We tackle the pressing menace of biblical illiteracy, offering you an anchor in the stormy seas of modern life. With clarity, we demystify the divine orchestration behind the Bible's creation, unravel the meanings of wisdom, inerrancy, and instruction in righteousness, and equip you with the knowledge to infuse Scripture into every facet of your existence for unparalleled insight and guidance.
Subscribe to our channel for your weekly spiritual uplift, and if our mission resonates with you, leave us a review to help spread the transformative power of walking with the Lord every day.
We tackle the pressing menace of biblical illiteracy, offering you an anchor in the stormy seas of modern life. With clarity, we demystify the divine orchestration behind the Bible's creation, unravel the meanings of wisdom, inerrancy, and instruction in righteousness, and equip you with the knowledge to infuse Scripture into every facet of your existence for unparalleled insight and guidance.
Subscribe to our channel for your weekly spiritual uplift, and if our mission resonates with you, leave us a review to help spread the transformative power of walking with the Lord every day.
Speaker 1:
Psalms 19, 7-14. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous. Altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea than much fine gold, sweeter also than the honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servants also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, o Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.
Speaker 2:
RSM Teen Podcast is a podcast to engage and encourage teenagers in their walk with the Lord. We desire you to crave God's word and embark on a journey of making it a daily priority in your life. Now meet your guest of the day.
Speaker 1:
Hey everyone, how is your day going today? I hope everything is going great in your world and in your lives. If I were to ask you the question here, getting started today what does it mean to be illiterate? If I were to ask you what does it mean to be illiterate, what would your response be to that question? If you look up the dictionary definition of the word illiterate, it means unable to read or write.
Speaker 1:
If I'm being honest with you, I want to talk about today maybe we're going to talk about the Bible and exactly what it is and how it will equip us in different areas in our lives but I want to talk about biblical illiteracy. Biblical illiteracy, in other words, we're unable to read or write in the moments of life because we're biblically illiterate. We don't understand necessarily what the word of God means and how powerful it truly is in each of our lives. And so when we talk about the word of God and exactly what it is, the Bible itself it consists of the Old and New Testaments, it's made up of 66 books and it has one message. And to consider that and to think about that, there's a lot there included in the word of God, and the books aren't necessarily arranged in a chronological order, but more so in categories. So we have history, poetry, prophets, gospels, the epistles and then revelation, but ultimately, god's word is a guidebook to Christian living, how we ought to live as Christians, and it contains every single thing that we need to know in there, from past, present, what's going to happen in the future, and so, as believers, we should make it a regular part of our life. We should make it a priority in our life to dive into the word of God and to understand what God is sharing with us from his word. It's interesting to note, as we get started here, that God's favorite name for the Bible is the word of God. More than 3,800 times in the Old Testament he uses language such as thus saith the Lord and the word of the Lord came, and this all claims its divine origin.
Speaker 1:
The Bible was written by God. We're going to start off and look at a very familiar verse, but if you look at 2 Timothy, chapter 3, in verse number 16, the Bible says all scripture, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. Just to break down maybe some of the definitions or the words that are in this verse and that are important for us to understand Bible reading. We're going to talk about some definitions here quickly. But wisdom, wisdom, is godly discernment that comes from a knowledge of God's word. We know the book of Proverbs talks a lot about wisdom, but we can't have wisdom apart from God's word. Wisdom is a godly discernment that only comes from having a knowledge of God's word. So if we're biblically illiterate, if we're unable to read or write spiritually to understand what God's word is saying to each of us, then we are not going to have wisdom to function on a day-to-day basis. Inspiration we saw that word there in the verse. Inspiration God literally breathed or relayed his words to the human writers.
Speaker 1:
Inerrancy the Bible is without error. Righteousness it's a moral purity Doctrine. That is what is right according to the Bible. There's a lot of doctrines that we practice or that we abide by on a daily basis that aren't necessarily biblical. Maybe it's a tradition that we have turned into a doctrine and we have to be careful of that. We have to make sure that the principles and the guidelines that we live our lives after, that we base our lives on, are 100% biblical doctrines. It's important for us to understand that, reprove what is wrong or displeasing to God. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, to understand what is wrong or displeasing to God in our present culture and in our daily lives. Correction, it says it's profitable for correction, it's how to make our wrongs right. Then, lastly, there in the verse, it says, for instruction in righteousness. This is how to stay right, how to live a morally pure life, how to interact with individuals properly, how to have the relationships that we should have and not have relationships that we should not have.
Speaker 1:
So again, who is the author, then, of the Bible? The Bible is the Word of God, but over a period of 1500 years, god used more than 40 different men from a variety of different backgrounds to record every single word in the Word of God. In most of the human writers God used to pin his words never even knew each other. Yet the Bible completely agrees in its complete, entirely tiredty, and has been proven to be 100% pure, historically and prophetically. Think about this If you were to take 10 different contemporary authors and ask them to write their own viewpoints on one controversial subject, would they all agree? The answer, inevitably, is no. There would be disagreements between one author to another and every single author, honestly, would have some kind of varying, different opinion or stance on whatever it is, even the topic that you gave them just one. But if you look at the authorship of the Bible, all of these authors, over a span of 1500 years they wrote on so many different controversial subjects and they do not contradict each other. It does not go against what the other individual was saying.
Speaker 1:
2 Peter, 120, verse 21 says, knowing this verse, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God's spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Number one I want you to notice in this short passage here in 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21, the Bible was not made by men. It says came not by the will of men. The Bible wasn't something that a group of writers thought that they would come up with and make a bunch of money off of. It didn't come by the will of men. It's important to know that Men of God recorded the Bible. Number two it says holy men of God spake. Holy men of God spake. Number three God is the author of the Bible. You'll notice there it says came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God's spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. You see, men do not reject the Bible today because it contradicts itself, but men reject the Bible today because it contradicts them, it contradicts their lifestyles, it contradicts different things that they're involved in.
Speaker 1:
And so, as we jump into this, we're going to get into studying the Bible in 2024 and going over some practical insights and ways to do so. But I first wanted to start off, in this first week of episodes of discussing what the Bible is. What are we studying? What are we giving our attention and our efforts to understanding on a more personal level? Okay, so real, quickly, a brief description.
Speaker 1:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's God-breathed, it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. And the author of the Bible is God. It was God-breathed. And then, knowing this, first that no prophecy of the scriptures of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God's spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Bible was not made by men, the men of God, recorded the Bible, and God is the author of the Bible. Hey, in this next episode we're going to get into how we can defend our Bible. Thank you for tuning in today. God bless each and every one of you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode While you're at it. Please leave us a rating and review. Our goal is not to replace your personal devotion time with the Lord, but to give you the option to tune in through the week and get a boost from the Lord throughout your day. Do life big and remember there is no greater joy than walking daily with the Lord.