The Holy Spirit: A Model: The Spirit and the Word

You'll start over again. But mark this, there will be terrible things in the

last days, in these days, in the end of the present age, and as we await the

fulfillment of the age to come.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful,

proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents.

Parents love that one. Ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous,

without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous,

rash, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

having a form of godliness but denying its power.

Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into

homes and gain control over gullible women who are loaded down with sins and

are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,

always learning but never able to come to knowledge of truth.

Just as Janus and Jambres oppressed Moses, so also these teachers oppressed

the truth. They are men of depraved minds who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.

But they will not get very far because, as is in the case of those men,

their folly, talking about these characters that oppose Moses,

as was with them. Where did I go?

Case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. Yes,

however, know all about my preaching.

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose,

my faith, my patience, my love and endurance,

persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch,

Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

while evildoers and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. I love that.

The reality is, unfortunately, that we will be persecuted.

There is no gospel story to live in in the present age overlapping with the

age to come where there's not suffering or there's not trials or there's not

persecutions, but it's still better for us than the others because they'll go,

it says, from bad to worse.

Deceiving and being deceived, 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 were able to make you wise for salvation through Christ Jesus,

through faith in Christ Jesus.

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

correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be

thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Again, this word righteousness, we've come to make it mean simply our whiteness

with God, but that's not this concept.

Yes, that's part of it. It means living right, doing justly,

living in a way that honors God and other people.

In the scriptures, it says, have all the power to allow us to live rightly as God's temple.

And then in 2 Timothy 4, that was a whole chapter. You guys should,

some of you, that's your whole Bible reading for the week. You got it in today.

I've listened to John Mark Colmer and a long series on, sorry,

I'm stopping again, and reading the Bible and their church at a particular time,

it was a couple of years ago, they were taking the church on a journey of biblical

literacy, which I think is amazing.

And they were doing the Bible in a year, which a lot of us have done.

And he's like, I know that you got to read four chapters. And I know that's

so much. I'm like, four chapters?

Are we so infantile that we can't read four? This was the one chapter.

How long did it take? Anyway, sorry. I didn't mean to be mean.

Chapter 4. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living

and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom, I give you this charge.

Preach the Word. Be prepared in season and out of season.

Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.

Talking about the church here. People who call themselves Christians,

they will not put up a sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number

of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear, and they will turn

their eyes away from the truth and turn aside to miss.

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

evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry, for I'm already being

poured out like a drink offering.

The time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,

the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me,

but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

When I was 18 years old, I spent a year in India.

Many of you know that. Most of you know that. But a lot of you perhaps don't.

I went when I was 15 with my father and my mother. And I just fell in love with it.

Nobody understood why. Because most people who go to India on missions trips

are like, this is like real missions work.

But I just fell in love with this beautiful place. And I asked my parents,

when I turn 18, can I come back for a year? I don't know what prompted me to ask that.

But I really had this desire. They said, if you still feel that way when you're

18, we'll do that. And so it so happens.

I've still felt that way. When I turned 18, December 20th, 1993, I turned 18.

January 2nd, 1994, I got in front of this church and asked Pastor Amy to marry me.

Two weeks later, I left for a year.

I went to India. And it was one particular season. And when I was there,

you see, I lived in this home. I went there to help and to serve and to work.

But at the same time, the family that I lived with in this nurse or not nursing

home, this children's home, they were terrified that I was going to get sick

and die or something terrible would happen to me.

And unfortunately, I represented a system where I was part of the hand that

fed them and they didn't want anything to happen to me because then I would

make all the other people mad who were feeding them.

And so they were so they were loving. I loved them. It was a great place,

but they kept me contained.

So and they were so scared. And every once in a while, I get to go out and I sneak out.

And there was one particular season where the family was gone and everybody

who was there in the home didn't speak English.

There was all these kids that lived there and they would help and they'd serve

me and they cooked me food, but they didn't speak English.

I learned how to pray during that time.

But I would also have the gift of once a month, I could talk to my beloved on

the phone for the phone card back then.

It cost hundreds of dollars. she would call me or I'd call her.

A couple times I had the phone card number and I just did it in the middle of

the month and got a little bit of trouble, but I was lonely.

But there was one particular time I was waiting for them to call me,

waiting for some sign from home and the family was gone. I was all alone.

No one to talk to. That's like torture.

They put you in isolation because it's torture.

And I can remember weeks went by and nobody was calling me and I felt abandoned

and I felt alone i felt despondent like i was being poured out like a drink offering.

Finally, the problem was I didn't know the number had changed.

Nobody told my family because nobody told me.

And so finally they got through. And I say that to say there's nowhere near

what Paul is going through.

But you can imagine this letter is written at a time in Paul's life.

This is the last recorded letter that we have from him. Doesn't mean he didn't write more.

But as far as what we have in scholarship in the world and the manuscripts written

down by Paul, This is his last letter, probably written sometime in around 65

AD. This is literally about 30 years from the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And here he is at the end. He's imprisoned in Rome, whether it's the time that

we learn about in Acts or whether or not he got out of prison at that point,

ministered for a few more years. But we know he's back in prison and we know he knows it's the end.

He talks about at the end, people who had abandoned him and he feels alone.

He's all by himself. But yet he's just filled with this passionate,

urgent love for Timothy and the church.

You see, in my moment of sadness, I just wanted to die.

But here's Paul at the end of his life, writing this last letter that we have.

And he's not writing a letter. Don't forget today we're talking about how do

we build a model that engages the reality that we are the temple,

that we are the place filled with the Spirit.

How do we be a Spirit-filled church? And here Paul is addressing Timothy,

the pastor of his greatest work in Ephesus.

And he doesn't say, please make sure that you're having Holy Spirit-filled meetings

and are prophesying everyone's praying in tongues.

Though they did that, he didn't say, please make sure that people are getting healed.

Make sure you're staying in the moment and having amazing experiences.

Though they did and they were, what he says out of urgency at the end of his

life, If he's got one thing to say, he says, preach the word.

All through this letter, he encourages him not to be ashamed of his imprisonment

because it was people who were ashamed.

And if Timothy were to come, he wants him to come and see him.

It's the most personal letter that we have from him. At the end,

he's saying, come quickly and bring my coat and bring my cloak and bring my

books because I'm coming to the end and I need some comfort.

Yet the most important thing he had to say before I die is, Timothy,

it's important as we build this thing called the church as we engage the reality

that we are the kingdom of God today, that we are the place where the presence

of God meets the earth. Preach the word.

In order for anything to leap off the pages of scripture and to be lived in

community, there must be a theology, a model, and a practice.

We've been talking for weeks about theology, and last week as we got to the model.

We realize that the right question

is Jesus engaged a woman at the well isn't what's the right model.

Which one is we look at history? Which one was the better one or the right one?

The right question is what am I modeling?

Because Jesus wasn't redefining worship. He was relocating God's presence saying

before it lived in the temple. Now it lives in you.

So anything that we build must be built from this reality that we are the place.

God is everywhere. God is omnipresent, but we are the way that God interacts

with the earth, through us, in us, the place where heaven meets earth.

But today, as we go into the next few weeks, having understood what we're modeling,

we do need to ask the question, how do we model it? How do we build it?

How do we do it? How do we create the environment and build a church that is

full of an understanding and the reality of the Holy Spirit?

How do we lean into the experiential side of Christianity and build something where we can do that.

And as we just learned from Paul, as he gives the most important piece of the

building, the greatest building block for the church, as he's the leader,

he says, preach the word.

First, we need to understand when Paul uses the phrase, the word,

what he's talking about, because we read that and we immediately assume he's

talking about this collection of scriptures that we have called the Bible,

the Biblia, the Holy Biblia, which Latin just means book.

And he is certainly referring to that as he goes on. He says that following

the scriptures are God-breathed.

And he's referring to not just the written scriptures, because sometimes you

read that. I just got to read the word.

We have to understand what he's saying. Don't just go in and teach people,

read the scriptures to them, teach the word. What does that mean?

And anytime in the New Testament, this word logos is used, it's referring to

Jesus or the message about Jesus or how the scriptures, which are a unified

story, all telling one narrative, one story, all leading to Jesus.

He's saying, do not forget to preach what I have entrusted to you,

what you've learned, what you've grown up learning,

the scriptures, which are God breathed, but not just these written words,

but how these written words through the Holy Spirit, come on,

are taking God's story forward.

Preach the story, the message of Jesus.

So when Paul says, preach the word, he means unpack the Spirit-filled understanding

and the narrative of Scripture.

He says, this is useful for all things pertaining to being the temple of God.

Every season, every culture, every cultural moment, and every experience has

its truth rooted in and flourishes in the authority of scriptures.

Come on, somebody say amen to me today.

We cannot build a spirit-filled model church without realizing and understanding

nothing that can be built can be built on any foundation.

Paul said in Corinthians, only Christ is the only foundation. Come on.

And the scriptures are the written revelation of how God has interacted with

the world, leading to Jesus, how God is fixing and restoring all things.

So why is Scripture important? And I want to give you four reasons today.

There's so many things I could say, but we have to understand as we're leaning in, how do we build?

Because all of us have this anticipation, how can we go to the next season?

How can we build in such a way where we can engage and have experiences?

Why is the Scriptures important for that? Because you say, well,

why does that matter? Just read a couple scriptures and let's really engage the Holy Spirit.

Let's feel things. Let's prophesy.

Let's have healing meetings. Well, we can do all those things.

But why is the scriptures necessary for us to truly do those things in the way

that honors and actually builds the kingdom?

So number one, if you want to write something down, I'm going to give you four

reasons why the scriptures are important for what we're building.

If you want to write it down write it down anyways number one why is the scripture

so important why is this bible so important for what we're trying to do number

one because it's important because jesus said it was important.

Jesus loved the scriptures. Jesus came to do away with the scriptures.

No, we follow the Bible because we follow Jesus. We don't follow Jesus because we follow the Bible.

We can follow the Bible because we follow Jesus.

Andrew Wilson in this really cool

book that I just started reading called Unbreakable. It's a short book.

You can read it in one sitting. I started it and I'm almost done.

And it's what Jesus said about the scriptures. and he says this,

our trust in the Bible stems from our trust in Jesus Christ.

I don't believe in Jesus because I trust the Bible. I trust the Bible because I trust in Jesus.

I love him and I've decided to follow him.

So if he talks and acts as if the Bible is trustworthy, authoritative.

Good, helpful, and powerful, I will too.

Even if some of my questions remain unanswered or my answers remain unpopular.

There's a reality, we talked about a little last week in the Western church,

particularly in this cultural moment that we are living in, of what John or

Tim Mackey calls the post-biblical Christian.

I like Jesus, but I don't like the Bible.

Or maybe I like the New Testament, but the Old Testament is weird,

even violent and hateful how can anybody read the Old Testament but here's the

thing here's the problem with that and there's a lot to wrestle with but you

cannot separate Jesus from the scriptures and you cannot separate the Old Testament

from the New Testament it's one story.

Matthew chapter 5, verse 17 through 20, Jesus says this in the beginning part

Matthew 5:17–20

of the opening part of the Sermon on the Mount, do not think that I have come

to abolish the law or the prophets.

That's shorthand for saying the Old Testament, the Tanakh, what they had,

what they called it at that time, the law and the prophets.

And sometimes he says, and the writings, this is their collection of the Old Testament.

It's not him saying, do not think I didn't come to abolish all of the strict regulations and rules.

We have a bad reputation or bad relationship with this word law that's translated law.

It simply means the first five books of the Old Testament with the prophets, with the writings.

He's saying, I did not come to abolish the law of the prophets.

I didn't come to throw that story out.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. That also doesn't mean

to complete them, to finish them, so something new begins.

Fulfill means to bring it to its maturity, to show you what all of that was

leading to, or all of that, all of those laws, all of those instruction,

what all of them were trying to create, I came to bring it forward and to show you what it looks like.

For truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter

nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until

everything is accomplished.

Therefore, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches

others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever practices and teaches these These commands will be called great

in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you that unless your righteousness, that means your right,

the way that you rightly live with others and towards God, your righteousness

exceeds that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly

not enter the kingdom of heaven.

I said this before, and I'll go on saying it over and over and over again.

The library of Scripture.

That's why sometimes calling it a book is unhelpful, because it's a library.

Multiple genres, multiple writers, but one spirit.

That's amazing. Three different languages.

And this library of Scripture that we have is not two stories,

where one cancels the other.

Obviously, some parts are more literally relevant to a specific time.

Time, just like the way Luke Skywalker interacts with Yoda in Empire Strikes

Back is different than in Return of the Jedi.

In Empire Strikes Back, he says, you're not ready to face Vader.

You must complete your training.

In Return of the Jedi, he says, you must complete your training and defeat Vader.

You gotta confront him. Does that mean that one was telling the other wasn't

sure we threw the other one out? No, it's a story that's moving.

And so, yes, Yes, there are parts of the Old Testament, parts of the New Testament

that were more literally relevant, but it's the same spirit and one story.

It's all telling the same story. And Jesus is at the center of that story,

the climax, the hero accomplishing the objective.

So in other words, if you want to build anything that is supposed to look like

this book of Acts church, it's supposed to be full of the spirit,

leaning into the experiences and the reality that God is in us doing something

on the earth, then we have to start.

With Scripture, because Jesus started with Scripture.

Why? Number two, it's important, because all power and authority is mediated on earth through text.

It is written. He said at least nine times.

And other times you have heard it said.

I'm going to read that again. It's important because all power,

I want the power of the Holy Spirit, all power and authority is mediated on

earth through text. Let me explain that.

And Jesus says in Matthew chapter 28 in the Great Commission,

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

that we all know it or have heard about it, or at least heard of it.

It says, Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountains where Jesus

had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him. But some doubted.

Then Jesus came to them and said, I love that.

It's so real. The scriptures which are fully divine, fully breathed by the Holy

Spirit, yet written by people.

And here's the Holy Spirit writing the truth. Jesus is there, but still some doubted.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Authority.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name

of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything

that I have commanded you.

And surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age.

You will have authority. You will have power, it says in the book of Acts as

it goes on. Wait for me and you'll have power.

It says through that power you will go, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded.

Let me just give you a little context for a minute for this statement.

All power and authority is mediated on earth through text. Think about your

relationship with your kids.

Think about, say, perhaps you have a preteen or a teenager. They're just miserable human beings.

I'm just kidding. I love teenagers. Sid's amazing.

And say you have certain expectations for them as they engage the story of your family.

And say you leave the house and you have these expectations that there's something

they're supposed to accomplish.

Load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, clean something,

I don't know what it is, mow the lawn. But you never tell them.

But you're not there. So what do you do? You write a note. Or nowadays,

you used to write a note and you put it on the fridge or somewhere.

My wife would scribble everything on envelopes. There'd be a million notes on

an envelope. Now we send a text because the only way that intention,

the only way that authority that you have for them to operate under can be mediated

or lived in is through something being told.

All authority over the heavens and the earth, he says, they've been given to me.

But Jesus, as we see his ministry on the earth, he mediated that authority by

unpacking the scriptures. It is written.

We see this on the Sermon on the Mount as we just read that part.

Jesus himself mediating. This is what the scriptures say. This is what I've

come to do. The scriptures say it.

Come on, somebody say amen. And we see this after his resurrection,

as he secretly walks with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Can you imagine that you're walking? They've just heard about Jesus. He's died.

It's been a terrible moment in our history. We thought he was the one,

but now we're hearing that he's not there, that some are saying he rose from the dead.

And there's two of his disciples. One of them is called Cleopas. I don't know the other.

They're walking and Jesus secretly comes and walks beside them and he's hanging

out with them and like, whoa. And he's like, what are you speaking of?

And they're like, don't you know,

are you the only person in all Judea who doesn't know what's going on?

And so they tell him what happens. And then Jesus, it says this in verse 25,

he said to them, how foolish you are and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken.

And when they say prophets, when they're talking about the Old Testament,

but not just talking about Jeremiah and Isaiah, that's their way of talking

about how the spirit breathed through humans to write the scriptures.

They're talking about Moses who wrote, is credited of writing in the first five

books of the Bible, they're talking about whoever wrote Daniel,

talking about these are the prophets because God breathed through them.

They spoke and he says, did you not believe all that the prophets have spoken through the text?

Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was

said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

That means that they're walking long enough for him to go from Genesis to.

To Malachi. I don't know if he quite did that, but he sums it all up.

He walks, unpacks the written text. He's mediating, but he's Jesus.

Just tell them, just show them. He's mediating his authority through the written

word because we are humans. We need something to grasp.

So God breathed the spirit. Come on, somebody.

And then later on, it says that their eyes were opened as they sit and they

broke bread together and they

saw who he was. They recognized them and he disappeared from their sight.

And they asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked

with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?

This is the reality of the spirit in the word.

As the Holy Spirit in Jesus unpacks the written scriptures, it says,

were our hearts not burning within us?

And then later on, when he's eating with his disciples in Luke 24 says,

he said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you.

Everything must be fulfilled.

That is written about me in the law of Moses, in the prophets, in the Psalms.

And then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

And he told them, this is what is written. The Messiah will suffer and rise

from the dead on the third day.

Now that's the word. Here's the thing. That's not clearly written in the Old Testament.

Yet the Scriptures do testify of it.

And it takes someone like Jesus, the Spirit. That's the Word.

When the Spirit says, this is what is written, and this is what it means.

Again, that does not mean, as he gives a great commission and he says,

doesn't just say, go and do amazing things.

He concludes with teach them to obey all that I've commanded you.

Again, that does not mean he's saying, disregard all the scriptures.

Just do the couple things that I said.

He knows, no, remember what I said, how I unpacked the scriptures and teach

them by the spirit, tell the story and invite everyone you see into it.

John 14, 25, he's talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, all this I have spoken

while still with you, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will

send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything that I've said to you.

He doesn't say, I'll teach you different things, but all things through my spirit,

the things that I've said, the scriptures that I've read.

He says, it'll bring back to remembrance all that I said. This is why we can

call the rest of the New Testament Scripture.

Because as the Holy Spirit moved in the early church and brought back to memory

the things that Jesus said,

as they orally transferred this tradition and all the things from person to

person, and then they wrote them down, we can trust,

just as the Holy Spirit was breathing into the Old Testament,

into the prophets and the writers, as they were telling God's story and bringing

it forward, They've now breathed into us and into the apostles as they wrote

down the words that the Holy Spirit told them to write and say.

We can see this even as the Holy Spirit comes onto the scene in Acts chapter

Acts 2 · chapter mention

2. We can see the Word and the Spirit.

It says that as they are in this room praying and they're waiting on Pentecost,

it says that the place begins to shake and a cloud comes in and then a pillar

of fire goes over each of their heads and goes in them and they start speaking

in other languages, declaring what? The scriptures.

Declaring all the good things that God had done in everybody's own language.

And then following that, everyone's like, these people are crazy. They're drunk.

Peter stands up, this fisherman filled with the Holy Spirit,

the very first Holy Ghost meeting.

And what does he do? Preaches the entire Old Testament.

Filled with the spirit unpacks the reality that this is what god was always

leading us to this is the story that we've been living in this is the promises

we've been waiting for as the,

scriptures the text mediates the authority and the power of god and connects

it to the dirt come on somebody it's important number one because jesus says

important number two because all power and authority must be mediated through texts on the earth.

Number three, it's important because without the Spirit-filled teaching of the Scriptures,

as we enter into, as we engage the reality of the Holy Spirit,

as we try to have experiences without Spirit-filled teaching of the Scriptures,

we are in danger of telling a different story.

As we just read in 2 Timothy 4, for the time will come when people will not

put up with sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number

of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their eyes or their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

When we become more in love with our experiences and more influenced by the

cultural moment that we're living in than the scriptures, we actually will separate Jesus.

Even if we're leaning into. I want to experience the presence of God.

But if we separate that from scripture, we actually separate Jesus from the

Holy Spirit because Jesus is the Logos.

And the Bible then becomes nothing more for us than a proof text for our experience

and something that the spirit of the age will distort to fit an agenda.

I think about Jesus as he's in the wilderness for 40 days fasting.

And the tempter comes to tempt him and Jesus starts answering the scripture.

And so the enemy's like, hey, I can play that game too.

As Jesus says, it is written, so does the enemy. Eh, but it is written as the

enemy is telling a different story, as the accuser, as the Satan takes the scriptures,

to accommodate his agenda, trying to tell a different story.

Here's the problem. even at times when we are proof texting our experience,

there might be true elements in what Paul says are myths, but they will not be the whole truth.

And a half-truth that becomes a whole truth is an untruth.

I believe some half-truths in my life, scripturally and just simply as a human being.

I was told as a child that if I banged my head with my eyes across, they'd stay that way.

And I lived in fear of that until I was in my mid to late 20s.

I kid you not, I still had this temptation every time I crossed my eyes in Georgia,

like, what will happen to me in my head?

It becomes a myth that you live into and that you believe. And let me give you

an example in church history of how an experience became the main reality to the Christianity,

to being Christians, particular experiences mixed with a cultural experience or a cultural age,

how the scriptures were twisted to create a myth that has aspects of truth in it, but it is not true.

Just give me a moment, because this is a much longer conversation,

but you've heard me say several times probably, but I've never unpacked it.

The rapture's not in the scriptures.

But you're an evangelical Christian in America, in the West. You grew up as I did.

My dad never talked about it. He never talked about it. He just didn't want

to go there. I appreciate that.

Because yet I still, because our cultural experience, we grew up thinking that

everybody in church history believed in the rapture.

What is the rapture? That Jesus is going to come twice.

Going to come back once to rescue the church, take them up in the air,

and then come again later on to accomplish the work.

Nobody in church history up until the mid-19th century ever believed that because

it's not in the scriptures. But here's the thing that happened.

And don't get me wrong. The second coming, eschatology, has been debated since

at least the second century.

This is one of those things you got to wrestle with. But as they're wrestling

as the early church fathers, Augustine, Athanasius, Justin Amard who had a rich eschatology.

They're wrestling. They're having different ideas, interpreting things differently,

but they all have the same idea.

Jesus is coming back once. How it looks, we're not quite sure.

But then in the mid 1800s, during a particular Christian experience,

when there was a group of Christians that were really obsessed with prophecy.

Old Testament and scriptural prophecies obsessed with interpreting them and

obsessed with being prophetic.

And they started having these prophetic conferences led by, there was a few

different people that were in this particular movement, but Henry Drummond was

the most popular, the loudest.

And they would have these prophetic conferences, which I don't understand.

I'm not saying don't do it. I'm not here to judge, but I don't get it.

But they have these prophetic conferences.

I mean, how many things can God say in one meeting prophetically that's going to change the world?

But anyways, they have these prophetic conferences, and they'd all get together,

and they'd prophesy, and they'd lean into these experiences,

which is amazing. I believe in prophecy.

In the middle of this experience, a 15-year-old girl, I think she was 15,

14, or 15, named Mary MacDonald, had a couple dreams.

That Jesus came back twice, that he came back and snatched the church up,

and it was fitting within the way they were interpreting prophecies and giving new prophecies.

And so Henry Drummond grabbed a hold of that idea and wrote an entire theological

perspective called dispensationalism, which means that the church and the world

is divided into all these dispensations.

There's this age, this age, this age, this age, this age, this age.

And the way they interpret Scripture is a longer conversation.

It requires them to literally place pauses. The scripture will say this and

they say, yeah, but there's a divine pause right here.

And we as the church are living in the time where God has just paused everything.

That's dispensationalism. And into that culture, into that experience, a girl has a dream.

And Henry Drummond took a hold of this dream and made it fit,

made his eschatology fit.

It's a much more nuanced conversation. It's much longer, but to make it simple,

that's where it begins. A couple of years, a couple of decades later,

this idea is floating around in another conference.

A man named Schofield and a few others in the turn of the century,

they get a hold of this idea, this eschatology, and it makes perfect sense to them.

And so Schofield writes the Schofield Study Bible. You've probably heard of it.

It was the most popular, sold millions of copies around 1905.

And it became the gold standard. If you really want to be smart and truly understand

the scriptures, you need this Bible. as you unpacked in the Bible commentary,

all revolving around a little girl's dream and an experience.

Now, there are aspects of truth.

The scriptures are a part of their eschatology. They're using scriptures to

proof text being caught up in the sky, which is not what Paul is talking about.

And on top of that, they're also living in a cultural moment where modernism

is at his heyday, after the Industrial Age and the Enlightenment before that.

And you have people like Charles Darwin, who have now developed sciences that

tell us where we come from.

And that changes the fabric of the Western ideology. It gets into their minds,

into their heads. On top of that, there was this fear.

There was wars and rumors of wars. And so people began to also interpret the

Bible literally, trying to answer science, because we don't realize how impacted

we are by the cultural moment that we're living in.

Ideologies that we don't even know creep in. And there was this ideology that

because Darwin could explain everything scientifically, everything could be

explained scientifically.

Therefore, dispensationalism must be the right theology because we can look

at the entire Bible scientifically and say everything happens just like this,

just like this. This doesn't make sense.

So we're going to pause right there. It's a holy pause because they're engaging

the cultural moment living off of an experience that might have been god-filled

and holy spirit-filled but it was a experience and separated from the narrative

of scripture actually becomes a whole new narrative that is not the story.

Elements of Scripture not rooted in culture, or rooted in culture,

I'm sorry, and rooted in experience.

It's not the gospel. And here's the thing. We are all living at a cultural moment.

We're all having experiences, not realizing how effective we are by a cultural

moment. We're all living into a story.

Somehow. An American story, a Western story, a political story,

an ideology, a political left versus right.

We're living in a moment right now, there's a story of rugged individualism,

that we all need to be our own person, and who you are, just who you are,

is exactly who you're supposed to be. It's perfect. Love yourself.

We're also living in a moment where everyone's looking for someone to blame.

We're all looking for an oppressor. We're all looking for justice.

We're all looking to tolerate and accept everything, but nobody at the same time.

We're living in this moment that is prevalent. It's an ideology,

and it leaks into us if we're not careful.

And then we come to our experiences looking for God to just make it this beautiful

moment where we just read in the scriptures that Jesus sat with sinners.

Therefore, he loves me just as I am.

Yes, he absolutely loves you just as you are. But if we're going to have Holy

Spirit experiences, we are engaging the presence of God to heal us.

We need to recognize that the scriptures tell us that the love of God was for

the broken world to fix us, to heal us, to make us new.

And if we are not grounded in scripture, we are at risk for leaning into experiences.

And we grew up in it. Our church was a different model. I'm so grateful for our church.

We majored on the word and then engaged experiences.

Man, I went everywhere. Their church is still living in moments from 1990.

An experience that they had that became the entire story.

I refuse to do that as a church, but I want experiences. But our experiences,

they're not just accents by scriptures.

Because the truth is, you're not going to find a proof text for every experience we have.

Because the Holy Spirit is moving through us as we engage the scriptures to engage our culture.

And different things happen. They're a different manifestation,

different experience from culture to culture, from time to time. But the same spirit.

And without the scriptures, it's a different story.

If we're not grounded in scriptures, we're at risk for leaning into experiences

underpinned by the cultural experience that will create a different story.

It's happening all over the West right now. It seems so exciting that there's

like Christian ads and commercials during the Super Bowl. And I love that.

But the Christian ads that are in the Super Bowl are telling a different story.

There's aspects of truth. Yes, Jesus gets us.

Jesus finds us and loves us right where we are. He came to us.

But not to leave us, but to rescue us.

So how do we live in the tension of the moment and time that we are living in,

in the reality of the story?

How do we do it? The Word and the Spirit. It is written.

The Holy Spirit connects us to the Word, to the Gospel, to the reality of these Scriptures.

Connects us to Jesus through the Scriptures.

And in our spirit-filled lived experiences. And together, they're the only way

to not just learn the story, but to live into it.

The only way to live in the moment, the cultural moment, to have experiences

is by the Holy Spirit and the Word.

It's the only way to not just learn about it, but to live into it.

Number four. Number three. I don't remember what number I'm on.

I actually have five. I said I had four. Why do we need the Scriptures and our

Holy Spirit experience? I'm almost done.

Because the Holy Spirit is the co-author of the Scriptures.

Why do we need this doctrine? Why do we need teaching?

Can't we just experience it? Because we're experiencing the one who co-wrote the Bible.

It's like, why do I care? It's like someone's making a movie.

Someone's biography, somebody wrote their biography, but they don't want to

talk to the person who wrote the story about themselves.

No, we don't need that. Just give me the highlight. Give me the wiki notes.

Just give me the preview and then let me just live like the hero in the story.

No, you can't truly experience the Holy Spirit unless you know Him.

We know Him through scriptures, and we experience Him in our lived experiences,

but we know Him through the written Word.

And we need the scriptures if we're going to engage the Holy Spirit because He's the co-author.

It means the experiences that we have as we lean into this reality,

within the moment in time that we exist as the temple of God,

will connect us to the story and confirm the narrative of the Word,

which is to bring the kingdom into the world as we wait with hope for the restoration of all things.

If we're going to have experiences, if they're not confirming the story already

being told, they're just emotionalism.

And I love emotionalism.

I'm a four in the Enneagram. I just want to get in my fields and cry.

But if my tears and my moments at the altar, if the prophetic,

if healing is not telling the story of the gospel.

It's just emotionalism.

The experiences are not the story. The gospel is.

And if our experiences don't live in that story, they're a different story.

And finally, we need the scriptures and the spirit because it connects us to

the church, those paths, present, and future. That's beautiful.

Paul tells Timothy, hold on to what you were taught from your childhood,

taught by your mother and your grandmother.

Hold on to what I've taught you.

This connects you to a story that's been written for thousands of years.

It connects us to the present, to one another, and it connects us even to those who will come behind us.

Don't get me wrong. Since the second century, the church was wrestled with the

scriptures, but we have wrestled with the same scriptures.

No, Pastor Josh, there are all kinds of problems with translations.

We don't have the same thing. Yes, we do. That is so ignorant.

Translations are made from the same manuscripts that they translated.

No, Pastor Josh, it's a translation. I heard somebody arguing that translations

are wrong because they're from the King James. The King James is not our translational.

It's not our source material. It's a translation.

It's not even the best one. But it comes from manuscripts, and we've got thousands of them.

We have the Septuagint, which is what Jesus read.

It doesn't matter. I'm just going to need to go on that rabbit trail on that tangent.

Yes, the church has wrestled with some of these things, but we've wrestled with the same scriptures.

And we today, as we wrestle with them, we're connected to all of those church

fathers and the church that has come before us.

And those will come after us as we wrestle with the same scripture.

It ties us to the same story.

And the spirit in us, the same spirit, come on, continues to tell the same story.

The spirit has moved uniquely through the ages to address the times and the

cultural moments, but it has been the same scriptures and the same spirit through all of it.

I just read this beautiful book called Water from the Deep Well that goes from

the early church all the way through the modern moment.

And you can see all kinds of crazy things. Some moments where you're like,

that was pretty dark, but the spirit came in.

The same scriptures were there. And somehow they began to connect people to the same story.

And throughout it all, different experiences, different moments.

Some of them were in the desert, church fathers. Some of them were monks,

the same spirit doing something in its age, connecting people to the story all

through the Renaissance and all through the Reformation into the modern age,

even during the crazy time that brought us the rapture.

It's still the same scriptures if we just gather around it and say,

Lord, teach us by your spirit from your word, what is the story and how do I

live in it? We need the scriptures.

Ephesians 4, this is 4 through 6. My wife read it a few weeks ago.

There's one body, there's one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when

you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,

who is ever or is over all, through all, and in all.

We need the scriptures because it connects us together through the centuries, through time and space.

How do we do this? How do we be a spirit-filled,

word-driven charitable number one we preach

the word as the central feature

of our gatherings you say are you gonna this is our son this is my least favorite

part as a kid this is my least favorite part but i grew to love it because it

is the central feature of our gatherings and from there we experience and encounter

the same spirit that wrote the scriptures that we're digging into But number one, we preach the word.

It is my job and my responsibility as the pastor of this church to do the work

of treating the scriptures with the utmost care.

And I do. I will not always be right.

I will always, by the Spirit, and through careful and diligent,

strive to rightly divide the word of truth, as Paul tells Timothy, rightly divide at work.

I take what I do very, very seriously.

Listen, we all listen, most of us do at least, to multiple preachers.

Because we live in a day and age. You see, churches were bigger back,

even country churches back in the day, because there was only one way to hear preaching.

At your local church. and we don't need

that anymore we can hear any voice any ideology any

theology any whatever we want at any

time but guess what we're part of this church we're part of this house and

i'm the one who has a responsibility for us not just me me and the elders and

other leaders here in this church we strive together but if we want to be a

church that is leaning into the reality that we are the place where the heaven

meets earth that we are spirit-filled church we've got to be taught,

what God is saying to us through the Word and by the Spirit.

I take this very seriously. I don't just sit down and come up with cool things to say.

I study history. I pray. Number one, I have my own devotional time where I just

read for me. I pray. I slowly read.

I contemplate the reader, the reality of the Holy Spirit is in me that wrote these words.

But then when I feel God is leading me in direction, when we did a sermon on

the Mount, I read six books while we were preaching it, Listened to an entire

series of lectures on the Sermon on the Mount.

Many other preachers and other teachers went back to history to hear what Augustine

had to say about it. Not because I want to be super smart, but because I take this seriously.

How has history treated this text? What has it said? What does scholars say?

What does it mean to us today?

Number one, we preach the word. Corporately as a church, it's the central feature

of all of our gatherings.

We can have moments where we just come to worship and pray, but there should

still be scripture because this is how we keep our experiences grounded to the story.

Well, personally, we all have the same spirit and we all have the same scriptures.

If you don't got a Bible, get one.

Nobody uses paper Bibles anymore. You got a phone.

Maybe you should get a paper Bible because you put your phone down.

Read it. We just went through four weeks and some of us are a week behind,

but four weeks on how to engage the scriptures for formation,

how to live in the scriptures as part of my spiritual disciplines and growing in faith.

How do I do it? How do I meditate on it? How do I read it?

Get yourself a guide, a plan. I don't care how you do it. Ask some of us for

help. Or maybe if you could have come to a small group, you would have learned and could have done it.

Read it, pray it. You can't live into a story you don't know.

Find a translation that works for you, not the passion translation that's wrong. this is bad.

It's a myth. It's the same.

Find a method or a plan that works and just do it, but not out of a dogmatic

obligation, but because it is the beautiful and transformational.

Read it with the awareness that the same spirit that inspired the people that wrote it is in you.

Think about that for a moment as you're reading these scriptures.

The Holy Spirit that wrote these words, holy crap, he's actually in me.

I can ask him what it means.

And then talk about it in community. Love you guys.

Wrestle with it. You can go ahead and stand up. We exist to lead people to purpose

and belonging through a genuine relationship with Jesus.

Who are you inviting into the story? Who are you praying the scriptures over?

Because we've been invited to live in the story, not just to learn about it.

The scriptures, the spirit and the word together, they are the way that we connect

to Jesus and live into the story. It continues in and through us.

How are you living in the story?

And then a final thought in 2 Timothy 4, as we already read it.

And Paul says this, For I'm already being poured out like a drink offering,

and the time for my departure is near.

I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I've kept the faith.

Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,

the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me,

but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

That means also for me and for you.

As we close today in this thought.

Fight the good fight. That means live in Paul's urgency, that this matters.

The scriptures matter. Being the place where heaven meets earth, it matters.

Finish the race that means stay together because we can't finish alone keep

the faith stay grounded in the story by the word and the spirit,

Lord today we just thank you Father for your word,

Lord we are so willing and ready for whatever it is that you want to do in and

through us in our season and our time on this timeline to be your temple to

be the place where heaven meets earth. Lord, we're ready for that.

So Father, we need you and we need your presence,

but we need to truly engage with your scriptures because all scriptures God

breathed that I need to know the story because I want to so desperately to live into it.

So Father, we want experiences, but let our experiences as we open ourselves

up to them, tell your story.

Let our experiences tell your story,

we thank you Lord for it today.

Music.