Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / Rooted: In The Word | Sunday Service | September 8, 2024

Transcript

Rooted: In The Word | Sunday Service | September 8, 2024 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give a sermon this morning that takes what we've been doing the past couple weeks and goes to the next step.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to give a sermon called Rooted in the Word.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your neighbor and say, I want to be rooted in the Word.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, look at your other neighbor that you just ignored and say, I'm sorry.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry I ignored you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, I want to uh take us from where we've been.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you haven't been here for the past couple of weeks, I want to explain where we've been the past couple weeks.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: The very first week, which was only three weeks ago, can you believe that?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The very first week, really two weeks ago, this is the third week, uh, was it a sermon called Firmly Planted.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I invited you the wherever you are in your college, you know, kind of journey, wherever you are in your personal journey, and a lot of you come from different places and different backgrounds and different histories, different relationships with Christ and all of those things.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you get to those, no matter where you are, I want you to be firmly planted in Christ here.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I told you uh to keep to be where your feet are.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because so many times you're looking for that next opportunity.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what I invited you to do is be rooted right where you are, to be rooted right where you are.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then last week we talked about how the fundamental nature of that root is what?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You might remember?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Love.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Love is the fundamental root of everything.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this Bible, which we're gonna talk about today, it means nothing if it has not what?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Love.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It says, all of this is for nothing unless we have love.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: This week I want to talk about this book.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to point us to perhaps what is the most famous scriptural passage about this, which is in the book itself, in 2 Timothy.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you'll you can open up your Bibles or it'll be on the screens.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every scripture is inspired by God.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some translations say God breathed and useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: May it speak to us, may it speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, oh God.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You are our rock, you are our redeemer, and we love you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We pray this in your holy name.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we talk about the Bible, all of us came from different places, backgrounds, histories.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: All of us believe slightly different things because it may depend on where you grew up and what you were taught when you grew up.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have a personal relationship with this book, and some of you don't.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you believe every word it says, and some of you don't.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have all different perspectives.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So before we get into what could be a pretty controversial topic, could we all agree that we're just a big melting pot here, okay?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're a big melting pot here, and what we want to do is we want to discover the beauty of this word.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: The beauty of this book.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want to do.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to set some kind of ground rules or at least some uh some at least definitions.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I use the word scripture, and you're gonna hear me use it a lot, when I use the word scripture, I'm talking about the 66 books here.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and we can go into detail.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you should come to Bible study on Wednesday and we'll talk more in depth about this.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking about these 66 books.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this may seem basic, but there are Christian denominations and other faith organizations that have a different amount of books.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: They have a different amount of things.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, I'm what I'm talking about is these 66 books that you find in what we call the Holy Bible.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to affirm a few things before we go on so that you don't feel like I'm crazy.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear this.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is essential and true.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Say that to yourself.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is essential and true.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is essential and true.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is essential and true.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just prayed after we read the word, I said that your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: May it speak to us and through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That requires that I believe and that we fundamentally believe it together, that the Bible is essential and true.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk about what that actually means.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the Bible is essential and true.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: There is a teaching that you'll see probably in a church that you grow up in.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you might see it in other ministries and other churches.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But let me just kind of go through that for a second for you.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is a teaching that in order for the Bible to be true, it has to be literally true in every word, phrase, passage.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is a teaching that requires that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to tell you, just from an objective perspective, there is no way that can be the case.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that may sound crazy, so I want you to go with me for a second, stay with me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's essential and true, but it cannot be necessarily at every point, historically and special, especially scientifically true at every given point.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just show you a few places where that's the case.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Before I do that, actually, I want to talk about how we got there.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: There was a movement in the late 19th century, early 20th century, that's late 1800s, 19, early 1900s, of uh a new age of science where we started to discover things about like the universe and the stars, things that we're still discovering today.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you just want to go wild, you can go watch a three-hour documentary on YouTube about the universe and what we know and don't know about it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely insane.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about a God that is big, holy cow, that's what we're talking about there, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's that there is a lot that you can learn there.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was a movement that happened and it started to disprove some things that we believed about the scriptures, like uh the age of the earth as an example.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We started to believe some things about uh that we started to to like refute some things because of you know carbon dating and things like that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We started to be able to prove that, like, wow, we're a lot older than we think we are, and all these things are a lot older than we think we are.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there became this immediate conflict between the scientific world and the Christian world.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example of uh what one person says about this.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is a quote uh from a historical professor who taught at the school I went to, George Marson.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentalists regarded the inerrancy of scripture, that means the imperfect, the perfect nature of scripture, as the foundation of their defense against the modernist denial of the supernatural, particularly in relation to scientific advances and higher criticism of the Bible.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read it again.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentalists is a lot of big words.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's your college students?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentalists regarded the inerrancy, that means the perfect nature of scripture, as the foundation of their defense against the modernist denial of the supernatural, meaning the scientific world that said God can't exist because we can prove this and this and this and this, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: The science, the supernatural, particularly in relation to scientific advances and higher criticism of the Bible.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: This happened around that same time period, the late 19th century, early 20th century.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was all of this progress that was made scientifically, and then what Christians did, rather than like trying to take that in and trying to understand that and say, okay, I can see that, but also I believe in my heart that this is true, what the Christians started to do is started to fight against it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Christians just started to fight against it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: We started to say, well, you know, well, you know, this book is what told me the actual truth, so that thing that you say that you can prove, I can't believe it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you may be familiar with this because if you've ever followed in the Christian world or if you live in the scientific world, you'll find that those worlds often collide for this reason, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's there's this fundamental disagreement with this.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you an example of where this happened in my life.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when I was in college, I had a friend named Jordan, and Jordan is still a close friend of mine today.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was in my wedding.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, Jordan lived down the hall from me, but I was in the room that no one wants when they move into their freshman year dorm, and that was the room right next to the RA.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, come on, what kind of luck do you get?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But our R RA was actually pretty cool, and he was uh he was a religion major.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I was just thinking about him earlier today because he he and I are still good friends, and he works at a tech, works tech in a uh a church in Tampa, and he actually showed me how to install these lights this summer, so that was pretty cool.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was thinking about him in that realm.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But he is the host Bible studies in his in his room, in his dorm room.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we would go to Bible study every week and we'd talk about things, and and there was one week where he started talking about whether the Bible is true or not.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't like that because I believe that the Bible is true, it's true fundamentally.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just told you it's essential and true.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But we started, you know, hearing all these things, and he said, Well, you you need to see that it's not literally true, and I was like, No, no, no, it is literally true.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can point to so many things, and he said, Well, there's probably things you aren't aware of.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend Jordan, who grew up in a very, very conservative church, was like starting to get real nervous.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, saying he starts getting red in the face, and he's you can tell he's getting angry, and he's like, How dare you question in the middle of Bible study the thing that I believe?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Matt, our RA, he says, Well, just look at the first two chapters of Genesis.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Genesis 1, there's a story of creation in which Adam and Eve are created together in the image of God.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Together, God created them, so it says.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the very next chapter, the literal edited headline in there says another count of creation.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, like, oh, here's another telling of a story.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: But in there, there's severe details that are different.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's severe details, particularly one in which that is the most famous, which is that Adam existed first, was made in the image of God, and then Adam was put to sleep, and then a rib was pulled out of Adam to create Eve.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that story has been used to show the inferior nature of women since the beginning of time.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a different story than happened previously.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: In the same book, bro.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the same book.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's fascinating to me because I'm like, oh, okay.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you could take one of two different ways here.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You could do what I did, which was like, huh.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or you could do what Jordan did, which is like, I'll be back with my Bible.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he leaves and he comes back and he gets his King James and he opens up and he goes, huh, it's in there too.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fundamental change that happened in Jordan's life right there.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem that I have with this movement that tried to fight science.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: We call it fundamentalism, whatever you want to call it, but a little literalism, and there's a lot of words for it.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's playing by the wrong set of rules.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what science did.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Science said, hey, we can prove how old the earth is.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: We can prove where you came from.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: We can prove the vast nature of the universe.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're still discovering it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're not, we sent people to space, and we don't currently have a way for them to get back.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with this?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's two people that are stuck at the International Space Station.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to be eight days, it's gonna be eight months.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine being up there?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is like a horror movie, bro.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we don't know a lot about it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are still discovering it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem is that when Christians wanted to go up and fight that, we started doubling down on the nature of the literalism of the scripture.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's really, really, really, really, really interesting because it's playing by a different set of rules.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Our faith is based on something I can't prove.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: At its fundamental nature, it's based on something I cannot prove.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's based on a God I've never seen, but I know within my soul is real.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's based on a God that came down to earth and taught us how to live, and he was so popular we killed him.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then after he died, he rose from the grave, which we've never seen that happen again.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know in my soul that it's true, but I cannot prove it.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our entire faith is based on faith, not a provable thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we could have done is double down on this faith thing rather than trying to prove it all.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an example.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Does it matter that it happened that the creation happened in a literal seven seven days?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: What does matter that God created and that God created you in the image of God?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hear how that's far richer?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the world, it won't matter whether it was seven literal days or not.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: What will matter that is that you knew that you were created in the image of God.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And both those stories, Genesis 1 and 2, they both tell that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to go to this passage in 2 Timothy.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you can pull it out.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna read a little bit more than just those two passages, but I want to go back to chapter 3 here.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every scripture is inspired by God.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some passages say God breathed, useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Next slide.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you go to read the scriptures, very important to know who's talking and to whom.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every book was written in with a certain context of his history, but also from a certain author to a certain person.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is 2 Timothy.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was written by who?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, yeah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You will hear me ask that a lot, and most of the time the answer is Paul.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this one's confusing a little bit because it's titled Timothy.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So who's it written to if Paul wrote it?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Timothy, pretty good.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of things that are important about Timothy here.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first of all, we we think this is written by Paul.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's at least written in Paul's name.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're a little bit disputed.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Paul at the time is imprisoned in Rome, because if you aren't familiar with the story, it's not very popular to be a Christian at this point, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul is imprisoned in Rome and he's writing to Timothy.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Timothy is a colleague of his.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's a fellow church planner, he's a pastor, he's a friend.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Timothy is one of these people.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he he is uh in Ephesus at the time, where we get the letter to the Ephesians.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Ephesus at the time, and he's saying a few key things.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, remain faithful to the scriptures, and he's saying, Oh, combat all of the things that you know and stay faithful to the scriptures.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, another piece of context, very important, when you're reading the New Testament and it's talking about the scriptures, it's talking about the Old Testament because the New Testament was being written.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you're reading it, right?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about the Old Testament at this point, and I want you, I want to go back to verse 10 just to give you some context here.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you have paid attention to my teaching conduct, purpose, faithfulness, patience, love, and endurance.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have seen me experience physical abuse and ordeals in places such as Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I put up with all sorts of abuse, and the Lord rescued me from it all.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, anyone who wants to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will be harassed.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's really important.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said that too.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to live a holy life in Christ Jesus, you better get used to being harassed.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said that too.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: They will hate you because they hated me.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But evil people and swindlers will grow even worse as they deceive others while being deceived themselves.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you must continue with the things you have learned and found convincing, meaning stay on the path, meaning stay rooted is what he's saying.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: You must continue with the things you've learned and found convincing.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know who taught you.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love that because Paul loves himself.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know who taught you.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He is so confident that what he's telling you is the actual will of God.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: We discussed a Bible study on Wednesday that Paul calls himself an apostle because he met Christ on the road to Damascus.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Paul had a complete transformation of who he was, and that's why he's saying this.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know who taught you, meaning me.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Since childhood, you've known the holy scriptures that help you to be wise in a way that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says the famous line every scripture is inspired by God, useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: This translation says, inspired by God.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: The most famous translations say God breathed.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because throughout the entire story, God breathes on humanity.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: God breathes on creation.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the the very uh there's a uh a long story we don't have time to go into, but there's a an explanation of the way in which Hebrew worked, which uh described the word God, like the name for God, as a breath.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yo, out of reach, you know what I'm saying?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever found it so helpful when you get into that moment where like you just like are going and going, maybe we call it anxiety or panic these days, yes?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh have you ever had those moments and that first big breath you take?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Man, how amazing is it that when a baby comes from the womb, their very first breath, they're breathing the name of God.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture is God breathes.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: How cool is it that when God came down to earth, God comes not in some sort of like big voice with thunder and lightning and says, Oh, better start following me, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like he doesn't do that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: What God does is God brings a human to the earth.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: A human that does what every few seconds?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Breathe.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Faster than that, probably.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Breathe.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: God, breathe.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying here is that scripture is not some book that just sits on a shelf.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we made it that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul's saying is that God breathes into this and it's alive.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's alive.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Man.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: That takes it from the 2D words on a page and brings it into our lives.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: It takes it from this 2D, like, I'm just gonna read this and hopefully it'll say something to me.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then, oh wow.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Man, there have been so many times, I would say this isn't even true in the pulpit.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: There have been so many times I've prepared a sermon or or something, and I've read through this scripture a bunch of times trying to get ready for it, and I've tried to find some context about it, and I've read so much about it, and then I get up to read it here, and like something else hits me.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh man, that is God breathing into the scriptures.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see how this is far more immersive than we sometimes read it as?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Far more immersive than just an app on your phone that you could pull up and change the translation and have it read it to you.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is something that's pulling you in.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's breathing into you, it's giving you life.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you that you need to spend some time with scripture on a daily basis.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to sound like that youth pastor you heard growing up.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But let's be real.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: If God's gonna breathe into your life, Then you've got to take that living word and read it because it's essential and true.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the other thing he says in this passage to Timothy.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Next slide, yeah.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture is used to equip believers for every good work.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that if you need to grow in your relationship with Christ, if you need to grow and being a more Christ-like person, if you need to grow and being the person that you're called to be, that God wants you to be, then you might want to use scripture.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because Paul's saying it's used to equip believers for every good work.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that when you read Paul's letters to other people, you might think, oh, what's he trying to say to me?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you read the words that Jesus says to his disciples, he might be talking to you.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Read it daily.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the other thing I know about reading the scripture, and I know this from my own personal life.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Faithful reading leads to transformation.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you read the scripture faithfully, and notice I didn't say literally.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Notice I didn't say get in a Facebook argument about what this says and this says and this says and try to proof text your way out of some argument that you were going to put yourself in the middle of before somebody else came into.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Notice I didn't say that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say use scripture as a weapon.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say try to grab it and throw it at somebody.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a very famous uh clip of a movie called Saved, where uh the girl is throwing this Bible at somebody and she goes, I am filled with Christ's love.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she throws the Bible at him, like, uh yeah.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But reading the scripture faithfully, daily, often, leads to a transformation of who you are.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about last week that love brings transformation.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: True, authentic love brings transformation.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Guess where the best place in all of human history where love is defined is?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: In this book.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: In this book.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I get so annoyed when people tell me, hey, you don't believe the Bible.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Bro.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I believe so much of it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it to be essential and true.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that it has some hard words that I don't want to read some days.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it has some hard teachings that I'm like, ha ha, he's talking to them.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he was definitely talking to me.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible is essential and true.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you read it, if you spend time with it, it will change your life.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in high school, I played the bassoon.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not well.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I played it well for a while.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole story.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then got really bad toward the end.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was taking private lessons with my band director who had uh a big old music degree in bassoon performance.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember going to a lesson once, very unprepared, because that's who I was as a person.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Bryant, I don't think you're spending enough time with the instrument.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was right, and I think that's true about our lives right now.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're not spending enough time with the scriptures.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my promise to you.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to read this thing, uh, and I want you to read it uh every day if you can.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the Bible app on your phone, I'd encourage you to download it.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing gift that Life Church gave to the world because it's like free translations, it's amazing.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to download that just so you have it on your person at all times.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Put it on your home screen, bro.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Put it on your home screen, not the third page, you know, the one you can turn off.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Put it on your home screen.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then secondarily, if you don't have a physical copy, I don't want you to leave this building until you do.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I will give you one today.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every summer I have alums donate Bibles so that I can give them to you for free.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to take one if you don't have one.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's no shame in that, there's no no hard hard feelings in that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to take one.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I want you to open it and ask that God would open your eyes to its truth, would teach you something to equip you to be more Christ-like, would show you what the definition of love is.