Welcome to ECB's Weekly Sermon Podcast. ECB is an international church in Bangkok, Thailand,
with dozens of nationalities worshipping together. We invite you to connect with us from wherever
you are through our website, ecb.asia, or our mobile app. And now we pray that you are blessed
by this week's sermon. In this series, Servants Devoted to God, we are learning that God saved
us for so much more than just dying and going to heaven. In fact, when he saved us, he made us part
of his people, the kingdom of God. And in this kingdom, we see ourselves as servants devoted
to God. We love him, and we serve him with devotion. And that summarizes our lives. And that
heart has been from the very, very beginning of the movement of Jesus that he established on earth
that became known as Christianity and the church. It's been a movement of people that repented of
their sins and realized that Jesus loved them and asked Jesus to save them. He gave them the Holy
Spirit to indwell them and lead them into a life of service to God. That's why anyone that is a
follower of Jesus is invited to see herself or himself as a servant devoted to God. And we learn
that in this kingdom, the attitude that we need to have is like water, flexible, adaptable. When God
leads us, we go. When he says stand, you stand. When he says stop, you stop. We are following him.
But also we have a motive, which is not fear or shame or selfish ambition, but it's love for God.
That is why we serve him. He loved us first. Now we love him because of what he has done. And we
also learn that in the kingdom, there are pillars. And it's our godly servants who are driven by a
love for God to serve God. And they have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit
because they lead from that place of flow from within. Today we are going to discover the
foundation of the kingdom. And if you already are familiar with foundations, you know that
foundations are very, very important. So important that picture says it all. The foundation upon which
you build your life is going to be strong and solid or faulty. Like Jesus put it in the parable
of the person who built the house on the rock or on the sand. We don't have sand. We have a rock.
We have Jesus, our strong rock upon which a foundation is built. The apostle Peter, the
apostle Paul, they write about these things. The apostle Paul says that in Ephesians, that the
foundation of this kingdom, the rock is Jesus and the foundation is the teaching of the apostles
and the prophets. God's word is the foundation of the kingdom. And this will become clearer and I
will take much more specific shape at the beginning of the church. So what we will do in this study is
two things. We will first look at what the early church had to face in order to start defining
what was their foundation for truth. And secondly, we will then look at what the apostle Paul wrote
to Timothy, how important this foundation was. So let's go at the beginning. After Jesus ascended
to heaven and the church began, the apostle Peter preached the gospel and 3,000 people came to know
Christ. We studied that before. But then as the church started growing, Barnabas and Paul went
from the area of Jerusalem all the way now to Antioch in the north. And they started preaching
the gospel there. What was different is that in Jerusalem, it was a city primarily populated by
lots of Jews that were responding to the gospel. The first Christians in Jerusalem were all Jews.
Then later, a Roman man, Cornelius, he came to know Christ. He was the first Gentile,
meaning non-Jew, to come to know Christ. But that was in that area on the south. But then in the
north, it was a very cosmopolitan city, very multicultural, commercial center. And in that
area, the apostle Paul and Barnabas started preaching the gospel and many people came to
know Christ. And that church started growing and became the center of world missions, Antioch. But
at the beginning, as these Gentiles started coming to know Christ, the first Christians that were
Jews started wondering, so how does it work? They are not Jews, but they're believing in Christ. So
is that all it takes to be saved? Or they also have to become Jews like us to truly be saved.
So there were these guys from Jerusalem that went all the way to Antioch and started teaching the
people certain things that created a dispute. Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and
were teaching the believers this, unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by
Moses, you can not be saved. What? Really? Wow. The church of Antioch was like confused now because
they knew, yeah, the scriptures in the Old Testament talk about the love of Moses and it says you need
to be circumcised, but that was for the Jews, but I'm not a Jew, so really, what do we need to do?
The apostle Paul and Barnabas said, no, no, no, that should not be the case. But these guys were,
no, it is, it's just there, the word. You have to be circumcised. So in the middle of that dispute,
they had to start discerning, okay, what is true? They cannot both be true. Which one is right? So
they decided to go to Jerusalem, meet with the apostles and the elders. And when they got there
to start talking about this issue and try to figure out, okay, let's reason through this, as the
meeting begins, we are told that some of the believers right now in Jerusalem, they are meeting
with apostles and the elders who belong to the party of the Pharisees, stood up in the middle
of the meeting and said, Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the love of Moses, period.
Huh, wow. And these are Pharisees, they are well connected to the other people in Jerusalem,
so it's like, what do we do now? So the apostle Paul and Barnabas started telling the leaders
in Jerusalem about what had happened. And they started sharing with them all the experience of
how people have come to know Christ. And now as leaders, they were trying to discern together
which one is true. Now I know that throughout church history, many more disputes have come up
throughout different denominations and churches. And depending on what denomination you come from,
we have different convictions about secondary issues. Like when is Jesus going to come back?
Is it before the millennium, during the millennium, after the millennium? Is there a millennium? Maybe
there's no millennium. You know, all those questions. It's like which one is true? And people
try to discern these things. But there are other things that are much more fundamental. How many
genders are there? What about sexual identity and all of these things? Should we be an affirming
church? What does that mean? You know, these are things that people are dealing with in churches
around the world today. And they're trying to discern what is true. The first Christians got
together and this is what they did. First, it tells us that the apostles and elders met to consider
the question. Why the apostles and elders and no one else? Because we learned last week that the
leadership that emerged, the pillars in the kingdom, were the elders and the servants, the deacons.
And these two forms of leadership had complete different functions, different roles. The servants,
the deacons, they were there to help execute and mobilize. But the elders were responsible for
ensuring the organizational health of church, as well as doctrinal integrity, biblical teaching,
they were responsible for making sure people were being shepherded well. These were the elders.
And that's why now the elders come together in Jerusalem with the apostles. And now they're
going to engage and they start listening to Paul and Barnabas and then Peter is the first one to
stand up. After much discussion, have you ever been in an elder meeting? That's true. After much
discussion. That's the way it is. That's why elders have to have self-control. They have to
love the word. They have to be trustworthy servants because we can never put our interest
in front of God's church. We can never put our opinions, our preferences in front of God's Word.
So it takes a certain quality of person to lead in eldership. And these were them.
So Peter got up and addressed them, brothers, you know that some time ago,
God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the
gospel and belief. True, because the apostle Peter was not the only the first one to preach
the gospel in Jerusalem when 3000 people came to know Christ, all of them Jews and some
Hellenistic Jews. But he was also the first person to preach the gospel to the non-Jews,
to the Gentiles when God led him to Cornelius and preached the gospel there. And when he preached
the gospel to Cornelius, he remembers how the Holy Spirit came upon them and they started
experiencing the same thing that he had experienced in Jerusalem when they were baptized with the
Holy Spirit and the experience was exactly identical. But without a doubt, he knew that
these Gentiles had come to know Christ. So he says, guys, I have some experience here.
I'm the only one here in this group of elders and apostles that has led a Gentile to Christ.
So God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to
them, just as he did to us earlier in Jerusalem at Pentecost. He did not discriminate between us
and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. What gave them the Holy Spirit was that they
believed. That's it. They didn't go and get circumcised and then they received the Holy
Spirit. No. We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as
they are. Can I hear an amen to that? This is why we believe salvation by grace through
faith alone. Because it is believing in Christ that caused you to be in dwell with the Holy
Spirit. And if you are in dwell with the Holy Spirit, he is there to stay with you until
the day of redemption. So he is speaking from the experience. And the
Apostle Paul and Barnabas start saying, yeah, that's true. Let us tell you more about some
of our experiences. There was another guy that he was an elder. He was not one of the
Apostles. His name is James. He was very well acquainted with the Scriptures. He was a theologian.
And he was the brother of Jesus. And James, who later writes the book of James that you
have in the New Testament, he has been just listening the entire time. Have you ever met
someone like that in those leadership meetings? It's just listening quietly. Not quick to
say anything, but then when the person speaks, wisdom. That's James.
When Paul and Barnabas finished talking about all these things, James spoke up. Brothers,
listen to me. Simon here has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people
for his name from the Gentiles. Also eloquent, huh? And as I listened to him, I've been thinking
about this. The word of God, the word of the prophets are in agreement with this. As it
is written, and he's going to quote the book of Amos, after this, I will return and rebuild
David's fallen tent, its ruins, I will rebuild and I will restore it. That the rest of mankind
may seek the Lord. Even all the Gentiles who bear my name says the Lord who does these
things, things known from long ago. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not
make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. We should not ask them to
go and get circumcised. We already heard. They received the Holy Spirit by believing.
They already belong to God's people. Circumcision is not necessary. And we just heard it in
the scriptures. It's aligned with God's word. Gentiles will come to follow God. As Gentiles,
not as Jews. But then James is thinking about another dimension. And you can see how analytical
he is. Because he's thinking now with cultural intelligence. See, cultural intelligence is
that awareness that there are cultural differences and we need to adapt to different circumstances
so that our relationships can remain strong. And he knows that in all of these cities like
Antioch and throughout the empire, many of the Jews that were Christians were persecuted
in Jerusalem and they had spread out throughout the empire. So there are Christian Jews in
all of these different places. Also there are synagogues for centuries that have been
teaching the law of Moses in all of those places. So there are Jews, also non-believing
Jews, waiting to learn about the gospel. So now that we start having all these Gentiles,
non-Jews becoming part of the church, we have now a mixed community. And there's a problem
that he anticipates. He says instead we should write to them telling them to abstain from
food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from
blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and
is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. Right, because what happened is that if I
am a Jew, I am told by the law of Moses that it touch you, I cannot have fellowship with
you, I have to stay away from you because if I get close to you or I get to touch you,
now I become unclean. They have all these regulations. So if now I go to a church that
is surrounded, that has a bunch of Gentiles and these people are doing things that make
them ceremonially unclean, that's going to be chaos. How can we be the church if we cannot
be in the same proximity? Imagine, it's like, hey, you're scheduled to do worship this
Sunday. It's like, oh, but so and so is in the worship team. I know they eat this kind
of meat. I cannot be close to them so I can't leave worship that day. You know, it was just
like a complicated thing. So it's like, oh, James, you're right. We hadn't thought about
that. Yeah, this is not about salvation anymore. But there is an issue that is not so theological
in nature, but it's ecclesiastical in nature. It has to do with our fellowship, our community.
How can we maintain these relationships without damaging them? That's a good idea. And now,
after much thinking together with the scriptures as the foundation and the experience of spiritually
mature people, they come to a conclusion of clarity. And they decide to write this letter,
send it to the Gentiles, send it to the church in Antioch, and they send Paul and Barnabas
back with the letter telling them everything that they had, discussed, their conclusion,
and what the recommendation was. And as the letter is written, at the end of the letter,
it said this, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything
beyond the following requirements. Did you notice something interesting he says? It seemed
good to the elders and apostles that we should, is that what it said? No. It seemed good to
the Holy Spirit and to us. And that is the reason why the scriptures and the authority
of the scriptures are the foundation of the kingdom. The apostle Peter said that the prophets
did not speak out of their own will. They were led by the Holy Spirit to write what
they wrote. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is the one that inspired the scriptures. So
I cannot have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and be a good, reliable, godly
pillar in the kingdom if I don't have a strong relationship with his word. And also, as the
elders and apostles were leading, they are praying, first of all, God lead us into all
of these things. And the Holy Spirit leads. It's not that they are creating truth. They
are discerning it. It's like mathematicians discover, as they come out with these formulas
and these theories and things that they write, it's not that they are creating it. They are
trying to define what is already there through mathematical formulas. They are not creating
the laws. They are just giving out words or numbers. And the same thing here. The Holy
Spirit is leading them. They have the word from the Holy Spirit. And as they are engaging
together as leaders in the unity and power of the Holy Spirit, now they have this clarity
and they can write this with confidence because it's aligned with the foundation of the authority
of the word. And that's why they say at the end, you are to abstain from food sacrifice
to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will
do well to avoid these things. And that's it. Farewell. Now when that letter got to
Antioch and they read it, people were so excited. It says that people read it and were glad
for its encouraging message. And that is an understatement. Because imagine if I was the
pastor of that church and I was with the men's ministry and I said, hey guys, we got the
letter from Antioch. Guess what? No circumcision. It's like everybody was like, oh, praise God
for Holy Spirit. Thank you for leading them into all truth. If they would have played
politics, say, oh, but these Pharisees are the ones that are saying we should do this.
We can get in trouble with the authorities. Can you imagine if the church in this moment
decided to make a decision not based on God's word and the wisdom of trustworthy pillars,
but instead they went with the popular vote, instead they played politics, they could have
gone completely the opposite direction and you and I guys would have to be circumcised
today to be Christians. The foundation of the kingdom matters. And this is how they
faced it. The authority of the scriptures is the foundation of the kingdom. That's how
it was at the beginning and that's how it will continue to be until the very end.
The apostle Paul went through this first experience. This was the first time engaging in disputes
about these things with the leadership of the church, engaging now with the scriptures
to figure out how we discern truth. And after all these years of ministry, he started mentoring
another servant devoted to God. His name was Timothy and he was young. He writes two letters
to Timothy telling him lots of things about how to serve God well. And in these letters
he's going to talk about three convictions of servants devoted to God when it comes to
the foundation of the kingdom. And I want to stake then the next part of the study to
focus on understanding these things. Because if you and I are servants devoted to God and
we are going to love God and serve him with devotion, we have to make sure that the foundation
that we have is not having cracks, but it's solid. And the first conviction of a solid
foundation as a servant devoted to God is that we need to know the word. Know it. Master
it. Get so familiar with it. During my first year of marriage, we bought a piece of furniture
that was a corner piece of wooden furniture that needed to be stained. I had no idea how
to do that, but my wife, she had a college degree in art. So she knew how to do this
very well. So we took this thing and she taught me how you stained. You choose the color,
you use these sponges and then you go, then you let it dry, then you sand, you let it
dry, then you sand, then you let it dry, then you sand. Every time that you do another coat,
you sand it until finally, little by little, you get exactly the color you want and the
consistency you want. It was very dedicated work. I had no idea about it, but she taught
me. And then much later when we moved into our home, we had bought a bigger TV when the
flat screen TVs came into the market and it was one of those flat screen TVs with a very
thick background. I still remember it was a Sony TV, you know, like a very thick piece
in the back, not those flat that we have today. So the piece of furniture we had in the TV
room was not the right size, so I built one. I never built anything, but hey, let's try
it and it fit. And I stained, just like my wife had taught me and it took time. And then
we were remodeling a part of the house and we hired this contractor to bring his crew
to start building a wooden frame around the fireplace. And I remember that I walked in
as the worker was doing that. I got my attention that he was like using the stain like he's
painting a wall. You know, I was like, that doesn't seem right. So it occurred to me to
ask him, hey, how long have you been doing this kind of work and staining furniture and
stuff? And he said, oh, this is my first time. Oh, that explains it all. It's like, okay,
you have no idea what you're doing. And that's not uncommon. You hire the contractor, but
you're not hiring the employees, you know? And so I learned from that experience that
you have to stay on top of the game when you have construction going on. So anyway, I had
to teach him, no, that's not how you do it. This is how you do it. I was not an expert,
but I had learned enough as to discern when something was not being done right. And Paul
is going to tell Timothy, you need to be like that. Will you read out loud? Second Timothy
2, 15 with me. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does
not need to be ashamed, who correctly handles the word of truth. You need to be a servant
of God. Shame is no longer part of your life. You are living right before God. You put your
life together, but you know the word. You know how to handle it. You have mastered it.
You need to do your best to get to that level of maturity as a follower of Jesus. And I
tell you, Timothy, avoid godly chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and
more ungodly. Don't even engage with those conversations that lead nowhere. Some people
just want to argue and they are deceived. In fact, let me tell you what I'm talking about.
These guys that I came across, it's just like that. Their teaching was spread like
gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have departed from the truth. They say
that the resurrection has already taken place and they destroy the faith of some. They will
be people in your ministry, in your community, in your life group. There will be people in
your church. There will be people in your family that say, I believe in Jesus. I follow
God. But they are teaching something that is not aligned with the scriptures. And somebody
has to know how to stay in the furniture. Somebody needs to know how to use this tool
called the scriptures well. Because if we don't, any teaching goes. And the problem
was that some people were already deceived by this thing so it's going to spread like
gangrene, like cancer. So Timothy, if you're going to be a servant devoted to God, know
the word. Do you know the word? Can you detect when the guy is staining something and say
that doesn't look right? Or you are there looking, oh that's awesome, is it going to
look pretty? Because you have no idea, spiritually speaking. You cannot discern deception from
truth. Just because the guy has a YouTube video doesn't make him an expert. Just because
the guy published the book doesn't make his true, his right. We need to grow in our understanding
and the proper handling of God's word. And one of the things that I have discovered is
that a lot of the bad teaching, doctrine that is not sound at all, comes not because we
do not believe in the Bible. It's because the way we interpret the Bible is faulty.
There's a word that perhaps will be new to many. It's called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics
is simply a fancy word to describe the study and method of interpreting texts. How do you
interpret a text? The answer to that is hermeneutics. There are systems in place to properly interpret
a text to reach the right conclusion. But people have different hermeneutics systems
just like people have different glasses that they look through. And the way we engage with
interpretation matters. Let me give you an example. Can you read this word out loud?
What does that mean? Huh? Greeting? Yeah, hello, hi. Greeting, right? Yeah, you're right.
It says hello and it means a greeting. So simple. Yeah? It says hello, it means greeting.
Perfect. But what if somebody comes to you and says hello? Huh? What did the person say?
Hello? So it says hello, but it means, ah, that person's not greeting me. That means
a reproach. That person is actually being rude. What it says, what it means, what it
implies. It implies that you better talk to that person because that's not how we interact
with each other. Especially if you're in my team. Don't treat me that way. Huh? Right?
What it says, what it means, what it implies. Now imagine that you're walking on the street,
you're a lady, you're with a friend, couple of ladies with you, and on that corner there's
a guy standing and he looks you up and down and then he says hello you. He says hello.
What does it mean? Oh, he's greeting me. Hi. Your friend will say, what are you doing?
Well he's greeting me. He's not greeting me, I'll tell you. Yeah, it doesn't mean a friendly
greeting. It means I'm flirting with you. What does it imply? Well, you better walk
fast. You don't want to be around this guy. Hmm? It's not secure. What it says, what it
means, what it implies. You see? That is hermeneutics. And we engage with hermeneutics all the time.
We just did not know that word existed. But let me give you a little background. Three
common or dominant models of hermeneutics can be summarized with these three different
types. Postmodern, allegorical, and grammatical, historical. Postmodern is thinking, huh, what
does it mean to you? Allegorical says, what does it represent? It's just a symbol, it's
a metaphor. And the grammatical, historical says, well, what does the text say? What does
it mean in its original context? What's the internal evidence that that's the right interpretation?
Three different ways. Each one of these is a form of hermeneutics. So let me take you
to this text. Can you read it out loud? Okay. That's what it says. What does it mean and
what does it imply? Hmm. That's hermeneutics. So if I start with the postmodern system,
it's like, what does it mean to you? Well, for me, it means that, hey, this person needs
honey and bananas and milk and bread. And most likely between bananas and milk, I think
that the person forgot to add a couple of things. So I'll just add a few more things
there. Yeah, that's what it means to me. So you show up home, at home with honey, bananas,
milk, bread, and a bunch of other things. I say, here. And your wife says, what? Well,
I just was interpreting it with this hermeneutics system that I learned from Pastor Pablo. This
is the postmodern way of thinking about text. That's what it meant to me. So that's what
I got. Well, the allegorical will be different. The allegorical says, well, honey, bananas,
milk, some bread. That's definitely breakfast food. That's what it represents. So this person
is asking you to just buy breakfast food. So fine, good. So I'll go and get some coffee,
some donuts, some jelly and butter, and maybe milk. So I show up with that stuff. And my
wife says, what did you get all this? Well, I thought you were just asking me to bring
breakfast food. So this is why I brought donuts and all this stuff. Okay. That's a way of
interpreting it, you see. Well, the third system, the grammatical historical is different.
It says, okay, wait a second. Honey, I need bananas, milk, and some bread. Or honey, I
need bananas, milk, and some bread. Oh, this could be interpreted in two ways. Maybe the
person is asking you four things or three. Hmm. Which one is it? I don't know. Okay.
Let me get the text. Can I get your phone? Who sent you this text? Was it your son, your
friend, your wife? Because that will help a little bit, right? If your son sent you
the text, he didn't most likely call you honey, huh? So maybe that's part of the list. That
will mean honey, I need bananas, milk, and some bread. Did you send any text before this?
Yeah? Okay. So what? Okay. You are talking to your wife and you ask, do you need me to
get anything from the store? Okay. Does she typically call you honey? Yeah. That's our
term of endearment. Okay. That's what it means. She's asking you to buy just bananas, milk,
and some bread. So I show up with bananas, bread, and some milk. And my wife says, honey,
thank you so much. You see how we're engaging with the text? Three different ways of interpreting.
What does it say? Everybody reads the same thing. But what does it mean? It changes.
And what does it imply? It changes. The problem that I believe we have is that we have hermeneutical
systems that are faulty. And we're reading the scriptures and we come up with conclusions
that the text never meant to give us. And we show up to God with all these ideas and
say, well, this is what I believe now. And God says, well, I never said that. I personally
believe in the grammatical historical system of hermeneutics. And that is how I engage
with the scriptures. And that is where I come from. When I am teaching the word and studying
it, I can tell you the power of God's word when you pay attention to what it says. It's
amazing. The second thing that Paul tells Timothy, not just know the word and master
it and use it correctly, but you need to trust the word. Because Timothy grew up in a home
where his father was a Greek, his mother was a Jew, and his grandmother from the mother's
side taught him the word from the beginnings since he was a little kid. So he was a kid
that you could say grew up going to church, even though not truly. But he was familiar
with the scriptures. So now the apostle Paul says to him, but as for you, Timothy, continue
in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned
it and how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you
wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Timothy, you know the word since you
were so young. Don't walk away from it. It is the foundation. You know who you learned
it from. Timothy, you need to understand that all scripture, not just part of it or some
sections of it, but all the scripture was God-breathed. It originated in God himself.
That's why we call it God's word. It came from the Holy Spirit and that's why we treat
it with authority for our lives. It is useful to teach. It's going to rebuke you. It's going
to make you realize when you are doing something wrong, it's going to say, not that way, that's
wrong, but it's going to also correct you. It's going to teach you how to do it right.
And as you go through this process, it's going to train you in righteousness so that the
servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work because that is the kind
of maturity that you're going to acquire. The more you know it, the more you align your
life with it, the more wise you become, the more trustworthy you become, and you are thoroughly
equipped for every good work. When I was seven years old was the time I remember getting
my first Bible. I remember it was a black Bible with the gold sides. It was very beautiful
and it was nice. I also remember it so much because one time we took a taxi from church
to home and I left it in the taxi so I lost it. But somebody had written something in
that Bible, a little quote at the beginning that said, this book will keep you away from
sin or sin will keep you away from this book. And the more I've grown older, the more profound
I find that. So true. Don't walk away from the foundation. But I understand that there
are complexities. I went through it myself when I was in graduate school. I had my faith
crisis from all places when I was studying theology. Because that's when I became acquainted
with the way, the manuscripts, the Old Testament, New Testament manuscripts and all these things
about textual criticism. I had never even thought about how did the Bible come together
and how do we have all these books, what's the history of it. I never studied any of
that. I was just a Christian. But when I started taking those classes and learning the technicalities
of it, it's like, oh, my faith started shaking and I started realizing, can I really trust
this thing? But that was a good crisis of faith because it allowed me to consolidate
my convictions and solidify my foundation. I trust the word of God more than I did before.
So I understand that this is something that may take engaging with certain things. That's
why I would like to give you a few resources. Because you need to trust the word, otherwise
your foundation will crack. If you've been wondering about how do we know that the text
we have is reliable, just like the same Bible that Jesus read, how do we know the quotations
are proper, you know, all these things about text. There's this documentary called Fragments
of Truth. You will get to hear from the experts on the field and you will learn about how
is it, what are the New Testament manuscripts, how does this whole thing work. Amazing documentary.
I'm so glad that they put it together. YouTube, type that and it will come up. Watch it. It's
technical but good. Secondly, if you want to get acquainted with one of the New Testament
manuscripts we have. When I was at the theological seminary, one of our professors in Greek,
New Testament department, was Dr. Wallace. He eventually left that academic world to
focus specifically on creating the digital collection of New Testament manuscripts, traveling
around the world, digitizing all of these things. And there's this website. It's just
amazing that we have access to this. High resolution images of all the New Testament
manuscripts that we have right now, digitized. And there's many more. You can see first,
second, third, fourth century manuscripts of different sizes and qualities and right
there, accessible from your phone. Thirdly, if you're wondering, is the Bible
historically accurate, how do I know, what is the archaeology of it, the Associates for
Biblical Research put together this program that is called Digging for Truth, that is
about biblical archaeology. You go YouTube, you type Digging for Truth and you will see
all these videos. They have a whole collection of videos about biblical archaeology and
you will be amazed how much archaeology is there to verify the historicity of the scriptures.
It's really amazing. I give you those so that your trust in the word will increase in case
it was shaky. But the third thing that Paul tells Timothy
is that Timothy, you need to live the word. And he's going to end the last part of his
book, the letter to Timothy, with a charge. And you can see by the words he uses, it's
very solemn. He says, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living
and the dead, and in view of his appearance and his kingdom, I give you this charge. Wow.
Whatever he's going to say, this is very serious. What is the charge? Preach the word. Timothy,
if you're going to be a servant devoted to God, preach the word. Be prepared in season
and out of season. Correct, rebuke, encourage with great patience, but careful instruction.
Stand for the truth. Let the truth be known. Breathe it in, breathe it out. For the time
will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to soothe their own
desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching
ears want to hear. People will not care about truth. They will just care about being right.
And they will hire leaders to teach them exactly what they want to hear. They will turn their
ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. By you, Timothy, servant devoted to
God, you keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist,
discharge all the duties of your ministry, live the word so that people will come to
know truth because of you. You know it, you trust it, you proclaim it, you stand for it.
Even when it feels like you are swimming against the current. Do you live the word? Are you
knowingly disobeying God? Why you are following Jesus? Is he convicting you and you are trying
just to be deaf to what the Lord is telling you? Then your foundation is cracked. Because
it's not just about believing in the word, but practicing it. Is the Lord asking you
to stand up for truth and speak up, but you are not because you are afraid of what may
happen? Correct. Be patient. But don't give up the truth. We need to live it. And Eris
was a man that was so glad he met Christians that were living the truth. Because you know
he was a guy from Israel. He was a Jew himself. He grew up there not knowing anything about
Christianity. He had friends and relatives that lived in Galilee. He remembers, you know,
time we would visit them and we would go fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And I had no idea that
there was a Jesus or apostles. None of that stuff. I had no knowledge. Zero. But as I
was growing in my study of Judaism and going to school and everything, it just didn't satisfy.
And I started searching for more. So eventually he says like many Jews that live Israel, they
come to this area of Asia to explore some other religions. Buddhism, Hinduism and things
like that. So I was reading all these other writings from all these other religions trying
to find something to feed my spiritual hunger. And none of that worked. And then I ended
up going to Holland. And when I was in Holland he says, I met this group of Christians that
were talking about a relationship with the God and they were very nice people. And what
surprised me were two things. They knew more about my book than I did. They kept quoting
it. And secondly, there were people that were different. They had a godliness about it,
a joy about them that I didn't have. So one day I told them, how come you use my book
and you keep quoting it and know so much? And they said to him, it's not your book.
This is what we Christians believe. This is our foundation. The Old Testament and the
New Testament is one book that we have the Bible. And for the first time he was intrigued
enough to start reading the New Testament. But he got a Hebrew version of it and as he
was reading it, he came to learn about Jesus and the apostles and all of these things.
And he came to know Christ. All because of these Christians who lived the word. So he
said at that moment, I really believe I was like the apostle Paul. I'm the only Christian
here going back to Israel. I need to tell my family about it. So he went back to Israel
to tell about his family, about Jesus. And he says, my father sent me to the psychiatrist.
My mother made an appointment with the rabbi. And then I wanted to study the word more,
but I realized there was no place for me to do that in Israel. So I moved to the U.S.
where he got his doctorate and he felt called by God to go back to Israel and start a place
where people could study the word. Because he says, you know, we say that Jesus is the
best kept secret that Christians have. There are many Jews like me that know nothing. So
he went back to Israel and he founded a ministry called One for Israel. That's the story of
One for Israel. That's Eris. And that's because God put people in his life that knew the word,
trusted the word, and lived the word. Exactly what Paul tells Timothy. This is the foundation
of the kingdom, the authority of the scriptures. So I want to conclude the study by simply
asking you to look at your foundation. Do you find any cracks? These are three cracks
that will appear. First, ignorance. You do not know the word. And because you do not
know the word, secondly, deception. You cannot tell truth from falsehood. And you are that
Christian that just watches a bunch of YouTube videos thinking all these people are right,
and you are absorbing deception and you have no idea. We are here to help you in your journey.
We're not asking you to turn off your brain to follow Jesus. Quite the opposite. Turn
it on. And we are here to help you engage with the complexities of interpreting and
developing doctrine and things like that. But the third crack is disobedience. You have
compromised the truth because you are no longer living it. And if you have compromised it,
this is the time to align yourself with the Holy Spirit once again. From the very beginning,
servants devoted to God build their lives from the foundation that is the authority
of God's word. Hold tight to it. Father, thank you for not leaving us, not leaving us, Lord,
with any empty places, just with words, but not scripture. You give it to us written so
we can have it throughout millennia. Thank you for the way you have led people throughout
the centuries to do archaeology and textual criticism and all the studies that have gone
before us. There are foundation today is even stronger because we have more access to verifiable
knowledge than ever before. But thank you, Holy Spirit, for the power of truth. Will
you strengthen our foundation if it has become weakened? And I ask you, call among us people
that can be equipped to the next level with the word. So there will be a group of godly
people that can defend the truth with compassion, but with conviction. For the glory of your
name and for the impact of your kingdom in Jesus name.
Thank you for tuning in to the ECB sermon podcast. Whether near or far, if you are looking
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