MID-WEEK GATHERING

The Need for Christians to Know Why They Believe Scripture

If you're a Christian, then you believe that everything in Scripture is truth. And I meet a lot of Christians that will affirm certain things to be true in Scripture, but when it comes down to it, they're not really sure why they believe it.

They say, well, it's in Scripture. The Bible teaches this particular doctor. Maybe they heard their pastor or a Sunday school teacher or somebody like that tell them about this truth, but they're not really sure why the Christian faith has come to that conclusion that that is exactly what Scripture teaches.

And so we decided on our midweek gathering to start walking through this book right here. It's on this side. Everyone's a Theologian by Dr. R .C. Sproul. And this book is an introduction to something that's called systematic theology.

And I know that's kind of a big word. Most people are like, I don't know what that is. That's not for me. I'm not wanting to go to seminary. Well, here's the thing is this is giving us a grid of all of these particular truths from Scripture that we as Christians hold to.

And it walks us through why we as Christians, the church historically, has come to these conclusions. And it goes to Scripture and explains why we believe these things to be true. And we want to equip the saints with that truth so that you can be further established in your faith and in your walk.

All right.

Scripture as the God-Breathed Foundation for Ministry

I love what the Apostle Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3 .16. He said that, hey, all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

I think what Paul is saying is we need, particularly pastors, need to be equipped for that thing. But why would pastors need to be equipped with that? If it's not the pastor's job to then turn around and equip the saints as a whole with this truth.

You as a Christian are a theologian, as R .C. Sproul puts it there in the book. Everyone's a theologian. The question is are you a good theologian or are you a bad theologian? Have you studied to show yourself approved and diving into why you believe what you believe?

What Theology Is and Why Scripture Is Authoritative

And these are great opportunities for us. For example, the past two weeks we took on a few of the first chapters because they kind of apply to the same thing. And the first section that we looked at was what is theology?

Theology is the study of God. What are we looking at? And then the next four chapters that led up to chapter 8 were really just kind of laying out for us why Scripture is authoritative, why it is truly inspired by God, and how we came up with the 66 books that we do have in Scripture and how we can be assured that those are the ones that God intended for us.

And we've walked through that the past couple of weeks. But tonight we jump into our first section, which is something called theology proper. And I know that can seem intimidating, but it isn't. This breaks down into different categories.

The Knowledge of God and Anthropomorphic Language

For example, tonight we're going to talk about the knowledge of God. Like how do we know God? We have things called the incomprehensibility of God. What does that mean? The incomprehensibility of God, what does that even, how does that apply?

How can I even begin to comprehend who God is? Well, we walk through that. We talk about that. We talk about things like anthropomorphic language. Again, I know a big word, and it probably intimidates some of you if you've not been exposed to these things.

But this is important for us as Christians when we're reading Scripture. Like what do we do when we come in contact with a passage that says that God repented of something? And then we come to another passage that says that God is not like man.

He doesn't repent. He doesn't change his ways. What does that mean? What does it look like? Well, wait a second. I thought God didn't have a body. God is spirit, but yet it talks about the hand of God coming and writing on a wall.

I thought God didn't have a body. How does he have a hand? Well, we have to know. What does that mean? Anthropomorphic language that gives us this idea as to how we can know God. These are just some of the things that we're walking through that we believe are important for us as Christians to know about God.

A Small, Accessible Introduction to Systematic Theology

And we're going to do this week at a time, a small chapter. This is literally just an introduction to systematic theology. This is really hardly scratching the surface but giving us a foundation that we can build upon.

And we're only going to do, like I said, one chapter every single Wednesday night from here on out. And each of these chapters is anywhere between three to five pages. Very small. Very approachable. Very easy and accessible to read.

All of the big words are explained very, very well. And then we get to talk through them. And we get to grow in our faith because all Scripture is profitable. And it is changing us. It's molding our minds.

It's renewing us as a people of God and growing us in our knowledge of God and equipping us. God has prepared good works for us. We are called to go and work. We're not just called to sit around and read theology and do nothing with it.

That's a dead faith. That means nothing. We are to apply these immensely beautiful truths to our lives. And this is what applies. You want to help your neighbor that's in need? You better know who God is and how God has given the ability for you to be able to help your neighbor.

Do you want to witness? Do you want to evangelize the way that you know internally, like, I need to be evangelizing? We need to know who God is and what God's called us to and how we're called to evangelize.

And what does that look like? We need to be equipped. We need to know why we believe what we believe from Scripture. And that's why we're doing this on Wednesday nights. Please come and join us every Wednesday at 630.

Everyone is welcome. Teenagers, youth ages 10 and above, they meet with Pastor Jeremiah, and he is teaching them. But for us adults, we are gathering with this. If you need a copy of this book, I don't think we have many left.

But we do have a few at our resource desk that you can grab if you want to join us in this study. But we would love to have you come and grow with us every Wednesday at 630. We look forward to seeing you there.