Halu, come on, let's praise Him this morning and be encouraged that no matter what you're going through—if you're walking through a battle, if you're walking through a season of depression, if you're walking through something that's too much for you—God is right by your side. With His strength and in His power, we can lift our hands and we can sing Hallelujah through it all. Amen? Amen!
I'm so glad you're here. Take a seat; we'll get started. Music wouldn't stop, right? Yeah, don't say yes; you hurt my feelings, bro. Okay, that's my feelings. Let's pray.
Father, wow, we come here from just so many different places. There are people in this room that are going through just unbearable stuff, and there are people in this room that are celebrating just incredible stuff. We're all coming from these different places, from joy to bewilderment to confusion. Lord, the world around us is a mess, and our lives are confusing, but in the middle of all that, we can say You are good. We have nothing to offer You except our lives. We have nothing to say to You except Hallelujah. Come save us now.
Father, we love You, and we just thank You, as we always do, for this chance we have to be together in Your house, to be with Your people, to lift up Your praises, to experience Your presence. God, we thank You for the privilege we have of opening Your Word now. As we're opening it up, God, I just pray that You'll speak to us today and say to us what we need. Show us something we don't know; show us something that's new for us. God, change us today by the power of Your Word. In Jesus' name, amen.
So, for the last couple of weeks, we've been kind of owning the reality that reading the Bible and understanding the Bible can be tough, especially some parts of the Bible that are just unclear or confusing or just plain weird. But what we keep saying is it's worth it. It's worth it to do the digging because we know that the more we dig into God's Word, the more we find God. We know that God's Word has healing for us, joy for us, peace for us, purpose for us, new life, better life, and eternal life for us. So, it's worth the dig in, but sometimes it's tough digging. It's hard to understand.
Last week was all about digging for understanding, and we saw that if we use the right tools and if we get some help from each other and from the Holy Spirit, and if we just dig in and ask the questions, we really can understand the Bible, even the hard stuff.
You guys know what's a hard job? Pastor's wife. Let me tell you something: that is a gig you do not want right there. If I had to choose, I'll just ask you: if you could choose between two jobs—pastor's wife or elephant proctologist—you tell me, right? This is a hard job. One of the worst parts of Margaret's job is just having to hear—I mean, you only have to hear the sermon once, you know? But she's hearing it all week and before it's even ready. And you know, I'm very excited; I'm constantly telling her, "Oh, it's going to be so great! We're going to talk about David and Moses and Peter and Paul. They had this incredible experience; they wrote this amazing poem; they were dealing with this hard issue, so Paul wrote this incredible letter. Isn't it amazing?" What's she going to say? Right? Well, actually, it sounds kind of stupid to me, honey. She's not going to say that, right? She's always super supportive, and it's always like, "Oh, honey, that sounds great! That is just life-changing! You are the best preacher ever!" And like, she never rolls her eyes where I can see her, and I just so appreciate that she never criticizes. You know, she never even questions what I'm talking about, but I've given her permission—in fact, I've asked her to always feel comfortable asking me one specific question, no matter what the sermon is and no matter what it's about. I've always asked her to ask me, "So what?"
So, after I blather on, you know, about history and language and culture and what happened to these people 4,000 years ago on the other side of the planet, I want her to ask me, "So what?" I want her to say, "You know what? I'm glad to hear that Eve ate an apple, and it's wonderful to hear that God made this deal with Abraham, and a donkey talked, and a snake talked, and a kid killed a giant, and the lions didn't eat Daniel. I think it's amazing that Jesus healed a leper, and Paul got bit by a snake, and John was a really fast runner, but how does that matter now? How does that apply to my life? So what? What does that have to do with my family, my relationships, my life, my problems? It's a great story; it's a great story. It's a cool poem; it's a fascinating letter from Paul to the church at Corinth, but I've never been to Corinth. I've never met a giant; I've never met a leper; I've never talked to a donkey; I've never talked to a snake; I don't like apples. So, so what? What does this story have to do with me?"
How does this story apply to me? And I want to tell you, church, that it's not just okay to ask "so what?" We should ask because if we don't ask "so what," if we don't figure out what all these stories and poems and letters and laws mean to us, we reduce God's Word to just another book. But when we dig deeper than just a pretty poem, when we dig deeper than just a strange letter or a great story or an unexplainable law, when we see what it means in our lives, that's when the Bible comes alive, and that's when it really becomes what it's intended to be—the ruach, the breath, right? The spirit, the essence of God written down. It tells us who He is; it tells us what He loves; it tells us what He wants for us; it tells us who we are and who we are to Him and who we are to each other. It affects our lives, our beliefs, our relationships, our families, our decisions, and our habits. It really does what it says it does in 2 Timothy 3:16. It teaches us truth, shows us how to live, and how to do what's right. It prepares us to fulfill our life's purpose; it gives us wisdom, power, faith, healing, and eternal life.
Jesus said in John 17:17 that God's Word makes us holy, that it makes us like Him. But for all that to happen, we have to ask "so what?" We have to figure out how it applies to our lives now—not just what it teaches, not just knowing what it teaches, but doing what it teaches. Look what Jesus says. This is John 13:17. He's been doing all this great teaching, right? And then He says, "Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing these things." Right? His brother James wrote in James 1 that God's Word has the power to save you, but verse 22 says you can't just listen to God's Word; you got to do what it says. You have to apply it to your life. We have to look at those stories and see how they fit into our stories.
It's hard digging because when we're dealing with all kinds of literature from thousands of years ago, from completely different people living completely different lives, how do we figure out the application in our lives now? How do we get through all these crazy laws and these personal letters and these really strange poems and these weird stories? How do we get through all that to the "so what?" How do we get through all of that to the life-changing part? How do we get through all of that to the application?
So today, we're going to go through a really simple three-step process to help us get from just digging for understanding to really digging for application—really seeing how this thing applies to us, how we can apply Scripture to our lives. We're going to do it through asking three questions, and the questions are: What does it say? What does it mean? And then, what does it mean to us?
So let's talk about this famous text from last week. I am quite sure that we've talked about this passage of Scripture more in the last three weeks than every church in America combined over the last three years. This is Exodus 4:24. It says, "On the way to Egypt, at a place where Moses and his family had stopped for the night, the Lord confronted Moses and was about to kill him. But Moses' wife Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised her son. She touched Moses' feet with the foreskin and said, 'Now you are a bridegroom of blood to me.' When she said 'a bridegroom of blood,' she was referring to the circumcision, and after that, the Lord left him alone."
Okay, so that's the weirdest passage I can think of. Of all the crazy stuff in the Bible, that's the weirdest one that I can come up with. So we're going to use this system: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to us?
So the first thing is, what does it say? How do we get there? I'll tell you one of the easiest things to do to start with is just read it, and then read it again, and then read it again, and then read it really slowly, and then read it really fast, and then read it in different versions. I'll tell you a really great exercise: write down a little summary. Write down your little summary. Well, this is what it says. You can also supplement with some commentaries from BibleHub.com; we talked about that last week. Word studies from OpenBible.info; you can go to BibleProject.com and get some background and some kind of context for what's going on. All this is just to figure out what does it say.
So here's my summary of this passage. I wrote down—I just read it, I read it, I read it in different versions, I looked at everything, and then I said, "Okay, well, the first question: What does it say?" Here's what I wrote down: God was going to kill Moses, but when Mrs. Moses circumcised her son, God decided to save him. And then she said that weird thing about a bridegroom with blood. Can we all agree that's what it says? Yeah, that's what it says. That's what it says.
But if we want application, right? If we want more than just to know it, if we want to live it, if we want to do it, if we want to see how that applies to our lives, we got to ask some harder questions than just what does it say. The next question we want to ask ourselves is, what does it mean? We know what it says; we got the context; we got the scene, right? We got the key players figured out; we know what the facts are; we got the storyline; we know what the words say. But now we're trying to draw some real meaning out of the text.
It's easy to see what I mean by this in poetry. Let me give you a poem from the Bible that you may have heard before: the 23rd Psalm. What it says is, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul." That's what it says. That's what it says. But what does it mean? Does it literally mean that I'm a sheep and I'm eating grass and Jesus is leading me to the stream and pushing me down with this little hooky thing and making me lay down in green pastures? Is that what it says?
I think everybody knows that's not really what it means. What it means is He's providing for me; He's taking care of me; He's protecting me; He's making me comfortable; He's making me safe. So in this step, we're looking for more than just facts, right? In this step, we're not just digging out the accurate facts. You know, Moses was going to die; his wife did this thing, and so God cooled off. Those are truths; those are truths. But we're looking for a bigger truth. What does it mean? We're looking for a deeper truth; we're looking for the transcendent truth—the truth that's bigger than the story, the truth that's universal, the truth that's eternal.
Like in the big picture, what does this mean? I see the facts; I see the little; I see what it says. What does it mean? I'm telling you, people get in a lot of trouble by skipping this step. We just want to go from what does it say to therefore what does it mean to me? So we copy and paste, and that gets us in lots of trouble, right? Here's a man that says, "You know, Deuteronomy 20 tells us that if our kids are rebellious and disobedient, we should take them to the city gates and have the elders stone them to death. My son did not clean up his room this week." I mean, that's it! We got to go straight to application, right? That's what it says; that's what it says. Disobedient—that's what it says. I said be home at midnight; he got home at 12:05. That's what it says!
So therefore, I'm going to jump to the application of what does it mean to me. This is a critical step. We've got to ask ourselves something bigger than just what does it say and then jump to what does it mean to me. We got to say, "What does it say?" and then, "What does it really mean?" We can't just copy and paste into our current situation.
And here's where people love to do this the most. You're going to get mad at me when I say this. I don't know if it's worth it; should I let me think for a second? Okay, all right, okay, all right, you asked for it. Okay, so I'm going to say it. Just give me a second to think of how to say it. Okay, so Christians—I'm going to say Western American Christians—are notorious for taking promises from the Bible. That's what it says, right? And I'm just going to paste that right into my life, and that's what it means to me, right? I'm going to take this promise that was made to a specific people at a specific time in a specific circumstance. I see what it says; I'm going to jump over what it means, and I'm going to go straight to what it means to me. I'm just going to copy and paste, right?
Okay, don't hate me. Do you guys love me? Oh gosh, that was horrible. I don't know, man; I'm really nervous now. Okay, okay, okay, here's what it says: Jeremiah 29:11. I'm sorry; I gotta go there. I'm sorry. Here's what it says: "I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "Their plans for good, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you'll find me. I will be found by you," says the Lord. "I will end your captivity; I will restore your fortunes. Yeah, I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you, and I will bring you home again to your own land." Right? That's what it says; that's what it says; that's what it says.
But a lot of people will, like, we're going to copy and paste that promise, right? If it says that, it must be meaning that to me exactly. And we're going to say, "Okay, well, what does that say? Because I'm in jail, right? I'm doing 20 years, but this says He's going to release me from my captivity, right? I don't have any money, but this says He's going to give me a fortune, right? I'm in an apartment; this says He's going to give me my own land." That is a promise God made to a specific people in a specific circumstance at a specific time in history. And I'll tell you how I know, because above that in verse 10, it says, "This is what the Lord says: You will be in Babylon for 70 years." How many of you have been to Babylon? Right? Metaphorically, I think we've all been to Babylon, but very few of us have actually even been to Babylon. But this is, "Then I will come and do all this good stuff for you." But we're not in Babylon, right? So that promise is not for us.
But the premise is for us. The premise is for us because what it means—the transcendent truth—is not about living in Babylon; it's not about 70 years; it's not about owning property. The transcendent truth of this is sometimes God's people are going to find themselves in a messed-up world. Yeah, sometimes God's people are going to contribute to the messed-upness of that world. Yeah, but sometimes God's people are going to find ourselves in a messed-up world, and it's going to be hard, and it's going to be dark, and it's going to be scary. But even there, God is with us. Yeah, and someday He will—we will be with Him. Someday He's going to make this right. Someday we will be in His protection; we will be in His provision, and we will be in His presence. And meanwhile, we should keep our faith no matter how dark and scary and weird the world around us is. That's the transcendent truth; that's the premise that is for us, right?
But we just can't skip from what it says and put it into what it means to us. That premise is for us, but the specific promise about fortunes and land and all that stuff—that was specifically for them. So asking what does it mean means we got to get away from it; we got to step back; we got to get the 30,000-foot view, right? We got to kind of pull back and get a bigger picture than just the storyline—not just what the words say, but what do the words mean?
So again, we get our tools, right? We got GotQuestions.org; we got OpenBible.info; we got BibleHub. We ask these hard questions, and we really try to understand what this passage—not just says, but what does this passage mean? And here's a really important thing: what did it mean specifically to them, to the people that wrote it and to the people that first heard it?
So in the Moses passage, right? That's a weird—like, what does it say? We know what it says; what does it mean? And you know what? What I really—I learned a lot about this through just a little bit of digging into this question: what does it mean? I was even thinking, like, they were traveling and they were stopping at a place. What does that mean? I mean, that's—you know what that is? That's Motel 6, right? They're at a hotel or something, right? They stopped at some Airbnb or—I don't know what they stopped somewhere. That's what it means; they were there.
And then I was just digging all the words out and all that stuff, and I'm telling you, the key word in that is "circumcision." I like going, "Do it." Yeah, circumcision. Yeah, that's it. If you ever wonder if you want to know how to sign circumcision, it's like that. Okay, just a second. Okay, settle down.
Okay, so this word—this is a key word, man. This is a key word. We want to know what it means, right? We want to know what it means. So I go to OpenBible.info, and I type in "circumcision." It's going to show me the verses of the Bible where that word shows up. Guess how many there are? 99! 99 times! It's obviously an important thing, right? We need to know what it is. So I need to know what does that mean? I know what it says; what does that mean to them? What does circumcision mean to them?
And it means something really powerful and really super, super, super important because going way back—grandpa, grandpa, grandpa—all the way back to Abraham, God made this amazing promise to Abraham. He said, "Abraham, I've chosen you, man. I've chosen you and your family, and you're going to be My people, and I'm going to bless you. You're going to have this amazing, huge family. I'm going to bless your family. I'm going to bless the world through your family by bringing Jesus through your family." So I'm offering you this amazing, incredible thing. If you're in, this is a covenant, right? It's a deal I'm making with you. If you're in, here's how you show me you're in—not signing a contract, not shaking hands with God—circumcision. That's how you accept my offer, kind of, right?
You tell who had some profound theology on this? George Strait, because he had a song called "Check Yes or No." Remember that song? "Do you love me? You guys know it? Do you want to be my friend? Sing it, and if you do, well then don't be afraid to take me by the hand. If you want to, I think this is how love goes." That's it! That's what God is telling Abraham and his descendants and their descendants and their descendants forever. "I'm offering you this amazing thing, man, to be My people. Check yes or no."
And when Moses didn't circumcise his son, that wasn't just something that happened. That meant something. That meant he was checking "no." Yeah, he was at least not checking "yes." He was at least unsure of which way he was going—of his identity. Am I going to be Egyptian? Am I going to be Hebrew? Am I going to really trust God and depend on His Word and His promises and His covenant? Am I going to really come out of slavery and death into freedom and life? Am I going to really come in with both feet, or am I going to hedge my bet and hold back and keep my options open?
So Moses failing to circumcise his son wasn't just a fact. It's not just what it says; it's not just what it meant. It meant something, and it meant he was choosing not to be part of the covenant that God had made with Abraham.
So what it means—the transcendent truth of this story—when you read that story, don't cut and paste, right? Don't cut and paste. The transcendent truth of this story is not that God might kill you. That's not the transcendent truth of this story. The transcendent truth of this story is not that you should circumcise your sons with a flint knife and touch your feet with the foreskin. That's not the transcendent truth of this. The transcendent truth is that being in God's kingdom means making a choice. It means going all in. Yeah, it means being different. It means separating from the world. Trusting God fully means trusting Him—His ways, His ideas, His instructions, His version of good and evil—and trusting those things even when the world doesn't.
I think it means there's no such thing as a kind of sort of Christian. There's no such thing as kind of following God, sort of being a believer. You're either in—like, all in—or you're not. And God does most of the work in this relationship, true or false? 100%. Man, I can't believe we get this offer, to tell you the truth. I mean, He does most of the work, but He does expect something. Yeah, you got to do something. You got to choose. And being God's people means being holy, and being holy means being called out. It means being separated. It means being different. It means not waffling back and forth between, "Well, I'm a Jesus follower on Sunday, and then, you know, Monday through Friday or Saturday, then I'm kind of back in the kingdom of darkness, and Sunday I jump back into the kingdom of light."
I'm going to choose our citizenship, and we're going to follow the rules and the laws and the procedures and the instructions of that kingdom. So if I'm looking at this and I'm saying, "Oh, here's this weird story," we know what it says because we read it over and over, right? We know what it means because we unpacked all this circumcision stuff and what that really, really meant. I think there are two really big transcendent truths in this story.
The first one is God requires us to make a choice. God requires holiness; He requires separation; He requires us to be different. And then I think the second transcendent truth is that when God's people fail to separate, and when we blow it, and when we really just look like the world around us, if we'll repent, we can find salvation. We can! Because that's what Moses did, right? When they circumcised that child, then that was them saying, "Okay, okay, okay, okay, we're in! We're in! We blew it; we're in now." And when we do that, we can find salvation and grace and mercy. And when God's people do that, He saves them in spite of their unholiness through sacrifice and blood.
So that's what it says; that's what it means. The third question is a big one: what does that mean to us? So now what we want to do is we want to take those transcendent truths and we want to apply them into our world, our time, in our lives, and our relationships and our decisions and our habits. And I think what this means to us is, "Okay, Moses was God's people then, right?" Right? Who's God's people now? It's us! It's us!
And so, as God's people, we are called to be separate. We are called to be holy. We're called to be different. We're called to say yes, and when we say yes, we have to get in with both feet, and we have to fully trust God. We have to let go of our old lives. You know, we have baptisms coming up. If you're interested in being baptized, talk to us in the Connection Center about it. In a few weeks, we're going to be doing some baptisms.
And here's what baptism represents: so many cool things. People like this image of, "Well, I'm washing away my sins." That's cool; that's a really cool image. But I'm going to tell you kind of a deeper biblical understanding of baptism. What this represents is that when you go down into the water, it's like going down into the grave. That's it! That guy's dead now! That guy's dead now! That guy that followed his—that followed sin, that guy that was more interested in what the world wanted than what God was wanting, that guy that wanted to look like the world instead of looking like Jesus—that guy's dead now! And when you come out of the water, this is new life—a new creation in Christ Jesus. That's what that means!
And so I think what this is saying to us is that we're called to be separate; we're called to be different. It's repentance—not just being sorry; it's turning away from our old ways and rejecting our old selves. And you know what? The way that's going to happen for us, honestly, is probably not going to be showing up in circumcision or not, right? But it will show up in our decisions; it will show up in our relationships; it will show up in the way that we live our lives and interact with the people around us and the things that we do.
If we're choosing fully embracing God's ways like Moses didn't, if we're really fully choosing God's ways—let's set circumcision over here—what would that look like for you? Right? What impact would that have on the way that you treat your neighbors? What impact, if you're really following Jesus's ways, right? I'm going His way instead of that way. I'm in with both feet now. What would that look like at school? What would that look like at your job? What would that look like in your house? What would that look like with your neighbors?
I bet you can think of a way that you have a choice probably right now. Am I going to stay kind of in the world and out of the world and in the world and out of the world, or am I going to say, "You know what? That guy's dead now! That guy's dead now! This is the way I make my decisions now. These are the things that I do now. This is the way that I treat people now. This is the way that I live my life now."
I bet you can think of ways. I'll give you one right now: go back there and register to vote after church today, right? The way you vote should be impacted by who you are. And if who you are is a Christ follower, if you're fully in the kingdom of God, that should have an impact on the way you vote. That should have an impact on the way you treat the people around you. That should have an impact on the way you treat people that don't know Jesus. That should have an impact on the way you interact with people on social media who disparage you and hate you and say ugly things about you.
Because if you're still in this world, if you're still over here in Moses, if you're still in Egypt, right? If you're still that old person, then when people write ugly stuff about you, what do you do? Something even maybe even worse, if you can, and if you can throw a scripture in there, that's really cool, right? That really digs—that really hurts, right? But if I'm saying, "That guy's dead now! That guy's dead now! That guy's dead now! This is the new way; walk ye in it! Right? This is the way that I'm going."
So this is what this story I think means to us. Romans 2 talks about a circumcision of the heart, so chew on that just for a second. I mean, this is this tearing away, yeah? This cutting away of the way I used to think and the way I used to feel and the way I used to believe—that's not me anymore! I'm cutting that stuff away! I'm no longer focused on man; I'm no longer focused on self; I'm no longer focused on the world. I'm fully focused on God and His kingdom.
So a couple of things I think—the story means to us as God's people: we are called to be different; we're called to be separate; we're called to be holy, and that should show up in our decisions, in our relationships, and our habits in our lives. And then an important part of this too is if we've failed to be fully holy, if we're repentant of that, then we can still experience life. We can still be reconciled to God and made right with God through blood and sacrifice—not the blood of the Passover, and not the blood of circumcision, and not the blood of animal sacrifice, but through the blood of Jesus.
And I'll just tell you, if you have questions about that, you should talk to me today before you leave. Before you leave, or go back to the prayer corner, and those people back there will talk to you. But talk to somebody before you leave today.
So last week, we used this text, and we looked at this really weird passage, and we saw that if we use our tools and if we get help from the people around us and the Holy Spirit, and we dig into Scripture with some hard questions, we can understand Scripture. This week, we're seeing that if we ask the questions right—what does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to us?—we can not only understand Scripture; we can actually apply Scripture.
How you guys doing? You with me? This is easy, right? Yeah, it's like everything Larry says—it's easy on Sunday.
So let's do another story, okay? And we'll kind of do this same thing. I want us to really see this idea that what does it say? You can't skip that middle step of what does it really mean and then just jump into what does it mean to me.
So here's a great story: Luke 18:18. Once a religious leader asked Jesus this question: "Good teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said, "Why do you call me good? Only God is truly good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments: you must not commit adultery; you must not murder; you must not steal; you must not testify falsely; honor your mother and father."
And the man said, "I've been doing that stuff since I was young." When Jesus heard this answer, He said, "Okay, if you want to inherit eternal life, there is still one thing you haven't done: sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me."
But when the man heard this, he became very sad because he was really rich. When Jesus saw this, He said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! In fact, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." And those who heard this said, "Well then, who in the world can be saved?" And Jesus said, "What is impossible for people is possible for God."
I'm going to tell you a story about a friend of mine named Ed that I knew years ago. Ed was just racked with guilt and shame and fear. "I know God's so disappointed in me. He must just be so mad. I've let Him down so much." And I said, "Why do you say that?" And he said, "Because look at my house! I have a nice house; we got two cars; my closet—I got clothes in there; I got more than one shirt! You know, I'm doing—we're going on vacations and all this stuff."
And I'm looking at this passage of Scripture, and I see what it says: "If you want to inherit eternal life, there's still one thing you haven't done: sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor." So he said, "So I guess that means I'm not going to inherit eternal life because I have not sold all my possessions and given everything to the poor."
You see what he did? He skipped the middle step. He should have asked not just what does it say and then what does that mean to me. He should have said, "What does it say?" and then said, "What does that mean?"
And what this really—I think what this really means—the transcendent truth of this is not just what it says: "If you want to inherit eternal life, you have to sell all your stuff." The transcendent truth from this story is that we have to love and trust Jesus only—not our religion. Remember, he followed all the commandments—not keeping all the rules. Right? We don't trust our success; we don't trust our popularity; we don't trust our wealth. And when we have all those things, it's really easy to put our faith in those things, right?
You know what? People like us—bad news—we're rich! You know that? We're rich people, man! We are rich people! And there's a peril that goes along with that because it's really easy to start putting your faith in that. It's really easy to start putting your faith in government. It's really easy to start putting your faith in your own behaviors. It's easy to put your faith in your family name—all kinds of different things.
And what this is trying to teach us—what this means—is we can't put our stock in that stuff, man! If we want to follow Jesus, all that stuff has to become secondary to us. That's the transcendent truth! You follow that? You see the difference between just saying what does it say and jumping to what does it mean to me, to saying what does it say? Let's really dig into what it really, really means. Let's pull out that transcendent truth, and then let's apply that transcendent truth to our lives.
You guys with me? You want to do one more? Okay, I got nothing but time.
So John 13:17—we kind of started with this verse. Jesus said, "Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them." Do you know what He was talking about? You remember the story? Anybody? Washing feet!
So Jesus is just, you know, washed His disciples' feet, and then He says, "This is John 13:14." What does it say? It says, "Since I washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet." That's what it says! That's what it says! What if they got toe fungus or something? I mean, that's right! That's what persecution is all about right there—toe fungus!
So if we skip from what it says straight to what it means to us, then Jesus commands us to wash each other's feet. And there's nothing wrong with washing each other's feet. That's a cool little symbolic gesture; that's an amazing thing to wash each other's feet. But that's not what it—that's not the transcendent truth of that passage.
The transcendent truth of that passage is that if we're Jesus followers, we're called to be servants, right? That we should esteem and value and honor other people more than ourselves. And one way that probably shows up is the way that we serve one another. And so, yeah, one way we could serve one another is washing feet. But for us, when we say, "What is the transcendent truth?" we should be servants; we should honor one another; we should value other people more than we value ourselves.
What does that look like in our lives? Maybe it's letting somebody in at the stop sign. You know, maybe it's taking a meal to somebody that just had surgery. Maybe it's holding the door open for people when they come into church. Maybe it's like Wade and Christine do—getting here at 7 o'clock in the morning every Sunday to put the donuts out, right? These are just ways to apply the truth of biblical stories to our stories.
We got to ask all three questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to us?
Okay, we're great on time; don't get nervous. There's lots of stories in the Bible—lots and lots of stories in the Bible. And when we're saying, "Why is it in there? What's its purpose? What does it mean?" the main purpose of most of those stories is to become part of a bigger story, right? Think of your marriage, right? I remember the story of when we first dated. I remember the story of when we proposed. I remember the story of the day we got married. I remember the time we bought our first house. Those are all stories within the story, right?
And so all of these stories in the Bible—kind of the most important thing they do is that they're part of the big story that points to Jesus. But they also have practical applications for us—not just understanding God's Word, but applying God's Word to our lives. But there are also parts of the Bible that aren't stories—poems. There are lots of poems in the Bible. When you read the Old Testament, there are so many things in there that we just think are just narrative or whatever, and they're poetry.
There's lots of poems in the Bible; there's lists of laws in the Bible, right? It's not a story; it's a list of laws. It's part of the story, but it's a list of laws. There's letters in the Bible that one person wrote to another. There's receipts in the Bible where somebody says, "You did this for me; I did that for you." There's instructions—written instructions in the Bible.
So there's all these different kinds of literature in the Bible. They're all part of the big story of the Bible, and that story points to Jesus. And I think it's just really important that we understand this: all the parts of the Bible—all the literature in the Bible—yeah, they do have application to us, but the main function of all of those things is to fit into the one big story that starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation, and it's a story that points to Jesus.
And it's really important that we get this. It's just like if I was—here's—I love this. If I was going to tell the story of the United States of America, it would include lots of little stories: Paul Revere, right? The Boston Tea Party, right? It would have all these stories about Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves, Pearl Harbor, 9/11. Each one of those is a story that fits into the story. You with me?
But if I was really going to tell the story—and it's going to be a really thick book, right? If I'm going to really, really tell the story to somebody from another planet, it would also not just be a collection of stories; it would also have poems and songs: "Star-Spangled Banner," "America the Beautiful," right? Maybe it would have some jazz because that's an American genre. Maybe it would have country; maybe it would have that George Strait song, right? It would have to have some country because that's helping tell the story of who we are.
So it would have stories, and it would have songs, and it would have poems, and it would also have some discourse—some other stuff. It would have to include the Gettysburg Address, right? It would have to include Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." How could I tell the story of America and not tell that, right? Yeah, I have to show you that; it has to be in the book.
You have to have some laws. I mean, if I'm going to tell you who we are, if I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about America, it's going to have to include the 15th Amendment. It's going to have to! And it's going to have to have some documents in it, like the Declaration of Independence. It's going to have to have some documents.
So all those laws, all those letters, all those documents, all those poems, all those songs, all those stories would tell one big story, and it's the story of the United States of America. And similarly, the Bible is laws and letters and documents and poems and songs and a whole bunch of stories, and they all work together to tell one big story, and that story points to Jesus.
So reading the poems and reading the letters and reading the laws for application especially is going to be a little bit different than reading stories. And I would love to spend a couple of hours now and really go into detail about how to read and unpack each one of those things, but instead of that, I'm just going to refer you.
Okay, if you really want to see how do I read a poem in the Bible and get meaning out of that, how do I read a poem in the Bible that was written 4,000 years ago, right? The words don't even rhyme for us in English, right? How am I going to read that and get meaning out of that? How am I going to read a letter that one person wrote to another person 2,000 years ago and get meaning out of that for my life? How's that going to happen? How am I going to look at these old laws in the Old Testament? They don't even apply to us anymore. How am I going to look at those laws? What does that have to do with my life right now?
If you want to really get some application or even just understanding out of these other types of literature in the Bible, I'm going to tell you where to go: BibleProject.com. Awesome, awesome! If you go to BibleProject.com and just—they have a whole section in there called "How to Read the Bible," and there are multiple videos—five or six minutes each. Watch one. If you don't like it, don't watch anymore. Watch one video about how to read poetry, how to read narrative, how to read discourse, how to read the Bible. I'm telling you, it really, really will help you.
And that way, we don't have to spend—or we can stay all day today! Who goes for Bible Project? Unanimous? Awesome! That's beautiful!
So let's wrap it up. Whatever type of literature you're reading—whether it's stories or poetry or discourse—the main purpose is probably just to fit into the big story that points to Jesus. But whether it's a story or a song or a letter, you can dig out truth and understanding if you just get some tools, ask for help from each other and from the Holy Spirit, and then dig in with these questions.
But then you can also find more than just information; you can find real application that changes the way you live, that changes the way you decide, that changes the way you relate, that changes the way you see God. And it starts with these three questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to us?
Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word. I mean, You've spoken to us. I just pray that You'll just renew us with how awesome that is. Just remind us of how cool it is. You could have just saved us, left us, and picked us up later, but instead, You've left us this amazing book to show us who You are and who we are, who we are to You and who we are to each other, and what You want for us. Thank You for this amazing book.
And as we're trying to unpack it and we're seeing that it's hard, I just pray, Lord, that You'll show us it's not just about understanding the truth; it's not just about understanding the facts. We want to be doers of Your Word and not just hearers. So show us, Lord, how to apply Scripture to our life.
And I just pray that everything we do, every move we make, every relationship we have, the way we vote, the way we get along with each other, the way we go to church and school and work—everything we do will be informed by Your Word. Because we're going to take Your Word, we're going to ask what it says, we're going to really do the work of figuring out what it means, what are the transcendent truths, and then we're going to ask, "What does this mean to us? How do we apply those transcendent truths to our life?"
We need Your help, so Holy Spirit, help us understand Your Word and apply it to our lives. In Jesus' name, amen.
Okay, if you're a volunteer and you've got a station to get to, this is your 30-second head start. Everybody else, just sit quietly and relax. We got nothing but time. First football game is at two; you guys are golden. Everything's cool.
I will tell you, next week, this is all kind of academic stuff we've been doing the last couple of weeks, and it's fine and it's good and all you Bible geeks are loving it, and all that—that's good for us. But it's a supernatural event to have an interaction with the Father. You agree with that? It's a supernatural event.
So this shouldn't just be a head exercise; this should be a spiritual exercise. So next week, we're going to really have some fun. Next week, we're going to say, "How can I ask the Holy Spirit to help me understand Scripture and actually hear from the Holy Spirit supernaturally?" If you're scared, don't come, okay? It's not going to be weird; it's not going to be spooky. You don't have to hold hands with anybody, okay? But next week, we're going to say, "How can we hear from the Holy Spirit, and how can He help us sync up His written Word on the page with His living Word inside of us?"
See you then! God bless you; have a great week!
on Jan 22, 2024
