Why is the Bible so Important?

Joke

A minister was driving down the road and he got pulled over by the police. When the officer got to the ministers window the officer smelled alcohol on the ministers breath and saw a thermos in the seat next to him. “What are you drinking there?,” the officer asked. “Just water,” replied the minister. The officer took the thermos, opened it, and took a sniff. “This is not water, it’s wine.” Said the officer, to which the minister replied, “what do you know, Jesus did it again.”

Pop Quiz

T or F: In Exodus 20 God gave Moses 10 commandments?

T or F: The book of Ezekiel is located in the Old Testament?

T or F: There are 4 different books dedicated to the story of the human life of Jesus Christ.

T or F: There were 2 of every type of animal on the Ark?

T or F: Revelations is the last book of the Bible?

T or F: God created the world in 6 days?

How many disciples were there?

T or F: The Bible is 100% accurate, written by men, with words given to them by God.

Why the Quiz?

Chances are you knew all the answers to those questions.

Probably because you have spent your life in church, in Sunday School, listening to people like Pastor Mark Hudson give amazing sermons week after week. But what is the point. Is it because you were forced to? Is it because it was the cool thing to do? Or is it because you believe that the Bible is the perfect word of God, and you wanted to know everything you could about it?

As a Christian, do we think the Bible is as important as it truly is? Paul knew the importance of the scriptures. Our text today not only shows the Bible’s importance, but our text also shows us the dangers of misusing them. This morning we will look at three reasons why we should strive to know everything we can about the Bible. And the dangers of using the Bible the wrong way.

The first Reason is that...(SLIDE 2)

The Bible is Our Standard

For this morning’s text we will be in the second letter to Timothy. Here we see Paul feels that it is vital to make sure Timothy shares the standard correctly.

Just a few verses before our text Paul tells Timothy and the church in Ephesus just how important the Bible is.

(SLIDE 3)

2 Timothy 2:8–10 (ESV)

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

Paul is about to give his life for the gospel. He is about to sacrifice literally everything for the word. For Jesus. For Salvation. As we begin our text we see that Timothy needs to share with the believers in Ephesus the importance of the gospel and how they are to share it.

Do we realize how special the Bible is?

The Bible is the best selling book of ALL time for a reason. It is the moral standard that society (for the most part) has followed.

Many people whether believer or non believer, whether they know it or not have most of the moral viewpoints they have in life because our ancestors took them from the very Bible many hate.

As Christians, the Bible is the very foundation we stand on. If we believe that any of the Bible is less than God’s word, than the whole thing should be tossed out. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe that He is God’s only son. We believe that He died on the cross and rose from the dead, and because of that we have Salvation. How do you think people got this information. From first hand acounts. Accounts directly From the Bible. From people sharing the good news that God gave His people thousands of years ago. Look at Other tall tales of famous people such as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, all real people whose life stories were written and embellished and much of their stories have been proven untrue in a lot of cases, but not Jesus. Not the Bible. No matter how much people have tried to disprove that the Bible is untrue they have always fallen short.

We know how important the Bible is. In fact as we know, our country though it may be hard to believe was founded as a Christian nation.

(SLIDE 4)

John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of our country, once stated... "So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year."

Can we all agree that the Bible is the most important book ever written?

Can we all agree that the Bible is the standard by which we should live our lives?

Good, then...

With that in mind, please turn with me to 2 Timothy. Starting in verse 14.

2 Timothy 2:14–15 ESV

Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

If you are going to share the word, share it correctly.

Lot’s of people can stand in front of a crowd and tell them what the Bible says. To teach it, to share it correctly is the problem. We have many different versions of the Bible. They may sound different but if they are a good Godly translation which many are of the Bible they give the truth correctly as it was written. It is our job to make sure that we are sharing it correctly. That we are “handling the word of truth” correctly.

Also we spend too much time arguing about the Bible. Here we see that Paul is saying that arguing defeats the purpose of the Bible. When we argue all it does is confuse those who need to hear the truth.

The truth. That is the key. The Bible isn’t a quiz book. There are no puzzles. All the information is there, and it is available to you if you do the work.

God never intended the Bible to be multiple choice. “Here is the verse and all 4 of it’s possible meanings, so pick one.” Sometimes simply reading reading the Bible isn’t enough. Sometimes we need to study. Dig deeper! We need to know the Bible and teach it and share it as it was written. Look at what Proverbs says.

(SLIDE 5)

Proverbs 15:28 (ESV)

The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer,

but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.

Remember the master. In order to reach people that needed the truth Jesus spoke to them with love and truth. The world my look different but the needs of the people don’t.

That is why we need to remember and believe that...

(SLIDE 6)

The Bible is both true and accurate

If the Bible is the standard that we live our lives by we had better believe that it is both true and accurate. It is perfect in how it is written. It is not wrong, it is definitely not pliable.

For this sermon I am going to choose to believe that you all believe this is true. I know it is a dangerous and often stupid thing to assume things but I pray that as you sit here at MLCC you believe in the truth and inerrancy of the Bible.

The problem lies with the multitudes outside these walls that don’t.

Let’s look at verses 16-19....

2 Timothy 2:16–19 ESV

But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”

Irreverent babble will spread like gangrene! That is a picture right?! Gangrene. Gross. Let me give you a very quick history lesson. When Paul wrote this letter something like the death and resurrection of Christ was hard to understand. At the time, Philosophers believed that the soul was immortal and the human body was just a temporary prison. If that is the case, it made no sense that Christ’s physical form would come back. It served its purpose on this planet so it made Jesus weaker to take physical form again. So they had to tweak the gospel they were given to fit the mentality of the people. Paul calls out Hymenaeus and Philetus. They swerved from the truth according to Paul.

It seems to me that a practice like that would be a very dangerous practice indeed.

But it is also pretty easy. According to people like Hymenaeus and Philetus If the Bible says something that is hard to understand, or that we may have a problem agreeing with, then it is either wrong, or we are reading it the wrong way.

That mentality has not changed. If anything I would argue it had grown worse. We hear people say that when the Bible was written it was a different time. The world is obviously different now then it was then. We need to see the Bible as pliable. We need to be able to adjust it for our world today. We know that this isn’t a new idea but it is being presented in new and dangerous ways.

Romans says.

(SLIDE 7)

Romans 10:17 (ESV)

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

These people in Ephesus were learning about Christianity from there pastors, from the people that they trusted to give them the word the way God meant it to be given. If it was given the wrong way what are they believing in?

This is a problem today just like it was then isn’t it?

What percentage of what you believe from the Bible is from your study, and what percentage would you say you get from someone else telling you what the Bible says.

So if in fact people are getting the wrong message from the Bible, we need to look at how this is happening.

The Bible hasn’t changed. So what did?

Think about it this way. Spokane was declared a town or province in 1881. Now compare Spokane now to when it was first declared a town in 1881. Would you say it has changed? Where there was once openness there are big buildings, bridges, houses, stores....

I think that we can all agree that the city of Spokane looks very completely different now.

So, did Spokane change, or did we change Spokane?

The Bible is the same exact same message that it was when it was written thousands of years ago. If it looks different, but it is not that God made a new Bible. It means we changed it. If you are studying and reading the Bible as it was written, It means the exact same, yet humanity wants to change it. Humanity wants to make the Bible better, more for today.

We want the Bible to say whatever we NEED it to say. Even if it doesn’t say it. Let me show you what I mean.

(SLIDE 8)

TIK TOK Pastor

Brandan Robertson

Moody Graduate

6400 Facebook Followers

189.7 k TIK TOK Followers

4.5 Million Likes on his videos....for instance

Lazarus come out - 3.3 k likes

Jesus Didn’t Believe in Hell - 4 k likes

The rapture is unbiblical - 10.1 k likes

The Bible Says Abortion is ok -24.8 k likes

(SLIDE 9 : A Mean God Video)

How scary is that.

If that didn’t raise the red flags it should have.

The so called theologians we just saw fully believe what they just said. They went to Bible school, they recieved their degrees and doctorates.

How do we fight that? Do we give up? Of course not! We study and we strive to know the Bible and we never stop.

(SLIDE 10)

2 Corinthians 4:1–6 (ESV)

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Why do I push knowing the Bible, holding the Bible in reverence, studying the word more than any schoolbook we have ever opened? I am telling you this to make sure we all understand that...

(SLIDE 11)

If we don’t know the Bible, Others will claim they do

You all know your Bible. Or do you? You get taught every Sunday by a man who knows the Bible. The people we just saw on those videos “know” the Bible just as well as our Pastor, or at least they say they do. You might be able to sit there and listen to someone on TIK TOK and say to yourself they are nuts, their dumb and starting trouble. TIK TOK is a waste of time. But what if you don’t know any better. What if you are searching for answers and the answers that you see by someone like these so called theologians are a lot nicer and easier to live by then what the Bible actually says. And because you don’t know the difference...

Earlier I gave you a quiz, a Sunday School special. Let me give you one more.

The Second Quiz

Instead of me asking though, imagine it is a teenager.

The Bible gives me mixed messages about homosexuality. How do I make sense of it?

The Bible says that God wants good things for us, then why do bad things keep happening to me?

My parents both claim to be Christians, yet they argue with each other all the time and I have even heard the word divorce. Does the Bible say anything about that?

How can God let things like Uvalde Texas happen?

Is the Bible specific when it says abortion is bad?

Is God real?

I know that these might not be questions that you need answers to, but there are millions who have these questions and many like them. You might be a parent, a grandparent, a family member. I might be a kid that lives across the street. What are you going to do when someone comes up to you, knowing your a Christian and asks you a question like that?

Wait and ask Andy?

Ask Mark?

Google it?

What will you say?

Grandmas Bible

Jimmy Swaggart, worn, well read, always with her

Important

What kind of a legacy are you leaving for tomorrow. When you have been gone for 30 years like my grandmother will people look at you as someone who knew the Bible. As someone who treated the Bible like it deserved? Will people say that you were someone who knew Jesus well because you knew His word.

I’m passionate about this subject. For 26 I have had the opportunity to share the word in one way or another. I get the privilege of watching young men and women grow year after year trying my best to make sure they have as solid a foundation as possible because they are going into a world that desperately wants to shake them off it. I have been given the amazing job of teaching them the Bible. I darn well better do it the right way.

Why is the Bible your standard?

Why do you believe that the Bible is true and perfect?

It’s not enough to just take the Bible at face value. It is the most vital tool that we have in our toolbox. It is the roadmap that we live by and if we follow it it correctly. It is the map that will lead us home.

Earlier i quoted our 6th president. I want to leave you this morning by quoting another. Our 40th President Ronald Reagan said..

(SLIDE 12)

“Within the covers of one single book, the Bible, are all the answers to all the problems that face us today—if only we would read and believe. “- Ronald Reagan

(SLIDE 13)

We have all the answers. It’s time to read them, and then believe.

Let’s Pray