The Bible

This week we are starting our first Series of 2021, called, The Basics!

We all know the saying, / / “Get back to basics.” or “Stick to the basics.”

But, is that relevant for our Christianity? And what does it mean? Or, what would that look like?

See, I think a lot of times we get very distracted by the new, the shiny and to be honest, the complicated. Think about it for a minute. Even in the context of what we’ve just talked about the last two weeks. How to leave 2020 behind, how to embrace and look forward into 2021. When it comes to trying something again, how often do we want to find something new rather than just going back to what we know we should do?

I don’t know about you, but I want tend to want to try something new. Give me the biggest, baddest, best option. I want to find the newest fad, the perfect solution before I jump into something. I’ve been suckered into watching those videos on facebook, or a website that lead you on and on and on and keep promising the answer, and then after 45 minutes you have to pay to get the answer and…forget it!

Here’s the problem. A lot of the times, those don’t work. Oh sure, they do sometimes, sure it’s kind of hit or miss if it’s going to work for someone. But a lot of times, because our desire for change has produced such an emotional response in us, the action becomes based on that emotional response as well, and as soon as the emotion runs out, the will power, and the action run out too.

So, how do we fix that? How do we not get derailed when it comes to the things we want in life?

Well, for the next few weeks we’re going to focus on

/ / The Basics: of our Christian faith.

There is a difference between / / “becoming” a Christian, and “living” as a Christian, or you could say “being”. Of course if I’m a Christian, and I’m living, I’m a living Christian, but that doesn’t always mean that I’m living as a Christian should.

What does that mean?

It means becoming a Christian is more than just saying a prayer, or telling Jesus you believe in him, it is a commitment to become a follower of Jesus.

Now, we could ask... Can you become a Christian, have faith in Jesus, believe that He has saved you from sin, and not do anything? Maybe?. I mean, If you can believe that Jesus is the true Savior of mankind, and then go on about your merry way and maybe you live a good life, you don’t sin, you are kind to people, but you don’t really engage with what it means to be a Christian.... maybe you can do that, but what would be the point, and to be honest, I’m not sure that’s really how it works.

I guess it would kind of be like having health insurance, but never using it.

You could go get your eyes checked, and they would help you and get you glasses so you could see right, but you don’t.

You could go get your teeth cleaned and checked, but you don’t, so they slowly decay over your lifetime.

You could go get the wounds you have checked by a doctor, but you don’t, so they never fully heal, or don’t heal right.

/ / So, what’s the POINT of being a Christian?

If you want my answer, here it is… We just finished talking about the redemption story of God. The whole purpose of Jesus coming and dying was as a sacrifice so that sin could be removed from us and we could be reconciled, or made right, with God. But in that redemption story, if you remember, I said God is always inviting us into the story. And Jesus does this in the best way. Jesus makes a point that / / becoming a Christian is to follow a better way, and that better way is the way of Jesus Christ.

The disciples of Jesus actually asked him at one point, “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

and in John 14:6 / / Jesus answered them, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

So here Jesus is saying, listen, the goal, the end game here, is to be with my Father, to be with God in heaven, and the only way that happens is through me. And he clarifies, He is the WAY, the TRUTH, the LIFE.

There is a better WAY, it’s the life the truth, and the way of Jesus Christ. But that takes a commitment. That takes a willingness to engage with something. See, I would say that each of us at this point in our lives is loving God, or engaged with Him on very different levels. Each of us has a different understanding at this point, we each have a different level of knowledge, and we all probably have a different level of relationship with the person of God, be that God the Father, God the Son AND God the Holy Spirit.

Here’s why we are doing this series. Because I don’t want you to think, or live, like Christianity is just a club you sign up for, and then at some point some benefits kick in, or you pay your dues, or it’s a humanitarian effort or a social justice push, or community effort club that we all get together and do some good things for each other and for people and because we’re Christians it’s all under the name of God.

I love doing those things. And really, there’s no one else I want to do them with. Trust me, I love you guys so much. But what I truly want for us to understand is that Christianity is a gift. It’s the gift of a journey that Jesus is laying out for us to walk with him on.

We all know that you can be given all the right tools, but if you don’t learn how to use them, the tool itself will be useless. When we were living in Raleigh, which was from 2008 - 2010, so it was either Christmas 2008 or Christmas 2009, Kelley bought me a circular saw. I didn’t have many tools back then. I had a bright orange tool box with a few screw drivers and a hammer in it… The saw she got me was a great saw, but that circular saw sat in the original packaging the whole time we lived in Raleigh....it moved with us to Ottawa, and spent more than 2 years in that box and then went into storage while we were in Norway. Finally, it came with us to Miami and I can’t honestly tell you how many times I heard something to this effect,

“That saw I got you is still in the box...”

“ya, like the saw that’s still in the box...”

“You don’t even use it, you’re not buying more tools...”

It was never a nagging wife thing, that’s not Kelley at all, it was always a half joke, half truth…But it was true, the tool was still in the box.

And finally in June of 2017 that box got opened.... See, I had the tool the whole time, I had the potential for 8 years, but I never took the opportunity to actually use it, which means, I never got the benefit of knowing, “Hey, I can build stuff.”

And when I told my mother and father in law that I was going to tear apart the back steps and rebuild them, they asked, “Are you sure? Is that something you do?”

Hey, I don’t know, but I’ve got a saw....so let’s rock and roll!!!

The point is this. We have tools in our belt of Christianity that most of us are not using, and because we aren’t using them, they are not benefiting our lives, we are not able to say, “Hey, being a Christian means this...” or “Hey, I didn’t realize I could do this with that, or get this by doing that, or move forward by doing this...”

You want to know why so many people don’t like Christians, or don’t understand Christianity, or have a problem with the church? Because there’s too many people that claim to be Christians, not truly living as Christians. They say they a Christian, but they follow their own path instead of following the way of Jesus.

So.....Back to the Basics we go. What tools do we have that we aren’t utilizing? And ultimately, like I said, being a Christian is choosing to follow the way, truth and life of Jesus Christ, with the goal of being with God for all eternity in heaven… So what are we doing, to follow him?

2 Timothy 2:15 says, / / Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth. Avoid worthless, foolish talk that only leads to more godless behavior.

Now knowing the tools we have, and not learning to use them, is like going to a job site without the skills to get the job done, and when someone says, “so, how you going to build this?” and all you can say is, “umm.... i don’t know.”

See, when my in-laws looked at Kelley and asked, “is this something he does?” I was able to say, “No, but I’m willing to learn.” And that right there my friends, is all the difference you need.

As a Christian Jesus asks us to become and to help others become what we call disciples.

It’s called the / / Great Commission. What’s a commission? The definition of a commission is an instruction, command, or duty given to a person or group of people. A group of people officially charged with a particular function.

So, it’s either the instruction given, or, the group itself is called a commission… hmm..never thought of that. We are the Great Commission of Jesus Christ on this earth.

What is the great commission? what is the instruction, the command, the duty given to us? Well, Jesus says in Matthew 28:18-20, / / I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this. I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Make disciples. teach them to obey what I taught you.... so, Do what I told you to do, and help others do the same...

The word disciple actually means, to be a pupil, a student… A disciple is someone who engages in learning through instruction from someone else… We become a student of the way, the truth and the life of Jesus Christ.

So, in our first step into the Basics of our Christian Faith, today, we’re going to look at the importance of the Bible.

/ / The Basics: The Bible

We call the Bible the word of God. It’s got 66 books in it, 39 of them are in the Old Testament, and 27 are in the New Testament.

The Old Testament is the time period from the creation of the world to about 400 years before Jesus was born. Then there was a gap between the last book of the old testament which was written by the prophet Malachi and when Jesus was born that it seems there were no prophets in the land hearing from God. Then the New Testament is the story of the birth of Jesus, his life, ministry, death and resurrection. The early church and letters that were written to the early church instructing them on how to live the life of a christian.

Now, I don’t want to just give you facts about the bible today, but what I do want to do is make a case for the Bible. It’s an incredibly important part of the Basics.

Why?

Well, first of all, The bible itself is full of instruction and evidence that reading it is good for us.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, / / All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

So the bible is meant to equip us to do good work… to train us in how to be good people, to live righteous lives, which means to be right before God, to live rightly.

In the book of Joshua, after the death of Moses, God speaks to Joshua and says, listen, Moses is now gone, it’s your turn to lead the people, you’re going to take them into the promised land that I’m giving you. And he says these incredibly important words, / / Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

Now, I love that we have grace, and we aren’t saved BY our good works, BUT, the Bible is full of instruction that is meant to do what? God just said it to Joshua, to “Cause us to prosper and succeed in all that we do..” that’s what God said, if you follow what I tell you to do, you can bank on the fact that I’ll be with you, and I’ll bless you.

When Jesus was in the desert, being tempted by the devil, he says to him, / / Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes form the mouth of God.

The word of God, it’s vital, it’s important, it brings us life.

Paul even says in Romans 15:4, / / The scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

I want encouragement and hope!

I want to succeed in all I do!

I want to find the life that comes through the word of God…

So, let’s talk for a quick second about the book itself. We get that if God says something, it’s important. We get that if God speaks to someone to tell us something and they write it down, that would also be important. But where did this book come from? Jesus didn’t write the bible and put it together and hand it to the disciples and say, “here, use this...”

So, what’s the history of this book, that we call the bible, that we put so much stock in?

The Old Testament is a little simpler to qualify as Jesus himself said in Luke 24:44, / / When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled...

So Jesus himself gave high importance to Scripture. In fact, multiple times throughout the ministry of Jesus we see that he would go to the temple and take a scroll and read from it. Jesus believed the Scriptures, endorsed its teaching, obeyed its commands and set himself to fulfill the pattern of redemption that it laid out.

And because all of the first Christians were Jewish, this already established importance and standard of Scripture continued on. In fact, Paul in 1 Timothy 4:13 says, / / Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.

There was a man named Justin Martyr, who had spent years searching for meaning in his life, he had tried many different philosophical schools of thought. Well, he met a man one day and they were talking and the man urged him to explore the Jewish prophets…so, the Old Testament - through his reading of Scripture he turned to Jesus and became a Christian. Many other early church leaders had the same experience, through scripture they saw the truth of Jesus Christ the savior.

Justin Martyr said this, / / “On the day called the Day of the Sun all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray.”

So we see early on, what he called the “Memoirs of the Apostles”, what we call the Gospels, were used in early church life. Paul would say, when he wrote letters to the church, “Read this to the church, and then take it to such and such church and read it there too.”

As the gospels and these letters to the churches continued to be read out loud along with the Old Testament Scripture, by 190 AD, so some 150+ years after Jesus death and the beginning of the church, there was a pretty standard list of books that were being used by the church to encourage and teach. And over the next 170 years this solidified to a point where the first complete list of books as we have them today, came in a letter written in 367 AD by Bishop Athanasius from Alexandria, and soon after that there were councils in North Africa and at Carthage published the same list. Why all this history? Well, it’s important. If we are to believe that the Bible is the word of God, yet we also know it was compiled by humans, then the process of the collection is important.

Bruce Shelley, who wrote Church History in Plain Language says this, / / “In one sense, of course, Christians created the canon [that is the bible]. Their decisions concerning the books were a part of history. In another sense, however, they were only recognizing those writings that had made their authority felt in the churches. The shape of the New Testament shows that the early churches’ primary aim was to submit fully to the teachings of the apostles. In that purpose they shaped the character of Christianity for all time. The faith remained catholic precisely because it was apostolic.”

Meaning, the focus on the gospel and the connection to the apostles and their teachings, was what gave the church its foundation.

We can go on and on about church history and such, but if you want more of that, there’s great stuff to read, or come talk to me! The point I’m hoping you are getting this morning is this, as Christians we believe that the Bible is not just a book, but that it is the word of God and it has the capacity to bring life and revelation, meaning you are inspired by God Himself as you read.

/ / So, what do we do with the Bible?

There’s an organization called the Center for Bible Engagement, and they set out on a more than eight year journey to research the spiritual lives of more than 100,000 people from around the world to see what the consistent engagement of the Bible could produce in someone’s life.

They found that people who engage with the Bible four or more days a week had the most profound and powerful impact on their spiritual growth.

See, there’s something powerful about reading the word of God that just can’t be explained. Yes, I’ve been a Christian for most of my life, but in this last year I’ve actually realized more and more that reading the Bible is just simply GOOD for me, regardless of what I’m reading. It doesn’t matter whether I’m reading the life of Jesus, or the history of the Kings of Israel, there is something about reading the bible that is GOOD. It brings positive change to my life, yes, even when I don’t fully understand all that I’m reading.

So, this organization saw a powerful impact on people’s spiritual growth. What’s that mean? They define spiritual growth as, / / “Becoming less of the person I was before I committed my life to following Jesus and more like Christ in my thoughts, words, and deeds.”

That’s what we want, isn’t it? We read the life of Jesus Christ who says I’ve come to give you life and life more abundant, to transform you, to encourage you and lift you up. And we say, “Yes, that’s what we want. We want life, I want to be less like the me that has problems, and issues, and addictions and insecurities, and more like You!”

So, let’s just listen to some of the key findings that the Center for Bible Engagement saw in these more than 100,000 people they studied:

/ / If a person engages the Bible four or more times a week, their odds of giving in to temptations such as drinking to excess, viewing pornography, lashing out in anger, gossiping, and lying significantly decrease.

/ / Receiving, reflecting on, and responding to God’s word four or more times a week decreases a person’s odds of struggling with issues such as feeling bitter, thinking destructively about themselves or others, having difficulty forgiving others, and feeling discouraged.

Across the thousands of surveys completed through this study, they repeatedly examined the relationship between spiritual practices and moral behavior and struggles. Summarizing across all of the studies, they found that if a person engages the Bible four or more times a week their odds of giving in to these temptations decreases:

/ / Drinking to Excess - 62%

Viewing Pornography - 59%

Having sex outside marriage - 59%

Gambling - 45%

Lashing out in anger - 31%

/ / Gossiping - 28%

Lying - 28%

Neglecting Family - 26%

Overeating or mishandling food - 20%

Overspending or mishandling money - 20%

They also saw significant reduction in the frequency of emotional struggles. Receiving, reflecting on and responding to God’s word four or more times a week decreases a person’s odds of struggling with:

/ / Feeling bitter - 40%

Thinking destructively about themselves or others - 32%

Feeling like they have to hide what they do or feel - 32%

Having difficulty forgiving others - 31%

Feeling discouraged - 31%

/ / Experiencing loneliness - 30%

Having difficulty forgiving yourself - 26%

Thinking unkindly about others - 18%

Experiencing fear or anxiety - 14%

/ / The Basics of Christianity: The Bible

God wants to do something in your life, of that I’m 100% positive. One of the ways he does that is through his word. We read it, He transforms us. We honor it, He does what we can’t do.

I know reading the bible isn’t always easy. Kaylee was in the living room with me the other day and I was reading and she wanted to play MarioKart and I said, “In a little bit, I’m just finishing what I’m reading.” And she says, “Why, reading the bible is boring...”

Ya know what…there’s parts of the bible that I’m like, “wow, this is boring”… There’s parts of the bible that I’m like, “Wow, I don’t understand this right now...” but, Like I said earlier, I’ve realized that God honors the process and the obedience.

Listen, every year for many many years, I’ve started a “read the entire bible in a year” plan...every January. And here’s the reality, I’ve never finished the Bible in one year. I’ve always fallen off track, felt guilty, given up and walked away. ok, January 1st, try again....same thing.

This last year, 2020 was no different, And as I said at the beginning, in my pursuit to find the best, biggest, baddest newest shiniest plan out there… I ordered these books that are a reading plan. This time though the plan was working for me, and my schedule was working for me, and everything was lining up and I thought, YES, I’m totally going to do this. All the way until March.....then pandemic hit and Kaylee was at home all day and my schedule was thrown completely off and I didn’t know what to do and I missed a day, 2 days, 3 days a week, 2 weeks, a month… OH NO!

Well, I have to say, I actually feel kind of accomplished right now because this morning I finished the last book of the Old Testament, that I started January 1st last year. I only missed the entire New Testament, but to be honest, that’s the farthest I’ve ever got.

Well I was reading a couple weeks ago and thought, how do I do this, because one of the things that derailed me was that some weeks there was a lot to read, and other weeks there wasn’t, so I looked at my bible. 775 pages.... well, with 365 days in a year that’s not even 3 pages a day. I can read three pages of a book a day.

So, what I’ve done, for each of us, is gone through the entire bible, and divided it up into manageable daily readings. I know, today is the 10th of the month. I’ve designed this to start on the 11th. And I’m inviting each of you to do this with me. I don’t want you to overthink it. I don’t want you to complicate it. I simply want you to trust that someone took more than 100,000 people, studied them reading the bible for more than 8 years, and they saw all of those benefits. Can you trust that? And are you willing to try that?

Each day you’ll read a couple pages from the Old Testament and 1 page from the New Testament, and you’ll also read one chapter of the book of Proverbs, every day, each month.

This means by the end of this year you’ll have read the OT once, the NT twice and the book of Proverbs twelve times.

Each month I’ll have papers printed for you that tell you want to read on what day, AND an explanation of the books that we’re going to be reading. We all agreed last week that we don’t want life at the end of 2021 to be the same as the beginning of 2021. We all agreed that we were going to give this year our BEST shot. This will take anywhere from 10 - 20 minutes a day, depending on how fast you read. And I think we all have that, whether we admit it or not. We all read facebook more than that, we all play candy crush or toy blast or castle kingdom more than that.

Take me up on this. Do it with me. Let’s do it together, and at the end of the year let’s say we did this, together, and let’s see what kind of change it’s had in our lives.

We have free bibles for you today. There’s a small print and a large print and it’s the New Living Translation which I really like and is mostly what I preach out of. And if you’re joining us online and you don’t have a bible and you want a physical bible, please send us a message and we’ll get one to you. Or, there are great apps and websites that have the bible for free as well. We’ll post that information for you.