“Scripture Worth Memorizing” 2 Timothy 3:16
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All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16- NRSV
We are picking up where we left off and we are in the process of memorizing some Scripture. So we want to take a few moments and see if we can remember that. We will continue to do that when I am speaking throughout the summer. We have already learned a couple different Scriptures. Anybody remember the first one? 2 Corinthians 5:17. O.K. Rhonda’s got it. Here we go:
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17
Very good. That’s what we learned in May; so that is an opportunity for you to review it and continue to stay on it. We moved on after that to Romans 12:1.
Romans 12:1
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God—which is your spiritual worship.
Romans 12:1
If you turn your order of worship over, today’s Scriptures are there. What I have done is I have given you a couple different versions. We are going to actually say it here as part of the New Revised Standard but it is our next Scripture and it refers to Scripture itself. So we are going to say that together and then we will say a prayer and then we will get into our message. This is 2 Timothy 3:16.
2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.
2 Timothy 3:16
I invite you to take and embrace that this week. Would you pray with me once again?
Lord we thank you for your word and Lord we ask that you would continue to use it for good in our lives. Thank you Lord. Quicken our hearts to hear what your Spirit is telling us this day. Amen
Well, I recently had some work I had to have done on my car. It was part of a manufacturer’s recall to repair the brakes on it. So I took it in and as I took it in I wanted a technician to work on it that knew what he was doing. Right? Don’t you want that? Don’t you want someone who knows what they are doing? I didn’t want a technician that believed he or she knew what they were doing or had read about it in a technical manual, I wanted someone who knew, right? Maybe if you are facing surgery, you know where I am going….you want a surgeon who knows how to perform the surgery, right? You don’t want one who believes they know how. That probably wouldn’t be a good thing. There are just some things in our lives that we want and we need to know. Knowledge is an important part of our lives. It is something that is critical to who we are. Imagine if we didn’t have the knowledge to build a bridge correctly. Would you want to drive over it? I wouldn’t. Knowledge can be defined as, putting yourself in touch with what is true, putting yourself in touch with what is true. When you know something, you know the way things really are. It brings an element of truth and reality to it. We know that two plus two equals four, right? Mathematics is built on that knowledge. When you know that two plus two is four, you know that’s the way it really is. Right. Having knowledge around a topic, whatever that topic may be, will help you navigate that topic and the reality of that topic; whether that topic be auto repair, whether it be medicine, whether it be physics, whether it be literature, it doesn’t matter. If you know that topic it helps you navigate that topic effectively, with reality.
And you know what? That also applies to the study of God called theology. It also applies to Scripture. For when people lack knowledge it can lead to problems, right? Think about what happens when we don’t know something, where it goes, whether it be medicine or any of those topics it can lead us astray and it can cause trouble. The prophet Hosea knew this. He said in the Old Testament, “my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.” My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. When there is a lack of knowledge, chaos can ensue. This knowledge that is needed for a spiritual life is just as important as the knowledge that is needed for any other part of your life whether it be professional, relational, or whatever. We need to have that knowledge about our spiritual life and Scripture is the source of that knowledge. Scripture is the source of the knowledge that is needed for a spiritual life. Too many people in the Church today, I hate to say that. Too many people, including people in the Church today, do not have a good grounding in Scripture. Our lack of ability to navigate spiritual truth very well can lead us off course very easily. We see that time and time again, don’t we, in the T.V., in the papers, all around.
In 2007 Time Magazine conducted a survey and they said only half of the U.S. adults could name one of the four gospels. And that less than half could name Genesis as the first book in the Bible. Now, that is all of the U.S. but when they did it for those who attended Church, it wasn’t much better folks. In 2005 a study found that English teachers in both public and private schools said that students who were familiar with the Bible had a distinct educational advantage over those who did not. There is something about having knowledge of the Bible. So the Bible brings a knowledge that is important for all of us to have. I think that our Scripture speaks to that, doesn’t it? It speaks first to its source, it is “inspired by God;” and then it tells you what it can do once we have that knowledge. It “is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training.” That is what it can do once we know it. But that still leaves us hanging, doesn’t it? Because many of us want to know, how do we gain that knowledge? How do we gain knowledge about the Bible? How do we get it into our hearts, our minds and ultimately our souls.
Well it may sound trivial, but the starting point for it is simply to read it. Read the Bible. As we read, and I want to encourage you to do that, as you read, look for the ways that God reveals himself beyond just the story that is going on, look for how God reveals his character, how he reveals his soul through the pages of Scripture. As you read Scripture, the ebbs and the flows of Scripture, especially if you are new to Scripture or if you are unsure of the Scripture or unsure of your knowledge. I lately have been reading through the story of David again, just enjoying it and seeing all the ups and downs that have gone through David’s life. It is a great story. That is the way we kind of get a piece of how God is working, how God works through peoples lives, what it tells us about God, as well.
I want to invite you that if you are not sure of your Bible knowledge, and it is O.K. to say that, then what I want to invite you to do is to maybe, what I say, zoom out a couple stops to get a bigger picture of God’s work. What I mean by that, if you have ever had to Google something on Google maps, you know you type in the address and it takes you right to the address and you have it on a map; but you are not really familiar with it and you don’t know what the cross streets are, what do you do? You zoom out a couple stops, don’t you? Until you can get a highway or a major intersection that you recognize and then it helps you orient yourself for where you need to go. That is what I think we need to do with Scripture. I think too many of us, particularly those of us who have grown up in the Church, have learned to start too small, or to stay too small with things like word studies or verse by verse Bible studies. Those things are good. Those things are needed. But lots of times when that is all we have, we fail to see the forest from the trees. So what I want to encourage us to do is to zoom out a couple stops and look at the bigger themes that go throughout Scripture, things like the Abrahamic promise that God gave to him and how that carries through the pages of Scripture, why the prophets were needed, not just what they said, but why were they needed. Beyond that, why did Jesus stay focused on his purpose? How did he do that? Or, how the Church spread across Asia Minor? Those are things that will help us absorb and gain knowledge about Scripture. That is what happens when we read it. When you read or you study Scripture, how many of you have ever had that opportunity where you read a passage and you go back to it again and it says something completely different to you? Have you ever had that happen? Yeah. That is the Holy Spirit working though Scripture in your heart, leading you to where you need to be. That is many times where the reproof and the correction come from. It is the work of the Spirit moving in your spirit with God speaking to you. I think that is what is meant when it says that Scripture is active and alive and sharper than any two-edged sword. That is what happens when you read, when you take it in and allow yourself to hear God’s voice in the midst of it, and when you do that, Scripture says about itself it will not return void. It will have a positive impact in your life.
So read, read the Scriptures. Read them devotionally, read them for study, read them to reveal God’s character, read them to follow the major movements in Scripture, as well. Read. It is a great way to gain knowledge about God. And if reading gets us started toward knowledge then we must also take the time to meditate on Scripture, as well. If reading is what helps bring understanding, then meditation helps bring depth to that understanding. Think of it like studying a great work of art. I mean, I know that I can tell you about the statue of David. I can tell you where it is, I can tell you a little about it; but if I were to go there and spend some time and study it closer, to absorb it, take time to reflect on it, what would happen? I would have a greater knowledge of the statue, wouldn’t I? That is kind of what happens when we meditate on Scripture.
Another way to think about it is when we read Scripture it is like a square. It is important, we need it and it is good for us. But when we meditate on it, all of a sudden it goes from being one dimensional to almost three dimensional; it’s in perspective. It gives us perspective around it and that is what happens, I think, when we meditate on Scripture.
Understand the biblical meditation is about filling yourself with God’s word. We have to make the differentiation that that is different than when you just hear the word meditation, which really means Eastern meditation. Eastern meditation is about emptying yourself. Biblical meditation is about filling yourself with Scripture, and that is a huge difference. It is the idea that biblical meditation gets the Bible into you.
One of the great exercises to do that came from a man by the name of St. Ignatius of Loyola. He taught his followers an exercise that he called “imaginative meditation”. He encouraged his followers to enter the gospel story. What he said was “take a story out of Scripture and become one of the participants in the story.” So let’s take the story of the crucifixion. You pick a character that was in the crucifixion story, whether it was one of the thieves on the cross, whether it was Mary watching her son die, maybe it was one of the Roman guards, maybe it was one of his disciples standing from afar. You read the story and you reflect on what it would have been like to be that person in that story. What did you see? What were you feeling? What were you experiencing as that was going on? And it moves you into the story. It allows God to speak to you as you enter into that story, and the pages of Scripture come alive at that point.
A couple years ago we taught a class called “Eating your Bible.” This is one of the exercises we did. We will probably, maybe, offer it up again this coming year. So be watching for that. But meditation is the next step that allows us to think deeply about the words that are on the printed page before you. I want to invite you to do that. Take time to enjoy and to meditate on those words, and if meditation adds another layer to that knowledge, then so does praying Scripture. You have probably heard of “let’s pray Scripture.” Well, I want to talk a little bit about that. The idea here is that you take the words of the Bible and you turn them into prayers, prayers to God. Now what I want to invite you to do is to take the red pew bibles that are in front of you and we are going to do a couple examples of this. What I want to invite you to do is to turn to Psalm 25, which is page 502 in your red pew bible, and we are going to start by looking at the first three verse of Psalm 25. This is a very easy, very direct way to pray Scripture because it is all laid out for you. All you basically have to do is to pray the words back instead of reading them.
Psalm 25, the first three verses. As you look at these words you can see how they can become prayers very easily.
To you, O Lord, I lift up my
soul.
O my God, in you I trust;
do not let me be put to shame;
do not let my enemies exult
over me.
Do not let those who wait for
you be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are
wantonly treacherous.
A very easy, a very direct way to just say, “I am just going to recite these back as prayer to God,” a very easy way to do that. The Psalms are probably one of the easiest books to do that in; but you can also take another Psalm which is not necessarily direct as this and just basically rephrase that. So what we are going to do with that one is Psalm 24; it is on the same page. Look at Psalm 24, verses 3 through 6. It says:
Who shall ascend the hill of the
Lord?
And who shall stand in his
holy place?
Those who have clean hands
and pure hearts,
who do not lift up their souls
to what is false,
and do not swear deceitfully.
They will receive blessing from
the Lord,
and vindication from the God
of their salvation.
Such is the company of those
who seek him,
who seek the face of the God
of Jacob.
O.K., so how do you turn this into a prayer? Maybe you start by saying, “Lord, Lord I want to ascend your hill. I want to ascend your holy hill. I want to stand in your holy place, God. And Lord I know I need clean hands and a pure heart, God; so clean my hands, purify my heart, God, that I might stand before you. Lord help me not to lift up my soul to what is false, help me not to swear deceitfully. Lord, thank you, thank you that you will give me that blessing as I stand in your presence and I will be vindicated because you are the God of my salvation. See how that goes? Is that hard? It is not real hard, is it? That is what I want to encourage you to do. Now we are we are going to try one that maybe you had not thought of as something you could pray, but we are going to do it anyway. I want you to turn to Acts Chapter 12, verse 6 through 11. It is on page 131. And this is actually a narrative. This is part of a narrative story. So how do you pray a narrative? Alright, it is a story of Peter being released from prison. I will read the story and then I will give you an idea of how it might go. This is Acts, Chapter 12, verse 6 through 11:
The very night before Her’od was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door where keeping watch over the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” Peter went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. After they had passed the first and second guard, they came before the iron gate leading in to the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Her’od and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”
(Tape is blank for a short time but picks up with the following:)
God rescue me. Send your angels. There are no guards, no gates that can hold your power, O God. Come, rescue me. Free me from whatever it is that is holding my back and Lord I will give you glory and I will know it is for you and for your kingdom.
Something as simple as that is a way to pray Scripture. That is what we want to do. That is a way to do that in a way that makes sense and in a way that can allow you to absorb Scripture in ways that you have never before. So we have been talking about the getting the Bible into us and it is important to do that because we need to have that knowledge, don’t we? But we can’t stop there; that is not enough.
James says we must be doers of the word not just simply hearers of the word. In other words, we need to act on what we know. In Jewish thought there was no separation between knowing and doing. They were exactly the same. So in other words, you know something by doing it. So knowing was doing, doing was knowing. The proof of whether you knew something or not was whether you did it. So if you weren’t doing something that you said you knew, in the Jewish way of thinking you really didn’t know it.
So we need to do something with the things that we know. Well I am a graduate of Bethel Seminary and, as such, I have the ability to audit any class at the school that I want to. What is auditing a class? It basically means you get to go to class, sit in there, you can listen to the lectures but you don’t have to do anything in the class because you are not graded on it. You get lots of information but you don’t have to do anything with it. And I think that is what many of us are doing. We are auditing the Bible. We have lots of information but we are not doing much with it. What do you say we change that, huh? What do you say we change that? Imagine what might happen, if you, as you read through the Bible, made a commitment that every time you came across something that the Bible told you to do you tried to do that as best you could in your world today, whatever it might be. What might happen? How might that change you? You might that change your attitude? How might that change your faith? And what would happen if all of us as the Church here at Faith did that? What might happen here at Faith?
Well, I like airplanes and someday I would actually like to learn to fly one. Let’s say someday I decide I am going to do it and I am going to go to ground school and I am going to learn everything there is to learn about airplanes. I am going to learn about the dynamics of flight, and how you get a heavy piece of metal up in the air, how that happens. I am going to learn about all the weather factors that can complicate flying and I am going to learn what to do in all those situations. I am going to learn all the controls and electronics of an airplane so I can take off and land and learn how to fly through the air. I am going to learn everything there is to know about flying an airplane; but never get in a cockpit. Who wants to go up on a flight with me? (Laughter) Exactly. Exactly.
Well I want to encourage all of us to learn to fly, learn to fly with God. Get his word into you and you will be soaring before you know it.
Let me pray for us.
Holy God thank you for your word, thank you for the way you watch over us and you are so gentle and tender with us, Lord, God. Lord we thank you that you have given us your word and it is alive and active and it is something that can change us and move us closer to you because that is really the end result. That is our end goal, that we might be closer to you, Jesus. So Lord thank you for the gift of your word, may it bear fruit in our lives as we grow in its knowledge and its application in our lives, in your name, Jesus. Amen.