Means of Grace: God’s Word

Today on Renewing Your Mind. I'm assuming that those photos strip to hovel Bible to be able to open the Bible to say to ourselves. This is nothing lasts from the words that have proceed to it through human authors from the very mouth of God. This is where God speaks to me. The Bible is available to us in printed form and multiple translations wanted in hardback, whether premium leather any one of them is yours for the asking is said that the typical American household has three bundles. Many of the church are lacking when it comes to reading, studying and understanding God's word today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson shows us that our growth isn't measured by having the Scriptures doesn't look God gives to in his grace that enables us to grow as Christians within the context of the life of the church.

I do not individual Christian life. Sometimes these things are called the means of grace. But if we use that expression we need to be careful about what we mean, we don't mean means that we use like putting money into a slot machine then if we use these meetings then lo and behold if we press the right button. We will get grace out of the slot machine when I was so much talking about the means that we use to accomplish Ottomans as the instruments God uses to accomplish his ends and the four of them in particular that we going to think about on the festival. Among the most obvious one is the Bible itself, God's word. We come to know God, we come to grow in our knowledge of God in our fellowship with God through the words that he has spoken to us since that's not an obvious thing. How do we know each other.

How do we how do we know what's on our minds. My wife sometimes says to people of what with me. Ask him just ask him because he tends to think that if something's passed through his mind. It would've passed through his mind to your mind, that he may forget that he needs to use words to tell you what's actually in his mind.

It's a failing but it's not a feeling God's God has told us what is in his mind and his word in a way he is open to his heart up to us and he is spoken to us. I'm so the want of God is absolutely central to living the Christian life. I was a little boy in Scotland, a very soundless I went to be gone in exactly the same way the Chuck Sexton on Beedle as he's known in Scotland would walk into the sanctuary with a large Bible he would climb the pooping stamps on before the minister goes into the pool put the Bible would get into the pool put on he would open up the Bible was assigning that the church is undergone smart. It was a sign that the want of God is far more important than the person who asked finds it on the central to everything we do is the importance of the Scriptures on this of course is something that the apostle Paul makes especially clear in the very last lecture that he wrote about itself is an interesting thing. It's as though he's saying my last will and testament is that you should focus on the things that are really central and so you remember, he writes to Timothy at the end of second Timothy chapter 3 in the following times. As for you Timothy continue and what you will flounder no firmly believed, knowing from whom Yolanda and hung from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ reasons.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and it is profitable are useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, but the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work, but quite apart from anything else when anyone comes along and says yes, but in addition to the Bible you need this you need this other book all you need these traditions. The most important thing to do is to point to verses like this and say.

But God survived itself says everything I need to live the Christian life competently and to be equipped for every good work is to be found in the Scriptures. While the Scriptures so very important.

Why is it so important for us to study them.

Why is it so important for us to be in a church where they are expended faithfully and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

While Paul gives us the first reason here as he speaks to Timothy the Bible. He says maids Timothy Y used for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

He's only giving us a few hints about Timothy's spiritual experience is almost São Tomé dominantly referring here to the Old Testament Scriptures because he understood the told Lord Jesus was not incarnate until the end of that Old Testament.

The whole of the Old Testament pointed forward to the Lord Jesus. He was spoken of by way of promise. He was pictured in both sacrifices network individual figures who were spoken often the Old Testament who pointed forwards to the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of mine whom Daniel saw in his vision the prophet like Moses, to whom Moses himself without the suffering solvent, but Isaiah saw in these extraordinary visions he had of what God would do in the future. Although we don't know the details. We know that Timothy was taught the Old Testament Scriptures by his mother and by his grandmother, and it looks to me as though he was especially helped by the apostle Paul, but you remember how Paul speaks about him is my son, Timothy.

Perhaps it was through Paul's ministry left in a very special way. Timothy, who knew the word of God had come to find the gracious wisdom of God that filling out his understanding of what it means to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ's know I think that's interesting Dr. Timothy discovered the truth of Scripture through people but God surrounded him with unfairly often not strewn yes on occasion you meet an individual who came under constraint for no apparent reason to read the Bible for themselves. One of the most famous British actors. Some of you may be familiar with him from public television fashion of Agatha Christie's Pottle tells the story of how he was in a play in New York. He was suddenly seized with an unexpected which to read the Bible. He couldn't find the Bible he expected to be in the hotel. He went downstairs he went to every shop around to ask if they sold Bibles. He eventually found the Bible and he started reading Paul's letter to the Roman and he came to a living faith in Jesus Christ. Apparently, without any human mediation. But for most of us like Timothy is often what we saw in somebody else what somebody else said dark Mom and Dog Some Preacher Who Points Us to the Bible and Then We Begin to Discover That the Message of the Bible Will Lead Us to Salvation. I Think I'd like to Add My Own Testimony to Loud, I Began to Read the Bible When I Was Nine Years Old, My Family Didn't Go to Church at All, but I Was Sent to Sunday School. I Have Some Sunday School Teachers. I Admired and Liked Although I Had No Idea Why.

Later on I Realized. Of Course They Were Genuine Christians Seeking to Point Me to Jesus Christ and One of Them Encouraged Me to Start Reading the Bible. I Read the Bible for the Next Five Years.

I Probably Missed Five Days Reading the Bible Saying My Prayers, Trying to Be Good and I Hadn't yet Become Wise for Salvation. So Do You Think I Should've Looked Somewhere Else nor No, It Was Just As I Was Reading the Bible As I Think I Said in the First Study That I Came to These Words of Jesus. Your Your Searching the Scriptures, but You're Not Seeing in the Scriptures. What I Want You to See and That Is It's Not by Reading the Bible That You Will Be Sick by Discovering the One about Whom the Bible Speaks so the Bible Does Not Save You. The Bible Did Not Die on the Cross for Only Jesus Can Save You but out Only Access to Jesus Unless We Have a Jesus of Our Own Imagination Is to Be Found in the Pages of the Bible. On the Way in Which Jesus through the Bible Begins to Draw the Outlines of His Own Character and Grace in the Lives of Others Who Remind Us I'm Sure As What the Message of the Bible Really Is on. This Is Why the Bible Is so Important Because It's the Only Book in the World to Which We Can Look with Absolute Sense, but This Is Reliable, but It Will Make Us Wise for the Salvation That Is to Be Found in Jesus Christ As a Second Thing Paul's the Bible Mixes Wise for Salvation through Faith in Christ. Second, the Bible Speaks to Us from the Mouth of God. I Think of Something What to Say to Me What's the Best Way for Me to Think about the Bible, Then I Would Want to Give Jesus Answer. How Did Jesus Answer the Question, How Should I Think about the Bible, Jesus the Son of God. Think about the Bible You Remember When He Was Tempted in the Wilderness Should Remember What He Said Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone, but by Every Word That Proceeds from the Mouth of God and a Thing That Is Photostatic to Have a Bible to Be Able to Open the Bible to Say to Ourselves. This Is Nothing Lasts from the Words That Have Proceeded through Human Authors from the Very Mouth of God. This Is Where God Speaks to Me. Paul Uses a Unique Word That's the Only Place in the New Testament Where Excused about Anything When He Says That the Bible Is God Breathed, but Just to Say We Are to Think of the Bible Is Coming Right from the Heart of God to Communicate God's Will and Present Students When It Communicates God's Own Presence to Us. We Sense That We Are Hearing His Voice so When We Read the Bible We Have the Sense That We Are Actually Listening to the Voice of God. He's Speaking to Us and so We Say Is You Remember Samuel Was Taught to Say Speak Large Because Your Solvent Is Listening Somewhere Sense the Most Difficult Thing in the World for Us and It's Becoming More Difficult Because We Are Living in a World Where Young People at Educated to Have Opinions I've Noticed over the Years That I've Taught and Sam Noted That It's Been a Tremendous Shift in People's Ability to Write Because the Not Encouraged to Write That Encouraged to Have Opinions on the More Than Able to Articulate Themselves and Have Opinions. More Impressively Become and Hardly Anybody Notices That Fort Lacked Transformation in Society Is Doing Is Purchasing a Nation of People Who Talk Hardly Ever Listen and You See That in Ordinary Life.People Want to Talk to You, but If They Say Is They Often See How You Doing, Are Sometimes a List of Friends Hold onto Their Hand As They Shake Your Hand Tightly As I Actually Am Not Doing Very Well and Then Experience the Power Struggle Because They Don't Really Want to Listen, and If That's True of the Human Level Is Also True of the Southern Level in Relationship to God and so We Need to Come to Scripture and to Pray That God Will Help Us to Listen in One of the Things That Paul Says Happens to You When You Become a Christian and His Assignment Somebody Really Has Become a Christian Is That You Shut Your Mouth. Memory Says That in Romans Three He Says One of the Things the Truth of the Gospel Does to People.

Is It Means Every Mouth Is Shocked Because Everyone Realizes That They Stand Guilty before God. And That's When You Begin to Listen. And Paul Is Speaking about Last Year. The Truth of the Gospel Comes Out Of the Mouth of God.

And in a World in Which We Are so Encouraged to Have Our Own Opinions and Now the People Speak about False News. We Realize That so Much That Is Fed to Us Is Inherently False and Unjust People's Authoritative Opinions and We Need so Much to Hear the Voice of God in the Place When We Hear the Voice of God Is Here in the Word of God, Remember Those Beautiful Words That Isaiah Speaks about the Coming Solvent of the Lord When He He Puts into Jesus Mouth Is Aware These Words I We Cannot Morning by Morning, and My Ears Open to Hear What the Lord Will Say My Friends Let's Jesus. Jesus, Who Would Every Entitlement Is Aware to Express His Own View of Things. But Jesus Who Says Everything I'm Saying to You Isn't Just What My Father Has Said and so As We Think about the Scriptures Being Able to Make Is Wise for Salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ, We Also Understand That If This Is Our Father. Speaking We Need to Learn to Listen to Bobby Darlin'.

Some of You Who Know the Story of George Whitfield Will Remember That George Whitfield Read His Bible on His Knees As an Expression of the Proper Disposition of the Christian Believer to the Word of God and You See the Mark of Latin People's Lives Don't You You Can You Can Usually Tell Somebody Who's Yielded to the Word of God. I Love to Think of This in Terms of the Picture That Were Given in the Old Testament of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and See That Almost As a Kind of Picture of What It Means to Study the Bible That You You Take Hold of This Messenger from God in the Scriptures, and You Say I'm Not Going to Let You Go until You Bless Me and Remembering That Wrestling Match That the Angel Caused Jacob to Limit on the Story Ends with This Picture of Jacob Walking Away As the Sun Rose over the Water You Job Book and He's Limping Away from Having Met with God and It Seems to Me to Be an Almost Perfect Picture of the Impact of the Scriptures Make up on Our Lives, but They Humble Us, but Because the Sun to Rise upon Us, but They Put Something into Us the Creates Humility Causes Us to Limp Very Occasionally You Will See That Very Clearly in a Christian I Remember a Man I Got to Know a Little Because He Invited Me to Restructure More Than One Occasion We We Fix It off for Us. It Is an Older Man Had a Great Affection for Him. He Still Alive.

Thank God.

I Thought I'd Got to Know Him Well Enough to Say to Mike and I Can Envisage As We Were Walking Away from the Car Park.

I Said to Him to Mind If I Ask You a Question Know He Sent. I Said Something Happened to You Didn't Something Happened to You I Give This Little Smile As Though to Say How Did You Know Because He of Course Was Oblivious to It, but He'd Been Humbled on the Web of God and and You Couldn't Help Noticing There Was Just Something Different about Him.

I Think That's the Crying Need in Our Generation. You Know When They Do All These Poles about How Evangelical Christians Behave, They Don't Notice Too Much Difference between Evangelical Christians in Another People. The Statistics Are Frightening. My Friends Is Not Just What We Do, It's Who We Become Its Character on the Want of God Produces Character, Just like Our Son Has Character Produced in Him As He Listens to and Watches His Father.

That's Why the Bible Is Such a Powerful Book for Us, so It Mixes Wise for Salvation Is Speaks to Us from the Mouth of God. And Then the Third Thing Is This That Is Given to Us to Transform the Lives of the People of God, Salvation from God from the Mouth of God to Transform the Lives of the People of God under Notice That This Is Paul's Real Point in Second Timothy Three Verse 16. Of Course He Wants to Emphasize the Inspiration of Scripture. But It's the Reason Why Scripture Is Inspired. That Is His Real Focus under Notice He Says It's Inspired for Four Things. In Verse 16. It's Profitable for Teaching, for Reproof, for Correction, for Training in Righteousness.

You Know When New Believers Say. How Should I Study the Bible. I Say Study the Bible the Way It Is Given to You.

And since Is Given to You. First of All to Teach You the Truth of God and Then to Prove Your Sin and Then to Transform Your Life and Then to Equip You to Solve the Lord Then What for Your Reading of Scripture Are Questions Courses Are That This Passage Is Teaching Not Notice What Is This Passage Saying to Me about My Life Today.

First of All, What Is This Passage Actually Saying Because That's What God Is Saying, What Is Its Teaching.

And Then I'm in a Position to Ask the Question As I Think about This Teaching Other Ways in Which My Life Is Not in Conformity with This Teaching, Then I Unconscious the Time I Need to Be Convicted of My Sin and to Engage in Repentance, I Need the Help of the Holy Spirit in Order That My Life May Be Cleansed under My My Character May Be Corrected and That's What This Third Word Really Means, and I Was Brought up in an Educational System Where the Teacher Would Correct Your Work, Which Usually Meant Telling You What's Wrong That's Not What the Web Correct Means Here. This Language Is Used Actually outside of the New Testament in a Medical Capacity.

Someone Is Broken a Bone and the Physician Does Whatever Is Necessary to Enable the Healing of the Boeing to Perhaps a Default on the Malformed Took to Help Straighten the Boeing and This Is What the Word of God Does As We Absorbed It and Does Is Preach to Others and Is Explored into Our Lives. It Does the Magical Transformation of Our Souls to Produce Spiritual Health. That's Why I See Is so Important for Us When We Come to the Scriptures, Not to Be Saying. First of All Tell Me What I've Got to Do to Improve, but First of All to Say Transform for This Is What the Lord Jesus. Father, Sanctify Them through the Word, Not Sanctify Them through What They Do but Sanctify Them through What You Say to Them, and It's by That Renewing of Our Minds That Comes from the Truth of Scripture That Emotions about Affections on Our Lives of Gloriously Transform on the Result Is Not the Result of That He Says Is That We Are Equipped for Every Good One Because Solving the Lord Is Not a Matter of Learning Tech's Solving the Lord Is Fundamentally a Matter of Being the Transform Individual. As Christians We Are Made New. We Are Born-Again Regenerated and Then We Are Transformed When Our Minds Are Renewed through Scripture. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson Has Provided Us with a Deeper Understanding of the Bible's Work in the Christian's Life.

You're Listening to Renewing Your Mind on This Tuesday. Thank You for Being with Us Today and We Web Dr. Ferguson Is Helping Us Think about Several Helpful Matters of Christian Living. This Week, Including How God Uses Prayer, Baptism and the Lord's Supper Is Means of Grace. There Are 12 Lessons in This Series Contained on Two DVDs It Would like to Send Them to You When You Contact Us Today with a Donation of Any Amount You Can Make Your Request online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Let me also encourage you to take advantage of later ministries interactive question and answer service. It's called ask Ligon near as you read and study God's word and a question comes up we find a passage difficult to understand that you can receive answers in real time when you go to legionnaire's homepage you'll see a chat icon in the lower right-hand corner.

Just click on that and you'll be connected immediately to want to buy colleagues who will be glad to answer your question and provide you with resources for further study. Tomorrow will return to Dr. Ferguson series to learn about the importance of prayer that sometimes we avoid prayer because we simply don't know what to say to God, but he has graciously provided us with guidance from his word to help us pray rightly to see you back here tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind