God's Word

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy chapter 3. The sermon is going to come from verses 16 and 17, but I think it's important that we read the context in which this passage is found. So we're going to read the whole chapter together. So 2 Timothy chapter 3. If you're using the New King James pew Bibles provided for you, you're going to find that on page 1057. 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. Brothers and sisters, this is God's perfect Word.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. having a form of godliness but denying its power, and from such people turn away. For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Janus and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, depraved concerning the faith, disapproved concerning the faith. But they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.

But you have carefully followed my doctrine. manner of life, purpose, faith, long suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured. And out of them all, the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." And then our sermon text. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Lord, Your Word never fails, it never returns void. And so, Father, we pray that this morning your Holy Spirit might attend to your Word. Lord, we pray that as we think through your Word, that you would use it like a surgeon's scalpel upon our souls.

Sermon

Where there are calluses, we pray that they would be cut off. Where there is cancer, we pray that it would be cut out. Where there is disbelief, we pray that it would be replaced with faith. Where there is fear, We pray that it would be replaced by trust and peace and hope. Help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The reason why I wanted to read the entire context of this to you rather than just picking up at verse 16 and 17 and giving you a scripture sermon, which is what I'm going to give you today, the same thing I do either the last Sunday or the first Sunday of every single year, is I wanted you to see specifically the context in which Paul is writing these words. Did you notice how happy of a context this is in verses 1-9? I mean, if you look at verses 1-9, Paul is not saying, hey Timothy, I just wanted to let you know everything is going great in Ephesus, everybody's listening, everybody's paying attention, this is wonderful.

No, he warns Timothy, in these last days, You're going to have people around you and we read through that list and we sit there and most of us are like, man, he could have been writing that today. It was the last days during Timothy's life and it's the last days now. We're living in those last days, these perilous times that are going to come. And there's these people who are popping up all around. They popped up in the 1st century, in the 2nd century, in the 3rd century, and now in the 21st century.

And this text is just as applicable to your life and to your faith as it was desperately needed for Paul to write down to Timothy, this young pastor in Ephesus. So as we come to this passage, I need you to know that this is not just written as theological academic jargon. If you can hold to the inspiration and the infallibility of God's Word, or the inerrancy of God's Word, then that's what this is talking about. Well, yes it is. God's Word is perfect, and we're going to get into that. But you need to see that this has practical implications and applications for your life today. And my desire coming out of this, I just want to be honest with you, my desire to come out of this, is that in these last days you might not find yourself caught off guard, but that you might be ready for the things that are going to come at you. So with that, 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning at verse 16, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The word here is God breathed out, or God spirited out. Right? All the writings of the Lord are breathed out by God. Etheonevtos.

Every syllable, every paragraph, is not mythology, is not made up story, but it is given to us by God Himself. It is not a book of second opinions, and third, I want to feel like this, but it is God's Word, handed down to us through the centuries. I need to tell you, how did God give this to us? It's not like the Lord gave us a Bible, and the clouds parted, and the light came through the clouds in the sky in the Bible. Send it down from the clouds. That's not how we got the Bible.

But the Lord inspired holy men who carried along by the Spirit wrote down what God intended without erasing their personality. This is why sometimes you read Paul and he's dense and hard like run-on sentences and lots of lists. Because that was Paul. And then you read John and you read a verse and five verses later you seem like you read another iteration of that verse and five verses later it's again, you know, Love the Lord, love the Lord, love the Lord, and he does this again and again, because that was John's style. You pick up Hosea's style, you pick up Isaiah's style, because these were real people who really wrote these books, but they were carried along by God.

There are people who will come to tell you, it's almost like, you know, The Matrix or something, where it's like, you know, they got their heads plugged and they just start typing or writing God's Word. That's not how it happened. They're not just typewriters, they're not just computers writing down, but they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. But even though these were written by men, they are true histories. This is one of these things that always amaze me, right? When I talk to non-believing people or I'll read non-believing, one of the best evidences of these ever that the Lord's providence is funny sometimes, right? One person said, the Bible is just made up and here's an example of this, right?

The King David, there's no archaeological evidence that has any writing for King David anywhere. That's not post after the exile. And then a week later, what did they find? a signet for King David in Bethlehem, where they said they didn't think Bethlehem actually existed.

It's not myth. Right, even when people come to you with archaeological stuff and they'll say, well, see, this totally disproves the Bible. I sit there and go, alright, give it a couple weeks or months or years. It'll turn up. Because this wasn't history written after the fact. It's inspired by God. It was written by real people. And they truly were. carried along, as it says here, Theo neftos. The words are God breathed.

Now, I can't convince you of that. I can tell you it, but the only person who can convince you that these words in the Bible are actually God's own words is, guess whose job that is? God Himself. It's the Holy Spirit who will convince you whether or not the words of the Scriptures are true or not. I can't Bible-thump you with that. I can't pound the pulpit hard enough to get you to believe that. It has got to be you who owns it for yourself.

Do you believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God or not? It's an article of faith. This is why it's the third vow of covenant communicant membership in our church. Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule for faith and life? There's a reason before we allow people to take communion, even if they're just visiting. We ask them that question. What's the foundation of your faith? Is it the God of the Scriptures? Do you believe it's breathed out by Him? Oh, that's great. Okay, wonderful. You know what God's Word is. But right, we're Americans, we're pragmatists. What good is it for me?

I'm glad you asked that's what Paul's going to go on in the next part of this right and is profitable Right the Lord's Word is profitable, and there's a list here of different things that God's Word is Profitable for the first one is God's Word is profitable for teaching the word here in the New King James is doctrine We often don't know what doctrine is the word here is just didaskalon.

It's just teaching and The Lord's Word is where we get our teaching from. It's our source material, it's our curriculum, it's our body of evidence. This is what we go to for teaching. And this is very, very, very different than the way that we find our culture moving more and more today, where relativism and personal feelings dictate and rule the day.

My truth is my truth, you do you, all do me, and we say, hold on, no, the Lord has spoken. And because we're people of faith, because we believe in God, we listen to His Word. We listen to Him, rather than what we want. We ask God to transform us, not just to fill our brains, but to change our hearts. Why? Because we actually believe in who He is. And so we listen to Him. But it's more than just teaching. But God's Word is also good for reproof. It's profitable for reproof. This lexical definition here would be an expression of strong disapproval, reproof, rebuke, reproach. I gotta tell ya, I don't like that. I don't like when my wife reproves me. I don't like when my mother-in-law tries to tell me I'm doing stuff wrong. I don't like when my kids say, Daddy, you're not doing that right. But when they're right, they're right.

One of the hard things about being a Christian is we have to stop and we have to ask ourselves, who's got the right answers? Who's the one who knows life and death? Who's the one who holds eternity in their hands? Who's the one who created the mountains and the sky and the seas and holds all things together and tells us, this is what will be good for you. It takes humility. a Holy Spirit-wrought humility that we listen.

We say, I don't have the answers. I'm not perfect. This is why one of the hardest things that people will level against Christians is legalism and hypocrisy. Because what they're really saying is, you prideful, arrogant fools. We ought to be the first ones to say, I don't have any opinion of my own.

All I got to say is, I know the Lord, what He says is true, and that's as far as I'm willing to go. And it reproves me too. The issue is I need someone outside of me to speak truth into my life. And you need somebody outside of you who speaks truth into your life. And the Lord does that by His Word. Some of my best friends are the most offensive people I know.

I've told you before about my pastor, Micah Ramsey, when I was really struggling with something one day. I wasn't planning on giving this illustration, but I was sitting in prayer meeting, and I was complaining about all this stuff that's going on in my life, and all this busyness, and after the prayer meeting, he said, hey, let me talk to you.

Okay, so we go into the sanctuary. I sit down in the first pew, and he sits down on the steps of the stage there, and he looks at me in the eyes, and he says, Brian, why are you being such an idiot? Go home and spend some time with Olivia. And I needed that, right? I was a young husband and I got so busy and, oh, I need to study this stuff and I need to be involved in this ministry and I need to do all this. And he was pointing out, no, you don't. You need to go home and love your wife like Christ loves the church.

We need people who will bring us back and speak from the outside and tell us what the scriptures say and drive home the truth. Again though, in an age when people are so worried about getting their feelings hurt, and let's be honest, we don't like getting our feelings hurt either. It is hard to be reproved.

This is one of the biggest graces God gives us. It is profitable for reproof. It is also profitable for correction. And that's the next part of verse 16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for correction. You can... translate correction also as improvement. Again, every single one of us can use improvement.

I gotta tell you, you aren't perfect. If you think you're perfect, go ask your children if you're perfect. If you think you're perfect, go ask your parents if you're perfect. If you think you're perfect, go ask your spouse if you're perfect, or your co-workers if you're perfect. None of us are perfect. It's only Jesus Christ who's perfect.

Each and every one of us need the Lord's Word to give us spiritual improvement in our knowledge of God and our love of God. To improve in our love, to improve in our joy, to improve in our peace, to improve in our patience. We can all improve in our kindness. We can all improve in our goodness. We can improve, oh man, we can improve in this, in our age, our gentleness. We can improve in our self-control and in our faithfulness. And the Lord, through His Word, reminds us of this regularly. Because it's breathed out by Him and it's profitable for improvement.

We're not finished yet. We're not finished loving our spouses perfectly. We can be improved in that. We're not finished loving sacrificially. We have a lot more love to show. We're not perfect and finished in loving our children and handling our money and raising our children, relating to our parents. We're not perfect in how we relate to our bosses or how we relate to our co-workers. We're not perfect or we're not finished in our use of time and controlling our eating. We have so much the Lord has yet to teach us.

So much joy and so much being conformed to the image of Christ yet to come. Don't be satisfied with the level of sanctification you are at now, but desire more improvement, that the Holy Spirit would continue to work in your life, to lead you in your faith and in your living, that you would look more and more over time like Jesus Christ. God's Word is profitable for that. It is a blessing that God has given us a tool that He uses by the power of His Spirit. for correction, for improvement, but it's also profitable for instruction in righteousness.

God's book, God's Bible isn't a dead book, but it teaches us. This is a different idea of teaching here. We had teaching or doctrine in the earlier part of 16, but now it says instruction. This idea of instruction is directly related to being like how you would instruct children.

And God has shown us a standard of righteousness, but we failed. God has told us that we need to be renewed. We're not walking according to the old man and the old ways. We're not to live our lives by sensual desires in the flesh, but we're to live by the power of the Holy Spirit. And in His Word, He takes us to the gymnasium of holiness.

I gotta tell you something, there's a secret here. I don't like the gym. Don't tell the coach that. I don't like the gym. I don't like going to the gym. There's often days when we do have to go to the gym and I'll sit there and I'll look at the weights and I'll literally kick the barbell, just in procrastination, asking myself, why in the world am I here? I'm not good at this. And the most frustrating thing to me is, right, I want to be strong now. And I don't like the fact that I've been going for three years and I'm not that much stronger.

We want to lift the big boy and the big girl weights right now. We want all the immediate gains and none of the plateaus. We want all the good days, all the personal records with holiness, but not all of the bad days that teach us how to be patient and kind and loving and gentle. We don't want those hard work days. But the reality is just like we go to the gym and we have to see incremental increases, So it's the same way in our holiness.

I remember, when you read fitness articles about stuff, they'll talk about when somebody hasn't gone to the weight room in a long time or ever, and they'll go start lifting weights, and they'll start getting immediate gains. I mean, if you graph it, it's like... And they get really excited, like, man, I got some really big immediate gains right away, and then all of a sudden they hit a plateau. And a lot of people get really discouraged and they quit. This happens in Christian lives. Especially in new converts. They'll see immediate gains in their holiness right away. But then they'll hit a plateau. And they'll wonder, is something wrong? No. No, it's the way it works.

Because from here on out, you're going to have to fight for incremental progress. You're going to have to train in this instruction in righteousness. And if we want to be trained, we have to show up regularly. But see, this again takes a lot of humility, because I told you this is related to this idea of teaching children.

I got to tell you what... I'm not going to show you my transcripts from seminary, but I'll let you know that two of my worst grades were Greek and Hebrew. It's just hard. And one of the hardest things about Greek and Hebrew is you have to realize you don't know nothing. You have to sit there and you have to learn like a three-year-old. A teacher tells you, you don't say it like that. No, you can't say it that way. No, that's wrong. No, here, learn this song.

And you have a whole group of grown men sitting in a class, learning how to sing their Alif-Bets. Literally, the Hebrew professor in the front going, Alif-Bet-Fet, and you, the whole class, Alif-Bet-Fet, Gimel-Dalet, hey, Gimel, and you're singing like five-year-olds.

And it's hard, because you don't even know what half this stuff is, but you have to memorize it. You don't know why you're memorizing it. You don't know how it's going to get you to your goal. It's the same way with God's Word. And if you're going to grow in your instruction of righteousness, you have to show up for the class. You have to read the material. This is why we give you reading plans on the back table. There's a whole bunch of reading plans.

That is nothing but consider it a Bible reading curriculum. It's just a tool. It's nothing more than that. It's a help. I do not want you to walk out of here picking up a Bible reading plan and walking away with a sense of legalism. Like, somehow if I don't read 10 chapters a day, I am not a godly Christian. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to provide you with help.

An external structure to take you to the spiritual gym. But what's the goal? If God's Word is profitable for all these things, if God's Word is breathed out, Why do it though? That's what verse 17 answers. That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. I'm not going to hide it from you that the elders of this church want to see you strong. We don't want to see you anemic. We want to see you thoroughly equipped, ready for every good work. We want to see you growing into men and women of God. But with that being said, I need to warn you about a number of things. We want you to be strong men and women of God, but you need to be cautious of your own heart here. So caution number one is of legalism.

There will be some of you who will pick up your Bible and you'll think to yourself, if only I can read the Bible, then finally God will accept you. God has never saved anybody because they read the entire Bible. He saved them if he loved Jesus Christ and believed in their heart that he was Lord. And confessed that with their mouths and believed that he was raised from the dead.

You don't read As much as the next person, and so you think, well, maybe I'm not as righteous as they are. Again, that's pharisaical legalism. We're not adding on something to your shoulders. You might even think, if I don't read my Bible in an entire year, then I'm not a Christian. I don't think that's right. I actually brought my Bible with me and I wasn't able to read my Bible as much as I was hoping this year. I didn't take this Bible with me when I was overseas. And so, as of today, I'm on October 19th. So, there you go. Right? It's not the point. That's a good goal to shoot for.

But sometimes life is messy. Sometimes you only get to read a paragraph. Sometimes you only get to read a small section. And sometimes you can read eight chapters because you have a glorious Sunday afternoon. Praise God for it. Beware of the trap of legalism. Secondly, beware of the methodology. We're so tempted with this in our causal nature of thinking of things, right? If I read the Bible, or if I do A, then B will happen. If I read the Bible, then B, magically I'm going to become godly. No, that's not true.

There's a famous guy, you can look him up on YouTube, where you can ask him to recite to you any chapter of the Bible. He has every single chapter of the Bible memorized. And if you ask him to recite any chapter from memory, he'll give it to you. And he's an atheist.

Just reading the Bible isn't going to magically make you a Christian. It's not going to magically make you godly. We need the work of the Holy Spirit as we read the Scriptures. It is objectively God's Word, but we also need the work of the Holy Spirit, for without the Holy Spirit and without faith, the reading of the Bible profits you nothing. Thirdly, a third caution, if you just read your Bible, your life is going to be great. Yeah, no. No, you're not going to get that in 1 Kings or in Revelation or in the Gospel of John, maybe in 3 Hezekiah somewhere, but you're not going to get it in a book of our Bible.

No, as you read the Bible, you might find out that your life becomes harder because you're convicted of sin. You might find out that ungodliness is pointed out, and you don't want to deal with it, but you have to. I don't want to promise you that if you read your Bible, all of a sudden your finances are going to go well.

Your 401k might tank this year. If you just read your Bible, your children may still rebel. If you do family worship with your Bible, your children may still reject Jesus Christ. If you read your Bible, Your health may still fail you this year. And if you read your Bible, death and tragedy may still come knocking on your door.

The difference is, if you are a Christian, you have God's word that instructs you on how you respond to those hard providences in your life. To still live your life filled with joy and direction and a life filled towards God's glory. Fourth caution is that if we just read, it's going to be useless.

Well, Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verses 46 through 49. Jesus himself talks about just reading God's Word, but not actually doing anything with it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke chapter 6. Luke chapter 6 verse 46, here's the words from our own Lord and Savior. But why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things which I say?

Whoever comes to me and hears my saying and does them, I will show you whom he is like. He is like a man building a house who has dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, a stream vehemently beat against it and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently and immediately fell, and the ruin of that house was great." If you do nothing with God's Word, if you just read it up, store it up as intellectual information, but don't do anything with it, it is unprofitable to you. It is unprofitable to you.

Verse 17 in 2 Timothy 3 tells us, "...it is profitable that we may be completely equipped for every good work." Make no doubt about it, God will demand things from you in your life if you read His Word. The question is, how will you respond to it? Fifth caution is though, not to pit word against works. Many of us will think that way, especially in the Reformed tradition, right?

We want to think about, well, God saved us by faith alone, through grace alone, and that's true. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 and 9, right? By grace you have been saved through faith, and not of your own works. It was a gift of God. Right? So we can't brag, we can't boast about it. But then what does verse 10 say? that we might be equipped to do every... No, that's 2 Timothy 3, 17. That we might walk in the good deeds which He has called us to do. Our salvation by grace is so we can do the good works.

You don't want a doctor who's not trained. Why? Well, I don't want a doctor who didn't go to school. That sounds kind of scary to me. But I also don't want a doctor who doesn't pick up his phone or show up for call hours. The training and the work both matter. Right?

You don't want an electrician who doesn't have any training. Why don't you want an electrician who doesn't have it? By the way, this is why you never want me to do any electrical work in your house, right? You don't want an electrician without any training.

Why? Because they're likely to burn down your house. But how frustrating is it when you call an electrician and they don't show up for the job? Don't pit the good works against the instruction. So you can say the same thing for a firefighter, right? Do you want a firefighter who doesn't know what he's doing? No, you want a well-trained firefighter. This is why our tax dollars go to training them. But how useless is a firefighter who sleeps in his bed rather than getting in the truck and going and responding to the fire?

Don't pit word against works. Your faith is to be informed and your faith is to be lived out. This is exactly what Paul was getting at in verse 5 of chapter 3. That there are going to be those who are going to come and they're going to have a form of godliness, but denying its power. We're to flee from people like that. Run away from them, get away from them. They're mansions without plumbing. They're skeletons without organs. They're whitewashed tombs. All knowledge and no love stay away from them.

Now I'm gonna guess that there's a number of objections here as I'm going to encourage you to read your Bibles this year. By the way, that's my whole goal, right? I want you to read your Bible this year. All right, but some of you are gonna tell me, hey, I just don't have time for this, Pastor Brian. I mean, come on, aren't you almost done with your sermon? Yeah, I'm almost done, don't worry.

But you also have time too. You do have time in your schedule. You have time while you eat your breakfast? You have time before you go to bed? You have time? Each of you have a mini-computer in your pocket. I can't tell you how many guys I have to say, you know what you do when you go to the bathroom when you're in there for a long time and it drives your wife nuts? Memorize some Bible when you're in there instead. Right? Like, you have time. You have to make the time. You have to prioritize it. If it is a priority to you, if you really want to know what God says, prioritize it.

Some of you are going to object, though, and you're going to say, look, I've tried this and I have failed. I tried a reading plan, I got through Genesis, I got through Exodus, I got to Leviticus, and man, that reading plan died faster than the people who were objecting to Moses.

You didn't fail. You read through Genesis, Exodus, and part of Leviticus. Good. Try something else. You don't think that the Lord was profitable in your reading of those passages? That's fine. Keep going. Find something else. Keep going. What's your goal? Is your goal just to finish a Bible reading plan or is your goal to grow in your knowledge of God? I would say you accomplished part of that goal. I think you could have done more. We could always do more. This isn't about legalism. Don't get down on yourself for that. Pick yourself up and keep going. Some of you are going to say, but I'm just not good at reading. I just don't like reading. I'm not good at it. I'm slow at it.

Wonderful tool for you, YouVersion, or I think it's just called the Bible app now. On almost every translation, there's a little button at the bottom. It's a play button. You just hit play and it will read to you. You can either read with it or you can play it in the background.

There's somebody in the congregation that what they used to do is sit in their workplace and they would just play the Bible and listen to it multiple times a year just to hear the Bible play in the background. Read God's Word. Actually, for the majority of human history, of church history, that's how most people, because most of the world was illiterate, most of the world heard God's Word. Listen to it. You can even get Morgan Freeman or something like that reading the entire Bible to you. You can get cool people's voices. There's no reason you can't listen to God's Word. It's even free. Objection number four, though. You just get lost. It's such a big story. You don't know where things are going.

You don't know what the entire point of the Bible is. If you've never read any book of the Bible, or the Bible is just so strange to you, I would encourage you to do the things that I've told new Christians quite regularly, go pick up a story Bible and just read it cover to cover. Just to get the overarching themes and the main highlights.

If you've never read through the Bible, this would have saved me so many stupid moments in front of my pastor. When I said, did you know that David became a king? Did you know that Paul also wrote these letters? And he would just sit there and I could see Pastor Snap's face like, oh, Brian. Like, didn't you ever read your Bible? Didn't you ever read, like, a story Bible? How do you not know these things, right? Read a story Bible. It's fine. Start there. I would recommend Catherine Voss's story Bible to you. Fifthly, you might object, well I just don't understand, right?

Some translations are just so dense, so difficult, and if this is your first time reading the Bible, I would encourage you, you might have a really, really, really hard time with the King James Version. You might have a really hard time with a wooden translation, like the New American Standard Bible. You might have to start, if you want to read through the Bible as a large chunk, you might have to start with a more paraphrased translation. I don't want to encourage you to study there, But if you're just trying to read and get a feeling for the Bible, go ahead. Go ahead, read a more periphrastic translation. Just be careful. Remember, it's not word for word, and so there are things that it's going to be off. A sixth objection may be, well, I'm just not disciplined enough.

Well, let me encourage you, you can buddy up with someone. Pick someone else in the church and say, hey, I want to do a Bible reading plan. You want to do one? For some of you, though, I know that's difficult, and we have tried to create a resource for you, where if you're just like, I can't do this by myself, and this is just too hard, talk to me, I'll put you in the coffee and devotions text messaging list, and we can do devotions together every weekday morning. I don't know what we're doing in 2024 yet, so hopefully some of you can come talk to me later. But you can do that, every weekday morning, the kids and I, lots of times the kids join me for it, and we can work through some Bible together. Objection number seven, though, some of you will say, well, I just keep losing my little Bible reading pamphlet paper.

I set it down and I walk away. I don't know what to do. You know, this is actually one of these fun things. I'm really lazy and I don't like those papers. One, you can just read it on your phone, or, like this is the Bible I got this year. It's a one-year chronological Bible. All I need to do is remember what the date is, or where I'm supposed to be, and That's just what my reading is for the day. I did this one this year, that was fun. But for years and years and years, I did this one. It's just one year through the Bible. And just, you open up to the date, and that's where it was.

And if I got too far behind on yours, guess what? Don't sweat it. Just go to the date you're supposed to be on. And keep on reading. If you do this regularly enough, you're gonna read that other passage. Don't sweat it. Get a reader's Bible if you need to. So I'm going to give you some helpful tips and tricks here, and we're going to wrap this up because I'm a few minutes late. Number one, be honest with yourself.

If you're going to get a Bible reading plan, be honest. Don't get the Professor Grant Horner's plan if you don't think that you can actually sit down for enough time to read that plan. It's like ten chapters a day. It's a great plan, but if you can't do it, be honest with yourself about it.

Be honest about the amount of time you have. Some of you have very, very busy lives. You need to look at those plans and decide, how much time do I actually have to invest in this plan? Be honest with yourself about that. Maybe you just need to read a portion of the Bible, or just the New Testament, or just the Old Testament. I don't know what you need to do, but be honest about your time.

Tip number three. Don't set yourself up for failure. This goes hand in hand with these other ones, but don't pick a plan that's so large, or that's going to take so much time, or that if you just know you're like me... I envy people who can read fast. I can't though. And so I cannot accomplish these Bible plans that are like, read the Bible in three months. I wouldn't talk to my children or Olivia at all. Because it would take me all day long to read that.

Other of you, you can read quickly. Great. Set yourself up for success, not for failure. If you get knocked down, tip number four, if you get knocked down, brush yourself off and get up again. This isn't about legalism. We want to progress in holiness and our knowledge and love of God. Tip number five, bundle it in. This is habit bundling. Bundle it in with something you already do.

If you already wake up in the morning and you have a cup of coffee, Drink your cup of coffee and read your Bible with it. If you're already in a habit that you sit down at night and every night you sit down and you watch a little TV, when the 7 o'clock news goes off, turn it off and pick up your Bible. Maybe pick up your Bible beforehand, maybe that would help. But anyway, the point is, bundle it together with something you already do.

And with that also, set up a space for it. Put your Bible next to something that you know where it's going to be every day. You got a chair you like to sit in? Put your Bible next to that chair. You've got a place where you sit every day, put your Bible there.

When I have a planner, I have a hard time with this, even with my planner. And I remember my counselor telling me, Brian, why don't you put your planner underneath your coffee cup? So every morning when you go and you get your coffee cup, your planner is right there, so you actually know what you're supposed to do that day.

And I was like, this guy's a genius. I'm just passing on his wisdom. Point number seven of tips and tricks. This is a helpful one. This is a recommended resource for this month. It's going to go out in the email probably tomorrow. It's a little book by Steve Demme on family worship. I'm going to have it on the back table with the Bible reading plans. Do devotions with your family.

One of the most helpful things you can do is just sit down at dinner or at breakfast, whatever meals you happen to have with your family, and read the Bible. There's a whole bunch of tips and tricks he has for how to do that, and the snafus, and what could happen, what could go wrong, and what the delights of it are. I highly recommend that book, but this is a huge blessing.

There's nothing in the Bible that says you must sit by yourself for 30 minutes every day and read your Bible to yourself. No, for, again, the vast majority of history, the family had one Bible. If any, since the printing press. And the dad would sit down, typically, and read the Bible with his kids. out loud.

It's our mealtimes. It's a great time to sit down and do devotions with your family so you're growing together as a family. Lead your family in this. My whole point in all of this right now, now I'm five minutes over, we're going to be done right now. We want you to grow. The elders want to see you grow in grace.

We want to see you know God like you've never known God. We want to see you love God like you've never loved God. We want you to be ready for the attacks that are going to come. We want you to know that the charlatans are going to try to trick you. We want you to know that ungodliness is real, but you don't fight in it by yourself, but you have the Holy Spirit. We want you to be reminded of the Gospel. We want you to know the covenants. We want you to know God.

Closing Prayer

So you might glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. We want that to start now in your life. And so we pray that you will get into your Bibles this year. And that you'll enjoy it. And that you'll enjoy the Lord who's breathed out that word for you. Let's pray. Father, this has been a long-winded type sermon. We pray that it might be profitable. God, we pray that we would be people of the Book, that we might know You, that we might love You, that we might enjoy You, that we might glorify You, and indeed that we might tell others about You. We thank You for Your Word, what a gift it is from Your hand. In Jesus' name we pray.