Give Us The Word
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning!
Please keep your bibles open to Nehemiah, chapter 8. Last week, we saw the list of those who came with Zerubbabel back to Jerusalem, which was a reiteration of what the prophet communicated through Ezra chapter 2. The list was so long and full of so many difficult names that I made the tough decision not to read it in its entirety. There were several reasons for this decision:
partly, because it was almost 70 verses long
partly, because of all the difficult names
partly, because I would rather engage with the text and let you read it on your own time so that we could get to the point and not spend all the time in an academic style lecture.
This morning, I am really glad to come back to a point where it is not only appropriate to tackle the text in its entirety as well as read it in its entirety. This passage is one of the clearest in all of scripture of the importance of preaching and teaching within the context of a corporate body - where the people of God gather to hear the Word of God taught, explained and applied in a way that meets us where we are. We see one of the primary examples of the use of a pulpit in preaching - where many believe the practice of using a pulpit originated, and we see how important it is in terms of how the restoration of God’s people in God’s purpose goes hand-in-hand with the preaching, teaching and application of God’s Word.
Before the exile, the Jewish people had unfettered access to God’s Word until He cut them off for their wickedness against Him and their refusal to live up to their end of the covenant. You see, unlike the unconditional covenant we live in today - where God does not make any provision to end a relationship with His elect, there was a clear and identified conditions built into the Mosaic Covenant with the people of Israel a reiterated throughout the Old Testament.
9 “I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you.
10 You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new.
11 I will place my residence among you, and I will not reject you.
12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom.
14 “But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands—
15 if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands—and break my covenant,
16 then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you—wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it.
17 I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even though no one is pursuing you.
And further, the Israelites knew and accepted the terms and conditions of the covenant:
7 He then took the covenant scroll and read it aloud to the people. They responded, “We will do and obey all that the Lord has commanded.”
By the time the Prophet Jeremiah came on to the scene, God’s patience with the people had been completely exhausted because of their unwillingness to abide to their side of this conditional covenant - so out of love for His people and a full knowledge of what He aimed to accomplish in the future through them - by bringing the Messiah out of the line of Judah - He decided to cut them off temporarily and discipline them so they would know that He meant what He said.
In the church today, I believe their lives a spirit of licentiousness where people don’t take their sin seriously because God is a forgiving God - we see the reality of His love as believers more than we see the reality of His judgement and justice. They forget that
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
They forget that sin is still massively offensive to God and that the call of every Christian is to pursue with their entire being the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit whereby God recreates you more and more into the image of His Son.
1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.
2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
What is the mechanism that Paul is spelling out here? Be transformed by what? The renewing of your mind. How does He renew our minds? God’s Word and the influence of the Holy Spirit!
A basic explanation of this is that:
We are renewed through replacing worldly thought patterns by adopting a mind transformed by God.
We are renewed through the role of the Word and the Spirit, where we fill our minds with God’s truth and allow the Holy Spirit to rewire our minds to function with His Word as our foundation instead of the systems of the world we have been programmed with since we were born.
We are renewed through the process of renewal where a renewed mind allows believers to test and approve - or discern God’s good, perfect and pleasing will.
We are renewed through ongoing transformation. Paul uses a Greek word, that describes a complete metamorphosis - or transformation from the old man to the new man. This work is the influence of the Holy Spirit who uses God’s work through His Word as source material for that transformation.
One comment on this passage from Romans says this:
The Epistle to the Romans Exegetical Comments
“…it is a complete inner change of thought, will, and desires that Christians are to allow God by means of the ministry of his Holy Spirit to bring about in their lives, resulting in a recognizable external change of actions and conduct. It is a metamorphosis of a person’s inner being…”
Does God love us even though we sin? YES! All day long! But does it still grieve His heart that we gravitate to it as easily as we do? Yes! Our goal should be to strive for holiness, knowing that we’ll never attain that goal, but that in the pursuit of holiness, we walk in line more and more with God’s will for our lives and conformed more and more to the character of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
God’s word plays a huge role for us, but we cannot be guilty of the sin of some who would replace God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible. We must not neglect the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, but we can’t sit idly by and pretend like our participation in holiness is optional. If we are to be Holy, we must contribute to that by committing to being renewed and feeding our souls with God’s word.
Our passage today shows what happened when God brought His word back to the Jewish people after the exile. For many of them, it would be the first time they had ever heard the Scripture, let alone it being taught and explained in a manner which they could apply it to their own lives. Their collective goal was to put their past of obstinance and disobedience behind them and live for God the way He wanted them to.
If you were to take away one primary point from today’s message, it would be this:
Embracing and understanding the Word of God revives our hearts and transforms our lives, leading us closer to Christ and His purpose for us.
If you are a note-taker and didn’t get a copy of the bulletin insert, here is a brief outline of where we will be going today:
Gather with Eager Hearts (8:1-3)
Proclaiming with Reverence (8:4-6)
Understand Through Teaching (8:7-8)
Gathering With Eager Hearts (8:1-3)
Gathering With Eager Hearts (8:1-3)
At this point in the book of Nehemiah, we have not heard from Ezra, but it is important to remember that the original literary unit of the book of Ezra and Nehemiah were the same single unit. This literary unit, Ezra and Nehemiah, showcase three stages of return from exile for the Jews. The first stage of return was under Zerubbabel in Ezra 1-6. The second stage was under Ezra in Ezra 7-10, and the third stage, as we have seen, was by Nehemiah in Nehemiah 1-7. Each of these leaders are sent by the King of Persia with resources, each of these leaders encounter resistance and opposition. Zerubabbel was sent by Cyrus roughly 50-60 years after the Babylonians destroyed the city. About 60 years later, Ezra comes on the scene after being commissioned by King Artaxerxes. Ezra was a Torah scholar and a teacher. Both Zerubbabel and Ezra had interesting troubles in their leadership by interjecting their own will and vision for the people in place of God’s. Zerubbabel fought against the Jews who had never experienced the exile. Ezra decreed that those Jews who married non-Jews in Jerusalem during the exile. None of those things were commanded by God, but they enforced them anyway. We will see Nehemiah fall into the snare of frustration and even bitterness as we close the book.
For now, we see Nehemiah and Ezra join forces to lead the Jewish people in their pursuit of the Lord by bringing them back to God’s Word.
Read with me in…
1 all the people gathered together at the square in front of the Water Gate. They asked the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had given Israel.
2 On the first day of the seventh month, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly of men, women, and all who could listen with understanding.
3 While he was facing the square in front of the Water Gate, he read out of it from daybreak until noon before the men, the women, and those who could understand. All the people listened attentively to the book of the law.
What we see here is a hunger and thirst for God’s word being satisfied through the preaching and teaching of the Word in a corporate context. What I mean by corporate context is that they were gathering together as a larger group, not just partaking in individual, independent study, but coming under the authority of God’s Word from a qualified teacher whose goal was to communicate with the people God’s priorities and mission that He had in the text of Scripture. Preaching is not just an exercise in telling people what to do and how to live - it is confronting the world we live in with the Word of the God who made it, seeing where the differences lie, and helping us see where we may have blind spots.
My goal is never to condemn from the pulpit or to make people feel like I am coming down hard on them, but there are times and moments where it is necessary to call sin what it is, point out that there are places where it is slipping up in the church and it needs to be addressed. Some of those situations can be addressed privately - of course. But some of those conversation become prevalent enough within the body that they deserve coverage from the pulpit - not to intimidate or shame people, as I know some pastors have done from the pulpit, but for the sake of admonishing the church to repent of sin and follow Jesus - for the sake of restoration! If a pastor ever brings up their personal vendetta against a congregant from the pulpit, I am of the mind that they are publically disqualifying themselves from the ministry. My personal take on addressing sin and behavior from the pulpit is that it needs to be out of the same spirit of restoration that Matthew 18 discipline scenarios are approached in. It must be done out of brotherly love - not vengeance or desire to bring shame on someone else.
That being said, I do have something I want to point out. Who does the church belong to? Jesus Christ.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
22 And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church,
23 which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
I bring this up because I have noticed a few occurences over the last couple weeks where (I am assuming) well-meaning folks from the church have behaved in a way towards certain members of the Sprague community that completely took me aback. God is at work in the Sprague area and I believe he is trying to prepare successive generations to come in and plant their roots within the church. It has been really exciting seeing the work that Justin, Stephanie, Jarod and Denise have been doing with the youth group and Awana program, and seeing the explosion of interest from community youth in coming to church - even when some of the boys come in on Sunday to explore and hang out. What we have in those instances is an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the children of this community - who really, really need Jesus’ love in their lives.
What I want to urge and plead with you is to remember the fact that this church doesn’t belong to us, but to God. If we find ourselves working against what he wants to do, he is perfectly within His right - as the head of the church - to remove His blessing and accomplish His will through other means. We can either be used by God in the lives of those in the community, or we can tell God, “No thank you, we’re here to learn the Word, but not apply it…”
I don’t like addressing these things so bluntly and directly, as I am a man who doesn’t enjoy confrontation. But I do believe with my whole heart that our job as a church is to represent Christ in everything we say and do - and that includes how we treat the kids in the community. We can guide and teach them in love, but if we approach them in judgement, they may carry those scars with them their entire lives and use Sprague Community Church as a reason not to follow Jesus. That scares me to death! I’m not specifically pointing out a single incident but several that have been brought to my attention over the last couple weeks. When it comes to the specifics, I would ask that we not throw stones or cast judgement, but I would also ask that we be sensitive to this and commit as a church to representing Christ well in the community.
This first point in our sermon - gathering with eager hearts - is fitting. Eagerness in a heart grows by the draw and pull of the Holy Spirit - especially in the lives of those who have yet to experience faith in Christ. As we gather together, my heart and prayer is that we gather with an eagerness to praise the Lord, give Him the glory He is due, and to lift our souls to Him in a collective sense of wonder! At the same time, my hope and prayer for us all is to hear from His word the truth of what He expects from us, to be challenged in areas we need work in, and encouragement for the victories Christ has won on our behalf.
These first few verses of chapter 8 show that people gathered and listened intently to the Word of the Law that Ezra was teaching. I have been encouraged greatly by the enthusiastic feedback and support I have received from many of you during my time in the pulpit - I treasure that because I know that God’s Word - and not anything of me - was at the center. As we gather week by week, we should have an eagerness in our hearts to hear from the Lord and to apply what ever He may have challenged us with that week. One of my greatest joys in preaching is that I get to wrestle with what I am preaching on for an entire week or more before I present it to you - the times I have felt convicted and even ashamed of my own sin before the Lord and experienced His restoration before bringing you the same Word has shown me that God has used this pulpit for good in all our lives over the past year.
Embracing and understanding the Word of God revives our hearts and transforms our lives, leading us closer to Christ and His purpose for us.
Proclaiming With Reverence (8:4-6)
Proclaiming With Reverence (8:4-6)
4 The scribe Ezra stood on a high wooden platform made for this purpose. Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah stood beside him on his right; to his left were Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam.
5 Ezra opened the book in full view of all the people, since he was elevated above everyone. As he opened it, all the people stood up.
6 Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and with their hands uplifted all the people said, “Amen, Amen!” Then they knelt low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
If we didn’t include context and names, there’s a good chance someone could confuse this description as a modern day Christian church! In verse 4, we see the first mention of a pulpit in Scripture. Many credit this passage as the start of the tradition of a dedicated lectern from which the minister would bring forth the Word of God in the presence of the people, so it could be taught and presented clearly - with the honor and respect it deserves. Don’t get me wrong - I am not advocating that we somehow venerate the Scriptures to the same status as the Divine, but I am saying that the preaching and teaching of God’s Word is a sacred task that should be approached by the preacher with solemn humility at the sheer gravity of the task. Those in attendance shouldn’t just listen out of respect for the pastor or to be polite, but should come with high hopes and expectations to find what God has in store for them in the text that week and embrace it!
For the longest time in human history, the majority of people in a community did not have to be literate to live happy lives - it simply wasn’t as much of a priority. It’s one of the reasons the Catholic church kept the mass in Latin for so long. But ended up happening is that people’s only exposure to the Word of God came during the weekly sermon. Stain-glass windows were developed as an art form to depict stories in the Bible for those who weren’t able to read them for themselves. Since we live in the times we do, it is rare to come across people who haven’t yet learned to read, but the tradition hasn’t changed.
People can read the Scripture and probably come up with sermon ideas all day long that could be preached more succinctly and eloquently than the pastor is able to come up with, but the point of the matter is that we gather with reverence for the teaching of God’s Word as the act of preaching and listening to the preaching are both acts of Worship we partake in.
The French Reformer, John Calvin, said this:
We owe to the Scripture the same reverence that we owe to God; because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.
John Calvin (French Reformer)
We see Ezra bless the Lord and the people shouted, “Amen, Amen!” which means, “I agree,” or “let it be so.” When we close in prayer, it is commonly said as an anthem of agreement in hopes that our communal agreement in prayer would be a pleasing sign of unity as we pray to Lord - who desires us to be unified in our thoughts and deeds led and guided by His Word!
In order for the preacher and the congregation to give the Word of God proper reverence, great care must be taken to keep the message on the message of the text and to remove speculation or pet-projects of the pastor - when we come together, it is to hear the Word of God alone! Nothing more, nothing less!
Reverence excludes speculation about things that God has not mentioned in his Word.
J. I. Packer
It’s interesting in this passage how the people are specifically noted as having a face-down posture in reverence to the Lord and the preaching of His Word. Taking a posture of humility to the Word isn’t some archaic form of bibliolatry - where someone is worshiping the bible in some heinous act of idolatry, but it is acknowledging the sacred source of the Scripture being from God.
An amazing promise of God when it comes to preaching is that
11 so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”
When we gather together for this time, God has a plan for what He wants to accomplish, and we have both the duty and the privilege of witnessing that. I believe one of the greatest dangers of seminary, from my personal experience is that the act of preaching can be far too romanticized and perverted into something it was never meant to be. It is a time of study, of learning, of growth, of encouragement and a time of correction and humility. It should never be bent into a time of shame or judgement! After all, we are all sinners and we are all in the walk of life together! If we boil it down, we all struggle with different varieties of sin that keep us from realizing the fullness of what God wants for us, but we strive after Him together because we know that He is able to do more than we could ever have dreamed! His Word does not return unto Him void of the purpose He sent it out to do - and we should be walking hand-in-hand, brokenness and all, toward Him with our eyes on the prize!
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead,
14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.
Embracing and understanding the Word of God revives our hearts and transforms our lives, leading us closer to Christ and His purpose for us.
Understanding Through Teaching (8:7-8)
Understanding Through Teaching (8:7-8)
7 Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah, who were Levites, explained the law to the people as they stood in their places.
8 They read out of the book of the law of God, translating and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.
It’s interesting that the author made sure to let the readers know that the men he mentioned in verse 7 were Levites. The Levites were appointed by God as the priestly Tribe of Israel - so much so that as a Tribe, they were not given a share of the inheritance like the other tribes were - they were told that the Lord was their inheritance. Their part of the program was to be ministers of God’s presence to the Israelites - and now that the city was being rebuilt and repopulated, their services were needed again, now more than ever!
Have you ever had a pastor minister to you in a way that blessed the socks off you? I remember when I was going through kidney dialysis, I wasn’t allowed to have visitors during the aggressive 4 hours of boredom we had to go through, but my wife arranged for a friend to come pick me up after and take me home. I was surprised when I was being wheeled out that my mentor pastor was also their to say hi and check on me. It was the first time I had seen him since I had gone through the coma, and I will admit, I may have lost my “man-card” because of how much I wept.
For the Jews, many of them were getting the first teaching on the Scriptures they had ever experienced. It was a connection to the Divine that they had never experienced before, and God used Ezra and the priestly tribe of Levi to administer His word to the people. This was important because it helped the people see the Levites in their role as priestly ministers, which was super important for the community as a whole moving forward so that the order God placed everything in could be observed and followed. Likewise, it was good for them to have the experience of ministering the Word as well. Many of them probably had not had the opportunity for lengthy training in the Word, so the standard idiom that “Practice Makes Perfect” applies to preaching and teaching as well!
Another interesting thing to note is that in verse 8, it says that the Levites were translating it and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read. Translating might seem to be an interesting note, because they were all Hebrews after all and the Torah was written in Hebrew. The interesting thing to remember though is that these people grew up in a culture that spoke a different language! Most of the people who returned to Jerusalem probably spoke Aramaic, like Daniel did. An interesting side note is that the written Hebrew language that we may be most familiar with today isn’t actually Hebrew, but it is the Aramaic alphabet - they adopted it during their time in exile. When Aramaic essentially became a dead language, they were the sole heirs of that alphabet. The Torah was written originally (most likely) in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
I have Exodus 14:14 tattoo’d on my arm in Hebrew. It is the Hebrew I learned in seminary and grew to love in my time in academia. However, I cannot rightly and correctly say that it is the original Hebrew text because it is in the Aramaic alphabet! My OT Prof loved to point that out to me as gently and as often as he had the opportunity!
The other important aspect of what the Levites were doing was “giving the meaning of the text” so that the people could understand it. In modern biblical studies, we call this exposition, or expository preaching. It comes from the Latin words ex - meaning “out” or “forth,” and ponere, which means “to put” or “place.” There was another word credited with the roots of the word - expositorius (which almost sounds like something from Harry Potter!). Putting that all together, exposition is the practice of drawing the meaning out of the text. The term was coined in the 1620’s with the specific intention of saying that if something was being exposited, it was being explained or described in great detail.
One of the greatest books written for the developing preacher is called Biblical Preaching, by Haddon Robinson. In that book, he says…
“expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept.”
Haddon W. Robinson
Another popular author for preachers, Bryan Chappell said this,
Expository preaching presents and applies the truths of a biblical passage.
Bryan Chapell
In preaching and ministry circles, there are two primary approaches to preaching and teaching: expository preaching and topical preaching. Topical preaching, to be fair has it’s place and can be useful at times - but by-in-large, the preferred method of preaching and teaching within the church should primarily be expository preaching. The preacher should strive in every sermon to explain the text and to draw the meaning out of it so as to propose a correct interpretation of the text and applications that coincide with what the text actually means. That’s why subjective interpretation doesn’t cut it for ministers and pastors, and you should vehemently strive towards understanding the single objective meaning present in any text. It is possible, it just takes a little work to get there, and is more that worth it.
There is a book I read years before ever even dreaming of going into seminary - and I would later get the opportunity to meet him, but his name is Steven Lawson, and the book is called, Famine in the Land - talking about the drought of Biblical teaching in the church because everyone was going towards the more seeker-sensitive model of the topical sermons instead of expository sermons. The job of a pastor is to bring the Word, not some message that he feels God placed on His heart to share - there are times for that, but the primary methodology for preaching in the church should be tied to the text of Scripture through expository preaching. When we excuse the Bible so we can have a more applicable conversation without it, we tear the hearts out of people who need to hear from the Lord!
As many of you are aware, if you were here last week, I did resign as the pastor of Sprague Community Church, and will be transitioning out of this role towards the end of April. My goal is to finish the Book of Nehemiah and get us through Easter well. A big part of the reason why I gave as much notice as I did was because I wanted to use the time we have left together to prepare you for a new pastor and admonish you in the things you should expect from him. My heart breaks as I say these things because the honest truth of the matter is that if I wasn’t struggling with cancer, I wouldn’t be leaving. What you should expect and demand from your pastor is in the title of the sermon today - “Give Us The Word.” Our identity as a church is in the Lord, not the personality or the man filling the pulpit. God’s Word survives the centuries, the fads and shifting cultures of men and remains unchanged. We should be striving to understand the text through the teaching we receive and hold high expectations and standards from anyone who stand behind the pulput and declare, “Thus saith the Lord.”
Embracing and understanding the Word of God revives our hearts and transforms our lives, leading us closer to Christ and His purpose for us.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In order for us to embrace and understand the Word of God, we need to commit ourselves to interpreting the Word the way that the Lord intends it to be interpreted. Starting around the age of enlightenment, people started getting this idea that all interpretations of Scripture are valid because it was more in the eye of the beholder - like art - than an authoritative text.
Have you ever been in a bible study of some sorts where they ask, “What does this passage mean to you?” And then people give their answers that are so highly specific to their situation and circumstance that it fails to hold meaning for anyone else in the group?
I don’t want to put down anyone’s study methods, but I would like to point out that there are literary methods of interpretation that hold the text in highest regard and methods that put the text behind their own subjective feelings.
Say I were to write a love letter to my wife, and she treasured it until her dying day, and our kids pass it down and some how, it survives 500 years of being passed down in a shoebox. If someone studying what I said to my wife looked at my words through their own perspective, are they actually concerned with what I had to say or how I actually felt about my wife? No! They are more interested in how what I said makes them feel - which is ultimately worthless in terms of getting to know my wife and I’s relationship better.
Say in that exact same scenario, another person studied it, and they took the time to get to know 21st century America, and maybe even found a biography that mentions me enough for them to know some of my background - the fact that I am a pastor, that I have had tremendous health struggles throughout my life, that my wife and I are celebrating our 15th anniversary this year - simple facts like that could massively open up the door to understanding my words to my wife. They could get a closer glimpse of my intention as they author of that letter, which gives them an objective foundation to stand on when they say that the letter means this or that.
That might sound like a weird scenario - but isn’t it a scenario we deal with every time we open God’s Word? Aren’t we faced with how we are going to interpret it when we read? Are we going to look at Scripture through our own lenses, or can we dig deeper to find out more and more what the author intended to convey?
I believe firmly that subjective readings of scripture miss the mark on studying God’s Word by removing God’s Word from the equation. If we want to know God’s Word, we need to understand what the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to write, what the purpose and occasion of that writing was - and what they were trying to convey - we need to understand their intent to understand what God was wanting to communicate through His word. In seminary, prospective pastors go through training in what is called “Hermeneutics,” or the science of interpretation. I will admit that hermeneutics aren’t agreed upon throughout all of Christendom. There are many faith traditions who hold tightly to prominent people’s subjective interpretations of the Word - whose interpretations are now studied to figure out - objectively - the core of what they believed.
Brothers and sisters - I don’t want to create dissention within the church, but I do believe that it is important to at least communicate this aspect of studying Scripture as clearly as I can. When you study, get to know the situation and circumstance of the author so we can put their own words into context. I believe that is the only way to have access to the actual word of God. We can still enjoy the overwhelming emotion we get when we read through the Word and enjoy what God brings about in that, but to actually know what God’s word is so that we can accurately apply it to our lives, we must seek after that author’s intent so we can find their objective meaning as closely as possible.
Embracing and understanding the Word of God revives our hearts and transforms our lives, leading us closer to Christ and His purpose for us.
