Well, good morning, saints. Go ahead and open up your Bibles to 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17. 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17. And in addition to that, I want you to open up to 2 Corinthians 5.10. I'm gonna read these two back-to-back. So 2nd Timothy chapter 3 verses 14 through 17 and then 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10. The title of the message is the stewardship of the word of God. Once you're at 2nd Timothy chapter 3 please stand as I read from the word of God. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing those from whom you've learned, and that from childhood you've known the sacred scriptures, which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. In 2 Corinthians 5.10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or bad. Let us pray. Our God in heaven, we come before you, Lord, and I just, I pray, Lord, that you would be with me as I preach this message, Lord, as I attempt to share from your word what you teach us about stewardship, and more specifically, what that means for our responsibility with the word of God. I pray, Lord, that there's no way I can mess this up, but God, the Holy Spirit, that you would fill me and you would proclaim your word, Lord, and that the saints would, the word would just take root in the saints' heart, Lord, and people would just be convicted and moved and spurred on, Lord, to just study your word more and grow in righteousness and to walk in holiness. And we just pray all this, God Almighty, in Christ Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Well, as Pastor Mo already told you guys, today I'm taking a break through our journey in the book of Acts. As most of you know, I've been preaching expositionally, chapter by chapter, through the book of Acts, but a few months ago, the Holy Spirit laid this particular subject on my heart, and I've been resisting it for a while, and then finally, He got His way, and I put this sermon together because it's very crucial, what is going to be said this morning. I'm going to talk to you about stewardship, as I've said. Stewardship is a concept that permeates all of the scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments. And it's so big that it's impossible to do justice to the entire subject of stewardship in any one, two, three, or a thousand sermons. You just can't do it. And so, for this morning, what I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on just one aspect of stewardship, and that's the Word of God. Before I do that, let me give a general outline of where we're going. First, I want to give you the proposition. What is the one thing that I hope you walk away with? It's real simple. It's that all Christians will have to answer to Jesus Christ for how well or how poorly they use the Word of God during their lifetime. Every Christian will have to answer to Jesus Christ at the Bema seat of judgment for how well or how poorly we used the Word of God. And in preaching about this, the sermon will be broken up into four parts. I have no little catchy rhymes or alliteration this time. It's just real simple. Part one, I'm going to define stewardship. I'm going to review it, let you know exactly what it is. That way, the rest of this makes sense. Part two, we'll be talking about the stewardship as it relates to the Word of God. Part three, I'll be answering the, so what? Okay, so why is this important? Why are you telling us this? And then part four is gonna give you some exhortations of how you could get into God's word to get God's word into you. Now, a little forewarning up front, bottom line up front, is that some of the things I'm going to say will sound harsh. But one thing that I wanna let you guys know is I'm gonna be speaking collectively about the church in America. So where it does not apply to you, where you're not guilty, I'm not talking to you, okay? So you can pat yourself on the back there. But where we are guilty, I am talking to us, all right? Because the point is we all will have to stand before Jesus Christ and answer for how well or how poorly we use his word. So I'm hoping there will be some conviction on this. I know there was in me when I was putting it together. So with that said, let us jump into it. First, let me talk a little bit about stewardship. It's kind of interesting. In the weeks leading up to the birth of this church, Sovereign Way Christian Church, I had the privilege at the last church we were at of preaching on the topic of stewardship two weeks in a row. Now, I'm a Christian who believes in the sovereignty of God, so I don't believe in accidents. And although God, for many months, was moving certain people and causing certain events to happen to make it to where this church was born, I also don't think it was an accident that the day it was born, the sermon we heard was about stewardship. because having a church, running a church, being a church itself is a stewardship that we're going to have to answer to God for. So it's almost like he was giving us that warning before we even got started, that one day we're going to have to answer for what we're doing. And then that sunk through in the head, all the pieces fell in place that God had been working with, and Sovereign Way Christian Church was born in the home of Pastor Mo on a really cool night. For all of us who were there, we remember that. Well, point is, the Lord indeed has given us a big task as stewards. And so I want to explain exactly what stewardship is. But before I do that, let me tell you how important it is. One sixth of everything Jesus says in the gospels is about stewardship. So if one out of every six statements that came out of the Lord's mouth that was recorded for us in Scripture is talking about this subject, then we should focus on it. And you know, the sad thing is a lot of churches don't even talk about stewardship, or when they do, they misapply it to only be talking about money, as though that's the only thing we have to answer to God for. In reality, stewardship covers all aspects of the Christian's life. And so with that, let me define it. What is a steward? A steward is a person who possesses no wealth of his or her own, but instead he manages the wealth of his master according to the will of his master. One more time, a steward is a person, they don't own anything of their own. They belong to a master and they manage everything that belongs to the master according to the will of the master. As Christians, we are all stewards. We are managers of every single thing that God has put under our care. We are managers of the things of God. And I'm going to come back to that in a moment, but I want to frighten us with this reality. Since God has entrusted divine things to you, He will hold you accountable for everything that He has entrusted to you. It's not that He might hold you accountable. He actually will hold you accountable. That's why I opened with 2 Corinthians 5.10, because that's exactly what that said. And we'll get into that verse in a little more detail later. But let me talk a little more about what stewards were in biblical times. In biblical times, as I said, these guys didn't own anything. They managed other people's stuff. Why? Because they were slaves. Every single steward was a slave. Now, not all slaves were stewards, okay? A lot of people were slaves back then, but only the most exceptional, trustworthy, talented slaves became stewards. They were the ones who had the character quality, the trustworthiness, and so a master would spot them out and say, I want this one, and I'm gonna entrust my stuff to them. Big examples, Joseph. We've been studying through the life of Joseph with the men's study, and he was put over everything in Potiphar's house. He had authority over everything there, yet he was still a slave. Another example would be Daniel. He was put over all the wise men of Babylon, and at one point, he even became third in the kingdom, just for a day, but the point is, he was still a Judean slave. So these were great men who had a lot of authority and responsibility, but they were still slaves. In the Roman world, in which the New Testament was written, stewards were typically put in charge of their master's children and their master's financial estate, and they were expected to manage it. And at any time, unexpected, the master could ask them to open up the books and call them to account for everything. Let me see how you're doing. Now, for the steward who did what he was supposed to, They never had to worry about that. If the master said, hey, I want to see the books, they're ready with it. For the wicked and lazy stewards that didn't do what they were supposed to do, it was trouble. They could either be arrested, beaten, or executed if they were found to be mismanaging their master's stuff. And so then getting to us, what this means for us is in the New Testament, many times we're described as stewards, which means we're slaves. And I know in America, we don't like to hear that because we think we're the freest people in the world, but really we're the most enslaved to our sin in the world. But the fact of the matter is the New Testament many times calls us doulos. the Greek word doulos, it means slave. A lot of our English translations put it as servant because it wants to soften it. We are not servants. Servants get to negotiate the terms of their employment with their master. We do not negotiate with the God of the universe. So we are his slaves. Many texts say we were bought at a price. For example, 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 19 and 20. Paul clearly says you are not your own. You were bought at a price. Who owns you? Romans 6, verse 22. You are slaves or doulos of Jesus Christ. So you might be thinking, alright, we're all slaves, but how do we know we're all stewards? 1 Peter 4.10, Peter says we are all stewards or oikonomos of Jesus Christ. So we are oikonomos doulos, we are steward slaves. We, by the very virtue of being a Christian, by the very nature, it's a necessary attribute of being a Christian, you are a slave that has exceptional qualities and abilities given to you by God and you are expected to manage those things and you will have to give an account for it as 2 Corinthians 5.10 says. And so what this means, and we have to come to terms with it, is that yes, Christians do face a judgment. You might say, now wait a second, how could Christians face a judgment? Well, let me comfort you for a second. We do not have to face the great white throne judgment of Revelation chapter 20. Okay, in Revelation chapter 20, those whose sins have not been atoned for by Jesus Christ will face the great white throne judgment and they will be thrown into hell. We will not face that judgment. But according to 2 Corinthians 5.10, we will face what's called the bema seat or judgment seat of Jesus Christ. And that is where we as Christians, that's not for unbelievers, we as Christians who are saved, we're then gonna be called to account for how we managed or what we did with all the things that God entrusted to us. And as we'll see when we get further in this, it does look like there's punishment. I don't know what it is, I don't know what it means, but it does look like there are punishments that are given to Christians at the Bema seat if they have mismanaged what the Lord has entrusted to them. So, our stewardship then, and our accountability, it covers everything, both our spiritual gifts and our physical gifts. In other words, we will have to give an account for our money. How was our money used? Or our spouse, did we fulfill our duties to them? Or our children, did we raise them up spiritually? We'll have to account for our house, cars, job, your health, even your intelligence. Are you like the smartest guy in the world, but you just didn't use it for Christ? I mean, we're gonna have to account for all of that stuff. And then in terms of the spiritual stuff, We're going to have to answer for how we studied the word, which is my topic today. We're going to have to answer for how we prayed, encouraged, loved each other, everything that the Bible commands us to do. And as I've said, everything entrusted to us will be put under God's magnifying glass to see if we did what we were supposed to for His glory. So the question at hand is, did we use what was given to us for our own selfish motives, or did we say, no, this isn't really mine, it's God's, and I am to use it for everything for His glory, for advancing His kingdom? And so I'm hoping you're starting to see that the more we start to think about stewardship, the scarier it gets. You know, stewardship is not the warm and fuzzy type of subject, because at the heart and soul of the concept of stewardship is we do have to stand before Christ, open up the books, and be able to account for everything that we did. I remember... Oh, it was probably a year and a half ago. Myself, Pastor Mo, and a couple others were talking with the guy. And I remember Pastor Mo brought up in Ephesians how it says, you know, the days are evil, make most of the time. We even have to account for how we used our time. So, I mean, if we even waste time, we might have to answer for that. So it's scary thoughts. And see, this concept of stewardship that I just defined for you, you could take any facet of your life and now apply it to this. So it's an all-encompassing subject. Now Jesus Christ gives us a lot of good examples through parables of stewardship. I'm going to summarize one right now. Matthew chapter 25 verses 14 through 30. I'm not going to read it because I know Pastor Mo will exegete this one for us when we get there. But many of you are familiar with the parable of the talents. That's what this one is. The master goes away on a journey for a long time, and the master represents Jesus Christ in this. He leaves three stewards with monetary units called talents. Now today, a talent would be the equivalent of a little more than a million dollars. Okay, so one guy he gives five talents to, the other guy he gives three, and then the third guy he gives one talent to. Well, the first guy put it to work and made five more talents. The second guy put it to work and made three more talents. But the third guy, he didn't squander it. He didn't go spend it on booze and all that type of stuff. He just buried it. And that way, when the master comes back, he could say, look, here's your million bucks or here's your talent. I haven't lost any of it. I haven't squandered it. Yet, that wasn't the point. He got punished for being wicked and lazy and not using it like he was supposed to. And what he had was taken from him and given to the first steward. And so in that parable, and many other parables, we'll be going into one in Luke a little later, but in that parable, Jesus pictures perfectly what I'm talking about. He's the master, He's away right now at the right hand of the Father. He will come back at an appointed day, and we will have to stand before His behemoth seat and give an account. So, with all that, I think you guys now understand or have a general idea of what stewardship means. So then, I want to apply it to the one subject of the Word of God. We're going to focus heavily on it, and I hope that conviction will result from it. And so, that's why I began with 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17. And I want you to go back there, because we're going to go over it again. And I linked it with 2 Corinthians 5.10, because it causes us to reflect on the simple truth that we will even have to give an account for how we use the Bible. How much, how little, how accurately, how nonchalantly. I mean, we're going to have to give an account for all of that. So let's look at 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17 again. I'm not going to exegete it as though I were expositionally going through it. Instead, we're just going to draw some points out from it. So verse 14, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing those from whom you learned, and that from childhood you have known the sacred scriptures which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So what we see here is the Apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to rely on the word of God for everything concerning faith and practice. If you look at verse 14, he tells him to continue in what you've learned. So what you've learned, you better stay in it, continue in it. And then he goes in verse 15 and tells him you've learned the sacred scriptures which are able to instruct you for salvation. So where do we learn of salvation? From the sacred scriptures. Then in verse 16, he gives us a very powerful statement. He says, all scripture, not some scripture, all scripture, meaning the whole Bible, is inspired by God, or God breathed, theonoustos, and is profitable for four things here, teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training for righteousness. In other words, This is a clear statement that the scriptures are what we're supposed to use to teach each other. Because all scriptures God breathed and it's profitable for teaching. I should not be coming to you and teaching you with secular psychological theories or anything like that. It's the Bible that I'm supposed to be teaching you from. Also, the Bible is what we're supposed to use to confront each other's sins with. Because rebuke, it's profitable for rebuking. The Bible is what we're supposed to use to correct somebody who's in error. Because it says for correcting. And then perhaps the most important thing is it's used for training in righteousness, training ourselves, training others, meaning the way we learn to obey all the commands that God has done, all the commands that God has given us is through the scriptures. See, verse 17 gives the so what to this. A lot of times we skip verse 17 when we read about all scripture being God-breathed. Why is all scripture God-breathed? Why is it given to you? so that, so verse 17, quote, so that the man of God may be complete, meaning lacking nothing, equipped for every good work, not some good works, but every good work. The scriptures are given to you so that you would be complete, lacking nothing, so that you could do every good work, meaning the things that God has commanded us to do. All right, so it's real simple. And if we're gonna do these things, we gotta do them by the scriptures. We're not gonna do them by our creativity or anything like that. It has to be through the scriptures. And so with this being the case, we have to come to terms with the fact that the greatest thing that God has entrusted us with is his very inspired words of scripture. And the power of this tool is unquantifiable. You know, when we think of any other tools that we're gonna have to answer for, you could kind of see the limit of their power, like money. Money is powerful. You could do things with money. You could accomplish things with money, but the Scripture, its power is unquantifiable. So if people could accomplish great deeds with money, should we not be able to accomplish even far greater deeds by the power of Scripture? I would think so. The Scripture stood the test of time, and it's the very Word of God. And so the question before us this morning is, have we used the Scripture to accomplish powerful things? And answering for the church in America as a whole, the answer is an astounding no. We have not used the word of God to do powerful things. We just haven't. Now, all Christians, as I've said, are gonna have to stand before Christ and answer for this. But there's something else that I gotta add to it. Not all Christians are gonna stand before Christ equally accountable for it. And I'm gonna prove that. Some are gonna have a harsher judgment over this than others. The question at hand is which group are you in? The lighter judgment or the harsher judgment? If you don't want to hear an answer you don't want to hear, then you might want to plug your ears for the rest of the sermon. Because the honest truth is, we stand to face a harsher judgment. Not just the pastors, but all of us. And so, let us look at a few facts as I start to build the case. In the United States, we have an abundance of Bibles available to us. Furthermore, we have many faithful translations, not paraphrases, they're not faithful, but translations. We've got many good English translations that we could choose from that fit each person's taste, and they're understandable to just about anybody. We have concordances like the Strong's Concordance, which allows us to do word studies. We have Bible dictionaries like the Thayer's and the Vine's that help us dig deep into each word. And if you add to that that we have an abundance of commentaries written by Christian scholars for the last 2,000 years on many verses of the Bible, and we have all that at our disposal, we've got a lot of good stuff available to us, don't we, in this country and in this time? The body of knowledge available to us is staggering when we sit down and think about it. In addition to that, we have Bible programs like Logos that make studying the Bible a lot faster in past eras. than in past eras. For example, next week I'll be preaching on Acts chapter 15. So I'm going to open up my Logos program, I'm going to type in Acts chapter 15, and this massive search engine is going to tie all these commentaries specifically to that chapter, and also it's going to link me up with Greek language tools, maps, outlines, You know, you name it. Illustrations, just in case I can't think of any. I mean, sometimes it thinks for you. But the point is, that program makes it possible for me to get into the word in a very surgically precise manner. Now, why is that important or where am I going with this? Well, let me tell you a story. And you know I'm not like the pastor who likes to tell stories in this sense. That's not what we're about here. Okay, but I do have a relevant story here. In 2009, when I was at chapolic, which is chaplain officer basic leadership training, that's what my army basic training for being a chaplain, I had to work with a bunch of guys who represent their religions. And I got into it with a Russian Orthodox priest, all right? We started arguing over 1 Timothy 2.6 and what is specifically meant by Christ is a ransom for all, all right? So I showed him quite clearly through verses one and two that the context makes it mean a specific thing, that Christ is a ransom for all kinds of people. He didn't know what to say. He left, came back the next day and declared I was wrong. I'm like, okay, you know, maybe I missed something. I'm hoping he's gonna come to me with the scriptures. He didn't. He said I'm wrong because he looked up what John Chrysostom wrote about it, and John Chrysostom disagrees with me. Thinking, okay, just in case you don't know who John Chrysostom is, he was a fifth century church father, a great preacher. He was nicknamed Golden Mouth because of how good his preaching was. "'cause he was that good." Okay, so I'm thinking about this, I'm like, wait a second, you're saying I'm wrong just because a guy who lived 1,600 years ago disagrees with me? And because this guy's Russian Orthodox, yeah, Chrysostom's his patron saint. And so I did something that wasn't necessarily wise, but I was setting a trap for him. I said, you know, I know more than John Chrysostom. Right away, I was hitting below the belt because that's this guy's patron saint. But before he could punch me, because he was a former army ranger, I said, let me explain this in a little more detail. John Chrysostom lived in a time where books, scrolls and all that were not that available. They were very expensive. His library would have been relatively small. And if he were to get more stuff for his library, he'd have to travel hundreds of miles to get it. And so he would have been digging through a bunch of scrolls, just a handful actually, to come up with the conclusions that he came up with. In contrast, through the commentaries available to us, through computer programs, with the press of a button, I could be instantly linked to everything written in the last 2,000 years on a particular verse, including what John Chrysostom wrote. And so, I mean, who really has the advantage? Okay, John Chrysostom, you know, who has to open up scrolls next to candlelight, or us, you know, any given one of us who has access to all this stuff. Now, I admitted to him, I said, Chrysostom's one of my favorite guys. And it's amazing what he was able to do with his meager resources. So why do I bring that up then? If he was able to produce what he did with scrolls and candlelight, then what in the world is God going to ask for me when I'm standing before his throne, before that Bemis seat, and he's saying, okay, you had all this available. And it's not just me that has all this available. You have all this available too. So I told you, this isn't the warm and fuzzies that you might have been expecting. Oh, stewardship, that's fun. No, it's not. It's scary. And so I want us to think about this for a moment. Chrysostom, he wrote all that stuff. He wrote hundreds of homilies and even wrote systematic theology treatises that go over the heads of a lot of people today. And so if he could produce so much with so little, then what is our excuse? And remember, I said it with my own lips. I'm in big time trouble. With the press of a button, I have more than he had in his whole lifetime. And so what I want you to do is look really quickly at Luke 12, 48. So you could see that it's not just me making stuff up here. Luke 12, 48. And then later on, I'm gonna read the whole parable that is summed up with Luke 12, 48. But first I want you to see just this passage. Luke 12, 48. Much will be required of everyone who was given much, and even more will be expected of the one who has been entrusted with more. Now, I would say that just by simple thinking and reasoning, we could say all of us have been entrusted with more than any past generation of Christians that there has ever been. And so if those who are given, who are entrusted with more, more will be required of them, that means all of us will be required of more concerning the word of God, because we just have way more available to us in this. We have Bibles, tons of them in our own language, we have commentaries, and as I said, we got computer programs, you got pastors, at least at this church, who are dedicated to teaching you the word of God expositionally, occasionally throwing in a topical. And I understand that you might say, well, okay, yeah, we got all that stuff, but I don't want to buy Logos or BibleWorks or any of those. They're a decent chunk of change. And I'm not telling you you have to buy them. But one thing that I'm going to throw out there just as food for thought, it costs half of what your TV costs most likely. And so if we think about it, and let's say we buy 10 TVs over our lifetime, Yet we're gonna say we couldn't buy something that costs way less than that, that's gonna help us get into God's word more. I don't think so. That's not gonna fly when we're standing before the Bema seat. So I'm not telling you to go get it. Don't say, okay, I gotta go swipe the credit card, because no, then that's bad stewardship there, because you're going in debt. The point is, if you got money and you're spending it on other things, you might wanna consider spending it on the things that really matter as well, such as something that's gonna help you understand the word of God beyond what you can right now. You know, one thing that just boggles my mind and frustrates me is that we've been given so much by the Lord that can assist us with our Bible studying, but what did we do with it as an American church as a whole? And the answer is not much because American Christians are the most biblically ignorant saints on the planet. I would dare say if you pulled a guy from Africa or you pulled a guy from Asia who became a Christian and you put them toe-to-toe with the average American Christian, they're gonna make the average American Christian look bad. And that's sad. And another thing, and I'm about to put the blame on pastors here, because if you guys knew the information that good seminaries transfer to their students, if you could just sit in their classes and see all this stuff they get, And then you go and sit down, and they're giving you jokes and stories, and they're keeping the knowledge back for themselves. You would be angry, and you should be angry. You'd be saying, what in the world? You spent all this time and all this money. You could break the text down. You could give it to me in a way that'll transform my life, and you're telling jokes? You're doing stand-up comedy? You're telling stories? What is wrong with you? Now listen, I'm not trying to say anything good about myself here, but the reason that I preach and I teach the way I do is because God gave me what I know, not for me, but for you. If he gave it to me for me, I wouldn't be a pastor. I would just be a guy sitting in the pews that likes to read books and keep it for myself. But by virtue of him calling me as a pastor, by virtue of him calling Pastor Mo as a pastor, the simple fact is every bit of information he's given us isn't for us, it's for you. That's the nature of what this office is all about. And I would be a criminal if I held back that knowledge that I've picked up. My job is to stretch your minds. My job is not to tell you guys what you already know, because then what good am I? My job is to tell you things that you don't know, that hurts your head a little bit, but it's not way over your head, but it's about this high over your head, so you could grab it and pull yourself up, and each time get a little more knowledgeable in the Word of God. That is what we're supposed to be doing. I mean, really, why are you going to come to a place for somebody to tell you what you already know? Well, the jokes are good and the music's great. Well, that's the wrong reason. Now, let me add a little more to this. It's insanely sad, and I think it's also convicting, that tens of millions of professing Christians in America right now know a thousand times, no Hebrew hyperbole there, I believe it's a thousand times less, of the Bible than the pilgrims who brought it here 400 years ago. I think if you were to take the average Christian today and compare his knowledge with the average pilgrim who came over here 400 years ago, it would be sad to make that comparison. Even worse, flocks today have been conditioned to such a point that their spiritual stomachs can only digest milk, and it's too painful for them to eat spiritual meat. They come in a place where the Scriptures preached like all this hurts and they can't take it. It's not entertaining enough Where was the explosion in the background and stuff like that? And so they just they just can't handle it and that's sad and it's sad that that's what you know milky preaching and lukewarm preaching has led to and I remember that we had visitors one weekend, and they walked out five minutes into the sermon. I was still in my introduction. Now, I wanted to know why they walked out. And so I found out later that they thought it was over their heads. And so I went back and read that introduction. Because if I'm being a punk and I'm talking in some sort of intellectual way and trying to sound smart, then you better believe I'll change that. But I went and read that introduction. There was nothing in it that my high school public school students could learn. There was nothing in it beyond their heads. If I said that same introduction to my 11th grade US history students, they would have fully got it. So is that what's happened to America then? To where we have a literacy rate of 99% according to Wikipedia, we possess Bibles galore, and we have commentaries in abundance, but the majority of it's Christians have to walk out five minutes into a biblical introduction? I mean, is that what it's come to? And I think, unfortunately, when we look around, that is what it's come to. Okay, so I've been blasting the whole church. Well, let me focus in on Sovereign Way Christian Church for a second, okay? One thing that I wanna say is, first, it is a blessing to preach to saints such as you, because you guys are willing and wanting to hear the truth of Scripture. And I firmly believe that if I switch to stories and milk and all that, you guys would get rid of me really quickly. And I believe that, and praise. Praise God for that. Okay, so I love preaching the word to Sovereign Way Christian Church, but I don't want us to think we're off the hook. You know, yes, we could look at ourselves and then look at a thousand other churches out there and say, we must be doing good. But that's no different than the unbeliever when you confront him with the Ten Commandments and he says, well, I'm good because I'm not as bad as Hitler. Okay, yeah, he's not as bad as Hitler. That unbeliever. But he doesn't meet God's standards, so he's still condemned. All right, so from that standpoint, okay, we're not as bad as some other churches. We're preaching the word and all that. But how do we know we're meeting the standard? And we might say, well, what is the standard? I don't know. I can't say, like, here's the standard. What I could say, though, is with everything that's been entrusted to you, the standard is that you are using it to the best of your ability. That's the standard. And so it might be a little different between like two given Christians. Well, I'll get to that a little later. I don't want to get ahead of myself. But the point is, we're supposed to be working diligently with what we have available to us. Now, the question is, are we where we're supposed to be here? It feels good to know that we're nowhere near as bad as some other places. But here's how I know we're not where we're supposed to be. Because if we were where we're supposed to be, meaning if everybody looked at commentaries, and if everybody did word studies, and if everybody studied the scripture like they have the availability to here, then my sermons and Pastor Mo's sermons would already seem like milk to you, and you guys would be demanding more of us. But on one hand, some people say, I'm too heavy. There's no way that I'm too heavy, not given with what God has given us, with what he's made available to us. Now, if we only had the book of Romans and we didn't have a single commentary, then yes, we'd both be way too heavy. But from that standpoint, no. The reason why I know we still got room to grow is because think of all we have available to us. With that, we should know a lot more than we do. just saying. Okay, so that's the beating that you guys get. Now I could go back to everybody else. I could go on belaboring for a while, but I want you to consider something. Given that we have all this stuff, you know, that I keep repeating over and over again, commentaries, Bibles, and all that, I want you to know, and Pastor Mo alluded to it in his prayer today, that there are some countries where the Christians don't even have complete Bibles in their language. You follow the voice of the martyrs and stuff like that. You learn about that. Some Christians will travel secretly at night across the countryside for like 20 miles to deliver one page of the book of Romans to a different church. And then they take a different page of the book of Romans and go back with it just so they could hand copy it because they're just trying their best to get a complete copy of just one book of the Bible. And if they're caught with a single page of scripture, they could be executed by their governments. That's pretty crazy if you think about it. They treasure that one page of scripture so much that they would die for it, yet we have the complete treasure, many copies of the complete treasure, and a lot of them are collecting dust on our bookshelves. And so one thing I'm wondering is how long is God gonna be patient with us? You know, if he disciplines those he loves, and we're doing that, yet people are being run over by tractors in Korea because they're found with a page of scripture, how long is he gonna put up with this? Now, I think the judgment has already started to come. Our country is pagan because of us, as I'm gonna talk about a little later. But yeah, I mean, that's just one thing to think about. And then another thing that we could think about is how many of us have heard unbelievers say, I'm never gonna go to church, because Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. We've all heard that, right? Okay, well, do you know that should never be said of us? We're supposed to have a good reputation with outsiders, according to 1 Timothy 3, 7. We're supposed to be at peace with all people as far as it depends on us, according to Romans 12, 18. And we're supposed to walk in good deeds, according to Ephesians 2, 10. So why are so many Christians called hypocrites? It's because they are hypocrites. I mean, that's just the truth of it. They walk in the deeds of the flesh. They're conformed to the world. They like the same things that the world likes because they possess the same values that the world has. They watch the same trash on TV. They gossip. They cuss. They get drunk. They let their kids run around wild. They lie. They steal paper and staples and all that from their work, and they do everything else that the world does. And so then I'm sitting here scratching my head, and I'm saying, do they not know that in Romans 6 too, Paul asked, how can we who died to sin still live in it? Do they not know that he asked that? The implied answer is if you've died to sin, you shouldn't be living in it. And he goes on later in Romans 6 to say, put to death the deeds of the flesh. Have these people who are Christians not seen Ephesians chapter 4, verses 17 through 24, where it tells us that we're not even to think or walk like the world, but instead we're to renew our minds, put off the sinful man, put on the righteous man, and walk as the new creation in Christ that we are. That's what it says. Why don't they know this stuff? I'll tell you why they don't know it, because their Bible's on their bookshelf collecting dust. All the while, somebody's getting killed for just having a page of it. That is bad. Now, why am I bringing this up? Well, we're talking about stewardship of God's word. And here's the point. If a person reads God's word, if a person studies God's word, and then if a person attends a church where pastors preach God's word, and then if the person actively tries to apply God's word, their lives will be transformed. Not might be transformed, it will be transformed. The only reason somebody's life isn't transformed is because they're not doing that. You can't act on what you don't know. But if you know it, you can act on it. People won't walk as a hypocrite if they do those things because they'll shine as God's light on the hill. Then the world will hate them for their righteousness rather than for their hypocrisy. If we're gonna be hated by the world, please let it be for the right reason. Don't be hated for being a hypocrite and doing evil. Be hated for doing righteousness and accurately reflecting our Lord Jesus Christ. And so proof of good stewardship is God's word will be seen first and foremost and transform lives. That's the key to that. And so I could bring the heat on the husbands real quick concerning this. Husbands, when you stand before Christ and he asks you why you didn't live in a sacrificial way for your wives, or why you did not wash her with the water of the word, or ask why you didn't treat her like your own body, meaning you considered her wants and desires to be equal with your own, Are you going to then look up to His glory? Because you will be on the ground. John was on the ground in Revelation when he saw Christ. Will you then look up at His glory and say, I don't know? And if you do, will He then not say, you read Ephesians 5 many times? And as a result, you had the Word of God, you knew it, you're now accountable for it. Of course He will. Now that's just one example. Husbands, and I'm not going to pick on wives. Because then, you know, well never mind. I'm not going to pick on wives. But the point is we can take this, we can take this and we could apply it to anything is my point, all right? So what we need to get out of this is that the word of God will transform us. Romans 12, verse two. Romans 12, verse two, one of my favorite verses in the whole New Testament. Paul says, do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God is. In fact, the way that we will not conform or be like the world is if we're transformed by the renewing of our mind. Now, the only thing that can renew our mind is the Scripture. So if your mind is renewed by the Scripture, then you will be able to discern what the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God is. So many Christians, you know, you look at them and it's like they don't know the difference between good and evil, and the reason is because they're conformed. If they're transformed, then they automatically will discern what the good, pleasing will of God is, and then they can make the right decisions. Makes sense, right? So the stewardship of the word of God affects our lives greatly. You know, every time a revival happened for the people of God, it always was centered on the word of God. In 2 Kings 22, after decades of apostasy, the book of the law was found and it was read to King Josiah. In verse 11 of 2 Kings 22, he tore his clothes and repented. In the next chapter in 2 Kings 23 too, He made sure that the whole book of the law was read to every single person in his kingdom, both children, old people, and everybody in between. He made sure everybody heard it. Then you could fast forward a couple hundred years to when Israel came back from the Babylonian exile. They were struggling for a while, but then Ezra was sent to get things right there. And in Nehemiah 8, verse 1, it says, Ezra brought forth the book of the law. He then read it to them, he had his people explain it to them, and that generation had a revival as well. And we could even look in church history and see this. For centuries, the Bible was kept from people by the Roman Catholic Church. But then you have the Protestant Reformation, where Bibles came out in German, French, English, and pretty much every major language of Europe. And then as a result, what do you have? A full revival in the church. I mean, the Reformation was the greatest revival in the history of the church, I think, when we look at what it actually accomplished. And so it's proof that the word of God alone is what has the power to transform both our thinking and our living. And if we all do this, then we also affect the culture as well, as we've seen in Ezra and in 2 Kings. And so the problem is, you know, most people just let the Bible collect dust. And if you do that, it can't do anything for you. The Bible doesn't have the power to change you if you don't read it. And if you want proof of that, just look at the lives of the majority of people who call themselves Christians. It's like, are they Christians? I mean, you know, it's just one of those things. And I'm not trying to be harsh or judgmental. I'm trying to talk about the stewardship of the word of God. And when I think about the stewardship of the word of God, it makes sense out of a lot of things that I see if there's a failed stewardship. If there's a successful stewardship, we shouldn't be seeing those things. And so my whole point then is that as stewards entrusted with the things of God, we've got to be faithful with everything entrusted to us. And a lot of things are entrusted to us, as I said at the beginning. But the point is the way we handle the Word of God will be the single greatest determiner as to how we handle everything else in the stewardship given to us. how I handle my marriage, my parenting, my finances, my duties to the church, my job as a teacher, my second job as a chaplain, my friendships, every opportunity to preach the gospel, and everything else. How I manage all that depends first on how I handle the Word of God. And if I let the word of God collect dust, then I will fail at all those other things, and I will have to account before Christ for it all. But if I let the word of God inform my thinking and transform my life, then on those other things, you will see me, or you, or anybody do things the right way. And there's another thing that we have to realize, okay? We're gonna be held accountable for everything entrusted to us. A lot of times we don't think about this, but every single verse from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 has been entrusted to you. All right, for that guy who's only got two pages of Romans, right now that's all that's entrusted to him. That's what he's accountable for. You're accountable for every verse from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 because you have it all in your hands. You have it in multiple translations and all that. So I mean, we have to pretty much show God that, look, we used it. We used it for your glory. So if you're not using it, use it, all right? So that's the point with that. And one thing that I wanna point out also is that God gave us all minds that are pre-wired as Christians to understand his word. That's basic 2 Corinthians 2, that God, the Holy Spirit teaches spiritual things to spiritual people. So nobody's like, I'm too simple to understand this. Not if you're a Christian. You might have to work a little harder, but the point is, everything that I know, everything that Pastor Mo knows, you can know as well. I mean, it's not beyond you. None of this is beyond you. You just have to put in a little bit of effort for it. And so we need to realize just how important this stewardship over God's word really is. So with that then, what I want to do is I want to neatly package this into a so what type of formula. In other words, what does it mean for us? And it's pretty straightforward. Since persecuted saints live with greater zeal and righteousness than we do, and yet they have far less available knowledge, That's why I'm saying we're going to have a harsher judgment. I looked on the Voice of the Martyrs website. It's really cool if you ever get a chance to go there. I counted that there's 53 countries that Christianity and Bibles are restricted in. That means those saints have meager resources, yet they're still living transformed lives. You then read about what happens to them over there. As I said, getting run over with tractors, the horrible things that happen to women, kids being tortured, yet these people still live transformed lives and they do it with less resources available to them than we have. They seem to know the heart of Christ even though many of them do not have access to the Word of God. And I'll tell you something, if you've studied one or two pages of Romans with the same intensity that they do, because that's all some of them have, you too would be transformed from only two pages. Martin Luther was transformed from a single verse in Romans and Augustine was transformed from a couple of verses in Romans. And so the point is it doesn't take much. And so we see them live transformed lives with just a portion of the Scripture. How much more should we be living is the point with all of Scripture. So the bottom line is this. You've got 66 books of the Bible and tons of available tools to help you understand it. In this country you have the means to acquire far more than those of other countries. And so when Jesus Christ returns to settle accounts with us, what are we going to say? Now I want you to turn to Luke chapter 12. Because I want to give you the picture in your head of what it might be like when he does settle accounts with us. Luke chapter 12, verses 42 through 48. Remember, this is a parable, okay? So don't take everything you're reading here literal, but pick up the principles behind it. Luke 12, 42 through 48. The Lord said, who then is the faithful and sensible manager his master will put in charge of his household servants and give them their allotted food at the proper time? That slave whose master finds him working when he comes will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that slave says in his heart, My master is delaying his coming and starts to beat the male and female slaves and to eat and drink and get drunk. That slave's master will come on a day he does not expect him, and at an hour he does not know. He will cut him into pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. And that slave who knew his master's will and didn't prepare himself or do it will be severely beaten. But the one who did not know and did things deserving of blows will be beaten lightly. Much will be required of everyone who has been given much, and even more will be expected of the one who's been entrusted with more. Just real simple, Jesus identifies who the faithful and sensible steward is. It's the one that the master finds working when he returns, and that steward will get rewarded. Now, the steward that lives like a total unbeliever is a total unbeliever, and so he says he's cut up and cast out with the unbelievers in the parable. But then there's two other guys that aren't set off with the unbelievers. One knew the master's will, but chose not to do it, and he got severely beaten. in this parable. And then there was another one who didn't quite know as much, maybe the new believer or whatever, but they still did wrong, so they got lightly beaten. So I'm thinking, all right, right here he's talking about stewardship and our settling accounts with him, and it seems that, okay, there's reward and there's punishment. And then turn back to 2 Corinthians 5.10, because Paul says that very thing. 2 Corinthians 5.10. Let's read that one more time. 2 Corinthians 5.10. for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether bad or good. See, he doesn't say just to repay us for what was good. It says whether bad or good. Now I'll tell you something, I don't fully understand this and I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what it means to be repaid for the bad things we've done as Christians. I know that it cannot refer to condemnation, right? Does it mean that we're gonna get a copper tumbleweed that we have to push around? I don't know. Who knows what it is? Now, the parable talks about beatings, but it's a parable, so I don't necessarily think we're gonna be getting beat at the beam of seat, but there's some sort of negative consequence that happens if we're found to be unfaithful. But if we're found to be faithful, there's rewards. And Christ throughout the Gospels talks a lot about treasure in heaven. Now, what treasure in heaven is, I don't know. Is it like this extra sparkly heavenly gold? I don't know. I mean, who knows what it is? But what we do know is when we do stand before that beam of seat, there are rewards and there's punishments. I would rather not find out what the punishment is. So if you ever come up to me and say, hey, I notice you still have a problem with this sin. I hope my answer never is, well, I know I'm handling everything else, but I gotta know what the beating is. So I'm keeping this one here. No, I'm sorry, I don't wanna find out. I don't wanna find out. I'm hoping there's no reason for me to not get a full reward when I'm there. And so I pray that it'd be the same for you as well. Now, as I said before, I don't know exactly what Christ expects of us, like how high the bar is, you know, because we've been blessed with so much here. But one thing that I would think is as a generation, we should be greater than all past generations in what we can accomplish for Christ. I'm hoping that we will be the generation that gets the gospel to every nation, tribe, and tongue. But I wanna balance all this stuff that I'm mentioning with these resources with another important truth. Okay, and that's divine giftedness. Just because I have more resources than Martin Luther does not mean that God has gifted me to do as much as Martin Luther did. So when I'm at the Pima seat, I'm not gonna be compared to Luther. God's not gonna say, well, you had this much, Luther had way less, and look what he did. It's not necessarily gonna work that way. Because for all I know, God gave him just this gifting to just, impact the world far more than I ever could. So what I do know, though, as I've said previously, that the way I'm gonna be judged is based on everything I have, did I work to the best that I can with it? I think Luther, for the most part, did. Praying two to three hours a day, I mean, and when you look at what Calvin did, he preached three or four sermons every day, okay? We complain having to do it once a week. And this guy was doing it three a day. I mean, it's just amazing what those guys were able to do with their resources. And so, am I doing an equal amount of effort, at least, with the resources given to me? And are you doing an equal amount with the resources given to you? Meaning, are you pretty much putting all yourself into it saying, hey, I don't want to stand before Christ, you know, lacking on anything. And so that's the hope. And you know, on a positive note, we have seen some churches do powerful things with their stewardship. Grace Community Church, I talk about them a lot. John MacArthur, he's got, because of the Grace to You organization, he's got sermons being broadcast 24 hours a day in all four hemispheres of the globe. Luther and Calvin could have never done that. because it wasn't available to them. So here we have a church that says, look what's available to us, let's take advantage of this. The word of God is expositionally being preached on invisible radio waves surrounding the globe 24-7. That's amazing, okay? And I think that's a well done, good and faithful servant type of thing that they're gonna be hearing for that. And I hope that as our means increase, we likewise do things like that. All right. And so getting to the point, though, that I wanted to make earlier about our culture and that being a punishment that we have, because most churches have failed to do what grace community does and because most churches have failed to take their stewardship of the word seriously, I think the churches across the American landscape are the reason that the nation has fallen into great immorality. the more I've been watching things and hearing about it. And I want you to think about something for a moment. Let's go back to the Puritans 300 years ago. They assembled in humble buildings, you know, four walls and a door or whatever, humble buildings. They worshiped God. They listened to two to four hour sermons without complaining. And by the way, their typical style then was this. just reading from a piece of paper. But they would sit through two to four hours of it. I mean, just amazing. And they had a lower literacy rate than we did. They only had one translation, the Geneva Bible, and they had very few commentaries available to them. Yet the regular lay persons among the Puritans knew so much about the Bible that my systematic theology course that I taught a couple years ago would only serve as a catechism for their kids. And the reason I know that is I've looked at their catechisms, and I'm like, whoa, this is like my systematic theology here. And this is what their kids were doing, you know? And that's just 300 years ago. Now, what does that have to do with culture? Well, if you look at the culture back then, the colonies, all 13 of them were Christian in their principles, their laws, and their ethics. The Bible was the standard of conduct. And even some of the founding fathers, most were believers, but some weren't. Even the unbelieving ones, like Thomas Jefferson, still said that the Bible's how civic virtue would be instilled in citizens. And so back then, language was cleaner, everything was cleaner. In fact, sinful living was taboo. There was shame attached to you if you went to the saloon and got drunk. There was shame attached to you if you were known as a fornicator. There was shame attached to adultery, even the death penalty, actually. And there was shame attached to witchcraft. Now all these things are celebrated and we make movies about them and buy accessories. I mean, the thing is, this isn't good stuff. It's all out in the open. drinking, drug abuse, violence, total sexual licentiousness, and broken families are now the norm. And just to tell you how bad it is in the churches, I once preached a sermon in a church of Christ when I was like 21 years old, maybe 22, and I mentioned that adultery and homosexuality were on the rise. People complained and came up and said, you said the words homosexuality, you said the words adultery, that made this more than a G-rated sermon and it wasn't appropriate for my kids. That was their complaint to me. Can you believe that? And so I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, that's the problem. That is the problem. If the church doesn't know the word and it's not teaching its people the word, and it's not teaching the children the word, then the world will teach them about these things. If you don't tell them about adultery and homosexuality, the school system will, okay? And TV will. And so then we look around and we're shocked at how evil our culture is. I mean, are we serious? An uninformed church leads to an uninformed culture, which then creeps back into the church and corrupts its good morals. For this reason, we now see small group Bible studies having cagers and women ordained as pastors, homosexuality and abortion accepted by some churches, and teenagers and youth groups engaged in widespread fornication and now bisexuality. You might not know this, but the new popular term is called smashing. It's now the fun thing for teenagers to do on a weekend to go to a party and experiment with bisexuality. And if that's happening, for the regular high school students, you don't think that's happening in these youth groups where all they know is how to play Call of Duty? You know, because all they do is play video games? I'm telling you, the smashing or whatever is also gonna be happening in the churches really soon. And then on top of that, we send kids to a public school system, bless you, where the world gets to brainwash them and sin for seven hours a day. And so our culture and its total paganism, it's the church's own fault because we have failed in our stewardship of God's word. And so I think that there's gonna be some people, mainly pastors, to be honest, that are gonna have to also answer at the Bema seat for the culture's total pagan outlook. Because it's their fault for not spurring on their flocks to then take stands and spurring on a Christian culture. When we're a joke, because we're not living right and we live just like the world, that's why they're gonna run amok. And then when we try to finally say, hey, this is the way it is, we're now bigots and the world's got no place for us. We're now the ones who, shame's attached to us, but if we were distinctly Christian as we should be, and the culture was, then they would actually be the ones that have shame attached to them. It's just crazy when you look at it. And think about that. 300 years ago, our brothers and sisters left us with a distinctly Christian culture. What have we done with it? And so with that now laid out, let's move to the final part, wrapping this thing up. What shall we do? Okay, so we know that we're stewards, and we gotta answer for everything. We know that one of the things we have to answer for is the word of God. We know that there's some sort of beating involved, even though we don't know what that is. And so with that said, what do we do with this? Well, it's real simple. Three exhortations for you. Read it, believe it, live it. Okay? Read it, believe it, and live it. Let me first talk about reading it. You can't act on what you don't know. If you don't read it, you don't know it, and so you can't believe it and you can't live it. It's that simple. You have to know the Word of God. 2 Timothy 4.2 commands us to be able to preach the Word to people in season and out of season. That means at all times. But the only way you can preach the word to people at all times is if you're reading the Bible, if you're in it. So let me suggest something for you. A Bible reading plan. And the cool thing is, we have a Bible reading plan. Now, I want to talk to you about how a Bible reading plan has helped me out. You know, when I was a young Christian, I did not read the Bible too much. I got all my ideas arbitrarily from my own opinions. In 2005, I said, you know what? I need to read the Bible cover to cover. I had only done it once before that. And so, I kind of mathematically figured it out that if I read three chapters a day, and then twice a week, twice a week, read four chapters, and then when I got to the Psalms, read five, because they're shorter, then in 15 minutes a day of reading, I would read the whole Bible cover to cover in the whole year. So 2005 was the experimenting year, and it worked. I had a week and a half off. I finished right before Christmas with Revelation. I'm like, cool, I read the Bible cover to cover. So I did it again next year with a different translation, I think the New King James. Then I did it the next year with the New American Standard, and then the next year with the ESV. And what I noticed is after a couple years of doing this, one, 15 minutes is not a long time, and then I noticed that when situations would come up in my life, I'd be thinking, now wait a minute, there's a scripture that talks about this. It would be there where it wasn't there before because I wasn't reading the scripture. So all you got to do is come up with a reading plan. This year I did a chronological plan, which the whole church is doing next year. It has blessed me greatly. I'm getting so much more out of both the Old and the New Testament from that. Now next year, after the next year, I'm probably gonna go back to a regular one for a couple years and then throw the chronological one back in it. But the point is, if you spend these 15 minutes a day reading the Bible, and you read it cover to cover for 15 years, that means you would have read the Bible 15 times. You would have a familiarity with it that you can't even imagine right now. but you won't have it till you get there. So 15 minutes, what excuse do we have? You know, the average American watches 1,400 hours of TV per year, which is 27 hours per week. And we know that most of what is on TV is godless, satanic junk. Yet only 15 minutes a day, which amounts to only a little less than two hours a week, will get you through God's perfect word in the year. So when you stand before Christ and he's talking to you about the stewardship of the word, you say, I didn't have time, Lord. And I'm pretty sure he's gonna say, you didn't have 15 minutes, and then he's gonna be able to recite to you how much time you were reading the newspaper, watching TV and stuff like that. There's nothing wrong with doing those things. But if you're doing all that stuff and you're not reading God's word, there's a problem, it's priorities. Now, the second thing is, if you read it, then you believe it. A great benefit of Bible reading is that as you read the word, you're gonna believe it more and more, because when you see that everything it says happens in the real world, you're just like, huh, that makes sense. Now it makes sense why my kids act like monsters, and why earthquakes and hurricanes happen, and why people are hostile to the gospel, and this totally makes sense of why that lady pepper sprayed people on Black Friday to get an Xbox, all right? We rest in comfort with the fact that the Bible says we live in a fallen world and people all have a sin nature. And so the more you see the nonsense, the more you're like, this is just proof that the Bible's true. So the more you read it, the more you believe it. And then if you read it and you really begin to believe it, you're going to be able to do something amazing. You're going to be able to live it. Romans chapter 6 says that we can put to death the deeds of the flesh and cast it off. Ephesians 4 says you could replace the deeds of the old man with the deeds of the new man by having a renewed mind. We've got the ability to choose to not sin. Now, we still have a sin nature that wars with us, we're still gonna occasionally stumble, so don't get me wrong on that. But the point is, God does not save us and then leave us to act just like we did before he saved us, no. There's supposed to be a progressive sanctification where we become more and more like Christ every single day, every single year. And the word of God is what enables us to do that with the Holy Spirit within us. And so, I mean, when you read the Word, you're gonna have your theology of suffering. When suffering comes, you'll be able to rest in the fact that God's grace is sufficient, like 2 Corinthians 12, nine says. And so, the exhortation is get into God's Word so you can get God's Word into you. And get God's Word into your, or get your kids into God's Word so you can get God's Word into your kids. My suggestion to you is this, all right? Every family should have worship time every day. And this year, we're making it easy for you. You buy one of these chronological Bibles. You, your husband, wife, kids, you read your three chapters or whatever you're supposed to read for the day. You just read it on your own throughout the day, and then before you go to bed, you could come together, listen to a couple songs on your iPod if you can't sing like me, and then you go through the text just real quick, like a 10-minute Devo. And then your kids are learning the word. As a husband, think about this. You're hitting three aspects of stewardship if you do that. The stewardship of the word of God, you're washing your wife with the water of the word, and you're raising your kids spiritually. Now let's say you're thinking, well, what if I don't understand the scripture that I read that day? Well, there's about 50 other people here who read that same scripture. So call me up, call Pastor Mo up, call anybody that you know that understands it up. And if you have a question, we'll gladly answer it. And then you could once again, teach your kids the word. It becomes too easy, too easy. You know, so kind of summing everything up, everything that I've said in this message should be basic Christian common sense, right? I mean, this should be stuff we already know, but apparently all you do is do a Christian search on YouTube and you see a bunch of circuses going on in church, and we start to see that, oh, people don't know this. Apparently it's not common sense. And so my hope is when you do those YouTube searches and you see just how bad it really is, and then you realize it's because people abandon the Word of God, let that serve as a warning to you what could happen to you if you abandon it. And that should then encourage you and spur you on to root yourself in the Word of God so that you will live a life that's pleasing to God. It seems like we're in dark times because we are in dark times. But Christians, that gives you no excuse to slack. Our Lord God has entrusted his word to us, and he expects us to live by it. He's entrusted a lot of stuff to us because we're stewards. And if you think about it, is it not like our great God to not only entrust us with something like this, but then to also give us the secret weapon that allows us to do it? He's given you the scriptures, which is the instructions, and he's given you the Holy Spirit, which is the power. So from those two aspects, yeah, he's given us a stewardship, but he's given us the ability to fulfill it. The only reason why we would never fulfill it would be our own faults. And so we're gonna have to answer to Christ for the entire spectrum of our stewardship. But the most important thing that you should focus on is your stewardship of God's word. If you get that right, everything else will become so much easier. And so may we here at Sovereign Way Christian Church spur each other on in growing in the word. May we encourage each other, may we build each other up, and may we teach each other the precious truths given to us in this great book. Let us pray. Our God in heaven, we just thank you so much for you being God, Lord, that you're giving us your word, Lord, that you saved us and then you gave us your word. And here in America, we got your word in multiple translations, we got footnotes, we got study Bibles, we got commentaries, we got computer programs, we got the best seminaries in the world that teach pastors so much about the scripture, Lord. And we just pray that we would use all this stuff you've given to us. And that, Lord, we wouldn't forget stewardship. Because the consequence of forgetting stewardship, Lord, is that we start to live like you're not going to return. And we start to live like we don't have to give an account to you at any time. And so, Lord, may we be the workers who are found as faithful servants, good and faithful servants or stewards, doing your will, Lord, doing what you've entrusted to us. Give us the strength, give us the power, and just give us the motivation to do this for you. And we just pray this all in Christ Jesus' name, amen.