everybody doing this morning doing good all right yes I like to see a little life in the room good that's good because today we have a very important topic that I need everyone's undivided attention for here today because today I'm going to challenge the notion that you are not as smart as you think you are well I want to talk about today is a topic that on the surface you might say I don't understand this stuff and I don't know this stuff and I'm not like a seminarian or theology student but I believe that what I'm gonna talk about today isn't as complicated as it may seem and we're gonna talk about the Bible or talk about what the Bible is and what's inside the Bible and how to understand the Bible and as you see in the title of your handout there today is how to find are you ready joy in the Bible how to find joy in the Bible how to turn here's what I want to do up front okay I'm gonna tell you the goal of today is I want to turn one sentence into a different sentence I want to turn I have to read my Bible to I get to read my Bible not even want but get okay I want to change have to to get to and most of us say I have to read my Bible and that's good and that's not a bad thing but I want us to say I get to read my Bible and we'll do that when we learn to find joy and enjoyment and satisfaction from the Word of God here's our theme verse for today this is our memory verse for this week say let's read it all together so I know that you are awake with me Jeremiah 15:16 says your words were found and I ate them and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart Jeremiah 15:16 is the hardest memory verse we've had so far if we have you been here with since the beginning of the series we've been talking about how the Word of God is food for our spirits that was the first week and we talked about how man should not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and we said that we do a very good job of feeding our bodies but we do a very bad job sometimes of feeding our souls inside and many of our bodies stop feeding me alright and many of our spirits are saying please feed me more and we do the exact opposite ok we continue to feed this and we don't feed this and the first week we talked about how the Bible is the Word of God we saw the Bible is not just a regular book it is the Word of God and it is given to us to be food for our spirits the second week we looked at not what the Bible is but what the Bible does the role of the Bible and what we saw is that the Bible was given to us if you remember the memory verse from that week was from John chapter 8 verse 31 and 32 that you shall know the truth that if you abide in my words you're my disciples indeed and if you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free and we saw that when we are in the Bible and we're regular in the Bible we will remove the lies and replace with truth we will remove the fear and replaced with faith and will remove the confusion and the darkness and we replaced with clarity about what God wants me to do then after that we looked at how to read the Bible and the attitude that we need to read the Bible we agree the number one things been an attitude of submission all right and that was when we said our verse together was open the eyes of my heart I'm sorry opened my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law and then last week we talked about how to do that like the process and we talked about three ways to go deeper in the Word of God all right that when we read one do three things observation interpretation application observation is asking what does it say interpretation is asking what does it mean application is asking what am I going to do about it alright and we said that when we take every passage through those three then the word of Christ will dwell in us richly now what I'm trying to get to today is I'm trying to get to this point where you don't say I have to read my Bible today I want to get rid of that I don't ever want you to say it have to read my Bible ever again I want you to wake up and say I get to read my Bible today lofty goal but I think we can do it first let's see why it is that we don't say that sentence usually in the morning when we wake up I found there's three groups of people when it comes to your relationship with the Bible every single person here for the most part falls in one of these three Group one is I don't read group two is I read but under understand and Group three is I understand but I don't know big let's take it one at a time okay and do this kind of sequentially first group number one I don't read my hope is that by this point time in this series I've changed your mind or I should say God has changed your mind and you realize that the Bible is what you need for your spirit and even though you don't enjoy it and even though you don't like it you see the value in what the Bible can do for you and first Peter chapter 2 verse 2 says it very nicely it says as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby when when we had our first child okay when Michael was born all right he like was eating but he didn't want to eat like he liked nursing but he didn't want to make the shift into not nursing into other kinds of foods and because of that like he wasn't gaining weight because he was trying to stick with the nursing at the beginning I was you know obviously there's cost benefits to continuing nursing okay so I wasn't to you know I mean like I was fine I was content you know as long as long as he seemed to have me like we were happy like everyone was happy but the doctor said no like you're gonna stunt his growth if he doesn't eventually you know like eat regular people food so what did my wife and I do when we went to him and he refused the regular food what did we do we forced him to eat the regular food and he said no I don't want we said doesn't matter if you don't want or don't want you to eat the regular food because it's what's best for you and you need it to grow and if you're in Group one and you say no I don't like the Bible then I say to you go read the Bible and at the beginning of your relationship with the Bible you have to start with persistence like group number one you need to just push yourself to do it and I agree that I don't want over the course of the next 50 years to always be forcing food down my kids throat but at the beginning you gotta you gotta kind of force it any time you want to start any new habit at the beginning it's not gonna be easy it's not gonna be natural you have to push yourself a little bit and if you're in Group one my advice to you is persistence keep at it push yourself and then hopefully you'll be able to get to a higher level now let's skip group number two for right now because that's one of them spend the most time well let's go to group number three group number one said I don't like to read group number three said I read and I understand but I don't want to obey these are people we're not with a knowledge issue but a lifestyle issue in group number three needs submission we spoke about this a little bit a couple weeks ago group number three is the group that reads and understands but they don't like what they read so you know what happens when the Bible keeps telling you one thing but your lifestyle is something different something's got to give either you got to stop reading or you got to change your life which of the two is easier which is easier change my life or stop reading the Bible stop reading the Bible that's why many of people in this group you read for a little bit yeah I'm spiritualist stuff and then the Bible comes at you so you say okay let me show you a different passage but it's the same author of the different passage so he comes at you here so you try to go around here now you try to go all up different places and in the end the Bible stands as a wall and either you obey or you end up stop reading Mark Twain the author said it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that give me a problem he said my problem is the parts of the Bible that I do understand you see that it's not the Bible that we don't understand that's the problem it's the Bible that we do understand that's the problem because many of us don't want to obey if you're in this category I want to point out a couple verses to you proverbs 16:25 says there is a way that seems right to a man and let me emphasize seems right to a man but it's end is the way of death those who do not accept the authority of God's Word what they're in essence saying is I worship the authority of my mind like my mind is the highest authority and if the Bible agrees with my mind Bible good if the Bible disagrees Bible bad because my mind is the highest thing that's why when the Bible says don't kill okay this is good don't steal this very good but then what happens when the Bible says love your enemy what happens in the Bible says forgive who hurts you seven times 70 times what Amazon the Bible says not even a hint of sexual immorality a monkey who's right and who's wrong and if you're in this category you think that you are doing what is reasonable and what is logical but I would like to show you that you who think that your logic is the highest thing in the whole wide world I would like to show you that you're being extremely illogical with that decision that you're making you know why because I don't tell you two things about your logic number one you're not as smart as you think you are and number two you're not as unbiased and objective as you think you are and I'll prove it to you who say that if it doesn't make sense to me it can't be right that's what a lot of people say so are you saying that there's nothing that doesn't make sense to you that could be right well when I was younger it made sense to me to eat donuts for breakfast made perfect sense felt good felt energy felt happy made perfect sense but now that I've gotten older I have come to the realization that the truth is is actually not good for me to eat donuts for breakfast when I was in seventh grade I had a conversation with my math teacher I was in algebra had a conversation of my math teacher went like this algebra doesn't make sense and I was fully convinced algebra didn't make sense and at the time it didn't make sense it made zero sense but you know what I discovered my sense ended up changing and Alger eventually made more sense so you who say that if it doesn't make sense it can't be true well your sense is growing and your sense is changing does that mean that truth is changing as we understand more and as we become more mature that mean truth is changing maybe not secondly you're not as objective as you think you are and find me one quart in the entire universe that will allow you to judge yourself that allow you to walk in and say okay I'm on trial here but I'm also the judge okay and I think what I did was totally fine can't work that way you cannot be the defendant and the judge at the same time you need someone outside of you to judge you and it's same thing with our lives we cannot what's right and what's wrong in our lives because we have a vested interest in it and we are very self-serving and we are very biased and we are very much on objective or not objective whatever that word might be said another way you can't have the inmates running the asylum you can't have fourth graders determining what's right and what's wrong on the fourth grade test you need to have someone outside in order to judge objectively the book of Judges chapter 21 verse 25 talks about one of the darkest times in the period of Israel's history and it says in those days there was no king in Israel there was no authority there was no objective standard Authority and because that everyone did what was right in his own eyes so there's a young girl who in her eyes and her mind it's right to sleep with her boyfriend it makes sense it's right to her makes the perfect sense but then later on in life she realized hey wait a minute actually that was the worst thing that I ever did because that actually took away my ability to have true intimacy with my boyfriend and for us to have intimacy when we got married was taken away when that happened so what I thought was right turned out not to be right there are parents all over who think in their own right in their own eyes it's right to yell at their kids for not cleaning their room every single day and to spank their kids and it go crazy on their kids and in their eyes it's the right thing to do maybe later on many years later to discover that was not the right thing to do many times it's right in our eyes to hold on to that grudge why should I let go with that grudge it's right in our eyes but maybe later on we'll realize that it wasn't right objectively and in an unbiased way so group number one who read doesn't read persistence group number three who understands but doesn't obey needs submission now I want to spend the rest of the time today talking about group number two because group number two is where I would say the majority of us fall into all right would fall into the category of we read the Bible but we don't really understand what the Bible is saying and if you are in group two you can't really stay in this group very long because my guess is that anyone who's in Group one was probably in group two but never got out of group to end up falling back into Group one and if you are in this point where you're reading and you're forcing yourself to read but you're not understanding it's just a matter of time before you end up back in Group one which is don't read so what do we do to understand well let me give you an example of my lovely wife Mary Ann several years ago when we first got married okay we got married back in the stone Age's right back before there was something called DVR'd and this affected us tremendously on Sunday afternoons during the fall because of football season so for me we use something called young kids may write this in town this was called a VCR y'all know the VCR is okay I remember very clearly having to record the entire game on the VCR and then I come home from church 3 o'clock 4 o'clock but you can't start watching because you need to let it finish recording ok and then when you have to wait till like 5:00 o'clock cuz you have to factor it could go to overtime or something like that and then you have to wait until 5 o'clock and then you go back to 1 o'clock and you start watching football was an all-day event okay at our house because of Marian because of me so because of that Mary Ann okay she's the sweetest person in the world and she wants to like me to be happy okay so she wanted to like get into my world so she said I'm gonna learn about football and she said like I never watched she never watched football in her life gender saying anything but she said because it's important to me that she wanted to get into football at first I thought this was a great idea because I said this is great now I will not have to say like leave her to watch football now and I'd in my mind okay all guys we have when we get married we have this thing in our mind we're dream okay that my wife is gonna like one watch football she's gonna be more in football to me and then we're gonna do like like fantasy football together and we're gonna talk about football of a requisite this is gonna be the greatest marriage we've ever had in the whole I drunk then we find out that that's not really the truth so she said I wanted to get in a football I said this is great I want to teach her about football but we had like a problem right off the bat no offense to my beautiful wife right there she wasn't willing to invest the time necessary to learn the game properly okay this is my assessment of I had in my mind like reading okay studying like tests okay she had in her mind questions during the game you see how we had a conflict right out of the back I had in my mind hours of silent study she had her mind lots of discussion during the game luckily for us $1,200 worth of marriage counseling later we came out okay man I'm just joking during that time Maryann kept saying that football it makes no sense it doesn't make any sense and I tell you explain to her first down and a few first and ten and then if you get five yards it's now second and five like logic age it makes perfect sense and then if you get a penalty this and this would happen and this would subtract this and then a field goals were three and then say and I tried to explain and she kept it doesn't make sense doesn't make sense doesn't make sense is it true that football doesn't make sense no of course not God heavens forbid okay but it's true don't take any offense Marion okay don't take any offense I'm just using this example that in her mind it didn't make sense but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense it just means that sorry her underdeveloped athletic football mind sorry sorry sorry sorry scientists using to prove a point just using to prove a point sorry sorry sorry and her underdeveloped mind it didn't make sense yet that's a perfect example of how we are with the Bible we read the Bible that doesn't make sense no to the rest to many people this makes sense but just because you don't see it doesn't make sense to you it just means that our mind may not have gotten to the point where we can understand it yet just like I said with the set greater with algebra with the third grader with doughnuts for breakfast with Mary Ann for football and what I would call it Mary Ann old many people here today with football but for us educated people football makes perfect sense for the hots for the high class the highly educated people football is the game of choice okay because it's an intricate ballet okay it's a ballet its artistry in motion so if you're this way with the Bible I read but I understand what you need man is you need patience like I want to preach to you patience and want to say to you that the Bible does make sense I promise you but I'm telling you I'm the first one to admit me I'm the first one there are many passages I read in the Bible I don't understand even just last week we got together like the like group of us got together people who like I respected and Bible people like me and we're talking about a passage in the Bible and three of us couldn't understand what it means and I'm a priest and then they are very smart people and then what's gonna stand what it means just because I don't understand like there's nothing wrong with saying I don't understand what this means but I'm not gonna quit on it because I know that there is sense in and there's not just sense there is what read it with me again we're gonna ingrain this one in our head Jeremiah 15 there is your words were found and I ate them and your word was to me the joy and rejoice it of my heart if Marianne would have stuck with football I mean she'd have found the joy and rejoicing of her heart right gentlemen and I'm telling you if you stick with the Bible you will find the sweetest words on the planet but you got to stick with it and you got to fight through it sometimes and sometimes y'all gonna understand a thing you got to keep on reading because the bottom line is if you're reading and not enjoying you will read for a little bit but I promise you you will stop because you can do it for a short term maybe a few more weeks there's gonna come a point in time where you're gonna stop reading the Bible because it's not an enjoyable experience to you the only way to make it long-lasting is to learn how to enjoy the Bible so that's our topic for today how can we understand the scripture so we can enjoy description before I get into the how like one like assumption or one not even assumption like one truth we need to agree on one principle I should say agree on this principle and then we can move on with our discussion and that principle is this that every verse in the Bible every verse in the Bible has a correct meaning has one correct meaning not many meanings one meaning one correct interpretation now I know as soon as I say that you say hey wait a minute doesn't the Bible mean different things to different people don't confuse interpretation with application the Bible means one thing because the meaning is based on the speaker when I'm saying certain words I'm only meaning one thing like one main meaning like I mean one thing you as the multiple hears can apply it in different ways but that application being many doesn't mean that the interpretation is many so when Jesus said something or when Moses said something or when Peter said something he meant one thing and that one thing can be applied in many different ways if you're living in the first century versus of you're living in the 21st century if you're a stay-at-home mom versus you are a surgeon working throughout the night or if you are a young girl or an older lady like the application I agree as many applications as there are peers but meaning there can only be one meaning why this is important second Peter chapter 1 verse 20 st. Peter says knowing this first no prophecy of Scripture is a private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit this is important for us to understand that when God speaks he means something and there's a right meaning because I'll tell you what's not right when we think that okay so I'll tell you a story about me and I'm sure you can relate to this story I remember there was a time when I was serving as a missionary in Africa and we were a group and we'd serve as missionaries alright every morning we take quiet time and a quiet time would usually be like two hours I know that sounds like I believe me I don't do to our quiet times now okay but at the time you're now for hmm I mean you have the free time so be every day usually like 6:00 to 8:00 or 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning each one take a cornered all right and they would pray read their Bible whatever it is write in a journal whatever it was and then we get together later and share what was the most annoying thing about getting together later and share you know there's times were you reading the Bible but like I said you're not like getting anything out of it and you're like really want it but just not and then you look over at that person you know that person and they're just writing away in their journal and they're just in heaven and lying and then you get together and share and you're like well you know I didn't really understand anything and they're like I took six pages of notes in my journal from this passage and you just want to choke them cuz you think to yourself that they have some key to unlock the meaning and I'm just sitting here in the dark like like a schmuck and how come that like something's wrong with me and I can't understand and they find all this stuff and for me the Bible doesn't mean anything good for them it means something I'm here to tell you leave that person sigh get rid of that person the Bible has one meaning the Bible has one meaning no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation because the one who spoke it is one and to say that that it means different things is to say that different people speaking it one speaker one meaning multiple applications why I'm saying this is very important because how do we get to the correct interpretation of the Bible that's what I'm trying to get to if we agree that it has a meaning then we have like I said an objective like it means something now it's not just like everyone with their own whatever they want to make it me know there's a right meaning and there's wrong meanings how can we find that right meaning that we can enjoy the Bible and understand it there are two sources of correct interpretation for the scriptures two sources that we can turn to and the first source is the church and I want to tell you that you cannot understand the Bible apart from the church and vice versa you can't know the church apart from the Bible you can't separate the Bible from the church and the only way to truly understand the Bible is to understand it through the lens or the context of the church why think about it this way let's say your and explored all right is the year 2014 so you say I want to explore new land I want to discover new stuff you want to you know whatever discover whatever first thing that you're gonna do if you're smart is you're gonna pull out a map and you're gonna look at that map you're gonna see what the people who have gone before you have discovered so a guy named Louis and a buddy named Clark discovered a little river here called the mighty Mississippi and Ponce de Leon discovered the Fountain of Youth is that right and then Magellan discovered the GPS okay whatever he discovered okay people have gone before us and they've discovered stuff so if I'm gonna start exploring and I'm gonna walk through this country I'm gonna look at the experience of the people have gone before me but I would be a fool to completely negate that and then walk up to River and say I discovered a river look I discovered a river and no one ever knew before well you say no one knew before because you look at the map this country is 300 years old and it's safe to say we've discovered all the rivers safe to say we discovered most of the mountains trees all those things have been discovered how long Christianity been around roughly 2,000 years and it's safe to say that the revelation that God wanted to reveal to his people has been discovered by people who have gone before us and has been written down in the scriptures but more than in the scriptures in the church and then when we know the church and we know what God is teaching us through the church but the church is giving to us then we have the map and now we can truly enjoy the land and we can benefit from being there because we know the circumstances and surrounding environment this verse in Jude chapter 1 verse 3 says I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints once for all delivered means that what we believe is that God gave the entire faith okay on the day of Pentecost we always look at Pentecost as like the completion of our faith okay so in that first century in the day of Pentecost he revealed everything to his apostles everything to his disciples they had it all right there and then they documented it they wrote scriptures but they also wrote things that may not be in the scriptures they wrote things that are in the life of the church okay the prayers of the church the teachings of the church the hymns of the church church the rituals of the church these things teach us what God wanted to reveal to man but he didn't necessarily write it in the Bible so for me to walk and like I said think that okay the Bible says this and these people say this but no I actually discovered a new meaning that the church doesn't know about like for me to say I discovered something new in the Bible is a very arrogant statement would you all agree it's very arrogant for me to say that 2,000 years of people I walked the face of this earth but they didn't discover something that I discovered I've been a Christian for 15 minutes and I discovered something that 2000 years people was hidden from people it's very important for us to not have this mindset to think that we discovered something new no first source is we submit like the church helps us to understand the scripture the second source of correct interpretation and you know it sounds kind of like a circular reference is the rest of the Bible the best way to understand the Bible is the Bible like the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible and the best way to understand one section the Bible is to read another section of the Bible think of the Bible like a movie imagine you go see a movie and you walk in somewhere in the middle long 2-hour movie you walk in somewhere in the middle you watch for about ten minutes then you walk out and say I didn't make any sense and you come back in 30 min later you watch another three-minute clip and you come back it doesn't make any sense isn't that the movie doesn't make sense or is the problem that you didn't watch the whole movie that's how we read the Bible sometimes we just read little piece I didn't make any sense every little piece of it I don't make any sense yep because you you got to read the whole book and if you don't read the whole book you can't read half the book and say man the author didn't tie up any loose ends in that book because you get to the end of it and if you get to the end of it if you read from start to finish and you read the whole thing you see that it is one complete story but any one section of it is not complete in and of itself we need to understand the Bible in order to understand the Bible we need to increase our knowledge of the Bible as a whole like the big picture Bible in order to appreciate understand any one section of the Bible to show you how we are lacking as a country as a nation and are in our Bible knowledge Jay Leno one time on his show wanted to like test the people's knowledge of the Bible and he asked them he said name one of the Ten Commandments name one of the Ten Commandments and just like this a hush fell over the crowd and then one guy shouted out god helps those who help themselves that's not in the Bible and it's definitely not a commandment in this country eighty percent of the people in this country say they believe that the Bible is the Word of God and did you know that less than ten percent of the people in this country can name four out of the Ten Commandments eighty percent say yes there's the Word of God this most important book ever in less than 10 percent of the people can name four out of ten commandments and did you know these are true stats like I'm not making this stuff up fifty percent of Americans cannot identify the first book in the Bible fifty percent of Americans tell you I don't know what the first book is and this is the one fourteen percent of Americans think that Joan of Arc was the wife of Noah I'm serious he's a real statistic it's going to be tough to enjoy the scripture if you think Noah and Joan are part of the same family so what I want to do is quickly not calling anyone in this room a dummy but do a dummies guide to the Bible when I mean a dummies guide to the Bible is again we look at it so much in pieces that we don't see the big picture I want to take a big-picture view of the Bible and understand the Bible as a whole because if you don't understand like again once you read the whole story or you watch the whole movie then you say I wanna go back and see that scene again you know with this and then you can understand that scene and then you say well I don't know watch this one a few more times because now I see this connected to this but I didn't know until I got here and I saw the real killer was you know what I'm saying so let's do a dummies guide to the Bible and look at the Bible at that 10,000 foot level the Bible is a story and if I have to describe what the Bible is at its root the Bible is simply a story that describes God's relationship to man that's it it's a story about God's relationship to man and if you remember at the first week when I was speaking about of the Bible and science and creation all kind of stuff the Bible was not meant to be a science book that's why like we talked about like you talked at the beginning okay God created this guy crazy Scott crazy I got created got created got created and then he gets a God created man and then it takes its time because the other stuff is just an intro and the Bible was never meant to be a story about how the universe came into being and some people get all worked up about this the Bible says one day and today not stuff look the Bible wasn't meant to be a science book and we don't know how long from day one a day - and yeah it could be a billion years or it could be a thousand I don't know I don't care the Bible wasn't meant to tell us how the world was created the Bible is meant to tell us how God relates to man and anything in the contest of God's relationship to man is 100% accurate and anything outside of that the Bible wasn't given to be a history book about when was it created and when did the dinosaurs all that stuff you have to take it in terms of what it was meant to be about and story it's the original love story before Hollywood started love stories the Bible is the original love story because the Bible has like any good story you need a good guide who's the good guy God you need a bad guy who's the bad guy devil and then you need a damsel in distress right you gotta have a love story you gotta have a good guy have a bad guy you gotta have a beautiful woman was the beautiful woman us mankind even though she wasn't beautiful very long but believe it every verse in the scripture you must understand in the in context of the relationship between these three entities every verse in Scripture is is about the relationship between these three entities could be about any two of the three of them God devil and man so that's why when you read in the Bible like I'll go through some passage from the Bible about like Genesis chapter one and you read the story of creation it's not a science book it's not a story of of how was the earth created and it's not meant to be that it's meant to be a story about how God prepared a home for his beautiful bride that God was building a home God wanted to marry this bride and God was building a home now read it in that context then God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness let him have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle over the earth over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created them male and female he created them then God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it don't read this as a history book don't read it as a science book maybe there's a love story if God is saying I created everything for you now I want you fill it subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over every living thing that moves on the earth and God said see I've given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you it shall be for food I don't read this as a story of creation I read this as a love story about God loved man so much and prepared the entire universe for him and said what do you want you want seeds you got seeds you want fish you got fish you want birds you want got Birds whatever it is you want and God like worked overtime to prepare the beautiful home so he could carry his bride into that home and when he carried the bride in his home he said to live in my house there's only one rule is don't eat that fruit and if you don't eat that fruit we will live happily ever after and that's the way the Bible was supposed to end I was supposed to start and end with man living happily ever after with the good guy with the damsel in distress good guy live happily ever after forever but that be kind of a boring movie wouldn't it so there has to be some drama and the drama appears couple chapters later when the bad guy enters the story dun dun dun the bad guy walks in and the bad guy is the devil and it says Genesis 3:1 now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden and the story goes on he convinced her to eat of the tree and then she convinces Adam okay and then they have all kinds of problems and bad stuff happens now why again if you don't understand the context why the rule of you're not allowed to eat and how come when she ate and how come they're years it's not a rule we don't look at sin as a rule that was broken we look at sin as Eve why did you talk with the enemy of your husband like God and man married and you knew that God had one enemy and the enemy was the serpent and the enemy was that guy he hated your husband the problem was and I ought truly believe this the problem wasn't that she ate the problem if I'm the husband why are you talking with the enemy like forgive me I use my wife I see her I have this nemesis hates my guts and oh dude I see my life having my wife having lunch with him excuse me now it's not a rule that was broken it's a betrayal it's a relationship that was broken and that's what man did man knew that God's enemy was the devil and the devil was just gonna say lies say you trust him now he's bad now he's not taking care of you nah he's not add of your best interest and man befriended the enemy of God when that happens and then man acts on that only one thing an honorable husband could only do one thing when the woman does this what can the Honorable husband do what God did in Genesis 3:23 even though broke God's heart said therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken so he drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life parents who hurts more when you kick your kid out of the house you were them no parent wants to kick his kid out of the house no husband wants to lose the wife that he loves but if the wife behaves this way if the children behave this way there's no other option if the child is gonna curse the father spit in the father's face and hang out with the father's enemy if the wife is going to befriend the enemy of the husband then an honorable husband even if he doesn't want to for the sake of his own honor must remove Genesis 3 not a sin a relationship that was broken and then the second this happened can now we're gonna fast-forward through the rest of the Bible for the most part the second this happened something began a process began you had man and God who are separate now man was not living in the garden so therefore man began to chase God in order to get back in the garden right that's the way the story should be that man made a mistake some man tries to make it up to God that's how the story goes no story's exact opposite that God even though he's in the garden chase his man who walked out of the garden like it should be the opposite it should be man is chasing God but it's not because God is the one who's initiating the whole process and he pursues his wife to bring her back problem is once the wife mankind as the wife has left the garden and has broken the communion with God all kinds of problem happen in the world you see the second this happens Genesis 3 what happens in Genesis 4 you got two boys Cain and Abel an eighth one kills the other one where'd this murder come from because once there was separation there was no more communion with God once the wife was outside the husband's house the wife went crazy okay and she wasn't living the way she was meant to live she was not meant to function outside of this relationship so all of a sudden starts murdering Genesis chapter 5 you see the tower Babel and you see them pride start to show up and arrogance start to show up and Genesis chapter 6 you see there Noah an ark you see the immorality flowing all around why because man can't function outside of God a man cannot function outside of God man thinks he can but the mourn man man tries the more he realizes he cannot function outside of God outside of communion with God this is not how he was meant to live so what God does is first Timothy chapter 1 verse 15 this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief this is where now you have the good guy this bad guy steals the Queen and now she is living in captivity and slaved to the bad guy so what does the good guy do he puts on his Robin Hood outfit and he sweeps into the forests of Nottingham and he comes and he fights the bad guys and he shoots the arrows he does all this stuff and he rescues the woman whom he loves and then after that he doesn't take her to live happily ever after right away because they can't go now they're escaping back through the garden and this is the life that we live right now we're going back to the garden and God is saying we're trying to get there and we're trying to get there and and he's saying okay but to do this we got it you gotta do this and he's instructing us how to get back to where it is that we belong and then you end the Bible in the book of Revelation with the future house the future home where we truly will live happily ever after forever that's the Bible every verse of the Bible fits into that story that I just painted you have God creates man man is tricked God prepares man for rescue by the Old Testament sending the law and the prophets and then God sweeps down onto the earth through His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to rescue man and then God heals man and teaches man how to walk until they one day live forever and the kingdom of heaven and as you see on your on your handout if you grabbed a handout is that I said the church T in the Bible you cannot separate the two what I put for every one of the scenes is the prayers that we say in the Divine Liturgy and you see when we say the liturgy we go through this story of salvation every single time and we say how God formed us and created us and places in the paradise of joy and then when we disobeyed by the guile of a serpent we fell from that eternal life and then he did not abandon us to the end but visit us by by the prophet and sent us the law and then at the last days he manifested himself to us who were sitting in darkness and then he taught us the ways of salvation he didn't just come down and swoof was up to heaven no we have to continue to live in this earth and he taught us how to live live as free live as healed people and he granted us the birth from on high and then he will appear to judge the world in righteousness one day that's the whole Bible every page in here is somewhere in the story and you got to understand the big picture story so that you know when you're reading but you know what Shin you're in you can't just open the Bible and say I wanna learn how to pray and then you open up numbers and it says stones hope you got sown so be God's own soap teach you how to pray you need to know that if you want to learn how to pray Jesus gave instruction on that in like scene five okay so you go to the like the Gospels and scene five and you see he taught us how to live on this earth how to live a life for pray and you want to understand the rules that God gave so you maybe go to the beginning of Deuteronomy or Genesis or any of these passages that talk about the law you have to understand where it is in the big picture to be able to appreciate any one section every section of the Bible reveals a different stage in the relationship between God and man though Bible as a whole think of it as a library okay the Bible don't think of it now as a book think of it as a library and the entire library has one purpose God's relationship with man but not every book speaks about every aspect of God's relationship with man logic you have certain books that speak about certain aspects certain that speak about another and the way I want you to think of it the best thing that ever happened to me if someone told me this and it changed my way of viewing the Bible entirely think of it as man was born in the beginning and that mankind has matured over the ages so what I mean by that is you look at it that at the beginning mankind even though Adam may have been an old man or a young man mankind was an infant so how do we treat infants when they're born we treat them by saying don't touch this don't touch that if you do this I give you a cookie if you touch that bad and that's how God started to deal with man that's why he gave them the law and he was saying don't touch that and don't touch that and make sure you definitely don't do that and he taught them that way in the beginning it was don't touch then eventually after man learned kind of those rules man got to a stage of a little more maturity of like adolescents face if you look on your handout you see I put the the breakdown of the Old Testament New Testament okay the law is kind of that infants face after the law came the books of history and the history is where I would say is like the adolescence phase of mankind where basically what happened is man said I don't want to live in your house anymore we want to have our own independence and man said we want to have a king and God said okay I'm telling you that you're much better off in my house but you want to have it your own freedom I let you have freedom and they started to have kings and what was the end result of having Kings very bad and ended very very bad for them this is the adolescent phase this is the teenage phase where we say no we wanted me and rose kind of stuff and the parents say okay I'm gonna give you a little bit of freedom but I'm telling you it's gonna end up hurting you more than it's gonna hurt me and that's the period of history where when Israel was obeying God good but they spent more often than not thinking that they could do it on their own and the end result of that was their history ended up getting them in captivity okay and they were enslaved by different kingdoms and then okay in the Old Testament as you see in your handout we have the law of the history and then we have poetry and wisdom okay which is the book of like Psalms and proverbs and those kind of books important thing to note about those books is they're not chronological okay the Old Testament is chronological and from the law in the history perspective but then after that the rest of the books are all over the place so they're not chronological so those books of Proverbs and psalms and class T's and in those kinds of books okay are nice okay meditations or man's relationship with God but they're not history all right and then you see the books of prophecy after that and that's where we hit the stage of God is saying now that you realize that you can't live without me now I'm telling you that I'm going to come and this is what you need to do to get ready and God started to lay the foundation and then after he laid the foundation we get to the New Testament you know what the New Testament is the Gospels this is not when we're in college you know why cuz what happens when you go to college you start to hear stuff that doesn't make any sense and tell you stuff that doesn't make any sense now you started to hear things that are very intellectual and there and you say this doesn't make any sense but eventually your mind catches up to it that was when Jesus came and he said you heard it was said don't commit adultery I'm saying don't look you heard it was said don't touch I'm telling you don't look you heard said don't murder I'm telling you don't get angry and these things were like now I'm gonna drop out of this this is too hard I can't take this kind of stuff but eventually if we stick with it we understand it our minds develop and then we get that college education and then we're ready to graduate and a graduated life is the life in the letters in the history and the letters in the prophecy where now we have graduated and we understand and now we are practicing and living as working people that's it that's the entire Bible in a summary you have to understand the big picture once you understand then you can go in depth in any section and you can see where is it that you fit in this story but I don't want anyone to walk out of here saying that the Bible is a complicated story you know who wrote the Bible Shepherds fishermen low-level people wrote the Bible some of y'all have degrees and and and like 10 letters after your name okay on your business card you have ten letters of this degree in history you got very educated people should tell me very educated people can't understand the words are written by Shepherds and fishermen 2,000 years ago no we can as long as we have an understanding of the big picture you can understand every piece of scripture no matter where it is last thing that I'll say call-to-action I want to challenge every single person to do one thing today and that one thing is get a Bible reading plan get a plan I don't care what the plan is I don't care where you get the plan get a plan let me tell you what plan not to get the plan of I'm gonna read the Bible more don't do that you've tried that plan many times 90% of this country is on that plan I'm gonna read more just like I'm gonna eat healthier and I'm gonna exercise more we're all on the same plane that plan doesn't work get a plan get a plan and show me on a piece of paper or an electronic device what you're gonna read on Monday which gonna read on Tuesday which can read on Wednesday a plan and I don't care what the plan is I recommend okay if you have an app iPhone or something I got you version you can download that app and it has a bazillion plans a New Testament you say I wanna read the New Testament 30 days are you sad when we read the Bible in a year or you say I want to read the books to prop I don't care what the plan is I'm not telling you a specific plan but choose a plan and get on a plan because you're gonna come out of you're motivated you're gonna read on Monday and Tuesday but you don't got a plan you're gonna trail off on Wednesday and Thursday all right so get on a plan to read 10 minutes a day 15 minutes a day 20 minutes day whatever it is I promise you that it will bear fruit in your life last verse Isaiah 55 verse 10 through 12 why do I say that it'll bear fruit because that's what scripture says says as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth it shall not return to me void but it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper and the thing for which I sent it for you shall go out with joy and be let out with peace I don't want to say I promise you I want to say God promises you that his word will not return void just as water comes down from heaven and doesn't have no effect it always has an effect and I promise you you get in the Word of God and you're consistent with the Word of God you're reading the Word of God it's only a matter of time before you shall go out with joy and be led out with peace y'all believe me you don't need to believe me you didn't believe the Bible because the Bible says the Word of God gives us that joy and gives us that peace watching TV ain't gonna give you joy and peace hanging out til the wee hours in the morning ain't gonna give you joy and peace updating your Facebook status again is not gonna give you joy and peace you want joy and peace you be consistent in the Word of God all right can we say our memory verse one last time say it all together you know what I like to say it together because I believe that we memorize not by reading but by sync let's say it all together say it with me your words were found and I ate them and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart Jeremiah 15:16 let's stand up and say a prayer together in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit one God amen Lord we thank you for your word and we thank you that you don't leave us alone in this world but you sent us your word to like be a reminder of all that you've done for us and all that you are doing for us and all that you plan to do for us as well I pray Lord that you would help us to understand your word and find joy and peace in your word and not just to read it as empty words on a page but to read it and find life find joy find peace find the very thing that we're lacking in that deep part of our heart that we can't really put our finger on but we know Lord your word contains the very thing that we need most so give us like the persistence the patience to fight through the laziness and the not understanding days to read your word and to find that joy and peace that you promised us thank you for this message that you gave us today and thank you for your word thank you for your love for us and thank you for this story that you keep reminding us of about you how much you love us now can't you came to save us and to heal us and it take us to be with you forever I pray that you'd accept our supplications and prayers this day in the name of your son our Lord Jesus Christ and with the intercessions and prayers of all your saints hear us as we pray thankfully our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us an evil one through Christ Jesus our Lord mine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever amen thank y'all very much have a great week and I'll see y'all next week
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