Our Rule of Life - Scripture Pt1

We are continuing with our Rule of Life series, and we're

practising scripture, uh, today, this rule of practising God's word.

Um, and, uh, as, as I talk about this, as we talk about practising scripture,

really want to frame the way that we think about it as being a relationship.

So I want you to think about relationship with scripture and why?

Why, why do I want to put it in the framework of a relationship is

because the work of scripture is incredibly dynamic in our lives.

It forms us.

It can change us.

It has the power to do something to us in a holistic way, like relationships can do.

And so my first question is practising scripture is what is your

relationship with scripture like today?

Like right now in your life?

What is your relationship like with scripture?

God's word.

What does that look like?

I think if there's any hope for us to grow in any relationship, one must need

to be honest about where it has been and where it is currently, and that's

what I want to do today with you.

As you think about your relationship with God's word,

could there be any misconceptions, maybe biases or unhelpful traditions

that you've adopted as you've developed this relationship?

Is there anything in your relationship that has been unhelpful in growing

an affection with scripture?

For example, for many of us, we've been taught through our discipleship,

in particularly in the, the, the moment of today within the culture

that we live in and habit that the Bible is primarily about you.

In fact, it's not just about you.

It was written to you.

So you read scripture with the consideration of holy yourself

rather than understanding that the Bible is not written to you.

It's written for you, but it wasn't written to you.

It was written to a people thousands of years ago to them

in their way, in their days.

Or maybe you were raised in a tradition that saw the Bible as a really complex

study manual, and those trained and smart enough could access its goodness.

Therefore, you, your personal experience of the work of God's

word seems really hard to obtain.

Meaning your engagement with scripture seems forced or even absent.

So today I wanna start with a revealing of where we find ourselves

in our relationship with scripture.

And so I've got a QR code here.

It's completely anon anonymous.

I won't know how you guys answer this poll that we're gonna take.

I want you to get your phones out right now and we're gonna discover where we

sit both communally and individually with our relationship with scripture.

So we've got a poll here as you open that up, and there's a whole

heap of different statements.

And what I want you to do as you look through this poll is I want

you to consider what are the top three that you most identify with?

What are the top three that you most identify with?

And I want you to select those.

Just select the top three.

And from there we will then get into reflecting on what we're seeing.

And so I'm just gonna give us a minute or so to look at that.

I should fill it out too, shouldn't I?

Where am I?

I'll go over here.

Yeah.

Oh, we got tech support.

Yeah, tech support.

Um, so if you've not used a QR code before, I've noticed something,

you got the camera out and you're hitting like the take a photo button.

Uh, you don't want to take a photo of that.

What you wanna do is wait till the screen actually has a link.

Does everyone see the link that comes up on the screen and then you hit the link?

Is that okay?

Do I say that without condemning the older folk in the room?

Great.

Awesome.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Simply.

Yeah, that's good ads.

I've noticed people doing that, simply taking photos of QR codes,

you know, it's not working.

Beautiful.

I'll give you another 30 seconds to fill that out.

So before we put those up, oh, there you go.

That's okay, ed, you can put it up.

So there's two reasons why I want to do this, is I want to understand

our corporate leanings, like where we find ourselves as a community.

But secondly, I really wanted every single person to hear, to know something

about your experience with scripture is probably not all that unique, but your

experience with scripture is shared, whatever your experience has been.

And so there's others in this community that has experienced something

similar to you in your interaction and relationship with scripture.

Okay, so our leanings, as we look at this, almost 60% of us have

stated that primarily the, that scripture is a devotional that's

used in our devotional times.

Um, we've also stated secondly that scripture is primarily

a guide for daily decisions.

Uh, we've mentioned that it's a story as well above 40% of us.

So that's our top three.

Now, as individuals, as you look at this, almost 40% of us say that scripture

is something that we wrestle with.

Now that can be interpreted different ways, can't it?

But what what I want you to know is you're not alone.

You're not alone.

And that's what I want to sta start before there you go, 7%.

And that's doesn't sound like a lot of people.

There's a, there's a few of us, there's a handful of us that say there scripture's

something that I'm, I'm unfamiliar with.

And so one, there's people here who are being really honest and open.

So I applaud you for that.

But also, secondly, you're not alone.

There are others within this community that would say with honesty, if,

if someone asks me, am I deeply familiar with the word of God?

I would have to say, no, I'm not.

And there you go.

So before I move on, if you're present, you say, I rarely, I

don't read scripture, I struggle.

And there there's a mountain of shame that's attached to that, right?

'cause it can be, or even embarrassment, like this is something that you'd

go, oh geez, I'd be happy to confess a lot of other things.

I just want, I want you to know that you, you are in a safe community.

You are safe here to struggle with that.

That's where I wanna start.

The The reality is, is that if you've placed your faith, which is your

loyalty or allegiance to Christ, and you live a life desiring or

hoping for the fruit of the spirit.

Because you felt his love, that there's affections there, then you are safe.

You are his beloved because the great commandment summed up in all the law,

according to Jesus Christ himself is to love God and to love others.

And so if there's something in you that is compelled to live that life.

Then you are.

You are filled with the Holy Spirit.

You are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Shame or self-hatred or condemnation, our wrestling with scripture,

these realities will not help us.

They won't.

We'll just stay in the same rut that we've always been in.

So I want you to be open to healing of the Holy Spirit today in this

relationship that you have with scripture.

And we're gonna speak a little bit more into that at the

end in our reflection time.

So this morning is about presenting a healthy vision for

a relationship with scripture.

Who wants to hear that?

I do so to establish a healthy vis, uh, vision for a relationship with scripture.

I thought that we should probably go to scripture to

see what it says about itself.

As they say, let's go and hear from the horse's mouth.

Now I'm convinced that we see at least, oh, going through adolescence again.

I'm convinced that we see at least two major works or ministries of scripture

to us through the power of the spirit.

I had four, but I've made it less complicated today, so I've brought two.

The first work that I can see in scripture is that it invites us to come and listen.

What are we listening to in scripture?

We are listening to not the dead or the old voice, but the living voice of God.

The second ministry that I think the scripture provides us is reading.

What are we reading?

We're reading the written witness of God.

So scripture is a living voice and a written witness to us.

So let's go through just these two works and dive into what they

are, what they're doing to us, and how we discover the riches of

practising scripture with this vision.

So first, listening, the living voice of God.

We've got some scripture references there.

I had pages of references, so I've cut it down to four for you this morning as well.

What I wanna do is I just wanna read these out and I want you to

see if you can pick up something.

What's going on here?

What is the messaging that we can receive about the work of scripture to us?

In Matthew four, verse four, it says, this man shall not live by

bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Matthew 24 35, heaven and Earth will pass away, but what

my words will not pass away.

One Peter 1 24 to 25.

The word of the Lord remains forever.

Hebrews four 12.

The word of God is living and active.

What is it doing?

It's discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Put simply.

We are listening because he is speaking and we are receiving.

He speaks, we receive.

See, this work is an invitation by scripture to listen as a reminder

of who he is and who we are.

That God is a God who communicates through words, through all generations,

and the words are written, they're spoken, and they're embodied.

The word of God is flesh Christ himself.

So this work of listening to scripture reminds us of a posture that we should

come to God that he speaks and we listen.

He generates and we receive.

He declares and he and we receive.

He promises and we receive.

Let's go back to the garden.

God is the voice.

He is the power of the word spoken, creation on all matter.

Receive what His life giving words.

The human made from dust spoken out by the words of the one who is the living word.

The word of his breath breathes upon us.

He breathes upon us.

He speaks, and we are, he speaks and we receive.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that

comes from the mouth of God.

God initiates the story.

God initiates the story.

Scripture, therefore ought to be listened to.

So what does it do to us when we listen to the story of God in scripture?

When we discipline ourselves to be the receiver?

The work of the word does what it wishes.

So the first work of scripture and listening is to call us into a posture

of sitting under rather than over.

The word is active.

It is the active component of the relationship.

We are the passive members of this relationship.

Hebrews says that it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Scripture as we listen to it.

Does this deep work in us?

It can, if given the opportunity, be a mirror for us in the revealing of God.

It also begins to reveal us in the process as we listen to it.

At first, and this is from experience, it's the most dreadful thing to see

yourself truly naked and revealed by the word of God, the hurt, the resentment,

the unforgiveness that we can carry to be laid naked before God in that.

But see, the word of God doesn't just highlight that, but it gives

us language as we listen to it.

It gives us promises, and then it gives us a vision to see a way towards life.

The practise of listening is to place scripture in its proper place

in our minds and our hearts, so that truly a revelation is coming to us.

It's a continued word of self-revealing.

Have you ever thought of it as a continual word of self revealing

to us daily to listen to who isn't revealing God himself to us.

How can we practise listening?

So an encouragement here first, over the history of God's people.

This ministry of listening has been the main way.

Most of God, PE God's people have interacted with scripture.

The Israelites had a verbal me memorization based culture

rather than a written one.

Most would hear the word of the Lord spoken by either someone quoting it or

if they were lucky enough they'd have a scroll and someone would read from it.

For the majority of church history right up into the printing press.

Not right up, but probably a bit later than that.

Most Christians did not interact with scripture through reading it, but by

hearing it, the majority of church history has been us interacting with

the word through listening, not reading.

Now the practise of listening, I think is multifaceted.

And here's some practicalities.

When we gather on a Sunday, or we gather in our house churches, what

I want us to be available to is the ministry of the Holy Spirit

through just simply hearing the word.

So what that would mean is we can't just settle through mere comprehension,

but start realising that as the word is spoken, what is it doing to us?

Well, I think foundationally, it's actually reminding us that God is still

speaking and we are still listening.

So it's reminding us that God is active.

Now, as you hear the word of God spoken, treat it as if God is with us.

I've lost my spot.

Or I could just go for a long, just pause, just to let that settle.

There's options there when you're public speaking.

But other things that you could use is things like auto, auto, audio, bibles.

They're great to actually just sit in the presence of going, I am just going to

listen and be the receiver of God's word.

I, I use them often.

Another thing that, um, that I think is really, really helpful

is that when you actually engage with the word, read it out loud.

Hear the word.

Do you know current research into memorization, comprehension, and

focus has concluded that when we read something out loud, it boosts what is

called the production effect by engaging both sight and sound, and it creates

something called sensory tags that lock information into long-term memory.

They've concluded that this is far more effective than silent reading.

So read out loud, hear the word of God being spoken to yourself.

And then lastly, a slower way is a practise, an ancient practise that the

church has been practising since the early church fathers known as Lectio.

Davina, which simply just means divine reading.

It means just sitting in the word of God, being available to the spirit.

And that can mean just sitting with a phrase or a saying of Jesus, praying it,

asking questions of it, and inviting the Holy Spirit to uncover more so of it to

you, and in the process uncovering you.

Now hold this caution.

If your engagement with scripture, this is the lip ness test or the, you know,

the water test that you do with your pool, if you're outta balance, right?

If your relationship with scripture is making you more rigid, more certain,

less generous, you are not being formed by the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

through the word, you're actually being formed by an ideology of the world.

And why can I say that with a sense of confidence is because the goal of

listening in scripture is not more knowledge, and therefore more certainty.

The goal of scripture in listening to God and his story is a renewed heart and

therefore a life of love in Christ Jesus.

That's the goal.

Yeah.

Amen.

I need to hear that as well.

'cause I get really rigid and that's because I don't stretch

and anyway, it's a lot, lot there.

Okay, the second one, reading the written witness of God, the work of reading.

Okay, let's move on to those scriptures that we've got there.

Alright, so I've got three here.

And just notice something in these three.

Just be open and go.

What's going on?

What's connecting here?

What's the thread?

John?

20. It says these.

These are written so that you may believe what?

That Jesus is the Christ and by believing have life in his name.

Romans 15.

Whatever was written in former days was what was written for

our instruction on Corinthians.

Oh, I deliver to you as a first importance.

What I also received.

The work of reading the consumption of scripture is ultimately to

be a remembering of something.

What is the remembering?

The remembering is that we are weak creatures.

And God and his loving kindness has met us in that weakness

by the giving of his word.

It strengthens our faith.

Faith when we read it, when we're reminded of these truths, because we

forget, it renews us when we grow weary.

As John rightfully declares.

These three things are written so that you may believe that Jesus Christ,

that Jesus is a Christ the Son of God, and by leaving have life in His name.

So the reading of what has been written is a work of the Holy Spirit for what.

Communion with Christ.

What does it do to us?

It centres us on that good reality that we are prone to wonder.

I fast once a week, and fasting for me is that realisation once again

that my life has become unordered

and I'm just shocked at how unor order it can become in a week.

Oh my word.

But in some sense, that's what scripture is providing us every

single day is to go, I'm out of order.

I've wandered and God in his rich mercy and kindness every single day through his

word is calling me back, calling me back.

The reading of his word gives us security and restful hearts.

It builds into us a reliance upon the reality of his work,

that the work has been done, is being done and will be completed.

I think reading also does something pretty powerful in the written

witness of God is it reminds us that what we have received, this faith.

This faith that I have isn't mine alone, but it has been received.

I don't get to reshape it.

I get to live under it.

As Paul writes, I delivered to you of first opponents.

What I also received that Jesus died for our sins was buried and was raised

on the third day according to what.

Yell it out according to scriptures.

That the core messages and teachings of Christ as we receive the

witness of God in the Word is what?

It's inherited, it's given to me.

And that does a great work in all of us to kill off the pride

and the arrogance of our hearts.

To think that I can adjust, I can modify, I can change the truths of who God is

because of my personal devotion time.

How do we practise it?

We practise this by having the word regularly informing and reminding a

daily connection to the words of life You see, reading The Witness of God's

work should not be seen as simply as a mental discipline, because reading

the receiving of God's word opens us on how to pray in and through scripture.

It gives us words to speak when we do not have them.

Reading gives us worship to sing unto God.

Prime example, Psalms is known as the hymnal of the church.

I spend so many time, I spend most of my days in Psalms every day in Psalm.

As Paul says in Romans, whatever was written in former days was written for

our instructions that through endurance and encouragement, we might have hope.

Reading encourages and provides us with endurance to live with God.

And this is where, as I get back to that point, our overemphasis on personal

devotion time at times has been a weakness to the evangelical church.

You see, the reading of God's word was never meant to be so solitary.

Discipline alone.

It's actually meant to be communal and you know, with other people all the time.

No, not necessarily with other people all the time though it can be that, but

it's the communing of the historic church who has gone before us and therefore

the interacting with the way in which the church has formed its teachings and

its beliefs around Christ and who he is.

It's communal in that as I read, I'm communing with the Holy Spirit.

Yeah.

How am I going Mick?

Good.

Mick was one of my lecturers when I went to Bible college 20

something years ago at Table.

And just quietly, Mick wouldn't know this, but he, he made a huge

impression on me in regards to my relationship with God's word.

And I've told his son, Josh Stringer, and I remember him, that

Skelly wag that used to be here, got married, ran away, had a kid.

We'll, just, I think we'll just frame it like that.

Um, delinquent.

He's, yeah.

No.

Should we tell stories, um, and I'll say this to Josh, but Mick, you,

the way in which you inhabited this joyful sense of God's word being

a safe place for us to dwell in.

You were a man who was more than willing to come uncovered in

that, and that that just caught my attention and gave me a vision to go.

God is safe in his word, to be who I am, so thank you.

So re reading's never meant to just be simply solitary.

We do it with all these other concepts practically.

When we read a passage and we're reading it, I dunno about you, even

now, I'm like, oh gosh, what the heck?

Does that mean that that's right?

I read that last time and I jumped over it.

But just practically one thing that can be really helpful, if there's

this part of scripture that you just find really challenging, you just sit

with it, but sit with it with say, four or five different translations.

And everyone can do that because we have apps that are free, so there's no excuse.

If you're reading the NIV, if you're reading the NLT great

translations, but get into the amplified, have a look at the message.

Have a look at something that's more literal, like the NSAB.

Or the s uh, the CCSB or the ESV, they just sound, just sound like a heap of

really bad things that you can catch.

And hopefully we do catch something from 'em, right.

But just like lay them in front of you because what you're actually communing

with is like hundreds if not thousands of different scholars that have spent their

lives pouring into unearthing what is spoken in scripture to us in our language.

And so putting a heap of translations before you can really help fill

out or get a better understanding.

And then the next level, again, you have free apps.

Next level is to go to commentaries.

Commentaries are where scholars or a scholar has written a commentary on

a particular book or passage where they give insight into the cultural,

historical, religious context.

They get into cross-referencing and, and all those sorts of things.

The work is already done there and we can glean from the wisdom of the church.

Another way in which we can practically do this is coming to

Word and wait on a Wednesday night.

And in some sense, this is what I think scripture could, should be.

The ultimate manifestation is that the communion of the Saints

are reading this together.

I think that's where, where scripture should take us and

lead us to get a move on.

Now hear this clearly, clearly, all right.

Don't, don't just really hear this.

'cause I think with this overemphasis on personal devotion and so forth, I think

this is where it's gotten a bit skewed.

I'm off of personal devotion by the way.

Our practise of scripture and our daily reading of it carries

no expectation of performance.

There's no mandate in scripture from God to read a chapter or three chapters

a day or to finish the Bible in a year.

So if there's any concern or worry that has sort of caught up into your mind about

the amount of scripture you read each day, you can just drop that right now.

We can just leave that at the door.

You are welcome to read a verse a day,

a paragraph a day, a chapter, a day.

You start wherever you find yourself.

And this is, this is, this could be the short ads, this little little phrase.

This is my Instagram short.

Alright.

You don't have to, oh, I'm joking.

I was joking with Adam.

It's not the quantity that matters, it's your availability.

Dad preach.

I tested it for a few days there.

I was like, no, that still preaches Luke.

Thank you.

Great.

Good.

Did you get my shoes?

Was the headshot.

That's arguably, I don't know if that's my best feature.

I feel like it's possibly a calf.

One of my calves is my best feature.

It is not the quantity.

It's your availability that matters to God's word.

So underneath everything in all of this, underneath everything,

everything that I've said this morning, there's one simple truth

that the goal is not scripture itself.

That's what I'm talking about.

What am I talking about?

The Bible.

A book written words on a piece of paper.

The scripture is the means that God has instituted to the goal,

which is himself, the living word.

To meet Christ in the Word.

So therefore, scripture ought to be seen as a ministry or work of the Holy Spirit.

God, by the power of His spirit, uses the means of His revealed

truth to guide us towards himself.

So therefore, scripture doesn't need to be mastered, rather it ought to master us

to see that goal of communion with him.

Take place.

So it's a giving over practise.

It's a giving over discipline to the ministry of the Holy Spirit

when we find ourselves in scripture.

So two truths I want you to take home today that lead us to an important point.

Firstly, it's important that we don't see scripture as merely a book of

rules to follow so that now we're, you know, we're good with God.

But again, it's ultimate purpose.

Communion, not rule.

Following this communion is love formed and affection developed in

the inner self to serve our Lord.

Hence why Jesus says in John, if you love me, if you love me, then keep my

commandments, keep my revealed truth.

Keep my words if you love me, that the whole story of scripture

speaks to the faithful, loyal, long suffering God who loves his creation.

If that's the call, love, then keeping His commandments will

never be a matter of obligation.

It'll be a matter of affection.

And then secondly, that the testimony of scripture reveals a God who speaks

to people, acts in time and space.

That the story of God spoken by himself to a multitude of people, remind us of

his constant desire to be present with us.

God reaffirming his inherent desire to be with his people, to be with creation.

When you relate to scripture remembering those two truths, what

it does is it brings us to the profoundly good news of God's love,

which scripture all points to and is supremely discovered in Christ Jesus.

God's word is pointing for, telling and preparing us for Jesus.

See the mystery.

Just a little encouragement.

I've got all these little encouragement that I want to tack on.

I've cut this message down quite a bit by the way.

The mystery of the work of scripture is beautiful.

What do you mean?

You see, our relationship with scripture isn't results driven, and I can tell you

right now, there's probably more days than there are days of reading, listening,

studying, that feel incredibly uneventful.

I'm just gonna, I'm being honest with you.

I'm not, you know, coming out of the holies of Holies in my little cabin.

I'm sure Dale thinks I do.

So please trust, this is the discipline I've lent into.

Please trust that even in those moments and that I pray this often,

that there is a work taking place by the Holy Spirit that is full

of ministry that I'm unaware of.

And guess what it is?

It's an eternal work that as I yield to the scripture, as I listen to

it, as I read it, as I'm reminded of the witness, even in the absence

of feeling the goosebumps and the IES and all that sort of stuff.

There is still a work happening in me.

In Psalm 1 0 7, it says he sent his word and he healed them.

He rescued them from the pit.

So we rest in that, that the work of the word is in his hands and it's not in ours.

Earlier I asked you who are bringing your shame and your guilt that you

carry around scripture to confess.

Confess that if there's any sense of shame or guilt or worry or embarrassment

or condemnation about my relationship with scripture, the best thing you

can do is verbalise that to someone.

They will break any hold that it has over you.

And there's no shame.

There's no shame here anyway.

There's no shame with me.

The reality is that every single one of us have had moments

where it has been hard work.

Every single one of us, there have been seasons where we've felt dry, where

we've felt despondent, where we've, we've really found it hard to go to this, to

the word of God, and so there's no shame to confess it and to be led to a place

of actually inviting the Holy Spirit to come in and reveal what's going on

under all of that, what's happening?

And to pray for healing so that one can see the fruit of scripture once again.

So I just want you to take a moment and we will go over a little bit of time.

Take a moment, get quiet.

Close your eyes if you'd like to pray.

Pray.

If you've got someone next to you that you, you actually wanna start,

you go, actually, I want to confess that I'm struggling with that.

Can you pray for me?

Do that now.

Uh, for anyone else who needs some time to reflect on some questions,

we've just got some questions there.

Um, take a photo of that, of that if you want.

You can sit with 'em now, you can take 'em into the week.

Just do moments of self-reflection and honesty to go, what is my

relationship with God's word right now?

And how can I see healing and freedom by the work of the

spirit so that I might enjoy.

And get a, get a vision, get a holy vision for this relationship

that's available to me.

Amen.