Biblical Theology (3 of 10 non-negotiable elements of a healthy church)

Well, it is so wonderful to be with all of you this morning. A couple weeks ago, Pastor Nathan began our new sermon series called

Healthy Church Essentials. And so we're asking the question, what makes a healthy church?

And so if you are a Christian, then you have a responsibility to help in building a healthy church.

Jesus commands us to go and make disciples. The book of Jude tells us that we are to build ourselves up in the faith.

The apostle Peter says to use your gifts to serve one another. The apostle

Paul says for us to speak the truth in love so that we can grow up as a local body of believers to maturity.

And so the aim of our preaching series is to equip you to fulfill these biblical commands, to have koinonia.

This means to be in joint participation with one another. So that's what it means to have fellowship.

And so we do this, we want to grow for our love for the church the way that Jesus Christ loves the church, his bride.

So local churches exist to display the glory of God to all the nations. We do that by looking to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, and then loving one another with God's own holiness, his unity, and his love.

And so Nathan began by starting with preaching the word of God expositionally.

And so the two main goals in expositional preaching is number one, drawing out the truths from God's word.

And then we study the scripture in its grammatical historical context. This will allow us to have

God's intended truth to any passage because we are looking to the original audience to understand how they would have understood the word of God preached.

And so expository preaching, number two, then applies principles from what we've learned from exegeting the text and how we should then live our lives in light of what we've learned.

And so in every verse, in every passage of scripture, there is always one truth in many applications.

And so expositional preaching is so important because when it is faithfully followed, it results in the whole counsel of God being preached.

Always scripture interpreting scripture. When the expositor deals with the text, he does so verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book.

This helps us avoid taking verses out of context, and this forces the faithful pastor to give due diligence to the controversial passages, the things that are hard to understand.

We must deal with these things. And so last week, Pastor Nathan then looked at the gospel.

The gospel is a non -negotiable for a healthy church in terms of its orthodoxy and its orthopraxy.

Orthodoxy simply means to have right doctrine. Orthopraxy means that you have the right practice of what you are then learning.

We must not only believe in the right gospel of grace, but it must also directly impact how we live our lives.

And so if we are a people that overemphasize sound doctrine and theology without exhorting the heart to live to the glory of God, we are no different than the church of Ephesus.

You remember that they left their first love. These were a people that were able to discern who the false teachers were and stay away from them, but they did so by not loving

Christ and not loving one another. And so that's an extreme, right, to overemphasize orthodoxy.

But you can also do the other extreme by overemphasizing orthopraxy. Pastor Nathan talked about this extreme is where people are really, really nice and they are really kind to one another, but it is without any depth of understanding the scriptures.

This results in a fake kind of niceness, and it is not grounded in the truth of God's Word.

We are to be loving, yes, but that love must be spoken and acted upon in truth.

The scripture commands us to grow in the grace. Think about how we interact and love one another and the knowledge of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So we must look to that balance of gospel orthodoxy and gospel orthopraxy.

This will produce a healthy gospel culture for the saints to flourish in their sanctification, their fellowship and deep discipleship with one another.

And so this moves us to the main topic this morning. We're going to be talking about the next non -negotiable of a healthy church, and that is biblical theology.

So what does that mean? Biblical theology seeks to understand the Bible as a unified whole rather than a collection of disjointed doctrines.

So we understand it holistically. Biblical theology helps us understand the glorious roadmap of scripture, always pointing to the

King, Jesus Christ, and his blood -bought people. It is all about him.

And so if we are reading the roadmap of scripture correctly, this always leads us to Christ and his people that he has redeemed.

It is all about him and his purposes of glory. And so I believe the church is in desperate need for biblical theology because it's so easy to read the

Bible and to even be excited about it, but miss its very point, what it's trying to communicate.

You may miss the focus by looking to the scenery or looking too much at minor characters.

You might read only paragraphs at a time and aimlessly skip around from one place to another.

I have been guilty of that. And so sometimes we may feel like we've gotten the plot down, but we may skip over here and go over there, and I've been guilty of reading something and not seeing how it fits in the grand scheme of all of scripture.

And so simply put, you won't understand the story of the Bible unless you understand it is all about Jesus Christ.

That means from Genesis to Revelation, Jesus is the hero. He is the point of the story.

You won't understand who Jesus is unless you also understand the larger story also being connected to him.

Jesus is the interpretive key to the Bible. This means that the careful

Bible reader will find him in the beginning, in the middle, in the end. So I want to share with you an example of what

I'm talking about. Do we all know the story of David and Goliath? Right? Went to Sunday school, you drew the pictures.

I know you did, like I did. But growing up, I was taught that I was to have the courage of David and just to take up these smooth stones of faith so I can slay the

Goliath -sized problems in my life. That's what I was taught. But biblical theology comes in and tells us you are actually not

David in that story, and Goliath is not your problems. David is a picture of Jesus Christ.

He is the one who conquered the enemies of sin and death, and the arch enemy of God, the devil.

That's what that story is telling us about, and if we were honest, we are more like the scared Israelites who need a savior.

Or even worse, we might be like the Philistines, the pagan Philistines that are hostile towards God and his people.

And so we understand that firstly, that this is telling us about Jesus, then we can learn those many applications.

We can look to David and see that, yes, he is a man after God's own heart, and see what a person of faith looks like.

But we have to understand that one truth that's intended to communicate to us, and it's always about Christ.

And so now, I want to show you how Jesus interpreted and understood the Old Testament, and how all of it is pointing back to him.

If you would, please join me in turning your copy of God's word to Luke chapter 24.

I kind of want to move this too, if that's okay with y 'all. I get a little rowdy up there, so I'd hate to send an arm left, and there goes a microphone.

So in Luke chapter 24, starting in verse 13, I want us to look at these two individuals on the road to Emmaus.

They encounter the risen Savior, Jesus, and he begins to unpack how all the

Hebrew scriptures point to him. He is the message of it all.

So starting in verse 13, we read, And that very day two of them were going to a village named

Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about these things that had happened.

And while they were talking and discussing with one another, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

And he said to them, What is this conversation that y 'all are holding with each other as you walk? They stood still, looking sad.

Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

And Jesus says to them, What things? And they said to him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, besides all of this, it is now the third day since these things had happened.

Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and they did not find his body.

They came back saying that they had seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women said, but him they did not see.

And he said to them, O foolish ones, slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Let's pray this morning. Heavenly Father, we just want to praise your holy name and all of who you are.

Thank you so much for allowing us to gather this Lord's day. Lord, we pray that you would send your spirit to open up our heart and our minds to your truth.

Lord, please teach us. God, please give us ears to hear and please give us understanding.

We pray all these things in your name, Lord. Amen. So if you would look back with me at verse 13. Here we see two individuals.

One is named Cleopas, and they were going to a village named Emmaus. And so on the way here, they encountered the risen

Christ. And verse 16 tells us that they were kept from recognizing him. So yes, this is the risen

Christ, and I believe that he was glorified, but his glory was veiled. It's not like back on the Mount of Transfiguration where his face was shining like the sun.

So they perceived him to be just an ordinary person here. And then Jesus asked them why they were sad.

And Cleopas said, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

And so I love how Jesus here asked a question because he definitely knows what's going on, right?

But he wants to get a response. Jesus said, what things? And I'm sure

Cleopas was about to lose his mind thinking how clueless could someone be over these last number of days.

But I want you to listen to Cleopas' detailed response about all of these events that had just happened.

Because every single one of them was prophesied in the Hebrew scriptures to take place.

And so these two individuals missed that important reality. All of these events were necessary because they were foretold to happen the exact way that they did.

And so verse 19, Cleopas started by saying, concerning Jesus of Nazareth.

Okay, Nazareth is very important. This is a description from where Jesus came from. It was very clear who

Cleopas was talking about. And so it's unmistakable. In fact, another gospel writer in Matthew chapter 2 verse 23 says this about Jesus connected with Nazareth.

There we read, and Jesus went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets must be fulfilled, that he would be called a

Nazarene. So in some way it was prophesied that Jesus would come out of this city.

This likely refers to the theme of the Old Testament prophets that foretold that Messiah would be despised.

And if you know anything about Nazareth, this was a very despised and rejected people.

And yet in God's providence, that's where the branch of Jesse would emerge from, one of his descendants, the

King of Kings. And so it's no accident that Jesus was from Nazareth.

And so also when we look at the word Nazareth, this is very important to understanding the biblical

Jesus, the only Jesus that can save. Acts chapter 4 says, let it be known to all of you and all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom

God raised from the dead, this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone and there is no salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

And so I want to emphasize, you must believe in the right Jesus to be saved.

Why do I say that? Well, there's a lot of people that say, I'm a Christian. Yeah, I follow Jesus, but my question is which one, right?

Because Mormons say they believe in Jesus, but they believe in a made up Jesus that is the brother to Satan. Jehovah's Witnesses say they believe in Jesus, but not the second person of the

Trinity. They believe that Jesus was created by the father. And there are many people in our community that say they believe in Jesus, but that he already returned in the past at 70

AD and he's not going to restore this sin -cursed world. All of these

Jesuses are wrong. They cannot save. Why? Because they are not real. The apostle

Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 11 about being led astray by the cunnings of the devil.

He says, for if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if we have received a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Paul's point here is that do not embrace the lies, the damning lies of false teachers.

We look to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the God -man, the only righteous one who said it is finished at Calvary.

And we look to him in faith alone, apart from trying to add our good works to his already finished work, amen?

So we go on in verse 19, Cleopas says how Jesus is a man who was a prophet, mighty indeed in word before God and all the people.

And here, Cleopas is exactly right, because in Deuteronomy 18, Moses foretold of a coming

Messiah that would be greater than him as a prophet, that he would be mighty in this way.

And so in verse 20, Cleopas continues to explain the events that have just taken place. He says how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and they crucified him.

All of these were long prophesied in the Hebrew scriptures to happen. In Psalm 22, Isaiah 53,

Zechariah chapter 12, all of these go into great detail how Messiah's hands and feet would one day be pierced to the point of death.

And so what I find amazing is that all these prophecies were written centuries before crucifixion was even invented.

That is remarkable, because how could these prophets have foretold about something like this? Well, the all -knowing

God revealed to them what was going to take place, how they were necessary. All of those details about the

Messiah's hands and feet being pierced is incredible, because there's only one explanation, it would be by crucifixion.

And so Cleopas, not only was he unaware of the Hebrew scriptures and what they explicitly taught about these events, but he makes the wrong conclusion here about the matter.

Verse 21 he says, but we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem

Israel. So they were assuming that Jesus had failed in redeeming the people of God.

And so I'm sure the Jewish understanding of redemption, redeeming means to buy out, to be released from slavery by payment of a ransom.

This would have been Levitical law that taught in order to redeem something, it required a payment.

And so I'm sure Cleopas would have had this in mind with most of Israel. They would have believed that Messiah would free them from the

Roman oppression. That's what was at the forefront of their minds. But they forgot about the price that Messiah would first have to do and ransom them back to the

Father. He must first suffer and die as a perfect substitute on our behalf to atone and satisfy the wrath of God.

The Jews of old, they would have knew very clearly Zechariah 9 verse 10 that says, behold, your king is coming to you, the war horse of Jerusalem and the battle bow shall be off and he shall speak peace to the nations and his rule is from sea to sea.

This is telling us that Messiah will come back to rule and reign as a king. The imagery is like he's riding on a war horse.

They knew that very, very well. That's why they were expecting Messiah to deliver them from the oppression of the

Romans. But they missed the verse that comes right before it in verse 9 that says, behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation as he humble and mounted on a donkey on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

So both of these together, it's unescapable. Messiah is coming as a conquering king, but he must first come meek and lowly as a suffering king to pay our ransom from the bondage of sin.

And so we're looking at Cleopas here in Luke chapter 24, because it seems like he has given up on the resurrection of Jesus.

And once again, the Hebrew scriptures foretell of his resurrection in Psalm 16, Isaiah 53 again in the prophetic life of Jonah.

Cleopas says, yes, and besides all of this, it is now the third day since these things have happened.

Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had seen vision of angels who said to them that he was alive.

So some of them who were with them, with us, went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said, but him they did not see.

So this is the third day. And you notice that these two individuals were sad that the

Messiah had not met their expectations of restoring the nation of Israel. And so here we see kind of a shift in the narrative.

Jesus kind of turns the tables a little bit in verse 25. We read, and Jesus said to them, oh, foolish ones, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary for the Christ that he should suffer these things before he would enter into his glory?

Jesus is rebuking these two because they are being slow of heart, meaning that they were dull in their thinking.

They were not trusting in the word of God that was revealed to the prophets of old. And so these two individuals, they were right to expect

Messiah would come to rule and reign and establish his kingdom over Israel and the rest of the world. But that was only partially right.

They had missed the truth that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and die first. Jesus is holding them accountable.

They had no excuse for their lack of understanding because the scriptures were very clear on the matter.

Jesus was holding them responsible. And in this dialogue, I really think that Jesus would have been going back to Isaiah 53.

This is one of the clearest passages in all of scripture that explains in detail why it was necessary for the

Messiah, the righteous one, the suffering servant to die a substitutionary death.

I want to read to you a little bit from this prophecy. I want you to listen to how it's all in the past tense, because from the prophets vantage point, it's a done deal.

It is certain it is going to happen. He says, talking about the suffering servant, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and is one from whom men hide their faces.

He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought peace to all of us.

And by his wounds, we are healed. All of us are like sheep that have gone astray. We have turned everyone his own way and the

Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. What an incredible passage of scripture in Isaiah 53, that the

Messiah would suffer and die on our behalf so that we might have our sins forgiven.

In fact, this suffering was necessary because this was the will of Yahweh. The prophecy goes on to say, yet it was the will of the

Lord to crush the suffering servant. He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt.

The righteous one, my servant, make many accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.

He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. I hope you're starting to see that it was necessary for all of these events to take place.

Right? It's all to fulfill God's plan of redemption to make a way for salvation for us.

It was also necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die before he would ascend back to the right hand of the

Father in glory. You probably guessed it. That was also foretold in the Hebrew scriptures.

The prophet Daniel talks about this son of man, the one who is coming who will both be human and divine.

To go back to the ancient of days, this would have been a reference to God the Father and that he would be given all authority to rule on heaven and earth.

Here in our text, we now get to verse 27. We see the focus of biblical theology in the words of Jesus to see how all scripture is pointing to him.

The text says, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus, he interpreted to them and all the scriptures concerning himself.

We see a key word there, interpreted. Jesus interpreted the Hebrew scriptures, meaning that he expounded on its true meaning and purpose.

Think about how remarkable this would have been for Cleopas and the other individual. They are listening to the author of the book explain its meaning in relation to the events that they just experienced.

Jesus says, beginning with Moses and all the prophets. He's using a shorthand speech here.

He's actually referring to the whole span of the Hebrew scriptures. In my study of these things,

I learned that the Jews refer to the Hebrew scriptures as the Tanakh. That sounds real strange to us.

This is Hebrew. This is referring to the threefold division of the Hebrew scriptures. It's an acronym, actually.

You hear the T in Tanakh. Number one refers to Torah. These are the first five books of the law, the first five books of Moses.

Number two, we have the Nevim. This refers to the minor prophets, the major prophets, and all the historical books that we see in the

Hebrew scriptures. Number three, we see the Ketuvim. This refers to the writings.

This is the wisdom literature like Proverbs and the Psalms. Actually, I want you to look down with me in verse 44.

We see this brought out in the context again. Here Jesus is talking to the disciples.

He's also interpreting and expounding to them of the necessity of his death and resurrection taking place.

Once again, it's all to fulfill God's redemptive plan. Verse 44, we read,

So you probably heard the full span of the

Hebrew scriptures, right? The law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. So Jesus, once again with the disciples, is explaining that all of scripture, all of redemptive history is telling us about him.

That is the principle of biblical theology. Understanding the whole story of the Bible while keeping our focus on the main point of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Think about it like this. The Old Testament promises and points forward to the Messiah's plan of redemption, right?

His mission. And the New Testament unpacks the fulfillment of the glorious promises that are found in Jesus Christ.

So that's kind of what we got going on with the Old and New Testament. But many of you may know that there's a 400 year gap called the intertestamental period between the

Old and New Testament. This would have been the time of Second Temple Judaism and they failed to understand the

Tanakh. They failed to understand how the Hebrew scriptures were meant to be a schoolmaster teaching them for their need of a perfect savior.

The Jews of Jesus' day, even modern day Jews, they see the scripture as a means to live a moral and upright life to earn favor with God.

And they would admit that, yes, they do sin. They know the right answer, but they're just going to say, well, we just repent.

We just try to do better next time. We try to reform and live according to the law. And there's a problem with that.

If your faith is not resting in the perfectly righteous savior as your substitute, then your repentance, your moral reform is inadequate before the holiness of God.

Your repentance and acts of piety are like filthy rags. And so that picture of Second Temple Judaism, that is actually a model of all the false religions in the world.

They are looking to themselves and the works that they can accomplish. And guess what? It misses the mark every time.

We need a perfect savior. Look to him. Put all of your faith in him. And so Jesus, that's what he was rebuking the

Pharisees for in John chapter 5 verse 39. He said, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me. So do the scriptures make us wise unto salvation?

Yes, absolutely. But only when the Holy Spirit opens up our minds to understand the scriptures and our need for the savior

Christ. And so Jesus says, it is they, the scriptures that bear witness about me.

This is exactly what Jesus has been saying to the two individuals on the road to Emmaus and the disciples in Luke chapter 24.

That is the whole point of this sermon about biblical theology, understanding how the entire

Bible is weaving a gospel thread to magnify Jesus Christ. Can I get an amen on that one?

So look back with me at Luke chapter 24 back in verse 44. Jesus says, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the

Psalms must be fulfilled. And I love this next part. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

That is an incredible statement. I want that. How can I have my mind open to learning and understanding and all the truths and the scriptures are joined together in this unified whole.

Two points here. And we've been talking about the first one. We must understand biblical theology. And number two, this is by a supernatural work of God.

And so as we continue to unpack biblical theology, this helps us understand the scripture holistically because the

Bible is made up of many parts, many books, many chapters and many verses. But holistically, it is revealing to us a unified message of truth, how we can be reconciled to our creator by the only savior,

Jesus Christ. And so here in Luke 24, Jesus is modeling the principle also of what expository preaching, expositional preaching looks like and how we should personally study the word of God.

A couple of weeks ago when Nathan, Pastor Nathan talked about expositional preaching, we look to drawing out, exegeting the truths of God's word, right?

We must understand what was originally intended in the time that it was written. And we do that by looking to the context holistically.

That means we look to the entire passage, line upon line, letting all of God's word speak.

There are many pastors out there that tell you that they exposit the word of God just because they read through it. No, it takes time.

You have to camp out on certain words and phrases and see how it fits with all of God's word, the whole counsel of God.

That is what expository, expositional preaching is. And so that's what

Jesus did earlier back in verse 27, remember? He began with Moses and all the prophets interpreting to them in all that the scriptures had to say concerning himself.

No doubt when Jesus was interpreting, he would have been going back to those very clear Old Testament texts like Isaiah 53, explaining their meaning and how they found their fulfillment in him.

Expositional preaching interprets the scripture in this same fashion. So look back with me at verses 46 and 47, because Jesus connects his interpretation of scripture with how we should preach the gospel.

Verse 46, and he said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins, that's the gospel, should be proclaimed.

Same Greek word for preached in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

So Jesus is instructing the disciples to preach this gospel message, this good news that man can have their sin forgiven by repentance, repenting from sin, putting their trust alone in Jesus Christ by faith.

We do this expositionally from the pulpit and we also do this as we interact with other people in our lives.

We share the gospel. We proclaim it, right? We share with them the good news about who Jesus is and we do this with having biblical theology in mind, how it relates to the entirety of God's word.

This is also how the apostle Paul preached the gospel with this biblical theology principle in mind.

In Acts 20, Paul said, I did not shrink back from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I've received from the

Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

That is what expositional preaching seeks to do, to examine the depth of all of God's word, using scripture to interpret scripture, always understanding context and seeing the bigger picture pointing to Jesus Christ.

I want to share with you a quote that I was finding as I was studying from Charles Spurgeon.

He once told of a Welsh minister who spoke to a younger minister about his sermon after hearing it.

He said, it was a poor sermon, he told the young man. Will you tell me why you think it was a poor sermon, came the response?

Because, said the Welsh minister, there was no Christ in it.

Well, said the young man, Christ was not in the text. We are not to be preaching Christ always.

We must preach what is said in the text. The exchange continued. Don't you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London.

Yes, said the young man. Ah, said the old divine, and so from every text of scripture there is a road to the metropolis of the scriptures that is

Christ. And my dear brother, your business when you get to the text is to say, now where is the road to Christ?

And then preach a sermon running along the roads towards the great metropolis Christ. And he said,

I have not yet found a text that does not find the road of Christ in it. And if I ever do find a road that does not have

Christ, I will make one. I will go over hedge and ditch, and I will get to my master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.

What you could have heard when I was first starting to preach, I was getting that healthy rebuke in my life as well.

But that's what we aim to do when we preach the gospel. We do so expositionally, holistically.

And we must do this in our devotion time, even when we are at home. We must look to the word of God, always looking to Christ.

We must listen expositionally. We must think expositionally. We must study expositionally, always finding

Jesus Christ in the center. So our minds are opened to understanding the truth of scripture, number one, by biblical theology and number two, by supernatural intervention.

Verse 45 once again says that he opened their minds to understanding the scriptures.

This would have been a supernatural work of God. He has to remove the spiritual blindness and the slowness of heart that is hindering those who are blinded to spiritual realities.

This is what we learn in 2 Corinthians 2. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart these in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

It must be the spirit of God that illuminates our hearts and our minds to the truth of God.

Why is that? Well, it's so that God can receive all the glory and you don't get to boast in yourself at all.

That's why we begin the service in prayer, praying for God's blessing. Right before we really dive deep into the scripture, we pray that the spirit would open our mind to understand the truths of God's word.

And so when we're studying our Bible in our times of devotion, it should be done so in prayer, praying that God would teach us during this time because that is the relational aspect.

We talk to God in prayer and he speaks back to us through his living and breathing word.

It's exactly what we read in James 1 .5. If any of you lacks wisdom, is that any of you in here?

Because I know it's me. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously and without reproach and it will be given to them.

We pray that God would reveal wisdom to us through his word. And we pray that God would bring other saints into our lives to help us, to give us wise counsel.

And so in closing here, I'm reminded how Jesus rebuked the two individuals on the road to Emmaus.

He said, oh foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Jesus was holding them responsible for what the scriptures clearly taught about the coming

Messiah, but they were sad. They were not waiting with joy and anticipation for the

Savior's resurrection. They were not trusting in the promises of God. And so I pray that here at 12 .5

Church, that we would be that city on a hill, that people that are seeing

Christ in all of scripture and that we find joy in the promises of God. I pray that we would see the value of biblical theology because that will open our minds to understanding the truth.

That will have a direct impact on our preaching, our evangelism, the personal study time in the word of God, how we treat one another and how we live our lives to the glory of God.

This is essentially what it must look like to be a healthy church.

And that is the aim of our soul care groups that many of y 'all are involved with. We talk about how to observe the text, right, how to make observations.

We discuss principles of how to interpret the word of God. And then we apply what we learn from the scriptures to live in our everyday lives.

And so something that Pastor Nathan says that I absolutely love is he says, healthy things grow.

And so I just want us to keep our focus on Christ and his truth as he continues to grow us in our walk with him.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just want to thank you so much for the clarity of your word.

God, it's all about you, Jesus. Lord, I pray that we would find you in every text of scripture,

Lord. And as we look at hard to understand truths, God, please help us to not hide that light under a basket,

God, but please help us to reach out to other saints to walk along with you, Christ, with a church body.

Lord, you command us to not neglect the gathering of your people, to be in a fellowship, that joint participation that you have gifted us with so many wonderful gifts to serve others.