Do you have spiritual question about angels
or demons
or marriage or the devil
or sexuality or government or the reliability of the Bible
or Catholics or transgender people
or a thousand other things?
Because the people at my church do.
[Laughs]
Every year, at the end of the year, we have this tradition that we call
Question and Answer Sunday.
Where people can anonymously text in
a question that they have about faith,
about religion, about God or the Bible.
And every December I'm reminded how many
great and difficult questions God's people have.
And, this week, I want to wrestle with some of those questions together with you.
In the next few days, we're going to try to answer these questions
with an open Bible.
What's a good spot in the Bible to share
with someone who doesn't know God?
Why do we seem to take Paul's words on homosexuality
more seriously than Jesus words about divorce?
Are Catholics going to heaven?
And what does the Bible mean when it talks about a new heaven and a new earth?
Should be an interesting week, huh?
[Laughs]
Those are really difficult,
challenging questions.
But one of the things that I love about the Bible
is that we can come with real questions
and God provides real answers.
Now, I'm going to try to do that in the days to come
but you have a responsibility too.
And it's not just to watch and to listen and to absorb.
If you're really going to grow spiritually in your faith,
you're going to have to do some work.
And it's the same work that a group of Christians
did about 2,000 years ago, called the Bereans.
Ever heard their story before?
In the book of Acts, chapter 17,
the apostle Paul is coming
to new cities and new places
and he's sharing the incredible news
that Jesus lived and died and rose
for the forgiveness of sins.
And he gets to this Greek city called Berea,
and he's passionately sharing the message.
And the Bible says something, not about Paul
or about his message, but about the people who are listening.
The people I kind of want you to imitate in your faith.
Let me read you this incredible passage from Acts, chapter 17.
I'm going to start with verse 11.
I love that line.
Paul is Paul.
He's the famous Paul.
The Bible teacher Paul.
Smart as a whip Paul.
And yet,
these people of faith
didn't just trust everything he said.
They received the message with eagerness.
But first, they opened their Bibles
to see if what Paul said was true.
And this week I want you to do the same thing.
There's a thousand pastors who think a thousand different things
about the judgement day
or about different religions
or about sexuality
or about the Bible.
And you can't just listen to all of them
and believe all of them because not all of them agree.
So, what you're going to have to do,
is the hard work of opening this book
and testing to see if what I say is true.
So this week, when I quote a Bible passage,
I want you to make sure that I do,
I want you to open your Bible
and I want you to make sure that what I'm saying about it
is what it actually says.
Read the passage in context.
Meditate on it.
What comes before and after.
And I hope that, this week, you don't just get,
you know, four answers to four really tough questions.
But you get a great way to listen to
the answers to every Bible question.
So that every video,
every blog that you read,
every church service you attend,
you can be a noble Christian just like the Bereans.
And examine God's truth to see if what we say it true.
I hope that you're praying for my wisdom
and I'm praying for your strength,
your intelligence and your depth in God's Word.
So, let's ask God to bless us this week.
Would you join me in prayer?
Gracious Father in Heaven, we need your spirit to understand the Bible.
Some parts of it are so simple and beautiful.
And some and really complex
and we need to understand context and culture.
And so we pray this week that you would help us.
Help us to be committed not to easy answers,
not to simple answers, but to the truth.
We pray that you would lead us closer to Jesus.
That we wouldn't just learn some more Bible knowledge
but the stuff that really helps us love you with our whole heart
and love our neighbor as our self.
More than anything, God, open our eyes to the depth
and the width and the height
of the love that you have for us in your son, Jesus Christ.
We can't wait to hear what you have to say to us.
Because we're praying today in his name.
We'll see you the rest of this week.
God bless.
Because you can know it all,
and you can read it all,
and you can give it all
and you can be there every Sunday.
But if you don't have, if you don't have love,
it's nothing.
So I want to ask you a hard question today.
What are you justifying
because you're talented?