Do we have any 12 year old boys with us today? 12 year old? The two on the back row are looking. Yes, we have several 12 year old boys. When I was a 12 year old boy, my father won a sabbatical to do research at Oxford University for a year.
So, we had just a tremendous year living in England for a year and every vacation we would get a Eurail pass and we'd get on the train and go all over Europe. So I've been in every museum in Europe, every castle in Europe, and everyone has a tourist trap gift shop that sells swords. And I've been told in every one of those gift shops no you can't buy a sword by my father and mother. No, no, no, no. Mom, can I, no?
That's what I heard all across Europe. So earlier this year I woke up one morning and the thought occurred to me, I'm 36 years old. I'll buy a sword if I good will want to, so I went online and I and I bought two swords, so why do we have the sword up here today? Well it's because the Bible describes itself as a sword, It's a tool and a mighty tool, a powerful tool and it's our job as expositors of the scripture to put this tool in a unique way in the hands of our brothers and sisters who are in the fellowship who are among us and why is that? So they'll be equipped for every good work so they'll understand the nature and character of God and so that when we preach they'll find that same thing welling up within them the greatness of God, his glory, his incomparable majesty in stark opposition to everything else is just a shadow of him.
There was a man at Plymouth Plantation at our nation's founding. His name was William Brewster. Most of you know William Bradford because he was the first governor there. But in his memoirs of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford had the occasion to eulogize his recently departed friend, William Brewster, who had been an elder in that congregation for decades upon decades. William Brewster was a man who was a gentleman when they were in England.
He was a wealthy man but his convictions about the Bible hit his pocketbook and he found himself as a farmer in America but an elder among the congregation and here among many other thoughts which are wonderful and I wish I could share them all here's what William Bradford said about his friend William Brewster. They almost always had a paid pastor, a man who was paid particularly to labor in the word full-time, but they had some periods of time where they didn't, and when they did, William Brewster, who was an elder in their church would carry the preaching load here's what William Bradford said speaking about William Brewster he labored in the fields as long as he was able yet when the church had no other minister he taught twice every Sabbath and that both powerfully and profitably to the great edification and comfort of his hearers many being brought to God by his ministry He did more in this way in a single year than many who have had their hundreds a year do in all their lives. The point of that quote is not to disparage men who are set aside and paid to labor in the Word.
How valuable those type of men are to the church, how much the church needs men and the powerful ministry of the Word of God that we would set aside men to just completely give themselves over to devote themselves to prayer in the ministry of the word. But there's also a sense in which churches must have bench strength in preaching, right? Churches aren't made of one man who labors in the word only. And the more bench strength our church has in the laboring of the Word, not just on Sunday mornings but in Bible studies that we have in teaching the Word of God in their own home and then going like Paul said he had a ministry that was preaching publicly and what? From house to house.
The more of that we have in our churches the more blessing we'll have from God the church needs a long bench of careful expositors of the Word of God today we're talking about teaching from narrative text I should have looked this up but I'm gonna throw it out there How much of the Bible is narrative text? Does anyone know? 60%? Anyway, a large portion of the Bible is narrative text. It's histories that are recorded in the Bible.
So It's extremely critical that we understand how to handle these narrative texts carefully and in a way that's profitable to our hearers. Almost all of what we're talking about this weekend is founded Principally in this verse, 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17, all scripture is inspired by God. It's God-breathed. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, may be complete, may be mature, equipped for every good work. Let's just start for a minute with the big picture doctrine of scripture and that's this.
We get it here. Everything in this book that we've been given by God has been given to us perfectly and directly by God. Perfectly, it's inerrant, it's sufficient and directly by God. Naturally, narrative texts are included in the phrase, all scripture. Can we agree on that?
All scripture includes and incorporates narrative texts. These two verses here have some very profound implications on how we must view scripture including all the narrative texts. Firstly there are no throwaway texts. There are no throwaway texts. Andy mentioned yesterday how troubled he is when preachers will skip over texts in their expositions because they consider them unprofitable.
That is troubling. There are no throwaway texts in scriptures. None. Zippo. Nada.
No throwaway text. We should be full of praise for God for every text in Scripture because it's profitable for His church. Number two, every single text, every single word and phrase and paragraph and chapter and book was given by God directly by God for a specific purpose. What was that purpose? Teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness.
The result being maturity in the people of God, equipping the people of God for every good work. This is why God has given scripture to us. This is the message of 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. It's your job to mine this out of the text. When you've been given a text, when you have a narrative text or any text, it's your job to mine out as best as you're able.
I may feel a little bit inadequate about mining the text out? But it is your job to mine out what God was thinking as best you can. We can't trace out his thoughts, but as best as we're able, what was his purpose in giving us these texts? There are no throwaway texts. They all have a specific purpose and our job is to mine this out of the texts that we've been given out of faithfulness to the text.
So we have different models about how you put together a sermon and there's different strategies. I'm gonna give you another strategy today. I'm just going to pile on to all the things that you also won't remember. I'm going to give you more that you won't remember potentially. Hopefully there are some nuggets.
Hopefully there are some nuggets in there that will stay with all of us long term. But what's most critical is how we approach the Scriptures and how we determine in our hearts in advance of preparation to give honor to the text. Amen? It's our approach to the scripture that has to be the foundation for all these things. If you don't have the right approach to the scripture it matters precious little what techniques you use to put together your sermon.
But if we approach it as if God has given us something directly for a specific purpose so that the word that he chose mattered, the phrase that he put together was intentional, the paragraph has value in itself, the book has a theme and a specific, God had a specific desire and he was headed in a specific direction when he gave it to us then we'll be very careful with the text. We'll be very thorough in our studying. Approaches everything. Our job is to honor the text Because we know that this just isn't just any old book, right? It's a book beyond compare.
There's no other writing like it. I love these commentaries. I love Matthew Henry. He's my favorite. And I love John Gill and I love John Calvin.
And there are many things that I benefited from, but those are different kind of books. Nobody ever described them as active or double-edged. They don't divide between soul and spirit. They're just different kinds of books. So our job is to honor the text.
And as we honor the text, we honor what? We honor the author of the text. That's the whole point. So when a person sits in the pew and they listen to our sermon about the text that has been selected and then they go home and they read the text again, they find that the emphasis of the text was the emphasis of our sermon. Not that we used the text as a launching point to talk about something else that we found to be more interesting than the text.
God forbid that we would be men like that in the pulpit. Dan touched on these briefly yesterday and I'm going to touch on them again today because I think it's important. I got this particular summary although it's the same three points you saw but I want to give credit because I borrowed so specifically from it I'm going to quote it it's from Dr. Kevin Bowder who's president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota and this has to do with basic hermeneutics. How do we interpret scripture?
Well first of all and this of course this is review right? Is anybody hearing this for the first time? No. But principally we use the Bible to interpret the Bible. And we start at ground zero.
Ground zero is the text that we're looking at and teaching on and we start there and we look at things inside the text that will help us interpret things within the text, right? So we start right there in the text and then we move outward. We move to the immediate context which is the things that are before and after. We move to the rest of the book and how it fits with the book and then we move to all of Scripture and ultimately as Andy and Scott have both pointed to this morning how this relates to redemptive history. Isn't the Bible about redemptive history?
Isn't it about the hand of God always coming to this culmination point of Christ being on the earth and giving his life for the sins of many? Yeah, so we're always looking to link it to that. Two, prioritizing interpretive texts. What do I mean by interpretive texts? Well, we're going to bring certain passages to bear on the passage that we're preaching to give it clarity and to reinforce the points that we're pulling out, that we're mining out of the text.
So we're talking about the passages that we're bringing to bear. When we rank these passages and we determine which ones to use, we want to look at intention. A passage of Scripture that intends to answer a question or discuss a topic is of greater relevance than a text that merely touches on it incidentally. This is all intuitive, right? This is just all logic you could have come up with on your own, but it's incredibly important principle.
Because of their relevance deliberate passages should be given greater weight than incidental passages. 1st Timothy 2 Paul says what? He says I do not permit a woman to teach. So when we're considering the question, should a woman take the pulpit and preach a sermon in your church, is Paul addressing this question intentionally in his text? Of course he is.
It's a direct one-to-one correlation. I do not permit a woman to teach. There's no vagaries and it's intuitive that Paul is addressing this question specifically. So Galatians 2, there's no difference in Christ between men and women, bond slave and free. Is Paul intent in Galatians to address whether a woman should preach or not?
No, that's not what he's talking about in Galatians. Therefore the intentional passage of 1 Timothy 2 trumps Galatians 2. Number two, prescription. Prescription, the difference between command and observation in Scripture. There's a difference, isn't there?
Thus saith the Lord, do this is different than in the early church we saw them do this. They're not exactly the same, right? Now they're both useful for teaching, they're both profitable, but they're not exactly the same. Prescription. Some passages of Scripture intend to address a topic prescriptively, to prescribe, while others address it only descriptively.
Prescriptive passages are of greater relevance to doctrine and practice than descriptive practices. So we have the Lord's Supper. Are there any commands about that? Yes there are. Do this in remembrance of me.
Are there any places where there's a command to do it every week? No there is not. Do we see a pattern in the New Testament where it's described that as they were gathering on the first day of the week they were breaking bread together? Yes there is. Do we hold these things exactly the same?
No we don't. If we would have a brother and it who's leading a church and they've just done away with communion you would say you know what that's sinful we have a command from God that we're to do this in remembrance of him until he returns. He hasn't returned, you're not doing it, you're in sin brother. Repent. If we have a brother where they take church monthly and quarterly we might say to him, I don't think that matches up very well with the New Testament pattern but we certainly wouldn't say brother repentance for you you're not doing it weekly as we are in our superior church because we don't hold these things that are prescriptive in the same way that we hold the things that are descriptive.
Another example, the command to sacrifice Isaac. Is that a command for all believers everywhere? No, we see that one time in scripture and I don't think anybody's on the sign up list to do that in their own home. Oh, we're doing something new in family worship today. Come here, Jake.
Having all things in common in the New Testament we see that in Acts so do we all lump everything in our church and our fellowship and just the corporate store and you just take what you want well the passage has value right it teaches us about life together It teaches us about how we should be with our stuff, but it's not prescriptive. Thirdly, clarity. Clear passages should take priority over obscure passages. Perhaps the principle could be stated in other terms. Consider two passages that treat the same topic.
One passage could bear multiple interpretations. It might mean this or it could mean that. And just looking at this passage, just with this passage it could mean either. While the other passage is capable of only one interpretation, it could only mean that. The test of clarity states that the theologian must understand the first, the unclear passage in the light of the unequivocal one, the clear one.
You always interpret the unclear passage in light of the clear not the other way around. Now when people have an axe to grind on a certain topic you see all these rules go out the window and we'll interpret the clear one with the unclear one every time. We just have to be very careful. So we all have our own sensibilities. We all grew up in the house that we grew up in and our mama taught us a certain way and sometimes that way isn't in agreement with the scriptures and we have to cleanse all that away and let the text have it say and try as faithfully as we can to apply these hermeneutical or interpretational principles.
What we always have to ask in the text that we have is if there's a question about how to interpret it, does the text necessitate that interpretation? Does the text that I'm looking at demand this interpretation? If not, we better go looking for outside sources in the Bible. I don't mean outside sources like philosophers and psychologists, I mean other places in the Bible that treat the same topic more specifically, more clearly, more prescriptively. Okay, careful handling of narrative texts.
I'm going to make the most of this is just a statement of the obvious so I'll apologize in advance. I'm stating obvious things but there are things that will do well just to keep in front of our eyes, right? Because sometimes even things that are obvious get missed when we get so focused on other things. One, the Bible is about God. You're thinking I want a refund.
The Bible is about God. Wow, what a stroke of genius. I can die happy now. The histories contained in the Bible display the hand of God constantly at work in the world. The histories in the Bible display the hand of God constantly, always, faithfully at work in the world.
Is it a comprehensive documentation of that? No, of course not. Not even in one single generation is it comprehensive, but it's the things that God wanted to deliver to us and he delivered them very perfectly. Simply put, the Bible is about God. Now, make sure you get this because Scott and Andy have both touched on it, but I'm guilty of it when I preach, and I bet you're guilty of it when you preach too.
Preaching from the Bible is not about studying religious people from the past to either be like them or not like them. When you preach the point is it be like Abraham or don't be like Lot there might be things that we learn about Abraham that we'll want to emulate there might be things about Lot that we'll want to avoid but that's not the central focus of our preaching it must not be That is man-centered preaching. That is back to sola bootstrappa. That is forever a phrase that I will use over and over again. The thought that if we'll just study these religious people from the past that we'll be able to shine ourselves up and make ourselves acceptable to God.
No, that cannot be the content of our pulpits. Careful expository preaching emphasizes what God has done in history, what God is doing now, what God will do in the future, the future He's taking us to. That has to be the point in our preaching. Sometimes the differences are very subtle, sometimes. Make God the main character of every sermon.
God has to be the main character. Abraham can't be the main character of your sermons or Lot or Moses. Jesus can be. We'll give you a pass on that one. Sometimes that's obvious in the text you're working with.
Sometimes it's not obvious at all. Two, narratives don't necessarily exist to give us a pattern that God commands. Another obvious point, but one that's worth stating anyway. I mean, if that was true, then we could just look at the life of Abraham and go out and get another wife. And then where would we be?
Narratives There's a couple of pitfalls I want to talk about, about treating narratives. Narratives beg that we would argue from silence. What do I mean? I mean that we take a narrative and because we don't see a specific condemnation from God in the narrative or right after it or around it or it ends well that we would read into that that God was pleased with it. That does not work.
Narratives beg for a pragmatic slant. That all the stories that end well we would say this is pleasing to God and we can trust these means or all the stories that end poorly we would say God was displeased with these, we can't use these means. No, we can't necessarily make any of those conclusions from any text that we preach. We have to look at these texts and make judgments on the means and on the outcomes based on the clear principles from Scripture that we see when God is prescribing through other texts in the Bible, when He does give us clear text on the topic in the Bible. Also when you're using quotes, when you're cross-referencing, Be careful when you quote narrative texts.
Be careful with those quotes. Have you ever seen the book of Job quoted? You've got to be careful with the book of Job. A lot of it comes from his three friends and the things that they say sound spectacular, sound very wise and they end up being condemned by God for the wisdom that they've given to them. You have to be careful when you're quoting passages from a narrative text.
Of this we can be sure about a narrative text. We almost always learn something about the character and nature of God. We almost always learn something about the character and nature of man. And we almost always learn something about the character of nature and both all in the same passage. And these are the things we should be looking for.
What does this text teach me about the character and nature of God? What does this narrative, this history teach me about the nature and character of man and then application what should we do with it I'm trying to be careful to call narratives histories in the Bible I don't like calling them stories because stories are meant for felt boards Abraham was not a felt piece you know from Sunday school. Here comes Abraham, there is, no. These are real histories and precious few of them have been recorded and the ones that have been given to us have been given to us for very specific purposes for teaching for reproof for correction for training and righteousness number three it is good to be systematic about analyzing narratives and just confess to you that I like to free flow a little too much in preparation, led by the spirit, yes. I think sometimes we think that if we're systematic somehow we're choking out the spirit, we're quenching the spirit.
Nonsense! Nonsense! We should be systematic in our study and our approach to these things so that we're always honing our skills and we're getting closer and closer and closer over time through the years to what God wants to communicate to his people. We'll be much more faithful to the text if we'll be systematic. So here's a systematic way to look at narrative texts.
Understand how the narrative fits in the theme of the book. Most books have a very dominant theme, something that the author was angling at sometimes from the very first words of the book. If you've got any sort of a decent study Bible, it's got a half page synopsis at the beginning of the book. It'll tell you what the theme is. Just that should be a checkpoint early on in your preparations that you'd Look in your study Bible, read the half-paid synopsis, see the main theme and say, how does this passage fit with that?
How is this consistent with that? How does this drive us to that point? Next, answer the standard questions about any given text. Who, what, when, where, why, how? Just the basic factual questions.
This is just getting your feet wet in the text but in a systematic way where we just ask the same set of questions over and over and over again so that we know we've got a thorough understanding of the facts. It's a thought process that we're trying to put ourselves into that in taking this disciplined approach that we're more careful with the text. Narratives have narrators, don't they? They've got the author of the book, ultimately God's the author, but the pen was in a man's hand. And our narrator sometimes will give us a clue, Sometimes he'll give us his view.
When we were talking about Paul in Athens yesterday, there's this little parenthetical phrase in there where Luke says, the people of Athens, either native born or visitors, love to spend their time and nothing else but hearing or saying something new. Now the NASB has put that in parentheses because the narrator is pointing to something there. It's a clue, it's a viewpoint of the narrator. Look for those things in the text. Pay careful attention to direct discourse.
What is direct discourse? Of course, it's the things that people just said right there in the text. A lot of narratives is just The facts, where they were headed, what they were doing, and then sometimes we'll get this direct discourse. Somebody will say something and it's recorded word for word. Do we ever get all of what they said?
I don't know, but probably 99.9% of the time we only get a small fraction of what they said. And so what they said is really important because the author has weeded out 99.9% of what was said and included this for what? For a really specific purpose. To teach and correct and train in righteousness. Categorizing the plot.
Most narratives, of course some narratives will have multiple plots within the same narrative, right? Narratives come in different forms. Most plots follow kind of a general storyline. And by the way, I'm begging, borrowing, stealing from Dr. Wayne Mcdill who teaches preaching less than a mile from here on Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary campus.
So I do want to give him the credit for these. These are not my thoughts. Most of them follow along or at least you can categorize them in this. There may be as many systems to looking at this as there are guys on seminary campuses that teach preaching. But this is Wayne McDill's And I think you can plug most, the plot of most narrative texts into this.
One's the situation. It is most of those basic factual questions that we talked about. Who, where, when, the basic questions. It's the setup. To the stress.
There's always a problem to be solved in these narratives. That's why they're in there because they're showing us something and the stress shows us what problem needs to be solved. Then there is the search. There's normally something in the plot where they're trying to get from here to there, right, or trying to figure out what it's going to take to resolve the stress. Four, the solution is the solution.
I won't say anymore about that. And then five, normally this leads into a new situation. Are all of these elements present in every single narrative? No. Sometimes they're either, you'll have one part of this that's either implied or it is not there at all.
So let's look at a passage. Turn your Bibles to Luke 10. Luke 10, 38. Jesus goes to the house of Mary and Martha. It's a five verse narrative.
We're going to read this passage and then I'm going to take you through it. Not in workshop fashion but in dictator fashion and I'm just going to do it and I'm just going to tell you right off the bat I'm going to do it the wrong way but I'm going to do it the way that I've probably done a lot of sermons and then we'll go back through and we'll do it together and try to improve upon it. Luke 10, Luke 10. Now as they were traveling along Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord's feet listening to his word.
But Martha was distracted with all her preparations and she came up to him and said, Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me. But the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things but only one thing is necessary for Mary has chosen the good part and it will not be taken away from her the situation two sisters hosting Jesus Mary sitting and listening Martha doing all the work did I get the facts right at least can I get credit for the facts I got the facts right here so far so good to the stress there is stress isn't there the stress is right there is stress Martha's ticked off because there she is doing all the work while Mary's just sitting there listening to the conversation they get that right that is a stress here number three the search Martha is going to enlist Jesus to get Mary off her duff? The problem is Martha's doing the work Mary's listening Martha has a fix for that and she enlists Jesus that's the search for the solution the solution is Jesus contradicts that He defends Mary and he gently corrects Martha.
And finally the new solution. In this one, This is the end of chapter 10. Chapter 11 starts somewhere else completely, so this is a missing element to the plot in this one. It's just not there. So can we agree that at least I got the facts right?
I mean, at least you can find all this. You could trace it back to the passage, can't you? If you look at this, this isn't disconnected from the passage. All the things are there. So what's the problem?
What's the problem here? Why would I have fallen on my sword from the very start to say I'm going to do it the wrong way and then we'll go back and fix it. Mr. Wicks, do you know? Right.
Who's at the center of this? Martha is driving the agenda in this breakdown of the plot this is about Martha and what she was feeling and what she wants done about it How many man-centered sermons could we take out of this? Many, many, many. And many, many, many man-centered sermons have been preached out of this. Now let's go back and do it again, but this time God is the central character.
We're going to make the conscious decision from the very start to make Jesus the central character of the story. Okay. Take two. You have your blank slate. The situation.
Jesus entered a village. What's going on here, though? How do we want to set the stage for what's going to happen? I wasn't too bad. It wasn't too offensive.
We weren't too far off track the first time, were we? But I think we should set the stage a different way when we put God as the central character. Let's try this just to get you started. Jesus is at their house. So we have two sisters and they're giving themselves to legitimate things.
Is it legitimate to prepare for your guests? Yes, okay, that's a legitimate activity. They're giving themselves to legitimate things, but they're very different activities. So if we start there and say this is the situation, we agreed in round one that it could be traced back to the text that was faithful to the text will we say that this is faithful to the text is this what's happening in this passage yeah there's two ladies they're both engaged in something that by themselves could be legitimate but they're very different kinds of things so then what is the stress become right that's a stress one of them wants to hear Jesus one of them's putting a value on Jesus the other one's getting ready Dotting the I's and crossing the T's. I don't even remember how I said this.
Yeah. This will cause stress in any home. Martha assumes that Mary is doing the wrong thing and she should start doing what she's doing and immediately. So three, the search. What would a God-centered search be from this text?
Well the search is kind of the same, isn't it? Martha asked Jesus to arbitrate this and makes her opinion known. And then the solution. The solution is really where things get different from the first time around. What's the solution?
Jesus offers instruction on the value of the things being compared here, right? He offers us instruction on the value of the two things that are being compared here. Jesus identifies the problem. Martha's worried about a lot of things. She's worried about the wrong things.
She's putting the value on the wrong things and he instructs these sisters on his value. The differences are somewhat subtle, but it's all in the approach. There are all sorts of man-centered sermons here. Sola bootstrappa on display. Don't be selfish.
Don't be such a selfish pig like Martha. That sermon is in there. Make time in your life for Jesus. That sermon is in there. Watch your priorities that sermon is in there but that is those should probably be parts of your god-centered sermon they're the garnish but they're not the stake in the middle of the plate.
There are applications here that are man-centered that belong in the outside of the plate, but they're not the stake. There is a glorious God-centered sermon to be preached here. It's about the worth of Jesus Christ above everything else even things that are legitimate isn't it? Martha was about to deprive herself of minutes sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most precious possession, ever to walk the face of the earth and she almost missed it Because she was peeling potatoes. Isn't there a glorious sermon here about the worth of God?
Where God is right here in the middle of the sermon and we get to see how wonderful he is and how if we're not careful the best things in life would be crowded out and we'll miss the worth and the glory of God. That's the sermon we should be preaching here and we'll touch on what selfishness does in that equation. Summary. Approach the text as if it had been given directly by God for a specific purpose. And why do we do that?
Because it has been given by God for a specific purpose. That's why we approach the text that way. We can approach the text that way in confidence knowing that God is the direct author of scripture and he's given it for fruitful purposes in your local fellowship. Not just in the universal church for time immemorial but for your local fellowship. God gave these precious chests of treasures that we've been given the privilege to mine out the best that God intended for us.
Number two, get out of the way and let the text speak. Now This isn't limited to narrative text. We need to do this in all instances. We need to, as much as we can, remove ourselves and let just, let the text be honored. Let the words of praise for God's gift to his people in giving the text be on our lips when we're in the pulpit.
Step aside, let the text speak. Number three, beware the pitfalls of narratives. Narratives come with some pitfalls. Arguing from silence, assuming that a good outcome means that the means are acceptable and pleasing to God. Hogwash, you get so much trouble doing that.
Narratives come with pitfalls and you better, when you're preaching on a narrative text you just need to keep that on the frontal lobe so you don't get caught preaching a sermon about man or preaching something it's not even true lastly put God smack dab in the middle of every sermon you preach. And both Scott and Andy improved on that considerably this morning by saying, put Christ smack dab. I loved what you said, Andy, that it's Christ's distinct function and privilege to bring us to God So there is no God centered preaching without Christ fulfilling his function and his privilege to bring us to God. I never thought of it in those terms before. But isn't that true?
Isn't that what we need to be doing? It's Christ's function to bring us to God. So we must allow Him to have His place in our preaching so that we point to Christ because He points to the Father. He always points to the Father. Amen.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, so much of the Bible is narrative text and that's not an accident. We know that you did that on purpose. There are so many things that you want to teach us about your character in nature and about our character in nature so that we would be laid low, that we would see ourselves rightly as poor and blind and naked and wretched and that we would know there's only one hope that we would buy from you without money gold refined in the fire the Lord Jesus Christ the most precious possession God help us to preach texts that point to Christ. We know that you designed every text that way.
Every text points to Christ and Christ always points to the Father. 001 01-01-20 How can we go wrong? But we do go wrong, Lord. 001 01-01-20 We confess our dullness of thinking in this matter. 001 01-01-20 We ask, Lord, that you would do a work in our hearts to correct these things that need it.
Father thank you for your word. It's a precious treasure. Help us to be faithful with it. In Jesus name. Amen.
For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God, And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.