Read The Story of God

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The Practice of Scripture

The content of these sermons is 80% from the resources from our friends at Practicing the Way…20% my work. Practicing the Way is a ministry that resources churches like ours as we pursue apprenticeship to Jesus.

Matthew 5:17-19

Read the Story of God

Intro hook:

• In Oxford, England there is a memorial known as “Martyr’s Cross.” It marks the spot where Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and two other bishops were burned alive by Queen Mary in the English Reformation for “heretical teachings,” which, in fact, were orthodox teachings they had rediscovered by reading the first English translation of the Bible, paid for in blood by another martyr, William Tyndale.

• Tyndale was a linguist at nearby Cambridge University, who’s been called the father of modern English.

• Fluent in both Greek and Hebrew, when he read Scripture in its original languages, he came to a conclusion that we take for granted today, but was radical at the time: that every follower of Jesus should be able to read Scripture in their own language.

• But that was actually illegal in 16th-century England.

• The powers that be — both in the government and the church — thought Scripture was too dangerous to be put into the hands of ordinary people.

• So, Tyndale escaped to Germany.

• From exile, he translated the first-ever English edition of the New Testament.

• With the help of a wealthy patron who ran a shipping business, he smuggled 18,000 Bibles back across the Channel into England.

• Followers of Jesus would hold secret meetings in homes, where they would read the Bible out loud, many of them hearing it for the first time.

• Henry VIII, the King of England, was enraged. He bought 6,000 copies through a spy and had them burned on the steps of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

• He made passing out Bibles a capital crime.

• Eventually, Tyndale was captured and burned at the stake.

• Witnesses to his execution said his last words were a prayer, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”

• And God answered his prayer.

• Just three years later, the king changed his mind and not only allowed but funded the translation of the Bible.

• As the saying goes, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” But this raises the question …

• What was it about people reading the Bible that terrified the political powers of the day so much they were willing to censor, or even ban and burn every copy they could find?

• And what was it about Scripture that so many people were willing to suffer exile, torture, and even death, just to get a copy into our hands?

The Bible is no ordinary book.

• Whatever Scripture is, it certainly is no ordinary book.

• And from the earliest days of the Jesus movement all the way through church history, followers of Jesus have said in unison: Scripture is more than a well-curated collection of stories and poems and historical records. It’s like a map to another world. Like a portal to a whole other reality — what the Celtic Christians called a “thin place.” And if you enter it, it has the potential to change not just your life, but the world.

• And yet, here we are today, many years later, and let’s be honest: Many of us have two or three Bibles lying around our home, but we don’t even read them.

• In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of “the post-Bible Christian”: a modern, Western kind of person who retains a vestige of Christian spirituality, while attempting to sever any serious ties to Scripture.

• We don’t burn Bibles anymore, we just ignore them or worse, turn them into weapons or manipulate them to suit our preference.

illus: Tear out pages of Bible

Seam: What are we missing? What did they see that we don’t?

Jesus was a rabbi and we are invited to be His apprentices.

• This Practice is designed to help you follow Jesus.

• And Jesus was a rabbi, which is an Aramaic word meaning “teacher.”

• Rabbis were teachers of Scripture.

• Like any 1st-century rabbi, Jesus had most, if not all, of the Hebrew Bible — or what today we call the Old Testament — put to memory.

• His mind and imagination were steeped in Scripture. His identity itself and his vision of life were extrapolated straight out of its writings.

• Read Jesus’ teachings! They are full of quotes and allusions and prayers and prophecies and promises right off the pages of Scripture.

• And Jesus’ view of Scripture was incredibly high.

• He said things like, “Scripture cannot be broken.” in John 10.¹

Mark 12:35–37 (CSB) — 35 While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he asked, “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? 36 David himself says by the Holy Spirit: The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ 37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How, then, can he be his son?” And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.

• Jesus is blatantly saying that this ancient text was God speaking through David.

• Also in Mark 12, he rebuked the religious leaders by saying, “Are you not in error

because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?”³

Mark 12:24–27 (CSB) - 24 Jesus spoke to them, “Isn’t this the reason why you’re mistaken: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”

• Then He Goes on to tell us Wholehearted devotion is what God desires…

Mark 12:30 (CSB) - 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Seam: If we’re going to apprentice under Jesus, we need to come to see Scripture through his eyes. To that end … Let’s look back at our teaching text in Matthew 5.

• In context, this is from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

• Jesus frames his most famous teaching with a word on Scripture.

Matthew 5:17–- “17 “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

• “The Law and the Prophets” was a common way of referring to the Bible of Jesus’ day.

• “The Law,” or in Hebrew, “the Torah,” was the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

• And “the Prophets” was a way of referring to the rest of what we call the Old Testament.

• “Do not think I have come to abolish …” The word “abolish” is Katalyō, and it’s used later by Matthew to mean destroying a building or institution. It was a technical term in Jesus’ day that meant to disobey or dismiss the Bible…to fail or fall short of following through.

• Apparently, Jesus was saying and doing things that were so radical, some people thought he had come to disobey the Bible — to throw it out as a relic from the past and move on.

• But he says, “I have come to fulfill them.” Now, the word “fulfill” is a twist; it’s a surprise to the ear.

• What’s the opposite of disobey? To obey, right? You would expect Jesus to say, “Don’t think I have come to disobey the Law or the Prophets; I have come to obey them.”

• But instead, he says, “I’ve come to fulfill them.”

• In Greek, it’s the word plerosia, which is used all throughout the book of Matthew for a prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures coming to pass in Jesus.

• Jesus sees the entire story of the Bible as all leading to him.

• Matthew 5:18 “18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.”

• Okay, follow me here: The word that is translated “smallest letter” in the NIV translation is referring to the Hebrew word yod — the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet.

• It’s literally the size of an apostrophe.

• And the word that is translated “the least stroke of a letter,” is referring to a little serif that is used to distinguish the Hebrew letter khaf from resh. It’s a tiny little hook, like the difference between a capital O and Q in English.

• Another way to translate this is: “Not one dot of an i, not one cross of a t will drop out of the law ... ”⁵

• Jesus is saying that the Bible, down to its smallest details, will hold true until everything is “accomplished.”

Jesus came to reveal the full picture of God and His Story of redemption and renewal.

Illus: Full Circle Meaning…

Jesus invites us to be His apprentices; becoming like Him.

Matthew 5:19 “19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

• The word “sets aside” is the same word translated “abolish” in the line before. Again, it means to disobey.

• He’s saying that anybody who disobeys the least — and notice the wordplay here — the least of these commands will be called least.

• But, whoever “practices” — notice his language — practices “These commands” –

referring to the commands of the Bible, and in particular, the ones Jesus is about to teach in the Sermon on the Mount — “will be called great in the kingdom ….”

• Meaning that if you don’t disobey or dismiss the teachings of the Bible, but instead you take them really seriously, in particular, Jesus’ teachings on the Bible, and you devote your life to practicing them and teaching other people how to practice them, then you will grow into one of the great ones in the Kingdom of God.

Point: You could put it this way:

For Jesus, there is a reciprocal relationship between the place of Scripture in our lives and the level of our formation into Kingdom people.

• This is why we read the Bible;

• Not because we have an odd love for ancient literature, but because we have come to love and follow Jesus, and, at an intuitive level, we know that following Jesus and immersing our minds in the library of Scripture are inseparable.

illus: FC Kids Inspire Imagination

• But he is the reason we trust Scripture, not the other way around.

• I love this from Andrew Wilson, the Reformed Bible teacher from London:

• “Ultimately … our trust in the Bible stems from our trust in Jesus Christ … I don’t trust in Jesus because I trust the Bible; I trust the Bible because I trust in Jesus. I love him, and I’ve decided to follow him, so if he talks and acts as if the Bible is trustworthy, authoritative, good, helpful, and powerful, I will too … even if some of my questions remain unanswered, or my answers remain unpopular.”⁶

As apprentices of Jesus, we organize our whole lives around three basic goals: • To be with Jesus. • To become like him. • And to do as he did.

• And Scripture is essential to each goal.

• To be with Jesus: As we read, we discover this isn’t like reading an ordinary book. The author is with us in the room. Reading this ancient library is a way of opening our hearts to God’s presence.

• To become like him: As we read, we take his thoughts into our own minds. We begin to think like him, feel like him, see the world like him, and live like him.

• And to do as he did: As we read Scripture and put into practice what it says, we are formed into people who live out the Way of Jesus.

• Do you see it?

• Reading, mediation, studying, and memorizing Scripture are all essential aspects of our apprenticeship to Jesus.

As Dallas Willard once said, “We come to Scripture as a part of a conscious strategy to cooperate with God for the full redemption of our life.”

Sticky line: But here’s the key! This will require us to read Scripture very differently from how we read a young adult novel or a school textbook or a news op-ed.

illus: The Bible is NOT…

Textbook: Read for information

Rule book: Read for instructions

Cook book: Read for recipes

Magic book: Read for formulas

Coffee table book: Read for inspiration

We have to learn how to read Scripture not just for information, but for formation.

And that is the goal of this Practice and collection…

• To clarify, this is not a hermeneutics course.

• Hermeneutics is the academic word for the art and science of biblical interpretation. It’s where you learn how to read the various genres and literary types of the Bible and notice the design patterns that repeat throughout the canon.

• And it’s very important.

• If you don’t understand the text, how can it form you in the way Jesus intended?

• In fact, if you misunderstand the text, it can malform you.

• That’s why there are two basic skills we need to develop as apprentices of Jesus:

• One is biblical interpretation (or hermeneutics); we need to learn how to study the Bible and understand what we’re reading.

• The other is spiritual reading. Once we get our heads around the text, we need to learn how to read it not just with our heads, but with our whole persons, not just informationally, but formationally.

• These two skills rise or fall together.

• If you only focus on one, you will hit a cap on your spiritual growth.

• Both matter.

• And we’ll do a little bit of hermeneutics work in our session on study.

• But this Practice is going to focus more on spiritual reading …

• Because ultimately our goal is not just to know the Bible, it’s to read the Bible in such a way that we meet Jesus himself on the page and are deeply formed to be like him.

• It’s to read Scripture as a spiritual discipline — or as a way of opening to God.

Seam: And the first step is simply this…

Begin reading Scripture daily as an apprentice of Jesus.

…bible recap is our primary recommendation.

Ending:

• And as you read, remember: Your rabbi, the author himself, is in the room with you.

• You may want to imagine Jesus looking over your shoulder as you read this week.

• You’re not just reading about Jesus.

• You’re reading with Jesus.

• As Dallas Willard once said, “Come to your chosen passage as to a place where you will have a holy meeting with God.”⁸

• As you learn how to slow down and read Scripture prayerfully and intuitively … Jesus will come up to you and speak with you.

• He will highlight words and phrases from the page. He will plant new images in your mind and imagination, draw up memories from your past, and speak into your present and your future.

• He will love you and lead you.

• This is why reading the Bible as a spiritual discipline is more about posture than technique.

• Don’t get me wrong, technique is important; and we’ll talk about different methods that people use to read Scripture – all that matters.

• But what matters even more is to come with the right heart; the heart of an apprentice of Jesus.

Before you read, pray this: “God, here I am; speak to me now … God, give me wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Let any knowledge I gain help me love You and others more, and not puff me up. Help me see something new about You that I’ve never seen before. Correct any lies I believe about You or anything I misunderstand. Direct my steps according to Your Word. Amen.”

• So this week, every day as you open your Bible: Slow down, breathe, and pray for Jesus to meet you on the page.

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Talk it Over (being honest & open with friends, a spouse, or your Group)

This week we looked at the importance of reading the Screiptures as an apprentice to Jesus. What is one idea from Sunday’s message that impacted you?

Read Matthew 5v17-19. What does it mean to formed into a Kingdom person?

What is your primary feeling about Scripture? Fear? Desire for more? Shame? Ambivalence?

Do you resonate more with reading Scripture for information or formation? Why?

What’s the primary obstacle you face to the regular reading of Scripture (e.g., time, your sleep habits, parenting, work schedule, intellectual questions, emotional triggers)?

Read 2 Timothy 3v10-17. Paul’s words to Timothy are about persevering in faith within a world often at odds with the Way of Jesus. What do you notice as you read the Scripture passage?

2 Timothy 3v16 is often read alone. How does your understanding of this verse expand when you consider its context?

Think back to a season of struggle in your life. What Scriptures helped shape and steady you through that time?

Paul encourages Timothy to keep living in what he’s come to believe deeply. Discuss one specific truth from Scripture that you’re convinced of. Why are you convinced?

What would it look like for you to approach Scripture as God-breathed, rather than just a text to be studied?