What is The Bible all About?

In this part of the sermon: The sermon begins with a hypothetical scenario where listeners are given notepads to answer two questions: 'What is the Bible?' and 'Why was the Bible given to us?' The expected…

A hypothetical scenario where listeners are given notepads and pens to answer 'What is the Bible?' and 'Why was it given?' to introduce the sermon's central questions and the Bible's purpose.

Imagine with me that in preparation for our gathering for this worship service this morning, I had spoken to the chairman of our deacons and asked him if he would do me a favor. And that favor was to make sure that one of the deacons would secure a number of little notepads and an equal number of ballpoint pens, and that he would instruct the ushers that at this point in the service, they were to come down the aisles and distribute one of those notepads and one of those pens to everyone gathered here who's able to write. Not give it out to the little kids as a scribble pad, but as something th...

0:04 - 1:23 Read in full sermon

Driving home: If you want to know what the Bible's all about, master this one verse, and you have got a handle on what the Bible's all about.

Citing the complex visions in Ezekiel and Revelation as examples of biblical passages that can initially seem incomprehensible but ultimately convey God's message.

In many places. It is a book that contains some very strange means of communicating the mind and will of God. If you were to first encounter the Bible and open up to Ezekiel 1 and the early chapters of Ezekiel, and you saw wheels within wheels and fiery this and all the rest, you'd say, I can't make sense out of this book. Or if you were to open to the book of the Revelation and you were to read about dragons and beasts coming up out of the sea with ten horns, you'd say, What in the world is this all about?

5:43 - 6:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Resist the temptation to 'make arrows' and blame the messenger when your sin is revealed.

An extended analogy of a person feeling healthy but discovering a serious internal medical condition through diagnostic tests, used to illustrate the necessity of facing God's diagnosis of our sinful state, even if we don't feel it.

Suppose you hadn't had a general physical check up for a long time. And I mean you feel so healthy. You make everyone else sick. You go last time you had your cholesterol checked 120 and you eat ice cream every night and eggs every morning and all.

13:20 - 13:36 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: An extended quotation of Annie Cousin's hymn illustrates the profound truth of Christ bearing the burdens, wrath, rod, tempest, and sword of God's judgment for us, so that we…

A lengthy quotation of Annie Cousin's hymn, which graphically depicts Christ bearing God's wrath, burdens, rod, tempest, and sword in our place, serving as a powerful illustration of the substitutionary atonement.

To a rod. To a tempest. And to a sword. And this is what she wrote.

59:47 - 59:54 Read in full sermon