How to Read Your Bible

Um, look, I wanna make two confessions to you really quick. Uh,

the first one is, I am an over packer.

Like if I ever go and travel anywhere,

I always put way too much aside of my bag. Uh,

I usually end up packing way more clothes than I need. But on top of that,

I always bring a bunch of books that I always intend to read. And, uh,

I have never read one of them like ever any single time.

The second confession is, and this is the part that, uh,

I really wanna kind of hone in on here a little bit, is, uh, this, the,

one of the books that I always bring with me is my Bible.

And I always have this idea that when I go on vacation, I'm like,

I don't have any distractions. There's nothing to get in my way,

there's no excuses. I can sleep until noon, wake up and still read my Bible.

Right? And, uh, that doesn't always happen that way. Um, this past summer,

my wife and I, we went to California and I brought my Bible with me and I said,

every morning I'm gonna wake up and all this stuff,

we're gonna have a good time.

And then I woke up and it was either too hot or the weather was just right,

and I went and hung out in the pool instead. Um, and ended up wasting some time,

right? But, uh, over the first couple of days, I was really beating myself up.

I was really upset at myself because I'm like, man,

I told myself I was gonna bring my Bible. And then I just, I get distracted.

I find something else, I end up. And so yeah, that's,

that's starting to beat up on me. Uh, fast forward,

I'm about halfway through the vacation and we go to this sushi restaurant and

we're sitting down and, uh, we're eating and my wife is talking to me,

but I'm not really listening to anything that she's saying. Um,

I promise this is different than usual.

I there's a reason for it this time. Um, she's talking,

but behind her, there's a homeless guy that walks into the restaurant and,

uh, I can tell he's not all there. He's asking for a cup of water.

Um, the, the server that was in the restaurant is like trying to be helpful,

but not too helpful, you know what I mean? Like,

this guy kind of gave off the vibe that he does this all the time and they're

like, Hey, you know, people are trying to eat and whatever.

Really treating this guy like he was an inconvenience. Uh,

but before he left out, I realized he didn't have any shoes on his feet.

And the entire time, once he walked out, uh,

the entire time my wife is talking to me,

the only thing I can keep hearing over and over and over and over again in,

in my heart is Matthew Chapter 25,

Matthew 25 · chapter mention

where Jesus is talking about how, uh,

there will be times where you see people or where we saw him, uh,

and he was hungry and we gave him something to eat or he was naked and we gave

him clothes and he was, uh, in jail. And we went to go visit him.

And they asked Jesus, when did we ever see you do any of these things?

And he says, whenever you do these things,

to the least of these is as if you'd done it to me.

So I see this guy and all I can, like, I I,

it's bothering me like it's getting on my nerves. I can't shake this thought of,

of just thinking about Jesus's words and realizing I have to do something.

So I go outside and I go to have a conversation with this guy.

And this is probably the part where you're like,

I did it and it was the best thing I've ever done. And I felt great about it.

The truth is, is like I was pretty uncomfortable the entire time. Uh,

he clearly wasn't in his right mind.

I asked him his name and it took him about two minutes to think of it. Uh,

he had a smell to him because he hadn't had a shower in a really long time. Uh,

I asked him his birthday, I'm pretty sure he made something up.

And so I asked him, I said, Hey, can, can I get you a pair of shoes?

And he's like, yeah. And the closest place was a couple of blocks away,

but his foot was also injured.

So it takes us a couple of minutes to get around the corner,

get to where we're gonna go, all this stuff. It was really time consuming.

But the entire time, all I could think of was Jesus' words from Matthew 25.

Now, I don't tell you this to tell you that I'm a great person because I'm not

. I definitely had some apprehension in this moment, moment.

There were definitely parts of me that, like, I sent my wife back to the car.

I was like, Hey, listen, I just, we don't, you know,

we don't know if we can trust this person. We wanna make sure he's gonna be,

it's gonna be a safe situation, all that stuff.

What the reason why I tell you that story is because it's proof that the word of

God is living in active.

And that even though I hadn't been inside of my Bible in a couple of days at

this point, uh,

the time that I had spent inside of the word had grown down deep into my heart.

And now the Holy Spirit was at work. And I just had this thought, man, I'm like,

man,

I'm so grateful that I read Matthew 25 and had those words from Jesus in there

because when the situation arose,

the Holy Spirit kind of had like this deposit that he was able to, or the, uh,

this deposit that he was able to pull from in order to send me into action.

And then I walked away from that thinking, man,

what else is in here that's not readily available for the Holy Spirit to draw

from in order to move me into being the type of person that he wants me to be?

And in that man, I just had such a hunger and a desire for the word, I'm like,

man, what other things? Like if it gets placed inside of me,

we'll draw up to the surface when the time comes. Uh, I wanna put it this way.

In order for the word of God to get into you,

you have to get into the word of God. So listen to this.

When we talk about reading the Bible, it's not this idea of perfection.

It's not about like, man, you gotta do it every day.

And it's gotta be this religious thing. And this checklist that you do,

what we're talking about is this participation, um,

where you're actually in an ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit.

He's revealing things to you in real time. And on those days,

even when you can't get to it, uh, it's being worked out in your life. So,

uh, when we talk about the Bible, when we've been doing this entire series,

the purpose of this is that ultimately we wanna see you grow in that this is

the, the job of the church, believe it or not. Uh, Ephesians chapter four,

uh, Paul writes this. He says,

now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets,

the evangelists, the pastors and teachers.

And their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up

the church, the body of Christ.

This will continue until we all come to such unity

in our faith and knowledge of God's son,

that we will be mature in the Lord measuring up to the full and complete

standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children.

We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that

they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak,

speak the truth in love growing in every way more and more like Christ who

is the head of his body, the church,

he makes the whole body fit together perfectly.

And each part does its own special work.

It helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and

full of love. And so that's what I wanna do today.

I want today drop that I want today to be a time for us to,

uh, in a way to train each other and work alongside each other, uh,

to grow in this knowledge of Christ that,

that the Bible's talking about so that we can reach maturity in Christ.

But that starts with baby steps .

So today isn't gonna be as much of a sermon,

as much as it's gonna kind of be a workshop, uh, where we look at, man,

what are some tips and tools and resources that we can use to help us engage in

scripture? Uh, again, not so that we can be religious,

know-it-alls or say we have it all figured out,

but so that we actually know how to feed ourselves so that we know how to go to

God, how to learn from God, and how to let him transform our lives. And so, uh,

here's what we're gonna do. Um,

I'm gonna go ahead and give you some of these tools.

I'm gonna lay 'em out for you. And, uh, we're just gonna start here.

So if you're a note taker, highly encourage you take some notes. Um,

here's my hope for this. If you're someone in here who,

maybe everything I talk about today, you've heard it before and you know it,

and it's a part of your daily routine and all that sort of stuff,

I want this to be something that hopefully models for you,

how you can have conversations with other people. Uh,

maybe there's somebody in your life who doesn't know how to engage the Bible.

Well, hopefully this is a model for that. Uh, this is gonna be online.

So if you ever want to use it as a tool somewhere down the road to say, Hey,

you're trying to get started, you have questions.

Maybe use it with your kids or your coworker who's new to the faith. Uh,

you can point them to this weekend as an example of what that looks like.

So here we go. Here's the first, uh, tool, tip, trick,

whatever you want to call it, that I want to give to you. Uh,

the first step in engaging with your scripture is this,

is to prepare your heart and mind.

Prepare your heart and mind before you even open the book.

We have to prepare our hearts and minds. Uh,

I have plans right now to turn my garage into a man cave.

I'm super excited about it. I'm really exci, I'm too excited about it. ,

I was up at three o'clock in the morning the other night taking pictures of the

garage. I have the Home Depot app on my phone.

I'm counting the cost of what it's gonna take to get to things,

but I know I shouldn't get started on this too early without the proper tools,

right? So I wanna make sure that I have all the tools that I need.

I wanna make sure that I have all the resources that I need.

I wanna make sure I have the money to go into this process.

I wanna make sure that I count the cost before I go into it, uh,

so that I don't end up making a bigger mess.

Any of y'all ever try to do a DIY project and you end up making it worse and you

spend way more money and you just end up calling a professional by the end of

all of it, right? Why? Because you didn't do your research.

You didn't come into it prepared and ready to go ahead of time.

Here's the difference about reading the Bible.

Reading the Bible is not a DIY project. It's not something that we just come to.

We say, okay, I read the, the words on the page and now boom, magic bullet,

everything inside of my life is transformed, right?

It's recognizing that our time in the word is actually communion with God.

So if you were to ever have an opportunity for you to go and sit down at a table

across from God, let me ask you something,

would you like kind of get ready for it? ?

Like you'd actually think about it, right? You,

you'd probably start coming up in your mind with, Hey,

here's some questions that I want to ask. God, here's what I'm actually feeling.

Here's what's going on in my brain.

Here are the things that are stressing me out this week.

And we think about all of those things. And then we come to God in humility,

prayerfully. And so, uh, the first thing I want to give you is,

is kind of a prayer that you can use. I, I went through, 'cause the church man,

we have like

generations of saints who have gone before us and have written out, uh,

prayers and, uh, just kind of these thoughts of devotion and stuff like that.

And actually where I found this was the K Love website.

I wasn't expecting it to find it there, but right there,

there was a prayer that you can pray to get yourself ready to read the Bible.

And here it is, dear Lord, I need your word. Like,

I need bread to live.

Help me to recognize my need and to hunger for your truth as I

read Feed my soul Like I eat a hearty meal.

Give me life abundantly as I follow its instructions today.

I love that it's just this moment for you to pause and reflect and say, God,

just, I I need something from you today. Can you,

can you meet my need? And there's a level of trust that comes with this.

I think we actually lose some of that trust when we approach the Bible thinking,

I'm gonna figure it all out. I'm just gonna read it.

I'm gonna know what it means and it's gonna be easy.

I I know at times the Bible can be confusing.

Maybe that's just God's way of asking us to rely on him.

And so as we approach him humbly in that, I think we start to see that happen.

The next recommendation to you would be to, uh,

once you prepare your heart to prepare a space.

And what I mean by that is you find a time,

a location and you get all the tools that you need. Okay? Uh, full transparency.

I am not a morning person. I've tried it. I've tried to be that guy.

I want to be that guy that's like 80 years old who wakes up at 3:00 AM and reads

the Bible till 7:00 AM That's not me. I just know it .

And I used to beat myself up for a long time. And so, you know what happened?

I would say, man, I can't wake up in the Bible, uh,

wake up in the morning to read my Bible in time. And so,

because I thought it had to be in the morning, I never read my Bible. Instead,

I just said, ah, I'll try again tomorrow.

And then I hit s news eight times again.

And then I just repeated that cycle over and over again.

But then what I came to realize was, man,

like Jesus just wants me and that doesn't like expire at a certain time,

, he's okay if I go to him in the times that match, like he made me,

he knows my personality type.

He knows that I'm not at my best in the morning .

And so if I can bring him my best at any point in the day,

he's still okay with that. Now,

I'm not saying that means that we never wake up early. Jesus woke up early,

he often got up early to go and be alone.

So I'm not saying that we should never discipline ourselves,

but I do think that we should at least like not try to kid ourselves either,

right? So you find the time that works for you.

Maybe that's first thing in the morning. Maybe it's during your lunch break.

Maybe it's once you put the kids on the bus.

Maybe it's once your roommate has an intramural soccer game,

and so they're gonna be out of the dorm room for a few minutes. You know,

you're gonna have some quiet to yourself.

And then here's something that's helped me. I have to think of

What does present Aaron need future Aaron to do so that I don't get in my own

way, . So if I make a plan to read the Bible later,

I have to start working now to eliminate those distractions. So, uh,

there was a time where I said, you know, I am gonna discipline myself.

I'm gonna do the early in the morning thing.

I woke up at 5:00 AM for about a week and just said,

I'm gonna wake up every day, 5:00 AM read the Bible. And so the night before,

you know what I did? I got my Bible. I opened it up on my, uh, kitchen island.

We, I love like smart devices.

So I told Google to turn on the kitchen lights at 5:00 AM I went and put

the K-cup in the Keurig.

So all I had to do in the morning was push the button and let it go.

Like I eliminated all possible distractions. And I told a friend of mine, Hey,

um, who we both decided to do this together at 5:00 AM Let's text each other.

Uh, not to give each other a hard time,

but just to make sure the other person got up.

Just give ourselves some accountability, right?

I try to eliminate anything that would create any sort of distractions.

And now at this point, you're ready to open your Bible, right?

It's like when you go to, like,

you do basketball practice and you spend like the first three weeks and you

don't touch a basketball yet. You're like, yeah, but when we get to the stuff,

now's the time. Uh,

and so one of the most common questions that I get all the time from people, um,

especially when I worked with students, middle schoolers and high schoolers, uh,

they would always ask, well, what bible do I get? Like, what's a good one?

What's the right one that I should read?

Like there's all these different translations and versions and what do I do with

all that stuff? And when I was in high school,

I asked my youth pastor this question and he said, you know,

the best bible to get? I said, which one? He goes,

the one you actually read . It makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it?

So I kind of went through some trial and error and I started trying out some

different things, and then after a while, I,

I found the Bible that worked for me.

But I want to kind of help you in making that decision for yourself.

So we have this chart that I wanna throw up on the screen,

and this shows you kind of a spectrum of all of the different translations that

we have.

Anybody ever like try to figure out what's the difference in all of these and

why are they different and how are they different? Well, hopefully this helps.

Okay?

What this does is it shows you all the different translations of the Bible and

where they fall on the spectrum based on what the translators are trying to do.

So in some of the examples that you see, like the NASB,

that's a New American standard Bible, and the ESV, um,

the English standard version, those are what we call word for word translations.

So the idea is, is that scholars sit down with the ancient text,

the Greek or the Hebrew or the Aramaic, and they say, what do these words mean?

And they translate it exactly, or at least as close as they can with it.

Still making sense in English, right? Because when you translate,

if you've ever used Google Translate before, you know,

sometimes you put it in and the way it comes back, it's like,

that's not exactly what I said, but I could see how you got there.

That's essentially what the word for word translation is.

And then as you move over, kind of as you go,

the meaning for meaning thought for thought, those ideas are like, okay,

how do we put this in a way that Americans will understand?

So the NIV for example, it's the most commonly used translation in the world,

and that's because it's a thought for thought translation.

So it may not be word for word exactly the same,

but you'll be able to get the general idea from it.

And then the further we go over, you also get paraphrased.

And the paraphrase is gonna be something like the message translation. Uh,

this was written by Eugene Peterson,

and basically what he did was he would read the Bible and he would say,

how would I say that? And then wrote it down. So, uh, often around hope,

we won't use the message from stage. Sometimes we will,

if we're trying to communicate or get, get a certain point across.

Usually what we try to use from stage is the ESV. Um,

and the reason why is because we just believe it's close to the original text.

So for example, let's just use this in real time. Uh,

this is Romans chapter 12 verse two. This is it in the ESV. It says,

Romans 12 · chapter mention

do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

That by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect. Okay? So that's the ESV,

that's the way they would put it. Here's the way the NLT would put that.

Don't copy. So that first one, just so you know, was word for word.

This one is thought for thought.

Don't copy the behaviors and customs of the world,

but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

See how it's the same thought? It's just a little bit different.

So that you kind of wrap your mind around it a little bit more. It says,

then you will learn how God's will for you, which is good and plea, uh,

which is good and pleasing and perfect. Now we about to get gangster.

This is the Message translation. All right? This is just shooting from the hip.

This is what I felt when I read it. says, this is Eugene Peterson's, uh,

interpretation of that passage. And so you'll notice too in the message,

it's not just one verse. What he'll do is he'll kind of group two,

three or four verses together to say, here's the, here's the summation,

here's the Cliff Notes version of it. So the way he writes it is,

here's what I want you to do, . I love that.

It's just so straight to the point. God, helping you take your everyday,

ordinary life, you're sleeping, eating, going to work,

and walking around life and place it before God is an offering.

Embracing what God does for you is the best thing that you can do for him.

Don't become so well, adjust,

adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead,

fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out,

readily recognized what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you who are always dragging you down to its level of

immaturity, God brings out the best of you,

and he develops well-formed maturity in you. Can I tell you what,

what the message is? It's Eugene Peterson's sermon of the Bible. It's like,

if he, it's what we do every week. It's when we read a passage, we say,

how do I explain this to people?

That's essentially what the message translation is.

So if you're looking on recommendations on which ones to get, um,

this one is my favorite Bible of all time. Uh, this is the Jesus centered Bible.

It's available on Amazon. Uh, and I have worked this thing to shreds man,

like I think the most Bibles the last book is Revelation minus one, Peter.

'cause it fell out. And so it's back here. Um, but I love it.

And one of the things that I love about it is,

is you know how in the New Testament how the words that are in red, uh, they,

like Jesus said those words in the Old Testament, in this Bible,

anything that alludes to Jesus or kind of foreshadows Jesus is in blue.

So it really helps you make some really cool connections between the Old

Testament and the New Testament. The second one, uh,

is an ESV Student Study Bible.

And what I like about the ESV Student Study Bible is that, uh,

this actually isn't it.

I I left that one at home because I was carrying it around earlier and didn't

fit in my bag. And then I, my wife told me that I left it on the bed.

So this is an ESV Bible. This one's bougie. I, this is handcrafted leather.

I I'm a nerd, y'all, I'm sorry, um, . But the ESV study Bible,

what I love is there's commentary on every verse in the Bible.

So if you read something, um, and you're like, I have no idea what that means,

you can look right at the bottom of a page and it gives you a little bit of

help. And then this one, the Telos Bible, um,

is the one that we recommend for middle schoolers and high schoolers.

This is actually the one that all of our student ministries use.

It's a new international version, the NIV. Um, and it has some stuff in there,

some devotionals and stuff that really help, uh,

drive home a lot of the points of scripture. And so, uh,

highly recommend you do that.

The other thing I would recommend is that when you read,

you read with a goal in mind. Um,

I want to kind of illustrate this with a point, okay? Uh,

I have a word search and I wanna throw it up there for you.

And, uh, I just want you to look until you think you recognize something. And,

uh, I just want to ask you,

has anybody ever looked at the Bible and felt like it looked like this?

just a bunch of jumbled words on the page. Okay, maybe you're,

maybe you're noticing some stuff. Let's go to the next one. Give you a hint.

It's WWE wrestlers.

Anybody kind of pick up on that after you found one or two of them? All right,

let's go to the next one.

Is it a little bit easier now that you have the word bank?

How about now let's go to this last one. It's pretty easy to find 'em there,

right? That's how my Bible looks .

And now whenever I open my Bible or flip through it, man,

I can use these colors that I've put in there to just highlight to me straight

up like, man, this is, this is what it is. So for example, um,

I actually have a slide that shows all the colors that I use in my Bible and

what I use them for. So we'll go ahead and throw that up there for you. Um,

this is my color. God, you don't have to use it exactly like this.

Feel free to take a picture of it if you think it'll be helpful for you.

But for me, like I can open my Bible right now and just,

I can literally flip to any random page.

And if I find something in orange,

it tells me something about the nature of God.

And so if I ever need a reminder of who God is, uh,

I can just look for the orange.

Same thing with the purple or the green or all those things.

The one I'll clarify is the blue, uh,

where I say Old Testament reference or New Testament connection.

If I read anything in the Old Testament that reminds me of the verse in the New

Testament or vice versa, I highlight 'em that way. Uh, highlight those in blue.

Um, and then yellow is stuff that doesn't really fit in a category.

I'm just like, dang, that's really good.

And I don't really know where to put it. So , I think it's good to,

to read those sorts of things and enjoy it that way.

So everything else that I want to tell you about with our last few minutes here,

the last few resources, uh, instead of just telling you about them,

I actually wanna show them to you with a passage of scripture that typically

gets, uh, misused all the time. Okay? So, um, before we do that though,

let's pray.

Because we talked about how the importance of diving into the word before we do

that, uh, approaching the word and humility is super important. So, um,

so let's go ahead and, and pray together. Uh, father, thank you for your word.

Um, and thank you for, um, man,

the way that you want to communicate with us.

The fact that you would even do that is such an honor. And so, Lord,

as we get ready to dive into this passage together, I just pray, um,

that you would reveal something new to us that we would leave out of this space

today with an excitement to continue to read your word because you want to

continue to reveal stuff to us.

Holy Spirit, we ask you to be present with us right now,

saying your son's name, we pray. Amen. Philippians four 13.

You know it , anybody got it tattooed on them anywhere.

Maybe Philippians four 13 says,

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

The verse we see all the time, right? Uh,

it's a verse you hear athletes spit out after they put up like 300

yards in a game or something like that. It's, uh, it was a verse.

I used to like murmur to myself before I took a test that I didn't study for in

high school. , I can do all things through tries who strengthens me.

I know I didn't study, but God, I know you're good.

You're gonna make something happen here, right? Listen,

I don't know if that's what that verse really means,

at least the way that we kind of pluck it out there.

And so what we have to do is think about context and context is super important.

Lemme show you what I mean by that. I have a picture I wanna show you.

You look at this. Can anybody tell me what this is? Anybody?

No. All right, let's, let's zoom out a little bit.

What was it? Go ahead and shout it out.

Are you certain that it's the last supper? Uh, now you're asking questions,

aren't you? Let's zoom out one more time. It's actually the last crawfish boil.

This was a staple in Louisiana homes, uh, all over the place. We loved it.

But do you see how important it's to zoom out and see the entire picture?

'cause when you only have a small portion of it, you start making assumptions,

right? So you read Philippians four 13, oh,

I can do all things through Christ who shrink this me? Well,

I'm gonna close this deal on Monday, right? I'm gonna pass this test. I'm gonna,

I'm gonna finish this or accomplish whatever I want. But as you zoom out,

you start to actually have, uh,

your brain informed by the word instead of your brain informing what the,

what it wants the word to mean, right?

So let's zoom out a little bit and learn something about the book of Philippians

that actually is gonna help illuminate for us what this means. So to do that,

um, I have a video that I wanna show you.

This is from an organization called The Bible Project.

Is anybody familiar with them? Got a few of us. Yeah, they're brilliant.

They're really, really good. Um,

and they offer these animated videos that give a really deep,

rich context into what you're about to read. Now we're gonna watch the whole,

we're not gonna watch the whole thing for Philippians,

but this is the first minute of it.

And watch how much it helps you understand the story a little bit better.

Check this out.

Paul's letter to the Philippians,

the church in Philippi was the first Jesus community.

Paul started in Eastern Europe. And that story is told in Acts chapter 16,

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Philippi was a Roman colony in ancient Macedonia.

It was full of retired soldiers, and it was known for its patriotic nationalism.

And so there Paul faced resistance when he was announcing Jesus as the true king

of the world. And after Paul moved on from there,

those who became followers of Jesus continued to suffer resistance and even

persecution. But they remained a vibrant community,

faithful to the way of Jesus.

Paul sent this letter from one of his many imprisonments,

and for a very practical reason,

the Philippians had sent one of their members a parodi to take a financial gift

to Paul to support him in prison.

And Paul sent back this letter with the Aphrodite to say thank you and to do a

whole lot more.

So that video is about nine minutes in total. And with the rest of that time,

they fill that canvas with all the details that are going into the book that

you're reading. And so, uh,

already that's starting to answer some questions for us, right? One,

we learned who wrote the book of Philippians. We learned why he wrote it.

We learned who he wrote it to, and we learned something about those people,

right? So we have to realize now that when Paul writes,

I can do all things through, Christ strengthens me.

He's writing that from a jail cell,

and he's sending this back as a message to some friends as a,

as a thank you, uh, for, for them sending him a gift.

And it's just wild to me that in this situation,

like they send this to Paul as an encouragement and he's in jail. And he goes,

no, actually, let me encourage you, . If I was Paul,

I would not have encouraging things to say. I'll be like, look here.

I've been drawing up these blueprints. This is how you break me out tomorrow.

Okay? Like, that's, that's the type of mindset that I'm in. No,

but instead he's actually encouraging them. And how is he able to do this?

Well, this is why we zoom out and read outside of just chapter four, um,

verse 13. So let's go ahead and start at verse 10,

and we'll work our way through and just see what God starts to reveal to us

through this.

Paul writes How I praise the Lord that you are concerned about me again. Now,

who's concerned about him? The Philippians.

And why are they concerned about him? Because he's in jail. There you go.

He says, I've always, uh, I know you have always been concerned for me,

but you didn't have the chance to help me. Not that I was never,

ever in need for I have learned how to be content.

And now as you continue to read the Bible,

you start to kind of notice some of these literary structures where you notice

that the way Paul writes is he'll introduce an idea and then he'll kind of start

to unpack that.

And so right now what he's about to do is he's about to unpack the idea of what

does it mean to be content? And how did he learn that? He says,

I've learned how to be content with whatever I have. He says,

I know how to live on almost anything or with everything I have learned

the secret of living in every situation. Excuse me,

whether it is with a full stomach or empty,

whether I have a lot or a little. Now just thinking about the context,

doesn't that change when you like, imagine Paul sitting in jail writing this,

you start to kinda wrap your mind around that a little bit more, right?

And then here comes verse 13,

for I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength,

even so you have done well to share with me in my present difficulty.

As you know,

EU Philippians were the only ones who gave me financial help when I first

brought you the good news and then traveled on from Macedonia.

Now as you zoom out even more,

you start to realize this entire journey of Paul's,

it's written down in the book of Acts as you start to read acts kind of through

chapter 16 and 18.

Like you learn that Paul traveled to all these different places and established

these different churches. Um, uh, I don't remember where I was.

I'm just gonna pick up here. It says,

no other church did this even when I was in Thesal. Inca,

you sent help more than once. I don't say this because I want a gift from you.

Rather, I want you to receive a reward for your kindness. Now,

this isn't, think about everything we've read so far.

Think about all of these different concepts, right? Do you think Paul's reward?

Is anything monetary? Do you think Paul's reward?

Is anything material? Do you think Paul's reward for them? He's like, man,

I just hope everything works out for me every now and then. Like,

do you think that's what he's writing from a jail cell?

Or do you think Paul wants them to receive the same type of contentment that he

has? And why would they need it?

Because they were also being persecuted for their faith.

These are all things we learn when we wrap our minds around the entire story.

And so what does Paul want for them? Verse 18, it says, at the moment,

I have all I need and more

in a jail cell counting down his days.

I am generously supplied with the gifts that you sent me with a pitis,

which this is great 'cause who would've known who a paphitis was before that

video?

There are sweet smelling sacrifice that is acceptable and pleasing to God.

And this same God who takes care of me will supply all of your needs from

his glorious riches, which you have in Christ Jesus. Amen.

This is where it's good to know the rest of the, the word.

This is good to know where those riches,

those glorious riches are listed throughout the Bible. Because if not,

lemme tell you what'll happened. I'll sit down and go, oh, um,

God has all these glorious riches. Let me brainstorm what glorious riches means,

A house cyber truck promotion.

And now I go to Jesus with my Christmas wishlist when Jesus never promised

that. But what does he promise? Matthew six 20,

he promises that treasures in heaven will not, uh,

will not rust or be destroyed, and that thieves can't break in and steal them.

That whatever he has for me is greater than that. Romans 1123 tells me that I,

I have been brought into the family of God. Ephesians one,

seven tells me that redemption is available through the blood of Jesus.

So is forgiveness of sins and his glorious grace. Ephesians two,

four tells me that I'm a made, made alive in Christ.

Ephesians three 16 tells me that I have received his Holy Spirit.

These are his glorious riches. And with that, because of that,

because I have that man, throw me in jail, kill me.

Take whatever you want to away from me. I can do any of these things. Why?

Because Christ is strengthening me. That's what Paul is talking about.

And now that verse, man, it's just so much more than like,

look at all this stuff I could accumulate instead, instead of saying,

what can I do? It's looking at what has Jesus already done?

And I just want to encourage you, when you read your Bible,

a simple way that you can figure out, am I on task?

Am I moving in the right direction? Is is this,

does what you read remind you of your necessity for Jesus?

Because if so, you're probably interpreting it right, . But instead,

if you walk away thinking, man, I don't need Jesus,

I'm just gonna go out and try harder,

you're probably missing the point somewhere.

And so here's what I want us to do as we close up today,

I just want you to, to take this list of questions,

and I want you to consider this whenever you read scripture.

The first is, this is what does this teach me about God? The second is,

what does this teach me about me? And then the third is,

how do I pray in light of this?

And so I'm gonna go ahead and close us out with a prayer and,

and my prayer is simply this, man, I just,

my prayer is that we would all experience what Paul experienced when he was in

prison,

that we would learn contentment because of the truths that we

find in this book. That as we read this book,

that we would connect with the God who wrote it in a way that transforms us from

the inside out.

And that we would be lifelong students of this book so

that we can, uh, uh, uh, can,

can start to just experience a glimpse on this side of heaven, of,

of everything that Jesus died on the cross for, for us,

it's experience unity with the Father and to experience transformation through

His word. Let's pray. Father,

we love you and, uh,

we are just so grateful for the word of the Lord.

God, over these past few weeks, we've talked about a lot.

I feel like we've covered a lot of ground,

yet we haven't even scratched the surface of the riches of your word.

God, I I pray right now,

I give you your Holy Spirit permission that no one would listen to this four

week series and think, oh, that's it. I got everything I need to get.

But that instead, Lord, the same way that we experience physical hunger,

PS for food, for nourishment, for water,

for anything that we have ambition towards God,

I pray that we would yearn that desperately to spend time in your word,

to know you, to be changed by you,

to live lives that are molded by you,

and to reflect you everywhere we go,

Lord, we're nothing without you, Lord.

We are nothing without you, Lord.

We are nothing without you.

So I just pray that we never leave you or our Bibles on the shelves ever

again. We ask all this in your son's name, we pray, amen. Amen.

Love you guys.