Latest / INSIGHT FOR LIVING: Biblical Wisdom For Everyday Living / An Important Interlude │ Msg 128 - Pastor Chuck Swindoll Insight for Living
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: In a ministry like ours. Some things are givens. We
- 0:05Speaker 1: could say. Some things we come to expect, and we're
- 0:10Speaker 1: never disappointed to hear them declared. One has to do
- 0:15Speaker 1: with the confidence we have in the Bible. Continually we
- 0:22Speaker 1: are reminded here and in our lives what a remarkable
- 0:28Speaker 1: book the Bible is. And by remarkable, I mean miraculous.
- 0:34Speaker 1: And along with being a remarkable book, it is so
- 0:39Speaker 1: amazingly resilient. It has survived its critics, and it seems
- 0:46Speaker 1: as though its most outspoken opponents come and go, but
- 0:52Speaker 1: it just lives on. One scholar wrote such good words,
- 0:59Speaker 1: The Empire of Caesar is gone, The legions of Rome
- 1:04Speaker 1: are rotten in the dust. The avalanches that Napoleon hurled
- 1:10Speaker 1: upon Egypt have melted away. The pride of the Pharaohs
- 1:14Speaker 1: is fallen. Tire is but a rock for bleaching fishermen's nets.
- 1:23Speaker 1: Sidon has scarcely left a wreck behind. But the Word
- 1:27Speaker 1: of God still survives. All those who have threatened to
- 1:33Speaker 1: extinguish it have only added to it. And it proves
- 1:38Speaker 1: every day how transient is the noblest monument that man
- 1:42Speaker 1: can build, and how enduring is the least word that
- 1:47Speaker 1: God has spoken. Bernard ram a number of years ago,
- 1:52Speaker 1: added this thought a thousand times over. The death knell
- 1:57Speaker 1: of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed,
- 2:02Speaker 1: the inscription cut on the tombstone, the committal read. But
- 2:07Speaker 1: somehow the corpse never stays put. And yet, in spite
- 2:14Speaker 1: of its remarkable, miraculous and resilient characteristic, it is really
- 2:21Speaker 1: amazing to see how few Christians, in the right sense
- 2:27Speaker 1: of the word, are proud of their grip on the scriptures.
- 2:32Speaker 1: More often than not, it is a cause of embarrassment
- 2:39Speaker 1: to admit how virtually ignorant we are of this Bible
- 2:44Speaker 1: for which we say we would die. Reminds me of
- 2:50Speaker 1: a friend of mine who gave a series of entrance
- 2:52Speaker 1: exams in a Christian college a number of years ago
- 2:56Speaker 1: to kids that had been raised in the church. They
- 2:59Speaker 1: were coming to a Christian college. They had been raised
- 3:02Speaker 1: in the Christian Church, And on the exam, which was
- 3:06Speaker 1: really a basic questionnaire of Bible facts, was the question
- 3:10Speaker 1: what are the epistles? And one well meaning young man wrote,
- 3:15Speaker 1: the epistles or the wives of the Apostles. Oh, it
- 3:19Speaker 1: was absolutely hilarious, and so I shared that a number
- 3:23Speaker 1: of years ago here at our church, and I noticed
- 3:26Speaker 1: one of our men did not laugh at the time,
- 3:28Speaker 1: And when it was over, he came up to me
- 3:30Speaker 1: and he says, if they weren't the wives of the apostles,
- 3:33Speaker 1: whose wives were they? And that isn't a well taught church.
- 3:40Speaker 1: It would be interesting to discover in a questionnaire how
- 3:43Speaker 1: adept we are with biblical facts. And I know it
- 3:47Speaker 1: isn't vogue, It isn't very sophisticated to talk about biblical
- 3:51Speaker 1: facts today, but nevertheless, they are the things that really
- 3:55Speaker 1: come in handy when the bottom drops out of our lives.
- 4:01Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing that the young man who drops into
- 4:04Speaker 1: the foxhole er in the trenches when war attacks doesn't
- 4:08Speaker 1: dig around for some book on philosophy. He wants to
- 4:11Speaker 1: hear the twenty third Psalm. He wants to know what
- 4:14Speaker 1: the Bible says about his future if he has one.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Are the young couple that struggled deeply and desperately with
- 4:25Speaker 1: whether their baby is going to live or die? They
- 4:29Speaker 1: come back as a Christian couple to the Bible, and
- 4:33Speaker 1: when you go to visit and minister to them, they
- 4:35Speaker 1: don't want to hear stories. They want to hear what
- 4:38Speaker 1: God says about their life, and about their grief, and
- 4:44Speaker 1: about their fear. The wonderful thing about the Reformation is
- 4:50Speaker 1: that it exploded. It resulted in the Scripture leaving the
- 4:58Speaker 1: pulpit to which it was aimed and getting into the
- 5:02Speaker 1: hands of the people. Luther felt the whole movement of
- 5:07Speaker 1: God would be a success if the common man had
- 5:11Speaker 1: in his possession a copy of the scriptures in his
- 5:14Speaker 1: own tongue, and in the other hand a hymnal from
- 5:17Speaker 1: which he could sing his faith. We have both. We
- 5:24Speaker 1: have both, in whatever size text and whatever color binding,
- 5:28Speaker 1: and whatever version we please, now by the dozens. And
- 5:35Speaker 1: yet still to this day our ignorance is astounding, and
- 5:44Speaker 1: so at the risk of being viewed is rather unsophisticated.
- 5:47Speaker 1: We've decided in these services to launch a survey study
- 5:53Speaker 1: of the now the New Testament. We finished the Old
- 5:56Speaker 1: Testament several months ago. In fact, when I checked my records,
- 6:00Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. It's been over a year ago.
- 6:03Speaker 1: We finished a survey book by book through the Old Testament,
- 6:08Speaker 1: and now we've decided to get into a survey book
- 6:12Speaker 1: by book through the New Testament. We'll take a book
- 6:18Speaker 1: per service and just work our way through it. We'll
- 6:21Speaker 1: take Matthew next time, and then we'll take Mark, and
- 6:26Speaker 1: following that we'll take Luke and then John, and we'll
- 6:29Speaker 1: work our way through the through the New Testament. My
- 6:33Speaker 1: concern really is not that you be able to give,
- 6:36Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat and outline of any
- 6:39Speaker 1: one of the books of the Bible. That really is
- 6:41Speaker 1: not very helpful except to Bible professors at a Christian college.
- 6:46Speaker 1: My concern is not that you're able to nail down
- 6:50Speaker 1: all the nuances of a particular doctrine, but that you
- 6:54Speaker 1: have a pretty good grip of the scriptures as they
- 6:59Speaker 1: appear in the English text, that you can pretty well
- 7:03Speaker 1: think your way through the flow of scripture on your own,
- 7:07Speaker 1: without the help from any clergyman. Because that really is
- 7:12Speaker 1: the goal of a ministry like ours, is to make
- 7:15Speaker 1: our job less and less indispensable, more and more dispensable
- 7:21Speaker 1: as the Truth equips the saints for the work of ministry.
- 7:26Speaker 1: There are no popes. In the body of Christ. The
- 7:31Speaker 1: Lord Jesus Christ, his Spirit, God the Father work together
- 7:36Speaker 1: as the sovereign head of the Church. And we are
- 7:38Speaker 1: all learners. We're all people who discover the truth from
- 7:43Speaker 1: his word. Now, I'd like you to turn to a
- 7:47Speaker 1: section of the Bible that I would imagine has been
- 7:50Speaker 1: used least the one in your possession, and that's the
- 7:54Speaker 1: table of contents. That funny, how seldom we look at
- 7:57Speaker 1: the table of contents of our way over and before
- 8:05Speaker 1: you get to Genesis, you'll find this sheet or two.
- 8:10Speaker 1: And you may want to put some markings down in
- 8:13Speaker 1: alongside what we uncover tonight, maybe all around the margin
- 8:18Speaker 1: of your Bible, just to have it handy for your
- 8:21Speaker 1: own use. I think you'll lose outlines that we give
- 8:24Speaker 1: you from time to time, but you won't lose something
- 8:27Speaker 1: written right here on the page itself. Let's get some
- 8:31Speaker 1: information about the Bible down, sort of a review, so
- 8:35Speaker 1: that we understand where coming from when we come to
- 8:39Speaker 1: this survey study. First of all, let's talk about the
- 8:41Speaker 1: writers and the time involved. There were about forty writers
- 8:46Speaker 1: of scriptures best were able to determine from Genesis through Revelation.
- 8:51Speaker 1: If you sit down and number the writers, you come
- 8:53Speaker 1: up with just about forty. It took those writers a
- 8:58Speaker 1: period of about sixteen hundred years to record the text
- 9:03Speaker 1: that we have in our possession, starting with the writings
- 9:07Speaker 1: of Moses and ending with the writings of John. From
- 9:11Speaker 1: the earliest of the Old Testament to the last of
- 9:13Speaker 1: the New Testament, we've got about sixteen centuries of time
- 9:17Speaker 1: in which these writers of scripture put down the truth
- 9:21Speaker 1: of God. I'm convinced that most of them, perhaps it's
- 9:24Speaker 1: safe to say none of them really, none of them
- 9:28Speaker 1: knew that they were writing's biblical truth. They had. I'm
- 9:33Speaker 1: convinced no idea that the journal of their woes, or
- 9:36Speaker 1: some prophecy, or some letter written to some distant church
- 9:41Speaker 1: distant to us, would be preserved throughout the centuries for
- 9:45Speaker 1: all to read. I believe they wrote under the inspiration
- 9:50Speaker 1: of the spirit of God, and what they wrote in
- 9:52Speaker 1: that original text was absolutely inerrant without error. They were
- 9:57Speaker 1: miraculously preserved from error as they took the truth from
- 10:01Speaker 1: God and put it down not in a dictation form,
- 10:05Speaker 1: but in a very natural manner. If you were able
- 10:08Speaker 1: to read the original texts, you're able to see quite
- 10:11Speaker 1: a difference between, for example, the writings of Luke and
- 10:14Speaker 1: the writings of John, or the writings of Moses, as
- 10:18Speaker 1: opposed to the writings of Isaiah. They're different in style.
- 10:23Speaker 1: God allowed the style of these men to be preserved,
- 10:28Speaker 1: and at the same time he took away even the
- 10:32Speaker 1: chance of error, so we would have an our position,
- 10:34Speaker 1: a trustworthy text. Amazing. Now, the divisions, as you will
- 10:41Speaker 1: see in your table of contents, are very simple. There
- 10:44Speaker 1: are two, an old division and a new division. In
- 10:48Speaker 1: the old section, that is those first number of books
- 10:54Speaker 1: Genesis through Malachi, we have those writers looking forward to
- 11:00Speaker 1: the Lord Jesus coming, and in the twenty seven books
- 11:04Speaker 1: of the New we have the writers looking back on
- 11:08Speaker 1: his coming. So if you did get an outline this evening,
- 11:12Speaker 1: on the opposite side of it, you'll see sort of
- 11:14Speaker 1: a layout of the library of sixty six books. I'd
- 11:20Speaker 1: suggest that you take your pen or pencil and draw
- 11:23Speaker 1: a long arrow from left to right from the Genesis
- 11:27Speaker 1: book all the way to Malachi. Just a long error
- 11:30Speaker 1: pointing toward the Cross. Everything over here in the Old Testament,
- 11:35Speaker 1: these thirty nine books looking toward the coming of the Savior.
- 11:40Speaker 1: And then you get into the New Testament, starting with
- 11:42Speaker 1: Revelation and going back in the opposite direction from right
- 11:45Speaker 1: to left, draw an arrow back to the Cross. Everything
- 11:50Speaker 1: in the Old not everything, but many of the things
- 11:52Speaker 1: in the Old look forward to the coming and speak
- 11:55Speaker 1: of the coming of the Savior, and many of the
- 11:57Speaker 1: things in the New Testament. Look back upon the of
- 12:00Speaker 1: the Savior and all that he taught and all that
- 12:02Speaker 1: he meant to people in his times. While you're writing,
- 12:10Speaker 1: notice the section called Old Testament you might want to
- 12:13Speaker 1: put down was mainly written in Hebrew, some of it
- 12:16Speaker 1: in Ara, make sort of a sister language. Hebrew and
- 12:20Speaker 1: Aram make the languages of the Old Testament, and then
- 12:23Speaker 1: the New Testament God preserved in a beautiful, simple, common
- 12:27Speaker 1: street language called Greek. Coin a Greek meaning common Greek,
- 12:33Speaker 1: the Greek of the people, the Greek of the street,
- 12:36Speaker 1: not classical Greek, not sophisticated Greek, but just common Greek,
- 12:42Speaker 1: the Greek of that day. Hebrew is a colorful language,
- 12:48Speaker 1: filled with beauty and embellished with all of the feeling
- 12:55Speaker 1: of those Hebrews as they expressed themselves. Greek is a
- 13:00Speaker 1: very abstract language, very explicit, very specific. I often I
- 13:06Speaker 1: often illustrate it by referring to a television set. The
- 13:13Speaker 1: Hebrew is is the color set and the Greek is
- 13:16Speaker 1: the black and white. Or describing a sunset, the Hebrew
- 13:21Speaker 1: would say something like in the evening, as the as
- 13:25Speaker 1: the rays of orange and red and yellow flashed across
- 13:29Speaker 1: the sky, flashing against the beauty of the clouds and
- 13:33Speaker 1: the and the sea in the distance, the sun sank
- 13:37Speaker 1: in the horizon. The Greek would say, the sun went down.
- 13:41Speaker 1: Not a light to you know, not a lot of
- 13:43Speaker 1: romance in it. But it gets to the point. And
- 13:46Speaker 1: it's significant that when God decided to put down his Testament,
- 13:50Speaker 1: he did it in a very specific, explicit, direct, black
- 13:54Speaker 1: and white language, not leaving a whole lot up for grabs,
- 13:58Speaker 1: not a lot left for interpretation. Pretty clear, pretty direct.
- 14:04Speaker 1: In the Old Testament. There is romance in the New Testament.
- 14:07Speaker 1: It's more like the mind of an attorney. Give me
- 14:10Speaker 1: the facts, give it to me logically, let me see
- 14:13Speaker 1: it clearly and directly. I'll come to a conclusion. There's
- 14:17Speaker 1: a lot of color in the Old, not that there
- 14:20Speaker 1: is no color in the New, but it is much
- 14:22Speaker 1: more specific. Graham Scroggy wrote, familiar words, The New is
- 14:29Speaker 1: in the Old, contained, the Old is in the New explained.
- 14:36Speaker 1: When you read in the Old Testament, you find a
- 14:38Speaker 1: number of the wonderful truths left hanging waiting for fulfillment.
- 14:44Speaker 1: When you get into the New Testament and you know
- 14:47Speaker 1: a bit of the Old. It is amazing how you
- 14:49Speaker 1: can tie the knots and wrap the package and send
- 14:53Speaker 1: it off. It's fulfilled, it's finished, it's complete. Those two
- 15:01Speaker 1: to work in tandem with one another. Now, while you're
- 15:04Speaker 1: looking at this layout of the Bible, let's take a
- 15:09Speaker 1: few minutes sort of think our way through these sections. Okay,
- 15:13Speaker 1: are these divisions within the section. The first part of
- 15:19Speaker 1: the Old Testament is illegal. See the little number five.
- 15:22Speaker 1: Just write legal under number five. Genesis through Deuteronomy is
- 15:27Speaker 1: the legal section, the pentituve, it is called. When you
- 15:33Speaker 1: get to Joshua, which is the sixth book of the
- 15:36Speaker 1: Old Testament, and you move twelve books along to Esther,
- 15:41Speaker 1: you come to the historical section. So we move out
- 15:44Speaker 1: of the legal part into the historical part, and you're
- 15:48Speaker 1: able to trace the history of the Jews thanks to
- 15:53Speaker 1: Joshua and Judges and Ruth and Samuel and Kings and
- 15:58Speaker 1: right on through to the Book of Then you come
- 16:01Speaker 1: to poetry. You talk about beauty and color of language,
- 16:06Speaker 1: beginning with job and ending with the song that Solomon wrote,
- 16:10Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as the Canticles. You have poetry. You
- 16:16Speaker 1: have the text written in a definite meter, and you
- 16:20Speaker 1: can see it in certain Bibles. As the text is
- 16:23Speaker 1: put into that poetic or metric form, you're able to
- 16:27Speaker 1: see it not meter that rhymes, but meter that literally
- 16:31Speaker 1: has a rhythm to it. And those grand teachers of
- 16:35Speaker 1: Hebrew are able to help us understand in the meter
- 16:38Speaker 1: of the text, emphases and significant phrases. It's just beautiful.
- 16:44Speaker 1: I remember sitting in a Hebrew class and Bruce Walke,
- 16:48Speaker 1: one of my Hebrew prophets and I loved so dearly,
- 16:51Speaker 1: would hold the text and he would read from that Hebrew.
- 16:55Speaker 1: He'd just weep over it. I'd weep because I couldn't
- 16:57Speaker 1: read it. He was weeping because it was so moving
- 17:00Speaker 1: as he worked his way through it. And he said,
- 17:02Speaker 1: and listen to this, And he'd read out a Psalm
- 17:04Speaker 1: thirty one and the Discouragement of David. He'd read through that,
- 17:08Speaker 1: and I think, which way do you put the thing?
- 17:11Speaker 1: I had the dumb thing upside down for a week.
- 17:14Speaker 1: Before somebody goes the other ways, I had it back
- 17:16Speaker 1: the other way. There are a number of reasons to
- 17:20Speaker 1: weep as you read the Bible. That was one of
- 17:22Speaker 1: my reasons. We took a refresher course. It's a joke.
- 17:26Speaker 1: One summer to get started in Hebrew. Between my first
- 17:30Speaker 1: and second year in seminary, it took a course that
- 17:32Speaker 1: was to acquaint us with the text. Walkee was fresh
- 17:38Speaker 1: out of Harvard where he'd finished his PhD. And he
- 17:42Speaker 1: was going to go easy on us. The average grade
- 17:44Speaker 1: in our class was twelve. When I tell it to
- 17:48Speaker 1: my kids, they say out of fifteen, twelve out of fifteen.
- 17:52Speaker 1: I said, no, twelve out of one hundred. I had
- 17:55Speaker 1: never made four on an exam in my life until
- 17:58Speaker 1: I took that summer course. It was designed to depress
- 18:02Speaker 1: you so totally that you just leaned hard on God
- 18:06Speaker 1: to exist during the next semester. It's incredible. Then you
- 18:11Speaker 1: beget to get begin to get the hang of it,
- 18:13Speaker 1: and it's just absolutely beautiful. The poetic books job through
- 18:18Speaker 1: Song of Solomon. Then you get to the prophetical section,
- 18:22Speaker 1: and this is noted here. There are some major prophets,
- 18:25Speaker 1: and they are and there are some minor prophets. So
- 18:27Speaker 1: the last section of the Old Testament is prophecy or
- 18:30Speaker 1: prophetical major and minor not because some are important and
- 18:34Speaker 1: some are unimportant, but because some are larger and others
- 18:37Speaker 1: are smaller. That's why major and minor. Then you get
- 18:45Speaker 1: to that marvelous Intertestamental period where so many things fall
- 18:50Speaker 1: in place, and yet here again our ignorance is astounding.
- 18:54Speaker 1: It is in this Intertestamental period that there comes on
- 18:57Speaker 1: the scene the sex among the Jews, the Sadducees, and
- 19:02Speaker 1: the Pharisees, and the scribes, and those people who gave
- 19:07Speaker 1: Christ such hassles during his life, they have now established
- 19:12Speaker 1: themselves in hundreds of years of tradition. And he comes
- 19:16Speaker 1: in and he changes those traditions, and he tries to
- 19:20Speaker 1: bring them back to the truth of God. But they
- 19:23Speaker 1: are so enamored of that veneer of tradition that he
- 19:27Speaker 1: can't carve through it. And finally they nail him to
- 19:29Speaker 1: a cross. It wasn't Christianity, it wasn't a believing religion
- 19:35Speaker 1: that put him there. It was unbelieving, formal, traditional religion
- 19:39Speaker 1: that nailed him to the cross. Established during this Intertestamental period,
- 19:44Speaker 1: Now you get to the New Testament. You again have
- 19:46Speaker 1: four sections. You have biography for the first four books
- 19:51Speaker 1: Matthew through John, and then you have history, another book
- 19:56Speaker 1: of history, the Book of Acts twenty eight chapters in
- 20:02Speaker 1: that book that trace the history of the Church. Then
- 20:05Speaker 1: you get to the letters, or what we might call
- 20:10Speaker 1: doctrinal section, from Romans through Jude. You ever thought about that?
- 20:15Speaker 1: Stop lately to think about the letters you're able to
- 20:17Speaker 1: read written to someone else, and how much truth they
- 20:20Speaker 1: give you. Today Another wonderful, wonderful revelation of how timeless
- 20:26Speaker 1: God's truth is that you can take a letter, short
- 20:30Speaker 1: letter written to someone else in another century, think of
- 20:34Speaker 1: it doesn't and more centuries removed from where you live,
- 20:39Speaker 1: and it's as timely, it's as relevant, it's as needful
- 20:44Speaker 1: as the day it was written. No other letter, no
- 20:49Speaker 1: other book, can make that claim. Those letters come in
- 20:55Speaker 1: like a flood, and they help us and they assist us.
- 20:58Speaker 1: A section of them or a Paul's letters, called the
- 21:01Speaker 1: Pauline letters, and another section of them are the general
- 21:05Speaker 1: letters written by other men. And finally you come to
- 21:09Speaker 1: the last book, Revelation, which is again prophetical. Now, what's
- 21:14Speaker 1: the theme of it all? The Bible obviously must have
- 21:18Speaker 1: a theme, because great books carry a major theme. And
- 21:21Speaker 1: it isn't that difficult to understand. Quite simply, the theme
- 21:26Speaker 1: of the Bible is salvation through Jesus Christ, God's promised son.
- 21:32Speaker 1: The Bible is a book of redemption. It's a book
- 21:35Speaker 1: of deliverance. It's a book that lifts you out of
- 21:38Speaker 1: yourself and sends you heavenward. It's a book that doesn't
- 21:42Speaker 1: tell you how to seek and find God. It's a
- 21:45Speaker 1: book that tells you God has sought and found you.
- 21:49Speaker 1: It's a book that tells us of how to be
- 21:51Speaker 1: delivered from sin and guilt, from the horror of living
- 21:57Speaker 1: a selfish life. Tells us how to come to know
- 22:01Speaker 1: the God who loves us through faith in his son
- 22:05Speaker 1: who died for us. It's a book of redemption. In
- 22:10Speaker 1: the Old Testament, Jesus is pictured in shadows and pictures
- 22:13Speaker 1: and types and ritual. In the New Testament, he's seen
- 22:17Speaker 1: in his real presence. Those who saw him and talked
- 22:21Speaker 1: with him and knew him right of his life, and
- 22:26Speaker 1: those who believed in him by faith as we do,
- 22:29Speaker 1: tell of what he revealed to them during that era
- 22:32Speaker 1: in which he lived. It's wonderful in case you have
- 22:37Speaker 1: difficulty believing that He is even over in that Old Testament,
- 22:41Speaker 1: as some really have trouble believing. Turn over to Luke's Gospel.
- 22:45Speaker 1: Just for a little glance into a few verses Luke
- 22:48Speaker 1: twenty four, last chapter of the Physician's Gospel, verse twenty
- 22:59Speaker 1: oh twenty five, down through verse twenty seven. He that's
- 23:03Speaker 1: Jesus said to them, oh, foolish men, slow of heart
- 23:07Speaker 1: to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. See,
- 23:11Speaker 1: this is nothing new. The struggle with believing the Bible
- 23:15Speaker 1: not a twentieth century phenomenon. It's been going on since
- 23:18Speaker 1: the Bible was written. And even believers in Jesus' day
- 23:22Speaker 1: were slow of heart and had difficulty really putting it
- 23:25Speaker 1: to practice. And he says to them right now, he says, oh,
- 23:28Speaker 1: you foolish men, slow of heart, verse twenty six. Was
- 23:35Speaker 1: it not necessary? And this is Jesus speaking for the Messiah,
- 23:39Speaker 1: for the Christ, the anointed one, to suffer these things
- 23:42Speaker 1: and to enter into his glory. And beginning with Moses
- 23:48Speaker 1: and with all the prophets a l L, he explained
- 23:55Speaker 1: to them the things concerning himself in a l L.
- 24:00Speaker 1: All the scriptures. Now, I want to tell you that
- 24:05Speaker 1: is the most significant exposition that has ever been delivered
- 24:08Speaker 1: by anyone on earth. Jesus, who was right there when
- 24:14Speaker 1: scripture was written, turns to the scripture and teaches the
- 24:20Speaker 1: people of himself in the Bible. Tell me, people wouldn't
- 24:24Speaker 1: just come out of the woodwork to hear that kind
- 24:26Speaker 1: of teaching Jesus expositing the truth of God. Look a
- 24:32Speaker 1: little further in the chapter, verse forty four. He said
- 24:37Speaker 1: to them, these are my words which I spoke to
- 24:40Speaker 1: you while I was still with you, that all things
- 24:44Speaker 1: which were written about me in the Law of Moses
- 24:48Speaker 1: and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then
- 24:55Speaker 1: he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said,
- 25:02Speaker 1: thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and
- 25:06Speaker 1: rise again from the dead the third day. Are you
- 25:10Speaker 1: ready for a shocker? There was not an existence one
- 25:14Speaker 1: New Testament piece of literature. The only thing he had
- 25:19Speaker 1: in his reference and in his presence were the scrolls
- 25:22Speaker 1: of the Old Testament. And he says, it is written
- 25:25Speaker 1: of me to die, to suffer, to die, to rise
- 25:30Speaker 1: again the third Day. It's all there, tucked away in
- 25:32Speaker 1: the Old Testament. Let me give you an assignment. Can
- 25:35Speaker 1: you show in the Old Testament the prophecy of Christ's coming,
- 25:43Speaker 1: of his suffering, of his death, of his resurrection on
- 25:47Speaker 1: the third Day. And what if I took away Isaiah
- 25:50Speaker 1: fifty three. Oh, oh, that's the last straw. You know,
- 25:54Speaker 1: what if I took away Psalm twenty three. Those are
- 25:57Speaker 1: favorite sections in they're kind of our oasis to go
- 26:00Speaker 1: the Old Testament. But I read here that he did
- 26:03Speaker 1: it out of the Psalms, he did it out of
- 26:04Speaker 1: the prophets, and he did it out of the books
- 26:06Speaker 1: of Moses. By the way, he didn't have any struggle
- 26:09Speaker 1: with the authorship of Moses. He calls him, in fact,
- 26:12Speaker 1: the law of Moses, and he showed them concerning himself.
- 26:18Speaker 1: Now let me pass along something to you that's not
- 26:20Speaker 1: original with me, but it has really helped me in
- 26:22Speaker 1: my study of the Bible. When I think about the
- 26:24Speaker 1: means employed to communicate God's truth, it really boils down
- 26:29Speaker 1: to three three great subjects. No matter where you slice
- 26:33Speaker 1: the Scripture, you come up with one of three subjects. First,
- 26:37Speaker 1: his people, second events, and third is great ideas. There
- 26:45Speaker 1: is nothing else under any category in scripture besides those three.
- 26:51Speaker 1: When you read the Bible, you're reading either about a
- 26:54Speaker 1: person or about an event, or about some idea, truth
- 27:01Speaker 1: or doctrine set forth in the scriptures. We call them
- 27:04Speaker 1: at times principles. Some things are very clearly set forth
- 27:08Speaker 1: in their precepts. Some things are are not clearly set forth,
- 27:13Speaker 1: but they leave us with a principle. Drive carefully is
- 27:21Speaker 1: a principle. Speed limit thirty five miles an hour is
- 27:27Speaker 1: a precept and doesn't leave you a lot of room
- 27:30Speaker 1: to dink around thirty eight forty forty five. They have
- 27:34Speaker 1: a way of frowning on it. Take it from me.
- 27:37Speaker 1: When you mess around with a thirty five mile an
- 27:39Speaker 1: hour speed limit, they get little you know, they get
- 27:42Speaker 1: a little antsy with you about how you turned it
- 27:44Speaker 1: into a principle. It's a precept, But drive carefully means
- 27:48Speaker 1: one thing at three o'clock in the afternoon when all
- 27:50Speaker 1: the kids are getting out of school, means another thing
- 27:52Speaker 1: entirely at two o'clock in the morning, when you're on
- 27:55Speaker 1: your way home in the same street as a principle involved,
- 28:00Speaker 1: and you use your head to put together the principle. Now, people,
- 28:04Speaker 1: events and great ideas are all the way through the scripture,
- 28:08Speaker 1: and when you read the Bible, you determine what am
- 28:10Speaker 1: I dealing with right here. Now, let's zero in a
- 28:14Speaker 1: little further on those sections, and especially the sections of
- 28:17Speaker 1: the New Testament. If it'll help you to do it
- 28:20Speaker 1: on the sheet we gave you, fine, If you'd like
- 28:22Speaker 1: to turn to the table of contents, that's better. That's
- 28:25Speaker 1: fine too. You can put it either way you like it,
- 28:28Speaker 1: just so you don't lose it. I'd like you to
- 28:30Speaker 1: learn some things about the scriptures tonight in the next
- 28:33Speaker 1: few minutes. First of all, the biographical section Matthew through John.
- 28:38Speaker 1: It's very helpful to remember in the New Testament that
- 28:40Speaker 1: what we have is not a lengthy, uninterrupted moving picture
- 28:45Speaker 1: of Jesus of Nazareth. No, what we have in the
- 28:49Speaker 1: Gospels is a slide presentation thirty five millimeters snapshots of
- 28:54Speaker 1: Jesus in various actions during his life and ministry, suffering, death, resurrection.
- 29:01Speaker 1: You will not find an exhaustive, uninterrupted moving picture of
- 29:06Speaker 1: the Savior all the way through the Gospels. Critics do
- 29:10Speaker 1: backflips over the fact you see there he mentions this,
- 29:13Speaker 1: and the other doesn't mention that you can tell by
- 29:15Speaker 1: seeing what is left out of this that it is
- 29:18Speaker 1: not a reliable text. That's like having me show one
- 29:22Speaker 1: set of slides and someone else show another set of
- 29:24Speaker 1: slides and yet a third person show a set of
- 29:26Speaker 1: slides from the same trip we took. You're not going
- 29:29Speaker 1: to get the same pictures because you don't have the
- 29:32Speaker 1: same person showing the slides. What I'm going to show
- 29:36Speaker 1: you will be some kind of things that speak to
- 29:38Speaker 1: me from where I'm coming from. And what some other
- 29:40Speaker 1: man or woman will show you is what that person
- 29:43Speaker 1: saw on the same journey. You've seen it happen many times.
- 29:47Speaker 1: You're interested in one phase and another one is interested
- 29:50Speaker 1: in another. So what we have is these thirty five
- 29:52Speaker 1: millimeters snapshots. Matthew was a tax collector, Mark was a missionary,
- 29:58Speaker 1: Luke was a physician. John was a fisherman. You can't
- 30:01Speaker 1: expect to get the very same moving picture, and you
- 30:05Speaker 1: therefore will not get the same from each one of
- 30:07Speaker 1: the four. In fact, I just discovered this last week
- 30:11Speaker 1: that in John's Gospel, ninety two percent of what he
- 30:16Speaker 1: writes is unique, meaning it's not covered by Matthew, Mark
- 30:21Speaker 1: or Luke in their writings ninety two percent. Part of
- 30:24Speaker 1: the reason is he wrote about thirty years later. He
- 30:29Speaker 1: wrote toward the end of the New Testament era, toward
- 30:32Speaker 1: the end of the first century. He had had time
- 30:35Speaker 1: to think on it, to mull it over, to meditate,
- 30:39Speaker 1: to put it through his grid, to see the significance
- 30:42Speaker 1: of it in the flow of church history. And now
- 30:44Speaker 1: when he writes, he writes dealing with some of the
- 30:48Speaker 1: things that they were now wrestling with. Interesting. Isn't it
- 30:52Speaker 1: that in the progress of time new things come along
- 30:55Speaker 1: that make truth even more relevant. It was a great
- 31:00Speaker 1: issue to the nineteen fifties for the Christian in the
- 31:04Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, is not really as great an issue in
- 31:06Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Some are, but many or not. I
- 31:11Speaker 1: even think we go through a communication revolution, reformation, and
- 31:16Speaker 1: we need to The person who communicated well in the
- 31:19Speaker 1: nineteen eighties is an unusual person if he's still communicating
- 31:23Speaker 1: well today because communication styles change all the more reason
- 31:30Speaker 1: again to keep up with our times. We don't change
- 31:32Speaker 1: the truth, but we adapt it so that it fits
- 31:35Speaker 1: our times. Matthew is teaching, Mark is talking about the
- 31:38Speaker 1: actions of Christ. The physician is dealing with the parables
- 31:42Speaker 1: that he told. John is concerned about the deity of
- 31:45Speaker 1: the Savior. We'll go over that at length and time
- 31:47Speaker 1: to come. When you get to the Book of Acts,
- 31:50Speaker 1: you get to history. It's very, very helpful to remember.
- 31:54Speaker 1: The Book of Acts is a book of transition. We're
- 31:58Speaker 1: leaving one phase and we're entering another. We're moving out
- 32:03Speaker 1: of one kind of life and we're moving into another
- 32:05Speaker 1: kind of life. Homes go through the same kind of transition.
- 32:09Speaker 1: You who are in the little baby stage, dealing with
- 32:14Speaker 1: little baby things, or in one phase, others of you
- 32:17Speaker 1: are in the releasing them from the nest stage. You're
- 32:22Speaker 1: letting them out of the home little by little, person
- 32:25Speaker 1: by person, young adult by young adult. You have been
- 32:29Speaker 1: in a transitional period of time, and now you're learning
- 32:32Speaker 1: how to live again alone as you once lived before
- 32:36Speaker 1: those children were even in your home. The Book of
- 32:39Speaker 1: Acts is a doctrinal transition section. Be careful listen now
- 32:44Speaker 1: about basing your major doctrines on the Book of Acts.
- 32:49Speaker 1: You're on shaky soil. It's changing, it's going through up evil.
- 32:55Speaker 1: You even find it when you get to chapter fifteen
- 32:57Speaker 1: and that counsel of the church meets and wrestles with
- 33:02Speaker 1: what will be the basis of salvation. Now, if you
- 33:05Speaker 1: have trouble determining it in the Book of Acts, it
- 33:08Speaker 1: makes sense. So did they, Because now we're moving into
- 33:12Speaker 1: the whole ministry of the Holy Spirit, which was a
- 33:15Speaker 1: non entity in the Gospels as far as the lifestyle
- 33:20Speaker 1: of the Christian is concerned. Why He comes in the
- 33:22Speaker 1: Book of Acts sets up a whole new frame of
- 33:26Speaker 1: reference for the believer to live by. And I get
- 33:30Speaker 1: a little nervous when I see people settling their doctrines
- 33:34Speaker 1: out of the Book of Acts. It's like settling all
- 33:38Speaker 1: of life during the baby stage of your children. You
- 33:42Speaker 1: learn it as time progresses, and as time moves along,
- 33:46Speaker 1: then you get an overall view and you're able to
- 33:48Speaker 1: understand it. I'm not saying Acts isn't for us. It's
- 33:52Speaker 1: not what I'm saying. I'm saying it's shaky ground if
- 33:55Speaker 1: you're determining your doctrine simply from the Book of Acts.
- 33:59Speaker 1: When you get to the Letters, oh what a rich
- 34:02Speaker 1: section of the New Testament. That is. You've got Romans
- 34:06Speaker 1: all the way through Timothy and Titus and Phileman. You've
- 34:17Speaker 1: got Paul's letters. Paul wrote these thirteen letters. You get
- 34:24Speaker 1: to Hebrews, you move into the general epistles. No one
- 34:28Speaker 1: knows who wrote Hebrews. Don't waste your time trying to
- 34:31Speaker 1: find out. Okay, there are a lot more important things
- 34:36Speaker 1: and who wrote Hebrews. It is an adolescent pursuit. Forgive
- 34:43Speaker 1: me if that offends, but you're not going to determine
- 34:47Speaker 1: one of the craziest guys in our seminary class solve
- 34:50Speaker 1: the authorship of Hebrews. They put him away in the
- 34:54Speaker 1: third year. Literally, he had spent all this energy determining
- 34:59Speaker 1: who wrote Hebrews, and he really flipped. It won't help
- 35:05Speaker 1: you to know who wrote Hebrews. We're going to get
- 35:07Speaker 1: into a study of Hebrews, by the way, next Sunday morning.
- 35:10Speaker 1: It's a marvelous book on the superiority of Christ. It's
- 35:13Speaker 1: the first of the General Epistles, and the General Epistles.
- 35:17Speaker 1: You've got James and Peter and John and Jude writing
- 35:20Speaker 1: eight of these letters. One is anonymous. Great letters often
- 35:26Speaker 1: missed because Paul gets a lot of press and evangelical churches.
- 35:31Speaker 1: But I'd venture to say there's nothing more pungent and
- 35:34Speaker 1: needed in the church today than the Letter of James.
- 35:38Speaker 1: What a marvelous book for the Christian and how to
- 35:40Speaker 1: live his life. Now, and you get to Revelation, You've
- 35:45Speaker 1: got the final book of Prophecy, and God wraps up
- 35:48Speaker 1: his plan for the ages, and it is there that
- 35:51Speaker 1: you kind of put this the Final touches as best
- 35:54Speaker 1: you can on what God is saying about the future days. Now,
- 35:59Speaker 1: how do we each of them relate to Christ? I
- 36:02Speaker 1: can you can? We all can understand that very simply.
- 36:07Speaker 1: The Gospels relate to Christ in his life, ministry, death,
- 36:12Speaker 1: and resurrection and ascension. The Gospels cover that in full scope.
- 36:18Speaker 1: If you want to know about Jesus life, death, ministry, resurrection, ascension,
- 36:26Speaker 1: you go to the Gospels mainly. That's where you find
- 36:28Speaker 1: that kind of information. And let me encourage you as
- 36:31Speaker 1: a Christian not to spend all your time in the
- 36:33Speaker 1: letters or not to spend all your time in the
- 36:37Speaker 1: Book of Psalms. Those two extremes are used frequently by Christians,
- 36:42Speaker 1: and we suffer because of it. God has given us
- 36:45Speaker 1: a full spectrum. I'll talk about reading it all through
- 36:48Speaker 1: a little later, but remember to stay balanced in your diet.
- 36:51Speaker 1: We work hard in our church at keeping people in
- 36:54Speaker 1: both Old and New Testament, understanding something of the law
- 36:58Speaker 1: and something of grace, dealing with the ministry and life
- 37:02Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ at the same time. Some things he
- 37:04Speaker 1: says to the churches, and yet not to forget the
- 37:07Speaker 1: prophets and the poets of the Old Testament. It's all
- 37:11Speaker 1: a part of a good diet. You do that in
- 37:14Speaker 1: your reading. Remember that when you read the Bible. Now,
- 37:18Speaker 1: when you get to the Book of Acts, Jesus is
- 37:20Speaker 1: proclaimed as the resurrected Christ, and the Church begins to
- 37:25Speaker 1: grow in the words of F. F. Bruce, like a
- 37:27Speaker 1: spreading flame, the fire catches on and it sweeps across
- 37:32Speaker 1: the country, and before you know it, you have a
- 37:34Speaker 1: group of well they called them ignorant and unlearned men,
- 37:37Speaker 1: turning the world upside down. And the Church begins in
- 37:42Speaker 1: the Book of Acts, and it starts on its growth
- 37:44Speaker 1: process carries you right on through to the end of
- 37:46Speaker 1: the first century, or almost the end. When you get
- 37:51Speaker 1: to the letters, what you're reading, you're reading over the
- 37:54Speaker 1: shoulder of some of those apostles that lived during the
- 37:57Speaker 1: first century and wrote to different churches that were established
- 38:01Speaker 1: or different people that lived in those times. Some of
- 38:04Speaker 1: the letters are especially meaningful to the church as a body,
- 38:10Speaker 1: the local church. They're called the pastoral letters. Some of
- 38:15Speaker 1: the letters are very helpful in establishing ourselves doctrinally. Romans
- 38:19Speaker 1: and Galatians and Thessalonians are good letters to establish yourself doctrinally.
- 38:26Speaker 1: Some are letters of joy and delight, and the Philippians
- 38:30Speaker 1: is one of those letters. Some are letters of forgiveness.
- 38:34Speaker 1: Filehman is a letter like that. Some are letters that
- 38:37Speaker 1: speak of Christ's coming, and the Peter letters are in
- 38:42Speaker 1: that vein suffering in First Peter and Christ's coming in
- 38:46Speaker 1: Second Peter. You see in the letters all of it
- 38:50Speaker 1: is sort of put together and packaged so that you
- 38:52Speaker 1: can get a hold of it in a tangible way.
- 38:58Speaker 1: My life began to be changed when I became a
- 39:00Speaker 1: student of the Letters of the New Testament. I was
- 39:04Speaker 1: raised in a home where the Bible was loved and
- 39:07Speaker 1: God was feared, but I really didn't get a hold
- 39:10Speaker 1: of the Christian life until I began to understand what
- 39:12Speaker 1: the letters had to say about my life. Today, I
- 39:16Speaker 1: think the same would be true in many of your lives.
- 39:20Speaker 1: Christ's teachings are amplified in the Letters, and finally, the
- 39:23Speaker 1: last book of the Bible. It's obvious Christ's coming and
- 39:27Speaker 1: establishing himself as King of kings and Lord of lords.
- 39:30Speaker 1: That's how Revelation relates to him. What's fun to do
- 39:34Speaker 1: with a family of small children is to kind of
- 39:36Speaker 1: think your way through the Bible in just this way.
- 39:40Speaker 1: Kids loved to do this. They loved to learn about
- 39:44Speaker 1: truth in the Bible, not the little nitpicking details and
- 39:48Speaker 1: the color of every leaf on every tree, but the
- 39:50Speaker 1: idea of how it's laid out. It's exciting to them
- 39:54Speaker 1: to see how God is put together his truth in
- 39:57Speaker 1: this flowing, meaningful fashion. I'm a good friend up in
- 40:02Speaker 1: Portland that says sometime when he has trouble going to
- 40:04Speaker 1: sleep at night, he just thinks his way through the Bible.
- 40:08Speaker 1: John Mitchell, who has about memorized the Bible so he
- 40:11Speaker 1: can think through it rather easily. He just kind of
- 40:14Speaker 1: flows right through. And it's incredible, like skiing down the slope.
- 40:17Speaker 1: For some people, skiing down a slope just it's an exciting,
- 40:23Speaker 1: exciting adventure. If you're committed to scripture memory, it's beautiful
- 40:27Speaker 1: not only to memorize just a little section, a little
- 40:31Speaker 1: part of a passage, but bite off a small book
- 40:37Speaker 1: and work on that one so that you can put
- 40:39Speaker 1: it together in one flow of thought. You know how
- 40:45Speaker 1: it all relates to us today. It's not that difficult.
- 40:48Speaker 1: The Gospels, they're where we begin. You and I came
- 40:54Speaker 1: to know Christ by meeting him personally as the one
- 40:58Speaker 1: who lived and died for us. We came to terms
- 41:02Speaker 1: with the biography when we came to Christ in our conversion.
- 41:07Speaker 1: Shortly after that, like the Book of Acts, we began
- 41:09Speaker 1: to see the importance of the church. I'd venture to
- 41:12Speaker 1: say that many of you before you came to know
- 41:14Speaker 1: Christ saw no sense whatever in a church who needs it,
- 41:19Speaker 1: A place full of hypocrites, place full of people that
- 41:22Speaker 1: sing songs and look pious and talk about religious things,
- 41:25Speaker 1: but they rip you off during the week, all of
- 41:28Speaker 1: those cynical thoughts about the church. And suddenly you come
- 41:32Speaker 1: to know the Savior, and you begin to think, I
- 41:36Speaker 1: need other people. I need other believers to help me
- 41:41Speaker 1: in my walk with Christ. And we began to settle
- 41:46Speaker 1: in the flow of the church life. That's the Book
- 41:49Speaker 1: of Acts. As we do, then the truth of Scripture
- 41:53Speaker 1: begins to make sense to us, and that's the Letters
- 41:57Speaker 1: and by and bye. We began to realize we're not
- 42:00Speaker 1: living just for time, but in eternity. The Savior is
- 42:03Speaker 1: in fact coming again. And we began to see that
- 42:07Speaker 1: there are some sign posts along the way that help
- 42:09Speaker 1: us see that he's coming as soon. Peter says, whom,
- 42:13Speaker 1: having not seen you love in whom, though now you
- 42:16Speaker 1: see him not yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable
- 42:20Speaker 1: and full of glory. What a treasure it is to
- 42:24Speaker 1: have a Bible. We have in our possession a complete
- 42:27Speaker 1: copy of the scriptures. It's probably true that most of
- 42:33Speaker 1: you have at least a half dozen copies of the
- 42:36Speaker 1: Bible in your possession. Why don't we have a little
- 42:40Speaker 1: fun and just give that a try. If you've got
- 42:42Speaker 1: six or more copies of the New Testament or the
- 42:45Speaker 1: Bible and your possession, lift your hand up nice and hot.
- 42:48Speaker 1: Let me see there. You look around, folks, see what
- 42:51Speaker 1: I'm saying. I was talking with a man who ministers
- 42:54Speaker 1: behind the iron curtain, a man who talks straight stuff
- 42:59Speaker 1: about the un Church. He said, in all of his ministry,
- 43:05Speaker 1: how seldom he comes across a pastor who has a
- 43:10Speaker 1: complete copy of the Bible. He said, I have been
- 43:14Speaker 1: in areas, Chuck, where I have had the scriptures, and
- 43:17Speaker 1: I would minister. And I've been asked by some of
- 43:20Speaker 1: the saints, can we just look at one of those
- 43:24Speaker 1: books that we've never seen before. Would you just let
- 43:27Speaker 1: us look at it, he said. Pastors say, could you
- 43:30Speaker 1: tear out that page and leave that page here with me?
- 43:35Speaker 1: Little page out of his Bible. Hey, I I get
- 43:45Speaker 1: really moved over that kind of stuff. I realize how
- 43:49Speaker 1: precious a possession we have, how meaningful it is to
- 43:53Speaker 1: have it all in our language, just neatly formed in
- 43:57Speaker 1: paragraph forms, nice big print for some of us, just
- 44:02Speaker 1: easy to read, seldom read. If I figure correctly, we
- 44:10Speaker 1: got a little over three hundred and thirty days left
- 44:12Speaker 1: in our year. I counted the chapters and found there's
- 44:16Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty of them in the New Testament.
- 44:20Speaker 1: If we start reading a chapter a day, not anymore.
- 44:24Speaker 1: It's not fair to read more than a chapter a day.
- 44:26Speaker 1: I don't even care if you want to. You can't
- 44:28Speaker 1: do it. Just one chapter a day and stop. You
- 44:32Speaker 1: read one chapter each day through the year, you'll have why,
- 44:40Speaker 1: you'll have a month left over at the end with
- 44:42Speaker 1: time to waste, and you'll have gone all the way
- 44:45Speaker 1: through the New Testament. Some of you have never once
- 44:49Speaker 1: in your life read it through. Now I'm not talking
- 44:52Speaker 1: about the whole Bible. I'm just saying the New Testament.
- 44:57Speaker 1: If you take it by the months there. Let's say
- 44:59Speaker 1: we have eleven month left. If you just read twenty
- 45:03Speaker 1: four chapters in that month, you'll wrap it up with
- 45:06Speaker 1: time to spare, won't you do that? Oh? A little
- 45:14Speaker 1: beneath your dignity. That's childish stuff, that's Bible college stuff. Well,
- 45:20Speaker 1: when have you done it last? I want to tell
- 45:25Speaker 1: you something. It's been a long time since I've read
- 45:27Speaker 1: the Bible through. I'm done this year. I'm going to
- 45:32Speaker 1: read through the New Testament with you. I'm going to
- 45:35Speaker 1: read a chapter a day. And because i'm a quick
- 45:39Speaker 1: starter with a slow ender, I'm going to start tomorrow
- 45:44Speaker 1: and I'm going to see how I do through the
- 45:46Speaker 1: New Testament. And I'm accountable to you. You can ask
- 45:49Speaker 1: me how I'm doing on it anytime you want to. Okay,
- 45:53Speaker 1: I'd like to do that together. You just start with Matthew,
- 45:57Speaker 1: and when you finish that, just go right on to Mark.
- 46:00Speaker 1: None of this high power jumping around back and forth.
- 46:02Speaker 1: Just go right on through. Just a simple plan and
- 46:05Speaker 1: you get the revelation. Just dig right on in, go
- 46:08Speaker 1: right on through it, and finish it up. I like
- 46:14Speaker 1: the way this guy says it. I suppose I knew
- 46:19Speaker 1: my Bible reading piecemeal, hit or miss. Now a bit
- 46:22Speaker 1: of John or Matthew. Now a snatch of Genesis, certain
- 46:26Speaker 1: chapter of Isaiah, certain psalms of twenty third, twelfth of Romans,
- 46:30Speaker 1: first of Proverbs. Yes, I thought I knew the word,
- 46:33Speaker 1: but I found that through that thorough reading was a
- 46:36Speaker 1: different thing to do, and the way was unfamiliar. When
- 46:40Speaker 1: I read my Bible through. You who like to play
- 46:44Speaker 1: at Bible, dip and dabble here and there, just before
- 46:47Speaker 1: you kneel a weary and yawn through a hurried prayer.
- 46:51Speaker 1: You who treat the crown of writings as you treat
- 46:53Speaker 1: no other book, Just a paragraph, disjointed, just a crude,
- 46:58Speaker 1: impatient look. Try a worthier procedure, Try a broad and
- 47:04Speaker 1: steady view. You'll kneel in very rapture when you read
- 47:10Speaker 1: the Bible through. I ministered up at glen Air. Even
- 47:21Speaker 1: when I got through with the talk one evening, I
- 47:24Speaker 1: think it was Friday. They had Lauren Sandy wrap up
- 47:27Speaker 1: the evening. It was a one of those special times
- 47:31Speaker 1: when I since God had spoken, and I felt terribly
- 47:34Speaker 1: unworthy for the joy that had been ours together, and
- 47:38Speaker 1: that God had used me to speak to lives, and
- 47:41Speaker 1: so I sat down kind of wistfully, and I was
- 47:44Speaker 1: moved to tears that particular evening over some things God
- 47:47Speaker 1: had led me to say. And Lauren stood up and
- 47:51Speaker 1: he said something I'll never forget. He said, I met
- 47:56Speaker 1: and women, as I sat here tonight listening to Chuck,
- 48:00Speaker 1: realize that our tendency is to be hearers of the
- 48:02Speaker 1: word and not doers. So he said, I'd like us
- 48:07Speaker 1: to do something that will make that change. I'd like
- 48:13Speaker 1: us to go back over our notes, and I heard
- 48:16Speaker 1: the pages turning as people got back in their notebooks
- 48:18Speaker 1: that they had been writing in. I'd like you to
- 48:20Speaker 1: circle something right now that you want to start doing one,
- 48:28Speaker 1: not more than two things from what you heard tonight.
- 48:31Speaker 1: Something you want to start doing. Circle that says, I'll
- 48:34Speaker 1: give you a few seconds, so forty five seconds or so.
- 48:36Speaker 1: A silence, and everybody was marking up the one or
- 48:39Speaker 1: two things they want to deal with. Then he said,
- 48:41Speaker 1: I want you to circle one or two things you'd
- 48:44Speaker 1: want to stop doing. Okay, And again we did that,
- 48:49Speaker 1: and I said, I just want to ask you one
- 48:51Speaker 1: more thing. I want you to put down when I'd
- 48:56Speaker 1: never heard it done like that, I want you to
- 48:58Speaker 1: put down when you want to start. Maybe you want
- 49:00Speaker 1: to start when you get to work next Monday. You
- 49:02Speaker 1: want to start, or you want to stop. Put a
- 49:07Speaker 1: time here at a time there, share it with no one,
- 49:12Speaker 1: Just put it down. That has helped me think about
- 49:18Speaker 1: being a doer of the word. Let me just ask
- 49:22Speaker 1: you tonight, in what you have heard, having heard some
- 49:27Speaker 1: things that are very helpful, not only this evening but
- 49:30Speaker 1: this morning, what one thing could you circle you're going
- 49:36Speaker 1: to start doing or stop doing? When are you going
- 49:43Speaker 1: to do it? I've learned that when I don't nail
- 49:49Speaker 1: it down, usually in writing, I don't do it. Maybe
- 49:55Speaker 1: you're like that too. I'd like to to bow together
- 49:59Speaker 1: for just a min moment of quietness. You've listened very
- 50:10Speaker 1: patiently through these forty five fifty minutes or so, and
- 50:16Speaker 1: you've sung well, and you've enjoyed the evening. I wonder, however,
- 50:22Speaker 1: before we slip out into this cold night air and
- 50:24Speaker 1: start a busy week and we meet that old enemy
- 50:30Speaker 1: of ours immediately because he's heard everything you've heard today.
- 50:36Speaker 1: One of it isn't a good time to just seal
- 50:38Speaker 1: to our hearts. One maybe two things. Give God thanks
- 50:45Speaker 1: for it. There's a commitment you need to take care
- 50:52Speaker 1: of with regard to your Christian life. Even want to
- 50:57Speaker 1: put a time on it and say, right now, I
- 51:00Speaker 1: want you to know that's when I plan to get
- 51:03Speaker 1: it going or stopping it. Lord, your word is like
- 51:11Speaker 1: a garden. It's like a deep deep mine. Treasures are there,
- 51:18Speaker 1: blossoms are there, the plants there. We really do need
- 51:23Speaker 1: to mine your truth. We need to enjoy the fragrance
- 51:29Speaker 1: of your lovely plants. But it takes time, and so
- 51:38Speaker 1: many things seem so much more exciting and important to us.
- 51:47Speaker 1: Some have begun to miss time with you while busy
- 51:52Speaker 1: meeting with others. Get a hold of our lives and
- 52:00Speaker 1: help us in the quietness of this evening, this very day,
- 52:05Speaker 1: to come to terms with where we're going and how
- 52:10Speaker 1: we're spending our time. Speak very directly to my life
- 52:19Speaker 1: and to a few who hear these words. This day
- 52:25Speaker 1: set apart this week as a very refreshing and new
- 52:29Speaker 1: kind of experience. As we come back to some basics,
- 52:35Speaker 1: time with you, time and your word. We pray in
- 52:43Speaker 1: Jesus' name, God's people said Amen. The preceding message an
- 52:52Speaker 1: important Interlude, was copyrighted in nineteen eighty two, and the
- 52:56Speaker 1: sound recording was copyrighted in twenty twelve by Charles Rswindahl.
- 53:00Speaker 1: In all rights are reserved worldwide.