Sermon Tone Analysis

Who should read the Bible

Anyone who wants to know God and hear from Him.

Imagine getting a series of text messages from an unknown number.

hello!

I hope you are having a good day.

I missed you so much.

I love you.

I’ll do anything for you.

Please will you marry me?

at what point would you know that it is the wrong number?

The Bible is God’s love letter to us.

It tells us all about who he is and what he’s done.

It tells us a grand story of how he came to save us and will some day fix everything.

This does not mean that everything in the Bible is written to us like a personal text message.

If we don’t understand what the Bible is and how we should read it, we can actually misinterpret the Bible and misunderstand God.

We can think God said something to us, when in truth, he did not.

And as Christians, since we base our entire life on the Bible, we really want to understand God’s true message in the Bible.

Two main questions in the sermon today- What is the Bible, and How Should We Read and Understand the Bible?

What is the Bible?

1. God’s revealed Word (from 7 Arrows)

How did God create the world?

God speaks.

And things happen.

(Man he made with hands+breath)

That could have been the end of everything God said.

He didn’t have to speak to Adam and Eve and promise to send a deliverer.

(Abraham promises, Moses the law, David a kingdom, and the prophets the warnings and blessings of the Day of the Lord)

God could have been silent.

But he chose to speak.

Now most everyone in this room today will be like all of God’s people that have come before us.

We will never hear an audible voice from God.

We won’t see a message written in the sky.

The way the Spirit of God speaks to us won’t always be as clear as a text from a friend.

But God does speak to us.

He has written a love letter to you.

He’s proven his love for thousands of years through millions of people to show you he has not forgotten you and will keep his promises.

God didn’t have to speak, but he speaks most clearly to us through the Bible.

The Bible is the word of God revealed by God to display God.

This is not simply a bunch of stories written by various people thousands of years ago.

These aren’t the words of men.

What the Bible says, God says.

(Rogers, Matt.

Seven Arrows: (23) )

1 Thes 2:13 “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”

2. The Bible is a gift from God

Since the Bible is one over arching story that shows the love of God, you can think of it as his love letter to you.

A letter to show you all about himself and your relationship with him.

So as you think about what the Bible is, it is a gift.

Something precious you don’t deserve to possess, but you do!

Psalm 19:7-10 “7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

No one talks about a duty like this.

They talk this way about a gift.

God’s words to us are something so special, so unique, that the wise desire it more than millions of baht.

David here is saying, wealth is not important.

Being rich and famous person is not important.

What is really important, what really brings him joy, is the relationship he has with God through his word.

Did you notice what else he compares the Word of God with?

Honey

My children love sweets.

Sophie loves chocolate, but the boys love any kind of sweets.

Now imagine if I said to them, sit down here.

You can either read the Bible or you can have chocolate.

What do you choose?

3. The Bible is clear (but not simple)

Psalm 19:7 “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;”

Some people around the world love trying to find hidden messages in the Bible.

They will find the 47th book and open to the 4th chapter and the 7th word to spell out new messages like “Go to the house of crying.”

And they will think God is telling them to go find a person who is crying.

That is NOT how God speaks to us through the Bible.

There are not secret messages you will discover if you use math or chance.

God wrote the Bible in human language, not angelic language.

He wrote it in plain language that the initial readers can understand.

The Bible is clear.

However, the Bible is not always simple to understand.

Some passages of the Bible are much easier to understand than others.

So a simple rule to understand the Bible: Use the clear passages to help you understand the hard passages.

4. The Bible is True

Inspired and inerrant

2 Tim 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,”

This is an important concept especially in our current generation.

More and more people who call themselves Christians want to say that the Bible is not really true.

(especially in the original documents).

They say the Bible contains some good messages from God, but that the Bible isn’t historically or scientifically accurate.

That there have been many errors added over the years.

That we can’t actually know what God said.

Brothers and sisters, God has miraculously preserved his word for us.

If we are to be followers of Yahweh, we must believe what he has said.

He breathed out these words into the original authors.

They made no mistake in writing the thoughts God wanted them to have on paper.

It was a miracle.

5.

The Bible is United

“The Bible is composed of 66 books, written by dozens of authors, on three continents, over thousands of years.

Yet, the Bible tells one story which points to the person and work of Jesus Christ.”

Remember after Jesus resurrection?

He was talking to some of his disciples, but they didn’t know he was Jesus?

They were really sad and confused that Jesus had died.

They knew the Scriptures and believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

They believed he was going to set up God’s eternal kingdom.

But even though they knew some of the Scriptures, they didn’t understand that their Messiah wouldn’t just come and be a king.