I have a hobby, and many of you know what my hobby is. But there's a hobby that I have that you don't probably know, and you might not approve. I like swords. Big swords. They're just neat. And in fact, one of my grandsons asked me to make him a sword Thursday. And I did. It's made out of bass wood. The end is kind of dull. I know it should be sharp. But I made for him. He likes swords to.
And my wife knows that I like swords and so she gave me a brand-new sword, that I didn't have before, for Christmas. Would you like to see it? The Bible is a sword. Correct? Which do you think is the sharpest? Which do you think is the strongest? May I submit to you that this can do far more than this can do? And so I want to invite you, as a pastor, to sink your teeth into the sword this year. Connect with it. You might need it.
You should be glad, I think, that you were not in San Francisco; is that where it was this week, that a tiger got loose? You might have been glad to have a sword had you been there. Had you had the sword that David had in his hands when he decapitated Goliath. You might have rescued yourself from that tiger. Three hundred and fifty pound tiger. Jumping out of an enclosure that was supposed to be safe. Twelve and a half feet high, the wall was. But it was four feet short of what it ought to have been. Tigers can jump.
And may I submit to you that the devil is after you like a tiger. Like a lion. Come into your Bibles to Ephesians, chapter 6, if you have your sword with you. This morning I'm going to be reading from the NIV. A lot of you have the King James. Whatever you have is fine. But look at Ephesians, chapter 6, and verse 11. And this tells us what to do. It says, "Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." And what is that armor of God? What is a part of that armor of God? May I submit to you that a part of the armor of God is the sword? Look at verse 17, that tells you that indeed, the sword is part of the armor of God. And so you need to be connected with this, and then you'll be safe from that lion, or that tiger which is out to devour you. And believe me, the devil is like a lion. The Bible has a lot of treasure in it, and if you will get into this book, the vast resources, the vast power of the Scriptures, will empower your life and you will be changed. You will be.
The Bible is an inexhaustible source of strength for the Christian. And how thankful we can be that we have the Bible. So we need to stop eating the crackers and cheese that the world provides to us and start eating some real food. I think some of us are living on defective food. We're feeding on novels, when we could be feeding on power. Raw power. Designed for the Christian life.
Now I don't apologize for presenting this sermon on the Bible. I think the greatest thing that you could do is connect with the truth of God. I think any sermon that’s powerful needs to be based on the Bible. I think any Christian that is a really strong Christian has the Bible in their life.
I would like for you to underline some words in your Bible if they're not already underlined. Come to John, chapter 6. And I would like to point your attention to verse 63. John 6:63. These are the words of Jesus. And Jesus says here, "The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life." Life! The words that God speaks to us are life. These words… I'm touching life. This is where the life is for the Christian. Would you agree? And if you connect with this, you have life. And if you don't, you'll never be strong as a Christian. You'll never, ever do it. So you need to partake of this life.
The leaves of this book are like the leaves of the tree of life. Now where is the tree of life today? It's up in heaven, isn't it? It used to be down here in this world, but it was withdrawn and taken back up to heaven. But may I submit to you that the leaves of the Bible are like the leaves of the tree of life?
The modern world is in a mess. You've heard of all the happenings over in Pakistan. I don't know what's going to happen. We're in for trouble. But the cure for the trouble is the Bible.
Come to the last page of your Bible. Revelation 22. I would like for us to notice verse two. Revelation 22, verse two. It says, "The leaves of the tree of life are for", what? What purpose are the leaves of the tree of life for? For what purpose? "The healing of the nations." May I ask you to read the Bible? And to encourage everybody else to read the Bible. If the Bible were thoughtfully read, and studied, and followed, the world would be a safe place. You wouldn't have to worry about terrorism. Because my Bible does not tell me to kill you. My Bible doesn't tell me to kill anybody. There's a lot of record of wars in there, but it doesn't tell me to kill anybody. It tells me to pray for people. To turn the other cheek if somebody does something wrong to me. That's what my Bible tells me. This is a good book.
Ninety percent of American homes have a Bible. And only ten percent of those people open their Bible on a daily basis. Only ten percent. That's a tragedy. And what that means is that we are just one generation away from being Bible illiterates. One generation is between us and total illiteracy. You need to read your Bible to your kids. You need to read Bible stories out of the Bible to your kids. If we don't do it, who's going to do it? We have succeeded in getting the Bible out of our schools of America. And we have also succeeded in allowing our personal Bibles to gather dust. That is a recipe for failure.
A minister was making a visit. Visiting a family. And the family, the mother wanted to impress the pastor, and so she said to her little girl, “Honey, would you go get that big book that we read from all the time?” The little girl went running and brought back the Sears and Roebuck catalog. That's too bad. That's a shame.
This week I read on the news that scientists in Israel have perfected nano-technology to the point where they can print the entire Old Testament of the Bible, in the Hebrew language, onto an area half the size of the head of a pin. That's pretty small. Here we have the whole Bible, the size of a mustard seed or a little smaller. What good does that Bible do me? I can't imagine how that Bible would help me spiritually. I want a Bible that I can see. And they claim if you were to enlarge that so that you could actually read each word, it would be a square picture, 72 feet square. That's a lot of words, isn't it?
Second Timothy in our scripture reading today, chapter 3, and verse 15. "The holy Scriptures can make you wise unto salvation." They can. If you want to be saved you need to learn to be wise. And the wisdom that leads you to salvation is in the scripture.
My wife and I went to Africa this summer. The first real evangelistic meeting type experience we have had. We went with Share Him, and it was just wonderful. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We got over there and each of us held a series of meetings, and we saw lots of people baptized. And a lot of those people did not have Bibles. And so people were buying Bibles from various sources that they could get Bibles from and giving it to people, and people were just cherishing those Bibles. They loved them. They had not had that privilege of having a Bible. And yet over here in America, we have all kinds of Bibles. And we let them gather dust. Shame on us. That's a shame.
I remember visiting in the home of one individual, a lady who was a widow. And she said, “I have something to show you.” And she brought me a box about that big, and she put it on the postum table, and she opened that box. And then she opened the tissue paper that was in it. And she brought forth a Bible that was brand-new, in mint condition. She said, “Look at this. My husband gave it to me when we were married. It's in mint condition.” Then she put it back, folded the paper around it, put it back in the box. They had been married for 50 years. She had never read that Bible. Not once. Let’s wear our Bibles out. Don't you think?
I would like for you to take your Bible and open it to the book of Psalms. Psalm 19. And here David is describing the Psalms. In very unique and picturesque language. Notice the nineteenth Psalm. Now I'm going to kind of summarize verses seven through 11 for a matter of time. Okay? So he says, "The law is perfect." The next one. The statutes are trustworthy." He's talking about the Bible. The Bible is perfect. It's trustworthy. The next one. "The precepts are right. The commands are radiant." And your version of the Bible may say something else. And then it goes on. "The fear of the Lord is pure. The ordinances of the Lord are sure. They are more precious than gold. And they are sweeter than," what? "Honey in the honeycomb." They're sweet.
This morning I read my Bible, and I had some honey on my cereal. And I brought along the honey jar. May I suggest to you that in five or six different ways the Bible is like a jar of honey? And I want to tell you what those ways are. But which is the sweetest? I think the Bible is sweeter. God’s metaphors are very interesting. And He says honey. Hmmm. That's interesting.
In other words, in that day honey was about the sweetest thing they had. Today, it may say that God's Word is like ice cream. God's Word is like a chocolate chip cookie just fresh out of the oven. It's finer than manna. Those would be words that possibly could describe it.
But in what way is the Bible like honey? Well, first of all, honey is not man-made. And the Bible is not man-made. This does not come from human sources. As far as I know, there’s no substitute for honey. No artificial honey. There is one that's called that, but it's made out of corn syrup. It's not honey. Somehow God has handcrafted honey into nature’s most pure and wholesome food. It's a complete food. It has all the vitamins, the minerals in it. No wonder a rugged outdoorsman like John the Baptist could live on honey and locust beans. That's what he lived on. It's complete food. Second Peter, chapter 1, and verse 21. "Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." God is in that book. And only God can produce a Bible. This Bible is produced by the Holy Spirit. It has the words of God the Father. It has the words of Jesus Christ. And as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, we ought to be a people of the book. We ought to be reading our Bibles, and studying our Bibles.
Number two. Both honey and the Bible come to us through instrumentalities. Let me explain that. What I mean by that. God gave the bee the ability, the exclusive contract or franchise, to produce honey. I know of no other source. Only the bee can produce honey, and only God can produce the Bible. Just how the bee makes the nectar into honey I don't know. This is not nectar. This is honey. And just how God can take human words and make them into divine words, I don't know. We believe that the holy men were inspired as they wrote the words of the Bible. We believe in inspiration. Not verbal inspiration, but thought inspiration. They were his pen-men and not his pen.
Number three. Both honey and the Bible are selectively derived. They are not exhaustive. The bee goes and gets the pollen wherever he wishes, and usually they prefer one over the other, plant. And so they will attend to certain flowers or just to the clover, or whatever. It takes about two million round trips to produce one jar of honey. One quart. And God, too, is a specialist. This book does not contain all the information. Now you may say, “What!?” Well that's what the Bible says in John 21, verse 25, 26. It says, "Jesus did many other things, and if they were written down, I suppose the whole world would not hold the books that could be written on the life of Christ." That's what John says. So not everything is here, but enough is here to get you to heaven. If we would just read what we have, there's plenty here.
Number four. Both honey and the Bible are attractive and sweet, but it's only sweet if you eat it. I will never realize the taste of this honey, unless I taste it. Sometimes you take a little child, and you say, “You're going to like this, taste it.” “No, I don’t want to taste it.” They don't even know if it's good or bad, do they, but they will not taste it. Why do kids do that? And some people say, "You know, the Bible. I think it's a dull book." "Well read it." “Oh, no.” They're the same as the kids. Get into it. You'll never realize how sweet it is until you taste it. Until you eat it.
I was in the great Smoky Mountain National Park this summer and fall. And I decided, one day, to climb the chimneys. How many of you have been up to the chimneys? Oh, wow. Look at that. More than first Church. I wonder what that means? I went all the way to the top. And that day I remember seeing a sign that said, "DO NOT FEED THE BEARS". And I thought, "Well, you know, that's a no-brainer." I mean, if I feed the bears, I'm liable to become bear food. I know that. But that's not the reason the sign was put up there. The sign was put there, placed there, because the game wardens of the Smoky Mountain National Park, for years, every fall, when the tourists stopped coming, bears would starve to death, because the bears were so used to being fed. And they would haul their carcasses away, and bury them. It's bad for the bears, for you to feed the bears. And let me tell you, it's bad for you, for some other person to feed you spiritually. You need to get your own food. You need to sink your teeth into the Word of God. Your mother can't do that for you. Or your dad. Or your husband. Or your wife. You, personally, need to read your own Bible, and study your own Bible, and memorize your own Bible. You’ve got to do that yourself.
And number five. Honey is the only food I know of that doesn't spoil. I looked it up on the Internet. I read books about it. You say, “Well, it turns to sugar.” Well, just reheat it. It’s still honey. It doesn't spoil. It's an amazing substance. And let me tell you, that God's word is always fresh, right? It doesn't spoil. It's fresh. It's always fresh. So get into it. Read it.
I'm going to be spending the next year with my new Bible. My new sword, that my wife got me. I love my wife. And I appreciate this gift. And I believe that this gift will make my life better. This is the Quest Bible, by the way. It has about a thousand different answers to questions. I believe that this Bible will help me.
So you need to eat. You need to partake of it yourself. And it will benefit you, and it would be a blessing to you. You need to consider that the Bible is your sword. Because you never know when the tiger is coming. So be ready. Does that make sense? Get into the Bible this year. Please! For your sake. For your benefit. And you will be richly rewarded.
Let's sing our closing hymn. 272.
Hymn of Praise: #135 O Little Town of Bethlehem Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:14-17 Hymn of Response: #272, Give Me The Bible
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McDonald Road Sermon transcribed by Steve Foster 1/11/08