I want to kick things off this morning by asking the question. Can you trust the Bible? Can you trust the Bible? How is it that we get the Bible as we know it? Because the Bible itself is actually the most printed, most sold, most given away piece of literature in all of world history in all time. And there are more exact copies of the Bible as we know it than any other ancient near east document. Now, when they were putting the books of the Bible together, really, it's known as the, the group of books or the canon of books. There are some protocols or things to qualify what, what makes it into what's considered scripture and what doesn't some of those things include an apostolic origin, meaning that they had to have a direct connection with God or direct connection with Jesus, either they walked directly with Jesus or walked with the people who did. So, for example, right? You got Matthew, you got John, you got some of these guys here, but Mark was actually the assistant of Peter. And so it's still kind of the Peter's firsthand account if you will of the early books of the Bible. Now when The New Testament came onto the scene, much of the Old Testament had already been placed in a canon, so to speak and, and accepted. And so there's Hebrew and then there's Greek and then there's the Greek translation of a Hebrew that some people work through. And so you, you walk through these books. And so the idea is, is that you can't just write about Jesus hundreds and hundreds of years later. But actually, it's eyewitness accounts or direct connections with Jesus and in the beginning of the early church. So there's apostolic origin, but then also there is belief and shared belief that they were inspired by the Holy Spirit that then are preaching orthodox truth. In other words, that you can't have one book, contradicting another book that there is actual acceptance within the early church. And then one of the things that actually has become my favorite proof of value of scripture is what I would, what is called cross references. Now, I would totally use this as a cheesy sermon illustration to say like cross references, like what's the cross and like here. But like in, in this particular case, I literally mean like no, it's like one passage referring to another passage or one prophecy connecting to another prophecy or one historical place mentioned or character that that is confirmed over here, right? If you're doing research, you wanna see the writings that are confirmed in other places. And what's fascinating to me is that the Bible made up of 66 different books written by 40 different authors over the span of 1600 years in different languages, in different countries. And yet one central theme. And that is that salvation belongs to our God. That within these 66 books, uh two researchers named Chris Harrison and Christoph Ram Hild put together a list of all of the cross references in scripture. And then they made a visual representation and I wanna show you this image. Did you know that in scripture, there are 63,779 cross references throughout the book. What you see before you on the bottom is every chapter in Scripture and based on the length of the chapter. So like right there in the middle, there's a little line that drops down, that's Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. And so anytime a reference is made from one book to the other, you can see that and the closer in proximity, the more you see that in that darker purple and then over the distance, you actually see that brighter like yellow or green, you can see there because it covers like from Genesis all the way to revelation and back and forth. But how incredible is that, that the Bible as we know it has 63,779 cross references. Can you trust the Bible yes, what was written and we have now. But where does that come from? See in Second Peter chapter one verses 2021 it reads this, it says that knowing this, first of all that there is no prophecy of scripture that comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This idea of carried along is like this picture of a giant wind or a giant tidal wave so to speak. And there's this understanding in scripture known as dual authorship, meaning that it is fully inspired by the word of God. So like the humans, in this case would be like the pen, like as people, they were the pen that wrote it down. But God was the one that was actually writing the scripture at the same time, did so through the context of that particular individual at that time. And so the different books represent different genres, different personalities and so on. So for example, like Luke was a doctor, he actually is very detailed in his account, right? And, and versus some of these other places, you can see the education of Paul or the enthusiasm of John, who was known as the Son of Thunder and then became the disciple whom Jesus loved. And so you actually see personalities come out in the writing. And so it's inspired by God. It's inerrant, it's, it's, it's perfect, but yet God managed to use specific people at specific times, using their own experience and personalities. And so what we have is the most talked about, most read body of literature in all of world history. And so before people and we live in a culture that just kind of brushes that aside. But let's let's take a deeper dive in today and say, why is it important for us to study and to know the word of God. If you're taking notes, I invite you to write this down that God's Word teaches us to how to live God's way and to reach God's world, God's word, the Bible as we have it here teaches us how to live God's way ultimately to reach God's world. Now we're gonna be taking a look at one of the famous passages of scripture found in second Timothy chapter three that talks about the power and influence of the Bible as we know it. But let me share with you the structure because it's actually the opposite of the sentence I just shared with you. Paul is gonna start off by talking about the world and describes the world as we know it just real quick, foreshadow, not looking great. Ok? He actually tries to describe the society of what the world's gonna look like in the last days and he shares 18 characteristics. And what we're gonna read in just a moment is that we're gonna read it something that was written 2000 years ago, that could describe our culture right now, today, this week. So 18 characteristics about the world. Then he's gonna share the way. In other words, he's gonna say like here's what the world will look like in the last days, but here's how you should live. And actually early Christians most commonly were not referred to as Christians, but actually was referred to as the way it was a way of life, a way of living. Jesus Christ himself said, I am the way the truth and the life. So he provides the means of salvation, but then also the model to follow and then the methods or the way to actually live as Jesus lived. So we see the world and then we're gonna see the way and then say, well, how do we know the difference? And how can we actually live that way? Then we see the power of God's word. So that's kind of how the chapter breaks down. Here's the world, here's the way. And if you, and here's how you can live that through God's Word, because what we see that then in reverse is that God's word teaches us to live God's way to then reach God's world. All right, let's jump into it. Second Timothy chapter three starting in verse one. But understand this, that in the last days, there will be, there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, uneasy, slanderous without self control, brutal, not loving, good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God having the appearance of Godliness. But denying its power, avoid such people. For, among them are those who creep into households and capture weak w women. Now notice it's not saying that all women are weak. What is saying is that when you see the presence of evil, evil takes advantage of vulnerable people. And when you see a sinful broken world or a sinful broken society, what you see is that sin corrupts vulnerable people and that it was definitely happening then and it's happening today. It burdened with sins and led astray by various passions. Now, man, if, if there is one verse that can describe modern day higher levels of education from a secular context, it's this right here, verse seven, always learning and never, never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Doesn't that sound like our culture today? We have higher levels of learning, but they're never able to arrive at. What actually is the truth? OK. Now what's interesting there is that they actually make learning its own idol, right? They make learning its own idol instead of actually arriving or discussing what is truth. Just uh I'm just adding stuff, you get a little bonus stuff that didn't say first hour. Um you know, in dictionaries, they actually changed the definition of tolerance. You know, like I did a dissertation on some stuff on leadership development, how things have changed. Just a couple decades ago, the definition of tolerance was the acceptance of the existence of differing viewpoints today. If you look up the definition of tolerance in most cases, they took out the word existence of. And so now the definition of tolerance is the acceptance of differing viewpoints see before to have tolerance towards somebody was assumed that there was a disagreement and that you had a discussion on what could be understood as objective truth. But when you take truth away, you take the foundation of truth away, now you have to accept whatever somebody's viewpoint is as true. And if you don't accept that, they're saying, not only are you not tolerant that you're judgmental and maybe even a bigot. And so they've taken truth and substituted it with tolerance and made that the highest virtue. And so we live in a culture that say that yeah, believe whatever you want. And therefore we have to believe that as true, which ironically enough is by saying all things are relative that in and of itself is a self refuting statement. Because if you make the claim that all things are relative, that's actually an absolute statement. In other words, it's self refuting meaning like it, you're disproving your own argument in this case. But this is what our culture lives in because if you can deny the truth, you don't have to obey the truth and you can live with, sleep with and do whatever you want. All right. That's a side note verse eight. So encouraging isn't it came here to encourage, lift you up. OK. Verse eight, just as James in chambers opposed Moses. So these men also oppose the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith, but they will not get very far for their folly will be plain to all as it was of those two men. So Paul gives this encouraging uplifting message of the world in the last days. And we realize that this actually describes our society today and you can summarize those eight characteristics into what I would describe as three things. It's not original to me, but I want to show them to you. So three pursuits of the world that then and it's not gonna be on your screen, but three pursuits of the world that describe our culture. Number one is individualism, individualism that again, it's that view of tolerance, believe whatever you want live, however you want, do whatever you want that you can't tell me I'm wrong. And now I am the arbiter of truth. In other words, I am my own God, individualism, self is the highest level of authority. The second thing that we see in here is materialism, materialism, see Bible, the Bible teaches us to love people and then to use things, our culture will tell you to love things and then use people. I'm and so materialism, you have to have the new, whatever fill in the blank to have value, right? That the person who has the most rank, the highest title, the most money, the most stuff at the end of the game wins. But what they don't tell you is that if you are playing this game of life or monopoly or whatever you wanna call it at the end of the game, you don't get to take any of it with you. All the pieces go back in the box, right? And so you have individualism, you have materialism and then the last one then is Hedonism. And so this idea of pursuit of pleasure and it's not so much that Christians pursue pleasure too much as CS Lewis would talk about John Piper was famous talking about it. But, but really this idea here is that it's not that Christians pursue pleasure too much, but actually too little because what we've done is we've exchanged, what is great for what we think is good. But we've exchanged as Roman one tells us we've exchanged creation for the creator because God creates. But then Satan counterfeits right? An example would be God creates love. God is love. Satan and demonic forces come in and then don't promote love, they promote lust, right? And they counterfeit something that we think that you want. When in reality. True joy, true pleasure, true, meaning, true fulfillment comes through the God who made you and saved you. Ok. So at the end of, in, in the last days, which I think we're in the last days, the last, the fourth quarter, so to speak. I don't know how much time is left on the clock. But we're in, we're in this last time. It's gonna be described this way in a society that's individualistic, that's materialistic and that's hedonistic now, now that we're all uplifted. Um But I am grateful actually, in all seriousness that Paul doesn't stop there. He doesn't say Timothy, here's what the world looks like. Good luck. But actually then gives the contrary position or the alternative known as the way. And he describes that in verses 10 to 13, he says, but you however have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, and my persecutions and suffering that happened to me in Antioch and Ian and Lyra with persecutions I endured yet from them. The Lord rescued me indeed. All who desire to live a godly life in Christ. Jesus will be persecuted and while evil people and impostors go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. And you continue on, we'll, we'll pause there for a moment. But he says, but you are going to receive a different type of power. But for now, just, just notice here that there is an alternative way that you don't have to walk around aimless, that you can actually lean into a life that has meaning fulfillment, joy, peace, love, purpose, self control, right? A life not just of more information to learn, but transformation to experience. And that way comes through understanding and then applying God's Word because God's word is powerful and it's practical, it's powerful and it's practical. And so Paul writes, he says, here's the way of the world, here's what this looks like. You're gonna be called to live differently. It's gonna be difficult. You're gonna get persecuted, it's not gonna be easy. But let me tell you where your power comes from. And so he show shares with us God's word in verses 14 to 17. He says, but as for you continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ. Jesus. Now, I love this verse because it's equating and attaching the Old Testament to Jesus Christ himself. And so the Old Testament has power has meaning. It's the scriptures that Jesus quoted and used and described, but then he's attaching it to the current writings and the early letters that were being spread and they actually end up quoting each other, right? They make reference to each other. Now, do they, did they know in that exact moment that this was gonna be what we have as the Bible. We don't know exactly. But they affirm each other. They reference each other and they talk about how at the end of the day, the purpose of the word of God is point is the point to salvation that comes through Christ Jesus says, hey, you've learned this, you've heard it from the sacred writings that all of it is about coming to faith in Christ Jesus. So attaching the old covenant, new covenant, the Old Testament to the New Testament. Now, here's a real famous verse that's all set up towards verse 16 says, all scripture is, is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And what we see here is that the word of God is actually God's breath exhaled out for you. And for me that the breath of God breathes into our spiritual lungs, so to speak, that it is powerful and it, and it changes us. So can you trust the word of God? Yes. So then the next question is, well, how do you use the word of God? How do you use the word of God? And it shares with us four ways to use the word of God and he uses four words. So let's break this down first. He said the word of God is, is doctrine, which is the writing or description of what is right? What is right as doctrine? Second, we see that the word of God is good for reproof, which is to describe for us what is not right? He just did that in that passage right here is the world, here is right here is what's not right. You're able to identify that. Right. Third, it's useful for correction how to get right. A way to think about this is that it's not simply a ther uh thermometer, but it is also a thermostat, right? Living in Arizona, every one of you is checking your air conditioners right now, right? And you don't want your system to simply tell you what the temperature is. You want to actually be able to set the temperature in the room. As Christians, we're not called simply to read the temperature of the culture. We don't just sit on the sideline and go bad, bad. That's sin, that's bad. That's wrong. And just shout at the world from our theological front porch, right? As some Christians want to do, but actually gives us the ability to bring light into darkness, the ability to actually change, to get right, to help people get into a better spot of transformation, to heal relationships, to get over addictions, to repent from our sins and experience the fruit of the spirit. And so we see doctrine, what is right? We see reproof, what isn't right? We see correction, how to get right. And then number four, we see training and righteousness, which is how to stay right? How to stay right? It gives us guidance into how to grow, how to be made, complete, how to mature, how to grow in our relationships, and our courage and our perseverance and our obedience. Couple of other scriptures that show us this psalm 1, 19 verse 105, it says your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Now, what do those two phrases actually assume? Think about that for a moment. If you have a lamp unto your feet, why would you need a lamp? It's because you're surrounded by darkness, right? And if you have a light for your path, what does that assume? Assume there's other paths. And so in a world that is surrounded by darkness filled with lots of different paths through the word of God being a lamp to my feet and a light to my path who will guide us through the way on how to live and how to experience life to the full. Jesus promises us that in John 1010 that he has come to offer life and life abundantly, a life of vitality, a life of fulfillment. Ok. Ephesians 617, talking about the armor of God, it says, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. This is our weapon. It's our weapon. Jesus actually modeled this. He quoted the Old Testament 70 times in the gospels. And when he was tempted in the wilderness by Satan himself, he just flee temptation. He responded by quoting the truth. The best way to respond to a lie is with the truth, right? And you can use this as a weapon in your life. In Romans 12 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Notice the ongoing this of this process that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, understanding God's word through God's spirit and taking that in, right will transform your mind. People ask me John, I just want to know the will of God in my life. What am I supposed to do? And I'll start by saying, well, have you read the word of God? No, what this tells us here is like the starting point is to look at His word and go from there. There's still gonna be a process but start there, right? First Peter 123 to 25. Since, since you've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God for all flesh is like grass in all its glory, like the flower of the grass, the grass withers and the flower falls. But the word of the Lord remains forever. This word is the good news that was preached to you. This word came before us and it's gonna stay after us. It's the most distributed piece of literature of all time. We we've been helping in some prison ministry stuff. Actually, Chris is in the room who's helping there. Thank you for connecting us with rescue, not arrested. The founder of that ministry came and joined us for staff meeting this week. It was pretty cool meeting Roger and hearing his story, man, that guy is just like a walking red bull. Like, have you ever met those people that just have that passion, right? And he comes in and over the last 20 years, the they've worked with, I believe you can correct me if I'm wrong. But uh 5000 prisons across the world and they've actually distributed over a million Bibles. And I asked them why they did that. They said because the word of God changed lives. All right. But here's my fear. Ok? If God's word is, is, is God's breath being breathed out, right? Like being put into our lives. My fear is that if your only interaction with scripture, with the Bible, with the word of God, if your only interaction is what you hear on a Sunday morning, that's equivalent to being placed on a spiritual ventilator. The ventilators were invented to help people breathe, who don't have the power to breathe on their own, but they are not meant to help people live a life of vitality. And so while I'm super grateful that you've come here this morning and that you can hear the word of God, what I want for you, what my prayer for you is that you will experience and learn to breathe on your own and in community so that this word can radically transform your life and change the way you live. And that's not gonna happen if you engage with it once a week or once every month or every couple of holidays, right? But let's get real practical because let me share, I'm gonna share with you 10 ways that you can engage with the word of God. 10 ways. We're not gonna spend a ton on each of these, but we're gonna put them all 10 up on the screen so you can write it down or screenshot it whatever you wanna do. But here it is, number one, you can start to engage the word of God by reading it, read it, even if you don't understand it, just start by reading the word of God, start by reading it. It's hard to know something that you're not reading. OK? If you're not so much of a reader, then you can listen to it, listen to the word of God, get an audio app or in Spotify or different apps applications there or have, if you're not a reader, find someone who is a reader and have that person read it to you. Right. That's why you can read scripture with your kids or share a verse. We're going through that, right? It's a practical way that you can either read it or listen to the word. Next way to engage with it is to speak it. Take it in your mind but then speak it out loud. Right? Jesus declared those verses out loud before Satan in fighting off temptation. If you don't wanna speak it, you can sing it. The songs that we sing are based off scripture that we read. In fact, our response song we're gonna sing in a moment is based off of some of the scriptures. We just read together this morning. You can sing it, there's power when you put music behind it right next, you can study it, study it, go a little bit deeper, learn context, right? Understand commentaries, ask questions, go to a Bible study, study together with somebody dive deeper to understand it. Just as I would hope you would study your spouse or study a friend as you, the more time you spend with that person, you start to know what they like or dislike in the same way, the more time you spend with the word of God, the more you're gonna understand it. And sometimes you read the Bible and other times the Bible reads you right? If you ever had that experience, you hear the message, you're like, oh John must have talked to my spouse. I did just to clarify. I did and I do formulate messages for one specific person in the room and I pick a different one each. No. Just kidding. Just kidding. No. The reason it feels like that sometimes and I've had that experience too is because sometimes you read the Bible. Other times the Bible reads you right and, and scripture speaks right into our moments. Ok. Another one is to write it down, write it down, journal, it meditate on it, chew on it. This is, was the key for Joshua when he took the over the promised land to be strong and courageous. It was called to meditate on it day and night to recite it over and over again. Think on it, memorize it when you memorize the word of God, I would, I would describe it this way that have you ever tried to go somewhere? You put directions into your phone and you're driving along and then all of a sudden you lose cell recept reception. It's like I don't like, do we even know how to get anywhere anymore or no? Like, I don't know, I'm, I'm scared for how few phone numbers I actually know at this point, right? Because it's, oh, it's in my phone. What happen if you lose, right? If you commit something to memory, it's like downloading it into your system so that when you're faced with temptation or trial or a difficult situation and you, you, you're offline, you don't have service so to speak. You're not in a church setting. God will call that verse back to mind, right? And uh and help guide you where to turn. Then if you me, after you memorize it, uh share it. If you've been encouraged by verse, text it to a friend, speak it out loud, write it down. Share it or lastly, they'll teach it any Bible study teacher that you talk to or say man, like I've learned more teaching than just being in a classroom setting. And it's true. Just start somewhere. You start to do all these and you start to combine it right? You read it, you say it out loud, you sing it, you write it down, you send it to somebody, you start to do it, it starts to change you. OK? Uh I like this quote from Charles Spurgeon. He said the word of God is like a lion, but you don't have to defend the lion. But all you have to do is let the lion loose, the lion will defend itself. Yeah. Like I'm not worried about what culture thinks about scripture. Hm. It is going to stand yesterday today and tomorrow it is the inspired word of God that can transform lives because God's Word teaches us to live God's way ultimately to reach God's world. So the question I wanna leave you with is as is the Bible unused or is it unleashed? In your life, let the lion out of the cage, unleash the word of God in your marriage, unleash the word of God in your parenting in your friendships, unleash the word of God in your work ethic and in your disciplines. And I'm telling you, if you do that, it's gonna change things. It is a gift. It is a blessing. It's for you and for me, will you pray with me, dear father. We'd love you, God. We celebrate all that you've done that. You spoke your world into existence. That Jesus yourself was referred to as the word that you gave us. This inspired word of God that we have more access to than ever before. But God, it's only gonna change lives. If we allow it into our lives, let us not just set it on the side and let it go unused. May we unleash the power of your word in our lives today and to see you move, we love you God in your sense and we pray amen.