The Word Alive: How to Study Your Bible

Welcome to Word Alive: How to Study Your Bible!

In this new livestream series, we’re learning how to move beyond simply reading Scripture and begin truly studying it in a deeper, richer, and more meaningful way. My heart is to help you grow confident in studying the Word of God for yourself so that Bible reading becomes more exciting, life-giving, and transformational.

In Episode 1, we’ll begin in the Gospel of Matthew and cover:

 An introduction to the Book of Matthew What to do BEFORE you study a passage How to find helpful study tools — even if you don’t own a study Bible How context changes understanding Why genealogies matter more than we think Hidden treasures found in Matthew Chapter 1

You’ll learn practical ways to dig deeper into Scripture, ask better questions, and discover the beauty woven throughout God’s Word.

Whether you’re brand new to Bible study or have been reading Scripture for years, this livestream will help equip you with tools and understanding that can completely change the way you approach the Bible.

Bring your Bible, a notebook, and a heart ready to explore the Word together. 

Here is the link to the handout: https://higherpursuitministries.com/resources/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We all have promises from God that even when there is yuck in our history, God is bigger. He's bigger than all of that. And it's it's an amazing thing to sit and meditate on the sovereignty of God, the power and might of God. That he's bigger than my mistakes, he's bigger than my sin, he's bigger than my failure, he's bigger than all the sin and the failure of my family that I can't even control. But if he's made promises to me, he will bring it to pass. My job is to stay as faithful as I can and repent of the times I blow it. Hey there, friends, I'm Cecily LaChapelle, and this is the Higher Pursuit Podcast. I'm so glad that you're tuned into this podcast where we talk specifically about things that will encourage you and strengthen you in your pursuit of the Lord. For more content, check out our ministry website at HigherPursuit Ministries.com. You can also find me on YouTube at Cecily LaChapelle with Higher Pursuit Ministries. Okay, now let's dive into the podcast. And things look a little different here because I'm in a different part of my office. We're trying this different. This is actually a whiteboard back here that um I'm I think I'm gonna use. We'll see. And um, so I want to make sure that you have downloaded your handout. It is the first comment, so you might have to scroll up if you haven't received the um the email that just went out a few minutes ago. Then um the the handout is there. Let me know if you are able to see it. Okay, awesome. So we have Manu and Delisa is here and Kate is here. Linda, Colleen, Tracy, Harmony. Oh my gosh, this is so great. I've got some of my favorite peeps. This is so awesome. This is so great, you guys. Thanks so much. Okay, so what you should have is your Bible open to the book of Matthew. It would be great if you have some sort of note-taking device, whether it's a good old-fashioned journal and pen. Um, Linda printed the handout. Of course you did. You're so admin. And um, and then you can have, or so you'd have the handout, your Bible, your journal. I think that's all you're gonna need for right now. And so let's see. Why have I why am I starting this series? I'm starting this series for a few reasons. First of all, because I absolutely love studying the word of God. If you don't know my testimony, just the high level, I got saved alone in my bedroom with nothing but a Bible. I have no idea how that Bible ended up in my bedroom when I was 17 years old, but inside that Bible was a little pamphlet that led me through all of the uh steps for salvation. So I literally came out of the spiritual birth canal with a Bible in my hand. And ever since then, for the last 40 plus years, that is what has spoken to me the most is the word of God. I had loved to dig into the Greek and the Hebrew. I love reading commentaries, even Bible atlases. I'm sorry, I geek out even on that. So I really love the scriptures and I've seen how it has taken my love of Jesus, my ability to worship, my ability to hear God's voice to a whole nother level. And I want that for you. I want that for everyone. So I'm just standing here as a girl who loves the Bible, and I want you to come on that journey with me. So that is the first reason we're doing it. The second reason is because I've done this in person a few times. Some people have said, you know, when are you gonna do that again? And are you gonna teach that at CLC again, which is the name of our church? And I thought, you know, why don't you just take this online? Because that way anybody, no matter where they are, can be a part of it and can join. So, oh, Delisa says the entire family is there. That is so great. Love that. Hey, Silk family. So good to see you guys. Even baby Eddie, or is he asleep? All right. So let's see, where are we gonna go? Oh, I you know what I want to know from you all is what do you want to get out of this? What do you hope to get out of this? Do you want to get more context for studying the Bible? Do you want to deepen your worship? Do you want to be able to hear God more clearly? What is your purpose for joining this series? Because I honestly know that each one of you came here tonight with something that you want to get out of this. When you saw that subheading of how to study your Bible, something said, Oh, I so want to be a part of that. Why? Share that in the chat. Tracy said, Thank you for your obedience. Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome, Tracy. Well, thank you for being here with us. All right. So while you are typing your reasons for why you want to be a part of this course, I am going to pray. I'm going to pray over us. Okay, connect the dots. Literally, all of the above, Colleen said, connect the dots. Okay. All right. Well, the rest of your typing, I'm going to just invite the Holy Spirit in. Holy Spirit, we just welcome you into this place. We welcome you to guide and direct my steps, my thoughts, and also the connection that we all have on this live stream. It's not just me talking at the people, it's us talking with each other. So we thank you, Father, that you are here with us. Holy Spirit, you are the teacher, you are the counselor, you're the guide. We look to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. So the very first thing you need to know before you study any passage of scripture is context. Have you ever heard of context is king or context is key, however you want to say it? That is absolutely the truth when it comes to studying scripture. One thing that makes me so frustrated is when, for instance, you walk into Hobby Lobby and it's very sweet, right? It's very precious. You see all of these beautiful pictures with calligraphy of all these scriptures. And what I know is that that actually is a sign of a symptom that is an issue in the church, where we take scriptures, we cherry-pick these scriptures, we like this verse, we like this promise. We have absolutely no idea the context. Who was that even spoken to? Does that even apply? And what was the who was the author? What was going on in that situation? And not that it means that our little Hobby Lobby sign is meaningless, but how much more would that mean something to us if we understood the context behind it? Case in point. One of my favorite movies in the last 10 years is a movie called Hidden Figures. Put a thumbs up in the chat if you have seen the movie Hidden Figures. Let me see how many, how many of you have seen this movie? In case you have not seen it, it is a movie, I would assume it's in the 1960s, early 70s at the latest, because it's during the space race, but it's also when segregation is still roaring in our country. Yep, Linda has seen it. Yes, Kate has seen it. Such a good movie. Well, let me ask you, how impactful would that movie be if you had no context for the space race, knowing how the US was trying to beat Russia to the moon? And if you had no context of segregation, and if you had no context of really where um job opportunities were for women in the United States at that time. I mean, you see these women in the movie, they're still going to work in dresses and high heels, right? And they have to wear pearls. So Pat Hodgkin says yes, and uh and Rachel R. Yes, yes, I've seen it. So good to see you. Mandy's seen it. Okay, all the ladies have seen it. And it's actually one of my husband's favorite movies, too. My whole point of bringing all that up is if you didn't know the backstory, the culture, the context for that movie, you wouldn't admire those women so much. You wouldn't admire and feel empathy for what these lead characters are having to go through to stand up and to make a difference the way they did. And it's the exact same thing with the Bible, my friends. The exact same thing. If you don't understand the culture and the context, for instance, of the gospel of Matthew, if you don't understand what's happening politically, if you don't understand what's happening culturally, if you don't even know some of the backs, Jewish backstory, then when Jesus opens his mouth and he drops these bombshells, it's just going to be words. But when you know the backstory, you're like, oh, fire, fire. And it's just, it just adds everything. So context is king. So five questions that you can ask yourself with context. And let me see if I can get us to our slideshow here. Here are your five questions who, what, when, where, why? Those are the questions we're asking. Who? Who's talking? Who is the author? Who is he writing to? And maybe who is speaking in the situation? Because Matthew might be writing, he might be writing to a Jewish audience, but what we're reading might be Jesus speaking, and then who was he speaking to? That all matters, all the who's matter. And then what? What is happening? What is the context? What is the illustration, for instance? Who, what, when, when in time is this happening? Because time, time periods obviously matter a great deal. If you're reading about Abraham, it's going to be a very, very different scenario than if you're reading about Jesus. Who, what, when, where? Where is this happening? What like, do you have you gotten out an atlas? Have you seen maybe how far somebody had to walk? When it, for instance, we'll read in the book of Matthew that Jesus walked from one location to another location. And when you look at it on the map, you're like, wow, that's not like walking from you know Portsmouth to Rye. It's it's not close at all. So where matters. And then also why? Why is this happening at this time period? Why is Jesus addressing this? Why is Matthew writing? Why is he saying things the way he's saying them? So all of those, so those are our five context questions. And these questions protect us from cherry-picking scripture and bringing pulling it out of context. And we're not trying to make the Bible say what we want it to say. That is the very, that is the absolute scariest thing about cherry-picking scripture is that we make it, we make the Bible say what we want it to say based on our bias, based on our background. And that is the worst thing that we can do with when um reading the Bible. So Tracy Warren said, loving the cultural backgrounds Bible in my study. So the Bible that she's talking about, I actually have it right here. This is one of the things that I wanted to show you guys tonight. So this is the cultural, historical, cultural background study Bible. So this is one of the books. I mean, you can kind of tell I it's gotten a lot of wear in my world, and it is a phenomenal study resource. So one of the things that I'm going to be doing in this series is I'm going to be doing two things. First of all, I'm going to be teaching from the book of Matthew things that I've learned. So you can be taking some notes and some fun things that I've learned. But I'm also going to bring out resources because I want you to be able to go to the places I go to so you can find your own cool stuff. So, like Tracy's talking about, she loves this Bible because, for instance, there's charts, there's tables, there are articles, whoops, there's post-it notepads. Um, there's all kinds of things like that in this Bible. Let me actually get rid of this for a second. Here we go. Now I can be bigger. So here's the cultural historical Bible. Here are articles that are in it. And there's all these study notes down here at the bottom. I'm not sure if you can see that. And there's little blurbs like, what is this blurb right here? The sovereign lord, right in the middle of Psalms, talking about what sovereign lord actually means. So there's incredible, incredible study here. This out of all of the resources that I have, the reason I put this one on the table on my table first for tonight is um, oh, Colleen said she just bought this for her husband, Matt. Um, very good purchase. Every, I feel like every household should have this one because of the high, high value you will get for your money. It's like $56-ish dollars, I think, on Amazon. Um, but it is, it's worth every penny. I saved up for it and I got it, and I've I've used it for like the last 10 years. So it really does give you historical and cultural background, helping answer some of these questions. So that is a resource I totally think um is worth it. Okay. So, all right. Um now let's talk about Matthew. Let's move on and chat about Matthew. So I'm not usually I'm not used to writing in like 4,000 font. So hopefully everybody will be able to see what I write here, but anyway. So our lead guy is Matthew. But he has another name. Does anybody know the name? Oh Rochelle said she couldn't see the book. I'll hold it up again at the end of the thing, Rochelle. So, does anybody know the other name that Matthew went by? Put it in the chat if you know his other name. He was a tax collector who became an apostle of Jesus. He was called by Jesus Levi. Linda got it. All right. That's his other name, Levi. So he is also the son of Alpheus. Not that that matters a huge deal for us for tonight. So that is who is writing. Here's our author. Now, who does anybody know who the audience is? Who is Matthew's audience? Trying to write the word audience in 4,000 thoughts. I'm gonna give it a second if anybody knows who Matthew's audience was. The audience obviously is the person or the group of people that the author is writing to. Jews. Linda took my class before. This is why she knows all these answers. She she was in Word alive before, and she remembers her facts. So, yes, Matthew is writing to the Jews. Why does that matter? Well, I'll tell you why. Because every single thing that Matthew is writing is to tell the Jews something very important. He is telling the Jews, those who are already believers and those who are seekers, who are investigating whether this man who died, who they said rose from the dead, is truly their Messiah. They're thinking we'll prove it. And Matthew says, absolutely, I will write the gospel that will prove it to you. And his goal in his gospel is to prove to the Jews that Jesus is their king. So that's what he's trying to prove that Jesus is the king. So in the gospel, he is going to mention the word king or kingdom 56 times. Now he says kingdom of heaven, not kingdom of God, because the Jews were uh are were and are very sensitive about using the name of God in casual talk. So he would say kingdom of heaven. Other gospel writers refer to it as the kingdom of God. It means the same thing, in case you ever were confused by that. The other thing that Matthew does in writing to this audience, the Jews, is he quotes the Old Testament. Why would he do that? He would quote the Old Testament because that is their scriptural basis at the up to the time of the writing, of this writing. And so he is going to quote the Old Testament 93 times. He quotes the Old Testament 93 times. Now, compared to Mark, who quotes it 49 times, Luke, who quotes it 80 times, and John only quotes it 30 times. Every single gospel writer is writing to a different audience. While we're talking about the gospels, let me also add this. There are four gospels, but there are only three synoptic gospels. So you've got Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then John is his own little dude over here. He's his own guy. His gospel does not resemble these three at all. And so these three are synoptic, meaning since S-Y-N coming meaning the same. So these are the same gospels, they're similar, like synthesis together. The Bible scholars believe that Mark was the first to be written. And if I'm getting my facts right, I don't have this in my notes. So you can fact check me in your cultural historical Bible or other sites, but I think around 60 A.D. And so they're thinking that Matthew and Luke would have been written between 60 and 100 A.D. Um, so where was I going with that? Okay. Um also Matthew quotes the from the Old Testament, he quotes um Isaiah, Hosea, Deuteronomy, Zechariah, and Jeremiah. Those are the the top Old Testament prophets and writers that he quotes. Now, why is he quoting Old Testament? He is proving to his Jewish readers, look at all the scriptures Jesus fulfilled. You're gonna see all through Matthew how Matthew says, and Jesus did blah blah blah to fulfill what Isaiah said, da-da-da. And he'll he'll do that over and over and over to help them connect the dots. So that's something that you'll see in Matthew a lot. Okay. So how do we actually study a passage of the Bible? We talked about the fact you start with context for the love of God. Start with context. Your five questions. Well, the second thing is how to study a passage. So let me put this back up. And that is first pray. Pray first. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what you need to see. You and I could both sit next to each other and pull out the exact same passage. And the Holy Spirit could show us two totally different things because we're two totally different people. So just because I got something out of a certain passage does not make it what you're supposed to get out of it. Thus, we pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. Then we read for understanding and context. We already just talked about how you read for context, but also understanding. Like, for instance, if you're reading along and you're like, um, oh, blah, blah, blah, something says something, it says something about the Pharisees. Who are the Pharisees? It's so easy and tempting to skip over words and names that make no sense to us. That's why we're studying the book of Matthew, and that's why we're gonna go slowly, because we need to slow down and make ourselves look up these things that we have just breezed over, because we are missing a world of information and depth when we do that. So when we if you read something about Pharisees or Sadducees or the Herodians or Smaria, something like that, that you think I really don't know what that is or what that's talking about, we're gonna look it up. And to which you're probably saying, Great, Cecily, how do I look that up? Um, well, I'll show you my. Second, let's go through the rest of the list. So we read, we pray, we read for context and understanding, and then we read for application. This is so critical, people. I can't say this enough. If you just read for information, but not for personal application, we become we become puffed up with knowledge. And that's not what the Lord wants. He doesn't want walking talking heads who know a bunch of scripture or fun facts from Greek or Hebrew. He wants people that are transformed by the word. So if we don't take it to that personal application place, we've missed the whole point of Bible study. So when you read something, like for instance, when I was rereading all of this and I was reading about Mary giving birth to Jesus, and I stopped and thought about her and thought about the risk she took and the sacrifices she made and all of that to give birth to the Messiah. The personal application for me is Lord, please do a work in me that I would be willing to let you birth in me and through me whatever you need to, whatever needs to come into this earth through me, through my life, let me have the same heart that would say, Be it unto me according to your word, O Lord. That's personal application. Because in my heart of hearts, I know I am not always willing. I come up with a ton of excuses why God must be office rocker for asking me to do this or that, or well, you certainly would never ask me to be uncomfortable or sacrifice. Get thee behind me, Satan. But Mary understood she walked into this eyes wide open, and she still said, Let your will be done. I will give birth to whatever you want. So that's the personal application piece. And then lastly, we respond in prayer. And we're using the four Rs. I'm going to go through that really quickly. The four Rs are repent, renounce, receive, and rejoice. So if we see a truth in the scripture and we realize the personal application for us is repentance. Like, I'm sorry, Lord, I see this truth. I had not been living according to this truth. And I repent for my ignorance or I repent for my rebellion. We renounce our partnership with it. And then we receive God's mercy, his forgiveness, his grace. And then we rejoice that we were allowed, we were able to see this truth in God's word. So there's a whole new part of our life that now aligns to the truth. So we can rejoice over that. So back to the part where I was talking about how you look for understanding. If you didn't understand who the Sadducees were, or you don't know who Matthew is, let's just say you didn't know who Matthew was. I'm going to try to share. Let me see. Share my screen. And we're going to go. Here's one resource I want you guys to know about. Super fun. It's called gotquestions.org. Let me write that on the board. Okay. Gotquestions.org. And there you can type in almost anything. So I typed in who was Matthew. And this article came up. And it gives you an answer on who Matthew is. So it's almost like Christian Google. And I have really asked this site a lot of questions. And I have not found anything that I theologically disagree with. They really are keeping different people's opinions out of it. They are really just stick with the facts, Jack. And it is.org is a great resource for you. Okay. And let's see. Stop sharing there. Okay. That went well. And now with that lens, let's look at take a peek at how Matthew opens. How are we doing for time? Well, pretty good. Okay. So the introduction to Matthew is very cool. The very, very first line frames out the entire book. It says, if you have your Bibles, look at your at verse one. It says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So in the chat, Tracy Warren, amen. So good. I love that. So in the chat, tell me why, just random guess. Maybe you know, you can put it in the chat if you know. Why would Matthew open with that sentence? What is the importance of him saying this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ? And then wait, the son of David and the son of Abraham, wasn't he the son of Joseph and Mary? Or he doesn't even say the son of God. Why would he open that way? I'll wait a couple more seconds and see if any answers come through. That's the only issue with doing this on YouTube through StreamYard is the delay. Because I know you're typing. I know half of you have already typed your answer, and I'm just waiting for it to come through my third party app so I can see your great answers. Kate O'Neill said, Jews relate. Yes, they they absolutely do. Exactly. So what Matthew is expressing here is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the two eternal covenants that the Jews have. I could be wrong on that. But I know, for instance, the covenant that he made with Moses was time-bound. But the covenant that he made with David and the covenant that he made with Abraham are eternal covenants. So let's see, the covenant that he made with David. Sorry, gotta clean this off. The covenant that he made with David, does anybody know what that was? Like in a sentence or a word. And then Harmony said to follow the bloodlines of Jesus through the whole Old Testament. Yes, that too, absolutely. So the covenant that he made with David was that there that David would have a king on his throne forever. So an eternal kingdom. Does Jesus have did Jesus fulfill that? Does he have is he a king now of an eternal kingdom? Yes. Now the covenant he made with Abraham, he said, Your seed will bless the earth. Your seed shall be a blessing to all the earth. So bless bless the whole earth. And bless the whole earth. Did Jesus fulfill that? Yes. Because before Jesus, only the Jews had the promises. Gentiles, and I'm assuming most of us on here were are not of Jewish descent. So we would have been like too sad, so too sad, too bad, so sad. But because only the Jews had the promises. Through your seed. And so now, through Jesus, this has been fulfilled. He is the king of an eternal kingdom, and he sits on the throne of David eternally, and the entire earth has now been blessed through him. And the reason that Matthew starts with a genealogy, just like Harmony said, to follow the bloodline of Jesus. But I don't know about you. Put in the chat, give me a thumbs up if you are a person who loves genealogies, or put a thumbs down if you're a person who always skips over. The second you see a list of names, you're like skip, skip, skip, skip. Okay, let's get to the actual action again. That used to be me. I was a thumbs down person on genealogies. I just thought, so-and-so begat so-and-so, begat so-and-so, begat so-and-so. Like all of these names, they're weird names. I don't care. I don't know. This is boring. But then one day I started reading the genealogy here in Matthew. And I had at that point done enough reading in the Old Testament that some of these names were familiar to me. Yeah, I'm gonna throw a bunch of thumbs down. Linda Sullivan is like genealogy is bad. List of names never meant anything until, says Tracy. Yes. Harmony goes, yes and amen. Yep, it's so true. I mean, genealogies was like, but once I started doing some cross-referencing on some of these names, that's when the genealogies started coming alive. And we're gonna pick out some pretty interesting things in this genealogy. Manu says I used to be thumbs down too. Yeah, that's great. Um, so in this genealogy, uh, we're gonna find out, first of all, Matthew answers the Jews' question, is Jesus truly the king? That is the burning question he wants to answer for them. But he knows that he also has some Gentile readers. And so he's showing through this genealogy, don't you worry, guys, you're included too, and you always have been. The Jews kind of wanted to push you out of the lineage, kind of keep that stuff hush-hush. But Matthew says, let's just bring it all out, let's just air all the family dirty laundry, and let's just bring out all the Gentiles, kind of like crazy Uncle Harry. Let's just bring them all out and just show that our family tree is not quite as pure as we always wanted everybody to think it is. And so in this family tree, he brings out four women, five if you count Mary. And you have to understand in Jewish genealogy, they would never include women, not just because women in that time period were, you know, kind of at the level of cattle, but more because it was through the father that you received your name. It was through the father you received your inheritance, it was through your father that you received your position and your reputation, not through your mother. And so that's why they always listed genealogies through the fathers. And so, but here uh Matthew includes four women, and I love this. This is so great. So who put in the chat who can find the first lady name? Who's got the first lady? Skipped all through the names, Manu said, and Harmony said, now I love the history. Okay, who can find the first female name for me? I'm gonna jump in if I don't find if I don't see an answer come through in a second. All right, I'm jumping in. The first one is Tamar. Oh gosh, that was a very bad A. Sorry. Tamar. Does anybody know who Tamar is? She's got kind of a spicy story. Uh, her story is that she was married to one of Judah's sons who died. And according to Jewish law, Judah was supposed to give his next son. Good job. Good job, Tamar. Nice job, Colleen. Thank you for noticing that, Linda. So Judah was supposed to give his next son to Tamar, but he didn't want to. And so he didn't. And she tricked Judah into sleeping with her so that she could have children. Yeah, it's kind of like Jerry Springer, really. It's it's a little messed up, but she actually did crazy, like a righteous thing in that she was really deserved to have children. And Judah was the one who was unrighteous in how he handled his daughter-in-law. And so there's Tamar, a woman who had children with her father-in-law. Okay, the next one. Who's the next lady? You guys could have been reading ahead because you know I'm gonna ask the next one and the next one, the next one. So who's the next gal? She's found in verse five. All right, I'm writing. It's Rahab. Or as we would you would actually say, yes, Rahab, good job. It's Rahab. So if you know who she is, she is a Canaanite woman from Jericho. And when the spies came to before the walls fell down on Jericho, the spies came and she hid them. She believed in God, she knew God was going to win. She knew her people were toast and she wanted mercy and protection. So the spy said, Bring your whole family under your roof, put a red scarf out your window, and anybody that's in your household will be safe. And that's exactly what happened. So she and her entire family then move on and move in with the Israelites. She marries one of the priests, and they and one of the, no, not one of the priests, I'm so sorry, one of the men from the tribe of Judah. And she is in the family of Jesus. But guess what her um her vocation was? She was a prostitute. So we've got this woman who had to sleep with her father-in-law. Then we've got this woman who is a prostitute. Interesting. It's interesting. Okay, so now then next woman is Ruth. Ruth is a Moabitus. So what you have to understand is the Jews were not supposed to marry Canaanites or Moabite women. It was forbidden. And yet Boaz, knowing that Ruth is a Moabite, still married her. And Jesus came from that lineage. In fact, David came from that lineage. She's David's grandmother. So then we go on to the next one, Bathsheba. And Bathsheba. Most of you know the story right there. But look in your Bible when it talks about Bathsheba. What does it say about her? And David was the father of Solomon by what? The wife of Uriah. It does not say the wife of David. Uriah is still called her husband. And yet she had a child with David. So Matthew did not gloss over the scandal. He brought it right out there, like our King David, that whose throne is going to be eternal. Guess what? He's he took your eye as wife. That's who she is. And then the last one is Mary. Now we know that there's no scandal there with Mary, but there is something cool about Mary when um in verse 16. The numbers are so small in this Bible, it says, and Joab, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom, underline that in your Bible, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So she was the husband of Joseph, but that singular feminine says she's the only one involved in the birth of Jesus in this lineage. Very cool, right? So that is interesting stuff in the genealogy of Jesus. So why would Matthew bring all this up? Why is he going to show you know these the Moabite and the Canaanite woman? And why is he going to bring up Tamar and Bathsheba? Why is he going to do all this? Because he's going to show that Jesus, even Jesus came from that messy family line. That even though it was full of drama and sin and failure and weakness, God is sovereign and his word will not fail. And he said that his promise would come through David, would come through Abraham, would come through Adam and Eve, that this that her seed would crush the devil's head. And his word came through. So let me ask you what Tracy said there's absolutely hope for us. You you completely answered the question I was just going to ask, Tracy, because my question was going to be what is the personal application for us? But Tracy just said it that there's hope for us in our messed up families and our messed up lineage and the mistakes we make. We all have promises from God. And our takeaway is that even when there is yuck in our history, God is bigger. And it's it's an amazing thing to sit and meditate on the sovereignty of God, the power and might of God. That he's bigger than my mistakes, he's bigger than my sin. He's bigger than my failure. He's bigger than all the sin and the failure of my family that I can't even control. But if he's made promises to me, he will bring it to pass. My job is to stay as faithful as I can and repent of the times I blow it. So We just made it through a lot in the genealogy, and I'm pretty excited that we have gotten this far. All right, guys. So, next time, the structure that of what we're going to go through, we're going to go through the rest of chapter one into part of chapter two. So, your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to read chapter one and chapter two of Matthew slowly. Read for context, read for understanding. Make sure that you ask the Holy Spirit to help you learn. Then you're going to apply, you're going to write in your journal what that application is from the word that you studied. You're going to repent, you're going to renounce, you're going to um release, you're going to rejoice for whatever you have to. And you're going to let that word actually take root on the inside of you and become something that you own. So you also just learned about the cultural historical Bible. You also saw gotquestions.org. And next week, I am going to introduce you to my favorite Bible app that is called Bible Hub. And we're going to take a little tour and we're going to be taking a tour through Bible Hub throughout the sessions because there will be all different facets of it. And it's not the only Bible application, but it's the one that I use all the time. I know it really well. And um, so I like to introduce people to that. Okay. Well, I think it's time for us to to pray and sign off. I've really enjoyed doing this class with you. And I hope that you guys enjoyed it too. You'll have to let me know if you have any suggestions or if if you liked the format. And let's just, let's just pray. Heavenly Father, we love you so much. We are so grateful that we have this word that we actually hold your word in our hands. That we can count on your word. We can count on your promises. That, like Mary, we can say, be it unto us according to your word, oh God. Knowing that your word is good, your promises are good. You are faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful. And you are sovereign. And it's a mystery to us how you can be sovereign over all creation and yet never violate our free will. But we don't seek to completely understand who you are. We just want to know you. You are God alone, and there's none like you. So we just approach you with awe and with delight. And we love you with all our hearts. And we give you the praise and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right, guys. Well, thanks for being a part of next week one. I will see you next time. And next time we're going to talk about the birth of Jesus and those additional study tools. I hope you have a wonderful night, and I will see you in the next live stream. God bless. Hey, family, I pray that you were blessed and encouraged by that episode, and that you took away something you can use in your walk with the Lord starting today. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So I thank you for making me a part of your pursuit. Until next time, abide in Him.