Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:07] I want you to open your bibles if you have it with you. Also, it'll be on the screen to James, chapter one. James, chapter one. We're going to start a new series this weekend talking about big questions that we all face, and I would love for some feedback after these next three weeks with myself. Pastor Ben and Pastor Steve will be back on the third week as we talk through some of these big questions. And I'd love if this is something that is helpful to you as a church to see, come back to this maybe each summer and answer the big questions that we all ask when it comes to life and purpose and faith and God and our place in this world.
[00:00:44] James 116. James writes this.
[00:00:48] He says, so don't be misled, my dear brothers and sisters, whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. In verse 18, it says he chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word, and we, out of all creation, become his prized possession.
[00:01:16] Today I want to talk about this question of why do we read our Bible? Why do we read this ancient text, this book that has been known as such a good thing and such a bad thing throughout our history?
[00:01:33] I think we all ask questions about what our place in life is, what our purpose should be.
[00:01:40] We all have questions about why, if God is so good, why do we hurt? Why do people experience suffering and pain and violence in this world?
[00:01:52] What is truth? What is the reality of the world we live in?
[00:01:58] Is an ancient religion written down in this book in the Middle east so many centuries ago? Is it really applicable to our world in the United States in 2024?
[00:02:12] All these questions seemingly don't have very easy answers.
[00:02:17] But we're here, and you're probably here, and you're probably engaging at some level in this community, in this kind of faith. Maybe this is your first time, or maybe you've been here for 30 years, but you're leaning into the hope that this book, the Bible, might have answers to the questions that plague all of us.
[00:02:38] Is it true?
[00:02:40] And does it have answers?
[00:02:43] But I don't know about you, but I've noticed this, that many people read the same Bible that we do and yet come to very different conclusions about it. Have you seen this?
[00:02:54] I mean, plenty of people know their Bible. Plenty of people have read their Bible and used the Bible to support whatever they're going after in this life on both sides of history, on the good side and the bad side of history, right?
[00:03:09] Everybody from the apostle Paul to corrupt roman emperors throughout the centuries, from genocidal dictators to Mother Teresa, right? Billy Graham, to even the devil himself in Matthew, chapter four, where he quotes scripture to Jesus.
[00:03:25] And sometimes I laugh to myself because someone will. I'll meet somebody and they'll be talking about their church, and they're like, well, we're a Bible church. We teach the Bible. And I'm thinking, are you like a Billy Graham Bible church? Or are you like the devil Bible church? You know, like, which side of it? How are you reading the Bible? How are you applying the Bible?
[00:03:43] Because throughout history, many have used the Bible in good ways, but also have manipulated the text to say things that support an agenda that is not of God.
[00:03:56] You tracking with me, hearing me?
[00:03:59] So the question for us today isn't, do you read your Bible? But we should ask this question. How do you read your Bible?
[00:04:07] How do you open up its pages and experience something of God's presence through the written text? How do you read your Bible?
[00:04:20] And I think if you were to ask 100 christians in a room, most would agree that the Bible is an important thing to make a part of your daily or your weekly practice.
[00:04:31] But out of those hundred, how many have taken the time to make it a part of. Of their practice? Because the truth is, it's really long. This is my Bible from when I was in high school. I still have it. And page after page, you can see where my favorite sections of scripture were back then and still are today. A lot of highlights and notes in those sections. The psalms is full of highlights, the gospels, a lot of notes and portions that are written up. And there's whole sections where it's like, I don't know that I ever made it to that section. Right.
[00:05:06] I don't know how much time I spent in numbers. I don't know how much time I spent going through second chronicles.
[00:05:13] And the truth is that the Bible is so wide ranging and it's long and it's dense, and we can end up in a place where we say, well, I like church, or I like the community I'm part of. But this is maybe more challenging than I want to commit to, to integrate or to bring into my life the Bible. This seems like a pretty tall bar.
[00:05:42] And so today, what I want to talk through is, what is the purpose of the Bible, and how do we engage with scripture in a way that honors it, that doesn't fragment it in a way that removes its power from our lives.
[00:06:02] It's interesting. When we come to church on Sundays, oftentimes we take just a few little chunks of scripture and we put them up on the screen and we talk about those chunks. And then we say something like, and then come back next week and we'll talk about another chunk. Right. We have to do this. There's no way we would sit here and spend the next 6 hours reading through, you know, all the gospels together, although that would be good. That's not practical.
[00:06:27] But the issue is that the Bible was not actually primarily written to be read in five or ten verse chunks. I mean, could you imagine this if you were to go to a concert at the amphitheater this summer, your favorite artist is playing and you sit down on the grass or you stand. By the way, I know there's a big debate whether it's appropriate to stand or sit at the amphitheater. How many standards do we have in the room? Okay, yeah, yeah. The nine o'clock's more of a sitting crowd. Okay, I got it. Tracking that.
[00:06:57] But imagine you go to the amphitheater and your favorite band or your favorite artist that you've been listening to for years and years gets up on the stage and they open with the intro of one of their most famous songs to kick off the concert. And then as soon as that interlude or that intro is done, they stop playing and they say, now, come back next week. Where in our next concert we'll get to the chorus.
[00:07:19] And then the following week it's a three part series. The following week we'll even get to the bridge. You'd say, well, that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to be caught up and swept up into something that is cohesive. And that takes me somewhere, something that I can be swept into.
[00:07:37] And I think this is the truth about the narrative of scripture that we often read it for inspiration, we often read it for direction. I've got a big decision to make. What can I get that will apply to my situation? And so we flip through it, or maybe we read it devotionally. And so we get to, where am I in the scripture today? And we read it and say, okay, how can I apply that? And that's all good and well, but I will tell you that there is a higher way to engage in scripture when we begin to see it as a cohesive story that tells something about who God is and who we are in light of that.
[00:08:13] And this is our invitation into our engagement with the Bible is not to have it so fragmented that it loses its power, but to understand that God is telling us a story. Eugene Peterson wrote this in his book, eat this book. He said, the holy scriptures are story shaped. In fact, reality is story shaped. The world is story shaped. Our lives are story shaped. We enter this story following the story making storytelling Jesus, and spend the rest of our lives exploring the amazing and exquisite details, the words and sentences that go into the making of the story, of our creation, salvation and life of blessing. It is a story chock full of invisibles and intricate with connections. Imagination is required.
[00:09:01] And so I want to begin this three weeks talking about how the Bible is best understood as a story.
[00:09:11] Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for the way that you bring us together. And we thank you that today we have your word and as challenging as it can be to understand and to get into. Lord, we pray for your grace and your holy spirit to guide us into truth. Even as we share these moments together. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
[00:09:39] Just last week, my son has found a group of kindergarteners in our neighborhood, and they play for hours each day, which is amazing as a parent, to have your kid want to go outside and play. And so we send him out each day. And then this past week, on one of the days, he came back in, and just out of the blue, he said, you know what? With my friends, I think I'm the main character.
[00:10:04] I thought, man, we gotta dial this kid back, right?
[00:10:07] We gotta have some humbling moments here. I think I'm the main character.
[00:10:14] I think we think the same about our faith.
[00:10:18] I think oftentimes when we read the pages of our bibles even, or when we lean into moments like this where we're listening to teaching or the preaching of the Bible, oftentimes we are trying to figure out, how does this come around my needs and my interests and further my plight in life?
[00:10:42] And oftentimes we can come to the conclusion that our faith, especially in our hyper individualized, individualistic society, we can come to the conclusion that the best version of our faith is one that serves me the best.
[00:10:58] Because, like Jack, I'm the main character.
[00:11:02] And I don't think this is malicious. I don't think this is something we do just out of, you know, evil intent. But I think it's very natural that we come to the conclusion that this is what it's all about. And when I was growing up in church, if you were to ask me, like, what is your christian faith, about growing up as a christian kid in a christian school, the answer I probably would have given you is something like this. Well, Jesus died for my sins. And if I accept him as my savior, when I die, I go to heaven, right? Isn't that what Christianity is all about? And while that is true, if you notice in that sentence, the emphasis is solidly on me and my sin and my decision to follow Jesus and then my future, where I will go when I die.
[00:11:55] And I think we have to recalibrate our impression of what this faith is all about, that maybe, maybe, maybe it's not all about me.
[00:12:05] That the purpose of your life, as Rick Warren once wrote, is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family or your career or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with goddess. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.
[00:12:30] One of the key pieces to reading your bible well is to understand who it's all about.
[00:12:38] I came across this older video online. One of the popular segments that made the rounds in the 2010s, online and on tv, was this thing called Carpool karaoke with James Corden. Did you see this? Have you seen these?
[00:12:55] So, carpool karaoke. James Corden, who's a talk show host, would get in a car and drive around celebrities, and they would sing songs together. I know, sounds amazing. But this one that I came across just a couple weeks ago was shot in the city of Liverpool. And so James gets in his car in Liverpool, and the segment starts and he calls somebody. You don't know who it is, but you can guess because it's Liverpool. And into the car comes Paul McCartney.
[00:13:25] And so in this segment, about 1520 minutes long, they drive around Liverpool as Paul McCartney tells the story of different songs and how they were written, as they're walking through the setting where the Beatles first came together. And it's really fascinating as they're driving and then walking through the city of Liverpool. And at the most probably poignant moment of this video, they arrive at Paul McCartney's childhood home, where he lived up until he was about 20 years old. And this is the first time. Find out later. This is the first time that Paul McCartney has been back to that house since he left when he was 20.
[00:14:07] And now, because it's the McCartney home, they've made it a museum, and they've set it up just like it was back in the sixties when Paul lived there. And so for the first time in how many decades, Paul McCartney enters into his childhood home. And it's set up just like it was when he was last there, so many decades ago. And he begins to tell stories about him and John as they would write story, write the songs that all of us would know. Even if you're not a fan, you would know these songs, right?
[00:14:39] And then he sits down at the piano and he begins to play some of the most famous Beatles songs. And it's very poignant. But then what happens is the camera pans out to the street and out on the street, in the few minutes that James and Paul have been in this house, word has spread that Paul McCartney is in the house. And so all up and down the sidewalk, outside this little row house, there's these fans, cameras out, you know, phones out, hoping to get a glimpse of Paul McCartney. They didn't make any announcements. Word just spreads. He's here. He's here.
[00:15:14] And as Paul leaves the house and he walks out, people are showing him all this love and people he's never met. But a guy runs up and says, I was named after you. I'm Paul too. I was named after you.
[00:15:26] And Paul's like, very sweet, you know, waving. And he gets in the car and drives away. And I was thinking about this, how the house is really cool and special. I'm sure. I'm sure people visit that house and they want to see the environment and the space where Paul McCartney grew up. But that is no comparison to when Paul himself is in the house.
[00:15:48] And here's what I want to tell you about the Bible. The Bible is such a key that unlocks our faith and our ability to understand and engage in our faith with God. But we do not worship the Bible.
[00:16:02] We do not hold up the Bible at the same level as Jesus himself.
[00:16:08] This story, and it is a wonderful story that reveals the artist, but it is not the artist itself.
[00:16:15] And it might be very fascinating to understand the structure of Paul McCartney's house and how the bricks were laid and how the layout of the house. And that would all tell you something about the story of the Beatles, but it pales into comparison. It pales in comparison to understanding and knowing and having a relationship with the artist himself. When the artist is in the house, that's what matters. And I want to tell you something about our church and who we are, and what makes us the community that we are, is that we love the Bible. And we believe the Bible has incredible and important things to say about who God is. But we are a Jesus church, and we are looking to know and understand the artist who is in the house.
[00:17:05] And so no matter how you want to engage today, whether you have great doubts about the truth of the Bible, whether you aren't so sure about this community or this church, maybe you're questioning Christianity. Is it good or is it bad? All these questions circle around us. I want to give you permission to have questions today, but at the end of our lives, I hope not that we just spent all of our time enamored and in worship of the structure, but that we really got to know the artist who's in the house, that we would say about our lives, that everything we did to understand the Bible and to read the Bible and to know the Bible was in service of getting to know the one who is revealed in the story. Amen.
[00:17:58] In the story, we meet the artist, and we look at the beginning of the story from the book of Genesis, at the very beginning. And then the story introduces us to this God who steps into this uncreated space, this uncreated world of chaos and unordered space and into that space. As the story of Genesis, one begins to tell us that God speaks into that and brings beauty and order in his creation. There is life and flourishing.
[00:18:33] And in the story of Genesis one, the crowning accomplishment of that creation is when God creates humankind, or a hebrew Adam. Adam, right.
[00:18:45] And it's this man and the woman, this humankind, that God breathes life into and says they are made in his image.
[00:18:56] And just like he has spoken order and beauty into this unordered space, he gives the man and the woman this job to do the same, to harness the potential and to create even more beauty and flourishing in the world that God has created. And in Genesis, chapter one, verse 31, this is what God does. After he creates all of this. He looks and says, then God looked over all that he had made of, and he saw that it was very good.
[00:19:26] The goodness of God is translated into the goodness of everything he has made.
[00:19:33] And we as humanity are the crowning accomplishment of that creation.
[00:19:39] And from the very beginning of this story, we find that God has in his mind a very special relationship between himself and the crowning accomplishment of his creation, the woman and the man.
[00:19:55] And if you know the story, you'll know that no sooner has he created humanity and he has engaged with relationship with him as he walks with them day by day, that humanity is given a choice in the form of a tree, as the story goes.
[00:20:13] And this tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they had this choice to make, that they could partner with God and they could find entrusting him and his knowledge of what is good and what is evil, that they would have life and communion with God and flourishing, or they could choose to seize power and define for themselves what was good and what was evil and to take into their own hands their future.
[00:20:43] And God warns that this will eventually kill them.
[00:20:47] In the narrative, they hear the voice of this, the Bible project guys call a dark, mysterious creature.
[00:20:55] And this creature tells them to take the fruit, take their future into their own hands, get knowledge on their own terms, enter into a different kind of relationship from what seems like an all controlling goddess. Go out, strike out on your own.
[00:21:14] And so they do.
[00:21:16] And what happens from that point, as we even experience today, is the world descends into violence and chaos once again.
[00:21:27] And eventually what it leads to is this civilization called Babylon, where good and evil are now not defined by this creator God who has put his goodness into the world he has created. But now good and evil are being defined by this civilization called Babylon.
[00:21:47] And in Babylon, good is seen as evil and evil is seen as good. And chaos and violence continue to Spiral.
[00:21:57] And then the story takes a turn, because out of this city, out of this civilization, comes this husband and wife, Abraham and Sarah.
[00:22:07] And to this couple, God speaks. And he says that he is going to use their family to create a new nation that will give the world another chance to make things right.
[00:22:20] And this begins the story of the Hebrew People.
[00:22:25] And if you know how that turned out.
[00:22:29] All throughout the Old Testament, we find this family struggling and making mistakes and unable to fulfill their covenant with God. But God never gives up.
[00:22:45] And so by the end of the old Testament, God has promised that he would send a new leader that would transform not just the status of this family, this nation, but that would transform hearts and minds.
[00:23:00] And then the Old Testament goes silent.
[00:23:04] And then we get to the New Testament. In the New Testament, we find that God is intent on his mission to redeem all things.
[00:23:14] And so out of the line of Abraham, out of the line of Israel's kings, a baby boy is born, and we celebrate him on Christmas each year. And also today, Jesus of Nazareth is born.
[00:23:30] And something about this child that's born as he grows up, people, even from a young age, can tell that the holy spirit of God is on him.
[00:23:41] And as he grows, he eventually steps into ministry, where he confronts that same dark, mysterious evil. He resists the power of the devil in the wilderness. And then he begins to announce the message that he came to announce.
[00:23:55] And here is what it was. He said, repent and turn towards heaven because God is coming close to you.
[00:24:04] That same God that walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, that same God that looked on all that he had made and said, it is very good. That same God was coming close again.
[00:24:17] And the story of Jesus continues. That he taught a new way of living, taught a new way of power, taught a new way to love the poor, and even to love your enemies, is now the ones that will be at the top of this new kingdom called the kingdom of God.
[00:24:34] He taught that to sacrificially love and to give even one's life is the ultimate expression of the heart and the love of God, to understand that those who are loved and forgiven by God can now love and forgive others. This was at the core of what Jesus taught.
[00:24:54] After Jesus was crucified and died and was buried, rumors began to spread that he hadn't stayed dead, but that he was resurrected and was still alive.
[00:25:06] And from this point, this Jesus movement began to spread across the world, and it formed new communities called churches. And these people would talk about these stories, about how God had not given up on his original intent, that the world he created would not be captive to fear and violence and destruction, but we'd be restored and redeemed.
[00:25:32] And these communities would spread throughout the known world, and they would talk about Jesus and call each other to hope for the day when Jesus would come again and make everything right once more.
[00:25:44] And we get to the end of the Bible and the book of revelation at the very end. And it points to a future day when God makes all things right, when sin and suffering are eliminated, and everything is very good once again. And I want to read this to you. Revelation 21 five, it says, and the one sitting on the throne said, look, I am making everything new. And then he said to me, write this down for what I tell you is trustworthy and true. And I want to tell you today that from beginning to end, God is in the business of making things new and good.
[00:26:19] And I think oftentimes what we experience in religious spaces is that this is the place we come where we hear from other people just how bad we are. And I think that there is a very, very important piece that God uses his word to reveal in us parts that need fixing and redemption and restoration.
[00:26:42] But I want to tell you from my heart today that I believe this, that God has made you in his image, very good.
[00:26:50] And that he is on the move in your life and in your relationships and in your family and in your purpose.
[00:26:59] Not to condemn you, not to reject you, not to give up on you. But he is intent in his purpose to restore and redeem all the parts of your heart that feel broken or lost or disconnected or isolated. He is at work, as he always has been, through the whole story of scripture, to redeem and restore.
[00:27:22] And I think there are lots of bad takes on what the Bible is all about. But as I even just talked through it in like, what, four minutes, I believe that the heart of scripture is that Jesus is the perfect representation of a God who designed us to know him and to be loved by him.
[00:27:40] And he is at work in the world around us, rolling out that redemption, rolling out that restoration every single day. And how is he doing it? He's doing it through us. Do you know that the environment that we live in, our family, our workplaces, our cities, those should all look better because we're a part of them.
[00:28:00] Those should all look more like redemption because you're part of that, you know, staff, or you're part of that family everywhere we go, that we embody the redemptive work of Jesus.
