in the first half of our school year, we talked about continuing in God's Word, and i said that the second semester this this last half of the school year we want to focus on continuing in the work of god but first we're gonna start with the word of god which is what we've been doing and then jump into the work of god and but both are important can i say in the life of a christian you need to know god's word but you also need to do god's work and so It's not enough just to have one or the other. So many times as Christians, if we're not careful, we get caught up in the work of God. And we're all about, we want to do this and help people and give and do that. And I'm all for that. But if you do that and you neglect the word of God, then you're still not living the full Christian life. And let me tell you, it won't be long before the work of God will be something that will be really a burden to you, something you'll be bitter about, not something that you'll be motivated to do. And that's why it's so important. We ground our faith in the word of God so that we can be empowered and strengthened to do the work of God. We need the Word of God in our lives so that we can do the work of God in our life. And you say, is it possible to do God's work without the Word of God? Yes. There's a lot of people that do good things that would be considered God's work. But let me tell you something, and I heard this from Pastor Tony Evans, and he is right on when he says this, but he says, you cannot do that work of God that remains. You know, when it talks about, when the Bible talks about the works that God has asked us to do, he's talking about more than just helping. But he's talking about something that remains, something that is eternal, something that will bear fruit. And there's a lot of things that people can do that will be good things and are considered good things. And they might even be considered biblical things in the sense that it's something that God wants us to do. But you'll find that that work leaves no fruit behind it. It's kind of like a lot of the charities that sometimes rich people give to. And I think those charities are doing good things. But there's really nothing personal that that person, that wealthy person that donated to it, there's really nothing personal sometimes that they can get out of it or anything that really remains an impact that they made other than just the money that they gave. And so many times you can live a life as a Christian and have that be the reality in your life. And we don't want that. The Word of God teaches us that we need to be grounded and rooted in the Word of God so that when we do God's work, it's fruit that remains. It's something that leaves an impact and something that has eternal value in it. And so that's why it's so important to have both in your life, the Word of God and the work of God. And let me tell you, you're going to have to work on that. for all of your life. Just this week I started getting back into a stronger memorization study of the Word of God and I'm trying to memorize Psalm chapter 103 and there's only 12 verses and it's a psalm that I think I can get. And I've got the first six verses down but it's something that I have to purposely put time into and I've read books on how do you better memorize things? And how can you do better and how I can do better and memorizing more of God's Word? What are some tricks that you can use and things that you can do to help it stay up here in your mind? And it's something that young people you'll never get to in your Christian life to say I'm done. I've shared this many times, but the vice president of the Bible College that I went to, his name is Dr. John Goetsch, and he's got 15,000 verses memorized. In fact, there's a message, and maybe I'll try to get it on CD for those that want it, but he preaches one straight hour, okay, one straight hour, and he says nothing but verses. He doesn't expound on it, he doesn't say, now this is what this verse is saying. All he does, and it is from memory, he quotes, and he starts in Genesis chapter one, verse number one, he starts by quoting the first three chapters of Genesis. And then he goes on to other verses in John chapter one, and then in Psalms, and then in Romans, for one straight hour, nonstop, verse after verse after verse after verse after verse after verse. Man, he challenged me so much when I was there at that college to try to work on that in my life. Dr. Goetsch will tell you he's not a genius. He's not, it's not because... He's so much smarter than everybody that he's able to do that, but he has worked at it. And he's made the Word of God a priority in his life. And so I say that just to encourage you. This is why we're going through this. I know it's been a lot of weeks of going through what the Word of God is, what's the Word of God is, what the Word of God is, how did it come to be in our hands, and why can we believe it? It's because it's a source of our strength. It's something that God left for us so that we might be strengthened by it, empowered by it as we do his work. So in your notes, we're going to finish this on the word of God. This is not in there, but I'm just going to give you the heading of where you're picking up here. We're talking about the composition of the Bible We said the copies of the Old Testament text as well as a new are very reliable even though they're not the original copies We don't have them today, but we be we can believe it and we can accept it because of the history of it We talked about the Mazarites That were the the men that copied the Word of God in the Hebrew I told you that when they would do this it was something that I was so important to them that they actually counted. They counted the letters, not just the words, the letters. And if they didn't match up, then they would throw away the copy and start all over again. And I gave you the example of the letter A in the Hebrew alphabet. It appears in the Old Testament 42,377 times. And they would actually count it. And if in their copy, the letter A does not come out 42,377 times, they would throw it away and start over. That's how exact they were. And it's amazing that God had taught them to do that. He wanted them to make sure that they were copying exactly what the Word of God said. And then I said in the New Testament, it's known as the Septuagint. It's the The Old Testament was translated into Greek. It was like many of today's day. I was reminding you of that, that sometimes you can run into Americans that are perhaps Polish American or African American or European somehow, and they don't speak their native language anymore. You could have some Russian blood or German blood in you. You don't speak German anymore. You speak English because we live in America. Well, that was happening to those that were growing up in the Greek culture. They knew a little bit of Hebrew, but they didn't know enough to be able to read the Bible efficiently and effectively. So because they spoke Greek better, they made a translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, where they translated it into Greek. Now, here's where your notes begin. Tradition says that 70 Hebrew scholars translated the Hebrew text into Greek, and that's why it's called the Septuagint. That's a Greek word meaning 70, all right? And so the Greek translation of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint. And this is just important if you ever begin to read a commentary or read something that you're trying to do a big, deep study in the Word of God. Sometimes they'll refer to the Septuagint, especially when you're studying the New Testament, to compare words and to compare what was used. Then, the New Testament also has a history of its manuscripts, though we no longer have the originals. There are different manuscripts that are used. There's four different ones, as you write them down. The papyrus manuscripts, that was, of course, the manuscripts that were written on that type of paper. And then the unsealed manuscripts was a different kind, and the minuscule manuscripts. Each one of these three different manuscripts were used to copy the New Testament. And so what we got today, what you hold in your hand or what you have maybe in your phone, when you have a translation of the Bible, it was because it was been passed down and copied either through papyrus manuscripts or unseal or minuscule. All of them are known as Greek manuscripts because all of them were translated in Greek. Okay. and the originals were written in greek when john wrote down the book of revelation the book of the letters of first second and third john the gospel of john he wrote it all in greek all right now this is important because they're Throughout the different ages, obviously, in the church history, some translations were made from the Greek to the Latin. Now, if you go to a Catholic church 100 years ago, what you would hear the priest talk and say was in Latin. And they would read the scriptures in Latin. Some still do, but most Catholic churches now will translate the Bible into the English language and teach in English. But for many, many, many years, they would do it in Latin. But the more reliable source and the original New Testament was in the Greek. It wasn't in the Latin. And I say that just so it's so important for us to know these things because the New Testament was written in Greek. When you study some words, you want to study the Greek word. What Greek word? What was the original word? What did it mean? Because sometimes words can mean different things in different contexts. And we're going to talk about that here in a second. So there in your notes, that was a composition of the Bible. We want to talk about the illumination of the Bible. What does the word illumination mean? The definition of illumination. It is simply this, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, whereby he enlightens those who are in a right relationship with him to comprehend the written word of God. Illumination is the Holy Spirit helping you to comprehend what God's word says. Now, in 2 Corinthians 2, the Apostle Paul told the Christians in Corinth, he said, listen, this book, the word of God, The Word of God is such that those that are not saved cannot understand the truths of this book. The only thing that they can understand when they begin to read this book is what the Holy Spirit convicts them of. And John says that the Holy Spirit convicts a person that is not saved about their sin, and about Christ being the Savior. That's what the Holy Spirit does for someone that's not saved. So someone that's not saved can start reading the Bible, but they won't really understand the Bible because the Holy Spirit will begin to convict them, first of all, of their sin. That's what the Holy Spirit does for the unsaved. He starts convicting them of their sin. He starts convicting them of the fact that they need a Savior and that Jesus is that Savior. He points them to Jesus. That's what the Holy Spirit does. For someone that is not saved but once that you become a Christian once that you're saved the Holy Spirit begins to Help you understand other truths of the Bible truths that the unsaved may never understand But you and I that are saved will always understand for instance, it's difficult for a non saved person to understand why Those that shall be first shall be last and the last shall be first It might be very difficult for someone that's unsaved and he may never understand the truth that says we are to love our enemies, to pray for them that persecute us. Someone that's unsaved says, how are you not going to stand up for yourself? Where are you? You're so weak. Why are you being such a coward? But it has nothing to do with being a coward. It has everything to do with understanding what the truth of God's word is teaching us to do. The unsaved may never understand that, but those that are saved can understand why that truth is real and why that truth really makes a difference in the life of a person. And so the Holy Spirit through illumination helps us to comprehend the Word of God. Here's some quick ways of explaining this of illumination. Alright, there in your notes, in reference to the Bible, revelation relates to its content or material, inspiration to the method of recording that material, and illumination to the meaning of that record. We'll talk about this in the review next week. But real easy definitions, I said revelation is God communicating truth. Inspiration is God recording truth. Illumination is God helping me understand or comprehend the truth. That illumination is to understand what does that mean when Jesus says, whoever shall lose their life for my sake shall find it. That almost sounds like a contradiction. On Sunday night we studied Romans chapter 12 and verse number 1 says that we become a living sacrifice. That's a contradiction of terms. Yet there's a deep truth in that, in those two words of living sacrifice. And so that's why it's so important to understand the illumination is the Holy Spirit helping me to understand what the meaning of those words are. After salvation, there in your notes, the Holy Spirit indwells the believer and takes the truths of God's word and reveals them to him. In other words, helps them to understand that truth. And that's why, listen, anytime you start reading your Bible, maybe you do it in the mornings, maybe you do it in the afternoons, maybe you do it at night, I don't know. But whenever you read the Bible, it's always so important to just take five seconds. It doesn't take more than that, but just say, God, will the Holy Spirit I ask in the Holy Spirit help me understand what I'll read today? God, please help me to understand your word as I read it. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the one that helps us. He illuminates our minds. It means he helps us comprehend what we're reading to understand how it affects us and what it means to us. Excuse me, that is illumination. Then, lastly tonight, the interpretation of the Bible. Illumination is to comprehend what I'm reading. Interpretation is how I comprehend that. How do I do that? Well, there's four major truths when it comes to interpretation. Number one is literal interpretation. All right, the words and sentences of the Bible of scripture are understood in their normal meaning. All right. So when you're reading the word of God, you want to have, there's a literal meaning to what it is saying. Okay. So when it says that someone told a lie, you know what it means that they told a lie. All right, when it says that Samson took the doors off of the city and walked 20 miles, it means he literally took the doors off the city and walked 20 miles. When it says that a big fish came and swallowed Jonah, what does it mean? It means that literally a fish came by and swallowed Jonah whole. There is a literal interpretation to the Bible, all right? It's where you understand it in its normal meaning. And this is important because there are some people that they want to allegorize everything in the Bible. You know what an allegory is? It's like a story where every character pictures something else, right? And so, Pilgrim's Progress, for instance, if you know the story of Pilgrim's Progress, is an allegory, all right? The main character, Christian, he represents you and me, and he goes through the pit of despair, and really what it is, it's not a literal pit, he's talking about the fact that sometimes there are times in our life where we get into a depression, and everything in the story means something else. But the Bible is not a book of allegories. It's a literal interpretation when you read the Bible. Then there's grammatical relationships when you interpret the Bible. This is the study of verb tenses, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and laws of structure. When you're studying the Bible, word order matters. All right, when you're studying the scripture, the way that grammar works is important. That's why, by the way, if you did not know this, in the early American history, there was an act that was given by Congress called the Old Deluder Satan Act. And this act in Congress, and this is in your history books, or maybe not in your history books. I don't know. You can read it. It is in history. But that act had this purpose. It was near the beginning of the education system here in America. The reason you have public school is that tomorrow you're going to go to a school and that it's mandatory. It came through this idea and this act of Congress back in, I believe it was in the early 1700s. But this act, the Old Deluder Satan Act, was the purpose of teaching children to read so that they could understand the word of God. that the whole deluder satan act was in the fact the purpose of saying we don't want our children to be deceived by the lies of the devil so they need to know the truth well how can they know the truth unless they know how to read the word of god and so there is an act enacted in our nation to say we want children to learn to read and they didn't say just read any book they wanted the children of this nation to read the bible They believed that this was a book that has the truth, that this was the truth of the word of God. And so they wanted them to start teaching them grammar. Hey, what is a verb? What is a noun? What is a pronoun? I know sometimes you can get into English class and you go, this is the most boring class. It was, it was my least favorite class. I'll tell you that right now. Grammar is my least favorite class in school, but it's so important. It's so important because guess what? The word of God is made up of words. It's not made up of numbers, it's made up of words. And so it's so important when you're reading, hey, what's the subject of the sentence? And what is God trying to say here? And what is the direct object? And how does this relate to the other? And all of that goes into us studying the word of God. So when you're interpreting the word of God, there's a literal interpretation. You've got to understand it normally, like you would any other document. But then there's also these grammatical relationships of words. And then I want you to notice, thirdly, the historical context. This is a framework from which to interpret the scriptures. What is going on in this time in history? Many times you might come to church and you'll hear either myself or pastor or maybe a special speaker and they'll talk about what life was like when that was written. Usually when you're doing like the story of Joshua, In the story of Joshua, when they're going to go and fight the battle against the city of Jericho, usually people will give you a historical context and say, well, this is what was happening. This is how the cities were built back then. This is how they were to fight. This is how battles were won. Back then, they didn't have cannons. They didn't have tanks. They didn't have helicopters. How did they fight? What weapons did they use? So then you have historical context. OK, this is what was basically going on at that time. And the Bible gives us some of that historical context. So as you read to interpret the Bible, you need to find, what is the context? What is going on in the world at this time? What is the historical context? And then I want you to notice lastly there in your notes is the literary context. And that's the immediate context, that's verses before and after, the remote context, that is the chapters before and after, and then the greater context, the emphasis of the entire Bible. Anytime you're studying scripture, you want to look at all these contexts, okay? When we started this series of continue in 2 Timothy 3, verse 14 says, but continue thou and the things which thou has learned and heard. In that message, I try to give you the context of what was happening, who Timothy was, how did he know Paul? What was going on in Timothy's life? What was going on in Paul's life? Where was he when he wrote that? He was in prison. Why was he in prison? What was going on? And once you have that context, then it's easier to understand why Paul was writing to Timothy what he was writing to him. So sometimes you study the context of the verses right before and after. Then you sometimes study it in the chapter, because it's kind of like these letters are just like letters that you would write to anybody, right? When you write your boyfriend or your girlfriend, or when you write something on Facebook, usually you want a context. And if there's no context, usually the ones that understand who you are, that know you as your friends, you do your comment, and sometimes they laugh. There's other people that if they don't know you and they don't know what you're talking about, the context, they look at your post and they're like, what's so funny about that? The reason they don't know the joke is because they don't know the context. Like, why are you saying that? What happened? What's so funny? It's kind of like an inside joke, right? When you go camping and something happens and, you know, somebody, their bed got wet or something and then, you know, you tell them, hey, pack dry clothes next time. Well, if nobody was on that trip with you or they don't know what happened, if I just hear somebody say, pack dry clothes next time, Yeah, I do every time, thank you. What are you talking about? But if you're on that trip and it was something funny that was said, then there's context to what you're saying. The same thing with the word of God. You've got to look at the context. Why was Paul writing that? What was going on? And then why did God want Paul to write that for me? Why is it that more than 2,000 years later, God wants me to know this? Why? Why would he want me to know this? What does it mean to me? What does it mean for my life? All of that goes into studying the Word of God as you interpret the Word of God. And so, in this brief series that we've had on the Word of God, we've talked about what revelation is, inspiration, illumination, the interpretation, the composition of the Bible. All of this is so important. Next week, like I said, we'll review it quickly. But it's so important because, young people, if we can have that, then we can be rooted in our faith. You know why sometimes we're scared to talk to other people about Jesus or about our faith? I can guarantee you that the number one reason that everybody in this room is scared is because we say, what if they ask me a question that I don't know the answer to? That's the fear of everybody. That's my fear. What am I going to do? What am I going to say? You know how the best way to change that is? By knowing the word of God. There's a guy by the name of Ravi Zacharias. He's an apologist. He's someone that defends the Bible. He goes to different colleges. And if you want to get on his podcast, you should listen to it. I love his podcast. His name is Ravi Zacharias. And he defends the Bible against atheists, against people from all different religions, whether it be Muslim, Mormon, or any other religion, from different worldviews. He's always defending the biblical worldview. And I really enjoy the material that he shares. But what is awesome to me is, I had never thought of it before, but I always get scared and I think, what if they ask me a question that I can't answer? But you know, I wonder, what if you give them a question that you can answer for them? A question like, if you were to die today, where do you think you would go? What do you think happens after death? Because I guarantee you, every other worldview doesn't know. But the Bible does. Every other worldview has little to no hope, if any. But the Bible has the hope in Jesus Christ, the hope of new life. In fact, Ravi, in one of the talks that he was having today that I was listening to, he said, you know that in the Koran, which is the holy book of the muslims he said there's two things that are attributed to jesus uh... one they talk about the virgin birth of jesus and number two the other thing that they talk about jesus is that it isn't he had miracles and that he brought people back from the day that he was the only one it doesn't say that about muhammad and say that about anybody else but it will even in the current say that jesus resurrected people In other words, Jesus had power over death. And that is the hope that we have, that is the Christian hope, that's the gospel hope, is that sin brings about death eternally, but Christ brings about life everlasting. And so, it's so important, before we get into this idea of, man, I don't know, listen, how do you remedy that? Make this a priority in your life. I go through all of this, I went through this whole series, young people, just so we can get to the point, and I hope I drive it into your head. Hey, God wants you to know the truth. God's given you the truth. So the question is, what are we gonna do with the truth? God's given us everything we need to be able to do his work through his word. But what are you doing with his word? What'd you do with it today? What'd you do with it at school? So important for us as young people, understand the word of God. It's gotta be important to me. If you can make that decision tonight, I promise you God will begin to illuminate you in so many areas of your life. And God wants to use you and guide you so that you can do his work.