As I thought about what would be helpful for us as we enter the new year, I thought it'd be nice to focus on the Word of God and our attitude towards it and our relationship to it, as we're going to see, even to help us do some self-examination so that maybe we can develop better habits in the new year or improve upon good habits that we already have. So with that, I want to ask you a few questions. What is it that you can say you delight in? What do you have a deep love or attachment to? What draws your attention? What supplies your satisfaction? Further, we could ask, what do you take joy in? What is it that gives you a deep sense of contentment? What is it that gives you a sustained gladness? All these questions are where they are for a reason, as we're going to see. What do you long for? What do you crave? What do you feel incomplete without? What is it that when absent creates an ache in your heart? What is it in your life that you can say is far more valuable than money? What is it that you esteem greater than all material things? What is it in your life that has captivated your attention? What is it that your mind wanders to when you're idle? What is it that consumes your thoughts? Further, we could ask, what is it that has captured your zeal? I mean, what motivates you? What generates intense enthusiasm? What gives you a passion? What generates commitment in your life? What is it that you're willing to sacrifice for? What is it that commands your emotions? What is it that drives your pursuits? What is it in your life that you run to when you're hurt? What is it that you seek out when you're discouraged, when you're sorrowful? What is it that you go to when you need comfort? What do you cling to when everything else around you feels unstable? What gives you strength through the difficulties of life? What gives you hope for the future? Finally, what do you run to for wisdom, for advice, for counsel, for guidance? What if I told you that God has given us one resource that supplies all of those needs? And of course, that's the Word of God. Listen to what the psalmist says. Psalm 119, verse 20. He says, my soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. And if you know Psalm 119, you know that every single verse, I think there's 176 verses in Psalm 119, every single verse in some way references the word of God. Verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Verse 162, I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. Verse 31, I cling to your testimonies, O Yahweh, let me not be put to shame. Verse 24, your testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors. 148, my eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promises. 147, I rise before dawn and cry for help, I hope in your words. Verse 52, when I think of your rules from old, I take comfort, O Yahweh. Verse 127, Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold. And what the psalmist is expressing in all of these verses is the appropriate attitude which all of God's people ought to have towards God's Word. God has lovingly provided a resource that brings joy, that evokes delight, that sustains satisfaction. He's given us something that fuels hope, which supplies comfort, which offers guidance. How does God's Word do all those things? It reveals His nature. It communicates His promises to us. It gives us guidance and wisdom for life. So the psalmist in Psalm 119 has learned to accept the Word of God for what it is. God's perfect revelation. And he's learned how to implement God's Word as God has intended. So he loves it above riches. He's consumed with it. He meditates upon it continually. He longs for it when he doesn't have it. He clings to it with hope. He reads it, he studies it, he memorizes it, he meditates on it, and he obeys it. He lives according to it. He loves the Word because in the Word he learns about God and about God's plan for him and how to be ushered in a relationship with the Father. So, we start with those questions. Those are some pretty probing questions that we started with. Those questions also serve not only to determine how we relate to the Word of God, but those questions help us even to detect idols in our lives. Because whatever it is that we supply as an answer to all those questions is that object or that thing that really has supplanted, in some way, the Word of God in our lives. So, this is an important exercise in self-examination. Now, it's right to love and to delight in the good things that God gives us in this life. That's true. However, if something else is commanding our attention, that's why I say as we come into the new year, it's good to look back on 2024 and do the self-assessment. Has there been something else that has been commanding your attention, receiving your affection, consuming your energies at the expense of worshiping God, or devoting yourself to His Word. And if there is, whatever that thing is, or whoever that person is, is an idol, is an idol in your life. So what we want to do this morning is simply remind ourselves of the importance of God's Word and the proper role it plays in our lives, and maybe encourage us to change some bad habits or start some good habits in the new year. So, let's define what we mean when we say God's Word. God's Word is spoken of in the Bible in multiple ways. There's different aspects of God's Word. We could talk about His declarative Word that goes out to create, like in the beginning in Genesis chapter 1, when He says, let there be light. That's His creative Word of decree, accomplishes all of His purposes. We could also speak of His word as His direct communication to individuals when He speaks to Abraham and speaks to Moses and so on. We could speak of His word as the revelation of His promises and warnings that He gave through the prophets. We could also speak of His word in all of those senses and embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, who John tells us and the writer of Hebrews tells us is the word become flesh in John 1.1.14 in Hebrews 1. Verse 1 and 2. But for our purposes this morning, we're going to focus on the Word of God as the written Word. As the written Word. That is God's powerful, creative, revelatory, that is everything else we said about those other forms of His Word, all contained in written form. God's powerful, creative, revelatory Word as contained in the Scriptures. The written Word of God. So let's look at a couple verses in the Old Testament that kind of lay a foundation for us regarding how God's people began to respond to the written Word. Deuteronomy 6, verse 1. This is Moses speaking about the commands which God gave him to write on the tablets of stone. Deuteronomy 6, 1 through 2. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that Yahweh your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear Yahweh your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all the statutes in his commandments which I command you all the days of your life, that your days may be long. Moses would later write the Ten Commandments and God's other instructions in a book. Actually, this 24-7 calls it the Book of the Covenant. This is God's written word. Tangible, ever-present revelation from God which provides guidance and instruction, encouragement, warning, and it gives hope to God's people. So as early as Deuteronomy we find the written word. In Deuteronomy 32, after reiterating God's promises as contained in the book of the covenant, this is Moses' final address to the people, he says, Deuteronomy 32, 46, "...take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of his law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life. By this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess." And notice that in both those passages he says, learn it because by it you will live long in the land. That is, God is the architect of life. And so when we take his plan for life, we begin to live as he has designed it, and he says, it'll go well with you. It'll go well with you. Joshua, after the death of Moses, warns the people in Joshua 1a, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. And so God's design for his people from the moment they were forged as a nation was that they receive the written word as what it was, the authoritative revelation from God. That is, they were to love it, and they were to study it, and they were to memorize it, and they were to meditate on it, and they were to teach it to their children, and they were to live by it. Now, not everyone had a copy of the written word. In fact, that would have been very rare. but they would have heard the written word spoken and taught. And you can imagine how much of it then would have been committed to memory in the absence of readily available written copies. And so that's a little glimpse of the Old Testament and how Old Testament believers related to the word. Has anything changed for us in the New Testament, for us as New Testament believers? Well, yes and no. God still expects that his people give themselves to Scripture. Love the Word. Read the Word. Study the Word. Memorize the Word. Meditate on the Word. Obey the Word. Find in the Word joy, delight, comfort, and hope. That remains the same. Well, what has changed for us as Christians? Well, unlike the Jews in the Old Testament, or even Christians from much of church history, we have ready access to the completed written Word of God that every one of us can have a copy of, and have multiple copies of, and have multiple translations of. That's new. Beyond this, we have another immeasurable privilege. In the written word as we possess it today, we have the clearest and the complete revelation of the Son of God and the salvation that He has accomplished. We have the perfect revelation of the salvation, which the Old Testament believers only got to see glimpses of, and really only hoped for. We have a record of it in the completed Word of God. That's an incredible privilege. Sadly, we with the greatest privilege and the greatest access oftentimes neglect the Word to a degree that they never would have imagined in the Old Testament or in the early church. Now, for the remainder of our time this morning, we're just going to kind of do a little bit of review regarding the overview of Scripture and what our attitude ought to be to Scripture, and maybe even a few tips on how to study Scripture. And some of this is intended for new believers. If you're a relatively new Christian, this is intended for you, but I think it's also a good reminder for the rest of us. So hopefully you'll find it that way. the written Word of God in the Scriptures, the Bible, as we possess it. What is it? Well, it consists of 66 books. Divide it into two sections, Old Testament and New Testament. 39 in the Old, 27 in the New, and first I guess we should explain what that word Testament means. You may not be familiar with the word Testament, but you're familiar with the word Covenant. And so the Old Testament is the record of the Old Covenant. The New Testament is the record of the coming of the New Covenant. New Testament record of the coming of the New Covenant. And so these 66 books contained in these two sections were written over 1,500 years by various authors, about 40 different authors, all different walks of life. And yet, despite the many different authors, despite the tremendous time span, this one book containing 66 separate books tells one story with incredible unity, incredible harmony from Genesis to Revelation. And so the Old Testament begins with the grand story of God's redemptive plan. It reveals God's character, humanity's sinfulness, and the promise of salvation. It starts all the way back in Genesis chapter 3 where we begin to see God's plan for redemption. His books are grouped. Maybe you didn't know this if you're a new Christian here or not yet a Christian yet. The Old Testament is not grouped chronologically. It's grouped according to genre, law, history, poetry, prophecy. That'll become important later as we think about how to study the scriptures. It's written by prophets, written by priests, written by kings, written by leaders of Israel, written primarily in Hebrew, a little bit of Aramaic. It recounts Israel's relationship with God, showcasing His covenant faithfulness despite the repeated failures. And so what we see in the Old Testament is like this record of a continual cycle in Israel's life. It's this wonderful revelation from God, a commitment to be obedient, then falling into sin, judgment from God, repentance, and then blessing, and the cycle starts over and over and over again and never ends with success as we come to the end. creation and the fall and Genesis to the hope of the coming Messiah and the prophets, the Old Testament lays a foundation which then is going to be built upon in the New, actually fulfilled in the New. I have in my notes here additional information about the structure of the Old Testament and the structure of the New Testament. We're not going to do that this morning for the sake of time. But the New Testament fulfills all the promises of the Old. The Old Testament is viewed as, you know, shadows. looking forward to something greater, shadows looking forward to substance, promises looking forward to fulfillment. And so when the New Testament or the New Covenant is ushered in, it is the satisfaction or the fulfillment or the culmination of all these things in the old that we're looking forward to something. And so the old, there's always something incomplete, and it's all anticipatory and fulfilled in the New Covenant or the New Testament. And so the New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus, because it's in Him that all the promises of God are satisfied. And so the New Testament, what do we have there? In the New Testament, we have books of history and prophecy, at least in Revelation. We've got the Gospel. We've got Acts. We've got the Gospels, which is three synoptic Gospels, generally covering the same events. We have the Gospel of John, which is a little bit different, focuses on the deity of Jesus, that we're going to eventually get back to our exposition of, by the way. We have Epistles. Letters that were written primarily by the Apostle Paul, but there's some others in there as well. And of course, one book of prophecy, which is the book of Revelation. But the New Testament brings about the birth of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of all of the old. And then what we find is that the Bible then, Old Testament and New Testament, is one story, one book, one progressive unfolding of one redemptive plan. We see this from the very first promise of redemption in Genesis all the way to its final fulfillment in the book of Revelation. Absolute wonderful unity. And I'll just say to you that if you are one, you're still in a place in your life where you think the Bible is full of contradictions or inconsistencies, The remarkable thing about the Word of God is the more you study it, the more you become exposed to the absolute harmony and unity of Scripture. There's great reward for those who dig in, those who will get into the minutia, those who will begin to see the repeated themes and the threads that run from one end to the other. You'll be absolutely astounded and in awe. And so there's great reward when you study Scripture. Your faith in the Word of God is bolstered the more you dig into it, which is incredible because you think the opposite would be true. The more you get into it, the more you see its flaws, or the more you see its inconsistencies. But that's not what happens when you study Scripture. The more you get in, the more that you understand it's one harmonious book. And so, throughout the Bible, Old Testament to New, you see recurring themes emerge. You learn about God's holiness, God's faithfulness, God's love, humanity's sinfulness. You see the idea that there's a need for a Savior, and that Jesus Christ is the centerpiece of it all. All 66 books, though written by different authors over centuries, perfectly harmonized to contribute to that one overarching story, pointing us to God's grace and the hope we have in Christ. And again, the more we study, the more we'll come to appreciate that perfect harmony. So, how is all that possible? How can you have the Bible? One of the things you've got to get used to as a Christian is that God operates sometimes... Now, I'm going to say this from a human perspective. Can I say anything else? I mean, is there any other perspective I can say from? From a human perspective. The way that God operates is oftentimes messy from our perspective. It's messy from our perspective. That is, some religions who have holy books say, well, their God just presented the scriptures almost from heaven in completed form and came to earth. That's not how God operates, and that's not how he produced the scriptures. And by the way, that's not how he preserves the truth either, and how he operates within the church. How is it that God could have 40 different authors over such a span of time produce one harmonious story? Well, the Bible indicates in 2 Peter 1, verse 19, Let's read it. It says, "...and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you would do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." And so there's a messiness in that there are multiple authors, there's multiple contexts, and this happens over centuries, but we see that all along the way what's happening is that God is supernaturally intending the record or the writing of the Scripture. This is what Peter and others will call inspiration, that Paul will call inspiration when he writes to Timothy. And so Peter says, we will do well to pay attention to the Scripture because it's not produced by the will of man. Notice that Peter does not suggest that the Bible came to us again in completed form. We don't believe that it is dropped down from heaven in the form of golden tablets or something like this. Not at all. So what does this mean? Well, a few more what it does not mean. It does not mean that the Holy Spirit simply influenced human authors to write about certain concepts, leaving the choice of the exact words to the author. It does not mean that God dictated every word mechanically, as if someone just became within a trance and they just started writing. It doesn't mean that. Instead, it means that God, by His Holy Spirit, caused the authors to write exactly what God intended while utilizing the author's personalities, style, vocabulary, and experiences. And so He allows His Word to be developed or to be written by individuals within the context of human history and human lives. And He does all of this, superintending it, ensuring that those manuscripts are produced without human error. That's the inspiration of Scripture. And there's no use opening the Word and trying to figure out, did God write this or did man write this? And if you have trouble with that, you're going to have trouble with some other major doctrines in Scripture. Because any time God's sovereignty and human responsibility come together in some doctrine, you have that same tension. The same is true when it comes to your salvation, the same is true when it comes to our sanctification, and the same is true when it comes to the inspiration of Scripture. So God used human authors to write exactly what he intended while not superseding the style, vocabulary, experiences, or personalities of those authors. That's the doctrine of inspiration. Paul wrote to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3.16, inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." And notice there, because of the inspiration of Scripture, the Word of God becomes an authority. He says the Word of God is profitable for reproof. That's an authority. teaching, correction, and training in righteousness. And so the Word of God is the final authority for faith and practice for those who are believers. It is imbued with divine authority by virtue of its inspiration. Not only is it inspired, but it's also sufficient. Paul said to Timothy that it is good for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. That is, what does he say? So that the man of God may be equipped for every good work. That means that we don't need any other source of special revelation to know who God is, how to be saved, how to please God. Nothing else rivals the completed Holy Scriptures. And so be wary of any religion that tries to put something alongside the Scripture. And sometimes what that thing is that comes alongside the Scripture generally serves as a lens, a distorting lens, through which you're told to read the Scripture. And whatever that lens is, whether it be the Book of Mormon, or whether it be the Watchtower Society, or whether it be the Magisterium, or whatever it may be, whatever that thing is, if that's the lens through which you read Scripture, it becomes a greater authority than Scripture. But the Bible teaches that it's the Word that is sufficient for us. It is what equips us for every spiritual good work. Now, the Word of God is inspired, the Word of God is preserved. I'm sorry, the Word of God is inspired, the Word of God is sufficient, and next of all, the Word of God is preserved. This might make some of you uncomfortable, and this is going to drive home the point when I mentioned that the way God operates is messy from a human perspective, not from His perspective. How can we be assured that the Bible we have in our hands is an accurate reflection of God's originally inspired scripture. After all, we are thousands of years removed from the original writing. After all, we have an English translation, and we don't subscribe to some... I'll be kind. We don't subscribe to the idea that the English translation is in some way a perfect translation of the Bible, because English is God's chosen language to preserve scripture. There are those who believe that. What do we believe about translations and the confidence we can have in our translations? You might hear some people who want to criticize scripture saying, oh, it's just been copied so many times. And they have the idea of the telephone game. You tell the story, they tell it to someone else, they tell it to someone else, they tell it to someone else, comes out the other end, and there's nonsense. And they try to assume that that's how the Bible has come to us. Well, that's not true at all. How can we be assured that what we're reading is an accurate reflection of what was originally written? There's a whole area of science devoted to this question. It's called textual criticism. It's a branch of scholarship dedicated to determining the original wording of ancient texts. Where the Bible is concerned, textual critics have spent centuries discovering and cataloging and evaluating and preserving and publishing biblical manuscripts. As a result, we possess more manuscript evidence for the Bible than any other piece of ancient literature. through the comparison of thousands of manuscripts, textual critics can identify any copyist errors that have crept into the translations or the copies. They can detect also additions that may have crept into certain lines of transmission. And we can just illustrate this. Let's say we have three different sections here this morning. Okay, so you've got the left, you've got the right, and you have the center. And so if I were to give a copy of the Word to Jared, and I give one to Silas, and I give one to Becky, And their task is to copy. And so Becky makes a copy, and then Monique makes a copy, and then Richard makes a copy, and then Phil makes a copy, and then Jack makes a copy. I know all your names. And Jared does the same thing here, and Silas does the same thing there. The manuscript gets to the end of the row, and then we compare them together. And over here, I have one reading of Scripture, and then I have another reading of Scripture here, and I say, well, these don't agree with each other. Maybe there's one word that's different in one verse between these two. But then I read one over here, and I see that this one agrees with that one. Well, I can make a judgment that that error then must have crept in with this line of manuscripts. Well, now, think about that on a large scale. Think about it the globe over. Think about it with different countries, different lines of manuscripts where these things are being produced. By comparing manuscripts with one another, we can determine what the original writing is, and if there are variations, we can determine where they crept in and how they ought to be corrected. And so there is an entire science dedicated to this. And so we can analyze patterns, and we can analyze the ages of manuscripts and knowing which ones are closer to the originals. We can think about the origins of the manuscripts. We can think about then how to reconstruct with a high degree of certainty what the original inspired text actually said. Now, amazingly, That's confirmed by things like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-20th century. The biblical manuscripts that we have today are essentially the same as those that were circulating 2,000 years ago. These discoveries have repeatedly affirmed the reliability and consistency of scripture. So we have a privileged position as Christians, because we don't have to sit on the edge of our seat worried about the next archaeological discovery. Occasionally you might see these articles written where, oh, this throws into question this and this and this. Just give it time. Just give it time. We have a privileged position because we have the confidence that as more discoveries are made, they consistently bolster what the Scriptures claim and bolster the fact that what we have today in our hands accurately reflects the original writings. So, God's Word has been preserved. And I said, that's messy. Right? That's messy. Why don't we just have one book fall down from heaven and say theirs is complete and that's it? Well, the issue is then if some error, if you had one line of manuscripts and one error crept into that one line of manuscripts and that's forever preserved in that form. Instead, it's very messy and this is God's way of preserving it from error so that we have a multitude of lines of manuscripts that can be compared together. And I say that's similar to how God operates with the church as well. There's a reason why God didn't design the church to have maybe one head of the church, maybe somewhere in the world, and every other church is underneath that one authority of the church. Why? Because your experience and my experience is that when you have some organization with authority at the top, oftentimes the top becomes corrupt, and that corruption trickles down to everything underneath. What is God's design instead? His design is local, independent churches. Why? Well, because if error creeps into the local church down the road, it doesn't mean it creeps into this church here. And just as God preserved manuscript, He also preserves the defense of Scripture and accurate doctrine as well by having individual local churches. So, that's the preservation of Scripture. It's been preserved for us through the meticulous copying of scribes, even the advent of the printing press, or even through the process of translation, where errors have crept into the copies, maybe through miscopying or misprinting, the abundance of manuscripts that we have serve as the checks and the balances, the safeguards, so that any aberrations can be rooted out and the original text can be preserved. So, you can be confident in the translation that you have. you can have complete confidence that the Bible you hold in your hand is an accurate and faithful copy of God's Word. So, when we turn back to now, all that being said, what should be our attitude towards the Word of God? What should be our attitude towards the Word of God? Again, Paul says to Timothy, it's sufficient for teaching, reproof, correction, and training, and all those carry a sense of authority. James writes in James 1.25, therefore, Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word." So there's an attitude. Meekness. Submit to it. Sit at the feet of the Word of God like you might sit at the feet of a respected teacher. Receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law of the law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. And so we find that the Word of God is not just a revelation of who God is, but it also helps us have a reflection of who we are. It exposes us, right? It reveals areas where maybe we need to change. And so James likens that to like a mirror. Look in a mirror in the morning? I mean, ideally you look in the mirror in the morning, and not when you get home from work, and then discover that had you looked in the morning, you would have found there was something on your face, or something out of sorts, that now you think, all the people I met today, and they looked at me, and they didn't say anything about the smear of toothpaste on my chin, right? Or the eye makeup that's all askew, and they didn't say anything about it. But had you looked in the mirror, maybe you could have fixed that and then went your way. That's what it's like when we read the Word of God. And so we read it, it reveals who God is, but it also reveals who we are. And it gives us an opportunity then to submit ourselves to it and say, okay, I need to change my actions here. I need to alter my affections. I need to change my attitude according to what Scripture instructs me. So we have an attitude of submission, meekness. And so we receive the Word, we receive the Word's testimony about ourselves, and then we alter our actions, attitudes, affections, and response. The writer of Hebrews says this in Hebrews 4, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing through the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." Now this verse, these verses, are given in a very serious context. The context is that of individuals who claim to be followers of Jesus, who continued for a time, but who now were tempted to go back to their former religion and to abandon Jesus. And the warning from the writer of Hebrews is, listen, God will judge. He will expose the heart of individuals for good or for ill. And that's the power of the word of God. It can discern our thoughts. It can expose areas in which we fall short. It can convict us of sin. And so for those who desire to live godly lives, that's a gift. That's an awesome tool. That's an awesome tool. Why? Because we welcome that type of exposure. If we're genuine believers, our prayer is, Lord, show me your will for my life. Show me where I can change for your glory. Show me where my thinking is wrong. Show me where my priorities are wrong. Show me where my perspectives are off. Right? You want that as a believer. And the Word of God supplies that for us. So when we read the Scriptures, we don't stand as its critic or its judge. Instead, we allow it to examine our hearts. We allow the Scriptures to reveal our sin. We allow the Bible to show us where change is needed. Then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we respond with obedience to those things. So, as followers of Jesus and children of God, we long to grow. And so we long for the Scriptures. We long to learn more about who God is. We long to learn more about what He's done for us through Christ. And we long to know more about how He would have us live for Him. Peter said it this way, 1 Peter 2. So put away all malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy, and slander, and all slander." Then he says this, "...like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." If there's one thing Calvary Baptist Church knows, it knows its newborns. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation. That's our attitude towards the Word of God. It's necessary. We are dependent upon it. We long for it. Why? Because we want to grow up. Like a child who delights in the sound of her mother's voice and the security of her embrace, Christians find deep satisfaction in God's Word. God's people throughout history have cherished His Word. We saw that in the beginning with the psalmist in Psalm 119. I want to show you something else from Psalm 119, verses 9-11, which we repeat often. We recommend this as memory verses, especially for new Christians. But the Word of God provides something else for us as well. Psalm 119, verses 9-11. The psalmist says, How can a young man keep his way pure? by guarding it according to your word." That's interesting. How do you keep your way pure? Internet filter? Yeah, absolutely, sure. How do you keep your way pure? Accountability to others? Yes, absolutely. But the psalmist's answer is, by guarding it according to your word. We have all kinds of external things that might help us to remain pure by keeping certain things out of our line of sight, keeping certain influences out of our lives. Those things are all important. But ultimately, we do those things so that we can give ourselves to the Word. And so the psalmist says, by guarding it according, by guarding what? His way. I'm going to guard my way. so that it can remain pure. You're going to guard it according to your word. And then he says, with my whole heart I seek you, let me not wander from your commandments. So that's the attitude. So it's got to start with that attitude, a wholehearted desire to seek God, not desiring to wander from his commandments. And then look in verse 11. He says, I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. And so how can a young man keep his way pure? Guard it according to your word, by guarding it according to your word. But then that looks like something. What is it? taking the initiative to take the Word and to store it up in our hearts, right? So that takes effort, that takes work. That's like reading, that's like memorizing, that's like meditating, that's like studying, that's like applying, that's like obeying. And so it's taking the Word, storing it up in our hearts, which has that practical effect of guarding us against sin. And so we've used that analogy before of like, you know, stocking the shelves of your mind with the word and then when temptation comes or questions come or you need wisdom or whatever it may be, you can go to those shelves and you can see that scripture that's been stored up in your mind. But scripture is more than just like that type of reservoir. As we read it and study it and memorize it and meditate on it, it actually works to fundamentally change our perspectives and our priorities and ultimately our responses to temptation. So it actually has a formative effect in which it renews our minds. So it's more than just storing it on a shelf, it actually has the effect of changing us. And that's what enables us to keep our way pure. So, without the foundation of biblical knowledge, we risk relying upon our own wisdom. We risk finding ourselves surrendering to temptation, being unarmed and unprepared to face those things because we don't know the Word of God. Well, we're going to close with just some tips then on how to study Scripture, on how to study Scripture. It's interesting and unfortunate how many Christians have gone so long in their Christian lives maybe just not knowing a proper approach to reading and studying the Word of God. So, we'll give a few tips. And by the way, there is a ladies Bible study that's in the works that eventually will be launched, and the focus of that study will be encouraging women to learn inductive Bible study. That is how to get into the Word and actually study it for yourselves. So how do we study Scripture? Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.15, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed. And how do you do that? rightly handling the word of truth. So Paul says to Timothy, who's a pastor in Ephesus, hey, this is how you be a workman that God approves of. This is how you ensure that you don't need to be ashamed. You know what else occurs to me? You know what else that tells us? Is that when someone gets up behind the pulpit and they fail to rightly divide the scripture, and they fail to not interpret properly because they are lazy or uneducated or unmotivated when it comes to the Word of God, it seems like they should feel shame. Because Paul says to Timothy, hey, this is how you have no need to be ashamed. Rightly handle the Word of truth. And so the Bible needs to be handled properly. So what does that look like? Well, here are some tips for you as you approach the Word of God. First of all, come to the Word as a means of grace, which is empowered by the Holy Spirit to change your life, and so approach it with prayer. Approach it with prayer. The psalmist in Psalm 119 verse 18 says, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. And so this is not just an exercise of self-effort, this is, Lord, show me. Allow your Holy Spirit to guide me as I read your word. It's God's Holy Spirit who helps us to understand the things that are freely given to us by God. So pray. Next of all, as you get into the word, and maybe here's a little tip for you if you're a new Christian. I admire the determination as a new Christian and you say, I'm gonna read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. do that eventually. But I would just suggest to you that right away, Genesis, Exodus, awesome foundations, but I would just recommend you start in the New Testament, because in the New Testament, you're gonna learn about Jesus, you're gonna learn about salvation in his name, you're gonna learn, I mean, that's the end of the story, that's the fulfillment, that's the culmination, and then that helps to provide for you a lens or a framework through which you can now read the Old Testament. That'd be really helpful for you, because now as you read the Old Testament, you get to Leviticus, And you talk about not boiling an animal in its mother's milk, things like this. When you come out of there realizing that now you know how to diagnose leprosy, and you don't know why you know that, but you do know it. When you start with the new, that becomes the interpretive lens. through which you see the old, and some of those things that seem very mundane and odd, now you can kind of understand how they foreshadowed a look forward to the coming of Jesus, or the salvation that we'd receive in His name. So, I would say, start in the New Testament. You know what you could do? Start with Matthew, and then read the rest of the New Testament, and then read Mark, and then read the rest of the New Testament, and then read Luke, and then read the rest of the New Testament, then read John, and then read the rest of the New Testament. Do that four times. And then go to the Old Testament and read Genesis, Exodus. Now, caveat, Psalms and Proverbs are awesome to include in your daily reading all the time. But eventually, read it all. It's all sufficient. But use some wisdom when you choose your passage, right? And we can give you some guidance on that. Next of all, as you read the Bible, respect the Bible as literature. Respect it as literature. For some reason, the Bible stands alone as a book that individuals seem like they'll just approach, like they don't approach any other book, in that they might read one page from one book today, and one page from another book tomorrow, and maybe three pages from another book the next day, and that's the pattern that they have with the Word of God. You would never do that with your library. You'd never just pull a book and read a couple pages. Oh, tomorrow I'll just read it. You wouldn't do that. And what it does is it seems to expose the fact that the reader does not believe that the Bible is one harmonious book that's telling one story that progressively unfolds across its pages. So, you've got to respect the Bible as literature. The Bible's not a hodgepodge of unconnected thoughts. The Bible features historical narratives, lengthy discourses, instructional letters, prophetic literature. It makes no sense to dip in and to dip out a paragraph here, a page there, while ignoring the overall context and the flow of Scripture. The biblical authors, in addition to being inspired by God, are intelligent writers. They wrote for a purpose. Their writing is cohesive. Their writing is logical. Their writing is sometimes complex. It falls upon us as readers to find the original author's flow of thoughts and intention in their writing. We need to find their line of argumentation. We must work to discover their intended meaning, which follows the normal rules of interpretation. So, have you heard people say, well, you shouldn't take the Bible literally? And I would say to you the exact opposite of what that person is saying. You should take the Bible literally. And what does that mean to take the Bible literally? It doesn't mean that everything you read in scripture, you take as if it's, you don't read everything in scripture as if you're going to ignore any figurative language, like metaphors and similes and allegory and analogy and so on. You read the Bible literally in that you respect the basic rules of interpretation that you would apply to any other literature. That means what? That means respecting context, respecting genre, respecting literary devices. This would be a weird approach to interpretation, one which kind of we don't take with any other literature if we just approach the Word of God into everything absolutely literally without respecting metaphor and simile and figurative speech and so on. And so we want to read literally in the sense that we are respecting what the original authors intended, including respecting the style and genre and so on. Apply the normal rules of literature that we apply to any written work. And I'd also say this, don't fall prey to an approach of scripture reading that's kind of like the beachcomber. If you ever walk along a beach and just try to find interesting things, you find some cool little stones, you'll find some fossils, you'll find some glass that isn't worked down, it's really smooth, and you find things like that and you kind of stick them in your bag. That's how some people read scripture. Oh, that's a nice verse. Oh, that's a pretty verse there. Oh, that's a nice one there. And that's how they approach the Word of God. Or some might have what I call the chapter a day keeps the doctor away. Right? Or read one chapter today and another chapter tomorrow, and I check a little box and say, there, I've done it. Regardless of whether or not what you've read stops in the middle of a narrative, you know, the chapter divisions in Scripture are not the most helpful sometimes. And so you realize that the Apostle Paul is giving you some, like, heightened theology, and it's going to come to this wonderful culmination and climax, and it's going to burst forth into praise or burst forth into application, and then you just stop and say, oh, time to go to work. Respect the flow of text and understand what makes the most sense. Understand what the literary unit is and read the whole thing. So, respect the Bible as literature. Next of all, check the context and respect progressive revelation. I'm not going to say much here because we're running out of time, but I would just say, understand the historical context, the cultural context. Who's writing? Who are they writing to? Where is this in the progressive flow of scripture? If I'm reading Leviticus, I'm not applying that to my life as far as rules for sacrifice. That's written to Jews. That's written under the old covenant. That's been fulfilled in Jesus. That's not for the church, for instance. And so respect the context, respect the progressive nature of revelation? Does this come before Jesus? Does it come after Jesus? Is this part of the Abrahamic Covenant? Is this part of the Davidic Covenant? Where does this flow in the progressive revelation of Scripture? That matters. That even matters when you get to the New Testament and say, okay, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church in the book of Acts. Is that a little bit different time period than it is now? Should I expect the same things that they expected then? So you've got to know a little bit about progressive revelation. Don't be intimidated by that. You'll learn that over time. And so before we start reading a book, take the time to discover who's writing, to whom are they writing. Consider the audience. Is the audience Jewish? Is it Gentile? Is it pre-cross? Is it post-cross? All of that matters. And a good study Bible will lay all that out for you in the beginning of the book. They'll provide introductions. It's all there. So it's not as intimidating as it might sound. Next of all, respect genre when you read. The Bible has poetry, the Bible has narrative, the Bible has discourse, the Bible has teaching, the Bible has history. It's all there in the Bible. And you cannot even just say, well, certain books are poetry and certain books are narrative, because there are some narratives that have some poetry, there's some historical documents that have poetry, there's some that have apocalyptic aspects to it as well. And so you just got to use some wisdom when you're reading to determine what the genre is that you're reading, because each genre of the Bible requires different rules of interpretation. So you're not going to read poetry and take it as history, necessarily, and you're not going to take literal history and say, oh, that's just poetry. And so you need to know your genres and the proper rules of interpretation. Next of all, As you read a book, observe its structure and its features. Get the lay of the land. Scan a book before you begin reading and say, okay, what are the questions and answers here? Where does it seem like the main argument start and end? What is the main argument here and how is it being supported? What are the questions that are being asked in the text? Where are there references to the Old Testament maybe in the New Testament? If I'm reading the Old Testament, maybe there's some verses here that are referenced in the New. And so you kind of want to get the lay of the land. You're looking for things like paragraph divisions, repeated words and phrases, figures of speech, quotations, and so on. And that's essential to inductive study. What I suggest, this is what I do, is I print out the Bible, wide margin, double spaced, and I put them in a binder, and then that way I can mark that up to my heart's content. Underline, highlight, right in the margins, and if I write something I don't like, I can just reprint that page and put it back in my binder. And that's a really helpful way to just be able to kind of just write and highlight with abandon, and not worry about, oh no, I've messed up my Bible now. And so that's one approach. So observe its structure and its features. Take note of names of people and places, especially if you're reading something like the ministry of Jesus or the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Take note of where they're going and where they've been and so on. So observe the structure and the features of a text. Next of all, ask questions of the text. Who is writing? Who's the main audience? Who are the major characters? What are the major ideas? What's its purpose? Where do these events occur? When will these things take place? Where are these events happening? From where was the text written? Why was the text written? Why did the author make a certain reference or quote a certain passage or use that argument? And on and on and on and on. Next of all, read the text. Read it once. Read it twice. Read it again. Don't miss the forest for the trees. Next of all, apply. I'm going to give you this. As you read, consider this acrostic. As you read, you can say, read with expectation. No, as you read, expect. E-X, look for examples to follow. P, look for promises to claim. E, look for errors to avoid. C, look for commands to obey. T, look for theology to learn. Examples to follow because the Bible is a book of theology and biography. It's full of the accounts of people and their lives. Why? Because God wants us to learn from them. And so look for examples to follow. Or examples that you're saying, okay, I shouldn't follow that one. Promises to claim. God is our faithful covenant-keeping God who's blessed us beyond measure. And so the Bible is full of promises that we can cling to and place our hope in. And again, errors to avoid, commands to obey, and theology to learn. And all of that, I just encourage you to get some good tools. Get some good tools. Have a good study Bible. Recognize that the notes in your study Bible are not perfect. They're not inspired. And feel free to disagree with those notes, but they can also be very helpful. So have a good study Bible. I'd recommend to you that you don't use your app on your phone for your main study. It's fine to bring up here and there to read scripture, but I suggest to you that you have a paper Bible or even print your own Bible for serious study. But there's also all kinds of resources out there. We live at a time where we're incredibly privileged in that if you want to learn the Word of God, you can. You can get a free seminary education or Bible college education today if you want to. It's all out there. All the resources are there. And we've tried our best in the church app. If you go to, I think it says links. If you go there, you'll find recommended resources. The basics all the way up to like online seminary level stuff. And so the tools are all out there. So get some good resources and start with a good study Bible. And I would say have a study Bible, but then also have a Bible that you can mark up, whether that's a printed Bible or just a wide margin. So, in conclusion, God has not only given us His Holy Spirit as the agent of change, but has also given us the means which the Holy Spirit intends to use to change us. And that is, in part, the Word of God. The Bible is chief among those means. And so, if you want to see real change in your life in 2025, give yourself to the Scripture. You want to see spiritual transformation? You've got to learn to love the Word of God. You've got to learn to read the Word of God. You've got to learn to obey the Word of God. The Bible and the reading of the Bible should become a routine discipline in your life. And maybe it already is, and awesome, but maybe it once was and you've slacked off, or maybe it's never been, but this ought to become integral to your life. Not as a lifeless ritual performed because, you know, God's going to be displeased with me, but as an integral part of our life, which longs to know God better and to prepare for Christ's return. And I would just suggest maybe one more practical thing. If you find a Bible reading schedule helpful, do that, but if you have a history of starting into a Bible-reading schedule and then falling off and not finishing it and then being discouraged, then don't even take that approach this year. Have some looser goal. Just say, you know what I want to do this year? I want to read through the New Testament a couple times or something like this. something more manageable, something that's not so rigid, but develop a goal in such a way that when you fail, you're not going to be discouraged and then quit altogether. Okay? So, you know what? God is sympathetic to our weaknesses. You need to be sympathetic to your own weaknesses and recognize what's manageable and what's not. And so the Bible, like any other book, requires us to apply, as we said, basic rules of interpretation. careful in how we learn to properly read and understand it and apply it. In this way, every Christian should become a student of God's Word, yet we don't approach the Bible as a dry textbook merely to fill our heads with knowledge. Instead, we approach it as it is, the living and abiding Word of God. And so, I hope that you'll avail yourself to it in the New Year. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your Word, and we pray that you'll help us to be faithful to it in the New Year. I know that this sermon this morning is a little bit different, but we pray it'd be helpful, an encouragement, a reminder, and maybe an education for some who are new Christians, for whom some of this may be new. But I pray that you'd help us at Calvary Baptist Church to be a community of men and women who are men and women of the book, who are not always being spoon-fed by others, but who have learned to study the Word, to learn your Word, because we love you and we want to know more about you, to know more about what you've done for us in Jesus, and to know more about what you would have of us as we live in obedience to you. So, help us to have a proper attitude towards your Word. We pray that you'd help us to develop wonderful disciplines in our lives for our own good, not simply to check a box or because we think it's an avenue of acceptance, but because this is what's good for us. It's when we walk according to the Spirit that we don't gratify the desires of the flesh. It's when we walk according to the Spirit that we can actually fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. And it's the Word of God that the Spirit seeks to use in our lives to guide us as we walk. I pray that we do this for our own spiritual good. Help us to use your means. If there's some here this morning who are new Christians who have never developed a discipline of Bible reading, we pray that you would just encourage them to do that. We pray that maybe this could spur them on to dig into the Word and to read it. There's those this morning who have maybe slacked off in their Bible reading. They have enjoyed that joy of discovery, the blessings of Scripture, but they have fallen off of that habit. We pray that you would just Encourage them to get back into your word. And then lastly, if there's those here this morning who are not yet Christians, more than Bible reading, we pray that they'd come to know Jesus Christ, who's the star of the book. Pray that you'd help them to see their need for Christ as Savior, and that they would submit to him as Lord, and that they would be publicly baptized, declaring their faith in Christ. We thank you for all of this, for your goodness to us. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.