Insights from Bible Project's Tim Mackie

NEW SERMON- Bible Project’s Tim Mackie

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Tim Mackie of Bible Project, in collaboration with Pastor Tyler Staten from Bridgetown Church, presents a thought-provoking sermon. The sermon emphasizes viewing the Bible as a narrative designed to teach about truth, wisdom, and hearing God's voice. Through stories of individuals like John and Matt, Mackie illustrates varying relationships with the Bible, showcasing its potential as a source of inspiration and challenge. The sermon encourages consistent engagement with scripture, highlighting its role as a compass in understanding Jesus's teachings and realizing personal spiritual growth.

Highlights

The Bible invites us to lose ourselves in its narrative to uncover deep moral questions 🕵️‍♂️.
Each individual's journey with the Bible can differ greatly, influencing faith and understanding 🌈.
Understanding the Bible involves embracing its complexities, not just cherry-picking verses 🍒.
Tim Mackie stresses learning through community and frequent scripture engagement to gain wisdom 🌱.
Jesus used the Hebrew Bible as foundational, indicating its timeless relevance ✨.

Key Takeaways

The Bible is meditation literature meant to be read and re-read in community 📖.
Through engaging with scripture, we learn about truth, wisdom, and hear God's voice 🎧.
Tim Mackie's sermon illustrates the diverse experiences people have with the Bible through storytelling 🌟.
Adopting a narrative approach to the Bible helps unlock its profound truths and complexities 📚.
Consistent interaction with scripture is essential for spiritual growth 🌱.

Overview

In this engaging sermon, Tim Mackie urges believers to approach the Bible as a lifelong meditation literature. Along with Pastor Tyler Staten, he highlights how scripture is not merely a reference book but a complex narrative that asks profound moral questions. The sermon encourages engaging deeply with the Bible to uncover its truths and to connect with God's voice.

Mackie shares stories of individuals like John, who rediscovered faith through the Bible, and Matt, whose journey led him to struggle with faith. These narratives illustrate the varied and personal relationships people have with scripture and emphasize the Bible's role in individual spiritual journeys.

Emphasizing a communal and consistent practice, Mackie suggests that reading the Bible as a narrative helps in understanding life's questions. This practice not only enriches personal faith but also aids in discerning truth and wisdom, aligning with the teachings and traditions of Jesus. By regularly immersing themselves in scripture, believers can foster spiritual growth and a deeper connection with God.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Bible as Meditation Literature The chapter discusses the concept of the Bible as meditation literature, emphasizing its role in being reread within a communal setting throughout one's life. It suggests that engaging with the Bible can lead to powerful prophesying, understanding God's communication through creation like David, and acquiring spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues.
00:30 - 01:00: Introducing Bible Project and Tim Mackie This chapter introduces the Bible Project and Tim Mackie, focusing on a journey of rediscovering the Bible. The transcript mentions supernatural healing and seeking guidance from God through reading the Bible. It also provides context for the channel 'Ring Them Bells,' reflecting on the influence of Tim Mackie as a significant resource at the beginning of this spiritual journey.
01:00 - 01:30: John's Story of Discovery This chapter discusses John's journey of rediscovering the Bible over the past 3 years through the resourceful insights provided by the Bible project. John frequently shares content from Tim Mackey and the Bible project, which has helped him understand the Bible on its own terms and follow Jesus more closely. The chapter highlights an impactful sermon by Tim Mackey and Pastor Tyler Staten at Bridgetown Church, focusing on eliminating unhelpful paradigms.
01:30 - 02:00: Matt's Story of Crisis The chapter titled 'Matt's Story of Crisis' takes readers on a journey to Portland, where the narrator visits Bridgetown Church. The narrator shares their experience of attending a sermon by Tyler and visiting the Bible Project Studios, involving personalities like Tim Mackey. It emphasizes understanding the Bible in its context and how Jesus interpreted it, urging readers to subscribe and engage with the channel's content as it significantly supports the ministry. The overall theme revolves around the experience of spiritual discovery and learning within the community.
02:00 - 02:30: Role of Scripture in Life Rhythms This chapter explores the significant role that scripture plays in the daily routines and life rhythms of individuals. It kicks off with an introduction to John, described as an exceptionally intelligent individual with a complex engineering background. The narrative focuses on a particular interaction with John, who approaches the speaker post-teaching on a Sunday to inquire about a topic unrelated to the usual threads of discussion, illustrating a quest for understanding and integration of scripture into everyday life.
02:30 - 03:00: Jesus's Relationship with the Scripture The chapter explores a person's journey with the Bible, prompted by both challenges and successes in life. Despite facing hardships that led him to question his beliefs, he found that achievements brought him no fulfillment. This realization made him scrutinize the societal norms and teachings he'd accepted, particularly questioning how these align with the scripture's teachings. Through this reflection, the chapter delves into understanding how Jesus's relationship with scripture can be a guiding light in finding deeper satisfaction and truth.
03:00 - 03:30: The Story of the Bible The chapter titled 'The Story of the Bible' explores the personal journey of an individual named John who decides to read the Bible. Initially expecting it to be overly simplistic and manipulative, John is taken aback by the complexity he discovers in the narratives. This chapter highlights his initial skepticism and subsequent surprise at the depth and intricacies of the stories he encounters.
03:30 - 04:00: Epic Narrative of the Bible This chapter delves into the profound questions posed by the Bible, highlighting not just explanations but inquiries that lead to self-reflection. It centers around the experience of John, an individual who initially perceives the Bible as something attempting to sell a concept. However, he later realizes that it challenges him to relinquish his own sense of control, trust, dreams, visions, and plans. The narrative suggests that true life can be found in willingly letting go of personal control and aspirations.
04:00 - 04:30: Wisdom through Story This chapter, titled 'Wisdom through Story,' explores the transformative journey of a character named John. Initially skeptical, John discovers the profound intellectual and philosophical depth of a collection of 66 scrolls, often dismissed as mere fairy tales. These scrolls challenge Western society's narratives, revealing a complex exploration of life's profound questions, ultimately illustrating the theme of wisdom gained through stories.
04:30 - 05:00: Scripture as a Source of Wisdom John found the Bible more honest than the world, leading to his curiosity about its truth. Despite lingering questions, he found it intriguing enough to attend a Sunday worship gathering. Afterward, he approached the pastor with questions about his readings, leading to further exploration of scripture as wisdom.
05:00 - 05:30: Understanding Different Types of Biblical Literature In 'Understanding Different Types of Biblical Literature,' the author reflects on a personal experience while pastoring in New York City. A congregant, John, regularly asked questions about the Bible that were prompted by his own readings, initiating a routine of engaging post-sermon discussions. This narrative illustrates the importance of questioning and dialogue in deepening understanding and provides insight into the different interpretations and teachings within biblical studies.
05:30 - 06:00: Hearing God through Scripture The chapter titled 'Hearing God through Scripture' recounts an experience shared by John during an alpha Retreat in Upstate New York. On the last morning of the retreat, John reveals to his peers how the previous night he had invited the Holy Spirit to come into his life. This invitation marked his surrender to Jesus as his Lord, embracing Him as both Savior and friend. From this moment, John describes scripture as the path he follows, occasionally straying but repeatedly finding his way, symbolizing the spiritual journey that eventually leads him to his true home.
06:00 - 06:30: Conclusion: Immerse in the Scripture The conclusion chapter emphasizes the transformative power of scripture through a personal anecdote about John. John's engagement with scripture was an unexpected journey that brought him abundant life. The story contrasts with another individual from Wisconsin, highlighting diverse encounters with scripture. The chapter underscores the idea that scripture can profoundly impact lives in unique ways.

NEW SERMON- Bible Project’s Tim Mackie Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 the Bible is meditation literature is meant to be reread in a communal context over the course of a lifetime so if you want to learn to prophesy with power read the Bible and if you want to learn to hear God speak to you through creation the way David does read the Bible if you want to speak in the tongues of angels and and miraculously
00:30 - 01:00 and supernaturally heal and do only what you see the father doing read the Bible so how do I read the Bible to hear God welcome to another episode of ring them Bells before we get started with this episode I want to bring a little bit of context for this Channel and Tim Mackey in the Bible project when I first started my journey over 3 years ago rediscovering the Bible and ringing them bells and getting this channel started one of the first resources that the Holy Spirit led me to was Tim Mack and the
01:00 - 01:30 Bible project they have been the most valuable resource for me over the past 3 years uh to ReDiscover the Bible on its own terms and to follow Jesus more closely if you've been with us any amount of time you've seen me constantly share content from Tim Mackey in the Bible project and that's not going to change today we've got an awesome sermon from Tim and his pastor at Bridgetown Church Tyler Staten preaching an incredible sermon going over eliminating some unhelpful paradigms and and then
01:30 - 02:00 understanding the Bible on its own terms and how Jesus read the Bible so we're going to travel to Portland in this episode to Bridgetown Church uh over a year ago I got to visit Bridgetown got to see Tyler preach uh got to see Tim Mackey at the Bible project Studios it was an incredible pilgrimage I hope you guys are subscribed if you're not please take a second uh it only takes a second for you but it means so much for the ministry of this channel uh to subscribe like and share the content and let's get ready to read discover the Bible
02:00 - 02:30 together now John is quite honestly the most intelligent human being I've ever met no offense to any of you um he's an Ivy League grad he had a job in some very complex form of engineering that I couldn't understand then no matter how many times he described it to me so I don't have a chance of recounting it to you now but I met John because he approached me on a Sunday morning after the teaching to ask a question a question that actually had nothing to do
02:30 - 03:00 with what I had been teaching on but a question specifically about his own reading of the Bible a couple things had gone wrong in his life leading him to ask ultimate questions without satisfying answers a couple of other things had gone right in his life leading to success and prosperity which in his own honest self-reflection he found to be profoundly less satisfying than he'd imagined no one had outright lied to him but it was like the whole of Western Society had conspired in a
03:00 - 03:30 narrative that he was living to Perfection and the rewards were profoundly underwhelming so that combination of factors led him to do the unthinkable to crack open the most widely read book in human history and start reading John was surprised by what he found on the page he had expected to find an oversimplified morally manipulative laughable explanation of human origin and meaning what he actually found was a highly complex story that Prov oked the
03:30 - 04:00 deepest of moral questions and seemed not to explain everything but more to ask everything to him and then eventually ask everything of him and this was really interesting to John that he thought this book was trying to sell him something when in fact it was challenging him to sell everything else his sense of control his trust structures his dreams visions and plans for his own life give it all away to find life in willingly handing himself
04:00 - 04:30 over picking up his cross and walking behind Jesus now that was a plot twist to say the least this 66 scroll Anthology had been touted to John as an intellectually uncredible over simplified fairy tale when in fact by his own Discovery it was a highly complex intellectually honest wrestle with life's deepest questions it was Western society that had been offering him an over simplified fairy tale the
04:30 - 05:00 Bible he found was more honest than the world but was the Bible true maybe maybe not he still had a whole lot of questions there but it was honest and that got John's attention John found the Bible so intriguing that he did the unthinkable he Googled nearby churches and he sat through a Sunday worship Gathering and then he approached me the pastor with a question or two about what he'd been reading that's how ended up in the front
05:00 - 05:30 of the sanctuary that I was pastoring at the time in New York City uh asking me a question about the Bible a question that I imagine I had an unsatisfying answer to but a question that I at least had thoughts on and that gave him a conversation partner and that began a weekly ritual every Sunday after the sermon John would come and ask me a couple of questions based on his own reading not what I'd just been teaching and I can still vividly remember the sunay morning uh in the
05:30 - 06:00 spring not in that Sanctuary but in this big house in Upstate New York on the final morning of the alpha Retreat when John shared with me and a handful of other people that the night before when we'd invited the Holy Spirit to come he had done it he had surrendered to Jesus as Lord and asked him to walk beside him as both Savior and friend from that point out scripture was the pathway that John walked getting lost at times but always finding his way again eventually arriving at the home that he had been
06:00 - 06:30 looking for scripture was and is for John the unlikely pathway that leads to life and life to the full now that's a really happy story John's is a beautiful story of his encounter with scripture and it's very different in fact the polar opposite of a friend that I met in the great state of Wisconsin anybody yeah that's right that's right the great state of Wisconsin so my wife wife and I moved there um in the early
06:30 - 07:00 2000s so I could uh go to graduate school in the department of Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin and I met this friend I'll call him Matt at the church that we were attending and Matt had grown up in a very religious home his father was a Lutheran Minister he grew up in that tradition um he was confirmed in the church at age 13 and he was surrounded by the Christian tradition and by and by the Bible so so I met him almost 20
07:00 - 07:30 years after all of that in his early 30s and he was going through a significant crisis of just everything that he thought he believed and so as we dialogued he decided and me being the Bible nerd that I am um he decided that he would try to engage the Bible on his own as an adult for the first time ever and really sort out what he believed and that ended up being a really complicated experience for him him he made it about
07:30 - 08:00 2third of the way through the Old Testament first 3ar of the Christian Bible and he was so Disturbed and Confused particularly by the consistent abuse and violence perpetrated by the people in the Bible who are supposedly the heroes that God is constantly supporting and rescuing and bailing them out of all the messes that they make of other people's lives and their own and then the the real um stumbling block for
08:00 - 08:30 him was the violence of God in certain stories of the Bible whether it's the flood whether it's sending the Israelites to take the land of the Canaanites and he reached this point and I'll never forget it with the conversation where he just said I I just can't do this this surely is an ancient relic of what primitive people thought and wrote about God there's no way this is going to play a role in my life and so the Bible actually played a role in
08:30 - 09:00 my friend Matt walking away from his faith entirely so we have a story like John's we have a story like Matt's and there might be some of us here in the room who have experiences that are like one of those extreme opposites my hunch is that most of us have some kind of relationship to the Bible that falls somewhere in between and that's really what we want to name as we begin in today's teaching is to say we're going
09:00 - 09:30 to focus on the role of scripture in the Life rhythms of a follower of Jesus and we want to begin by acknowledging that all of us come with a prehistory of relationship to the Bible the Bible is unique among every other book in a whole bunch of different ways but one of them is just the fact that we all have a relationship to the Bible a relationship of suspicion that keeps us at a safe and skeptical distance or a relationship of fast ination that pulls us in a
09:30 - 10:00 relationship of hate deeming this story and the the story on these pages to be not just suspect but dangerous or a relationship of love deeming the story on those pages to be not just true but treasure a relationship of complexity where the scriptures are characterized in your story like a manipulative abusive parent the source of both love and harm to you over the years or a relationship of distant admiration where the scripture is great so long as it's
10:00 - 10:30 filtered through a teacher or preacher that you trust but you rarely if ever approach the scripture on your own or maybe a relationship of confusion where there's enough in Jesus to keep you from throwing out the whole thing Al together but every time you open the scripture for yourself it just leaves you scratching your head whether you read this book every single day or you've never peeled open the pages the truth is that the Bible has been so broadly in influential across the globe and so
10:30 - 11:00 particularly influential on Western culture that it is nearly impossible for us to start any discussion on scripture without acknowledging the fact that we all have a relationship with the Bible and that's unique we don't all have a relationship with Grapes of Wrath or or green eggs and ham or Dante's Inferno or the Quran I might with green eggs okay yeah some of us there's plenty of other famous works of literature out there but none provoke such a personal and emotional response
11:00 - 11:30 broadly like the Bible so no one will ever come to the Bible with a completely clean slate but man I wish we could because I do wonder what we'd find there if that were our starting place so that raises an interesting question that maybe you've thought about maybe you haven't um but it is odd that a group of people come around every single week to sing songs to someone
11:30 - 12:00 that they cannot see and to read from a collection of ancient Israelite texts I don't know if that's how you would describe what we're doing right now but it is one way to describe what we're doing right now and it is kind of odd um I am pretty sure that most of you don't have a group of friends who get around weekly to read ancient Egyptian literature um it is Portland so anything's possible you know but I just
12:00 - 12:30 have a hunt that like most of you don't have that friend Circle and it is worth asking like why is it that we would do such a thing and there's lots of factors that go into an answer to that question but one simple way to uh answer the question of why is it that followers of Jesus would do that uh is the answer is because Jesus did that um Jesus held this colle C and if I'm holding up a a
12:30 - 13:00 Christian Bible Bound in some form of cheap non-leather um but the first 3 of it if you look at the table of contents is a collection called the Old Testament otherwise known as the Hebrew Bible and this was Jesus's Bible he didn't encounter it in this form he would have encountered it in the form of Scrolls most likely uh that were uh at his local synagogue but Jesus displayed every sign of being a devout Jew who was raised singing reciting meditating on
13:00 - 13:30 memorizing and praying the words of his Bible and you can see this kind of uh immersive experience that Jesus had with scripture when he said things like this to his followers this is from words that he said in Luke chapter 24 uh this is after the resurrection and he says this to a group of his closest followers he says this is what I told you all while I was still with you everything had to be
13:30 - 14:00 fulfilled that is written about me in the Torah of Moses in the prophets and in the Psalms and then he opened the mind of his apprentices so they could understand the scriptures and he told them this is what is written the Messiah will suffer will rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to All Nations beginning at Jerusalem Jesus Not only was immersed in
14:00 - 14:30 these collection of texts growing up but when he went around doing and saying all the things he was doing he was constantly quoting from alluding to these writings and he did that in order to explain who he was and what he was doing which is why he said things like I just read aloud from Luke chapter 24 Jesus like all devout Jews of his time believed that this collection of writings was telling a story story and what this collection is is
14:30 - 15:00 it's a how you guys doing okay great all right good I'm great than yeah totally me too um so what this collection is uh it's a collection of ancient Israelite texts that we like come around every single week and they tell the story of Jesus's family they're a family history and they tell the story of Jesus's ancestors begins specifically
15:00 - 15:30 with a guy named Abraham that God called out of ancient Mesopotamia and this family had a consistent story of encounters with this God over their history the promise that this God made to their ancestor Abraham was that unending Rich abundant infinite life was a gift from God to our world and he wanted to give that gift to all all of creation through this particular family
15:30 - 16:00 which is quite a bold claim to believe about oneself but that is the claim that this family makes about themselves in in the story and Jesus fully accepted that claim what's interesting about the family story is after receiving this gift the entire history of this family over every single generation if you take the time to read it is just a comedy of errors to put it lightly the family takes makes this promise and they abuse
16:00 - 16:30 it misuse it misunderstand it misapply it become apathetic about it or idolatrous about it in every way possible and the whole story is really an expose on how shortsighted and stupid and selfish and bent toward violence that human beings are and the family fails miserably at stewarding the gift that God gave them however there was a group of Israelites among this family who really believed that God was going
16:30 - 17:00 to do something through them despite their failure and so God hands them over to self-destruction um but promises that in their suffering that is self-caused God will be with them and he will never forsake them and never forsake his promise and so the prophets began to Foster this hope well if God made this promise and if we seem unable to keep it then God's going to be have to be the one to keep our end of the deal and his end of the deal and so the prophets
17:00 - 17:30 dreamed of a day when this family would be so immersed with the presence and the love of God that it's like their hearts and their minds are created all over again to become brand new kinds of humans they dreamed of a day when their God would come to live personally among them and experience intimate Union with them the prophets talk in their poetry about a day when God would send a deliverer like a royal Priestly figure who would rescue them and Rescue all of
17:30 - 18:00 the Nations out of the mess that we've made of God's good world that figure is called the Messiah and that's how the story of the Hebrew Bible ends it's like an unfinished story and that's the story that Jesus claimed that he was carrying to its next stage of fulfillment which is why he said the things like I just read a little bit earlier so except Jesus's claim was even Bolder and and wider than that because Jesus claimed not only to be the faithful Israelite
18:00 - 18:30 who would finally be the faithful partner among this family that God could work with he also claimed that he was Israel's God become human to be the Covenant partner that God had called his people to be but that they consistently failed to be he actually was both ends of the deal fulfilling the Covenant partnership as an extraordinary Act of love in general generosity which is just apparently who
18:30 - 19:00 this God is and so when Jesus enters into the human story he enters into the suffering of hurting poor people as a display of the love of God and he also provoked the powers that be in his day to show just how corrupt and idolatrous their family had become and in Jesus's life and in his death he enters in to the mess that we have made he takes it into himself and he allows it to kill
19:00 - 19:30 him because only he has the power to bring life out of death and love out of hate and in Jesus's resurrection from the dead he is fulfilling the destiny that God has placed on the Human family but that we consistently come up short on our end of the deal and it gets even better it's a good story so far yeah it gets even better because after his resurrection Jesus promised that he would actually share the life and the love that he had with God his father and
19:30 - 20:00 share it with all of us his followers and in Pentecost and the sending out of the spirit he actually shares with us the love and the power that he spread in the world and so here we all are 2,000 years later turning to this same Foundation story but even more he sent out his followers into the world and appointed a handful specifically to represent him and start new Jesus communities around the world that's a
20:00 - 20:30 group of people called the apostles it's a Greek word spelled with English letters that means the ones who are sent and so those Apostles started Jesus communities all over uh the the Roman Empire and then they wrote letters to all of these churches and that makes up the bulk of what we call the New Testament alongside the written versions of the stories of Jesus's life death and resurrection and so here we all are descendants as it were of all of this great family history that comes to its
20:30 - 21:00 fulfillment in the story of Jesus why would a group of people gather every Sunday in Portland to sing songs to someone who's all around us but yet we can't see with our eyes and read from a collection of ancient Israelite texts that's why in as a concise a way as I can possibly say and so this collection of text is like a it's like a compass it's like a true north and with all of the problems and challenges that they cause on
21:00 - 21:30 purpose we'll get into that when we read and engage them they are to be received as God's word to us in our day and in our time so if scripture is a core practice for the way of Jesus and if the whole thing is a collection of Scrolls revealing a person Jesus who in a one-word summary of His personality is love why is it that we all have such complexing wide ranging relationships with scripture I mean why do certain
21:30 - 22:00 parts Comfort Us and other parts make us wise and want to look away and why have some of us been healed by scripture but just as many of us have been harmed by it why have some been empowered by scripture and just as many of us read it with our heads hanging in shame if the Bible is good inspired and trustworthy why is it so complicated so that is a super important question that that needs to be honored and never treated as a sign of a lack of
22:00 - 22:30 faith where this person just doesn't have enough to believe it's a real question that most thoughtful people will have if they really start to read this collection of texts for themselves and there's lots of reasons why this is such a complicated relationship that many of us have to the Bible one way to think about that complication it's actually very simple and intuitive this is a collection of texts that comes from another time from another culture It Was
22:30 - 23:00 Written in another set of languages Hebrew and Aramaic and then translated into Greek and if you're going to like your friends who sit around reading Egyptian literature every week uh you're going to have to learn some new tools or at least learn some skills for like where do these come from what is the culture like what do the language and thought patterns like of of the people out of whom the set of texts come which means you you need some new tools and
23:00 - 23:30 every time that you're developing a relationship with a new tool there are pitfalls and there is potential for example uh my hammer I took a picture of my hammer the other day um it it was among one of the eight days that I was trapped in my house like all of you and uh so I don't know what day it was or what time of day it was but uh that's my hammer I've had it for over 20 years and um you know it's a hammer most of you probably know what
23:30 - 24:00 it's for but you don't remember how and when you learned what it is for and this became uh really clear to me when um two of my Littlest roommates two boys um half their life ago when they were uh four and six and they discovered like my the tool garage where I keep all my tools and they discovered my hammer and it was summer and the way I learned that they discovered my hammer was um I came out and they were were digging a big hole and they were using the claw of the
24:00 - 24:30 Hammer as like a pickaxe to like dig at the hole and then they would scoop out the dirt with their hands and I thought it was so entertaining of course I didn't tell them like to do otherwise um except when I found it two days later like buried in the mud and I was like yeah that's not uh and it's been Rusty ever since um but what I observed there in that moment was somebody who had a good intuition about what to do with this thing clearly it's a tool it's got a
24:30 - 25:00 handle it's meant to be swung and to hit something right intuition less than helpful method there are much more effective tools if you want to dig a hole which is really what they wanted to do and also they missed out on learning what the hammer is actually designed for So eventually I taught them that it's meant for pounding and pulling nails and then they started pounding Nails into things not always the right things so that's told story um
25:00 - 25:30 but our relationship with scripture is actually very similar um we can have right intuitions about what this thing is for but adopt or develop less than helpful methods or habits and how we relate to it and a lot of the complications at least in my own experience of walking alongside people in years as a pastor and a Bible teacher is that many people have a complicated relationship to the Bible not because they have bad intuitions but because
25:30 - 26:00 they have the right intuitions with less than helpful methods for how to make the Bible do the thing they think I'm going to take a second and ask you to subscribe this is something really small for you but it means a lot for the message and scope of this channel if you can slap that like button share this content out make sure you're subscribed turn on the alerts All These Little Things help us get the message out about the good news about what God has done for this world so thank you for subscribing let's get back to the message of course as we've already acknowledged many of us come with good
26:00 - 26:30 intuition of scripture and then engage less or more helpful methods so here's three good intuitions that we want to talk about this morning scripture is designed to teach us about what is true scripture is meant to give us wisdom about what is good and scripture is the place that we learn to hear God all of these are good so how do we use them in order to construct and not to destruct most people whether whether uh you believe it or not like John or my
26:30 - 27:00 friend Matt both of them had a sense that people ought to believe or if I'm a part of this community what that means is believing that scripture is designed to teach us about what is true but how how is it that I can Engage The Bible and hear about what is true Jesus's own conviction was clearly that these collection of t text pointed to what is true that is to reality and he also held
27:00 - 27:30 the conviction that these texts were written by humans by Moses and the prophets but also that through these human words God addressed his people and those twin convictions of them having both a human origin and a divine origin were always held together in a balance and a mutually uh enriching set of convictions not something scen that was at odds with each other and even more
27:30 - 28:00 than that Jesus held the conviction that because this God had always been reliable to fulfill his word and his promise to this family over their history that the words that they hear in scripture were trustworthy and reliable too but that can lead to a number of different practices if you believe or have the intuition that in these texts I learn what is true a less than helpful method that is
28:00 - 28:30 tended to develop at least in the modernish era uh in westernized Christianity has been uh what you could call like a reference book approach to the Bible many of the sources that we turn to when we want to know the truth about something are forms of encyclopedias paper or digital more digital these days um this thing called the Google um which is kind of like our modern encyclopedia but we have this idea that I know a reference source and
28:30 - 29:00 that's where I go if I have a question that's where I go use a reference book and so many of us grow up in families or church traditions where we're trained to have that kind of relationship to the Bible if I have a question about big questions about life myself the god uh the world where can I know the page it's a big book I'm supposed to read the whole thing like where's the page where's the chapter where's the verse and then where's the sentence that will give me the answer to my question and
29:00 - 29:30 while that's an okay place to start um just think about what's happening there um what I'm doing is I'm taking little bits little texts from here and there throughout the collection and I'm just reading those and then getting my answer I myself had this experience when I knew was a new follower of Jesus and my first relationship to the Bible was learning answers to questions and where to turn to find the answer on the page AG the problem with this approach is the
29:30 - 30:00 Bible and I don't know of any um reference book or dictionary that begins with the opening words in the beginning and then ends on the last page with the words and they reigned forever and ever um most books that we uh encounter that begin and end like that are what we call narratives or stories um and epic epic narrative natives are stories that have a long history many generations huge
30:00 - 30:30 cast of characters that are embedded with sub stories and poems and letters all the way through and that is actually the form that the Bible has been presented to us in of one Epic narrative with an overarching story and that story was designed to answer the core questions that every human community and every human being actually lives out of and has to sort out at some point in
30:30 - 31:00 their life who are we where are we why are we here what's the problem if you think that there is one and what is the solution if you think that there is one and the biblical story actually offers profound nuanced sophisticated responses to every one of those questions but it doesn't do it like a reference book it does it in terms of a story and poetry and letters who are we well human beings
31:00 - 31:30 are really complicated we're glorious images of God meant to receive and reflect God's love out into the world and we are also some of the most irrational appetite driven often stupid self-oriented creatures that the planet has ever hosted and so everywhere we go we leave a trail of amazing accomplishments and a trail of bodies and a history of violence and this is
31:30 - 32:00 human history where are we we're in this wild wild place called the world and we're on a flying space Rock hurling through the universe at unimaginable speeds if we actually stop to think about it and make you pe your pants and we're separated from this vacuum by this thin little blanket of you know air molecules that we call the atmosphere and and we are in this world that is both so beautiful and well-ordered and
32:00 - 32:30 on inspiring and also absolutely terrifying and dangerous and will kill you without even thinking about it what a strange place that we find ourselves in what is the problem oh why are we here sorry I forgot one of life's most fundamental questions I just forgot so why are we here well the story is trying to tell us that like that deep intuition that you have when you see a sunset or when you hear a beautiful piece of music or when you have a meaningful loving encounter
32:30 - 33:00 with another human being that there's something about that that is above and beyond simply going to sleep doing another day of work and having another meal or satisfying another desire that you have there's something bigger going on and in the terms of the biblical story what that something bigger is that you and I were made to receive love that comes from an Infinite Source of love
33:00 - 33:30 and then to reflect that love out into the World by bringing order where there's chaos and by bringing healing where there's hurt by sharing love and generosity where there is lack and where there's hate this is the human calling to be images of God in the world and we do an okay not very great job of that and that is the problem and so what if man just what if there was a solution what if there was a human who was also
33:30 - 34:00 the Creator become human to actually be the kind of human that we're all made to be and have a sense of what we could be and sometimes are but that we pretty consistently fail to be even to live up to our own most noble ideals what if there was someone who was that who would come and be the human that we're made to be but that we failed to be and what if they took care of the whole history the train wreck of human history and found a
34:00 - 34:30 way to overcome the death that we have created in this world and overcome it with life and with love what if there were such a person and that is precisely the person that Jesus said that he was and that he said this whole collection is about but notice the way scripture goes about answering these fundamental questions is through the medium of story and that is not coincidental it's not an accident it's on purpose yeah so
34:30 - 35:00 when we approach the Bible most fundamentally as a story we don't only understand it best intellectually but we also allow it to work within us most transformatively uh psych psychologists will point out that story has a greater power to shape a human being than just straightforward explanation because a story involves both the right and the left sides of your brain or your in intellectual and emotional processing at the same time both ways of knowing our
35:00 - 35:30 logical and emotional uh ways of knowing are harmonized when you and I watch a film or read a book or just listen to a friend share a story uh think about music uh music is a form of communication that communicates to you emotionally and logically at the same time you are much more likely to weep or to recall the lyrics to a song If you hear the song set to Melody versus if
35:30 - 36:00 you just read the lyrics to that song this exact same thing happens with the increasingly popular form of healing therapy known as neuro feedback uh you recount the events of a traumatic memory while electronically both sides of your brain are activated why because that will speed up healthy processing and healing of that traumatic event the same same thing happens when we interact deeply with story for instance I could
36:00 - 36:30 recount a fact right now like uh research suggest that up to 30% of uh pregnancies end in miscarriage now that is a fact that for many in the room will land with no empathy or response but if miscarriage has been a part of your story then when I say that fact it is a thread that pulls on that whole story that you've lived it is a thread that that tugs on the excitement that you went through and the way you began to
36:30 - 37:00 daydream about what August was going to be like when you were pushing a stroller down the sidewalk and the way you couldn't resist but to share with your mom and your sister and your best friend and it also pulls on that doctor's office visit that you'll never stop reliving and the phone calls that you had to make and the grief that you then went through that almost no one even knew you were going through that little fact pulls on a whole story and then if I didn't simply say a fact like 30% of
37:00 - 37:30 pregnancies end in miscarriage and but instead told you a story the story of an individual who has walked that path even those of us who haven't gone through that personally could empathize and enter into that story with compassion the Bible is a story it is the true story of the whole world and it's a story that you can find yourself within and that means that the Bible is both intellect ually credible to offer truth and it is a story that is emotionally
37:30 - 38:00 aware enough to offer healing if you take a moment to think how you would go about introducing another person to your favorite movie that you've ever watch it's the movie that you rewatch once a year or every few years my Hunt is that um you wouldn't sit down with them and fast forward through the movie and just show them the your favorite scenes now here's the thing is that those scenes are the thing that makes it your
38:00 - 38:30 favorite movie but to see those scenes isolated will mean that your friend that you really care about there if you want to help them Cate a right experience to the movie they won't have any of the emotional investment they won't care about the people in the scenes that you love so much intuitively you would invite them to watch the whole movie to get a sense of the context for every one of those scenes and so really this is a fairly intuitive Improvement that one can make
38:30 - 39:00 to their method of engaging the Bible which is learning how to take in parts of the Bible in larger chunks if where you're at is little bits at a time that's so wonderful like double high five way to go the next step at some point in your journey will need to be learning how to take in larger chunks of the story learning to hear the way themes repeat across it as a whole so that you can see every little scene or verse or sentence or paragraph that
39:00 - 39:30 you've come to love but to see it in a larger context modern studies have suggested that the number one way to cultivate empathy within the human person is to read a novel that when we read a novel we enter into the story of another and develop compassion in a way that we don't if we just see a film or watch a television series why is that why is that that this for form of interaction with story has the most power to shape us the psychological
39:30 - 40:00 consensus is that it comes down to time that when you read a novel you spend much more time on those pages than you do staring at a screen taking in a story in another form and revisiting that person's story over a long period of time and revisiting it consistently produces empathy and compassion within us uh for any story including the biblical story to shape you it must be interacted with consistently and over a
40:00 - 40:30 long period of time another 2009 study that surveyed 40,000 people between the ages of 8 and 80 years old found that the Bible reading the Bible has a profound effect on both mental health and spiritual growth but only if it was interacted with four times a week or more once or two times a week offered minor benefit but when it gets to four times a week or more the growth metrics
40:30 - 41:00 of both mentally and uh spiritual health just take off all to say listening to a Sunday sermon on its own is incompetent for whole life transformation reading the Bible from time to time might help you understand the grand story but it's not enough to redeem your story Redemption is exponentially possible through story but Redemption requires consistent interaction with that
41:00 - 41:30 story a seconding intuition uh that most of us probably have um is that scripture is designed to give us wisdom about what is good that's maybe not the way you would phrase that intuition but there's something there the Bible is for teaching us how to do what is good and how to not do what is bad and in Us in that my hunch is that if you grew up in a family or a church tradition that the
41:30 - 42:00 Bible played a role in that that was something underneath an intuition underneath once again right intuition but there can be more or less helpful methods for how we get the Bible to accomplish that goal a less than helpful method is a relationship that many Christian Traditions have uh developed with the Bible again it's that reference book mentality except this time if it's about Behavior it's about the Bible is like a behavior manual or like a rule
42:00 - 42:30 book and it's a bit more complicated than that and all it takes is a few uh examples of just sampling across different parts of the Bible four example Ephesians 5: 18 it's a very straightforward instruction do not get drunk with wine it leads to ruin deal I guess it's okay but be really really careful because this thing
42:30 - 43:00 could ruin your life but then I come just literally 20 Pages later in the collection in another letter by the same author who says this stop drinking only water and have some wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses okay so don't get drunk with wine but definitely have some every day especially if you have stomach problems because the only water is going to be are you with me now if you're just kind of like the reference book Behavior M
43:00 - 43:30 there's the rule okay what how do these two work together let's add another layer of complexity Deuteronomy chapter 14 of all the creatures living in the water you can eat any that has fins or scales but anything that doesn't have fins or scales yeah you cannot eat it for you it is impure so sometimes no wine at all except every day if you have to Ty a problem s and definitely like no
43:30 - 44:00 calamari or fried eel but Sushi's cool right thus saith the Lord so I'm I'm trying to make light of actually something that is very real and that often has consequences it is not funny at all because anybody can make the Bible Advocate or forbid almost anything because there are hundreds of commands throughout the Bible given to different people at different moments in the story and if you just treat it as a
44:00 - 44:30 static type of behavior manual and put together collections of commands it becomes really arbitrary really quick and and it's as if the Bible can be recreated in the cultural image of those who are doing the plucking and the picking and a lot of the history of the abuse of the Bible is rooted in this right intuition but less than helpful method what is interesting is if you turn to the same author Paul the Apostle who made the two comments about wine one
44:30 - 45:00 of the few places where he actually stated explicitly his own convictions about what scripture is and what you do with it he puts forward a bit of a different like method or approach and he puts it like this it's in a letter um to a protege of his called Timothy uh it's in second Timothy chapter 3 and he says this he says from infancy Timothy you have known the Sacred Scriptures which are able to give give you wisdom about the rescue that comes
45:00 - 45:30 through trusting in the Messiah who is Jesus all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching and challenging correcting and training into what is right so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for doing every kind of good notice that for Paul the fundamental thing that scripture does is give wisdom and wisdom is different than teaching somebody rules notice his description of
45:30 - 46:00 wisdom first that wisdom comes from immersing yourself in a story the story that says we need to be rescued that's what he says uh a story that says we need to be rescued not by pulling up our bootstraps but by trusting that God can do something that I consistently prove incapable of doing and that there actually is someone who has done that for me that is the Messiah namely Jesus Jesus of Nazareth and he says if you immerse yourself in that story you will
46:00 - 46:30 become wise and what is wisdom do wisdom is about a deep internal moral compass that gets developed over time like Tyler was saying and then when you begin to hear scripture as a source of wisdom you will hear it and again could we get the second Timothy verse back up there notice what he says it will teach you it will tell you things you've never heard before it will challenge you it will take the things you think that you believe already and it's going to poke
46:30 - 47:00 and probe and undermine and problematize it's going to correct where you're going wrong it wants to point you in the right direction and it's going to train you it's an actual training ground which requires time and repetition like Tyler was saying so that eventually you don't need a rule book what you have is a deep internal awareness and connection to the presence and wisdom of God because if you give someone a rule they can make a good decision in one situation but if you give someone wisdom
47:00 - 47:30 they can begin to discern between good and bad throughout the course of a whole lifetime and that's what Paul says scripture is for to give us wisdom that comes from a story that trains us how to discern between good and bad so that you can learn from the rules in scripture and also take them in context and know that there are times when one might be more appropriate than another another so if we're going to derive wisdom from the scripture that it offers we have to
47:30 - 48:00 understand that the Bible is uh offering us wisdom in the overlap of three different types of literature or communication there's poetry there is narrative and then there is letter within the Bible so poetry offers us wisdom in that our eyes are opened to what the poet sees that is hidden in plain sight to most of us most of the time that's what we see in the Psalms and the proverbs among other biblical books a poetic form of literature aimed at opening our eyes then there's
48:00 - 48:30 narrative uh the author and columnist David Brooks defines wisdom not so much as telling someone what to do but as entering empathetically into the story of another walking alongside them long enough so that you can point them toward the future with hope uh think about Robin Williams and Goodwill Hunting the way that he enters into will hunting's story for a long time and walks beside him in his story so that that climactic
48:30 - 49:00 moment where he's holding him weeping in his office and pointing him toward a healed future can happen this is wisdom and it's how story offers us wisdom we enter into the biblical story and find our own stories within it and walk long enough to be pointed forward into a hopeful future and then there's letter the Bible especially in the New Testament contains many letters written to individuals or communities instructing us on how to live on my 33rd
49:00 - 49:30 birthday I was gifted Michael chabon's book pops by a friend now Michael Shaban is a novelist but he's also a father of four and he published a scattered collection of letters on fatherhood and at that time in my life I was a father of two young boys and I just published my first book and I will never forget sitting on my balcony on that evening and opening up this book hearing my
49:30 - 50:00 young boy squealing inside and making out the words on the pages underneath the glow of the Manhattan skyline when I a young father who had just become a writer was reading a letter about fatherhood from another father who had been a writer and a father for much longer than me and he closed his first letter this way if none of my books turns out to be among that bright Remnant because I allowed my children to steal my time narrow my compass and curtail my freedom I'm all right with
50:00 - 50:30 that once they're written my books unlike my children hold no wonder for me no mystery resides in them unlike my children my books are cruy unforgiving of my weaknesses failings and flaws of character most of all my books unlike my children do not love me back you see this letter from Michael Shaban it functioned for me less like a map and more like a trail God and that's how the Bible offers wisdom less like a direct instruction
50:30 - 51:00 turn left here and more like someone that has walked through this Wilderness behind Jesus for much longer than you and so can show you where to find your footing at this particular Bend as you try to make your way home the the wisdom offered me in this letter was not the sacred moment I experienced on the balcony it's the way that this letter has reformed the way I relate to both my work and my children ever since I read it scripture is meant to make us wise it is meant to grow us up to live well in
51:00 - 51:30 the complex conditions of our everyday lives so scripture is designed to teach us about what is true is designed to give us wisdom about Discerning between good and bad and thirdly is scripture is a place where we learn to hear from God this has been an enduring intuition uh that Jesus held and Christians have ever since that in these texts that were
51:30 - 52:00 written by people God's people hear themselves addressed by God through these human words and to borrow a phrase from one of my uh favorite Hebrew Bible scholars a guy named John Walton this whole collection of scripture while it wasn't written to us it was written to ancient Israelites and two early Christians living throughout the Roman Empire every page of scripture is for us
52:00 - 52:30 as part of the family history that you and I are still living out today but what does it mean to hear something that's for me even if it wasn't originally addressed to me and that's the journey that involves the first two issues that we talked about but there is something fundamental about learning to hear God speak to me through Tex text that were not originally written to me and that is a deep conviction and there
52:30 - 53:00 is it's a right intuition and there are more or less helpful ways to go about doing that one way that many people begin and it's the way that I begin it was all too big I mean it's just massive and it's too much and so I would come across passages in Scripture that gave me just the warm fuzzies I was inspired I felt the love of God it was beautiful it was poetic and I'm like I just want to think about that cu the thing that comes two lines later whoa I have no
53:00 - 53:30 idea what to make about that and so or bothers me and so I'll just kind of pretend that's not there and if that's where you're at with the Bible like double high fives that's okay like get the warm fuzzies and enjoy uh the inspirational beautiful lines in scripture about God's character and about what he's doing in in the lives of his people and that is great read the Bible where you are at at some Point you'll need to make a jump to another level of Engagement with scripture to
53:30 - 54:00 learn to hear God in other ways and what that will mean probably is learning to hear God speak to you in parts of the Bible that you don't enjoy reading very much the challenging Parts the disturbing Parts the provoking parts and those parts are there on purpose just like any difficulty in life forces you to make make a choice of if you're going to retreat and just keep life same as you know it or head into this
54:00 - 54:30 Challenge and allow it to change me transform me and I'll become a Lord willing a more mature and wise human and so there are parts of the Bible that so address the complexity the painful realities of life in our world and the Bible reading the Bible itself imitates the Journey of real life of wrestling through painful difficult questions and issues and so the question is in what context and with what group of people am I going to move towards these issues in
54:30 - 55:00 the Bible that are exposing these issues in my own heart and mind the Bible is meditation literature it literally calls itself that we'll read that in a moment but it's a kind of literature that is meant to be reread in a communal context over the course of a lifetime and it's actually designed not to surrender its meaning on the first reading but to problematize the story introduce riddles
55:00 - 55:30 puzzles difficult things that you will only have the tools to think through if you're in a context of a community reading and living the story over and over again in its life in its life rhythms so that being said there's a whole lot more that we could say there but one important step forward then a more helpful method would be to start reading scripture in larger chunks beginning with an open Palm posture in a prayer of God would you speak to me even
55:30 - 56:00 through the parts that I don't understand another type of practice would be to get a community of friends together where you read scripture aloud in large chunks together so you can at least commiserate in your confusion right um rereading a part of the Bible over and over and over again until you feel like you are making some progress together and then turning to if your friends are commiserating a misunderstanding turn to a Bible nerd in your community uh to ask them for some
56:00 - 56:30 resources to help you through memorizing portions of scripture especially the warm fuzzy parts that uh is a really good way to go and then there's a whole actual like scroll or part of the Bible called The Book of Psalms that's designed to teach us how to pray and how to make these words of scripture our own words in prayer um and if you uh adopt that as some kind of habit whether it's daily or weekly uh you will find
56:30 - 57:00 yourself discovering the language of prayer that you would have never come to on your own but becomes a a gift of God's own words now spoken through your words to God some of us have a a really unhelpful and untrue divide in our minds between Bible churches and holy spirit churches uh between the more objective and intellectual pursuit of understanding God in his story and the more subjective and mystical pursuit of
57:00 - 57:30 understanding God in my story or between knowing God's voice in paper and ink on the page and knowing God's voice in The Still small Whisper of the spirit to my soul and this is a completely false dichotomy in John 14 Jesus himself said all this I've spoken while I'm still with you but the advocate the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you so the holy spirit is a teacher but a particular kind of teacher the the
57:30 - 58:00 kind with no original content the holy spirit is sent to deepen and to remind us of all that Jesus has taught and where is all that Jesus has taught on the pages of the Bible all all to say the Holy Spirit Works in partnership with not competition with the word of God the truth is that scripture is the training ground for hearing God's voice if you uh read scripture you will discern God's voice
58:00 - 58:30 there and then quickly begin to recognize God's voice everywhere else but if we don't first learn God's voice in the scripture it's very difficult to recognize God's voice anywhere else so if you want to learn to prophesy with power read the Bible and if you want to learn to hear God speak to you through creation the way David does read the Bible if you want to speak speak in the tongues of angels and and miraculously and supernaturally heal and do only what you see the father doing read the Bible
58:30 - 59:00 so how do I read the Bible to hear God what we want to do is end our time by reading and reflecting on it and hearing God's voice in it together so here's what I would invite you to do is to stand with me yeah we good yeah let's do it okay all right um I think you'll see it on the screen but I'm going to read the section of Psalm 3
59:00 - 59:30 again blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that Sinners take or sit in the company of mockers instead their Delight is in the instruction of Yahweh and they meditate on his instruction day and night that person is like a tree planted
59:30 - 60:00 by streams of water which yields its fruit in season whose Leaf does not wither whatever they do they Prosper I invite you to listen as personally as possible maybe even in the quietness of your own soul praying God would you speak to me through this passage by highlighting a word or a phrase as it's read this
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