How Does the Bible Work? | The Bible For Grown-Ups

Hey everybody, it's Rob from Trinity Streetsville.

Here at Trinity, we're just a group of ordinary people learning to follow Jesus in our day.

Say, do you read the Bible?

If so, how do you read the Bible?

Do you read it for information or do you read it for transformation?

Because there is a very big difference between a Bible-believing person and a Bible-living

person.

Well, join us today as we discover that the Bible is way more than just a system of belief,

it's a way of life.

Our reading today is from 2 Timothy 3 verses 14 to 17.

2 Timothy 3:14–17

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because

you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures,

which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training

in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good

work.

The word of the Lord.

Good morning, everyone.

You know, the other day, my car was making a bit of a squeaking noise, so we went to

the mechanic, and you know, the mechanic popped the hood, and the two of us stood there and

looking inside, and you know, then the mechanic, you know what he did?

He reached over and he grabbed a ratchet, and he put that ratchet on a bolt, and he

gave it about a quarter turn, and the squeaking stopped.

I was like, amazing, that's fantastic.

I said, you know, what do I owe you?

What do I owe you?

And he said, that'll be $500.

And I said, you've got to be joking me.

You know, all you did was turn that bolt a quarter of a turn, and he said, yeah, yeah,

no worries.

Like, it was only $1 to turn the bolt, but it was $499 to know which bolt to turn.

And isn't that true?

That it is one thing to be able to turn a bolt.

It's another thing to be able to look at all those parts and all those pieces and know

what it is that they are doing.

Anyone, anyone can turn a bolt, but not everyone can fully see all these pieces, all these

parts and know what it is they are doing and how they all work.

We are right in the middle actually now of a teaching series that we are calling the

Bible for Grown Ups.

And it's a series where we're not talking about cars, we're talking about the Bible.

And actually, I have to do a little bit of an apology because I heard last week that

some of the younger members of our congregation, this is legitimate, some of the junior youth,

they said, hey, we're not grownups.

And so you're doing this whole series and you keep saying the Bible for grownups, the

Bible for grownups, and I hear you.

And you know, we don't want to exclude anyone who's younger.

And so what we might say to you for sure is this isn't just about the Bible for grownups,

but it's the Bible for those who are growing up.

And actually, the fact that you're here and that you're participating with us on Sunday

mornings means that you actually may learn some of the things that we didn't learn when

we were growing up.

And you'll be better positioned to read your Bible throughout your whole life because you're

here this morning.

So the Bible for grownups, the Bible for those who are growing up.

And so far, to kind of get to this, we've asked a couple of very simple questions.

We've said, you know, what is the Bible?

And we've said, now, and then where does the Bible come from?

But today we want to do something different.

Today we want to take that Bible and we want to pop the hood, if you will.

We want to, you know how they always have one of these sticks, right?

We want to pop the hood on the Bible and we want to take a good look at all the various

pieces inside here and ask the question, you know, what does all this do?

What is this for?

How is this supposed to work?

The average car, we are told, has something like 30,000 pieces in it.

And you know, everything from carburetors and radiators down to little bolts and screws.

And I have to be honest, I don't know a heck of a lot about cars.

I probably know less, you know, what 5% of those pieces do.

I don't know, but I do know this about a car and that is what the car is supposed to do

when it's working.

And when it's working correctly, it's supposed to move me.

It's supposed to take me from A to B, from here to there.

It's supposed to transport me.

That's what a car does.

A car is transportation.

That's what all the pieces under the hood of a car are meant to do.

But what about the Bible?

If you look in the Bible, it too is full of all these pieces, all these parts.

This is a wonderful Bible, by the way, made by our very own Brian Holton.

And if you look under the hood of the Bible, you see, look, there's this and there's that.

There's all these books.

Some of these things are letters.

Some of these things are prophecy books.

Some of these are poetry.

Some of it is like genealogical information.

There's so much in here.

This, there's 66 books found within the library of the Bible and they have different genres

and different authors and they're written at different times and they're written over

a span of like 1500 or 2000 years as well.

And so you may look in there and say, my gosh, what does all that do?

And what is it trying to accomplish?

All those parts, all those pieces, they are doing something, by the way, when you read

this thing, it's doing something to you.

But what, what are the parts do?

What's it for?

What does it accomplish?

Some people may say, I'm not sure the Bible accomplishes very much at all, but it is doing

something to us.

And today I want to talk about what the Bible is doing, what all those pieces and all those

books and all those words, what they're doing is together.

They are, they're like a car.

They're moving us somewhere.

They're taking us somewhere, but it's not about transportation.

That's what a car does.

The Bible is about transformation.

That's what the Bible does.

Right?

That's what it's for.

It's not to transport me.

It's to transform me.

Right?

It's to transform you.

It's to transform our city.

It's to transform our church.

D.L. Moody, he put it this way.

He said the Bible was not given for our information, but for our transformation.

That's it.

That's what the Bible does.

That's what it's for.

Just like all the pieces and parts in a car are designed to take you to a certain somewhere,

right?

All the pieces and parts in a Bible are designed to turn you into a certain someone, right?

A car takes you somewhere.

A Bible makes you a certain someone.

That's what it's for.

That's what it's for.

But the problem is most of us do not read our Bibles for transformation.

We read our Bibles for information.

We think the point of the Bible is for us to fill our heads with knowledge and facts

and data.

And yes, there is a lot of information in the Bible, but we don't read the Bible to

make us look smart.

We read the Bible to make us look like Jesus.

We read the Bible for transformation, not for information.

I can't state that enough.

That is what it is for.

And today I want to tell you the two main ways that the Bible transforms us.

So here's a spoiler alert.

I'll tell you right off the bat.

Here they are.

First, the Bible transforms us by giving us a true picture of God.

And secondly, the Bible transforms us by telling us the true story of the world.

And as I'm going to explain to you, the picture you have of God in your mind and the story

you tell of the world and you understand how the world works, those are two of the most

transformative influences in your life and my life.

And the Bible helps us with both of those things.

So how does the Bible work?

Let's look at the very first one.

The Bible works by giving us a true picture of God.

If you were to open up a Bible and turn to page one, you would read this in the beginning,

God, dot, dot, dot.

And it carries on from there.

And do you know what that means?

It means that the Bible is first and foremost, not about you.

It is not a book about me.

It is not a book about how to solve my problems.

It is not a book about how to live a better life.

It is not a book about how to be successful or how to make better decisions or how to

have better relationships.

It's not even a book about how to get to heaven when you die.

Right?

That stuff, yes, that stuff is in there.

But from the very first words of the Bible, you can see that primarily, primarily, primarily,

the Bible is about God.

And last week, we learned that the Bible tells this great big story.

And if that's the case, then you know who the story is about and you know who the main

character in the story is.

It's God.

It's not you.

It's not me.

The Bible is kind of like God's social media profile.

It's his revelation to the world.

He's showing everybody, this is who I am.

This is who I am.

And he's showing us, by the way, this is who I am.

I am not.

And if you think about it, what would we really know about God if it weren't for all the bits

and pieces found in the engine of the Bible?

What would we know?

We might know some things from looking at creation, from looking at the world, from

looking at each other.

We might know some things.

But as Eugene Peterson says, God and his ways are not what most of us think.

Most of what we are told about God and his ways, whether it's by the way, whether it's

by our friends or whether it's through our news feeds or TV or, or even some of the things

we think up on our own.

Most of all that Peterson says is wrong.

It's simply wrong.

It might not be dead wrong, but it's wrong enough and get this to mess with the way that

we live.

But the Bible is precisely a revelation of what we could never figure out on our own.

So you see what he says there.

He says that it's our ideas of God are wrong enough to mess with the way we live.

Now you might say, what does my picture of God have to do with the way I live?

And the answer is way more than you know, way more than you know.

A.W. Tozer said that we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image

of God.

Just take those words in for a second.

We tend to move toward our mental image of God.

In other words, the idea of God that you have in your mind is affecting the type of person

that you are becoming.

And it doesn't matter actually if you have the right image of God in your mind or the

wrong image of God, you are gravitating toward that image.

Yet your image of God is turning you into a certain kind of someone.

And that someone could be amazing or that someone could be absolutely horrible and terrifying,

but we become who we are based on what we think about God.

A bloodthirsty terrorist is who he is partly because of the image of God he has in his

mind, right?

The bully that you run into at school or in the workplace is who they are partly because

of the image they have in their mind of God.

You know, the prosperity preacher is who he is because of how he thinks about God.

But you know what?

So is the missionary, the missionary who travels around the world to care for children does

that because of the image of God they have in their mind.

And so is the wife, the wife who stands by her husband for years as he struggles with

a chronic illness and she stands by his side.

Why does she do that?

Partly because of the image of God that she has in her mind.

Or how about a wealthy businessman who gives away three quarters of all his income to God's

work and the work of the kingdom?

Why does he do that?

He does that partly because of the mental image he has of God in his mind.

Each one of those people do what they do because of what they believe about God.

What we believe about God matters.

And I'll tell you with so much bad thinking about God out there and so much bad thinking

about God in here, we need someone to show us a true picture of God.

Our life depends on it.

Our very transformation as human beings depends on it.

And that's what the Bible does.

That's how the Bible works.

It helps us sort through all the bad information and the misinformation and the wrong images

and unhelpful images of God and helps us to see what God is really like.

And by the way, I don't think we see that any place more clearly than we see it in the

life of Jesus.

In the Christian tradition, there's this old Latin saying, lex orendi, lex credendi, lex

vivendi.

What that basically means is it says the way that you worship or pray affects the way that

you believe, which affects the way that you live.

Isn't that interesting?

This morning as you gather, as we sing these songs and as we worship and pray together,

you have an image of God in your mind.

And that image of God is affecting the way that you think about God and your thoughts

about God are going to ultimately affect your way of life.

And that is why the Bible is so important because the Bible comes along and it says,

let me show you a picture of the God that you're worshiping.

And then that inform your thinking about God.

And then that can in turn inform the way that you live.

That process of moving and changing from our thoughts all the way through to our actions,

that is called transformation.

And if you think that I'm only talking to church people here, I am not just talking

to church people.

This affects everyone, whoever you are.

You don't get to decide whether you worship.

We all worship.

There is no such thing as not worshiping.

The only choice you have in the matter is what it is that you are going to worship.

There was a novelist named David Foster Wallace who long before his suicide, he gave a very

famous graduation address at Kenyon College.

And this is what he said.

He said, everyone worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And then he said this, he said, and the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of a God

or a spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will

eat you alive.

And he goes on and he says, if you worship money and things, then you will never feel

like you have enough.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.

Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid.

Worship your intellect being seen as smart and you will end up feeling stupid and a fraud.

What he's saying is that everyone has an image of God in your mind and everyone has something

that they're worshiping and that thing, that wrong image, if it's a wrong image, will deform

you and over time it will turn you into something broken and ugly.

But the Bible comes along.

The Bible comes along and says, hey, let me show you a true picture of who God really

is.

This is the God who created you and the whole world.

This is the God who loves you.

Look, this is the God who laid down his life for you.

This is the God who sacrificed himself for you.

This is the God who will heal you and restore you and actually will restore this whole creation.

Look at this picture.

Look at this God.

Let that be the God you see in your mind.

Let that be the God that you worship here on Sundays.

Then if you do that, then you will become like that God.

You will become like the son of God.

You will not be deformed into the likeness of whatever idea of God the world throws at

you, but you will be transformed into his likeness.

And so that's the beautiful thing when we let the Bible show us the true picture of

who God is, that we actually find out the true picture of who we are because we gravitate

toward who we're supposed to be as we hold that image of God in our minds and in our

hearts.

This is who God is, and this is who you're meant to be.

So that's what the Bible is for, right?

That's what the parts do.

This is like the parts of the car all work together to transport us.

The parts of the Bible are working together to transform us.

And one of the primary ways it does that is by giving us the true picture of who God is.

But that's only the first thing the Bible does.

The second thing the Bible does is it tells us the true story about how the world is,

right?

Every person here, every one of us, we live by some kind of a story, right?

You have to have a story in your mind, a story that answers some pretty fundamental questions

like who are we and where did we come from and what is the purpose of my life?

We all have a story that we believe that helps us answer those questions.

So for example, I'll just throw a couple of examples out here.

So if you had, take for example, the story of individualism, many people live their lives

according to the story of the rugged loner individual.

Now if you believe that story and live your life according to that story, then what's

the answer to the question, who are we?

The answer is we are independent and free beings.

And then where did we come from?

Well, that everyone can choose that for themselves because we're all independent.

We can all make up our own answers to that.

And then what is the meaning of life?

Well, they might answer the meaning of life is to realize your full potential and who

you are and all your desires.

See how that story you tell yourself helps you answer those questions about life.

Or how about the story of atheism?

That's also tells a story.

So what do atheists say?

Who are we?

We are evolved animals, glorious evolved animals.

Where did we come from?

We came from some glorious accident, trillion years ago, cosmic accident.

What is the meaning of life?

Well, there is really no meaning of life.

You can just make of it whatever you want.

There's so many stories you can live by.

This hedonism, socialism, capitalism, commercialism, liberalism, conservatism.

These are all stories that help you answer the big questions of life.

And that's why James K.A.

Smith, he says, he says, we're all essentially storied animals, right?

To be a human, to be you and me is to be in and come from a story.

And look what these stories do.

A story defines our identity, a story that guides our actions and a story that orients

us toward the future.

Now, this is why it's important.

The Bible tells a story.

The Bible tells a story.

But last week we learned that 60 percent of what's in the Bible is a narrative.

It's telling you a story.

And yes, it is a story through the lens of one particular nation, the nation of Israel,

and what God was doing in them.

But that story of that nation is actually blows up bigger into what God is doing through

all the nations and all the world as well.

And it answers all those really important questions.

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

What is life all about?

What is the meaning of life?

The Bible is trying to tell you a story.

But what you've got to realize is as it tells you the story, it's not just any story, it's

trying to tell you a story that subverts and upends all the other stories that you hear

out there day in and day out.

There's a South American philosopher by the name of Ivan Illich.

And he said, you know, when you want to change a society, how do you change the society?

Do you do you have a big fiery revolution?

He said, no.

Do you do you have a very slow going political process?

Is that the way to change the society?

He said, no.

He said, if you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.

And friends, that's what the Bible is doing.

It is telling you an alternative story, an alternative story to capitalism or commercialism

or individualism or hedonism or atheism or whatever ism.

It's telling you something different.

And as it tells you its story, it's exposing all the problems and all the flaws and all

the shortcomings of these other stories that we find ourselves living by.

I feel like I just got to say one thing is maybe I'm using the word story so much that

you're thinking story.

Oh, a story is a fiction fiction.

It's not real.

But no, when we're talking about the story of the Bible, we're talking about the true

story, the true story of the world that the Bible tells us.

Friends, that story shapes us.

It transforms us because when we live in that story, we live it out as well.

You know, NT Wright is kind of the master of this because he actually has a way of breaking

down the story of the Bible into what he calls a five act play, five act play.

That act one of the story is called creation.

It's where God out of nothing with his voice, he calls creation into existence and it's

good and it's good and it's good and it's good and it's very good.

That's act one creation.

We're created.

We are very good creation.

Act one act two is the fall.

That part of the story is when human beings rebel against God, we decide to go our own

way and it snaps and breaks our relationship with God and it breaks our relationship with

the rest of creation too.

It's kind of a very sad and disturbing part of the story.

Act three, though, is God's plan to put it all back together.

And so he reaches out to one particular people, one particular nation and through them, he's

going to bless the world and he's going to heal what was broken in act two.

And that particular nation is called Israel.

And that actually takes up probably most of the Old Testament that you're reading is God

is chapter three, act three, God working through Israel.

That leads to chapter four, act four, which is where all God was doing through Israel

is fulfilled and culminates in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, who ultimately

restores the broken relationship we have with God and gives the potential to be reconciled

with one another.

And that then leads to chapter five, the final chapter, which is the church, which is now

how the followers of Jesus empowered by the spirit of Jesus continue to live and work

in the world following Jesus as they do.

Now that's the story.

That's the story.

NT Wright says we're actually living in that story.

It's like we're jumping into the Bible.

We're in there and we're located somewhere in act five.

He calls it a play because he says we have to think of ourselves as actors and what's

going on is we have a part to play in here.

There's no script for it, by the way.

There's no script.

All we know is act one, two, three, and four.

We know how that part of the play goes and we know how the end part of chapter of act

five goes.

The book of revelation, God's kind of creating and recreating new creation, healing the world

and new heaven and new earth.

We know how it's ending, but we are plunked right somewhere in the middle of act five

and we have to figure out how to live knowing what came before and what came after.

Friends, all I'm saying is that's the story the Bible tells us.

And when we live in that story, how can it not but transform us as human beings?

That's what stories do.

And God gives us the best story of all.

And so just to recap, the Bible is not given for our information.

It is given for our transformation.

That's how the engine works.

That's what the pieces are doing by giving us the true picture of God and by telling

us the true story of the world.

We're not just informed, we're transformed.

That's what it was supposed to do.

That's what it's for, which means that you've got a decision to make when you read the Bible.

This is kind of a complicated chart, but I just wanted to share this a bit with you.

You can choose to read the Bible when you read the Bible.

If you read the Bible, you can choose to read it for information or you can choose to read

it for transformation.

And the way you read it actually affects what you're getting out of it.

So for example, if you want to read for information, you're going to read the Bible really fast

and you're just going to be looking for highlights and the information.

Give me the details, right?

But if you read for transformation, you will read it slowly and you will read the Bible

for depth.

If you read the Bible for information, you're going to kind of stand over the text as some

kind of authority of the text.

But if you read the Bible for transformation, you will actually stand under the text of

the Bible and let it be the authority in your life.

If you read the Bible for information, the Bible becomes an object that you can manipulate.

But if you read it for transformation, we become the object that we allow God's word

to manipulate and change.

You can read the Bible analytically or you can read it receptively.

What is God saying to me today?

You can read the Bible to become a master of scripture.

That is the high point of informational reading.

Or you can read the Bible to be mastered by scripture.

And that is the point of transformational reading of the Bible.

Do you read the Bible or do you let the Bible read you?

Right?

It is important to get this right because if we read the Bible just for information,

yeah, we may learn a lot, but we may still end up being conceited and arrogant jerks.

Right?

Because we haven't let the Bible transform us.

We've only let it inform us.

But if you read the Bible for transformation, then you'll see this true picture of God and

you'll gravitate toward it.

Then you'll hear the true story of the world and you'll find yourself lost inside of it.

And that can't help but change you.

And that's what we're trying to send just by looking at the scripture that Ali read

for us a few minutes ago.

Paul wrote these words to Timothy and look carefully at how this is exactly how Paul

understands what scripture does.

It transforms us.

He says, Timothy, all scripture is God-breathed.

It's useful.

Isn't that a neat word?

That's what we're trying to figure out.

What is this used for?

What is the point of it?

Right?

It's useful for one, teaching.

Right?

Teaching.

How do we follow Jesus?

That's what it's useful for.

And secondly, rebuking.

How do we not follow Jesus?

Correcting, training and righteousness.

All this language sounds like the language of formation and transformation.

So that, and here's the end goal, that we, that the servant of God may be fully equipped

for every good works.

And so in other words, he's saying, Timothy, we read these scriptures so that our thinking

and our feeling and our believing is so transformed that we become a certain type of person in

the world, a person of love and justice and peace and compassion and generosity.

A person who looks a lot like Jesus.

Dallas Willis says, we come to the scripture as part of a conscious strategy to cooperate

with God for the full redemption of our lives.

Do you have a strategy to cooperate with God for the redemption of your lives?

This is it.

Read the Bible.

If you don't bury yourself in this story, then the gravitational pull of all the other

stories in the world will suck you in.

And 10 years from now, you may not like the person that you have become.

But if you allow this Bible to show you the true picture of God and tell you the true

story of the world, then 10 years from now, you will find yourself living and acting and

thinking and speaking and loving in a way that may even surprise you as you look more

and more like Jesus.

It won't happen overnight.

Formation, transformation never happens quickly.

But every day, wake up, open up your Bible, read it.

It's doing something to you.

It's taking you somewhere.

It's making you someone.

That's what all the pieces are for.

There is a big difference between being a Bible believing person and a Bible living

person.

Bible wasn't designed for you just to believe it, but not just to read it or know it or

even understand it.

You have to live it.

And when you do, you'll see it's not just a system of belief.

It's a way of life.

It's a way of life.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.