God's Word Is Not Just Good

Church Psalms 23 says, Surely your goodness and your love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So we're here right now, dwelling in his house, ready to worship and praise him, not because everything is perfect, but because he is good. Amen? Come on, raise your hands and praise him. Here we go. I've seen favor, but not like this. I've seen blessings that don't make sense. Can I testify? I've seen miracles I could not buy. I've seen power I can't deny. So can I testify? I'm gonna shout it out. Yeah, the Lord is good. I've seen it all my life. Yeah, the Lord is good. He was faithful then, he is faithful now, forevermore I will sing. Hallelujah, yeah, the Lord is good. Can I testify? Can I testify? Come on, hands up. Testify, yeah. Can I testify? So good. Here we go. He's been with me from the very start. He's the only one who has my heart. So can I testify? He's the one who never lets me down. He's the one who turned my life around. So can I testify? I'm gonna shout it out. Yeah, the Lord is good. I've seen it all my life. Yeah, the Lord is good. He was faithful then, he is faithful now, forevermore I will sing. Hallelujah, yeah. Can I testify? Here we go, church. He's been so good to us. There's so many reasons we praise.

Can I testify? Come on, church. Sing this with us. If you only knew what Jesus saved me from. I was in the dark, he brought me to the sun. Now I'm living proof, look what the Lord has done. Look what the Lord has done. If you only knew what Jesus saved me from. I was in the dark, he brought me to the sun. Now I'm living proof, look what the Lord has done. Yeah, oh. If you only knew what Jesus saved me from. I was in the dark, he brought me to the sun. Now I'm living proof, look what the Lord has done. Yeah, look what the Lord has done. Come on, sing it out. Yeah, the Lord is good. Yes, he is, church. Yes, he is. Yeah, the Lord is good. Yeah, the Lord is good. I've seen it all my life, yeah. Yeah, the Lord is good. He was faithful then. He was faithful then. He is faithful now. Forevermore I will shout. Hallelujah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Come on, sing it out. Come on, make some noise, church. Amen. So good to be in the house with you guys today. Listen, sometimes we run to our father in prayer because the world is falling apart. But sometimes we need to run to our father because he's been good. Because he's shown us. because he's provided, because he has healed, because he has brought reconciliation, because you see his hand moving in your life. I'm going to invite our prayer team to come join me right now, and maybe you're here today, and it's been a while since you ran to your father. And maybe you just need somebody to run to him with you. I'd encourage you to come forward. We'd love to pray with you. We'd love to stand in the gap. We'd love to celebrate with you and give God the praise and honor he deserves. But maybe you're here, and you are the one. It's like the walls are coming down, and you don't see a way out. And you're asking for purpose, or like me, my prayer's like, Why, God? Why is this the thing that's happening at this moment? I'd encourage you to come forward. That's what this time is for. Don't worry about the people next to you. We'll make room for you. But we want to make sure that we have opportunity to just run to our Father. Prayer is not our last resort. It's our first response. So let's respond today. But maybe you've got everything's going great. Congrats. We get to lift each other's burdens today. And so I'm going to pray for a handful of prayer requests, representative of the many. If you're comfortable, would you just extend a hand in agreement as we pray this afternoon?

God, we come before you, giving you glory and honor because you are so worthy, giving you praise and sitting in all of you because you deserve it all, recognizing that your hand is moving, recognizing that you go before us, recognizing that you are doing things in the supernatural that we may never know, we never experienced, that you have protected us and you have guided us and you've made a way for us. We thank you in advance for the work that you have already set into motion. We thank you in advance for the things we have not yet seen come to pass, but we know that they are coming because you are in it all. God, we thank you and we praise you. We give you honor. We come before you with the burdens of this house, Lord. We pray for the family that's praying for their fertility struggles, Lord. God, we pray right now that your comforting hand would just rest on their hearts and minds, Lord, as they've suffered loss, Lord. I just pray that you show up in them, Lord, in their sadness, in the darkness, in the quietness, Lord, that your hope and your love and your comfort would be so overwhelming, God. We also pray for your hands, your healing hands in their lives, Lord. We pray that you would open that wound. We pray that you would make a way. We pray that you would have favor, that your blessing of a child would show up in this family's life, God. We will give you praise because of the life you're going to give, God. We thank you for what you're going to do. We come before you praying for Melissa who's battling some mental health struggles, Lord. Who's suffering from the things of this world. But, Lord, I pray that you would remove any work of the enemy, any lie of the enemy, any secrets of the enemy is whispering into her heart and to her mind that are making her anxious, that are making her sad, that are pulling her into darkness. God, we pray that you would remove those lies and you would replace them with your truth, with your promise, God, your promise of hope, your promise of joy.

We pray that she would find her identity in you, God, that she would submit all things to you and you would bring healing and you would bring hope and restoration to her mind. God, we come alongside Ernest, Lord, who has a big opportunity ahead of him, Lord, a tryout that would change everything in his life. It would change all of his opportunities. God, we pray that you would swing wide open the door. We pray for your favor on that opportunity. We pray for your blessing on that opportunity. We pray that you would multiply his efforts and, Lord, that you would provide a way that not that he gets famous, not that he gets glory, but that so he could show up in a place and you get famous because of where you've placed him, because you've given him purpose, because you've made a way, Lord, that he would make your name famous, that you would get glory for what you're going to do in him. Lord, we pray that for the people in this room right now who have opportunities ahead of them, that they don't know what they're going to do with it, but, God, we pray that they would use it for your glory, for your honor, that you would continue to make a way, you would continue to give purpose, you would continue to show up in our circumstance, you would continue to revive, you would continue to heal. God, we thank you that you are the God who does all those things. We love and praise you. It's written we pray, amen and amen. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ Hey, yeah. Oh. I was your fool. Still you loved half of me. You had been so, so good to me. But I felt no worth. I felt no worth. You paid it all for me. You had been so, so kind to me. Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love died. Oh, it chases me down. Why still I'm found? Please deny, deny. I couldn't earn it. I don't deserve it. Still you give yourself away. Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love died. Yeah. Oh, your reckless love. Oh. There's no shadow you won't light up. Mountain you won't climb up. Coming after me. There's no wall you won't kick down. Bar you won't tear down. Coming after me. There's no shadow you won't light up.

Mountain you won't climb up. Coming after me. Thank you, Lord. There's no wall you won't kick down. Bar you won't tear down. Coming after me. There's no shadow you won't light up. Mountain you won't climb up. Coming after me. No wall you won't kick down. Bar you won't tear down. Coming after me. There's no shadow you won't light up. Mountain you won't climb up. Coming after me. There's no wall you won't kick down. Bar you won't tear down. Coming after me. You're a good, good father. That's who you are. That's who you are. And I'm loved by you. That's who I am. That's who I am. You're a good, good father. That's who you are. That's who you are. And I'm loved by you. That's who I am. That's who I am.

Oh, the overwhelming never-ending. Come on, sing it out, church. Oh, it chases. Fight till I fall. I need none. I couldn't earn it. I don't serve it. So you give yourself away. Oh, the overwhelming never-ending. Practice of God. Yeah. Thank you, Lord, for your love. Thank you, Jesus. God, we're so grateful to be in your presence today, surrounded by your people who are redeemed, that you love us so much and you're such a good father that you would wash away our sin, invite us into your family, give us a home for all eternity, God. For us, it feels so reckless, so irresponsible to love imperfect people like us, but we're so grateful that you extend your grace upon us day after day, that you transform us more and more into who you create us to be. time together Lord, as we seek you, as we continue to worship you through the opening of your Word that is living and active and powerful and able to produce in us fruits that you desire, we empty ourselves out for whatever you want to do Lord. We pray that you would speak to us, that we would receive everything you have, that our ears would be open, that our heart will be fertile soil, that you

put faith through our feet to move forward and to be the people and do the things you've created us to do. We need your help Lord, it's not by our might, it's not by our power, it's not by who's preaching today, it's by your Spirit and your Spirit alone that all these things are possible. So let your will be done in our lives, in this place, in our time together, on earth as it is in heaven, we thank you and pray. And all the people of God who love them said, Come on Church Familia, if you are grateful to be in the house of God today, why don't you turn to someone next you and tell them, get ready for what God's gonna do. 1 p.m. I want to welcome you to the perfect place for imperfect people to experience the presence of God. My name is Eric and I want to start today's teaching with a question that sounds pretty simple, but I think it reveals a lot about who we are. And so my question is this, by show of hands or, or noise or a little bit of both, how many of us have ever received advice from somebody and all we did in response was simply nod our head and do nothing with it? Show of hands. Someone's given you advice, you did nothing with it. Seems like every hand went up. I understand it, but why? Why do we do that? Here's what I've noticed about advice. We receive advice based on how much we trust the source. So if your neighbor, who for the past four years made terrible decisions, all of a sudden is offering you financial advice, what are you gonna do? You're gonna say, hey thanks. You're gonna nod your head and then do nothing with it, right? Because why should I trust that source? But on the flip side, if someone has a history of wisdom, a history of making wise decisions, who's demonstrated credibility in their track record, when they give you advice you're gonna do something different. You're gonna lean into it differently. We don't just evaluate the message. We also evaluate the messenger, right? And I think this is one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people struggle with the Bible. Not because they've read it for themselves and rejected it, but because they've heard by culture, by critics, by TikTok influencers, maybe by even their own doubts. They hear this source can't be trusted. That it's an old book. That that's been changed too much over time. That it was written by men with agendas.

That science has disproven it. That it's simply a very good moral book, but nothing more for our life. And if that's what you believe about this, then how you'll treat it is the same way you treat advice from someone who isn't trusted. You'll nod your head. Maybe you'll carry it around, but you won't let it do anything in you to transform you. Today we're starting a new series titled Faith Forward. God wants us to have a faith that's consistently growing and moving forward. And one of the reasons we can move forward in our faith is because our foundation is secure. Our foundation is solid. Over the next several weeks we're gonna be talking about apologetics. Say apologetics. If you don't know what that word means, it's just a fancier way of saying that we're gonna talk about real, substantial, honest answers for why our faith is worth trusting and how we can share it with confidence. Say confidence. That's what this series is all about. It's helping us move forward in faith with confidence. Because the posture of God's people should be confident. Not combative. Right? The whole purpose of this is about learning, not simply to defend our faith so we can get into arguments with people, but about having a defense for our faith knowing that it has a solid foundation. And where we're starting today is with this. This book. The Bible. Because everything else in this series is predicated upon the Bible. The resurrection of Jesus is declared in this. The existence of God is affirmed through this. The hope that we have is found in the Bible. So if we can't trust the Bible, then the rest of the conversation doesn't have a foundation. Here's what I want us to know today. And this is what the teaching is titled. The Bible is not just good. I want us to know today that the Bible is not just good. The Bible is unlike anything else that we've ever experienced that has been written to us. Here's why. Turn your Bibles to 2nd Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17. Here's what it says. 2nd Timothy 3, 16 and 17. It says, All scripture is breathed out by God. It's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Verse 17 says that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Paul is writing this letter to his young

protégé Timothy. He's a young pastor living in a real world, dealing with real people, with real problems, experiencing real pressure. And Paul says to Timothy, he essentially says, the thing that will keep you, the thing that will equip you, the thing that will sustain you is not simply a good word. It's not simply something that is inspiring. It is God's words. God's word is different. God's word is divine. That's what Paul tells Timothy. And so today I want to walk us through three things that I believe will change the way that we hold this book, that we see this book. Hopefully the way that we use this book. Now let me say this on the onset. The next several weeks are gonna feel a little bit different than what we typically do. We're gonna be leaning a little bit more into teaching rather than preaching. Which is why I'm sitting down today. Because I have a lot to say. A lot of information to give. And if I stand it will take us a little bit longer. But here's what I promise. If we put this into our application, if we do something with what God gave to us, I promise you it will produce powerful fruit in and through our lives. Do you believe that? Do you want that today 1 p.m.? Well let's jump into this. I want you to write this first thing down. First thing we need to know about the Word of God. The Bible is reliable in its record. The Bible is reliable in its record. I know that some of you here, or maybe you, you, somebody that you know, you've heard this objection to God's Word before. Someone has said, you can't trust the Bible. It's changed so much over time. It's like one big telephone game. How can you trust the Bible to be reliable? Let me tell you. Just in the New Testament itself we have 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. 5,800 handwritten copies that we can cross-reference, that we can compare, that we can verify. And when you add in other languages like Latin that number shoots up to over 24,000 manuscript copies. Now why does that matter? Because the more manuscript evidence that you have, the easier it becomes to identify accuracy. If you only had one copy of something, it'd be difficult to know if an error has crept in, or mistakes have crept in over time. Now I turned 45 a few weeks ago, and as I was reminiscing on my life I realized I got away with a whole lot when I was younger. I would get in trouble in school

often, and I'd come home, and I'd have to show my parents the tension slip, and they'd say, what happened? And I can tell them my story. Now I wouldn't lie. I would just omit some of the facts. And I would only give them my singular perspective. And they would believe my singular perspective because, oh what a good kid he was. And I wasn't. Now kids today, I don't know if I feel bad for you, if I feel grateful that, that you can't get away with anything today. Why? Because everyone has a cell phone. Everything is recorded from various angles. And when you take those different angles, recorded from different people, and you bring them all together, and you compare these multiple perspectives from multiple people recording in the same moment, you get a clearer picture of what actually happens. That's what manuscript evidence does. When you have thousands of different copies from different people, from different regions, from different centuries, and different scribes, you can compare them against one another to see where they agree. It's actually one of the strongest forms of verification in ancient history. Now let's put that into context. Anyone ever heard of Julius Caesar by show of hands? Julius Caesar. You've heard of Julius Caesar. Do you know that we only have ten copies of Julius Caesar's works? Ten. What about Plato? Did you learn about Plato in school? Show of hands. Anyone have heard of Plato? 200 copies. Homer's Iliad. Have you heard of that? This year they're releasing this epic movie called The Odyssey. Homer's Iliad, an odyssey which scholars consider to be one of the best attested ancient texts, has fewer than 2,000 copies. And yet no one questions whether these are reliable. No one says, man, we can't really trust Julius Caesar's account on the Gallic Wars, can we? No. No one says that. No, no one debates whether Plato, what he said, was, was actually what he said. But the New Testament, with far more manuscript copies than any other ancient document, all of a sudden it gets treated differently. Why? Why is that? What makes this, this, being able to, to rely on the Bible even more remarkable is the time gap. For most ancient documents, there's a gap of hundreds, sometimes even over a thousand years between when something was originally written and when the earliest surviving copy was made.

And the farther we are from the date of the event, the easier it is to exaggerate, to reshape, and to invent details. But the New Testament, it was actually circulating close enough to the original events where people were still alive. Eyewitnesses were still alive to fact-check the events, to fact-check the claims. Some of our earliest manuscript fragments date within decades of the original writings where eyewitnesses were still alive. And in the ancient world, that gap is extraordinarily small. And what that shows us is that what we have isn't some legend that was slowly passed down over time, just from people saying it to one another and vice versa. I want you to hear this. The Bible that you're holding, the Bible that is in your phone is, is not some corrupted version of something that was lost in history. It is a carefully preserved, extensively verified, and historically substantiated document. And the overwhelming consensus of scholars who've dedicated their entire lives to reconstructing ancient texts, they've concluded that the New Testament we have today reflects the original writings with the highest degree of accuracy. In fact, most scholars agree that well over 99% of the New Testament that we have, the text that we have, is established with the greatest confidence. And that small variation, that less than 1% variation we're talking about, changes nothing about the core beliefs of our faith. No variation all of a sudden takes away the resurrection of Jesus. No variation removes the divinity or changes the divinity of Jesus. No variation rewrites the gospel, salvation, or grace that we know. All it is, listen to this, it's simply differences in spelling, word order changes, and repeated phrases. When we compare that to us today, honestly we have more errors in our writing just in an afternoon of sending text messages. It's truth. The average person has an error every 20 to 50 words in their writing today. And that's with autocorrect. We have more errors than the biblical scribes had. So again, this isn't some ancient mystery book that barely survived history. This book, the Bible, God preserved over time through persecution, wars, government changes, critics, and centuries. People tried to bury this book. They tried to burn it. They tried to ban it. They tried to discredit it like they do today, and somehow it's still here. Somehow it has lasted the test of time. It's still confronting hearts. It's still transforming lives. Now why did I share all that? Here's why this matters. Some of us, we've been intimidated into silence when someone says, you can't trust this book. We've been intimidated into silence because we didn't know what to say. I want you to know what to say over these next several weeks.

Because the evidence is not against us. In fact, the overwhelming scholarly evidence is with us. It's not even fair how much evidence we have on our side. And some of us, we've let doubt creep in. We've let doubt in the reliability of Scripture create distance between us and God. We pick it up. We read it. We respond to it in church services. But if we're honest, sometimes we have this whisper in the back of our head saying, but is it true? Can I trust it? And that whisper has stolen our intimacy with God. Romans 10, 17 tells us that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That's where faith comes. And so if we don't trust the record in the Word of God, then we can't grow in our relationship with Him. And can I tell you, Satan knows that. Our enemy knows that. That's why his first attack is always attacking the reliability of God's Word to us. The first recorded words of our enemy in Scripture is what? Did God really say that? Come on Eve, come on. Did God really say that? And he's been making us question the reliability of God's Word from the beginning. He's not creative, he's just consistent. So we need to know that the Bible is reliable in its record. Amen? Second thing we need to know about the Word of God, the Bible is inspired by God. I want you to write that down. The Bible is inspired by God. Reliability, that answers the question of preservation. Inspiration, that answers the question of origin. Second Timothy 3.16, again it says, all Scripture is what? Breathe out by God. It's breathe out. That phrase is important because Paul is letting us know that, that what we have wasn't just something that was simply inspiring. The Bible is inspiring, but he's saying it's inspired. There's a difference. Something that's inspiring moves you physically, emotionally. But when we talk about the Bible being inspired, that means something deeper. That means origin. That means source. It means that what we're reading didn't begin in the minds and the imagination of people. It began with God. That word breathed out. That's the word theonoustos. Theos meaning God. Noustos coming from the word pneuma, which means spirit or breath. God's Word is literally God breathed. Paul is saying that, that these words didn't come from people who simply had spiritual thoughts. He's saying the author behind all of the Scripture we have is God himself. Now let me pause right there. God used people to

write this. And when he used people and inspired people to write this, he didn't make them into robots. God didn't override their personalities to write his Word. When you read the writings of Moses, Moses sounds like Moses. David writes like a poet. Luke writes with precision and accuracy. Paul writes with urgency and logic. John, he writes with intimacy and depth. All their experiences are still visible. Their personalities still remain intact. But the source, the origin, the oversight is divine. It was written by God. He worked through real people in real moments. And he didn't erase who they were while he was writing his Word. And that's what makes Scripture so unique. It's fully human in its expression to us, but it's fully divine in its origin. It's not just good. God's Word is not just good. It's greater than anything we could imagine. The internal consistency of this book is unlike anything else written in human history. This was written over 1,500 years by 40 writers, 40 authors, on three different continents, in three different languages. Some of the writers were kings. Some of them were shepherds. Some of them were fishermen. Some of them were scholars. Some of them wrote during times of peace. Others in times of persecution, in times of prison. Many of them they never met. Many of them they lived centuries apart, but yet somehow from Genesis to Revelation, this book tells one consistent story about one Savior. The themes in the Old Testament, they continue to build rather than compete with one another. The Old Testament asks questions that the New Testament answers. Promises that were made earlier, we see them come to pass. Shadows, they become substance. Symbols in the Old Testament become reality. This is how Jesus taught his Word. On the road to Emmaus, the Bible says that he met two of his disciples. They didn't know because he'd resurrected. And the Bible says, beginning with the law and the prophets, Jesus revealed everything concerning himself. All of this is one consistent story. When you have multiple authors contributing to one writing over many years, what ends up happening? right? You ever have a group writing project? How did that turn out? There's always one person who wants to make sure they get the A, so they do the majority

of the work. Then you have a few people who do bare minimum to say, I participate. And there's always that one. There's always that one person who did absolutely nothing except for write their name on the report, and they got the full credit. But what happens when you read that writing? Contradictions. Ideas clash. Philosophies shift. Narratives, they lose cohesion. But Scripture, Scripture keeps moving in the same direction. And the consistency of this becomes even more compelling when we look at biblical prophecy. Isaiah, he writes about a servant who would be pierced for our transgressions, who'd be crushed for our iniquities, led like a lamb to the slaughter 700 years before Jesus died for us. Micah named Bethlehem the birthplace of the Messiah, 700 years before Jesus was born. In Psalm 22, King David writes in detail about crucifixion, a form of punishment that didn't exist when he wrote it. If this were simply a human project, then this prophetic precision would be very impossible to explain. Many years ago this mathematician named Peter Stoner, he sought out to figure out the probability of one person fulfilling eight of the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. And he did the math. And his conclusion was one person to fulfill eight of these Messianic prophecies would be 10 to the 17th degree, which is a hundred quadrillion, if I'm correct. Someone else did the math to make that reason, like more realistic for us. And so this is a math they came up with. You know what a quarter looks like, right? I know everyone's tapping to pay and all that stuff. You remember what a quarter looks like? You take a quarter. You stack that quarter onto other quarters 2.2 feet tall. You take that stack and you magically multiply it so it fills every square inch of the state of Florida. From the Panhandle to the Florida Keys. Every Publix. Every Abuela's Efficiency in Hialeah. Every Turnpike Extension that they're still trying to build in South Florida. Every square inch of the state of Florida. 2.2 inches high, stacked of quarters. And you take one person, you say, grab one of those quarters. Put an X on it. Now I want you to throw that into the pile. Now I want you to mix up that pile so you don't know where it is. Now you blindfold them. And you say, you have one chance to pick up that exact quarter.

That's one. That's 10 to the 17th power. That's a hundred quadrillion to one. Fulfilling just eight of these prophecies. Jesus fulfilled over 300. How does that happen? Because this is God-breathed. God is the writer. God is a preserver. But here's where I want to sit for a second. The fact that it's God-breathed doesn't just mean that it's accurate. It means that it's alive. His Word is alive. Hebrews 4.12 says, The Word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. It says that His Word is living and active. Not was living. Not was applicable to people 2,000 years ago. It's living present tense. It's active present tense. This is why you can read the same passage ten times. And ten out of ten times the Holy Spirit can reveal something different in that for where you're at. This is why you could skim over a passage a hundred times, but then one day just suddenly stop holding your tracks and feel like the Spirit of God wrote it specifically for where you're at. It's not a coincidence. That's the living nature of the inspired, active Word of God. Some of us, all we treat this as is, is a historical document to explain the past. But no! God gave this for our present. I can't tell you how many times that, that I was struggling with the decision, situation. I didn't know how to navigate, trying to stay strong, trying to make the right choice for my family, for my life, for this church. And so I would turn to this. And I would open it up and God would lead me to a passage that I've read dozens of times before, but all of a sudden it's speaking specifically to where I'm at. Not because I manipulated the text to say what I wanted to say, but because God knew I would be in that exact moment, with that exact question, and He gave me that exact word. And I know you know this is true. I can't tell you how many times after service someone will say, Pastor Eric, were you reading my email? Did my wife tell you what happened this week? Because what you said was exactly what I needed today. How is that possible? It's only possible if the author is alive. And he is. Now let me say this before we continue. We're not gonna be able to cover

everything about apologetics in this message series. We want to give a strong foundation for our faith, but our faith is actually a deep well. There are many questions. There's many evidences on history and philosophy, archaeological studies, manuscript studies. There's so many conversations that that go far beyond what we can communicate in a weekend message series. So I just want to say if this stirs something in you, if you're the type of person that likes to excavate deeper and to ask the why questions of what we do and who we are, I want to let you know we're not gonna be able to cover all of that here, but I want to give you some resources so that you can dig deeper. Now there are tens of thousands of scholarly sources that you can read. A lot of it will go over your head unless you have a PhD in Bible nerdology. I want to give just three that have really impacted my life. The first book I'd strongly recommend is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It's thoughtful. It's accessible. And it helps explain why Christian belief is intellectually reasonable and deeply human. Another great resource that was written a little bit more recent than that is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel, he was a journalist and a skeptic who set out to disprove Christianity and actually ended up being convinced by the historical evidence for Jesus, changed his life, changed his eternity. And speaking of Lee Strobel, someone on our team is actually friends with Lee, and this past week they released a book on this very topic. Dr. David Shapiro, who leads our young adults, he just released this past Tuesday a book called Unshakeable. And this book, it's amazing. It unpacks the historical, archaeological, prophetic, and logical proof of the reliability of Scripture and the identity of Jesus as the Messiah. I've read it. I love it. I like the old title before Lee told him to change it. It was called Jesus Christ. That's a lot of evidence. I thought that was awesome. But to be more accessible, Lee said, hey, let's call it Unshakeable. Phenomenal book. I encourage, listen, if you're interested in digging deeper, faith isn't afraid of questions. Faith will actually grow forward when questions are asked and explored honestly. So I want to encourage you to keep asking questions, to keep reading, to

keep exploring the evidence for yourself, because I'm telling you it is in our favor. Amen. Third thing I want you to know about the Word of God. Write this down. The Bible equips me for every good work. The Bible equips me for every good work. This is where we're gonna shift from the intellectual to the applicable. Because listen, I can see your faces. Some of you are saying, hey man, the evidence is compelling. Inspiration's real. I get all that. But I don't want to call you Professor Eric. Like, tell me how does this apply to my day-to-day life? How does the ... I'm not trying to debate people. Paul answers this question directly. Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17. It continues, all Scriptures breathed out by God and is what? Say it again. Profitable. It profits us. It benefits us. For what? For teaching. For reproof. For correction. For training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. That word equipped, I'm going to talk about that for a second. The Greek word that Paul uses, the word exartizo. It means to be fully furnished. To be fitted for a task. To have everything you need to do for everything you've been called to do. Not partially equipped. Not mostly prepared if you catch me on a good day. Fully furnished. Complete. Now that's important because a lot of us, we've been trying to navigate circumstances. Navigate life without being fully using the thing that God gave us to fully equip us. We've been going through situations underprepared because we have not been spending time in the access that God has given us to fully prepare us. Again, it's not an access issue. We have the access. It's the difference between someone who has a gym membership and actually goes to the gym. A lot of you know what I'm talking about. Are you aware that just having access to the gym doesn't bring transformation? You can have a gym membership. You can drive by the gym every single day. You can own gym clothing, but never grow in your strength because that's not how it works. Strength only comes when we consistently engage. I think a lot of us, we treat the Bible that way. You can have a Bible on your person every day because it's on your phone. You can have a Bible on your, your coffee table, on your bookshelf, and still

go through life spiritually malnourished. Why? Because you haven't engaged with it. So many of us, we own it. We never open it. You may quote it, but, but you aren't living it. You know where it is. I know it's a third book on my, my bookshelf on the top shelf, three to the right, but it's not living inside of you. Because equipping only comes when we consistently engage with it. Write this down. Transformation doesn't come from possessing the words. If transformation came from possessing the Word, you would be transformed by going to a La Quinta Inn, or a Red Roof Inn, or a Double Tree. Because every hotel room has a Bible in it thanks to the Gideons. Thank you Gideons. But that's not where transformation come from. Transformation doesn't come from possessing the Word. It comes from engaging the Word. Again, just like physical strength is built up over time, spiritual strength, it's not formed in one moment. It's formed to exposure to the truth day by day, verse by verse. You don't read the Bible once and then all of a sudden you're mature. You build spiritual endurance the same way you build physical endurance. Repetition. Consistency. Come on gym people. You know it's showing up when you don't feel like it. Right? The people that I found that are strongest in their faith, they're not the ones who know the most facts about the Bible. They're the ones who have stayed in this long enough to shape who they are. Paul says his Word equips us for every good work. How it equips us, how it's profitable for us, he gives four reasons. He gives four ways. Number one, write this down. Teaching. And what teaching is, teaching tells you what is true. Teaching tells us what's true. In a culture where a thousand competing voices are all screaming at the top of the lungs, feeling they have authority, the Word, it gives us a stable foundation for what is actually truth. And unlike the advice of the world, the truth of this world that will put us into condemnation, into sin, capture us into sin, this truth doesn't do that. This truth actually sets us free. Amen? It's profitable for teaching. It's profitable for reproof. And here's what reproof is. It shows you where you're wrong. No amen for that. There's a part that none of us like, but all of us need. I want you to hear this. The Bible is not a document that simply affirms all your

current choices. It doesn't do that. It doesn't say, good on you. That's what you feel. That's who you are. No, it convicts us. It challenges our choices. It holds itself up like a mirror and says, this is what's really going on in your life. And the people that, that I sense are the most adverse to reproof are actually the people that need it most. It's profitable for reproof. It's profitable for correction. What is correction? Correction shares with us how to get back on track. This is the difference between a book that simply tells you what you did wrong and one that redirects you to the right place. God doesn't simply expose the wound. God, God brings healing to that. God doesn't just diagnose saying, this is the problem in your life. He shows you how to get back on the right track. It's profitable for correction. The fourth and final thing says it's profitable for training in righteousness. Training in righteousness. That teaches us how to live like Jesus. Because that's the goal, isn't it? The goal isn't, I sit down, I hear one sermon, I have, I have an aha moment because I have this information where now I can beat down the people that I like to debate with. No! The goal is not a moment of insight, but a life that is progressively aligned with Jesus, with the character of God. And again, you don't get that in a day. You don't get that in a single sermon. You get that through sustained, consistent engagement with a living Word that shapes you over time. As a pastor, I get a lot of people all the time asking a lot of questions that I believe the Bible already gives the answer to. People are asking for direction. I need direction. God says my Word is a lamp unto your feet. It's a light unto your path. I need to know what to do. And James 5 tells us if we have to ask God for wisdom, He'll give it generously from His Word. We're saying, I need God to change me. And He tells us how we can experience His transformation. Romans 12 too. He says it's by the renewing of your mind through the reading of His Word. The equipping is available. The question is, are we actually picking this up and doing something with it? I love you, church family. But some of us, we've been struggling for far too long for, for something that, that we shouldn't. And

the reason we're struggling is because we're not consistently engaged in the very thing God gave us to address those concerns. And I've seen it in my life time and time again. And I've seen it in the lives of so many people. When we leave this on the shelf, when we leave this on the coffee table, when we have a dusty Bible, it leads to a directionless life. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. But can I tell you today, we don't have to live that way any longer. Amen? Every situation we'll face in marriage, God gives us the advice here. Every anxiety we're carrying about the future, God gives us answers right here in the words of this book. Every question we have about who we are and what our worth is, God gives the answer. Every moment we try to lead well and live well and love like Jesus well, there's equipping for us right here. Church family, you have beautiful Bibles. Some of you, you've etched your name in gold or silver on the front page of your leather-bound Bible. But can I challenge you, the Bible is not simply a beautiful decoration for you to show off. It is a living, active, inspired, equipping, God-breathed Word that He's given to us. What are we gonna do with it? Here's where I want us to land today. We started today's teaching talking about how we receive advice based on whether or not we trust a source. In the past 30 minutes, I believe that I've given some historically grounded, some verifiable, some real reasons that we can trust that this source is reliable. And if you don't believe me, don't take my word for it. It's out there. The evidence is overwhelmingly forced. The Bible, in the book of Acts, it talks about a group of people called the Bereans. It says the Bereans were more noble-minded than anyone else during that time. It gives a reason why. It says because they didn't take what the pastor preached for face value. They didn't say, he said it, I believe it. That settles it. They went back to the Word of God. They went back to do their own research to see whether or not what the preacher was saying was God's truth or not. I'm telling you, don't take my word for it. This Bible, this Word of God is reliable. But here's where I want us to land today. Here's what I want to challenge us with going forward. I've given us some resources. I've given us some grounded reasons to believe this. Don't just

believe this. Use it. Don't just believe the Bible. Use it. Don't just get information to defend it in conversations. Let it shape you in private. Child of God, the goal was never to win arguments about the Bible. The goal is to walk in the life the Bible says we have in Jesus. The goal is to encounter the living God the Bible talks about. The goal is for us to be equipped fully and completely lacking nothing for the life to come. that God has caused to live in His words. Don't just believe it, we gotta use it. I know for some of us here today, maybe the only time that you heard the word was when it was preached to you on a weekend service. And you're saying, man, today the Holy Spirit is convicting me, I gotta get in this. How do I do that? Where do I start? Let me give us some real practical wisdom on how we can read the Bible. First of all, the best Bible translation is the one that you actually own and that you will read. Now, we study from the ESV and occasionally we'll share a verse from the NLT because it's in modern day language, but it doesn't paraphrase as much. But whatever Bible you have, read it. Oh, where do I start? Start reading your Bible like the Star Wars saga. Here's what I mean by that. Don't start in Genesis, don't start from the beginning, don't start in episode one.

I wanna encourage you to start in the book of John. John writes with intimacy, John writes with depth about the relationship we have with God. After you read John, I encourage you to go back to Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, and then start reading Acts and see what the early church did when they're filled with the Holy Spirit. And when you're reading Acts, maybe follow along with some Proverbs and some Psalms. And after you've done that, then read the rest of the New Testament and then just like the Star Wars saga, watch it again and watch it again. And after you've done it a handful of times, then go back to episode one, then go back to Genesis because we have to know who the hero of this story is about. It's not us, it's Jesus. And when we start reading about the relationship we have, and then we go back and we see how all of it points to him. I'm telling you, you start in Genesis, it's good. Those 50 chapters are full of life. There's so many life-giving stories that all point to Jesus. But once you get to Leviticus, you'll be like, what am I reading? But more than anything, in my 29 years of reading the word of God, the most important thing that I've realized is it's not just about reading, it's about letting it read me. It's about letting it see who I am

and who I'm becoming in him. And the more I spend time in the word of God, the more it is in me. And the more the word of God is hidden in my heart, the more I start to look like the one who wrote the Bible. That's the goal. That's what it means to be faith forward. So wherever you are right now, wherever your relationship with God, or even your religious duty of reading his word, would you stand to your feet right now? Paul tells Timothy, young pastor, don't just read this as a responsibility. Church, don't just read it because you wanna check off the box in your Bible app, because you wanna show your kids, I actually know some of this, because you got a Bible study to lead or a group that you're facilitating. Read it because it's the source of life that will sustain us, that will equip us, that will complete us, that will transform us from the inside out. And maybe you haven't done that, or maybe you've been like me and you've only studied sometimes because you had a sermon to preach. Whatever it may be, let's repent of that right now. In a posture of surrender, would you lift up your hands and just start letting our Lord who's here with us right now who hears our prayers, let him know where you're at. If you need to repent, repent.

Father, we're sorry for treating your word like any other book or sometimes even worse. We've lent our ear to Harry Potter more than the precious words that were God breathed and inspired for us. God, we repent for listening to the opinions of other people, for being persuaded and intimidated because we haven't done the work of spending time with you. But God, today we say no more, Father. We may not know the answer to every question, Lord, but we can know who you are fully. And that's our prayer, that you would put a heavy burden on our shoulders that's holy, that comes from you, that will not be lifted until we spend time in your presence. And as we read your word, that it will shape us, it will transform us, it will equip us, it will help us to know that we have a firm, steady foundation, Lord, because the times we're living in, they are wicked. The culture says what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right, Lord. But as the winds blow against our homes, as the waves crash against us, we know that we can have a firm foundation built on your word that never fails. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you so much that you've given us everything we need to know. Help us to...

use it, help us to live it, help us to love it, let it transform us from the inside out so we can be all that you've created us to be and walk with confidence in this life. Thank you, Jesus. We believe the best is still before us because you're always with us and we pray all of this and the name above every name, the name of Jesus and all God's people said, come on church, let's give a praise, let's go faith forward, let's declare that no matter what happens, our house, our life is built on the unshakable promises of God. I'm safe with you, I'm going to make it through Rain came, wind blew, my house was built on you I'm safe with you, I'm going to make, say I'm going to make it through I'm going to make it, because I'm standing strong on you I'm standing strong on you, because I'm going to make it I'm going to make it, because my house was built on you My house was built on you Christ is my first foundation The rock on which I stand When everything around me's sinking I've never been more glad That I put my faith in Jesus She's never let me down Faith for a new generation So why would he fail now? He won't He won't He won't fail He won't fail He won't fail