Today, as we look at the scripture, look at the message, it's in our misconception series. And I'm going to be a little shorter today. We're not going to dig into one particular passage very deeply, but we're going to just look at one scripture verse, and then I'm going to springboard from there that scripture is going to be in mass. Matthew, chapter 24, verse 35. I can read it before you probably even have a chance to find it in your scripture.

But if you want to take that as a challenge, go for it. Jesus said these words, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Now, here's why that verse is very meaningful to me today, why it just speaks so much today, because as we think sometimes maybe perhaps a bit of a misconception, that the Bible was written directly to me. In other words, that God wrote it as a love letter to me. And I hate to tell you, he didn't write it to you.

In fact, the Bible, if you think about it, is not just a book. It's a library of books that have been put together. There's 66 books in our Bible. There's Old Testament, there's New Testament, there's letters, there's poetry, there's wisdom, there's history with a point. There's gospels that tell the good news of Jesus.

There's all these different things, and they're all put together. There's not one genre, there's not one kind of things. And yet Jesus mentioned in a couple places. We talked about it recently, that the scriptures, the Old Testament that the hebrew people called, the jewish people called the Bible up to that point. That's what they had.

It was all speaking of Jesus. It was all pointing the way to Jesus. Over the last couple weeks, we looked at the faith of Abraham and the fact that there's only one faith of Abraham, and his faith was in the coming Messiah that would one day be his offspring that came through him, that would one day save all nations on earth and all peoples. That is the true faith of Abraham. There's no other faith of Abraham.

The jewish faith is one that is incomplete at this point if they have not accepted Jesus Christ as their messiah, because he is the hope of the faith of Abraham. And so our prayer for our jewish brothers and sisters is that they would understand that the hope that they have in the messiah, Jesus Christ, that they would put their faith in him and trust him as their savior. The hope that we would have for people of the islamic faith is that they would understand that the faith of their forefather, Abraham, was not passed down through Ishmael, but through Isaac and on through Jacob and the twelve patriarchs, on down to the time of Christ, that he is the hope and pinnacle of the faith of Abraham. And so as we look at that, we realize that the Bible, the different books of it, were written to specific people or group at those times. And yet at the same time, it isn't just written to them, but it is written for us.

The Bible was not written to you, but it has been preserved by God and his human followers throughout the ages for you, that God has given you his word as a gift, and that it is in every bit of it, every page, every verse, every corner, every line is for you. If you've ever thought that there's a part of the Bible that's not for you, that's a misconception, that's a mistake. You see, there's times where we might read part of it and say, I don't know. It's not speaking to me today. Have you ever been there, like the first page of the New Testament?

We think, okay, this is going to be about Jesus, right? And all of a sudden it's like just telling us about families and who had how many kids and what their kids were and what their kids were. And we're like, do I need to know all this today? Actually, today, maybe not. But there's a time where you might be studying something else in scripture, and you'll see those names and you'll say, wait a minute.

I remember reading about that character in the Old Testament. I didn't realize how closely these people were related. I didn't realize who David's grandfather was. He's kind of an important guy in the Bible. His great grandfather kind of plays a big, like, we're like, oh, my goodness.

I see why these genealogies are in there. It's important to see how it's all connected, the Bible. There's no way that any group of people so separated over so many centuries of time that most of them didn't know each other. There's no way that they could ever write such a library of books that has one overarching theme that goes all the way through it from beginning to end. Yet by the spirit and power of God, he has done that as he inspired others to write, sometimes directly narrating to them, such as certain things where he'll say to Moses or a prophet, he'll say, write these words down.

And then they write it exactly. But then there are some times where we're like, I don't think God spoke these words directly, but these were the people that were following God so closely that what they wrote was immediately recognized as scripture. There's verses throughout the New Testament that acknowledge that. For instance, Peter. In second Peter, and I forget the chapter and verse, but you can just read all of it.

It's only about three chapters. In second Peter, he mentions the writings of Paul, the apostle Paul, and he calls them scripture. There's other prophets that talk about the scriptures of those who had written before them in the Old Testament. In other words, throughout the Bible, there are those who are testifying to the fact that these other parts of it are, in fact, holy scriptures. And in so doing, we know that God has preserved his scriptures for us.

And Jesus says, since it's all about him, he says, my words will never pass away. I don't think he means just the words that he spoke, but he means the words about him. So as we look at scripture, when we look at how it's been handed down to us, one of the things that you might not be aware of is how many times the Bible itself has been hunted down throughout history. There have been people throughout time who have tried to destroy the Bible. Very powerful men, rich men, rulers, that tried to stamp out the scripture, the books of the Bible, tried to erase it, tried to get rid of it.

See, we live in this time where it's beautiful, because ever since the Gutenberg printing press was invented several hundred years ago, we have the opportunity to mass reproduce books and literature. See, that wasn't always the case. They had to be made out, written by hand, and it took a long time, and it was very expensive and costly. And if they made a mistake, they would have to destroy it and start over. And they were very serious about the way the veracity in which they passed down the words of scripture to make sure that it wasn't messed up over time.

In fact, the Bible, we have more manuscript copies. We don't have the original manuscripts that the original authors wrote, but we have more copies that are closer to the original author's pen than any other historical work of literary genres. In other words, people that we have, ancient authors like Plato or guys like that, some of their works. It was several hundred years. The first copy we have was several hundred years after they wrote it.

And maybe there's only a few dozen or maybe even a few hundred copies of that in existence today. But the Bible has over 27,000 copies of different portions of the manuscripts. And the earliest ones dating back to within 100 or 200 years of when they were written. In other words, the time frame between the original author's pen and the first copies that we have available to us is very close and reliable. Now, you might think, okay, but a lot of time has passed since then and a lot of room for error.

Well, a lot of the copies that our Bibles were translated from were they only dated back to the year 900. So about 100, 1200 years ago ish, those copies that we were working from were still a long gap between when the people wrote the Bible books and those copies existed. But then, earlier in the 19 hundreds, I was born in the late 19 hundreds. That's a good joke. Somebody said the other day, I'm like, oh, I'm from the late 19 hundreds.

I'm like, I like that. In the earlier 19 hundreds, they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. And these scrolls dated back so much older than the copies that we had available to us. And you know what? They showed over 95% matched up.

And the only differences were clear scribal errors. There was no difference in doctrine or major theological concepts of any kind. In other words, the words that Jesus has said, when he said that my word will be preserved, that my word will never pass away or never fail, he meant that. He meant that no matter when Emperor Diocletian was trying to stamp out the Bible and get rid of it, that later constantine would come to power, would get saved by a vision that God had given him, and he decided to turn sides. And instead of stamping out the Bible and Christianity, he began to promote it.

Now we could get into arguments whether it was good to make it the official religion and then start fighting wars in the name of scripture or not. We could argue about that, probably end up on the same side and say, hey, don't go to war. Don't do that. I've said it before and I mean it. I'm about ready to vote for anybody, for any office in this country that won't take us into a new war.

I'm sick of it. I don't want us to go to any more wars or support them. That's where I'm at. I don't hardly care what's going on. Can we find ways for peace?

I follow a savior who calls himself the prince of peace, and I want to live by that. But Jesus, he's protected his word on down. After the Gutenberg printing press had made it the ability to print multiple copies of scripture, we had the Protestant Reformation, led by people like Martin Luther, and a whole bunch of others. And as they kicked this off, they liberated the word of God from just the few educated biblical scholars and priests to where now anyone could get, if they could afford it, at least back then, they could get their hands on a copy of scripture. Now we have it available to us everywhere.

You can go to stores and there's little scripture verses painted on things like Hobby Lobby's got a ton of them. And other stores do this. You can get it on your phone where you can get an app that not only can you read anywhere in the Bible, but you can have it send you reminders every day that you can just ignore and still not read the Bible. Right? I mean, we kind of tend to do that sometimes.

But the scriptures are so available to us today, more so than literally any other era in history. And God has been faithful to preserve and promote his scripture in a way that we are able to have not just access to it, but to base our lives on it, to live our lives according to it. As the scribes made copies, and as copies of those copies were made, they had such a faithful process in transmitting that. That we know that today, even though we have all these different versions where the wording changes, because language changes over time and we want to understand it in a modern way, we have all those version differences, but it doesn't change the doctrine and it doesn't change the truth of the scripture that God has provided to us and for us. So then the question is, if all of this has been preserved for us and given to us, do we use it?

Do we study it? Do we love it? Oh, see, that's where it hits home, isn't it? I mean, evil men have tried to destroy the Bible over time and failed. And yet Satan is still at work to try to convince us that we really don't need to have a rich walk in the word of God.

He tries to tell us that, look, this is just a book. And look, these words, they're flat on the page, right? I mean, they're two dimensional. It's just black letters on a white page. That's not really going to do anything for you, is it?

That's what Satan tries to help us, to convince us and to make us believe. But the truth is that the word of God, it says is living and active. In other words, it's not just dead, flat words on a page. God breathes life into this. The word of God is living and active, and it's sharper than a double edged sword.

Well, we don't really have double edged swords. So what I think of is a surgeon's scalpel. The word of God is sharper than a surgeon's scalpel, and it's able to slice through us, but not in a way that cuts us up and leaves us bleeding and dying. It's able to do it in the way a surgeon's knife does, to cut out the things within our hearts and within our lives that don't belong there and to cut those out and to allow us to heal back up. And as we heal back up from reading the word of God and doing surgery upon us, we are able to grow into what God wants us to be.

We're able to pattern our lives after the life of Christ himself. The question is, have we followed the lie of Satan that says that we don't need to spend time in the word of God? Do we get to a place where we say, well, I've already read that before, or that part. I'm kind of bored with that. I don't know.

I'm not really feeling too good about it. I'll tell you, there's a lot of things that we'll do, because we should do it. I stayed in a hotel for this conference, and I could just hear my wife saying, like, did you make the bed? Now, she didn't say that. She's not checking up on me, but I made my bed.

I didn't need to. I'm sure if I would have just left the little card on the inside of the door, they probably would have opened it and the room service would have made it for me. But there's something that says even that little smallest thing of just getting your day started right. Do that thing. If you do that thing right, you got a chance at doing the other things right.

I've got this reminder on my phone every morning. It reminds me to do two things. One of those things says, pray for your neighbors. We use this program or this app, and you can actually do it here as well and join in with our church. It's called bless every home, and we might start promoting that in the next few weeks, but I'm telling you a little bit about it now.

Bless every home. Some of you I know use this and are part of this. You can have it send you a reminder within the app on your phone, or you can get an Email every day, and it'll include five neighbors to pray for. And you pray for them by name. Hey, look at that.

Good job. It's something where you can pray for five neighbors each and every day. By name, and you can set it for as small or large of a neighborhood as you want. And so you can go actually to their website and you can join our church. And so that you're a light within our neighborhood is what they call it, that bless every home.

And so if you're interested in that, come see me at that purple table. We'll talk about it after service and just before Sunday school. And also, we'll present it to you over the next couple of weeks as well. It'll play in really well with the district advance that we're headed to in April. It'll pair really well with what we're going to learn there.

And so I pray for my neighbors every morning. And then the other thing is, I read my devotional from Oswald Chambers at night. I have a reminder to read scripture. Now, you'd think, well, you're a pastor. Why do you need a reminder for these things?

Don't get me wrong. I study scripture. I listen to other preachers preach. I read books on scripture, and I read scripture itself. But I need that reminder sometimes, each and every day, that no matter whether I feel like it or not, whether I feel like there is a need or a lack in my life at some particular moment, that every day I need to be in the word of God.

So that the times where I'm looking for an answer in the word of God and saying, God, why won't you speak to me right now? I know, because he's been speaking to me through his word, as I have that habit of doing it. But it's not just a habit, is it? It's a richness that's building up within my life. And as I get to know the word of God, the times where I need it, I can just think through and say, lord, I know the word is in here.

I know you've taught it to me. I know I've read it. And I just need you to speak to me right now. And he'll start flooding my mind with verses. I can't tell you necessarily what some people call the address, the chapter and verse number.

I'm not always good with that, but I can quote it. I remember it because it's living in my heart. Because the word of God isn't just flat and two dimensional. The word of God is alive and well, living and active and sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. And it brings not only healing but wholeness to our lives.

It builds a richness in our lives that we can't find anywhere else. So the misconception that we think the Bible might have been just written to us might be wrong. But the spirit of that is that the Bible was definitely given to us. It is for us. And God is for you.

He loves you and he wants a relationship with you. It's pretty simple. We made it really complicated over time. We make it about a lot of different things. But the truth of the matter is that God wants a relationship with you and he's moved heaven and earth to have.

That's our channel.