How Do We Know The Bible Is True?

Auto Generated Transcript

We are almost finished with our series of frequently asked questions, and in this series so far we’ve looked at a few different things. We have looked at what makes Christianity different than all the other religions in the world. We’ve asked, how can I know God personally? How can I spend eternity in heaven? How can I know God’s will for my life? We’ve asked all these questions, and in asking these questions, the answers that we’ve given, we’ve all looked to the Bible for all these answers. Conveniently, at Alpine Bible Church, we base what we believe on the Bible, but basing what we believe on the Bible and seeking answers to these important questions brings up the question, why the Bible? So we have to ask, how do we know the Bible is true? Fair question. If we’re going to base everything that we believe on, we put our hope and trust in the Bible. How do we know that we’re putting our hope and trust in the right thing? Whenever you’re investigating the authenticity of something, you have to look at the product itself, and then, if necessary, you then look at outside sources. I love the show Pawn Stars because. Because he’s got a buddy for everything, right? And whenever he’s got an autograph, he always calls his buddy, and his buddy comes and looks at the autograph. The first thing he looks at is the autograph itself. Okay, this does look like whoever Babe Ruth’s autograph, this does look like his signature.

But let’s look at the outside facts. Was it common for Babe Ruth to sign this type of memorabilia? Yes or no. Okay. Based on what the signature looks like and whether he would probably sign something like this, then we can base on. Yes, this is probably authentic. Or they, you know, they always bring in Revolutionary War, Civil War artifacts. And the guys look at it and say, yeah, this looks authentic, but they probably wouldn’t actually have anything like this in that time. So it’s not real. So you can use these two, two rules if you would, to verify whether something is true or whether something is right. So we’re going to use those same types of principles and asking the question is the Bible true? How do we know the Bible is true? When John Piper was asked this question, he simply answered because my mom told me it was true. That’s how I know. Which is a good answer. And and moms out there, that is a good thing to teach your kids. But we’re going to dig a little bit deeper than that. We don’t want to just settle for my mom told me. So, um, so we’re going to look at the Bible and see what the Bible has to say about itself, on whether it can be trusted or true. If you go ahead and turn to your Bibles, we’re going to be bouncing around a lot, but our main text is going to be second Timothy 316 and if you read second Timothy 316, it says, All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.

So Paul goes ahead and lays down the foundation. All Scripture is given by God. Um, the Greek here is is pretty important, as when studying most texts, looking at the Greek and what the original language was is important. Here Paul uses two key Greek words. The first is the Greek word for scripture. Here is graph that is the word used. It’s 50 used 51 times in your New Testament, and in those 51 times it’s referring back to the Old Testament. So here we can see Paul is referring back to the Old Testament when he’s talking about all Scripture. We can also see this because in verse 15 Paul says, from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So we can see that Paul’s talking about all Scripture being the Old Testament, all graph and the word inspired by God, the word that they get that from. It’s a compound Greek word that’s actually and forgive me on pronunciation. It’s been a while since I’ve taken Greek classes, but the the Greek compound word that you see here is theognostus.

And that’s derived from two different words, the first being Theo, which means God, and then panio, which means breathe. So what Paul is saying here is all scripture, everything that we have, these writings that you heard of when you were kids. So the Old Testament is what he’s referring to, is literally been breathed by God. Pretty important, pretty, pretty profound. Knowing that these writings that he says in verse 15 lead to salvation through faith in God are breathed by him. They’re literally from the mouth of God. We also see this same claim in Second Peter chapter one, verse 21. It says, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So again, the prophecy referring back to the Old Testament, when the prophets would write um is spoke from God. They were moved by the Holy Spirit. They weren’t writing anything from their own intentions or the own desires of their heart. They weren’t writing from their own motives. They were writing because God inspired them through the Holy Spirit. So we can see that the Old Testament is verified through the Bible as yes, you can trust the Old Testament. The Old Testament is God breathed. But that leaves us with a pretty significant chunk of Scripture that seems to be left out in the New Testament, but in the in the New Testament, Second Peter 316 says, as also in all his and his refers back to Paul letters speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, um, as they do also the rest of the scriptures that word Graf again to their own destruction.

So here Peter says, all of Paul’s letters that he’s written are on the same page, same level as Graf. The Old Testament scriptures. So now, Graf, the Old Testament is God breathed. And Peter says Paul’s writings, his letters are on the same level as those and the same people that are distorting the Old Testament because they don’t understand it, are going to distort and are distorting Paul’s writings because they don’t understand it. So Old Testament God breathed New Testament. Paul puts Peter puts the same writings of Paul on that same level as God breathed, inspired by God directly from God. You can also see in first Timothy 518 that it says for the scriptures. Again, Graphia says, you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing, and the laborer is worthy of his wages. This time Graphia refers actually back to Luke ten seven is where Paul is quoting from. So here Paul uses the word that was set apart and distinct for talking about the holy writings of the Old Testament. And he says, what Luke wrote is graphic. It’s divinely inspired. So through different authors in the New Testament and through authors in the Bible, if you read the Old Testament throughout the the books of the prophets, you’ll consistently see the phrase thus says the Lord directly from God.

These are his words. So we can see that through Scripture. This is God’s word. This is true. This is fact. Peter and Paul, two of the early fathers of the church, who really, um, who Christ says to Peter, I’m going to build my church on you, says that the writings of Paul are divinely inspired by God. And Paul says of Luke that the writings of Luke are divinely inspired, and they all say of the Old Testament that they are divinely inspired. Jesus himself quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy more than any other book. So if it’s good enough for God in human flesh to quote as Scripture, it’s good enough for us as humans to read and trust as Scripture. The New Testament. So within the Bible we can see that it claims its truth. But are there any outside sources? So we see that the original looks good, but does it fit it? Does it match up for the New Testament? There’s actually more manuscripts than any other ancient work, so essentially ancient handwritten copies. There’s more manuscripts for the New Testament than any other work in ancient history. They have over 5800 Greek manuscripts. There’s over 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9300 manuscripts in other languages of that of the ancient times.

So we can see these letters. We don’t have the originals that Paul wrote himself, or Peter or any of the other authors of the New Testament. But we have manuscripts which are direct copies. So a scribe would take Paul’s letter. Today we have the printing press so everybody can have their own copy of the Bible. But in that day, typically Paul would write a letter. So he wrote the letter to the church in Rome in the book of Romans. And they had that one copy that was written and sent to them. So they would all have to either take, you know, they would be on several pages or whatever, and they would take them and share them. They would have one copy, though, that they had to keep. So then they realized this was pretty ineffective. So then they would have someone put Paul’s copy here, and then they had a blank page and they would just copy word for word, what Paul said in all of those manuscripts. So you have the human element involved of hand copying. They didn’t have photocopiers back then, otherwise we wouldn’t have to worry about this as a as a debate of whether these were the real, authentic words of God. But within all of those texts. So all of those 20,000, some manuscripts that we have, the textual variants that you see, the differences between all of the manuscripts and the copies are simple scribal errors.

So they copied the same line twice, or they misspelled a word or they accidentally left a word out. But all of those minor things, when you look at the whole of them and you compare them, it’s pretty clear and evident what the true original writing was, because we can see the theme and we can see the consistency, consistency throughout. So even though we don’t have the originals, we have plenty of copies that can show us what the originals were saying. Um, another, uh, support for the manuscript evidence that we have is of these manuscripts. Not only are there more of them for the New Testament, but they’re also the closest dated to the original of any of the other manuscripts. We have manuscripts of, of Homer’s The Iliad, but those are hundreds, several hundred years after the original was written. Some of the manuscripts that they use in historical studies are even millions of years removed from the original. But the old or the New Testament manuscripts that we have actually date within, um, to 125 A.D., so roughly 90 years after Christ was crucified. We have a copy of one of the letters that was written. And they date all the way from 1 to 25 A.D. up to the 15th century. So we know that not only do we have a lot of these, but they’re dated close enough to the originals that they can be trusted as accurate and as true.

So if you’re going to put your trust in something, it’s good to put your trust in something that can be proven right outside of the the manuscript evidence that we have that is just overwhelming. Scholars continually look at the manuscripts and try and point out differences and problems and errors, and that it can’t be trusted. But they continually, through further study and further research, see that it’s an invalid argument that they pose. But outside of the manuscripts that we have, we also have historical and archaeological evidence that proves what the Bible says as accurate. Um, some things in the Bible still to this day are considered as myth or fable or or just just folklore. The people have just believed one of the actual beliefs about the Bible was that Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, because they didn’t have writing in that time. So how could he write something if they didn’t have written language? They had hieroglyphics, which were pictures, but that’s not what they they based this off of. But then they discovered, um, in Turkey they’re called the Ebla tablets. And these are just little tablets from the the nation of Ebla, which the nation kept civic records. So they kept records of commercial trade with other nations. They kept records of kings and things happening. And these date several hundred years before Moses would have actually started writing Genesis.

So historically, we can see that. Yeah, it’s possible your argument that it wasn’t is actually disproved. And in these tablets, not only does it prove that there’s writing, but they actually use some of the same language and same words that Moses himself used to write Genesis, they found the same, same word for the deep. When Moses is talking about the sea and the ocean in these same tablets and manuscripts, so we can see that Moses himself proves or this proves then, that Moses himself could very well have written the historical account. They also found some cuneiform tablets which prove that there was a king, Sargon of Syria. He’s mentioned in Isaiah chapter 20. And before this discovery there is no record of him. So they thought that this was just somebody that Isaiah had made up, and it was just an illustration and couldn’t be taken as fact, but it was just a good story. But they found these cuneiform tablets that actually spoke of King Sargon and further study. Actually, they found King Sargon’s palace. And on that, in that palace, on one of the walls was a mural depicting the exact same thing that Isaiah 20 describes happening. Um, so we can see through archaeology and through manuscript study and historical proofs what the Bible has to say is accurate. It’s important, though, to note that you don’t want to put too much weight on these external sources to to focus on proving the Bible through archaeology, and focus on proving the Bible through history.

While it can be done when you put your focus on saying, this is how I’m going to prove the Bible. Um, you’re not relying solely on the Bible, and you’re putting your trust in archaeology and history and historical fact as a higher standard than the Bible. Um, it’s not bad to use these things. It’s good because some people, um, when talking with them or debating with them, want something outside the Bible that proves the Bible, and we have those things. But to put your trust in those and say, I’m going to prove the Bible through archaeology means you’re putting archaeology and holding archaeology to a higher standard than you are the Word of God. So looking at all of those things, can we trust the Word of God? Is do we know that the Bible is true? Looking at what Scripture says about itself, looking at the historical evidence around Scripture, we can overwhelmingly say, yes. Yes, we can trust the Word of God. And when you realize and you study and you see that you can trust the Word of God, things that you have studied in the past out of the Bible or heard out of the past start to just become overwhelmingly just amazing, really. While I while I’ve been restudying the the validity of the Bible and the inerrancy of Scripture for this sermon, I’ve also been reading through Romans chapter eight and studying through Romans chapter eight.

And when you combine the fact that we know that the scriptures that we have the Bible that we have today is God’s spoken word to us, and the promises that you find in Romans chapter eight, it just takes you over and you’re just you’re just overwhelmed with what God has promised us today through His Word. I don’t know if you can read all these, but these are just some excerpts from Romans chapter eight. I’m not going to get too deep into each one of them because it would take forever to get through. It’s probably a 6 or 7 week series just on that chapter in the Bible. But knowing that this is God’s Word to you today, the believer listen to what he says. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Romans 815 for you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, ABBA, father! Romans 828. We know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 831. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Romans eight 3537 through 39 who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Then verse 37, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Those are the words of God to you, the believer today. You can trust in those things because we can see that the Bible is true when you read those things, when you hear those things, that’s exciting. That’s good to know that there is no condemnation for us who are in Christ Jesus. He’s paid our penalty for our sins on the cross. Nothing we can do can earn that salvation. Nothing we can do can lose that salvation. We are no longer condemned because of what Christ said. That’s what God says to us. We’re adopted into his family. That’s what he says to us. We can call him father. Abba, father, daddy, father. We’re more than conquerors. We overwhelmingly can conquer what this life has for us. That’s God’s word to you. I don’t know what everybody’s going through. I don’t know what struggles, what trials you have in your life. But I know life isn’t always easy for me. I know there’s a lot of stress with work and finances and and whatever, but we can overwhelmingly conquer.

That’s God’s word to you. God divinely inspired Paul to write those words to the church in Rome, and through his sovereign will, he’s preserved those words for us today. And if you think about the church in Rome before, right after Paul wrote these, the church in Rome started to see the most intense persecution that the church had seen to that point. Christians were being thrown into the arenas and torn apart by by wild animals, by lions and wolves and tigers and and they were they were covered in tar and lit on fire to light the Roman Emperor’s garden. Just because of their faith. And Paul says, through all these things we’re more than conquerors. God said that to them, because they can overcome those things through him. And he says that to us, because whatever’s going on in your life that has you distracted from him or or relying on yourself to figure out the problem or you don’t know what you’re going to do. He wrote this to you so that you can know through him you are overwhelmingly a conqueror. You’re more than a conqueror through God. All Scripture from Genesis to Revelation is inspired by God, and we can trust all of the things in it as promises to us that our salvation is sure that nothing can take that salvation away from us, that salvation is a free gift.

All of these things we can see as truth because God’s Word is true from Genesis to Revelation. Paul finishes second Timothy 316 by saying that all of God’s divinely inspired word is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Contained within the Bible that we have today, we have everything that we need for life. Um, in the Bible we have it’s profitable. It’s good for teaching, for showing us, um, what we need to learn about God’s will for us. It’s it corrects us. It reproves us. It rebukes us when we’re wrong. It shows us the way that we need to live. And through studying the Bible, the only way you’re going to know what the Bible says, the only way you’re going to be able to understand, um, and let the Bible teach you is if you’re in God’s Word, if you’re reading it. Second Timothy 215 says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. Accurately handling the word of truth. Paul tells Timothy to be diligent. The new King or the King James. Translation. Translate the word diligent as study. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth properly using the Word of God. If you’re relying on your your growth in the knowledge of God and in the truth of His Word by limiting yourself to an hour on Sunday mornings at church, of following along, or maybe at a weekly Bible study, um, you’re not going to fully understand the truth.

You’re not going to see the growth that that God wants for you, and you’re not going to feel the confidence that you can have in His Word because you’re not studying it. Um, according to Hebrews four, the Bible is powerful. It’s active. It’s sharper than any two edged sword. It’s interesting that the writer of Hebrews refers to it as a two edged sword. Um, they had in battle there were various types of swords, and some of them were just used to just just stab at people and to kind of run through and to break armor. But a double edged sword was made for swinging, and it was sharper than any of the other kind of swords because of the motion that was needed for it and the the way it was used. And here the Bible is referred to as the sharpest weapon out there. The most powerful weapon that you can have is the Bible. And just like a good soldier knows his weapon inside and out, he can clean it. He can function it under any circumstances. He can disassemble it and reassemble it. He can show others how to use it. We need to be able to do the same thing with the Bible. We need to be able to unpack its truth and see how it applies to our lives, and then show it to other people and show them.

Unpack the truth for them and show them how it works. It’s like a tool. If you don’t know how to use a tool, you’re not going to be able to use it effectively, and you’re not going to be confident in the work that you do with that tool. When I started working in the steel factory back in Ohio, we had overhead cranes and essentially just a giant crane that runs on tracks throughout the length of the building, and cable comes down and you can wrap the chain around it and you just walk beside it with the controls. Um, and when we my I think it was probably my second day there, I still remember not really knowing what’s going on, kind of figuring it out, trying to get everything down. I’d never worked in a steel factory. I’d never welded, I’d never done any of this stuff before. So I’m still trying to get it figured out. And somebody says, hey, go grab that crane and pick up that bundle of steel. We need it down here. And all I’m thinking is, okay, so you want me the guy who just lit his pants on fire and you laughed at. You want me to go pick up three tons of steel, move it over everybody’s head and put it down right here in this exact spot, without somehow managing to kill anybody myself or putting a hole in the building.

Um, I don’t know. I don’t want to try that because I had no idea. I’d never touched the controls. I’d never. And by this point, the steel factory had been there for about 35, 40 years. So the controls are pretty worn. So unless you really know exactly what you’re doing, you can’t really read what the buttons are going to do. So my training was this does this, this does that, and this does this. There you go. And then the guy walked away and I’m like, Holy crap. So I start moving it and I’m going super slow. And everybody’s yelling at me to hurry up because we’re running behind. Now hurry up, you got to pick up. And I’m like, man, I’m not going any faster than this because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. But as time went on, I was able to grab the controls and more confidently move the steel from place to place or pick anything up that I needed to and do all these things. Because I was getting familiar with the controls, I was getting familiar with how the crane operated, how it would react to certain things. Um, and by the time I was done, after two years there, I could I could do just about anything needed to be done with the crane with great confidence, because I was familiar with it.

I made myself get familiar with it after eight hours a day for weeks on end. I became familiar with how to operate the crane. If I would have limited myself to just an hour each week at a given time, watching someone else or listening to someone else describe how the crane works, I wouldn’t have ever been confident in using the crane. And the Bible is the same way if you’re not in it on your own. If you’re not studying it and seeking answers on your own training yourself, you’re not going to be confident in it. And when time comes to use it and someone asks you, well, what do you believe this says? And you say, well, the Bible says this. Where does it say that? I don’t know, I just know it says that because somebody told me that a while back because my mom said so. Okay. What does the Bible have to say about it? Can you show me that the Bible says that that’s what you believe? Or are you just relying on guessing your way through? When operating those cranes, I never forgot the severity that came with operating that crane. If you get careless. I mean, if I got careless while I was using it, I could have damaged some machinery or cost the company millions of dollars in repairs. Or. I mean, even to the extent that I could have killed somebody. Um. And if you’re not careful with the Bible, you can kill somebody with it when you’re using God’s Word.

If you’re not familiar with it and you’re just guessing your way through, you can cause some serious damage. That’s why James chapter three says in verse one, let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment, because as a teacher, if I misrepresent God’s Word to you, if I misuse and abuse and distort God’s Word from what it says and what it’s telling us, I incur a stricter judgment. That’s why I could give up and give a public speech about pretty much anything and not really care. I, as a pastor’s kid, my dad forced me to be in front of people pretty much my whole life doing whatever. So public speaking isn’t a fear for mine, but anytime I have to preach, I am so nervous I palms are sweaty the whole week. I’m like, oh gosh, I don’t sleep as much because I know that if I don’t accurately share with you God’s word, that’s on me. And if you’re not studying on your own and looking at God’s Word, when it comes time for you to share with your coworker or your your family member or your friend, you’re not going to accurately be able to handle that word of God, that tool that he’s given you. And it can misfire and it can damage someone’s life.

So how can we study the Bible, you say? How can I study the Bible? I never went to school for any of that stuff. Well, it’s pretty simple. You open your Bible, you read it, and then you ask questions about it. That’s how you study the Bible. You open it up and you read it. This didn’t make sense. What does this mean? Well, I don’t know. Let me ask somebody. That’s it. It’s not that hard. But if you don’t have somebody readily available, I have Greg. And so whenever I have questions, I can just ask Greg because she’s a genius and I’m not. Amen. But for everybody that doesn’t have a Greg, in simple, some simple steps that you can do to improve your study. You’ve been wondering, how can I study the Bible? Um, the first step is to set aside a time, say, this is the time when I’m going to open God’s Word and I’m going to read it, and I’m going to study it, and I’m going to see what it has for me today. If you don’t set aside a time, you’re not going to study well, I’ll study after I do this. Okay. Well, then something else comes up while you’re doing that. So then you’re going to study after that. Well, and then something else came up. So then you’re going to study after that. And then by the time you get to the point where you have time to study, you’re so worn out from all these other things that you’ve done that you just want to sit on the couch and watch TV and not think about anything.

I prefer my set aside time. I prefer in the morning, which is tough because I’m not a morning person at all. And the mornings that I go to work in the morning instead of later in the day or have the day off. I’m not going to lie, my study time is a lot shortened because I like the snooze button. That’s not good. It’s not healthy, but I have that time set aside where I can read God’s Word and conveniently through technology. It’s on my phone so I can just grab my phone. And while I’m still kind of waking up, grab it off the nightstand and I can open up my app on my phone that I have the Bible and I can read. There’s devotion plans on there so I can go through these things and I can get into God’s Word before I start my day. So if you don’t have a time, I mean, just like school, you had a designated time when you had to go to class to study this thing, and then you had to go to this class at this time for this thing. If you don’t set aside a time where you’re going to go and study the Bible, it’s not going to happen by random chance.

You’re not going to just sit down on your couch and a Bible fall down on your lap, opened up to a passage with a highlighter and pen. Ready. You have to plan those things and be intentional in your study. Another thing that’s helpful in your study of God’s Word and I brought some stuff. If you want to come take a look at is study Bibles. This is my new study Bible, but since I have my study Bible on my phone now, I don’t use it as much as I did my old one. But a study Bible puts the passage of Scripture at the top of the page, and then at the bottom it has notes to help you understand. So while you’re studying, if you don’t understand something, instead of having to ask Greg and you can look at the notes in the Bible and help see and interpret and understand what that means. So you have study Bibles. That’s my new one. This one is the one I got when I graduated high school, so it’s seen some better days. But if you guys want to flip through either of those, you’re more than welcome to. Another helpful aid is a Bible handbook. It’s slightly more in depth than a study. A study Bible. So you just turn to the passage that you’re looking for. So you’re studying through a book and something doesn’t make sense. So you turn and this will have kind of an overview or an understanding of what that means.

So these are all things that are put together by people that did go to school to study the Bible. So for people that haven’t gone to school to study the Bible can still have a good, solid study at home where they can read and interpret and understand the Bible for themselves. Other things that will help in a concordance. This is essentially if you’re studying and you see a word that kind of stands out to you as unique or different, you can use this to see what the original Greek word is and what it what the, the Greek word meant. And then you can also see anywhere else that word is used in Scripture. So this is helpful if you’re doing a little bit more in depth study. And then this is uh, this is a systematic theology. This basically this is a book. This one’s by Wayne Gruden. It’s really good. If you want to know more about your faith. This essentially takes pretty much just about any question you have and takes about 30 pages to go through and show scriptural support for what the Bible has to say about those questions. Things like the nature of God, the validity of Scripture, just pretty much a lot of the questions that we’ve gone over in this series. You can also get commentaries, which are somewhere they’re a little bit more than the handbook.

They go a little bit more in depth, but these are all tools that you can get. A lot of them you can get electronically now online to help study. These are relatively expensive. Um, for a good study Bible, you know, depending on the the style that you get and stuff, you know, you’re going to be over $20 for those so it can get expensive. But as technology increases, these things are more readily available. One of my favorite sources that I use any time I teach, I use it for youth group all the time. I use it for my sermon prep. It’s called E-sword dot net. It’s a free online download. You just go there and you can download it to your computer. And it has a lot of free things that you can plug into it and use. So that has a concordance in it for me. So I didn’t have to go spend 50 bucks on a concordance. It’s got commentaries. It’s got several different translations of the Bible. It’s got notes, it’s got devotion plans. So if you’re looking for something that makes it easier to study Esau dot net or dot dot net is it’s a great resource and a great tool that you can use. It’s not hard to use. It’s real simple. And it makes study a lot easier because you have different screens and it’s right on your computer. So once you’re done, you can go ahead and minimize that and get right back on Facebook.

And you’re you’re set. Um, another thing that I would really recommend to anybody that’s looking to deepen or broaden their study, other than these resources and other than setting a specific time, is to keep a journal, um, keep a journal while you’re studying. And I know it’s not real manly for a guy to journal or use a diary or anything. So just take notes, then call it taking notes instead of journaling. Um, but I haven’t done it for a long time, and I really need to get myself back in the habit of doing it, because there’s a lot of advantages to to keeping notes and journaling. While you’re reading. You can look back and see see See where your understanding has grown. How? You know, years ago you used to only see this little bit of a verse, but now your understanding of it is greater and your application is greater, and you can see how you’ve grown, but it also forces you to pay attention to what you’re doing. You can’t just read through something and kind of to breeze through it. But if you’re keeping notes and journaling and writing about what you’re reading and how you understand it, it makes you pay more attention to what you’re doing. So it makes your study time a little bit more valuable in that respect. So those are some things that I recommend.

Set aside a time. Find some study aids that can help you. Like I said, there’s these. They make phone apps. If you have a smartphone, they make computer downloads that are free. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money and then journal while you’re while you read and while you study, because you’re going to be able to to understand better where you’ve come from. And you can look back and see the growth that you’ve had, because sometimes it feels like you haven’t came very far. Or, you know, why do I keep doing this? I’m not really getting any further than what I’ve been. And then you look back at your old notes from a year or two years ago and you say, Holy cow. Um, I really have matured and grown in my understanding. Um, but all of this knowing that the Bible is true, knowing how to study the Bible and seeing God’s promises for us don’t really do us any good. It doesn’t do me any good to tell you about these things, unless you take the time to read it and study it yourself. James 122 says, but prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers. What James is telling us is, don’t just listen to somebody tell you what the Bible has to say for your life. Study it for yourself and then do it. Don’t just listen about it. Um. As a church, we’re not going to see growth unless as individuals, we’re seeing growth.

And the way that you see growth in your life is by getting into God’s Word on your own and reading and studying it. God’s word is truth. The Bible claims that his history and archaeology are proving that daily. And as Christians, knowing that we have God’s written word for us, we need to be active in studying and training ourselves so that we can use that to change the world around us. We can’t just rely on teachers at church to to do it all. We have to be able to confidently use God’s Word to share with other people. We can’t just always say, um, hold on, let me go ask my pastor, or you should talk to my pastor. He’d be really good at explaining this to you. You should be really good at explaining this to them. So as we leave here today, if you don’t already have a time, set aside where you study and you don’t have anything consistent, I challenge you to not only pick that time, but find someone that will hold you accountable to study God’s Word. Because if you don’t know how to use God’s Word, um, you’re not going to see growth that you need, and you’re not going to be able to to share with others what makes Alpine Bible Church so special, because you’re not going to be able to explain to them what God’s Word means to us.