Transformed by Truth | Ayren Nelson

So I'm Judy, listen, my husband Tim or the Bradleys,

and we've been going to Hope Church since 2020,

so about four years. So to give you a brief explanation of what Lighthouse is,

it's its opportunity to serve families who have children that are

or have went through childhood cancer. For.

Us, our first experience at Lighthouse,

it was just connecting to the families and the children's that we

were serving and the families that we were serving with.

'cause we could never imagine losing one of our children.

And so all of these families have faced potentially losing a child and the

children had actually faced death. So for us with Lighthouse, um,

it was an opportunity for the kids to come and be kids.

Whether they're in the pool swimming or playing nine Square or cornhole. Um,

the fire trucks come,

they'll bring fire trucks and police cars and emergency vehicles.

And it's just a time for the families to relax and to finally not just be

focused on one person in the family and for the parents.

They finally got to spend time with other people that have been through

something similar. It was really good in that aspect to,

to just let them feel normal for a week.

Lighthouse tells you that every year at retreat you'll hear someone

ask, why are all these people here for us?

And Tim got to hear that on our first trip.

The dad asked, uh,

how they had so many people there and I told him it was all for their two and a

half year old that was on his shoulders. You know, we couldn't,

we couldn't understand what they had went through. And, um,

having a two and a half year old that had faced death and being the parents and

having to deal with that. And so the least we could do is to come and serve.

If we all just treated everybody else the way we wanted to be treated,

life would just be so much easier. And so for us,

it's just going there and taking the time to just love on people

and to let 'em know that they're important and that they don't have to,

they don't have to fight these fights alone. You know,

they're not by their self.

It is probably the most enjoyable and also one of the most

emotional, um, missions that we've served on. But it's,

it's local. You don't need a passport. You don't have to fly anywhere.

You can take your kids.

You know, oftentimes you hear just do it right, just go do it. Go follow.

And it is as easy as that. But it is as hard as that too, um,

because of the unknown and the, um, opportunity that fear cripples.

And what if, and I just can't urge you enough, urge someone enough to just,

not to consider it, but to just do it.

Hello? Is everybody doing All right? Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Well,

we are gonna go ahead and get rolling quick 'cause we have a lot of ground to

cover today. Uh, as you heard earlier,

we are starting a brand new series this week called,

this is the Word of the Lord, and this entire series is about the Bible.

And maybe you hear that and you're like, well, Aaron,

don't we talk about the Bible every week? , uh, sort of kind of, right?

Like we talk from the Bible, we teach from the Bible,

usually there's a passage and we walk through it and we, we talk about, uh,

the things that are in here.

But what we're actually gonna be talking about for the next four weeks is what

is the Bible? What is it, what is it not? How do we read it?

How do we not read it?

And I know there may be some people in here who you feel like this feels a

little bit basic or it feels a little bit elementary like, okay, like we,

we get it, it's the Bible, we pull it out every week and you know,

that's how we go. But um,

I actually wanna take a moment before we get too far into things and I want us

to go through an assessment together, okay? And, uh, these questions,

I don't want you to answer them out loud, but they're not rhetorical either.

Sometimes you hear a question and you're just like, Hmm, that's a good question.

But then you don't actually answer it in your brain. So it's not rhetorical.

I actually want you to think about your honest answer to these and don't answer

these the way you think you should. This is a moment between you and God,

answer them honestly, give yourself an honest assessment. Okay? So here we go.

How important is the Bible to you?

Number two,

how many times a week do you interact with the Bible

outside of church or small group?

Have you read the Bible in its entirety?

And are you sure , because I know that was me for a long time. I'm like,

surely I've covered all the ground by now, right?

I've been in church for a long time, but honestly have,

do you know for a fact that you've covered everything that's in there?

And then if you have, do you believe everything that the Bible has to say?

Why do you believe everything that the Bible has to say?

If you bumped into someone on the street who you knew relatively well,

but they knew nothing about God, they knew nothing about Christianity,

they knew nothing about the Bible, and they asked you, Hey,

can you describe the book to me? What would you say?

How about this one?

When was the last time that you challenged yourself to memorize a verse or a

passage of scripture to have the word written on your heart?

This one's a little bit tough.

When was the last time that you read something in scripture that bothered you?

And then what did you do with it?

So in light of those questions, I want to ask you one more,

I wanna revisit where we started. How important is the Bible to you really?

Now, if you're anything like me, you know,

this assessment that I've just asked you to give yourself,

it's not gonna be graded, but in your brain,

you probably give yourself a pass fail, right?

Either I'm doing really good or I'm doing really bad, or somewhere in between.

Lemme talk to my really bad people for just a second. Uh,

the bar for pass isn't as high as you may think it is. Um,

the American Bible Society,

they're this organization who every year they publish, uh,

what they call the state of the Bible. And basically what they do is they, uh,

take polls and census throughout America to figure out what is America's

relationship with the Bible.

And so they wanted to figure out how many Americans, uh,

have an ongoing relationship with their Bible.

And the number comes in at 39%. Okay?

39% of Americans would say that they have an ongoing relationship with their

Bible. Here's where the problem comes in.

In order to kind of put parameters around this and define what is a relationship

with the Bible looks like they askeded.

How many of you interact with the Bible at least three or four times

a year outside of a church setting? That's not a week,

that's not a month over the course of a year.

And so you think about it for anybody who would say, yeah,

the Bible is important to me. Even if you haven't,

if somebody asks you that question, you'd probably be like, well,

surely I opened it three or four times this year, right?

So realistically that 39% is probably even a little bit lower than that.

And so there's this crisis that's going on, I would say, in our country,

in our world, and that crisis is biblical illiteracy.

And that's really what we're gonna be addressing through the course of this

series. And so I want you to think about this book. You know,

one of the questions I asked you was how would you describe the Bible to someone

on the street? And I think in its simplest, most profound, uh, way,

we define this as the word of the Lord.

And I want you to think about it that way and then kind of ask yourself some of

those questions again. Right? So what if we,

what if we rephrase those from earlier? What if I asked you, Hey,

how important is the word of the Lord to you?

And don't change your answer because it's the same question, right?

How important is God's message or his opinions or his promises or his character

in the way he reveals that to you?

When was the last time that God spoke to you and it immediately affected the way

that you live your life? And lemme paraphrase that one question I had,

you revisit, how important is God's voice to you? And again,

don't change the answer because we're still talking about the same thing.

This is how he reveals himself to us.

And so we realize that there are some natural hurdles that we all have as we go

through scripture. And so those are the things that, um,

that we're gonna address. Okay? Um,

we're talking about the idea of biblical literacy, and I've been kind of,

I've been toying around with this working definition of what biblical literacy

is. Um, because lemme tell you what it's not,

it's not being able to crush Bible trivia like that alone is not

biblical literacy. Lemme tell you this, uh,

when I was at the University of New Orleans, I had a professor,

an English professor, who was a very outspoken atheist.

And the next semester I was signing up for classes and I was scroll looking down

the list,

and I realized she was teaching a class called the Bible is Literature. Uh,

and so as an English teacher, she knew the nuances of the Bible.

She could pinpoint all of the connections between the Old Testament and the New

Testament. She, uh,

could talk about all the different literary styles and the different genres of

the Bible.

She knew that it was originally written in the Hebrew and the Aramaic and the

Greek. And how do we, uh,

take those and translate them into our English language? But guess what?

She never had a profound and genuine encounter with the Holy Spirit.

And I think for us, even as Bible carrying believers,

it's very common and very easy for that to happen.

So when I talk about biblical literacy, what are we talking about? It's this,

and we're gonna leave it up for a while for my note takers in case you need some

time to go through it. 'cause a little long.

But biblical literacy is the ability to know the scriptures and the

God who inspired them,

and to rightly interpret and apply its

meaning to our lives in ways that shape us into the image of Jesus.

Okay? So this is kind of a, it's a four part thing, okay?

The first is to know the scripture. So that just starts on a basic level.

You gotta read it and know what it says, but beyond that,

to have a relationship with the God who wrote it, uh, who inspired them,

and then to be able to rightly interpret them. So I read this,

but now I'm trying to figure out what does it mean and then to apply that truth

to our lives in a way that shapes us into the image of Jesus. That four part,

um, it's almost like this puzzle made up of four parts that when we, uh,

internalize all of those,

that is how we can know if we're truly biblically literate. And so, uh,

every week when we talk about the Bible, you know,

I want you to think about those weeks kind of as, uh, us giving you a fish.

And the next four weeks is gonna be us, you teaching you how to fish,

how when you're on your own,

when you're trying to navigate this book to walk through it.

And so lemme just give you a quick preview of what to expect next week. Um,

Jason's gonna be back and he is going to hold your breath,

leave you through the entire story of scripture, like Genesis to Revelation,

what's going on there, because I think a lot of us, uh,

what we know of the Bible is just kind of these verses that have been picked out

or maybe these random stories and things like that.

But the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, even though it's 66 different books,

it's one collection that tells one story.

So he's gonna talk to us about what that story is. Um, the following week,

I'll be back with you and we're gonna be talking about how we can be sure that

scripture is true. We live in an information age right now,

and there is so much misinformation and false theology and false doctrine

flying around.

And I can't tell you how many people I know who have been lifelong Christians

that see one thing on the internet and they're like, man,

my faith feels like a house of cards that's crumbling down.

So the purpose of that week will be to how do we, uh, discern truth from lies?

Um, and how do we learn to trust the Bible more than TikTok?

And then week four, uh,

I'm actually really excited about at all of our campuses,

we're gonna have live teaching from all of our campus pastors.

And basically this is gonna be a workshop, uh, uh, to teach is Us,

how do I actually read the Bible?

So what we want you to do for that is we've set up a way for you to kind of send

in some questions to us.

You can text the word question to 7 2 9 8 9 or questions

we text tested both, both of them work. Uh, but you can text that,

that word to 7 2 9 8 9, and it'll give you a form where you can just say, Hey,

here's some of the questions. Here's some of the biggest hurdles that I have.

And then in week four, we're just gonna address those. And so bring your Bible,

bring your highlighters, bring your pens, bring your notebooks.

It might kind of feel like class,

but I think it's gonna be one of the most practical weekends, um,

that we've had that, uh, hopefully will be able to help you to get started.

So that's the next couple of weeks. But what about today? Uh,

today we are going to talk about, you know, we,

we mentioned that biblical literacy is, uh,

reading the Bible in a way that transforms us into the image of Jesus.

But how does that happen? What does that process actually look like?

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Second Kings chapter 22.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

And I just kinda wanna get a pulse of where we all are. Uh, very simply,

I just want to ask you this, this part is a little bit of trivia, uh,

based on the name, excuse me. First and Second Kings,

what do you think the books of Kings are about?

If you said kings, give yourself a round of applause. Okay?

Give yourself your first gold sticker. You're doing it,

you're learning the Bible. I'm really, really proud of you. Yeah,

it's the story of King. Some of y'all were like, is this a trick question?

I feel like it's gonna be, when I used to do middle school ministry,

I used to ask kids all the time who wrote John? They're like,

John who wrote Matthew? Matthew who wrote Timothy? They're like Timothy, like,

no, Paul got suck it. Um, I used to have so much fun with that.

But it's about, uh,

the kings of Israel we're dropping in on the nation of Israel.

And at this point they've gone through a lot. Okay? Um,

they were in captivity to the nation of Egypt.

They were enslaved for hundreds of years.

And God sends along a man named Moses to set them free.

And so they're released from their slavery. Uh,

they move into a new land and God says, Hey, I want to be your king.

And they go, no, actually the other nations,

they have human kings and we know how infallible they are.

So can we get one of those instead? And so God, uh,

somewhat reluctantly, he, uh, anoints a man named Saul and says, okay,

if you guys want a king, I will give you a human king that you can follow.

And then we read the stories of Saul and then of David,

and then of David's sons Solomon. Uh,

and then in the books of First and second Kings,

we get the list of kings who ruled over Israel.

And let me just spoil this for you. They, most of them,

the majority of them completely ruin it. They drive the nation into the ground.

Uh, the nation is divided into two. Um, uh,

they're split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of

Judah. So the entire nation has a, a split that happens.

And today we're gonna focus in on the kingdom of Judah. Uh,

and most of their kings were evil.

They tended to drift further and further and further away from God.

God called them to be unified, holy nation that follows him.

But after amount of time, a certain amount of time,

they end up becoming defiled by things like idol worship and injustice and

slavery and warfare. These are the new defining marks of a society that has, uh,

pushed God to the side.

And they reach a point where the idea of God has been so lost

that they're struggling so deep.

But then there comes along an 8-year-old boy named Josiah .

And Josiah, this 8-year-old becomes their king.

And you thought our political situation was scary, right?

Could you imagine if we go pull some kid outta Kid City and say, Hey,

figure it out, right? That's basically what happened here. And so, uh,

the Bible tells us that there was, uh, uh,

Josiah's dad was this king of Judah named Amen. He dies,

his son becomes the new king of Judah. Uh,

and there's something special about Josiah. If you read through Kings,

you'll notice there's a recurring, uh,

description of all of the evil kings who rule over, uh, the nation. Um,

it sounds something like this, it'll say,

so and so was X amount years old when they began to reign,

and they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Uh,

they served and worshiped idols.

They abandoned the Lord just that their Father had done.

And there was this idea of like, man, they're,

they're really following in the footsteps of their bad leadership,

but not Josiah. We get a different description for him.

If you look at two Kings 21 starting in verse one, it says,

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign and he reigned

31 years in Jerusalem. He dropped down to verse two.

It says he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the way of

his, of David, his father. You're like, wait a minute.

I thought you said amen was his father. Yeah, he,

this is just the Bible's way of saying he followed, followed the pathway of,

of a spiritual leader, if that makes sense. He walked in the way of David,

his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

And for the next two chapters, the Bible describes to us what the life of,

of the rule of King Josiah was like. Um, during his reign,

the Jerusalem had a temple and that temple had been destroyed.

And so under Josiah's leadership, he said, Hey, I'm gonna take my, my secretary,

whose name was Shain. There's a lot of confusing names in here, okay? So just,

you gotta, you gotta focus in for just a minute. But he's like,

I'm gonna take Shain, my secretary, and I'm gonna ask him to go to the,

the temple which has been, uh, demolished, go to that temple,

but they've still been collecting money. Take the money they've collected,

use that to buy the supplies needed to repair the temple.

So Shahan goes to the temple and when he gets there, he meets a man named Hel

Heah is the high priest. Think of him kind of as the lead pastor of this temple,

right? And he goes, Hey, hel kayah,

can I get the money from you because we want to do some repairs to the temple.

And Hill Kayah goes, yeah, uh, we can. But um, real quick, uh,

while I was cleaning out in the temple, uh,

I found the book of the Law of Moses. Um, do you want it?

And Chaffin's like, I, I don't really know what that is, but sure,

I'll I'll take it. Long story short, what the book of the law of Moses was,

scholars believe it was a portion of the book of Deuteronomy.

It would've been the only Bible that they had to this point,

but it had been lost in all of the destruction of the temple.

So Israel had been doing their own thing without this, uh,

knowledge of who God was.

Imagine a church trying to find its own way without the Bible and then just, uh,

succumbing to the culture around it, right?

So they end up bringing this back to Josiah. And uh, here's what happens.

We're gonna read this from um, uh, chapter 22 verses 11 through 13. Now,

buckle up. There's a lot of long confusing names in here, but,

but I believe in you. I believe we can all do this together.

If I can read it out loud in front of a group of people,

you can listen and follow along. All right? And I need a number.

I love grace here. So starting in verse 11, it says,

when the king heard the words of the book of the law,

he tore his clothes and the king commanded kuah the priest and

ha hacha, here we go, the son of Shain and Aor,

the son of Maiah and Shain the secretary, and Isaiah the king servant.

That's just the way of saying he got a bunch of people together.

Wish it would've said that. Uh, verse 13, he says,

go inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning

the words of this book that has been found for great is the wrath of the Lord.

That it is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of

this book to do according to all that was written concerning us.

So Josiah's like, look man,

you found this book and there's a lot of stuff in there that don't seem good for

anyone who turns their back on God.

We need you to go and find someone to talk to God for us and let us know what we

should do. So this group of people goes and they find a prophet, um,

and she goes to God on their behalf and says, Hey, listen, yeah,

you're right man. Y'all made a covenant with God and you broke it.

And so as a result of that covenant, there are going to be punish,

there is gonna be punishment because sin always has consequences.

But God says, listen, Josiah,

because you responded a certain way,

you're gonna experience something different. So in verse 18, uh, it says,

but to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord,

thus shall say to him, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,

regarding the words you have heard, because your heart was penitent.

And because you humbled yourself before the Lord,

when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, uh,

that they should become a desolation and a curse.

And because you have torn your clothes and wept before me,

I also have heard you declares the Lord. Therefore, behold,

I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in

peace and your eyes shall not see, um,

shall not see all the disaster that I'll bring upon this place.

And they brought back that word to the king. So God's basically saying, listen,

Josiah, because you were, uh, sorry,

because you were deeply hurt by the things that you realize to be true. Um, yes,

uh, Judah is gonna suffer but not in your lifetime.

And so we keep reading along and Josiah immediately he goes to all the people

and decides, Hey, listen, some things have to change. Okay,

here's the last big chunk of scripture that we're gonna go through,

but it's super important for where we're gonna go today. Okay?

So I want you to lean in Second Kings 23 verses one through three.

It says,

then the king sent and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to

him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord and with him,

all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priest and the

prophets, all the people, both small and great.

And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the Covenant that had

been found in the house of the Lord.

So all that segment of Deuteronomy that they had found,

he read it out loud to all the people.

And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before God to walk after

the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with

all his heart, all his soul,

to perform the words of the covenant that were written in the book.

And all the people joined in on that covenant. So basically, uh,

Josiah's saying, Hey, listen,

all the people that I have control over we're team God now and things

are going to change. And so Josiah,

he sends a team of people out across the land and they start doing everything

and anything they can to rid Judah of anything that doesn't point them towards

God. So, uh, Josiah,

he sends leaders to the temple to remove all of the false idols that had been

there. Uh, he uh, has all of the priests who led people in idol worship.

He says, you guys are fired. Y'all are out of office. There was land, uh,

where these idols had been worshiped. He's like, destroy the land.

There were people who had been buried, um, in the name of these false gods.

Josiah said, Hey, those dead people dig their bones up and burn them.

And then he went over to the bones and like beat 'em some more to make sure they

were like dust. And then bring those all the way outta the city. Okay?

This dude's being serious.

There were horses that had been dedicated to the sun gods. And so Josiah says,

Hey, you know what? We don't need these horses anyway. Take the collar off,

open the front door, let 'em run, burn their chariots. Uh,

he got rid of all the mediums,

all the psychics that were in the land like he is cleaning house.

But he also re institutes the Passover, which was this meal that they had, uh,

that God had given them as a way to remember that he was their savior,

that he was their true king.

And the second kings 2325 says this, this is, this is the,

the, the final, um, description that we have of Josiah.

It says that before him there was no king like him who turned to

the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might

according to all the law of Moses,

nor did any like him arise. I know that's a lot.

We just covered two scriptures worth of text.

But it's weird to do a series called, this is the Word of the Lord,

not spend Time in the Word of the Lord, right? .

I wanna make a couple of observations from this story about how biblical

transformation happens.

I think there's a couple of steps that we see in Josiah's life that I think we

all need to deeply internalize. And the first one is this,

it's a sense of remorse. It's a sense of remorse.

Second Kings 2211 said that when Josiah heard the words of the book of the law

that he tore his clothes. That's a weird response, right?

I've never preached a sermon so good that somebody got up and started stripping.

Like that's thankfully that has never happened.

And hopefully tonight's not the night. But he does this. Why?

Because it was an ancient way of showing grief. And I want to ask you,

when is the last time that you read the word of the Lord and actually felt a

sense of grief? Like,

when's the last time that you had an interaction with the Bible that showed

you something in you that was wrong to the point that it actually kind of like

bothered you a little bit. Like I'll say if,

if every time you read the Bible you walk away feeling encouraged and like

rainbows and sunshines, you might have,

you might wanna go back and read it one more time 'cause there's some hard

truths in there. Now the goal of this is not shame.

That is never the Bible's goal. We'll show you where this remorse leads to,

but man,

when was the last time you read the Bible and it bothered you like a rock in

your shoe where you're like,

I'm not going to be right until I get this thing taken care of.

My relationship with God is gonna feel off until this situation gets taken care

of. Have you ever felt that way? Listen,

I talk to people all the time who tell me, man, you know,

I'm pretty sure I've been saved since I was a baby.

Like I just can't remember a single time where I didn't have God in my life.

And listen, with all due respect, that's impossible,

like genuinely, because there has to come a moment.

Even if you grew up in a godly household,

you've been living with godly morals your entire life.

There hap something happens when you open this book with the power of the Holy

Spirit that points out how sinful you are and how holy God is.

And you think woe is me God, I need you to work on me.

So even if you've been raised around these things all your life,

there has to be a moment where the Bible helps you recognize your sinfulness in

light of God's holiness. And remember,

Josiah had to send somebody a way to dig this out, to find this.

We live with this word all the time and barely touch it.

There's so many truths in here that deeply impact us that we claim,

we believe that we don't interact with on a regular basis.

And I just wonder how many of us are missing out on the work that the Holy

Spirit wants to do inside of us? Listen,

if you've ever read scripture and you felt something inside of you like, man,

something is off here, there's a word for that. It's called conviction.

And conviction is this thing that the Holy Spirit does where he rises up inside

of us to let us know that there's some aspect of our life that doesn't bring

honor to God. Listen, a few years ago I saw a clip from Dr. Phil.

Don't judge me, um, Dr. Phil. So me and my wife,

whenever we travel, we, the first thing we do, we get in the hotel room,

we turn on the tv, and we look for either Dr. Phil or Diners Drive in and dives.

Those are like, and they just sit on the TV the entire time. We're away.

It's just what we do.

But there was a story on Dr. Phil about a boy who was born with a rare disease

where he does, like his nerve endings don't work, so he doesn't feel any pain.

And maybe you think about that and you're like, man, what a lucky kid. Right?

But actually his parents were so distraught over it because, uh,

he would go and put his hand on the stove and just watch it sin and never pull

back. 'cause he didn't feel anything.

He would climb trees and fall out and break a leg and then go and try to walk on

that leg because he, he didn't have that feeling.

And I think this is what happens with a lot of us in the Bible.

I think we've lost our nerve endings. I think we've gone through the,

the motions of Christianity for so long that we're not susceptible to

that pain anymore.

But this is why we need to invite the Holy Spirit into our time in the word,

because the Holy Spirit works like heat from the stove.

It's a warning that lets you know that something in your life is not right,

but that, that remorse, that conviction, it leads to the next step.

And that's repentance. I was reading earlier, uh,

this week in two Corinthians, um, chapter seven, if you want to check it out.

It's, it's pretty funny actually.

But Paul is writing to the church in Corinth and he's telling him, he's like,

Hey, listen, I wrote y'all a letter before and I heard y'all really like,

got down in the dumps about it. He's like, I'm sorry, I,

I think I went a little bit too hard on you guys. But then he goes,

you know what, maybe I'm not, because it led you to repentance.

And repentance is not just this idea of saying, Hey, I'm sorry,

it's saying I'm sorry, followed by an actionable step. And this is a, a state,

a stature of the heart. We saw this in Josiah as well, right? In chapter 22,

verse 19,

it says that his heart was penitent and he humbled himself before the Lord.

Listen,

hearing the word of God and feeling remorse means absolutely nothing

if it doesn't lead to a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit to bring about

tangible change in your life.

The goal of scripture is not just to make you feel bad, is to say, Hey, listen,

the reason why you feel bad is because you're moving in a direction you were

never designed to move in. Repent,

which means to take a complete 180 run away from those things and run into the

arms of God. That's what scripture, uh, calls us into.

The same thing is true of preaching.

Like how many times do we come into church and we sit down and we hear a

message? And our only takeaway from that was, that was a good message.

Or I really lost him when he started using all those big words in the Old

Testament. Like,

how many times do we walk into church and we actually walk out saying, man,

there's some, there's some soul work that needs to be done.

Now I was talking to some of the other pastors on our staff earlier this week

and we were joking, but I, I don't know how much of a joke it really is,

but man, sometimes we walk into church so excited, like, man,

I'm gonna walk in here encouraged and feel great.

I'm gonna walk out and have a big smile on my face when I wonder if sometimes we

should walk into church like we're walking into a funeral because we trust that

God wants to put to death something inside of us that doesn't glorify him.

What does that look like? Do we even think of that as a possibility?

Do we imagine the word of God as being transformative?

Because that's how the Bible describes itself.

two Timothy three 16 through 17 says that all scripture is breathed out

by God and is profitable for teaching because there's some stuff

you don't know. It's, it's, um,

used for reproof and correction because we don't get things right all the time

and for training in righteousness because this life in this faith takes

practice.

You don't just figure it out overnight so that the man or woman

of God may be complete equipped for every good

work.

If there's a part of your life where you feel incomplete or un whole or like you

can't, uh, uh, accomplish every good work that ha God has designed for you,

I wonder if it's because we're trying to conjure these things without the word

of God in our lives. Many of us want to live like Jesus,

but that's impossible without a deep internalization of God's word.

Repentance, true repentance is impossible without action.

And this is the third thing and the last thing that we see in Josiah's life,

this is the idea of reform. You know,

once the word of God has convicted us and calls us to repentance,

there has to be a tangible change as well.

And we see Josiah do this aggressively, right?

He goes through the town and he's like, anything that resembles anything sinful,

I wanna get it outta here. Why not? So that, uh,

we could be on um, um,

good terms with God so that he only blesses us and all this other stuff,

but because he realizes, man,

we have been offending God and now something needs to change.

There's a part of the story we didn't get into, but I love it.

I find it hilarious,

but he's like throwing stuff out and stumping on bones and he sees a grave like

in the distance and he's like, Hey, what's up with that grave over there?

And they're like, oh no, that guy's cool.

He's actually a prophet who said that this day will come. And he is like,

all right, leave that grave alone . What else can we burn?

What else do we need to get rid of?

And I just love that aggressive elimination of sin

from their land. What would that look like in our lives

For us to say, Hey, listen, uh, we're going to make some changes around here.

Maybe that's your schedule.

Maybe that's the things you allow yourself to watch or the accounts that you

follow on social media.

Maybe it's pornography or alcohol or some other addiction.

Maybe it's the way that you live with your spouse or maybe it's the way that you

and, uh,

your significant other who you're not married to or living in a way that is

opposite of the word of God. Maybe uh,

it's a commitment that you have as a family to come to and attend church

together. Maybe it's the way that you talk to or about other people. Listen,

these are the things that we all need to assess and say, Hey God,

every area of my life, here's an open hand.

Do it at what you will because I trust your way more than my own because your

word says it

to be reformed is to allow yourself to be shaped by another way.

Romans 12, two says, don't be conformed, um, to this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And you know how that happens.

You know how you renew your mind. It's by what you put into it.

It's by spending time meditating on this and thinking about this. Listen,

I want to ask you right now, especially in this political season right now,

how much junk is going into your brain? Like without even thinking about it,

Let's just look at politics, okay?

Every time you start a YouTube video, so and so is out to ruin your life.

If you don't do this, your family's going to uh, whatever, fill in the blank,

right? You get text messages on your phone if coming from every angle,

man,

how do you think you can make it through a day without filtering this through

your brain to make sense of all of that noise and all of that nonsense?

Donald Whitney puts it this way in a quote that I absolutely love. He says,

little input of God's word results in little resemblance of God's son.

If we want God to make us like Jesus,

we have got to spend time reflecting on what he said. Oh God,

why don't you speak to me? I'm so clueless about the situation. Where do I go?

What do I do that he wrote you 66 books of his best stuff

that hasn't changed ever.

If we would just pick it up and engage with it.

The word of God, it brings about remorse, repentance,

reformation, but it's a lifelong process. We have to repeat it,

we have to repeat it. This is a lifelong thing.

I had a professor who I was talking to about the Bible one time and he's like,

yeah, this is like my 38th time reading through it cover to cover.

And I was like, you still get stuff out of it? He goes, man,

I get something new out of it every time because the word of God is living and

active.

And so maybe through these few minutes you've had something kind of spark inside

of you where you realize, man, you know what?

Maybe I haven't been prioritizing this the way that I should.

I want to give you a couple of next steps, um,

that I hope will just get the ball moat rolling in the meantime. Okay?

The first is this. Read your Bible.

probably didn't see that one coming, right? .

And I would say just to pick a place and start,

and I actually know this is one of the number one,

I sat around with some of the,

the other teaching pastors this week and I was like, Hey,

what's the number one question you get about like,

the hurdles that people face when read in scripture? And they said,

I don't know where to start.

So here are a couple of recommendations if you're looking for a simple way to

get started. Okay? Uh,

something that I did that actually was really helpful for me is I looked up

online and I found a list of the books of the Bible by word count and

I started at the bottom . So which one's the shortest?

Now I'll tell you now, it's like one of the like Johns,

it's either second or third John probably read first, second,

and third John together. That way you're not like so disjointed. But I mean,

you can read all three of them in about 15,

maybe 20 minutes and just keep doing that and kind of build up and build up.

And after a while you'll notice yourself developing a habit.

Another option is just to start at the beginning.

Next week Jason's gonna get into the grand narrative of scripture,

but it's easier to understand what the book is about if you just start at the

beginning and work your way through. Um,

if you're looking for really practical stuff, like, man,

I'm looking for the stuff that's, that's just really clear and to the point.

I wanna recommend the Sermon on the Mount to you. Uh,

this is Matthew chapters five, six, and seven. I call it Jesus's greatest hits.

And if you are looking for a passage of scripture that will bring up

remorse and lead you to a desire for repentance and for reformation,

I can't think of a better place to start than that. And then as a church, um,

and I realize some of you may not realize this,

but we have an app called the Hope and Real Life app. And in there,

there is a bible in a year reading plan that it's going on right now.

Now we're a couple of days in,

I think we're a little bit over a week in right now,

but there's a way that if you go into the app,

if you click on daily and then click in the calendar,

you can go back and it lets you start at the beginning. Uh, and if you're like,

man, I don't wanna hop on the train now because what if it's too late? Listen,

I had somebody that told me a few years ago, they were like, listen,

if you missed a meal, would you never eat again?

I was like, no, of course not. I would actually become more hungry for it.

And he said, that's the desire you need to have for the word. If you miss a day,

it's okay, just hop back in because there's such a deep desire for it.

And I realize some of us may not have that desire.

So as we get ready to close out, um, I actually wanna pray for that.

And so I wanna invite you into a moment kind of a a of engaging in,

in what I would call an interactive prayer. And uh, I'm just gonna ask, um,

let's start here. Everybody close their eyes.

And if you are in here and something has come alive in you that just says, man,

I need to prioritize the word of God again in my life. Maybe you've fallen off,

maybe you read the Bible every day, but it's just kind of feeling stale to you.

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

if you're able and willing, go ahead and stand up for me. And if,

if you can't stand, just go ahead and raise a a hand in the air for me

and I'm gonna lead us across all of our campuses, please.

And I'm just gonna lead us through a prayer

that if you desire for the Holy Spirit to be present as you read the word of

God, I just want you to repeat these words after me.

Dear God, thank you for your word.

Thank you that you love us enough,

that you don't hide yourself from us. God.

You reveal who you are in your word

and you reveal who you want me to be. God,

if I'm honest, life gets busy.

I get distracted by other things. Sometimes I just don't want to

Holy Spirit heal my heart.

Give me a deep desire for your word because I know

that's the only way that I can be transformed into the image of your son.

Father.

Thank you for all of my friends here today. Lord,

I just ask that you would transform all of us, uh, by the power,

the transformative power of your word. We ask all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.