An old friend emailed Dr. Brian Payne, a professor at Boyce College.

“You are the man," his friend wrote.

Dr. Payne wrote back. "I'm not sure how to take this. I could take it as, 'I’m an Alpha male,' which if you did, that's redundant. Or I could take it the way Nathan the Prophet meant it when he told King David, 'You are the man!'" (2 Sam 12:7).

Dr. Payne's friend wrote back, “You are the woman.”

This humorous story teaches a lesson when we study the Bible. Context means everything. If we read a verse all by itself with no attention to what's going on in that passage, we may miss its meaning by a mile. It's like the woman who told her pastor one day, "I'm leaving my husband for another man."

"Why?" the pastor asked.

"Because God told me to."

"How do you know God told you to?"

"He said it in the Bible. And Pastor, you always told me to obey the Bible."

"Where did you find that in the Bible?" asked the worried pastor.

"Ephesians 4. Put off the old man and put on the new."

Using the Bible out of context we could prove that toothpaste is edible, latops can fly, and chipmunks are made of mustard. Or we could find out what God meant when He spoke through the human author.