obvious, but the temptation to rush ahead to some poignant application, that we know our hearer's need, is a real one. Here we have the proverbial “getting the cart before the horse.” There are two reasons we must allow good study or reflective reading of the Bible to lay a foundation for application. First, if the order is reversed, we risk substituting the authority of the text with our own pseudo-authority. In other words, by rushing into what we wish to say about a given matter, we have inadvertently