Now, I want to say this because I think it's very important, this is all doable, very doable, I really
want to set that up very clearly. We've covered lots of territory and we've gone into
various books and styles of study and approaches and categories but not one of them requires you to
have to go to seminary or even a Bible club, nothing wrong with that right but even if
you've done that, you've not necessarily learned how to fix your own meals, most people don't
prepare their own spiritual meals, they rely on a teacher like you or one like me or someone that
they've admired or maybe a book, a book or maybe what their mother and dad told him, which may
or may not be right, someone online, some teacher, who may have a particular ax to
grind and we've all got those, so I say to people, "don't just listen to me, listen broadly a scope out,"
others that are reliable teachers, now we're not through till we get to this crowning part, well
I've got a question because it seems to me that if I observe the text, that was the
first step out, right? Read it, very carefully, as I move to not only, what it says but why it says it,
interpret the text is a step two and then to guard my interpretation, that it's correct, I'm
looking at other passages to see how it all fits together, that should be sufficient, is it enough?
I mean, I'm now understanding what's being said, I'm understanding why it's being said, I got it. What
you have done? You don't have it, you have analyzed the print on the page, you've done a awfully
good job of setting it in his right place, seeing its context, how it applies to various other verses,
but you've missed the person that's doing the study, you need to apply what it means to
you, to me, to the one you're going to be teaching every Saturday. This is it. I've not shared this very
often, I put myself in the shoes of my congregation, I have people there who are older and
younger, married and single, those who are single parents, I have some are struggling desperately
in life, others who were very happy and satisfied, some with strong marriages, some who've never been
married, I've got in front of me professionals- airline pilots, nurses, physicians, counsellors, that
whole group, professors and teachers, educators, I can go on and on and I think, "okay, this is what I'm
going to be teaching, what does this say to her to him, to you, you're in the congregation.
What would this mean to Rome Dyke when he hears this? This is called applying the Scriptures. For
example, back to our favourite text here, John 3, has there ever been a time in your life as you look
back over the years, when you believed in Christ and were born again, just as Jesus presented it to
Nicodemus, I'm applying it to the one listening now. Often people who are in our church are
already there, they need a different application because they've already come to Christ, no need
to offer them the gospel because they've heard it and they believed it, what they want to know
if Jesus could love the world so much that He was willing to give the most important gift of heaven,
His son, what about my love for my neighbour? Let me go even closer, to my own circle of a family.
I may even get into relationships that are afraid, may be fractured, I may imagine and
I will say that, "perhaps some of you are in this particular situation," and I will describe it in
a way that John 3:16 - 18, down through 31 applies to their world and where they live now,
without that, one of our favourite professors used to say, "you've committed an abortion." Wow ,
the text is stillborn, you've got the observation, interpretation, the application, I'm the end and the
correlation got that down, done. No, it's not done because He's given us His Word to transform our
lives. If you miss that, you'll miss the primary reason we have a book that's timeless and true
and appropriate for all generations. You must apply it and that does bring me to this crowning part
of teaching it, we're serving this, we call it the feast. We prepared it very carefully, observed and
interpreted and compared it verse with verse we've begun to apply it now, there is the need to deliver
it. I say, "start with your own children," how great is it when people can think back and remember
when they're dad was the first one they remember teaching them about loving God and obeying His
Word and obeying their mother and living a life of honesty and purity and mothers who would pull
a daughter aside and talk about what's involved in being a young woman. What does that mean? She's
delivering this great message based on maybe one of the Proverbs, what God says to daughters. I did
a study one time on what God says to the sons and then what God says to daughters, it is remarkable
the different daughters that are in the book of Proverbs and the different kinds of sons that
are there but we're going through a tough time right now in our family where where one of our own
dear family members is a stray. There isn't a day that passes that we don't remember
and pray and long for that one to return to the Lord God and you know, we have to be wise
and how we convey the message to that one because there's resistance and so the heart has
to be prepared and I would add here that in order for a teacher to be effective, you must know your
audience, know who you're talking to and you adapt your words to that audience. When I'm on the
radio and I'm delivering this particular passage of Scripture, that's going out to thousands of places
around the world, not to mention internet and every hour of the day, think of that and it will touch a
life in the middle of the UK or Australia or Peru, China think of that, in those different
contexts. So, I've got to be very clear, I've got to be wise in how I'm saying all of that to pass
that on to those who are going to be using this information to teach, use wisdom, pray for guidance
and how you communicate, that it can all be applied. I mean, you've talked about the importance of it,
can all the Bible be applied? It can, there is application there in every circumstance.