Well, again, welcome to you.
Those of you that we didn't get to welcome at the beginning,
welcome to you now on behalf of Church of the Advent.
If you're new, really glad that you're here.
My name's Tommy.
If I haven't had a chance to meet you,
hopefully we'll get a chance to do so after the service.
There'll be some refreshments in the room next door
if you'd like to hang around and get to know some new,
see some new faces and shake some new hands.
Before we do that, in the midst of this service,
we're, as Dan said a moment ago,
we're at this place in our gathering
where we turn our attention to God's Word.
We do that knowing that people come
from all different backgrounds and sets of assumptions.
Some of you are here as followers of Jesus,
and some of you are here,
you're not sure what you believe.
And some of you are here,
and maybe you already decided
that there's nothing here for you.
And so what we're gonna do today
is we're gonna look at God's Word,
the Bible, in light of that.
We are doing a series in this season
of the church calendar, which is called Lent.
And this is a series where we're looking
at some of the various habits and practices
that Christians engage in
as we seek to grow and mature in our faith.
These are habits that Tom Wright
sort of calls freedom habits.
Freedom habits.
Now, when you hear that, you think,
well, there's nothing about habit
that sounds like freedom.
They sound opposed, actually.
But, you know, the image is this.
Imagine if you're a slave
and you've lived your entire life in captivity,
and then one day somebody comes along
and they unlock the cage
and the chains drop from your hands.
Well, what do you do?
See, technically you've been freed,
but you're still going to think like a slave.
You're still going to have desires like a slave.
You're still going to live like a slave.
And so you would then have to begin to learn
how to think and to live like a free person.
And so this is the image that Wright uses.
He says, Christians have been set free
by the power of Jesus Christ.
We have the freedom of knowing
that we're fully known and fully loved
by the God of the universe.
And yet our minds and our hearts
and our lives would still convince anyone watching
that we are still, in fact, slaves to sin and death.
And so we have to learn how to live this freedom out.
And so we're talking about what these habits might be.
And so for those who are here who are Christians,
this is, we're asking how we grow in our faith.
For those who are here who are not Christians
or not sure what you believe,
you know, one of the main reasons
that people don't take the claims of Christianity seriously
are because they look at Christians
and they wonder, does this faith
actually make any difference in their lives?
And so what we're really focusing on
is what kind of change or transformation
can we expect in this life as Christians?
And so tonight's focus is really a foundational one
and that is the focus is Scripture itself.
The role of Scripture
and the ways we habitually engage Scripture
in our following of Christ.
A lot of people, a lot of Christians,
a lot of people in this church
say various forms of the same thing to me,
which is, yeah, I believe in Jesus
and I follow Jesus,
but why bother with the Bible?
You know, why bother with it?
It's hard to understand
and I don't even really know if I can trust it
and everybody thinks it says something different
and so why bother with it?
Why not just follow Jesus?
So that's what we're going to talk about tonight
and we're going to do so
by looking at 2 Timothy chapter 3.
We're going to focus on verses 14, 15, and 16
to help us understand the role of Scripture
in our lives.
Fair warning,
there's going to be more teaching tonight
than preaching.
I'm going to probably be giving more information
than I normally do
and hopefully you'll understand the reason for that,
but there's going to be more information
and so some of you are note takers
and some of you aren't,
but if you are not a note taker,
this might be a time when you want to jot things down
if there are things that I bring up or hit on
that you want to follow up on.
Just so fair warning,
I'm going to,
but you'll understand why,
hopefully as we get into it.
But we're going to see two things
from this passage in 2 Timothy,
Paul's letter to Timothy,
his sort of protege in the ministry.
We're going to see the origin of Scripture
and we're going to see the purpose of Scripture
and how knowing that helps us understand
why Scripture is central in the life
of those who follow Christ.
So let's pray.
Our Father, far be it from us
to put our faith in the words of human beings.
Lord, our hope tonight is not
that we would be moved or inspired
or that we would think differently
because of anything that human beings
might have said or might say tonight.
Rather, our hope is that these spoken words
would faithfully lead us into your written word
and that your written word would reveal to us
the living word, Jesus Christ.
And we pray this, Lord, for our glory,
but also for our good,
but also for your glory.
That you would be glorified
as we encounter you afresh tonight.
We pray this in your Son's name.
Amen.
So first of all, we see the origin of Scripture.
Where does the Bible come from?
When I say the Bible,
I'm talking about something
that's really quite a unique work.
It's not really like anything else
you're going to see out there.
It has two sections, right?
So it's like a two-act play,
the Old Testament and the New Testament.
And you'll notice your Bible is pretty lopsided.
A lot of it is Old Testament,
and then there's just a little bit in the front,
which is the New Testament.
And so you can think of it as though
the Old Testament lays the foundation
for what happens in the New,
and the New Testament fulfills
everything that's predicted in the Old.
That's kind of their relationship.
It's made up of 66 books.
It's been composed over the course
of about a thousand years.
It was originally written
in many different languages,
mostly Greek and Hebrew,
but also some other ancient languages
are found in there.
It's been composed by as many
as 40 different authors.
It's been composed in places
as far apart as Babylon and Rome.
So if you think about all this,
you realize that the first thing
we've got to recognize about the Bible
is it's not really a book.
It's a library.
It's an entire library
spanning a thousand years,
multiple authors, cultures, societies,
historical contexts.
But of all the things
that make the Bible unique,
the most unique thing about the Bible,
which makes it unlike any other work,
is its origin.
The Bible is, as Paul says,
breathed out by God.
It is God breathed.
So ultimately,
the church didn't write the Bible.
You know, people think,
well, the church, you know,
the church formed,
we got together,
they said,
we've got to have some documents,
so the church wrote the Bible
and then started copying the Bible
and that's how it happened.
No.
What Paul's saying is
the church didn't write the Bible
that God,
using all different kinds of authors
and contexts and genres,
from poetry to history to prose
to even parts of it that are liturgy,
that God, through all of these means,
wrote the Bible for the church.
So God breathed
is a very carefully chosen phrase.
What this means, by the way,
is that the authors weren't automatons.
You know, they weren't word processors
with legs.
I used to hear this phrase,
especially before I was a Christian,
and I thought that somebody
would be walking along
and all of a sudden
they would be seized up by God
and they would just start writing.
You know?
And they would just,
and all of a sudden
they'd be like, oh!
And they would look
and they would be like,
what is this?
Where did this come from?
And that's not at all
what he's saying.
He's saying it's God breathed.
And I think the best image of this
comes from the Bible itself.
There's a place in 2 Peter
where Peter's talking about
where Scripture comes from
and he says,
in 1 Peter 1.21,
For no prophecy was ever produced
by the will of man,
but men spoke from God
as they were carried along
by the Holy Spirit.
As they were carried along.
Now, this same word shows up
in Acts chapter 27.
You know, Paul and his crew,
they're in a boat
and they put up their sails
and a storm comes along
and it says,
the storm, the wind was so strong
that in the boat
they were driven along.
And they just had to submit
to the direction of the wind.
It was too strong.
They couldn't turn
either to the right or the left.
They were driven along.
It's the same word.
The idea being
that these biblical authors,
these 40-some biblical authors,
you know,
they put the sail up
of their life,
but the Holy Spirit
was the wind.
It filled the sail.
It determined the course.
So they sat down
and they wrote
to their various
historical contexts.
They wrote to the political
and social and economic issues
of their day.
They wrote with their own
distinctive voice,
their own turns of phrase,
their own favorite language.
They wrote representing
their own culture,
their own dialect,
their own sense of poetry,
their own ability.
They wrote within
all of these constraints
and yet,
they did so in a way
that reflects exactly
what God wants them to say.
So God is able
to use their distinctive personalities
and to not violate
who they are
to deliver his message
and they're able to write
in a way that doesn't violate
what God wants to say.
It's God-breathed.
So I know this raises
some questions
and it raises some objections.
The first being,
well, people say,
well, okay,
Peter and Paul,
they're talking about
the Old Testament.
What about the New Testament?
Does this apply
to the New Testament as well?
What we need to understand
is that when the apostles
began to die out,
when the apostles,
these are people
who had seen Jesus face-to-face,
they knew him,
they had been trained by him
and their purpose
as given by him
was to send his word out
to continue his teaching.
When they began to die out,
they and their secretaries,
their associates,
their assistants
began to write
their teaching down
and these became letters
that were then circulated
to all of the known churches.
And so from the very beginning,
their teachings
were treated
with the same authority
as the rest of Scripture.
So you actually have places
like 2 Peter 3
where at the very end,
Peter refers to Paul's letters
as Scripture.
He says,
now I know
that there are some things
that are hard to understand
in Paul's letters
as with the rest of Scripture.
So you see Peter
right there
acknowledging
that Paul's writing
is part of
what is recognized
as Holy Scripture.
And then you have
the earliest Christian writers
like Clement
who quote
New Testament writings
right alongside
the Old Testament writings
as Scripture.
And by the end
of the first century,
Paul's letters
were already
in circulation.
And we know this
because in the very early part
of the second century,
Justin Martyr
refers to
the writings of Paul.
So some of you hear this
and you say,
well, okay,
well,
all this is fine and well
if you lived
in the second century.
But these books
that we have today,
this Bible
is a translation
of a translation
and it's got all kinds of errors
and who knows
what they had
but this is definitely not it.
You know,
this was very obviously
published by Crossway.
You know,
and you say,
well,
that's not what
you're talking about.
And what we have
to understand
is that's actually
not true.
This is actually
just one translation
from the original language.
And most likely
the Bible that you have
at worst
is just one translation
from the original language.
And moreover,
we actually have
all of this
in the original language.
So you can go
and you can actually
read all of these texts
in the original language
they were written.
So we have actually
5,800
complete or fragmented
Greek manuscripts
of the New Testament.
5,800.
We have,
you know,
in addition to that
10,000 Latin manuscripts,
almost 10,000,
9,300 manuscripts
in various other
ancient languages,
all that came about
before the invention
of the printing press.
And when you compare
all of the errors
and all of the kind
of little misspellings
and all of that
across all of this,
the vast majority
are utterly meaningless.
In fact,
less than 1%
of all of the errors,
less than 1%,
are both plausible
and meaningful.
In other words,
less than 1%
are plausible
in the sense
that you can have
either or reading.
They're both well supported
in the text
and you're not sure
which is right
and meaningful
in the sense
that they might affect
a phrase
that would have
some effect
on the meaning
of that section
of scripture.
Less than 1%
would fall
into that category.
The vast majority
are just tiny little
omissions or issues
that you immediately
look at and you realize,
well, this copyist
made this slight error,
a slight misspelling,
a slight error
in punctuation.
And even if you look
at that 1% of errors
that are plausible
and meaningful,
they in no way
affect a single doctrine
of scripture,
a single doctrine
of the Christian faith.
In fact,
I've got to be
a little careful
saying this,
but really,
there's so much
interconnectivity
between all of the
various books
of the Bible,
Old Testament,
New Testament,
that you could actually
throw out entire books
of the Bible
and still
no doctrine
of the Christian faith
would be meaningfully
affected.
Because there's so much
interconnectivity.
You can have a doctrine
of creation built
out of the New Testament,
you don't need Genesis.
You can have a pretty
clear understanding
of who Jesus is
without reading
one of the Gospels.
Because there's so much
interconnectivity there.
It all fits.
So another thing
I hear a lot is this,
well, okay,
okay, so the Bible,
maybe it's reliable
and all that,
but doesn't it make sense
that the church
would claim
that it's divinely inspired?
I mean,
isn't that really convenient
for the church?
Isn't that really,
if you're totally honest,
a kind of power play
so that the church
can use the Bible
to sort of manipulate
and control people?
And certainly,
the Bible has been used
and abused
and some of you
are victims of that.
But if you look back
at what actually,
at the sort of
the core of this question,
didn't the church
invent this idea?
There's a lot of problems
with that,
but the central problem
is this,
that there's nobody
in history,
nobody in history
before or since
that had a higher view
of Scripture
than Jesus Christ.
He has the highest view
of Scripture
of anybody there is.
You can see it
in many ways.
You can see it
because Jesus quoted
from almost every book
of the Old Testament
throughout His ministry.
In fact,
between Jesus
and the other
New Testament writers,
I think every single book
in the Old Testament
is quoted
except for Esther.
Not sure why
they left that one out,
but every single book
is quoted.
And when Jesus
is tempted by Satan
in the wilderness,
what does He do?
He relies 100%
on Scripture.
He quotes Scripture.
He explicitly taught
that the Old Testament
was written about Him
and points toward Him.
So in John 5,
He says,
you search the Scriptures
because you think
that in them
you have eternal life.
And it is they
that bear witness
about me.
You know,
Luke 4
is one of my favorite places.
This is one of Jesus'
first sermons.
He gets invited
to be a guest preacher
at a synagogue
in Galilee,
shows up.
You know,
he's expected to stand up,
read a scroll,
preach a little sermon
and then sit down
so it can be discussed.
So he stands up,
opens the scroll of Isaiah,
reads from Isaiah
chapter 61,
first couple of verses,
rolls the scroll up
and guess what his sermon is?
Today this has been fulfilled
in your hearing.
And then he sits down.
It's like the ultimate
drop the mic moment.
You know,
it's like,
Isaiah 61,
yeah,
this is about me.
Boom.
And then he just sits down.
Can you imagine?
And it incites
ultimately a riot,
right?
But Jesus is saying
this is all about me.
And then Jesus himself
goes on to teach
that the primary nourishment
that we're designed
to require
as human beings
is not food,
but what?
God's word.
Man shall live
not by bread alone,
but by every word
that comes from
the mouth of God.
So Christians
don't believe in Jesus
because of the Bible.
We believe in the Bible
because of Jesus.
And then you say,
okay,
well,
those are God's words.
What about Jesus' words?
Well,
Jesus made it very clear
that his words
are God's word.
So he says this
in Matthew 24,
heaven and earth
will pass away,
but my word
will not pass away.
Now,
either Jesus
is a lunatic heretic
or he's making
very explicit
the fact
that when he speaks,
God is speaking.
He says in John 5, 46,
if you believed Moses,
you would believe me,
for he wrote of me.
But if you do not
believe his writings,
how will you believe
my words?
And then finally,
Jesus defines for us
what does it mean
to be my disciple?
What does it mean
to follow me?
What does it mean
to have a relationship
with me?
What does it mean
to be counted
as belonging to me?
Well,
he says this
in John 8,
if you abide
in my word,
you are truly
my disciples.
Not just hear
and understand,
but live out,
abide,
have it define
all of who you are.
So he asks,
well,
what difference
does this make?
Well,
when people today
say,
I love Jesus,
I believe in Jesus,
I follow Jesus,
but I don't bother
with the Bible,
I want to humbly
suggest that that
is actually a kind
of power play.
And what I want
to suggest is this,
is that when you say,
I'm all about Jesus,
but not the Bible,
I'm just about
following Jesus,
what you're really
saying is,
I have discovered
a more true,
more pure version
of Christianity.
It's sort of,
you know,
capital T,
capital C,
true Christianity,
trademark pending,
you know,
and it's more pure
than your version
of Christianity
because it doesn't
have this baggage
of the Bible.
So it becomes
a kind of power play.
And this sounds
like a great idea,
and this sounds
like the kind of thing,
wow,
that's really cool.
But the only problem
is that Jesus
would have completely
disagreed.
If you look at
what Jesus says
about himself
and about God's word
and about his words
and about what it means
to be his follower,
you realize that
he's saying,
and one of the best
places to see this
is Luke chapter 24,
he says,
to these disciples
on the road to Emmaus,
if you want to
understand these scriptures,
you need to understand
that they're about me.
And if you have any hope
of understanding me,
you have to understand
the scripture.
And if you believe in me,
that means that you
believe in scripture.
If you love me,
that means you love
scripture.
He did everything he could
to tie even
his moments
of greatest suffering.
When he's hanging
on the cross,
what does he do?
He quotes scripture,
Psalm 22.
So the origin
of the Bible
and what makes it unique,
the origin is God himself.
It is God-breathed words
for God's people.
So this is why
we can say with confidence,
the word of God
does the work of God.
You know,
if people say,
I want to see God
at work in my life,
the first question should be,
well,
where is the word
in your life?
So the origin
of the Bible
is God.
God breathed
through all of these
different people
and cultures
for God's people.
So that leads us
to the second point.
What's the purpose
of the Bible?
And in this passage
in 2 Timothy,
Paul lays out
three sort of
interrelated purposes.
He says,
scripture leads us
to salvation,
it shapes what we believe,
and it shapes
how we live.
In verse 15,
you see he says,
the scriptures are,
quote,
able to make you wise
for salvation
through faith
in Christ Jesus.
So first of all,
it's about salvation.
As we said before,
the whole Bible
from Genesis to Revelation
is ultimately
about Jesus.
It's meant to show us
the reality of our sin.
It's meant to show us
the necessity
in every human life
for the grace of God
that comes through
the sacrifice of Jesus.
It's meant to show us
how to become a part
of God's renewal project,
how he's making
all things new
in this world.
So first of all,
the Bible is meant
to show us
how to have a relationship
and be reconciled to God
through Jesus Christ.
But then Paul goes on,
it's not just about
getting saved,
as we might say.
The Bible is meant to,
scripture is meant to,
shape what we believe.
Now,
that's an important point
because again,
in terms of objections,
something I hear a lot,
and you may hear
some of this too,
is more and more
and more people,
individuals,
as well as entire churches.
I knew a church
up in New York
that tried this
for a little while.
They realized
it didn't work.
But it's more and more
common for entire churches
to say,
you know,
we don't really believe
in the whole idea
of doctrine.
We want to do away
with doctrine.
Doctrine,
all that does
is divide people,
it confuses people,
and it causes
all kinds of problems.
We're going to get rid
of doctrine
because we just want
to be about
worshiping God.
That's what we're about,
worshiping God.
And again,
that's really great
for your marketing campaign.
I mean,
that will preach well.
And if I said that,
you could probably
get standing ovation
for that,
right?
It's one problem.
Okay,
so you want
to worship God.
What do you mean
by God?
That's a doctrinal question.
Oh,
so you want
to worship God.
What do you mean
by worship?
How does that happen?
It's a doctrinal question.
In other words,
doctrine is inevitable.
You cannot get away
from doctrine.
The minute you try
to answer that question
is doctrine.
So everybody
has doctrinal assumptions.
Now,
you may be forward
with them
and honest with them,
or you may hide them
and conceal them.
But everybody makes,
you know,
atheists have
doctrinal assumptions.
So the question is,
are your doctrinal assumptions
grounded in anything
beyond you,
or are they just
your opinions?
So doctrine
is inevitable.
So what do you
or whatever
we believe about God?
What do you believe
about this world?
What do you believe
about what it means
to be a human being,
our purpose
and identity here?
You know,
what do you believe
about what life
is all about?
What do you believe
about other religions?
What do you believe
about marriage
and gender
and sexuality?
What do you believe
about family?
What do you believe
about parenting?
What do you believe
about our jobs?
What do you believe
about human institutions
and the role of government
in everyday life?
there's hardly a question you can ask that doesn't somehow flow out of doctrinal assumptions
and so paul is saying here that all of scripture has been given for the express purpose of shaping
what we believe about all of these things he says it's profitable for teaching for reproof
for correction of all of our beliefs and he actually says in ephesians chapter 4 that that
a big part of maturity is growing in our understanding of doctrines so that we're rooted
in scripture in instead of being tossed to and fro by every new idea that comes along he says
that's how you tell a mature person so scripture is for our salvation it shapes our beliefs
thirdly it's meant to shape how we live how we live now by that i do not mean that it's just a
wooden set of rules and you follow the rules and you're right with god that's not that has nothing
to do with the christian faith he says scripture is in verse 16 he says it's for training in
righteousness that the man or woman of god may be complete equipped for every good work
so this is by the way why we started our series last week by talking about submission to god
if you're an athlete or a musician or an artist you know what it's like to submit yourself to their
authority because their job is to train you is to take your innate gifts and talents and to help you
hone them so that you can then express i mean how how is it how can hillary sit down and play so
beautifully and bring such beauty into the world well it's because she has trained and trained and
trained and trained she has a doctorate in performance piano which meant she hours and hours and hours and
hours and training under some very demanding instruction
so he uses this phrase deliberately it's for our training in righteousness and it's interesting in
ephesians 2 10 paul says that christians are god's workmanship created in christ jesus for good works
and you know the word there is actually poema
in other words i mean a kind of a loose way of translating that would be to say your life is
meant to be god's poetry in the world it's meant to be god's poetry in the world it's meant to be the
the beautiful art that god brings into the world to glorify himself we know we're not saved by our
good works we're saved by the finished work of jesus christ but the question then is why why are we
why are we saved it's so that our lives can become god's poetry in the world so scripture is our coach
it's our guide it's our instructor it's meant to show us how that happens
so the purpose of the bible is what to lead us to salvation to shape our beliefs and to shape how we
live now i'll deal with another objection another objection some people say okay that sounds good but
you know i've found in my walk with god that i don't actually need the bible because i hear directly
from god you know the holy spirit prompts me and leads me and if i'm sensitive to that and if i listen
to that then that's all i need and that raises a number of questions you know people ask well and people
debate this hotly debate this you know in some of the theological circles i come from people this is a
huge debate can god does god still speak today well to the question of can god still speak today
absolutely i mean god is god he can do whatever he wants but the more important and more salient
point here is this that god has spoken god has spoken so paul says right here that the scripture
is sufficient to make us complete for every good work i mean what does that mean he's saying you have
right here everything you need to become complete for every good work in other words you don't need a
special personalized message you've got this this is enough it's sufficient for everything that god's
going to call you to do and everything god's going to call you to be is right here so we should be very
wary and i apologize if i've ever said this you should be very wary of people who say well god said this to
me you know in my prayer time the other day you know god said god told me this or you know i was
just really thinking about you and your situation and god god told me to tell you this i think you
should be really careful because the thing is unless you are deeply deeply deeply immersed and intimately
familiar with every corner of god's word how do you know that god is saying that and how do you know
it's not just you i don't think you can
to paraphrase ann kennedy who's a somebody that i love to read her her stuff she says why would god
take the trouble of using so many different people over such a huge span of time representing so many
different cultures representing so many different genres to weave together this beautiful tapestry of a
witness to describe who he is what he's done in the world what that means and how we can be a part of it why
would he go to all that trouble only two thousand years later to say ah never mind i'm just going to
whisper some vaguely spiritual stuff in tommy's ear that kind of sounds like the bible but not as good
why would god do that and frankly i i don't think that's how he works
so what does this actually look like in our lives i mean that so the question becomes okay well
then how do we actually engage scripture and the answer is there's there's a number of different
ways and think of these not as a choose one but rather as all of the different angles or approaches
or means by which we seek to hear from god so first of all there's there's personal study of scripture
if you have never sat down and read the bible before i will warn you it is hard
there there are places in there just like peter the apostle peter says that are hard to understand
because it's written by so many different people in so many different genres representing so many
different cultures and societies there's an enormous amount of work and learning to be done to understand
those cultures and societies because the goal is to understand what was this originally written for
what did it originally speak to who was the original audience and then how from knowing that can we apply
it to us today so you have to understand this piece before you can understand this piece and that takes
study it takes work so it's great to rely on commentaries it's great to rely on study bibles
it's great to rely on people who are more knowledgeable than you but what we need to remember is in our
personal study of scripture the goal is to understand ultimately more about jesus and so if you've never
read the bible it's not necessarily the best idea to start at the beginning you know i talked to this
one sweet amazing woman who was marrying get you know getting married she was engaged and she said well you know i really
you know you know studying the bible is is really important and in his life and this is something
we've talked about and so i for him like i want to read the bible um i want to read the whole bible
before we get married and i said okay well how long is your engagement and you know and engagement for
some of you know is it's stressful enough and i'm like and you're gonna just kind of kind of like
squeeze in there reading the whole bible you know and i said well how's it going she's like not very good
i can't read it back to front i would suggest if you've never read the bible before start in the
middle in other words don't start at the beginning start in the center jesus is the center pick one of
the gospels read one of the gospels begin to learn about who jesus is and then wherever you are in
scripture wherever you're studying if you get lost and try to start to lose your way and you're not sure
what is happening just remember this is somehow meant to point me to jesus and normally that will get you back
on track last thing i'll say about personal study is this yes we study for understanding but more than
that we read the bible so that it can read us and we study it so it can study us the goal is to have
your heart laid bare by scripture you read it and you realize oh my gosh this is talking about me
and then you begin to understand more your need for christ so that's one way some other ways right
quick we we engage scripture through prayer you want to guarantee that god is going to hear and
answer your prayer pray scripture guaranteed we we do it in community there's a there's a time and
place for discussing and interacting that's why we do this in small groups we sing god's word together
we sing god's word most of what we sing up here is in some way directly taken from scripture
we do it in the preaching hopefully the goal of preaching is to reveal scripture faithfully
to exposit it and then to reveal christ through that
and then lastly through our liturgy you know the book of common prayer on which our service is based
three quarters of that is just directly quoting scripture that was the goal of the book of common prayer
you know so we we decide okay do people want to hear whatever i make up every week
or do they want to hear god's word we just went with the latter
and how we put the service together but the goal is through all of these means to just be utterly
saturated with god's word to be completely saturated by god's word in every way
and and the goal is not to have spiritual highs all the time sometimes you do and sometimes you don't
the goal listen to this the goal of all of this as we're doing it all together
is a kind of mutually reinforcing cumulative effect on our hearts and minds over time that's the goal
the more you personally study the bible the more you're going to get out of gathered worship the more
you listen to good preaching and the more you sing and the more you learn to pray scripture the more
you're going to get out of your personal study it all works together but the goal is the accumulative
effect over time a great way of thinking about this comes from the chicago shakespeare improv group and
some of you have heard me talk about this before i love it um the chicago shakespeare improv
group they give two 90 minute performances every time they they they perform two 90 minute performances
and it starts this way they say give me some topics and the audience yells out they yell out different
different like whose line is it anyway they they they shout out different ideas and then from that
on the spot totally improv they construct a full-length 90 minute shakespearean verse play
and people looking at and then how do you do the verses in the rhyming and how did it sounds just
like shakespeare and how do you just how does that come out of you well guess what they do
they spend all of their off time studying shakespeare they read and they read and they read and they read
and they study and they study and they study and they study and they study and the goal is that they
become so immersed in the real thing in shakespeare that they're able to just exude it it just comes out
So our goal in reading Scripture
is that we would become so familiar with it
that whenever you find yourself in a situation
and Scripture doesn't speak directly to that situation,
and Lord knows there's a ton of those,
you can just exude it.
You have a kind of gospel-shaped instinct
because you're so familiar with God's Word.
So all this brings us back to our original question
as we wrap up.
But for those of us who do follow Christ,
for those of us who consider ourselves to be His disciples,
why bother with the Bible?
And I would say there's two reasons.
Because of its origin,
because the entire purpose of this
is that it is God-breathed for us.
God does God's work through God's Word.
And the second is this, because of its stated purpose.
The Bible itself all throughout the Old Testament
and the New Testament says again and again and again
that God's Word in Scripture
is the way to have a relationship with Him.
So do you want to know God intimately?
Do you want to feel a sense of His presence
and His love in your life?
Then open His Word, sit at His feet,
and listen to what He has to say.
Let's pray.
Father, again, the great danger
is putting our hope in human words.
And we pray that whatever is of You
would be empowered by Your Spirit
and driven deep into our hearts.
Lord, that if we have resistance to this,
that You would help penetrate
to the core of that resistance.
That for those of us who are open
and who desire to hear from You through Your Word,
I pray that You would bless and empower that desire
and give us the means to hear from You
and to be transformed from the inside out
by Your Word in our lives.
We pray this not only for us as individuals,
but for our entire community,
that one of the things we would be known for
is a church that values
and seeks to live under Your Word in all things.
We pray this in Your Son's holy name.
Amen.