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He has his particular field of study, but he focused here on the religious illiteracy of Americans, and how much Americans do not know about world religions in general, and specifically, as he started out in the book, how much people do not know about the Bible and their own religious creed or religious faith. And it was a lot of information in the beginning of the book was a repetition of studies and ideas that I've heard before, and you've probably run across as well in terms of how much people don't know about the Bible, ask various questions about the Bible, and how much of a literacy rate people don't know, don't have about the Bible. And he goes beyond that into other world religions as well. But it set me thinking in terms of the certainly the attention that it got, because we're always looking for topical ideas when we write and do programs to write on ideas that are of topical concern in people's lives. And in looking at this, it had some very interesting information, and it brought back a very interesting topic to mind that I think is important for all of us to discuss. What I'd like to do at this point is give you all a little bit of a quiz and just see how much you know about various things in the Bible. We all love these little tests. I know you can see, and the the summits are starting to churn, and you're looking for the exit at this particular point. But let me give you a little bit of tests just on your paper in front of you or in your mind, whichever works fastest, answer these questions. And I'll see how you do, and I'll show you how you compare with most Americans according to what Mr. Prothero says here in his first chapter, which is entitled, A Nation of Religious Illiterates.

We certainly don't have religious illiterates in this congregation, I'm sure, but let's just ask ourselves a few questions here. Number one, name the four Gospels.

Name the four Gospels. List as many as you can.

Go real quick on this.

Okay, number two, where according to the Bible was Jesus born? Where was Jesus born?

Okay. Number three, a little different. President George Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho Road. What Bible story was he talking about?

President Bush, in his first inaugural address, spoke about the Jericho Road.

What Bible story was he talking about?

Okay, next question. What are the first five books of the Old Testament?

What are the first five books of the Old Testament?

And the next one, you can paraphrase this one. You don't have to write it out word for word, but what is the golden rule? What is called the golden rule?

And no, it is not them who has the gold make the rules.

That's another golden rule, but that's not the biblical golden rule. What is the golden rule?

Okay, next question. Here's a quote from the Bible.

God helps those who help themselves. Or is that a quote from the Bible? Is that in the Bible? And if so, where? God helps those who help themselves. Is it in the Bible? Yes or no?

And if so, where? Next question. Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of God. Is that in the Bible?

And if so, where? In general. You don't have to give scripture and verse.

Here's one I added from my own personal study. Which of these salt verses is found in the Sermon on the Mount?

First one is this. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. Or this one. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it?

Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another.

Which of those is found in the salt verses in the Bible? In the Sermon on the Mount.

Which one of those? Or are both of them?

I'll read them again. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

The second, salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another.

Which one is the salt verse in the Bible? Or are they both?

Put one or two, or one and two, on that. All right, let's go back to the name the four Gospels.

Name the four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Okay, I knew you'd get that one.

Where, according to the Bible, was Jesus born?

How many said Nazareth? Okay, some did. Got some honest people here. All right, President George Bush. He was, yes, Bethlehem was where he was born. President George Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho Road.

What Bible story was he talking about?

Which one? Joshua? I'm either I'm hearing or I'm hearing you're not speaking loud enough.

Somebody know it? Good Samaritan? How many of you say it's a Good Samaritan?

How many of you say it's another story? Okay, it's the Good Samaritan. Okay, Jericho Road. He was on the road to Jericho, so when he spoke about what Bush was saying was he was talking about Jericho Road. He was talking about having compassion for people. He was using it in the context of having compassion. This is an illustration he brings out. Nobody knew that one.

Television producers, experts who were listening to Bush, gave that speech later on. I have no idea what he's referring to. Jericho Road. Good Samaritan. What is the golden rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Okay. God helps those who help themselves. Is this in the Bible? How many of you say it's in the Bible? How many of you say it's not in the Bible? Okay, most of you are right. It's not in the Bible. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Is this in the Bible? How many of you say it is? Anybody say that it's not?

Okay, good. You got that one right. We're doing pretty good, actually. And then the one on the salt verses are... how many of you thought just one was in the... number one was in the Bible? Okay. How many of you thought just number two was in the Bible?

How many of you thought number two was not in the Bible?

Most of you. Okay, they're both in the Bible. They're both in the Bible. I stumbled across that reading through the book of Mark this week, and it's in Mark 9 and verse 50. The way it is put in Mark 9 verse 50, I'd looked at it and I read it and I said... I told Debbie, I said, if I were asked that question on a test, I'd say that's not in the Bible. And so, just one of those things you don't... if you're not reading it or hadn't read it for a while, or hadn't done a comparison of the Sermon on the Mounts in the synoptic Gospels and comparing what all the... at least the three Gospels talked about on the Sermon on the Mount, again, you would pass over that. But we've heard the Matthew 5.13 mostly repeated, the salt of the earth, if salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? But in Mark's account, there's a little bit of a difference. And it just illustrates that, again, we... all of us probably have a lot of room to improve when it comes to knowing about the Bible. Only half of American adults can name even one of the four Gospels. So if you can name three or four of them, you're way ahead of the curve when it comes to that. Most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. This is what Dr. Prothero says about Americans' knowledge of the Bible.

Only one-third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Only one-third know that.

Many think that Billy Graham gave the Sermon on the Mount.

A majority of Americans wrongly believe that the Bible says that Jesus was born in Jerusalem. They believe that they just associate Jerusalem as a biblical town, and if he died there, he was born there, I guess they think.

Most Americans don't know that Jonah is the book of the Bible.

10% of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

It's an interesting chapter, just to open it up, but as to what people know about the Bible, obviously what they don't know about the Bible. He brings out a number of interesting facts.

And we've all heard that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and according to Dr. Prothero, it still is. The Bible every year outsells any other book. Next time you're in Borders or Barnes and Noble or a big bookstore, go to the religion section and just look at how many Bibles are on those shelves. It still is the best seller. How many of you in school were ever received a small New Testament in Psalms from a group called the Gideons? Yeah, many of us older, some younger too. I don't know if they still... do they still go to schools and are they allowed in to give up? Do they go to the IPS schools at all? I know they don't go to Sinner Grove, but when I was a kid they were allowed into the classroom and every kid got a copy of the New Testament and the Psalms, and I care. I had that for years and years and years in a very little pocket-sized edition. The Gideons still give away Bibles. In fact, this book points out the Gideons give away one Bible every second of every day.

That's how many they still give away. So it illustrates the point the Bible is prolific in its distribution, its popularity, and how many people have copies of the Bible, multiple translations in some cases, and yet how little people know about what's in the book. As he brings out, they have it. They may say they go to church. They may say they believe in God, but statistics and tests and surveys don't prove it out. Many people just don't know the basics of the Bible. They don't know basic information about it, and this is just about what's in it. Now, we all should understand that it's a far deeper level to understand the truth of the Bible, and what the Bible really teaches about God and mankind and salvation and the major doctrines and teachings of the Bible. That's a whole other dimension, not just a whole other dimension of understanding that is just not there. But in terms of people who profess, and America has, from its very beginning, been a religious nation. We could talk about that all day. It prides itself today on being a nation of churches. There are churches on every corner still and in every strip mall. As in this building, we even triple up on the use of this building. There are churches all over the place, and people say they are religious. One of the books that I read some time back showed that the statistics don't match up between the number of people who say they regularly go to church and the actual attendance statistics that are available. There's a big disparity. The only conclusion is that either people don't want to look like they're not religious and they say that they go to church and they really don't, or they say they go to church and they just don't get around to it, or whatever it is. But more people say they go to church than the statistics regularly show are in attendance every Sunday in churches just in the United States. So the statistics don't tell the whole story in terms of what people say they believe or what they do in regards to faith. And certainly, when it comes to what it shows about what they know about the Bible, they just don't know it. They may have a copy of it on their shelf. They may carry it to church even, but they don't know what's in here.

And let's not get too smug about it. Many of us could fall prey to a lot of that as well. We don't need to think that we know everything about it, and we need to be very careful. As I'll be quick to admit, I could have been tripped up on a question that I discovered that I gave to you here about the statement about the salt. No matter how long we've been a part of God's church and reading the Bible and coming around, we all have a lot to learn and to continue learning and to make sure we continue to stay sharp on in regard to just the basics of the Bible, much less the essential teachings of the Scriptures. Now, this was not the most important, or really the most important, or even the most interesting part of Mr. Pearl Theorel's book. The most important chapter was chapter four, because this is probably, to me at least, his best contribution of this book. In chapter four, he goes through in a very interesting section, and he shows how America fell, how we forgot. If America was founded in a sense, and that wasn't the religious nation, but if there was more religion back in the good old days of an earlier epoch of American history, what happened? Why have we come to this point? And in reality, we have more churches than ever before. Again, more Bibles are distributed, but there's less knowledge from just a general level of knowledge about the Bible and religion as a whole. But his chapter four is called The Fall, How We Forgot. And he goes through a brief history of religion in America to show how Americans got to the point today where they don't know nothing about the Bible, and they in many cases know even less about their particular faith, whether it's Catholicism, evangelical, Pentecostal Christianity, or whatever it is. They don't know even what their own church teaches, much less know what the Bible teaches or says, and certainly what it really means. And how did we get there is how he gets to it. And if I could just give you a few highlights of chapter four.

It's a chapter I think every speaker in God's church needs to read for just a background and understanding of how things have got to the point that we are today. He opens up by telling a story about a heated debate at an early Methodist convention. This is going back in the early 1800s, a Methodist convention where Methodists were debating whether or not their seminaries should educate their ministers. Okay? They were debating this. One minister rose to oppose the idea, one bishop, and he said that faith was strongest in a soul unfettered by book learning. If pressed, he added, he would opt any day for a preacher without education over a preacher without passion. He wanted passion, in other words, over education. He didn't necessarily feel it was important to educate the ministry. This was the debate within the Methodist church. Another Methodist bishop, a critic, got up and asked him the first one whether he was thankful for his own ignorance, to which the first bishop unabashedly answered, Yes, I am thankful for my ignorance. Whereupon the critic moved that the convention sing a song of thanksgiving to God, since the good bishop had so much for which to be thankful.

I was surprised to read something like this. He goes on and he says, this story encapsulates the 19th century battle inside American Christianity between piety and learning, a battle that learning lost. In the telling of this story, the bishop plays the fool, but for many American Christians then and today, willingness to be a fool for Christ is a mark of true faith. Christianity, according to them, is all about loving Jesus. It does not require knowing much of anything at all.

And throughout, he spends the rest of the chapter explaining how this developed in American religion, that the idea was that book learning was not that important, even among some in the ministry of various denominations, that faith and just loving Christ was the most important thing, and how deeply entrenched that became through the 1800s. He starts off by talking about an event called the Second Great Awakening, which was a religious revival that swept the American frontier very early in the 1800s, that led to the rise of evangelical Christianity.

It was a time when it was all over when the Methodists and the Baptists and the evangelical churches had gained the primacy in American religion over the East Coast Anglicans and Episcopalians and the established churches of the revolutionary period of America. And his point is that the two were radically different. The old East Coast Puritanism and Anglicanism, which is the American version of the Church of England, essentially dealt with head learning and knowledge, very reserved in their approach to the Bible and to God, and the ministers and the church services reflected that. In the early 1800s, he talks about how a wave of religious Pentecostal fur were swept across the frontier churches of Kentucky and Virginia, the Carolinas, and further westward in the American expansion.

And as one minister called it, it was a movement greater or as great as anything since the very first day of Pentecost described in the book of Acts of Holy Spirit preaching, of enthusiasm, and of passion. And in the end, when it was all over by the middle 1800s, that particular approach dominated American religion, at least as the country was growing up to that point in the Civil War.

He uses a quote from Abraham Lincoln to illustrate what he's talking about. Abraham Lincoln supposedly said at one point, he said, when I see a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees. Think about that. And Lincoln was talking about the frontier preachers that he grew up watching, where they were all over the stage or whatever the pulpit was and waving their arms and shouting.

And there was passion. There may not be a lot of logic. There may not be a lot of doctrine. There may not be a lot of going through and explaining the Bible verse by verse by verse, either through a doctrine or through a passage of the Scripture. But there was a lot of fun. And there was a lot of entertainment. And there was a lot of excitement. And as he said, I'd rather have a preacher that looked like he was fighting bees. Can you imagine me doing that every week or any of our other ministers in the Church of God experience, you know, fighting bees in our approach?

Well, you can see that in other episodes of American religious worship, but you don't see that in the Church of God. Let's be honest about that. But that's the difference. And it goes through to show how, especially after the end of the Civil War, the movement began to be among religious circles in America, a movement toward more of a social gospel. And again, de-emphasizing religion or doctrine and Bible reading and Bible teaching according to the dictates of the Scriptures.

He shows that as various Protestant churches, especially at that time, the Methodists and the Baptists and Presbyterians, as they sought to work together, they had to find a common ground. And to find that common ground, they had to dumb things down. In the middle of the 1800s, the common ground was fighting Catholicism. There was a very strong virulent opposition to what they called potpourri and Catholicism. I grew up with that. My mother was a product of that type of thinking as she grew up in the 20th century deep south. That idea was still very strong.

Now that has shifted in our own time, but that was a common ground upon which Protestant churches sought to work together. And as they worked together, they dumbed down their teaching and their approach. Toward the turn of the 100 years ago, toward the turn of the 20th century, the social gospel came to be much of a stronger impetus. Doing good, saving souls, cleaning up the meat shambles, cleaning up a lot of society and getting the drunks off the streets, temperance movements, and a social do-gooder approach.

And again, as various denominations worked together, they had to find common ground. And they, again, dumbed down their own teaching and doctrine in order that they could find ways in which to agree and to do their particular work. And that has carried on into our time, and we are a product of that, whether we want to admit it or not. He also goes on to show how the actual role of preaching itself got dumbed down, where the preachers who would preach from the head, in other words, they would go through scriptures and explain what the Bible said, moved to preaching more from the heart or from emotion.

There's nothing wrong with preaching from the heart when you really do it right. The Bible talks a great deal about that. But if you rely only on emotion, which he shows ministers began to do, in the early part of this country, towns hired their ministers.

And ministers could preach what they felt they had been trained to teach from the Bible, and if people didn't like it, there wasn't much else to do. There wasn't much in the marketplace for them to go to. And he shows how, through the 1800s, as churches proliferated, as churches grew, people voted with their feet. And if they didn't like what they heard from one preacher, then they could go to another church, or they could start their own church. And that's been very common throughout the Protestant world for 150-plus years in that approach. But he shows how that the motive behind that was to find entertainment and emotion, and teaching and preaching that made them feel good, rather than to find teaching and preaching that put their nose in the Bible, and taught what the Bible said, much less what it meant. What Mr. Armstrong said through all the years, beginning in the 1950s or whenever he said that, blow the dust off your Bible. There was good reason for him to say that. Then, as well as now. And this author here, Prothero, goes through and shows exactly how this developed. It was very enlightening for me as we come down to our particular time. And he, let me just give you one final quote here. I could read numbers of quotes, but that's not my whole purpose here. I just wanted to illustrate how we got to this point here. But we've come to our own time where we have various terms like the Judeo-Christian tradition. And you have to be careful when you, to really break that idea down, you hear the term Judeo-Christian thrown out all the time. That does not explain and define the truth of God. That may define a certain religious American experience or brew of religion in America, but that doesn't define the truth. And in reality, it is a very vague and watered-down approach to the Bible and everything else. He brings it forward to the 1950s in the time of President Dwight Eisenhower, who became the very first U.S. president to be baptized while he was in office, when he was baptized on February 1, 1953. Peity at that time went public in post-war politics.

In 1954, the words, under God, were written into the Pledge of Allegiance, which I grew up saying every day of my grade school life. The term, in God we trust, became the nation's official motto in 1956. But once again, this fervor was not free, he says. As Protestants, Catholics, and Jews came together to fight godless communism, just as Baptists, Methodists, and other evangelicals had united to fight potpourri a hundred years earlier, believers again jettisoned content in order to find common ground.

They had to water down their own teachings. And he brings out how the Catholics got away from teaching their catechisms, Baptists got away from teaching what Baptists taught, Methodists write down the line in American Christianity, to the point where we get to what one sociologist called a strange brew of devotion to religion and insouciance as to its contents. In other words, a very watered-down approach that people have no care and no concern about. Today, Christians flock to church, yet forget all about Christ when it comes to naming the most significant events in history. Men and women valuing the Bible as Revelation, purchasing and distributing it by the millions, yet apparently seldom reading it themselves. The religious bestsellers of the past 50 years, such as The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and The Secret of Happiness by the evangelical Billy Graham, preached therapy more than theology, happiness more than salvation. And that's very true. When you look around, much of television preachers today preach more about therapy than they do the Bible. From time to time, as I'm flipping through the channels, I'll stop and watch some of the various television evangelists that are on. There's one that is out of Houston, Texas named Joel Olstein. Some of you have probably watched Mr. Olstein. He's very popular, has a very large following. He has upwards of 15,000 people in his church every Sunday morning in what is the farm work Houston, one of the Houston stadiums down there that he bought and turned it into his church. So he gets more people than I've got right here. I mean, he's got more people on the front row than we've got right here in this room today.

But you listen to him for 10, 15, 30 minutes, whatever, and you will not find any doctrine. You will not find any hard teaching of the Bible. You can feel good about it. By his own admission, he is preaching a feel-good message for people. Larry King invited him on and was talking with him and was asking him even about the hot topics like abortion and homosexuality and these things. He said, I don't go there. I don't get into that. He says, I just want to bring people to Christ or give them a good feeling. And he does. And it works. But give Mr. Prothero's test to them, and many of them would come up not being able to tell you about the Bible. And again, the truth beyond that is a whole other dimension in terms of understanding and importance for us to understand. What all this brings and comes to, folks, is this.

The importance of you and I continuing our lifelong study of the book. Not ever taking for granted that we know it all, just because we've read it once, twice, fifteen times, or sat through so many messages, services, read booklets, this and that, and whatever makes us in our own heart and mind think that we know it all and have read it all and have heard it all in regards to the Bible, never letting ourselves sink into that type of complacency.

Because it will trip us up. We not only can name the four Gospels, and I'll say that all of you here can do that. That's great. You can name the first four books of the Old Testament, I hope.

And if you didn't know about the Jericho Road, you do now. It's not so much about book knowledge. It's not so much about memorization, Scripture cards. Years ago in the church, we were big on Scripture cards. And I have to confess, I've never been able to memorize Scripture, or not been good at it. And I have certain ones that I can quote from memory, and I can tell you right where they are. There are others I could quote, and I couldn't necessarily go there and find it. And I can't quote obscure Psalms or Proverbs that maybe some of you could, or others. Scripture cards to me were not something that really taught me about the Bible. I know some people could just flash through them and get 100%. But it's not about Scripture cards. It's not about just memorizing and spitting it back in a Bible bowl quiz or Bible baseball type setting or whatever it might be.

The members and kids that over my years of experience in the church who, quite frankly, did the best at those things, I don't see them in the church today. It's not about being able to memorize something and spit it back. It is about having it written in your heart and, yes, knowing what's in here and knowing where to go to get it when you need it for that time of crisis in your life, soul-searching whatever it may be, or to explain the hope that does lie within you, as Peter said. We should be able at any time to explain and give an answer for the hope that lies within us. When Christ said that the Holy Spirit will cause us to remember the things that we bring to memory the things that He said, the principle that you and I should apply for that is we do have to put this into here in order for God's Spirit to eventually draw it out, because the Spirit of God can't draw out what we don't put in. Now, that doesn't mean you read it and you can then shut up the book of Nahum, let's say, and you could then spout the whole sections of the book of Nahum. That's not what we're talking about. But you could know where Nahum is. You should be able to know where it is. You should be able to understand some general things about it if you have done some relatively basic Bible study. You should be able to go to find where the Sermon on the Mount is fairly quickly, and the Psalms, and hopefully your own favorite Psalms that you might have marked or whatever else. But I think you should also, and I know you do realize that beyond that, we have to understand what this book means, and we're living it. That is the ultimate test for every one of us. But I know that through experience of our own lives, mine and yours, that if we're not reading it, if we're not studying it, if we're not drinking it in on a regular basis, then we can say we're living it. We can walk through that door, but that doesn't always mean that it's true. So don't kid yourself and don't try to kid me. And certainly don't try to kid God. I do know from the experience of my years in the ministry, personally, years of experience as a Christian, that we have to be reading it, we have to be studying it, if we're going to be truly living it in the quiet moments of our life, when nobody else is looking through each day of every week in our lives. So we do have to be studying it, drinking it in, learning from it, letting God's Spirit teach us from it, knowing and coming to know this book. I don't say memorizing it. I don't say coming to the point where you can just be a Bible-quoting, spouting individual. Some of those that have been the most vociferous and obnoxious about that in our past, again, they're not even keeping the faith anymore. They're not in God's church. So that's not our goal, is to be somebody that can stand around at the coffee pot after church and just talk Bible and quote Bible and kind of pound into people's chest or head. That's not the type of person you want to be either.

That doesn't mean anything. It's how we live it. And how we live it is keyed directly to how much we know about it and how much it is a part of our life. This book is a storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that is available to us from God, and we have to keep that in mind.

We're talking today really about Bible study. The way we achieve biblical or religious literacy is by studying the Bible or just plain simply reading the book. That's how we come to know it.

You can absorb so much week after week in church. You can absorb so much by listening to other church members talk about the Bible, but you're not going to have it written in your heart unless you're reading it yourself. You're reading it as a book that you know you need to read.

Not just to get 30 minutes in every day or 15 or 10 or whatever you set for yourself, not just to go through a particular Bible reading program, although those can be helpful. We have this Bible reading program in the church today, and it's really more of a Bible commentary program. Let's be honest about it. You can read the Scripture, but there's more commentary about that Scripture there. To the degree it helps, that's fine. I know many of you have kept up with that over the years that we've had it, and it is a useful tool. But the majority of the text is commentary, whether from a book or the author of the series itself.

It's not a substitute for reading the book. A Bible reading program, and some Bibles have a day-by-day reading program that you can be looking at and reading. That is good, too.

But only so much so as, again, we let it feed us and teach us and become written on our heart. Let me go through a few points to just remind us of a few things about the importance of this and the benefits of Bible study and what the Bible tells us about this. Number one, the Bible leads us to eternal life. That's why we read the book. Why do we read the book?

It leads to eternal life. Look what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3.

Let's read verse 14. You must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Paul says to Timothy that since you were a little boy, Timothy, you have been made wise in these Scriptures. Now, this review, the only Scriptures that Timothy knew as a child were what we call the Old Testament. He didn't have the New Testament. And Timothy didn't have his own copy of it. There were copies written on parchment or on scrolls in his local church, whatever it was that he attended, and he was raised by a Jewish mother. His father was a Greek, which means he was not a believer. And his mother and his grandmother were the prime influences in his life. Paul says to him that since you're a little boy, you learned these things. And he says, but what's important to realize is that they were able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Yet, do you get the point? You can read the Old Testament and be brought to knowledge of salvation. And as all the Old Testament points back to the Old Testament to explain it and comment on it in many ways and to bring it forward, and to add obviously the dimension of the gospel in Jesus Christ, but to Timothy, he was made wise. Now, we can bring all together to understand this point that we read the scriptures, we study, because it leads us to eternal life. You want salvation. I want it. We all want to live forever. How do we get it? Read the Bible as a part of the answer.

Read this. These scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation, and that is the critical point of this. Christ said that the words that he spoke were spirit, and they were words of eternal life.

We read the Bible to get that knowledge. The second reason to read the book is it helps us to avoid sin. We read it to help us avoid sin.

Any of us who think we are immune to temptation, and to the problems, the pulls of the flesh, that can pull us away from faith, pull us away from God, pull us away from the Church, we kid ourselves. One of the ways to help prevent that, one of the antidotes, is to read these scriptures and stay close to them. Back in Psalm 119, Psalm 119, this long, long Psalm here has something to say in regard to that. In verse 11, Psalm 119, how can a young man cleanse his way in verse 9 by taking heed according to your word? With my whole heart I have sought you, he writes. Oh, let me not wonder from your commandment.

Your word, in verse 11, I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you.

If we are like the Psalmist writes here and we don't wonder from the commandments, we read the book, we read the word, we tuck it away in our heart. We not only put it in our mind in terms of certain knowledge, and there's a level of head knowledge that's important, but the whole point of this, and really the whole problem that this book here and the explanation of the approach toward preaching and Protestant Christianity, they really want and need both. It's not a matter of just the head or the heart, it's a matter of both. You've got to speak with passion, you've got to have emotion and feeling about the subject and how it is explained. I had never heard American history taught until I was a freshman in college, and I got for one semester a motivating type teacher who took a dry subject like American history, and he because of he was like a Pentecostal preacher in the college classroom, as he taught. He taught it with passion and emotion. This was during the Vietnam War, and he would bring up, bring in things that were current in the news at that time, and as we were talking about past episodes of American history, and he would make it relevant. And he was he'd paced across that front room, and he got your attention, and he made a dry subject very, very interesting because he had passion. He loved his subject, and he was filled with it. So you've got to have the knowledge, and you've got to have the heart, and work together. It's not an exclusion of the two. It's not just a dry doctrinal explanation that you come wanting, or we want to hear when we hear the word of God preached. Nor is it just an emotional appeal.

I'll be honest with you, in the last 20 years, or so 15 years, 20 years of the church, as I've said through conferences and seminars on preaching, and seen how people's interests, and I've seen this creep into the church. A lot of people, for a long time, started coming to church just wanting to be entertained. They didn't want to hear a doctrine about the truth, a sermon about the truth. They wanted to hear something about dysfunction, and they wanted to hear something about dysfunction. The inner child. Something therapeutic. I hope that is the last time you ever hear me say the word dysfunction. I just use it to illustrate what people wanted to hear. We were talking about it this week, Debbie and I, and I said, Debbie, don't ever let me use that word again. It's a euphemism. It's a buzzword for sin. That's really it. We use that word to excuse behavior. It's used as a part of modern pop therapy, and really we're talking about sin.

Either we do it, we've been exposed to it, it's a part of our life and our family, we've got to repent. You come out of it. The word dysfunction hides, and it's one of those words that covers it up. It's kind of like gay or cohabiting. It used to be called living in sin.

Sin, you know, a little three-letter word. We use the word cohabit to make it sound better.

That's our whole culture. So anyway, how did I get off on that? In the Church of God, people have come, you know, and there's still an element of this left. We all have to be careful. We don't just come looking to be entertained. I can tell stories, I can tell jokes. I had one minister friend, he and I went through ambassador together. He was a minister for a number of years, and he stayed with the faith. I assume that he still is. He's not in the employ. Actually, he's not even in the ministry. I remember hearing him speak a few times, and it was one joke after another. And they were funny, and they were interesting stories. But from the moment he stepped in the pulpit to the time he got done, he was telling one joke, one story after the other. I don't like him. He's a very fine guy, but I couldn't imagine a steady diet of that for a group of people. I couldn't even imagine having a repertoire of jokes and stories every week to be able to do something like that. But he had them, and he did that. That's not... any story we tell, any joke we tell, has to have a point, has to illustrate what we are teaching in terms of the hardcore subject that is there. And we do have to be entertaining, and in that sense today, to a degree, but we have to be... as ministers, teachers, men who speak, all of us have to be careful that we don't rely on that to the exclusion of the word. And, you know, don't yourself, as members, come here or to the feast or wherever and evaluate everything based on how entertaining it was or how good you feel. That's not always the final criterion. We have to be careful that we don't fall into that and perpetuate that. We hide, you know, we hide the truth in our heart, and it keeps our feet walking in the straight and narrow ways. What the psalmist here is saying, that we might not sin against God. And we have the responsibility to put that within our heart and mind. In verse 105 here, says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Again, the Word of God, as we read it, study it, feed on it, it is a light. It shows us how to go every day. We don't have to wonder and worry there on a daily, weekly, regular basis, because we are feeding on the Word. We're reading it. We know what it says. We read something last night. We read something yesterday or two days ago, and God's Spirit brings it back to our mind, when we might find us meeting a challenge as we go about our daily routine. And we find ourselves, you know, being brought back in our mind to that, rather than something else, or frustration, or just a dead end. If we are not, the frustrations and the challenges of our daily life are not being illuminated, met, dealt with, in the light of the Word. It's our responsibility to put it there. This is what verse 105 is telling us. God's Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. It shows us the way to go. It shows us how to avoid the dead end of the cave, of life, or of the wilderness of experience, whatever we choose to illustrate where we are in our life. And let's face it, we all, you know, we get up each day and we have to do our job, we have to set up our desk, we have to go out to wherever we do and go here and there to do our jobs. And we meet people, we meet frustrations, we meet obstacles, we have temptations, challenges. That's, we all face those. It's how we work through them and how the ultimate impact of those trials and tests and just the daily accumulation of life, what it does to us. We meet those, we handle them, hopefully, from the light of God's Word so that we don't, again, just keep pulling or putting our hand into a bag and coming up with emptiness and resulting in frustration in our own lives and a cycle of futility that leads to, you know, any number of other issues there. Again, putting that into our heart and in our mind is what these verses are telling us and we keep it there like a safe object. We hide it in our heart and we find something that works for us and we keep it there.

You ever hide away something that's very important to you?

I have a drawer in my desk and I have a box in that drawer and I got little things that are precious to me. They go all the way back to my childhood and when I open them occasionally and we'll look at it, they remind me of something. It's always a good memory and it's things that I've just kind of collected over the years and I've got them in this box. They're hidden away.

Now, God's Word is like that and that the principles and the Psalms of inspiration, the Proverbs of wisdom, the stories of faith are the ones that we latch on to and they become very special, meaningful to us through whatever experiences life and the church has brought us. And we tuck those away and we remember them. We go back to them when we need to be reminded at various times and we bring them out and they light up our path and they keep us from sin.

That's the whole point of the whole matter here of reading the Bible. We've got to put it there. We've got to have that in our life and that strengthens our faith which comes by by a hearing. All the examples of God intervening in people's lives and the healings and the people being led and delivered, whether it's Israel, whether it's the Apostle Paul on one of his journeys, or writing as he did from the jail, the house arrest that he was under when he wrote such an inspirational book like Philippians. Those are the things that provide for us encouragement in times when we need God and faith and help to get along in our life.

The Word of God brings blessings as well. The Word of God, as we read the Bible, it brings God's blessings. It's pleasing to God when we seek understanding and we want to learn more of his ways and we are reading the book. There's an example, let me just give you one example here briefly, in 2 Chronicles chapter 17. 2 Chronicles chapter 17. This is in the time of the King Jehoshaphat, one of the kings of Judah. He reigned in verse 1, tells us, Jehoshaphat reigned and strengthened himself against Israel, the nation to the north.

And he placed troops in the various cities that his father had taken, his father Asa. Verse 3, Now the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the former ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals. He didn't go after foreign gods. He didn't go after the paganism that was right around the corner in the land of that time.

He didn't seek those. He worshiped the true God, the former ways of his father David. Verse 4 tells us, He sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments and not according to the acts of Israel. So he kept the commandments. He again sought the true God. And as a result, verse 5 says, the Lord established the kingdom in his hand. In other words, because he sought God and he listened to the God of his father David, and he kept the commandments, verse 5 tells us God established him.

God fought his battles. God was working for him. God was pleased. Because he did what he had read and what he had heard and what he knew to be right. The Lord established the kingdom in his hand and all Judah gave presence to Jehoshaphat and he had riches and honor and abundance and his heart took delight in the ways of the Lord. Moreover, he removed the high places and wooden images from Judah. And in the third year of his reign, he took some of his leaders, some of his instructors, and he mentions them there in verse at the end of verse 7, he sent them to teach in the cities of Judah.

So he had learned, he brought his level of education up to a certain point and he wanted the rest of the country to have advantage to that. So he set up an educational program is what he's talking about here. And he sent these men to teach the cities of Judah. Verse 8, he also sent along Levites who had special training in the temple. He mentions the names of the Levites in verse 8, and they went along with the priests. So he sent priests, Levites, and other teachers, three groups of people within the educational religious structure of Judah, and he sent them out to the other cities.

And they conducted seminars and Bible studies and meetings and services and whatever they did. This is what these men went out and did to teach people what Jehoshaphat saw was needed to be learned. He taught Judah in verse 9. They taught in Judah, and they had the book of the law of the Lord with them, and they went throughout the cities of Judah and taught the people. So they taught the Bible, the book. They taught it throughout the land. And what's critical in verse 10, the fear of the Lord fell on all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah, so that they did not make war against Jehoshaphat.

God was pleased with what Jehoshaphat did with the programs that he instituted, the training that he was giving the people, the responses there. It went well with Jehoshaphat. There was a time of peace and stability. They weren't, it seems, distracted by a lot of other scandals and problems within the nation from the king on down and then throughout the society. There was a systematic approach to teaching. And the end result is what we want to learn here is the fear of the Lord fell on the kingdoms around them, and they didn't make war against Jehoshaphat.

The beauty of it for you and I in the application here is this. If we're training and educating and just reading the book, studying the book on a regular basis and having a love for the commandments and the law of God in the spirit of what we read here by Jehoshaphat, we can expect God to be pleased with that.

And we could expect and should expect over a period of time to see some of those big gorillas out there, some of those big monkeys that are on our back, fade. Some of the things that we fight with in life on a regular basis evaporate.

God fought and protected his people because of this policy, the policies and the reign of his king. And he kept all the other problems outside the door. Now, did they not have human nature? Did they not have some other struggles? I'm sure they did. But when the record was written of Jehoshaphat's reign, this is what we have. A time of relative stability, peace, and no major problems to bring downfall or economic ruin or other major impact upon the society. It doesn't mean that everything was perfect and it was the millennial setting for them. But I think you have to understand it in a relative context. And the same can be expected for us. As we put the study of God's Word, the application of God's Word, the living of it first and seeking it and teaching it in our life, we can expect this in our own heart and in our own life. And sometimes if we find ourselves wondering why are these problems perennially, yearly, decade-long, generational-long problems in my life or in my family, why? Well, then maybe the first place to look is to, again, our relationship here and our approach to the Bible, the Word, the Book. And ask ourselves a question.

Let me look at this example. Just how mighty are we in these scriptures? Let me ask you that.

Do you consider yourself mighty in the scriptures? Again, I'm not talking about being able to pass a test and score 80% or 60% on a test. That's not the point. I guess I'd rather have somebody score 40% and the 40% they got right they were living by and they were working toward the other 60% as just as hard as they had to learn and to internalize the 40%. So it's not a matter of percentages and this and that. It's not a matter of being able to quote by memory verses and obscure names and genealogies and lists and all of that and go through the Bible and Genesis revelation to get it all in order and listed. That's not the point. You know, it may be good at a certain time and certain exercise, but ultimately that's not it. To be mighty in the scriptures. That thought came to me, that question came to me as I was looking at the example in Acts chapter 18 of a man named Apollos, what do we read about in Acts 18, who kind of came out of nowhere in the narrative here of the book of Acts chapter 18 verse 24, where a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.

Now he needed some brushing up. He needed a refresher and two other members, Priscilla and Aquila, took him aside and they, because all he understood was the baptism of John.

Essentially the Old Testament is when you look at the story here. He just knew the Old Testament story. He had been brought in contact with probably some disciples of John the Baptist, and he knew that, and that much he had right. Two other members, Priscilla and Aquila, had to take him aside and explain to him, as it says in verse 26, the way of God more accurately. And he got it. He put the New Testament with the Old Testament, got the whole picture, became an even more eloquent preacher, and tells a very interesting chapter in the story of the church in the New Testament period. But I don't want to talk so much about, you know, the whole story, all the other issues around Apollos' life, other than to just look at what it said about him in verse 24. It says he was mighty in the Scriptures, and he was eloquent. Now, I don't consider myself eloquent, and maybe you don't either. I don't look at myself as a great orator. But that's not the point that really, I think, is most important to take from this story of Apollos. It's not a matter that you're going to be teaching or speaking or whatever. The point is that all of us can apply is to become mighty in the Scriptures. What does it mean to be mighty in the Scriptures? What does it mean to you?

I don't have three points to explain. Do you think about that? What do you... What would it be to you to be mighty in the Scriptures?

To quote all the books of the Old New Testament in order?

All Ten Commandments long-form? Would that be mighty in the Scriptures for you? Would it be to be able to, you know, turn to, you know, sit down in front of a panel of people and turn to any Scripture that they threw out to you? Acts 3, 16. Matthew 24, 14. What does it say? What does it mean? Philippians 3, 8. To be able to do... to repeat it back? Would that be mighty in the Scriptures?

It might be knowledgeable. It might be... pretty good. I don't know. And it's not... I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying, what to you in your personal life would explain and detail being mighty in the Scriptures according to the problems? And then what we read here. This is what kind of came out to me as I prepared this sermon for it to leave with you. You think about that. What would it be?

I think it's a worthy goal to be able to have a set of Darris McNeally or Debbie McNeally or whoever else. I'm gonna go beyond my own family and just stop at my wife right there.

Have it said of you that you were mighty in the Scriptures. I read that. I thought, boy, I'd like to have that said of me. But what does it mean to you? Well, I think number one, read the book. It's important to read the book. I can give you that as point number one. I am going to give you two points here in conclusion. The first one is just read the book. If you haven't read it, do it. If you haven't been reading it daily, do it. Read the book to be mighty in Scripture.

You know, at 200 words a minute, just spending 10 minutes a day, you could read through the Bible in a year. 200 words a minute is kind of an average speed of reading. Most of us could easily read 200 words a minute. If you read just at that rate, 10 minutes every day, you could read through the Bible in a year. I do the math. Read 20 minutes, 6 months. 30 minutes, 3 months. Whatever. It's not a point of getting down to minutes and doing your reading or Bible study by the clock. That's not my point. Whatever we might use. I referred to the Bible reading program earlier as what we have here. You can find on the internet or maybe in the back of one of your Bibles on the shelf, you can find a plan for reading the Bible in a year. I have one on my very first Bible that first one ever bought. It does have a day-by-day reading guide in front of the Bible.

If that works, great! Use them. If you want to start with the New Testament or in the middle of the New Testament, you want to start in the Psalms, do that. But read the book.

You don't necessarily want to read through the whole book, although that might be a challenge that some of you may want to do, just to be to have said you've done it or to accomplish a certain personal goal or whatever. But just read it. And secondly, read it every day.

Read it every day. The example of the Bereans is classic in Acts chapter 17 here. A group of people described as very, very zealous, very dedicated. Acts 17 and verse 10.

In the Greek city of Berea, Rapaul and Silas came upon the city at night because they got run out of Thessalonica because of problems there, not the problems that they created but were put upon them. And verse 10, they came to the synagogue of the Jews, and they arrived and they went to the synagogue, and these were more bare-minded than those in Thessalonica. Different spirit, different people, whatever created that. But they received the word with all readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Now, they were zealous for the word.

They wanted to read it, and they read it every day. How do you become mighty in the Scriptures?

I'd say, first of all, you've got to read it. However you read it, how much you read it, what you focus on, that's up to you. You create your own plan. You find a plan from a, you know, some other Bible help or source, and create your own. That's what I leave you with. But read the book. And don't read it just to get in time. Create some time. Think about giving up something else that takes your time that you think is more important to do, whatever it is.

And I won't say anything more than that. And come to the point where you drink in of this, and you have to, because it is something that you want to do, and you know you need it.

That's, I will tell you this, none of us will ever become mighty in the Scriptures, and rise above a memorizing approach or a rote approach to the Scriptures until the day in our life that we come to the point where we begin to look at this book as indeed bread that we have to have every single day. Whatever gimmick you start with, and I hope you start tomorrow, and stay with it. But I have to realize that whatever I use in my own life, whatever I do, to practice what I preach, I've got to ultimately get to the point and stay with it that this is what I read above all else. And you know that I like to read a lot of other things, too. But I read this above all else as a source of life and strength. And this gives me something that no other book I read, no other magazine, no other internet site, no other source of information I go to, gives me what I get here. And I know it. And you know it. And when you come to that point, then you will be taking the first step toward becoming mighty in the Scriptures as that drives and feeds your life, and you read it on a regular basis. And to be not just like a Berean, but to be like a Christian who is literate in the Bible. And we read this book as the blueprint and the source in our life for preparing us for the kingdom of God. An eternal life, a source of eternity, that that kingdom represents. And we look at this as the blueprint, the instruction manual, the guidebook for life today and for life for all eternity in God's kingdom. And when we approach it that way and we exalt it, put it up to that level in our life, then we will be taking a step toward becoming mighty in the Scriptures. It's a worthy goal to be sure that we understand not only what is in it, but what it means. And that's the truth. But then what that truth then does in our lives, and as it creates godly character and righteousness in our hearts and writes all of that in our hearts and minds and brings us to the ultimate goals of salvation in God's kingdom. Let's make it a goal to become literate and be able to pass any test, the flying colors, whether it's a written test or a pop quiz that somebody puts to us, but most importantly, the test of life.