Scripture

Well, again, welcome to you.

Those of you that we didn't get to welcome at the beginning,

welcome to you now on behalf of Church of the Advent.

If you're new, really glad that you're here.

My name's Tommy.

If I haven't had a chance to meet you,

hopefully we'll get a chance to do so after the service.

There'll be some refreshments in the room next door

if you'd like to hang around and get to know some new,

see some new faces and shake some new hands.

Before we do that, in the midst of this service,

we're, as Dan said a moment ago,

we're at this place in our gathering

where we turn our attention to God's Word.

We do that knowing that people come

from all different backgrounds and sets of assumptions.

Some of you are here as followers of Jesus,

and some of you are here,

you're not sure what you believe.

And some of you are here,

and maybe you already decided

that there's nothing here for you.

And so what we're gonna do today

is we're gonna look at God's Word,

the Bible, in light of that.

We are doing a series in this season

of the church calendar, which is called Lent.

And this is a series where we're looking

at some of the various habits and practices

that Christians engage in

as we seek to grow and mature in our faith.

These are habits that Tom Wright

sort of calls freedom habits.

Freedom habits.

Now, when you hear that, you think,

well, there's nothing about habit

that sounds like freedom.

They sound opposed, actually.

But, you know, the image is this.

Imagine if you're a slave

and you've lived your entire life in captivity,

and then one day somebody comes along

and they unlock the cage

and the chains drop from your hands.

Well, what do you do?

See, technically you've been freed,

but you're still going to think like a slave.

You're still going to have desires like a slave.

You're still going to live like a slave.

And so you would then have to begin to learn

how to think and to live like a free person.

And so this is the image that Wright uses.

He says, Christians have been set free

by the power of Jesus Christ.

We have the freedom of knowing

that we're fully known and fully loved

by the God of the universe.

And yet our minds and our hearts

and our lives would still convince anyone watching

that we are still, in fact, slaves to sin and death.

And so we have to learn how to live this freedom out.

And so we're talking about what these habits might be.

And so for those who are here who are Christians,

this is, we're asking how we grow in our faith.

For those who are here who are not Christians

or not sure what you believe,

you know, one of the main reasons

that people don't take the claims of Christianity seriously

are because they look at Christians

and they wonder, does this faith

actually make any difference in their lives?

And so what we're really focusing on

is what kind of change or transformation

can we expect in this life as Christians?

And so tonight's focus is really a foundational one

and that is the focus is Scripture itself.

The role of Scripture

and the ways we habitually engage Scripture

in our following of Christ.

A lot of people, a lot of Christians,

a lot of people in this church

say various forms of the same thing to me,

which is, yeah, I believe in Jesus

and I follow Jesus,

but why bother with the Bible?

You know, why bother with it?

It's hard to understand

and I don't even really know if I can trust it

and everybody thinks it says something different

and so why bother with it?

Why not just follow Jesus?

So that's what we're going to talk about tonight

and we're going to do so

by looking at 2 Timothy chapter 3.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

We're going to focus on verses 14, 15, and 16

to help us understand the role of Scripture

in our lives.

Fair warning,

there's going to be more teaching tonight

than preaching.

I'm going to probably be giving more information

than I normally do

and hopefully you'll understand the reason for that,

but there's going to be more information

and so some of you are note takers

and some of you aren't,

but if you are not a note taker,

this might be a time when you want to jot things down

if there are things that I bring up or hit on

that you want to follow up on.

Just so fair warning,

I'm going to,

but you'll understand why,

hopefully as we get into it.

But we're going to see two things

from this passage in 2 Timothy,

Paul's letter to Timothy,

his sort of protege in the ministry.

We're going to see the origin of Scripture

and we're going to see the purpose of Scripture

and how knowing that helps us understand

why Scripture is central in the life

of those who follow Christ.

So let's pray.

Our Father, far be it from us

to put our faith in the words of human beings.

Lord, our hope tonight is not

that we would be moved or inspired

or that we would think differently

because of anything that human beings

might have said or might say tonight.

Rather, our hope is that these spoken words

would faithfully lead us into your written word

and that your written word would reveal to us

the living word, Jesus Christ.

And we pray this, Lord, for our glory,

but also for our good,

but also for your glory.

That you would be glorified

as we encounter you afresh tonight.

We pray this in your Son's name.

Amen.

So first of all, we see the origin of Scripture.

Where does the Bible come from?

When I say the Bible,

I'm talking about something

that's really quite a unique work.

It's not really like anything else

you're going to see out there.

It has two sections, right?

So it's like a two-act play,

the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And you'll notice your Bible is pretty lopsided.

A lot of it is Old Testament,

and then there's just a little bit in the front,

which is the New Testament.

And so you can think of it as though

the Old Testament lays the foundation

for what happens in the New,

and the New Testament fulfills

everything that's predicted in the Old.

That's kind of their relationship.

It's made up of 66 books.

It's been composed over the course

of about a thousand years.

It was originally written

in many different languages,

mostly Greek and Hebrew,

but also some other ancient languages

are found in there.

It's been composed by as many

as 40 different authors.

It's been composed in places

as far apart as Babylon and Rome.

So if you think about all this,

you realize that the first thing

we've got to recognize about the Bible

is it's not really a book.

It's a library.

It's an entire library

spanning a thousand years,

multiple authors, cultures, societies,

historical contexts.

But of all the things

that make the Bible unique,

the most unique thing about the Bible,

which makes it unlike any other work,

is its origin.

The Bible is, as Paul says,

breathed out by God.

It is God breathed.

So ultimately,

the church didn't write the Bible.

You know, people think,

well, the church, you know,

the church formed,

we got together,

they said,

we've got to have some documents,

so the church wrote the Bible

and then started copying the Bible

and that's how it happened.

No.

What Paul's saying is

the church didn't write the Bible

that God,

using all different kinds of authors

and contexts and genres,

from poetry to history to prose

to even parts of it that are liturgy,

that God, through all of these means,

wrote the Bible for the church.

So God breathed

is a very carefully chosen phrase.

What this means, by the way,

is that the authors weren't automatons.

You know, they weren't word processors

with legs.

I used to hear this phrase,

especially before I was a Christian,

and I thought that somebody

would be walking along

and all of a sudden

they would be seized up by God

and they would just start writing.

You know?

And they would just,

and all of a sudden

they'd be like, oh!

And they would look

and they would be like,

what is this?

Where did this come from?

And that's not at all

what he's saying.

He's saying it's God breathed.

And I think the best image of this

comes from the Bible itself.

There's a place in 2 Peter

where Peter's talking about

where Scripture comes from

and he says,

in 1 Peter 1.21,

For no prophecy was ever produced

by the will of man,

but men spoke from God

as they were carried along

by the Holy Spirit.

As they were carried along.

Now, this same word shows up

in Acts chapter 27.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

You know, Paul and his crew,

they're in a boat

and they put up their sails

and a storm comes along

and it says,

the storm, the wind was so strong

that in the boat

they were driven along.

And they just had to submit

to the direction of the wind.

It was too strong.

They couldn't turn

either to the right or the left.

They were driven along.

It's the same word.

The idea being

that these biblical authors,

these 40-some biblical authors,

you know,

they put the sail up

of their life,

but the Holy Spirit

was the wind.

It filled the sail.

It determined the course.

So they sat down

and they wrote

to their various

historical contexts.

They wrote to the political

and social and economic issues

of their day.

They wrote with their own

distinctive voice,

their own turns of phrase,

their own favorite language.

They wrote representing

their own culture,

their own dialect,

their own sense of poetry,

their own ability.

They wrote within

all of these constraints

and yet,

they did so in a way

that reflects exactly

what God wants them to say.

So God is able

to use their distinctive personalities

and to not violate

who they are

to deliver his message

and they're able to write

in a way that doesn't violate

what God wants to say.

It's God-breathed.

So I know this raises

some questions

and it raises some objections.

The first being,

well, people say,

well, okay,

Peter and Paul,

they're talking about

the Old Testament.

What about the New Testament?

Does this apply

to the New Testament as well?

What we need to understand

is that when the apostles

began to die out,

when the apostles,

these are people

who had seen Jesus face-to-face,

they knew him,

they had been trained by him

and their purpose

as given by him

was to send his word out

to continue his teaching.

When they began to die out,

they and their secretaries,

their associates,

their assistants

began to write

their teaching down

and these became letters

that were then circulated

to all of the known churches.

And so from the very beginning,

their teachings

were treated

with the same authority

as the rest of Scripture.

So you actually have places

like 2 Peter 3

where at the very end,

Peter refers to Paul's letters

as Scripture.

He says,

now I know

that there are some things

that are hard to understand

in Paul's letters

as with the rest of Scripture.

So you see Peter

right there

acknowledging

that Paul's writing

is part of

what is recognized

as Holy Scripture.

And then you have

the earliest Christian writers

like Clement

who quote

New Testament writings

right alongside

the Old Testament writings

as Scripture.

And by the end

of the first century,

Paul's letters

were already

in circulation.

And we know this

because in the very early part

of the second century,

Justin Martyr

refers to

the writings of Paul.

So some of you hear this

and you say,

well, okay,

well,

all this is fine and well

if you lived

in the second century.

But these books

that we have today,

this Bible

is a translation

of a translation

of a translation

and it's got all kinds of errors

and who knows

what they had

but this is definitely not it.

You know,

this was very obviously

published by Crossway.

You know,

and you say,

well,

that's not what

you're talking about.

And what we have

to understand

is that's actually

not true.

This is actually

just one translation

from the original language.

And most likely

the Bible that you have

at worst

is just one translation

from the original language.

And moreover,

we actually have

all of this

in the original language.

So you can go

and you can actually

read all of these texts

in the original language

they were written.

So we have actually

5,800

complete or fragmented

Greek manuscripts

of the New Testament.

5,800.

We have,

you know,

in addition to that

10,000 Latin manuscripts,

almost 10,000,

9,300 manuscripts

in various other

ancient languages,

all that came about

before the invention

of the printing press.

And when you compare

all of the errors

and all of the kind

of little misspellings

and all of that

across all of this,

the vast majority

are utterly meaningless.

In fact,

less than 1%

of all of the errors,

less than 1%,

are both plausible

and meaningful.

In other words,

less than 1%

are plausible

in the sense

that you can have

either or reading.

They're both well supported

in the text

and you're not sure

which is right

and meaningful

in the sense

that they might affect

a phrase

that would have

some effect

on the meaning

of that section

of scripture.

Less than 1%

would fall

into that category.

The vast majority

are just tiny little

omissions or issues

that you immediately

look at and you realize,

well, this copyist

made this slight error,

a slight misspelling,

a slight error

in punctuation.

And even if you look

at that 1% of errors

that are plausible

and meaningful,

they in no way

affect a single doctrine

of scripture,

a single doctrine

of the Christian faith.

In fact,

I've got to be

a little careful

saying this,

but really,

there's so much

interconnectivity

between all of the

various books

of the Bible,

Old Testament,

New Testament,

that you could actually

throw out entire books

of the Bible

and still

no doctrine

of the Christian faith

would be meaningfully

affected.

Because there's so much

interconnectivity.

You can have a doctrine

of creation built

out of the New Testament,

you don't need Genesis.

You can have a pretty

clear understanding

of who Jesus is

without reading

one of the Gospels.

Because there's so much

interconnectivity there.

It all fits.

So another thing

I hear a lot is this,

well, okay,

okay, so the Bible,

maybe it's reliable

and all that,

but doesn't it make sense

that the church

would claim

that it's divinely inspired?

I mean,

isn't that really convenient

for the church?

Isn't that really,

if you're totally honest,

a kind of power play

so that the church

can use the Bible

to sort of manipulate

and control people?

And certainly,

the Bible has been used

and abused

and some of you

are victims of that.

But if you look back

at what actually,

at the sort of

the core of this question,

didn't the church

invent this idea?

There's a lot of problems

with that,

but the central problem

is this,

that there's nobody

in history,

nobody in history

before or since

that had a higher view

of Scripture

than Jesus Christ.

He has the highest view

of Scripture

of anybody there is.

You can see it

in many ways.

You can see it

because Jesus quoted

from almost every book

of the Old Testament

throughout His ministry.

In fact,

between Jesus

and the other

New Testament writers,

I think every single book

in the Old Testament

is quoted

except for Esther.

Not sure why

they left that one out,

but every single book

is quoted.

And when Jesus

is tempted by Satan

in the wilderness,

what does He do?

He relies 100%

on Scripture.

He quotes Scripture.

He explicitly taught

that the Old Testament

was written about Him

and points toward Him.

So in John 5,

He says,

you search the Scriptures

because you think

that in them

you have eternal life.

And it is they

that bear witness

about me.

You know,

Luke 4

is one of my favorite places.

This is one of Jesus'

first sermons.

He gets invited

to be a guest preacher

at a synagogue

in Galilee,

shows up.

You know,

he's expected to stand up,

read a scroll,

preach a little sermon

and then sit down

so it can be discussed.

So he stands up,

opens the scroll of Isaiah,

reads from Isaiah

Isaiah 61 · chapter mention

chapter 61,

first couple of verses,

rolls the scroll up

and guess what his sermon is?

Today this has been fulfilled

in your hearing.

And then he sits down.

It's like the ultimate

drop the mic moment.

You know,

it's like,

Isaiah 61,

yeah,

this is about me.

Boom.

And then he just sits down.

Can you imagine?

And it incites

ultimately a riot,

right?

But Jesus is saying

this is all about me.

And then Jesus himself

goes on to teach

that the primary nourishment

that we're designed

to require

as human beings

is not food,

but what?

God's word.

Man shall live

not by bread alone,

but by every word

that comes from

the mouth of God.

So Christians

don't believe in Jesus

because of the Bible.

We believe in the Bible

because of Jesus.

And then you say,

okay,

well,

those are God's words.

What about Jesus' words?

Well,

Jesus made it very clear

that his words

are God's word.

So he says this

in Matthew 24,

heaven and earth

will pass away,

but my word

will not pass away.

Now,

either Jesus

is a lunatic heretic

or he's making

very explicit

the fact

that when he speaks,

God is speaking.

He says in John 5, 46,

if you believed Moses,

you would believe me,

for he wrote of me.

But if you do not

believe his writings,

how will you believe

my words?

And then finally,

Jesus defines for us

what does it mean

to be my disciple?

What does it mean

to follow me?

What does it mean

to have a relationship

with me?

What does it mean

to be counted

as belonging to me?

Well,

he says this

in John 8,

if you abide

in my word,

you are truly

my disciples.

Not just hear

and understand,

but live out,

abide,

have it define

all of who you are.

So he asks,

well,

what difference

does this make?

Well,

when people today

say,

I love Jesus,

I believe in Jesus,

I follow Jesus,

but I don't bother

with the Bible,

I want to humbly

suggest that that

is actually a kind

of power play.

And what I want

to suggest is this,

is that when you say,

I'm all about Jesus,

but not the Bible,

I'm just about

following Jesus,

what you're really

saying is,

I have discovered

a more true,

more pure version

of Christianity.

It's sort of,

you know,

capital T,

capital C,

true Christianity,

trademark pending,

you know,

and it's more pure

than your version

of Christianity

because it doesn't

have this baggage

of the Bible.

So it becomes

a kind of power play.

And this sounds

like a great idea,

and this sounds

like the kind of thing,

wow,

that's really cool.

But the only problem

is that Jesus

would have completely

disagreed.

If you look at

what Jesus says

about himself

and about God's word

and about his words

and about what it means

to be his follower,

you realize that

he's saying,

and one of the best

places to see this

is Luke chapter 24,

Luke 24 · chapter mention

he says,

to these disciples

on the road to Emmaus,

if you want to

understand these scriptures,

you need to understand

that they're about me.

And if you have any hope

of understanding me,

you have to understand

the scripture.

And if you believe in me,

that means that you

believe in scripture.

If you love me,

that means you love

scripture.

He did everything he could

to tie even

his moments

of greatest suffering.

When he's hanging

on the cross,

what does he do?

He quotes scripture,

Psalm 22.

So the origin

of the Bible

and what makes it unique,

the origin is God himself.

It is God-breathed words

for God's people.

So this is why

we can say with confidence,

the word of God

does the work of God.

You know,

if people say,

I want to see God

at work in my life,

the first question should be,

well,

where is the word

in your life?

So the origin

of the Bible

is God.

God breathed

through all of these

different people

and cultures

for God's people.

So that leads us

to the second point.

What's the purpose

of the Bible?

And in this passage

in 2 Timothy,

Paul lays out

three sort of

interrelated purposes.

He says,

scripture leads us

to salvation,

it shapes what we believe,

and it shapes

how we live.

In verse 15,

you see he says,

the scriptures are,

quote,

able to make you wise

for salvation

through faith

in Christ Jesus.

So first of all,

it's about salvation.

As we said before,

the whole Bible

from Genesis to Revelation

is ultimately

about Jesus.

It's meant to show us

the reality of our sin.

It's meant to show us

the necessity

in every human life

for the grace of God

that comes through

the sacrifice of Jesus.

It's meant to show us

how to become a part

of God's renewal project,

how he's making

all things new

in this world.

So first of all,

the Bible is meant

to show us

how to have a relationship

and be reconciled to God

through Jesus Christ.

But then Paul goes on,

it's not just about

getting saved,

as we might say.

The Bible is meant to,

scripture is meant to,

shape what we believe.

Now,

that's an important point

because again,

in terms of objections,

something I hear a lot,

and you may hear

some of this too,

is more and more

and more people,

individuals,

as well as entire churches.

I knew a church

up in New York

that tried this

for a little while.

They realized

it didn't work.

But it's more and more

common for entire churches

to say,

you know,

we don't really believe

in the whole idea

of doctrine.

We want to do away

with doctrine.

Doctrine,

all that does

is divide people,

it confuses people,

and it causes

all kinds of problems.

We're going to get rid

of doctrine

because we just want

to be about

worshiping God.

That's what we're about,

worshiping God.

And again,

that's really great

for your marketing campaign.

I mean,

that will preach well.

And if I said that,

you could probably

get standing ovation

for that,

right?

It's one problem.

Okay,

so you want

to worship God.

What do you mean

by God?

That's a doctrinal question.

Oh,

so you want

to worship God.

What do you mean

by worship?

How does that happen?

It's a doctrinal question.

In other words,

doctrine is inevitable.

You cannot get away

from doctrine.

The minute you try

to answer that question

is doctrine.

So everybody

has doctrinal assumptions.

Now,

you may be forward

with them

and honest with them,

or you may hide them

and conceal them.

But everybody makes,

you know,

atheists have

doctrinal assumptions.

So the question is,

are your doctrinal assumptions

grounded in anything

beyond you,

or are they just

your opinions?

So doctrine

is inevitable.

So what do you

or whatever

we believe about God?

What do you believe

about this world?

What do you believe

about what it means

to be a human being,

our purpose

and identity here?

You know,

what do you believe

about what life

is all about?

What do you believe

about other religions?

What do you believe

about marriage

and gender

and sexuality?

What do you believe

about family?

What do you believe

about parenting?

What do you believe

about our jobs?

What do you believe

about human institutions

and the role of government

in everyday life?

there's hardly a question you can ask that doesn't somehow flow out of doctrinal assumptions

and so paul is saying here that all of scripture has been given for the express purpose of shaping

what we believe about all of these things he says it's profitable for teaching for reproof

for correction of all of our beliefs and he actually says in ephesians chapter 4 that that

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

a big part of maturity is growing in our understanding of doctrines so that we're rooted

in scripture in instead of being tossed to and fro by every new idea that comes along he says

that's how you tell a mature person so scripture is for our salvation it shapes our beliefs

thirdly it's meant to shape how we live how we live now by that i do not mean that it's just a

wooden set of rules and you follow the rules and you're right with god that's not that has nothing

to do with the christian faith he says scripture is in verse 16 he says it's for training in

righteousness that the man or woman of god may be complete equipped for every good work

so this is by the way why we started our series last week by talking about submission to god

if you're an athlete or a musician or an artist you know what it's like to submit yourself to their

authority because their job is to train you is to take your innate gifts and talents and to help you

hone them so that you can then express i mean how how is it how can hillary sit down and play so

beautifully and bring such beauty into the world well it's because she has trained and trained and

trained and trained she has a doctorate in performance piano which meant she hours and hours and hours and

hours and training under some very demanding instruction

so he uses this phrase deliberately it's for our training in righteousness and it's interesting in

ephesians 2 10 paul says that christians are god's workmanship created in christ jesus for good works

and you know the word there is actually poema

in other words i mean a kind of a loose way of translating that would be to say your life is

meant to be god's poetry in the world it's meant to be god's poetry in the world it's meant to be the

the beautiful art that god brings into the world to glorify himself we know we're not saved by our

good works we're saved by the finished work of jesus christ but the question then is why why are we

why are we saved it's so that our lives can become god's poetry in the world so scripture is our coach

it's our guide it's our instructor it's meant to show us how that happens

so the purpose of the bible is what to lead us to salvation to shape our beliefs and to shape how we

live now i'll deal with another objection another objection some people say okay that sounds good but

you know i've found in my walk with god that i don't actually need the bible because i hear directly

from god you know the holy spirit prompts me and leads me and if i'm sensitive to that and if i listen

to that then that's all i need and that raises a number of questions you know people ask well and people

debate this hotly debate this you know in some of the theological circles i come from people this is a

huge debate can god does god still speak today well to the question of can god still speak today

absolutely i mean god is god he can do whatever he wants but the more important and more salient

point here is this that god has spoken god has spoken so paul says right here that the scripture

is sufficient to make us complete for every good work i mean what does that mean he's saying you have

right here everything you need to become complete for every good work in other words you don't need a

special personalized message you've got this this is enough it's sufficient for everything that god's

going to call you to do and everything god's going to call you to be is right here so we should be very

wary and i apologize if i've ever said this you should be very wary of people who say well god said this to

me you know in my prayer time the other day you know god said god told me this or you know i was

just really thinking about you and your situation and god god told me to tell you this i think you

should be really careful because the thing is unless you are deeply deeply deeply immersed and intimately

familiar with every corner of god's word how do you know that god is saying that and how do you know

it's not just you i don't think you can

to paraphrase ann kennedy who's a somebody that i love to read her her stuff she says why would god

take the trouble of using so many different people over such a huge span of time representing so many

different cultures representing so many different genres to weave together this beautiful tapestry of a

witness to describe who he is what he's done in the world what that means and how we can be a part of it why

would he go to all that trouble only two thousand years later to say ah never mind i'm just going to

whisper some vaguely spiritual stuff in tommy's ear that kind of sounds like the bible but not as good

why would god do that and frankly i i don't think that's how he works

so what does this actually look like in our lives i mean that so the question becomes okay well

then how do we actually engage scripture and the answer is there's there's a number of different

ways and think of these not as a choose one but rather as all of the different angles or approaches

or means by which we seek to hear from god so first of all there's there's personal study of scripture

if you have never sat down and read the bible before i will warn you it is hard

there there are places in there just like peter the apostle peter says that are hard to understand

because it's written by so many different people in so many different genres representing so many

different cultures and societies there's an enormous amount of work and learning to be done to understand

those cultures and societies because the goal is to understand what was this originally written for

what did it originally speak to who was the original audience and then how from knowing that can we apply

it to us today so you have to understand this piece before you can understand this piece and that takes

study it takes work so it's great to rely on commentaries it's great to rely on study bibles

it's great to rely on people who are more knowledgeable than you but what we need to remember is in our

personal study of scripture the goal is to understand ultimately more about jesus and so if you've never

read the bible it's not necessarily the best idea to start at the beginning you know i talked to this

one sweet amazing woman who was marrying get you know getting married she was engaged and she said well you know i really

you know you know studying the bible is is really important and in his life and this is something

we've talked about and so i for him like i want to read the bible um i want to read the whole bible

before we get married and i said okay well how long is your engagement and you know and engagement for

some of you know is it's stressful enough and i'm like and you're gonna just kind of kind of like

squeeze in there reading the whole bible you know and i said well how's it going she's like not very good

i can't read it back to front i would suggest if you've never read the bible before start in the

middle in other words don't start at the beginning start in the center jesus is the center pick one of

the gospels read one of the gospels begin to learn about who jesus is and then wherever you are in

scripture wherever you're studying if you get lost and try to start to lose your way and you're not sure

what is happening just remember this is somehow meant to point me to jesus and normally that will get you back

on track last thing i'll say about personal study is this yes we study for understanding but more than

that we read the bible so that it can read us and we study it so it can study us the goal is to have

your heart laid bare by scripture you read it and you realize oh my gosh this is talking about me

and then you begin to understand more your need for christ so that's one way some other ways right

quick we we engage scripture through prayer you want to guarantee that god is going to hear and

answer your prayer pray scripture guaranteed we we do it in community there's a there's a time and

place for discussing and interacting that's why we do this in small groups we sing god's word together

we sing god's word most of what we sing up here is in some way directly taken from scripture

we do it in the preaching hopefully the goal of preaching is to reveal scripture faithfully

to exposit it and then to reveal christ through that

and then lastly through our liturgy you know the book of common prayer on which our service is based

three quarters of that is just directly quoting scripture that was the goal of the book of common prayer

you know so we we decide okay do people want to hear whatever i make up every week

or do they want to hear god's word we just went with the latter

and how we put the service together but the goal is through all of these means to just be utterly

saturated with god's word to be completely saturated by god's word in every way

and and the goal is not to have spiritual highs all the time sometimes you do and sometimes you don't

the goal listen to this the goal of all of this as we're doing it all together

is a kind of mutually reinforcing cumulative effect on our hearts and minds over time that's the goal

the more you personally study the bible the more you're going to get out of gathered worship the more

you listen to good preaching and the more you sing and the more you learn to pray scripture the more

you're going to get out of your personal study it all works together but the goal is the accumulative

effect over time a great way of thinking about this comes from the chicago shakespeare improv group and

some of you have heard me talk about this before i love it um the chicago shakespeare improv

group they give two 90 minute performances every time they they they perform two 90 minute performances

and it starts this way they say give me some topics and the audience yells out they yell out different

different like whose line is it anyway they they they shout out different ideas and then from that

on the spot totally improv they construct a full-length 90 minute shakespearean verse play

and people looking at and then how do you do the verses in the rhyming and how did it sounds just

like shakespeare and how do you just how does that come out of you well guess what they do

they spend all of their off time studying shakespeare they read and they read and they read and they read

and they study and they study and they study and they study and they study and the goal is that they

become so immersed in the real thing in shakespeare that they're able to just exude it it just comes out

So our goal in reading Scripture

is that we would become so familiar with it

that whenever you find yourself in a situation

and Scripture doesn't speak directly to that situation,

and Lord knows there's a ton of those,

you can just exude it.

You have a kind of gospel-shaped instinct

because you're so familiar with God's Word.

So all this brings us back to our original question

as we wrap up.

But for those of us who do follow Christ,

for those of us who consider ourselves to be His disciples,

why bother with the Bible?

And I would say there's two reasons.

Because of its origin,

because the entire purpose of this

is that it is God-breathed for us.

God does God's work through God's Word.

And the second is this, because of its stated purpose.

The Bible itself all throughout the Old Testament

and the New Testament says again and again and again

that God's Word in Scripture

is the way to have a relationship with Him.

So do you want to know God intimately?

Do you want to feel a sense of His presence

and His love in your life?

Then open His Word, sit at His feet,

and listen to what He has to say.

Let's pray.

Father, again, the great danger

is putting our hope in human words.

And we pray that whatever is of You

would be empowered by Your Spirit

and driven deep into our hearts.

Lord, that if we have resistance to this,

that You would help penetrate

to the core of that resistance.

That for those of us who are open

and who desire to hear from You through Your Word,

I pray that You would bless and empower that desire

and give us the means to hear from You

and to be transformed from the inside out

by Your Word in our lives.

We pray this not only for us as individuals,

but for our entire community,

that one of the things we would be known for

is a church that values

and seeks to live under Your Word in all things.

We pray this in Your Son's holy name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.