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As we continue our study in the way that we study the Word of God, and getting tools and principles for doing that, we're going to focus this evening, in the next two sessions on a tool that's been very, very helpful to me personally and to so many others. It's asking the four questions that must be answered when studying the Bible. These provide great insight, context for what we read and what we study. Question number one is asking the question, who is speaking or writing when we read a particular passage of Scripture? Second question.

Or actually, as we continue that this is not complicated. In fact, it's always in the context. You know, whether it's God speaking or whether in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, whether it's Moses speaking or the prophets, or whether it's the Lord Jesus Christ speaking in his earthly ministry, or Luke, the physician in the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, or Peter in, in his messages in the book of Acts and in his letters, or James or John or Paul. So there are many authors, human authors, and there is God as the ultimate author of the Word of God. And asking this question, who is speaking or who is writing?

Is critical. The second question is to whom is the writer writing or the speaker speaking? And it's key to understand that, because we need to understand what is it that applies to whom, when the speaker speaking or the writer is writing? It could be, for example, it could be that God is speaking to Adam, or God is giving specific instructions to Noah, or God is giving instructions to Moses and speaking to him, or to Israel as a nation or the body of Christ. Many recipients of the messages that are in the word of God.

So who is speaking to whom? And the next question is, when? When is this being spoken and what time frame? And fourthly, why? For what purpose?

And I want to warn you that you never want to ask just the first question. If you say, if you can answer who is speaking, and you say, for example, God is speaking or Christ is speaking, and you just answer that question, you will go astray more times than not, because you will assume, as many do, that if God is saying must be to us and about us, or if the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking it in his earthly ministry because the Lord Jesus has spoken it, it must be to us and about us. And you will go wrong the vast majority of the time. And you may by accident stumble on what is really to us and about us. So these four questions are key, and that's what we will be looking at in this study.

So as we look at those four questions. Let's look for example, at Adam, the first man that God created. In Genesis chapter 2, God gives specific instructions to Adam. So who is speaking? God is.

To whom? To Adam. When? When they were in the garden. And God had a particular purpose for speaking to Adam.

Genesis chapter two, beginning with verse seven. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

The tree of life also in the midst of the garden. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so God puts man in the garden. Skip down to verse 15. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Edom to dress it and to keep it.

Verse 16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it. For in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die. And the Lord God said, it's not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him a help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every foul of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. So here we have God is speaking to Adam when he had created Adam and then Eve. And he gave to them very specific instructions as to what they were to do as a life occupation in obedience to God.

We see that there. Then in chapter three of Genesis, we see that man disobeyed God, man sinned, we have the fall of man. And you'll see how the instructions change. Whereas God had them in the garden of Eden, doing certain things, dressing it, keeping the garden, naming the animals that God had created. But now man sinned, and we'll break in at chapter three of Genesis.

And verse 22 it reads, and the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us. There we have the triune Godhead communicating with one another to know good and evil. God did not intend for man to know evil by experience. He was to trust God in his understanding of good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

So he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. Something changed. Now we have God speaking to Adam and Eve when becomes significant. Before it was before the fall. Now it's after the fall, after they sinned.

And God commissioned Adam and Eve to something completely different. While they were to stay in the garden, enjoy all of God's creation there. Now they were kicked out of the garden, never again to go back. And if they even attempted it, they would be struck dead by those that got appointed to guard the garden from them. And it was for their own good.

But you see how things have changed. And asking that question, these four questions is key when we look at Adam. They were not supposed to go back to the garden. They were not to do what they did there. Now they had a different responsibility, a different set of principles to live by.

Certain rules that God had set up for them that were different now that they were out of the garden. So that in a sense is dividing the word of God in a way that we can understand life in the garden, life after sin and out of the garden. Let's look at another example. Noah. Noah was a man that was righteous before God.

And God gave instructions to Noah in chapter six of Genesis. We'll break in there beginning with verse five. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. And every imagination, the thoughts of his heart, was only evil continually. There you have the complete depravity of man.

Notice the all inclusiveness of what God says, that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Every imagination, every imagination, without exception of the thoughts of his heart, was only, only evil continually. There's four words here that describe the utter lostness and depravity of man. And the result of that verse 6. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth.

It grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repents me that I've made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And then Skip to verse 11. The earth also was corrupt before God.

And the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them.

And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make the an ark of gopher wood. So now God says, I'm going to destroy the earth. Tells them later it's going to be through a flood. And God gives specific instructions to Noah.

I want you to build an ark. And Noah does that. Scripture says that it took him 120 years to do that. And during that 120 years that he was building the ark, he's called a preacher of righteousness. Talk about kind of a discouraging job.

You're laboring for 120 years, you're preaching for 120 years, and all you get is the people in your own family, your four sons, your wife and their and the wives of the four sons that believe the message, that accept the message. Everybody else is rejecting the message. Everybody else is ridiculing Noah. Everybody's saying, nah, it's not going to happen. I mean, Noah is talking about something that had never happened before.

It never rained before now. Noah says it's not only going to rain, it's poor going to pour rain. There's going to be a flood. God's going to destroy the earth. You better come into the ark.

That's the message. That's the commission that God gave to Noah. And that's what he was supposed to do. So the flood comes, all the people on the earth perish. And it's a universal flood.

And what happens after the flood? You'd think that God's judgment would fix some things. God's judgment doesn't fix anything. It just shows the righteousness of God and the justice of God. But it doesn't fix anything.

Look at chapter 8. This is after the flood, beginning with verse 20. After the flood, 40 days, 40 nights it poured rain. And Noah built an altar unto the Lord, took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled a sweet savor.

And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake. Why? You see, the same problem that was there before the flood is there after the flood. For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. That's original sin.

A man, man is born. A little baby is born with a sin nature. Neither will I again smite anymore everything, everything living as I have done while the earth remains seed, time and harvest and cold and Heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. So God says, I'm not going to destroy the earth this way anymore. And as long as the earth remains, it won't always remain because God is going to destroy it by fire next time.

But he'll do that so that he can do a create a new earth and a new heavens. But here we have the flood, Noah being given instructions. And so we cannot take what we read with Adam. We don't try to. We're not in a garden.

We're not kicked out of the garden. That was Adam and Eve. And we're not Noah. And we're not out building an ark. That's real clear to all of us, right?

That's easy to understand. The point is that that is so clear, why not apply the four questions to all of Scripture? When we apply them to Adam, when we apply them to Noah, it makes things real clear. It's obvious to us. But why don't we do that all the time?

In fact, you must apply these four questions if you want to understand and apply the Bible correctly. It has to become a regular habit when you read or study the Word of God to ask these four questions. They're simple, they're easy to remember. But boy, they will give you great insight. So let's continue and look at some other passages.

I tell you that there are gross misapplications of Scripture in many, many passages of Scripture. And it is tragic to see how the Bible is being misused and misapplied. It doesn't honor God at Take for example, the incident of Isaac the father. Abraham is concerned about Isaac. He doesn't have a wife.

And so In Genesis, chapter 24, we read the account there. Abraham, verse one, was old and well stricken in age. And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said, said unto his oldest servant of his house that ruled over all that he had put. I pray the the hand under thy thigh.

Make a vow and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth that you will not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell. But you will go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac. And the servant said unto him, per adventure the woman will not be. What if she's not willing to follow me to this land? Mashai needs bring Do I then bring your son there from when you came, Abraham said unto him, beware you, that you bring not my son don't bring my son back there.

The Lord God of heaven, which took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and which spoke unto me and swore unto me, saying, unto your seed, shall I give this land. He shall send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife unto my son from there. So here we have. I have a very close friend who's got a wonderful daughter. She's 31 years old, and he's concerned because she can't get a good husband.

She's a believer, and she can't find somebody that she can marry. So in making the point to him, as we study the Word of God together, I said, you know, you could find somebody like a servant of yours or somebody that works for you. Maybe you can send them out and go find a husband for your wife, for your daughter. I said, it's biblical. It happened to, to Isaac.

Why don't you do that? And of course, we had a good laugh. And I said, that is the point that you can't just take anything and everything in Scripture and try to apply it to yourself.

So that's a misapplication of scripture because you ask the four questions. Who's speaking? Abraham. He's speaking to his servant about Isaac. And it was at a time, at a very specific time, God had made a promise that God would bless the seed of Abraham through his son Isaac.

And beyond that, he didn't have a wife and he didn't want his son to marry a heathen.

And he sent his servant. And the servant said, well, what if she won't come? Should I bring him there? He said, no, no, can't do that. But I tell you what, the angel of the Lord, the angel will go before you.

He will prepare the heart of the woman, and trust me, you'll come back with a wife for Isaac. You can't apply that because it doesn't answer the questions the way that apply to us. It was at a particular time, for a particular purpose, for a particular reason, and it can't be applied to us. We're going to go through several examples, hoping to really make the point here of what we're trying to accomplish so to understand, so that these four questions become embedded in your conscious and even your subconscious, so that automatically it becomes a habit when you read or study the Word of God, that you ask these four questions. Moses.

Take a look at what God said to Moses in Exodus, chapter 19, Exodus 19. Beginning with verse three, Moses went up unto God, and the Lord God called unto him out of the mountain saying thus you will say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel. Now there we have an answer to several of those questions. Who's speaking? God is speaking.

To whom? To Moses. When? At a time when God had a plan for Jacob, for Israel. And that was the message that Moses was to bring to them.

Verse 4. You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians. How I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant. Now remember, God is speaking to Moses about the children of Israel and what he's going to do with them.

Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then what will you be? You will be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. For all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

You know how many times I've heard people taking these verses and saying, that's who we are in the body of Christ. God is making out of us a holy nation. No, he's not. God is not making up to us a kingdom of priests or a holy nation. That's not who and what we are.

Can't take that and try to apply it to the body of Christ. Why? Because we know whom God was saying this about and who it applied to. You have a message to Joshua. Go to Joshua, Chapter one.

Joshua, Chapter one. God speaks specifically and gives a message. Again, there have been gross misapplications of all of these passages. And this is one of them in. In the book of Joshua, chapter 1.

And after the death of Moses, verse 1. The servant of the Lord. It came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of nun Moses minister, saying, moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people unto the land which I give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall trade upon trip.

Tread upon that have I given unto you as I said to Moses. And then he gives them the demand, the borders of the land. And then verse 5. There shall not any man be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

Well, we can't take that, to apply that to ourselves. God has a particular mission for Joshua as he takes the children of Israel into the promised land. And he makes promises to him as he goes and engages in this great work that he has for him. Not any man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses.

So I will be with you. I will not fail you, nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for unto this people shall you divide the inheritance, and so forth. Verse 7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Don't turn from it to the right or to the left, and that you may prosper whithersoever you go.

And then he promises at the end of verse 8 for then you shall be make your way prosperous, then you'll have good success. This is not a passage of Scripture to be taken out of its context. It's not written to us, and God does not promise us this kind of prosperity and success.