Potted or Planted: The Word

Well, it's good to be with you this morning. If we've not met, my name is Josh, and I'm glad you're here. We're gonna play a quick game. I'm gonna show you a picture of a lesser known celebrity from pop culture. And if you know who this is, don't say, Just raise your hand if you know who this is.

Okay, you know, this is interesting. Keep it up, because I'm just interested. Like, this is a multi generational thing. Okay, if you know who this is, let's say it together. For all the uninitiated in the house, this is Waldo.

Waldo. If you know Waldo, then you know he is the main character of a book series called Where's Waldo? And interestingly, I learned this week that our British brothers and sisters across the pond, they actually came up with with this. And in the original books, he was called Wally. Well, of course, in true American fashion, we couldn't leave that alone.

And so we declared independence from that oppressive tyranny and we called him Waldo.

Funny enough, he's Charlie in France, Walter in Germany. I digress. If you were a kid in the 80s or to the early 2000s, and apparently everyone else, then you know who Waldo is. And you probably remember these books in your school library or at the school book fair. Each page was just packed with all of these micro details.

Thousands of tiny little things. Parades, oceans, cities, all squished together in this wild picture. Here's an example of one.

And hidden somewhere in all of that chaos is one little guy in a red and white striped sweater and black glasses. Man, I loved these books. When I was a kid, my friends and I, we would pour over the pages for hours trying to find our boy Wally. And I was thinking, you can take that down. Everybody's trying to find him.

You couldn't see him from there, trust me. But I was thinking about how the illustrator of those pages must have spent so much time drawing all of the other thousands of other details that are on these pages. All the things that no one really paid attention to, right? All those extra things our brain just quickly categorized as not Waldo because we were only looking for the one character that we thought mattered the most. And I'm bringing all this up today because I think that the way that we approach those Where's Waldo, where's the Books?

Is really the same way that we approach the pages of Scripture. Our tendency is to turn through the pages of Scripture looking for one specific character on every page, and it's not Waldo. In fact, for most of us, it's just us. And today I want to talk about the Gospel practice of being in the Word and a better way to approach Scripture. At Whitewater, we say that we want to be a people of the Word, a people marked as those who are of the Word.

In fact, here's a quick summary of our position on the Bible. We believe the Bible is the perfect, inerrant, inspired word of God and the single highest authority on this earth. That means it trumps all other revelation, all wisdom, all understanding. And while it does not explain all things things, we believe that it is completely sufficient. We believe that it is sufficient in that it is everything God has chosen to reveal to us about himself and everything we need to know about how we should live now on this earth today and how to attain salvation and eternal life with Him.

This is why the Bible matters so much to us. It's more than history. It's more than inspiration. It's more than a moral code. It's more than rules and regulations.

The Bible is an absolute masterpiece, written by dozens of authors in multiple genres and literary styles. Over 15 centuries, God has perfectly and miraculously stitched all of this together to form one unified story. From Genesis to Revelation, every page pulls in the same direction, revealing his nature and his likeness, revealing how he wants us to interact with his creation, and how he wants to interact with his creation, and all pointing to one main character. It is Jesus. And if this is all true, if this is all true, then the way that we approach Scripture matters more than I think most of us can imagine.

So today I want to really hone in on the practice of being in the Word. And I want to talk about what I've seen are some of the most common worst practices when it comes to approaching Scripture with good intention. Christians are approaching Scripture, but we have some worst practices. We'll talk about how to avoid these and better ways for us to engage with, learn from, and live out what we find in Scripture. But first, let's pray together.

God, I thank you for today. I thank you for this gathering of people who are here just pursuing you. And I pray that as we do this, you would teach us today about your Word through your word. Father, use me as your mouthpiece today that the words that come from my mouth are only the words that you want me to speak. Challenge us and encourage us and move us toward you.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. I think most of us resonate with that Where's Waldo? Approach to Scripture. I think it's just normal for us we do the same thing with movies and other books, too.

And if we're all in a group picture together and we see a copy of it later, the very first place that we look is at ourselves. Just human nature.

So we comb through the Bible and we're trying to find ourselves on every page. We read about David and Goliath and we go, I'm David and my boss is Goliath.

We read Daniel in the lion's den and we think, that's me. That's me standing up against the world, Right? We read about Joseph in prison and we think, that's me. I'm waiting on breakthrough and injustice to be.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's value in identifying with the people in Scripture. I do this all the time when I preach. These are real men and women who lived real lives and had real struggles and real faith, and we can learn real lessons from them. But the moment that we make ourselves the hero and the point of every Bible story, we lose sight of the real main character, Jesus. Because the truth is, the story of David and Goliath, it's not about you facing your giants.

It's actually about Jesus, the greater David, the perfect king who stood in our place and conquered the true giant of sin and death. The story of Daniel isn't about surviving the lions of this world. The story of Daniel is about the ultimate picture of Jesus who was thrown into a pit, came out alive. The story of Joseph isn't about you climbing out of unjust imprisonment to a place of power. It's about Jesus who was betrayed by his brothers, thrown into the grave, and then became exalted to the right hand of God, bringing salvation to those who betrayed him.

These are all echoes and shadows of Jesus. Alistair Begg, he's a great preacher and author from Cleveland. He often says that if you lose your bearings or your way while you're in scripture, it's because you've taken your eyes off of Jesus. Jesus is the true north. Jesus is the central character of the Bible.

From COVID to cover. Everything, whether you realize it or not, points to him. And so the very best way for us to break away from this Where's Waldo approach to Scripture is to constantly read the B through the lens of Jesus. There are some other really practical ways for us to break away from this one is to remind ourselves that while the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us. The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.

Each word of scripture was written by someone who God inspired to write into a specific context, to a specific audience. And when we forget that, it's easy to completely misunderstand or misapply Scripture. One classic example, Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me. When we read ourselves into the center of Scripture, we tend to treat this verse like a motivational slogan. So we slap it on coffee mugs and laptop stickers and football eye black and graduation caps, as if it's God's personal promise that everything we attempt will turn out awesome.

The promotion will come, the relationship will work, the doors will open, the plans will succeed. So no one adds on the verse just before this. Here's what it says in context. Paul says, I know what it is to be in need. He's writing this from prison, by the way.

And I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Paul's not even the main character of this verse, the one who gives Paul strength. Jesus is the main character of that verse.

Another classic is Jeremiah 29:11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. But that's not what was happening in the original moment. This wasn't written to someone having a tough Tuesday.

It was written to an entire nation that had already been dragged into Babylonian captivity, which was a punishment from God himself living in the first few years of what God promised would be a 70 year exile. And God wasn't saying, don't worry, I'll rescue you by Friday. He was saying, settle down, build homes, plan gardens, seek the welfare of the city. My promise is real, but it's not coming fast. In fact, some of you won't even see it in your lifetime.

Church we are not the main character of the Bible, and the original context matters. John Stott said the meaning of Scripture is what the original writers intended and what the original readers understood. Only when we've grasped that can we begin to apply it to ourselves. NT Wright said the Bible is not an infinitely elastic document into which we can pour our own meanings. It's a story with a direction, and we're called to find our place within it.

I'll put it this way. Scripture can certainly always have more meaning than the original context, but it can never have less meaning. Original context so to avoid the Where's Waldo approach to Scripture, we can ask ourselves a few questions. Who was the original? Or who was this originally written by?

Who was this originally written to? And what's the immediate context in which this scripture is written? So who's the author? Who's the listener or reader? And what is the immediate historical, political, personal context that this scripture written to ask these questions and always look for Jesus.

These are great ways to defend against the Where's Waldo approach to scripture. But what are some other worst practices that I see? Christians misusing and misapplying scripture. The next is what I'll call Bible roulette. We close our eyes and flip to and point at a scripture and we just imagine that the Holy Spirit is.

It wants us to find perfectly applicable meaning to our current situation. Come on, you've done this. We have all done this. So we're having a bad day at school. Let's imagine maybe some kids were making fun of us.

And we randomly flip to Second Kings, chapter two and we read from there. Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. Get out of here baldy, they said, and get out of here baldy. He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord.

Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys.

Now yes, that's in the Bible. And we have that moment and we're like get em Jesus right?

Or we're in our quiet time in the morning. It's just a nice quiet morning and we just want a really warm good verse to make it through the day. And we spin the wheel and we land on Deuteronomy 25:11. If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

Just say not every verse is content. For a solid morning devotional playing Bible roulette cheapens the power and the value of the Word and it keeps us from ever understanding or applying scripture in its intended context. So how do we fight against this approach? We gotta zoom out a little bit. Read a whole section or a whole chapter or a book of the Bible instead of pinpointing one random verse and trying to apply it to your day.

We'll talk more about a solid Bible reading plan here in a few minutes. But our next worst practice, it's similar to Bible roulette, but it's a little more specific. I'll call it the instruction manual approach to scripture. We want to be able to go to the glossary and find the exact answer to the thing that we want God to tell us about. A perfectly formed, clean, step by step guide to everything we've ever wondered.

And when we try this, it almost always falls short for us. And so we flip through the pages looking for how to fix my teenager or what to do when my boss is terrible, or how to know whether I should buy this house or this house. And when we can't find the exact verse that spells it out, we get frustrated. Or maybe we start to believe that maybe the Bible is a really good religious text, but it's not really practical, it's not useful for daily living. Or we think that the purpose of scripture is to give us permission or restriction on all topics.

And so we go looking for a verse that says that we shouldn't vape. And when we don't find it, we conclude, well, God didn't have a problem with it and so maybe shouldn't I have a problem with it? Or we say, yeah, that was the Old Testament, but Jesus didn't mention it in the New Testament, so it must not matter anymore. All the while, answering this specific question was never God's intent to begin with. The Bible isn't a topical dictionary for whatever we're curious about today.

Actually, it gives us a worldview, a way of seeing things, a lens. And we don't view scripture through the lens of our cultural topics or our questions. We view our cultural topics or questions through the lens of Scripture. Let me say that again. We don't view Scripture through the lens of our cultural topics and questions.

We view our cultural topics and questions through the lens of Scripture. This matters so much. In fact, Scripture often shows us we're asking the wrong questions to begin with.

The next worst practice I'll cover is what I'll call the throw the baby out with the bathwater approach to scripture. We do this when we run into a verse or a passage that we can't understand or that offends us or confronts our favorite sin, or maybe sin in the life of someone else that we love. And instead of wrestling with it, we deconstruct the whole thing in frustration, we stop trusting scripture altogether. Maybe. Imagine, though, if we applied that same logic to the rest of our lives, we'd all be riding bicycles to work every day because we cannot explain the internal workings of a combustion engine.

We would all be taking the steps because we don't understand the engineering that happens when you push a button and makes the elevator go up. When we throw the baby out with the bathwater, we lose valuable, potent, powerful Things in Scripture God never promised that every part of scripture would be easy to understand. In fact, the Apostle Peter himself was reading Paul's words and he says in two Peter this is hard to understand. Why are we surprised when an all powerful and complex God baffles our understanding or confronts our beliefs or preferences in His Word? We should be far more apprehensive of a God who only shares things that we can easily understand and never bothers us when we run into difficulty.

We shouldn't conclude that the Bible is insufficient. We should conclude that there is more depth to explore than we can see right now.

But what about when the Bible says something that's opposed to our personal convictions? Most of us either bend it to align to our thinking, or we throw out a section or a verse because we don't like what it has to say. Or we do what C.S. lewis called chronological snobbery, where we believe that since the Bible is old and we are not old and we are much smarter now than they used to be, then we can rewrite the meaning of certain words and bend them to our will. Even though thousands of years of Christians have always viewed them one way.

You may have heard of the famous Jefferson Bible. Thomas Jefferson actually took multiple copies of the New Testament text and different versions of it, and he literally used a razor knife and he cut out all the parts that didn't align with his worldview and he pasted them all together into his own version of Scripture. You can actually buy it on Amazon now. I don't think any of us have physically done that, but I know that many of us, if not all of us, have at some level done this in our minds. I love this quote from Tim Keller.

He says, now what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility or crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't. You'll have a God essentially of your own making and not a God with whom you can have a relationship in genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle, as in real friendship or marriage, will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not some figment of your imagination.

See, when we throw out the parts of the Bible that conflict with our worldview or our preferences or our values. We prove that in fact we are our own God. We should never bend the Bible to form to our worldview. Instead, we should always allow the Bible to bend our worldview into alignment with it. The last worst practice I'll cover today is what I'll call the Leviticus Log Jam.

It's when we decide, usually in January, this is the year I'm going to read through the entire Bible and we're going to do it the way that we read every other book. We're going to start on page one and we are going to trudge straight through to the end. Now, there's nothing wrong with reading the entire Bible. Please read the entire Bible. But the Bible isn't built like a modern novel.

Genesis is exciting. Exodus is really interesting and powerful. But then somewhere around mid February, we all meet the same brick wall. Leviticus. And it's not that Leviticus is bad.

In fact, Leviticus is beautiful. It's foundational. It's dripping with imagery that all points to Jesus. But if we try to plow through it with no context, no plan, and no understanding of how it fits in with everything else, it feels like reading an owner's manual for a toaster in another language. It is just dreadful.

Most people get bogged down, fall behind, feel guilty, and quit. And it's not because they don't love Jesus. It's not because they aren't pursuing Scripture. It's because they're using a reading method that isn't helpful. While the Bible has one overarching narrative, it's not linear.

And if we insist on reading it only in the order the books are bound together, we often end up distracted and discouraged rather than discipled. So what's the better way? Instead of reading front to back, read whole books. Read according to genre. There are multiple genres in the Bible.

Follow a reading plan that moves through Scripture more linearly. I don't know how to say that word. That sounds weird coming. It's like, okay, some of you will know about the story version of the Bible. Several years ago, I know Whitewater went through that.

Some guys got together and they tried to put a linear version of scripture together, where they reordered Scripture and the stories inside of Scripture to make it flow a little more cleanly. But instead of trying to sprint from Genesis to Revelation in one shot, they slow down, slow down. Read with a plan. Read with patience, Read with context. Read with Jesus at the center.

Because the goal of the Bible reading is not to finish the Bible. The goal of Bible reading is for the Bible to finish the work that it's doing in you.

So what's the better way? What's a better practice of being in the Word? Well, first, when we approach Scripture, we should always start with prayer, praying, and asking the Holy Spirit to help us understand what we're about to read. The Bible tells us on several different occasions that part of the work of the Holy Spirit, among other things, is to help us understand the ways and the meaning of God, to help us understand Scripture and what it means. So pray a simple prayer.

Super simple Holy Spirit, help me to understand what I'm about to read and help me to apply it to my life. Second, choosing a translation that makes sense is a big deal. The translation matters. I'll prove it to you. Let's read this together.

This is James 1 in the King James. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of. Of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls. I have no idea what we just said.

Now let's try that same verse in the New Living translation. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. The translation matters. If we're reading a translation that doesn't make sense to us, then we should switch to something that does make sense. The two most readable translations of the Bible, I think, are the New Living Translation, the nlt, and the New International Version, which is the niv.

These two versions do a really good job of making Scripture readable without diverting too much from the original language. Now, there's also the message version of the Bible. It isn't strictly a translation, it's more of a paraphrase. And I don't suggest using the message translation of the Bible on its own, but using it in conjunction with one of these others, like the NIV or the nlt. If you want a translation that's more literal to the original language, you have the nasb, the New American Standard Bible, and the esv, the English Standard Version.

All that to say the translation matters. And we have over 30 solid English translations of the Bible available to us, all of them on the YouVersion app of our phones. And we can just scroll through each of them. Sometimes it's awesome to lay them side by side and go read five versions of the same thing, especially if it seems confusing. Third, have a consistent time, place and plan.

Have a consistent time, place and plan. I Know that Christians all throughout history have very commonly found that the morning is the best time to engage with Scripture. It starts our day off with the right focus. It gives us kind of a focal point that we can view for the rest of the day. As far as place, maybe it's out on the deck, maybe it's on your favorite recliner.

But whatever it is, make it a consistent time and place for you to study the Word. It just gets us into forming a habit. And then make sure you have a plan. There are thousands of Bible reading plans all across the Internet. Some of the easiest ones to follow again are on the YouVersion Bible app.

If you don't have that on your phone, put it on your phone. I found out this week they crossed the mark of 1 billion international downloads. But the Bible is an old document that's not really applicable to today across the world. Right? 1 billion.

They're topical reading plans, plans for a whole book of the Bible. Whole Bible plans. Just pick one. The very best Bible reading plan that you can use is the one that you will use. So whatever it is, have a plan.

Or you might like to use a devotional or a daily guide for studying the Word. The one that I recommend most often to people is New Morning Mercies from Paul David Tripp. It seems to have just about the perfect balance, combination of challenge, actual Bible reading. There's so many devotionals that give you four words of one piece of scripture that's barely a devotional. Actual Bible reading depth and readability.

This is a great balance of all of those. They have a teen version as well. It's a great devotional. If you haven't used it, use it. So pray.

Get a version of the Bible that's readable. Get a consistent time, place and plan. And next, slow down, slow down and ask the questions. We talked about three questions earlier. Who's the author?

Who is the recipient? What's the immediate context into which this is written? Two questions we often ask around here. What does this say about God? And what is this saying to me?

I don't know who came up with this method. It's called the SPEC method. I think it's a great way to frame some questions as well. S Is, is there a sin to be avoided? P Is there a promise to be claimed?

E Is there an example to follow? C Is there a command to obey? K Is there something to know about God? If you want to take a picture of this, get your phone out, take a picture of this. Don't feel bad.

It's okay. If you text your sister too.

But grab some foundational questions that you can ask yourself when you read scripture. What does this say about God? What is this saying to me? Speck? Who wrote this?

Who was it to? What's the immediate context? The last practice that can make Bible reading and study even more potent. And if you have found that Bible reading is still drudgery even after doing all of this, it's to read the Word together in community with others. It is so powerful.

When we do this together, we can learn from the collective perspectives of everyone else at the table. We can encourage one another, we can hold each other accountable, we can ask each other questions, we can grow together. And if you've never done this or you've not done this in a while, I cannot encourage you enough to come and be part of a group like this. We have several opportunities all throughout the week. You can find out about those at the information desk in the foyer.

Or if you want to start a group like this, go talk to them at the information desk and let them know that you would you'd like to be a part of this. I cannot encourage you enough to gather small like this in community around a table, sharing the Word and studying the Word together. Ultimately, all of these better practices turn the Bible from informing us to transforming us. That's the work. Not to inform us, but to transform form us.

So as we think about all these worst practices and the better way to approach Scripture, here's what I want us to hold onto. The Bible is not ultimately about us. It's about Jesus. Every page, every promise, every prophecy, every symbol, every sacrifice, everything leans forward toward him. Jesus tells us that or I'm sorry, John tells us in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.

And the Word was God. This word is capital W. This is Jesus himself. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory. The glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, who full of grace and truth.

Jesus isn't just the main character of the Bible. Jesus is the very word. God's full and final self revelation is Jesus. Jesus himself said, if you want to know what the Father is like, look at me. He's the message and the meaning.

And when we read his story, the the refrain keeps echoing. This happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. His birth, his ministry, his suffering, his death, his resurrection. None of it's random. Jesus is the living fulfillment of the Word himself.

So we read Scripture not to find ourselves on every page, not to grab our favorite verse for the day, not to force it to say what we want it to say. We open the Bible to find Jesus, to behold Jesus, to listen to Jesus, to trust Jesus, to follow Jesus, to become like Jesus. Because when his voice is the loudest voice in our lives, when his story becomes the story we're living inside of, that's when we stop living potted, fragile, surface level, selfish, egocentric lives, and we start living planted lives rooted in not our favorite truth, but in the truth. The One who is truth, the One who never changes and never withers. So, church, we must be a people of the word.

A people who slow down, a people who ask good questions, a people who who read with context, of people who read with hunger, of people who see Jesus as the centerpiece of everything. It all points to Him.