Listen: Through Scripture

We announced last weekend that our elders have voted to put me forward as a candidate to succeed John as the Lead Pastor of Prairie Lakes. It’s been a pretty humbling, exciting, and yes, terrifying thing for me. But my wife, Erin, and I are so grateful for the opportunity to be considered, love our church, and are trusting God joyfully with all of that.

So, if that is the first time you’re hearing the news… sorry for the ambush there. Go back to last week’s message on YouTube or our website and get caught up.

But this is, for me, the first weekend that I can, like… start talking to you all about this, and what it’s been like for me as we’ve been walking towards this.

And I can’t think of a better weekend to do it than this one where we’re closing out a series on “listening.” Because I’ve been doing a lot of that through this whole process.

But this weekend, when it comes to listening, here’s what we’ll be talking about specifically:

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How do we listen to God through Scripture?

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How do we listen to God through Scripture?

Assumptions

Now: in order to even dive that question, you kinda have to assume a few things. First, you have to assume that God inspired its writing.

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Assumptions about Scripture

God inspired it

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Meaning: God superintended the process of its writing for the purposes of revealing himself to us through it—so that, now, even today, he speaks through it. God inspired it and speaks through it.

And you also have to assume that it’s reliable.

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Assumptions about Scripture

God inspired it

It’s reliable

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Meaning, the version of the Bible we have today is a faithful copy of what was first written, and that what was first written was accurate.

Finally, you also have to assume that you’re able to interpret it in a way that you can understand—and in the way that God intended—so that you can live it out.

Assumptions about Scripture

God inspired it

It’s reliable

I can interpret, understand, and apply it correctly

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So there are some assumptions that we kinda have to share if we’re going to ask how we can listen to God through Scripture. We’re kinda assuming that God inspired it and is speaking through it, that the copy we have today is faithful to what the authors originally wrote, and that we can handle it correctly.

Now: we don’t have the time we’d need to dive into each of those three assumptions. But I wanted to start with these because here’s what I’m finding:

More and more people don’t share some of these assumptions. Even church people.

I mean, it would be fascinating to do some polling in real time this weekend on these, live in the room, even.

If I asked you to take those assumptions and give each of them a score, 1-5, with “1” being “Strongly Disagree” and “5” being “Strongly Agree”—

Like, “God inspired it.” Yeah. Put me down as a “5.” I strongly agree.

Or “I can interpret it and apply it correctly.” Eh… maybe a 2.5.

It just would be fascinating to see, in a room full of church people, to what level we really share these assumptions.

Because the danger here is to just plow ahead and give everyone practical tips on how to listen to God through Scripture when a good chunk of us might not be really confident in it.

So, listen: if that’s you, and you’re not really confident about 1, 2, or all 3 of those, let me encourage you on a few things.

First, that’s ok. That’s ok. You do not have to be “all 5’s” before you are able to listen to God through Scripture. Wanna know why? Because he did inspire it, it is reliable, he does speak through it, he wants you to know who he is, and he can and will help you.

And so will we.

You’ve got everything going for you in this—no matter where you’re starting. And you can start from anywhere.

We want this to be a weekend where you walk out a little more confident and a little more excited about growing in your ability to listen to God through his Word, through the Bible… through Scripture.

Pathways

So here’s how we’re going to do that:

We’re going to talk about “5 Pathways” that you can explore when it comes to growing more confident in listening to God through Scripture.

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5 Pathways...

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That’s what we’re going to do. We’re gonna talk about 5 different paths that you can explore.

Now: these are NOT “to-do’s.”

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5 Pathways… NOT “to-do’s!”

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For each of these pathways, we’re going to be talking about a lot of different things, and resources, and tools. And so if you approach them like they’re “all the things I have to do to get better at ‘Bible-ing’” then you’re just going to be overwhelmed. We’ve already got more stuff to do than we can get done without adding more “Bible stuff.”

Not to mention:

I think a lot of us are kind of already reducing this down to a to-do. Reading the Bible, studying the Bible, listening to God through the Bible… a lot of us fall into that trap of approaching it like it’s a “to-do” that I “probably should do more of.” And maybe we’ve even got a little bit of guilt or shame built up around that… like God is a teacher up in heaven keeping track of my Bible reading grade. Hopefully I can bring it up before the end of the semester.

So… not “to-do’s.” Pathways.

And that’s not just semantics.

As we approach these Pathways, here’s what I’m going to encourage you to do:

Choose one of them to explore more. Just one.

I know some of you over-achievers are rolling your eyes right now. Yeah, yeah… setting the bar low. Whatever. You’re going to do whatever you want to do anyways. Do all (5) and come up with (2) more for extra credit.

But for the rest of us, here’s the deal:

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Since Scripture is one of the primary pathways that God speaks to us and reveals himself to us, it’s not surprising that the Enemy works overtime to poison this path.

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I think that if we were honest, a lot of us feel like our engagement with God’s word is stale at best. And one of his most effective ways of poising the pathway of Scripture for us is encouraging us to make it into a to-do that we start feeling obligated to or guilty of not “doing more of.”

So don’t take that approach. See these as pathways to explore… and head down one.

Pathway 1: Become a Better Student

Alright. Let’s jump into these. Here’s Pathway #1:

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Listening to God through Scripture: Pathways

Become a better student of Scripture. (Psalm 119:105; 33-34)

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If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to Psalm 119. We’ll have the verse on the screen for you in a minute.

But this is the first pathway: if you want to be able to better hear God through Scripture, you might want to consider becoming a better student of it.

Psalm 119 is a really long Psalm, most of which is dedicated to talking about what Scripture is and what God does through it. Let’s take a look at verse 105, then verses 33-34:

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Psalm 119:105; 33-34 “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end. Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.”

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The Psalmist talks about Scripture like it’s a lamp or a light helping him see how he should live as life plays out. And because of that, what he asks specifically for is for God to give him understanding so that he can handle it correctly, and live it out appropriately.

Understanding.

You know… there’s all different kinds of learning styles; several different ways that we are wired to learn things. And being a student is one of those.

Now: some of us loved school, studying, all of that… and some of us, not so much. I get it.

But there’s a reason why I’m inviting you to consider this path first—and that’s because of what the Bible actually is.

When we talk about the Bible, we sometimes talk about it like it’s a (1) book. “The Bible.”

But really, it’s 66 different books.

39 of those books, which we call the “Old Testament,” were handed down to us from the Jewish people who, for 15 or so centuries prior to Jesus walking the earth, collected and copied them.

27 of those books, which we call the “New Testament,” were collected over the course of the first (3) centuries after Jesus walked the earth.

So, the Bible isn’t a book in the sense that we often think about a book. An author didn’t just sit down and write it all at once, send it on to the publisher, have the 1st edition printed, and then update it as it went.

It’s 66 books written over the course of several centuries.

AND, across different cultures.

Some of it was written in the Ancient Near East before there was such a thing as “Western Culture.” It was written in a world of completely different assumptions than ours.

Oh—and I haven’t even mentioned that each of those 66 books aren’t the same kind of literature.

There’s historical narrative.

There’s poetry.

There’s apocalypse.

There’s wisdom literature.

There’s law.

There’s epistles.

There’s gospels.

And each of these different kinds of literature has to be treated according to its kind for us to, let’s say, not read weird things into it or draw weird things out of it.

Let me show you why this matters.

Let’s say someone asks you this question:

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Does the Bible condone slavery?

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Well… does it?

If you approach the Bible like it’s just one book, and a book like any other, what you’ll do is helicopter down onto this verse or that verse. Because it’s all just “the Bible.” And if you do that, know what you’ll find? You’ll find that “the Bible” is pretty conflicted when it comes to slavery. Sometimes it seems to assume that it’s fine; other times that it’s not.

But if you approach the Bible like it’s several different books written within different times and cultures, and you become a student of some of those cultures, you’ll see that God worked within those cultures in some pretty consistent ways and patterns—one of which was moving from slavery to freedom (not to mention a few more).

So, as someone who has spent a lot of time and money to become a better student of Scripture, here’s what I’m trying to say:

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Most objections to, misunderstandings of, or confusions about Scripture can be traced back to being a poor student of Scripture.

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And that breaks my heart, honestly. Because there’s a lot of us that just get stuck, or get confused, or feel insecure about God’s Word when there’s a pretty clear path to a more confident understanding that we just haven’t walked down.

So, if you want to explore this path of listening to God through Scripture, here’s what I’d suggest:

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Steps to becoming a better student of Scripture:

Go to prairielakeschurch.org, go to “Sermons,” and search “Bible Savvy”

Ask your Campus Pastor about “Bible Savvy” or “First Principles”

Search “Bible Project” on Youtube or the YouVersion Bible App

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That’s pathway #1. Becoming a better student of Scripture.

Here’s #2:

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Listening to God through Scripture: Pathways

Become a better student of Scripture. (Psalm 119:105; 33-34)

Become a consistent reader of Scripture. (Psalm 1:1-3)

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Become a consistent reader of Scripture.

So, don’t forget the caution we opened up with: we all have a tendency to kinda reduce our relationship with God’s Word down to a “to-do.” And because of that, a lot of us carry some guilt and shame about how little we read it on our own time, or how irregular those times are.

And then we get ourselves on this hamster wheel of “I’m never doing it as often as I should so now I’m gonna really double down and get back into it until I fall of the wagon again” and then round and round we go.

Listen: nothing will poison your relationship with God’s Word more quickly than if you approach it that way.

Said differently:

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If you make consistency the goal, then reading the Bible becomes just another to-do.

If you make consistency a strategy, and spending time with God the goal, then reading the Bible is a joyful opportunity.

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(Explain.)

Lets look at Psalm 1:1-3 together:

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Psalm 1:1-3 “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.”

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So, let’s apply our first path to the second one. Let’s apply being a student of Scripture so that we read this passage correctly.

Psalms is a collection of mostly songs. Psalm 1 is a song. In the original language (which in this case would have been Hebrew), there would have been rhythm and rhyme to it. You would have felt it.

You wouldn’t be reading it as though you were reading a book. You’d be listening to it as lyrics over music.

And if you’re someone who listens to a lot of music—doesn’t matter what kind; pop, hip-hop, metal, whatever—you don’t listen to music like you read a text book. Meaning in song is conveyed not just through the words.

And the words themselves are more free; you’re given permission to interpret them a little differently because they’re… lyrics.

So when you look at this Psalm, and you see the Psalmist write “meditates on his law day and night”—that’s not like an assignment. He’s not saying “you must read your Bible every morning and every evening.”

It’s a song. What he’s saying is more like “be the kind of person who loves having God’s word on your mind.”

Who doesn’t want that? Who of us would say, “Nah. No thanks. Having God’s word on my mind and in my heart throughout my day… gross.”

We all want that. We all do.

And one of the best ways to become that person (Captain Obvious) is to read it consistently. Not as the goal, but as a strategy.

Here’s a few things to consider along those lines:

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Steps to becoming a consistent reader of Scripture:

Find a time that works for you—and calendar it.

Consider a digital Bible reading plan by downloading the YouVersion Bible app.

Ask a friend to go on the journey together.

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Pathway #2. Pathway #3:

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Listening to God through Scripture: Pathways

Become a better student of Scripture. (Psalm 119:105; 33-34)

Become a consistent reader of Scripture. (Psalm 1:1-3)

Experiment with spiritual disciplines. (Psalm 119:15-16; 18)

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Experiment with spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines.

That’s a term that some of us might have heard, but not all of us know what it means. Spiritual disciplines.

Spiritual Disciplines is a way of seeing things like Bible reading, prayer, and other spiritual activity as though God is using them to work on us.

So if I see reading Scripture as a spiritual discipline, it’s like seeing it as some kind of spiritual machine that I’m gonna put myself inside of, with God using it to work on me—work on my mind and heart, my thoughts and attitudes, my spirit and my behavior.

This is kind of the sentiment of some other verse in Psalm 119:

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Psalm 119:15-16; 18 “I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.”

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You get the sense that the Psalmist isn’t just reading God’s Word like a book. He’s meditating on it. He’s considering it. He’s delighting in it. And he’s “not neglecting it”—meaning, he’s avoiding that dreadful trap of reading it but not living it out.

Hey:

If the idea of listening to God through Scripture feels dry or boring to you…

It’s probably because you’re “just reading” it.

“You mean we’re supposed to be doing more than just reading it?”

Yes! See it as a spiritual discipline.

Don’t just read it; meditate on it.

Don’t just read it; consider it. Journal about what you’re learning, where you’re confused, what God’s saying to you.

Don’t just read it; ask God to help you identify ways that very day to live out what you’re learning in it.

If that sounds good, but also unclear, here’s what I’d suggest:

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Steps to experimenting with Spiritual Disciplines and the Bible:

Approach it as an experiment! Try different things without needing to “succeed.”

Start with simple ones: journaling; reflecting/meditating/ capturing “1 application.”

Slow down! It’s supposed to be a 2-way conversation.

Explore further with the “Spiritual Disciplines Handbook.”

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Ok. That’s the 3rd pathway. I’m gonna go ahead and just put up the last (2) because they’re both pretty simple. Here’s 4 & 5:

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Listening to God through Scripture: Pathways

Become a better student of Scripture. (Psalm 119:105; 33-34)

Become a consistent reader of Scripture. (Psalm 1:1-3)

Experiment with spiritual disciplines. (Psalm 119:15-16; 18)

Find a friend or join a group.

Teach it!

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(Explain.)

Related Media

Related Sermons

Listen: Through Scripture

Introduction

Assumptions

Pathways

Pathway 1: Become a Better Student

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