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Well, hopefully you've already been able to talk to your father, your dad, your earthly father, and tell him happy Father's Day. If you haven't, it's okay you want to film if you get your phone out and text him real fast, you know. But I know that for some of you in the room, if we're honest, uh you haven't had an earthly father worth celebrating today. In fact, some of you have been wounded by your earthly father, and maybe you're even estranged from them. And so just want you to know my heart goes out to you. I've prayed for you this morning, just praying that God would bring peace to those who need peace and comfort as they reflect over not having the dad that they wish they had. Um, I also want you to know that there is a heavenly father who is perfect in our absence of our our earthly father, uh, that he is good and that he loves us, and that he will not abandon us, he will not leave us or forsake us. That's what scripture t teaches us. And so it's an awesome reminder this morning. I know for others of you, this is maybe an emotional day because you've lost your father. And uh I know I didn't expect to get choked up. I know for my dad, um, I remember when he lost his father, and I remember how impactful that was on him and how hard it was for him to deal with the emotions of losing his his dad and was kind of unexpected, he got contracted cancer. But I I want to know you to know this morning that there is comfort that passes all understanding for those of us who have maybe gone through the loss of a father. And the cool thing is, I can proclaim this morning with confidence that if they know Jesus, if we know Jesus, that we will see them again. And that's a good thought, isn't it? It's an encouraging thought this morning. And so we just uh we pray for peace for those of you who have lost a father. So happy Father's Day. Not sad Father's Day, now everybody's crying. Happy Father's Day. And uh I've got my I've got my uh mug here. I had to put it up here. This is what my kids got me this morning. They were elated to give me their new Starbucks mug. I had one, it was all beat up, it was ugly. I thought it worked just fine, but they said I needed a pretty one, so I've got a new one. So thanks to my kids for my Father's Day gift. Well, you're here today on the first Sunday of a new teaching series for us. And again, if you're a guest, um, welcome. Uh if you're a regular Tinder member, uh, I'm excited about the next seven weeks. We're gonna take some time to talk. Hey, I can see you. Um we're gonna take some time to talk about what we believe and why that even matters. And let me explain to you why we felt so compelled to do a series like this, and that's because number one, uh we all have a belief system that we are operating from. We have an OS, if you will. We have this system of a set of beliefs that run or at least we see lived out in all of our lives. And maybe those beliefs for you are below the surface. Uh maybe you don't talk to talk about them, maybe you've never engaged anyone to specifically articulate what you believe. But the truth of the matter is all of us have beliefs that we are functioning in our everyday lives from, okay? And with. So let me give you a practical example. Um, and not not to run too far down this trail, but but hear this. Uh if your belief system, for example, is that you believe all people are different values based on how smart they are or how much money they have or what country they live in, uh, what neighborhood they live in, what job they have, if you think that people vary in value, because that's kind of what the world tells us a lot of times, is that people who make more money, who are smarter, who are better looking, those people are more valuable than those people that uh maybe aren't, okay? And who defines that? You know, those people that make that assertion. And so when you believe that, at your core, if you believe that, then guess what? You're gonna live your life uh out of your behavior that's gonna be shaped in such a way that's gonna put other people around you as basically servants to you. You're gonna look for ways to get people to meet your needs, to serve you, to take care of you, to make your life more comfortable, to make your life more safe, uh, to just, again, make sure that you've got the life that you want. And so that's very possible that many of us in this room, even though we wouldn't say that's our belief, we have at times seen that belief lived out. Would you agree? I won't make anybody raise hands, but I'll be honest, there's times when, if I'm honest with myself, there are beliefs in me that are messed up that make me think I'm better than other people and that they should take care of me. Uh for example, go to a grocery store and let the clerk in that moment not be fast enough. What happens? Impatience, anger, frustration, or somebody cuts in front of you in line in a car line. What happens? Anger, frustration, impatience, right? What happens with your children when they are disobeying and they are disrespecting you or just making your life uncomfortable at that moment? Anger, frustration, and it's not always about the fact that they're wrong. Many times it's about the fact it's inconvenient. Because in essence, we have a belief system that says that we're more important and that they should do what we want them to do all the time, all the all the way and every way, and make our lives more comfortable. So your belief system will shape, it will uh shape your behavior. It will be affecting constantly your behavior. So we want to speak to our belief system, knowing that what we believe is very, very important. It affects all of life. Now, I want you to also understand that in our belief systems as a church, as individuals, um, but specifically as the church, we have what we call open-handed and closed-handed issues. We have open-handed and closed-handed issues. Now, really quickly, just to make this clear for you, um, we have doctrines in the church, beliefs, a basic set of beliefs, that we say these are core doctrines. They are essential to our faith as Jesus followers. They are essential to being Christian. So one of those would be that Jesus is God. Okay, we're going to talk about Jesus in some coming weeks, but Jesus is God. He's God's Son, that he came, he died, that he rose again. All right? That's an essential issue to being a Christian. So if you are in this room today and you say that you are a Christian, you claim that you are a Christian, but you do not believe that Jesus is God, or that Jesus died, or that He did, that He uh you don't believe that He rose again, then guess what? You can't say that you're a Christian because it's an essential doctrine, it's a core belief to our faith. Does that make sense? So we would call that a closed-handed issue. We will not budge from that, and I'll explain to you why in just a minute, but that's what the Bible teaches us, okay? Secondly, an open-handed issue. There are a lot of things that are preferential, okay? There are a lot of things that we have preferences on. There's even within this room a lot of different ideas about how church should be run, how church should look. Uh, there's different ideas about how you should raise your children, for example. This one can be a highly debated one. Okay? Uh let me just give you one example that I've run into consistently as a student pastor, and now as a pastor, I hear this debate about how you should educate your kids. And I hear homeschooler parents stand up and say, you should not let your kids go to public school, and they're like pounding their fist about it. And like, if you don't, if you do that, you're a heathen. Okay? I've heard that. Literally heard that. I've heard people that are public school kids, or public school parents say, like, why are why are you letting your kid be so weird and be a homeschooler, okay? Um, why are you and just did it? Then I've seen private school kids. They just pound about private schools the only way, okay? Now here's the deal. Those are preferential issues on how you educate your kids. I know this is a hot button issue culturally, even. We see this happen again and again. Do not die on that hill. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do not make a non-biblical clear issue, a biblical issue, and say you're not Christian if you do blank. That's a preference you have. Um let me take one that's a little bit even touchier because I grew up Baptist. That was my roots. In the Baptist faith, there were two things that you didn't do unless you were a non-believer. You didn't drink and you didn't dance. Okay? If you drank or if you danced, you weren't a Christian. That's what I was told. That was kind of how I grew up understanding. So let me let me is that biblical? Okay. Just making sure, okay, I'm not, and if you're Baptist in here, I'm I'm Baptist, I don't completely abandon all my roots, okay? I love my dad's still a Baptist pastor. But what I'm telling you is that you can't go to the Bible and find a verse that says, do not dance or do not drink. It does say, do not get drunk. And it also says, don't cause your brother to stumble. So if you drink and you're causing your brother to stumble, you're in sin. You shouldn't do that. Right? But there are preferential issues, and some people by conscience just say, I can't drink because it's just not good for me to even try to go down that trail. And we should honor that. But we should not die on that hill and say you're a Christian or not a Christian based on whether you drink. Make sense? So open-handed, closed-handed. Closed-handed issues are essential, open-handed issues are non-essentials. As the way the Augustine, who was one of the early church fathers, he said this. He said, in essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty, meaning that we are gracious with one another, right? We're gracious in those non-essentials. We don't make those the main issue that we're gonna like pound that issue. And if everybody doesn't follow our way, then you're not really in. You don't really believe. And then thirdly, in all things love. Right? We should always be a people of love. Especially people who don't believe those core beliefs. They're in process. So if somebody doesn't believe what we believe that are a close-hand issue, sometimes it's because they they haven't been taught it yet. Sometimes it's because the Holy Spirit hasn't revealed it to them yet, so they haven't kind of come to that place yet. But we need to love everyone. Now, let me make sure that you're clear on this. When I quote Augustine, who says, you know, again, um, in essentials unity, and non-essentials liberty, I'm not saying that in the Bible there are things that are essential and non-essential. Everything in the Bible is essential. That's why it's there. I'm gonna talk about it in a minute. But I am telling you that some of your preferences of how you do church, how you live out your faith, some of those things are non-essentials, right? Those are not essential to you being a child of God, going to be with God forever, being forgiven of your sin. That's a way you've chosen to live, all right? And we use the Bible in the wisdom of the Bible to explain that because that's the next thing. What we believe as Jesus followers must come from the Bible. Now you would think I wouldn't need to say that, but can I just tell you that we live in the 21st century and we have abandoned the Bible time and time again, even inside the local church. We've we've added things to it, we've taken things from it, we've tweaked it, we've kind of taken scriptures and passages out of context and tried to use that to make a point. And so here's the thing. We need to go to the Bible and we need to say, what does the Bible say about this issue? That's what's important, okay? And we'll talk about that in a second as well. But if we say we are Christian and we say we do not believe in the Bible, we are not a Christian. You hear that? So we're like, oh man. Now you're like, that are you are what are you talking about? If you say that you are a Jesus follower, you believe in Jesus, and you do not believe that this is God's word, if you do not believe this is the Bible, this Bible is scripture from God, then you can't say that you're a Christian because this is essential for us to believe that this is God's word. Okay? So that means that everything we do as believers must be evaluated through what the Bible says. So I want us to look at a text this morning that really speaks clearly to about the about the Bible because we want to talk about what we believe about the scripture, the holy scripture. If you have a Bible, I want you to pull it out. I want you to read this for yourself. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's some Bibles underneath the chairs. They're kind of spread out, so you may take you a second to find one. If you don't own a Bible, you can take one of those Bibles under the chair or come find me after service, and I will make sure you get a Bible. Okay, we want to make sure that every person has a copy of the Word for themselves. Because let me just say this: there are many people who undermine the authority and the idea that the Bible is true and they've never read it. Did you hear that? Like, don't tell me you don't believe what the Bible says if you have never read it. It's the first question I ask them when they say I don't believe the Bible. Have you read it? Go read it first, then we'll talk. Okay? Because we need to find out that the Bible, what the Bible says and what it claims before we start making accusations based on what somebody else tells us, secondhand information. Right? So 2 Timothy chapter 3. I'm gonna read from verse 14 through verse 4 through verse 17. So, just four verses here. Here we go. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Catch this. 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, Paul, the Apostle Paul, is writing to his protege, his young disciple Timothy, who's pastoring a church, and he's saying to him, Listen, this is what you need to understand. All scripture is breathed by God, it's inspired by God. That's the first thing that I want you to hear this morning is that we believe as a church, as Point Community Church, we believe the Bible is God's word. Now, people use this term, they use this title, but let's talk about what that means. It means that it's God's word, that God is speaking to us. In the book of Genesis, Genesis 1, 10 times, just in the first chapter of the Bible, it says, And God said. God is a God who speaks, He's a God who relates to us, right? He communicates. And one of the clearest ways that God communicates to us is through His Word, His written word. He's put it in a book form for us so that we could have it to learn from and to grow from. And we're gonna talk about how that impacts us. But know this: we have to begin from a place of understanding. This is God's word. It's scripture says all scripture, not some of it, not part of it, not pieces that we like and part and then we just cut out the parts we don't like, which is what Thomas Jefferson, one of our first presidents, did. Uh he took the Bible, he was a deist, and he said, Look, I don't like this part of the Bible. So he just cut it out. He just called it the Jesus philosophy. And he basically trimmed up his Bible and took parts that he liked and took the parts out that he didn't like, and he said, This is my Bible. How arrogant, right? But that's what he did. Because, and that's and honestly, that's what many people still do today. Maybe they don't literally sit down and physically cut it out with scissors, but the way they live, they just cut parts of the Bible they don't like out. Okay? Now here's another thing. Um, this is the reality of the Bible. It is a miracle. I'm not going to do an apologetic for why I think you should believe the Bible this morning. I want to talk about what the Bible specifically says about itself, but I want you to understand the miracle of this word that you hold in your hands. I mean, the chances are that many of you have countless copies all over your house, right? Um, I didn't bring them this morning with me, but I've got a Bible starting from when I was very young, like had pictures in it. And then I've got like, as I got to be a little bit older, and then I got to be an elementary kid, and I got the one, you know, when I became a Christian, and then I got the one that was, I was a little rug rat uh preteen, and then I got my student ministry uh Bible that I had, and I've got this stack of Bibles at home, you know, from the years kind of as I progressed, and it's interesting every now and then to look at it and to look at what I wrote when I was learning about God as a little kid and then as a teenager, and and so it's very it's a very interesting process, but many of us have many Bibles, and we forget just how much of a miracle this Bible is. Over 1,500 years of writing, 40 different authors, authors roughly, 40 different authors who wrote from in three different languages Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and it's collected over a period of time, and it came from multiple cultures. And in fact, when you come to the Bible, what's so cool about it is that it's 66 books, so it's it's like walking to up to a library. It's like picking up a little library. Instead of just one book, you're actually picking up 66 books. They have different genres, different, just like you when you go to a normal library, um, you would find that there's different types of books in there. But you would find that in the Bible there's different types of writing. There's poetry, there's law, there, there's history, there's these different types of genres throughout scripture. It's a fascinating book. But here's what's amazing. Over that 1500 years, 40 authors, all the cultures, all of the language, all the different things that happened, guess what? It never contradicts itself in its message. It never contradicts itself in its message. And the Bible that we read today, again, I don't have enough time to do this this morning. It has been rigorously, rigorously, time again, and many times viciously attacked and evaluated. And it has stood the test of time. You know why? Because it is God breathed. And if we get up on Sunday mornings and we teach something other than this Bible, we need to close our mouths. This is what we go to. It is God breathed. It will change our lives. The scripture says in Hebrews, it says that it is living and active, it is sharper than any double-edged sword, it divides bone and marrow. Why? Because it is God breathed. It is inspired by the living God. He inspired men. In fact, in fact, it says this in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 20 and 21. First of all, you should know this. No prophecy of Scripture comes from one's own interpretation. Because no prophecy ever came by the will of man. Man didn't just make this stuff up, it didn't come from the will of man. Instead, men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. It's interesting that it uses the language that it is God breathed, because in the New Testament, the word for the Holy Spirit is the word pneuma, which really means, or it can be translated to wind or breath. So what it's telling us is that God's word. Stay there. God's word is breathed into these men who wrote it down. And what's cool is that God didn't take away their personality when they wrote it, but that it's written in these different personalities and these different types, like from a farmer, like Hosea or Amos. You find these Old Testament prophets, you find these different folks that are writing the text in their different ways, and then even in the New Testament, when you get the gospels, you get these different collections of viewpoints. And yet, again, it never, catch this, never contradicts itself. We believe that the Bible is true, it is accurate, it is without error. That's what we believe, okay? Just want to be straightforward with you this morning. If you don't believe that, this is still a safe place for you to come. But I want you to know that what our elders believe is that God's word is true and it's accurate. We can trust it. It is trustworthy in all of life. It is reliable. Everything should be tested and filtered against it. In fact, as I stand up and teach every Sunday morning, if you are a regular tender and a member here and you say you follow Jesus, you should always take what I am saying and you should test it against the Word of God. Interesting story for you. You would think that in places around the world, we've been talking the last couple weeks about the global mission. You would think about places around the world where they don't have uh formal theological training for their pastors. You would think that there would be a lot of heresy, meaning there would be inaccuracies about what's taught about Jesus and the Bible and all these core, these closed-handed document uh doctrines, right? You would think there'd be a lot more of that in those places. What's interesting is actually in a lot of the places in third world countries we find that people, they don't look to one person to give them all of their Bible knowledge and their Bible feeding, if you will. Like they don't look to a pastor to stand up and to, because he's the trained guy, to spoon feed them the word. They get into it for themselves. So when they get together, guess what happens? They sit in a circle and they talk about what the Bible means and they sharpen each other as they're in community learning and understanding the Bible. Actually, there's less heresy. Catch this, there's less heresy, there's less false teaching, false doctrine overseas in many of these settings because they challenge one another rather than just sitting back and saying, okay, well, they're the expert, I believe whatever they say. If you turn your TV on and you hear a teach a pastor teaching on TV, not every one of those guys is teaching truth. Are you hearing me? Not every one of those guys is teaching the gospel from our text. And so we need to test it against the truth of the word of God. Psalm 33, 4 says it this way For the word of the Lord is right, and all his work is trustworthy. If God's word says it, you can count on it. It is sure. It is true. It is a promise that is going to always come to pass. But not only is it true and trustworthy, it's authoritative, meaning that it's what we put our lives, we submit ourselves to. Now, some of you may have grown up around Catholicism. I don't intend this to be a slam on Catholicism in the sense that I'm not trying to shame anyone, but let me tell you about Catholicism, what where they go awry. Okay? One of the big pieces here is about how we see the Bible. In Catholicism, if you grew up in the Catholic Church, what happens is that they actually elevate a person over the Bible. So the priest, all the way up to the Pope, like they they basically give you the interpretation of what the Bible means. Now, it was originally intended to protect people from false doctrine. But here's what's happened. Unknowingly, over the centuries, over time, we actually elevate people over the Bible instead of Bible over people. And what happens in that setting is that a person's opinion on translating how the Bible is translated, like that's that's the end-all be-all. Why is that dangerous? Because no one's God. No one is going to get it every single translation right personally. They need the community of people. We need to go to God's word and we need to always submit ourselves to what God's Word says. It's our authority. As a church, our elders, one of the things that's, because this is a close-handed issue, is that we want to protect the church from false doctrine. Anything that doesn't match up with Scripture, we want to address. We want to make sure we're speaking clearly on. It has authority. Here's what I've learned. There are a lot of people who they undermine the authority of Scripture, and you know why they do? Why they attack it, why they say it's not true? It's because they don't want to have to submit to it. They don't have to do what it says. I mean, can we be honest? But here's the thing: the Bible, I would be, I mean, wouldn't it be surprising if you never read something in the Bible that you didn't disagree with? That didn't make you uncomfortable? Because it's God speaking to us. And unless all of us in here think, feel, and act just like God, which we don't, we're going to read the Bible and sometimes we're going to feel like, oh man, I don't really want to know about that. I don't really want to be called out on that. I don't really want to feel that pain of being wrong. And so many times people undermine scripture. I'm telling you that this morning because here's the thing. You're going to read the Bible sometimes, and it's going to go against what the culture says. It's going to go against what you feel and you should do. People that use this phrase, follow your heart, that is foolishness. Can I just say that? I don't want to hurt your feelings this morning, but I'm just telling you, when people say stuff like follow your heart, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Do not follow your heart because the Bible says that our hearts are foolish, that they are easily deceived, and that they will lead us places to do things that we feel are right, and we'll follow our heart, and we'll find out that there's destruction at the end of that path. Follow God's word because it's true, it's right, it's trustworthy. You can follow it. It's authoritative. Isaiah 55, 8 and 9, just got to say this before we move on. It says that as high as the heavens are above the word the earth, God's ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So don't be surprised when you read the Bible and you're like, that's not what I've been taught. That's not what I think. And then we don't take this Bible, we don't take God's standard that's in his Bible. We don't lower it to fit our lives. We raise our lives to fit the standard. Right? With God's help, with his grace, we say, God, help us to get in line with your word rather than trying to dumb your word down or to cut parts out of what we don't like or to mess with it. We we say, no, God, we're gonna follow you because you're the one who's true, not us. And this word will show us things that are painful at times. But then when he shows us things that are painful, this is why we teach the whole Bible. When he shows you things in your life that you disagree with or that are painful that hurt because you're you may it shows you that you're wrong, then you get to turn to God's grace. And you get to say, God, help me. And maybe some of us in this room, it is Father's Day, and we fathers, we don't like to be wrong. But maybe in this room you feel like, well, you know, I just I can't I can't embrace that. Maybe it's just too hard for us to humble ourselves, to be under authority of that, but also just to even be able to turn to God. But it's the only way that we can live in the light of truth. The next thing that the Bible says about itself in this passage is that it is understandable. It says that it's profitable for teaching. So, question for you What does that infer if it says that it can be taught? What is the implication? What does a teacher do? They teach so that people can learn. And the teacher has to know what they're teaching. I mean, I've had some teachers that it didn't seem like they know what they were teaching at times, but for the most part, they're teaching stuff that they have learned themselves. The Bible is understandable. I have heard people play this card. Well, you know, the Bible is archaic and it's old, it's outdated, and you can't understand it, so like we really should dismiss it. It was for a different people at a different time, at a different place. And honestly, like I read it and I'm just confused, and so I just don't want to even mess with it. Don't buy into that, okay? Don't buy into that. The Bible is understandable. Now, I'm gonna tell you that while it is understandable, it is work to understand it. And it requires, catch this, it requires God to understand the Bible. Let me explain what I mean. In Psalm 19, verse 7, first it says, the instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one's life. The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise. So when you start the process, guess what? It's gonna feel a little bit like, wow, I don't really know where I am what I'm doing. I don't really know what this is about. Um I always tell people to start, if they've not been reading the Bible personally, I tell them to read the book of John. And just read a chapter a day. Read the book of John. It's a really good account of Jesus' life. Uh John's very straightforward, very direct. He's got some great theology, meaning, you know, understanding of who God is, what he's doing, which is particularly Jesus, Christology that's there. And so it's a great way to read the Bible and just kind of get your feet under you. You probably don't want to go start in Numbers or Leviticus or one of those books in the Old Testament. Some of you laugh because you've read them and you're like, wow, like what is this stuff, right? But you want to start somewhere and just read through it and ask God to speak to you. But understand that as you work at this, what will enable you to understand the Bible is not just purely your intellectual ability. The Bible's not just for smart people. That's a good thing, right? Amen. Think about Jesus' disciples. I'm not saying fishermen are dumb, but he did pick fishermen, not the ones who'd made, you know, the A-team and their culture, because the A-Team was the one that were the scribes and the Pharisees, the ones that were up at the top of the line they were teaching in the temple at the time. They were the ones who were the smarties. And so they were up there. And Jesus picks these fishermen and he picks them and he says, I want to teach you. And part of that is to think because people who are smart, like we think we're so smart in America, like we're arrogant, so we're not teachable. If there is one thing I pray consistently for myself, and but particularly for my children, because I saw it in myself, is that they will be teachable. That we will be teachable. But notice this: you have to learn the Bible. You have to learn how to study it. You have to learn and work at understanding it. But it's not just intellectually discerned, it comes through the Holy Spirit. Let me help you understand that better. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 12. Again, the apostle Paul, he's writing to the church at Corinth, and he says this. I'm going to just start in verse 13. There's some other context that's around it. But he says, We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God's Spirit because it's foolishness to him. He is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. What is Paul trying to say? He's saying that if you want to understand the Bible, you're going to need God to help you understand the Bible. Here's the cool thing. The same Spirit that breathed the Word of God, his words, into those men in the Old Testament, in the New Testament Bible, the scriptures that we read today. The same Holy Spirit that breathed and inspired those men to write these things down is the same Holy Spirit that lives inside of us today who will illuminate our hearts to understand what the Bible says. Isn't that cool? That's why you don't have to have a pastor explain everything to you. Now there are some things that, again, it takes study and it takes time, and if you over time you start to learn things, our study of Scripture and our understanding of God is cumulative. It takes work. But you can read the Bible and you can ask God for help to understand the Bible and He can speak to you. How many of you have ever been reading the Bible and you saw something there? You'd read a passage like 800 times, you felt like. You read it and you saw something completely different that day. It wasn't just circumstantial. The Holy Spirit was showing you something in the Bible. He was showing you something in the scripture. You know why? Because it is alive, it's active, it's life-changing. It's not just like any other book you pull off the shelf. It's not just a fairy tale. It's actually the words of God. And he's speaking to you because he wants to relate to you. Not just that you would have intellectual knowledge about him, but you would actually have a relationship with him. Isn't that cool? God wants to speak to us. And he wants to speak to us in a way through his Holy Spirit in us. Actually, this is what Wayne Grudham says about it. He says, Since the things of God are spiritually discerned, meaning it takes the Holy Spirit to understand it. A proper understanding of Scripture is more often a result of an individual's spiritual condition than his or her intellectual ability. Can I just say that this is coming from a guy who's one of the smartest dudes on the planet? He's written this book called Systematic Theology. It's like this big Bible doctrine. It's a massive book on understanding all the doctrines of God. He is an incredible thinker, very clear and very articulate. And he says, listen, you want to go to the Bible and you want to understand it's not just about intellectual ability, it's about your spiritual condition of your heart. Are you in a position where you are humbly coming to God saying, God, teach me? Are you in a position where you're saying, God, not only will you teach me, but I will listen and I will obey? Because here's the reality, even in that. Many of us, we want to know what God's word says, and God says, Well, why don't you do what you already know? We're always digging for something new. God, show me something new. Surprise me. Like, show me something shiny and new so we can chase after it. That's our culture's way. And God says, Well, love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, I think sometimes God's going, I want to move on to lesson two, but you got to get lesson one. You know? You want to go to Z, and we're still at B back here. I feel that way in my life many times. I've been around the Bible and for far far too many times, like I'm looking for something deeper. And God's saying deeper means obey me. Deeper means do what I say. Not just listen and hear and read and listen to great preachers on podcasts and watch great sermons on this or that or the radio or on TV and just hear more stuff that tickles your ears. I want you to know we need to know God's word and we need to do what it says. And the Holy Spirit will help us do that. Jesus would often say this. He would say, Let him who has ears what? Let him hear. We need to ask God to open our ears. To open our hearts. In fact, one of the prayers that I should pray for those people around me who don't believe in Jesus, who don't believe in the gospel, who don't believe the message of the Bible. One of the greatest prayers we can pray consistently for them is, God, would you open their hearts and open their ears, open their minds and their ability to understand? Because we can't do that. I can't do that. We could sit down all day long and debate, okay, you know, how's creationism versus evolution and how's this, that, and the other? We could talk about all these issues. But God has to save people. God, he's the only one who could save people. He's the one who has to illuminate their heart, he has to open their minds to truth. And some people go, well, that's a cop out. Listen, all I know is that God saved me, not my, I didn't save myself. And he had to do that through his grace and his mercy, reaching into my life and opening my heart to the truth. And he will do that for every person in this room as you cry out to him, as you ask him to open your heart. We also believe that the Bible says about itself, it is necessary for salvation and maturity. Notice what it said in the text, verse 15. From that, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred scriptures, which by the way, scriptures just means writings. It's capitalized there because it's referring specifically to the Bible, the Old Testament, particularly here. But notice that he says the sacred scriptures, which are able to what? Give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. To give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. The message of the gospel, the good news, is a word. It has to be read, it has to be understood, it has to be heard. And the Bible proclaims that word to us. So here's the thing the reason we know the gospel, the reason we know what Jesus has done for us to make a way for us, is because it's in the Bible, right? And so we have to look to the Bible because let's be honest. Um, would any of you write the story of the Bible the way it's written? I mean, if I'm thinking about this, there's parts of it I'm like, why did you put that in there, God? That just confuses people, right? Or that maybe this is that. That's my thinking. That's my human thinking. But God knows exactly what he's trying to do. And he put it in there exactly how he wants. And he writes the story that he gave his son, his one and only son, to die for us so that we no longer have to perform for our salvation, but it has been done in Jesus. That's the message. So, every person in this room today, I want you to hear this. Going to church doesn't save people. Reading your Bible doesn't save people, praying enough doesn't save people, serving people who are homeless doesn't save people. Uh, taking care of your wife and your children well does not save people. Being good enough doesn't save people. That's what the Bible says. You cannot be good enough. No one is good but God. That's what the Bible says. The only thing that can save us is Jesus, who was perfect and he was spotless, and he died on the cross. And if we put our faith and trust in him, that he not only died, but that he rose again, then we can have eternal life. That's what John 3.16 says. So if you, the only reason I know that message and I can stand up here and proclaim that is because the Bible says it. That's where it comes from. Right? So we need to understand the message of the Bible for salvation, but also maturity. Notice what he says in the passage as he gets to verse 16. He says it's profitable for teaching, for rebuking. Everybody loves that word, right? Telling us that we're wrong. It rebukes us, it corrects us, it instructs us, it trains us in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, grown up, mature. In Ephesians 4, it even says there, I won't go to that passage right now, but it says that God's given different roles in the church to teach God's word, to teach the knowledge of God, which again comes from his word, so that what? So that we will grow up and be mature. We will grow up and be mature. If you want to be a mature believer, read the Bible. Spend time in the Bible. Read it, memorize it, pray it, meditate on it, think about it, consider it, reflect on it, hear teaching on it, yes. But spend time in it personally. The people who are mature are people who spend time in God's Word because God's Word will mature you. It's living and it's active, it will shape your life. It will change you as the Spirit works together with the Word. Now, one caveat here, and I said this earlier, don't think for a minute that if you just study the Word and uh you study the Bible and you just try to make it into an intellectual exercise, that you're going to become a mature person. I know some men who study the Bible for their entire lives who don't believe in Jesus. They could tell you a lot about the Bible, a lot more than I can. They're very intelligent, they're at very, very uh prestigious universities and around the world, and yet they don't believe in Jesus Christ. So it is possible to actually read the Bible and not believe in it. One of those guys is named Bart Eriman, and he's very popular in the world today. He's written several books, and he undermines the authority of the Bible. And the reason that he he does that is because ultimately he doesn't have a personal relationship with Jesus. So he knows a lot about the Bible, but he doesn't know the God of the Bible. So just that, be careful, be very careful. But at the end of Ephesians 4 passage, what I love is he says this that when we become mature in the Christ's fullness, because we understand what God has called of us to do, and we're growing and we're developing, not just individually but collectively as the church, he says, then we will no longer be little children, tossed around by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. There are people who are trying to teach you things that are not true, that are not from the Bible. And you need to have a check in your spirit that says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That doesn't match up with scripture. I don't believe I don't believe it. Just because somebody has some letters after their name, just because they articulate and are seem important, doesn't mean you should buy what they say. Just because they're really gifted and they make you feel warm and fuzzy when they talk. Just because somebody gets you emotionally fired up, doesn't mean you should believe what they say. Right? I'm not going to call anybody out specifically, but there's some teachers on TV that they are adding to the gospel. They're adding other things to the gospel. There's even people who say things like this that if you follow God, he will give you more money. If you follow God, or if you give us money, then God will bless you and give you more money. Where is that in the Bible? Don't fall in that trap. Look at what the Bible says. It says there are false teachers that are going to come and they're going to tickle people's ears and they're going to go, oh man, they're amazing. And they're going to have huge crowds. So don't be deceived. Listen, there are a ton of people across this globe today that are meeting in churches, churches, that do not believe Jesus is the Son of God and He is the Savior of the world. So a crowd doesn't mean it's right. A crowd doesn't mean it's true. Right? We've got to make sure that we're aware. And the word helps us do that. Fourthly, is this it is complete. It's complete. It's complete. It's 66 books, 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament books. And it is complete in the way that God wants it to be complete. Around 400 A.D., the early church fathers they knew that the canon needed to be closed. They needed it to figure out how to make sure that there was unity and consensus about what was being taught in the churches and which uh scriptures were going to be elevated as authoritative and which ones were going to be kind of pushed aside. And so they did the hard work. It was already clear the church was already operating with these books that we use today. Isn't that cool thought? That people were standing up in their church services in the 100s and 200s and 300s A.D. and they were proclaiming from the same Bible that we teach from today. Different language, which is unlike Islam, by the way, because in Islam you can only study the Quran in Arabic, which is interesting because most people can't speak Arabic or don't read Arabic, but yet they have to know what their Quran says, their Bible says. We don't believe that's the case. We believe that God can help us translate the scripture into a language that we can understand, and that not only can He translate that language into a way we can understand it, but it can be accurate and faithful to the message that God's given us, right? And so know that. We believe that this is a credible canon of Scripture and that we can be unified around that. It is complete, it is unmatched in its ability to speak to us clearly and directly. It is inspired by God, like we said at the beginning. It is exactly what God wants us to know and do. It's exactly. And I just want to caution you do not add to this Bible. Do not add to it. Do not take from it. In fact, Proverbs 30, verse 5, if you just need a blunt, straightforward directive on this, Proverbs 30, verse 5 and 6 says this. Don't add to his words, or he will rebuke you, and you will be proved a liar. That's good. There's other scriptures I could read, but I thought that was so direct. If you try to say that God's word is false, that it's a lie, that it's not true, guess what? God will rebuke you. I don't know what that rebuke's gonna look like, but rebuke is not a cool word. Okay? So it doesn't, it's not gonna be good. And when he rebukes us, he also says, you will be proven a liar. Now that that fact that you will be proven a liar, I don't know if that's like here in this life, or if I don't know if that's when Jesus comes back and says, You're a liar. I don't know, but neither one of those seem good to me. Okay? The fact that we would try to undermine the authority of Scripture, to undermine the truthfulness of Scripture is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Do not add to it. Do not misuse and abuse the scripture. Like in our country, that they use the text to try to make a case for slavery at one point. And man, I just how how we can do that when we can take the text. Because you know why? We we just take these few things we like and we kind of use it for our own purposes. People do this all the time. I won't even get on that soapbox. Ultimately, we've got to be very cautious about adding anything to God's word, taking anything from God's word, because we will find ourselves in trouble. Notice this. Mormonism, it adds to God's word. Okay? I just want you to know our stance is Mormonism adds, they have additional text that they add to God's word. And that is not Christian in that way. They want to call themselves Christian, but it's not because Mormonism adds to the Word of God. That additional text. Jehovah's Witness. They change the text, they tweak the text, they take pieces of it out, they have different interpretations on the text. I don't know what your story is, I don't know what your bent is, and I realize that we live in a world of tolerance where we're not supposed to stand up and say stuff directly about other religions. But in the church, let me just tell you, those two faiths that call themselves Christians, they mess with the word of God and therefore they undermine what it means to be a Christian. So you can't say you're a Christian and change what the Bible says. Are you with me? You can't. I know that's not popular. I know that people, you know, again, we're supposed to be tolerant of everybody, and I do tolerate them. I love them. And I want to show grace to them by telling them that you change the Bible and it's wrong. If you want to know God, you have to spend time in God's Word. Because ultimately the Bible is all about God, who he is, and what he has done. It's all about God, who he is, and what he has done. If you want to personally have a relationship with God, read his word. If you want to know how life works, read God's word. If you want to find wisdom, read God's word. If you want to find real life, read God's word. If you're on a quest for truth, read God's word. If you need to know how to manage money, read God's word. If you want to know how sexuality works, read God's word. If you want to know how marriage works, read God's word. If you want to know how to parent your children, read God's word. If you want to know how to handle your job and your jerk boss, read God's word. If you want to know how to handle all the things in life that you are struggling with, read God's word. Do you get the point? Like, that's for me too this morning. Read God's word. Don't think that you can grow up and follow Jesus without his word. We can't. We neglect it far too often. This is not legalism this morning. This is an encouragement to you that I want you to know that this book is a gift. It is a gift to us. It is a treasure. We don't worship it, we worship Jesus. We do not elevate this over Jesus or God, but it is God's word and it is authority in our life. And so I plead with you, do not neglect his word. Do not neglect it. Don't wait on somebody to spoon feed you the Bible. Read it yourself. Wherever you are. If you've never read the Bible by yourself personally, like come talk to me if you need help getting started. We have a reading guide in our worship guides every week. On the right, you can just start reading some of those passages. And the passages this week are about the word of God and about how important it is and how significant it is. This matters. But ultimately, catch this again. If you want to have life now and life forever, read God's Word because it will point you to the personal work of Jesus. It will show you that Jesus is the way, is the truth, is the life, and that no man comes to the Father except through Jesus. That's what it'll teach you. Isn't that awesome? Life is available to us in the person of Jesus. Let's pray.