Latest / Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ) / "The Bible..." by Hiram Kemp

Transcript

"The Bible..." by Hiram Kemp · Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ)

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There are books, and then there's this book,
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also known as the book. There are many helpful books that man's
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given to us, but there is one heavenly book that God's given to us,
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and there's no other book on the face of the earth that's anything like it.
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Just think about the great depths that God has gone to to get this
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message to us. Men didn't write the Bible on their own and wouldn't have come
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up with the idea apart from divine inspiration and aid.
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No, the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that Scripture
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is literally God-breathed. It comes from God, and then it fully equips
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us for every good work. Prophecy didn't come in old times by the will of
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man, but holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy
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Spirit, 2 Peter 1:20-21. The Bible is a unique book,
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but it's not just unique in the depths that it took God to get it
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to us, but also the depths that men have gone to and gone through to
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preserve it so that we might still have it. Long before the printing press,
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monks in caves and in monasteries that we'll never know their names worked
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for countless hours to continue to copy out manuscripts by hand so
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that you can hold the Bible in your hand that you're holding today. William Tyndale
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translated the Bible out of the Greek and Hebrew and into English at
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the cost of his life as he was strangled to death for doing so.
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Because the authorities at the time forbade him from translating it.
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Chicago University Press says that the Bible is the most influential text
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in Western history. Oxford University Press says it's been the
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most important text and the most translated text in all of the ancient world.
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In 2023, at an auction in New York, a rare edition Hebrew
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Bible was sold for $38.1 million.
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There's no other book like the Bible. Like the psalmist says in Psalm
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119:10, your words are more precious to me than
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gold. Yes. Than much fine gold. Psalm 119
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and verse 72 says about the Bible, the law of your commandments is of
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more worth to me than many gold or silver pieces.
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But then this begs other questions. Why have people
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gone to so great depths to make sure that we have the Word of God
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and that we have the Bible? Why has the Bible been so translated and
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so cared for and meant so much to so many people down through the centuries
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and down through the years? And more than that, Why has God given it to
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us? This morning I want to look at the text of Scripture and see what
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the Bible says about itself to us so that we'd have a greater appreciation
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for it and ensure that we're engaging and acting with the Bible in the way
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that God would have us to. Because the truth is, there's nothing wrong with the
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Bible, but there may be plenty wrong with our approach to it. Because for
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some people, the Bible is a mere religious prop that accompanies them to worship
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services like this one once a week. For other people, the Bible
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has great religious and spiritual nuggets and it belongs on a sort of self-help
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shelf but has nothing to offer us as it relates to historical accuracy and
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things that really happened. Other people are in great doubt of the
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Bible and not impressed with the Bible at all because as far as they're concerned,
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it's on par with other religious texts also fighting for relevance
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and significance. They can't determine which books are in, which books are
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out, and as far as skeptics are concerned, Nobody can interpret
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the Bible with any consistency or regularity. And to all of
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those things, we should open up Scripture and see what it has to
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say to us. And I promise you, if we do this honestly, when we get
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to the end of our study, it won't be the Bible that's changed, but it'll
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be us. This morning, let's notice what God says to us about the Bible,
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why he gave it, and how we should engage with it. Number 1, the Bible
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is meant to be read. This should kind of be a no-brainer, but the Bible
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was given to us by God so that we could read it. This is fundamental
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and foundational. In passages like Isaiah 34:16,
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the prophet says, seek ye out of the book of the Lord and read.
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Ephesians 3:4, Paul says, I wrote these things
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down so that when you read, you might understand my knowledge and
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the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the sons
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of men, as it's now been revealed to us by his holy apostles and prophets
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by the Spirit. You turn your Bible to the Old Testament and you get to
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Deuteronomy 17, and it's there that God anticipates that a
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time was coming when Israel was going to want a king of their own.
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And in Deuteronomy 17:18-19, God says when he will
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sit upon the throne, he will copy out a copy of the law
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given to him by the priests or approved by the priests, and he will read
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it all the days of his life. And he's to do this so that he
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won't be lifted up or exalted above his brethren. Priests were to make sure
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that every king that came to the throne in Israel copied out
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by hand his own copy of the Law of Moses and then studied
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it and then read it all the days of his life because the Bible was
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meant to be read. And you might think that this point's assumed.
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This is a no-brainer. The Bible's a book and of course you're supposed to read
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it. But a lot of people don't engage with the Bible this way. Some people
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treat the Bible sort of like a lab rat. It's to be inspected. It's to
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be dissected. It's to be broken down in little parts and pieces. But never
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read. Other people treat the Bible as sort of like an aesthetic.
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It's beautiful. You know what? It looks good on their coffee table next
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to other books or on a shelf in their office or maybe one of my
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favorites, on their dashboard of their car. Maybe they think that won't get them a
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ticket or in an accident but don't read the Bible.
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For other people, the Bible is not to be read. No, the Bible is a
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family heirloom. Somebody really close to them died at some point.
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And one of the things they left behind for them was their Bible, and they
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keep it in a nice place tucked away and safe. And if you ask them,
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they proudly profess, this is my dad's Bible. Yes, but the question
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is, is it yours? Have you taken it in and made it a part of
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you? Have you started reading it and digesting its teachings? Because that's
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what it's there for. Job says, I've desired the words of your mouth more than
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my necessary food. Job 23 and verse 12. Jesus says, man cannot live
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by bread alone, but instead by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
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God. Matthew 4:4. The Bible's supposed to be read. This passage in Deuteronomy 17,
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yes, originally it was spoken to kings, but down throughout the Bible you
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can just note the passages where this same idea is spoken
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to the nation of Israel on the whole and the church, as Christians are told
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to read and engage their Bible.
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Nehemiah 8:8, it says, we read to all of the people
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out of the book of the law with distinction. And cause them to understand the
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reading. Paul says, see that this letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:27,
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is read to all the holy brethren. Colossians 4:16,
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when you read this letter, make sure you also read the letter that we
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left to the Laodiceans. And in Joshua 8:33-34,
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when the people finally get into the land of Canaan, Joshua copies out
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the law and he reads it before all the people because God
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wants us to engage the Bible But we do this by reading. New Testament scholar
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David Neuhaus says, the reason why today we struggle with biblical literacy
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probably more than any other generation is because we've raised
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a generation of Bible quoters and not Bible readers. And what Neuhaus
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is talking about is Bible is supposed to be memorized. Quoting Scripture and
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learning the Bible by heart is a great thing, not to be despised, but we've
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raised a generation of Bible quoters rather than Bible readers. Neuhaus means
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this: If you know John 3:16, if you know Ephesians 2:8-9,
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if you know Philippians 4:4, but somebody says to you, hey, have you ever read
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all of John? Or maybe, have you read the book of Philippians? Or have you
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read all of Ephesians or all of Romans? If your answer to those
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questions is no, then you're not engaging with the Bible the way the Bible was
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primarily meant to be engaged, and that is God gave it to us so
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that we might read it. In John 20:30-31,
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Jesus says— or John writes about Jesus— Truly, many other signs did Jesus,
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but these are written so that you might believe that he is the Son of
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God, the Christ, and in believing have life through his name. But that only happens
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when we engage the Bible properly, and that happens when we read.
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Just about every home, even apartment complexes,
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you've got a fire extinguisher. You probably walk past the one in your house
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hundreds of times every year. You don't even think about it. It's on the wall,
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it's under some cabinet, and you never think about it. In fact, You could get
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to the end of your life and there's a possibility that you could proudly profess,
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I've never used a fire extinguisher in my house ever a day in my life.
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And then just think about the Bible in relation to American homes. The average American
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home has 4 Bibles in it, to say nothing of all the electronic
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copies that are available at our disposal. What a shame to get to the end
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of your life to say, you know what, I've walked past it hundreds of times,
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but I've never used it. I've never had a need to use it.
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And I've gotten to the end of my life and I really haven't engaged or
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read the Bible thoroughly and sincerely. You know, the Bible was not
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given to us to primarily put out fires in our lives. God gave us the
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Bible to light a fire in our lives and change us as people.
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Psalm 119:104, your word is a lamp unto
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my feet and a light unto my path. Why did God give us the Bible?
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So that we would read it. This phrase, knowing something
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by heart, it comes from the Greco-Roman world. In the time of the first century
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in the ancient Near East and in the Greco-Roman world, they thought that not the
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brain but the heart was the storehouse of ideas and thoughts. And so
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they thought if you really want to know something well, you just rehearse it so
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many times so then eventually it's written not in your mind
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but ultimately on your heart. And sometimes we as Christians,
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we like will proudly profess, you know, I know a couple of things about the
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Bible but I don't really know it by heart. And the
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question is, why not? Or when are we going to get started? Because if you
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read the Bible, That's the point. Jeremiah says, your words were
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found and I did eat them. Jeremiah 15 and verse 16. Here's what
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we all know is true. We know by heart the things that have our heart.
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Think about the things you know easily and instinctively. It's because
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those are the things that have your heart. Colossians 3:16, Paul says,
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let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.
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Because he gave us the Bible so that we would read it. A friend of
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mine wrote an article this week called If I Don't Read My Bible, And he
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just listed maybe 20 things. I'm just going to share with you some of them.
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He says, if I don't read my Bible, I close my mind to God's communication
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with me. Hebrews 1:1-2. If I don't read my Bible, I'm going to lose sight
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of what's most important in my life. Matthew 16:26.
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If you gain this whole world and lose your soul, it profits you nothing.
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If I don't read my Bible, I fail to see who God truly is.
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If I don't read my Bible, I'm going to lose my zeal for God.
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When your life starts feeling like things are spiritually out of whack, we've got to
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start asking ourselves, how have I been or how have I not been engaging with
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the Bible? Because above all, he wants us not to just snack
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on it, not to glance at it, but to gaze into it and to read
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it. Here's number 2: the Bible is complete.
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God would have us to appreciate that his Word, the Bible, is complete.
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The Old Testament ends with this idea of there's going to be a Messiah that's
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coming. Malachi chapter 4 and verse 5 and Malachi chapter 3 and verse 1
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last book of the Old Testament, talks about the expectation of a coming Messiah.
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Hundreds of Jews in between the time of Malachi and Matthew have
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this idea— it's written down in historical documents— that God was not communicating
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by inspiration to anybody during that time period. But once the New
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Testament age comes, God reveals his will to his apostles and his prophets,
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and they wrote it down. In John 16 and verse 13,
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Jesus says, howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth, has come— talking about
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the Holy Spirit— He would guide the apostles into all the truth.
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They wouldn't speak their own thoughts, but the Holy Spirit would declare to them the
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things that are to come. Jesus's words in John 16 and verse
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13 are very important in their specificity. Jesus says the apostles
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would be guided into all the truth. That means if the apostles were guided into
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all of it, nobody was going to come along after them and give
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us any more. Near the end of the New Testament, Jude verse 3,
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Jude says the faith has been once for all delivered to the saints.
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That means God wasn't going to give it out to us in spurts and in
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spats at various times. It was once for all time delivered
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to the apostles and the saints, and there's no more revelation coming.
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The second thing to appreciate about the Bible is your Bible
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is complete, and the Holy Spirit anticipates that
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people are going to struggle to believe this truth. And so at the beginning of
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the Bible, in the middle of the Bible, and at the end of the Bible
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there are these warnings: do not put anything else into the Bible that God
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never did, and don't take anything out. Deuteronomy 4 and verse 2, Moses writes,
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do not add to the Word of the Lord and don't take anything away from
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it. Proverbs 30 and verse 6, Solomon says,
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don't add to the Word lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.
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And Revelation 22, verses 18 and 19 says, if you add to the Word,
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God will add the plagues to you, and if you take out of the Word,
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He'll take your name out of the holy city. The second thing to appreciate about
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your Bible is it's complete. And this is becoming
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a harder point for even Christians to accept. They go to Kroger, they're checking
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out, they look next to the candy bars, and there's a National Geographic saying,
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hey, we found some lost books, and they're enamored with it. Do you know how
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many people every week reach out to me? They're enamored with this idea of,
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hey, what about the Book of Enoch? And what about the Gospel of Judas?
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And what about the Gospel of Thomas? They're just sort of infatuated with this idea
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that, hey, I don't know about the Bible, maybe we don't have all the books,
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failing to appreciate that Enoch never wrote anything down.
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Judas was a villain and a traitor, not an author, and the Gospel
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of Thomas is 100 years too late to be included in our New Testament.
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It's almost comical how obsessed we are with the lost books and
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we never find our way to the books that have already been found and
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authenticated and verified. Just ask somebody that's infatuated
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with these lost books, hey, have you read the whole Bible? I mean, Genesis to
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Revelation? Nope, haven't read that. Have you read the whole New Testament? Maybe Matthew
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to Revelation? Nope, but I heard that they found some manuscript in Egypt in
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a cave under a hamster's bunk bed, and I'm really interested in that.
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Are you interested in what you do have though? Because the whole Bible's complete.
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When I say the Bible's complete though, I also mean the Bible's
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enough. This is God's final revelation to people.
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Yes, in the person of Jesus Christ, but revealed through Scripture, Hebrews 1:1-2.
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It means that the Bible is fully sufficient. It means if you have a Bible,
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you have everything you need to please God, 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
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If you study about ancient backgrounds and cultures, it'll shed a lot
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of light on the Bible. I mean, if you learn how people lived back then,
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what they ate, and how they went about their lives, if you can learn something
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about the language and the keywords Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic,
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it'll enliven your Bible study. If you have the money, the time,
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and the resources to take a trip across the seas to the places where people
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like David and Abraham and Paul and Jesus walked and lived,
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it'll enliven and enlighten your Bible study. But if you do none of those
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things and you take 100 pennies and you walk to the nearest
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dollar store and buy the cheapest paper copy of this book that you can find
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and read it and practice it all the days of your life, you'll know enough
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to see the author in peace when your life is over. 1 Thessalonians 2:13,
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Paul says, when you receive these words that you got from us, you receive them
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not as the word of men, but as they really are in truth, the word
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of God that works effectually in those of you that believe it. The Bible is
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complete, and it'll complete us if we allow it. Here's number 3:
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the Bible reveals the truth. Jesus just comes
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out and says this in John 17:17: sanctify
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them in the truth. Your word is truth. Psalm 119 and verse 160
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says the totality or the sum of God's word is completely true.
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And we need to appreciate the Bible for what it is. The Bible reveals the
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truth. And the idea behind this is the Bible is revealing the truth because
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we wouldn't have come to it on our own. There's no way we would have
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known the truth had God not given it to us. God reveals it so
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that we'll know it in its totality. What this means apologetically
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is this: wherever the Bible speaks to a subject,
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it's correct and it's accurate. It means when the Bible speaks about scientific
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things like the life is in the blood, Leviticus 17:11,
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the Bible's right. Whenever the Bible talks about historical people,
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there really was a Caesar Augustus and a governor named Quirinius in the
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time of Luke chapter 2 and verse 1. And when the Bible talks about morality
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and human behavior, it's always right. But when we say that the
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Bible reveals the truth, we also mean practically, this means
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when we encounter the Bible, we should brace ourselves.
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This means that we should brace— the Bible probably should come with a label out
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on front that says, read this book at your own risk, because sometimes
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truth has to wound us before it can help us. You start reading
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the Bible and there are going to be some uncomfortable truths that God shares with
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us. Galatians 4:16, Paul says, am I therefore become
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your enemy because I tell you the truth? The Bible reveals
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the truth to us whether we like it or not. Think about how
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an X-ray machine works. An X-ray machine doesn't really
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tell you what you want to hear or what you think you want to— it
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just reveals what's going on inside of you. It just says, hey, here's what's wrong.
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In fact, the X-ray machine isn't even designed to condemn
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you. It's just to say, hey, here's what's going on with your life, and if
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you want to make changes, you can change. You can't get mad at the x-ray
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machine. It's just doing exactly what it's designed to do. The same thing's
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true about a mirror. A mirror is really not designed to tell you what you
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want to hear. You might put this on and say, this used to be my
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favorite shirt. It's not a medium anymore. It's a smedium. It's too small for you.
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You might be mad about that, but at the end of the day, guess what?
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You can't change it. God's telling us in his word, hey, here's your
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reality. Here's your life, and I want you to focus on the truth that I'm
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revealing to you and be courageous enough to make the changes.
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Some people haven't always— listen, people don't like when God
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starts telling them, hey, you gotta change your life. You know, there are people that
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have changed religions because the Bible says something about their lifestyle or the way they
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behave that they didn't like. People have changed churches and said, you know what,
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I just can't go if you're gonna preach that, if you're gonna say this about
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the way that I live. But the Bible's an x-ray machine. It just holds up
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our lives and it doesn't tell us like an x-ray machine what's going on in
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our bodies. Beyond that, it says here's what's going on with your soul. And if
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you really want to allow God to, He'll do the work on you,
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and it'll make a great difference as we allow it to transform us. Here's number
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4: the Bible is challenging. If you have your Bible, go to 2 Peter chapter
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3. Go to 2 Peter 3 and notice what Paul says in verses
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15 and 16. 2 Peter 3. I think this is a point that people that
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have trouble with the Bible need to hear those of us who believe it and
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preach it say a lot more, because the Bible just says this. The Bible is
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difficult in some parts and it's challenging. Peter's an inspired spokesman.
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He gets to the end of 2 Peter and here's what he says about the
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Bible. He says that this— the patience of God is evidence of his
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long-suffering, even as our beloved brother Paul has written to us in
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all of his letters. He says, and some of those things in
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verse 16, they're hard to be understood, which the unstable and the
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unbelievers twist just like they do the other Scriptures. Peter says
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there are some things that Paul wrote that are hard to comprehend. Notice what he
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doesn't say. He doesn't say impossible. He doesn't say everything that Paul wrote, but he
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says, hey, there are some things in the Bible that are difficult.
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This is important because you might start reading the Bible and you might start thinking
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to yourself, well, this is kind of tough. I must be doing it wrong.
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But that's not true. You might start reading the Bible and you come across some
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things that challenge you, and you might think, if I don't understand this right off
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or on the first read-through, to close the Bible and give up. No, the Bible
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itself professes it's challenging. Endure hardness as a
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good soldier, 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 3. It's called the difficult
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and the narrow way for a reason, Matthew 7:13-14.
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Discipleship is called the crucified life in Luke chapter 9 and verse
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23. None of those statements, none of those ideas communicates anything
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about ease, about comfort, about simplicity. It's challenging.
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This doesn't mean the Bible was written in some secret code so
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that nobody could understand it, but it does mean this: if you have a nonchalant
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and a haphazard approach to the Bible, you should expect you're never going to
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get much out of it. If you pick up the Bible one day and don't
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read it for weeks and you come back and you say, hey, I'm always confused,
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it's always going to be that way because the Bible is too rich,
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too deep, and too important to be engaged with flippantly.
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Maybe you know that table. That table is called— I'm
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going to just call it the math table, okay. And if you have kids,
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if you were a child at some point, if you're a parent, you know all
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about the math table. The math table is where parental and child love
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goes to be tested. At some point, you're raising your kids, they've got homework.
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Look, they're at the table learning math, you're at the table learning patience.
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And they're trying to figure out math, you're trying to remember math you studied 30
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years ago, and there's this tension. And at a certain point, you start looking
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at each other and you start wondering, I don't know if we're going to make
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it. But you never say at the math table, you never say
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at the math table, you know what, it's just too hard. You're never going to
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learn how to count. We just aren't doing multiplication in this house because you know
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what, it's working me up too much, it's working you up too much. We just
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forfeit. No, you know what we do? We get tutors, we use tools,
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we use techniques. You know why we do it? Because we say, hey, this is
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essential. This is going to cost us. This is hard. But it's just got to
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be done. And maybe you get to the Bible and you're reading Revelation and Zechariah
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and Daniel, and you start thinking— look, people at the math table, when it's happening
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in your house, you might be thinking we're the only people in the world struggling
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like this in this moment. But you start talking to other people and it's not
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just you. You start reading the Bible and talking to other people and you realize,
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hey, I can't forfeit. I've got to get tools and techniques and tutors
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and do whatever's possible to understand the Bible because I'm not the first person
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that struggled and places with this difficulty. Daniel's an inspired prophet
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of God, and 3 times in the book of Daniel— Daniel 7:15,
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Daniel 8:27, and Daniel 12:8— God reveals things to
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Daniel, and Daniel's response: This is complicated. I don't
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understand it. And yet, he professed
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he believed and trusted in God, and he persisted.
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There are some things in the Bible that are challenging, but if you think about
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what the Bible's designed to do, it wouldn't be any other way. The Bible's literally
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trying to cut down deep into our hearts and change the innermost part
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of us as people. Nothing about that process should be simple.
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Hebrews 4:12 says, the Word of God is living and active,
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sharper than any two-edged sword, and it divides the soul from the spirit,
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and all things are naked and open before the eyes of Him to whom we
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must give an account. The Bible can be challenging, but number 5, the Bible is
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about Jesus. All of it. The first verse
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in the New Testament and the last verse of the New Testament mentions Jesus by
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name. But the Old Testament is equally important and it's also about Jesus.
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And throughout the Old Testament, God is getting us ready for the coming Messiah.
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And as we read and engage with the Bible, we should see that it's ultimately
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telling us a story not about ourselves, but about the person and work of Jesus.
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After his resurrection, Jesus is walking on the road to Emmaus, and in Luke 24:27,
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it says he met 2 individuals, Cleopas and another disciple, and he
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interpreted to them all of the things in the Law of Moses and in the
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Prophets. Concerning himself. And Luke 24:44,
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it says, everything written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and
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in the Psalms had to be fulfilled concerning Jesus.
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Everything in the Bible is primarily about Jesus,
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and this is important for settling a lot of doctrinal disagreements and problems.
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Was there really a global and worldwide flood? Listen, you can dig in the ground
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and you can go and visit the ark in Kentucky, but at the heart of
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it, this boils down to one thing: Did Jesus believe in Noah and the flood?
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If Jesus did, that's good enough for me. Matthew 24:37-44.
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Do you really believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish and came out 3
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days later and lived to preach about it? Jesus believed in Jonah.
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Matthew 12:39-41. It's good enough for me.
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Is God really serious in what he says about marriage, divorce,
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and remarriage? I mean, a lot of guys have written books. A lot of people
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have a lot of interpretations about that. The whole Bible's about Jesus. He's the only
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perfect person who ever lived, and Jesus tells me about marriage in Matthew
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19:1-12, and whatever he says is good enough for me.
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Here's number 6: the Bible applies to everyone, everywhere, for all
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time. Sometimes people say about the Bible, you know,
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we're reading other people's mail, and we should be careful not to take the Bible
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too literally. I mean, that was then and this is now, and that was an
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ancient time, and we should be careful not to try to read the Bible too
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literally Because some of this stuff is cultural and it doesn't apply to us.
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2 Timothy 3:16-17 says all scripture is
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God-breathed and is profitable, and it'll make you complete for every good work.
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But go to Romans chapter 4. I want you to see how Paul used the
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Bible. If you've got your Bible, go to Romans 4. It's important to see how
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Paul used the Bible and how we need to use it so we don't fall
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into this trap of thinking, you know what, that was a long time ago,
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and people like that spoke a different language and wore different clothes.
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And looked a lot differently than us. The Bible doesn't work that way.
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Maybe some of it's good for us, but not all of it. Look at Romans
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chapter 4, and in Romans 4, Paul— start in verse 22— he's
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talking about the faith of Abraham. And in Romans 4:22, he says, it was accounted
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to Abraham as righteousness. In verse 23, notice what he says,
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but this was not said for his sake only, it was accounted to him
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for righteousness. But what in verse 24? But it was written also for
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us, Listen, Abraham lived thousands of years before Paul in
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a different culture, spoke a different language, and the passage that
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Paul quotes in Genesis 12:1-3, Paul was not there when those
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words were written. Wasn't even around for thousands of years. Paul picks up
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Genesis and this is how Paul's reading his Bible. He says, hey, that wasn't just
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for Abraham, that was also for me. So when somebody says something
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about the Bible today and we say, well, yeah, but that's it. Well, that was
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back then. That's not our culture. That's not our time. The Bible's a living document,
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and it wasn't just written for people back then. According to Paul and how he's
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engaging with Scripture, it's also written for us. And it's right not just
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to read the Bible and make general observations, but to get very
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specific and see the Bible also has a message for me.
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Here's the last thing, number 7: the Bible is meant to change you.
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And this is where Bill started us in Psalm 19.
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The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord
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is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right,
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rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the
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eyes. The Bible at its heart is designed to change
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us inwardly as people. I don't know, some people do this differently. Do you
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know the difference between cleaning up and straightening up? You know
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the difference? Somebody says, we got company coming over, we're about to straighten up.
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You know what straightening up means? All that means is get
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everything out of view, okay? Make sure— no, throw it in the tub, throw it
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in the washer, throw it in the garage. Straightening up just means getting out of
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it. You know what cleaning up means? Cleaning up means you've got to like move
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stuff around, wipe under dust. It takes more work. The Bible
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is not designed to just straighten us up. The Bible's honest
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with us. I told you the Bible reveals the truth, and there's something deeply wrong
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with us on the inside. And scripture isn't just meant to straighten us
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up. You don't come to church to be made a more model citizen, so you
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can function better on your job throughout the week. Sometimes we use this terminology,
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and I know what we mean, I sympathize with it. Give us something to take
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with us throughout our week. That's great, but the Bible's trying to do something far
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more than just giving us little nuggets to make us better-behaved citizens throughout the week.
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Deep down inside, at the root of who we are, the Bible's trying to come
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inside of us, break down everything that's wrong and corrupt, and change
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us into who Jesus always wanted us to be. 2 Corinthians 3 and verse
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18, Paul says we're all being transformed into the very same image
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of Jesus from one degree of glory to another.
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And maybe sometimes you look at old pictures, you pull them out,
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maybe on your phone, and you just start looking and you see how you used
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to look. Sometimes you think you look better back then or maybe better now,
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but here's the thing, the pictures, they tell the story. They show you you've changed
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over time and it's marked out in the pictures when you look at them.
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Maybe your hair was different. Maybe there was more hair back then. I mean,
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you just look at yourself and you can see, guess what, I'm a different person.
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And you start looking at yourself and you can really see the changes.
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I can't believe I used to be like that and look at me now.
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And the Bible is trying to work on us in such a way that when
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we finish our lives, we can look back through the snapshots
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of memory and say, I was never like this before I started reading the Bible,
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and it's completely changed and reformed the person that I've become. Look at me
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then, but God, look at me now.
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And as we sung right before this sermon, Mike led us, to God
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be the glory, great things he has done. God wants to do a great work
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in us, Philippians 1:6, but he does it primarily as we read and engage the
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Bible. The goal has never been to simply learn more. The goal's always
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been to do more, to be a different person. We sometimes say practice
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makes what? Perfect. But you know that's not true. I mean, you know at your
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heart Practice doesn't make perfect. My grandma can't just work
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her way to be the middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears if she practices hard
28:56
enough. It's never gonna happen for her. But here's the truth: practice
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does make progress. Practice may not make you perfect. You're probably
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not gonna be Jesus Christ by the— but practice makes progress. And the more we
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keep coming back to the text and studying it and practicing it and
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living it out, Romans 8:29 says, We become conformed
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to the image of the firstborn Son. And that's always been
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the point. That's why people have run across deserts to get this book. That's why
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monks have spent their lives translating this book. That's why William Tyndale allowed them to
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strangle him to death in the 1500s, because he said to the king on the
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throne, when I'm finished, that plowboy in the field will know more of
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the Scriptures than you, because people have to have this so they
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can be the people that God wants us to be. To be. There are many
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good books which man has given to us, but there's only one heavenly book that
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God's given to us. The Bible is complete, but we're not,
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and God's still working on us if we allow him.
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Sometimes truth does have to wound us before it can
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help us, and the truth in Scripture is we all reach an age, a stage
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where we become accountable and we sin and fall short of the glory of God,
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Romans 3:23. But that's quickly followed up with the good news.
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The gift of God is eternal life and salvation through our Lord
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and Savior Jesus Christ. And if you believe Jesus is the Son of God based
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on the divine testimony given in Scripture, you're ready to change and turn and repent,
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confess Jesus is the Son of God, we'll baptize you and immerse you in
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water for the forgiveness of sins, and you'll rise to live a new life,
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be a new creature, and continue to read and study the Bible and
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be more shaped like Jesus. In the decades to come, you'll look back and
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you'll say, I can't believe I used to be like that. But look at me
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now. Not because of us, but because of what God's done through us. Mike's gonna
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lead us in a song. If we can pray for you, if you need to
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be restored, if we can help you to walk in your spiritual walking journey in
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any way, let us know how we can do it as together we stand and
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sing.