Speaker: we are keeping up our series in questions that Jesus asked, and
we are gonna be looking at Jesus' most commonly asked question, the
question Jesus asked people the most.
Um, and we're gonna be in Matthew 19.
And the question's right there: Have you not read?
That's the question Jesus asked the most often.
Um, but while you're turning there, uh, today I was thinking about…
So recently, I had to help my aunt set up her Bluetooth headphones.
Um, as the youngest cousin in my family, um, it's my job to do that, you know?
They're like, "You're young, you can…
You know stuff about technology."
So, um, but it made me realize there's things that, like, every generation thinks
are, like, basic life skills, right?
Maybe you're the person that your parents always ask, "Oh, can you,
you know, cast my phone to the TV?"
And they're like, "You're young.
You should be able to do that."
I asked, I asked Pastor Rod what his generation thinks, you
know, as, like, general things.
I was like, "Is it using a phone book?
Like, what is that?"
He said it's like changing a tire, doing an oil change, right?
Something way more important.
Um, but even a few, like a few decades ago, everyone knew how to drive stick
rather than automatic transmission because all the cars were, were stick shift.
You had the clutch and everything.
200 years ago, it was riding a horse, right?
Everyone had to know how to ride a horse to survive.
Um, so there's a lot of basic skills that you, that people think, oh, wow.
I don't know if you've ever talked to someone who's maybe either a lot
older than you and they're like, "Wait, you don't know how to do this?"
And then you're talking to them and like, "You don't know how to
connect your speaker to your phone?"
Like, there's, there's, like, basic life skills, right?
And you're, you're like shocked when people don't realize that Oh,
most people know how to do that?
So made me think about this passage because Jesus treats the people
he's asking this question to, when he asks them, "Have you not read?"
He- it's almost like he's surprised.
Like, "You don't get this?"
He's assuming that this is a basic thing, a basic thing that
every person, um, should know.
He's like, "Don't- haven't you read in the Bible where it says this?"
Or, "Don't you remember when it says this?"
So Jesus is operating with the assumption that you know your Bible.
He's operating under the assumption that you've read your Bible, that
you understand what it's saying, and that you remember it, and that you
th- it has relevance for your life.
And I don't think most of us operate that way.
I think a lot of people your age don't think that's a basic assumption, that
you can understand what the Bible says.
That when you open up your Bible, you should be able to know what it's saying,
you should be able to remember what it's saying, and you should be able
to use it to answer your questions, to solve problems, and to live your life.
I think most people your age would say, "Oh, reading the Bible is too hard," or,
"Reading the Bible takes too long," or, "It's not relevant," or, "It doesn't help.
It doesn't matter," right?
But Jesus would say differently, and so that's our question we're,
we're asking tonight is Jesus is gonna ask us, "Haven't you read?"
Jesus thinks you should be able to understand your Bible.
So we're gonna be in the Gospel of Matthew again.
Um, I've just picked Matthew for a lot of these.
They're in most of the Gospels.
But, um, we're gonna be in Matthew 19.
So if you're not already there, turn there in your Bibles.
And, um, we're gonna kinda talk about the whole story that's happening here, okay?
So in Matthew 19, uh, the Pharisees, right?
These are kinda, like, the Jewish religious leaders, right?
The Pharisees, these are the people who, they would teach the Jewish nation.
They knew their Bibles really well, actually.
The Pharisees, they would memorize entire books of the Bible.
So these guys had all your favorite books of the Bible memorized, right?
Like Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy.
They had all those books memorized, and, and they studied.
This was their job, was to study the Bible.
And so they don't like Jesus.
They think Jesus is a false teacher.
They think Jesus is not doing things the way they're supposed to do them.
And so they come up to him, and they test him.
And they ask him, 'cause what they're trying to do is they're
trying to get Jesus to say something controversial, right?
They're trying to get Jesus to say something that people are gonna be like,
"Oh, I don't like that," and so that people will get mad at Jesus, right?
They're trying to trap Jesus with his words.
So they come up to him, and they say, "Hey, is it lawful to
divorce your wife for any reason?"
And we're not gonna get into the whole, uh…
We're gonna focus more on what Jesus assumes rather than explaining all this.
But basically, they're saying, "Hey, am I- are we allowed
to divorce if we're married?"
Right?
"Should I be able to say, 'Oh, I don't wanna be married to this person anymore.
See ya'?"
And he says He answers a, he asks them a question, and you'll
find this a lot in the Gospels.
Jesus loves to ask people questions when they ask him a question.
Um, I had a small group leader who did that to me a lot, and
it was really frustrating, but it was really good for me.
I'd ask him a question, and he would ask me, "What do you think?"
Or, "What about this?"
And it was really good for me.
Jesus says that a lot.
He says, "Haven't you read that He, God, who created them from the beginning,
made them male and female and said, 'Therefore, a man shall leave his father
and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.'"
So they're saying, "Hey, shouldn't…
What do you think?
Should we be able to divorce who, if we're married?"
And he says, basically, "What does the Bible say about that?"
Well, he goes to Genesis 2:24 And he says, "Don't you know
that this is what God says?
'In the beginning, he made them male and female, and therefore
a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to…'"
He even quotes it word for word.
"'And the two shall become one flesh.'"
So verse six, his c- answer to their question is, "Well, you shouldn't
because God joined them together, so you shouldn't break it up."
Right?
God made the marriage a thing, and so you shouldn't decide you want
out of it just for any reason.
That's what Jesus is saying essentially.
And we, y- if you have questions about that, we can talk about that another time.
But what I want you to see here is that Jesus expects the Pharisees,
and I think he would expect us to do the same thing, to know, well, what
does the Bible say about marriage?
Right?
They have a question, right?
They're, they're, they're not sure about something or maybe they do know
and they're just trying to trick Jesus.
They've got a question.
He says, "Okay.
Well, you should be able to know what the Bible says about it.
You should be able to understand it, and you should be able to draw
a conclusion based off of it."
And maybe for you you're like, "That's crazy.
I shouldn't be able to do that.
That's like for pastors, right?
Isn't that your job, right?
Isn't that what you're supposed to do?
You're supposed to go to, go to seminary and take all these classes and study the
Bible and learn all this stuff, and that's your, that's, that's the pastor's job."
Or, "Oh, well, that's like the really religious people's job, right?
Maybe the like super spiritual people you know.
That's their job."
Or, or maybe, "Oh, that's the, that's only the like varsity Christians' job is to be
able to know the Bible and understand it."
What Jesus, I think, is saying is that everyone should be able to do this.
This is a basic life skill.
Just like you would say, "Oh yeah, basic life skill, connecting
your Bluetooth headphones.
Basic life skill, learning how to drive a car," right?
Basic life skill, being able to, um, in this case understand the Bible and
come to a conclusion about what it says.
Jesus is saying this is a basic life skill.
He expects you to be able to know, to, to read the Bible and to make sense of it.
That's a basic thing.
And it doesn't mean it's always easy, right?
But for all of us that's something that we can all, we are able to do
and that we all should be doing.
So our first point tonight, they're all gonna be things
about knowing your Bible, right?
Our, our main idea is that Jesus expects you to know your Bible, but
our first point here is that knowing your Bible is your responsibility.
It's your job to know your Bible.
No one else can do it for you.
Maybe you've never thought about it like that.
But
When Jesus asked the Pharisees this question, they're not like, "Oh,
well, let me go ask my pastor," right?
Or, "Let me go ask my small group leader," or, "Let me go ask my parents," right?
If, if you're…
If someone asks you a question about the Bible, right, it's okay if you
don't know the answer, but you have the capability of reading it and understanding
it, and you have to do it, right?
Your parents can't understand the Bible for you.
They can explain it to you, but you have to be the one that actually gets it.
Your small group leader or me or Pastor PJ, we can't understand the Bible for you.
God's given you His Word, and it's your job to make sense of it, right?
We're gonna, we're gonna teach it to you, we're gonna explain it to you,
but you have to receive it, right?
You have to catch it.
Just think, maybe you think about it this way, like, um, football season's starting.
You can have the best quarterback, and he can put the ball in all the right
places, but if the receiver doesn't catch it, doesn't matter, right?
You could have the best quarterback.
He has the best throws.
He, he never misses.
He always hits them r- in the right spot, always hits them in the numbers, whatever.
But if the receiver doesn't catch it, doesn't matter.
You're not gonna gain any yards, right?
You can have the best parents.
You can have the best preaching.
You can have the best explanations.
You can have the coolest study Bible.
You can have the best kids ministry teachers, right?
You can have the smartest brain, right?
You could have…
I don't know if this is even true, but you could have the most brain cells, right?
Or the most wrinkles on your brain.
But if you don't catch the ball, right, if you don't
understand the Bible for yourself
I- that's your fault.
It's not that it's too hard.
It's not that God didn't give you the Bible in your language.
It's not that you're not smart enough.
You have a responsibility to know God's word and understand it.
God's given you His word
And on our next point, we'll tackle … Or actually, we'll do
that actually here pretty soon.
But you have to do it, right?
People can set you up for success.
And, and honestly, you, you are set up very well for success, right?
You've got a lot of privileges and advantages that a lot of people don't
have to understanding the Bible, right?
You have 2,000 years of people's thoughts about the Bible, right?
The church has worked to help you understand the Bible for thousands
of years, and they've given you commentaries and study Bibles
and preaching and sermons, right?
Um, you have a church that works really hard to teach the Bible
really well and really clearly.
But ultimately, it's your responsibility to, to really understand it, right?
To catch the ball, to think about it, to remember it, and to use it.
And here's the thing.
Maybe you're like, "Well, whatever, I don't want to,"
and, and we can get to that.
But we … None of us can do it for you, right?
You have to do it for yourself.
Doesn't matter if your small group as a whole understands the Bible if you don't.
It doesn't matter if your family understands the Bible if you don't.
Doesn't matter if you know the books of the Bible if you don't know the Bible.
Uh, you have a responsibility, and I just, I just want you to take ownership of it.
I want you, e- like when you read your Bible, to think, "This is my
job to make sense of these words, these sentences, these paragraphs."
Right?
God's given me the Bible, and he said, "Here, get to know me.
I, I love you, and I, I want you to get to know me."
And it's your job to, to say, "Okay, yeah, I, I'll do that."
And that's your, that's our responsibility.
We've been given, we've been given it, right, God's Word, to get to know him.
And you're not just
I don't want you just to do it because your parents tell you to.
I don't want you just to do it because you hear a sermon about it.
I don't want you just to do it because your leaders want you to.
I want, I want you to do it because you say, "Yeah, it's God's Word.
I wanna understand it."
And you have to do it for yourself
But Jesus expects us to be able to read it and understand it and apply it, and
there's a lot of excuses that we all give, right, for not being able to do it.
And the easy one is, "I don't have time," right?
Well, I don't have time to understand the Bible.
I didn't, I didn't get…
You know, I don't get to be Pastor PJ and spend, you know, my work
day studying the Bible, right?
And you, you're like, "Well, I have to learn all these other things.
I have to learn algebra, and I have to learn literature, and I have to
learn AP Gov, and I have to learn chemistry, I have to learn bio, and
I have to learn all this stuff."
And so you're like, "Well, I don't have time
I just want you to think about this for a second.
You have the same amount of time as every single other person.
You have the same amount of time.
We all have the same amount of time in our day.
In, in your day, you have the same 24 hours that Elon Musk has, that
Patrick Mahomes has, that Cooper Flagg has, that everyone has.
Everyone has the same 24 hours
It, you just decide what to do with them, right?
My mom, whenever I said I don't have time for something, my mom would always
tell me, "You need to make time."
Right?
Time is, is a choice on how you spend it.
And so if you're saying, "Well, I don't have time to read the
Bible," I would just ask you, "Well, what do you have time for?"
You have time for a lot of other stuff.
So then go to…
think about what, how do I spend my time?
And then say, "Okay, well, clearly these things are currently more
important to me than understanding the Bible," because you're choosing
to spend your time on those things and not understanding the Bible, right?
I- if, if you say, "I wouldn't have time to read my Bible today," well,
you chose to do 24 hours worth of things besides read and understand your
Bible, and other people didn't do that.
Other people that read their Bible chose to spend one less hour or 30 less
minutes or 15 less minutes on whatever you chose to spend your time on, right?
They spent…
They sh- decided to spend 15 less minutes sleeping and 15 more
minutes reading their Bible, right?
Or 30 less minutes on Instagram or YouTube and 30 more minutes reading their Bible.
It's really not that hard, if that makes sense, right?
We all have the same 24 hours, right?
So saying, "I don't have enough time," is really just saying, "I'm choosing
to spend my time differently," right?
And I just want you to, to recognize that.
Don't say, "I don't have time."
Be honest and say, "I'm choosing to spend my time differently."
Right?
If, if you don't know God's Word very well, just be honest and
say, "It's because I'm choosing to spend my time differently.
I'm choosing to spend my time on other things besides understanding God's Word."
'Cause if, if all you say is, "I don't have time," you're
never gonna get anywhere, right?
You have to give up the excuses and start with actually being honest.
Maybe you say, "I'm not that smart.
I'm not that good at reading."
Right?
You don't have to be good at reading to understand the Bible.
Um, we're reading Proverbs, right, in our daily Bible reading right now, and one
of the things that we talked about this summer in True North in Proverbs is that
your brain power isn't the most important thing with understanding God's Word.
What does Proverbs 1:7 say?
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."
Right?
The fear of the Lord.
So your relationship with God is not about how smart you are.
It's about whether you think He's really God or not.
Right?
You don't have to be a super smart person to read and understand the Bible.
Right?
And there's, there's ways you can maybe even grow in your ability to
read, your ability to understand.
There's maybe things you could…
There's maybe skills you can learn and, and things you can do.
But you don't need to be really smart to know God's Word really well.
'Cause it, it's not about your brain power.
We're gonna see this in 1 Corinthians.
God didn't save all the smart people.
Right?
Christianity isn't a religion for smart people.
Christianity is a religion for anyone who says, "I wanna follow
Jesus, and I'm actually not…
I don't have it all figured out.
I need God's wisdom, not my own
Right?
There, there's not a qualification of, of smartness or IQ or reading
level to understanding the Bible.
So maybe that's encouraging for you, right?
If, if you're-- if you say, "I just can't understand.
It doesn't make sense to me," you can…
You really can, right?
And maybe you just need to, maybe you need to find a different Bible
translation, or maybe you just need, need to use a study Bible.
Maybe you just need to ask questions, right?
But if you, if you don't know what's happening, that's okay, right?
You, you ask the questions, and that's how you learn, right?
You don't start out reading the Bible and, and knowing how to, to
make sense of everything right away.
Um, which similarly, right, another excuse we use is it's too hard, right?
I tried already.
It didn't work
And, um, I, when I, uh, first started playing Mario Kart, I was terrible at it.
I was horrible.
Um, like I was-- my most used items were like Bullet Bill, star, golden mushroom.
So if you know anything about Mario Kart, you know I'm not very good.
But, um, you can ask Lucas, I got better.
Um, Lucas isn't here, but I did recently play Mario Kart with Lucas and, uh,
Lucas knows I got better at Mario Kart.
I'll just tell him that.
Right?
Um, how did I get better at Mario Kart?
I played a ton.
Probably more than I should've, right?
I didn't play as much as Hudson, 'cause Hudson is insanely good at Mario Kart.
Um, but I played more, right?
And I, I fell off the edges and the, the cloud dude pulled me up and I, I played
enough where I started learning the courses and I, I knew, oh, you're, you
know you should drift at this time, and oh, there's a shortcut over here and, you
know, this is, this cart does this and this cart does that and that character
does this, and you learn the stuff.
You just play and you make mistakes and you fall off the edge and you finish
12th and then you keep playing, right?
If, if the Bible, if reading the Bible is hard for you, it's okay, right?
You're, you're not good at stuff you don't do very much.
Right?
You don't just pick up your Bible once every six months and be
like, "Oh wow, this is so easy.
I lo- this is great."
Right?
You just, you keep doing it and you take ownership of God's given me His
word, I wanna get better at reading it.
I wanna get better at understanding it.
And you do it 15 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, and you get better
and it makes more sense and the more you read, the more it makes sense
and, and you keep going from there.
But it's okay that it's hard at first, right?
It's okay that you're, you're finishing 10th place and using
golden mushrooms all the time.
You just-- But you keep playing, right?
You, you, you, you, that's how you get better.
So
But I think the main excuse, and this is really gets closer to the
main reason we don't read our Bibles often, is something along these lines.
It's boring, right?
It, it, it's useless.
Doesn't matter
And this is when we're really starting to be honest.
Because really, the, the problem is you don't want to.
You don't think it's important enough.
When we don't wanna read our Bibles, it's usually not because we don't
have time, it's usually not because we're too tired, and it's usually
not because we're not smart enough.
It's usually just 'cause we don't want to.
Because we don't think that God's Word is really what He says it is.
That's usually the problem.
I had a pastor, whenever I would tell him, "Oh, I, I sh- I wanna do
that, but I just can't," he would go, "If you wanted to, you would."
Which is not, like, the most encouraging advice, but it's true.
If you really wanna do something, you make it happen, right?
Like, with your … Whether it's your sport or your
grades, right, or, or anything.
If you really care about something, you will figure out how to
do it and, and get it done.
If, if you really care about passing your class, you will do the homework.
You'll stay up late, you'll pull an all-nighter, you'll figure
out something to do it, right?
If you really wanna be good at your sport, you will figure out how to do it.
You'll miss things for it, you'll, you'll tell your parents, "Hey, I need to be
here at this time," and you suddenly get really responsible all of a sudden, and
you start knowing, "Oh, I need to do this, I need to do this," and all this stuff.
If you wanna get really good at a video game, you put hours into doing
it, and you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna
Oh, maybe I'll watch, you know, someone play it, and I'll see how
they g- " Like, if you really wanna do something, you, you, you're gonna do it.
And this is usually the problem, right?
Is we don't believe that God's Word really is what He says it is.
And that's usually our biggest problem.
It's not that we don't have time, it's not that we're not smart
enough, it's that we just w- it's
I don't trust God.
I don't think that this 30 minutes of reading His Word and thinking
about it is gonna be worth it.
That's usually our root problem.
And so maybe what you need to do before you read your Bible is talk
yourself into reading your Bible.
Maybe what you need to do is maybe you turn to Psalm 119.
You, and you take one of those verses, and you think about it.
You say, "Wow, uh, the psalmist in verse 36 says, 'Incline my heart to your
testimonies and not to selfish gain.'"
And so what you do is you say, "God, right now, I really feel like being selfish.
I really don't wanna do this.
This seems boring to me.
But I know that you are smarter than me," right?
And the next verse says, "Turn my eyes from worthless things,
and give me life according to your wo- to your Word," right?
And you say, "God, I need you to do this for me.
That these things, I need you to convince me that the extra 15 minutes of scrolling
in the morning is worthless, and I wanna put my attention on your Word."
And you ask God to do it, and then you start reading, and you see,
oh, wow, God really is worth it.
There really are things in His Word that are good for me.
So maybe that's what you need to do.
Maybe you need to, before you read, talk yourself into reading, right?
Anyway, you are responsible to do it, right?
And we just talked about that, you know, kind of a list of excuses, and
maybe you need to stop hiding behind your excuses and, and really just face
the facts that I don't wanna do this.
And maybe that shows you that there's a problem with your relationship with God
And or maybe what it shows you is, it, it maybe motivates you to say,
you know, "God, I, I want to show you that I love you by listening to you
and hearing what you have to say."
But can we just all agree to, to abandon our excuses?
'Cause that's not gonna help anyone, right?
The I don't have times, and the I'm not smart enough, it doesn't help
you, and it doesn't help anyone else.
Also, God forgives sins, not excuses, right?
God doesn't forgive the, "Oh, sorry, I don't have time to read the Bible."
God forgives the, "God, I've been valuing entertainment more than
I've been valuing you, and I confess my sin, and then I turn from it.
And I say, 'God, you're better, so I'm gonna spend time with you.'"
So we all need to take responsibility.
I, this is something I can do, and this is something that, that I need to do.
But the encouraging part is I think what Jesus shows us here in our chapters
is he expects us to be able to make conclusions from what we read, right?
He says, "Haven't you read?"
And he explains the verse, and then he says, "So…"
And that word's really important because Jesus expects these people,
and he expects us, to be able to read something in the Bible and then see
how it relates to real life, right?
It's not just words on a page.
It's not just old things someone wrote in a book.
But these things really matter for real life.
And you can do this.
I don't know if you've ever thought about this.
Jesus had to learn how to read.
Jesus had to learn the Bible.
Jesus didn't just show up at age one knowing the Bible.
Jesus had to learn, oh, this is what Genesis 2:24 means.
It's like Jesus went to the synagogue, heard someone teach
about this, and learned it.
Or he spent time hearing God's word read and made the connection in his head.
This is, this is doable, right?
Jesus didn't just wake up knowing this.
Jesus studied and learned, and you can too, right?
Jesus lived a real human life, and you and I can do the same.
So point two, knowing your Bible is completely doable.
Doable is one of those words that looks wrong
Like, it looks like Doble or…
But I didn't, I don't think it has a hyphen.
I'm pretty sure, 'cause it didn't get underlined in red.
I don't know.
I didn't bother checking.
It's correct.
It's correct?
Yeah, doesn't it look wrong though?
I don't know.
It looks weird.
It looks like it should be hyphenated or…
'Cause when I read this, I don't see doable.
I see- Doble.
Yeah, I see Doble, like Barnes & Doble.
Um, anyway.
We have everything we need to understand God's word, right?
You, today, right now, have everything you need to do what Jesus did, in the
sense of you can take a Bible verse, understand what it means, and come to a
conclusion that changes your life, right?
And impacts the way you live.
You are capable of doing that, whether you think you are or not.
You have the ability, you have the brainpower, you have the, just
the self-discipline to do that.
You can.
You're capable of it.
And maybe you don't believe that, and that's might be one of your biggest
obstacles to reading the Bible, but you have everything you need, right?
We already talked about it.
You have enough time, you have enough energy, you have the capability
of reading and understanding.
You have … Also, you have people to help you.
You have people who want to help you understand God's word, right?
You have parents, you have leaders, you have friends who want you to be
able to, to, to get something out of your time in God's word, right?
We don't want it to be frustrating and, "Oh my goodness,
I have to do this," right?
We don't want it to be eating your vegetables, right?
We want it to be eating dessert.
It's good.
It's enjoyable.
It doesn't have to be painful, right?
You can, you can do this, and you can get better at it.
Also, I don't know if you've thought about this before, but
God really wants to help you.
God doesn't want you to just be like, "Well, I give up.
This stinks.
This is so boring."
Hopefully, from this summer, with Pastor PJ, you've seen, in Psalm 119,
all of the times the psalmist asks for help to understand God's word.
And that was something I never really thought about until very recently, but
usually when I read Psalm 119, in the past, I was like, "This is the most
unrelatable chapter in the whole Bible."
This dude loves the Bible, and he thinks it's the most amazing thing ever, and
he's always excited about it, and I was like, "I don't feel that way."
I'm not always like, "Oh yeah, I get to read Leviticus today, yes."
Right?
But what I realized is this guy, who's writing Psalm 119,
he's asking God for help.
Right?
"Open my eyes, that I might behold wondrous things from your law."
He's asking that because he, that doesn't come naturally for him.
He's asking, "God, open my eyes," because he's like, "I'm not seeing it.
God, I need you to help me."
Or when he says, "Incline my heart to your testimonies," or in Psalm
86 where he says, "Unite my heart."
We sing that song, right?
Undivided heart.
The reason he's asking God is because he's saying, "I need help.
God, I need you to help me understand your word, to make sense of it, and
to feel differently because of it."
And God is ready and willing and available to help you understand the Bible.
Jesus says that he's given us the Holy Spirit.
He tells his disciples in, um, the upper room, John 13 to 17,
he says, "I'll give you a helper, and he'll help you understand and
remember what I'm telling you."
So
God wants to help you, right?
A- and maybe what you need to do is just ask him.
Maybe none- maybe what you do is you just open up your Bible and start reading, and
you don't ask God to help you, and maybe that's why your Bible reading's so hard.
But you have everything you need to do it.
You have all the resources.
You, that you can get great study Bibles to help you.
Maybe that's what you need to do.
Maybe you need to get a study Bible so you read the verse and, and you're like,
"Oh, I don't know what that means."
And you go down, and you look at the bottom of the page, and
it says, "Oh, here, this is what chapter 19, verse 4 means."
Or maybe what you do is when you read the Bible and you're really
confused, you write down a question or two, and you text your leader.
And you say, "I'm confused.
What does this mean?"
That's great.
That's a great place to start
But if you just say, "I'm confused," and you give up,
that's not gonna get you anywhere.
But it's okay to be confused, right?
That's how you learn.
You know, you realize that learning is being confused and then asking
questions and getting answers, right?
Learning involves confusion.
You wouldn't learn if you weren't confused, 'cause then
you'd already know it, right?
Learning starts with I don't know it, and then I get to know it, right?
So it's okay if it's confusing, it's okay if it's new, it's okay if it doesn't
make sense, but it's not okay to just be like, "Oh, well, whatever, I don't care
Because then you're not taking responsibility to get to know what
God has to say and who God is.
So knowing your Bible is completely doable.
And maybe you just need the right expectations, right?
Maybe you've never thought about reading the Bible as something that should take
effort, even though everything else that you wanna do takes effort, right?
Even, like, getting good at Mario Kart, right, took effort from me, right?
I had to actually play a lot to get good at it, right?
Or your sport, right?
Or your instrument, or school.
To get good at it, you had to practice.
You had to do things.
And so maybe you just need to realize, oh, reading the Bible is
gonna take practice, and that's okay.
And you don't have to get crazy good at it in two days, right?
You practice little by little, and you get better as you read
And that's how change happens too, right?
Maybe you say, "Oh, I read my Bible and nothing happens
Most of the time, the way people grow isn't like all at once
You grow gradually.
It's kinda like, you know, like the way your hair grows.
You don't…
Or the way your nails grow, right?
You're like, "I, I don't see them growing," but…
And every day you look yourself in the mirror and you're like…
You're not like, "Oh, wow, my hair's so much longer than it was yesterday."
But after a month you're like, "Oh, my hair grew," right?
That's often how God grows us spiritually.
You don't notice it, but then a year from now or six months from now or
even a month from now, you're like, "Wow, I, I actually do trust God more."
Or, "Oh, wow, I actually do want to love His people more."
Or, "I actually do care more about His church."
But also sin happens the same way, right?
Sometimes we don't notice, "Oh, wow, I did get really lazy over the past six months."
And that happens little by little too.
But growth usually happens that way too.
So maybe you just need to calibrate your expectations and say, "You know what?
I…
Reading the Bible might not radically change my life in two days."
It could.
God could do that, but it most likely will be gradual, a little bit at a time.
But I think the main thing for us that we need to take away from it is
that Bible reading is personal, right?
Bible reading is not like reading a history book.
Bible reading is getting to know God, right?
Bible reading's not for your brain, it's for your heart
If all you do is just read and try to understand with your head,
but nothing happens with your heart, you're not doing what God
intends you to do with your Bible.
Th- what God, His purpose for the Bible is, is to show you Himself.
Just like the reason, one of the reasons that Jesus came in human flesh was
so we could get to know God, right?
We get to see God as a person, right?
We get to see, see God with arms and legs and bones and muscles.
What God has done is rather than taking on flesh, He's taken on sentences, right?
God's said, "Here I am," but instead of putting on flesh and bones and muscles and
hair, He's put on sentences and paragraphs and words, and He says, "Here I am.
Get to know me."
And that's why we read our Bible is for God.
You get to know God by reading your Bible.
He's just, instead of wearing, you know, a tunic and sandals,
He's wearing a really long run-on sentence in Ephesians 1, right?
Or He's wearing parables, or He's wearing narrative stories, or He's wearing a
list of laws, and He says, "Here I am.
Get to know me
And so our third point is that knowing your Bible is how you know God.
And that's really what it's about.
That's why we care so much about you reading your Bible, is we
want you to get to know God.
You're reading your Bible for a person, not facts, not information,
not theories, not rules.
You're reading for a person.
You're reading to get to know God
There's another place where Jesus asks this question of have you not
read in Matthew 12, and basically what's happening is he's eating
on the Sabbath, and you weren't supposed to do that back in the day.
You weren't supposed to eat on the Sabbath.
And so the Pharisees, again, are like, "What are you doing?
You're breaking the law."
And Jesus says, "Haven't you read?"
Right?
Same question.
Have you not read what David did, or haven't you read in the law how…
Right?
So he asked them, "Don't…
You should know this."
Right?
So you see that expectation again.
You sh- you sh- you guys should know this.
This is in the Bible.
You, you should know what it says.
They're missing something that Jesus says you could find that in the Bible.
They, they're upset at Jesus about something, and he says, "You've,
you've got something wrong here."
And here's what he says.
He says, uh, "Actually, something greater than the temple is here.
You guys are worried about the temple.
You guys are worried about the Sabbath.
You're worried about the law.
You're missing the point.
The point of all that is me.
The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath."
Right?
Son of Man, that's Jesus.
Jesus is saying, "You guys totally misunderstood the Bible,
and so you don't recognize me."
Right?
The God they've been reading about in the Bible is standing in front of them, and
they're just, like, getting mad at him.
They don't get it, right?
They've read the Bible wrong.
So just because they spend a lot of time in the Bible doesn't mean they really
understood the Bible because the point of the Bible is to get to know God, right?
And it's really ironic that these people, these Pharisees, memorized
books of the Bible and, uh, about God, and then when God came in human flesh,
they were like, "Let's kill him."
So you, maybe you're really familiar with the Bible.
Maybe this sermon, you're like, "What?
I got this.
I, I read the Bible every day.
I listen to the podcast.
I got a study Bible.
I'm doing this great."
Maybe, this might not be true, but maybe you've become so familiar with
the Bible and spent so much time in the Bible that you don't know God.
Maybe you know all the Bible stories, you know all the Bible verses, but you,
you have zero relationship with God, or maybe a very poor relationship with God.
You're not very close with God, but you know a lot of stuff.
The point of the Bible is to get to know God, right?
I don't want you to be like the Pharisees and know all this stuff about
the Bible, and then when God shows up, you're like, "I don't want it.
Not my God
So the point of the Bible is to get to know God.
All right, you cannot have a close relationship with God if
you are not taking in His Word.
All right, maybe you think you have a close relationship with God because
you have certain feelings about God
But if you're not taking in God's word, you're not getting to know God.
You're just getting to know your feelings
Right?
It'd be like dating someone and all you do is watch movies with
them, you never talk to them.
That's why if you're gonna take someone on a date, don't take them to the movies,
'cause you don't get to know them.
You don't get to talk to them, right?
That's how you get to know God is, is you spend time in His Word.
A- and so maybe you think you're close with God a- and
you don't ever hear from Him.
You don't listen to anything He says.
So reading the Bible isn't just because people are forcing you
to or because you're supposed to, it's because you want to know God
And that's what Jesus ends up telling the Pharisees in John chapter 5.
He says, "You're searching the scriptures," right, the Bible,
"because you think that in the Bible you can find eternal life.
But it's the scriptures that tell you about me."
Right?
The Bible's about a person.
The Bible's not about rules or facts or lifestyle or anything else but a person.
All of the stuff in the Bible is supposed to show you this is Jesus
And so when you read the Bible, it's, it's about a person, right?
You're, you're getting to know a person, and that's the point of the whole thing
So if you say, "Yeah, I, I love the Bible, I love reading the Bible," I
just wanna encourage you, remember, you're reading the Bible for a person.
Right?
You're not reading the Bible to make your life better.
You're not reading the Bible just so you can get rid of sin in your life.
Maybe that's one reason you read the Bible, but you-- the reason you're
getting rid of the sin in your life is because you want more of God, right?
It's not so you feel better about yourself when you don't feel as bad
anymore, it's 'cause you want more of God.
Or maybe reading the Bible is hard for you, it doesn't make sense sometimes.
It's okay.
But just remember, you're doing it for God.
You're doing it because you love Him.
Right?
You're not doing it because your parents tell you to.
You're not doing it because I preached a sermon about it.
You're doing it for God.
And it's worth it, right?
If you love God, and you're not a good reader, guess what?
You're gonna say, "I, I love God, and I'm gonna do my best to get to know
Him the way He's shown Himself to me."
So let's pray, and you guys can talk about that more in your small groups.
God, we are grateful that you have made yourself known to us.
You've given us Bibles in our language.
You've given us even a country that teaches us how to read.
For a lot of history, people didn't know how to read, and so we're grateful for
this privilege and this opportunity.
I pray that you protect us from neglecting this priority.
I pray that we wouldn't just think that hearing about you
from other people is enough.
I pray that we get to know you for ourselves in your work.
I pray that we wouldn't shy away from effort and discipline and hard work to
understand your work, but rather we would see those things as a way of worship, a
way of showing you that you're valuable, you are important, and that we love you.
We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen