We Believe | The Bible Is Clear (September 10th, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

I will praise the Lord for that.

Right.

A lot of excitement and intensity building here.

And it's a huge joy to be a part of that.

I trust that you're feeling the same way and harvest is more increasingly for everybody.

Feeling like home.

Not because of the name of Harvest, not because of the pastor, not because of a person primarily, but because of Jesus Christ.

And that's who we want to glorify.

And again, like was said up there, bring honor to.

Alright, well, you guys ready to get into God's word?

Get this thing started off for real.

Alright, why don't you take it, grab your Bibles and turn them to uh Psalm 19.

Okay, Psalm 19.

And as we're getting getting situated there, uh three words.

Okay, three words that immediately uh strike fear and dread into anyone, everyone uh who hears them or reads them.

Okay, here they are.

Some assembly required.

Right?

You've you've read this before.

You've seen this.

Anyone who is, if you're you know, if you're an adult, you know, you've gone to IKEA and you bring home furniture and you open that up, you know, a sum assembly required, and you take a look at that.

Or maybe it's uh you know Christmas time or one of your kids' birthdays, and you know, they bring home a tool and, or sorry, a toy, and you feel like you need a PhD in like you know, electrical engineering, you know, just to get this dumb thing you know to uh to work, right?

It's uh these three words are the worst, okay, because you know uh the challenge in all of this is is oftentimes you you've gotta you've gotta follow these really you know half-baked instructions with really lame you know pictures and arrows drawn, and sometimes it's not to scale, and you always feel like pieces are missing, and you know, all of that.

And oftentimes these instructions they lack, at least it feels like they do, they lack sufficient clarity, right?

Clarity.

I remember I bought uh a barbecue, I brought a new barbecue home a couple of years ago when we moved uh into our house, and of course, as a man, I was really excited about this.

I'm like, I can't wait to eat some meat on this bad boy uh later today.

And of course, I got this back into the house and I had you know, some assembly required, so no problem, I should be able to do this.

You know, got it together, you know, starting to pull out all the pieces, and I I get most of it together and I realize, wait a second, like the door is it it doesn't fit.

Like it's it's upside down, the you know, the latch and the handle is on the wrong side, and you know what it's like.

You know, you're following the instruction, it should be this way, but it's actually this, and the frustration is starting to mount.

And really, I gotta take this thing back now, and I've gotta, you know, get a new part ordered or a new one.

I've already put most of it together, and you know, what I started to realize is no, actually, I can, if I just grab some tools, I can actually you know kind of pull apart this door and put the handle on the other side.

It was put together wrong in the factory and sent to me.

So I kind of did that and I got it all back in place, and uh we were off and uh and cooking, pun intended.

All right?

Now, when instructions are like that and they lack clarity, it's frustrating, right?

It really is.

It's it's it's challenging to us.

It makes it makes moving forward to the destination, i.e., some IKEA furniture or a toy or a barbecue or something, it makes it much more, much more difficulty.

Clarity in these kinds of things.

Uh, it's just so helpful.

It's so helpful.

Okay, well, today we're gonna be starting off uh a new series, and you see it up there.

It's called We Believe, and we're gonna be spending just the next three weeks talking about uh the Bible specifically.

This is uh this is a doctrine series, and so this is what we believe about, okay, what we believe about the Bible.

And today we're gonna be talking about uh the clarity of the scriptures, the reality that the Bible is clear.

Okay, when God brought the Holy Scriptures into existence by his spirit, human uh using human authors, all right, he left us with a collection of books, 66 books, all right, that are that are understandable to ordinary believers.

It's understandable.

Okay, now when we talk about the clarity of scripture, we're not saying that every single element of s uh of scripture is super simple to understand the the first time that you read it.

For sure there are some challenging sections that great men and women of God have differed on in all that.

There are some parts that are challenging to grasp and all of that.

Okay, but it would be a huge mistake to say that the overall, the general message of the Bible uh is unclear.

All right, that's just that's just not true.

Okay, so when we what we mean, okay, when we say that the Bible is clear, is uh is really what Wayne Grudham says.

All right, take a look at this.

He says the Bible is written in such a way that all things necessary to become a Christian, all right, live as a Christian, and grow as a Christian are clear.

Are clear.

Everything that we need for life and godliness comes clearly to us through God's word.

Okay, so believers, okay, believers, even brand new Christians, we don't need to be filled with like a sense of a sense of intimidation or or be overwhelmed or fearful or or or dreading in evil way, that in any way that we're gonna open this book and and not be able to follow along with it and and kind of understand what God is is saying to us.

No, the Bible is profoundly clear.

The Bible is profoundly clear.

Okay, and because of that, it accomplishes, or, or maybe even more accurately, God accomplishes through it great things in our lives.

Because through the through the scriptures, we learn a lot, right?

We learn who God is.

We learn about his amazing attributes, we learn about his incredible, incomparable character.

We learn who he is, what he's like, what he what he loves, what he doesn't love.

We learn about ourselves too.

How we tick, why we tick.

We learn about the world and how life kind of operates and you know why it is, why why why do bad things happen?

Right?

The Bible, the Bible tells us, it tells us really clearly.

Listen, it even tells us the future.

It tells us what's going to happen.

How incredible is that?

We don't have to be like, man, I you know, I hope everything kind of works out for me, and you know, I hope this, you know, I hope this isn't a waste of time, what I've kind of given my life to.

No, we know through the scriptures, because of the clarity of it, that the Lord wins.

Right?

That He's coming back, he's gonna take us home with Him, and everything, as challenging as this life is, as gritty and hard and painful at times as this life is, ultimately eternity with God is gonna be awesome.

Right?

And we know this because of the clarity of the scriptures on these matters.

Right?

And and and because the the scriptures are so clear, it it's just so helpful, right?

Because just like you know, putting together a barbecue through some instructions, or you know, getting some IKEA furniture and building a Bjorgenstadt or something.

I mean, I just made that word up there.

It sounds Swedish though, doesn't it?

Right?

Just like how instructions like that are so helpful in building something, putting something together, uh, the clarity of the scriptures are so helpful because it leads us towards some things.

Right?

It helps us get from where we are to where we want to go.

Okay, and it leads us, I mean, take a look at the first thing here.

Okay, it leads us to the revival of my unresponsive spiritual life.

That's the thing that we see from our verse here uh this morning.

Now we're looking at just one verse.

Just one verse here today.

Proverbs, sorry, Psalm 19, verse 7.

Psalms 19:7

Did I say Proverbs uh earlier?

Maybe I did, I don't know.

We were in the Proverbs a lot this summer, so forgive the confusion.

Maybe it's just me who's confused, I don't know.

But here we go.

All right, Psalm 19, verse 7, the first part.

Psalms 19:7

Take a look.

It says, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

Now that first part there uh that says the law of the Lord, that's that's an old testament way of referring to itself uh in certain ways, kind of depending on the context here.

Sometimes when it says the law of the Lord, it's referring to the Ten Commandments, right?

The Ten Commandments.

Sometimes it's referring to uh the law of Moses or the Pentateuch, the the first five books uh of the Old Testament.

Sometimes that's what it's referring to, sometimes very specifically the Ten Commandments or the Pentateuch, sometimes it's much more broad than that, sometimes it's referring to rules and regulations and instruction and teaching and all of that.

Okay, but it was always understood and should still be understood that the law of the Lord was the authoritative word of God, it's the holy scriptures.

Okay, now of course, you know, we refer to the to the New Testament as equally authoritative as the Old.

Okay, it's just as much scripture, it's just as much Bible as the Old Testament is.

And did you know this?

I'm not sure if you knew this, but the New Testament actually refers to itself as such.

Did you know that?

Yeah, it really does.

Okay, so claiming that you know the New Testament is the inspired word of God, claiming that that's like a relatively new thing that you know Christians just kind of made up in the last you know century or two or something like that because we wanted to add to God's word, and the Old Testament wasn't sufficient, and so we're just kind of you know making up our own Bible as we go, kind of thing.

That's just that's just not accurate.

All right, the New Testament itself actually calls itself uh the Word of God, it claims to be Scripture.

Okay, and so the disciples, the apostles, the ones that we read about in this book and the early church, they they thought of, looked at uh what we hold now in our hands, the letters of the apostles and all that, they looked at that as scripture.

I'm gonna give you kind of an example, two examples of where you can find this in the New Testament.

If you like to kind of jot things down, um, a couple of references for you.

The first one is 2 Peter 3.16.

Okay, 2 Peter 3.16.

In there, uh Peter refers uh to the apostle Paul's letters as uh one part of the scriptures.

Okay, he actually uses that word.

Okay, the apostle Paul, of course, wrote uh a whole bunch of the New Testament.

And there we see Peter calling it scriptures.

Okay, again, and then again, another reference for you, 1 Timothy 5, verse 18.

1 Timothy 5:18

1 Timothy 5, verse 18.

1 Timothy 5:18

It's Paul's turn now, okay, and he quotes both the Old Testament and the New Testament, kind of in one you know, sentence basically.

And so he quotes the Old Testament, he goes back to Deuteronomy chapter 25, verse 4, and he refers to Jesus' words, right?

Deuteronomy 25:4

Jesus' words that we find in Luke chapter 10, verse 7, and he refers to them both as you guessed it, scripture.

Luke 10:7

Right?

He guessed that he refers to it as scripture, the authoritative and inspired word of God.

Now, back to our verse here for a second, okay?

So it says the law of the Lord, so what we're referring to, you know, broadly as scripture as a whole, okay, here today.

Okay, the law of the Lord is what's the word?

Perfect.

Right?

It's perfect.

It means it's it's without blemish, it's it it's without it's without error or or defect.

Okay, it's it's clear, okay, in in what it teaches.

It's not, you know, it's not giving you a bunch of tr half truths mixed in with a bunch of lies and a bunch of truths as well, and it's like this big stew that you've got to you know kind of try and figure out.

No, it's uh there's a certain clarity to all of that.

It's it's perfect, and it says uh that it does what?

Well, it says that it it rev it's reviving the soul, right?

It revives the soul there, meaning that when you come before the the the Bible that you are you know holding in your hand right now, you know, as we speak, or as you you know sit under the proclamation of it, as we're doing literally right now.

Or you know, when you hear a song that's you know teaching scripture and that is coming out, all of that, okay, where we're saying that the Bible that you're holding and have, it has the it has the authority, it has it has the the ability, it has it has the power to completely revive uh an unresponsive spiritual life.

Okay, it has now that ability.

I want to grab something here.

Somebody in our church kind of lent this to me for uh for this morning.

I can't take this home with me or anything like that.

But have you guys seen this before?

What's this?

What's that?

That was really quiet.

Defibrillator, right.

So if I open this up, uh you can see this here, and I don't I've been told it's not gonna fall out if I open it.

Um but what is a defibrillator used for?

Resuscitation, right?

And so I was kind of thinking like to have some fun with you.

Like I would kind of scan and see if there's anyone kind of snoozing or falling asleep.

You know, I'm I'm I'm looking at you back row, right?

You think you can hide?

You can't.

Um, no, I won't do any of that.

As much as I'm tended to like turn this thing on, you know, and really have some fun with all of this, okay?

Um, I won't.

That's as far as I'll go with it.

Okay, but uh much like uh much like a defibrillator uh has the ability uh to resuscitate a person, revive a person uh physically, all right, your your Bible, your copy of God's word has the power to revive an unresponsive person spiritually, okay, spiritually, okay, from from dead in their sin, separated from God.

It has the ability to revive a person who's been numbed by their sin, a believer who has, you know, is maybe once fired up and excited about these things, but has kind of fallen by the wayside and and maybe you know kind of slidden or slid or off or drifted, and and you know, the passion is gone and the zeal is gone and priorities are out of whack and idols are raging out of control, and you know, sin is going wherever it wants to go, and I'm I'm passionless, I'm lukewarm, I could care less about the Lord and what he thinks and and what he wants for my life from all of that too, revived.

That's what the scriptures do.

Made new, okay, it makes us new uh from the inside out.

It it gives us a new heart, it gives us uh new desires, new new passion, it it transforms our outlook on absolutely everything uh in life.

It gives us it gives us purpose in life, it gives us the desire to actually do what we talk about here as a church, which is give glory to the Lord in all things uh at all times.

Okay, so God didn't just make the the scriptures clear simply so that we could kind of comprehend it with our minds.

Okay, though that's absolutely one part of it, and a very important part of it, and we're grateful that there was some order and clarity uh to all of that.

But he made it clear so that we would comprehend it and then be resuscitated.

Resuscitated from kind of our our deadness, our me-centeredness, our life is all about me and what I wantness.

All right?

God's word has the ability to revive us in all of these ways because of what Hebrews 4 chapter 12 tells us.

You want to jot that one down.

Okay, Hebrews 4 chapter 12 says, for the word of God is, you guys know this verse, right?

It's living and active.

Right?

The word of God is living and active, it's sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Okay, so the the spirit of God, okay, makes uh you know, takes the the clear word of God and uses it to surgically pierce us.

Okay, and it goes down deep into our into our motives, it it reveals sin to us, it it will encourage us when we're down, or or it or it'll show us wisdom when we've gone astray.

The word of God is awesome.

It's so much more than just ink on some paper, all right?

It's so much more than that.

The Spirit of God actually uses it to do the work of transforming our hearts, right?

That's why the Word of God is awesome, and that's how it revives us spiritually.

Now you might be wondering, like, well, what kind of ways specifically does it revive us?

Well, I've kind of hinted at it, but kind of two main ways, all right?

First of all, we're revived from a salvation standpoint.

Okay, we're revived from a salvation standpoint.

So when you first hear the gospel proclaimed, right?

Whether that was you know reading the scriptures for yourself, someone gave you a Bible and you went home, you started reading it and studying it, maybe they they told you where to read and what to read, or you read it with a person, or again, someone brought you to church and you heard the gospel proclaimed, you've listened to a you know a preacher on the radio or read a book or whatever, right?

When you when you first hear, you know, comprehend a clear the clear message of the Bible as as it lays it out for us, and you and you start to realize and and recognize that that we are we are deeply flawed individuals.

Right?

You start to understand that we're not all that we think we are.

We're not all we we we kind of think we're cracked up to be.

You know, we're we're deeply sinful, we're deeply rebellious, we have gone against God.

It started with our original parents, Adam and Eve, and you know, by our our own doing, we gotta own this, by our own rebellion, we have put ourselves at odds with this holy, awesome, perfect, completely righteous and loving God.

And when we start to realize that and and recognize our our utter helplessness when it comes to you know fixing that, you know, I can't do that.

Just, you know, being more moral and and behaving well and and hoping that you know it just kind of all adds up and and it all works out.

And you know, if there is a God, he'll kind of let me into heaven at the you know at the end of all of that.

When you realize that we can't fix it, okay, we're all we're so broken and and and so far gone that that we needed help.

And you start to you start to comprehend that through the clear, you know, the clear message of the Bible.

And you start to realize that's why that's why Jesus went to the cross.

Right?

He went as as the perfect sacrifice.

He went as the holy one, as the the unblemished one.

And and when when he did that, God looked down at his sacrifice and and and it was it was in our place.

You know, it should have been me, it should have been you know uh you, it should have been us hanging on that cross.

We should have been you know paying that penalty.

Uh but because God loves us so much, he sent his perfect, sinless son, Jesus Christ, to do that for us uh for us and for you.

And again, the the the the scriptures are just so clear about this, and they they they teach you that and they they push us you know towards recognizing that you know it's not about you know trusting myself and my ability to appease God in any way, we can't do it.

Okay, it's about transferring our trust from me and I can handle this and and I'm all that to I'm gonna trust Jesus, I'm gonna trust that what he did on the cross is actually for me.

I'm gonna transfer my trust from I it's again I can do it to he did it, and only he can do it.

Right?

And when I when I first comprehend the Bible's you know clear teaching about all this and then accept it and trust it, not just true generally, but true for me personally, and I trust in Jesus Christ as my savior, the Bible says that we are justified.

That's a really great word.

Justified.

It means that we are we are declared righteous.

Our sin is no longer held against us.

We are now considered, positionally anyways, holy.

We are holy.

God looks at you, God the Father looks at you as though you are Jesus, that you accomplished what he accomplished.

His perfect record gets transferred to you.

Your sinless, flawed, messy, broken, painful record, that all gets transferred to him.

He took all of that on himself and he absorbed that.

He absorbed the wrath of God so that you don't have to.

Okay, so when you are justified, when you are declared righteous, that that's you being revived.

You've been revived from a salvation standpoint.

I was once dead in my sin, separated from God, but now I've been revived through the work in the person of Jesus Christ, and I have now been forgiven, and I've been made alive.

Again, I've I'm saved.

All right, so we're first of all revived from a salvation standpoint, and I know that many of us are there.

You know, we have done that.

We have trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

We've admitted our sin.

We've repented, we've turned from it.

We're now trusting in Christ's righteousness and not our own.

And I would really challenge anyone who might be here this morning, and I don't know, you're not sure where your heart is at, but to get right with the Lord.

Admit your sin.

Give that over to the Lord.

Receive the free gift of salvation that he offers you.

And he wants to make you new.

And that really leads us here to the second thing.

Okay, so secondly, believers, okay, those who have trusted Jesus Christ, are revived from a growth standpoint or a sanctification standpoint.

Okay, we've talked about we talked about this actually a lot just last week, and we talked about this, you know, most weeks.

And what it means to grow in the Lord and become more like him.

Yes, positionally, we are holy, but practically we've still got some work to do, right?

And we need the Lord, we need his spirit, we need his grace to accomplish that changed hearts where practically we begin to live in line with the new identity that we have in Jesus Christ.

And what ends up happening for any believers, and started to kind of tease this out a bit, is we end up kind of stagging spiritually, don't we?

And some of you can kind of point back to that, those first moments where you recognized the gospel and you received Christ for yourself, and there was so much exuberance in you and fire for you, and you couldn't wait to come to church, you couldn't wait to get into your Bibles, and you couldn't wait to love people and get into community and all of that.

But now maybe that started to kind of wane.

And the passion's just not there anymore.

And it's, you know, it's been it's been leaking out, and and there's those idols that we talked about last week that you know you've always had, and now you're realizing, no, those idols are actually very strong, and they are you know trying to dominate my heart's greatest desire to follow the Lord.

And now I want to, you know, I care more about money, and I care more about sex, and I care more about my house and the toys that I have than I than I than I care for the Lord, and I'm going after those things, and because of all of that, I'm kind of drifting from the Lord.

And we, you know, maybe you're recognizing I need that, I need that jump start again.

I need the the Mikey defibrillator on my soul.

Right?

I need to I need to be stirred up afresh.

Again, the word is revived, right?

Revived.

I need to be you know inspired once again to follow Christ and not just you know mechanically go through the motions and show up here and open this book, read it, close it, move on to other things.

No, I want to be like fired up about this, I want to be excited about this, I want the passion to return.

I don't want to be numb, I don't want to be dull, I don't want to be flat, I want to be you know reinvigorated spiritually and get back on track.

Listen, if the Bible was unclear about all of what we just talked about, okay, the salvation process, the sanctification and growth process, if it was unclear, do you realize how confused we would be?

We'd be so confused about all this.

We wouldn't know like what's what, we wouldn't know you know who the Lord is, we wouldn't know what the plan of salvation is, we wouldn't know how to respond to all of that, we wouldn't know how to live life in a way that pleases him.

We wouldn't know how to change, we wouldn't know anything, we'd be so confused.

The fact that the Bible is so clear on these things is again unbelievably helpful to us.

It's an amazing thing.

Okay, here's the thing though.

A lot of Christians are confused about this.

Right?

They're confused.

I don't know where to go, I don't know what the Lord thinks, I don't know how to live, and you know, we're following our own hearts and our own passions and all that.

And listen, there may be, you know, and there are a lot of a lot of different reasons and motives and all that to to why Christians are confused, but can I can I say that maybe the predominant one is that we flat out just don't know, love, read, study our Bibles.

Right?

We we don't make it a priority.

You know, we we we don't come, you know, we don't come before it.

We don't we don't read it, we don't, we don't submit ourselves before it.

Okay, we we live in in a nearly biblically illiterate age.

Do you know that?

People don't know what the scriptures say.

Or they read it and they don't like what it says, and so they they tweak it and they try and morph it and try they you know they try what are they doing at that point?

Okay, they're they're they're basically saying, I'm God.

I know how the Bible should have been written.

Right?

So they're breaking the first commandments.

I have no other gods before me.

They put themselves in that place.

Listen, we all wrestle with that, all right?

And and they've created you know another, you know, scripture quote unquote.

Too many professing Christians just just don't give enough or or or adequate time to growing and being disciplined in getting into the scriptures, knowing it, loving it, meditating on it, memorizing it.

You know, at best, you know, so many believers are content showing up to church like this, you know, once a week and hearing for an hour or so about you know, a guy talk about how the word of God has impacted, you know, him, and we, you know, that's good enough.

That's that's all I need.

And I'm gonna go from here and you know, maybe I'm gonna go listen to another sermon this week, or you know, I'm gonna, you know, whatever, talk to other people, but I'm not, you know, we don't ourselves get into the scriptures and and chew on it uh the way that we should.

We'd rather do something else.

We'd rather read something else.

Again, and the focus is is all of that, uh, is all off.

And because of that, we've become spiritually unresponsive.

Very spiritually unresponsive.

We become despondent.

We don't we don't live in the scriptures like we ought to.

But some of us here, and maybe this is gnawing at you and nagging at your soul a little bit, not only do you not love to spend time in scripture, but you don't even like it.

You haven't nurtured that, you haven't you haven't developed that growth, and so because of that, you just kind of you know put your Bible on the nightstand, put it away in the closet, let it collect dust.

And because of that, we are paying the price spiritually.

We really are.

We're paying the price individually for this.

Our our marriages are big time, our homes, our families, our kids, our churches are suffering because we don't know the scriptures well enough, and we're not growing in maturity, and we're not pressing into the Lord through all of this.

You know, and churches are suffering, and and and and as a result, our our our society is suffering.

You know, and and too many Christians are you know following society more than following what the scriptures say.

And society just does whatever's right in their own eyes.

And and and because Christians are so unfamiliar with who the Lord is through the clear word of God, they're like, well, the the you know, society must be right.

You know, and so we'll we'll follow them and we'll do what they say.

And it's it's sad and it's painful, and it's wrong.

And so listen, Harvest, this has to change.

This has to change in us.

We have to be different than that.

We've gotta commit and get ourselves before the holy word of God.

And listen, this has got to start now, not next week, not next year.

It's not, don't wait till the January 1 resolution that we all do.

Start now, start today.

Bring back the centrality of this book, the centrality of the scriptures, you know, into your life and into your family.

Listen, for centuries and centuries, God's people fall into the trap of pushing aside God's word and the law.

Last week's passage that we looked at, King Hezekiah, what did he do?

He brought back worship, he brought back the centrality of the law.

They had drifted aside from it, they got caught up in all kinds of idolatry and all kinds of problems.

This was happening over and over and over again from the beginning of God's people.

They would get their eyes off the vertical, which the scriptures lead us to, and onto the lame kind of horizontal.

It's about mean, it's about problems, it's all about that.

Listen, our hearts can easily get that way, and so many churches get that way as we we neglect the vertical piece and we focus too much on horizontal stuff, and you know what ends up happening?

God's like, I'm out of here.

I'm not gonna show up to church anymore.

They don't even want me there.

They want to take care of them.

It's become so much about felt needs and and and caring for the poor.

Now, before blood pressures go like crazy high, do we need to take care of the poor?

Right?

Do we need to develop a strong community?

Do we need to love each other well?

Absolutely.

But sometimes that's the only focus.

And it's like, where has, you know, where's the preaching gone?

You know, why where has, you know, where is the discipleship gone in our kids' program?

Where's the discipleship gone in our in our youth program?

I I gotta tell you, I grew up in too many churches that didn't take seriously discipleship.

You know, that they that the word of God was not proclaimed and thundered.

And guess who suffered for it?

This guy.

Right?

We cannot afford to be a church like that.

The word of God has to be near and dear to our hearts.

Every single person individually has to own this.

It has to start with us.

The Bible is clear, let's get our noses in it, let's allow it to change our hearts and get going already.

Okay, second thing.

Second thing.

The Bible is profoundly clear and leads to wisdom instead of being easily led astray.

It leads to wisdom, okay?

Check out the second part of our verse there, verse 7.

It says the testimony of the Lord, so his word, right, is sure.

It's sure.

Love that word.

It's again, it's it's it's clarity, right?

It's it's clear, it's it's certain, it's therefore trustworthy.

Right?

You can trust it.

It's it says that it, because it's sure, it it makes wise the simple.

It makes wise the simple.

Now, I don't know how much more I need to kind of talk about that.

We spend our entire summer looking at the Proverbs and looking at wisdom and looking how it may uh how it makes us wise.

Okay, we spent uh a lot of weeks kind of digging into that.

What this is saying here is that because the Bible is clear, it has the ability of taking us from you know baby brand new Christians, you know, who are you know newbies, and you know, because of our rookiness, okay, which is an okay place to start, everyone starts there.

But because of our rookiness, we're just we're easily susceptible to being led astray.

Right?

We don't know what God thinks yet.

We don't know in depth who God is and what he's like and what he requires of it, because we're we're new.

We're we're brand new believers, right?

And and and because of that, we get we we kind of follow the ways of the world, and we follow the you know the quote unquote worldly wisdom that we've been taught our whole lives.

And it's saying here that the Bible gives us wisdom that helps us get beyond all of that, that takes us from being so easily led astray and falling into the same old traps time and time again, and and thinking you know, incorrectly, unbiblically, responding in unbiblical ways to to wise.

It says that it says it makes them them wise, it makes us mature, it makes us stable.

We've talked about that stability that comes, right?

It makes us strong Christians.

That's what the Word of God does.

Isn't that awesome?

I mean, are you not excited about that?

I mean, how many of us are like, yeah, I don't really want to stay as lame as I am right now, right?

Anyone else besides me?

Right?

Like, I would love to become a little more mature.

I would love to like not make the same mistakes.

I would love to have some understanding.

I would love to be wise.

Hey, this book gets you there.

How about that?

Right?

Is it's awesome.

And yet, again, what do we do?

We leave it over to the side.

Right?

And sometimes we don't we don't get into it.

All of this should just give us such great confidence in the book you're holding in your hand.

Such, such confidence.

It has power through God's Spirit to transform you, to revive you, to make you wise.

You know, time and time again, I have people come up and you know and ask me, you know, really great questions.

You know, like, you know, how shall I respond in you know, in such and such situation with my with my family or with my friends?

You know, or or what does the Bible say about blank?

You know, they ask me this question, these questions.

You know, how does God how does God view this this current event that is blowing up all over social media?

Like, how does he view that?

How should I view this, right?

And how should I think and respond properly in these kinds of situations?

So, well, the Bible points us in the right direction.

It really does.

It gives us what we need to become wise and to think properly through all of this and and and and respond in a godly way with all the various challenges that we have.

And and and of course, we've talked about it all summer, how badly we need wisdom.

Listen, it's found uh in God's word, it's found in the clear, the clear scriptures.

Right?

And we can find it all there, thankfully, because God put it together in a way that's just so logical.

And it's it's it's organized and it's understandable.

Again, there's that there's that clarity there.

And and and you may not kind of understand how the Bible sort of, you know, why is it kind of organized the way it is?

And you may have questions about that.

I totally understand that.

But if you do some digging, you can find out why.

Right?

You can read the scriptures and you can find, you know, some other things uh that can help you kind of figure some of that stuff out.

We're gonna get to that here uh right now, because it's a great question that might be kind of bubbling up in your in in your mind as we're talking about this, and I've had people come up and ask me questions very recently about this is this how can I get better at reading my Bible?

Right?

How how can I read it in such a way uh that it has an impact on me where I'm being revived and it's not dry and it's not dull, and I don't feel like I'm reading and have no idea the locations and the places and the people and what it's talking about.

How can I get the most out of this?

That is a phenomenal question, by the way.

A really good question.

And so I want to leave you with kind of six things here.

All right, how to get the most out of your Bible reading?

And you can jot these down if you're not into you know writing stuff down or you don't have a pen or whatever.

Again, just email me, I can send this to you.

Okay, no big deal.

Here's the first one how to get the most out of your Bible reading.

First of all, get that fire started.

Get that fire started.

Like, seriously, Pastor?

Literally, I need to start a fire.

No, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about passion, right?

Fired up, passion, desire.

You need to get that desire going.

You need to get it going.

Like maybe even as we're talking right now, the spirit of the Lord is working in you, and you're like, yes, yes, I need to go, and I have this desire kind of welling up in me for the first time in who knows how long.

Listen, you need to stoke that fire.

You need to get that going.

And listen, you need to expect that you're probably not gonna have that fire tomorrow morning.

Right?

Because desire, our hearts are so fickle, are they not?

And we have it one second, it's gone the next.

Part of getting that fire going is disciplining yourself.

Discipline yourself.

We all want the desire.

We all wanna be like brimming with joy and walking on air about the scriptures, and we want the Spirit of God to be like radically transforming our lives every single time we read it.

We want all that, and the Lord will do that slowly, he will do that intensely at certain periods, and and again, more slowly at times.

But listen, it doesn't always start or it won't always be full of desire and passion.

Part of it is that you need to grind through the discipline of it.

Right now it feels like duty.

I don't have a lot of delight yet.

Yeah, well, guess what?

That's normal.

You have to grind through that duty part, the discipline part.

The I don't really feel like it, but I'm gonna do it because I know I need this.

I can't afford to put this aside.

My life is too busy, my life is too crazy, I'm too messed up.

I need to be in front of the Lord in his word.

Whether I feel like it or not.

Do not let feelings dictate whether or not you're in God's word.

That's a super immature move, but listen, we all fall into it, myself included, don't we?

We all fall into it.

I'd rather go do something else.

Feelings, feelings, feelings, drive us, drive us, drive us.

Be driven by the truth.

Allow your feelings to follow.

Get that fire started.

Repent.

Repent of what got you to this place.

I'm so dull and I don't care.

Repent of that.

Give that over to the Lord.

Apologize for that sin.

Lord, I should care about this.

I'm ex, you know, I love you, but I again I've lost that desire.

Repent of all of that.

Turn away from it.

Confess it as sin.

Pray for more hunger.

Pray, pray, pray.

Pray like crazy.

When you're done praying, keep praying.

Okay, keep praying.

Enlist the help of a friend.

I need some help in this.

Will you will you like ask me about this?

How is it going?

Would you pray for me?

Keep praying.

Okay, again, seeing if you're awake.

Second one.

Get a good Bible translation.

Okay, get a good Bible translation in front of you.

I remember a person who was in, you know, I think it was at my old one of my old churches, you know, they'd been in the church for a long time, and and all of a sudden we noticed the Bibles they were holding was uh the New World Translation, uh, which is a Jehovah's Witness Bible.

And they're like, I'm a little confused about some things.

And we're like, yeah, I know why now.

You know, a lot of things have been kind of changed and manipulated, and that makes a lot of sense.

You need to get a good, right?

You need to get a really good uh translation uh in front of your face.

Now, if I may, okay, I'm gonna recommend the the English Standard Version.

Okay, the ESV is just a really phenomenal version.

I've been using it now for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years uh at least, and it has become my go-to.

A lot of you know biblical scholars and theologians have worked on assembling this, and really there are different translations.

I'm not, you know, we're not ESV the way some churches are about KJV, right?

If you don't have the King James Version Bible, you're not even a Christian.

Okay, we're not that, we don't go there.

All right?

But the ESV is amazing.

Why?

The ESV is a really good translation because they try, they they go back to the oldest manuscripts that we have in the Greek and in the Hebrew and in the uh in the Aramaic, and they try to translate that as word for word as possible while still being readable.

Okay, readable is really helpful, isn't it?

Do you know that if you were to translate Greek, uh just word for word in the English, the the words would be all jumbled up and all mixed up.

I don't think anyone, any one of us would find it all that helpful, right?

And so we want to be as word for word, precisely what it what were the original authors intending by what they said?

I want to know that.

And so they try to translate word for word.

Other translations that can be good and can be helpful would be like the NIV, for example, or the NASB.

NASB is pretty close to the to the ESV.

That's the uh the New American Standard Version.

All right, and that one is a bit of an older language, an older style.

The NIV is is again, it's it's it was made to be very readable.

So instead of trying to um interpret word for word, they're more trying to go thought for thought.

So you understand there's like different, there's there's different intentions that the you know that the uh the the authors or the or the people who are translating uh the original uh manuscripts that or the manuscripts that we have, there's different intentions that they were going for.

You've got the new living translation, you've got the message.

Okay, you've got there, there's different different thrusts, different things that they're going for.

I think the ESV is a really, really good one.

Because again, it goes I like personally, I don't want to know you know what somebody thinks.

And I don't want to know uh you know a theologian's idea of what this might say.

I just want to know what the original language says.

Right?

I want to be able to read it, I want to be able to understand it.

The ESV is again uh really helpful.

And so let me kind of help you um with some, I don't know, some pro tips if you want to hear that.

Um if you don't have an ESV Bible and and you're you're looking for a new Bible, I would say go to crossway.org.

Crossway.org, they're the ones that publish uh the ESV, and there you can find all kinds of different styles, and you can find you know big thick ones, you can find leather ones, you can find um you know, paperback, hardcover, big, small, journaling Bibles.

They're giving you lots of space in the margins to write notes and different things.

They've got you know Bibles for little kids, they've got Bibles for teenagers, they've got Bibles for, you know, all the way through different kinds of things.

They've got uh really good Bibles at crossway.org.

Also, another little insider tip, by the way.

If you're ordering a Bible online, this is what I always draw, any kind of a book online.

I go I go check it out on Amazon and then I compare it with Bible, uh, what's it Christianbook.com.

Okay, Amazon versus Christianbook.com, whichever one's cheaper, boom, buy that one.

Cool.

Get a good Bible translation, that's really helpful.

How about this one?

Get up get a pen in a journal.

Like, really, man, we need to talk about that.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna talk about that.

This is why I want this to be really, really practical for you.

You want the Bible to come alive and be, you know, you want that clarity to impact you?

Get yourself a pen and start taking notes when you're reading.

That'll help you get engaged with it.

Ask questions of it.

What is the author saying?

What are the original hears?

How did how are they hearing this?

What did it mean to them?

You know, and then try and bridge the gap.

What does this mean for me to, you know, today in 2017?

You know, what is what is God trying to say to me?

You're underlying stuff, you're highlighting stuff.

Grab a pen, do that, grab a grab a journal, write notes.

I used to be a big journaler, my wife's a big journaler.

I don't do it so much anymore.

I just I write notes all over the margins of my Bible.

You can look at there's underlines and highlights and circles and question marks and you know, all kinds of stuff in there.

That's I'm just kind of wrestling and grappling, you know, with the text.

That's why when I come back to it, I can see, oh yeah, that's where I was thinking, and that's you know, it helps me kind of realize where I was.

Okay, get a pen, get a journal, always have that with you.

We have notes for you in the bulletin every week.

So you can take notes in the sermon.

I want to help you with all of that.

Fourth one get some good additional resources.

Some good additional resources.

I want to be really clear about this.

These additional resources are not to be primary.

These you're not supposed to look at these as in line with the inspired word of God.

Okay?

The word of God is.

Is clear.

Alright, God didn't stumble or mumble or trip over what he was saying or anything like that.

But from time to time, uh we're unclear, right?

And we don't always know.

And sometimes having some of these additional resources can be a supplemental help to your personal uh study in God's word.

All right, is that clear?

These things aren't God's word, they're not to be looked at on the same level, they're not inspired like the word of God is by the Spirit, but they can be helpful to us.

Yeah, well, listen, how about an ESV study Bible?

I don't know, some of you maybe have this.

I brought a couple of these things as an example.

I don't have an example of every single thing that I'm talking about here, but here's the ESV study bible.

Okay, this is my uh personal one.

And this is uh this has been really helpful to me.

I can I I consult this every time, not every time I open up the Bible, you know, but when I'm when I'm looking at, you know, when I'm preparing the sermon, for example, I look at, you know, what are what are some of the notes there?

And on the inside, you'll find the the word of God is kind of written all through here.

And then at the bottom, you've got you know some notes on helping you it define some of the words in there, which is so helpful.

You know, you've got these godly you know people who uh you know, theologians who have worked to try and understand and help provide uh some notes that can direct you and help um help you in your journey to understanding the scriptures.

There's all kinds of notes and helpful things that that can point you to.

Now, this one I think is like 35 bucks, I think, or something like that.

35 to 50.

It's a hard, hard cover.

I just kind of leave it on my shelf at the office.

And um, I mean, I used to have like a big leather one, the thing was like a hundred pounds, and I didn't want to carry that around with me anymore.

Um, and so I can't remember where that went to, gave it away or something, but uh you can grab that one of those.

It's it's pretty cheap.

You can get ones that are more expensive.

I want to also tell you there's also an app for that.

Okay, there's an app for that.

Imagine that.

Right?

And so you can actually get the ESV study bible on your phone.

Okay, I think it's like 20 bucks.

Okay, the entire thing that I just held up, right?

I got a good workout, workout lifting, that whole thing on your phone, which is amazing.

And so I use that from time to time.

Some of you are very, you know, you're very digital in your whole approach.

You don't even carry a paper Bible or anything.

You don't want that.

Give me the app, right?

Give me the software.

All right, that can be really helpful.

What's the next thing here?

What does it say?

Okay, how about um how about a parallel Bible?

Okay, how about a parallel Bible?

Parallel Bibles are pretty helpful.

My dad is big on this.

You can buy a big Bible and they're usually thick, like the ESV study, and they've got four different columns.

They all say the same thing, but all in different translations.

Here's the ESV, here's the NIV, here's the whatever version, right?

And you so you can compare them and see the differences uh in all of that.

And so parallel Bibles are really helpful for some people as they study.

Uh you can also pick up commentaries, right?

I brought a couple of commentaries here.

Um, this is one uh that I often use.

I found a commentary set, I think, for like like 90% off.

And so I picked it up and uh have that.

That's a MacArthur one that's been helpful to me.

Uh here's another one.

This is a little bit more technical, maybe a little bit less readable, but you open that up and you're like, isn't that in the Greek?

Like I thought it was supposed to define the Greek for me.

There's a lot of um abbreviations and all of that, but it's really, if you want to dig into the nitty-gritty of what each word means and what does it mean in this context, and you know, the authors have put together questions there that really kind of draw out, you know, what is the script, what is the scripture saying?

So that's an exegetical summary of Galatians.

So you can find all kinds of different ones uh there uh for sure that can help you out depending on kind of your style and what you're looking for.

Are you looking for really technical help?

Are you looking for just some some kind of, you know, I just want some general understanding?

A dictionary is really helpful.

I didn't have that written down there, uh, but but a dictionary can be really helpful as you're trying to understand what words mean and stuff like that.

All right, so commentaries are helpful.

Again, address those after you've done your own study.

Right?

When I'm preparing a sermon, you know, during during the week, I I'll look at the commentaries for sure, but I'm all I've already spent significant time praying through, reading through, thinking through what is this text saying?

I usually come up with most of the outline or the whole outline or whatever, and then I'll just like you know, maybe it maybe look at a commentary or two or a couple of them to kind of look at, you know, am I way off in this?

You know, what what are some of these god, great and godly men, what what do they have to say?

Am I I want to make sure that I'm I'm not off base?

And so commentary is again, it's a great additional resource.

Okay, I'm gonna add these ones in here too.

Okay, I'm having a hard time carrying all this.

Um, but this is like, I again, I just thought of these this morning.

This is for you as you're trying to like teach your kids.

Like, how what are some good resources for my kids?

I'm trying to teach the Bible to them, and I'm trying to, you know, get them to understand it.

This is one that went through leading little ones to God.

It looks like it was made in like the 60s.

Um probably because it was.

Um, but it was really, really good, really helpful.

A lot of good questions to ask, discussion questions to ask your little ones.

We went through all of that.

The radical book for kids.

This book is outstanding.

Again, these aren't scripture, these aren't Bible, but there's really good springboards to get into conversations that talk about current events, done in a way that that my my eight-year-old loves, can't wait to get into this.

And so there, again, these are just because our kids are young, these are the ones that I have.

As we get older, our kids are gonna have, you know, the teenage ones and all of that, and there are some of those things uh available um as well.

All right, so those are some of the commentaries and things that can be helpful.

There are also apps.

There are apps for your phone.

All right, talked about the ESV study bible one, but a couple of ones that have been really helpful for me.

Um, accordance.

Accordance is a free app that is basically a Bible, it's a Bible app, and you can read it, but when you when you just touch one of the words, it pops open the definition of that in the Greek or the Hebrew.

It gives you a good understanding of what those words are and what the original, what the original language was actually saying.

I use this this accordance app, maybe most of all.

As I'm going through and you know, I'm trying in my own personal reading time and my you know, times where I'm preparing sermons, I'm going at accordance uh quite a bit as I want to read what is that word saying again?

I want to know exactly what it is.

Because sometimes in the English, sometimes the English language just isn't quite as rich as the Greek or in the Hebrew.

So accordance is really good.

That one's for free.

Some people like blue letter Bible.

I've never used that one too much, but people love that.

There's different resources and help for you uh there.

Um about this one, software.

Some of you like you know, bring your computers and you like, you know, you want it all there.

There's Logos Bible software.

Some of you have heard of that.

It's uh you know rather expensive uh Bible software program that can help you really.

If you're like a complete nerd about the text, you can totally go into all of that and study this you know the text.

You can spend tons and tons of money on that, and within that, buy commentaries like the ones I've held up, and you have that all um you have that all online, and you don't have to carry books and have a huge bookshelf and all of that.

There's also an app for your phone, of course, and all of that.

The one that I use is just called Bible Study.

Brilliant, right?

Bible study.

That's a free resource as I downloaded off the app store for my uh for my computer, and I use that one quite a bit.

There are resources in there that you can get for free.

There are free commentaries that you can download that will help.

You don't even have to buy half the stuff, right?

It's all there for you.

Bible study app.

Uh you can call that a lot of free resources, which is really great.

All right.

Um, websites.

Okay, again, I'm just kind of dumping all of this on you, but I hope this is helpful.

Um, gotquestions.org.

Again, people come up to me sometimes and they're like, yeah, what does the Bible say about this?

What does the Bible say about that?

As though I I, as the pastor, are the only one that holds the keys to that information.

Um there are um, there's a thing called Google, right?

That's really helpful.

Um, but it can also it can also lead you astray, right?

Like who knows what's coming up when you Google something.

Um but what I've found is that gotquestions.org, again, there's an app for that for your phone.

That is it's a really I I recommend it.

It's I it's trustworthy.

They've got all kinds of questions about the scriptures, about life.

Like, you know, what does the Lord say about you know marriage and divorce and remarriage?

What does the Lord say about you know eternity?

And what does he say about you know all kinds of things?

You just type that in there, you'll find it on gotquestions.org.

That's another one I go to quite a bit.

Biblegateway.com, Biblehub.com.

Okay, these are really helpful uh as well as you're trying to you know find translations and all kinds of different stuff.

All right, so those are some additional resources.

That is the tip of the iceberg, of course, in uh what you can actually find out there, some of the things that have really helped me.

All right, that's the fourth one, fifth one here.

All right, how do I get the most out of my Bible reading, fourth one, um, or fifth one?

Get a plan.

Okay, get a plan.

Okay, it's it's gonna do you no good if you, for example, get all excited about buying these resources and ESC study bible on my phone.

That's gonna be so helpful.

And you buy that, you purchase that, you wait for it to come to your house, and then you don't do anything with it.

You need to have a plan.

I'm gonna start now, before it actually comes.

I've I've got a game plan in place, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this.

And I've got it's structured, and you know, maybe your schedule is kind of like mine, and every day's a little bit different.

Some days maybe you're dropping the kids off in the morning, some days you're at work early, some days you have a meeting or your day starts later, and so it's not like every day at seven I can read my Bible.

It doesn't work that way.

So I have a plan for every single day of the week.

Your Saturday might look different than your Tuesday.

When you have a plan, you're gonna, you know, it's gonna help you so much in getting into God's Word.

Okay, sixth one is just this get going.

Get going.

Start now.

Start yesterday.

Don't wait, don't put it off, don't quit stalling.

Okay, as you do these things, you're gonna be well on your way to the word of God, the clear word of God, um, getting you uh towards wisdom.

Wisdom.