Nick Roark | Text to Talk - Context

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So before we begin, let's dive in and pray and ask the Lord to bless our time. Okay, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your precious word, the words of eternal life. Lord, where else are we going to go to hear from you, accept your word. And so we pray as we think about this wonderful letter from your servant, Paul. Father, we pray that you'd help us to understand. And as we see the glory and grace of your son and your word even today, we pray that you would help us to be bowed down before you. Help us to be men who are humble before you, who tremble at your word. And Father, we want to be not only able to understand your word more deeply and clearly, but, Lord, we want to be faithful, to obey it and to teach it, to teach all of your statutes and rules and all of your word. And so would you grow us as those who long to be able to teach your people and our families, our wives, our children, those in this church, and help us to proclaim your word, to grow in our understanding of how to preach, and to proclaim the wonderful, beautiful mystery of Christ, the unsearchable riches of our Savior. So as we think about context, would you be our teacher? Now we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so in your. In your notebook, you'll see, like on page. I think it's on page. Page 12. You can see on page 12, we don't. We don't have a whole lot of stuff on that page, but that kind of gives you some heads up on what we're doing today with context. So if you remember the last couple weeks, Brad has been teaching us kind of the framework, remember, the pathway to prep. That kind of looks like a square, right? It kind of looks like this, you know, and we've talked about how over here is the text, you know, and then over here is the audience. And one of the things that Brad said last week was the. The safest way home is the longest way around, right? We don't want to just go from text and immediately just go this way to the audience, right? We don't want to do that. We want to first understand what the text is saying, what it means, what it means to the original audience. And then as we reflect theologically, then we want to think through, and as we think through how the passage points and reveals Christ to us. And then we kind of go, that's over here is exegesis, right? It's just getting meaning out of a text, right? Exegesis is loving God enough to slow down and to think carefully, to listen carefully to what he has said to us. That's what exegesis is. So we do exegesis, and we're thinking about that. First audience, right. How would they understand this passage? And then this is up here. Sorry, I'm running out of room. Theological reflection, right? Theological reflection. We're thinking theological. What does it teach about God? What does it teach about Christ? We'll do that in the coming weeks. And here is the how does it get to Christ? I think Mike's going to be teaching on that in a few weeks. And then going down here, thinking about persuasion. How do we form a message from this passage to be able to communicate it to those that we are teaching and preaching to our audience. Right. And so over here, we're still over on this side of it, we're thinking about exegesis. And Brad talked about that first week. And then last week, what was the main. The one word summary of last week? What were we talking about last week? Structure. Okay, good. One person. Excellent. One person. Structure. So we're thinking about structure. Structure reveals emphasis. So he walked us through all the different kind of tools that we can use to think through how to find structure in a passage. And we went through all that last week. Well, this morning we're going to think about context. Context. And again, I think all of you understand the importance of context. That understanding a message, you have to understand it in its context. Back in 2002, Alice and I had just been married in October. And so later in the fall, we were both working in. This is when we were in Raleigh and we were working in the Research Triangle park in North Carolina, and I was working at IBM and she was working for a cochlear implant manufacturer. And so we were dinks. You know what dinks are, right? What are dinks? Dual income, no kids. I mean, it was. We've never had more money than we did then. And then it just went downhill ever since, right? So. But we were dinks. And so she was driving home from her work and I was driving home from my work. And we would usually get home about the same time. So I got home one day and Alison wasn't there. And it was like, well, maybe she got stuck in traffic or something. Well, then it went a little bit past when I would think she'd be home. So I called her on her cell phone and she didn't answer. And I started to get a little concerned. So then the phone rings and it's Allison Sell calling me. So I was like, okay, Great. So I answer the phone and I say, hey, sweetie, where are you? Silence. And then out of the silence, a woman's voice that I've never heard before says, your wife's been in a horrible wreck. Okay? That's all she said. Now, at that point, my life kind of froze. And I'm like, I did not. I was like, it felt like a million years. And I just go, is she okay? And Lady's like, oh, yeah, she's sitting right here. She's fine. It's just her implant fell off when she got rear ended, and so she just wanted me to call you. Okay, now listen, context. The message that I heard without any context, I immediately. I went in a thousand different directions, right? Now I told that lady, hey, lady, listen, I know you haven't taken Simeon Trust Workshop, but listen, context, like, make sure you tell me a little bit more, you know, so I can understand the message. Because that little message that she gave me, without context, it could be a lot of different things, right? And so, in the same way, when we use language, right, words are understood in the context of the words that are around them. And there's other factors that play with this as well. So in your notes, if you want to take a principle down, this is kind of the principle of context we're going to be talking about this morning. And you all know this. Again, this is common sense, because you all can speak a language. All of you can speak English, right? We must understand every text in its context in order to see how the original audience understood the text or the passage we're considering. And so, again, we're still on that left side of the pathway. We want to understand the text in its context so that we understand what the original audience would have understood. And then we can contextualize it later. But we first got to understand it in its own context. Okay, so I'm going to leave this up for a minute. And so one of the things, if you guys have ever been in, Y' all got this. We're good. All right. Pretty straightforward. So we have rules of interpretation. I've taught my kids hermeneutics. And you'll notice this one right here. So words have meanings. Context is king. Scripture interprets scripture. Look for the glory and grace of Jesus. There's a lot of other hermeneutical rules you could use. These are the ones I've taught my family, right? Because if you can get these, you're going to pretty much get it, right? So context is king, right? So that's another way to get to get across what we're trying to do in this class. Okay, Context is king. How many of you have ever heard someone teach God's word or preach God's word, and they've taken a verse out of context? Christian. Now, not only raise your hand, but tell us, can you think of passages in the Bible that you've heard taken out of context in teaching and preaching? Just. You have to name names. That's a great one. What is Philippians 4:13. That would be one. That's right. And if you. If you have that verse on your shoes, you can hit three pointers, right? Like Steph. Steph Curry. What else? Other passages maybe you've heard taken out of context. That's it. Is that the only one? [00:09:13] Speaker B: Judge not. [00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So right from the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says, judge not lest ye be judged. Right, exactly. What else? Yes. Yeah. So praying for the welfare of the city, seeking the welfare of the city. Like that's a passage. When you look at it in its context, it helps us understand a little bit better what it means and what it doesn't mean. Right? But even down, even from just the language period, last year, Mike taught this. This portion context, and he pointed out this word run. Now, Mike, do you remember now, Mike. Mike helped us understand last time. Just even in like, a English as a second language context. Think about all the different ways you can use the word run. So I'm going to read some of the ones that Mike gave last week because it was. Or last time because it was. So. So here we go. Listen to this. Imagine you're trying to learn English and you hear someone use this word run or ran in these different ways. Ready? I ran five miles. I ran to the store. Now, did you. Did you really run to the store? Like, I guess you could run to the store, but when you say I ran to the store, like, it just means I went to the store. Right? What about the train runs on time. All right, Another one. My nose runs constantly. My refrigerator is running. Better catch it. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:45] Speaker A: It's running. I need to run. Right, Again. Again. All of these the same word. But again, context is the only way to understand what that word means. What about this one? Ball. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Ball. [00:10:58] Speaker A: All right. What does ball mean? Well, ball. You only know what ball means by looking at the words around it in its context. Right? Throw the ball. Right. When Nico was running out of bounds against Arkansas a few years ago, at the end of the game, he just ran out of bounds. I'm saying throw the ball, Nico. I'm still traumatized by it. All right, if you don't know, go back and watch the last Tennessee Arkansas game. Okay? I held the ball. That's what he did. I held the ball. So throw the ball. I held the ball. Well, that could be something. You throw, like an actual physical ball. What about a dance? A ball, Right. I held the ball. Right? I had a ball. That just means I had a good time. I play ball, you know, ball. If you said Jordan is better than LeBron, I would say, you know, ball. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:11:41] Speaker A: There it is. Right? Here's the point. All of these are words. They're just one word in English, and yet we don't know what it means until we put it in its context. Okay, so DA Carson, who wrote a book called Exegetical Fallacies, is all the ways that you screw up when you're interpreting the Bible. That's what that book's about. He said this. A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text. Text without a context becomes a pretext for proof text. In other words, if we don't understand a text in its proper context, we're going to just say whatever we want it to say. It's going to offer us to just appeal to it and make it say what we want it to say. And that's not. That's not the way to read the Bible. Okay, this is really cheesy, but again, I'm just going to say it. If you. Here it is. If you take a text out of a context, what are you left with? A con. Right. Rough crowd this morning, Stephen. They're just. I don't know if it was the coffee. Sorry, the coffee was bad, guys. Wow. All right, here we go. So let me give you a drawing. I did not draw this. I got this clip art from the Internet. Right? So I'm going to draw it for you, but I wanted to see what I'm drawing before I do it. Okay. So every time we do one of these text to talks, we always have, like, a drawing. So this is the thing. What is this? A scope? Yes. The last time I used this, someone said a wheel. It's not rims. It's not like. No, it's a scope. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Right? [00:13:21] Speaker A: It's a scope. And so what? I want you to think of it like this. All right, let's draw. Draw it. Let me draw it like this. So we've got big circle here, right? And then let's see over here in the middle, Right, you've got. In the middle, you've got. Again, this looks Like a donut, but here we go. This is kind of the bullseye, the crosshairs, right? You're looking through it. Now, when you're trying to hit the target through the scope, you're looking through the scope, you're trying to hit the target. The target for us is the text, right? We don't want to miss that target. We want to hit the target square. And I want you to think of these crosshairs. Each one of them are aspects of context that we're going to briefly consider this morning. These are aspects of context that we're briefly going to consider this morning. So the first one I want you to think of is, we'll start over here. This is literary. Literary context. Then over here, it's going to be historical context. And then going up here, cultural. Cultural context. And then last one, biblical context. Okay. Now, I'm going to explain each one of these as we go through. But if you think of it, I'm trying to. I want you to see that it's kind of spiraling out. So you're going to start here. 2, 3, 4. Okay. All right. And what I want to do this morning is really just use our passage that we're going to discuss at our tables to kind of illustrate the importance of it. Okay? So I'm going to leave this up for just a minute. Okay? But when we. When we. When we're doing context, I'm always trying to think of, like, what's the best way to get at context? And it's really the best way to do any kind of Bible study is to really think about the greatest TV show in the history of the world, Colombo. Anybody see? Raise your hand if you've seen Colombo. Don't be ashamed. Michael. One person. Dennett. Let's see. Denver. So we have four people. Well, guys, I'm sorry, this illustration will fall flat, but I'm just telling you, your application is go home and watch Columbo, right? Columbo is a detective who always. He never stops asking questions. He's always. He has a cigar, he never has a match. So he's always, hey, you got a match. And he just keeps asking the simple, obvious questions. And I've learned more from Columbo about Bible study is that context. So much of the time you just do this when you're reading. You just do it in your head. But what I'm encouraging to do is to slow down, like Columbo and just ask the obvious questions. Okay? And a lot of the questions are going to be things like what who, where, when, why? You're going to. You're going to see this as we go through it. Okay? So the first. The first thing is literary context. And when you hear the word literary context, what do you think literary context is? Context means, what is literary context? What would y' all say? Anybody want to guess literary context? Any brave souls? Yeah, exactly. So literary. Think of it as like, what comes before and what comes what after, right? So remember, I told y' all and Brad said this last time, one of the best ways to study a passage is to study the book over and over again. Read the book over and over again. Get a sense of the whole book in your mind as you're studying. So if you. You read second Timothy, just keep reading second Timothy because you. You can know where he's going and you know where he's been, right? So you're looking at what comes before and what comes after, right? You're looking at the sentence, right? You're looking at the paragraph, you know, paragraph. You're looking at the chapter, and you're looking at the whole book. And so, especially in a short book like 2 Timothy, you can really, really get that whole. The whole flow, because sometimes you'll start to see themes that show up and words that show up. Even last time, do you remember last week, we thought about that idea of shame, and it kind of started, don't be ashamed. And it showed up again. Well, it's going to show up again in our passage. So part of. If you look at this part of our passage this morning, right over here. Right here. He was not. We're going to talk about this guy on Sufferus. He was not. What? Ashamed of my chains. And so that idea of shame, we're going to come back to it when we get to cultural context. But that idea of shame is. If you just jump into this passage, you may think that the first time that Paul's talking about shame is right here. But if you look up in the previous paragraph, he's already said, what? Don't be what? Ashamed. Right? Okay, so that's the literary context, and it's the. It's the larger section in which our passage resides. Okay, any questions on literary context? This is simple. This is basic. Look before, look at after, and just zoom out throughout the book. Okay, any questions on this? Okay, y' all got literary context. Done. This is going to be fast, right? Historical context. What would be historical context? What's the key word here? What's the key word in historical. What's the word? History. Right, so historical Context is kind of the circumstances, the situation of the original audience. All right, and so this is where you remember Colombo, the question asker, the detective. Remember I told you he's. He's always asking questions. Right. So what would be some questions we could ask to help us with understanding the historical context of a passage or of a book? [00:19:42] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:43] Speaker A: So remember when Brad was talking about the different genres of scripture? And if anybody here know French, I love it when some French person says genre. What is genre in French? Someone say it. I bet someone say it. Mike, you can say it. When, like, DA Carson says genre, he's like, Jean, what's the genre? It sounds French, believe me. And that's not a compliment. No offense to the French. Genre. That's how tendency. People say genre. All right, well, so the question you're asking is, what is it? When I open up Second Timothy. So here's my answer. Answer the question. What is Second Timothy, someone. What kind of. What kind of text is it? It's a letter. Yes. It's an epistle. Exactly. Thank you. It's not rocket science. It's an epistle. Great. So epistle, that means it's not a gospel, it's not apocalyptic, it's not a psalm. It's a letter. Okay. Who wrote it? Author, who? So what? [00:20:47] Speaker B: Who. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Who wrote second Timothy? The Apostle Paul. That's right. And so when did he write it? Was it like right after he was converted? Kind of middle of his ministry or end of his ministry? When did he write it? Yeah, at the end. How many more letters do we have of Paul? This is it. This is the last will and testament of the apostle Paul. Calvin said in his commentary, it's as if he wrote this letter in his own blood. This is it. So you could. You could say the late 60s, right towards the end of his life before he's executed. Right. Where'd he write it from? But he know where'd he write it from? Was he at a Hilton? Yeah, he's in jail. Yeah, he's in jail. Right. And he's in jail. And what is he awaiting? What does he tell us in this letter? That he's waiting for his time of his what? Departure. Right. He's about to be. He's about to die. So he's on death row, in jail. Right. And physically, where would he be? Right. If you're thinking of here, where would he be? Right. Yeah, he's over here. He's over here. Right. So where'd he grow up? Grew up in Tarsus, on the road to. He was down here when Stephen got martyred. And then he was on the road to Damascus when he was converted. And then he went over to Arabia for a bunch of years, and he came back, hooked up with the Church, and then he started going all over here, right, with his missionary journeys. But then eventually he gets. He appeals to Rome. He gets to Rome. This is his second imprisonment. So he's here. Now, where's Timothy? Where? Ephesus. So how do y' all know he's in Ephesus? He said at the end of 18. And you. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Well, almost every Ephesus. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you've got the church at Ephesus, Remember that was started by the Apostle Paul. He was there for years, preaching and teaching. He had bti. He had the hall of Tyrannus every day for five days, six days a week. So Timothy's over here, Paul's over here. And so that's important, right? That's important. He's writing now. He's writing. We know he's writing to Timothy, but is that the only audience that he's writing to? Is it just a personal letter to Timothy? Anybody know? Like, why are we reading it if it's just a Timothy? Anybody know? Look at the last verse. Look at chapter four, verse 22. Someone read that for us. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Now, y' all see that footnote on number? It's in my Bible. It's a little six. It says, grace be with you. Now, that's a Southern you. That's y'. [00:24:08] Speaker B: All. [00:24:09] Speaker A: You see, that's a plural you. So Timothy is the primary recipient of this letter, but Paul expects this book to be read in the whole church, just like First Timothy, right? And so he wants this read to the whole church. So it's us as well. Okay, so it's Timothy primarily, but it's also the church. Now, we're not going to spend a lot of time on why, right? But as you study a book over and over again, as you understand the parts in connection with the whole, you should get a sense of why the letter is written, right? Sometimes, like in First Timothy, the writer will tell us why. First Timothy, what, 3, 6, 315 and 16, right? The gospel of John, he tells us why he wrote the gospel. Now, if I could ask the Holy Spirit, I wish he would tell us every book that easily. But some books, he doesn't tell us that explicitly. But you have to read over and over again and ask, okay, what's the purpose? What's the aim of this? [00:25:08] Speaker B: Right? [00:25:09] Speaker A: So These are all historical context questions that will help you as you're thinking about your passage in its context. You put it in its literary context. What comes before, what comes after it. Now, why would this be significant? Right, Let me just ask. Let me just give you an example. Right? How many of y' all studied Lamentations before? Anybody? Okay. Is Lamentations like, if I took Lamentations and I preach Lamentations, what's the big historical event that, that happened, that produced Jeremiah's grief to write that, that book? What is it? Exile? What else? Anything else specifically? Yeah. So what city is getting wiped out? Yeah. Jerusalem. Right. So here's my point. If you take, if you take Lamentations and you just preach it like, oh, well, I know you had a bad week. Let's talk about Lamentations, that brings comfort. Well, yeah, it can bring comfort, but it would miss the entire context, historical context of that letter. It helps us appreciate what's actually going on when that, when Lamentations was written. Does that make sense? Okay, so we don't want to just jump from our, from our situation to, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the current audience. We want to make sure we understand it in its historical context. Now look at this. In its, in historical context. We've already talked a little bit about this, but we've, we've got here Ephesus, Rome, right? You've got all of Asia. All of this is historical context that has to do with geography about the time and setting of when this letter was written. But you also have his imprisonment, right? He's. He's in chains. Right? So these are some of the things in our passage that we would need to understand what's going on historically. That is the reason for this letter. Okay, Historical context. Okay, next one. Cultural. We're not going to spend as much time on this, but what would cultural context be? Cultural context. It's kind of the setting in the daily life of the people in the text. And sometimes you're going to have references to things in your passage. Customs, socio, economic references. There's all kinds of things culturally, sometimes, like, what is a denarius? Like, we don't use denarius like a denarii. What is that? Like, there's sometimes there's cultural things in your passage that you're going to have to understand to explain it to people. And I would say 99% of the time, if you just get a good study Bible, you'll find help on this front. Mike, when you're doing cross cultural Work when you're trying to explain cultural things from the passage to a completely different culture. Any tips for the guys on cultural context? Because sometimes we don't. We think the Bible came to us in King James English. Right. So any, any encouragement on that front? [00:28:21] Speaker B: Well, just don't, don't assume that you understand and can relate exactly to parallel ideas like the kind of way imprisonment would work there. Yeah, it may not look the same. [00:28:32] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:28:32] Speaker B: So, and what, what's the. What is chains literal or is it figurative? You notice, is there a cultural issue there that you need to understand? So there really are a lot of cultural references that it's good for us not to assume just because the words sound like ones we have. [00:28:46] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:28:46] Speaker B: They mean the same. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Exactly. So late. So Mike, again, he knows it because he's already said to us, and this is helpful, why is Paul so concerned that Timothy come as soon as he can? He says, bring my cloak because it's almost winter. How would that help you understand this? Imprisonment. Imprisonment in the first century wasn't three squares a day in cable television. Right. Remember in Hebrews 10? Right. People you'd have to go to the jail. Right. Depending on the kind of context it was to provide for the people, your friends and family who were there. The Romans aren't going to provide it for you. They're not going to say, oh, let me bring you a blanket. Paul, he's dependent on believers, which magnifies how significant it is that, that people are turning away and deserting him in his hour of need. They've abandoned him. He's alone. You see the, see what Mike is getting at? So if we just take prison. Prison, and we say it's the same thing, that means digging into it to see what kind of cultural issues there. Could you help really understand the first audience so that we can understand it for ourselves? Another thing that's maybe cultural that may not jump out at you. I mentioned it before, this language of shame. You all know, in different cultures, there's different kinds of cultural things that we. That we may not have in ours. But you've heard of an honor and shame culture. Right. What would be examples of an honor and shame culture? Like specific, maybe cultures that have that Islamic culture. Yep. It's there like in the Middle east, in Central Asia, in Islamic culture, in Asian culture, it's very prominent. Right. And you think about it in a lot of places where the identity, it's more. Not individualistic, but it's more. It's wider. It's your family, it's Your village, it's. It's your people. Right. So to do something dishonorable, it doesn't just bring dishonor to you, it actually brings shame to your entire family, everybody who's associated with you. And so that's a dynamic. Well, it's prominent in the Middle East. Right. So think about when this idea of shame. Right. Honor and shame, this shame theme runs all the way through the epistles. And you see it here with Timothy and Paul. Right. Don't be ashamed. Right. Of me. Don't be ashamed of my chains. Others are ashamed. But Timothy, I don't want you to be ashamed. So that, that would be a culture aspect. Is there any other things in here? How about household? Household, yeah. What a household is today. Yeah. Right. Understanding the household context. Right. What does that look like, other things in this passage? Maybe that, that anything else from this passage that might stand out in terms of cultural. Anything in the daily life of, of the, of the, of the, of the current, of the audience back then? Well, first of all, like, I mean, if any of you want a cultural artifact, if you're looking to name a son Hermogenes, what a great name. Or what about Phagellis? No one uses those names. I don't know. [00:32:21] Speaker B: What's. [00:32:21] Speaker A: What's the deal? Okay, we're going to keep going. Literary context, what comes before, what comes after? Historical context. We're understanding the historical situation of the audience to whom he's writing. Cultural. Are there cultural artifacts that we don't want to just trip over? We want to understand so that we can communicate it clearly? And the last one is biblical context. And what. This one gets a little tricky. And the way that typically people teach on this when they're doing text to Talk or Simeon Trust, they have a very narrow view of what they understand biblical context to mean. When we say biblical context, we often think of that idea of scripture interprets scripture. You've heard that before. That's true. Scripture interprets scripture. The scripture interprets scripture. Idea is, is a part of the bridge when we do this. That's the kind of theological reflection idea. Theological reflection. That's when you're thinking about theologically, what is my passage saying? And are there other passages of scripture not in Second Timothy that would help illuminate, help me reflect on the theological ideas in our passage? But that's not what they mean when they say biblical context. All biblical context means is when you're studying a passage of scripture, are there references to scripture in your passage? Are there illusions or quotations or Phrases in your passage that are referring back to older, you know, previous passages in Scripture. Okay. Paul doesn't do it a lot in second Timothy, but when you're studying Romans, does Paul quote other passages of scripture in Romans? Okay, one person has read Romans. Great. Yes, he does. And so biblical context is. You want to make sure, as you're studying your passage, are there passages that the author is writing, is alluding to, citing. And you want to make sure you're understanding how those passages are being quoted and how they support the point of your passage. I don't believe there's any passages expressly quoted in our passage today. But you want. You want to make sure. So you want. You want to look for those. Now, if you want a helpful resource that does this. Well, this is. This, this is a. The connecting scripture. New Testament. They're working on an Old Testament one now. But this is a great. If you want to understand more about allusions and quotations, they do a great job. It's in the csb. That's a great translation. So I think you can get this for like, 15 bucks. And it's excellent. So, yeah, check that out if you want to learn more about that. Okay, last one. And then you're gonna. I'm gonna release you to your tables to talk about the context and also to dig into your passage. This is the. This is the last thing I want you to see. Okay. Sometimes when people talk about this kind of stuff, especially Bible study, sometimes it can feel like a dump truck. Like I'm backing up a dump truck of all this stuff on your heart, and you're like, opening the Bible. And like, maybe 30 minutes ago, you were excited to study the Bible, and now you're sitting there like this feels like a PhD seminar or something. Okay, now, what I want. I want to encourage you with this diamond. I drew this yesterday, actually. No, this is clipart again. And I'm not going to actually draw the ring because you wouldn't be able to understand what it is. But what I want you to know is this, okay. When you open the Bible, beloved God did not speak 66 books to you by His Holy Spirit because He wanted to be misunderstood. He spoke this way because he loves you. He spoke this way because he wants you to know Him. And he spoke this way that you could understand and think his thoughts after. After Him. And all this stuff we're talking about in this text, to talk. I want you to think about structure, right? I want you to think about context. All this stuff. It's all this Stuff. It's like the prongs that hold up the diamond of your wife's engagement ring. Context is not the diamond, okay? Christ is the diamond. And so to the degree that you understand these things, they serve you because they help you. They hold up and they help you see the point, the glory and grace and the beauty of Jesus. This morning, like, Scott could spend 45 minutes talking about the structure and the context and what's going on. But what's the point of Psalm 45, beholding our majestic King, seeing him for all of his beauty and his kindness and his majesty and his might. You see? That's the point. So when you teach and preach, don't spend all your time talking about the prongs. Like, the prongs are necessary. Like, if you. If you don't have prongs, guess what? You're going to eventually lose the diamond. You need context. You need structure. But they're all beloved. They're all in service of helping you. Behold the glory of the diamond, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in His Son. So I close with this. This is just an encouragement. You can't get this book anymore because Banner of Truth apparently is going under because they're not even keeping this book in print. It's a shame, because this is where. This is what we're not going to get anymore. This is Chucky Bridges. He's great. He said this. Preach Christ Jesus the Lord, let his name, grace, spirit, love and triumph in all your sermons. Let your great end be to glorify him in the heart, to render him precious in the eyes of his people, to lead them to him. And I love this as a sanctuary to protect them, a propitiation to reconcile them, a treasure to enrich them, a physician to heal them, an advocate to present them as wisdom, to counsel them, as righteousness to justify them, as holiness to renew them, and as redemption to save them. And here's the point. Let all the context, let all the structure do one thing. Let Christ be the diamond to shine in the heart of all your sermons. He's the point. Okay. All right. I want you to take the passage. We've got 30 more, 25 more minutes. And I want you to just meditate and walk through, and in your worksheets, you've got some specific questions, right, that have to do with context. That's question number two. So go ahead and start that discussion at your table, and I will dismiss this in a few minutes, okay?