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Morning, everybody. And this is a much better crowd than last night. The weather got some of you yesterday and you wear down as this week goes on, don't you? I took a picture of some of the worship and the kids just bouncing off the walls and I sent it to our staff and, and I said, forget solar, forget wind, forget nuclear. I've discovered a renewable source of inexhaustible energy. It's kid power. And don't try to keep up with them. You're not going to win. You're not going to win. We're down to two more days here, today and tomorrow. Well, we got Friday, not much of Friday you don't have. So man get the most out of it. But again, don't feel like you have to do absolutely everything on the seventh day. We were reminded last night at dinner, what did God do? He rested. Not because he needed it, but because he knew that we were going to need it. So, you know, sneak that nap in during free time, that 15 minute section right there. Seize that power nap. Before we start, I've got a specific prayer request. I'd really love your help with this biblical character series. We're doing one of the 11 courses that are now available in this. By the way, I'm letting people take those when they buy them. We're almost out of daily walk Bibles. I think we have one more. But you still get the cheap price. If you fill out the order form today or tomorrow, pay for it here, we ship it to you. It's considerably less than on our website, so. So anyway, don't worry if you see the inventory trickling down still, come see me. Crazy Phil has lost his lease. Everything must go. And there you go. But the prayer request is this. We get our nine regional leaders together once a year, oftentimes in one of their regions. They can cross pollinate, steal good ideas from each other. About a year and a half ago, we were in Amman, Jordan, where our Middle East North Africa ministry has its hub. Our director there is a guy named Husam who's just a gift from God to our ministry. And about the second day of this conference before they took us out for camel rides. I've been on camel rides before, but it was like the five minute kind for the photo op. This at the 40 minute mark, we were still moving away from camp, up these dunes. And I'm like, this is not gonna end well. And I'm not a big equestrian. My family likes to ride, you know, Ellen has ridden quite a bit. Emily's like, I want A smooth horse, like nose to butt is fine with me. Give me velvet. And they get velvet. Philip exaggerates his abilities and they're like. And my wife's going, no, he doesn't. Really not. And so they're like, oh, we'll get you frisky. And then she kind of winks at my wife. Then they look at. And then they look at their horses, then they look back at me. And then the wrangler, you know, big boot Billy will whistle, and they bring this horse from the back lot that like flunked out of remedial Clydesdale training or something. And he looks at me and I look at him and we're equally unhappy about this. This is literal truth. My last three horses have been named Sarge, Brutus and Satan. So a camel is basically a horse put together by a committee. And they're just, they don't conform to my body structure. And so everybody else is on their camels and they bring this camel and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him. I know they've been saving him for me. And he kneels down and I get down and be careful if you ever do this, because the. They don't get up all four legs at a time. Their back ones come up first, which throws you forward. I took the skin off of right here. And I asked the guy who was taking this, I go, what is his name? I'm not making this up. He goes, his name is Osama. Which just warmed my heart to think of that. Anyway, about the third day of this conference, Husam says to me, hey, we're going to be joined at lunch today by a guy. He leads sat 7 for the middle east for the Arabic speaking channel. Anybody ever heard of SAT 7? Yeah, it's the largest Arabic. They also have a Persian one. They have another one in Turkish, but it's the largest Arabic speaking Christian communication network there is. At any given time, there's somewhere between a million and a million and a half people actually watching it. They have a social media crew that handles all the follow up. Last year from Saudi Arabia alone, they got 165,000 inquiries of people wanting to know more. It's glorious. It crosses all boundaries. Walk through the Bible for like 30 years has tried to get some of our stuff on Sat 7 long. It goes back to our original president and it's never worked out. And I thought, okay, it doesn't hurt to talk. And I had a couple people with me from the US and this guy is sitting across from me and he goes, I love your biblical character series. And I said, thanks, that's encouraging. And he says, I added up all of them. And he says, there's like 51 lessons altogether between all of them. When I see 51, I see a year's worth of programming. I go, yes. And he goes, but there's a problem. And I said, yeah, you don't need a white American with subtitles on an Arabic speaking channel. And he goes, you're ahead of me. And I said, no, I understand the issue. You want this to feel like it's indigenous content to this region. And he said, would you be open to letting Husam reteach your stuff in Arabic? And then we put it on Sat 7 and I looked at the two people who were with me and we just like, yeah. I mean, I trusted Hussam with my life that morning on the camel, okay? So I would trust him with my content. And so we worked that out. He had to get that all in legalese and all that good stuff. You can imagine the paperwork involved with that. And I said, well, how much? And he said, well, if you could cover the production costs, our studios can film who, Sam? We'll put it all together. But if you could cover those production costs. I said, how much is that? And he says, probably 70,000 for all the courses put together, which is a bargain, let me tell you. This is like high production value. Four cameras, background stuff. Not quite the graphics we have here, but by local standards, it's superbly done. And I said, what about for the airtime? And he says, don't tell any US Ministry presidents this, so zip your lips, because we're not going to charge you airtime because you're willing to give it to us and let us do it with an Arabic speaker. That's an incredible thing. And Mission India's our fundraising goal. I'm not asking for any. That $70,000. God has actually already provided it. That's about the easiest $70,000 I ever had to raise, quite frankly, because you look at the ROI on that, it's crazy. And they said, our hottest program is called the Chosen. Have you heard of it? I go, I have. And he said, even that has to be done with Arabic voiceover. But he says, this will be live teaching with Husam. And he says, we'll give you the slot on Tuesday nights right after the Chosen. I'm like, only God can do this. Husam is in Beirut. He lives in Jordan, but he's in Beirut, Lebanon, right now. It had to be delayed because the airspace has been closed some. He's there right now. He's shooting three of the courses this week. If, as we open up our time in prayer, if you would just pray with me for Husam, that's heavy duty teaching and I think he's doing Crucible, which is David, Detour, which is Joseph. And then right away they wanted refuge, finding home in a world of change. Within 30 miles of Husam's house in Amman, Jordan, there's a million, million and a half refugees. And this is going to go crazy in the refugee community as well as other places. So, dear Father, thank you for opening a door which we could never have opened ourselves. Thank you for Husam, for his giftedness, but even more than that, Lord, for his heart. And I pray even this week, as he's doing a whole lot of recording, Lord, that you would just give him strength, give him joy in the process. I pray that the product that comes together would be excellent and it would lead to many, many, many, perhaps tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Who knows, Lord, how many people will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? It's in his name that we pray. Amen. So, you know, next time you see a television, think of Hussam and think of SAT 7. That's also SAT 7 is available here. So if you have friends who speak Arabic, man, tell them about this opportunity because he's going to do a fantastic job with it. This particular lesson may be the most important one of all of them. So important, it's important that I turn my notes right side up. That's how important it is. We've talked about being rooted by family, rooted by mentors last night, rooted by trials this morning, rooted by the Word, rooted by the Word. One of the best ways, if not the best way to get rooted, is to become a man or woman, a boy or girl of this book. That's the best place for our roots to go down deep. There are verses in the Bible that are about the Bible, that talk about the purpose of the Bible, that talk about how we can best interact with it. An unusually high percentage of those just really primo verses in the Bible about the Bible are in first and second Timothy. So how could we not have a lesson about that in this study of his life? 2nd Timothy 3, 16, 17. Let's read this together. Here we go. All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. You may not know this, but Preacher types. Well, number one, we're weird as baseball players with our, like, with our quirkiness. Like, it drives me nuts that this microphone is on the right side of my face instead of my left side. That should be totally irrelevant, but it just belongs over here. I don't know why, but I have endured outward persecution, inward opposition, and I've endured all week, and we're going to make it through it. Something else you may not know about your pastor is that pastors have, like, bucket lists. I mean, we all have regular bucket lists of things we love to do before we die, places we might want to see. But, like, this is weird. We have, like, ministry bucket lists. Like, I had heard about Gull Lake for a long, long time before I was ever invited here. And when I finally got invited here, I'm like, yes, I get to go to Gull Lake. Because just the videos that are online, this place is amazing. And if you don't know the history of this place, it almost didn't make it. It was a sleepy little Bible conference that was kind of gradually spiraling downhill. And maybe Ambush will tell us the story tomorrow. But they took a massive risk when they hired brought Ambush and Hoedown both up here from Pine Cove in Texas. Said, turn it into a family camp. And they said to the board, they said, it will lose more people than it gains if we do that at first. And the board said, you come and we won't flinch. And it did decline a little more, but then it turned around, and now that's why you better be ready to hit the send button on registration day. Glory to God for that. Well, I didn't have a very long bucket list when I was in that little country church. In fact, here was my bucket list. Lord, I'll stay here my whole life if you want me to. I really will. Because, you know, I used to say, God doesn't care about numbers. All he cares is we're faithful. Then I discovered there's a book called Numbers, so I don't say that anymore. But numbers aren't the ultimate measure of fruitfulness in ministry. Can we agree to that? It's not how many people come in the door. It's what the people are like when they go out the door and go back into their real lives. But I had one item on my bucket list. I said, lord, just once, just once, I'd love for some church somewhere to ask me to come speak as a guest speaker. Wow, Mr. Mega Faith. My wife is like, please tell me you're not still praying. That prayer. Have you stopped that? Cause your schedule's nuts now. But I already knew if I get invited, I knew the message I would preach. It's this passage right here that we just read. And I had the title. I had preached it at our church, and it went well. I had the title. It was called the Four Purposes of God's Word. Doesn't that just. I mean. I mean, I could just hear the radio broadcast. Now, we don't know this is a helicopter up above, you know, bringing the traffic report from Sista Park, Illinois. And we don't know what's going on down there on 49, but there's a traffic jam. I don't think they're going to fit all these cars into the church parking lot. I'm trying to read the sign. Yes, the Four Purposes of God's Word. Wow. We're going to land the chopper and go in and hear this ourselves. It wasn't even a good title. It was going to be this passage right here. Little did I know, those are not the four purposes of God's word. And this passage tells that. So it had a lousy title. But it also was incorrect in what it said. Let's look at this verse. And when I came through school, I never learned to diagram sentences. How many of you can diagram a sentence or at some point in your life could diagram a sentence? It wasn't even mentioned in the school I went to. So I get in seminary, and we're supposed to be diagramming sentences in Greek. And I'm freaking out. And Ellen goes, you can't diagram a sentence. I go, no, I never learned it. So she's diagramming them out of the New American Standard Bible because it's the closest to word for word translation. And then I'm going, now draw that same diagram. She goes, here's the direct object over there. Look at this modifier. Here's an adverb. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is. They didn't teach us that. It wasn't in fashion right when I came through school. Then I would fill in the Greek words, and I graduated, and here I am. So thank you, my dear. We're not going to diagram it or look at it in Greek, but we are going to kind of break it down. Scripture's origin says God breathed. Your translation may say what word? Inspired. Same word, respiration. Hear that word? It literally means God breathed that same breath that brought life into Adam. Right? So scripture is God breathed. It comes from him. Yes, It's Poured through people, their experiences, their gifting. But it is sourced in God himself. Scripture's value. It's described as useful or purposeful. Scripture is useful or purposeful. It's not just for our entertainment. DL Moody, who starred Moody Bible Institute. You got some counselors here from Moody. Moody used to say God did not give us his word for our information, but for our transformation. It's given to change us, not just to make us smarter sinners. Then it lists those four things it's useful or profitable for. Four things. Teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness. So Scripture's purpose. We haven't gotten there yet. We haven't gotten there yet. I thought those were the four purposes of God's Word. But if you can go back to the scripture itself. I want to see the scripture. Look at the scripture. What does it say? Verse 17. So that in order that. Here's the purpose of it. What's the purpose of Scripture? So we can be thoroughly equipped to do everything God wants us to. That word, thoroughly equipped is the same word that's used of like packing before you go on a trip, a camping trip, a journey. And I saw some of your minivans unloading. You have excelled at that this week. I don't know how you fit all of that stuff in, especially first timers. Like, I've heard about camp food. It ain't much. Wow, are you wrong when you come here. But you brought food for survivalist living for five, six days. How you fit seven, you know, seven scooters in there too, I do not know. That's the word that. You're packed, you're loaded, you've got everything that you need for the journey. That's the purpose of. Of scripture. It's not what happens this week. It's how you can cope with life better next week as a result of learning about being rooted during our time together. That's the test, the evaluation of the Bible teaching this week. Well, what about those four things there? Are they unimportant? No, they're very important. Teaching, rebuking, correcting, training and righteousness. Good. Go ahead and go to that one that lists those four on the screen. It's kind of cool. Two of those are offense. They're positive words. Two of them are defense. Which two are the positive statements? Teaching Right and training and righteousness. Good. Which are more negative or they're playing defense? They are. Right. Another way of looking at. So you can put plus and minus signs by those if you want, but another way of looking at it as two of those focus on our beliefs, how we think. Teaching primarily, at least it starts in the head, right? It ought to move to the heart and out through the hands eventually. But I mean, we're using our brains while we're together in these sessions. So teaching says, if you believe this good, keep believing it. Jesus really is. It's not Jesus plus anything, it's simply Jesus, keep him in the focal spot. It's also saying if you don't believe that Jesus really loves you, you need to change your mind about that. Because had you been the only person on earth, Jesus Christ still would have gone to the cross. It's not just God so loved the world, it's God so loved Big Boots Billy. Okay? It's specific, it's personal. So that's focused on our beliefs. Sometimes our beliefs are wrong. And so what do we need? We need correcting. Some of you, this is a theme in here. Have you've been told that Jesus came back and you missed it? That's not true. You don't have to worry about that. Some of you are being told that it's Jesus, but you also have to keep the law. That's not true. Stop believing that. The same is true over here. On the behavior side, that training in righteousness, it is like a muscle, it is a skill set. And so discover your gift, use your gift, put it to work in your local church and beyond. But then there's also the rebuking. It's like we just need to turn up the contrast. There's not much contrast between the lifestyle of the average churchgoer and those who go seldom, if at all. There's a problem with that. There's rebuking in the Bible about that. Finally we get to Scripture's purpose in verse 17. It's to equip us for every good work. So those four things, they're not unimportant, they're just not the destination. They're the routes we take to the destination. My favorite elder, his name was Wes Ravens. He was a cattle feeder. He didn't have any formal education. I'm not even sure he finished high school. But he was a brilliant businessman, really, really, really street smart and just wise from the scriptures. And he came into church one Sunday and Sunday morning he goes, what are you spreading today? He called me Master Pastor. Feel free to not ever call me that. I hated that. I should not have entrusted you with that bit of knowledge. But anyway, Master Pastor, what you spreading today? And I had driven by the farm fields and I smelled what they were spreading. And I thought, what is he saying? And so he did this a few weeks. And I go, you gotta like, please, can you interpret that parable for me? And he says, yeah. He goes, we're like your field. And he says, you're like us farmers. And he says, you spray some stuff to make the bad stuff not grow right, herbicides, pesticides, but you also put on fertilizer to make the good stuff grow faster. Which is today's message that totally aligns with this, doesn't it, in just a simple parable kind of way. Well, let's keep going. First, Timothy1, as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work, which is by faith. It is essential. Paul says that Timothy, avoid false doctrines and useless controversies. Those are two different categories. And at first glance, false doctrine seems way worse than endless controversies. But I'm honestly not sure that endless controversies do much less damage than the false doctrines. What's a false doctrine in our day and age? Well, I'll give you one that I see all over the world. America has for many years exported some of our worst to the rest of the world. We're still the pornography kings, and we export that globally. Not only that, we send some of our worst Bible teaching the farthest overseas. Now there's some really gifted teachers online, have television ministries, but not all of them are equally true to Scripture. And one of the patterns that I see over and over is something I call it the prosperity gospel that says if you come into relationship with Jesus Christ, it's like your life is Teflon coated. If you're old, you know that metaphor. Problems come, but they don't stick. In other words, you're bulletproof, you're on autopilot. Once you come into relationship with Christ, you'll never struggle again. So receive him as Savior. I know the plans that I have to you. Jeremiah 29:11 hangs in a lot of homes. Nothing wrong with that verse, but it was written to people during the Babylonian captivity. They're not even living in the promised land. So it's not saying, hey, you're never going to struggle. That's just simply not true. And this prosperity gospel that gets proclaimed if it's bad in Detroit or Columbus or Indianapolis or Atlanta or Dallas, my friends, it's doing even worse around the world. I saw one grouping of the 10 wealthiest Bible teachers in the world. Four of them were Nigerian. That's not a rich country. But hey, if you'll send me $100, you sow that seed. You watch what God, he's going to give you back this money tenfold. I'm all for generosity, but I don't think we give so we can get more back. I think the blessings lots of times are not financial, they're intangible. This prosperity gospel is one of the major things because what happens then if you come to know Jesus and now a trial hits your life? That cancer diagnosis, that child that doesn't get well, that relationship that ends that you didn't want to end, what happens? There's only two choices. Maybe God isn't really as powerful as you thought he was and that leads to all sorts of bad news. If you buy into that or no, the problem is not God. The problem was you. You just didn't have enough faith. If you had had more faith, if you could conjure up more faith, then you wouldn't be hurting. Has that been your experience in the Christian life? That you're just trials free? Not mine and probably nobody here. I now believe in Haiti. Single mom, widowed lady test. If you can't look a widowed single mom in Haiti in the eye and teach that truth, then it shouldn't be taught in the richest church in the United States of America. That's a great example of false teaching. On the other side. He also says now watch out for endless genealogies from speculations about this and that. Can we just label some of that as conspiracy theories? What's the deal with Christians that we seem to be extra susceptible to that nonsense? I mean, seriously, before you post something or forward it, take a minute and check it out. Is it really from a reputable choice? Yep, they got 3.2 million followers. Must be true. What's the qualifications of that person? What kind of training do they have? This is how stuff circulates all the time. There was a big deal this a few years back now, but there were all these billboards that said on May 22nd I think was the day Jesus was returning. I mean people have never been able to figure it out for years, but somebody had finally cracked the code. And so on May 22, Jesus was coming back. There are people who skipped their May house payments. Why do that? Jesus is coming back. There are students who didn't study for finals. These billboards were all over the place and not just in our country. May 23rd, we're still here. Christians weren't raptured to the sky. I didn't see it on many billboards, but on some of them somebody had paid to put a banner across that said, well, that was awkward. And then had the verse that said, you're not going to know the time, you're not going to know the hour. If somebody tells you that they figured out first person in all the history of Bible students, please run from that person's teaching these endless genealogies, these speculations. Just stay away from that junk. Paul tells Timothy, tell certain people to stop teaching it. Second Timothy 1, 13, 14. What you heard from me, Paul says, keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. It is essential that Timothy guard the truth that was entrusted to him. We're not the owners of this book. We're the stewards of this book. In fact, you and I actually don't own anything. We don't own our houses. I know. The bank does. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking, if God gave you a home. Well, he didn't give me a home. I worked hard, I paid for my home. We gave you the skill set to get a job, and he gave you the health to go to that job. He gave you the discipline to accelerate the payments of that everything that we have. We're not owners. We are stewards of it. And that is especially true of this book. My brothers and sisters. I thought I understood that verse. I probably did understand it pretty well, but I understood it from our point of view. I had never looked at it from God's point of view. All that changed one time when I was in Ukraine. Again, I'm not allowed to have favorite countries any more than I'm allowed to have favorite kids or grandkids. Not a good idea. But if I could have a favorite country, Ukraine would be way up there on the list. It was the first place that I went and saw God work. People had told me, you can't use humor. You know that humor doesn't work internationally. It doesn't cross cultures. And so I was so paranoid, you know, I discovered people are people wherever they are. The same thing. Keep moms and dads up late at night worrying couples have the same dumb arguments globally. No, you can't do humor based on English puns and twists of language. But I had edited everything out of my presentations that was the least bit funny. One time I was Africa, and this Guy says to me, he actually lived literally in a hut. His village had been converted. Many of them had come to know Christ watching the Jesus film. It's a great evangelistic tool. And he goes, phil, you won't understand this, but he says, in our hut, there's a nail on the wall, and I'm supposed to hang my loincloth on the nail every night. And he goes, and my wife and I, we have an argument that ought to be about a 1 out of 10. Instantly, it goes to a 5 out of 10. If my loincloth is not hanging on that nail, if it's on the floor. He goes, I know you can't relate to this. No, because we have a hamper, not a nail. And I don't wear a loincloth. But, you know, people are people. On my second trip to Ukraine, God had really blessed. Or no, this is about the fifth trip, actually. Two groups wanted walkthrough to come to a big pastors conference. Think about this. The Baptists and the assembly of God. I said to our director there at the time, his name was Yuri. I said, yuri, why don't we do one big pastors conference? Invite them both. He just starts laughing. And he goes, because they won't come to the same pastors conference. The next day, we had a meeting with some of the Baptist leadership. And I said, we very much would like to do this. And they're like, we'll bring 200, 300 of our pastors together. You can teach them, you can train them in some of your stuff. I said, that would be fantastic. I said, we've received another invitation from the Assemblies of God. And they went, oh, really? They like the Bible, too. I go, yes, they do. And I said, what if we were to do one big pastors conference together? You know what the Baptist said? Oh, we'd be very open to that. But they would never be open to that. Next day, we're having lunch with the assembly of God leaders. I pitch this idea. They go, we would be very open to that. Our denomination is very, very open, accepting. We're loving. The Baptists, aren't. They would never agree to that. It's funny. Yesterday they did agree to that. We had one conference, was this massive building. It was like a train car. It just kept going and going and going, kind of long and skinny. Down the aisle was the line of demarcation. Over here, it's like, I lift my hands up to you, metaphorically speaking. And over here, it's like, no, I think Psalms literally says that they're doing this. The church I grew up in, if you raised your hand, you better have a really good question, okay? Or the ushers would take you out. Day two, some of them sent out spies. And you know what? They discovered the differences between them were not all that great compared to a secular society around them that said there is no God, the Communist Party's God. The shades of difference didn't seem all that significant. Third day, you can tell who was who. They're all mixed up. We didn't even pass a law that said they had to do that. They chose to do that. And people are going, he lives in my town. I met him. I thought he looked familiar from the grocery store, but we've never actually talked. We're going to start meeting for lunch once a month to pray with each other. That was awesome. That's the good news of that conference. The bad news is the translator that I had had on an earlier trip there. His name was Yvonne. That's John. We had him all lined up, and John got, like, terrible, terrible flu, so he couldn't come. So they brought some other guy in, and they showed me his academic credentials, and we talked. I mean, his English was better than my English. And I started teaching, and I kind of knew we were in trouble because if I said, the sky is blue, he'd go, for about two minutes, I'd say, the sky is blue here in Ukraine. He'd go, and on and on and on. And I'm like, are you saying what I'm saying? He goes, yes, but I'm making it interesting. And I said, oh, boy, here we go. That's fine. In the introduction, when you get into handling the actual word of God, it got really scary. And there were enough people there who were bilingual that they'd be nodding when I spoke and then he spoke and they'd go. And they're, like, looking at me, and they're like. And so I talk to our leadership, and they go, yeah, he's got the academic credentials, but we're not sure he's a follower of Jesus Christ. And he's actually, in some cases, saying the opposite of what you're saying. And I said, then pay him for his time for all three days, because he blocked out his schedule. Let's not make an enemy for Jesus, but we got to do better than that. We don't have anybody who's as skilled as he is. I said, I don't care about the skill. We need the heart. We got a guy, turned out. He was fantastic. He mimicked My style. He followed me around the stage. If I wanted to act something out, he'd just pick up on it. I was talking about marriage. And he plants himself on my lap, and I'm like, this is way over the top, but everybody's loving it. But that first night, this is me in my hotel room, Lord. And I would always proofread my prayers because I was trained to do that. Lord, I'm tempted to be frustrated by this. But of course, how could I be frustrated by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who has all wisdom? David played no such verbal games. You understand that, right? And so I was having some breakthroughs with that. And I was like, lord, I just got to tell you, I'm ticked off. Father, do you have any idea how hard I work to put this series together for the pastors? Do you have any idea how much money people gave to make this conference possible? Do you know what a risk the Baptists and the Assemblies of God are both taking for this? And, I mean, why did Yvonne have to get sick? You could have controlled that, Lord. You could have not let that trial come into his life right now. And I'm just kind of dumping on God. And there was no lightning bolt, shockingly enough. And then I made this statement, and I'll not forget this. I said, God, do you have any idea what it's like to take something you put together yourself and you create it and entrust it to somebody else who messes it up? Oops. And I didn't hear an audible voice, but I might as well. And he might as well have written in capital letters on the wall. Yes, I'm actually quite familiar with that phenomenon, my son. And sometimes that person is you. When you don't prepare like you should, when you think your gifts are enough and you spend more time studying than you do praying. That verse was etched in my mind. It's been entrusted to you. It's essential to guard the truth entrusted to us. 2nd Timothy 2, 15. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Some of your translations say rightly divides. That meaning doesn't communicate anymore. I really like handles correctly or handles accurately. It is essential that Timothy remember, someday God will evaluate how he handles God's word. Not to see if we get into heaven or not, but it's an issue of rewards. It's an issue of how did you do with what I entrusted to you. Preach the word. 2nd Timothy 4, 2 says, Preach the word. Oh, good. This is for the pastors. And I'm an electrician. I'm an attorney. Doesn't relate to me that word. Actually, I think a better translation is proclaim. You can proclaim God's word in any career that you have. In your neighborhood, in your school, in your office. Proclaim the Word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, Rebuke and encourage some of those same words with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Man, I hope I don't live long enough to see that in my lifetime. That's a joke. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, Timothy, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of evangelists. Discharge all the duties of your ministry. It is essential that Timothy and we proclaim God's word even when it's unpopular. A few years back, actually it's probably closer to 10 years now, I was contacted by just an enormous church and wanted me to come and speak there. And they weren't on my bucket list because I didn't figure it was any sense of even hoping I'd ever talk to that many people at one place. But they said, we want you to come. We want you to preach one weekend and then the next week do a walk through the Old Testament after people have heard you. Our office was so excited about it, and about three weeks before I was scheduled to go there, they called and they said, we've listened to some of your stuff and we're a little bit concerned. And I said, okay. And they said, we don't like your vocabulary. And I thought, because I've said elders at Southern Baptist churches where I was supposed to be saying deacons before, and I'm thinking of something like that. And I said, what is the focus of your concern? And they said, we never use the word sin in our church. We find it much too negative and off putting to people. We prefer to be positive in our messaging. I said, okay. And I said, you know, the gospel is good news. He goes, you got it. We're all about the good news. I said, the good news is irrelevant until you embrace the bad news that we are headed to eternity apart from God in a terrible place called hell because of our sin. Well, we don't refer to the sin part. In fact, we don't talk about things like hell. It just. It doesn't tend to build attendance. Said, can you. I mean, you can mention shortcomings, you can mention personality quirks that cause conflicts between husbands and wives. Just don't say anything negative like sin or judgment or hell. I said, let me pray about that. Talk to some of our leadership team. And they're like, whoa. About three days later, before I could even call them back, they called back and they said, phil, this is just not going to work. We hate to do this, but we're going to rescind our invitation. They probably made a good call. And I mean, I think you've heard me teach. I'm not like negative Nancy. Okay, but you can't embrace the good news until you come face to face with the bad news. Sometimes it is essential that Timothy proclaim God's Word. Even when it is unpopular, our roots grow deeper. Here's the bottom line of this session. By faithfully studying, applying and sharing God's Word, a great conversation for you to have is this. Even if you're not a pastor or teacher, how can you proclaim the Word in your everyday context? Home, work, online, coffee at Starbucks. What's that look like for you? Because you are, in fact, the only Bible that a lot of people will ever read. There are a whole bunch of people who are never going to come to a church and hear me preach. But when they are going through a tough time and you say, hey, I don't want to cram my faith down your throat, but would you be okay if I prayed for you? In fact, can I pray with you? I've rarely had a person from any background say no to that simple request that offer. Father, thank you. That of all the ways we're rooted, it is through your word that it happens the fastest, the deepest. It's the longest lasting. It's not dependent on circumstances. Thank you. That your Word is accessible to us, many in the world. Even a lot of the names that are written over here on this wall that Jennifer gave us, they don't have a single verse of Scripture, some of them. So help us not to take this book for granted. May we become more and more men and women of this book. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.