Well … I don’t have to tell you, the whole world as we know it is undergoing something I’ve never seen in my lifetime … and I hope that I will never see anything like this again in my lifetime … however long that might be. In two months, everything has been turned upside down and inside out as we shelter in our homes, maintain social distance, argue over whether or not we should wear masks … people by the millions … 33 millions and rising in this country alone … losing their jobs and applying for unemployment … businesses shutting down … some may never re-open. One minute we’re told that the ‘curve’ has been flattened and that we can begin to cautiously emerge from our homes and return to something resembling our former lives … the “new normal” as they’re calling it … and then in the very next newscast they talk about ever-increasing death and infection counts … second and third waves even deadlier than the one we’re going through now … and the on-going “sheltering” that they say will never end.
In the midst of all of this, where do we find hope? What do we have to grasp onto to steady us? Where is our light in all of this darkness? Where is our anchor … our lifeline or life preserver … in this storm?
It’s right here [hold up Bible].
Does anyone know what the word “bible” means? It’s Hebrew. It means “book.” And the reason that we always capitalize the word “bible” when we refer to this book is because it is “THE” Book … the Book of all books.
I love this book … this “bible” … an amazing book for all kinds of reasons. It has heroes and villains. It has romance and betrayal. It has songs, poems, great stories. It’s packed with interesting people. It is a book of science … a lot of science … I’ll tell you about it some day. It’s a history “bible” … it’s a philosophy “book” or “bible.” And the thread that holds it all together is “theology” … the study and understanding of God … who He is … what He’s done …and what He promises that He will do.
I love this “book.” It saved my life … and it continues to guide my life today. I’m not joking when I call is our “owner’s manual.” This is a book … a “bible” … that was written to a world that was hurting. It is a book that was written for a world that is still hurting today. It is the premier book on how to live our lives. It is a map and a compass for a people and a world that has lost its way ... and we could sure use a map and a compass … a “GPS” … a “God Positioning System” … today, couldn’t we, amen?
How do know that this map and compass … this GPS … will work? How can I be so certain that this “bible” … this “book” … can show us the way out of this mess we’re facing today? Because this book has worked in situations much, much worse than the one we’re dealing with now. Don’t think that’s possible? Well, let’s let “The Book” … the Bible with a capital “B” … speak for itself, shall we?
Imagine, if you can, President Trump telling us that the only way out of this pandemic is to appease the gods by sacrificing our children … and then, to demonstrate just how serious he is about this horrifying request … he sacrifices his own son, Barron, on national TV. Well, that is exactly what a king by the name of Manasseh did … and we find his story right here … in “The Book.”
Now … Manasseh lived over 2,700 years ago, so there wasn’t any TV or internet or social media but he was a king and he did sacrifice one of his own son. Let’s turn to 2nd Kings, chapter 21, and read what the Bible has to say about this ancient king of Judah, shall we?
The Bible says that Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king of Judah. Let that sink in for a moment. Manasseh was 12 years old when he inherited the throne from his father, Hezekiah. Twelve years old! Maybe you know a 12-year-old or can think back to when you were 12 years old … and then imagine being told that you are now the supreme leader of the United States of America … yikes! Bad for you … that’s a tremendous responsibility to place on the shoulders of any boy or girl … bad for the country too, I would think, amen? Judah’s king is 12 years old … you know that can’t end well … and, no surprise, it doesn’t.
The Bible says that Manasseh reigned over Judah for 55 years and doesn’t describe his reign as king very favorably. Manasseh “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, following the abominable practices of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (2nd Kings 21:2). Let’s pause here for a moment. The Bible says that Manasseh followed the practices of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. In other words, God is accusing Manasseh of undoing all the work that He had done when He sent Moses to Egypt to free His children and settle them in the Promised Land. “For [Manasseh ] rebuilt the high places that his father, Hezekiah, had destroyed” (2nd Kings 2:3).
“High places” were altars and sacred spaces built on the tops of hills and mountains so that pagan worshippers could get closer to their gods. For example, the Bible says that Manasseh built altars to the Canaanite god of thunder and lightning called “Ba’al.” Where better to get closer to the god of thunder and lightning than on top of a mountain … of course, it also increased your chances of being zapped by the god of thunder and lightning, amen?
Manasseh also “made a sacred pole as King Ahab of Israel had done” (2nd Kings 2:3). If you go back to 1st Kings 11:33, you’ll learn that King Ahab “made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.” Okay … so what is an “Asherah pole,” you wonder? An “Asherah pole” was an idol representing the Mother of the Earth … or what we would call “Mother Nature” today. Women and couples would pray to “Mother Earth” … or Asherah … to grant them children because she represented fertility, life, and birth. Farmers would pray to her because she was, as I said, “Mother Earth.” She was also considered the mother of all the gods by various pagan cultures at the time.
So far, we have Manasseh building altars to Ba’al and worshipping idols of Asherah … but he doesn’t stop there. 2nd Kings 21:3 says that King Manasseh “worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them.” Manasseh didn’t just worship Ba’al … he didn’t just worship Asherah … he worshiped all the Canaanite gods. He not only worshipped all the “host of the heaven, and served them” but as the king he made all of Judah follow his example and worship the host of heaven and serve them. Manasseh still worshipped Yahweh ... the people of Judah still worshipped Yahweh … but they also worshipped all these other gods as well … worshiping them and sacrificing to them as well as to Yahweh. In other words, Judah, under the leadership of King Manasseh, practiced polytheism.
Yikes, right? Well, things are about to go from bad to worse. Manasseh and Judah also embraced the practice of soothsaying … which is the ability to predict the future. They consulted mediums … people who spoke with the dead … and wizards … who cast spells and practiced the dark arts. They consulted pagan priests who practiced augury … which is the ability to read signs and interpret omens. Pretty bad, huh? Well, hold on … it gets worse.
Since Yahweh was just one of many gods, why not worship them all in one place? And the most convenient and most centrally located place would be Mount Zion … the mountain in the center of Jerusalem. And who already had a temple and altar there? That’s right … Yahweh! Since Yahweh was just one of many gods, surely Yahweh wouldn’t mind sharing His space with all His other divine buddies, right? Verse 4 says that Manasseh “built altars in the House of the Lord.” Did you hear what I just said? Manasseh built altars IN the House of the Lord! The House of the Lord! The place where God said “I will put My name” (v. 4). In the House of the Lord in the very heart of Jerusalem … in the very heart of Judah. Manasseh literally pushed Yahweh’s altar to the side and surrounded it with altars to other gods … altars where pagan priests and priestesses worshiped and offered sacrifices alongside the priests of Yahweh.
Pretty bad, huh? Well, imagine coming back to church after the pandemic and everything looks pretty much the same … except that I’ve put up a statue of the six-armed Hindu God Vishnu in one corner of the sanctuary … put up a statue of Kali, the Hindu goddess of war in another corner … hung dream catchers on the altar rail … and started out the service by reading everyone’s horoscope. Yeah … I know … it sends a chill down my spine too. I promise … you won’t find any of that when we finally get to worship together.
As if all of this weren’t bad enough, here’s where things get really, really bad. “What? It get’s worse? How’s that possible?” you wonder. Oh, yeah. Much worse. Remember all those pagan gods that Manasseh and the people of Judah began to worship? Some of them, like the Canaanite God Moloch, demanded the blood sacrifice of children. When you sacrificed an animal, you would slaughter it and then place its body on the altar and burn it so that your sacrifice would rise up to the heavens where the gods existed. Well, they did the same thing when they sacrificed their children to gods like Moloch. In verse 6 it says that King Manasseh “made his son pass through fire” … that’s what that means … that King Manasseh sacrificed his own son as a peace offering to a pagan god.
Now, that’s bad enough … sacrificing his own son … but Manasseh also sacrificed many other children to these pagan gods besides his own. In verse 16, the Bible says that Manasseh “shed very much innocent blood” … that’s the blood of children … “until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other.” This wasn’t an occasional thing … it was something that Manasseh and the people of Judah did a lot and for a long time.
If you find this all pretty upsetting, imagine how God felt about all this. It not only upset God … it not only disgusted God … it enraged Him. “Because King Manasseh of Judah has committed these abominations,” proclaims God, “because King Manasseh of Judah has done things more wicked than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, because King Manasseh has caused Judah also to sin with his idols; therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, …” Now, I don’t know about you but I would be terrified to hear God say to me “thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” because you know some terrible judgment or proclamation is coming down, amen? And it does.
“…thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such evil that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line for Samaria, and the plummet for the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. I will cast off the remnant of my heritage, and give them into the hand of their enemies; they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their ancestors came out of Egypt, even to this day” (2nd Kings 21:12-15).
I told you that Yahweh more than a little upset, didn’t I?
Suffice it to say, I don’t have time to explain what God meant when He said that He was going to “stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet” … or plum line … “for the house of Ahab” … but let me just say that the “measuring line of Samaria” and the “plummet of the house of Ahab” were very precise and unwavering means of measuring. It meant that God was going to judge Manasseh and the nation of Judah harshly … leaving no sin, no infraction unpunished. In fact, He was going to wipe every single spot of sin out of Judah and then turn it upside down and shake it to make sure that He got it all … and He does.
And boy, does He. In 603 b.c., God wiped Jerusalem as one would wipe a plate and then turned it upside down … and the dish rag that He used was King Nebuchadnezzar and his huge Babylonian army. And just as God said He would, He cast off the remnant of His heritage, gave them into the hand of their enemies, where they became a prey and a spoil to all their enemies (2nd Kings 21:14).
Now, you would’ve thought that the next king … another one of Manasseh’s son’s … who wasn’t passed through fire … would have gotten the message, wouldn’t you? But he didn’t. The Bible says that Amon “walked in all the ways in which his father walked,” serving and worshipping the same idols and pagan gods that his father did (2nd Kings 21:21). Well, as you might expect, things didn’t go well for Amon. He was assassinated by his own servants and body guards two years into his reign.
Like father, like son, like grandson, right? Well, let’s see. According to the Bible, Josiah … the son of Amon … the grandson of Manasseh … did [pause] … what do you think? You think he did evil in the sight of the Lord like his father and grandfather? Well, according to the Bible, Josiah “did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2nd Kings 22:2) … in other words, Josiah followed the example of King David and did not follow in the footsteps of his father or grandfather … which is nothing short of miraculous given what I’m about to tell you about Josiah.
To begin with, do you remember how old his grandfather Manasseh was when he ascended to the throne? Well, Josiah had him beat … he was only eight years old! Eight … years … old. And what kind of examples did he have to follow? His grandfather and father both worshiped pagan gods and goddesses … his grandfather and possibly his father sacrificed children to these gods … they both consulted witches and wizards, astrologers and fortune tellers. It would only make sense for him to do the same, right? But maybe he was smart enough … even at the age of eight … to see where that lead his father and grandfather. Perhaps knowing that his own father had been assassinated only two years into his reign as king might have convinced young Josiah to go down a different path, you think?
At eight years old, Josiah becomes the king of a country that was politically unstable and on the verge of erupting in civil war … aimlessly spinning out of control due to the lack of moral and spiritual leadership. How could an inexperienced eight-year-old child save his nation … save his people?
Given his situation and his incredibly young age, the only thing that Josiah could do was fail miserably … and to bring the nation of Judah down with him. But that isn’t what happened. Even at the tender, inexperienced age of eight, Josiah knew that if the nation of Judah were going to survive there could only be one answer … one hope … Yahweh! And, as the Bible tells us, they did more than survive … they thrived … even more than that! Revival swept through the nation of Judah like a wildfire. What God did to make that happen is truly amazing. You wanna hear how He did it?
No? Okay … our next song is …
Just kidding. Trust me, you’re gonna want to hear what God did … I promise, it’s pretty amazing. Be patient and follow me here … trust me, I’ll get you to the truly amazing part.
When Josiah turned 26 years old, he decided it was time to fix up and restore some parts of the Temple that had fallen into disrepair. He also decided that it was a good time to have the priests cleanse the Temple of all the pagan filth that his father and grandfather had installed in God’s house. He told his secretary and chief advisor, Shaphan, to spare no expense.
Now … Josiah’s desire to cleanse and repair the Temple had an unexpected serendipity or blessing. Remember how I said that the people were spinning out of control due to the lack of moral and spiritual leadership? Well, as the workers were removing all the idols and alters in the Temple, they came across a great number scrolls on witchcraft and sorcery and fortune-telling and astrology … but mixed in with all those scrolls was one very special scroll … it was the long, long lost scroll containing the only copy of the Law … the Pentateuch … in existence at the time. When the high priest, Hilkiah, opened and read it, words could not describe his joy, his excitement, his elation.
Stay with me. What just happened here? In order for the scroll of the Law to be found, it meant that it had to be lost. In fact, it had been lost for a very, very long time … and if it was buried under a pile of pagan scrolls then that means nobody was aware of its existence … understand? It wasn’t being taken out in the Temple and read. Nobody was using it because nobody knew where it was or that it existed. So … what were they doing in the meantime? As I said, they were just winging it … hobbling along from memory as best as they could.
There are no words, I’m sure, to describe how the high priest Hilkiah must have felt when he unrolled the scroll of the Law and began reading and realized what he held in his hand. And it should come as no surprise that he just had to share this incredible discovery with the king. He was greeted at the door, so to speak, by Shaphan, where he breathlessly shoved the scroll in to Shaphan’s hand and exclaimed: “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord!” Like Hilkiah, it takes Shaphan a moment to grasp the enormity of this find but when he realizes what he’s holding in his hands, he rushes off to show it to the king.
Again, let me pause here for a moment to let that sink in. Where did Hilkiah and the priests find the scroll of the Law? In the House of the Lord … right where it should be … where it had been all along. Someone didn’t steal it. It wasn’t destroyed … gone forever. It was right there, safe and sound, buried under a pile of pagan scrolls which may have both hidden it but also protected it.
The Bible described Josiah as a person, a leader, a king who “did what was right in the sight of the Lord,” and who “walked in all the way of his father David” (2nd King 22:2). How? How could Josiah walk in the way of his father David when he didn’t know the way? How could he keep from turning to the left or to the right … how could he keep from heading down the wrong path without God’s map? How could he lead his people … his nation … down the right path? How could he or his people do what was right in the sight of the Lord when they had nothing to guide them, nothing to tell them what was right or what was wrong in the sight of the Lord?
And the answer is: He couldn’t.
And so, with a great deal of excitement and a great deal of fear and trepidation, King Josiah listened as Shaphan unrolled the scroll and began reading it and King Josiah heard the Law for the first time and realized just how lost and how far off track both he and God’s people were. The Bible says that when Josiah heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. He commanded Hilkiah and Shaphan and several other of his most important advisor to go and “inquire of the Lord for me, for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our ancestors did not obey the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us” (2nd King 22:13).
Imagine, if you can, the Gospels … the first four books of the New Testament that tell us the story and the words of Jesus … somehow just disappeared from the Bible. Poof! Gone. Imagine our children and grand children trying to read the New Testament without the gospels … relying on bits of second, third, and fourth hand fragments of memory and verses that have been passed down to them from our memory to help them make sense of what Peter and Paul and James were writing about and, like the people of Judah, getting frustrated and perhaps eventually giving up on trying to make sense of the Bible all together … and then one day the Gospels suddenly appears on the internet somehow and our great-great-grandchildren get to read about Jesus in the gospels for the first time and the Bible comes together and it makes sense in a way that nobody has experience for a long, long, time.
Everything that Josiah hears being read from the scroll of the Law confirms the growing fear that he has in his heart that his people … that the entire nation of Judah … will be lost if they don’t repent and act swiftly. And now that he knows what to do, he doesn’t waste a minute of time. He sends a group of his advisors to see the Prophetess Huldah, who confirms what Josiah already knows to be true in his heart. “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,” Huldah prophecies, “I will indeed bring disaster on this place and on its inhabitants. All the words of the book that King Josiah read … because they have abandoned me and have made offerings to other gods … so they have provoked me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place and will not be quenched” (2nd Kings 22:16-17). Whoa! Remember what God said He would do? He would wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down … that He would cast them off and give them into the hand of their enemies?
What could Josiah do? What could the people of Judah do? They could repent! “Then the king directed that all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem should be gathered to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord” (2nd Kings 23:1-3).
Now that they had the scroll with the Law … now that they had heard it read … now that they knew how lost they were … now that they knew the way back … they could ask the Lord to forgive them and change their ways. “The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping His commandments, His decrees, and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant” (2nd Kings 23:1-3). Now Josiah and the people could walk in all the way of David … now they could stay on the right path and not turn to the right or to the left.
Revival sweeps the land. Josiah orders Jerusalem to be purged of any hint of paganism. He tears down the Asherah poles … breaks them into pieces and burns them. He removes all the carved idols and icons … he pounds all the altars to false gods into dust and scatters the dust over the priests’ graves who had served these false gods … he expelled all the priests and soothsayers and wizards who were still practicing the dark arts from Judah. You can read all about the things that Josiah did to purge the Kingdom of Judah and restore their commitment to God in Chapter 23.
Remember when I mentioned the possibility of the Gospels just suddenly disappearing? Well, guess what? In some ways they are … not suddenly … just slowly … from neglect. How many Bibles do most of us have in our homes? Five? Six? How many of you have the Bible on your phone? Thanks to modern technology, we have access to literally hundreds of translations at the push of a few buttons. Don’t have time to “read” the Bible? Then load an app on your phone that will read it to you.
But what good is having all those Bibles in your home or at your fingertips if you don’t use them, amen? We have a whole generation today who have never even held a Bible, much less actually cracked one open to read what’s inside … and that’s not an exaggeration, trust me.
In Josiah’s day, the priests had not only stopped reading the Law … they weren’t even looking for it. They didn’t even know that it was lost apparently. Where were they when Manasseh and Amon built alters to pagan gods in the hills around Judah? Where was their protests when these kings ordered this pagan god or that pagan god to be worshipped in the very house of God? The Law of God was thrown into a pile of other scrolls and forgotten. God had gotten eased out by the worship of idols and the so-called wisdom of soothsayers and fortune tellers in His own house … with tragic consequences for the people of God.
The same thing is happening today. The Word of God is being shoved aside and replaced by the Law of Consumerism. It has gotten lost among the idols of religious celebrity. It has gotten lost in the hustle and bustle of modern life. It has gotten lost because more and more people don’t even know what the Word of God has to say any more … the Bible has little or no impact on their lives … and how could it if they don’t even own a copy of the Bible or read the one that they may have sitting somewhere on a shelf in their house literally gathering dust?
The Bible has gotten lost among the crooked priests of worldliness and 24-hour media.
The Bible has gotten lost among the icons of comfort and ease.
The Bible has gotten lost among the worship of choice.
The Bible has gotten lost in the throes of sensuality and sex.
The Bible has gotten lost in our culture’s absolute demand for individualism and autonomy.
It can even get lost amongst the most ardent of disciples. The Word can fade from our lives, our consciousness because of our indifference to it … the Word can get lost amongst all the other religious books and literature that we read in its place … the Word can get lost because of our familiarity with the scriptures because we assume that we know what the scriptures means and we forget that the Holy Spirit is constantly moving in and through the scriptures and breathing new life, new meaning into the them and new understanding into our hearts and minds.
The reading and study of the Word can be replaced by preaching. We depend on the pastor but never dig into the Word for the sake of our own souls. Preaching can and has become a form of entertainment … light … superficial … designed to please the ear and appetite and not challenge the listener. We can blindly accept what the preacher is saying is true if we don’t know the Word, if we don’t read and study the Word, for ourselves, amen?
You want to change the world?
You don’t have to wear a mask. (I'm not talking surgical masks but the kind Antifa and rioters wear to hide their identity.)
You don’t have to carry a sign or spray people with mace.
You don’t have to smash windows and burn cars.
You don’t have to yell and scream at people or knock them down.
You want to know how to change the world? [Hold up Bible.] It’s done it before and I have absolutely no doubt that it can do it again. The problem is that it can’t do you or the world much good sitting on your coffee table or the back seat of your car, amen?
Reading the Bible is only part of the way that we can change our lives and our world. We have to not only “read” the Bible, we have to “live” the Bible … we have to “be” the Bible. By reading the Bible we learn about God … about His desires, His plans for us. By reading the Bible we learn about Jesus and what He did for us. By reading the Bible we learn how to be like Jesus … we learn how to speak love where others spew hate … we learn how to build up others while others try to tear the world down around us. By reading the Bible, Jesus shows us and teaches us how God can show His strength through our weakness. By reading the Bible, we not only receive God’s words of hope but have words of hope of our own to share and give away. By reading the Bible, we get hope and we can share that hope with a world that is badly in need of hope right now, amen?
Here’s a little Biblical math and philosophy combined … You can’t give away something that you don’t have, amen? How can you “be” the Bible if you don’t read the Bible, hum? How can you be like Jesus if you don’t know Jesus, am I right? How can you share words of love if all you listen to are words of hate? How can you build up someone else if you don’t let God build you up first? How can God show His strength through you if you only rely on your own strength? How can you share hope with a world badly in need of hope if you don’t have any hope yourself? You can’t give away what you don’t have but if you go to the Source … with a capital “S” … if you go to God’s Word … with a capital “W” … then you will have all that you need … for yourself and for everyone else around you … trust me.
Trigger warning! This might pinch a little or get some of y’all’s hackles up a bit but the truth is the truth. I am surprised that I don’t see more of you at Bible study. There’s what … 50 or 60 people attending our two churches? And yet we barely have a dozen people at Monday night’s Bible study … and that’s only when we don’t have a pandemic. It’s been six or seven on Zoom.
Does that seem right to you? I gotta tell you, as your pastor it worries me if it does. Bible study should be packed … not because I’m such a wonderful, interesting teacher, believe me. Bible study should be packed because the book that we’re studying is so wonderful, so interesting, so important, so vital. As students and disciples of Christ … as God’s children … doesn’t it make sense that we should want … that we should crave … that we should hunger and thirst … to know God’s Word more and more and more?
Don’t just blow this off as empty words because I’m the pastor and that’s what you think I’m supposed to say. I mean it! I’ve been on the other side of the pulpit … I’ve sat in the pews with you. Whether I’m in the pulpit or in the pews, I love going to church. I love seeing everybody. I love singing together … praying together. I love a good sermon just as much as you do … but it’s not enough. It has never been enough. I don’t spend time in the Word just because I’m a pastor … I don’t spend time in the Word because it’s an obligation or a part of my job, trust me. I’m a pastor who spends time in the Word because I want to … because I need to … because I have to if I want to know God, grow closer to God, become more like God … and that, my brothers and sisters, IS what makes sense to me!
Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Suppose you met someone who said they loved you but they never spent time with you … they never talked to you … they don’t know anything about you and don’t show any desire to get to know anything about you … I mean, does that make sense to you? If you love someone, shouldn’t you want to spend time with them? As much time as you can? If you love someone, shouldn’t you enjoy talking with them, being them? If you love someone, shouldn’t you try to learn as much about them as you possibly can so that you can love them and please them? Makes sense doesn’t it? The more you love someone, the more you spend time with them. The more time you spend with them, the more you love them … which makes you want to spend more time with them so you can learn more about them, amen? Makes sense, right? Pretty obvious … and yet, we claim to love God but how much time do we actually spend with Him? How much time do we spend talking to Him? Getting to know Him more so that we can love Him deeper? And the more we love Him … well, the more we just naturally want to be with Him … you see how that goes? I hope so.
And, in case you can’t tell, I’m deadly serious about this. I would love to see you on Monday night … even if it is on Zoom. I used to have another Bible study on Wednesday night until this pandemic came along but you can be sure that I will be starting that back up when this pandemic is over. Can’t make it Monday night, you let me know when you can make it and I’ll do my utmost to make it happen or I’ll find someone who can. Can’t drive at night? I’ll start one during the day. Live pretty far from the church? I’ll help you start a Bible study in your house. In fact, if any of you want to start a Bible study in home, you just let me know! I’ll be there faster than you can Nebuchadnezzar! Don’t believe me? Just say the word.
I am so passionate and so enthusiastic about this because I believe … because I know … that this can [hold up Bible] change the world because it has changed my life.
Are you and your spouse not getting along … find the Book, read the Book!
Are your children out of control … find the Book, read the Book!
Lost your job or are about to lose your job … find the Book, read the Book!
Don’t have peace of mind … come on, say it with me … find the Book, read the Book!
Does it seem like you and the world are at war … you know what to do … find the Book, read the Book!
You or a loved one just got bad news from the doctor … find the Book, read the Book!
Do you have a loved one going before a judge or is in jail … find the Book, read the Book!
Can’t stop crying … what do you do? Find the Book, read the Book!
Problems in the church? What do you do? Find the Book, read the Book!
Can’t find your way in the world? Find the Book, read the Book!
If everything is your world is going gang busters and you’re just humming along, what do you do? That’s right … find the Book, read the Book!
Find the Book … and then what? READ the Book!
In order to change the world, you have to be the Book … and in order to be the Book, you have to know the Book … no way around it.
I want to close with the Prayer of St. Francis … let us pray:
Lord:
Make us an instrument of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let us sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master …
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
In the light and hope of Christ’ love, we pray …
And all the children o
