Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. Lord, we just pray for Dave
right now as he shares the word. We just pray your anointing be
upon him. Lord God, that all the words
that he has spoken or, or what he's written down, Lord God that
they will just be your words and anything that is not of you Lord
will just fall away. We just thank you Lord, we just
pray for our hearts, Lord God, that they'll be open and
receptive to hear the words that you that you would want to say
to us in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Thank you, Pete. I feel there's, you know, I've
sort of said this already, but I feel like there's somewhat of a
emphasis this morning on, you know, God just really want to
break in and, and speak clearly. And you know, you know, we could
say the Lord always wants to speak clearly to us, but you
know how if we're not willing to hear clearly, it wouldn't matter
how clearly the Lord spoke to us.
I think about that with my children.
I speak pretty clearly to my children sometimes and it seems
to just to bounce off their ears and, and go in a different
direction. So I'm going to challenge us
with that this morning because it's really up to you.
Sorry. Yeah, it's really up to you.
Like your willingness for God to do a work in your heart this
morning. But I I believe he wants to do
an amazing thing in this place. Even during the music while Dave
was encouraging us to press in, I guess to God, I was just
reminded yesterday I was at a kids birthday party and I was
talking to this man who he was just telling me that his
marriage was in a really bad place last year.
And, and he he didn't realize why, but they got to the point
where they were starting to talk about separation.
And then God just showed him what the problem was on his part
and, and, and, and what it was, was that so he'd been hurt
before the marriage and he'd held onto his defence mechanisms
from that hurt and he'd never opened up to his wife fully.
And I just, I walked away from that going, you know, like God
can speak to you in a moment and show you what, what the, what
the problem is. And you know, his words were I
didn't do anything but like, but surrendered basically.
And so God showed him. It took God showing him what the
problem was. But what he probably didn't
realize is in that moment, he actually did still have a
choice. He had a choice to keep his
walls up and go, Nah, I'm not going to trust God.
I'm not going to trust my wife. And I'm, I'm going to stay bound
and lose everything that's important to me because in our
flesh, that's easy. It's hard to go let God show you
the thing that he wants to show you.
And then you go, OK, I'm going to surrender like because
letting your walls down is hard and being soft hearted isn't the
easy route. So I guess my encouragement,
God, God can minister through music, God can minister through
the word and God can minister through US fellowshipping
together. And that's why they're all so
important. And so just keep a soft heart to
God this morning. Whatever it is that you are
potentially putting your walls up to Him, or you know you're
desperate for freedom and you can't work out why, just let Him
show you what it is and surrender to Him today.
Thank you, Lord. Yeah.
So we've, we've had a couple of weeks talking about the fear of
the Lord or, you know, yeah, last week was predominantly on
the fear of the Lord sort of leading in from the week before.
You know, I've just been thinking a lot about that and,
and chewing that over and, and really just challenge to like
apply what God's saying to my life.
You know, it's no good me standing here and sharing things
that God's saying for us as a church and then me doing nothing
with it. You know, those are challenging
things. But I feel like, and I, I
believe this wholeheartedly. I believe that God is, is laying
down a challenge for us. And if we were to accept that
challenge, and if we were to implement the things that God's
saying, I believe that we're going to take a huge step in our
faith and, and, and in our ability to be able to be the
church that God's called us to be.
So that's, that can be a super exciting thing.
If you would view that in a healthy way and not a way
that's, you know, just seems like you're failing.
Please do not allow the enemy to convince you that you are
failing. None of us have made it.
None of us are in this place where the Lord's not working on
any of us. For me personally, there's big
things that God's working on, and that's the same for all of
us. Amen.
Very good. So we're going to talk about the
Word of God this morning. This is going to be a very
helicopter view of a huge topic. And so we're just going to, you
know, lay some, I guess some foundations today when it comes
to the Word of God. And these are things that, you
know, moving forward, we're going to have to unpack a whole
lot deeper in our togetherness. OK, so the Word of God, you
know, we're going to talk about like, why can we read it?
Why can we trust it? Why can we build our lives upon
God's word? First of all, what is the Bible?
You know, the, the word of God says, you know, simply the
simple answer is this is God's word to humanity.
God had men and men write down the words that he would want to
speak to us. And that's been documented so
that it's, you know, etched in stone, so to speak.
It's not passing away. It's there.
We have it is my point. We have the word of God.
He has spoken and we can we can trust it.
So we're going to look into some of these things.
You know, This is why billions of people across history have
believed that, you know, have founded their lives on this, on
the word of God. Many, many people that are no
longer on the earth and many people that are here today
believe that this is the, the word of God, that this is what
God says. We believe that in this room.
Can I say this church, we believe this is the word of God.
We, we base most of what we do here on God's word because
that's this is unchanging. This is the thing that we can
anchor our lives to. And so when we're building a
church, we're going to anchor everything that we do around
God's word because this is God in him.
You know, God, Jesus says I am the word of God, and he's
written it down for us, right? This book has outlasted kingdoms
and empires and critics and generations.
It's still here. They haven't been able to get
rid of it. It's still here.
Good luck getting rid of God's word.
Never going to happen. They've tried, they've tried
burning them all. They've tried to make it
illegal, all of these things. No, it's still here.
Those empires are gone. Do you see what I'm saying?
The ones that try to destroy it, those are those that have have
come and gone. The word of God is still here.
So today we're, we're going to look at, you know, why the Bible
is trustworthy, why we believe it's divine, why Jesus is
central to it, and how we should approach God's Word.
Bible facts. I'm just going to give you some
facts here. There's 66 books in the Bible,
Old and New Testament, written by around 40 different authors
over a period roughly around 1500 years.
That's a long time for one book to be written, isn't it?
It's, it was written in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek, most widely distributed book in all of history, this
book, and it's been translated into like 3 1/2 thousand
different languages in different parts of them, stuff like that.
That's those are huge numbers guys like this book.
This is the the most important book ever.
You know, like it just is and you know, it was it was written
by kings, it was written by prophets, it was written by
fishermen. It was written by priests and
shepherds and doctors and scholars over many centuries.
And, but, but yet it still contains like this uniform
message of what God is saying that should blow your mind,
guys, that, that it's been written over such a long period
of time out with so many different authors from so many
different walks of life. And yet the message is clear.
Like, how could that ever happen?
Like if Justin and I set out to write a book and you, you stay
over there and I'll stay over here and we'll write this book.
Do you think they're going to align in any way at all?
Like it's just like, anyway, that's probably a poor example,
but it's, it's unbelievable how this Bible has come about and,
and what it is, right? The Old Testament sets up the
story, right? We talk, it talks about
creation, it talks about the fall, it talks about God's many
covenants with people. It talks about Israel, God's
chosen nation, his people, but it talks about the promise of
the coming Messiah. And it's sort of ends there,
right? So the Old Testament left alone
is like an unfinished story. It just ends.
And it's just like when it's never fulfilled, there's still
just waiting for this Messiah to come.
And so the New Testament is like it reveals and it fulfills.
So Jesus Christ comes at the start of the New Testament.
It's about his life, his death, his resurrection.
It talks about the birth of his church, his bride.
It talks about the ultimate climax of creation of the world
that we live in. And it talks about life beyond
that. So the New Testament is like the
the it's like the end of this one book.
So you put them together, you have the start, you have the
finish. It it it it answers all the
questions, right. The New Testament sort of
answers these unleft questions in the old and together they
they make up this one story. Jesus him sort himself taught
that the scripture. This is the Old Testament
because Jesus didn't have the New Testament.
The the New Testament was being written while Jesus was alive,
but he said that these are they the words that testify of me.
So he's saying, you know, all of those words in the Old Testament
that was Speaking of me, right? So the Bible, again, it just
carries this unified message of God's relationship with all
humanity. All right.
So is the Bible historically reliable?
Yes. We, I mean, we believe it is if
we look at the, the manuscript evidence when historians, but
people that test ancient writings and stuff like that,
they ask these questions, they say, how many copies do we have?
How close to the time when the events happened was it written?
And they say, are they, are these different manuscripts?
Are they consistent with one another?
And so ancient writers like Aristotle and Plato, these are,
these are famous, well known guys from history.
Their, their, their writings have survived with relatively
few manuscripts, you know, copies and, and quite often
these copies were written hundreds of years after the
event that they were writing about.
OK, so if you look at Aristotle, he's one of the most influential
philosophers in history, right? His, his ideas have shaped
Western philosophy. It's shaped education, it's
shaped science. His writings, right?
Aristotle, his writings, there's fewer than 50 copies of his
writings in circulation. And often they're, they're
written like thousands of years after, you know, he lived and
stuff like that. But copies of copies of copies,
right? If you compare that alone to the
New Testament, the New Testament has over 500, sorry, 5800 copies
of Greek manuscript 50 5800 right.
And there a lot of these are within decades of the events
that of Jesus decades, not hundreds of years, not
thousands. Like a lot of them are pretty
close to when these events happened, right.
So the, so the manuscript evidence for the New Testament
vastly outweighs any other, you know, ancient manuscripts and
stuff like that. It's not even close, guys.
Like it's ridiculous the amount of evidence that we have in the
manuscripts for the New Testament, just the, the, the
numbers alone of, of how many copies of copies there are.
It's, it's not even close, right.
And can I say God authenticates his word through our future
prophecy. So God declares the future
before it happens. We see that in Scripture.
Isaiah 46, nine says this, he says I am God and there is none
like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient
times, things that that are not yet done.
So this is what God's saying. So God authenticates his message
through prophecy quite often. And so we're just going to look
at some of these things. There's a, there's a hidden
message in the Genesis, the first ever genealogy in Genesis,
right? So if we look at that, the, the,
the name, the meanings to the names in this genealogy in
Genesis 5, it's the genealogy goes from Adam to Noah.
And when you look at the meanings for these names and put
put them together in a sentence, this is what you get.
This is Genesis 5. This is the first book of the
Bible and it says man is appointed mortal sorrow, but the
blessed God shall come down teaching his death shall bring
despairing rest. Like it's like the gospel
message is hidden in a genealogy in Genesis, like, you know, just
way before Jesus even comes and Jesus fulfills that.
And I'm, and I'm not presenting that like as formal proof, but
it's just, it's just goes to show you how beautiful the Bible
is and how there's just little things just woven through the
Scripture everywhere that declare who God is and that he
is outside of time, right. So if we have a look at some of
the prophecies of Jesus, because I think this is a good, good
place for us to look. The Old Testament contains many
prophecies pointing directly to Jesus.
I'm just going to reel off some OK because we can't spend a lot
of time here. I said this is like the
helicopter view. So here we go.
OK so Jesus born in Bethlehem that comes from Micah 5/2.
This is the Old Testament scriptures.
Jesus born of a version a virgin.
Isaiah 7 betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.
Zechariah 11 verse 12, pierced hands and feet.
Psalm 22 silent before his accusers.
Isaiah 53, seven buried with the rich.
Isaiah 53, nine raised again. Psalm 1610.
These prophecies existed before Jesus came.
These were Speaking of the coming Messiah.
And you know, but, and I guess this, this, this brings us to
this question. OK, well, how then do we know
that these were written down before Jesus and not afterwards?
And it's really interesting because we can be 100% certain
that these were written down before Jesus.
OK, there is a, a manuscript or a translation called the
Septuagint, right? And this is where they
translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek.
So this it's called the Septuagint.
And this was done. The Torah itself is the first
five books of the, of the Old Testament.
These were translated 250 years before Jesus BC documented and
the entire Old Testament was largely completed and finished
100 years BC before Christ. That's it's not up for debate
like that. That is, that's happened, right?
Like no one's arguing that that happened.
And so this matters because it proves that the prophecies were
already in place before Jesus Christ came.
These stories weren't written to fit Jesus.
Jesus's life perfectly matched these prophecies that were given
through the Old Testament prophets, right?
So then you have to say, OK, did Jesus really exist?
Most historians, including non Christian historians agreed
Jesus was a real historical person.
Non Christian sources. There's a guy called Tacitus.
I'm terrible with names. No, I'm good with names.
Tacitus, right? So he was.
Around 1/16/80, Tacitus wrote that Christos was executed under
Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.
He, he was not a Christian. He was not a believer.
He wrote down this, this, this Christos, this Jesus was killed
under pilot, under Tiberius. OK, so that's in, that appears
in these writings called the annals.
Josephus is another one. Josephus is like really well
known. He's he's not a he's not a
Christian, but he, he's he, he's a historian, right?
And so he writes that Jesus as it was Jesus was a teacher.
His crucifixion again was under pilot and he says James, you
know, he talks about James being the, the brother of Jesus.
So it's just confirming, you know, these things that are
written in our New Testament, what historians generally agree
on, right? Generally historians, both
Christian and non Christian, they will agree that Jesus
existed. He was a Jewish teacher and
preacher, he had many followers, He was crucified by the Roman
authorities and Christianity spread rapidly after him.
Right, they all agree on this. It's not up for a debate,
there's just overwhelming. Yep, we believe that this is
true. So the resurrection now, because
the resurrection changes everything, right?
Christianity stands or falls on this one claim that Jesus was
resurrected from the dead, that he is the Son of God.
OK, so let's talk about the resurrection a bit.
The empty tomb. The empty tomb is in all four of
the the Gospels, the force, the first four books of the New
Testament. And it's interesting because
women were the first witnesses of Jesus's that Jesus says is
alive again, right? A female testimony in those days
carries far less authority than a male testimony.
It's just interesting to me that God would do that, right?
Like if it was made-up, just use the men, guys, no one's going to
believe the women, right? This is sort of the point,
right? You know, their opponents to
Jesus's resurrection, like those that, that would argue that the
body of Jesus was stolen. They, they, that was the
narrative that Jesus, the body of Jesus was stolen by his
disciples. And that's why the, the you
know, that's This is why Jesus body is no longer in the tomb.
They couldn't produce his body. They couldn't say here, this is
the body of Jesus. See, they're lying.
They couldn't do that. So they had to go, well, they
must have stolen it, right? So there, there's just not good
evidence for like, show me the body.
So and again, like another reason is that the message of
Jesus, it starts where where Jesus was killed.
Like if you wanted to like because everyone was there,
everyone saw it. There was, you know, the our
Bible says that many hundreds of witnesses to Jesus in a
resurrected state, right? Where he was executed.
So if you were going to make something up, go and do it over
there where no one knows. Do you know what I mean?
Like just make it up over there. And then like these witnesses
won't matter anymore because it's just like we can just say
whatever we want over there and no one can say, hang on a
second, I was there. Do you see what I'm saying?
Like so there's because it started where it happened.
It holds great credibility because the people that you
could ask anyone. So yeah, these are some of the
reasons for the for the, you know, reliable testimony of the
resurrection of Jesus. But another one of the the big
one for me is the transformation of the disciples.
While these guys were they were fearful when Jesus was killed.
They were hiding, they were scattered.
Soon afterwards, they publicly proclaim Jesus rose from the
dead. So all of a sudden they're not
scared anymore. All of a sudden they're willing
to stand and say, no, no, no, Jesus is alive.
They endured heavy persecution for that.
You know, many suffered and died for this testimony, right?
And this matters because people generally don't die for
something that they don't believe, right?
So, you know, they, they might have mistakenly believed
something potentially, but we see that the disciples, you
know, these were the ones that were potentially inventing this
story, right? But they believed this to be
true. They, they gave their lives
willingly for the testimony that Jesus is alive.
And that matters greatly to me because I'm not laying down my
life for anything that I know is a lie.
And neither are you like, you're not going to do that.
You're not going to lay down your life.
You're not going to allow your family and your kids and all
these things to be heavily persecuted for something that
you know is a lot. They believed, right?
They believed that Jesus was resurrected.
Why would they believe that? Because there was an empty tomb,
Because Jesus showed themselves clearly to them as we see in the
Scripture. What we read in here is what
happened. Jesus showed up and he said,
don't be scared. It's me.
I'd be pretty scared if, you know, a friend of mine died and
then they rocked up in my lounge room the next day, right?
But that's sort of what happened.
And Jesus, you know, which is crazy because he'd been warning
and warning and warning them, but, you know, so clearly that
this was going to happen and they missed it.
But anyway, that's a whole nother side note.
So there's another guy called Gamilio.
I think I'm pronouncing that right.
Say that again. Gamaliel, This is that he was a
Pharisee, right? And he was a well respected
leader. And later we learn that Paul is
actually sits at his feet before Jesus gets a hold of him, right.
So he's like a well respected teacher of the law.
And in Acts 539, he makes this statement, He said is if it is
God talking about the, the, you know, the Jesus and the
disciples, if this is a God's thing, you can't overthrow it.
It cannot be overthrown. If this is God, we'd be, we'd be
found to be fighting against God.
We don't want to do that. And so Christianity began as a
small persecuted movement and spread, spread across the world
despite this opposition. And this is proof that this is
not the work of man, this is the work of God.
The reason that we're sitting in Australia like SA Adelaide, like
now believing that this is the word of God and believing that
that God is who he says he is and Jesus Christ is our Christ
and our Lord. It's because this is God's work.
This is not man's work. This is the one just a bunch of
guys that thought, you know, let's just start this line, like
die for it. And then you people would just
embrace it. And then 2000 years later it
will still be going. This is God's thing, guys.
The reason that it's still going is it because this is God's
thing. All right, So again, what what
is the Bible? We believe in Acts 242.
It says that, you know, the early church, they continued
steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and some other things
as well. The apostles doctrine, it's
God's word. What were the apostles teaching?
God's word right. So they they were teaching
prominently out of the Old Testament scriptures, the word
of God and then they were writing down what God was
teaching and what God was saying.
So you know, our New Testament is written and the letters and
stuff like that by the meant most of them by the apostles.
And so the apostles teaching is what God's saying to you and I
through through the Scriptures, right?
It's documented there predominantly.
So God's word is written by men under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. 2 Peter one says for prophecy never came by the
will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the
Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit moved men to
write what's in here. So this wasn't man's idea,
right? This was God specifically
orchestrating what needed to be in his book. 2 Timothy 3 says
all scripture is given by the inspiration of God.
All scripture is given by the inspiration of God.
God inspired it. God had men write down exactly
how He would have it written. The Bible is not just
information, it's revelation. What does it reveal to us?
It reveals Jesus Christ. You know, again, I said this
earlier that Jesus, he says I am the word of God.
This is not just information. This is revelation.
This should be revelation. It is revelation.
It can be revelation. If you receive it as God's word,
it transforms you, it shapes you.
If you, if you give yourself over to it and allow it to
correct you and lead you, you will be changed.
You will be changed to be more like Him because this is
revelational. It's transformative, right?
So how should we approach the Bible?
Well, first of all, you got to accept that this is the word of
God. By faith, you have to make a
choice to go. I am trusting the Lord that this
is his word. If you can't do that, you're
never submitting to this. You're never going to submit to
God's Word if you can't actually believe by faith that God wrote
down His Word for you and I, that we could follow it, that we
could have it, that we could be led by it.
So that's Step 1. You got to trust by faith that
this is His Word. And when you do that, your
posture towards it changes, like your posture towards me.
Sharing the Word of God here can be very different when you are
like Lord, I'm believing that you're speaking right.
I'm believing this is your word, your posture towards the word of
God when you sit down and read it can be very different when
you are given over to it as God's authority, right.
So you don't need to merely analyse it.
You don't sit here and analyse it.
Many do this guys, many analyse the word of God and try to, you
know, work it out and understand it and analyse and this thing
you sort of need to have do that a little bit, but you need to
just listen to it. You need to give yourself over
to it, rely on it, trust it. So and and you must understand
that God is talking to you every time you open the word of God.
God is talking to you every time you open the word of God.
So you don't open your Bible to know the Bible.
You open your Bible to know him. That's the attitude that you sit
down with your Bible. Lord, I want to know you, I want
to listen to you. I want to hear your word, not I
want to know the Bible. I want to understand it.
I want to be able to teach it all of these things.
You want to know him. Scripture primarily is the way
that we hear God. You know, you could hear God in
your spirit and you can hear God speak to you personally, but
this is sort of like the, the, the anchor in the, the safeguard
against how do I know that it's God because God's not telling
you to do things that are contrary to his word.
This is your safeguard, right? Romans 10/17 says faith comes by
hearing and hearing by the word of God.
How do I, how do you increase your faith through the word of
God? How do you get the word of God
in? You got to listen to it.
You got to hear it, you got to read it, right?
I want to, I want to be more faithful to you, Lord, my word,
take a hold of my word. How do we read God's word?
This is going to be like a real, just over the top sort of fly
by, right? Different Bible versions.
People are often confused by this, Like there's different
translations, different Bibles. But again, I said that the Bible
was written in three main languages.
None of those are English, right?
You can't. Does anyone here read Hebrew or
Greek? Ancient Greek?
No. So I can't go and read the the
Bible in the original language that it was written, right?
So I have to read a translation. I have to read in the language
that I understand. And so do you think that God's
in that? Do you think that God would
allow me a son of God who loves him and wants to follow him and
wants to have his word? Do you think that God would
allow me to read the word of God in my own language?
Of course he would, right? So like God's allowed us to
translate the, the, the Bible into languages that we can
understand. It's just, it's a no brainer,
right? But people would argue, you
know, unless you've got the original that you won't
understand. That is not true.
But the Spirit of God, he will enlighten you and teach you and
reveal his word to you in whatever language it is that you
read, right? So there's different Bible
translations. So you can't like having a, I'm
just going to have to move quickly through this, right?
There's a spectrum. There's like literal
translations and then there's like a readable translation.
So there's this spectrum, right, where it's like almost word for
word. It can't really be word for word
because it wouldn't make a lot of sense.
But and then you're on this end of the spectrum.
You've got something that's interpreted for to help you
understand what this might be saying now you know, word for
word accuracy. We're talking about Bibles like
New King James Version, ESPNASP, these sort of things.
So they're aiming for a word for word translation.
And then you've got others that are like thought for thought
readability. These are things like the NIV
and the NLT, stuff like that. Then you've got paraphrase
Bibles, message others, ones like this.
These can be helpful, but these aren't the ones that you're
studying, guys. You don't study those.
These are sort of translated and they're an interpretation of, of
what someone believes the scripture is saying.
But we want to, we want to be able to read it and help God to
help us to understand what it's saying.
So as close to word for word accuracy as you can.
But I realised that there's, there's different reading
abilities, there's different attention spans.
There's like some of us just can't make any sense of a new of
a King James Bible, right? You sit down and just, it's
just, I'm not, it's not landing on me.
So you want to choose to read something like an NIV or an NLT
or something like that. That's actually you're getting a
hold of the word of God, right? So a lot of it depends on where
you're at. And we would say that a good
middle starting point would be like an NIV or something like
that. It's a it's a quite an easy read
for those of you, I don't know if you guys have your own Bibles
and all the rest of it, but if you don't have a Bible and you
want to start reading the Bible and NIV is a good starting
place. OK, OK, so now you've got a
Bible. Where do I start reading?
I would say that a good place to start reading is about Jesus.
So you know, the Gospel of John or Luke or Mark, Matthew's a
longer 1. So these ones might be might be
better John, Luke and Mark. And then from there you start
reading Acts and Romans and and the other, you know, just work
your way through the New Testament start of Jesus.
That's a good place to start. And then afterward, you know,
once you've once you've read the New Testament, return to the old
and start looking for Jesus in the Old Testament.
Because again, he said these words are those that speak of
me, right? We can ask some questions.
I'm just trying to help us to to be able to read and to be able
to get something out of our reading with the Bible.
OK, so some of the questions that you might want to have in
your mind when you sit down and read questions around what does
the Bible teach me about God? What does it teach me about
humanity? What does it teach me about sin?
What does it teach me about salvation being saved?
What does it teach me about obedience to the Lord?
What is what is the Bible saying about Jesus?
What can I learn about Jesus through reading these things?
All right, so have some questions, maybe write some
questions down and say, Lord, teach me about salvation.
And then when you, when you go on reading the scriptures, just
it's on your, you, it'll be highlighted to you.
The Lord will do this. If you've got a plan for sitting
down and reading and say, Jesus, I just want to see you clearly.
I just want to see you in the Old Testament and you sit down
and you start reading. You can trust that the Holy
Spirit will teach you because he wants you to lead you into all
truth, right? The Holy Spirit wants to reveal
Jesus to you. So if you ask him to reveal
himself to you, he will do that. I promise you that, right.
So the Bible is descriptive and prescriptive, OK, What do I mean
by that? This is important descriptive.
The Bible sometimes describes things that happen.
An example, you know David has multiple wives, right?
This is not saying that you should have multiple wives.
This is just saying it's giving us a description of what
happened, OK. And other many other events and
situations like that where things happen in the Bible and
it's documented. It's not necessarily telling you
that you should do that. It's just giving you the details
of what happened. So that's descriptive.
Prescriptive is where it's describing to us, to believers,
how we should live, right? So example, love your enemies.
The Bible talks about loving your enemies.
This is descriptive. This is saying that we should
love our enemies, right? And, and many other things,
forgiving and praying and repentance and believing and
walking in holiness. These are all prescriptive
things that we, that we can take out of the Bible.
These are things that you and I should be doing like the Lord
wants to make a part of our lives, Amen.
These are basically God's commands for us, right?
When there's descriptive things in the Bible, the Lord is
saying, this is how you walk. This is how you follow me.
OK, All right, So final thought, just as I close here, I know
this has been a lot, but I sort of said, you know, I set the,
the ground to what we're doing here.
This is just to help us to be inspired about the reliability
of God's word and, and the relationship that you can have
with God and his word and the change that this can bring in
your life, right? So final thought, the Bible is
historically rooted, it's prophetically unique and it's
spiritually alive. OK, it's alive.
This, this book says it's living and active.
It's able to transform, it's able to cut through the rubbish,
right? It's able to trim things off of
you. It's able to do a, an active
real work in your life, right? No other book can make that
claim. We believe that it's reliable
not because of just because of the manuscript evidence or the
fulfilled prophecy, right? We believe that it's reliable.
Like I believe that this word is reliable because in it and
through it, I have encountered God and he has changed my life.
You know, I'm not going to argue with people about why I think
the Bible's reliable about, about, you know, all of the
scholar evidence and the writings and all this thing.
You know what I'm going to say? I'm going to say, mate, I
believe this is the word of God because it's changed my life
that the Lord became very real to me and my life isn't the
same. And you will never convince me
to go backwards on that because I've met the Lord, right?
That's the evidence, right? And you and I are in this room.
I'm sure that many of us, well, most of us could say that you're
not convincing us otherwise, right?
This is the word of God because of the life that we've lived in
our experiences in it. So we as a church, like we want
to help us, you know, take steps in growing, in reading the word
of God. And I and I think like, how can
we start doing that? Like for one, we're going to
make sure that anyone, everyone's got a Bible.
If there's someone in this place that doesn't have a Bible, I'm
looking around. I'm pretty sure we all do come
and speak to us. We will put a Bible in your hand
because you need a Bible. If you're going to read the
Bible, right? You need to start reading it
regularly. This is like the first steps,
right? Get a Bible, start reading it.
Have questions. You're going to have many
questions. You're going to, you're probably
going to read 2 verses and you're going to have some
questions, right? Write down your questions.
Go and speak to people, pray about it, but but go and speak
to people. Come and speak to us.
Come and speak to Justin. Come and speak to others in this
church. You know, Alan, guys that have
been reading the Bible for a long time, Peter, come and ask
your questions. Say I was reading this and and
what does this mean? And just keep asking questions,
but write them down so you don't forget.
Ask many questions and you know, you sort of go from reading the
Bible regularly to studying the Bible.
This is sort of how the progression because we should be
studying the word, not just reading the word.
And so we want to help you to do that as well.
If you've been reading the Bible for a long time and that's all
you do and you're saying, I want to take the next step.
I want to start studying the Bible.
Come and speak to us as leaders and we we want to help us as a
church. We want the way church to be a
church that is grounded in Scripture, that knows the word
of God, that's growing in the word of God, that has an active
relationship with God's word. And so that means that we can
all, there's another step to take wherever you're at, there's
another step to take and we want to help you to do that.
So please come and speak to us, you know, ask questions in the
community groups. When we're together, we're going
to fellowship, we're going to have coffee and stuff
afterwards. Ask some questions.
If you've got questions, ask about the word of God, talk
about the word of God. All right, so again, I sort of
just touched this again, but the heartbeat of this church is to
be a church that's excited about the word of God, excited to hear
the word of God, excited to open up the word together.
We want to be Bible literate. What does that mean?
That means that the week we have some sort of a comprehension of
this, that we, that we know what it says in here, right?
You don't need to know it all, but you've got a you've got a
firm understanding. This is the church we want to
build a church that knows the word of God.
So that when, as I've said, when new believers come and they get
saved and they start reading and they have questions, who are
they going to ask us, right? Not just me, not just Justin us,
not just our wives, they're going to ask us.
And so we want to be a church that is Bible literate that we
that we together would have the answers that are going to be
burning in these people's hearts.
We want to be a church that's able to search out the
scriptures that when we have questions, we go digging and we
say, well, how should we do this thing?
Well, what does the word of God say?
Right like that when we're when we're correcting each other and,
and because we should be correcting each other, right,
Because if you're not corrected, how are you going to move
further, further in your work with walk with God?
So when we're correcting each other, it's not just because of
my opinion nor who's ever opinion that it's always coming
back to the word of God because of the word of God says this.
This is the what God's word says.
That's where correction is. We want to be a church that's
able to help each other, to correct each other, able to
teach, able to this is discipleship, right and and
understand from Scripture God's will for our lives, God's will
for this church, this local church, but more than that,
God's will for this city, God's will for this nation.
God's will for the nations. We want to be biblically
grounded to know in 2026 and beyond, what is the Lord doing
in Australia, What is the Lord doing in Adelaide?
What is the Lord doing in this community right now and how can
we be a part of it and play our part to see God's will be done?
Amen. That's what this is about.
We want to be building a church that's totally in step with what
God's doing in our time and our place.
That's what it means to have a lampstand here.
God put a lampstand here not just for another church, but so
that his will could be done specifically here to the
specific people that are around here, to the specific needs of
the people that God brings in here, Right?
So, yeah, this is the church that we want to see built here,
transformed from Scripture. So I'm, I'm landing here, but I,
I just had this, you know, this picture in my, in my mind this
morning. And you see, like Chantel's
driven written some drawn some mountains on the board there.
This came out of this right. So as I was praying this morning
and, and asking about our meeting and what God's wanting
to do and what he's going to say, I had this picture of like
these mountains. And there was a couple of
mountains in front of it. And then there was a bigger one
at the back and it was like really white on the peak sort of
thing. And you know, as I saw that I, I
was led to read about the, where Jesus was gone up the mountain
and transfigured in front of a few of his disciples there.
And so when I went and I, and I read that this morning, anyway,
I'm not going to bother trying to find it.
But basically Jesus is on this mountain and his disciples,
Peter and these guys, they're scared, right?
Because you know, this, this, there's this cloud there and
this voice comes out of the cloud, which is just amazing
because Jesus is like bright and shining.
And they're just like, Oh my gosh, what has happened to
Jesus? He's like, you know, this looks
like God. But anyway, so this voice
thunders out of this cloud and it says, this is my son in whom
I'm well pleased hear him, hear him.
And I'm, I'm believing that this is a word for us in this season
for this church, hear him. I believe that God is speaking
clearly to us. I believe that our Lord is
speaking to us. Even think about the past weeks,
think about the things that he's been saying.
Think about the things that he will continue to say.
The Lord is wanting to speak very clearly to us.
And he is, we need to hear him because hearing him doesn't just
mean that, you know, that I hear with my ears.
It means that you, when you hear God speak, you do something with
what God has said, you use it, you take a hold of it, you
embrace it as truth and you implement.
Now I'm challenged on this guys, because I believe that, you
know, even last week, fearing the Lord and, and moving away
from darkness and, and having a hatred towards sin and these
sort of things, this has gripped my heart again, because we're,
we're called to be a holy bride. And so I want to make sure, you
know, I just go to God and I say, Lord, I want to make sure
that I'm hearing you and that you are truly my Lord, that I'm
submissive to you in all things. And it starts there, as I said
last week, but there's some mountains that were in front of
this mountain that I think needs to be moved out the way.
When I heard Chantel talk about this, the, the wells and stuff
this morning, straight away I was like, I saw other mountains.
There was these other mountains and they were in the way of
God's mountain. And so I believe that these are
the things that God's saying, these are the things that he's
been saying in the past weeks. There's some mountains that need
to be torn to the ground, that need to be moved aside.
I think it's interesting that the Word of God says that you
will speak to this mountain and it will go to the sea.
Think about that like you will. You have the power to speak to
the mountains in your life that are getting in the way of you
going up God's mountain. And I think that's significant
for some of us in this room. I know it is for me and so I
would love for us just to again, we got to respond guys, where we
could sit here, we could hear the word, we could leave this
place, we could keep living our lives.
Nothing could change. But for those who have an ear to
hear and do something with God's word and are willing to receive
it, then you know you are you're going to be used by God to do
his will in this time. Who wants to be used by the
Lord? Do we really lift up your hand a
bit higher go. I want to be I want to be used
by the Lord, right, because because he wants to use us, he
wants to use us powerfully. So let's just stand to our feet.
This is ask us to stand because it's, it's like taking a step,
right? We could stay seated, but but in
responding to God's word, it actually takes for us to do
something. So standing to your feet is
simply just doing that. It's it's taking a step, it's
standing to your feet. It's a showing that what's on
the inside of your heart is a willingness to do something
right. So Lord, here we stand.
We stand in the presence of Almighty God.
We stand under the authority of Your Word in this place this
morning, and we are open, Lord, for you to touch us, for you to
move us, for you to change us, for you to show us the mountains
that are in the way that we could command those mountains to
get out of the way, that we could go up the holy mountain
and serve the living God. So, Lord, I thank you that
you're going to do that. I thank you that some of us in
this room are going to experience the power of the Holy
Spirit to move aside obstacles to to untap the wells, to throw
the rocks out of the way that living water could flow once
again. So we thank you for the power
Lord of your Holy Spirit in this place to do the mighty work in
our hearts. All we need to do and all we are
doing right now is to have a willingness to say yes, Lord, do
your work. And I say that.
I say yes, Lord, do your work. We say together, yes, Lord, do
your work. We thank you Lord, in Jesus
mighty name. Amen.
Excellent.
What a wonderful rice. Thank you for joining us for
today's message. For more information about The
Way Church, please visit ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot
AU. Have a blessed day.