As Christians, we also have a key of keys, a place that we always go back to when we want to figure out what is true. We always go back to when we want to figure out, all right, things may seem chaotic, things may seem confusing or we forgot. We always come back to our key of keys to know where our central location is. The thing with the Bible is it is this key of keys, but it's not just the starting point. It's our final authority on all things of God, all things of faith.
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As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. If you've been in church any amount of time, you've probably heard that said before. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be an inspired word of God? Well, 2 Timothy 3 says, all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, training in righteousness, so that the servant of God, us, may be thoroughly equipped for good work.
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As flawed men wrote these words out, an unflawed spirit of God guided the words to be written so that they would not only lead to salvation for those that read it then, but now and in the future as well. They were flawed men that wrote it, but the flawless God guided these words.
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If any of you all have been in group projects or in a team meeting, if 10 people leave a meeting place and they all leave saying the same message, that's a miracle, right? That's a miracle in itself. But for 1500 years, 40 different authors over different time periods, different nationalities, different languages. And the message rings true that we were created. We fell from our created one. We try to do things on our own and we mess up. But God said, I want to save them, came to be with us, died, saved us from our sins, rose to defeat our enemy death and said, follow me and I'm coming back and I've saved you. Over 1500 years, that message rings true. This book is a miracle. Complex, but it is a miracle.
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The Bible is living and active. We don't just read the Bible. The Bible reads us. The Bible is, how do we say, because the spirit moves in it, because the spirit wrote it. And now the spirit speaks to us in it. This is a living document in a sense, it's not living in a sense that we add to it, but living in a sense of it speaks. It moves to us. The spirit who inspired it is the same spirit that reads it within us.
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I love the way this is put, inhaling what the Holy Spirit exhaled thousands of years ago. We are breathing in what the Holy Spirit exhaled into the pages thousands of years ago.
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When we read the Bible, because it's active, it gives us what we need. Notice I said what we need, not what we want. Okay. Gives us what we need. Sometimes it leads to conviction, which brings to confession. Sometimes it brings encouragement, which brings rejoicing. Sometimes it brings knowledge, which can develop into wisdom, but it always shows us the true picture of the living God.
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The Bible gives us truth that sometimes hurts, but then it always comes with grace of like, but I've paid for it. I've paid for it. Like watch this because it hurts you, but I've paid for it. So let's walk out of it.
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The Bible is timeless and timely. It was written 1500 years ago, but it still has life-changing implications for us today. And it's timely. When we need it, it tells us what we need to hear. It's not just any other book. Like we can't just stop reading it once we read it once because it's constantly working in us through the Holy spirit.
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If you want to hear God speak, open your Bible, open your Bible. That's where God speaks to us. And the goal of reading the Bible since it's timely and it's timeless is for us to get it in us. We're not just trying to read it to say we read it. We want the Bible to be ingrained in us because if it's not ingrained in us, how can we be transformed by it?
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If this book is our map, the Holy Spirit is our guide. So if we don't start in prayer, we're hopping in here hoping we can figure it out on our own. And there's just so much we're going to miss. You can get good things out of here on your own. But we want the author to speak to us as we're reading it.
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Are we being intentional with hearing from the God who loves us and who created us? If that is our primary method of reading the scripture. Again, I'm not trying to beat up on you if that's your method. I just want to point you towards there are words in here. The God who loves you has given you this to show you how much he loves you. Let's dig into it. Let's be intentional to it.
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However you choose to read the Bible, what's most important is that you're reading the Bible. That's what's most important. I heard, I went on a year-long mission trip out of college and I was speaking at a camp later and the kids were like, how do I know what place to go serve? And I'm like, just go serve. I don't care where you go serve. That's not the point. Just go serve. Same way here. Just get in the Bible. Be intentional about it because God wants to show you himself and he wants to show you how much he loves you.
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If the God of the universe has said, I love you, I have saved you, and I want you to know things so that you can walk in life, how foolish are we not to dedicate a huge part of our life to hearing from him by reading it, and not just reading it, but storing it in our heart.
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But how can the Spirit pull Scripture into your mind that you haven't stored in your heart? If we don't have Scripture memorized, we are much less likely to have Spirit brought to our mind in moments when we need it. Once again, God works to us. It's all intertwined. The Spirit speaks. The Word speaks. The God's people speak. But we need to be doing all of them so that God can speak to us in the ways in which he is designed for us to hear from him.
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As we store God's Word in our heart, it does much more than make us more knowledgeable. It changes how we see things. It changes how we see the world because the frame in which we see the world is now through scripture instead of through something else.
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The Bible is our picture frame. If we let it be. The Bible is a picture frame where it shows us you are not just people. Through Jesus, you are the sons and daughters of the all-high king. You are heirs to the throne. You have been saved by this king. Like, our world is transformed when we look at the world through the Bible, when that is the frame that we look through. It reminds us of who God says we are and it reminds us of who God says he is. And when we see our world through those two things, we see things more clearly.
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The surest way to get into the presence of God and to see the world that way is to get into the word of God. We've got to look through the word of God to see the world fully as the way God created it. If we're not looking at the Bible as a picture frame into our world, we're going to be looking through something else to see our world.
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If we constantly look at social media, we're constantly going to look at the world through the lens of social media. If we constantly watch cable news, we're constantly going to look at the world through the frame of cable news. And the list goes on and on and on. Again, not saying all those things are completely bad. But if they are the primary frame through which we see our world, that will be the primary mindset that we see and live our world in. But if we abide in the word, as Jesus told his disciples to in John 14, then we will see the world through his word.
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It is so important, not just that we read the Bible because we're supposed to. We read the Bible because it changes how we see things and it changes how we see things for the good. And if we look at the Bible this way, not only will the world around us look differently, we ourselves will be changed. Reading the Bible changes you. It just does. Just as being with God changes you.
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Charles Spurgeon, one of the more impactful, probably evangelist in the history of our country, he once said that if a Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn't falling apart.
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The Bible changes us, which then changes everything around us. Now we often get to the Bible without the expectation that it will change us. Reading the Bible is not going to change us. Reading the Bible is not going to change us, but reading the Bible is not going to change us. isn't about picking and choosing what we want from God, but rather we knowing that we need him and when we are with him, we are changed. But changing hurts.
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It hurts to allow God to have access to the parts of our lives that we're ashamed of. It hurts to allow God to have access to the parts of us that are in pain, whether we cause that pain or someone else did. It hurts to be vulnerable enough to say, God, I've turned into something that I'm not proud of. And I don't know how I got here. Or to say, God, I've been hurt and I don't want to tell anyone about this because it's embarrassing. But no matter how we try to peel that hard skin off, it doesn't work because it takes the hand of our Savior, the hand of a lion sometimes, the lion of Judah, to be able to cleanse us of things that are hurting us, but it hurts for that stuff to be taken off too, right? It hurts.
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But when we soak ourselves in this word, we're going to see things that hurt, but we're going to see the true picture of the gospel, the good news of the God that says, it hurt me more than it hurt you because I love you. And because of what I've went through, I'm going to cleanse you. I'm going to scrape off all those scales. I'm going to dip you in water and I'm going to cleanse you. And you're going to have childlike faith again. You're going to become that boy. You're going to become that little girl. Yeah, it might hurt, but the sufferings in this world are of no comparison to the glory that will be shown to you and the grace that will be revealed to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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It's so easy for us to be like, I don't hear from God. When's the last time you were in your Bible? Well, I don't hear from God. I wish you would tell me something. Have you prayed and gave him time to speak? Have you tried to calm down the other things that make so much noise so you can hear from him?
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How often do we convince ourselves that God doesn't love us? How often do we convince ourselves that like, I have to do something to make God love me. Do you know why? Because we forget to get into the book that God has given us to show us just how much he loves us.
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He has shown us how much he has loved us in the perfect life of Jesus and in the inspired word of God. I challenge you as a believer and as a church, let's become people of the word. Not so we can say we're people of the word, but so that we can say, oh, how he loves us.
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