Sunday Sermon: What the Will of the Lord Is (Ephesians 5:15-21)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Ephesians. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Ephesians chapter five, starting in verse 15, the apostle Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God, the

Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we open up your word and we read today about understanding what the will of the

Lord is, I pray that you would illuminate that to us. We would come to understand your will, not by whatever subjective voice we might hear in our head, and we want to ascribe that to being the voice of God.

But we know that your will has been revealed to us in the pages of scripture. This is where you have spoken to us.

This is how we know what your will is for our lives. And may this word be written upon our hearts, and we walk in it and do what it says.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So this past Tuesday, I talked with the high school students at Bible Lunch Tuesday, and I want to encourage you to pray for that ministry.

Word has come to us that the school may be planning on closing lunches to the high schoolers and they would do that this year.

We know that that's coming sometime in the future. At the very latest, it would be when they move the high school from this building to the new one that they're constructing on the west end of town.

So we know that sometime in the next couple of years, we would lose that ministry, BLT, anyway. But there's a possibility that could be closed to us even sooner than that if they do decide to close lunches this year.

So be in prayer again for that. For those of you who don't know, Bible Lunch Tuesday is a ministry you do because the high school is just right here.

We invite high schoolers to come on over and eat a free lunch on Tuesday, and we give them the Word of God, and we partner with another couple of churches in town that help us do that.

It is a ministry in which we minister to somewhere in the vicinity of 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 students per year.

And there have been some years that have been so full, we've ministered to as many as 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 students in a single school year.

And that's nearly the entire number of students over at the high school. So it is a blessing to be able to do this ministry.

It was started by Brian Jones about 20 years ago, and we have continued doing it ever since.

So it's sad to us that we would have to lose this ministry, but again, pray that those kinds of ministry efforts are able to continue.

As I talked to the high schoolers this past Tuesday, what I talked to them about was this verse here in Ephesians 5 .17,

therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. There were two lunches, both with about an equal number of high school students in each lunch, and the first lunch was a little more responsive than the second lunch.

But I asked the students, can anybody tell me how we know what the will of the Lord is?

Lizzie's apparently listening to a whole other sermon over there. How do we know what the will of the

Lord is? And one student finally spoke up and said, we read the Bible. That's exactly right.

That is how we understand God's will. One of the things I caution the students on is that you will hear teachers who will stand up and say, here's how you hear

God's voice. You sit and you pray and you meditate, and God's going to speak to you through your mind.

Priscilla Shirer, who's a very popular teacher, has a whole session that she does on how you can hear

God's voice in your head and know that it is him talking to you. One of the most popular

Christian books ever written. You see it down at Walmart. You've probably seen it even at a local gas station or truck stop.

It's so prevalent, it's almost right there next to the King James Bible. Anytime that you go to some sort of religious section in a small bookstore.

It's a book called Jesus Calling, written by Sarah Young. Sarah Young claims that she sat at her table and she even says in her testimony at the start of the book, if you look at the introduction of the book, she will say that she prayed regularly and she read her

Bible regularly, but that wasn't enough. That wasn't fulfilling to her.

So she would pray and she would meditate and ask God to give her thoughts and she would write down those thoughts.

And she claims that that is Jesus speaking to her. When you read the book and you open it, it is the voice of Jesus speaking to you in first person.

That's the way that she has written Jesus Calling. This is not merely Sarah Young's opinion. She claims to have received the voice of Christ.

The problem with that approach is Sarah Young is claiming to write scripture. If she has heard the voice of Jesus and she has written it down, then she is saying,

Jesus has spoken to me and what he has said is every bit as authoritative as scripture. Another problem with that is that when you look at her words as she's written down in that book and you cross -reference them with what we have in the

Bible, you find some contradictions and the Lord is not going to contradict himself.

So we have to reject any such claims outright of anybody saying the

Lord has spoken to me and here is what he has said. He said, if someone ever says that to you,

God has spoken to me, what should follow is a Bible verse. And if it's not, then what they're giving to you is some sort of subjective voice or vision that did not actually come from God.

God was very serious about this in scripture. In Deuteronomy 18, he says, if anybody comes to you with a word from God, then what they say better come true or they're what?

A false prophet. And what does the Old Testament say should happen to a false prophet?

They should be put to death. I think that's why a lot of false prophets today don't really have a whole lot of fear about false prophecy.

Though we don't live in some sort of theocracy where we would drag a false teacher out to the parking lot and stone him if he would claim to have a voice from God, which didn't really come from God, the wages of sin is still death,

Romans 6 .23. There will be a judgment for that. If a false teacher does not repent of saying things on behalf of God that God did not actually say.

When the Bible says, thus saith the Lord, it is the word of God.

And so what we come to understand as we enter into scripture today in Ephesians 5, verses 15 through 21, we look at this to understand what the will of the

Lord is. And the will of God has been given to us in the pages of scripture. I talked with you about this a little bit last week, how in Thessalonians, in 1

Thessalonians 4, and then again in chapter 5, the apostle Paul says, this is the will of Christ for you.

The first time he says that you would not walk in sexual immorality. And then the second time he gets to that in chapter 5, he says, this is the

Lord's will for you in Christ Jesus, that you give thanks to God in all things. How do we know what the

Lord's will is? It's what's written down in the Bible. Let's look briefly at verses 15 through 21, and I'll do my exposition of this section and try to keep it concise and short.

And then what I want to do after this, here's where I want to go after we digest and dissect these six verses that are in front of us here.

What I want to do is I want to teach you how to read the Bible and give you some basic points, some key things that we need to remember when it comes to reading and understanding what

Scripture says. Finally, I've been asked to provide a few resources that you could use that would help you in your understanding of Scripture, and I provided those on the table in the back.

I'll go through those things with you as well as talk about the 40 -day Bible reading plan that Dave has already plugged in our announcements this morning.

First of all, let's look at the Scripture together in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 15 through 21. The Apostle Paul says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise.

Remember what we're coming from. The way that we concluded last week was this prophecy, this prophetic utterance that comes from the

Old Testament. Therefore, it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

All of us were once dead in our sins and our transgressions in which we once walked. The Apostle Paul talked about that in Ephesians chapter 2.

But in Christ, we have been raised to life. So we must no longer walk in darkness, but we must walk in the light of Christ.

And Paul talked a little bit about what that looked like in the verses prior to that when it came to not having any part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

We are to be children of light walking in the light of God's Word, following the instructions that we have been given here.

We live in a wicked and perverse generation in which the prince of the power of the air,

Satan, is going out with his message and trying to woo you away from the call of God and the

Holy Spirit through his Word, and instead listening to the pattern of this world, instead listening to the messages and the philosophers of this age.

And so to understand the difference between the voice of God and the voice of the enemy, we must look carefully then how we walk, not as unwise, but as wise.

And how do we come to that wisdom? We come to that wisdom through the Word of God.

In the book of Proverbs, we are told that a person who does not seek after wisdom, a person who hates reproof, is actually a stupid man.

But the man who loves discipline, loves knowledge.

Proverbs 1 .7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

So we keep that in mind when it comes to gaining wisdom. We come to the

Word of God. Jumping back to verse 2 in Proverbs 1, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth.

Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.

To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.

And we know those words have been given to us in the pages of Scripture. At the end of Ecclesiastes, this being

Solomon once again, talking about what man's ultimate priority is.

This is in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, I'm on the wrong page here, just a moment.

Verse 13, the end of the matter, all has been heard, fear God and keep

His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, for God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

So what is man's ultimate responsibility? Fear God and obey His commandments. How do we know what

God's commandments are? It's right here in the pages of Scripture. And as we had also read in Proverbs chapter 1, fearing the

Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. So look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise.

We gain knowledge and wisdom through the Word of God. Verse 16, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

When should you read the Bible? Today, right now.

Today is the day that you should open up the pages of Scripture and read it. You have the

ESV Bible app open and you've hit the play button and that's the guy reading that back. Isn't that what that is?

Yes, that's what I figured. That's wonderful. Thank you. So you could...

That's a great illustration, Miss Julie, because you could read the Bible that way. You could have a

Bible app with somebody reading the Bible to you as you drive in the car. So you're getting the Word of God that way.

Thank you so much for bringing that up, Julie, it was wonderful. Today is the day that we must open the pages of Scripture and read it.

Again, because today is the day that is evil. And there are people in this wicked world who want to lead us in wicked ways under the influence of Satan.

Now the Apostle Paul instructs Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .25 that we must correct opponents with gentleness for God may perhaps grant them repentance.

So we must not treat them with the same reviling that they might treat us, but with gentleness for the

Lord has dealt with us gently. But the way you come to an understanding of God and His will and salvation that is in Christ Jesus is all according to the

Word of God. Romans 1 .16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. So we get...

Oh, I'm sorry. Verse 16, still in this instruction, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

What I wanted to share with you here was how I failed to make the best use of the time. I was raised reading the

Bible. And many of you know that. Some of you have heard my testimony. From the time that I could read, my dad was giving me reading assignments from the age of five and telling me, what book of the

Bible do you want to start in? And I liked the story of Moses and the burning bush and the parting of the

Red Sea. So I said Exodus, little did I know I was picking the spot where we were starting and reading through the rest of the

Bible from there on. I should have picked Revelation. I don't know what I was thinking. But every single day, a part of my morning activities was

I woke up in the morning, I got ready for the day, and I was supposed to read one chapter. And I started in Exodus chapter one.

That was on a Monday. The next day, Tuesday morning, I read Exodus chapter two. The next day

I read Exodus three. On and on that went. By the age of seven, I'd read through the entire Bible.

And then my dad started to teach me how to use Scripture to interpret

Scripture. Well, you've read this in the Bible. Where have you seen that before?

Well, I remember reading that also in this book. Right. So then using that to see how the

Holy Spirit has worked through men over history to reveal God's will through His prophets and His apostles, knowing that this is not just the word of man, but God worked through men to reveal what the

Holy Spirit Himself says. But a few years after that, I squandered that time that I could have been reading and studying the

Bible and learning more from that. I instead indulged in the passions of my flesh. And I almost forgot the Bible entirely.

I was hardly reading it at all until I hit a crisis in my mid -twenties that caused me to fall on my face before God and realize just how much of my life

I had been wasting on myself. And though I had been raised so well to know the word of God and even how to read it,

I had been equipped with wonderful tools that most of my friends had never been equipped with. Yet I squandered those opportunities and missed a lot of those years

I could have been dedicating to the Lord and understanding His word. I did not go to seminary. My situation is very unique.

It is different than most. I was raised around the Bible, worked at Christian radio stations. I listened to Bible teachers all day long,

Adrian Rogers, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Woodrow Kroll, Erwin Lutzer. These were some of the guys that used to teach me in just the place where I lived.

I listened to it every single day. So it's not that I did not receive any training at all, but when it came to living on my own,

I squandered those opportunities that I should have been using and devoting myself to the Lord and to His word.

I'm grateful that He rescued me out of my sin. Myself and Becky and Sonia, just a couple of nights ago, we were talking about how

I feared to think about what could have happened to me if I died in that chapter of my life, thinking about the kind of sin that I was living in.

But the Lord was gracious to me and did not let me perish. There's a verse in the Psalms that says, though I take my life into my own hands continually,

I will not forget your word. And that spoke volumes to me, realizing that I had taken my life into my own hands.

But those tools that my parents had equipped me with when I was very young still stayed in my heart.

Though I wasn't listening to it and I didn't want to follow it, it was still there and it protected me from doing worse things than I probably could have done.

So I'm grateful to the Lord for saving me. Take it from somebody who has wasted time.

Make the best use of the time because the days are evil. Today is the day to read the

Bible or plug in your Bible app in your car and listen to it while you drive. Verse 17, therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the

Lord is. If you squander this time, if you do not read the word of God, do you grow in wisdom?

No, you languish in foolishness. So do not be foolish. Understand what the will of the

Lord is. As I said to you, I think it was either last week or the week before, it's a very common question that I get as a pastor.

Somebody coming to me and saying, Pastor Gabe, what is God's will for my life? And oftentimes that question is loaded with flesh.

I want to know where God wants me to move. I want to know what God's career is for me. I want to know what my spouse is going to look like, right?

You're not going to have those answers for you in the Bible. Instead, what you need to do is you need to take this word, have it written on your heart, live it according to what

God has said, and whatever comes your way, whether that be any opportunity or any place you are going to live, whoever you marry, whatever your kids are like, you give glory to God in all of those things.

You be responsible in all of those areas and all of those avenues to commit yourself fully unto the

Lord. My friends, I am fully aware as I stand up here this morning, some of you are in miserable marriages.

Don't think about what your spouse has to do for you. You think about what you need to do to commit yourself unto

God. Some of you work horrible jobs and you're looking for a way out, some other job that might be somewhere down the road, something that's better than this.

I'm grateful that we work in a kind of a country where you can examine different job options and pick another job if you don't like the one that you have.

Sometimes those opportunities aren't there and the doors are not open for you to be able to move to another place or take another job.

Wherever God has you and whatever He has you doing, be thankful for it. Be grateful to God.

Do your best and work for the Lord first and not for men. As it says in Colossians 3, you work for God first.

Be grateful for all that you have. For we have been given salvation in Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins.

If you have that, my friends, whatever you could have on this earth doesn't even compare to the glory that awaits us in the

Lord. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what God's will is for you, the way

He wants you to walk in holiness, pursuing godliness and righteousness in the present time.

Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. I'm actually going to come back to this again, even as we get to talking about wives and husbands and children, obey your parents and the

Lord, which is Ephesians 6 .1. Because I want to show you the contrast that exists here, but that'll be a little bit later on.

In the meantime, here's what we have, verses 18 and 19. Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the

Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart. Here is what Paul is saying here. Do not devote yourselves to things that would satisfy your flesh for a season, but then ultimately leave you empty.

Devote yourself fully unto Christ, be filled with His Spirit, and you will never be empty.

Do not get drunk with wine, that is debauchery. You lose your senses, you lose your faculties.

You devote yourself over to stupidity, but instead be filled with the

Spirit, soundness of mind, focus upon the Lord, understanding His will according to the scriptures.

When we read, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, don't be so legalistic to read that as just wine.

Well, as long as I'm not reading, as long as I'm not drinking wine, drink some hard liquor, that one's okay. At least I'm not getting drunk on wine.

It's any kind of substance that would lead to that. Any kind of drug that would numb your senses, any kind of thing that would make you intoxicated, that's what this is speaking against.

A friend of mine, his name is Alan, was recently on a podcast sharing his story about how he used to walk the life of a

Christian. It looked like a Christian on the outside to everybody, but inside he was abusing drugs and was making it seem like he was this good

Christian guy, but had these deep, dark secrets in his closet he didn't want anybody to know. And he said this about his drug addiction.

He said, every time you take a substance, you're really just chasing that first high that you got the very first time you tried it.

And you never actually get there, which is why you need to take more and more of it to try to match the high you got the first time.

And then that doesn't work, so you take more and more and more of it, and it still never matches that feeling that you had, that euphoria that came upon you that first time that you had taken this substance and had dumbed your mind.

None of those things are ever going to satisfy the flesh. There might be a season, a time in which it feels good.

Ultimately, those things will destroy us if we don't repent of them. So do not get drunk with those temporary things that ultimately lead to no fulfillment.

It leads instead to debauchery. Instead, we must be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart. There's a nature to this that is talking about understanding the will of God in community.

We don't just try to understand these things on our own, but as brothers and sisters in the

Lord, we're helping one another to understand what the will of the Lord is. As it says in the book of Proverbs, there is wisdom in many counselors.

Does the Bible tell you where you should live and what job you should have and who you should be married to?

No, it doesn't say that to you, but you can talk to somebody to give you wisdom and insight and help you to understand what you should do with your life.

There is wisdom with many counselors. We see the community that exists within the church that Paul is laying out before the

Ephesians here, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment. Verse 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God the

Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I said to you recently that the reason why we give into sin is because we are unthankful.

We're essentially saying to God, what you have for me is not good enough. I need this other thing in order to be satisfied.

And so it is the person with an ungrateful heart that gives into the passions of their flesh. But if we are filled with thanksgiving, we have nothing to fear of those temptations.

We have nothing to fear of anybody who would come our way with a false message from a false prophet or the philosopher of this age.

For if we have committed to ourselves the reading of the word of God and have that written upon our hearts, we know exactly what the will of the

Lord is, and there's no one that can lead us astray from it. And we help one another in the body of Christ.

We help to protect one another from temptation and from false teaching. We read about that in Ephesians chapter four.

So we would not be tossed to and fro by the waves and the winds of every shifting doctrine.

But instead, we would be sound in our understanding of God's will for our lives according to his scriptures.

We read this in Philippians 4, 4. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I so appreciate what Julie shared about her brother this morning. And I hope that you heard it also.

Julie recognizing that her brother is about to die, but did you not hear the thankfulness in the testimony that she shared?

That when he goes from this life to be with our Lord in the next, he will have something far, far greater than what he's suffering through now.

Even when we encounter tragedies of this kind, we can still have a thankfulness in our hearts.

And when we present our requests to God, we do it not with anxiety, but with thanksgiving.

Everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It's in the pages of scripture that we know the peace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. We should honor and respect and revere each other because we honor and respect and revere our

Lord. It is what he has asked of us that you love your neighbor as yourself, for this is the fulfilling of the law.

That is a command from the Bible. And it's how we know how we are to live in this way in submission and reverence to one another out of our submission and reverence to Christ.

So there is our exposition of Ephesians chapter five verses 15 through 21. And next week when we pick up in our study of Ephesians, we're gonna be talking about wives and husbands that oh so controversial section.

Wives submit to your own husbands, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

But as we continue to talk today about understanding the will of the Lord, a request that has come up to us over and over again and seems to be more prevalent in recent days than it has been in previous years.

The question has come, how do I read my Bible? This is a question that has been raised with the women's group that meets on the second and fourth

Saturdays of the month. It was asked of me that I provide a few resources and I have those on the table in the back and I'll read what those are for you in a moment.

And you're welcome at the end of service to pick up those books and take a look at them. But first, I wanna give you six keys to reading and understanding the

Bible. And these six keys are provided to us by Conrad Mbewe. He is the pastor of Gowada Baptist Church in Zambia, Africa.

And this is also where Vodie Bauckham has worked and has been teaching for the last several years. Conrad, Pastor Conrad gives us six keys to reading and understanding the

Bible. Spiritual, contextual, Christ -centered, reverent, communal, and repeated.

So when it comes to reading the Bible, these are your six keys to remember. I'll walk through these with you again.

Number one, spiritual. Pastor Conrad says to understand what is written, we must have our eyes opened by the

Holy Spirit. See, anybody can read this Bible. Anybody can pick it up and read it.

It's words on a page. And there's a very simple answer to this question, how do I read my Bible? Well, you open it, you start there, and then you go to the right.

And then when you get to the end of that line, you go down to the next line and you read across, just like you would read a book. That's how you read your

Bible. But we understand that this book is 750 ,000 words. It's a pretty big book.

You can forget parts of it when you get to other parts of it. So how do we richly glean this information and have it written upon our hearts that we may understand what the will of the

Lord is? Anybody can pick up and read black and white words on a page, but it is only by the

Spirit of God that we are able to understand those words on the page. 2

Peter 1 .21 says that these words were not written by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. In 2 Timothy 3 .16, Paul says, all Scripture is breathed out by God.

So this is God's Word. And in 1 Timothy 2 .14, the apostle

Paul says that the natural person cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God.

They are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

And Paul lays out in that same chapter how if we have the Spirit of God, the Spirit tells us the will of God according to what is in Scripture.

Romans 8 .7 says that the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. So if we're set on the flesh, we cannot understand these words and they have no meaning to us.

It would be as significant as any other kind of book or a collection of myths or fables.

That's the way the natural man reads the Bible. But the spiritual man understands this is

God's authoritative Word. And it sits over every person whether they submit to that Word or not.

Psalm 119 .18, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

In Matthew 21 .22, Jesus says, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.

Do you not understand the Word of God? Ask of God and He will give you understanding. James 1 .5,

if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach.

And Jesus says again in Luke 11 .10, for who, I'm sorry, for everyone who receives, everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

So number one, we understand the Bible through spiritual means. We need to understand that key to understanding the text.

Secondly, contextual. Here's what Pastor Conrad says. We also need to have a growing knowledge of the text and the times in which it was written.

Consider the literature that we are reading. When you open up a book of the Bible and read it, what is the form of literature?

Like for example, the Psalms or poetry, right? The book of Revelation, that's apocalyptic literature.

You're actually gonna read that differently than you might read the Psalms or Genesis or even

Matthew. The gospels are all historical, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Right now I'm teaching through Acts on the podcast and also doing that with our youth on Wednesday night.

The book of Acts is what? It's an adventure story. You see these wonderful adventures that are happening as the apostles are going out and sharing the gospel of Christ.

There's a sharing of the gospel. There is a miracle that will be performed. There's persecution that comes upon them.

And then there's the deliverance of God as he rescues his own out of persecution. So consider the literature, the literary style in which the book that you're reading is written in.

Who wrote it? Who were they writing to? This is all part of contextual of helping you to understand the scriptures.

Third key that we need to remember is that all the Bible is Christ -centered.

Pastor Conrad says we must never forget the Bible's big story.

The entire thing points to Christ. The Old Testament is looking forward to Christ.

The New Testament is looking back at Christ. The Old Testament anticipates Christ. The New Testament reveals

Christ. Now, not every Old Testament story explicitly looks forward to Jesus, but nevertheless, it's all moving forward in a story that climaxes with the coming of Christ.

In John 5, 39, Jesus said, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me.

Luke 24, 45, before Jesus ascended into heaven, it says he opened the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures.

So the first key we have to understanding scripture is spiritual. Second is contextual.

Third is Christ -centered. Number four, the fourth key to helping you understand scripture is that it is reverent.

Pastor Conrad says scripture comes to us from above, calling for reverence.

We've read that here out of our reverence for Christ in Ephesians 5, 21. The Bible is not an earthly book.

It is a heavenly book. The Bible is one coherent story written in a span of over 1 ,500 years by 40 different authors from different walks of life, whether they were kings or paupers on three different continents in three different languages.

Yet it's all one coherent story with God as its author. The Bible tells us about the fallenness of man and our need for redemption.

And the holiness of God and his plan of redemption. That's the kind of story you would expect

God to write. And that's what he has given to us from Genesis to Revelation.

The apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2, 13, we thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word from men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

James 1, 21, receive with meekness the implanted word. And David says over and over in Psalm 119, oh, how

I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Charles Spurgeon once said,

I have read other books, but the Bible reads me. The fifth key to understanding scripture, we need to remember is that it is communal.

And we've talked about this also, as we've been going through this section of Ephesians 5 this morning. Pastor Conrad says, spiritual nourishment through scripture is received not only in individual study, but also through corporate study.

The church studying scripture together. My friends, you could fall into error very easily if you let your biblical study just be limited to what you do on your own when you open the

Bible. Again, reiterating what is said in Ephesians 4, we are a protection for one another to help one another from falling into false teaching or being tossed to and fro by every shifting doctrine.

Acts 2, 42 says, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and prayers.

This is what we see in the early church, gathering together to hear the Word of God together, worshiping together, doing the

Lord's Supper together. Revelation 1, 3, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.

We know that the epistles, those letters that we have in the New Testament were written to churches.

And so Paul says in Colossians 4, 16, when this letter has been read among you, talking about standing up before the church and reading this letter aloud, have it also read in the church of the

Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. In Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, we are told, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as has become the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Finally, the last key that we remember in how to understand the scriptures is that they are repeated.

Pastor Conrad says, in order to truly understand the Bible with increasing depth over a lifetime, we must read the scriptures repeatedly, make the best use of the time for the days are evil.

2 Timothy 4, 2, the apostle Paul instructed the pastor that he was sending to Ephesus, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Psalm 119, 15, I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

Joshua 1, 8, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

So once again, those six keys that we remember to understanding scripture, how we can understand the

Bible. Number one, spiritual. Number two, contextual. Number three, it is

Christ centered. Number four, we uphold it in reverence. Number five, it is communal.

We do it not just individually, but together. And number six, repeatedly. We remember these words over and over that they may be written on our hearts.

Now we are hitting noon and I wanna wrap this up so that we may come to the Lord's table and partake in communion today.

But very quickly here, I wanna talk about some of those books that I have on the back table. Starting on the left and going to the right,

I started with the biggest and went down to the smallest. So you'll notice that first book back there is the Bethany Parallel Commentary on the

New Testament. That's one book on just the New Testament. There are larger books than even that.

But that one came from our own library here at the church. The next one over is Zondervan's Encyclopedia of Bible Words.

So you'll find many different encyclopedias that exist that contain Bible words. In your own Bible, you probably have a concordance in the back.

You can open up and see some key words there and it will tell you references as to where you find those words, various places in the

Bible where that word is found. That's one way to help you do scripture to interpret scripture.

Also, if you have a reference Bible that might have notes written in the margins over here, it will tell you other

Bible verses that go with that passage that you are reading. The third book that I have back there is

Baker's Topical Bible. So if you're looking for a particular topic in the Bible, it tells you where to find those various topics.

The next book is Where to Find It in the Bible, an A to Z guide. And that's definitely a more dumbed down version of the previous three books that I've mentioned to you, which at times can get kind of heady and a little bit overbearing.

The fifth book is Young's Compact Bible Dictionary. That's a very popular book going back a long time.

That book has been around for a while. Paul Kent wrote a book called Know Your Bible Illustrated. That one's on the back and in the last two, there are people in the

Bible and places in the Bible written by Woodrow Kroll. Now that's not an exhaustive list. That's just giving you some examples of various resources that you might find even at your local

Christian bookstore to help you in reading the Bible. What I've provided for you today, this list that was on the back table, this is a 40 -day

Bible reading plan. And what this 40 -day plan does, don't panic.

It's not reading through the entire Bible in 40 days. That's a lot of work. Now, I will tell you, you should at some point read through the whole

Bible. You should start in Genesis 1 and you should go to Revelation 22. That's a very simple answer to the question, how do you read your

Bible? Well, you open it up and you start reading it. But I know that when that question comes to me, it's not simply asking that question.

I think most people know you need to open your Bible and you need to read it. But rather that question comes with the underlying question, how do

I understand it? How do I apply it to my life? What's the most important things?

This part's important. This part's important. So I catch the highlights, the overview of Scripture, and then

I can read the rest of it and fit all the other stuff in between. So that's what I've tried to do for you with this 40 -day

Bible reading plan is give you the highlights of Scripture, starting with Genesis 1 and 2 and ending with Revelation 21 and 22.

So you start with the creation story. Then you go to the fall of man, briefly the flood and the

Tower of Babel, God's covenant with Abraham, which is very important. It comes up regularly throughout the

Scriptures. As we read in Galatians when we studied in Galatians earlier this year, we are all children of Abraham if we are in Christ.

So it's important to understand that. We have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac's deliverance when the

Lord told Abraham to sacrifice his son. Day 7, Exodus 3 and 4, God calling

Moses from the burning bush. Day 8, Exodus 20, the 10 commandments.

Joshua 1, the conquering of the promised land. 1 Samuel 16 and 17, David and Goliath.

Day 11, 1 Kings 3 and chapters 8 and 9, where you read about King Solomon's wisdom and the temple of God being constructed.

In 1 Kings 18, you read the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal. On day 13, 2

Kings 25, the siege of Jerusalem and the exile of Judah, a very important key event that takes place in Scripture.

Day 14, Daniel 1 and 2, which is Daniel in Babylon. Day 15,

Daniel chapters 3 and 6, which is the fiery furnace and Daniel in the lion's den.

On day 16, Ezra 3, the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Day 17,

Psalms 1 and 2 and 8, which is the opening of the Psalms. Days 18 and 19 also include some

Psalms. I basically tried to grab key Psalms for you to read and remember. But there's 150

Psalms there. So there's a lot more for you to read. The first 20 days of that Bible reading plan just goes through Old Testament.

Finishing on day 20 with Isaiah 9, 53 and 61, which is all prophecy concerning the coming

Messiah. After that, you get into New Testament. The next 10 days cover the Gospels. Day 21,

Luke 1 and 2, the birth of Jesus. And by the way, if you were to start this today, it's going to feel a lot like Christmas as you get further and further down the list.

Day 22, John 1, who is Jesus? And Mark 1, the beginning of his earthly ministry and his miracles.

Day 23, Matthew 5 through 7, which is the Sermon on the Mount. Then John 3 through 4,

God so loved the world. John 5 and 6, Jesus' miracles and authority. John 11 through 12,

Jesus raises Lazarus and his power over death itself. John 16 through 17,

Christ's comfort and his high priestly prayer. Day 28, Matthew 26 and 27,

Jesus' arrest and his crucifixion. Day 29, John 20, the resurrection of Jesus.

And then on day 30, Luke 24, the ascension of Jesus into heaven. Then the last 10 days of this study focus on the remainder of the

New Testament. There's Acts 1 and 2 with the giving of the Holy Spirit Acts 9, the conversion of Saul.

Acts 16 and 17, the preaching of the gospel to the world. Then you get to the epistles by day 34, where you're reading

Romans 1 through 3, justification by faith alone. On day 35, Romans 7 and 8, our battle with sin, but the life that we receive in the

Holy Spirit. Day 36, 1 Corinthians 15, the power of the resurrection of Christ.

On day 37, Ephesians chapter 1 and 6, knowing that as God's chosen ones, we put on the whole armor of God.

Day 38, Philippians 1 and 2, and I also put in there in parentheses, chapters 3 and 4, if you should so decide on that day to read through the entire book of Philippians, it would be beneficial to you.

It is the example of Christ and that we are called to rejoice always. Day 39,

Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the letters to the churches. And then finally on day 40,

Revelation chapters 21 and 22, the new heaven and the new earth. Let me conclude this with that particular section that we read in Revelation chapter 21.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their

God. My friends, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.

For the former things have passed away. Where do we hear about such hope and promises for our future?

The Bible. This is the will of God. Look to our

Lord Jesus Christ. He will forgive you of your sins and you will be saved.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.