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In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp teaches the sufficiency of Scripture and its application in our lives. He emphasizes that the Bible is necessary for knowing God, understanding the gospel, and growing in our relationship with Him. The sufficiency of Scripture means that it contains all the words of God that we need for salvation, knowing Him, and obeying His will. Pastor Aaron provides several applications of the sufficiency of Scripture, including knowing objective truth and morality, not adding any other writings to Scripture, and not considering modern revelations equal to Scripture. He also encourages applying the Bible to our relationships in our families, churches, and the world.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- The Bible is necessary for knowing God, understanding the gospel, and growing in our relationship with Him.
- The sufficiency of Scripture means that it contains all the words of God that we need for salvation, knowing Him, and obeying His will.
- We should not add any other writings to Scripture or consider modern revelations equal to Scripture.
- We can know objective truth and morality through Scripture.
- We should apply the Bible to our relationships in our families, churches, and the world.
- Humility, transparency, and testimony are important in applying the Bible to our mission in the world.
Creators & Guests
What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?
Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.
Aaron Shamp (00:00)
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God,
may be complete, equipped for every good work." So those are some of the most famous words in the Bible that talk about the Bible and what is the Bible's view of itself. And so that is Paul, the apostle Paul writing to Timothy there in 2 Timothy chapter 3, telling him about the usefulness of scripture and that it is all inspired by God through human authors and that it is given to us so that the man or woman,
So the man and woman of God may be equipped, he says, for every good work. We are doing this series called How to Read the Bible because we believe in what Paul says here. We agree with it. We agree that the Bible is necessary and that it has the power to transform us into people who look more like Christ and to draw us closer to him and to equip us for every good work.
The Bible is necessary for this. That's what we looked at last week. The necessity of the Bible to know God, to know the gospel and be saved and then to grow in the spiritual life, to grow in our relationship with Christ and so on. And so we're continuing this week and we're getting close to the end of the seven arrows for this series on how to read the Bible. I've been using a...
structure by a couple of other guys named Matt Rogers and Donnie Mathis, which they call the seven arrows for Bible reading. So that's what we've been using as the structure of our series, but I'm also adding in some of my own insights and things I've learned over the years. I'm also adding in some foundational truths that inform the way that we read the Bible. And so we're going to keep following that same format today. We're going to start with the foundational truth, and then we're going...
going to go into arrow number six, which is where we're at today. So we got arrow six today, seven next week, and then we are done with this series. And so we're going to do a foundational truth and then arrow six. Starting last week and then today and next week, these arrows are very heavy on application. And so we're going to be continuing in that today. So since we're getting more into the application section, I decided to take out that last piece that I had been doing for the first few weeks where
I showed you how to work out that skill, right, of like theological thinking or observation or whatever else in those three passages, and now that's your homework to do, okay, since I'm teaching you how to apply. You go home and read Psalm 1, Matthew 21, and Colossians 1, and work on applying those. So, anyway, let's go ahead and get started with our foundational truth for today. The reason that we do this is because what we believe about Scripture will inform the way that we approach Scripture.
And now just consider that today. Whenever we think about how do I become a Christian? What do I need to know? What do I need to do in order to become a Christian? Well, I know that the Bible tells me some things, but do I also need some church teachings to become a Christian? Do I need the Bible as well as some church teachings? Do I need the Bible as well as some sacraments to perform in order to...
know God and grow in a relationship with him. Do I need the Bible and maybe the special revelation of a preacher or the special word of a priest in order to know God and grow and be saved? Depending on how you answer that question, it's going to change the way that you view scripture. It's going to change the way that you view scripture and that you think about what it means to live the Christian life and the value that you're going to have.
for scripture in your life. So our first point today, our answer to that question is that no, we do not need anything else other than the Bible in order to know God, accept the gospel, and grow in a relationship with him. Our point for today is that the Bible is a sufficient word. The Bible is a sufficient word. In systematic theology, we call this the sufficiency of scripture. The sufficiency of scripture. It means that scripture is
all that we need in order to know God, to be saved, and then to grow in relationship with God. And we see this in the verses that Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy. He tells him to remember those scriptures that he was raised with. We know from the New Testament that Timothy was raised by a Greek, as far as we know, Greek pagan father, but then a Jewish mother.
And that the Jewish mother, as well as either a grandmother or an aunt, I can't remember, taught Timothy the Scriptures from the time that he was a little boy until he became a man. He met Paul and he heard the gospel for the first time. And so Paul is reminding him that he has been hearing the Scriptures from the time that he was a boy. He says, you know, you heard the Scriptures, which are able to give wisdom for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. He does not mention anything else. He doesn't say, now, you also need this.
this church teaching, you also need this religious ritual, you also need another special revelation, a word of wisdom given to you on top of that. You need an extra pouring out of the spirit on top of that. No, he says, you were taught the scriptures and that is what gives you the wisdom for faith in Jesus Christ. That is what saves you. That is what you need to bind yourself in unity with Christ in relationship with God.
He goes on to say how all scripture is inspired by God. So in other words, though it was written down by human authors, those authors were inspired by God to write those words. And he says, for what? He says, for all these things, teaching, rebuking, and so on, so that you may be equipped for every good work. We look at this and we say, okay then, in answer to the question, do we need anything else? The answer is no. The answer is no.
We do not look at any other documents. We do not look at any other teachings of the church, even the ancient historical creeds as helpful and as good as they are and place them on the same level of scripture. Scripture is sufficient for us for all that we need to know God, experience salvation, to know his will and to be equipped for every good work. The sufficiency of scripture means that the Bible contains
all the words of God that we need for salvation, knowing Him and obeying His will. Okay, let me draw this out for you by giving you several applications of what the sufficiency of Scripture means for us. So the first one is this, we can know objective truth and morality. We can know objective truth and morality whenever it comes to the big questions of life about...
What kind of world do we live in? Is there an ultimate reality? Is there a God? If there's a God, what is it or who is he, right? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live under the God that if there is one in this world and so on, right? The big questions of life, how do we live the good life? How do we seek a society that is flourishing and so on?
We can answer these questions because God has given us his words. These are not the answers to these questions that come from scripture are not time and culturally bound. In other words, God's answers or the Bible's answers to these questions that were written in many centuries past were not only true then, they are true now. And they're not only true in certain places and for certain people, but they are true.
in all places, across all cultures, in all time, for all people. They are objective truth. The Christian theologian and apologist Francis Schaeffer used to say that what the Christian worldview gives us is truth with a capital T. It is true truth, he used to say. So because we have the words of God given to us in scripture, whenever we ask, how do I answer the big questions of life?
Well, we have firm ground to stand upon because we have God's revelation to us in his words. So we can know objective truth and morality. And you see, we live in a culture today that disagrees with that statement that I just made. They disagree that any one person can really know objective truth, like that truth of the capital T, and really know objective morality.
Instead, it's assumed that no one can truly know those things. We just have to do whatever is best for each of us or whatever is best for the community, right? What is objective truth and morality in our culture is whatever feels good to me. So each individual person in our culture runs around as their own God, as their own ultimate authority. As Christians,
We do not take such an arrogant position, but instead we lay ourselves down under the authority in the teaching of scripture. And we do not say, it is not whatever I desire that is true, but it is what God desires. It's not my will, it is his will. We lay ourselves down underneath the word. Because scripture is sufficient to answer those questions for us. So that's the first thing. We can know objective truth and morality. Secondly,
The sufficiency of scripture means that we should add no other writings to scripture or alongside scripture. We should add no other writings to this. Okay, so a very obvious example of this would be Mormonism. Mormonism is a cult that is kind of an offshoot cult of Christianity. And what happens in Mormonism is that they take another book and they place it on the same level, if not a little bit above,
authority of the Bible. Mormons do not deny the Bible fully, but they take the Book of Mormon, which was supposedly a revelation to Joseph Smith, and they place it alongside and say, and they say, you see here you need both. As Christians, we reject that. We say no. We reject adding anything to scripture, such as the Roman Catholic Bible that adds the apocryphal books.
We say, no, there are no other Gnostic gospels. There are no other apocryphal books that should be put with scripture or even alongside scripture or certainly not raised above it. This applies to church teachings as well. There is no confession of faith. There is no ancient creed, no matter how. And like I said, I think a lot of them are great. The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, right? The different...
great confessions from church history such as the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Confession, the London Baptist Confession, like these are wonderful but they sit below scripture. We do not raise any of these teachings next to it. Now someone might say, why? What's so bad about that? Right? Is it really all that bad to have the Bible as well as the guidance from the wisdom of saints in the past? Here's a response.
we reject placing anything alongside scripture, right? It can be beneath, but anything alongside scripture and equal authority with it because inevitably what happens is that those teachings will slowly inch over and above scripture and be seen as superior to them. And the value that you hold for scripture will increasingly go down.
The sufficiency of the word means that we can know truth and morality. We should add no other writings to scripture or alongside scripture. Third, it means that we should consider no modern revelations to be equal to scripture and authority. Once again, an easy example of this would be Mormonism and that Joseph Smith back in the 1800s claimed that he had this special new revelation.
from an angel as to all the things that were left out of the Bible, right? So that's an example of something that we reject. Let me give you something that's a little bit more, I mean, that's modern, but let me give you something that's a little bit more modern and contemporary than that. This would be in some cases where you might go to a church where there is a person who says, I have a special word of wisdom, right? I have a special revelation from God as to what he desires for you, what he wants for you, what he's gonna do in your life.
And I wanna share that with you. The people who do this, I grew up in churches where they did that, the people who do this are well -meaning. I'm not trying to bash on anyone. Some of the most well -intentioned, sweet -hearted people, but they're off. Now there's times whenever God does impress something on our heart. Maybe he is leading us to go and give a word of encouragement to someone. Maybe if we see.
some error in their life, a word of warning, but we never take that word, that impression, what we think God might be leading us to say and place it on the same level as scripture is like, here is another revelation. A lot of the times, whenever people practice that, I don't necessarily think that they're saying this is equal to scripture, but if we develop a culture where these so -called words of wisdom are,
are extremely prevalent and encouraged. I'm once again afraid that what tends to happen is we start to look for sister or brother's word of wisdom when we look for the word of wisdom that's already in scripture for us. So I'm not completely saying wrong, discounted, right? There can be times whenever God does lead someone to encourage, correct, or whatever else.
However, any time that that is done, it has to sit beneath scripture. We have to test it against the word. In 1 John, it tells us, if you were here a few years ago, wherever Doug Grodhise came, he preached on this. John tells us to test the spirits, okay? So if someone says a spirit, right, even if they say the Holy Spirit told me to say this, well, that's not scripture. We need to test it, test it against scripture. And if it aligns with scripture, then we should praise God, right?
Fourth, we should not call anything sinful, which is not forbidden by scripture. Throughout many different times in church history, and even still today, we see occasions where a certain church or a denomination or group of Christians will pick out one thing that they say, you know, this is bad, this is sin, and so Christians should not do this.
One that's not as common today but was several decades ago was going to the movie theaters. There's still people who say that that's sin, you shouldn't do that. But it was a little bit more common, you know, kind of like in the early 20th century, that going to the movie theaters was sinful or dancing, right? That's the old stereotype of Baptists, that Baptists don't dance, right? These are things that some traditions and denominations have looked at before. They said that is sinful. That is wrong.
But if scripture is sufficient to tell us what is the will of God and how we ought to obey him, then we should look at the Bible and say, what does it have to say about these things, about movie theaters, about dancing, about alcohol, about different things that various Christians have differing opinions and convictions on, we need to go back to scripture and say, well, what does it say? And if there is something that is not forbidden in scripture,
then we must not go so far as to call it sin and condemn anyone who disagrees. We recognize that there is freedom in certain areas, that we ought to follow our conscience and how the spirit leads us, how we ought to follow wisdom, and we ought to respect those who disagree, but we cannot go so far as to start calling anything sinful that's not forbidden by scripture because scripture is sufficient to guide us in every good work.
The last one is this, the last application of this sufficiency of scripture. We should appreciate the wisdom of non -scriptural resources, but submit them to the Bible's authority. Okay.
If you've ever heard of the five solas before, right, it's kind of a reformed, I don't know what you would call it, right, yeah, it's kind of a Protestant thing. It is describing how one is saved and that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone, right? And these are described as sola gratia, sola fide, and so on. And so one of those is sola scriptura by,
through the scriptures alone. And sola scriptura, which is essentially what I've been teaching here, does not mean solo scriptura as only the scriptures. We can still read Christian books. We can still read commentaries. We can still read systematic theologies and theological dictionaries. We can still read books on...
business and science and economics and appreciate and soak up the wisdom that is in those things. What they say, which is true, we affirm it is true, but we still always have them submit to scripture. There's no other resource, whether it be a Christian resource, a good Christian book or commentary, or something that is not Christian, but just teaching about sociology or whatever else.
There is nothing else that we allow to rise up to and disagree with scripture. We always have scripture above it and over it, okay? So I just want to, as we kind of finish up these application points here, I don't want anyone to think that the sufficiency of scripture means that Christians can only ever read the Bible and reject everything else. That's not true. It just means that whenever we ask, how do we truly know God? What do we need to know him? The Bible is sufficient. It is.
It is everything and anything else sits underneath it.
As we think about the sufficiency of scripture and what is it good for and do we need the wisdom, insights, or help of any other resources, this is important for us to apply to our relationships. It's important for us to apply the sufficiency of scripture to our social lives and social context because one of the things that we see,
or most often what is debated and what is attacked in Christianity in our culture today is the more social aspects of our culture, of a society and what Christianity has to say about those. How people live together in a society. How, you know, do we allow people to follow whatever their heart tells them or is okay to disagree with that and so on. How do people of different religions live
together, should we say that none of them have the right to absolute truth claims and so on. It's important for us to say, to consider is the Bible enough for us to know how to navigate all of these different relationships in a social context or do we need the wisdom of things outside scripture? Scripture should always end up being applied not just to us individually but also outwardly to relationships.
and yes, even on a societal level. In Ephesians chapter two, Paul, in one of the most famous and best descriptions of the gospel, Paul tells us about how the gospel, you know, we started out as dead in our sin, children living under the enemy and against God and so on. But then by grace, we were saved, right, through faith alone, through the work of Jesus Christ, so that we might live out the good works that God had prepared for us.
beforehand, right? We see that in verses one through ten, a beautiful description of the gospel. But then after that, in the rest of Ephesians chapter two, Paul describes how the gospel transforms our relationships. He describes how it transforms a society. He explains how the gospel and how the barrier wall being torn down between us and God also tears down the barrier walls between us and one another.
It tells us how the gospel leads to reconciled relationships. And so therefore, the gospel transforms not only individuals, but it can transform communities.
So when we ask, is scripture sufficient not only for my individual spiritual life, but also for my relationships? The answer is yes. Our individual relationships and our personal relationships, but even on a societal level. We do not need to accept the wisdom of anything else that would pitch itself above or against the wisdom of scripture whenever it comes to our relationships and our...
social contexts in a culture. And so, this leads us to arrow number six. Arrow number six asks the question, how does this passage change the way I relate to people? How does this passage change the way I relate to people? And so, as we work through arrow number six, I'm gonna give you three places to apply it. Let's begin with the first one.
Whenever we answer error number six and we read a passage and say, how has this changed my relationships, the most natural place to begin is with the people closest to you. And so first of all, we need to apply the Bible to our families. It's natural to begin with by considering the people who are the closest to you, whether that be a spouse, children, parents, siblings, et cetera. We recognize that there are other relationships in our life that...
though they might not be direct blood relatives are the same. Maybe you have a cousin who is like a sibling to you. Maybe you have another family friend who is that near and dear to you. But we should begin by looking here. I think there is a very unfortunate and often sad thing that happens in people who start to become very familiar with Christianity and know how to live it out.
at least on a surface level really well out in the world, but then very poorly in their homes. Very poorly in their homes. Maybe, you know, at church they're that awesome guy or that woman who just serves above and beyond, but then at home, not like that to their spouse at all. Maybe they are loving and they're supportive and they are encouraging.
in their groups and in church contexts and at serving events, but not as loving and encouraging towards their children, or not as forgiving towards their parents or siblings and so on. I think it is a very, very unfortunate occurrence that happens whenever some people become too acquainted with how to live out Christianity on a service level, but not truly allowed to sink down into their heart, it comes out in the home.
And so if we want to make sure that we have the word, if we have the gospel really transforming our hearts, before you start thinking about how you're going to change the world, you need to start in the home. You need to start with your spouse, your children, parents, siblings, et cetera. So much of the New Testament is directly applied to our households. Whenever you go in, you read Paul's letters. They all follow a similar format, where he begins with a,
theological teaching that might last for the first half or maybe three quarters of the book. And then at the end of the letter, he applies it to life. He gets really practical. And do you know where he almost always applies it to first? The household. He says, here's what God has done. And here's how that gospel changes your homes. That's why we did.
Ephesians, the first half of Ephesians last year and after this series we're going to be going back into Ephesians to look at how Paul applies the gospel to our households. To say, you know, the gospel isn't something that just impacts us personally, but then it changes our homes. We can have homes that are actually shaped by the gospel. So we should start here. Consider how any passage you're reading can be applied to your family lives. Consider Philippians 2, 3 through 4. Let me go ahead and just...
flip to these passages here. In Philippians 2, 3, and 4, this is a part of the hymn that Paul gives to the believers here. I'm sorry, this is right before it, but in Philippians 2, 3, through 4, he says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also the interests of others. Think about how
how powerful it could be if you started applying that and living that out in your home. How many little moments of conflict in your marriage or with your kids are there that could have been avoided, could have been not just avoided, neutralized and transformed if you would have lived out those verses first? Whenever I do pre -medal counseling with people, I always tell them, whenever we talked about conflict and so on, how...
Nine times out of ten, conflict never starts if you first begin with that check of your own heart. Because so often what's happening is I'm wanting to assert my will, my desire, and me over the home and turn the home into my own little kingdom here. But if I follow what Paul says here, which is do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but consider others as more important than myself, and I took that servant attitude instead.
How many of those conflicts could be avoided or neutralized before they even began, right? Consider Colossians 3, 23 and 24.
23 and 24, Paul says, whatever you do, do it from the heart as something done for the Lord and not for people. Knowing that you will receive the reward of inheritance from the Lord, you serve the Lord Christ. Consider, how could that change your household if you started to take that attitude? So often we take these things and we start to apply them and live them out in places where people will see it, we don't live it out so well in the privacy of our homes. We gotta start.
by applying it to our families.
Secondly, we must apply the Bible to our church. So we're gonna look at how it changes relationships. We begin in the household or with our families, with those people nearest to us. And then we move from there to the church. How do we apply the Bible to our church? Once again, whenever Paul teaches in any of his letters, so, so often he moves from theological teaching, explaining the gospel, maybe fighting against some heresy or error that was in that church, and then moves to application in the household and then also in...
the churches. So much of the applications of the New Testament in Paul's letters and Peter's and so on apply to relationships in the church. Here's what that means. It means that if you are not applying the words of the New Testament to your relationships in the church, you are not living out much of the New Testament's teaching.
These can be some of the most difficult to actually apply because they require hard work in the context of real relationships. But if we do not do the hard work of being in those real covenantal relationships, then we are not obeying and living out much of the New Testament's teaching. It's easy for us to read some of the passages in Romans where it talks about bearing with one another in joy.
as well as in grief where we read about loving one another in first John and so on. It's really easy to live those things out if you're not around other people. It's easy to talk about peace and relationships if you have no relationships. To love someone in the church, if you aren't actually in the church, you read that and you say to yourself, okay, well, I feel love. But then you get into a church where there's people that aren't so easy to love sometimes. Or maybe where you...
You get into conflicts and disputes with them, and then you have to actually start living it out. If you're not in a covenantal relationship with the church, you're not gonna be able to do it. You know, I heard someone say, I heard someone say this week or the week before, how every church is perfect until people show up.
which is why we have these teachings from the New Testament on how to apply the gospel to our homes and then our church relationships, because it's messy once you get people involved. More than that, this is why it is important for you to have a covenantal relationship with your church and church membership. If we don't have a covenantal view of our membership in a church, then we're never gonna be able to live out.
these applications from scripture because every time it gets difficult, which is the opportunity to really live out those things about loving one another, about serving one another, as soon as our membership in a church asks something of us, if we jump ship every time our church asks something of us by being members, or it is difficult to love someone, or there's people there that we don't like, et cetera, then we're not able to live out what the New Testament tells us about what it means to be a part of a church.
Therefore we need to have a covenantal mindset towards our membership in a church and that we are committed so that we can apply what scripture says. Now, this might not mean that you're gonna be able to apply everything that scripture says to every person in your church, okay? We all have our capacity, but it does mean that you can practice it and live it out.
in your groups and in those close relationships that you have within the church membership. It takes intentionality, but if you read what scripture tells you and ask this question of how do I apply it to my relationships in the church, you will find endless opportunities to do that. So we apply the Bible to our homes, to our church, but then lastly, we need to apply it to our relationships in the world. In other words, we need to apply the Bible to our mission.
We need to remember that God gives us His word, the scripture. He gives us His word in the gospel. He gives us His word in Jesus Christ. With that, He gives us His spirit and then He sends us on mission in the world. In Acts chapter one, it says that before Jesus ascended, He gathered His disciples together and He told them to wait for the Spirit's power. He had given them the word. He was the word incarnate with them and He had given them the word. He had taught them.
But before they could go out and do anything, he said, wait for the spirit and pray. So they prayed and waited for the spirit. And then once the spirit came, so once they had the word and the spirit, what happened? They went out on mission. What that tells us is that people who have been transformed by the word and the spirit is active in their life, they will be on mission. Charles Spurgeon said that every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.
It's the only choice. If we have been transformed, then we are sent on mission. In 1 Peter chapter two, we see a great example of this. If I can find 1 Peter real quick. In 1 Peter chapter two, in verses nine and 10, before this, Peter talks about how the word transforms us. And what does it do? In verse nine he says, but you are a chosen race.
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, such you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." What he's saying here, he says, you have been transformed by the word into these wonderful things, right? Chosen race, royal priesthood. But why? Such you may proclaim his praises.
to the world that is mission.
If you are reading scripture and in communion with the Holy Spirit, you will be sent on mission. And if you're on mission, it's gonna drive you back into the word. The two work in a cyclical relationship with one another. The word sends us on mission and the mission will fuel us going back to the word because we need that nourishment and wisdom from the word in order to fuel our mission.
If you look at your life and you see a large gap, I bet that you have some weakness in both areas and not just one. Maybe you haven't been on mission, you haven't been driven to be a missionary because your time and the word has been lacking the spirit. You've been reading dry, you've been reading alone without prayer and meditation on the word, inviting the spirit to come into your heart to make the word come alive, right, and help you to live it out.
Or on the other hand, you haven't been recognizing your need for that daily, frequent time in the Word because you haven't been living out what the Word says on mission in the world.
So how do you do it? How do you take what you're reading in the Word and apply it to your mission? Let me give you three really simple encouragements or applications on this point before we close. The first one is this. As you are reading in scripture and asking, Lord, how do I take what you have taught me here and bring it out into the world, whether it be coworkers, friends, neighbors, or so on, the first point is this, is to have humility. Have humility.
No one wants to, no one in our culture today, probably even ourselves, wants someone to walk up to us and just say, you know you're wrong, you know, about whatever it is. You know you're wrong or you know that you're bad, right? We don't engage in the mission in an attitude or position of superiority, but we need to do so in humility. We recognize that we are only a chosen race, royal priesthood, a people of God's best possession. Why? By His grace.
We know that we have objective truth and morality, not because we discovered it, not because we decided it, but because we submit ourselves to scripture. And so if you are really having the gospel worked into your heart, then you're gonna engage in the mission in humility, right? Because you know of your need for grace. So approach it with humility. The second thing is approach with transparency. Whenever you are on mission and sharing with someone in your office, at work, wherever else,
Whatever you're sharing with them about something that you have read in the Bible, be transparent about how, you know, you're not saying you're an expert and maybe you were struggling to read something. You know, you can turn even your confusion about scripture maybe into an evangelistic opportunity. If you tell someone, you know, I was reading this in the Bible this morning and I was trying to understand this or that, or I was confused by this, or I'm trying to figure out what it means for life.
And just, so just be transparent about your time in the Word, about what you're reading in the Word with them as a place from just, look, I'm not trying to preach at you, I'm just, we're just chatting about our life. And I'm talking to you about my morning, right? Be humble, be transparent. And then the last one is using testimony. Not just testimony of how you were saved, right? When you became a Christian, but the testimony of what God is doing in your life right now.
what he is doing in your reading of the word. You read a Psalm, you read a proverb that just, man, it hit you right in between the eyes or it melted your heart. You just share that and you say, you know, so and so, I was reading this in the Bible this morning and that just sounded exactly like my life. Or you say to them, you know what, I was struggling with something similar to what you're telling me. And in the Bible, I read this and it helped me to overcome that because I learned about.
You know, Jesus' love for me, I learned about the faithfulness of God to me based upon the work of Christ. Use your testimony of how God is transforming you through his word with the person that you're talking to. So three things, remember humility, remember transparency, and then testimony in order to apply the Bible in which you're reading to the mission that you have in the world. So let us pray.
Father, we thank you for the gift of your word and we thank you that you give us your word and your spirit so that we might be transformed by your word. Lord, help us to apply the things that we are reading in scripture to our own hearts, minds, and hands, but then let it transform our relationships so that we have households that are shaped by the gospel, so that we have a church where people are living out the teaching of.
the Bible in our relationships and then let it bring about transformation on the mission fields that you have sent each of us into. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.