La La, La, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. La La, la, Greg Kokel and Stand a Reason, and glad to join me today.

I was just thinking about the difference between the meaning of two words that sound alike, but actually

have very different meanings and therefore different impact in the way we read our Bibles,

those are the words descriptive and prescriptive, all right?

Descriptive and prescriptive.

Now, descriptive is pretty easy to figure out.

A descriptive statement is one that describes something.

In other words, it says the way things are.

And a lot of times we read texts in scripture that are describing the way things are.

Or I sometimes will use an indicative.

My sheep hear my voice, Jesus says, in John 10. In other words, it is the case that Jesus' sheep will hear his voice in the sense that he meant it. Maybe that's not such a good opening illustration

because I think it's wildly misunderstood what he's referring to. But nevertheless, there's

an indicative, if you read or a descriptive element, this is describing the way things are

or describing the way they will be. We see the beatitudes, and the beatitudes

are blessed are those who, and then there are different ways that people are blessed because

of the consequence that follows or will follow. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they shall be satisfied. And so we're taking, we are, we are, in virtue of the fact that

we will be satisfied, we are, are happy in our hearts blessed because that's going to happen, and blessed are the poor in spirit, for they sell what, see God.

I'm not sure exactly which one that is, but you get the point there.

Those are descriptive statements that describe the way things actually are.

Notice that descriptive statements don't tell you one way or another in the fact that they're

descriptive whether the thing is good or bad.

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