How to Be Blessed by the Bible

Just to see what I'm dealing with. How many of you today are going to be rooting for the Seahawks? Can I see your show hands? Alright, Seahawks fans? How many of you are rooting for the Patriots? Wow! It is a Patriots crowd this morning. That is fascinating. I got to admit personally, I am rooting for the Seahawks, because I kind of feel like, you know, we were vanquished by them legitimately, and sort of we owe them our fealty now, plus I can't root for the Patriots because they're evil.

‍

So... My name is Rene, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Hey, I got to show you, I saw a riveting video this week. As you know, the East Coast has been going through some terrible, terrible winter storms, and we hope everybody's okay back there, but this past Wednesday, I don't know if you saw this, but this beach house, its sandy foundation and wooden timbered supports eroded by the storm is caught on camera collapsing straight into the waves. And these scenes are very haunting for those of us on the West Coast, right? But this kind of collapse is not inevitable.

‍

Famously a couple of years ago, this house withstood a hurricane and a storm surge right on Mexico Beach in Florida. It turns out that when it was built years before, the owners had invested an additional $30,000 to build a foundation of concrete pilings, not wood pilings, reinforced by steel cables and rebar. And I think that 30 grand probably looks like a bargain about now, wouldn't you say?

‍

Well, as a pastor, of course, I couldn't help but think, Jesus told the parable about this very situation, didn't He? He said, "Two guys built their homes, and the image that I always thought is these guys are right next to each other. One built his house on a solid foundation of rock, the other built on sand, the storm hits, house on sand collapses, house built on rock stands." Just like this. And Jesus says, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." And that right there is why we're doing this new series.

‍

Welcome to the kickoff for our four week series on the Bible. Everybody say the Bible, the Bible. We don't know what's gonna happen in 2026, but I guarantee you this, there will be storms. There are gonna be storms that hit you psychologically. There's gonna be stress storms, there's gonna be health storms, there's gonna be political storms, relational storms. And if you are built on something that shifts as your life foundation, you're gonna go wobbly and you might even collapse.

‍

So what is shifting soil? Well, shifting soil is, you know, pop culture, internet culture, political culture, your emotions, your opinions, the opinions of other people. Those things all shift from day to day. And this is one of the reasons that I love the Bible so much. It is stable. It doesn't shift. It doesn't collapse.

‍

One of the things I was talking to our baptismal candidates about this morning, we've got baptisms in all four of our services this week at all three English services and our Spanish service. It's just wonderful to see this new life happening. And many, many of the baptisms in younger demographics, which is awesome. But I was telling them, one cool thing about baptism is you're doing something that Christians did 2,000 years ago and that Christians have never stopped doing. Christians, I mean, can you imagine the Roman Empire? You meet them up in heaven, right? And they're going to be going, what are cars? What's the internet? What's an iPhone? But you start talking about baptism. They will talk about the exact same sensation, even the exact same words because we get those words out of the Bible.

‍

The Bible tells us to baptize people in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. They did it then. We do it now, 2,000 years later. So this is one of the things I love about it. It's wisdom and its instructions are un-shifting, un-changing. It's been the foundation of faith for over a billion people for literally thousands of years with no exaggeration. Now maybe you're thinking, Okay, that sounds good. Great.

‍

But Renee, you don't understand, I love what you get out of the Bible when I come to church and Mark and Kyle and Val and everybody else, but how do I get out of the Bible? It just confuses me. What even is the Bible? How do I understand it? How do I enjoy it? I can tell Renee, I can tell you really enjoy it. But how do I enjoy it? How do I read it? Or maybe you even feel like when I read the Bible, frankly, it's disturbing. Or honestly, it's a little dull or there's so much violence. It's disorderly. It's repetitious. It's nationalistic. It's narrow-minded. And guess what? It is all these things sometimes.

‍

But of course, a large part of this is it's real stories about real people who are like this, just like people today. And it's a story about all those real actual people in real actual countries that are like this, found redemption. There's a story arc to the Bible. You don't stop watching a movie after the first act. You don't stop reading a book after the third chapter. There's a narrative arc. And we're gonna talk about all of this in this series on the Bible.

‍

Let me show you where we're going with this. This week, the foundation, the next week, orientation. What even is the Bible? And if you feel like, well, I'm a veteran, I already know all this, I guarantee you, the refresher course is gonna be very good for you. In two weeks, interpretation, how do I understand? I'm gonna explain to you some things that I never actually heard growing up in church, that I first learned in grad school, that I was thinking, why in the world didn't I learn this like in third grade? Because it makes understanding of the Bible so much easier and gonna be talking about some of those principles.

‍

Week four application, how do I apply it to my life without just sort of ripping it out of context or something? And all of this is building up to in four weeks our annual Bible conference Saturday, March 7th. We're bringing in scholars, these are published authors, PhD level scholars from around the country speaking on things like what does Genesis 1 actually mean? What does it mean to be in God's image? Why are there so many Bible translations? The Old Testament seems so brutal. Can you find the gospel in the Old Testament? What about entry level here in A, not grad school level? How do I study the Bible? Scott Johnston's gonna be talking about this. So you could get more details about that at tlc.org/theword.

‍

Here's the thing. Here's another show of hands, much more important than who you're rooting for in the Super Bowl. How many of you genuinely, and this isn't a trick question, would love to be more like Jesus? How many of you would like to be more like Jesus? That's kind of the point, right, of being a Christian. That's what Christian means. Well, when we say that, we usually think, as we should, of, well, you know, I don't wanna be so temperamental. I wanna be gentle. I wanna be humble. I wanna be more loving and not resentful. I wanna be more forgiving, and that's all part of what it means to be like Christ, of course. But here's another thing about Jesus.

‍

Jesus really loved the Bible. Check this out. One-tenth of the recorded words of Jesus are actually quotes from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Jesus alludes to the Bible even more than that. Three hundred times he directly quotes the Bible seventy-eight times. So if you want to be like Jesus, obviously a huge part of that is knowing the Bible well and really loving the Bible, weaving it into the way you respond to life and look at life. However, I got a huge warning for you.

‍

If you get into the Bible, and this is so important because I see this happen all the time, if you get into the Bible as sort of a purely academic thing, as a skill to learn, the Bible can lead to a lot of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. Some of the people I know who are the most well-read and well-informed seminary professor level Bible experts are also frankly some of the biggest jerks I know. How does that happen? Well, it's because really getting into the Bible the way Jesus got into it doesn't just mean accumulating a bunch of knowledge and defending your viewpoint about how you interpret it on an academic level.

‍

What it means is getting into it like Jesus did, and we're going to talk about that right now. This is very important as we launch a four week series on the Bible, is how do I approach the Bible? So if you have your Bibles with you, open them to James 1. You'll find a lot of the relevant verses also here in your message notes if you want to follow along. If you're joining us online, you can grab these at tlc.org/notes. If you don't have a Bible, there's Bibles in the pews in front of you. And if you don't even own a Bible, we have free paperback Bibles for you at the Info Desk.

‍

And for this series, we have a whole table of extra Bible helps that we're making available at our cost at a special display at our lobby bookstore. Let's get into this and let's ask God to bless this series together. Heavenly Father, the Bible can be life-giving, but used the wrong way. It can also be a dangerous, brutal weapon. And so we want to approach it in a way that is a blessing to us and to others. So bless us in that regard.

‍

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So I'm gonna read this whole passage out loud, and then we're gonna dive very quickly into some of the four points that it makes. Excuse me. This is written by James, the half-brother of Jesus. And by the way, did you know that the Bible names four of Jesus' siblings? He had four half-brothers. We know them by name. And it also says he had at least two sisters. So that's a total of at least seven kids in the family. And I've always felt kind of sorry for those kids because can you imagine, why can't you be more like your big brother, Jesus? Mom, anyway.

‍

So Jesus, his younger half-brother James, sees how much Jesus loved the Bible, uses the Bible in his life, and he writes this. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be kind of a first fruits of all that he created. So my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. So get rid of the moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you.

‍

Don't merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is just like somebody who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they've heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.

‍

Another show of hands, how many of you would love to be blessed in what you do? Well, me too, so let's look at how to be blessed by the Bible, not how to use the Bible to reinforce your preconceived notions or how to use the Bible as a weapon to other people. How to be blessed and how to be a blessing. James says four things. First, read it humbly. Read it humbly. Don't be a know-it-all. I already know what it says. Yeah, lots of other people get the Bible wrong, but I got a system that I learned when I was 21 in Bible college. I always get it right.

‍

Somebody said, "There are two ways to read the Bible. You can study the Bible with your mind made up, or you can let the Bible make up your mind." James says, "Be quick to listen." So slow to speak, slow to become angry. Human anger doesn't produce God's righteousness. You don't, would you agree with this? You don't hear much when you're angry. Would you agree with that? Well, it's the same exact thing when you're approaching scripture.

‍

If you approach the Bible looking for verses to justify your anger or justify your viewpoint that you're ticked off about, you are not really listening to what it is saying to you. You know, you can read the Bible for reinforcement of your pre-existing views, or you can read it for repentance. Let me say that again. You can read it for reinforcement, or you can read it for repentance, where you're honestly going, "What does it have to say to me?" That's why James says, "Get rid of all moral filth, the evil that is so prevalent, humbly accept the word." That's an interesting phrase, "accept the word" in Greek, "dekomai." This is so interesting, it's a hospitality term, which means to welcome, to offer a guest hospitality. And it says to approach Bible reading that way, "Say, I welcome you into my house. My house is your house. I'm wide open. What? No, I got nothing new to learn. My conclusions are correct for all time." You need to be open, read it humbly.

‍

Second, read it actively. Turn it into an action. Verse 22, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Pardon me, now it says don't deceive yourselves. How do I deceive myself when I read the Bible? Well, let's say I, you know, there's some scripture that talks about how to be a good parent. There's plenty of those. I could talk to you in a sermon about how to be a good parent, but if you don't do it, it doesn't help. If you're not doing it, you're deceiving yourself, and this dovetails right into point three, read it personally.

‍

You start with you, and you stick with you. You don't start with them. James says, "Anyone who listens to the Word and doesn't do it is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror." So that's an interesting analogy for what the Bible is. It's a mirror. What's the purpose of a mirror? We all checked out ourselves in a mirror this morning, right? All of you spent some time going kind of assessing the damage. What do I need to do before I go to church, right? And some of you decided, "Wow, I really need to take a shower. I need to put some product in my hair." Others just popped out on a baseball cap. I see you, Kyle. And just we're like, that's good. I'm good.

‍

But a mirror is meant to assess yourself. A mirror does not show you how your friend has a nose hair that they need to clip, right? It shows you. And by the way, did you know that the first queen, Elizabeth, the one during Shakespeare's time, she had high-quality mirrors installed all over the palace? They were very expensive in those days. Whole walls were mirrors. So she could see her and her court in its glory. But as she got older and she felt she had lost her beauty, she had all of the mirrors removed from the palace because she didn't want to see the fact that she was growing older. And sometimes we get like that with the Bible.

‍

Maybe I'm growing a little less godly or disciplined or Christlike, I don't wanna see it. "This mirror is irritating me, and so I remove the mirror from my life." If you're spending less and less time in the Word, you have to ask, "Are you avoiding the mirror?" You make it personal. Now, I wanna really drill down on this point a little bit because James does, really, for the rest of his epistle. But right here in this passage, he goes on to give a couple of examples into following two verses of how it's possible to look at scripture like a mirror and see scripture but then go away and not do it.

‍

He says, for example, verse 26, "Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight reign on their tongues," on their words, "deceive themselves." Their religion is worthless. What's he talking about? It's a great example because there are verses about controlling your mouth all through the Bible, like a hundred times. For example, Proverbs 10:19, "Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut." Proverbs 29:20, "There is more hope for a fool than for somebody who speaks without thinking." Proverbs 17:27, "A truly wise person uses few words." I mean, it goes on and on. It's not hard to understand. It's clear.

‍

So when James says this, he's saying, "So if you are not keeping a tight reign on your mouth, then what are we even doing here? What Bible are you reading? If you do not see that in the Bible, what Bible version are you at?" And he makes a similar point in the next verse, verse 27. Here's another example. "Religion that our God and Father accept as pure and faultless is this: look after orphans and widows in their distress. Keep yourself from being polluted by the world." Another great example, just like watch your speech.

‍

This idea is all through the Bible, taking care of what is known. You could randomly just open your Bible to random pages from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, to the Psalms, to the prophets, to Jesus, to the epistles, all through the Bible. There's a good chance on that page we're gonna see something about taking care of widows and orphans and poor people. For example, Deuteronomy 10:18, he, God, defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love the foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.

‍

Or look at Deuteronomy 27:19. The person is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Or Zechariah 7:10, do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor. And do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. Over and over and over, I could show you a hundred verses. So when James says this, he's saying, are you not seeing this in the Bible? Oh, you do see this? Then why aren't you doing it? Because it's on every other page.

‍

This is what he means by read it personally. Now I'm emphasizing this because of two errors that I am seeing a lot in our cultural moment when it comes to the Bible. And this is nonpartisan, I see this on the left, I see this on the right, like all the time, and I'm probably gonna make some people mad here. I eagerly look forward to all of your emails. Here's the thing, you have a biblical principle, right? Like the ones James has been talking about. And so coming from that, the personal practice, that's pretty clear, like it's a straight line from that biblical principle to how you need to practice that in your life.

‍

But the public policy that comes out of that principle is a dotted line at best. And we, and I do this too, make two common errors. First, we equate the public policy with the biblical principle. We say, well, if you believe the Bible says this, then if you're a good Christian, I mean, it's clear what the Bible says, Then if you're a good Christian, skip a couple of steps, you are going to believe in this law or you're gonna vote for this politician. But public policy always has, at its best, it has unintended consequences and it has unforeseen costs, consequences, and costs. And if you have said this policy is equivalent to God's written word, now you've really backed yourself into a corner.

‍

Because if it turns out that it's just kinda not working out right, then now what are you gonna do? Now how are you gonna change your position? Because you've equated it with sacred holy writ. And I hear people say this all the time, like man, you believe this biblical principle is clear, so how in the world can you not support this policy? And again, I have heard this, I could quote you both left and right on this. So we have to be very, very careful. Public policy is at best, it's our well-intentioned but imperfect application of biblical principle.

‍

Second error, and this is even worse, we will often skip over personal practice to get to public policy. And this can become a way of escaping our personal responsibility, where really you're not doing anything to follow the biblical principle at all. You're just reposting like social media about the problem or about the policy. And if you're going like, I don't know what you're talking about, Renee, let's use James's examples. First speech, biblical principle is clear, don't lie, don't tear people down with your words, right? Personal practice is clear, I'm not gonna lie. I'm going to try to always speak nothing but encouraging words ultimately.

‍

Public policy, what's the application to that? Should there be laws making all discouraging speech illegal? Should there be laws making every lie an arrestable offense? Nobody would say that. But we do have laws against perjury. We do have laws against slander. So you see how these are not exactly equivalent. Or orphans. I can conclude public policy should be that the government should build orphanages, fund them 100%. Or I could conclude, well orphanages should be incentivized, but not 100% supported or anything. Whatever I think about policy, I cannot skip over this.

‍

What am I actually doing personally? Am I personally supporting foster care, children's homes, orphanages, schools for under-resourced kids? And by the way, as you saw last weekend, you are doing all those things if you support TLC because we do as a church. But let's go even deeper. Am I personally including kids that I know who are fatherless in my family's plans? Let's get real personal. I have to tell you, I am so grateful for guys at church when I grew up without a dad who would take me with their sons to Giants games, to A's games, I would never have had that experience if not for those guys, 'cause my mom was Swiss and she was like, what is this vis-a-vis men running around sowing the balls? It's a blood scene, doom height, you know?

‍

Or speaking of my mom, am I personally supporting widows by including them in my plans? I'll never forget mom, widowed twice, telling me how her social calendar just dried up when she became a widow, right? Am I including them? She would say, "I don't know, Renee. I feel like married couples just feel awkward with a single person or something." Focusing only on public policy can, in effect, become a way to completely avoid personal responsibility. We have to really watch that. James says, "If you don't do what it says, you." Now, that doesn't mean public policy shouldn't be part of the conversation. Of course not.

‍

We just need to keep the order straight. And we must remember to approach the Bible humbly and actively and always personally. And finally, consistently. Read it consistently. James says, "But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, it gives you freedom and continues to do this. Looks intently, continues. Does it regularly, consistently? You are blessed by it. Check this out. I saw a stat, Bible reading at least four times a week. And this, I saw this stat on a site that was trying to argue that any good habit, the kind of the magic number is four times a week, whether it's exercise or anything else.

‍

Bible reading at least four times a week strongly correlates with mental and emotional health. People who do this self-report 30% less loneliness, 40% less chronic anxiety, lower stress levels, they're more emotionally resilient. In other words, look at these bullet points, they're stable. Storms hit, they don't wobble as much. So how do you get into it on a daily basis? Well, we have lots of daily devotionals like the one through First Thessalonians Great Start that we had for January. For this series, trying to challenge you to crack those Bibles open more, I put together this 40-day Bible overview. And if you're joining us online, you can download this at tlc.org/bibleoverview.

‍

But this just has short Bible passages that take you through the whole narrative of Scripture for 40 days designed to give you an overarching high altitude view in a 40-day span for 10 to 15 minutes a day. And I would suggest that as we're going through the Bible these four weeks, you grab this and go through the Bible. Now I left out a lot of important parts, a lot of my favorite parts. This is just designed to give you a little kind of tasting menu of Scripture so you can see the whole arc of it. It's a lot, it was a lot of fun putting this together.

‍

A couple of warnings. A lot of people have this idea, if I do not understand 100% of this one verse I'm reading, I'm not moving on to the next verse 'til I understand this. And they get stuck. But the reality is, even if you don't understand 95%, the 5% you do is enough for you to apply. And just keep reading it and it'll become more clear. The Bible's got a story arc, remember, and it clarifies as you keep reading. Second warning, I'm asking you, do this for 15 minutes a day during the series. You can't just add something 15 minutes a day, right? You're busy.

‍

And so you need to subtract something. You need to unplug something. Personal example, for my New Year's resolution, I told my wife, I am too tethered to my phone. I mean, I wake up, honestly, the first thing I do every morning when I'm in bed is I pray. I usually pray through a scripture that I've memorized. But then the second thing I do is I grab my phone still in bed and I check the headlines, doom scrolling, check my emails, check texts that come in and what's my calendar look like before I know it? Lots of days I was finding an hour has gone by and I'm in bed going ridiculous, right?

‍

So I said, that's gotta stop. I said, Lori, here's how it can stop. This is great because we're going to Egypt on January 2nd. It's a great time to get a fresh start because I heard, and I heard accurately, by the way, that Egypt has terrible cell phone coverage, that the internet's super slow, and so this is going to force me off of my phone. Guess what? I still had phone addiction in Egypt. I just waited 10 minutes for the headlines to download. Right? So I prayed in Egypt, and I shared this with my wife. "Lord, I feel like this is almost approaching addiction level. Set me free from this iPhone habit." So guess what happened? My phone got stolen.

‍

I was sitting at a table at the restaurant, outside next to the hotel, working on this sermon, by the way. Laptop open phone right next to it. To go to grab my phone, it's gone. I look around, it's gone. I talk to the front desk, I think somebody stole it. No, that couldn't happen. Well, later on, the hotel front desk told me they found security camera footage of the thief taking my phone. And the manager told me, yeah, he was sitting right across from you, he just reached over very, very slowly, put his hand over your phone, and pulled it back very, very slowly, and you never noticed because you were very, very focused.

‍

So, yes, I did pray, God free me of this phone habit, and God said, "That is no problem." Here's my point. Don't make God steal your phone. Put it down. Gain 15 minutes to do this Bible reading project. It's really fun to do. By the way, I still don't have a phone. It's been over two weeks and you know what? I love it. I, seriously, I've been happier, less anxious, sleeping better. I've been exercising more. I've been like, "Who added all these hours to my days?" "Oh yeah, I don't have a phone." But let's go back to the idea we started with. I don't know the storms that are going to come into your life in 2026, but I do know that storms are coming.

‍

So build your life on the unchanging word. You know why? Because it leads you to the unchanging savior. Our soul isn't saved by the Bible, but it leads us to a profound understanding of Jesus Christ. And that's the really good news. It leads us to a more intimate relationship with our savior. So let's ask God to bless this next four weeks together. Would you bow your heads with me? Heavenly Father, we know that you want us to gaze into your word more intently, but there are so many distractions. So help us to choose to focus on the best thing. We wanna build our lives on your word, the Bible, which points us to the living word, Jesus Christ, and not to have our minds polluted by the world.

‍

We wanna build our lives on rock and not sand. We want a solid foundation of truth. So help us these next four weeks to learn how to do just that. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

}

‍