A Year of the Bible

Happy new year summer church welcome at all of our campuses across the triangle. I hope that you thousand 15 in the dove in an awesome way for you and I hope you are really excited about what God has for you in 2016 2015 was a great year for us as a church gobble so good to us, rebaptized hundreds of people and open up a new campus or elements County campus. We had the multiply initiative which God blesses a richly in and then our epic services at the Deepak Durham performing arts Center. There were just amazing. So we have a lot to thank God for what with all the excitement you have or the last year. I can't tell you how much of a sense of anticipation we have of what God is about to do in our church.

We believe in the coming months and that begins this very weekend, a handful of times I've told you about a book that looked at years ago called the year of living biblically on the author is a guy name Ajay Jacobs.

He's not a Christian. He describes himself in the book impact as a Jewish agnostic. In fact, this is from introduction, I am officially Jewish, but only Jewish in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant if that helps you help cover an entire year. The sky attempts to follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible. He begins by reading the Bible cover to cover.

Writing down every single directive that he can find any try to live them out as literally as he can for a year, all while living in Manhattan the year of living biblically stopped wearing clothes made of any mixed fibers in accordance with Levitical law he stopped saving the edges of his beard would make some end up with this massive beard that makes him look like the lead singer for ZZ Top or the character Duck Dynasty if you're not in the good music. He refuses to shake hands with any women that he thinks might be ceremonially unclean, which had to be awkward how you determine that and this is one of my favorites. He tries to clean tiny pebbles of people without them noticing. In order to fulfill the command to stone adulterers so high. He does this for an entire year. He said that it made for a great book, but it almost destroyed his marriage, which she thought was not biblical, his wife told him that if he did not cut it out. She was going to leave him, I've always felt a kind of morbid amusement with this book because I feel like it encapsulates how many people in our culture, maybe even our church approach the Bible or maybe I should say what keeps them from approaching the Bible are just not sure how to take it. It's intimidating, even if you believe the Bible you might feel about the Bible like you do that, terms and conditions page that comes up when Apple wants to load new software onto your computer right page after page of mindless tedium, mumbo-jumbo, and all you think is where's the button so I can accept all, right because you figure that if there's something in there that you actually need to know that some nerd somewhere is going to figure it out and tweet about it and let you know, put it on Facebook if there some clauses. As you know by signing this Apple gets the first two children born every family, did not tell you about that. That's how you feel about the Bible in this analogy, by the way, I am your nerd. You think if there's something in here. We really need to know that our pastor will explain it to us. Some of you have tried to read the Bible, maybe you made a New Year's resolution in times past, and you started out so well, but my guess is you made about two half weeks and you got stuck in some genealogy where some guy named a Bemis shazam but gets no sizzle or lease until you remember it and you just fizzled out this year at the summit church. We are going to change all of that, this is going to be our own year of living biblically, we're going to spend an entire year. About 50 sermons going through the entire Bible. We are calling this series the whole story because that's what were going to see the Bible has 31,102 versus 1663 commands it was written by 40 different authors with 3237 different characters in their other weight. There are 31 different gods in the Bible named Zachariah to meet some Old Testament looking dude in heaven and don't know what to call the sky was Zachariah.

Chances are you'll be right on getting all these commands and all these stories and all these personalities. All these characters there's really just one story that's been told not stories about the birth of a baby. It's a very special baby that's going to be born in a manger.

Every character, every genealogy, every command points to him. Every story whispers his name. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that this series is going to completely revolutionize some of your lives. For many of you, you're going to get your mind around the picture. The big picture of the Bible for the first time you had all these kind of disparate strands out there in order to pull together and it's all gonna start to make sense. Does Juergen have the framework to think about what God has been saying my wash.

She's now also tell you that there is absolutely nothing that will be better for your marriage for your self understanding your sense of self worth your understanding of your purpose in life than knowing this story, and your place in it. Probably the biggest misnomer is that the way we find direction in life this week. Figure out what parts of our life are missing and then we get the Bible to add those parts to it. It's it's actually you find the bigger story and your role in it, not for things begin to make sense to have often told you meet uncle JD giving you 10 steps to a good marriage is not nearly as important for your marriage is you grasping the 10,000 steps that your real husband Jesus talking coming to rescue you.

If you're new to Christianity or you are curious about Christianity.

Maybe you're here because of a New Year's resolution. Honestly, I can't think of anything that will be more beneficial for you of the next several months, then to to understand the big picture of what God is saying through the 66 books of the Bible, so I will invite all of you, whether you're a member of this church or not, I would invite all of you to take this very seriously and I want you to dive deep into it and to that end, I've got three resources I want to recommend to you on resource number one is this thing here call the Jesus storybook Bible.

Now you say this looks like a book for kids. It is a book for kids. It is still the single greatest resource I can recommend to you in getting your body your mind on the big picture. I especially want every family to pick up a copy of this in whatever campus that you are at and I'm going to actually align pretty closely with the messages we preach on the weekend and if your family will just one night a week sit down as a family and read on the story, you'll stay right really close to the sermons that are being preached even if you don't have kids. By the way, I don't come up to me about three weeks ago. Single adult men made the said I am looking for a boat to get my mind on the Bible. I hope this walking is that you should get this. This ability to get the book that it is a kids book but there's nothing out there. Honestly that's better. My family uses it to be doing that this year I would invite you to join us on the second thing after recommend you is artworks to things is that we have two different Bible reading plans for the year that we would like to give you a choice between say why to think of them as JV and varsity okay. The JV is the one that's in here on this in the front flap of your monthly newsletter there which it will be every month will have the updated version of it. This is what we are calling the whole story plan, it's one or two chapters a day and it align pretty closely to the sermons on the weekend the varsity level plan is in the black level here, right here. It is called the every verse plan because you literally will lead read through every single verse of the Bible, over the course of the year. Now there is no shame at all in doing the JV none at all. But let me give you just do a little bit of motivation for doing the varsity of RA. The motivation is this in 10 minutes a day you can read the Bible through an entire year you say how do you know that while the average American reads between 200 and 250 words a minute.

There are 775,000 words in the Bible so it 10 minutes a day, you'll get through the entire Bible in one year on, by the way, if you just use the amount of time that the average American watches TV on in four weeks you would have it finished okay so there's plenty time for you to do this so feel guilty and and and get on it is what you should do. By the way, if you like mom's not a reader. Honestly, I just say I can read but I just get up everyday and reading on our website seminar. Do you.com there are places you can link like apps that will give it you an audio version.

I do this a lot. Sometimes I got a really busy day off. Listen to the Bible as I go from place to place. Are there ways that that you can do this. Whatever it is I want you to get it. I want to go deep or small groups can be study along with this so would be a great time for you to get involved in a small group as well. Let me explain what this will absolutely change your life. I'm not. I'm not exaggerating this dwelling on the Bible is the single greatest thing you can do to invigorate your faith is better than read a bunch of books on apologetics is better than read every book there is out there on marriage is he developing faith is less like building a house where you add one brick of one brick at a time and then you're done and it's more like getting into shape, getting into shape is about your body steadily getting stronger over a lifetime is work out once and then get in shape and say okay now I'm finished. You spent a lifetime working out and developing those muscles. One of the keys they say to getting in the shape is eating right have heard it said that being in shape is only about 20% what you do is about 80% what you eat at the gym that I go to sometimes or always encouraging me to eat things that they call super foods think a high protein and omega-3 another count of whatever I'm stuck.

I'm always trying to explain to them that the reason I eat so many fried foods is that the oil lubricates your system thing a two cycle engine, and it just it works really well. That way they haven't added that to the nutrition manual yet, but I'm pretty sure that I'm wanting them over, but Scripture is and has always been the superfood of faith, knowing Scripture does not equal faith, but knowing Scripture gives you the capacity for faith. It is the superfood that gives you the ability to exercise faith which is not just when you read the Bible, but when you go through life. I do not make many guarantees as a pastor but I guarantee you if you do this next time this year. You will not be in the same spiritual place that you are as you are right now. This year you will look like a completely different person so I want you to do it. I want you do with this. It's going to be the summit churches year of living biblically now with the longest introduction about the Bible that has not even yet touched the Bible, how would you take out your Bible and open it to Psalm 119 Psalm 119 today we're going to spend some time in the greatest love poem several written in human history. Psalm 119. I like where Psalms in my Bible. If you have a Bible with old New Testament.

You just let it open in the middle changes are it will open to Psalm 119 Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible 176 verses, it is longer than almost half of the other books of the Bible. It is a love poem about the Bible itself. We do not know who the author of this poem is our best guess is Ezra who wrote the book of Ezra in the Old Testament, but whoever it is is is just enraptured by the word of God and the rightness poem in a very creative way there. 22 stanzas in the poem, each one corresponding to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is 22 letters in it and each of the eight verses in that stanza starts with whatever letter that stanza you know is is associated with one tradition says that the Psalm was written by King David to teach Solomon his son to learn the alphabet, I don't know about that but I hope that you see that it is significant. Listen that the longest love poem in the Bible is not about marriage is not about children is not about mountains.

Not all sunsets are good health.

It's about the Bible because the author understands that the greatest beauty that God has put on the earth is not found in romantic love is not to be found in nature is not to be found in children. The greatest beauty that God has deposited on earth is in that book you hold in your hands.

Jewish people have for years use this song. Psalm 119 is a part of the Roche-celebration their New Year's celebration somehow appropriate for us to be able to open up our year with the same song Charles Spurgeon said that every preacher of the gospel.

Every preacher should memorize this Psalm in its entirety. All hundred 76 verses on Blaise Pascal, the philosopher, I quote a lot, had the whole thing memorized William Wilberforce to stop slavery in the Western world.

He had it memorized. I will not tell you if I have it memorized or not, but you guys know how humble I am and I would never want to show off if I had memorized it.

So I'm just going to act like I'm reading a few verses when you know I'm really quoted offer memory okay and then I'll give you brief or half reflections on the verses that we read on these and all the verses in the Psalm, but these can represent to me the main things of the psalmist is trying to say Psalm 119.

Here we go.

Verse nine how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word. That is one of the verses I have memorized, but I memorized it in the keying James version. Anybody else memorized the King James version where with all shall young man cleanse his way about taking heed thereto according to thy word. It wasn't.

I was 19 years old that I was courageous enough to admit that I had no idea what wherewithal was where with horizontal white shirt. What is he talking about where with all just means how how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding your way, according to your word. Verse 11.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Verse 14. I rejoice in following your statutes like one rejoices in winning the lottery.

That's my translation even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes for 41 let your steadfast love come to me oh Lord your salvation.

According to your promise, then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me for I trust in your word. Verse 72. The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold were sitting on forever. Forever Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens were lost in door to this day for all things serve you. Verse 99 I have more understanding than all of my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation universe memorize in college that your one right there, I understand more than the agent for I keep your precepts verse 105 your word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path.

109. I hold my life in my hand continually means how my life lightly, but I cleaned to your I do not forget your wallet cling to it with all of my life 111 your testimonies on my heritage, my inheritance. What I'm looking forward to forever, for they are the joy, the delight of my hearts. Verse 116 sustain me, my God, according to your promise and I will live 133 keep study my steps according to your promise and let no iniquity have dominion over me.

176.

The last verse in the Psalm. I have gone astray like a lost sheep.

Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments when he give you forward 1/2 reflections on what I think the psalmist is trying to show us, and the things that he says or she says about this about the word of God here. Number one if you're taking notes. The Bible is Revelation from God. The Bible's revelation from God throughout the song. The author refers to Scripture as testimonies from God statutes law precepts rules, commandments, and word from God.

Nowhere in Scripture.

Nowhere in Scripture, not one place in Scripture talked about as enlightened human thoughts about God is God's revelation come down to us and that is one of the most important things that you can learn about the Bible.

You see, our culture relegates this book, the Bible as one collection of enlightened thoughts about God and it might be a good collection of enlightened thoughts about God arising from certain cultures and Western tradition, but every religion has its own contribution to make and we are going to be smarter when we learn from everybody. Most people in our culture see religion like the ancient parable of the three blind men of all of the pit with the elephant uncle do this before replying in bold that we all think and what they do. One of them jumps up and he grabs a hold of the task of the elephant says I would spear the other grabbed a hold of them the leg of elephants is know it's a treetrunk yellow grabbed hold of the tales is know it's a brute and the moral of the story is only when they humbly listen to each other and put all their collective insight. Together they can get a picture of the whole elephant.

That's how our culture sees religion and the Bible is a great contributor to human thoughts about God, but that's what it is that is not what Jesus nor is it what the prophets are what the writer of the Psalm believes about the Bible is what our culture believes that's totally opposite to what what they thought about it. Jesus believe that when the authors of the Bible wrote, they spoke with a very voice of God in Mark chapter 12, for example, Jesus quotes a passage from the Old Testament that is clearly written by David, but he doesn't open it by saying David said he opens it. Mark 1236 by saying God said you simple but how can something written by fallible human being like David, how could actually be the word of God. Theologians compared to the virgin birth of Jesus.

Jesus was both human and divine, it was 100% human and 100% of I'm not 50% human and 50% about it and I like a God hand and human hand.

Every molecule of him was 100% human and hundred percent divine. The human part of Jesus meant that Jesus was limited in his power, he limited himself.

He didn't fly everywhere he went. There were certain kinds of knowledge, he limited himself to what he was also 100% divine, which meant that Jesus was 100% free from error and sin, will the same is true the word of God the Word of God that you hold is 100% written by humans fallible human beings, but it is also 100% divine, which means it is absolutely perfect and free from error.

I know it is popular today to say well I believe in Jesus but not all the stuff that's written in the Bible lesson, I will tell you is humbly and clearly as I can.

If you say that you don't really believe in Jesus because Jesus saw himself as only the explainer and the fulfiller of Scripture.

Never it's correct that Jesus said in Matthew 518 that sooner would heaven and earth pass away than one syllable out of the Bible become untrue. Now of course you have to learn how to interpret the Bible you had to know when the Bible is speaking metaphorically. You have to learn which laws the Bible says do not apply to us anymore and working to get into that, but for now, what I need you to see is that Jesus thought about book that you hold in your hands as absolutely perfect for it to be wrong would be like saying to him that God was wrong because the book was 100% divine. It was the word from God hears all the writer of the song says in verse 89 forever.

Your word is established in the heavens, not it's been edited and improved. It's been established in the heavens forever. The Bible is a word that comes down from above, not a consensus of wisdom that rises up from below and here is why I belabor this because you gotta decide whether that is true or not. That is the most important question you're ever going to consider about the Bible is the Bible actually what Jesus and the prophets and the apostles said that it was because if it is, that changes the way that you approach it, it means that you accept it. Even the parts that make you mad and that you disagree with it because it's a word from God, and you don't pick and choose a part of the Bible you like like at the salad bar that you're constructing your own meal from God is the judge and he's the one that's right.

And we're like, will he and I disagree he's right and I'm wrong right if on the other hand, this is just a collection of human ideas about God and how about it since through what sick would help only what's not helpful, but whatever it is you gotta choose which one you believe it isn't what Jesus said it was or is it just a collection of human ideas, as it was ready.

I don't really know yet become this year and immerse yourself in and then decide for yourself. There's number two, number two. The Bible is life-giving law. The Bible is life-giving. All the word wall that the Psalms uses throughout the Psalm labor 72 we read a moment ago, straight edge, literally reforming straight edge, but something you would use to measure a piece of cloth or construct a building if you don't have a standard measurement for those things and you end up with chaos and imagine if everybody can redefine inch or pounds that might become inconvenient. It's from certain times. You know how much you weigh away hundred 10 pounds North a lot of pounds, but you know whatever it is, nonetheless, that might be convenient but it's mostly what would lead to chaos, God's law is the straight edge by which we measure all things in life that which is good.

That which is bad, that which is right and that which is wrong. Now I realize that not also is anathema to our culture because our culture cherishes the idea that ultimately the one who makes the best decisions about what's right and wrong for me is what is deep inside my heart. But how are you to determine what inside your heart is good and what is bad and you cannot say that everything in my heart is good. Nobody says that nobody says that I give you an example how Tim Keller says that she got to imagine two young men in their early 20s like they are walking down the street. One of them was an 800 A.D. in biking Norway and the other one is a young professional in downtown Durham in 2016.

They have two impulses in their hearts both of one impulse is I want to go back to the shop without guy just insulted my honor and I'm going to murder him.

The other impulse is I want to have sex with another man. Both of them come from inside of him in the first culture they would say obey the first, obey your honor, but Shawn the second were as our culture would flip it and say Shawn the first, but obey.

The second, because that's the real you know the point of that is not to say those are moral equivalence, the point of that is to say, you know that just because something comes from deep inside your heart doesn't make it good or healthier lives. Why would you say that everything that our culture believes is going to be right where is everything previous cultures believe is wrong. Could you put down your arrogance for just a second and have a little historical humility and realize that 100 years from now, your kids, and great grandkids. You can make fun of some the stuff you believed and realized that the only way that you have a straight edge going to life is to found your understanding of right and wrong, not based on what everybody else around you make what's in that dark heart of yours that you base it on the illuminated word of God, the Bible ought to listen.

The Bible ought to contradict you and make you mad if it doesn't, you're not really reading it back if it doesn't ever make you mad all you're doing is taking some of your own preconceived ideas of right and wrong and deifying them and calling that God is worshiping yourself. The Bible makes me mad sometimes and I know that I'm like a professional Christian and it's not, but it still makes me mad I'm reading when I was there when then there are like 10 minutes then appear preach like I love it. But in dynamite. I will initially not a monster though that's in there that it's this is what it means when it comes from a word from God that is super cultural and beyond us. It contradicts us, because God is God putting this all of this, someone 1999 I one thing all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation understand more than the age of rockier precepts will talk about liberals from my liberals like progressive wisdom will always want to be on the right side of history. So it's always that the future that's where the wisdom is conservatives, by contrast, oh they like the wisdom of the past where the word comes from.

We want to conserve all these great things from the past which one is better, but to? Right when you are saved by the word of God, you're not really going to be a true liberal or a true conservative because her to Christie the pastor to critique the traditions of the agent and you can critique the future which is the progressive wisdom of your computers professor. He gives you the ability to be neither a conservative or liberal verse 105 your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path toward the word of God gives me the ability to find a way in a place of confusion and darkness.

CS Lewis said he said yes, the law can be narrow in constraining but it's like somebody who is lost in the woods that suddenly in the dark finds the path again government lost in the woods. So when God built me. He chose not to give me 1 ounce of any sense of direction, but he also chose to give me this pioneering spirit that says wherever I am. There's probably a shorter way to get to where I need to go in the path that has been laid out.

These are two very dangerous thing for God to put in one human being which means I spend a lot of time and when I'm in the woods I might want to I wish you go that way I think and get back to where were going that way, and when I get what you just going to panic and then you don't start getting dark and you're trying a new water and minerals, and you find that path again right in that light shines in your there is in its narrow in its constraining, but it's liberating at the same time because it is the path out of the darkness. Listen, college students, high school students you're about to walk into some wildernesses known as dating in college and career and you got a bunch of things and there's nobody not mean that your parents is going to be able to prepare you for in the sauna says is the word of God gives me light and insight in the things I can't sleep because it helped me see the in before I even get to the beginning. That's what the word of God is see if I had thought of couches and hunting will be like, you know pastor there since your metallic months ago my girlfriend you can punish us for that.

Now before I say yes right, which I don't see him as he got it right before here's what what what I usually say I said, not just list the questions is think about what you're saying you're scared to go sideways with the wrath of God. That's why you're asking the question, but you're not scared to go sideways with the wisdom of God. How does that make any sense. Why are you afraid of God punishing you while you reject the councils that he gives to you on what he says life and relationships.

If he holds the keys of heaven and hell. He probably understands marriage and relationships. The word is a lie to your people path and whatever the verses verse 133. Keep steady. My steps according to your promise and let no iniquity get dominion over me steady. The worker here steady. Whatever party your life is not anchored in the God's word is going to be a shaky part.

What happens is the enemy finds whatever shaking your life and that becomes the area he begins to doubt I will sell more time to give you an illustration to whatever party your life is not anchored in the God's word is the part of the enemy start to happen. As you try to bring all structured out to like the game Janke religion going to try to knock out the different pieces and my son six years old. This is like it's based favorite moment is when one of us knocks the structured in a matter he doesn't even love that moment you try to pull out the sections and keep the thing upright.

What happens is the enemy looks at you and he figures out what parts are not anchored in the God's word. Maybe it's your career. Maybe it's your money. Maybe it's your purity any sister staff and it happened that eventually he found the one to bring the whole structure of your life down three says you gotta stay steady by building every part thinking every party your life in the word of God. Verse 23.

Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes.

When the most powerful people in the world whether their financial, political, my friends, my spouse, when they turn against me the first place. I turned to say is on my feet anchored in God's word because even the most powerful people around me could be against me, but my feet are on God's word and not fear. On a solid foundation where you turn in opposition where you turn in tragedy where you turn when the bad health route report comes in. Where you determine your marriage goes in the hard times because the way that your life stay steady is when you are anchored in God's word number three, the Bible, he says, is primarily the story of God's deeds, not ours.

If the record of his promise, not our duties may explain the ceiling of verse 27 there caused me to understand the way of your precepts that I may meditate on your wonderful B-12 of the Bible was about all the deeds that I was supposed to do, but here he somehow got a meditate on what he's done, but your steadfast love come the meal Lord your salvation.

According to your promise as a young man when I was growing up, I thought of the Bible is a collection of heroes that I was supposed to emulate. I'm not saying it was of all the people who taught me, but more just me how I heard it but I just thought I gotta be a man after God's own heart. Like David was there to be a Daniel and all the other flannel breath figures I learned from want to be like them.

As I got older I began to think of the Bible, mainly as a book of constraining rules that I needed to obey 1663 to be exact, and it was a little depressing because was like a walkable game every time I got some downs, like some others I wouldn't abandon. And I got overwhelmed as I got even older. I begin to look at the Bible is a book of practical advice on how to live and how to be happy and how to be a good husband I hope you see this year. Listen to what the Bible has rules and advice and all those things.

The Bible is not primarily any of those things. The Bible is primarily the story of somebody who came to rescue you because you broken all the rules rejected all the advice and mess yourself up so bad that you are unable to start keeping any of it again, and that story of love is to be so big and so captivating that when you finally learn that story. The rest of your life is gonna start to make sense and are to be able to think about your marriage differently in your career differently you're gonna have the motivation to start to obey God. Again, you gotta stop reading the Bible as if it's all about you because it's not.

It's all about Jesus.

Here's the analogy of using all updated for January 2000 1600 and every movie there's always the main character in minor characters. What happens of the minor characters is really not important because they're just there to support the store. The main character right like think of a movie like Star Wars Star Wars number four the 1970s through the main characters Star Wars easy question. Luke Skywalker's main characters. Star Wars big dark liner. You know that is course you don't. Unless you're a nerd.

Big dark liner is the X wing fighter that comes in with Lou to attack the desk are the gets destroyed like 10 seconds and that about and as I teach with the other guys and they don't even get named. They're just X wing fighter number six and the whole point is get blown up so that Lou can get to that place and bore the death Star up not have often thought to be that guy who gets her whole life in general point is you just time this movie you know and just get blown up in but you know what they don't really care because the move is not about them.

The movie about Luke Skywalker.

If you're life were conceived as a movie would you think the main character would be metal dogs me on the movie about me Scripture says what if we gave you the invitation to get out of a movie about you and get into one when you're not the main character but your minor character and outcome changing things. They are looking to change is the fact that not everything that happens using to be for you, that God may prosper you because he wants you to support with your prosperity.

The point of the main character and of God put you through pain if you blow up an X wing fighter. Maybe it's because you're supporting something of the main character is doing and the point is not living and dying. The point is how you are contributing to a story that's going to last and go on forever peaceable while I want to do that I would be a main character of my movie is wife because that movie goes on forever for all eternity is the kingdom that nothing can ever touch for change and I find a strange amount of significance and purpose in being a minor character in a movie is about Jesus. That's the imitation of Scripture is that it is all about him, you have to stop reading the Bible as it was all about you main message of the Bible is not. Here are some practical tools that can picture life. The main message of the Bible is fix your eyes on Jesus and then your problems and be seen in a different light. And then when you fix your eyes on Jesus will begin to fix your life for you. By the way. That's why all the genealogies in those things are in their genealogy like once a Bemis shazam emotional got to be with my marriage. Nothing in a direct way, but they're all about Jesus. And when you see the story about Jesus. Suddenly, everything in her life looks different.

This is not a book of duties of things you need to do for God. It is the story of his love for you. What you holding your hands is not a book of commands for heroes. It's the worlds and universes greatest love letter you read it that way you ever read it. As God's statement of love is love letters to you when I was dating Veronica the girl who became my wife.

When I met her shortly after I met her winter to live in Southeast Asia for two years.

We wrote letters back and forth right.

We filled the bread of letters to fill the encyclopedia Britannica is you under 18. Encyclopedia Britannica is before the days of Google how we learn stuff is book okay love letters. What say that on work Veronica and I now get here we are been married for long time and will say we go back and off on a big box in the attic.

Three big boxes full of those letters and I noticed that they're all unopened world is letters and openers all the letters you only when you are in Southeast Asia you didn't read any of them.

Now I knew that you love me so I didn't like read the letter. Not just come posteriorly if you love me you will read the letter you like what I believe God loves me, but I've never read the book of Habakkuk were God explained to me what love looks like in the midst of tragedy. I think it makes God feel about only one day in heaven given to me. Habakkuk and easy to say hi joy my book and you are gonna read it and it can be awkward and I do try to keep you from that moment okay.

Number four number four. The Bible has more value than life itself. The Bible has more value than life itself. The psalmist says the word has more value to him than thousands of pieces of silver, gold fever 72,000 pieces of silver, gold, verse 109.

What I showed you he says I hold my life very lightly and my hand but I cling to your law, hold it like a drowning man would cling to a life raft recently when asking this question what level of importance does the Bible have in your life, what level of importance does it play in your if not, what you believe about it, but what level of importance does it play minimum and talk to you for a minute if you found out that somehow the predator was in your neighborhood and you just let your kids go out and play with no supervision. What kind of dad would you be in Jesus Christ do you say understands reality more than anybody else tells us that there is an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking him, he may devour.

Jesus said his intent for your kids is to kill to steal and destroy them. Their only hope. Your only hope is Scripture because the only way that you can confront a lie is to know the truth you want. By the way Satan does identify his lies is lies.

Now this is like a check which Bible says he just puts it in that he surrounds them with it. The only way they're going to know truth from error is if they understand the truth and they can confront the lies with the truth like Jesus did. When Satan attacked Jesus. Jesus did not win it and outsmart him.

He didn't say I'm better than you can say I'm moral and you can't tell me he quoted Scripture. What are your kids going to come up with when Satan attacks them. Not if Satan attacks them when Satan attacks them. You say will of course Jesus through Scripture.

He was God. He wrote: no. New Testament says Jesus was not born with Scripture memorized Luke 252, says he had a learning just like the rest of us. In other words, Jesus went to Owatonna and he finished every book and he stuck around afterward for extra credit and listen outside our family were the him anyways. A typical American family were crazy busy, but I will tell you I choose not to have my kids in nearly the amount of extracurricular stuff that it seemed the average American parent has their kids involved in, but one thing I'm making sure of is that they learn the Bible and all they will grow up knowing everything there is to know about Taylor Swift or Lebron, but they can talk their way to first Timothy and Lamentations. I'll be a happy dad, take some Taylor Swift thing and help much in relationships like I would say she probably can become harmful right and Lebron certainly help them in their career, but the word of God is going to give them life and the word of God is going to give them the ability to distinguish truth from error and not be killed, stolen or destroyed. Readers are explained to them the other night. Not until just before that out until you as I told my kids and the kids like this there's this movie with Nicholas Cage and is always respected him and is called the rock enter not allowed to watch but the basic gist of the movie is this that there's some bad guys that have these balls of light green nuclear gas and if you get in the presence of the green nuclear gas or eat your face off and so at the climax of the movie Nicholas Cage takes one of these balls of green nuclear gas and he puts it in the mouth of the bad guy and he punches him in the face and the green nuclear gas comes out and it starts to eat the guys for now looking back at my wife as I'm told this story, Caesar minorities like men, but we are pastors do the same thing sometimes and am up your precinct like the ship has sailed at me.

We got a really good we got to get to wherever it's going so I know Mike took it so so so Nicholas Cage suddenly realizes that he's also in the presence you can see this is such a good actor to this moment of realization we like and then he's like so he starts to run away from the green nuclear gas, but the green nuclear gas evidently had brains because it knows where he is. So he's going to chase him and so he ran away down the hall and it just keeps coming after he gets into a room where there's nowhere to escape, no doors or anything and assist him in the green nuclear gas and here comes green nuclear gas what the deal is if you're in the presence of the green nuclear gas. The only thing that you can do to protect yourself is there's this antidote that you got put directly in your heart, but it's in a needle like that and so Nicholas Cage reaches into his backpack and he pulls out this needle and the unseen sit in on time.

Things like a foot and 1/2 and any holes in front of his chest and for a split second he disliked the tension built in anger like you can like just the green nuclear gas that's better put nothing in her heart but he takes it in the shelves and that thing in and then respond. It is me and it's for you much the end of the movie and said I say that the kids on businesses like the Bible, you can't watch this into your 18 years old but see everywhere around you everywhere.

Everywhere there's this poisonous gas. It's in the Disney movies you watch the little mermaid, little mermaid trying to tell you that if you'll just follow your heart everything to be fine and on the bottles and you don't follow your heart. The Bible is telling you follow Scripture cannot lie is seeping into your soul and then you turn on the Disney Channel and then you play these games and it's everywhere and it's lying to you and it will destroy you, and my job is your daddy is on Nicolas Cage and I've got to take the word of God and I got a put that in your heart so that when Satan's lies or press you, you will know the truth because the truth can set you free. Going is the word of God that God used to create everything that you see he didn't mix up a potion and create out of that he spoke a word, it was with a word that God raised Jesus from the dead. It was with a word that he gave sight to the blind fits with the word of the book of Revelation tells us that one day he will destroy the works of the enemy and make all things new.

It is by the word of God that God will release you from the chains of sin.

He will heal the wounds of addiction is by his word that he will pick up the shards of a broken relationship and put back a family together again, there is no power on earth. There is no powerful in no power in the universe quite like the word of God is the word it creates is the word that redeems is a word that restores is the word that heals everything in the Bible who is about the wired you got to know you gotta believe it.

It's got to saturate you when life cuts you.

You gotta bleed God's word like shakes you. You got to regurgitate God's word. The problem is not you will know that the problem is that you never brought your practices in line with what you believe right now the problem the problem is not that you don't know the promise she was never brought your life and in line with that, so why not let this be the year that you change that which leads me to the last verse in Psalm 119.

Look at it I love it. Psalm 119 Swanson music I've gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, try to not forget your commandments like a resumes and contradictory to you it does to me. I've gone astray like a lost sheep, but I've not forgotten your commandments which is you read the song like I did this week. Several times we will start to see is that there's all kinds of useful contradictions in their seeming contradictions in one breath. The Psalm says I hate double mindedness versus later he's like my am double minded. I love the law will a lot of stuff is what which is busy. Mother does not, here's the answer. He wants to live wants to love it, but he knows his heart is divided so he resolves that he's going to love it and asked God to bring his heart into line.

If you love that because the writer the Psalm is just like me. I want to love God's word. But I'll tell you a lot of times I'm looking more forward to the next episode one of her shows, now that I'm watching and I am what God has to say to me his word is what I will resolve his goblet.

You bring my heart in line with what I know to be true Christian growth begins by confessing to God what you are not, and then asking God to make you into what you know you should be in Jesus died so that you could be for most of us, including me the word and have near the place of prominence in our lives, and it should prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart Lord take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above, why not let this be the year that we resolve together as a church that this year is going to be the year of the Bible for us that we will choose to hate double mindedness that we will ask God to change our hearts are the word of God becomes our prize. Our passion. Our treasured possession that we would seek it more than we seek riches more than we seek the applause of man we would have for that more than a drowning man pants with another breath I want you to resolve that and then ask God to bring your heart in line with what you know to be true minimum to get these resources in which you join a small group in which you join my family and making this your year of living much about your heads with me if you would all campuses not asking you to commit anything on this asking you to ask God to make this year the year that the Bible move from being a part of your life to be the center of your life for being one other thing that your family does in the weekend to be in the center of your life and weaken your whole life is your week but I pray that this year but not just be the year of factual transfer not information to be your transformation as you make this church a church of the word pray in Jesus