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Why Should You Love Your Bible in 2024 | Matthew 5:17-20 (12-31-23: Richey Goodrich)
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In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of the Bible in our lives. They discuss how Jesus teaches that every word in the Bible is put there by God and should not be abolished. They also highlight how the Bible continually points us to Jesus and is essential for our growth as disciples of Christ. The speaker encourages listeners to love the Bible and offers practical tools for cultivating that love in the new year. It's a joy to be with you here on this last Lord's Day of 2023, I think it's my third time to worship with you over this last year. First time to be able to bring my wife and children, so I'm really glad they're here. We'll be staying around for the fellowship meal and love to hang out with you guys and spend time together in fellowship. Well we want to continue our worship by looking at the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 5 verse 17 to 20. We're going to hear our Lord's teaching on how central the Bible is to our lives and how important it is for us as we explore the claims of the Christian faith and as we grow as disciples of Jesus. So please hear the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 5 verse 17 to 20. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Please be seated and please keep your Bible open to Matthew 5, 17 and 20. Let me pray for us before we go further and meditate on this passage of scripture. Our Father in heaven, we are so thankful for the gift of Jesus that we celebrated this last Christmas and of course we celebrate every day and especially every Lord's Day. Thank you for sending your son as our savior. Without him there is no life and yet with him there is fullness of life, eternal life and a message to proclaim to our unbelieving neighbors and to the lost nations of the world. Thank you so much for the scriptures that reveal your son to us. Thank you for giving us your written word that we may know about your son, that we may know how to follow him by your grace and discipleship to him. Lord we confess, as we've already done in this service, that we do not love your word as we ought, that we do not treasure it as one of our greatest possessions. And so we pray, Father, that as we meditate on the words of your son in these next few moments that your Holy Spirit would show us the beauty of Christ and the beauty of your word that points us to Christ. We ask, Father, that you would deepen in us, in our time together, a love for your word, a love that would grow and grow and grow as we go into this next year. So Lord help me as I preach your word, help all of us as we sit under your word, reveal your glory, we pray in Jesus' mighty and matchless name. Amen. Well tomorrow is the first day of 2024 and you know what that means. Some of you have been thinking of your New Year's resolutions, thinking how life is going to look different at least the first week or two of January, with goals beyond that of course. Many people do that. There was a survey a few years ago that I read where they surveyed 29,000 people, so not just a small sampling, of what their top New Year's resolution would be. And these were the top five. Number one was some combination of I want to exercise, eat better, be healthier. That was like 41% of people said that. I think we especially feel that in America after glutting through Thanksgiving, through Christmas holidays. I know that I've had more than my fair share of sweets. Secondly, people said they want to spend more time with family as they rush into the New Year. They think about how busy they've been in the previous year and they want to spend more time and devote that time. Third, people wanted to find a better job. That was about one out of every five persons said I want a better job. Fourth was they want to spend less time on social media. And fifth said they want to quit smoking. Now there was a funniest resolution contest and one guy traced his continual desire to put these resolutions before us and his continual failure in a somewhat humorous way in regards to his health and reading books and finances. And he traced out, this article was from 2021, so he traced out over five years some of these resolutions and their devolution, if you will, over the years. So listen to this. You have to listen carefully to get this. This is, you have to listen to get the humor. In 2016, in regards to his health, he said, I'll get my weight down below 150 pounds. In 2017, he said, I'll watch my calories until my weight is below 170 pounds. 2018, he said, I'll follow a new diet until I get below 185 pounds. 2019, he says, I'll work out once a week. And then in 2020, he said, I'll drive by a gym once a week. Wants to read more. He said, in 2016, he'd read at least 20 good books a year. 2017, he said, I'll read at least 10 books a year. 2018, he said, I'll read five books a year. 2019, he said, I'll read some articles in the newspaper this year. And then in 2020, I'll try to read a tweet this year, get social media posts. Finally, in regards to finances, you have to listen very carefully here. 2016, he said, I'll pay off my bank loan, singular, promptly. 2017, he said, I'll pay off my bank loans, plural, promptly. 2018, I will be totally out of debt by next year. 2019, I'll try to pay off the debt interest by next year. And then 2020, I'll try to be out of the country by the end of the year. We can relate, can't we? We make resolutions. We fail. We do more. We fail more. Now, we all know what the Christian resolution is going into a new year, the most common. And it may be some of the shared ones, but when it comes to our spiritual life, what do all of us, even if we don't say it, we tend to think, I'm going to read the Bible more. I'm finally going to get through that one-year Bible plan. Or I'm going to devote myself at least five days a week to reading the scriptures and have devotional times. And those are good things. I hope you do read the Bible more in 2024. But simply completing a Bible plan or reading your Bible every day is too little for what God has for his people, those who've been redeemed in Christ. Our Redeemer doesn't want his people merely to check off the list or just to say, I've done this. He wants them to love his word because his word reveals himself. His word reveals his gospel. His word is absolutely essential to the Christian life. And it is the chief means of grace by which we grow as disciples of Jesus. Or if you're here and you're not a Christian and you want to explore the Christian faith, the chief way to learn about Jesus and the gospel is to hear the word read and preach and to read it for yourself. And so what I want to do is I want to look at what Jesus teaches in his most famous of sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, about the centrality of God's word. Jesus is going to give us both a theory and a practice to help us to love God's word. I want this message to be both theology of scripture, but I also want to give you very practical tools to put that into place and practice that you might grow in your love for the Bible in 2024 and as many days as the Lord may give you. And so I want to draw out three things. I want to ask and answer the question, why should you love the Bible? And from our text, I'm going to draw out three reasons. Firstly, as you'll see in your outline, I think on page 10, wherever the sermon outline is here, page 10, yep. We're going to see firstly from verse 17 to 18 that you should love the Bible because every word is put there by God, every word. Secondly, we should love the Bible because it continually points us to Jesus. We'll explore that also from verse 17 and 18. And then thirdly, you should love the Bible because it is essential to our discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ. So let's get into our text and begin to look in verse 17 about how every word is put there by God. Now, Jesus, in his most famous of sermons, was teaching in a way that people had not heard before. It was different than the Jewish religious leaders. We see that at the end of chapter 7, if you'll just move forward a couple of chapters with me, at the very conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, which covers Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Matthew 7, 28 says this, when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowd were astonished at his teaching. But why? Look at verse 29. For he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. The scribes would quote, sometimes the scriptures, but also lots of Jewish authorities. This rabbi said this, this rabbi said this, Jesus said, I say to you, or you've heard it said, but I say to you. And so the wrong conclusion to be drawn, it was being drawn by some, that this guru, this rabbi, this teacher, doesn't really believe the Old Testament scriptures. He's doing something beyond the scriptures. Maybe he doesn't believe that they are necessary for us. And so we come to Matthew 5, 17, and Jesus begins to lay that aside at the very beginning of his sermon when he says in verse 17, do not think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophets. I haven't come to do away with them. Law and prophets is shorthand for their scriptures, what we would call the Old Testament. In fact, as we see in chapter 5, he's not going to abolish the law. He's going to correct the misunderstandings and give us a much deeper understanding of the word of God and what it originally meant, not going against it at all. In fact, Jesus shows the highest possible regard for the Bible. If you want to know what Jesus thinks of scripture, all you have to do is keep reading in verse 17. He says, I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And then look at verse 18. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. You couldn't say more about God's word and how important it is, how unending it is, how it is going to be kept, how it's all from him. And friends, Jesus doesn't say this just in theory. Jesus is not an ivory tower academician who's, you know, just making good sounding arguments and writing provocative theological words. He's not a keyboard warrior out there on social media just making claims. Jesus knew this and believed it and he lived it in the hardest and most difficult moments of his life. In fact, just turn back one chapter to Matthew 4, as Jesus begins his public ministry after being baptized, he's thrust into the wilderness. And I'm just going to read 4, 1 through 11, and I want you to notice exactly how Jesus counters the temptations of the devil. Matthew 4, 1, that Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. Notice Jesus response, but he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Act two, then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you're the son of God, throw yourself down for it's written, he will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone. Notice Jesus response in verse 7, Jesus said to him again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him up to a very high mountain. This is going to be act three and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give to you if you will fall down and just worship me. Notice Jesus response in verse 10, then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Do you see what Jesus repeated every time he was tempted? Where did Jesus, the incarnate son of God, God himself turn to to counter the devil's arguments? Even when the devil tried to misuse some of God's word, he turned to the written word of God every time he said it is written and quoted from the Old Testament, quoting from the book of Deuteronomy. Most notable is especially verse four, where he quotes from Deuteronomy 8 3 and gives us another incredible statement about God's word, about the Bible. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Now, where do you get these words that come from the mouth of God, those which are written in Scripture? That's why Jesus says it is written. It is written. It is written. We live spiritually by God's word. It is our nourishment and even the incarnate son of God lived on God's word and dependence on God's word. Look at Matthew 5 18. Jesus is not just saying there's a general message that the scripture is pointing to that's true. He's not just saying there's a few promises that are true. In verse 18, he says for truly Matthew 5 18 for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. He's referring to Hebrew letters. There's 22 consonants in the Hebrew Bible and an iota refers to something called a yoad, which we would pronounce ya or just sound. It's the equivalent if you think of an apostrophe size wise. Now we make a contraction. Do not don't. You put a little apostrophe. That's the size of a yoad compared to other letters. It's the tiniest Hebrew letter, just a mark. But then he even ups the ante when he says not a dot that's referring to just a little jot. There's two letters in the Hebrew alphabet are equivalent of a D and an R called a dollar and a race. And they kind of look like this. And the only thing that separates them is there's a little little thing called a title or what he calls here an iota that just points out it's terror for beginning Hebrew students because you're trying to figure out is that a dollar or a race. It's just the tiniest thing that separates them. And Jesus is making a point. The words of Scripture, not just the words, but the very letters, the very mark that distinguishes one letter from another and what God has originally given to us is his word. None of it will pass away. All of it is important. It's not just the promises. It's the abiding moral commands of Scripture. Every part of Scripture is there by God. And that's why he's going to say later, it's essential to listen to it and to obey it and to follow it. Now, I think this is really important in our cultural moment where many in the church are wrestling with this. We're hearing many new ideas about humanity and about gender and sexuality. And many people are saying, well, you know, the Bible, the central message of the Bible is fine. But I think the Bible was wrong when it talked about gender or human sexuality or, you know, it says that Jesus is the only way. But surely those good Hindus aren't going to go to hell or our Muslim friends who don't believe in Jesus. And there are people who would call themselves followers of Jesus who would doubt the authority of Scripture, who would doubt that every word is put there by God. And I just need to point out to you, if you find yourself in that boat, if you call yourself one who says Jesus is my savior and my Lord, I am his disciple. And yet you say, I can't trust the word of God. Then you have a different view of Scripture than the one you claim to call your Lord. You're not letting him be the Lord over your life in this very key area, because Jesus view of Scripture is that every word is put there by God. And to be a disciple of Jesus is to follow Jesus in his view of Scripture and to submit to Scripture, to love the Scriptures, to know that we live by it. And so, friends, if you call yourself a Christian and yet you doubt the full authority of God's word, I call you on the basis of God's word to repent. You have wrong views of God's word. Jesus is calling you to embrace his views of God's word or that every tiny word in its original giving is his word. And friends, you know what that means? Do you know what it means if every part of Scripture is there, if every word of Scripture is there? It's all important. We can't be satisfied with a partial knowledge of God's word. Going into 2024, you can't say, oh, I spent a lot of time studying, hearing Mark's good sermons. I've read books. I'm good. All of it is important. The minor prophets are important. The law, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus is even important. All of it is important. I'm thankful that you're in a church where Pastor Mark preaches from the Old Testament regularly and he preaches expositional sermons. We need to sit under the preaching of all parts of Scripture. We need to read every part of it. We need to grow in our love for it. We need to love the Old Testament as much as the New Testament. Throw away those pocket New Testaments, have our full Bibles and read them and enjoy them because the Bible's self-testimony, the words of our Savior, is that this is the very word of God. It's without error. It's what God wants you to have. Friends, when Mark is faithfully preaching the word up here, when the word is read, when you're in a small group study and someone reads it, when you're reading it on your own, you're hearing God speaking to you. These are the words of God from the mouth of God. And friends, if that is true, if these are the very words of our magnificent and glorious Creator and Redeemer, how can we not embrace them and love them and treasure them and spend more time with God's word than we spend on social media and our recreations? Oh, friends, Jesus is calling us to love his word, to love his word preached, to love his word read, to love his word memorized, because every word is put there by God himself. Now, the importance of every part of Scripture is highlighted when we see how it all finds its fulfillment in the person and saving work of Jesus Christ. And so that leads us to our second point. We should love the Bible because it continually points us to Jesus. Again, look at Matthew 5, 17 and 18. When Jesus says, don't think I've come to abolish the law of the prophets, he says something very astounding about himself. He says, I've not come to abolish them. But listen to this. Listen to this claim. I've come to fulfill them. Verse 18, For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished and accomplished through him. Fulfillment, accomplishment in his very life in person. He views every part of Scripture as something that he's going to fulfill and not just the big promises of Scripture, even the very moral commands of Scripture. Jesus will fulfill the Ten Commandments and all the commands of Scripture. Everything finds its fulfillment in his ministry and his person. The big story and the small promises and the commands that are abiding moral commands of Scripture. The ceremonial law that pointed to him, the sacrifice, the temple, everything finding its fulfillment in the person and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder if any of you have IKEA furniture at home. You know about IKEA furniture. If you don't, I have some IKEA furniture at home. Bought IKEA furniture in Australia and India. IKEA furniture is, you know, you go into the big giant place or the warehouse, but when it comes, it usually doesn't come to you put together. Right. It's in a box and you have to put it together. And sometimes there's a lot of parts. And so you've got all these parts and you've got this manual. Step one, step two, step 243 to get it all put together. Now, if you just put all the parts together, you might think, well, I don't know what this little wooden thing. What does that do? What does that do? But when you understand it in light of the whole, you see it's an essential thing to, you know, shove the cabinet together or whatever it is. Every part has a place. And at the end, when it's all put together, it looks hopefully like the picture on the box or on the manual and what you saw in the store. And that's a small picture of what the scripture does. Every little part fits together and finds its fulfillment. Every part's important. And it points us to Jesus and his ministry and his saving work. It finds its fulfillment in him. Now, most of these promises of scripture have been inaugurated in Jesus first coming. What we especially celebrated on Monday. But one of the mysteries of the gospel is that all the promises of the Old Testament are not fulfilled at one time. They are inaugurated in Jesus first coming and they begin and they grow and they will be consummated or completed at his second advent, his second coming. But they are in process. Jesus is in process right now of fulfilling all the word of God. And Christian, here's the exciting thing. We get to be a part of that because part of his mission is to gather in a people given to him by the father from every tribe, tongue and nation. And as we share the good news to our neighbors in the nations, Christ works through us and uses us to fulfill his plan and what the scriptures points to. In Genesis 12, God said to Abraham, all the nations, all the families of the earth will be blessed through you. That has begun to happen in earnest when Jesus rose from the dead and commissioned his disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations. And it's still happening. There's still many unreached people groups have not heard the gospel and Jesus is working through his church to fulfill it. Friends, what this means is the Bible is first and foremost. And please hear me, young person, student, please hear me if you're not a Christian, especially the Bible is not just a bunch of rules to follow. That's what a lot of us think it is. It's just some list of rules and some commands. And maybe we'll have a better life. The Bible is not, first of all, rules and commands. It is a book of redemption. It is a story of grace. It is about a loving creator who redeemed so many of those who rebelled against him by his grace. And yet so many people, when they come to the Bible and maybe you fall into that camp, they think this is just a bunch of commands. It's just like every other world religion that gives you some principles to live by that might make your life better. And if you're good enough at doing them, maybe you'll get to what's ever better next. There was a New York Times reporter maybe 15 years ago named A.J. Jacobs, and he was a secular Jew, means he's Jewish in heritage. But he didn't practice, didn't do anything. And when he was a journalist student in college, he was thinking that this religion stuff is going away. People are no longer believing in religion. You know, the technology and science is the place to go. But as he got into his 40s, he kept just seeing that religion wasn't going away. He was always having to write about it as he covered stories around the world. And so he thought, I wonder if I'm missing something from my Jewish heritage. And so he got the idea that he would spend a year, he would go through and read the Old Testament. That's the Jewish Bible. He said, I'm going to try to obey every command for one year and see what it does for my life. Now, you've probably heard this from Pastor Mark or someone else, but Jewish people tend to count there being 613 commands in the Old Testament, somewhere around there. So not just the Ten Commandments. These are the tiny ones. He said, as much as I can, as someone living, I think it was 2005 when he did this. But things like, you know, not shaving your beard, I'm sure that was popular with the ladies, not wearing clothing of mixed fibers, all the little ceremonial kind of weird things that we read about or seem weird to us. So I'm going to do this for a year. And he said this was his goal. These are his words. I wanted to experience the Bible myself and find out what's good in it and what's maybe not so relevant in the 21st century. And then he wrote a book about his experience. It was called The Year of Living Biblically. One man's humble attempt to follow the Bible as literally as possible. What a parable of our misunderstanding of the Word of God, that it's a bunch of commands simply to obey. He missed it. Now, the commands of the Bible are very important. They are our duty, the moral commands of Scripture, summarized in the Ten Commandments. But they're not the first thing it's about. And they only properly operate when we understand and embrace the Bible as the story of redemption. A God who saves people by his grace and grace alone through the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus Christ. Look at 2nd Timothy 3, if you will, go forward in your Bible. I just want to highlight 2nd Timothy 3, 14 and 15. But while we're there, I'm also going to read verse 16 and 17 because they are two of the most important verses for our doctrine of Scripture. So 2nd Timothy 3, 14 to 17. Verse 14 says, But as for you, he's talking to Timothy, Paul to Timothy, continue in what you've learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you've learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. This is your bonus text. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for a proof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. That's worthy of an amen, church, is it not? That is our doctrine of Scripture. It's inspired by God, breathed out by God. But I just want to highlight verse 15. I could not read verse 16, 17, getting to 15. But notice what Paul says about the Old Testament Scriptures, how from childhood you've been equated with the sacred writings. That's the Old Testament, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. That's what the Bible does. The Bible makes you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And the commands of Scripture play a part of that because you know what the commands of Scripture show you and especially the moral demands of like the Ten Commandments that you can't obey God perfectly, that you can't be righteous on your own. I remember being a teenager, 15, 16, struggling with lots of pimples and acne. And I remember I was always so self-conscious about that. And I was kind of a social butterfly, kind of like to hang out with people. And so almost every night I went out with my friends and I'd always look in the mirror, you know, and pop the pimples and put on the medicine. And I remember one night at home, in my mirror at home, I felt like I was having a really good face day. There was no, you know, explosions out there, nothing red. My face looked almost clear in my mirror. I say, man, this is great. I've got a great evening. My pimples aren't popping out and doing that. And I'm hanging out with my friends and we stop at a convenience store, you know, the kind of lights they have in convenience store bathrooms. I go in there and this neon, or not neon, the fluorescent light, and it was like the apocalypse that happened on my face. Blemish after blemish after blemish that I couldn't see in my dim mirror at home was just popping out. That's what the law of God does to us, friends. It exposes the blemishes of our heart, our failures to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind, our failures to love our neighbor as ourself. It puts us under the judgment of God. So then we will be ready to receive the promised savior that he's given. That's how the scriptures make you wise for salvation in Jesus Christ. They show you your sin. They promise the savior and Jesus is that savior. And so they're able to make you wise for salvation. So, friend, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ here today, maybe you're a young person, a teenager who's thinking about, do I really believe what my parents believe? Or you're an adult and you know yourself not to be a Christian. Please make no mistake about it. Christianity is not a religion that you somehow go to heaven by trying to obey the Ten Commandments or obey the Bible. It's not advice how to simply make your life better. If you're treating it that way, you need to hear that it is a story that finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, that you can only be saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. And I plead with you that if you think if you've come into this service thinking that that you have to do a certain amount of things to be right with God and maybe you think you're a pretty good person, that you would see that you're not and that you would see that you need a savior. Or maybe you come in here thinking that you have to be a pretty good person to go to heaven and you know yourself not to be. And you think, man, there is no hope for me. Then I have the best news in the world for you. Grace is free. Salvation is free. Christ accomplished it, offered to you right now to be received by faith. Jesus is offering himself to you right now as his word is preached. If I speak to you, would you embrace him? The Bible points to him. It finds its fulfillment in him. And Christian, we need to know this because we need to read the scriptures with an eye for the gospel, because Christian, you never move beyond your need for the gospel. The gospel is not the doorway into the Christian life. And you move on to something else. As Tim Keller famously says, it's not the ABCs of the Christian life. It's the A to Z of the Christian life. It is everything. You need the Bible to preach you the gospel every day. You need every time Mark or someone else stands up here to preach Christ from scripture to you. When you go to the scriptures, you need to look for Christ and celebrate Christ and experience the rescue of the gospel afresh and anew. The gospel assures us of our standing in Jesus Christ. It gives us confidence in our struggles with sin that we are still loved and accepted by God. It gives us strength to fight and repent and to daily walk with him as we look to Christ and his ongoing work in our lives. Let me give you just a little bit of practical help to help you do that. I encountered this all the time as a pastor. Everywhere I've been, people struggle to read the Bible, even that know the word or know Christ. Man, I read it, I still don't know what to do. I'm going to give you four things you can do. So there's some helps here as you read. This is very practical. You've probably heard of the acronym ACTS, A-C-T-S. We use that as praying, adoration, A-C, confession, T, thanksgiving, S, supplication. As you read the Bible, adore. Look for things about the character of God, first and foremost. How is God revealing who he is? What do I see about his holiness, his majesty, his wisdom, the love the father and the son and the spirit have for one another? How can I celebrate God as creator? I'm intentionally staying away from redemption until the T, but what can I worship God for who he is, what he's done in creation, how he rules in providence? What is there in this text, either implicitly or explicitly, that I can stop and turn my Bible reading into prayer and say, God, I praise you because of this. Maybe you even write that down. One friend describes journaling as praying with your pen. That'll help a lot of people. Pray with your pen. A, adore. Whatever text you're reading, adore God. C, confess. When you've seen the beautiful character of God, when you see the commands of God that reveal his character, when you've worshiped and celebrated him, you turn and look at yourself and you're like me as a teenager with acne in that bathroom mirror in the convenience store and you see your sin and confess it. Lord, I see you're like this. I'm not like you. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please cleanse me. Please heal me. And then T, thank you. And this is where we focus on Jesus. Thank him for the saving work of Jesus Christ. Whether it's there explicitly or implicitly, you have to connect it to the bigger picture of the story. Celebrate the gospel. When you've seen the character of God, when you've confessed your sins, you see how much you need the gospel. Celebrate the gospel. Thank him for what Jesus has done for you and forgiving you and helping you. And then S, supplication. The very thing you've been repenting of, ask the Holy Spirit to change you, to begin to work in your life. Let me give you a quick example. Let's take something like the ninth commandment from Exodus 2016, do not bear false witness. Maybe our former Bible reading, you'd read that and think, OK, I shouldn't lie. That's it. But how can we adore when we read the ninth commandment? What is the ninth commandment revealing about God? God is a God of truth. God is a covenant keeping God, which Dan will be teaching to you in Sunday school. He makes promises and he fulfills them. And our very salvation is dependent on that. We can celebrate the fact that our God never lies, according to Titus. We can delight in his covenant faithfulness. We can adore when we read the ninth commandment because it reveals the character of God. And then we confess our failures. We all lie in some ways. We misrepresent ourselves at times to make ourselves look better, to get out of trouble. We exaggerate things. We're all guilty of bearing false witness. We can confess. We can give thanksgiving for the work of Jesus because Jesus never lied. Jesus was always told the truth. He was always faithful, even in the words of his opponents. He always spoke the truth and he died for our failures to keep the ninth commandment. He went to the cross. He bore the punishment of the father for all of us who would belong to him to keep that. And then we ask, we supplicate, Lord Jesus, make me a man of truth, a woman of truth. Make me like yourself. Work me by your spirit. And ever I'm in this situation, I tend to exaggerate when tax time comes. I don't report everything. Lord, change me, help me, whatever it may be. And we work through the scripture and we adore, we confess, we thank for Jesus and we supplicate. And friends, if you hear nothing else, never leave a sermon, never leave your time in God's word without celebrating the cross of Jesus Christ. Friends, if you leave your Bible hearing and your Bible reading times and not celebrate the work of Christ, you have not read the Bible as our Savior has taught you to read it because it finds its fulfillment in him. It's all about him and the story of grace and what he's done. So, friends, we've seen two reasons why we should love our Bible, every word is put there by God, it points us to Jesus. But the Bible not only points us to Jesus as a savior from the penalty of our sin, it also shows us how to depend on Jesus to live a life that is pleasing to him. And thus, we should finally love the Bible because it's essential to our discipleship. Look back at Matthew chapter five, Matthew 5, 19. Notice it begins with the word, therefore, and lie to the fact that every word is put there by God. Verse 19, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the commands of Scripture are still very important, the abiding moral commands of God's word are there. And I think this is often misunderstood by those of us who rightly profess that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I hear people say this all the time everywhere I've been and served and ministered to understand grace in one sense. But then they say, oh, yeah, yeah, we probably should obey. We don't have to, you know, but we should or we can for our good. But friends. The moral law of God doesn't change. You're made in God's image, the moral law of God summarizes the Ten Commandments as a reflection of his image. You're always duty bound to obey the scriptures. Now, as a Christian, we're not duty bound to obey them for salvation because we can't. We're trusting Jesus to fulfill them. But that doesn't mean that we still don't have the duty to obey. When we don't obey the moral commands of Scripture, summarize the Ten Commandments or other clear commands of Scripture, we're sinning and we have to repent. We don't lose salvation. We don't lose God's love. He loves us the same. We're still forgiven in Christ, but we have to repent. We're called to live out God's word, not in our own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Ten Commandments is really vital, it's a great summary of the reformed faith and the duty of the Christian, the commands of God, as we said, they show us our sin, they lead us to Christ, but then Christ, in one sense, leads us back to the commandments as the way to walk in him, the way to live in him. We quoted from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, it's 107 questions. Do you know how many of the 107 questions are devoted to the Ten Commandments and an exposition of them? About 40. More than a third. More than a third, we don't do them to earn God's love, we have it in Christ, but it's vital that we go to Scripture and say, God, what do you want me to do as a Christian in your strength, not on my own, as one who's forgiven and loved and adopted? How do I live the life that is honoring to you and good for me? About six years ago in Sydney, Australia, the one illustration I'm using for my kids, my kids were asking me, Dad, are we going to be in any of the illustrations? I said not, I'm not going to single any of you out, but I have a group illustration. I was working through the Ten Commandments with my kids, memorizing them, getting them to be able to say, and I just mentioned in our family worship, you know, I bet most of the people in our church, we were pastoring a church, Harbor City Church, I was an assistant pastor there, associate, and I said, I bet most of the people in our church couldn't list the Ten Commandments. I did not say go ask everybody, but my kids took it upon themselves, hey, I should go ask every person I see the next Sunday, hey, can you list the Ten Commandments in order? And so they did. I don't know how many people they talked to. I just had four at the time, probably, I don't know, 20, 30 people. You'd have to ask them afterwards. You know how many people in that church, many of them have been Christians for many years. Do you know how many of them were just able to list the Ten Commandments? I'm not I'm not talking about, quote, Exodus 21 through 17. I mean, just list them. You know how many they probably asked, 30 people, one. And he really didn't count because he was a pastor. Thank God the pastor knew it. He was a bivocational pastor, but he was a pastor nonetheless. And yet Jesus wants us to love his word, to understand all parts of it, even the commands of scripture. Obeying the scripture is vital to our discipleship. I mean, look at the Great Commission at the very end of Matthew. Just turn there with me. Many of you could quote it, but just I want to highlight something to you. You know, as a missionary, I'm always calling people to engage in the Great Commission and pray and give and go. But notice what part of that Great Commission is in Matthew 28, 18 to 20. Verse 18, Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. What's involved in that? Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe. Listen to this phrase, friends, teaching them to observe all I have commanded. He doesn't say just just share the four principles of the gospel so that they'll repent and believe and and then you're done. Teach him a few things. You know, here, teach him the shorter catechism. I mean, I wish everybody knew one hundred seven questions of what they meant. I didn't even say that. He said, teach him everything I've commanded. Do you know what that is? It's the Bible. Because Jesus, by the Spirit, has inspired all of it. All of it. And to be a disciple of Jesus is to be one who says, you are my Lord. You rule me through your word. What do you have to say about how I love my spouse? What do you have to say about how I love my kids? What do you have to say about how I use social media? What do you have to say about how I go about my work? How are you, Lord, of my recreations? What do you want me to do and believe? What am I supposed to know about you? And you search this book, not by yourself, in community and by yourself, sit under good preaching of God's word, study good books written about it. Because a disciple is one who is growing in their love for the scriptures, because to be a disciple is to learn and seek to repent towards doing all that Jesus commanded. And friends, Jesus amps it up a little bit. Our final verse. In verse 19, it sounds like our obedience to scripture is just the measure of kind of the amount of rewards we have in the kingdom of God. But actually, verse 20, he says something more devastating about that. He says in verse 20, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is saying our obedience to scripture is such a necessary evidence that we are trusting him as savior and belong to him. But unless we are really pursuing righteousness, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We will go to hell. We will be lost. How can he say that when we have been saying that we're not saved by our good works, our efforts, that he's done it all because the indisputable evidence that we belong to Jesus, that we are united to him, is that he is at work in us, giving us a desire to follow him, to repent towards him and specifically a heart level of righteousness. That's what he says in verse 20 when he says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, they were the religious people that everybody looked at and thought they're godly people, but they tend to externalize the law of God. They thought, you know, as long as I don't physically kill someone, I'm keeping the sixth commandment not to murder. And Jesus said, oh, no, no, no. When you hate your brother, you've broken that command. You may not have actually murdered them, but you've murdered them in your heart because all physical murder starts in the heart with hatred. And even if you don't get there, you may not be quite as guilty of murder, but you're still guilty. You're not righteous. He answered up when they said, oh, it's long seventh commandment not to commit adultery. As long as I physically haven't slept with another person's spouse, I've kept that commandment. And Jesus says, no, no, no. If you look at another person's lust after them, you've committed adultery in the heart because where does all physical acts of adultery start? They start in the heart with lust. And when you lust, you're sinning. And so Jesus takes the law of God. And a Christian is one who says it's not just about trying to fool God and others with an external observance. It's from the heart desiring to please the God who saved us by his grace, from the heart, daily repenting of our failures to obey him and seeking his grace to grow in obedience. It's not saying perfection. We will all sin every day. We have indwelling sin. But the follower of Jesus does not like it. He doesn't welcome it. The follower of Jesus daily repents, daily seeks God's grace, searches the scriptures, asks Jesus to help them to grow in their obedience. Look at Matthew 7, 21. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said some words that might be terrifying to us. Matthew 7, 21 through 23, he says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, that's the most basic Christian confession. Jesus is Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my father who's in heaven on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, listen to these terrifying words that I hope none of you hear. I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Those are terrifying words. And I'm fully aware, living in the South and the Bible Belt, that there's a good chance there are some of you here today hearing this word, you say, oh, I'm a Christian. I prayed a prayer. I put my faith in Jesus. And yet you are not daily repenting of your sins and seeking to come into the lordship of Christ. You need to be wary of these warnings because I want none of you to hear that. I want you to be welcomed in. And yet there's a warning that Jesus gives us. If we look at the word of God and we ignore the commands of scripture, then we really don't know him. We have not really been saved by his grace. A disciple is one who loves God's word because we learn how to live in the way that our savior teaches us and their daily repenting towards greater growth in obedience, not in their own strength, but in the strength of Christ. And so, friends, I have to ask you, what is your relationship to both Bible reading and Bible doing say about you? Are you really a follower of Christ? Are you really searching the scripture to look and say, Jesus, how do you want me to live, Jesus, I can't do it, give me your grace, help me to live in the way that you want. We should love the Bible because it's essential to our discipleship. There was a man who lived in fourth century Italy, his name was Augustine, he's from North Africa originally, probably a Berber in his ethnic background, and he was a rhetorician. He went to Italy. He could speak well. He was struggling with what life was about. But one thing he knew he liked, he loved his carnal pleasure. He loved all the sexual things he could get into. And he was very acclaimed because he was a teacher, a great teacher of rhetoric. But while he was in Milan, Italy, teaching rhetoric, he came under the preaching of a man named Ambrose, a very faithful preacher of God's word. And he began to hear God's word preached. And he would love to hear Ambrose speak because as a rhetorician, he knew what good speaking was. And Ambrose was a great speaker and he preached the Bible. And so Augustine slowly over time, as he read it on his own and heard Ambrose preach, began to be intellectually convinced of the Christian faith. But there was a problem. Augustine loved his sin. Augustine did not want to submit to the lordship of Christ. He knew the call to follow Jesus was a call to submit to the lordship of Christ, to repent of your sins. And Augustine said of himself before Christ, he said, he prayed this prayer, Lord, give me chastity and confidence, but not yet. So he makes it all through his 20s, living a life of lechery and yet a life of misery. And now in his 30th year, he's in the garden in Milan, Italy, and he's weeping because he's still just wrestling with the meaning of life and everything that's going on. And as he's there in this garden, he hears these kids playing and they're saying in Latin, tolo, lege, tolo, lege, which is Latin for pick up and read. And he takes it as a sign from God and he goes and he finds a Bible and does one of those, you know, random open up Bible things happens to be Romans 13, 14, which says, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the lust. And Augustine says, that's when it happened. That's when God, through the power of his word, converted him and his heart was changed in that moment as he experienced the power of God's word. And he writes about his conversion in a book called Confessions. If you haven't read that, the first Christian autobiography, Augustine is probably the most famous person in church history outside of the Bible. And he wrote in Confessions, which is actually not just an autobiography, but it's a prayer to God. So it's one long book length prayer confessing his former life. And listen to just one little section here as he talks about the power of God's word to change sinners. He says, how sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject. You drove them from me. You who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place. You who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood. You who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts. You who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves. At last, my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord, my God, my light, my wealth and my salvation. Friends, we should love the word of God because it is the very power of God for salvation and our sanctification. Friends, I call you in twenty, twenty four, what these little children unknowingly said to Augustine, Tole Legay, take up and read, take up and listen to the faithful preaching from this pulpit, immerse yourself in God's word, try to begin memorizing it, study it with other people, sit under good preaching, do everything you can that your life would be filled with the word of God, that God and his power might transform you and change you. We should love the word of God because every word is put there by him. It points us to Jesus and it's essential to our discipleship. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that as we end this year and think about a new year for this chance to think about the gift that scripture is to us and to pray and plead with you that you would forgive us for our failures to treasure your word and that by your spirit you would grow us in our absolute delight in you through scripture. Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us that this might be a watershed moment in our discipleship, that we might begin to love your word like never before, not because we're disciplined people, not because we're strong people, but because we are so weak and so helpless and so needy and can do nothing apart from your grace. So, Lord, do a great work in us by the power of your Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
