Discipleship: Scripture as the Story of God with Pastor Ryan Braley

Amen, you can be seated.

Good morning everyone.

It's great to be with you.

We are in the middle of our discipleship series.

We're unpacking and exploring what does it mean to be a disciple, in other words, a follower, a student or an apprentice of Jesus.

So we're all disciples of something, we're all students and followers of some way, and so, whether it's Jesus, or maybe it's fame or greed, or your dream for your life, whatever it is, we're all students.

We're all absorbing the philosophy, the ideologies, sort of the teachings of something.

Somebody's discipling us, so you should be aware of what is it or who is that's discipling you and we want to explore what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus, a follower, an apprentice, somebody who doesn't just know what Jesus knew but wants to be just like Jesus?

So our hope is that when we get out of this well, this day and also this series, that we are a little bit more like Jesus and it doesn't come from you just white-knuckling or trying harder.

That doesn't really work, but it's sort of like trying to understand what he was doing and how he was going about his life and who he hung out with and all these things, and then to sort of ask the spirit to come and transform our hearts to become more like Jesus.

And then we have these rituals and habits that we sort of engage with, that kind of also sort of shape our hearts.

So we talked about prayer.

What does it mean to be a person who prays we talked about last week.

We talked about love, loving our neighbor, and how does it?

You know, maybe we'd be known by our love.

Rob Morris was here Talk about love.

Ben talked about having community with accountability.

So that's part of being a disciple is having people in your life to say, hey, don't do that.

You're being, you know, whatever.

And then today I want to talk about scripture, because scripture is foundational to what it means to be a disciple.

When I say a follower of Jesus, I mean an adherence to his ways.

Well, how do you know what his ways are unless you know what he did and what he said and how he treated people and what his sort of sermons were like, his philosophies of ministry and his yoke, his teachings?

What were they?

Well, you have to read the scripture to know.

And so I do want to encourage you this morning to get into scripture and I'm the last guy that's like you should do this and you should do that, but I really believe that if you want to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, you should really be reading scripture, not because it makes you a better person, not because it makes you more lovable in God's eyes.

You're already included in embrace.

Welcome to the table, all those things.

But if you want to know what Jesus was like and what he said and how he'd respond to things like war or injustice or poverty, read the, read the gospels and you'll understand that.

So here's what I want to say.

I want to give you my sort of my thesis, if I will, on the front end.

I love to do this sometimes.

It's to give you a clear idea of where I go and also, if you fall asleep midway through, you'll at least got the thesis in the front end.

So the Bible is not just information.

It's not.

It's not just another history book telling you what happened.

It's not just information about God that we sort of just to absorb with our brains.

Remember a couple weeks ago I know you remember it because it was so dynamic this idea of Renee Descartes.

We thought we were just giant brains and a stick thinking beings.

Well, that isn't how we are.

We're more like what Augustine calls we're lovers.

We're not just thinking so.

The Bible is not just information, okay, so scratch that off your list if you thought that it's.

Also it's not just a rule book.

Many people think that the Bible is a book of rules.

Here's what you can and cannot do.

It's not that.

It's way more dynamic and deep and profound and layered and nuanced than just a bunch of rules, believe it or not.

Many of your friends don't read the Bible or don't like it because they assume it's just information or just a bunch of rule book, or just a bunch of rules in a rule book.

It's also now I'm going to mess with, maybe, your childhood framework for the Bible, so forgive me, I'll try to be gentle, don't stow me right away, but it's also not.

It's not, I would argue, basic instructions before leaving earth.

Okay, so maybe, if you've been taught that, I just would want you to like, just erase that for at least the next half an hour.

Okay, there's lots of problems with that idea, one of which is that we are not designed, created.

We're not leaving anywhere.

That's not the point of the Bible.

The Bible ends with heaven and earth coming together, not us leaving earth to go to some ethereal, disembodied bliss on the cloud.

That isn't what the Bible is even getting at.

So it's a misreading of the Bible so that we're leaving earth or escaping, or leaving and maybe even leaving others behind Some of this pop cultural stuff.

But it's not just basic instructions, it's way more than that.

Okay, so what it is, it's an unfolding story from beginning to end, about God and people and God's relationship with them, through a people called Israel and also drawing in the outsider.

From the beginning the outer was drawn in and how God was to bless and heal and restore and fix things, including these like violence and injustice and broken places in the world.

Then, dramatically and most empirically and emphatically in Jesus, who's the embodiment of Israel, who then rallies these people around himself, israel sort of becomes embodied in Jesus.

The doors of Israel blow open to include anybody who wants to kind of be in and surround their life, become a disciple of Jesus.

And that's now.

All.

Those stories now belong to you.

You've been sort of grafted in, and then it's about Jesus healing the world through his life, death and resurrection, and then, dramatically, it's you.

It becomes a story about them and it's also, as you read it, your story Fair enough.

I can tell how wild you are already so far.

Thank you, kevin.

Kevin's on board.

Okay, years ago I went to college for the first time.

In my mid-20s I was like 25, 26 years old went to college.

I didn't go to college right out of high school because my life was a bit of a mess.

I didn't have any meaningful direction in what I was doing or I was going had lots of bad habits.

It wouldn't have been a good idea.

So my mid-20s I went though, but instead of going to college at night at 18, I went to a place called Wyam Youth with a Mission.

It's a discipleship training organization.

I loved it.

I loved every part of it.

I really did.

But Wyam, believe it or not, it feels like, in fact, it probably is a bit of a Christian bubble where everybody in the bubble is a Christian and they all pray, more or less.

They all read the Bible, they always have a Bible, they all worship.

They know all the language.

In fact, they have their own language.

Maybe you've heard of this language.

It's called Christianese, and then you know you speak Christians.

When you say things in the bubble, like whether it's a church or Wyam that, like, people outside the bubble are like, what are you even talking about?

Like we just say like, oh, no big deal.

So, for example, here's one of them oh, I've been washed in the blood of Jesus.

And all of us are like, yeah, of course I have.

But you say it to an outsider.

Like what, think about that saying, if you're not a Christian, like what does?

Are you like a vampire washed in the blood of Jesus?

That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

This is Christianese.

How about this one for Bible language, the Lamb of God, someone who's not a Christian or you know in the bubble?

Like what are you talking about?

God is an animal.

There's an animal that belongs to God, a lamb.

What is?

Or how about?

This one is my favorite the incarnation.

Are you talking about a flower?

What exactly are you?

What is this language that you guys use?

Or my real favorite is when you sit down for dinner you say this bless this food to our bodies, as you're sort of looming over a double whopper with cheese.

Bless this unhealthy food to the nourishment of our bodies.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

There's like this Christianese.

Well, when I was in YWAM, that was kind of the water I was swimming in and I left there to go to college and I was actually doing them both at the same time.

But it was a secular community college called Red Rocks and it was down the road from YWAM and I was in both worlds and the community college was not a Christian school.

There was no bubble.

There was a few Christians there, no doubt, but they did not speak Christianese.

So I went there and I loved it because it was like they did not know all the language, didn't know the stories.

Well, in my English two class we had to do a project or a paper on anything we wanted to.

So I chose, you know, because once a Bible nerd, always a Bible nerd I chose the historical validity of the gospels.

I wanted to like scrutinize the gospels under the same lens you might, any other kind of piece of literature and see if it held up.

But it turns out it does hold up.

I have a paper if you want to read it.

It's actually pretty good, it's okay, but in terms of literature it actually holds up very well.

Now people still disagree whether or not Jesus actually literally resurrected, but in terms of literature it's very substantial the gospels, so you're not that weird to kind of read them or believe in them.

But I sat down with my professor and she goes okay, ryan, you can do this.

I approve of your topic.

But you cannot use the Bible as a source, because I don't give a bleep what the Bible says.

I was in the Christian bubble and then I'm now, I'm here and she's like I don't give a bleep what the Bible says.

I was like, oh okay, fair enough, so it's safe to assume that you're not washing the blood of the lamb.

I said, I said I said I said I said, I said Okay, she's like, cause I don't care what the Bible says, I don't care, I don't care what it says.

And this was like my first interaction with someone who didn't really appreciate the Bible the same way I did, and it reminds me of a modern.

There's this modern commentator who I will not name her because it's not important, but when she was arguing about this around the pro life, pro choice debate, this is what she said about Christians in the Bible.

She says this I don't care that you're a Christian, I don't care what the Bible says.

You don't get to tell me what the Bible says in this verse in this chapter.

I don't care.

I don't care what the Bible says.

Now, here's why I tell you all of this, in case you're living in a Christian bubble.

The Bible has fallen out of favor with many, many people in the world today, just so you know.

And this sermon is not about left wing, right wing at all, it's not that at all.

So just kind of put that aside.

That's how you see the world right now.

It's not that.

It's that people generally don't care what the Bible says.

They don't care.

And when we as Christians go around arguing what the Bible says, people don't care generally because they don't believe the Bible.

And in fact when we argue for like oh, the Bible says it, actually, they sort of like puts them off and it can be kind of like we lose credibility because it's important for many of us but not for them.

They just don't believe in the Bible.

There's all kinds of reasons for that, one of which is and again, our sermon series that you can hang with me is about discipleship in a disenchanted world.

We live in a cultural shift right now, more or less I'm generalizing, I've got 20 minutes.

It's called the postmodern world.

Have you guys heard of this word postmodern.

Raise your hand if you have.

Okay, well, take note.

The pre-modern era was antiquity to about the late 1800s.

Then we of course again with sort of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution people like Rene Descartes, which I mentioned earlier we go into this modern era.

Modernity loved everything to be in a box, night and nice and neat.

Science was elevated, things could be measured and weighed.

Then we approach what we call the postmodern era.

In the postmodern era, there's many things that would, or indicators for the postmodern era, one of which people begin to reject and dismantle or deconstruct or become dubious of what we call the meta-narrative.

Here's a picture of a meta-narrative clear, isabelle, isn't it?

A meta-narrative is any kind of guiding principle or overarching story that we all live by.

So things like progress or enlightenment or the Bible, that we have this framework that we all live underneath, we all agree to its principles.

We're like, hey, this is what we're doing, this is what we're going.

The post-modern world generally rejects this idea of a meta-narrative because they view it as a power move.

Well, you're just using that meta-narrative to have power and to claim power over me and even to subjugate or oppress me underneath your paradigm, your worldview.

Again, remember she said I don't care what the Bible says, because you're using as a sort of a power move over and against me.

This is what post-modernism in the post-modern world is.

So this is deconstruction, because it's a power move.

Also in the post-modern world generally, people will reject or at least restituate, reframe what we call truth, like capital T truth.

I have a picture in case you need to know what truth is there.

You go, you're welcome, and so they reject this idea of absolute or like a static truth, because they also view it as a power move.

Nietzsche said this that all truth claims are power moves that are used to oppress, to subjugate, to enforce certain paradigms onto the people.

So they reject truth.

Then we now live in a world where you hear things like oh, this is my truth, or that's your truth, or here's how I see it, here's how you see it.

That's fine for you, but what's fine for me is different.

Now again, in modernity we love things to be nice and neat, compact.

We can weigh them, measure them.

We like fact, but like scientific hard sciences.

Post-modernism sort of ebbs away from that because it sees even scientific fact or the goal of science in, generally speaking as these power moves or power claims or truth claims.

This is the culture that we live in Now.

It's certainly hotter in some parts of the world or country than others, but this is the post-modern shift and actually it's a classical post-modern movement it's more true now than ever where we become unhooked from these things like truth, meta-narratives, guiding principles that we all agree on, we all live by.

You might read the paper and be like, oh, this is what's happening, this is what's happening, and then so we live in a world generally of uncertainty, where everything is questioned and the whole thing collapses into a morass and a bog of unknowing.

And like uncertain, like we don't even know what we know.

We're like what is knowing?

No one, even we don't have a general agreement.

So like this is sort of this general, underlying sort of unknowing of the whole thing and we become unhooked from meaning, from story and even from each other and we sort of are adrift.

Interestingly enough, the word religion comes from the word relegère.

Everyone say relegère and relegère no religion.

Look, I get it.

Religion is a bad rap today and for many ways and many places for legitimate reasons.

But relegère all, it means the root word.

It means to connect or to bind.

Heads up over here, heads up, who are my most athletic catchers in the room?

Nobody, apparently.

We don't have any other people here.

Nobody, apparently, we don't have any Pete holding that.

And then, if you could toss it over here, this is what religion looks like Now.

Look, this might have been a bad idea.

We're going to find out real live time here together.

Nobody wants to touch the rope I get.

Relegère means to connect or to bind.

Religion is this idea that you're connected to or bound to something, something deeper than yourself, bigger than yourself.

Raise your hand if you want to.

Okay, there, nice job, we'll keep passing if you don't mind that you're connected.

So here's my question what are you connected to?

What are you bound to In the postmodern world?

In many ways, it's nothing.

There's no thing.

There's no meta-narrative, no truth.

I'm disconnected from a lot of things and I would argue, also meaning Now, when you connect yourself and I would argue to the Bible, to the scripture, to the story of God, to a church, community, to religion.

Now, listen, when religion goes bad is when you connect yourself to a violent narrative, what we saw with Hamas and some of these other terrorist organizations.

They're connected to, bound to a violent narrative of faith.

Does that make sense?

This is why a lot of these are very dangerous, because they've connected themselves to a form of fundamentalism that is actually rooted in violence, and so on.

However, if you connect yourself to something meaningful in this case, jesus, the cross, the scripture, the community of faith, this kind of thing, it can be quite liberating, freeing and actually can instill meaning.

Does that make sense?

Okay, thank you for my volunteers.

I appreciate it.

We may or may not be able to do this at the 10 o'clock, we'll see.

Just kidding, mike.

Does that make sense?

What are you connected to?

Anything, nothing.

My encouragement this morning is what is it?

The scripture, the story of God, the Bible can become this deep anchored point for your life if you let it.

It can be like a base note in a world of high treble notes, of like 30,.

What is the?

I don't know if the limit is for Twitter anymore now, or what was formerly known as Twitter, like in a world of instant, everything.

The Bible can be a deeply anchored point for you to anchor your life.

This is what it was in the ancient world, in the ancient world for the Jewish people the scriptures, where they foundation and the sort of yeah, the foundation of all of life.

For then the scripture was the story of God and how God interacted with the world, where it all came from, what is the meaning of life, all of these kinds of things, and how it involved them and included them in every single way.

This was the Bible, it was a building block for their life and Israel's sacred scriptures, what we call the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Bible.

In this case it was sort of.

It was the revelation of what God was doing in and through you know well, in our case, jesus, and how it included everybody.

It was an absolutely foundational text for them and book for them, and it showed who is the one and true God, what were His kingdom purposes for the world, where is this thing headed and how does it include or not, and how does it include us?

So, for example, here's what one scholar says.

Oh, by the way, we should have one before this, right, sarah, is there one, a quote before this?

Go back one for me.

There it is Through scripture, israel remember Israel was sort of.

God comes to Israel Abraham, sarah and sort of wants to minister, he wants to bless them so they can bless and include the whole world.

So, through scripture, israel was given order in her national life, a structured worship, wisdom for conducting daily life, rebuke and promise for the prophets and, not least, songs through which to bring every mood, every moment in the God's presence as praise, lament sorry for the not capitalized there adoration, perplexity, despair, hope and commitment.

This is what the scripture was.

Israel's text was a foundational part of their lives.

It was everything for them.

So the rabbis who show up before Jesus but after the prophets, rabbis, are these teachers right, and a disciple was a follower of a rabbi.

The rabbis loved the text.

They loved the Torah you heard in that scripture from Psalm.

They thought it was vital, shaped all they did and they were obsessed with learning the Torah, the teachings, the texts, the stories of God.

They wanted to know it deep in their bones and they would teach it to others.

They would instruct young people.

It was vital, as you saw a couple weeks ago, for them to pass on the teachings, the instruction, the texts, the scripture to the next generation.

Remember this.

They said this about this.

They said this.

They said look, under the age of six, we don't receive a child as a pupil.

So under the age of six we won't teach them Torah, but from six upwards we will accept them and stuff them like an ox with Torah.

Remember that from a couple weeks ago.

Because they knew that they were one generation away from being extinct, they wanted to pass along the scriptures, the texts, the stories of God to the next generation.

So they'd meet in the synagogues, the rabbis, the disciples and other just common folks in the town, and the rabbi would get up, he'd open the scroll and he would read the scroll as Jesus did in chapter in Luke.

We just heard this.

Jesus was a rabbi, so he reads the scroll and he would say things like may the word of God be sweet on your lips.

May these words, may the Torah, may the scriptures, be like honey on your lips as you read them and hear them.

May they taste sweeter than anything you've ever had in your entire life.

And they'd roll up the scroll and they would dance and they would celebrate and play music.

So everyone get up.

We're gonna dance here, we're gonna get the band out.

And Well, why don't we do that kind of stuff anymore?

I had someone tell me one time you guys really shouldn't read scripture from the pulpit.

It's just sort of boring when you guys read it.

It's just boring to me.

Oh well, I don't know whose fault that really is, but like where did this love for Tarago where they would dance and sing and play instruments and made the word of God be like honey on your lips?

Jesus was, like, profoundly affected by the scripture.

He knew the text, he knew the troch.

Some scholars think Jesus couldn't read.

I vehemently disagree.

I think Jesus knew how to read.

He was an educated young man and man.

He's at the temple arguing with people, very smart young man.

And he knew the prophets.

He knew the scriptures, the songs, the ancient wisdom.

They deeply impacted his life.

So the disciples and the job of the disciple this is, by the way, your job was to learn the text, to know it, to know what the story of God was.

Where was this thing headed, what did it mean, who were the characters, what are they doing?

And then embody it.

So every rabbi had their own interpretation.

By the way, if you didn't know this, it might be unnerving at first, but every rabbi saw the text a bit differently.

And they would come and they would argue here's how I see that law.

Oh yeah.

Well, here's how I see that law.

You know we're so obsessed with finding the one, right answer.

This is not rabbinical style of law.

That's not how they did it.

They would argue and you would adopt your rabbi's interpretation, and that was called a yoke.

And so, like I want to adopt my rabbi's yoke and it actually not just information though.

I would embody it, I would live it out and it becomes my guide, my light, everything to me, my anchor, my here.

We'll go this way this time.

There you go.

It would be like this this is the text, the scriptures, god's story, god's word.

To me, it was everything.

May they be sweet, the words of God, like honey on your lips.

Thank you, that was the job of the disciple.

This is what they did.

They absorbed it and they would go out and they would live it.

Now there's this cool story where Jesus is walking in this crowd with all of his disciples, his friends, and this woman comes up to him who's been bleeding for years.

Remember the story.

And what does she say?

She says this.

I'm glad you asked.

She says If only I could touch his cloak, I would be.

May well, now, in the look at numbers, Jewish men were supposed to wear a robe.

They had four corners on their robe and it evolves over time into a prayer shawl.

They had four corners on it.

Right, this is actually my robe, my prayer shawl.

I picked up and were we in Bethlehem, no Jerusalem?

Yeah, I'm asking Dave.

Now, on the corners of now, every Jewish man and rabbis would have one of these.

They call it Talit.

Everyone say Talit.

Talit was like a prayer shawl and now on the corner of every one of these Talits was a tassel and usually they would have 613 knots on all the tassels.

Do you know why they had 613 knots?

There were 613 commands of Moses.

The laws of Moses were 613.

So this is like wearing a Bible around your neck.

It was like there's a way to remember the scriptures, the Torah, which they had again memorized, and they would wear these Talit and these Jewish men and they would walk around town and these rabbis like this, and they'd put it up there like this and, by the way, they had this saying that they would they called them wings and you can kind of see why when you would walk around like these rabbis were walking, like this, you know, and also when they would pray, in order to not be distracted.

This is actually a good one for me.

They'd put their prayer shawl up over their head and they would do like this and they would close their prayer shawl around them so they wouldn't be distracted.

Do you know what they called this?

They called this their prayer closet.

Isn't that awesome.

Jesus says when you pray, go into your closet.

He doesn't mean go into the place where the mop is and the scrub brush and the sponge are.

He means go into your prayer closet.

How cool is that?

So you should get yourself a prayer shawl so you don't be distracted.

Now Jesus walking around and she says it only I could touch the hem of his garment or the hem of his robe.

What's she talking about?

She's talking about, by the way, they call these tassels the tzitzi.

Everyone say tzitzi.

Now in Malachi.

Here's why she does this is why would she say that?

Why wouldn't she just say Jesus, can you pray for me or, excuse me, sir, can someone heal me?

She wants to grab the hem of his robe.

Well, in Malachi, a scripture which she probably knows says this Malachi, the prophet, but for you who revere my name, the son of righteous will rise up with healing in his wings.

What did they call these things?

Wings and, by the way, the word k'naf in the Hebrew is the word for wings.

It actually doesn't mean the whole part.

They would call this thing.

They would refer to it as wings.

They just meant the edges of the prayer shawl.

She thinks if she can just reach out and grab a whole, the corner of the shawl, the tzitzi, that she'll be healed.

Why does she think that?

She probably knows Malachi and she thinks he's the son of righteousness, this woman who's then healed by faith.

I love it.

Jesus is like.

He's like, oh, who touched me?

And the friends are like everyone's touching you.

What are you talking about?

It's crowded and he's like no, I felt power go out of me Like ugh.

She has faith that he's the Messiah.

Her knowledge of scripture changes the way she actually lives and moves throughout her day.

It was not just information for her If it was oh, great, healing, great.

No, it meant like this God, who's embodied in this Messiah, has come to bring healing to the world and it includes and involves me.

I gotta touch it and if I do, I just might get healed.

So what is the Bible?

What is it?

Because your friends don't always know they think it's just a set of rules or a bunch of information.

The Bible is really this Good, thank you.

So how can we talk about it today?

The Bible is a library of 66 books.

It's not really one book at all.

It's a whole bunch of books that come together and tell a story, but it's poems, it's accounts, it's wisdom, it's history, it's letters, it's all these wonderful things.

It's a library of books that come together to tell the story of God.

It's written by real people in real places at real times.

Here's what NT writes.

It's about I love this, or somebody I don't remember who said this, but it's a library of books dealing with loss and anger and transcendence and worry and empire and money and fear and stress and joy and doubt and grace and healing.

The Bible is filled with people wrestling and struggling and doubting and shouting and arguing with this idea that there even is a God.

Again, sorry for the lower case G.

I wanted to tell my professor like you don't care what the Bible says, do you even know what the Bible says?

It's not just a rule book.

It's a whole bunch of human emotes.

It's a book, a library of books that deal with what it means to be a human and meaning and loss and suffering.

Read the Psalms.

Yeah, go ahead, you put them all up there, sarah.

The Psalms are like David crying and weeping at the hands of injustice.

The guy, his former mentor, wanted to kill him.

Read the prophets.

The prophets are the first people who cared about justice, because there are all kinds of injustices happening all around, and they were like this is not okay, god would not stand for this.

Read the story of David, this man who is a man for God's own heart but also a deeply flawed individual, and you might feel better about your own life if you read that story about David.

Read about Mary, a teenage girl who God chooses to be the mother of God incarnate.

How wild.

Why would he pick Mary?

She doesn't even have a husband.

Say a beautiful story about all the things that God is doing, from beginning to end, and how it involves and includes you and me.

Because the best stories and the Bible is in fact, an, indeed a story the best stories implicate and involve the reader and, by the way, the early apostles thought that the Bible, the scriptures, the word of God had power.

I don't have time to share the scriptures.

Well, maybe I do a little quick.

Hang on, hang on to your seats.

The Bible had power.

It was not just a normal book, it had power.

So Paul writes I wanna share him to the gospel because that's the power of God that brings salvation.

The scriptures, the story of God, it was like the vehicle through which God would bring about, through Jesus, through salvation.

It's incredible, this book okay, and, by the way, paul's not writing about the book you have under your pews there but the scripture is the story of God.

How about this one from First Thessalonians?

Because our gospel came to you not simply with words, it's not just information, it's power with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction, oh, and with that one, sarah.

So what is the Bible?

It's where the people of God said this is our story, israel.

They're like this is our story and they tell it.

It's about creation and God's involvement with the world and God's never leaving the world, the incarnation and liberation of our freedom.

And then, as you read it, you realize slowly oh my gosh, this is actually not just their story, this is actually my story.

God was to liberate and free me.

I've told this story before, but I'll end with this.

Good friend of mine and his wife went through a horrible, horrible, like marriage threatening incident years ago Actually several incidents, but their marriage was on like hanging by a very thin thread because of a number of horrible decisions they both have made and he had been betrayed on a number of ways and occasions.

And he came to me for counseling and again one more time he was what should I do?

What should I do, ryan?

And he's a Christian man, she's a Christian woman, but their marriage was like, it was all but dead.

And I'm like listen, I told her nobody would blame you if you left her because of what she did to you.

I wouldn't blame you.

But let me tell you something, and this is where I was like I don't know if I really believe this, but I'm going to be a pastor, so I should say this the Bible is a story about God redeeming broken things, raising dead things back to life, healing the whole cosmos, not just heaven.

When you die, escaping earth, going to some ethereal, disembodied place where you play a harp.

That's not what the Bible says.

It's about God restoring heavens and earth, making a new place where all are welcome and included and involved, and healing the broken place.

So I said, I believe that's the Bible.

I really do, and so I believe that God could in fact save this marriage.

Now, look, if you want to leave her, go ahead.

But, brother, if you want to stay, I will help you and you're going to need therapy, like professional therapy, counseling both of you probably will.

But if the Bible is what I'm hooked to and when I'm connected to myself, I've got to think that this thing can be saved.

If the Bible is what I'm connected to, then some kid from Aurora, colorado, who grew up in an abusive home, whose father left when he was eight years old, left him for the final time when I was eight years old, didn't have a dad early around at all, but my mom would drag me to church every Wednesday and Sunday.

Who was a knucklehead in high school and did all the wrong things, so much so that he couldn't even go to college because his life was such a mess.

But if the Bible is true, then there's hope for even people like me.

So my friend and his wife went to counseling for a couple of years.

It was horrible.

They had to dig down, expose all the nasty stuff underneath, and about a year and a half later I went back to their house and I helped them read to their vows and to this day they just started.

All the way over.

They've built a brand new marriage, because the scripture's not just information, it's not.

It has power.

It's the story of God, what God's doing in the world through Israel, through Jesus, now through you, the church, so central Lutheran church.

May you be tethered.

I won't.

You're never going to forget this, though, right, I win.

Also, I would tell you, if you've never read the Bible, read it.

Not because you should, and I bet you're going to.

And I would say there's lots of plans online.

You can Google like one year Bible reading plan.

Do it, you will get a wonderful idea of what I'm talking about.

This unfolding story that involves you.

It's beautiful.

There's weird parts.

We eat the weird parts.

Come and talk to me, I'll help you out.

There's troubling parts.

Sarah and I were talking about how troubling a lot of the.

Yeah, it's an ancient book full of violence and oppression.

Yes, that's okay to be troubled, that's okay.

It's a troubling book at points.

Come and talk to me, or to Sarah, we'll help you out.

Or Sonia, but may you be tethered to the scriptures, the word of God, the story of Jesus and His redemption in the world, and may that be your meta narrative that you live by and guide your life by.

May you be a disciple of Jesus, amen.