Fresh Starts in Faith: Living in the Scriptures - January 19, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

How are you doing this morning? So far, so good. Sounds like, yeah. Praise God.

We'll buckle up, see what the Holy Spirit wants to do this morning in our hearts.

You know, our theme this year is come alive in 25.

Are you alive yet? You feel like you have life? Are you still working out? Okay, praise the Lord.

We got to come alive. And so we've been talking, if I'm going to call you to

something, I want to model what the Lord does.

He calls people to stuff, and then he equips them.

So I'm calling you to come alive in 25, but I also want to equip you to come alive in 25.

It's one thing to give you an impossible standard to reach and then not tell

you how to get there, right?

Don't you hate when you had a job and they said, here's your job,

go do it, and they don't train you on how to do that?

Boy, that gets frustrating. But we're not going to be that way.

We are going to train you.

And so we've been talking about having a fresh start and fresh starts in three

areas. The first area we talked about last week, and that's prayer.

Having a fresh start in your prayer life. And I just want to ask, how's it going?

I know I ask rhetorical questions, but it's okay to answer back sometimes. I hope it's going well.

I hope that your prayer life has been rejuvenated. Because I'll tell you,

if you're not willing to go ahead and begin on your own to pray,

God will give you something to pray about, right?

Kind of like with your children sometimes, they're just crying for no reason.

And then you'll say, you're going to keep that crying up. I'll give you something to cry about. Right?

Generally, that's not a good thing, and perhaps not always the best way to parent either.

But nevertheless, we kind of fall into that at times, or maybe have before.

Well, I want you to be successful, and I know something that plagues our culture today.

Which is not new, but yet it seems to be becoming increasingly more prevalent,

and that is biblical illiteracy.

So not knowing the Bible. You think about all the way back to the founding of

the United States of America,

that the Bible was used as a textbook for public schools, for their instruction,

that they could learn everything they needed to know from the Bible.

And it's just amazing that that has even been kicked out of some schools and some school districts.

Now, young people, I want you to know, you still have the right to carry a Bible

anywhere you want at any time.

As a matter of fact, in public school, I would always take my Bible wherever

I went, my little King James version of the Bible that half the Bible is gone

because I left it on top of our little Ford Pinto and on the way to church, and it flew off.

Luckily, my mom stopped, but I couldn't find, kind of like Martin Luther,

I think, who ripped out the book of James and tossed it. I didn't do it intentionally.

It just kind of happened that way. But it's in my office back there if I could

show it to you. carry that thing to school.

And boy, read that at your lunchtime. It doesn't have to be King James. That's just what I had.

But read that. You don't even need to take a physical Bible.

I guess you have your phones now, and it's all on there.

But here's a statistic I wanted to share with you as we begin.

There was a poll done by the Barna Group back in 2021, and it was looking at people's,

How often were they in the Bible? What groups, what age groups,

what genders read the Bible the most?

And here's just a statistic, just in general for all people,

that asks the question, how often do you use the Bible on your own?

So I'm talking about outside of church, outside of your Sunday school class,

outside of your Wednesday night Bible studies.

How often do you get into the Bible and do you read it?

And I just want to share with you those results now. Now, of course,

they're four years old by now, so hopefully things have swung in a different

direction, but here are the options they were given. One was daily.

One was four to six times a week. One option was two to three times a week, several times a week.

One was once a week. Another was once a month. Another was three or four times a year.

Another option was once or twice a year.

One was less than once a year, which I don't know how I can do less than once

a year because the other option is never. So maybe you thought about picking

up the Bible, and now, okay.

Or you saw someone reading it on TV. I'm not sure how that went,

but I didn't make the survey.

Here's the results. All right, 11% of those that were surveyed said that they

read it daily, seven times a week outside of church, a church setting.

They read that Bible, 11%.

There was 5% that said they read four to six times a week.

9% was two to three times a week. Then you get into the once a week and it was 9%.

Every month, once a month, 8%. Three to four times a year was 8%.

The next option, what did we say that was?

Three or four times a year, once or twice a year was 8%. Less than once a year was 13%.

And never was 29%.

You take all the respondents, and here's kind of a simpler breakdown,

I guess. I should have just went with that.

50% read the Bible one time a year or less of adults that responded to this survey.

Now, that leaves 34% that at least read it one time a week or more, so that's encouraging.

But then you've kind of got the 16% in the middle that's monthly,

maybe three or four times a year.

It's just kind of a snapshot of the picture of our culture, where we're at.

I didn't research enough. It's online, the Barna Group.

If you want to research that some more and find out, well, what respondents

were Christians or what respondent did not claim faith in Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, it shows a problem.

It shows a difficulty that our culture faces, especially when you want to talk

about spiritual things, when you want to talk about Scripture.

And so this morning, I just want to propose to you, if we're going to have a

fresh start in the faith, if we're going to have an influence on biblical ignorance,

which is really what we're talking about, then we need to be living in the Scripture.

We need to be living that out. It doesn't mean you go have to preach at people

all the time, but just in the way you live and the values you hold and how you

interact with people, living in the Scripture is going to come out in that way.

So this morning, I just want to invite you, if you're willing to and able to

stand, would you stand as we read 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17.

2 Timothy 3:14–17

Here's what Paul wrote to Timothy. But as for you,

continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of,

because you know those from whom you learned it,

and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make

you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,

correcting, and training in righteousness so the man of God,

the person of God, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your Word.

Lord, thank you for the truth that it is, the truth that it contains,

Lord, the way that it impacts our life.

Lord, may your Holy Spirit now, through your word, God, just encounter us,

Lord, transform us, draw us unto you more and more.

And most of all, God, may we be encouraged this morning just to live out,

live out the scriptures and live in the scriptures today.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

When we think about the biblical illiteracy, biblical ignorance,

I just want to encourage you, let's not be a statistic, huh?

Let's just be one that is just going to follow God, and that is going to get

into the Word, and just going to live within the pages of Scripture.

That's going to live with the truth of God on our lives, in our hearts,

no matter what happens, no matter what we go through that, that we turn to the Bible.

There's five points I want to make this morning, but all of them just kind of

revolve around the main idea that engaging with the Bible regularly leads to a godly life.

If you want to know how to be like Jesus, how to live like Jesus,

if you want to know how to be godly and live as a godly person,

godly meaning one who reflects the values of what God is all about,

the attributes of God, then we've got to spend some time in the book that He

has given us, in the Bible, in the Scripture.

And so first this morning, as

we look again to verse 14. We see that a believer must live in Scripture.

Verse 14 again says, but as for you, Paul talking to Timothy,

continue in what you have learned and have been convinced of,

because you know those from who you learned it.

You know, a person has to learn Scripture in order to understand what it's all about.

I was talking to a guy once, and I was asking him what thought about the Bible.

He said, oh, yeah, it's a good book. I read it once.

Oh, you did from cover to cover. I should have followed up with,

how long did that take you?

You know, people usually start this time of year to read it,

and a lot have dropped out already because, you know, they're getting in Genesis,

and some things are confusing to them.

If they haven't dropped out yet, going from cover to cover, they might in the

next month or two when they start to get into Exodus or Leviticus or Numbers.

It just kind of gets a little scary in there without the other stuff that you

need to interpret that. But we've got to learn Scripture.

Christians, you've got to learn Scripture. I don't know about you, but I like bread.

You like bread? Some people don't. I know there's some diets that don't do bread. I love bread.

Man, put some butter on that. We'd go to Marie Calendars, and then we had cornbread.

Man, I had to have that slice of cornbread with the frosting,

by which I mean the butter that they give you.

It's only 1130. It's not quite lunchtime. But you know, the Scripture talks

about itself, I think, even. We consider this the bread of life.

We even have little devotionals out there called our daily bread,

which takes a little portion of the Scripture each day that we go through as

a devotion, a way to stay in touch with it.

But we're living in the Scripture. We're learning the Scripture.

We're taking our daily bread. We're consuming the Word of God,

making it part of our being, the nutrients of the Word, fueling our life, as it were.

You know, it says also here that you have been convinced of,

Paul tells Timothy, you've been convinced of this, that this is the truth.

So if we're going to learn Scripture, then we've also got to be assured that Scripture is true.

The only way to be assured that the Scripture is true is to test it.

It's to test out when Jesus says, love your enemies. Well, give it a try and see if it's true or not.

Someone does evil to you, do something good back.

Someone smacks you on one side of the face turn the other side of the face to

him you know put the stuff to a test does this really work,

The only way to see if God's Word is true is if you're going to put it into

practice and see. I'm just going to give it a whirl here.

Now, don't go out and start getting slapped this week. That's not what I'm saying.

I know some of you were thinking that.

Well, pastor said, I got to take one for the team. Go ahead, right here.

I love the old little house on the prairie when Pa, when he was there,

and he was going to get in a fight, and he took one on the chops, man, and he took it.

He stood up straight, and then he gave one back, and they said,

we thought you were a Christian. What are you doing? This is my paraphrase.

What are you hitting me for? Well, I turned the cheek once. It doesn't mean

I have to turn it again after he's hit again.

We've got to live out the Scriptures. Be assured that it's true.

Timothy was sure that it was true.

Paul said, here's why. Because you know from whom you learned the Scriptures.

So people that are teaching us the Word, people that are sharing the Word with

us, A person is to know his or her teachers.

Know who's teaching you the Word. Are they trustworthy?

Do they live out what they're teaching you? Or are they hypocritical?

They teach you one thing and do another thing.

If we're going to live out the Scriptures, we've got to know and entrust and

surround ourselves with people that are going to be true to the Word,

that are going to live out what is in the Word, that they themselves have become convinced it's true.

Unfortunately, in many Christian higher education professors and such,

there's people that don't believe what the Word says, yet they're training our

up-and-coming ministers,

our up-and-coming Christians, not just in religious studies,

but in the secular studies as well, and that's a dangerous thing.

Know our teachers if we're going to live in the Scripture. And last but not

least on this first point, living out the Scripture, and in the Scripture,

I should say, we have to continue in the Scripture.

You see, we can learn Scripture, we can be assured that it's true,

and we could know who's teaching it to us.

But like the fellow that I asked, have you read the Bible? And he said,

yeah, one time. That doesn't cut it.

There's this idea of continuing in the Scripture, and that word continuing relates

to these words, abiding, dwelling,

remaining, staying in the Scripture, staying right there with it,

continuing to learn, not just a one-shot thing, but to continue in it.

That's what we're talking about, to live in the Scripture, continue with it,

even when times are great and when times are difficult to stick with what God

is doing and how He's communicating to you in the Scripture.

All right. Secondly, Scripture makes a person wise unto salvation.

If we're going to live in the Scripture, we've got to become convinced that it points to a Savior.

We've got to become convinced that the Bible was written to lead us not just

to Jesus, but Jesus as a bridge to God.

We again read the Scripture in verse 15, and how from infancy you have known

the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Someone once said every page of the Bible, it can point to Jesus Christ.

Every passage of Scripture points to Jesus. It's an exciting study if you ever

take up that challenge to see how things, especially the Old Testament,

point forward to the New Testament Jesus.

But everything, Scripture can make you wise to see how to be saved.

If this were the only book someone was left with on a deserted island and it

was in a language they could read, they could be saved just from reading the Scripture.

You know, we think about the power of that.

Timothy was told by the Apostle Paul,

from infancy you've known the Holy Scriptures. What does that tell you?

It doesn't tell you he was a baby genius and could read. It means someone else

was sharing with him the Word.

Someone else was living in the Word with him, teaching him from a baby,

from an infant, all the way up until this point as a young man,

teaching him the Scripture.

Aren't you glad for our children's ministry that we have men and women that

are dedicated to pour their lives into these little ones from the nursery all the way up?

It's amazing that people take their lives and they say, I want you to know the

Scripture. I want you to know Jesus.

Folks, if we're living in Scripture, we're going to know Jesus.

If we're living in Scripture, we're going to know that Scripture is God-breathed. It's God-inspired.

In verse 16, all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,

rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

But just dwell on that word for a moment.

All Scripture is God-breathed. Ah, you take a deep breath, then you exhale.

At the very breath of God. You know, we think about the very breath of God.

How does that impact us? Well, think back to Genesis.

What does the scripture tell us about humanity, about human beings,

about the first human? His name was Adam.

It says that the Lord God formed him out of the dust.

Can you imagine that? You got a pile of dirt.

And what does God do? He breathes life into that pile of dirt and boom, up pops Adam, right?

I mean, the powerful creative force of the breath of God that brings life to

that which just seems inert.

God breathed theonoustos, the breath of God, the inspired word of God.

We talk about the creative power of the word. Psalm 33, 6.

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Man, this week something incredible happened. There was a lineup of planets

that appeared in our sky.

I don't know if anyone had a telescope or binoculars or anything that went out and saw it.

We saw them here and there, but we didn't, I don't think, identify all the the

whole spectrum of things, but just displayed in our sky the beauty of the planets

that we have in our own solar system.

Outstanding, incredible, bright points of light out there.

We think about the creative ability of God for us and what God can create in our lives with His Word.

It says that the Word is God-breathed. It didn't come about because some guy

had an idea, oh, I can write something and get many people to follow.

You know, it wasn't...well, let's look at the Scripture, 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21.

"'Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by

the prophet's own interpretation.

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God

as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.'".

It was the Spirit of God that inspired these people to write down what they

were experiencing in life, what God told them in life.

And while it might not be a thing where God's whispering in their ear and they're

writing every single word, we can be guaranteed that every word that's in Scripture,

especially in the original autographs, the original manuscripts,

that they're the inspiration, the inspired Word of God, the breath of God is there.

The Scripture tells us that we are living epistles today, that God is writing

His story in us in the way that we're living, that we might not be in the canon

of Scripture, but people are reading the way you live.

Is there inspiration in that story? Is God working? Are He showing that God is moving?

Is the Holy Spirit bringing you along to testify to what He is doing?

We've got to live in the Scripture. We've got to know that we can have salvation

in Jesus. us, we've got to really have considered and nailed down the fact that

the Scripture is inspired, that it is God-breathed.

And then, number four this morning, that Scripture is useful to people.

I read verse 16, but here's some of the elements on how the Scripture is useful to us.

First of all, it's useful for teaching.

I've alluded to the fact before that the Holy Bible was used in the education

system of the United States early on, even before its founding.

They would teach not only the ABCs, but they would teach the history.

They would teach much, especially in the way of values and morals from the Bible.

Now, interesting, we've gotten away from using the scripture,

and look where we've come just since the 60s. That's another sermon,

I think, for another time.

Jesus said in John 7, 14 through 17, or it says here, not until halfway through

the feast did Jesus go up into the temple courts and begin to teach.

The Jews were amazed and asked, how did this man get such learning without having studied?

Jesus answered, my teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me.

If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes

from God or whether I speak it on my own.

Jesus knew that the scripture was important. Jesus knew that it's from the teaching

of scripture that we discern God's will, that we know, hey, is what I heard

on Sunday morning just Mike's idea?

Or was he preaching the word of God?

Was he preaching the scripture? Can I go back and can I fact check the pastor?

I encourage you to do that.

Sometimes I maybe misspeak, and it's a good conversation to have if I ever do that.

But do we study the Word? Do we get into it?

Do we see exactly what the teaching of God is for us and how we can teach others?

Well, secondly, it said in that same passage, verse 16, that it is useful for rebuking.

Now, I know that's kind of an old school word, right? And we don't like it because

it talks about getting in trouble. It talks about getting talked to.

Going to the principal's office maybe.

But here's what Hebrews 4.12 says, For the word of God is living and active,

sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Boy, if you're not sure something is of God, maybe there's some rebuking in

there that you need to take.

Maybe there's something that you've decided from an impure motive,

and you need the Lord just to cut you to the heart, to say, oh,

wait, time out, wait, let's check this again.

Let's check this attitude you have.

Let's check it and see if it falls in line with really what my teaching is all about.

It's useful in rebuking. None of us like to be rebuked.

But you know what? From that, there's an opportunity to grow.

From that, there's an opportunity to do as the Scripture says next,

and that is to be corrected.

The Word of God is useful for correcting.

We're going one way and our path needs to change. We can be corrected.

Psalm 119, 9-11, how can a young man keep his way pure?

By living according to your Word. I seek you with all my heart.

Do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that what?

I might not sin against you.

The word of God is powerful enough to correct us. Why is that important?

It's important because God loves you.

Correction is important because God doesn't want to see the end of the choices

that you make that don't follow his way.

God doesn't want to see the impurity come into your life and lead you astray.

God does not want to see you addicted, enslaved to anything else,

but instead to have freedom to follow him.

And when we're corrected, we're shown that we need to make a choice to change.

Well, I thought God loved me. Doesn't he accept me all the way that I am?

Yeah, he does, but he accepts you.

He wants you to change, though, after you've been accepted. God accepts you. Now change.

You don't have to change in your own power, though. It's the Holy Spirit of

God working in you that will transform you.

The Holy Spirit of God will change you, will take your old evil desires and lusts and wants.

Transform them into something that is godly, that is lovely,

that is pure, that is to be praised, is praiseworthy, as we say.

Folks, it's okay to be corrected.

It's from that that we get to learn, that we get to grow, that we get to be

more and more. who God wants us to be.

1 Peter 1.22, just to add to that, now that you have purified yourselves by

obeying the truth, so that you have sincere love for your brothers,

love one another deeply from the heart.

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through

the living and enduring word of God.

So it's teaching, rebuking, correcting, and all this points to training in righteousness.

Titus 2, 12 and 13, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled,

upright, and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope,

the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We're able to be trained if we follow what God says. If when we are shown our

sin and we repent of that and we're corrected, and then we step into the newness

of what God has for us, well, there's a transformation in the way we live.

There's training that happens.

The churchy word, the religious word righteousness just means living how God

says we're supposed to live.

Modeling what Jesus set out in his life to live as Christ lived.

To love everyone in spite of their pride, in spite of their lust,

in spite of everything that's wrong with them, and hoping that God will transform

them and come into their lives.

Training in righteousness, learning how to live the holy life that God wants

us to live, not in our own power, but living, keeping in step with the Spirit,

as Ephesians says, and walking along with him.

And last this morning, Scripture thoroughly equips us for every good work.

Back to verse 17, and so that the man of God, the person of God,

may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

There's a word in here that's used. I didn't type it right or have it typed

right in the bulletin, but it's artrios.

It means complete and mature.

I didn't grow up in the Church of the Nazarene, and so when I heard this phrase,

Christian perfection, I thought, how arrogant.

Man, these Nazarenes talked about being perfect. What's that all about?

And so I finally humbled myself to learn what this was all about.

It doesn't mean flawless.

It doesn't mean you do nothing wrong. That's the aim.

Don't get me wrong there. It's the aim, but it talks about becoming mature,

becoming complete, becoming finished, if you will.

When we think about this, it means we're equipped for every good thing that

God wants to do in our lives through us and every good work that He wants us to accomplish.

Remember back to James 1, consider it pure joy, my brothers,

when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing or the

perfecting of your faith develops perseverance.

Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,

not lacking anything. And that's it.

God wants you to be a complete person, not lacking anything in your life.

I don't know if you're a fan of mathematics.

You don't have to admit to it. It's okay. Just tell me secretly later.

But in mathematics, we learn about fractions. Hooray!

No. But we also learn about integers, right?

An integer is a number that is a whole number.

There's no fractions in integers. It's complete. It stands alone by itself.

Whether that's number one, number two, number three, or down to number 27.

It stands alone. It's an integer. It's not divided.

God wants us to have integrity, to not be divided,

to not be split here or there, but to be complete in our righteousness,

to be complete in following the lead of God and His Holy Spirit,

to live the way that He wants us to live.

When we think about being mature and complete, We're talking about in the spiritual

sense, in our love of purely loving others, just as Jesus loved us.

No ill intent, no hidden agendas, but just to love and to seek out our best.

And when we can do that for others, we can say that our love has been perfected,

that our love has been completed.

If we think about what we talked about today, we must engage with the Bible

regularly to live the godly life.

We've got to plug into the Word every single day.

The example was given to us in Deuteronomy chapter 11, verses 18 through 21.

Deuteronomy 11:18–21

Here's what the Word says. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds.

Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when

you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates so that your

days and the days of your children may be in the land that the Lord swore to give your forefathers—.

As many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

You know, some people take this literally. We see certain groups of people that

literally tie things on their body. That's the scripture.

They literally have things posted on their house. And man, if it takes that

to remember to live into the word, go for it.

But the point is clear. God's desire is for us to live in the word.

It doesn't mean we need to go around speaking King James English to one another.

Hello, brother. How art thou?

Peace be with thee. I mean, that's okay if you want to do that,

but that's not the point of my message.

The point of my message is just to live in to what God says we should be and

how we should be, and to live that out, and really to truly express love for

one another, even in the smallest things.

So how can you do this? How can you really live in God's Word every day?

Three points, and we're done.

First, get into some kind of Bible reading plan. It's easier now today than it ever has been.

There's this app out there. It's called the YouVersion Bible app.

It was produced by Life.Church out of Oklahoma.

And I tell you what, it's got just about every translation you can imagine on there.

If you're a King James person, it's there. If you're a New Living Translation, it's there.

If you're one of our Spanish translations, it's there. I mean, other languages.

But you can set it up to where it pesters you every day to read the Bible.

Pester in a good way. It reminds you, hey, here's your daily verse.

Here's your daily passage.

Not only that, you can hold yourself accountable in a little group to other people.

So you can be reading the same devotional passage, the same scripture passage every day.

It's easier now to get your dose of the Word into your life,

to really live into that.

You can get a book if you're not all into electronics, you can get a Bible that

is divided up into 365 different portions.

It's called the Bible in a Year. And each day, you read a portion of Scripture,

and if you continue in that process, everyday reading, you'll complete the whole Bible in that year.

If you just need a list of that, I can provide one for you. I have several.

You can even do an internet search, though I don't always suggest that,

but you can find a Bible reading plan.

The point is, Get in the Bible. Be in it every single day.

Secondly, memorize a key scripture every week.

If you're up for a challenge, try it every day. I would suggest starting with

2 Corinthians 5.17, since that is our verse of the year.

Therefore, if anyone be in Christ is a new creation, the old is gone, the new is here.

Just start small. If you want to do an easy one, do Jesus wept. There you go.

Hopefully it clicks in your mind, why did he weep? And then you'll study some more.

But start getting that word into your life, into your heart.

When that happens, the Holy Spirit can work in that every single day.

You don't even need a book. You don't even need your phone when you've memorized that.

Last but not least, I'll just encourage you, attend a Bible study group,

Sunday school, midweek Bible study, form a group in your house to study the Word.

And I told you we want to equip you so when you have that right now media-free

gift that we're going to give you next week to access to that,

you'll be able to pull up any kind of Bible study you want to have your family devotions.

You'll be able to have that to study a portion of Scripture with one of the

pastors from the church, or with one of the famous people that's out there,

like Francis Chan, among others,

where you can go and you can have

a Bible study led with videos and paper content if you want to print out.

What I'm saying is just start studying the Bible with someone.

Get into a group. There's accountability there, and God will bless you in that.

Folks, if you want a fresh start in faith, Start living in the scriptures.

Let it saturate your life.

I referenced before how we have drifted from our moorings, our foundings even, in this nation.

People can debate back and forth whether we were founded as a Christian nation

or not. I just say, well, what did you use as your textbook in school?

That kind of points to the people that our children will become.

Our children were using the Bible previously.

Look at the great things this nation has done in its history.

I think we can get back to that. I don't know whether the Scripture again will

be used in the public schools.

I would hope so, but I hope also that it is taught in a good way,

that it is taught by faithful teachers who are faithful to the Word.

Folks, don't look at our world with disgust. It's disgusting.

Don't look at our world and say there's no hope because there's always hope

as long as Jesus is around.

What I want you to do is just live out the scripture wherever you go.

The scripture, like we said, it's powerful. It's transformative.

And the scripture, as we live it out with a fresh start in faith,

boy, it can do amazing things in our communities as we bear this along.

We're going to close with a word of prayer, and then we'll have a song and then

say the Lord's Prayer is a benediction before we leave this morning. Pray with me, would you?

Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you, Father, for the opportunity to

dwell in the Word a little bit, to continue in the Word.

And I pray, God, as we continue and we leave here, that we will continue to do that.

Though we might not have a Bible with us all the time, Lord,

help us and bring to mind those scriptures that we've memorized.

Or, Lord, the scripture that we're practicing.

Lord, I pray that this will so saturate our life, that, Lord,

we are able to live out the life that you've called us to live.

God, when you said, be holy, even as I am holy, Lord, help us to do that by

getting into the word, saturating our lives with it.

And Lord, we pray that the results will show up in the lives of the individuals in our family.

Lord, it will show in the people in our church.

As Lord, we have a fresh start with your word. We fall in love with you over and over again.

God, thank you for the word that's inspired, the word that drives us,

Lord, the word that feeds our spirit and our soul. Be glorified,

we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.