Opening: Jesus, We Adore You

What a grace it is for us to be able to say, “Jesus, we adore you.” If that is true, that is not natural. If that is true in you—if you actually love the Lord, if you adore Christ, if you love Christ and you want God more than anything else and to please God more than anything else—that means God has done a miracle in you. And if you don’t, if you’ve heard yourself singing those words and thought, “I want to mean them, but that’s not me,” don’t be comfortable there, but cry out to God and say, “God, change my heart. God, forgive my sins. Make me new.”

God really is worthy to be praised. That’s what we were doing. We were singing songs of praise to Him. And we’re going to be learning today about the only place—the place where we find God most clearly revealed, the place where we can put the eyes of our heart, our mind on God and worship Him. And that’s the Bible.

What Is the Bible?

So, today’s lesson is called “What Is the Bible?” The lesson is going to be a little bit different today—I’ll get to that in a moment—but I want you to understand that the Bible is central to every single thing that we do as a church. That’s why it’s central to student ministries.

Does everybody have their note sheets? The note sheets are super important today. If you don’t have your note sheets, there’s actually two of them for the day, two pages. Can you raise your hand so we can get you that? You’re only going to be filling in the little, taking notes in that little top part. I’m not even going to get to point one up here, but you need this because you’re going to be filling these out in discussion group.

Why the Bible Is Central

So, why is our church called Grace Bible Church? And each week in student ministries, and each week in the main service, we open our Bibles. Why?

If you ever ask me a question—right, if it’s Q&A time or if you ask me a question, if you ask your leaders a question—you know what they’re probably going to do? What they should do? They’re going to open their Bibles. Why?

Every single week, I will encourage you. I will admonish you. I will plead with you: read your Bibles every day. Saturate your mind. Saturate your heart with the Bible. Why?

Well, because the Bible is the very word of God. Think about that. We say that sometimes: “Open up God’s word. You have it in your lap.” Think about that. The Bible doesn’t just contain words written by God or doesn’t just contain some words of God, but every single thing in the Bible, everything the Bible says, is as if God breathed those words out Himself. Right now, these are my words, and they’re coming out of my mouth as breath, right? Passing my vocal cords. The Bible says that every word of the Bible, every word of Scripture, is breathed out by God.

And if it’s God’s word, then it’s true and it’s right. You can’t trust your own thoughts. You can’t trust your own perspectives. But you can and you must trust God’s word. God’s word is trustworthy. When it says something, you must trust it. It’s something you can believe in. It’s different than anything else in this world. Everything else in this world will let you down at some point. God’s word never will. It’s trustworthy. It’s authoritative, meaning it has authority as if God said it—because they are God’s very word. So when God commands something, we have to listen and obey.

God’s word is sufficient. You don’t need any more revelation beyond what God put in His word in the Bible. Nothing is missing from there that you truly need. So if you face a problem, don’t go beyond the Bible’s solution. In fact, look for the solution in the Bible. Don’t choose solutions that aren’t the Bible’s, that aren’t God’s.

And most importantly, the Bible is God’s word where He reveals Himself. The Bible isn’t just a book of history, or a book of rules, or poetry, or wisdom. It is revelation—it’s where God tells us who He is. Which is why, what do I tell you to do every time you open the Bible? You guys should know this by memory. What do you do? What do you ask? What does this teach me about God, and how must it affect me? What does this reveal about God? Because that’s what we’d expect on every page of the Bible—that God, whether it’s in history, in wisdom, in prophecy, in story, in letter, something about God is revealed.

How the Bible Is Composed

So, what is the Bible? The Bible was written—you guys, many of you already know this, I want to make sure everybody does. The Bible is one book made up of many books, written by probably about 40 different men, maybe a bit more, who lived in different countries and cultures across 1,500 years.

It was written not in English. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. There are 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. The books are very different. It’s helpful if you organize them in your mind. If you already know this, great. If not, look—this bookshelf is a helpful way to look at the way the Bible’s organized, the way that the different books and the different authors are set out.

The first five books, we call those the Pentateuch. They were written by Moses. They explain the creation of the world in Genesis, the fall of mankind into sin, God choosing the descendants of Abraham to be a means of blessing for the whole world. So it focuses on the formation, rescue, and then foundation of Israel.

Next, we have the 12 books of history. They tell you a story. You might be reading that being like, “How does this reveal God?” Well, God reveals Himself in history, in the way that He cared for and dealt with His people. And those books were written—they cover about 1400 BC to about 450 BC. So, about a thousand years.

Then there are five books of poetry—those include Psalms and Proverbs. They’re quite different from the rest, but they declare God’s glory, His power, His wisdom.

There are five major prophets. That doesn’t mean they’re more important; they’re just longer. And they wrote from about 750 to 550 BC. Each one of these is written by a different person. Just like the minor prophets—there are 12 minor prophets. As each one wrote, you’re going to see there’s a different context in history. You have to do some work to understand: when did they write, what was going on, who were they writing to? And it might read like it’s people’s words. Moses wrote a book of history. But as Moses wrote, or as the prophet wrote, the Bible says that they were men moved by the Holy Spirit and they spoke from God. Many times the Old Testament is declared to be—it says, “God said,” and it was something that a person said. So what’s going on there? Well, there’s more than 40 men, but there’s one divine author.

So, as you read, you have to ask, “What did the author of the book mean by what he said?” You want to get the original meaning. And to do that, you might have to know some history. You might have to do some reading. But as you seek to understand what the author meant by what he said, you’re going to understand what God meant as He spoke through that man. And you’re going to see a continuity through the whole Bible. Many authors, yet every single thing that was written is true. Because what did we say God’s word is? All Scripture is breathed out by God.

So, in the New Testament, you have 27 books. Four gospels tell the story of Jesus and His life and His death and resurrection. Acts: the formation of the church. You have, what is it, 13 letters by Paul, and then eight letters from other authors. You have Paul’s letters up to Philemon, then eight other letters, and then you end with Revelation. These New Testament books are Scripture, just like the old.

As each author wrote, they wrote in their own words, in their own time, in their own culture—with all the authority, truth, perfection, and sufficiency of words literally breathed out by God.

Crash Course and Study Plan

So, what are we going to be doing today? Big heads, right? That was just a crash course. You guys probably knew most of that. If you don’t, I want you with your parents—and even if you did, we’re going to be going over the next few months through topics that are roughly covered in a book called Fundamentals of the Faith. Has anybody ever heard of that? Big purple book. Has anybody read that or studied it with their parents?

That’s good. I would have loved if all the hands went up, but this is an opportunity. So this year in student ministries, we’re going to actually be covering the topics of that—the basics of what a Christian needs to know or what you need to know to be a Christian. There are going to be a bunch of copies. We have about five of them out at the book table. There’s going to be a lot more there. You can get these and go through them with your parents. It’s a really easy workbook that you could do throughout the week with your parents. We won’t do one chapter a week—you’ll have a few weeks to do it—and it’ll help you remember and even learn more of what we talk about.

So, I know this is just a crash course. If you don’t know this, or you don’t know what each book is about, I want you to learn those at home with your parents. But probably more importantly, or more foundationally, to understanding what is the Bible isn’t just “What are all the parts?” or “Who is who?” but understanding the implications, the meaning of it being God’s word. If this is God’s word, you need to know the “So what?” about that.

If it’s God’s word—we talked about that some—it’s going to be true, it’s going to have authority, it’s going to be trustworthy, all those things. So, you’re going to be in your discussion groups today reading lots of what God says about His word in His word and coming up with fill in the blanks just like we did at camp in the breakout sessions. Seeing if you can figure out what those blanks are, and then talking about: if this is true, if what God’s word says about itself is true, what’s the question we always ask? How must this affect me?

If God’s word says something about itself, you can’t just put that bit of information in your brain and then go live your life like you didn’t know it. That’s what James calls a hearer of the word and not a doer. Hearers of the word deceive themselves. Let’s not deceive ourselves.

Discussion Group Instructions

So, in our discussion groups, we’re going to be going through each of those topics. There’s a bunch of verses. If your group is really talkative and you’re getting a lot, don’t feel like you have to get through every single verse. Leaders, be selective if you need to. The point is to understand that God’s word says something about itself to ground the group’s knowledge—hey, this isn’t just us speaking, this is actually from God’s word—and then have some time to talk about each one of those.

I anticipate that there’s going to be some questions. I hope that there’s some questions, because if you’re thinking about these things and not just filling in the blanks and passing the next hour, if you’re thinking about it, you’ll have questions that won’t be able to be answered in the discussion groups. So, what I want you guys to come up with is real questions that you have that you’re like, “All right, this was good. What else do I—” and the questions that you ask in the group, write those down, turn them in to me. I have some good Q&As from you guys from the box, and I’m going to take those and these, and that’s actually going to be next student ministries lesson: taking all your questions and hopefully doing my best to answer those succinctly.

So, what we’re going to do now is we’re going to break, and until about 7:30—so you guys have a good amount of time—I want you to work diligently through those worksheets in your group. Okay? So, let’s break—discussion groups. Have fun.