Basics of the Old Testament - Lesson 1

Welcome to the course Basics of the Old Testament, brought to you by Biblical Training. This course will correspond to Basics of the New Testament, also brought to you by Biblical Training and taught by Bill Mounce. Together we're trying to introduce to you the whole of the Christian Bible in a way that's accessible, in a way that will allow you to take and understand the Bible, hopefully in a new way if you're new to the Bible or a new believer, even something like that.

We're thankful for the opportunity to teach this course. My name is Miles Van Pelt and I am a professor of Old Testament and Biblical Languages at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, where I've been teaching for 23 years. And one of my favorite things to do is to introduce students to the wonders and joy of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.

You may not know this, but the Old Testament is the first of two parts to the Christian Bible. The Christian Bible is made up fundamentally of the Old and New Testaments. Okay, it's one Bible, but it's got two parts.

The Old Testament begins with Genesis and runs all the way through a book called Malachi. And in our English Bibles, there's 39 books that span that space. And in the New Testament, we have Matthew through Revelation, an additional 27 books.

So, the entire Christian Bible has 66 books in it. The Old Testament with 39 and the New Testament with 27. And so, in this first lecture, we just simply want to talk a little bit about what is the Old Testament.

Let me just give you a few interesting facts as we begin. First, the Old Testament, if you don't know, was originally written with Hebrew and Aramaic approximately between 1400 and 400 BC. Yeah, that's exactly right.

The Old Testament took a thousand years to complete. It's perhaps the longest book production schedule of all time. One thousand years.

The second part of our Bible is known as the New Testament, and it was originally written in Greek by the disciples of Jesus and their close associates during the first century AD. So, imagine this. The Bible began to be written in 1400 BC by Moses and finished sometime in the first century AD, like, let's say, the Apostle John with the Book of Revelation.

So, we're talking about 1500 years, 1500 years of history to create the Word of God that we have today, and we're thankful for it. The Old and New Testaments together contain a single, unified narrative or story, from the creation of all things in Genesis 1 and 2 to the new creation or the consummation of all things in Revelation 21 and 22. So, in the Bible, we're going from the first creation to the new creation.

A single, unified story. It's popular today to talk about the Bible as a single, unified story, but I want to caution us with regard to the use of story, especially as it's applied to the Old Testament. In our particular culture today, the word story can mean something that's true or not true.

And so, I want to affirm to you from the very beginning that the Old Testament and the history that it records is indeed a true story or a narrative account. And that's a very important distinction to make when we're talking about the Old Testament because the Old Testament is the history of the words and acts of God in the lives of the people of God. It's real.

It's historical. It will change your life to become a part of that story. For example, in my Oxford Concise English Dictionary that sits on my desk when I read the definition here, the first definition of the word for story reads, an account of imaginary or past events, a narrative tale or anecdote.

And so, if you think about the word story as an account of imaginative events once upon a time, I want to dissuade you from thinking about the Old Testament that way. I'm going to use definition four in my Concise English Dictionary which reads this way, facts of experiences that deserve narration. Facts of experiences that deserve narration.

So, everything from the creation of the world in Genesis 1 and 2, to God creating the nation Israel and leading them out of Egypt, to that people occupying the land of Israel and then being kicked out and put into exile and then returned from exile as they await the advent of the new covenant. Those are real events. They are facts of experiences that deserve narration as the word of God.

So then, the Old Testament itself contains a single unified story or narrative account, the story of creation, humanity's fall into sin, then exile and death, and finally redemption. At least the type of redemption that will climax in the person and work of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament. So, one of the most important things can know about the Old Testament is that it's designed to point you to the person and work of Jesus and the climax of God's work as recorded in the New Testament.

Well, I think if you're new to the Bible, before we actually start talking about the contents of the Bible, we need to talk about the type of book this book actually is. There are all kinds of books in this world. Some books are novels.

Some are history. Some are cookbooks or magazines or instructional manuals. There are no end to the different types of books that we have.

And so, what kind of book is the Old Testament? Because the Bible, in general, in the Old Testament, in particular for this particular course, is a very special kind of book. And I've got this little five-part thesis that if you can hang around with me for just a few minutes, I'm going to say the thesis and then I'm going to explain each part of that for you to kind of give you a sense of the type of book we're about to encounter, the Christian Bible and the Old Testament. Here's my thesis.

The Bible in general, but for this course, I'm just going to say the Old Testament, the Old Testament is a God-breathed book. It is therefore both living and life-giving and forever enduring. Its human authors were guided by the Spirit of Christ who controlled its content, delivery, and preservation.

It has a theological center, a unified thematic framework, and a covenantal structure. So, there's purpose and design to the Old Testament. And the Old Testament is a Christian book.

It was written for Christians. Oftentimes, in parts of our culture, we might think that the Old Testament was written for the people in Old Times or it's perhaps just for the Jewish people of our world and friends. But no, the Old Testament is a Christian book written for Christians.

Let's consider the five-part thesis together. The first thing that we wanted to say is that the Bible is a God-breathed book. That means it's of miraculous and divine origin.

Even though that God used human instruments to produce the book, it is the Word of God according to the testimony of Scripture itself. There's a book in the New Testament called 2 Timothy where the Apostle Paul is writing to one of his young disciples who's pastoring a church. And Paul is trying to help Timothy in his ministry.

And Paul states this about the Bible that Timothy is using. And note this, the Bible that Timothy is using in the New Testament is the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the first Bible and the New Testament right now in Paul's life has not yet been written.

And Paul says about the Old Testament, all Scripture, or the entire Old Testament, is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the person of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Now, I want you just for a minute to think about what it might mean for a book like the Old Testament to be breathed out by God. Or perhaps if you're reading the NIV, it says God breathed, or the King James given by inspiration of God, or the NASB inspired by God.

There is this special word in 2 Timothy 3.16, and that word is God breathed. It's a single word in Greek, but in English, we're going to say it's a double word, God breathed. And that means that the Old Testament is the very Word of God.

Think about when I'm talking right now, I'm breathing out. The Old Testament is the breathed out Word of God. It comes from God.

And we're going to see that later that the prophets who wrote the Old Testament were carried along by the Spirit of Christ, that is God himself, to achieve this. A way to think about this that perhaps will put some illustrative force to it is that way back in the Old Testament, in the second chapter of the Bible, in Genesis 2, there's a statement by God when he creates man that he forms some dust from the ground and he breathed into him the breath of life. It says this in Genesis 2, which is the second chapter of the Bible, verse 7. It says, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

I want you to think about this. Humanity started out as a pile of dust on the ground until God formed it and breathed into it the breath of life. Once God breathed into that dust of the ground, it became a living thing.

That's us. And if we die, and when we die, the breath of God leaves our body and we return to dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as the saying goes.

So, the difference, if you can think about this with me, the difference between me and a pile of dust is the breath of God. And when the breath of God leaves me and I expire, I'll return to that dust. The difference, then, my friends, between the Bible and every other book ever written is the difference between me and a pile of dust.

The Bible is a living, active force, and every other book is dirt. Some dirt is good, good fertilizer. Some dirt is not so good, should be swept under the rug.

But the Bible is unique in the history of the world because it is the very Word of God. And because of that, our second thesis point becomes very true, then. It is therefore both living, life-giving, and forever enduring.

In the New Testament, again, which I'm trying to think of how does the New Testament think about the Old Testament, there's also this other book called the book of Hebrews. And in the book of Hebrews, kind of toward the back of the New Testament, there's this line or verse there in Hebrews 4.12 that says this, For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So because the Bible is God-breathed, it's living and active.

Because I am God-breathed, I'm living and active. So I'm a living force and I can have a relationship with you because we both exhibit that kind of same God-breathed, animating life. In the same way, we're connected to the Bible in that way.

The Bible is God-breathed, I'm God-breathed, and so we were created to relate one to another. And by saying 4.12, just so you know, I mean chapter 4, verse 12 in the book of Hebrews. If you don't know, in the Old and New Testaments, they contain books, and those books are divided into chapters and verses.

You can think about a book that you read today, that you open the book, it'll be a single book, and it'll have like maybe 20 chapters in it, right? And perhaps in those chapters, there are subdivisions and things like that when you're reading along. The Bible is a lot like that. It's got chapter divisions, like chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3. But then in each of those chapters, there's going to be individual verses, sometimes like sentences are a little bit longer than sentences.

And each of those are called verses. So books and chapters and verses make up the Bible. So if I say something like Genesis 1.1, I mean the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1. Or if I say Hebrews 4.12, I mean the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 12.

And so you'll get used to that as you progress in your understanding of the Bible. But it can be intimidating if you have not been exposed to the Bible previously. But the Bible, just for review, is a God-breathed book that is both living and life-giving.

In 1 Peter 1, 23 to 25, so another book, 1 Peter, because there's a first and a second Peter, two letters. In the New Testament, chapter 1, so the first chapter, verses 23 to 25, we read this. Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable seed, through the living and abiding word of the Lord, or the word of God, for all flesh is like grass, meaning we will, all flesh is like grass and is glory like grass.

The grass withers and the flower falls, just like I'm going to wither and fall away. But the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you in the Old Testament.

All right, that's a great line. And so here I want to just point out that the Old Testament is a God-breathed book that's living and active, but it's a little bit different than me in this way. I will be like grass and I will get old, I will wither and die and return to dust.

But the Bible will not. The Bible, the word of the Lord, it says here, remains forever. So even more animated and even more life-giving, even more life-receiving at this point is the word of God in the life of the believer.

In the Old Testament, there's this psalm, it's a book of songs. The 19th chapter, the 7th verse says, the word of the Lord or the law of the Lord is perfect, giving life to the soul. The Old Testament is a God-breathed book that is living and active and abiding forever.

That's our second thesis point. The third point is this, and this is a really important point. The authors of the Old Testament, when they wrote, were guided by the Spirit of Christ, who controlled its content, that is what was in it, its delivery, how God's people received it, and its preservation, how we have it now today.

The Spirit of Christ supervises, oversees, and controls the Bible's content, delivery, and preservation. So in 1 Peter 1, 10 to 11, so 1 Peter, that book in the New Testament we talked about, kind of towards the back, 1 chapter, verses 10 and 11, Peter says this, concerning this salvation, the prophets, that is the Old Testament people, who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. Now what I just want to emphasize here is that gang, when you're reading the Old Testament, you are not reading a book that's primarily written from human imagination or modes of thought.

The Old Testament is a book that was written by people who were carried along by the Spirit of Christ, who assisted them and guided them in their writing of the book. That's why we can say it's the Word of God, and that human authors are the instruments of the divine Word, they are not the agents of that Word. God himself is the agent or the source of the Word, humans are the instruments that God chose to deliver that Word to his people.

It's like they're the messengers to bring God's Word to his people. I often think about the image of my head in the Old Testament, the prophets would be caught up into the throne room of God and God would speak to them, and then they would come down and speak to the people, right? And they would speak to the people in their own language, in words that they would understand, and in language that they knew and understood and used. And so it's fully human, understandable by human, but God has condescended to make known to us his Word in that way.

And so it's an amazing thing to think about. The Old Testament is inspired, it's living and active, and it's abiding, and it's the Spirit of Christ or God's very own Spirit that guided the authors. And so we can trust it, we can trust it.

It's a human book of divine origin, okay? Also, this book with thesis point four states this, it has a theological center, a unified thematic framework, and a covenantal structure. And man, those three labels are maybe off-putting, or it may seem like, what in the heck is this guy talking about? And we'll talk about that more in these lectures as we have a chance, but I just want to say this in terms of that. When I say the Old Testament has a theological center, that means it's unified in a particular way that all of the diversity makes sense.

Like if you think about my body, I've got a nose, an ear, an arm, a leg, that's a lot of diversity. But there's a unity to it, it's my body. The Old Testament's just like that.

There's prophecy and history and law, there's wisdom literature, there's songs, there's laments, there are genealogies about when people are born and who's born to them. And all of that diversity is made sense of in light of a particular unity. And we're going to talk about that.

And that unity happens to be the person and work of Jesus. That is, the entire Old Testament was written as kind of a gigantic Mack truck intended to crash into the New Testament and explode on the scene when Jesus arrives to make sense of all that he is and all that he's doing. There's a unity to it.

But there's also a thematic framework or a structure. And that is one of the ways in which God has revealed his word to us. And the primary way in which God relates to us is covenant.

And so the Bible has a covenantal structure and a thematic framework. And the thematic framework is this, the Bible is about, are you ready? The kingdom of God. And I can put it this way, Jesus is the king of the kingdom.

So you've got the king and his kingdom and the book that he runs it by. The king and his kingdom and the book that he runs it by. So it's not like we have to guess from nature or call a friend and know how God runs the world.

It's in his Bible that we have that. Jesus is the theological center. The kingdom of God is the framework that we understand all things, right? All things were created, it says in Colossians, by Jesus and for Jesus and through Jesus, right? He is the main point of creation and he's the main point of the Christian life.

And that happens to be, he's the main point of the Bible as well. Jesus is not just the main point of the Bible for the Christian. He's the main point of the entire life and universe that the Christian lives in.

And finally, the Bible has a covenantal structure. Gang, the Bible is a covenantal book. It's not a phone book.

It's not a cookbook. It's not a novel or a history. It's the book of the covenants of God, right? And covenants are the way in which God has chosen to relate to his people.

He says, I will do this for you. This is what I expect from you. And this is the way we'll relate one to another.

Covenants in the Bible are very much like the marriage relationship that you may be aware of from our own particular culture. A man and a woman are united in a covenant of marriage, and they have certain obligations and responsibilities to each other. In the same way, we are united by God in a covenant relationship, and both parties have certain obligations and ways of relating to each other.

And the Bible tells us how God loves us, longs to be with us, how he's created us and redeemed us, and will bring us home into his new heavens and new earth. So the Bible has a theological center. That's Jesus.

A thematic framework. It's the kingdom of God. That's the one theme that comprehends everything.

It's the realm of the prophet, the priest, the king, the scribe, the judge, the warrior, the apostle, all things. The wilderness is the kingdom wilderness. Creation is kingdom creation.

The prophet is a kingdom prophet. Everything in the Bible has the surname covenant. And finally, the covenantal structure.

This is the fact that the Bible is structured that way. There are the covenant books, the covenant history books, and the covenant life books. Everything in the Bible is covenantal.

Finally, the fifth point. Gang, the Old Testament is a Christian book. It was written for Christians.

And that's very important because in the culture in which I grew up in, I always thought the Old Testament is a Jewish book and the New Testament is a Christian book. And so we only have the Old Testament because it tells us about where Jesus came from and kind of all the weird stuff Jesus did. Like, why did he get circumcised? Why was he baptized? Why did he eat at this festival? And why were there these things going on? Well, you can understand that's kind of like the historical prologue to the life of Jesus, right? That's not true.

The Old Testament, Paul calls it the gospel promised beforehand. And if the Old Testament is the gospel promised beforehand, then it contains within it the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ from the very beginning. So consider this.

In the New Testament, there's this book called Romans written by the apostle Paul. And Paul says this in Romans chapter 15, verse 4. So towards the end of the book, he says, for whatever was written in the former days, he's talking about the Old Testament was written for our instruction. He's talking to Christians that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

Now, one of the wonderful things about this is one. This tells us that the Old Testament was written for Christians. So if you are a Christian or if you are interested in the Christian life, the Old Testament is a book that you must read and study.

Secondly, we can say this about the Old Testament from Romans 15, verse 4. The Old Testament is not an old, dusty, angry, grumpy book. It was written, the text here says, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, the Old Testament, we might have hope. That is, our reading of the Old Testament, our study of the Old Testament should produce encouragement and hope that produces endurance in the life of the believer, that we might endure in this world and persevere in this world until the Lord returns and brings us home.

The Old Testament is designed to provide encouragement and hope for the believer. So, if we study the Old Testament and we understand it rightly, then we should have encouragement and hope well up in our hearts. And I think that's what I'm going to try and do in this course, is to have hope and encouragement well up in your hearts in the Old Testament for the person and work of Christ who can save you from your sins.

Finally, I'll just make one more statement here about that in 1 Corinthians 10, 11. So, 1 Corinthians is another letter written by Paul. And in chapter 10, verse 11, he says this, now these things, that is the Old Testament, happen to them, God's people, as an example or type of what's to come.

He says, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. So, the Old Testament, again, Paul says here, was, and I quote, written down for our instruction. Think about that.

So, if you're a Christian, a new believer, or you're thinking about the possibility of Christianity, the Old Testament was written for you to provide encouragement, hope, and endurance. So, let me just read my thesis statement again, and we'll conclude this lecture. And I'll read it so that you have a chance to process it.

Here we go. Gang, the Old Testament is a God-breathed book. It's the very Word of God.

Because it's a God-breathed book, it is therefore both living, life-giving, and forever enduring. It's unlike any other book. Its human authors were guided by the Spirit of Christ, who controlled its content, delivery, and preservation.

It has a theological center, Jesus Christ. It has a unified thematic framework, the Kingdom of God and covenants. And it has a covenantal structure, the books of the covenant, the books of covenant history, and the books of covenant life, both Old and New Testament.

And this book, my friends, is a Christian book. It was written for Christians. That's why I am excited, as a Christian, to not only invest my entire career and vocation in studying this book and teaching this book, but as a believer, in order to produce encouragement and hope and endurance in me.

And I hope it will do the very same thing in you, in your journey of spiritual formation and Christian sanctification. So, when you describe the Bible as a human book with a divine origin, there's some other religious books that claim to be dictated by God. So, when you say that it's a human book with a divine origin, what are your expectations for how you read it and how you understand it based on that process? Right.

So, it's a great question. So, a couple of things. One, because it was written by people and people a long time ago in three different languages that I didn't grow up speaking, Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, one of my jobs is to learn as much as I can about that ancient culture that existed in the Old and New Testaments.

Does that make sense? And so, I want to learn as much as I can about the human authors and the human contexts in which the Bible grew up in so that I understand what's going on. So, I don't live in a world where there are prophets like there were back in the day or animal sacrifices. At church, we're not doing circumcisions anymore, thank goodness, stuff like that.

But I have to understand that stuff in order to understand the Bible because it's part of the material culture of the Bible because it was written in real space and time for us. That's the first thing. So, first, I kind of give myself over to the study of the ancient world and in that context in order to understand it.

I want to know what is a sacrificial system? What does circumcision really mean? What is baptism? Why do you put people in water and stuff like that? And the ancient world helps us to understand that. So, I do my best to not interpret the Bible in light of my own culture. I do my best to try to interpret the Bible in light of its original culture and then apply it appropriately to my culture.

So, I want to study what the Bible meant back in the day so that I can accurately apply it to my day in a way that's accurately applying the material in a correct way. That's the first thing. That's the human aspect of it, right? If the Bible has human authors, I want to know about those authors, what they did, where they lived, how they spoke.

A great example is in the Old Testament, oftentimes we hear about God talking about himself as patient or people talking about him as patient. Well, the expression in Hebrew is not patient. It means that God has a long nose.

And so, one of the great attributes of God in the Old Testament is he's got a big nose. And you're thinking, what in the world is that, right? And so, in the Hebrew mind and in the Hebrew language, if you had a long nose, you were patient. If you had a short nose, you were impatient.

And if your nose was hot, you were mad. Does that make sense? And so, that's just great stuff. We don't say like, man, that guy really has a long nose, so I appreciate his gentleness.

You know, that guy was really mad, his nose must be short. It's just, that's the stuff we don't say anymore. And so, I love and appreciate the human culture out of which the Bible grew, and my job is to understand it.

The second part of that is, how do I approach the Bible knowing that it's not just a human book, but that it's the Word of God spoken through humans? And so, that puts me in a position of humble submission to the authority of the text. In some sense, yes, I interpret the text, but primarily, I try to be interpreted by the text. Does that make sense? I don't try to go to the Bible and say, how can I fit it into my world? I go to the Bible and say, how do I fit myself into the world of the Bible? How does the Word of God shape and mold me? How do I submit to it? That kind of thing.

Too often, I think, in our own, in the Christian life, we think about appropriating the Bible in a way in which we get to do what we do or not want to do and feel good about it. We pick a little here, pick a little there, and we ignore a little here and ignore a little there. But if all Scripture, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.16, if all Scripture is God-breathed, then I've got to read, study, and apply it all in an appropriate manner.

And I'll be honest, it's not easy. It's not easy. Understanding ancient covenants and how they work and in what way they still apply to us.

I own a house, but I'm not building a big fence on top of the roof so no one falls off. I'm no longer requiring circumcision for church membership. So I need to know, how do these covenants work? And it's hard to do that.

And that's why I've given my life to it. And that's why we have pastors and teachers and books. I mean, God has provided graciously so many resources for the Christian life in order of understanding.

And so it's just up to us to invest time in those good resources. And that's one of the reasons why we have things like biblical training, right? Because the whole goal there is to lead people in maturity in Christ as they kind of study the Bible and theology and all that kind of business. So I want to know the human culture.

And so I know how to appropriately think and apply the Bible. And then I want to be submitting to it because it's the Word of God. Would it be fair to say that a covenant is a formal agreement? Is that what a covenant is? Yes.

Can you call a covenant a formal agreement? And the answer is yes. In the Bible, a covenant with God is a formal and legal and binding agreement between two parties, which is something that gives us both security and knowledge in terms of how God desires to be related to us and how he wants us to relate to him. And so because God is faithful, he is reliable in the context of his covenant.

So he's not a God who is random or capricious or will change his mind. He has formally and legally bound himself to us by way of a covenant to express his love to us. If I opened up the Bible and was starting to read the Old Testament, how would you suggest that I start to do that? And what would I be looking for? Okay.

How do you start reading the Bible? Boy, that's a great question. Let's put, let me, there are a number of different ways to answer that. But the first thing is this, uh, begin reading the Bible, right? You can't go wrong by just starting.

And I would say start in Genesis, start in Genesis. And I'll tell you this, uh, reading the Bible once will not suffice. You'll have to read it over and over and over again.

Even I, after growing up in the church and being an academic for 30 years now and being trained in college and seminary and doctoral work before that, uh, I still read the Bible over and over and over again to understand it. So the Bible is not something you can read once and walk away from. It's something you have to read over and over and over again.

And then secondly, this, I, I would, my suggestion is just to, as you're reading the Bible, take a notebook. And when you come across something you don't understand or a question you might have, write it down, right? And then there are ways to find those answers. Sometimes you can, uh, uh, search on the internet to find an answer.

Like who is David? What is circumcision? Uh, there are things you can do. Other things would be a little trick here. Like, uh, what's up theology of God's presence or how do covenants work and stuff like that? Because you might get all kinds of different answers and stuff like that.

So I would, I would begin at the beginning in Genesis and read straight through the old Testament, right? Because God in his wisdom has laid out the book in a particular way. And then I would just keep a notebook and, and ask with, with questions or comments or observations, that process, uh, will be a helpful one because it will help you to begin to think. So begin to think of two things.

Uh, who is God, who are his people and how do we relate to him? And I think with those three questions, you'll get pretty far. Who is God, who is his people and how to relate to him. In fact, the book of Genesis is really only answering those three questions.

Who is God, the creator of heaven and earth, who are his people, all the children of Abraham, who are his offspring by faith. And how does God relate to us covenantally? And in the old Testament, the very first book of the Bible, Genesis is the most, I can say it this way. It's the most covenantal book in the whole Bible of all.

There's like, there's the covenant of creation. There's two covenants with Noah. There's a covenant with Abraham.

Uh, and so it's the most covenantal book of the covenants. After you get out of Genesis, there's just the Moses covenant and the David covenant. All right.

Two more and then the new covenant, but that's new Testament stuff. And so, uh, and so I would begin looking for, uh, who is God, who are his people and how to relate to him and then keep a notebook and ask your friends to questions. Or if you're involved in a church, you can ask the pastor or the elders or the deacons.

I mean, that's what they're there for. And I would say this, um, it's the curious person who makes the greatest progress in understanding. And so you need curiosity and humility.

So don't be afraid to ask questions like, I don't know what a chapter is, or I don't know what a verse is, or I don't know what the word Ecclesiastes means, you know, something like that. And so, uh, these are things like, uh, don't be afraid to ask the questions that you don't understand, because you know what? Probably a lot of people around you don't know the answers to those questions and you can provoke conversations that enlighten everyone around you.