A Year of the Bible

Happy New Year Summit Church.

Welcome to all of our campuses across the triangle. I hope that 2015 ended up in an awesome way for you, and I hope you are really excited about what God has for you. In 2016, 2015 was a great year for us as a church. God was so good to us. We baptized hundreds of people and opened up a new campus, our Alamance County campus. We had the Multiply Initiative, which God blesses so richly in, and then our EPIC Services at the DPAC.

It was amazing. We have a lot to thank God for. But with all the excitement we have over the last year, I can't tell you how much of a sense of anticipation we have of what God is about to do in our church.

We believe in the coming months, and that begins this very weekend. A handful of times, I have told you about a book that I looked at years ago called the Year of Living Biblically. The author is a guy named A.J.

Jacobs. He's not a Christian. He describes himself in the book, in fact, as a Jewish agnostic. In fact, this is one of my favorite books. This is from the introduction.

I am officially Jewish, but only Jewish in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant, if that helps you at all. For an entire year, this guy attempts to follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible. He begins by reading the Bible cover to cover, writing down every single directive that he can find, and then he tries to live them out as literally as he can for a year, all while living in Manhattan, the year of living biblically. He stops wearing clothes made of any mixed fibers. In accordance with Levitical law, he stops shaving the edges of his beard, which makes him end up with this massive beard that makes him look like the lead singer for ZZ Top, or a character in Duck Dynasty if you're not into good music. He refuses to shake hands with any women that he thinks might be ceremonially unclean, which had to be awkward how you determine that.

And this was one of my favorites. He tries to fling tiny pebbles at people without them noticing in order to fulfill the command to stone adulterers. For an entire year, he said that it made for a great book, but it almost destroyed his marriage, which he thought was not biblical.

His wife told him that if he did not cut it out, she was going to leave him. I've always felt a kind of morbid amusement with this book because I feel like it encapsulates how many people in our culture, maybe even our church, approach the Bible, or maybe I should say what keeps them from approaching the Bible. They're just not sure how to take it.

It's intimidating. You might feel about the Bible like you do that terms and conditions page that comes up when Apple wants to load new software onto your computer, page after page of mindless tedium mumbo jumbo, and all you think is, where is the button so I can accept all? Because you figure that if there's something in there that you actually need to know that some nerd somewhere is going to figure it out and tweet about it and let you know, put it on Facebook. If there's some clause that says, you know, by signing this, Apple gets the first two children born to every family, then they'll tell you about that. Well, that's how you feel about the Bible.

In this analogy, by the way, I am your nerd. You think if there's something in here we really need to know, then our pastor will explain it to us. Some of you have tried to read the Bible.

Maybe you made a New Year's resolution in times past and you started out so well, but my guess is you made it about two and a half weeks and you got stuck in some genealogy where some guy named Abimashazam begets Melchizel, or at least that's how you remember it, and you just fizzled out. Well, this year at the Summit Church, we are going to change all of that. This is going to be our own year of living biblically. We are going to spend an entire year, about 50 sermons going through the entire Bible. We are calling the series the whole story because that's what we're going to see. The Bible has 31,102 verses, 1,663 commands. It was written by 40 different authors with 3,237 different characters in there. By the way, there are 31 different guys in the Bible named Zechariah. If you meet some Old Testament looking dude in heaven and don't know what to call him, just go with Zechariah.

Chances are you'll be right. Yet in all these commands and all these stories and all these personalities, all these characters, there's really just one story that's being told. That story is about the birth of a baby. It's a very special baby that's going to be born in a manger. Every character, every genealogy, every command points to him.

Every story whispers his name. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this series is going to completely revolutionize some of your lives. For many of you, you are going to get your mind around the big picture of the Bible for the first time. You've had all these kind of disparate strands out there and we're going to pull them together and it's all going to start to make sense because you're going to have the framework to think about what God has been saying. I will also tell you that there is absolutely nothing that would be better for your marriage, for your self understanding, your sense of self worth, your understanding of your purpose in life than knowing this story and your place in it. Probably the biggest misnomer is that the way we find direction in life is we figure out what parts of our life are missing and then we get the Bible to add those parts to it.

It's actually you find the bigger story and your role in it and that's where things begin to make sense. So I've often told you, meet Uncle JD giving you 10 steps to a good marriage is not nearly as important for your marriage as you grasping the 10,000 steps that your real husband Jesus took in coming to rescue you. If you're new to Christianity or you are curious about Christianity, maybe you're here because of a New Year's resolution, honestly I can't think of anything that will be more beneficial for you over the next several months than to understand the big picture of what God is saying through the 66 books of the Bible. So I want to invite all of you, whether you're a member of this church or not, I want to invite all of you to take this very seriously and I want you to dive deep into it. And to that end, I've got three resources I want to recommend to you.

Resource number one is this thing here called the Jesus Storybook Bible. Now you say this looks like a book for kids. It is a book for kids.

It is still the single greatest resource I could recommend to you in getting your mind around the big picture. I especially want every family to pick up a copy of this at whatever campus that you are at. I'm going to actually align pretty closely with the messages we preach on the weekend. And if your family will just one night a week sit down as a family and read the story, you'll stay right really close to the sermons that are being preached.

Even if you don't have kids, by the way. I had an adult come up to me about three weeks ago, a single adult, and they just said, hey, I'm looking for a book to get my mind around the Bible. I held up this book and I said, you should get this. They said, that looks like a kid's book. I said, it is a kid's book, but there's nothing out there, honestly, that's better.

My family uses it. We're going to be doing that this year. I would invite you to join us. The second thing I have to recommend to you is two things. We have two different Bible reading plans for the year that we would like to give you a choice between.

You say, why two? Think of them as JV and varsity. The JV is the one that's in here. It's in the front flap of your monthly newsletter there, which it will be every month. We'll have the updated version of it. This is what we are calling the whole story plan. It's one or two chapters a day, and it'll align pretty closely to the sermons on the weekend. The varsity level plan is in the black level here, right here. It is called the every verse plan because you literally will read through every single verse of the Bible over the course of the year. Now, there is no shame at all in doing the JV, none at all. But let me give you just a little bit of motivation for doing the varsity. The motivation is this. In 10 minutes a day, you can read the Bible through in an entire year.

You say, how do you know that? Well, the average American reads between 200 and 250 words a minute. There are 775,000 words in the Bible. So at 10 minutes a day, you'll get through the entire Bible in one year. By the way, if you just use the amount of time that the average American watches TV, in four weeks, you would have it finished. So there's plenty of time for you to do this, so you feel guilty and get on it.

That's what you should do. By the way, if you're like, you know, I'm just not a reader, honestly. I can read, but I don't get up every day and reading.

On our website, some of the rdu.com, there are places you can link to apps that will give it to you in an audio version. I do this a lot. Sometimes I've got a really busy day. I'll listen to the Bible as I go from place to place.

So there are ways that you can do this. Whatever it is, I want you to get it. I want you to go deep. Our small groups are going to be studying along with this, so it'd be a great time for you to get involved in a small group as well. Let me explain why this will absolutely change your life.

I'm not exaggerating this. Dwelling on the Bible is the single greatest thing you can do to invigorate your faith. It is better than reading a bunch of books on apologetics. It's better than reading every book there is out there on marriage.

You see, developing faith is less like building a house where you add one brick at a time and then you're done. And it's more like getting into shape. Getting into shape is about your body steadily getting stronger over a lifetime. You don't just work out once and then get in shape and say, okay, now I'm finished. You spend a lifetime working out and developing those muscles. One of the keys, they say, to getting into shape is eating right. I've heard it said that being in shape is only about 20 percent what you do and it's about 80 percent what you eat. At the gym that I go to sometimes, they're always encouraging me to eat things that they call superfoods. Things with high protein and omega-3 and other kind of whatever stuff. I'm always trying to explain to them that the reason I eat so many fried foods is that the oil lubricates your system.

It's like a two cycle engine and it just it works really well that way. They haven't added that to the nutrition manual yet, but I'm pretty sure that I'm winning them over. But scripture is and has always been the superfood of faith. Knowing scripture does not equal faith, but knowing scripture gives you the capacity for faith. It is the superfood that gives you the ability to exercise faith, which is not just when you read the Bible, but when you go through life. I do not make many guarantees as a pastor, but I guarantee you if you do this next time this year, you will not be in the same spiritual place that you are as you are right now this year.

You will look like a completely different person. So I want you to do it. I want you to do it with us. It's going to be the Summit Church's year of living biblically. Now, with the longest introduction about the Bible that has not even yet touched the Bible, I want you to take out your Bible and open it to Psalm 119. Psalm 119.

Today, we are going to spend some time on the greatest love poem that's ever written in human history. Psalm 119. You're like, where is Psalms in my Bible? If you have a Bible with Old New Testament, you just let it open in the middle, chances are it will open to Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, 176 verses.

It is longer than almost half of the other books of the Bible. It is a love poem about the Bible itself. We do not know who the author of this poem is. Our best guess is Ezra, who wrote the book of Ezra in the Old Testament.

But whoever it is, is just enraptured by the word of God. And they write this poem in a very creative way. There are 22 stanzas in the poem, each one corresponding to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which has 22 letters in it. And each of the eight verses in that stanza starts with whatever letter that stanza is associated with. One tradition says that this Psalm was written by King David to teach Solomon, his son, to learn the alphabet.

I don't know about that, but I hope that you see that it is significant. Listen, that the longest love poem in the Bible is not about marriage, it's not about children, it's not about mountains, it's not about sunsets or good health, it's about the Bible. Because the author understands that the greatest beauty that God has put on the earth is not found in romantic love, it's not going to be found in nature, it's not going to be found in children. The greatest beauty that God has deposited on earth is in that book you hold in your hands. Jewish people have for years used this Psalm, Psalm 119, as a part of their Rosh Hashanah celebration, their New Year's celebration.

So how appropriate for us to be able to open up our year with this same Psalm. Charles Spurgeon said that every preacher of the gospel, every preacher should memorize this Psalm in its entirety, all 176 verses. And Blaise Pascal, the philosopher I quote a lot, had the whole thing memorized.

William Wilberforce, who stopped slavery in the Western world, he had it memorized. I will not tell you if I have it memorized or not. But you guys know how humble I am, and I would never want to show off if I had memorized it. So I'm just going to act like I'm reading a few verses when you know I'm really quoting it all from memory, okay? And then I'll give you a brief four and a half reflections on the verses that we read. These are not all the verses in the Psalm, but these kind of represent to me the main things that the Psalm is trying to say. So Psalm 119, here we go, verse 9, how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? That is one of the verses I have memorized, but I've memorized it in the King James Version.

Anybody else memorizing the King James Version? Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word? It wasn't until I was 19 years old that I was courageous enough to admit that I had no idea what a wherewithal was. Wherewithal, it's like a white shirt.

What is he talking about? No, wherewithal just means how. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding your way according to your word. Verse 11, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Verse 14, I rejoice in following your statutes like one rejoices in winning the lottery.

That's my translation. Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Verse 41, let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord. Your salvation according to your promise.

Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. Verse 72, the law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. Verse 89, forever. Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.

Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you. Verse 99, I have more understanding than all of my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. You want a verse to memorize in college?

That's your one right there. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. Verse 105, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path. 109, I hold my life in my hand continually. It means I hold my life lightly, but I cling to your...

I do not forget your law. I cling to it with all of my life. 111, your testimonies are my heritage, my inheritance, what I'm looking forward to forever, for they are the joy, the delight of my heart. Verse 116, sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live. 133, keep steady my steps according to your promise, and let no iniquity have dominion over me. 176, the last verse in the psalm, I have gone astray like a lost sheep.

Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments. Let me give you four and a half reflections on what I think the psalmist is trying to show us and the things that he says or she says about the word of God here. Number one, if you're taking notes, the Bible is revelation from God. The Bible is revelation from God. Throughout this psalm, the author refers to Scripture as testimonies from God, statutes, law, precepts, rules, commandments, and word from God. Nowhere in Scripture, nowhere in Scripture, not one place has Scripture talked about as enlightened human thoughts about God. It is God's revelation come down to us, and that is one of the most important things that you can learn about the Bible. You see, our culture relegates this book, the Bible, as one collection of enlightened thoughts about God, and it might be a good collection of enlightened thoughts about God arising from certain cultures and Western tradition, but every religion has its own contribution to make, and we are going to be smarter when we learn from everybody. Most people in our culture see religion like the ancient parable of the three blind men that fall into the pit with the elephant.

I've told you this before. Three blind men fall into the pit with the elephant, and what do they do? Well, one of them jumps up, and he grabs a hold of the tusk of the elephant and says, oh, it's a spear. And the other one grabs a hold of the leg of the elephant and says, no, it's a tree trunk.

The other one grabs a hold of the tail and says, no, it's a broom. And the moral of the story is only when they humbly listen to each other and put all their collective insight together are they going to get a picture of the whole elephant. That's how our culture sees religion, and the Bible is a great contributor to human thoughts about God, but that's what it is. That is not what Jesus, nor is it what the prophets or what the writer of this psalm believes about the Bible.

It's what our culture believes, but that's totally opposite of what they thought about it. Jesus believed that when the authors of the Bible wrote, they spoke with the very voice of God. In Mark chapter 12, for example, Jesus quotes a passage from the Old Testament that is clearly written by David, but he doesn't open it by saying, David said. He opens it, Mark 12, 36, by saying, God said. You say, well, but how could something written by a fallible human being like David, how could it actually be the word of God?

Theologians compare it to the virgin birth of Jesus. Jesus was both human and divine. He was 100% human and 100% divine, not 50% human and 50% divine. He didn't have like a God hand and a human hand. Every molecule of him was 100% human and 100% divine. The human part of Jesus meant that Jesus was limited in his power.

He limited himself, he didn't fly everywhere he went. There were certain kinds of knowledge he limited himself to, but he was also 100% divine, which meant that Jesus was 100% free from error and sin. Well, the same is true of the word of God. The word of God that you hold is 100% written by humans, fallible human beings, but it is also 100% divine, which means it is absolutely perfect and free from error. I know it is popular today to say, well, I believe in Jesus, but not all the stuff that's written in the Bible. Listen, I'm gonna tell you as humbly and clearly as I can, if you say that, you don't really believe in Jesus because Jesus saw himself as only the explainer and the fulfiller of scripture, never its corrector. In fact, Jesus said, Matthew 5 18, that sooner would heaven and earth pass away than one syllable out of the Bible become untrue. Now, of course, you have to learn how to interpret the Bible. You gotta know when the Bible is speaking metaphorically. You have to learn which laws the Bible says do not apply to us anymore.

And we're gonna get into that. But for now, what I need you to see is that Jesus thought of that book that you hold in your hands as absolutely perfect for it to be wrong would be like saying to him that God was wrong because the book was 100% divine. It was the word from God. Here's how the writer of the Psalm says it. Verse 89, forever your word is established in the heavens.

Not it's being edited and improved. It's been established in the heavens forever. The Bible is a word that comes down from above, not a consensus of wisdom that rises up from below.

And here is why I belabor this. Because you gotta decide whether that is true or not. That is the most important question you're ever gonna consider about the Bible.

Is the Bible actually what Jesus and the prophets and the apostles said that it was? Because if it is, that changes the way that you approach it. It means that you accept it, even the parts that make you mad and that you disagree with it because it's a word from God. And you don't pick and choose the parts of the Bible you like like it's a salad bar that you're constructing your own meal from. God is the judge and he's the one that's right.

And we're like, well, he and I disagree, he's right and I'm wrong. If on the other hand, this is just a collection of human ideas about God, then have at it, sift through what, take what's helpful and leave what's not helpful. But whatever it is, you gotta choose which one you believe in. Is it what Jesus said it was or is it just a collection of human ideas? You say, well, JD, I don't really know yet.

Well, then come this year and immerse yourself in it and then decide for yourself. Here's number two. Number two, the Bible is life-giving law. The Bible is life-giving law. The word law that the Psalmist uses throughout the Psalm, like verse 72 that we read a moment ago, just means straight edge.

Literally in Hebrew is what it means, straight edge. Like something you would use to measure a piece of cloth or construct a building. If you don't have a standard measurement for those things, then you end up with chaos. I mean, imagine if everybody could redefine inch or pound. That might come in convenient at certain times. How much do you weigh? I weigh 110 pounds.

North Carolina pounds, but, you know, whatever, nonetheless, that might be convenient, but it's mostly would lead to chaos. God's law is the straight edge by which we measure all things in life, that which is good, that which is bad, that which is right, and that which is wrong. Now I realize that that also is anathema to our culture because our culture cherishes the idea that ultimately the one who makes the best decisions about what's right and wrong for me is what is deep inside my heart. But how are you to determine what inside your heart is good and what is bad? And you cannot say that everything in my heart is good. Nobody says that. Nobody says that.

I'll give you an example. Tim Keller says this. Imagine two young men in their early 20s.

They are walking down the street, but one of them lives in 800 AD in Viking, Norway, and the other one is a young professional in downtown Durham in 2016. They have two impulses in their hearts, both of them. One impulse is, I want to go back to the shop where that guy just insulted my honor and I'm going to murder him. The other impulse is, I want to have sex with another man.

Both of them come from inside of him. In the first culture, they would say, obey the first, obey your honor, but shun the second. Whereas our culture would flip it and say, shun the first, but obey the second because that's the real you. Now the point of that is not to say those are moral equivalents. The point of that is to say, you know that just because something comes from deep inside your heart, doesn't make it good or healthy or wise. Why would you say that everything that our culture believes is going to be right, whereas everything previous cultures believe is wrong?

Could you put down your arrogance for just a second and have a little historical humility and realize that 100 years from now, your kids and great-grandkids are going to make fun of some of the stuff you believed? And realize that the only way that you'll have a straight edge at going through life is to found your understanding of right and wrong, not based on what everybody else around you think, or what's in that dark heart of yours, but you base it on the illuminated word of God. The Bible ought to, listen, the Bible ought to contradict you and make you mad.

If it doesn't, you're not really reading it. In fact, if it doesn't ever make you mad, all you're doing is taking some of your own preconceived ideas of right and wrong and deifying them and calling that God. And you're just worshiping yourself. The Bible makes me mad sometimes. And I know that I'm like a professional Christian but it still makes me mad. I'm reading, I'm like, I wish I wasn't in there. I don't like that. Then I stand up here and preach it like I love it. But in Todd, I'm like, that really makes me mad. I'm not sure though why that's in there. That's just what it means when it comes from a word from God that is super cultural and beyond us, it contradicts us because God is God.

Look at this, I love this. Psalm 119, 99. I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies or my meditation. I understand more than the age, and for I keep your precepts. Let's talk about liberals for a minute.

All right, hang with me. Liberals like progressive wisdom. They always want to be on the right side of history. So it's always the future. That's where the wisdom is. Conservatives, by contrast, oh, they like the wisdom of the past. That's where the word comes from. We want to conserve all these great things from the past.

Which one is better? Well, trick question, right? When you are shaped by the word of God, you're not really going to be a true liberal or a true conservative. Because you're going to critique the past, you're going to critique the traditions of the aged, and you're going to critique the future, which is the progressive wisdom of your confused professor. He gives you the ability to be neither a conservative or a liberal. Verse 105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. In other words, the word of God gives me the ability to find the way in a place of confusion and darkness.

C.S. Lewis said, he said, yes, the law can be narrow and constraining. But it's like somebody who is lost in the woods that suddenly in the dark finds the path again. You ever been lost in the woods? So when God built me, he chose not to give me one ounce of any sense of direction. But he also chose to give me this pioneering spirit that says wherever I am, there's probably a shorter way to get to where I need to go than the path that has been laid out.

These are two very dangerous things for God to put into one human being, because I spend a lot of time lost. And when I'm in the woods, I'm like, why are we going? We should go that way.

I think we can get back to where we're going that way. And when I get lost, you're just feeling a panic. And then, you know, it starts getting dark and you're trying to, and you're just walking. And then all of a sudden you find that path again, right? And that light shines on that path. And you're like, here it is, here it is. And it's narrow and it's constraining, but it's liberating at the same time because it is the path out of the darkness.

Listen, college students, high school students, you're about to walk into some wildernesses known as dating and college and career. And you got a bunch of things that there's nobody, not me, not your parents, that's gonna be able to prepare you for. And the Psalmist says, it is the word of God that gives me light and insight into things I can't see, because it helps me see the end before I even get to the beginning. That's what the word of God is to you.

I talk to college students sometimes and they'll be like, you know, pastor, and they're sincere, but they're like, you know, I'm sleeping with my girlfriend. Is God gonna, is he gonna punish us for that? Now, before I say yes, all right, which I do, sin, that's exactly right.

Here's what I usually say. I say, now, before I answer the question, let's just think about what you're saying. You're scared to go sideways with the wrath of God. That's why you're asking the question. But you're not scared to go sideways with the wisdom of God.

How does that make any sense? Why are you afraid of God punishing you while you reject the counsels that he gives to you on what he says life and relationships, if he holds the keys of heaven and hell, he probably understands marriage and relationships. The word is a light to your path and whatever the verse says. Verse 133, keep steady my steps according to your promise and let no iniquity get dominion over me.

Steady, the word right here, steady. Whatever part of your life is not anchored into God's word is gonna be a shaky part. And what happens is the enemy finds whatever's shaky in your life and that becomes the area he begins to tap. I will say that one more time.

I'll give you an illustration too. Whatever part of your life is not anchored into God's word is the part that the enemy is gonna start tapping and he's gonna try to bring the whole structure down. It's kind of like the game Jenga. You ever played Jenga where you're trying to knock out the different pieces and my son, six years old, this is like his favorite moment is when one of us knocks the structure down.

It doesn't matter who does it. He just loves that moment because you're just trying to pull out the sections and keep the thing upright. What happens is the enemy looks at you and he figures out what parts are not anchored into God's word. Maybe it's your career.

Maybe it's your money. Maybe it's your purity and he starts tapping it and tapping that and eventually he finds the one that brings the whole structure of your life down. So he says, you gotta stay steady by building every part, thinking through every part of your life on the word of God. Verse 23, even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. When the most powerful people in the world, whether they're financial, political, my friends, my spouse, when they turn against me, the first place I turn to say is are my feet anchored in God's word?

Because even the most powerful people around me can be against me but if my feet are on God's word, then my feet are on a solid foundation. Where do you turn in opposition? Where do you turn in tragedy? Where do you turn when the bad health report comes in?

Where do you turn when your marriage goes into hard times? Because the way that your life stays steady is when you are anchored in God's word. Number three, the Bible, he says, is primarily the story of God's deeds, not ours. It's the record of his promise, not our duties.

Let me explain this to you. Look at verse 27 there. Cause me to understand the way of your precepts that I may meditate on your wonderful deeds. Wait, I thought the Bible was about all the deeds that I was supposed to do but here he's telling me I got to meditate on what he's done. Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. As a young man, when I was growing up, I thought of the Bible as a collection of heroes that I was supposed to emulate.

I'm not saying it was the fault of the people who taught me, but more just me, how I heard it. But I just thought I got to be a man after God's own heart like David was. I got to dare to be a Daniel and all the other flannel graph figures that I learned from. I wanted to be like them. As I got older, I began to think of the Bible mainly as a book of constraining rules that I needed to obey.

1,663 to be exact. And it was a little depressing because it was like the whack-a-mole game. Every time I got some down, it was like some others I wasn't obeying. And I got overwhelmed as I got even older, I began to look at the Bible as a book of practical advice on how to live and how to be happy and how to be a good husband. I hope you see this year, listen, that while the Bible has rules and advice and all those things, the Bible is not primarily any of those things. The Bible is primarily the story of somebody who came to rescue you because you'd broken all the rules, rejected all the advice, and messed yourself up so bad that you were unable to start keeping any of it again. And that story of love is gonna be so big and so captivating that when you finally learn that story, the rest of your life is gonna start to make sense. And you're gonna be able to think about your marriage differently and your career differently and you're gonna have the motivation to start to obey God again. You gotta stop reading the Bible as if it's all about you because it's not. It's all about Jesus.

Here's the analogy I've used and I'll update it for January 2016. In every movie, there's always a main character and then there are minor characters. And what happens to the minor characters is really not important because they're just there to support the story of the main character. Think of a movie like Star Wars. Let's go back to Star Wars number four, the 1970s. Who's the main character in Star Wars?

Easy question. Luke Skywalker's the main character in Star Wars. Biggs Darklighter. You know who that is?

Of course you don't, unless you're a nerd. Biggs Darklighter is the X-wing fighter that comes in with Luke to attack the Death Star that gets destroyed like 10 seconds into the battle. And there's actually two or three other guys and they don't even get named.

They're just X-wing fighter number six. And their whole point in the movie is to get blown up so that Luke can get to that place and blow the Death Star up. Now I've often wondered what's it like to be that guy? Here you've got your whole life and then your whole point is you just die in this movie and you just get blown up.

But you know what? They don't really care because the movie's not about them. The movie's about Luke Skywalker. If your life were conceived as a movie, who would you think the main character would be?

Well duh, it's me. I'm the movie about me. Scripture says, what if we gave you the invitation to get out of a movie about you and get into one where you're not the main character but you're a minor character? Now it's gonna change some things because what's gonna change is the fact that not everything that happens to you is gonna be for you.

In fact, God may prosper you because he wants you to support with your prosperity the point of the main character. And if God puts you through pain, if you blow up in an X-wing fighter, maybe it's because you're supporting something that the main character is doing and the point is not living and dying. The point is how you are contributing to a story that's going to last and go on forever. You say, well, why would I wanna do that?

I wanna be a main character on my movie. Here's why, because that movie goes on forever for all eternity. It is the kingdom that nothing can ever touch or change and I find a strange amount of significance and purpose in being a minor character in a movie that's about Jesus. That's the invitation of Scripture is that it is all about him. You have to stop reading the Bible as if it's all about you. The main message of the Bible is not here are some practical tools that can fix your life.

The main message of the Bible is fix your eyes on Jesus and then your problems are gonna be seen in a different light and then when you fix your eyes on Jesus, he'll begin to fix your life for you. By the way, that's why all the genealogies and those things are in there. You read a genealogy and you're like, what does Abimashazam and Moshezul got to do with my marriage?

Nothing. In a direct way, but they're all about Jesus and when you see the story about Jesus, suddenly everything in your life looks different. This is not a book of duties of things you need to do for God. It is the story of his love for you. What you hold in your hands is not a book of commands or heroes. It's the world's and universe's greatest love letter. Have you ever read it that way? Have you ever read it as God's statement of love, his love letters to you? When I was dating Veronica, the girl who became my wife, when I met her shortly after I met her, I went over to live in Southeast Asia and for two years, we just wrote letters back and forth, right? We wrote enough letters to fill the Encyclopedia Britannica and for those of you under 18, Encyclopedia Britannica is before the days of Google.

It's how we learned stuff. It was in a book, okay? A lot of letters. Let's say that we're, Veronica and I now, here we are, been married for a long time and let's say we go back and I find a big box in the attic, three big boxes full of those letters and I notice that they're all unopened and I'm like, what are all these letters unopened? Those are all the letters you wrote me when you were in Southeast Asia.

You didn't read any of them? No, I knew that you loved me so I didn't feel like reading the letter. Now I'd be like, I'm not sure you really, if you loved me, you would read the letter. You're like, well, I believe God loves me but I've never read the book of Habakkuk where God explains to me what love looks like in the midst of tragedy. How do you think that makes God feel? And by the way, one day in heaven, you're going to meet Habakkuk and he's going to say, how did you like my book? And you're going to be like, I never read it.

And it's going to be awkward and I'm just trying to keep you from that moment, okay? Number four, number four, the Bible has more value than life itself. The Bible has more value than life itself. The Psalmist says that the word has more value to him than thousands of pieces of silver or gold. See verse 72, thousands of pieces of silver or gold. Verse 109, what I showed you, he says, I hold my life very lightly in my hand, but I cling to your law. I hold it like a drowning man would cling to a life raft. Very simply, I want to ask you this question. What level of importance does the Bible have in your life?

What level of importance does it play in your, not what do you believe about it, but what level of importance does it play? Men, let me talk to you for a minute. If you found out that some kind of predator was in your neighborhood and you just let your kids go out and play with no supervision, what kind of dad would you be? Yet Jesus Christ, who you say understands reality more than anybody else, tells us that there is an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And Jesus said, his intent for your kids is to kill, to steal and destroy them. Their only hope, your only hope is scripture because the only way that you can confront a lie is to know the truth. And you don't have, by the way, Satan doesn't identify his lies as lies.

Now, this is a lie. Go check what your Bible says. He just puts it in there.

He surrounds them with it. The only way they're going to know truth from error is if they understand the truth and they can confront the lies with the truth like Jesus did. When Satan attacked Jesus, Jesus didn't outwit him. He didn't outsmart him. He didn't say I'm better than you.

He didn't say I'm moral and you can't tempt me. He quoted scripture. What are your kids gonna come up with when Satan attacks them?

Not if Satan attacks them but Satan attacks them when Satan attacks them. You say, well, of course Jesus knew scripture. He was God. He wrote it.

Oh no. The New Testament says Jesus was not born with scripture memorized. Luke 2 52 says he had to learn it just like the rest of us.

In other words, Jesus went to Awana and he finished every book and he stuck around afterward for extra credit. And listen, I'll tell you, our family, we're the, in many ways, the typical American family. We're crazy busy but I will tell you, I choose not to have my kids and nearly the amount of extracurricular stuff that it seems the average American parent has their kids involved in. But the one thing I'm making sure of is that they learn the Bible and y'all, if they don't grow up knowing everything there is to know about Taylor Swift or LeBron but they can talk their way through 1 Timothy and Lamentations, I'll be a happy dad because I'm gonna tell you something, Taylor Swift ain't gonna help much in relationships. In fact, I would say she probably gonna be kind of harmful. All right.

And LeBron certainly ain't gonna help them in their career but the word of God is gonna give them life and the word of God is gonna give them the ability to distinguish truth from error and not be killed, stolen or destroyed. Or here's how I'll explain it to them the other night and I've told you this before, but I'll tell you, as I told my kids, I was like, kids, it's like this, there's this movie with Nicolas Cage in it because it always goes back to him and it's called The Rock and you're not allowed to watch it. But the basic gist of the movie is this, that there's some bad guys that have these balls of like green nuclear gas and if you get in the presence of the green nuclear gas, it'll eat your face off. And so at the climax of the movie, Nicolas Cage takes one of these balls of green nuclear gas and he puts it in the mouth of the bad guy and he punches him in the face and the green nuclear gas comes out and it starts to eat the guy's face. Now I'm looking back at my wife as I'm telling this story because she's over in the corner and she's like... And by the way, our pastors do the same thing sometimes and I'm up here preaching and I'm like, the ship has sailed.

I mean, we gotta take it to wherever it's going. So kids, so Nicolas Cage suddenly realizes that he's also in the presence. You can see this because he's such a good actor. You see this moment of realization where he's like... And then he's like... So he starts to run away from the green nuclear gas but the green nuclear gas evidently has brains because it knows where he is so he's going to chase him and so he's running away down the hall and it just keeps coming after him and he gets into a room where there's nowhere to escape, no doors or anything and it's just him and the green nuclear gas and here comes the green nuclear gas. Well, the deal is if you're in the presence of the green nuclear gas, the only thing that you can do to protect yourself is there's this antidote that you gotta put directly into your heart but it's in a needle that's like that wonk and so Nicolas Cage reaches into his backpack and he pulls out this needle and he unsheathes it and I'm telling you, the thing's like a foot and a half and he holds it in front of his chest and for a split second, he just lets the tension build and you're kind of like... Don't do it.

Just get eaten by the green nuclear gas. That's better than putting that thing in your heart but he takes it and he shoves it and he pushes the thing in and he's fine. It doesn't eat his face off and that's pretty much the end of the movie and so then I say to the kids because this is like the Bible.

You can't watch this until you're 18 years old but see, everywhere around you, everywhere, everywhere there's this poisonous gas. It's in the Disney movies you watch. It's in the Little Mermaid because the Little Mermaid's trying to tell you that if you'll just follow your heart, everything's gonna be fine and the Bible said you don't follow your heart.

The Bible's telling you follow scripture and that lie is seeping into your soul and then you turn on the Disney Channel and then you play these games and it's everywhere and it's lying to you and it will destroy you and my job as your daddy is I'm Nicolas Cage and I've got to take the word of God and I got to put that in your heart so that when Satan's lies oppress you, you will know the truth because the truth can set you free. Y'all, it is the word of God that God used to create everything that you see. He didn't mix up a potion and create out of that. He spoke a word. It was with a word that God raised Jesus from the dead. It was with a word that he gave sight to the blind. It's with a word that the book of Revelation tells us that one day he will destroy the works of the enemy and make all things new. It is by the word of God that God will release you from the chains of sin. He will heal the wounds of addiction. It is by his word that he will pick up the shards of a broken relationship and put back a family together again.

There is no power on earth. There is no power in the universe quite like the word of God. It is the word that creates. It is the word that redeems. It is the word that restores. It's the word that heals.

Everything in the Bible is about the word. You've got to know it. You've got to believe it.

It's got to saturate you. When life cuts you, you've got to bleed God's word. When life shakes you, you've got to regurgitate God's word. And the problem is not that you don't know that. The problem is that you've never brought your practices in line with what you believe.

Right? Isn't that the problem? The problem is not that you don't know it. The problem is you just never brought your life in line with that.

So why not let this be the year that you change that? Which leads me to the last verse in Psalm 119. Look at it.

I love it. Psalm 176, I've gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments. Do you see kind of like a, does it almost seem contradictory to you?

It does to me. I've gone astray like a lost sheep, but I've not forgotten your commandments. Well, which is it? If you read the Psalm, like I did this week several times, what you'll start to see is that there's all kinds of these little contradictions in there, seeming contradictions. In one breath, the Psalmist says, I hate double mindedness. And like two verses later, he's like, I am double minded. I love the law.

Oh, I love a lot of other stuff besides the law. Which is it? Does he love it or does he not?

Here's the answer. He wants to love it. He wants to love it, but he knows his heart is divided. So he resolves that he's going to love it and ask God to bring his heart into line. You see, I love that because the writer of the Psalm is just like me. I want to love God's word, but I'll tell you a lot of times I'm looking more forward to the next episode or whatever show is coming out that I'm watching than I am, what God has to say to me in his word. And so what I want to resolve is God, would you bring my heart in line with what I know to be true. Christian growth begins by confessing to God what you are not, and then asking God to make you into what you know you should be. And Jesus died so that you could be. For most of us, including me, the word doesn't have nearly the place of prominence in our lives that it should. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, taken. Seal it, seal it for thy courts above. Why not let this be the year that we resolve together as a church that this year is going to be the year of the Bible for us, that we will choose to hate double-mindedness, that we will ask God to change our hearts so the word of God becomes our prize, our passion, our treasured possession, that we would seek it more than we seek riches, more than we seek the applause of men.

We would pant for it more than a drowning man pants for another breath. I want you to resolve that and then ask God to bring your heart in line with what you know to be true. And then I want you to get these resources and I want you to join a small group and I want you to join my family in making this your year of living biblically. Why don't you bow your heads with me, if you would, all campuses.

I'm not asking you to commit to anything. I'm just asking you to ask God to make this year the year that the Bible moved from being a part of your life to being the center of your life, for being one other thing that your family does on the weekend to being the center of your life and weekend, and your whole life, not just your weekend. Father, I pray that this year would not just be a year of factual transfer, not information, it'd be a year of transformation as you make this church a church of the word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.