Servants Devoted to God - Part 4: The Foundation of the Kingdom | Pastor Pablo Morales

Welcome to ECB's Weekly Sermon Podcast. ECB is an international church in Bangkok, Thailand,

with dozens of nationalities worshipping together. We invite you to connect with us from wherever

you are through our website, ecb.asia, or our mobile app. And now we pray that you are blessed

by this week's sermon. In this series, Servants Devoted to God, we are learning that God saved

us for so much more than just dying and going to heaven. In fact, when he saved us, he made us part

of his people, the kingdom of God. And in this kingdom, we see ourselves as servants devoted

to God. We love him, and we serve him with devotion. And that summarizes our lives. And that

heart has been from the very, very beginning of the movement of Jesus that he established on earth

that became known as Christianity and the church. It's been a movement of people that repented of

their sins and realized that Jesus loved them and asked Jesus to save them. He gave them the Holy

Spirit to indwell them and lead them into a life of service to God. That's why anyone that is a

follower of Jesus is invited to see herself or himself as a servant devoted to God. And we learn

that in this kingdom, the attitude that we need to have is like water, flexible, adaptable. When God

leads us, we go. When he says stand, you stand. When he says stop, you stop. We are following him.

But also we have a motive, which is not fear or shame or selfish ambition, but it's love for God.

That is why we serve him. He loved us first. Now we love him because of what he has done. And we

also learn that in the kingdom, there are pillars. And it's our godly servants who are driven by a

love for God to serve God. And they have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit

because they lead from that place of flow from within. Today we are going to discover the

foundation of the kingdom. And if you already are familiar with foundations, you know that

foundations are very, very important. So important that picture says it all. The foundation upon which

you build your life is going to be strong and solid or faulty. Like Jesus put it in the parable

of the person who built the house on the rock or on the sand. We don't have sand. We have a rock.

We have Jesus, our strong rock upon which a foundation is built. The apostle Peter, the

apostle Paul, they write about these things. The apostle Paul says that in Ephesians, that the

foundation of this kingdom, the rock is Jesus and the foundation is the teaching of the apostles

and the prophets. God's word is the foundation of the kingdom. And this will become clearer and I

will take much more specific shape at the beginning of the church. So what we will do in this study is

two things. We will first look at what the early church had to face in order to start defining

what was their foundation for truth. And secondly, we will then look at what the apostle Paul wrote

to Timothy, how important this foundation was. So let's go at the beginning. After Jesus ascended

to heaven and the church began, the apostle Peter preached the gospel and 3,000 people came to know

Christ. We studied that before. But then as the church started growing, Barnabas and Paul went

from the area of Jerusalem all the way now to Antioch in the north. And they started preaching

the gospel there. What was different is that in Jerusalem, it was a city primarily populated by

lots of Jews that were responding to the gospel. The first Christians in Jerusalem were all Jews.

Then later, a Roman man, Cornelius, he came to know Christ. He was the first Gentile,

meaning non-Jew, to come to know Christ. But that was in that area on the south. But then in the

north, it was a very cosmopolitan city, very multicultural, commercial center. And in that

area, the apostle Paul and Barnabas started preaching the gospel and many people came to

know Christ. And that church started growing and became the center of world missions, Antioch. But

at the beginning, as these Gentiles started coming to know Christ, the first Christians that were

Jews started wondering, so how does it work? They are not Jews, but they're believing in Christ. So

is that all it takes to be saved? Or they also have to become Jews like us to truly be saved.

So there were these guys from Jerusalem that went all the way to Antioch and started teaching the

people certain things that created a dispute. Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and

were teaching the believers this, unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by

Moses, you can not be saved. What? Really? Wow. The church of Antioch was like confused now because

they knew, yeah, the scriptures in the Old Testament talk about the love of Moses and it says you need

to be circumcised, but that was for the Jews, but I'm not a Jew, so really, what do we need to do?

The apostle Paul and Barnabas said, no, no, no, that should not be the case. But these guys were,

no, it is, it's just there, the word. You have to be circumcised. So in the middle of that dispute,

they had to start discerning, okay, what is true? They cannot both be true. Which one is right? So

they decided to go to Jerusalem, meet with the apostles and the elders. And when they got there

to start talking about this issue and try to figure out, okay, let's reason through this, as the

meeting begins, we are told that some of the believers right now in Jerusalem, they are meeting

with apostles and the elders who belong to the party of the Pharisees, stood up in the middle

of the meeting and said, Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the love of Moses, period.

Huh, wow. And these are Pharisees, they are well connected to the other people in Jerusalem,

so it's like, what do we do now? So the apostle Paul and Barnabas started telling the leaders

in Jerusalem about what had happened. And they started sharing with them all the experience of

how people have come to know Christ. And now as leaders, they were trying to discern together

which one is true. Now I know that throughout church history, many more disputes have come up

throughout different denominations and churches. And depending on what denomination you come from,

we have different convictions about secondary issues. Like when is Jesus going to come back?

Is it before the millennium, during the millennium, after the millennium? Is there a millennium? Maybe

there's no millennium. You know, all those questions. It's like which one is true? And people

try to discern these things. But there are other things that are much more fundamental. How many

genders are there? What about sexual identity and all of these things? Should we be an affirming

church? What does that mean? You know, these are things that people are dealing with in churches

around the world today. And they're trying to discern what is true. The first Christians got

together and this is what they did. First, it tells us that the apostles and elders met to consider

the question. Why the apostles and elders and no one else? Because we learned last week that the

leadership that emerged, the pillars in the kingdom, were the elders and the servants, the deacons.

And these two forms of leadership had complete different functions, different roles. The servants,

the deacons, they were there to help execute and mobilize. But the elders were responsible for

ensuring the organizational health of church, as well as doctrinal integrity, biblical teaching,

they were responsible for making sure people were being shepherded well. These were the elders.

And that's why now the elders come together in Jerusalem with the apostles. And now they're

going to engage and they start listening to Paul and Barnabas and then Peter is the first one to

stand up. After much discussion, have you ever been in an elder meeting? That's true. After much

discussion. That's the way it is. That's why elders have to have self-control. They have to

love the word. They have to be trustworthy servants because we can never put our interest

in front of God's church. We can never put our opinions, our preferences in front of God's Word.

So it takes a certain quality of person to lead in eldership. And these were them.

So Peter got up and addressed them, brothers, you know that some time ago,

God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the

gospel and belief. True, because the apostle Peter was not the only the first one to preach

the gospel in Jerusalem when 3000 people came to know Christ, all of them Jews and some

Hellenistic Jews. But he was also the first person to preach the gospel to the non-Jews,

to the Gentiles when God led him to Cornelius and preached the gospel there. And when he preached

the gospel to Cornelius, he remembers how the Holy Spirit came upon them and they started

experiencing the same thing that he had experienced in Jerusalem when they were baptized with the

Holy Spirit and the experience was exactly identical. But without a doubt, he knew that

these Gentiles had come to know Christ. So he says, guys, I have some experience here.

I'm the only one here in this group of elders and apostles that has led a Gentile to Christ.

So God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to

them, just as he did to us earlier in Jerusalem at Pentecost. He did not discriminate between us

and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. What gave them the Holy Spirit was that they

believed. That's it. They didn't go and get circumcised and then they received the Holy

Spirit. No. We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as

they are. Can I hear an amen to that? This is why we believe salvation by grace through

faith alone. Because it is believing in Christ that caused you to be in dwell with the Holy

Spirit. And if you are in dwell with the Holy Spirit, he is there to stay with you until

the day of redemption. So he is speaking from the experience. And the

Apostle Paul and Barnabas start saying, yeah, that's true. Let us tell you more about some

of our experiences. There was another guy that he was an elder. He was not one of the

Apostles. His name is James. He was very well acquainted with the Scriptures. He was a theologian.

And he was the brother of Jesus. And James, who later writes the book of James that you

have in the New Testament, he has been just listening the entire time. Have you ever met

someone like that in those leadership meetings? It's just listening quietly. Not quick to

say anything, but then when the person speaks, wisdom. That's James.

When Paul and Barnabas finished talking about all these things, James spoke up. Brothers,

listen to me. Simon here has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people

for his name from the Gentiles. Also eloquent, huh? And as I listened to him, I've been thinking

about this. The word of God, the word of the prophets are in agreement with this. As it

is written, and he's going to quote the book of Amos, after this, I will return and rebuild

David's fallen tent, its ruins, I will rebuild and I will restore it. That the rest of mankind

may seek the Lord. Even all the Gentiles who bear my name says the Lord who does these

things, things known from long ago. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not

make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. We should not ask them to

go and get circumcised. We already heard. They received the Holy Spirit by believing.

They already belong to God's people. Circumcision is not necessary. And we just heard it in

the scriptures. It's aligned with God's word. Gentiles will come to follow God. As Gentiles,

not as Jews. But then James is thinking about another dimension. And you can see how analytical

he is. Because he's thinking now with cultural intelligence. See, cultural intelligence is

that awareness that there are cultural differences and we need to adapt to different circumstances

so that our relationships can remain strong. And he knows that in all of these cities like

Antioch and throughout the empire, many of the Jews that were Christians were persecuted

in Jerusalem and they had spread out throughout the empire. So there are Christian Jews in

all of these different places. Also there are synagogues for centuries that have been

teaching the law of Moses in all of those places. So there are Jews, also non-believing

Jews, waiting to learn about the gospel. So now that we start having all these Gentiles,

non-Jews becoming part of the church, we have now a mixed community. And there's a problem

that he anticipates. He says instead we should write to them telling them to abstain from

food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from

blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and

is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. Right, because what happened is that if I

am a Jew, I am told by the law of Moses that it touch you, I cannot have fellowship with

you, I have to stay away from you because if I get close to you or I get to touch you,

now I become unclean. They have all these regulations. So if now I go to a church that

is surrounded, that has a bunch of Gentiles and these people are doing things that make

them ceremonially unclean, that's going to be chaos. How can we be the church if we cannot

be in the same proximity? Imagine, it's like, hey, you're scheduled to do worship this

Sunday. It's like, oh, but so and so is in the worship team. I know they eat this kind

of meat. I cannot be close to them so I can't leave worship that day. You know, it was just

like a complicated thing. So it's like, oh, James, you're right. We hadn't thought about

that. Yeah, this is not about salvation anymore. But there is an issue that is not so theological

in nature, but it's ecclesiastical in nature. It has to do with our fellowship, our community.

How can we maintain these relationships without damaging them? That's a good idea. And now,

after much thinking together with the scriptures as the foundation and the experience of spiritually

mature people, they come to a conclusion of clarity. And they decide to write this letter,

send it to the Gentiles, send it to the church in Antioch, and they send Paul and Barnabas

back with the letter telling them everything that they had, discussed, their conclusion,

and what the recommendation was. And as the letter is written, at the end of the letter,

it said this, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything

beyond the following requirements. Did you notice something interesting he says? It seemed

good to the elders and apostles that we should, is that what it said? No. It seemed good to

the Holy Spirit and to us. And that is the reason why the scriptures and the authority

of the scriptures are the foundation of the kingdom. The apostle Peter said that the prophets

did not speak out of their own will. They were led by the Holy Spirit to write what

they wrote. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is the one that inspired the scriptures. So

I cannot have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and be a good, reliable, godly

pillar in the kingdom if I don't have a strong relationship with his word. And also, as the

elders and apostles were leading, they are praying, first of all, God lead us into all

of these things. And the Holy Spirit leads. It's not that they are creating truth. They

are discerning it. It's like mathematicians discover, as they come out with these formulas

and these theories and things that they write, it's not that they are creating it. They are

trying to define what is already there through mathematical formulas. They are not creating

the laws. They are just giving out words or numbers. And the same thing here. The Holy

Spirit is leading them. They have the word from the Holy Spirit. And as they are engaging

together as leaders in the unity and power of the Holy Spirit, now they have this clarity

and they can write this with confidence because it's aligned with the foundation of the authority

of the word. And that's why they say at the end, you are to abstain from food sacrifice

to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will

do well to avoid these things. And that's it. Farewell. Now when that letter got to

Antioch and they read it, people were so excited. It says that people read it and were glad

for its encouraging message. And that is an understatement. Because imagine if I was the

pastor of that church and I was with the men's ministry and I said, hey guys, we got the

letter from Antioch. Guess what? No circumcision. It's like everybody was like, oh, praise God

for Holy Spirit. Thank you for leading them into all truth. If they would have played

politics, say, oh, but these Pharisees are the ones that are saying we should do this.

We can get in trouble with the authorities. Can you imagine if the church in this moment

decided to make a decision not based on God's word and the wisdom of trustworthy pillars,

but instead they went with the popular vote, instead they played politics, they could have

gone completely the opposite direction and you and I guys would have to be circumcised

today to be Christians. The foundation of the kingdom matters. And this is how they

faced it. The authority of the scriptures is the foundation of the kingdom. That's how

it was at the beginning and that's how it will continue to be until the very end.

The apostle Paul went through this first experience. This was the first time engaging in disputes

about these things with the leadership of the church, engaging now with the scriptures

to figure out how we discern truth. And after all these years of ministry, he started mentoring

another servant devoted to God. His name was Timothy and he was young. He writes two letters

to Timothy telling him lots of things about how to serve God well. And in these letters

he's going to talk about three convictions of servants devoted to God when it comes to

the foundation of the kingdom. And I want to stake then the next part of the study to

focus on understanding these things. Because if you and I are servants devoted to God and

we are going to love God and serve him with devotion, we have to make sure that the foundation

that we have is not having cracks, but it's solid. And the first conviction of a solid

foundation as a servant devoted to God is that we need to know the word. Know it. Master

it. Get so familiar with it. During my first year of marriage, we bought a piece of furniture

that was a corner piece of wooden furniture that needed to be stained. I had no idea how

to do that, but my wife, she had a college degree in art. So she knew how to do this

very well. So we took this thing and she taught me how you stained. You choose the color,

you use these sponges and then you go, then you let it dry, then you sand, you let it

dry, then you sand, then you let it dry, then you sand. Every time that you do another coat,

you sand it until finally, little by little, you get exactly the color you want and the

consistency you want. It was very dedicated work. I had no idea about it, but she taught

me. And then much later when we moved into our home, we had bought a bigger TV when the

flat screen TVs came into the market and it was one of those flat screen TVs with a very

thick background. I still remember it was a Sony TV, you know, like a very thick piece

in the back, not those flat that we have today. So the piece of furniture we had in the TV

room was not the right size, so I built one. I never built anything, but hey, let's try

it and it fit. And I stained, just like my wife had taught me and it took time. And then

we were remodeling a part of the house and we hired this contractor to bring his crew

to start building a wooden frame around the fireplace. And I remember that I walked in

as the worker was doing that. I got my attention that he was like using the stain like he's

painting a wall. You know, I was like, that doesn't seem right. So it occurred to me to

ask him, hey, how long have you been doing this kind of work and staining furniture and

stuff? And he said, oh, this is my first time. Oh, that explains it all. It's like, okay,

you have no idea what you're doing. And that's not uncommon. You hire the contractor, but

you're not hiring the employees, you know? And so I learned from that experience that

you have to stay on top of the game when you have construction going on. So anyway, I had

to teach him, no, that's not how you do it. This is how you do it. I was not an expert,

but I had learned enough as to discern when something was not being done right. And Paul

is going to tell Timothy, you need to be like that. Will you read out loud? Second Timothy

2, 15 with me. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does

not need to be ashamed, who correctly handles the word of truth. You need to be a servant

of God. Shame is no longer part of your life. You are living right before God. You put your

life together, but you know the word. You know how to handle it. You have mastered it.

You need to do your best to get to that level of maturity as a follower of Jesus. And I

tell you, Timothy, avoid godly chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and

more ungodly. Don't even engage with those conversations that lead nowhere. Some people

just want to argue and they are deceived. In fact, let me tell you what I'm talking about.

These guys that I came across, it's just like that. Their teaching was spread like

gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have departed from the truth. They say

that the resurrection has already taken place and they destroy the faith of some. They will

be people in your ministry, in your community, in your life group. There will be people in

your church. There will be people in your family that say, I believe in Jesus. I follow

God. But they are teaching something that is not aligned with the scriptures. And somebody

has to know how to stay in the furniture. Somebody needs to know how to use this tool

called the scriptures well. Because if we don't, any teaching goes. And the problem

was that some people were already deceived by this thing so it's going to spread like

gangrene, like cancer. So Timothy, if you're going to be a servant devoted to God, know

the word. Do you know the word? Can you detect when the guy is staining something and say

that doesn't look right? Or you are there looking, oh that's awesome, is it going to

look pretty? Because you have no idea, spiritually speaking. You cannot discern deception from

truth. Just because the guy has a YouTube video doesn't make him an expert. Just because

the guy published the book doesn't make his true, his right. We need to grow in our understanding

and the proper handling of God's word. And one of the things that I have discovered is

that a lot of the bad teaching, doctrine that is not sound at all, comes not because we

do not believe in the Bible. It's because the way we interpret the Bible is faulty.

There's a word that perhaps will be new to many. It's called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics

is simply a fancy word to describe the study and method of interpreting texts. How do you

interpret a text? The answer to that is hermeneutics. There are systems in place to properly interpret

a text to reach the right conclusion. But people have different hermeneutics systems

just like people have different glasses that they look through. And the way we engage with

interpretation matters. Let me give you an example. Can you read this word out loud?

What does that mean? Huh? Greeting? Yeah, hello, hi. Greeting, right? Yeah, you're right.

It says hello and it means a greeting. So simple. Yeah? It says hello, it means greeting.

Perfect. But what if somebody comes to you and says hello? Huh? What did the person say?

Hello? So it says hello, but it means, ah, that person's not greeting me. That means

a reproach. That person is actually being rude. What it says, what it means, what it

implies. It implies that you better talk to that person because that's not how we interact

with each other. Especially if you're in my team. Don't treat me that way. Huh? Right?

What it says, what it means, what it implies. Now imagine that you're walking on the street,

you're a lady, you're with a friend, couple of ladies with you, and on that corner there's

a guy standing and he looks you up and down and then he says hello you. He says hello.

What does it mean? Oh, he's greeting me. Hi. Your friend will say, what are you doing?

Well he's greeting me. He's not greeting me, I'll tell you. Yeah, it doesn't mean a friendly

greeting. It means I'm flirting with you. What does it imply? Well, you better walk

fast. You don't want to be around this guy. Hmm? It's not secure. What it says, what it

means, what it implies. You see? That is hermeneutics. And we engage with hermeneutics all the time.

We just did not know that word existed. But let me give you a little background. Three

common or dominant models of hermeneutics can be summarized with these three different

types. Postmodern, allegorical, and grammatical, historical. Postmodern is thinking, huh, what

does it mean to you? Allegorical says, what does it represent? It's just a symbol, it's

a metaphor. And the grammatical, historical says, well, what does the text say? What does

it mean in its original context? What's the internal evidence that that's the right interpretation?

Three different ways. Each one of these is a form of hermeneutics. So let me take you

to this text. Can you read it out loud? Okay. That's what it says. What does it mean and

what does it imply? Hmm. That's hermeneutics. So if I start with the postmodern system,

it's like, what does it mean to you? Well, for me, it means that, hey, this person needs

honey and bananas and milk and bread. And most likely between bananas and milk, I think

that the person forgot to add a couple of things. So I'll just add a few more things

there. Yeah, that's what it means to me. So you show up home, at home with honey, bananas,

milk, bread, and a bunch of other things. I say, here. And your wife says, what? Well,

I just was interpreting it with this hermeneutics system that I learned from Pastor Pablo. This

is the postmodern way of thinking about text. That's what it meant to me. So that's what

I got. Well, the allegorical will be different. The allegorical says, well, honey, bananas,

milk, some bread. That's definitely breakfast food. That's what it represents. So this person

is asking you to just buy breakfast food. So fine, good. So I'll go and get some coffee,

some donuts, some jelly and butter, and maybe milk. So I show up with that stuff. And my

wife says, what did you get all this? Well, I thought you were just asking me to bring

breakfast food. So this is why I brought donuts and all this stuff. Okay. That's a way of

interpreting it, you see. Well, the third system, the grammatical historical is different.

It says, okay, wait a second. Honey, I need bananas, milk, and some bread. Or honey, I

need bananas, milk, and some bread. Oh, this could be interpreted in two ways. Maybe the

person is asking you four things or three. Hmm. Which one is it? I don't know. Okay.

Let me get the text. Can I get your phone? Who sent you this text? Was it your son, your

friend, your wife? Because that will help a little bit, right? If your son sent you

the text, he didn't most likely call you honey, huh? So maybe that's part of the list. That

will mean honey, I need bananas, milk, and some bread. Did you send any text before this?

Yeah? Okay. So what? Okay. You are talking to your wife and you ask, do you need me to

get anything from the store? Okay. Does she typically call you honey? Yeah. That's our

term of endearment. Okay. That's what it means. She's asking you to buy just bananas, milk,

and some bread. So I show up with bananas, bread, and some milk. And my wife says, honey,

thank you so much. You see how we're engaging with the text? Three different ways of interpreting.

What does it say? Everybody reads the same thing. But what does it mean? It changes.

And what does it imply? It changes. The problem that I believe we have is that we have hermeneutical

systems that are faulty. And we're reading the scriptures and we come up with conclusions

that the text never meant to give us. And we show up to God with all these ideas and

say, well, this is what I believe now. And God says, well, I never said that. I personally

believe in the grammatical historical system of hermeneutics. And that is how I engage

with the scriptures. And that is where I come from. When I am teaching the word and studying

it, I can tell you the power of God's word when you pay attention to what it says. It's

amazing. The second thing that Paul tells Timothy, not just know the word and master

it and use it correctly, but you need to trust the word. Because Timothy grew up in a home

where his father was a Greek, his mother was a Jew, and his grandmother from the mother's

side taught him the word from the beginnings since he was a little kid. So he was a kid

that you could say grew up going to church, even though not truly. But he was familiar

with the scriptures. So now the apostle Paul says to him, but as for you, Timothy, 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 Christ Jesus. Timothy, you know the word since you

were so young. Don't walk away from it. It is the foundation. You know who you learned

it from. Timothy, you need to understand that all scripture, not just part of it or some

sections of it, but all the scripture was God-breathed. It originated in God himself.

That's why we call it God's word. It came from the Holy Spirit and that's why we treat

it with authority for our lives. It is useful to teach. It's going to rebuke you. It's going

to make you realize when you are doing something wrong, it's going to say, not that way, that's

wrong, but it's going to also correct you. It's going to teach you how to do it right.

And as you go through this process, it's going to train you in righteousness so that the

servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work because that is the kind

of maturity that you're going to acquire. The more you know it, the more you align your

life with it, the more wise you become, the more trustworthy you become, and you are thoroughly

equipped for every good work. When I was seven years old was the time I remember getting

my first Bible. I remember it was a black Bible with the gold sides. It was very beautiful

and it was nice. I also remember it so much because one time we took a taxi from church

to home and I left it in the taxi so I lost it. But somebody had written something in

that Bible, a little quote at the beginning that said, this book will keep you away from

sin or sin will keep you away from this book. And the more I've grown older, the more profound

I find that. So true. Don't walk away from the foundation. But I understand that there

are complexities. I went through it myself when I was in graduate school. I had my faith

crisis from all places when I was studying theology. Because that's when I became acquainted

with the way, the manuscripts, the Old Testament, New Testament manuscripts and all these things

about textual criticism. I had never even thought about how did the Bible come together

and how do we have all these books, what's the history of it. I never studied any of

that. I was just a Christian. But when I started taking those classes and learning the technicalities

of it, it's like, oh, my faith started shaking and I started realizing, can I really trust

this thing? But that was a good crisis of faith because it allowed me to consolidate

my convictions and solidify my foundation. I trust the word of God more than I did before.

So I understand that this is something that may take engaging with certain things. That's

why I would like to give you a few resources. Because you need to trust the word, otherwise

your foundation will crack. If you've been wondering about how do we know that the text

we have is reliable, just like the same Bible that Jesus read, how do we know the quotations

are proper, you know, all these things about text. There's this documentary called Fragments

of Truth. You will get to hear from the experts on the field and you will learn about how

is it, what are the New Testament manuscripts, how does this whole thing work. Amazing documentary.

I'm so glad that they put it together. YouTube, type that and it will come up. Watch it. It's

technical but good. Secondly, if you want to get acquainted with one of the New Testament

manuscripts we have. When I was at the theological seminary, one of our professors in Greek,

New Testament department, was Dr. Wallace. He eventually left that academic world to

focus specifically on creating the digital collection of New Testament manuscripts, traveling

around the world, digitizing all of these things. And there's this website. It's just

amazing that we have access to this. High resolution images of all the New Testament

manuscripts that we have right now, digitized. And there's many more. You can see first,

second, third, fourth century manuscripts of different sizes and qualities and right

there, accessible from your phone. Thirdly, if you're wondering, is the Bible

historically accurate, how do I know, what is the archaeology of it, the Associates for

Biblical Research put together this program that is called Digging for Truth, that is

about biblical archaeology. You go YouTube, you type Digging for Truth and you will see

all these videos. They have a whole collection of videos about biblical archaeology and

you will be amazed how much archaeology is there to verify the historicity of the scriptures.

It's really amazing. I give you those so that your trust in the word will increase in case

it was shaky. But the third thing that Paul tells Timothy

is that Timothy, you need to live the word. And he's going to end the last part of his

book, the letter to Timothy, with a charge. And you can see by the words he uses, it's

very solemn. He says, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living

and the dead, and in view of his appearance and his kingdom, I give you this charge. Wow.

Whatever he's going to say, this is very serious. What is the charge? Preach the word. Timothy,

if you're going to be a servant devoted to God, preach the word. Be prepared in season

and out of season. Correct, rebuke, encourage with great patience, but careful instruction.

Stand for the truth. Let the truth be known. Breathe it in, breathe it out. For the time

will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to soothe their own

desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching

ears want to hear. People will not care about truth. They will just care about being right.

And they will hire leaders to teach them exactly what they want to hear. They will turn their

ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. By you, Timothy, servant devoted to

God, you keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist,

discharge all the duties of your ministry, live the word so that people will come to

know truth because of you. You know it, you trust it, you proclaim it, you stand for it.

Even when it feels like you are swimming against the current. Do you live the word? Are you

knowingly disobeying God? Why you are following Jesus? Is he convicting you and you are trying

just to be deaf to what the Lord is telling you? Then your foundation is cracked. Because

it's not just about believing in the word, but practicing it. Is the Lord asking you

to stand up for truth and speak up, but you are not because you are afraid of what may

happen? Correct. Be patient. But don't give up the truth. We need to live it. And Eris

was a man that was so glad he met Christians that were living the truth. Because you know

he was a guy from Israel. He was a Jew himself. He grew up there not knowing anything about

Christianity. He had friends and relatives that lived in Galilee. He remembers, you know,

time we would visit them and we would go fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And I had no idea that

there was a Jesus or apostles. None of that stuff. I had no knowledge. Zero. But as I

was growing in my study of Judaism and going to school and everything, it just didn't satisfy.

And I started searching for more. So eventually he says like many Jews that live Israel, they

come to this area of Asia to explore some other religions. Buddhism, Hinduism and things

like that. So I was reading all these other writings from all these other religions trying

to find something to feed my spiritual hunger. And none of that worked. And then I ended

up going to Holland. And when I was in Holland he says, I met this group of Christians that

were talking about a relationship with the God and they were very nice people. And what

surprised me were two things. They knew more about my book than I did. They kept quoting

it. And secondly, there were people that were different. They had a godliness about it,

a joy about them that I didn't have. So one day I told them, how come you use my book

and you keep quoting it and know so much? And they said to him, it's not your book.

This is what we Christians believe. This is our foundation. The Old Testament and the

New Testament is one book that we have the Bible. And for the first time he was intrigued

enough to start reading the New Testament. But he got a Hebrew version of it and as he

was reading it, he came to learn about Jesus and the apostles and all of these things.

And he came to know Christ. All because of these Christians who lived the word. So he

said at that moment, I really believe I was like the apostle Paul. I'm the only Christian

here going back to Israel. I need to tell my family about it. So he went back to Israel

to tell about his family, about Jesus. And he says, my father sent me to the psychiatrist.

My mother made an appointment with the rabbi. And then I wanted to study the word more,

but I realized there was no place for me to do that in Israel. So I moved to the U.S.

where he got his doctorate and he felt called by God to go back to Israel and start a place

where people could study the word. Because he says, you know, we say that Jesus is the

best kept secret that Christians have. There are many Jews like me that know nothing. So

he went back to Israel and he founded a ministry called One for Israel. That's the story of

One for Israel. That's Eris. And that's because God put people in his life that knew the word,

trusted the word, and lived the word. Exactly what Paul tells Timothy. This is the foundation

of the kingdom, the authority of the scriptures. So I want to conclude the study by simply

asking you to look at your foundation. Do you find any cracks? These are three cracks

that will appear. First, ignorance. You do not know the word. And because you do not

know the word, secondly, deception. You cannot tell truth from falsehood. And you are that

Christian that just watches a bunch of YouTube videos thinking all these people are right,

and you are absorbing deception and you have no idea. We are here to help you in your journey.

We're not asking you to turn off your brain to follow Jesus. Quite the opposite. Turn

it on. And we are here to help you engage with the complexities of interpreting and

developing doctrine and things like that. But the third crack is disobedience. You have

compromised the truth because you are no longer living it. And if you have compromised it,

this is the time to align yourself with the Holy Spirit once again. From the very beginning,

servants devoted to God build their lives from the foundation that is the authority

of God's word. Hold tight to it. Father, thank you for not leaving us, not leaving us, Lord,

with any empty places, just with words, but not scripture. You give it to us written so

we can have it throughout millennia. Thank you for the way you have led people throughout

the centuries to do archaeology and textual criticism and all the studies that have gone

before us. There are foundation today is even stronger because we have more access to verifiable

knowledge than ever before. But thank you, Holy Spirit, for the power of truth. Will

you strengthen our foundation if it has become weakened? And I ask you, call among us people

that can be equipped to the next level with the word. So there will be a group of godly

people that can defend the truth with compassion, but with conviction. For the glory of your

name and for the impact of your kingdom in Jesus name.

Thank you for tuning in to the ECB sermon podcast. Whether near or far, if you are looking

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