God’s Word’s Role In Changing Us

Good morning. This morning we are continuing our series, Change.

This is now Change Part 2, and the title of the sermon is God's Word's Role in Changing Us.

So this is Part 2. I guess I should review a little bit of Part 1 if you weren't

here to catch you up with where we've been as we've been talking about change.

So last week we said the Christian life is a changed life, okay? You remember that?

And we talked about three different transformations that take place in the Christian life.

The first one that we talked about was called conversion, okay?

Conversion is the transformation or the change from non-Christian to Christian.

Conversion is what happens when someone comes into contact with the gospel of

Jesus Christ, okay, and they believe it and they trust in him.

So the gospel is that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins,

and then he rose again from the grave.

And the understanding of what that means for us, that when someone comes to

the conclusion, they realize, wait, Jesus died on the cross,

not for his own sins, but for the sins of other people.

Like he took a punishment in my place.

So like I'm a sinner. I deserve judgment. That judgment happened to Jesus rather

than me so that forgiveness could be granted to me as my sins were paid for.

So Jesus died on the cross for my forgiveness and then rose again from the grave.

And so there is an eternal life that is offered to me instead of eternal judgment

that I deserve because of my sin.

And so when people come in contact with that gospel and they believe it.

And they say, well, I give you my life, Jesus. I follow you.

You are my Lord and Savior.

That's conversion. That's the change from non-Christian to Christian.

Then we said the second transformation is the change from baby Christian to mature Christian.

And then this is something that happens typically gradually over many years

as a person lives the Christian life.

And then we said toward the end of the, like the third transformation that we

talked about last week was, anybody remember what it was called?

Glorification. Glorification, hmm. First service was set it with much more gusto.

Glorification is the transformation from mortal to immortal,

so that when Jesus returns and he makes us fit for eternity,

that's the transformation there, glorification.

So last week when I was talking about what the series is about over the next

few weeks, and I said this at one of the two services, but I'm not sure I said it at both.

I think this might have been the service I didn't, I forgot to say it at.

But when it comes to those three different types of change or those three different

transformations in the Christian life, this series, the plan is for the next

four or five weeks for us to focus on the second of those three transformations, okay?

This is a series on spiritual growth, the middle one.

That is our intention, if the Lord wills. That's what we're going to be talking

about for the next several weeks. This is not a series on conversion.

This is not a series on glorification. Those are both very important topics

that we have covered in other sermons.

But this is a series on spiritual growth, that second kind of change in the Christian life.

So now we're going to be talking about different things within that topic of

spiritual growth and today the topic is God's Word.

Now before I even get into it I guess I want to ask you this for those of you

that are here and you're Christians.

Do you want to change? Like if you're here and you're a Christian,

do you want spiritually to grow as a Christian?

There may be some of you here who are at a point in your life where you would

say like, I really do believe I am a follower of Jesus, but my relationship

with God has kind of gotten sort of humdrum, sort of stale, like the way Lance described it earlier.

Like it's just kind of a dry time in my spiritual life. And there may be some

of you in that category that would say, like, I do. I want change.

And then there may be others of you that it's a different thing.

I'm going to guess there's probably some people in this room that you also desire

change in your spiritual life because you are sinning and you are feeling bad

about the fact that you are caught

in a sin, okay? I don't know if there's anybody here in this category.

I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I want you to just think about

what I'm going to say and see if it resonates with you.

Is there anybody here that you would say, right now, I feel like I'm caught

in a sin and I'm ashamed and it's terrible.

And I look back and I really think that I am a believer in Jesus Christ.

I really am someone who follows him.

In fact, I look back to before I was a Christian. I look back to before I was

a Christian and actually the thing I'm doing now that I feel bad about,

I used to do it all the time before I was a Christian.

In fact, quantity and quality, I did more of it back then. I was really good

at sinning back then, even better than now.

And back then when I was doing it even more and worse, I didn't feel bad about it.

Because I was just living the life I wanted to live. And now I've come to know

Jesus and I really do love him and I really do want to please him.

And I'm doing some of the things that I used to do before I knew him and now it's eaten me up.

Like I feel so ashamed, I'm like miserable. I was doing it worse and I was not miserable.

I come to know Jesus, I thought that was gonna make everything better and yet

I'm miserable now and I do, I need to and I want to repent.

Because I am ashamed. I want to get uncaught from this sin. I don't know if

you're here this morning, but I would imagine in a room this size,

there's several of you that are like, yes.

And if I said, do you want to change? You'd go, yes, I want to change.

And so I am praying that this series would be good for you as we talk about

spiritual growth and as we talk about the different things that cause spiritual

growth in our lives over the next several weeks, today being the one that focuses on God's word.

And when I say I pray this series would be good for you, I mean,

I'm literally going to pray right now that this series would be good for you.

So if you would pray with me.

Lord, I pray that you would light a fire within me this morning as I teach this.

I pray that you would light a fire among my listeners, that their minds would

be open in a way that like you have opened it.

And I just pray that they would, I just pray all of us that you would teach

us and we would understand you better this morning and that we would be able to turn.

And that the people here who are just kind of dry and it's just sort of cold,

I just pray that you would deliver them from that and that they would seek after you.

And follow you, and walk with you. And the people here who are caught in a sin,

I do pray that they would get uncaught.

I pray that they would repent, and they would turn from you,

and replace whatever it is that they're doing that they ought not do with something

that you have for them instead.

And so we thank you that we even get to ask you for any of this.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, the first verse that I want to begin with today is Romans chapter 12, verse 2.

Romans 12:2

If you have your Bible with you, now would be a good time to turn to Romans

or even whether it's paper Bible or on your phone, go to Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

I'm going to read to you verse 2 at this time. Romans 12, 2 was a Bible verse

that I read to you last week.

Last week when I was talking about the different types of change in the Christian

life, when I got to the part about spiritual growth, the first verse that I read was Romans 12, 2.

But at that point, we had a lot to talk about. I didn't have time to really explain the verse.

So now I want to go back and I want to explain more about what this verse says

that we covered just briefly last week when we talked about Romans 12 too. So here it is.

It says, do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing

of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing,

and perfect will of God. Anybody remember this verse from last week?

Yeah. So this is definitely a verse on transformation. This is a verse on change,

right? Like, if we're looking for Bible verses on change, this has got to be one of them, right?

Yes, because it literally, this is one of the Bible verses that actually tells you to change.

This verse says, be transformed, right?

Turn into something different, right? The verse is literally telling us to change. Okay, be transformed.

From what? And into what? And the verse tells us, right?

We're supposed to be transformed from this age, because that's the thing we're

not supposed to be conformed to, but rather we are supposed to be transformed

into something or someone that can discern what the good, pleasing and perfect will of God is.

So it's from, the transformation is from this age to discerning God's will, right?

Well, great, that's good to know. What does it mean this age?

So I'm supposed to be not conformed to this age, but be turned into something

or someone that like understands the will of God.

What does it mean to not be conformed to this age?

Well, there are some Bibles that actually translate it a little bit less literally.

And I think it is helpful sometimes when they do that.

There are some Bibles verses that actually translate this, do not be conformed

to the pattern of this world.

And I think that is a good way to think of what this is referring to when it

says, do not be conformed to this age.

That the word age, apparently sometimes in the Bible, in the original language,

the word age meant like the time or the times that we are in.

And so it's referring to not just literally like time time, it's referring to

like this whole chunk of time and how people are nowadays, right?

And so I think this is a reference to the ordinary culture that surrounds us,

like that is apart from God, not church culture, not Christians,

but like this world that is apart from God, what is valued?

What are the beliefs? What are the behaviors of this time, right?

The day and age that we live in, it is sort of a, not everybody believes the same things.

Not everybody does all the same things, But the times that you live in,

they really are like a river where there is a certain flow that is going in

a particular direction.

And if you're not fighting against it, it's going somewhere, right?

So what is the ordinary culture that surrounds us? It's all of the thoughts

and all of the behaviors that we see in the world apart from Christ.

And so it may be thoughts and behaviors about sexuality.

It might be thoughts and behaviors about how to handle money.

It might be thoughts and behaviors about what relationships are supposed to

be like or what a family is supposed to look like or how our career is supposed to be handled.

And I think you can tell what the prevailing beliefs or the prevailing behaviors

of this age are by just looking at what is it that people are into?

What is it that everybody kind of thinks is true? What is it that everybody

does? At least when we're talking about

outside the church, what are most non-Christians, what are they thinking?

What are they saying? This is the way it is and we don't do it this way.

That's the pattern of this age. And this verse is saying that the goal is to not be like that.

So some of you, at some point in your life, might have thought something like this to yourself.

You might have said, okay, Mario, I think I'm following Jesus.

I really do. And in fact, I am happy that I'm following Jesus.

But sometimes I feel like as I'm following Jesus, I just feel like I'm being weird.

Like I'm trying to do what God wants me to do. And I feel like as I do that,

I just stick out as weird compared to the people around me. Okay?

Aha. Now here's the thing.

That might mean that you're doing it right.

Are you following me? We're not supposed to be conformed this age.

If you're sitting there going, yeah, I'm trying my best to follow God,

and sometimes I feel like that just makes me stick out as weird.

Yes, that's a definite, huge, possible, likely indicator that you're spot on.

Following God's will definitely requires you to be weird if the definition of

weird is different from this age.

If your definition of weird, and I think most people's is, if your definition

of weird is different from the pattern of this world, then yes, weird is God's will.

And then some of you might hear that and go, oh, well, I don't want that.

I want to be a follower of Jesus, but I don't want to stick out as weird.

I'm sorry. That's not a thing.

That's not an option for us. The followers of God must be transformed away from

the pattern of this age and toward the good, pleasing, perfect will of God.

And how does that happen? You're like, okay, we're supposed to be transformed, how?

The verse actually says it, did you notice? In between where you're going from

and where you're going to, there's a hint. It doesn't just say be transformed.

It says, but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind.

So ladies and gentlemen, get this.

Change starts here.

The new ways that God has for us begin with new thinking.

All right, well, where do these new thoughts come from? Well,

this particular verse actually doesn't say, okay?

But I think the primary answer is God's word. And I'm gonna show you a couple

of different places, one in the New Testament and one in the Old Testament that

talk about God's word in our life.

Because I think if you're going to have your mind renewed, what we're gonna

have to do is we're going to have to think God's thoughts after him.

That is a very cool phrase that I did not make up. I heard another pastor say

it back when I was in Texas. I heard the pastor of my church said that phrase.

And the way that he said it, I could tell he did not make it up.

He was saying it like it was a phrase that he heard somewhere,

that we need to think God's thoughts after him.

And so I didn't know where he was quoting it from, but I Googled it this week to find out.

And it turns out he was quoting Johannes Kepler, okay? Any science nerds here,

you're going to love this. Kepler rarely gets quoted at this church.

But Johannes Kepler was a scientist back in the day, okay?

And he was a Christian. And he believed that as he was doing science,

he was doing it for the Lord in order to understand God better,

by understanding God's world better.

And so the way that he used the phrase, think God's thoughts after him is actually

different than the way my pastor was using it.

Kepler, the way he used the phrase, as best as I can tell is,

he was saying that when we use the

scientific method to determine whether something is true or false, okay?

Or to determine how something works, that once we've determined that which we

know is true, then we found something that God thought before we did, right?

So I'll just make up a thing. Like let's say it's the freezing point of water

is 32 degrees. Okay, at some point, humans figured out the freezing point of water is 32 degrees.

So at the point that humans realized that's true, the freezing point of water

is 32 degrees, we had to admit, and I think Kepler would say this,

God believed that before we did.

Right? So we're just thinking God's thoughts after him.

That's the scientific method. Okay? Well, my pastor who was using it,

I think he was using it in a different way. I think he was primarily referring

to what we do with the Bible.

That as we come across truths in God's word, what we should do every single

time is we go, wait, if that's true, then that means...

God believed it before I did. So I'm just supposed to believe it after him,

right? I'm following him. He thought it was true.

So now I'm following in his example and I'm believing what he believed way before I did.

I'm thinking God's thoughts after him as I understand what is true in God's

word. You following that?

So I would like to take you to two passages of scripture that I think specifically

talk about God's word and its effect on our mind and on our behavior and on our lives.

So the first one is from the Old Testament. it. It's Psalm, the 119th Psalm.

Psalm 119 is the biggest chapter in the entire Bible. There's like 170 something verses in it.

I'm not going to be reading all 170 of them, but I am going to read to you the

first 16 verses of Psalm 119.

Okay. Psalm 119, starting in verse one, I'm going to read you the verses and

just pay close attention as you see this.

It says, how happy are those whose way is blameless, who live according to the Lord's what?

Instruction. Okay, so the Lord has some instructions that we're supposed to live by, okay?

And then it says, happy are those who keep his, what's the word?

Decrees. Okay, so we got instructions and we got decrees, all right?

I guess we got two things here.

And seek him with all their heart. They do nothing wrong, they follow his ways.

Wait, so we got ways and decrees and instructions, right?

Let's keep going. It's kind of hard to keep track of all this.

You have commanded that your precepts be diligently clipped.

Oh my gosh, so God has precepts and ways and decrees and instruction.

I hope there's not any more. This seems like it's getting really complicated.

If only my ways were committed to keeping your statutes. He's got statutes?

He's got statutes and precepts and ways and decrees and instruction?

How am I gonna remember? How am I gonna be able to figure this all out?

Verse 6, so then I would not be ashamed when I think about all your what?

Commands. There's commands in addition to statutes and decrees and precepts

and instructions and ways.

How in the world? This is very complex. And here's the thing.

I don't think it's complex at all.

I think that all of these nouns that are found here, I guess what I'm trying

to say is I think that this passage is actually about one topic.

Do you agree? Did you pick up on it before I even said it?

Yes. This is really about one topic. All of these words are either synonyms

or if they're not synonyms, they're all parts of the same thing.

I don't think he's trying to get us to understand all the decrees as if it's

wildly, something wildly different than his ways, which is totally different

than his precepts, which is completely different than the list of commands, right?

All of these verses are talking about the way that God has revealed himself to us.

He's got a collection of words. He's got some truths and he's saying, okay, this is my stuff.

And so this particular psalm is about all that. And some of them are different.

Maybe the reason different words are used is because there are times in God's

word where the thing is a command, right? It's like a don't do this, do this.

And there are other times where maybe it's more like just a truth.

It's just a thing that you go,

this is true. I need to believe it because God thought it before I did.

There might be some that's more like a judgment. It's like, okay,

God says this is valuable. This thing is less valuable.

So they're all different types. But when you put it all together,

I think what Psalm 119 is about is God revealing himself in words to people

and then the people saying, whoa,

we need to take these words seriously, the commands and the precepts and the

decrees and the ways and the instructions and the statutes.

Verse seven, I will praise you with a sincere heart when I learn your righteous judgments.

I will keep your statutes, never abandon me.

So all of this is, I think, one topic, one thing, even though this is a new word, judgments.

Judgments is another word that I think goes along with decrees and precepts

and ways and instructions.

Verse nine, how can a young man keep his way pure?

Well, that's a good question. That's kind of the question of this series,

right? So I've become a Christian and I want to live the right way in spiritual

growth. I wanna live a way that's pure.

How can a young man keep his way pure? What does it say? By keeping your word.

And it turns out the word word is another word for the decrees and the precepts

and the instructions and the ways, right? By keeping your word.

I have sought you with all my heart. Don't let me wander from your commands.

I have treasured your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.

Lord, may you be praised. Teach me your statutes. With my lips,

I proclaim all the judgments from your mouth.

I rejoice in the way revealed by your decrees as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and think about your ways. I will delight in

your statutes. I will not forget your word.

Not eight different topics. God has revealed himself to us and we are to then

take that into us, into our heart, into our mind and live by it.

So I just want to, there's just some excerpts in those 16 verses I want to go

back to and highlight. So if we go back to verses five and six,

I want you to notice some things.

In verses five and six, it said, if only my ways were committed to keeping your

statutes, then I would not be, what's the word?

Ashamed when I think about all your commands. There's a connection between the

word of God and shame or lack of shame.

Look at verse nine. How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping your word.

There's a connection between God's word and purity.

Look at verse 11. I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you.

There is a connection between God's word and sinning or not sinning.

And then look at verse 14. I rejoice in the way revealed by your decrees as

much as in all what? All riches.

We're supposed to treat God's word like cold, hard cash. Do you see that?

Like in other words, It seems to me that the idea here is it's not mere exposure

to God's word that makes the difference.

It's the valuing of God's word that makes the difference in our life.

All right, the next section I wanted to show you is in the New Testament.

So that's the Old Testament. Now let's go to the New Testament, 2 Timothy chapter 3.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

I'm going to read to you from verses 16 through 17. As Paul was talking to Timothy,

he said these words. Oh, he wrote these words.

All scripture is inspired by God. This is 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching,

for rebuking, for correcting,

for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete,

equipped for every good work.

So what kind of change does this verse say God's word, right,

scripture, like scripture causes what kind of change in the life of someone

according to this verse?

The answer is, it says that it makes you complete and equipped,

right? That is a transformation.

Like the verse is making a claim that if scripture is applied to a life,

there's a change that happens.

Someone goes from incomplete to complete.

Someone goes from unequipped to equipped. That's transformation. Do you see that?

I think this is spiritual growth, right? This is not a verse about conversion, okay?

Not that scripture doesn't convert people, because I think scripture is very

important in converting people. I'm just saying, I don't think that's what this is talking about.

It's not saying that God's word is profitable so that someone can,

you know, come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

This particular verse is saying, no, it's profitable for these things so that,

now what is it? What does it say right there?

The man of God, okay, which I think that includes the woman of God.

But the point here is this is someone who already knows God becoming incomplete.

Apparently, you can be a man of God and you're incomplete and you're unequipped, right?

But then what can happen is scripture, after it does its teaching,

rebuking, correcting, and training, the person who's already converted,

they're already a Christian, they can go from incomplete to complete,

they can go from unequipped to equipped.

Well, how does that happen? It's by Scripture doing what it does.

Well, what does it do? It says what it does. It says it is profitable for teaching. That's helpful.

So teaching, like there's a content to Scripture.

And when we understand the content, then we want to believe it.

Like Scripture tells us what to believe.

But apparently Scripture does more than just tell us what to believe.

Because look at the next three verbs after teaching, right? It looks like all

we're doing is believing for a second.

And then all of a sudden, what happens? It's also profitable for rebuking,

correcting, and training in righteousness.

Clearly, this is not just about what we are to believe. Scripture changes our

behavior so that we are complete and equipped.

I mean, just this word right here, just the word correcting, okay?

That's a change. That with God's word corrects you, it straightens you up.

The word correcting, I looked it up, in the Greek, the word that's translated

into the English word correcting is a word that means to straighten something back up.

Okay, so it's like if there was a thing that was displayed and it fell over.

Okay, I think in Greek literature, even outside the Bible, ancient Greek literature,

to take that thing and put it back up to the way it was, the verb that you were

doing in that moment is this verb right here. You were correcting it.

You were getting it back to the way it was supposed to be. Or if a person falls

over or stumbles and you help that person get back up to standing, that's correcting.

You were getting them, you were straightening them back up. That God's word

is something that not only shows us what to believe, it straightens us back

up and changes our behavior.

So the bottom line this morning is this, all of these verses,

the reason I said, the reason I read to you Romans 12, 2, that we are,

be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

And the reason I read to you from Psalm 119, I have hidden your word in my heart

that I might not sin against you.

And the reason I read from you from 2 Timothy chapter 3, that scripture is profitable

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

for teaching and correcting so that you may be complete and equipped.

Like all of these verses are really, were read to you today to make kind of

one big point, And that is this, we, the people of God, are to be shaped by

God's word, and we are to be reshaped by God's word.

That's the main point of the sermon. Like when it comes to God's word,

we are to be conformed to it rather than trying to conform it to us.

Have you seen someone do that? I'm guessing by the number of head nods,

you're like, oh, I know what that meant.

What do you mean rather trying to conform it to us? What I'm saying is,

and I think you all have seen this, we have this, humans are funny creatures.

In that almost everyone that I've ever met has these two desires,

okay? That we wanna do what we wanna do.

And we want what we do to be considered good, okay?

We wanna do the things we desire to do, and we also want to do the right thing.

Almost everybody I know, they want that. I want to do the stuff I want to do.

I want to do the right thing, okay?

But the problem is, sometimes you can't do both of those simultaneously.

Sometimes they conflict and lots of people have noticed that sometimes they

conflict and they go, but wait a minute, I want to do what I want to do and

I want to do that, which is good, right?

And I want to make them both work at the same time. So how do I do that?

And it seems to me, especially if you're going to assume that the Bible is the

authority here, It seems to me that what a lot of people do is they will look

at a book like this and they will go, well, I guess there's two options.

If I got what I want to do and then I got what's considered to be good and right,

and if they don't match, then something's going to have to give.

And there are some people that go, you know what's going to give?

What I want is going to give.

I'm going to have to change what I want to match what God's Word says is right.

And then there are some other people that go, and there's another thing you could do.

I could try to take my understanding of God's word and make it match what I'm doing.

That also gets rid of that pesky conflicting feeling.

Have you seen that? Yes. I wrote down some methods of how people,

basically I'm saying you can make you match the Bible or you can try to make the Bible match you.

And so I wrote down some methods that I've seen where people try to make the Bible match them.

Okay, here's method number one. It's called, that must not be for the situation

I'm in. Okay, that's the name of the method. I named it that. Okay.

So that's, it must not be for the situation I'm in. And here's how you use it. Okay.

Person comes along and there's something in their life that is not matching

with what the scripture says. Maybe somebody, maybe they see it on something online.

Maybe a friend of theirs points it out. They go, hey, aren't you divorcing your

husband? Yes, I am. He's a loser.

Yeah, but here's a verse. And it seems to say you're not supposed to do that.

Okay, and in fact, this one says, like there's a whole bunch of stuff actually

going on in your life. You're supposed to love your enemies and you're supposed to forgive.

And the person goes, wait a minute here. Let me look at that.

Yeah, sure enough. and then they go this, wow, that must not be for the situation I'm in, right?

Because we've got what I want to do and we've got that which is considered right

and I got to fit him somehow. So I say, yeah, that must not be for the situation I'm in.

That's for somebody else, whatever they were going through. But if God knew

all of the specifics of my situations, he'd say something totally different than that, okay?

You've seen this? Now, here's what's weird about that is occasionally that is correct.

There are times where the Bible does describe a different situation than the

one that you're in. And so that particular verse doesn't apply.

Here's another one that people use. They will say, that was a long time ago. Have you heard that one?

Oh yeah, I hear that one. That was a long time ago. So they'll come across something

in the Bible, maybe it's something like, wives, submit to your husbands, and they'll go, oh wow.

That was a long time ago. Like that was for people in the Roman Empire and back

where they wore funny hats and stuff. That's not for nowadays. That was a long time ago.

And what's difficult with that is, like, sometimes that's true,

too. There are things in the Bible that were for a long time ago,

and they don't apply to you, okay? Did you know that?

There are. Like, literally, in the Old Testament, there are commands where the

Israelites were supposed to go into the promised land and conquer it, right?

That wasn't written to you. You're not supposed to do that this afternoon,

right? You're not supposed to go conquer the promised land. It says to do it,

but you're not supposed to do it.

That's actually for some people a long time ago, right?

So what's tricky is we have to read the word and study the word enough to start

to understand what are the parts that we're given for a very specific situation that I'm not in,

and what are the things in the Bible that are timeless and you can tell God

is telling everybody to do this over and over and over again for all time.

Here's another one. This one I've seen a lot the last 10 years.

It's this. I don't think that's what a loving God would require of me.

Are you seeing this one? I don't think that's what a loving God would require

of me. You put the word loving in and then he believes whatever you believe. It's amazing.

This is an incredible tactic. So it seems to me what happens,

I've seen this happen a lot.

It seems to me what someone does is they go to the Bible and they come across

a part they really like, like God is love, okay? Which is really in the Bible, okay?

It's in the book of 1 John. It says, God is love. And they're like,

oh, I like that. Let's put it on a coffee mug, a bunch of other stuff too.

God is love. But then it seems like what they do after that is they go,

okay, so what is it that a loving God requires?

And it seems to me a lot of people, instead of saying, well,

I guess what I could do is read the rest of the book and find out what a loving God requires.

No, that's not what they do. Instead, what they do is they go,

well, God is love. And I kind of got an idea of what love is.

And so they imagine what a loving God would be like.

And they almost, without even realizing, they kind of write this sort of alternate

Bible in their head of what a loving God would require, and what a loving God would do.

And then once that's established, they go back to their Bible,

and they read stuff, and they go, oh, this does not match with the loving God

of my imagination. I don't see how that could be right.

But maybe it would have been better than imagining what he was like.

Maybe it would have been better to read the whole thing and just say,

a loving God is whatever the loving God said.

And there's probably a whole bunch more of these. But I guess my point is,

I'm saying to you, at some point, you're gonna have to decide,

am I gonna make the Bible match me or am I gonna make me match the Bible?

All right, so as I'm moving to the close of this sermon, there are five methods

of getting the Bible into your mind that I wanted to point out to you before we close.

So the point is, God's word needs to be in your mind, renewing it,

that you might not sin against him, that you might be corrected and rebuked

and taught to be complete and equipped, right?

So then how do we get God's word into our mind? So I just want to give you five

methods of getting the Bible into your mind.

Okay, here's number one, okay? It's called sermons.

I picked this one not necessarily because it's the most important way to get

the Bible into your mind. I just figured I'd start with this one because I figured

all of you would be familiar with this particular method, right?

You want to know why I figured you'd be familiar here with it?

Because you're in one. Yeah, so I don't think anyone's gonna be like, what is a sermon?

Okay, it's the thing you're in right now. Okay, so we got that one covered.

All right, it's the thing you're in right now.

And one way of learning the Bible can be that you would put yourself in a place,

whether it's this church or some other church or listening to something on the

radio or watching something on YouTube, but the point is you put yourself in

a place where a person who teaches the Bible teaches the Bible and you listen

to it and you learn the Bible that way.

So how do you get the Bible into your mind? How do you learn God's word from sermons?

Okay, it's very simple. So basically involves things like real basic stuff. You show up, you listen.

For some of you, maybe this is not for all personality types,

but for some of you, it might be a good idea to take notes,

because if the goal is to remember God's truths so that I could have my life

changed by them, it might be worth writing some things down because there are

a lot of times if you write something down, you remember it better than if you

just hear it alone, right?

So if you have a pad of paper or a journal that you bring with,

it doesn't have to be that you write all the stuff the guy says.

If there's any point in the sermon where, where as the guy's talking,

you hear something and you go, wait a minute, I'm looking at the verse and I'm

thinking about what's being said.

And I, and I now realize like this, you could say this, like this thing is true.

I just figured out a thing that is definitely true. It is one of God's thoughts

that I am agreeing with him on. Okay.

Once you get that, like write it down.

You know, it doesn't have to be written in the pastor's words.

Like, because you go, I didn't hear the way he said it. Who cares?

If you understood it, if you understood a true thing, then write it down in your own words.

And now you have a true thing that you know, and the fact that you wrote it

down means you're probably going to remember it better than if you just thought it and then moved on.

Another thing that you need to do, if one of your methods for getting the Bible

into your mind is gonna be sermons, you need to make sure that the preacher is preaching the Bible.

This is really big. You could waste a ton of time if you do not follow this one step, okay?

You wanna make sure that the preacher is preaching the Bible,

whether it's this church, whether it's some other church, like I said,

whether it's outside of church and you're listening to something somewhere,

you're watching something on the internet, okay?

You have to make sure the preacher is teaching the Bible because there are times

when people present things that are called sermons, okay? Like this is the word they use for it.

But there's no Bible teaching in it. Like I've seen times, you've probably seen

this too, like there are times where you will find someone where they will speak

for like 30 minutes on whatever it is they wanna say.

And then at the end, they will read a Bible verse and then close in prayer,

right? And it gets called a sermon.

And so I'm describing this, I'm not even trying to be, first of all,

I'm not even talking about false teaching.

That can be, we can do a whole nother sermon about false teaching and like con

artists and all that stuff.

I'm talking about even people that get up and say good things for 30 minutes.

Sometimes someone will get up and they'll say good stuff for 30 minutes,

It's helpful exhortations or they'll talk about church history or whatever it might be.

They'll say good. So I'm not even talking about falsehoods. I'm talking about

good, nice stuff. They'll say

good stuff and then they'll read a verse and then they close in prayer.

That's not Bible teaching, right? I'm not saying it's a sin.

It's not a sin to talk for 30 minutes and quote a Bible verse and then pray.

That's not a sin, okay? Or to quote a Bible verse and then talk about stuff and then pray.

I'm just saying that's not Bible teaching. If you're trying to figure out how

to get the Bible into your mind, those sermons aren't the way to do it because

that's not Bible teaching. It's a different thing. Following me?

All right, number two, reading it regularly. This is the one I really could

have started with because this one's kind of simple.

You're thinking, how do I get

the Bible into my mind? A really good first step is read the thing, okay?

So I put reading it regularly here because I think this is a good idea and I'm

gonna explain a little bit about this.

First of all, before I even explain a little bit about this,

I wanna point out what an absolute privilege it is that we have these.

I bet you some of you do not even realize what a big deal this is.

Most everyone in this room has their own personal copy of God's word.

Many of you have multiple copies of it in your home.

And everybody here that has a phone has access to it. Like this whole thing, all of it's out there.

You could literally find anything that's in here from your phone at any point.

This is something that most people throughout most periods of history did not have. Do you know this?

Your own personal copy of God's word or your own way to check it whenever you

want. That was just not a thing for most of history.

Before the printing press was invented, people did not have their own copies

of God's word. You didn't get to just go and check it, right?

You had to go somewhere where it was read out loud and you just had to remember what the guy said.

And even if the printing press had been invented earlier, I don't think it would

have made a bit much of a difference, because there was also a long period of

history where most everyone was illiterate.

So even if someone gave you your own copy of the Bible, you'd go home and go,

wow, this is neat, too bad I can't read a word of it.

So for thousands of years, people just had to go to places, like we're talking

about the time period, like during Jesus's lifetime and just before Jesus's lifetime,

people would have to go to a synagogue on Saturdays and hear the Old Testament

read, and they would just have to remember what they heard.

And then after the time period of the New Testament, following after that,

there were people who would go to churches where they would hear the Bible read

out loud and they'd just have to remember it. You didn't get your own copy.

So this is an incredible privilege that I can even say to you, read it regularly.

So many people throughout history, they couldn't even be number two.

That couldn't even be like their point because you couldn't do it.

In fact, that's probably important to understand. When I say read it regularly,

I am telling you I think you should read it regularly, but that is not a command.

So when I was a kid, the church that I went to, even really the churches that

I went to, the church culture that I was in, sort of made it sound like this

was a command of God that was in the scripture.

I felt like what was said over and over again, it was always implied.

Sometimes I think they even just flat out said it. They made it sound like there's

a rule in the Bible. You have to read the Bible every day.

I don't know if any of you went to any of those churches, but I feel like I

heard it over and over and over then.

The implication was you must read the Bible every day. You are a bad Christian.

You are breaking God's heart. You're sinning. Like all of that was implied or said.

And then as I grew up, I became an adult. And as I read through the Bible and

learned it, I realized that's not true. There's literally no place in the Bible

that says you have to read the Bible every day.

That couldn't have even been a rule. Because remember, for most of history,

people couldn't even do that. That was not an option for them to read it every day.

They had to wait till their once a week spot and then pay real close attention.

So when I say read the Bible every day. This is not a you have to.

This is a you get to, right?

Okay, now, there's an objection I could imagine that some of you will say,

because I know some of you.

And I can imagine some of you are going to say to me, that's fine,

that's good, that's a good idea, Mario.

But sermons are enough, honestly. Sermons are enough for me.

I mean, I'm glad you read it regularly. That's important. You're the pastor. Good for you.

But I don't think I need to be doing that. I think sermons are enough.

The way I learn God's Word is once a week, I come here, and you guys explain

verses, and I hear it, and I understand it.

You do a very good job of making and me be able to understand it.

And I think that's good enough. That's all I need.

Okay, sermons are enough. And what I would say to you is this.

Maybe not. Maybe it's not enough. I did the math this week.

The average good news preacher, or on average, a good news church preacher preaches 23 verses per sermon.

Okay, I found that out by looking at all of the verses we have taught thus far

in 2025, dividing it by the number of weeks that have happened in 2025.

The average sermon at Good News Church teaches 23 Bible verses.

I am perfectly happy with that, okay? I don't think that's bad at all. I'm proud of that.

But I just want you to know, at that rate, 23 verses per sermon,

at that rate, it would take you 26 years to learn the Bible.

It's not enough. And in fact, that number is not even correct because the way

I came to that number was just how many 23s once a week would it take to get

all the way up to all the verses in the Bible? And it turned out to be 26 years.

But that assumes that you never miss a Sunday for 26 years.

And it also assumes the preacher never preaches on the same verse twice during

the whole 26-year period, which is unreasonable.

So let me point this out. If you are someone who's here, that the only way you're

learning the Bible is you come here once a week and you learn a sermon, okay?

I just want you to know this. If you would just start reading four verses each

morning, just four verses, you would more than double the amount of Bible you

are currently consuming,

because four times seven is more than 23, right?

I don't just do theology, people.

In fact, let me really impress you. If you do seven verses a week,

or no, seven verses a day each week, you would more than triple the amount of

Bible you are consuming.

So I guess what I'm trying to say by picking these numbers, I guess what I'm

trying to point out is I'm not even trying to tell you, like,

you've got to go and study scripture for hours at a time and go into your study

and light a candle and just read, read, read and hours and hours.

I'm saying a little bit and often can make a difference over the long haul.

One last tip that I wanna give to you.

If you wanna get in the habit of doing it daily or five days a week or whatever

it is that you choose, if you wanna regularly read the Bible,

it seems to me, and this is just my opinion, this is not in the Bible,

this is just my opinion, if you connect your Bible reading to some other behavior

that you also do every day,

then it'll be easier to keep the routine up because you'll just read the Bible

every single time you do this other thing that you always do. You following me?

So like last year, the way I did it is I read the Bible whenever I did Duolingo.

Okay, so last year I was doing Duolingo. I don't know if you've heard of it,

but it's this app that's supposed to help you learn Spanish.

I guess you heard supposed to, because I did a lot of Duolingo lessons and I do not know Spanish.

Okay, so I'm sure if they are listening right now, they would be very upset

about this commercial. But I mean, I did like a lot of lessons.

And so if you come up to me afterwards, I do not know. Okay,

if you come up to me afterwards, and talk to me in Spanish, I'm going to go, si, si, si.

Okay, so it did not work.

But let me tell you what it did work for. What I noticed is this.

I would do my Duolingo lesson, I would read my Bible, and Duolingo does this

thing where they talk about your streak, like how many lessons you've done, how many days in a row.

And there came a point where I realized when Duolingo said, hey,

you have a 109-day streak, you know, for your Spanish lessons.

I realized, oh, I have read the Bible every day for 109 days because I did these

two things at the same time. You following me?

So right now I'm not doing Duolingo, so I linked it to something else.

Lately, I've been, in the morning, I've been exercising, okay?

Nothing that's like a big deal. Like, a lot of people have not come up to me

and said like, whoa, you're looking different. What has changed?

Like, that has not been my life. But anyway, but I've been doing it for several weeks now.

And I'm not going to the gym or anything. Like, just stuff you can do at home.

Push-ups and, you know, crunches and stuff like that.

And one of the things that I've been doing is an exercise called the plank.

So whenever I wake up in the morning, I'll do some planking.

And if you don't know what that is, is when you take your hands or your arms

and put them on the ground and then your feet also on the ground and then you

hold your body up in the air like above the carpet by your arms and your feet.

It's an interesting exercise because if you do it, if you just hold it there,

okay, for the first 10 seconds, it doesn't even feel like you're exercising.

And then when you hit like the 35 second mark, you realize you are about to die.

And so what I've been doing is when I've been planking, I've been reading the

book of Nehemiah and I just put the book of Nehemiah in front of me and I start

the little clock and I plank while I'm reading it.

Like every morning I wake up and I read the Bible as I am dying each morning.

Now, that may not work for you. Some of you, maybe you need to get an audio

Bible and you need to listen to it as you drive to work and then listen to it

as you drive home from work, okay?

And then some of you, that won't work because you work somewhere that's like one minute away, okay?

So I'm just saying, you gotta figure out what works for you.

But I've noticed if you attach it to something you're doing daily,

it's easier to start a routine that way.

All right, let's move on to the next one, Bible study, okay?

Bible study is something that I think is sort of like a middle ground between

sermons and reading it regularly.

A sermon is a place where you are in a room with like two or 300 other people

and there is not much of an opportunity to ask questions or discuss because

there's so many people in the room.

And then reading it regularly is also a place where you don't have a whole lot

of opportunity to ask questions or discuss because you're the only person in

the room at the time that one's happening, right?

But Bible study is in the middle, okay? Bible study is not when there's hundreds

of people in the room and not when I'm just by myself, but it's just like me

and whatever, seven or eight other people and we're all in the room together.

Sorry, just had a flashback from the last service. I said six or seven people

and the young people all went.

Okay. So anyway, so you're in a room, you're in a room with,

by the way, if you're over 60 and you're like, I don't know what that means.

You are missing nothing. Okay.

It's a stupid thing that happened this year. Okay. So, so there's seven or eight

people in a Bible study and you have the opportunity to do something different

from when there's hundreds of

people in a room and different when there's just you in the room, right?

There's a chance to ask questions and discuss the Bible with people that you

know in order to understand how it applies to your life.

Okay, number four, memorization, okay? Memorization is a method for getting

the Bible into your mind.

That is that you want to not just be someone who hears about it and not just

someone that sees it and it stays on the page, but you want it to actually go

into your mind and be there for when you need it.

Now, in a room this size, I imagine there's gonna be some people that are gonna go, yeah, pastor.

You see, you don't know me. I can't memorize scripture, okay?

That's something people like you can do, but I can't memorize scripture.

And to you, I say this. Well, first of all, I don't know. I don't know your brain.

Maybe you're right. But I think probably you're not right.

Most of us in this room have memorized tons of things that are less important than the Bible.

There are some of you in this room that play video games, and you have memorized

all of the stats related to that game.

Some of you know this person that I'm about to describe, where they're looking

over someone else's shoulder that they're playing a video game,

and they're like, oh, that's a zombie that's coming up, 75 hit points.

That sword that you have, that's 10 hit points, so you'll be able to handle

that zombie. But the dragon that's behind it, 400 hit points,

no way. You're going to need a nice spell.

How many of you know that guy? How many of you know that guy?

Yeah, okay, so this is a real thing.

And some of us that would make fun of that guy and be like, I can't believe

that he knows how many hit points a fake zombie has, okay?

And some of the people that say that, like, they literally know all the basketball

scores and all the stats and all the baseball and this guy's jersey number and

this is how many points scored per game, like, whatever sport they're into,

they know all the stats, right?

And then someone else might look at that and go, oh, that's ridiculous sports ball.

Who cares about that? And then that person knows all of Taylor Swift's lyrics

and every album that it came from and what year it came out,

right? And then the person that's looking down at the Swifty is like, oh, that's ridiculous.

And that person knows everything about World War II, right?

And so my point is, most of us tend to memorize what we value.

Are you going to treasure God's word in your heart?

Do you value it to the point that you want to make sure you have it,

even when you don't have your phone with you, even when you don't have your

Bible with you? Because you're going to need it.

I'm telling you, it needs to be in your mind. there is going to come a day when

your boss is gonna ask you to falsify a document.

Or your boyfriend is gonna say, hey, wanna come over to my house tonight and spend the night?

And there's not gonna be time in that moment to do a Bible study and figure out what to do.

Like what you need to do in that moment needs to already be in there to get through that moment.

There's a great example of this, I think, in the books of Matthew and Luke.

If you look toward the beginning, this is the same story, it's found both at

the beginning of Matthew and the beginning of Luke.

Jesus is tempted by the devil, okay? So there's a story where Jesus is tempted

by Satan in the wilderness.

And every single time Satan tempts Jesus, Jesus responds back with what?

With a Bible verse. He says a scripture back to Satan every single time.

And if you read the story, I think you will come to the same conclusion that I did.

And that is, I do not think that when Satan tempted him, that Jesus whipped

out a pocket copy of Deuteronomy at that moment and started to find out what

applied to that situation.

He already knew it.

And that's why he was ready for it.

The fifth method for getting the Bible into your mind is called teach it.

And the reason I put this up here, I actually originally when I was writing

this sermon out, I only had these four because that's the first things that came to my mind.

And then I asked myself the question, Mario, how is it that you have learned the Bible most and best?

Like what method caused you to be able to learn the Bible the most and the best?

And I realized actually, this is the one.

Having to learn a passage of scripture well enough to teach it to someone else

is completely different than just reading it or even just discussing it.

I mean, I'll just give you an example of this. I took a seminary class on the book of Hebrews, okay?

It was through Reformed Theological Seminary in Oviedo, Florida.

And I took this class on Hebrews and I'm not, like it was good,

I learned the book of Hebrews.

And then I think it was like two or three years later, I taught through the

book of Hebrews verse by verse here at this church.

And I understand the book of Hebrews, like most of what I know is from the time

that I taught it to you and not the time that I learned it from that class.

Most of the stuff I remember about it is because I taught it to you and not

because someone else said it to me.

Now, you might hear that and you might go, that is great for you, Mario.

You got a congregation that you can do that with, okay? How are regular people

gonna be able to possibly pull this off?

And this is what I'll say to you. You don't need a congregation to do it, okay?

I think that there's something that you have access to that I do too.

Like, this is not some special, I'm able to do this because I'm a pastor and you can't.

It seems to me that the size of the congregation or the number of listeners is irrelevant.

To the idea that if you have to learn a passage good enough to explain it to

someone else, you have now learned that passage better than you would have if

you just heard it. That's true if the congregation is one person.

That's true. If you have a family and you have family devotion time and you

all get together in the living room and you explain, this is the passage I learned

and I want to explain it to my family.

Then you learned it well enough to have to explain it to your family.

You didn't have to have a whole congregation there to do this.

You could do it with a youth group.

That's what I did for years. I don't know if you know this. There were years

where there were not lots of people interested in what I had to say.

And I was a youth pastor in a basement with 20-something kids.

And for years, I just taught the

kids. I had to learn a Bible passage well enough to teach to those kids.

It did wonders for me being able to understand the scripture.

I didn't have a big congregation.

You can do it here at this church with kid zone classes. In fact, let me tell you this.

Our kid zone curriculum here at this church, so when the kids get dismissed,

we send them over there just so you know.

We don't just like, you know, round them all up and just barely keep them alive.

There's like lessons and stuff.

There's teachers that teach them stuff. And so I wanted to let you know,

our kid zone curriculum is actually on a three-year rotation through the Bible.

We teach the plotline of the entire

Bible from Adam and Eve all the way to Revelation every three years.

And that's so you will learn the whole Bible. If you're a kid that gets over

there, you'll learn the whole thing if you come for three years in a row,

no matter what Sunday you show up.

Like if you just show up in the middle, you know, in the middle,

if you show up on Moses week, then you learn about Moses and then you will learn

about Moses to Revelation and then it'll scoot back around to Adam and Eve all

the way to Moses. And in three years, you will learn the whole thing.

So I'm telling you this, if you are someone here who could be trusted with children,

and you went to our children's director and you volunteered to teach and you

said to her, I bet you she would be thrilled if you would do this.

If you said to her, I'm willing to teach every week for three years,

if you did that, you would learn so much of the Bible.

You would learn the plotline of the entire Bible because you'd have to learn

it well enough to be able to explain it to the kids here.

Okay, that's enough about methods. Let me just end the whole thing by saying this.

People of Good News Church, put your trust in God.

Believe that he is correct about everything.

And then realize your life's aim needs to include thinking God's thoughts after him.

And thank God he made sure lots of his thoughts got written down. Amen. Let's pray.

Lord, I pray that you would light a fire this morning. I pray for those of us

in this room who have been in sort of a stale period of our life.

Pray that you would change us. And I pray that you would even use our commitment

to your word, that we would value your word and it would change the way we relate

to purity and shame and sin,

that it would correct us and rebuke us and train us and teach us,

that would affect whether we are equipped or not, that whether we are complete

or not, that it would renew our mind so that we would know your will.

And so, Lord, I just pray. I pray for the people in this room that are caught

in a sin, that they would turn from their sin and they would replace it with

a hunger for your word, not just a hunger for it, but a taking in of your word.

I pray for all of us that we would treasure your word in our heart,

that we might not sin against you. We love you.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let me end with these good words from God's word. This is from 2 Timothy.

I'll just read a little bit earlier. This is Paul talking to Timothy.

He says, as for you, continue in what you've learned and firmly believed.

You know those who taught you and you know that from childhood you have known

the sacred scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching,

for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,

so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. That is good news.