Topic this morning is the centrality of the word in a healthy church, right? So my question for you to start off with is how much do you value God's word? Do you love it? Do you love it like the psalmist who writes, I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love and I will meditate on your statutes. Is that you? Do you love God's word? So you love God's word so much that when you get to Psalm 119 in your daily Bible reading plan, I get to read Psalm 119 today, the love letter of God's word. Or do you say, Oh, Psalm 119 is the worst day of my Bible reading plan. It is so long. Psalm 117 is pretty good, right? And the people who snickered know what I'm saying. It's two verses. Two, 176. So let's put this in perspective. Let's do some comparative analysis. So comparative analysis. This is the hope diamond. Maybe you've heard of it before. Right? Sits in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. It's valued at $250 million. You'd think they could find a better setting for it than that, if that's really what it's valued at. It's a rock, by the way. What about this? This is Shakespeare's first folio, an original copy. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, paid $6 million a couple years ago. for this book. This book. Come a little closer to home. This is the Apple Watch. Work stopped at my office on Tuesday when Apple had their premier event. Stopped. Our chief technology officer was drooling over himself for this watch. It's going to retail at $350, the cheap version. And millions of Americans will go into debt more to get it. The world assigns immense, even priceless value, if not to the Apple Watch, to many other things that we crave in our lives. So back to the question that I just asked you. How much do you value God's word? Let's go on the proverbial desert island. Now you're on that proverbial desert island. You're there. You have the Hope Diamond, your Apple Watch, and Shakespeare's first folio. Can you eat those? No food, no water, emaciated. Now how valuable is the Hope Diamond? How valuable is your Apple Watch? Though comparatively cheap, food and water have become priceless to you. We eat oatmeal every morning in our household. And I bet, though my children complain about eating oatmeal every morning, that they would be happy for that bowl of oatmeal in the same condition. Right? And so we say, what I'm going to tell you this morning is that God's Word then is the most valuable, priceless item on earth. And without it, we would waste away into spiritual nothingness. Truly emaciated although the time also the item that is most undervalued the most undervalued in not only in the world, but sadly in the church, too You see God's Word is as water in Ephesians 5 26 God's Word in Jeremiah 15 when God's Word is found in the temple Jeremiah the prophet says your words were found and I ate them and And your words became to me the joy and delight of my heart. The Word is spiritual food to satisfy our deepest hunger. When our Lord Himself, in Matthew chapter 4, after fasting supernaturally for 40 days and 40 nights, wasting away, quoting Deuteronomy to the devil, says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. In Amos chapter 8, God's Word is so precious, yet so despised by Israel, that God declares a famine. not a famine of bread, nor thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. Without food, you can survive maybe three weeks, maybe. Without water, estimates between three and seven days. But without God's word, the food of God's word, you will perish for all eternity. Without the rush of life or salvation revealed in Jesus by scripture, you will die. No matter how prosperous or wealthy I become, without God's word that reveals Jesus Christ to my heart, I will die. I will die. Any wonder then that Peter says, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation. But of course, God's word can be likened to a lot more than just food. In Psalm 119, 105, it's called, a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. In Jeremiah, chapter 23, it's a hammer that breaks rocks to pieces and a burning fire that rages at those who misuse it. In Ephesians 6, it's a sword, a sword of the Spirit. which is the Word of God. In 1 Peter 1, verse 23, God's Word is an imperishable seed that grows up into life. In Psalm 19, David writes that God's Word is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, more desirable than gold, sweeter than honey. In Hebrews chapter 4, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing through the vision of bone and marrow, dividing your heart. Consider how closely the Word of God is linked to the person of Jesus Christ. In John chapter 1, we read, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word became flesh. Dwell among us and we have seen his glory glory as the only son from the father in Hebrews chapter 1 this same word becomes Who became flesh? Upholds the universe by the word of his power Given the incomparable value of scripture of God's Word Why are so many Christians so bored? with God's Word We wouldn't admit it, right? We wouldn't say that we're bored with God's Word, even if the Bible's been on the shelf for a couple weeks. We wouldn't admit that when the pastor looks at this side of the congregation, that this side is checking Facebook. We wouldn't admit The God's Word is rarely read, if at all, in many of our churches. In 2009, in Christianity Today, published an article by Mark Golley, where he writes, it is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly. We start to mentally check out. Al Mola responds to this by saying, that stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity, an impatience with the Word of God. In a recent Barna poll, right, George Barna, Christianity's own poll master, reported that 38% of Americans said they're born again. 38%. A staggeringly high. was what the report concluded. Because Barna also applied two criteria to decide who could also be called evangelical, if they believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, and if they believe the Word of God is true. And he found that four out of those 38 people believed that. Four out of 100 people in America, according to Barna's poll, believe that the Bible is the Word of God, the true Word of God. You know what else he found? That those same four people were the only four people out of the 38 who applied God's Word to decision-making in their life, major life decisions. In my age group, among 18 to 29 year olds, right, in 2011, that's when this poll was taken, when I was 27, 28 years old, we found that 86% of the born-again Christians had, quote, no idea how the Bible applied to their education or profession. No idea. Contrast this boredom with Psalm 119 where we're told to sing God's word, speak God's word, study God's word, store up God's word, obey God's word, praise God for his word, pray that God would act according to his word. My favorite verse in Psalm 119 is that I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Why don't we love God's Word like the writer of Psalm 119 seems to love God's Word? If it's so valuable, why are we so dismissive towards it? Why do we fawn over the Apple Watch or a priceless masterpiece that hangs in a museum while the Bible lies unopened and forgotten in our churches? Mohler again. The fixation on our own sense of need and interest, listen carefully to this, as is, excuse me, the fixation on our own sense of need and interest looms as the most significant factor in this marginalization and silencing of God's Word. So Mohler says there, we love ourselves too much to love God's Word. Individually, each human being in the room is an amalgam of wants, needs, intuitions, interests, distractions. Corporately, the congregation is a mass of expectations, desperate hopes, consuming fears, and impatient urges. All of this adds up unless countered by the authentic reading and preaching of the Word of God to a form of group therapy, entertainment, and wasted time, if not worse. Our problem is that we're in love with ourselves. We value our own opinions over and above objective authority. In truth, the impatience with God's Word is an impatience with God Himself. He's behind the times. He needs to catch up to where we are now. The Bible is old news. We're past that. Human reason is greater than propositional truth. Experience trumps biblical authority. That's the condition of our churches. The topic of this message is the centrality of the word in a healthy church. This is not a message on apologetics. I am not going to defend what I am about to tell you. I'm going to suppose, presuppose that it's true. The goal is to frame our worldview, to orient our thinking. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about why God's Word says and believes and acts like it is greater than human understanding and reason in 2 Peter. And then we're going to talk about four doctrines that Protestants have traditionally believed about the Bible. And then we're going to go to 2 Timothy 3, to the most well-known passage in Scripture that's about Scripture. Go with me now to 2 Peter 1, verse 16. Right? A passage that may be well known to you. Chapter 1, verses 16 to 21. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths, and we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice born from heaven, and we were with him on the holy mountain, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed. to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our 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. The men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. In interest of full disclosure, I love this passage of Scripture. This is one of my favorite passages of Scripture in all the Bible, because it gives me infinite confidence in my Bible. And that's why we're talking about it this morning. You see, 2 Peter is mainly about Peter refuting false prophets who said, the day of the Lord is not coming. You're full of garbage, Peter. And so Peter writes 2 Peter to refute those men. And he offers as his evidence, as in a court of law, two pieces of evidence. Eyewitness testimony and authoritative documents. Right? He says to them, look, here's the proof. Here's the proof that the day of the Lord will come Okay, the first thing that he offers them is eyewitness testimony Right. He says we saw him with our eyes We were with him on the mountain. What's he talking about the Mount of Transfiguration? Peter James and John they go up to the mountain and Jesus's glory is revealed Right? And so, Peter says, I saw Him with my eyes, and He was glorious. And if that's not enough for you, if that's not enough for you, look at verse 19. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed. Now, this is sometimes translated as something more sure. okay, as something more sure. Right? What Peter is saying here, we've got to understand that he uses a phrase, he uses prophecy here, but he also includes the Greek word that means the same thing as it's written down. Prophecy that is written down. That's what Peter, James, and John saw with their eyes listen carefully, confirmed what the Scriptures said about Jesus. That's the position that Peter takes here. What the Scriptures say about the Son is more sure, Peter says, than what my own eyes saw. You cannot put more confidence in your Bible than Peter does right here. And so what does that mean for us? First, it means that God's Scripture is God's authentic written word to us. The authority of Scripture rests in what is written down, that we have in the Bible. It's not subject to my experiences, or my heart, or my interpretation. And while there are some things in the Bible that we are given freedom to choose from, and I want to say, I sat in Jeff Click's last talk, and I agree with you, brother. I agree, we have so much freedom in many of the issues that are not clearly defined in Scripture. But guess what? The vast majority of Scripture is unfailingly black and white. unfailingly. It's true whether you like it or not. Second, scripture is God's word given through human instruments. Verse 21, 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. B.B. Warfield wrote, the men who spoke from God are here declared to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought to the goal of his own choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs." This word, carried along, is the word that we get our word, ferry, from. Right? I lived in a few years in Seattle near Eric Burd, which is where we met, and if we wanted to go across the Puget Sound from where we lived in Seattle, we had to take the ferry. We drove on the ferry dock, got on the ferry, and it ferried us across the water to Seattle, to the goal of my choosing. That's what we see here. That's what happened. The men were ferried along to the goal of God's own choosing. And third, Third, scripture then is without error. This is hard to swallow for many. We get laughed at, without error. But then we forget we serve a God who cannot lie. If God is the author of scripture, if his words are the authentic, absolutely true word of scripture, and if it was him who carried along men who wrote it down, then it cannot be full of errors. The writer of Scripture is God, not men. If God spoke it, it must be true, because he cannot lie. In rejecting the truth of word, the infallibility of God's word, we set ourselves as judges over God. When we parse God's word and choose what we believe, in essence it's like saying, Scripture is not all from God, or God is not that dependable. So we're turning the question of human experience right over the question of yawning at God's Word. Why do we need God's Word to be healthy Christians? Because God's Word stands over my heart. Because as Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 17, my heart is deceitful above all things. Corrupt to its core. But God's Word is always true and always authentic. My heart deceives even my own self, but God's word deceives nobody." Al Mohler again says, the biblical formula is clear. The neglect of the word can only lead to disaster, disobedience, and death. Listen to this, God rescues his church from error, preserves his church in truth, and propels his church in witness only by his word. Not, I would add, but my experience. What then do we believe about the scriptures themselves? What is essential to my spiritual health as a Christian? David Wells wrote a phenomenal book called The Courage to be Protestant, right? And what he's saying in there in that title is that Protestants have traditionally believed the four things I'm gonna put up here. And we need to be courageous in our belief of them as Christians. as healthy Christians. First, God's Word is necessary. Second, God's Word is enough. God's Word is understandable, and God's Word is final. Let's go into these now. First, God's Word is necessary. Okay? God's Word is necessary. The necessity of the Scripture, general revelation, creation, nature, are not enough to save us. We cannot know God savingly by means of our personal experience or reason. We need God's word to tell us who Christ is, how to be saved, and how to live. And furthermore, our need for it is ever increasing. That's interesting. See, in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul writes that God's invisible attributes, namely His divine character and eternal power, have been made known to every man. And so every man is what? Without excuse. Every man is responsible for seeing nature and being convinced by nature, by creation, that there is a God and He expects you to look for Him. Okay, but that's not enough to save you and God doesn't claim that it is it's not enough to save you See God wrote in in the book of Hebrews long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to us by the Prophets, but in these last days he spoke to us by his son Right by Jesus Christ himself And so what did Jesus do? Right he he met he had the apostles the twelve apostles and then and paul and in some way paul later he conveyed His words to them. He spoke to them. He taught them Right, and then he was crucified. He died and was resurrected And he ascended And then they wrote down much of what he said not all We know because christian tells us they didn't write down everything he said they wrote down What he intended to say, for us to know. And in fact, that's completely in line with what Jesus himself says in John 16. He says, he, the Holy Spirit, will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. That's exactly what happened. Right? The apostles passed on the teachings of the Lord. First orally, and then they wrote them down. They wrote them down. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, they went around preaching Interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people and the things the things that were given to the Apostles by the Holy Spirit and the little Distinction is made at first between their oral teachings and their writings by the end of even some of their lives in their lifetime some of Paul's letters at least were recognized as Scripture 2nd Peter 3 16 Okay, and so that's that's the reality but what happened the Apostles died and All of them died. And with them, the oral handing down died. And what was left? The written Word of God. The teachings of Christ then, the way of salvation through Jesus, were preserved through us through the writings of Scripture. And 2,000 years later, what do I have to know Christ? I have the Scriptures. Right? And we see that our need for the Scriptures then is ever increasing. Right? I need the scripture so much more now because I don't have the apostles to tell me face-to-face what Jesus said. I need the words of the scripture to tell me what God said. Okay? Leads us straight into the next understanding about God's Word. God's Word is enough. This is the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. God's Word contains everything we need for knowledge of salvation and godly living. No new revelation is needed to complete it or augment it. No new revelation is completed. How do I know? How do I know that Jesus died? How do I know that Jesus died on the cross? Because Bradshad tells me so? Because Mark Fox tells me so? No. Because the scriptures tell me Jesus died for my sins. How do I know what it means that Jesus died for my sins? Because the scriptures tell me what it means that Jesus died for my sins. Right? In practice, this is the doctrine that evangelicals stumble over the most. Okay? Because we are always looking for new revelation. A little boy goes to heaven, he comes back, writes a book, and we all run out and go buy it. What's the problem with that? The problem with that is Luke chapter 16. Okay, so let's flip over there really quickly. Luke 16, chapter 16, starting around verse 19. I'm not going to read this. This is a story, this is a bizarre story, okay, of this man Lazarus and Father Abraham. Right? And Jesus tells this story, and it's okay to say that it's bizarre. It's weird. It's a tough story. Okay? And if you don't remember it, if you don't remember it, Lazarus and this rich man die in the same day. Lazarus goes to heaven, the rich man goes to hell. And then at some point, the rich man sees Lazarus standing across this great chasm that he can't leap across, and he sees Father Abraham and he says, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to me to give me relief. And Abraham says, no, no. Can't do that. Can't do that. And so he says then father Abraham send Lazarus to my house to tell my brothers So that they won't end up here And what did you say can't do that, right? Let's look at verse 29 but Abraham says They have Moses and the prophets Let them hear them and he said no father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent And he said to him If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced that someone should rise from the dead. You see what that means to us? It means that God's word is sufficient. God's word, it means if you really want to break it down real, real neat, it means the Old Testament is sufficient to tell a man that his need for Jesus is the only thing that should matter to him. And that it's enough to save him. In 2 Peter 1, Peter says, God's Word is enough. God's Word is necessary, God's Word is enough, and God's Word is understandable. Right? This is the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. The gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures is plain enough and so clearly taught in the Scripture that it can be understood by anyone who has ears to hear it. Here's what this means. Ordinary people, using ordinary means, listening, reading the Word of God, can understand enough of the Bible to be saved and live a godly life. They can understand that it is that clear. The essential things of the faith are the plain things of the Bible. Men have tried to throw mud in the clarity of scriptures since the very beginning. The claim that God is too high or too other. We can't talk reasonably about who God is because he's too high for us. Right? As if God himself didn't speak to us first. He can't be talked about knowingly, meaningfully with words. It sounds very humble, but it's deeply arrogant. It's a denial of what God has given, right? For the students who are here, don't believe that lie when you go to school. Don't believe that lie that we can't talk meaningfully in human language about the word of God. It's a lie. The Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, all distort this clarity. All these pseudo-Christians, fake Christians, who want to say that the Scriptures must be interpreted by church authority. They say, we've got to know, we've got to have a governing body who tells us what is true because common man can't understand it for themselves. Israel was tempted to read and believe the same thing but Moses says to them in Deuteronomy chapter 30 Verse 11 for this commandment that I command you today. He gave him the law Remember he gave them the law he gave them the Word of God and they and they're starting to freak out We can't do this and Moses says for this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you Neither is it far off? It is not in heaven that you should say who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it down to us that we may hear and do what it says Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us? We may hear it and do it, but the word of God is very near to you. It is in your mouth and it is in your heart so that you can do it. Jesus himself assumed that the scriptures were clear enough. At least six times he says to the Pharisees, haven't you read the scriptures? Right? He says it to them over and over. Have you even read the Scriptures? Because it's pretty clear. Let me explain it to you. God's Word is necessary. God's Word is enough. God's Word is understandable, and God's Word is final. God always gets the last word. We must never allow the teachings of science, of human experience, or reason, or even of church councils to take precedence over the Scriptures. Consider Acts chapter 17, right? Acts chapter 17, think about this, right? Paul and Silas go to Thessalonica, we just heard about this a couple weeks ago at Antioch, right? They go to Thessalonica and they do their normal thing, right? They go to the synagogue and they start preaching to the Jews in the synagogue, and what happens? They reject them, kick them out. So they go to the Greeks, they go to the Gentiles, and what happens? Some are saved. And then those Thessalonian Jews come back and they raise a ruckus, a riot. And so Paul and Silas get up, they leave, and they go about 40 miles down the road to Berea. And what happens there? Same thing? Not so much, right? Paul and Silas get there, they go to the synagogue, they preach to the Jews there, and what happens? The Jews do this. They're called more noble than the Jews of Thessalonica. In chapter 17, verse 11, we read, Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the Word of God with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. You see, they checked what Paul said against the Scriptures. Right? The context, the inference, right, is that if what Paul had said was not in accordance with the Scriptures, they would have rejected it. But because it was in accordance with the Scriptures, they accepted it. They were more noble because they were utterly submissive, not to Paul, but to the word of God. We must engage and wrestle with the claims of science as Christians. I myself, I have a degree in chemistry from a public university, every day confronted with the claims of science that stood absolutely opposed to the Scriptures. And I had to choose what to believe. And by God's grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I chose to believe the Scriptures in faith. To say and believe that God's Word is the final Word is an act of faith. Right? We're never gonna convince the naysayers, right? Until the Holy Spirit removes the blindness. Until they have faith of their own, a gift of God. But until that time, we act in faith that God's word is final. Even if the scriptures and science are hard to reconcile, we act in faith. In summary then, the four things we must believe about the Scriptures to be healthy in our faith, that God's Word is necessary, God's Word is enough, God's Word is understandable, and God's Word is final. Okay? Now let's get practical here. Let's turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3. Let's see what Timothy says, excuse me, Paul says to Timothy, okay? 2nd Timothy chapter 3 let's read first verses 1 through 4. I'll give you a quick second to get there Okay versus 1 to 4 But understand this that in these last days there will be times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self lovers of money proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Sound like anybody you know? Possibly yourself. Possibly me. Right, because read verse five. Having the appearance of godliness, but denying his power. Who's Paul talking about here? Religious people. Probably Christians in the church. Have the appearance of godliness, but deny his power. Right? Context is king, so verse 8, we also read that these men who were deceitful and destructive also opposed the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. So what does Paul tell Timothy to do? Let's pick it up in verse 14. But as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out 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." We see that to counter those who deny the truth by their heart condition, even if they appear to be Christian on the outside, who deny the truth on the outside, Paul tells Timothy, you go to the Word of God. You stand on the Word of God. Cling to what you learned in your childhood, Timothy, because the Scriptures apply to every aspect of your life. Right? I was thinking there'd be more children in here, but this is the point we need to say to those of you who are in here, you are never too young to learn the Gospel. You are never too young to know the Scriptures. and to every parent in the room. Your children are never too young to hear the gospel. Have it proclaimed to them. If they are an infant in your arms, they are not too young. Paul heard it from his grandmother and his mother, and later from Paul, and he was saved by it. John Piper was once asked, why do you believe the Bible is true? Do you know what he said? Because my mama told me it's true. And it wasn't a throwaway sentence. He was deadly serious. My mom told me it's true. My dad told me it was true. I believed him. We tell our children it's true because it is true and they'll believe us. If God's Word is necessary enough, understandable, final, what does that do for me day to day? How do the Scriptures impact my daily life? Well, first, let's examine verse 16. Okay, let's look at verse 16. All Scripture is breathed out by God. For what end is the question I insert in there? For what end? Skip down to verse 17. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Complete meaning mature, grown up. Sometimes translated with that dangerous word perfect, which means complete, mature. Growing up. Breathe out by God is sometimes translated inspired by God. Right? It refers to the origin of scripture, not the effect of it. Okay? Meaning, it's as if God has literally exhaled the Scriptures. Right? Exhaled them. Breathed them out to us. Where did they start from? From God. They started from God. And so all Scripture, even the really hard Old Testament prophets like Zechariah, and Leviticus, and Numbers, and the genealogies, and the land divisions, are all profitable. How? How is it profitable? Well, Paul gives us four reasons right here why it's profitable. First, Scripture gives us teaching. Teaching. It accords with what is true. Okay? So the first thing Paul says is all Scripture tells you what is true. Right? And so when we get to Scripture, we look at a passage and we say, what are the key truths of this passage? That's the first positive. Then he gives the first negative. It also reproves us. It tells me what is not true. It's got what is true, and it tells me what's not true. How does this passage speak, how does this, how of what I believe, excuse me, what have I believed that is false or inaccurate in my life that this passage speaks to? I'll give you a couple examples in a second. But we see that, right? What's true, what's not true. Third, what else does it tell me? Tells me correction. Right? Tells me what's true, what's not true, and now a second negative. What not to do. According to this passage, what in my life needs to change? Okay? And then finally it tells me training in righteousness, what to do. Right? The second positive. So we have four things Scripture tells me. Tells me what is true. Tells me what's not true. Tells me what to do and what not to do. I should also tell you, we're at an FIC conference, this is my father's material. Praise God for a father. I won't cry, let's keep going. Okay, so, what do we do with this? How does this passage teach me about scripture? How do I learn what is true, what's not true? When I approach scripture, what not to do and what to do? Let me give you two examples, okay? Parenting. Harsh parenting. This is a sin after 12 years in the Navy that I am very prone to. You see, when I speak to my children, I tend to speak to them, Mark can't point this out to me one time, do this, don't do that. Do not walk around the parking lot. Do not go through that door. Do not run through the house. Go to your room. I tend to speak that way towards my children. Harsh parenting. Right very direct with him. Well, then I then I turn in normal my normal reading I turn over to Ephesians chapter 6 and I read this Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right honor your father and mother This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land I say yeah Oh, baby It says right here you have to obey me then I read the next verse fathers Uh-oh. Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So I ask myself, what's true in this passage? What is true here? It's true that God places parents in a rightful position of authority over their children. It's a God-given authority. It's a true statement. God gives me authority over my children. What's not true? What is not true? What is this passage speaking to that I have believed falsely or inaccurately? Well, it's not true that I can dominate my children. It's not true that I crush their spirits with my words. It's not true that I destroy them with my direction. That's not true. It's not what Scripture gives me the authority to do. Okay. How does this correct my behavior? What does it tell me? What in this passage tells me what not to do? Well, it tells children, shouldn't be disobedient to your parents. Okay. Tells them that if you are disobedient, that's not in accordance with God's word. You're violating or breaking God's word, but also tells me I must not provoke my children to anger. Okay. How does it train me in righteousness? What to do? Right? Well, I'm instructed to exercise biblical discipline and authority over my children. To discipline them and bring them up, to instruct them. And I might go to other scriptures to figure out how to do that. Let's have another example here, okay? Maybe a little bit... more direct, honoring my employer. After years of deployments and having no news, we came here to travel. What I mean is like under the water as a submariner. So we're under the water, hundreds of feet down, there's no news down there. And so sometimes months would go by, you'd come up after months, you'd be like, what happened in the world? And so when I got off the boat and I came here to Charleston, I developed this insatiable habit of checking the news like five, six, seven, eight, 10, 12 times a day. Right? Because it changes every three minutes, right? Okay? And so, it became a question of, well, am I honoring my employer? Let's say I go to Colossians chapter 3. And I read this in verse 22. But with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you'll receive the inheritance as your reward." So read that. What is true in that passage? What's true? It teaches me that when I go and work my job, I'm working for the Lord. He sees me. That's a true statement. And what's true is that I can't disconnect my job from my faith. Right? And he considers my heart condition and my effort, and he rewards me accordingly. That's what's true. What's not true, okay? I actually jumped ahead. What's not true is that I cannot separate my faith, being a Christian, from my work. The Bible says, I'm a Christian, I'm in Christ at work. And furthermore, it says that when I'm working, I'm working for the Lord. So what's not true is that I can do whatever I feel like at work because God's not watching me. That's not true. Okay? Now, correction. What's the correction here? I don't dishonor my employer by wasting his time. I service. Working hard only when he sees me. Okay? Training in righteousness, what to do? Work hard all the time. Work hard all the time. I'm working as though working directly for Jesus Christ. I am. Okay, so two examples. In closing, how can I know that God's Word is changing my life? How can I know? What are the criterion that I can use to ask myself, is God's Word changing my life? Am I growing in godliness? Am I getting healthier as a Christian? Alright, we ask ourselves these three questions. First, am I praying more? And really what I mean here is that Be specific, okay? What I'm asking you is, when you're reading God's Word, are you more prone to spontaneous moments of prayer during your reading time? Are you prone to suddenly read the Word of God and say, thank you, Jesus, for this text, for what it teaches me about my heart? Are you prone to that? Spontaneous prayers of praise. Can I point to specific actions or beliefs in my life that have changed because of something that I read in Scripture? Can I point to something specifically in my life that changed because of what I read in Scripture? Give you an example from my life, okay? Again, remember the Navy before that? Teenager, worked at a hardware store. Guess what? I had a foul mouth. My wife will tell you, in the first couple of years we were married, I cursed like a sailor. That was me. Even the baptized believer, I cursed constantly in front of my wife. We didn't have children yet. Okay? And so Sarah prayed for me. And then at some point down the road, when I started reading God's Word, something began to change. I started to swear less and less. And I'm not perfect, right? I would hate for one of you to be in the backseat of my car when I don't think you're there. When I get cut off. I fail at this all the time. But over the course, I can see it too. I can see in my own life how I was very prone to have a foul mouth, but over the years, as God's word has saturated my heart, as when somebody cuts me off, I'm more prone to think of a scripture and be, right, I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Okay? So that's another thing we can do. And third, is my Lord's day increasingly devoted to God? When we were in Auburn, Alabama, I was going to school, Don Whitney came to do a little seminar, and he spoke about this, and I was just shredded in my faith because of how our Lord's Day had been devoted, mainly, this will shock you, to football up to that point, right? We got married, Sarah and I got married when we were 19, and we got a TV and we got cable, right? Because that's what you do, right? That's what you do when you're away at nuke school and your wife's home 15 hours a day by herself. Right? And so we got a TV and later on we got rid of cable all the time. We had it during football season. That's fair. Right? As we watched and stuff. But John Whitney just had this way of just, you know, pulling back the veil. And so at some point we decided not to have cable anymore. And then in our three years at House of the Faith, this was just for some of you. Our church met in the evening and I didn't watch the Super Bowl for three years in a row. Holy cow. Life went on. Life went on, right? And so the question is, is my Lord's Day increasingly devoted to God, right? And resting with my wife and my children. You know, in the interest of full disclosure, Sarah and I, over the last year, we have actually watched about half of Sunday Night Football together. After the kids are in bed, after everything is done, after the day has passed, at 8, 8.30, whatever time it starts, until we fall asleep, right? Which is like 20 minutes after it starts. We watch some football together. And you know what? I think the Lord is honored in that, in that resting of our closed out of our weekend. So those are the questions. Am I praying more? Can I point to specific actions in my life? Is my Lord's Day increasingly devoted to the Word of God? I think in closing, there's only one way that we can close this time out together. I want you to stand with me, open your Bible or look at the screen, turn to Psalm 119. We're going to read the first two stanzas together out loud. And I'll have them on the screen here, because I'm reading from the ESV. Let's read this together. I'll give you a couple seconds. Let's honor God's word together. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. I will keep your statutes. Do not utterly forsake me. How can a young man keep his way pure? by guarding it according to Your Word. With my whole heart I seek You. Let me not wander from Your commandments. I have stored up Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes. With my lips I declare rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word." Let's pray. Holy God, I just ask for the strength today to be Protestant, to believe, Lord, that your word is true and righteous and good altogether. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would be upon these people, that if there is any man or woman or child today who entered saying, or at least in their heart, really not sure what they believe about God's word, Lord, let them not take my word for it, but let them go to your word and prayer and faith and ask you for the answers. Because your word says, think over what I say, and I will give you understanding. Lord, I pray that you would give understanding to these people. Lord, we ask for your blessing, Lord, knowing that you give it, that you love us in your name.