Message | The Power of Scripture - Pastor Connor Ketterling - River Valley Church

Podcast Summary

Podcast: River Valley Church
Episode: Message | The Power of Scripture - Pastor Connor Ketterling
Date: November 23, 2025
Speaker: Pastor Connor Ketterling

Main Theme

Pastor Connor Ketterling’s message centers on the enduring power, purpose, and divine inspiration of Scripture. He challenges listeners to approach the Bible not merely as a text to read or analyze, but as God’s very breath—intended to shape, correct, and transform lives. He urges believers to engage prayerfully with Scripture, to recognize Jesus as the central figure, and to pursue authentic relationship with God, cautioning against forming one’s own image of God or treating the Bible as optional or secondary.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Global Impact of the Bible

Pastor Connor opens by celebrating the worldwide reach of Scripture:
- Over 1 billion downloads of the Bible app.
- In 2024, the United Bible Societies distributed 150 million printed scripture items.
- From 2015-2024, 2.6 billion scripture items were distributed globally.
Quote:

“The word of God is still changing lives all around the world.” (00:46)

2. Scripture Is God-Breathed

Focus on 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as the foundation.
- All scripture (not just the parts we like or understand) is inspired directly by God.
- This is the same “breath” that gave life to Adam, now animating God’s written word.
Quote:

“All scripture is breathed out by God… Do you understand how significant this is? This is the same breath that God breathed into Adam.” (03:11)

3. The Purpose of Scripture

Scripture’s role: teaching, correcting, training in righteousness, equipping for good works.
The intent is clear; interpretation should come from God, not subjective opinions.

4. Understanding the Bible Requires Humility & Prayer

Warns about our tendency, shaped by the modern era, to demand answers or approach Scripture with intellectual pride.
- Using a “time traveler” analogy, Pastor Connor stresses that we don’t need to fully understand all the mechanics to trust or use something, much like ancient people would struggle to understand a smartphone.
Encourages seeking understanding through prayer instead of relying solely on intellect or secondary sources:
- Referenced Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened…”
- Cites Psalm 119:73, emphasizing prayer for wisdom to actually apply God’s commands.
Quote:

“Prayer is the posture of an understanding heart.” (09:28)

5. The Lego Instructions Analogy (Building Life on God’s Design)

Compares following the Bible to using the instructions for a Lego set:
- The instructions (Scripture) enable us to build as God designed.
- Skipping parts or choosing which pieces (verses) to include can lead to a life that looks good on the outside but lacks inner structural integrity.
Quote:

“How many people have built their life to look like what’s on the outside of the box, but inside, they're actually missing critical pieces…?” (12:14)

6. Jesus: The Key to Understanding the Bible

The Bible’s central answer is not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’—Jesus.
The New Testament is the guide for understanding the Old Testament; Jesus fulfills the promises made throughout Scripture.
Uses Star Wars as a metaphor for understanding Scripture out of sequence but seeing the “big picture” once Jesus (the fulfillment) is revealed.
Quote:

“The entire plot of the Bible is about Jesus. The New Testament is the guide on how to read the Old Testament because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament that is revealed in the New Testament.” (17:17)

7. The Mystery and Dual Nature of Scripture

Just as Jesus is 100% divine and 100% human, so too the Bible is both fully God’s word and fully written through human hands.
The mystery of inspiration should foster awe and humility, not doubt.

8. Inseparability of God and His Word

Critiques popular tendency to pit the God of the Old Testament against the God of the New Testament.
Stresses the necessity of embracing the entirety of Scripture as God’s unchanging self-revelation.
Quote:

“God is unchanging. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament… You can’t explain that away.” (22:18)

9. Loving God Means Loving the Bible

Owning or even reading a Bible isn’t enough; it’s about obedience and application.
Distinguishes between being a “fan” of God and a genuine “friend” who pursues Him through His Word.
Warns against forming a personal “image” of God disconnected from Scriptural truth.
Quote:

“If you say you love God, but you neglect spending time with him and getting to know him, you are not a friend of God. You are just a fan of God.” (30:42)

10. Rejecting False Images of God

Creating our own convenient, palatable version of God is equated with modern idolatry—no different than crafting physical idols.
Emphasizes the importance of aligning our ideas about God with how God reveals Himself in Scripture.

11. Final Appeal and Prayer

Pastor Connor encourages listeners to reflect:
- Do you love the Bible?
- More importantly, do you love the God of the Bible as He has revealed Himself?
Closes in prayer, asking for a renewed desire to know, love, and follow the true God through His Word.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On scriptural authority:

“What God says about God… Not what I say about God, not what the news says about God, not what your favorite influencer says about God. What God says about God.” (27:43)
On applying Scripture:

“Even reading the Bible…is a great place to start, but in the end, that won’t even lead you to life. It is actually doing what the Bible says that is going to lead to the abundant life.” (24:39)
On Bible engagement:

“Owning a Bible doesn’t do anything. You downloading the Bible app…doesn’t do anything. Putting this on your coffee table or on your shelf, it doesn’t keep the bad vibes away.” (24:23)

Important Timestamps

00:46 – Bible’s global reach & the significance of Scripture distribution
03:11 – The implications of “All Scripture is God-breathed”
09:28 – Prayer as the means to true understanding
12:14 – The Lego analogy: instructions as a metaphor for Biblical guidance
17:17 – Jesus as the central answer and fulfillment of the Bible
22:18 – The unity of God’s character across Old and New Testaments
24:23 – The futility of superficial engagement with Scripture
27:43 – Authority on God’s character must come from God’s own Word
30:42 – On being a fan versus a friend of God

Conclusion

Pastor Connor’s message is a passionate call to see and love God as He truly is—revealed supremely in Jesus and in the totality of Scripture. The challenge is not only to read and study the Bible, but to let it shape our understanding, correct our misconceptions, and draw us into a transformative, obedient relationship with God Himself. The Bible is alive, essential, and meant to be central—never marginal—in a believer’s life.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Come on. That is just one of now 1 billion stories that are happening all around the world. And that's why we're celebrating this weekend here and at all of our campuses. We are talking about the Bible. That's probably a good thing to talk about in church, right? We should talk about the Bible. But one of the things that is so crazy we think about this, that there's 1 billion people that now have downloaded the Bible app. A couple other stats is that the United Bible societies distributed over 150 million printed scripture items worldwide in 2024. That includes full Bibles, New Testaments and portions. And over the decade from 2015 to 2024, UBS has distributed 2.6 billion scripture resources globally. So when people say that people aren't reading the Bible anymore, that I outgrew the fairy tales. Well, this data begs to differ. The word of God is still changing lives all around the world. Can we give it up for what God is doing through his Word all around the world? Amen. Now, my name is Connor Ketterling and I have the privilege to be able to speak to to you today. And I'm so grateful for that. Thankful for our church Pastor Rob, who's our lead pastor and he's also my dad. Shout out to you dad. He's probably watching online because he is doing ministry work all around the world. So don't worry. I got it. It's going to be good. It's going to be okay. I am actually the online campus pastor and so I am speaking today to our online campus as well. And, and so church, can we give it up to all those people who are watching online. Thank you so much for joining us. And really briefly I just wanted to share this incredible testimony. You saw Tammy get baptized today. And Tammy is actually a part of our online campus. She lives in South Dakota and has been watching online cause her daughter is a part of our Eagan campus and she's considering moving here to be a part of River Valley Church. So praise God. Praise God for what he is doing. So excited to talk to everybody who's a part of our online campus and just what God is doing all around the world. So we are talking about the Bible and I want to take a look at this verse, this one verse that I want to unpack for us today because I think it is so critical to how and why we should read our Bibles. So the verse that we're going to look at is second Timothy 3, 16, 17. You can see it up on the screen with me. But it says this, that all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and training in righteousness. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Now can we just rest on those first few words in that verse? It says all scripture. All scripture is breathed out. All scripture is breathed out by God. Do you understand how significant this is? This is the same breath that God breathed into Adam to make him a living being. This is the same breath that we see all throughout the Bible that God breathes life into his people and into circumstances. This is the breath that God has breathed into scripture. Now it doesn't say all the scripture that you agree with. It doesn't say all of the scripture that you understand. It doesn't say all the scripture that your favorite influencer just posted on Instagram and TikTok. It says that all scripture is breathed by God because these are his words. They are not my opinions. These are his words and we need to take them seriously. Why did God breathe this out? It says in the second half of that verse to teach us, to correct us, to train us in righteousness so that we will be complete and equipped for every good work. God has a very clear intention when he breathed out his word. And it's not up to us to interpret it however we want to. We don't get to interpret it however we want to because there is a right way and there is a wrong way to read scripture. The hard part is, is that we've been trained, we've been conditioned in this post enlightenment scientific era to have to find out the, the meaning of everything. We have to figure out the answer to everything. What can kill our spirit is when we read the Bible and feel like we know the answer rather than seek God in prayer. That's what kills our spirit, is when we go looking for answers rather than spending time in prayer. Can I be honest? If I were to be sent back in time, like if I was a time traveler and I got sent back in time, I would be totally useless to the people to explain what's going on today. I don't know about you. Would you, you think you would know? I'd pull out my phone and they would be like, what in the world is that? Say, well, it's a cell phone. What do you do with it? Well, I could use it to talk to somebody who's on any part of the world at any time I want. How does it do that? Wow, that is a great question. I don't know how I would explain the radio waves. I don't know how I would explain it, that I could just plug it into the wall and that I would be able to use it all day long. This would be mind boggling. I would be so useless to the people of the past to explain the future. I'd be like, you know what, just get ready, it's gonna be great. You just figure it out. Because I wouldn't be able to explain it to him. But that's how we are all the time. When we approach the Bible and when people approach us and ask us is they need to know, they need to know what does it mean? And what I'm not saying is we shouldn't pursue the truth, but sometimes we should. We start making stuff up because we feel like we just have to have an answer. We just start giving people whatever we feel is right or whatever we heard from so and so, and we actually do a lot of damage. Jesus tells us how we should be pursuing these answers. In Matthew 7:7, he says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock and, and the door will be open to you. So we should be asking, we should be seeking, we should be knocking, we should be asking Jesus these questions. We don't need to go to the History Channel to figure out the answers to these questions. And I love Wes Huff, but we don't need to ask Wes Huff all of these questions. We need to ask God the answers to, to what he has said in his Word. Prayer is the posture of an understanding heart. It says in Psalms 11973, you, hands have made and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Do you notice what the psalmist is praying? He's praying that he would get understanding, but the understanding is so that he would be able to learn God's commandments. He's seeking God through prayer that he would reveal to him what God wants him to do. Now I want to illustrate this and many of you probably are aware of the these fun toys that you've played with when you were a child, or maybe not, maybe you still play with them now. And that's all good. And it's Legos. People like Legos building LEGO sets. I was growing up and that was something that I loved getting as a kid. For Christmas, for a birthday, I would want a specific Lego set. So whether you're 4 years old or 99 years old, because, yes, Lego used to advertise aged 4 to 99. So when you're 190, no more Legos. You're all done. It's maybe time for something a little bit more sophisticated at 100. But when you get a LEGO set, there's a lot of important things in the box. You open up the box and what's in there. You've got the pieces, you've got the little characters, you've got everything all organized. But the most important part of the LEGO set is the instructions. The instructions. You need to know how you're going to build what is on the box. And you meticulously follow each step. Maybe you actually sort the pieces in little bowls. Where you set bowls of, these are the two pieces, these are the three pieces. Maybe you color coordinate them. Perhaps it was just me, but maybe you do it and that's fine. But I had my bowls on the table. No, no, no, no. Don't put the twos with the threes. That's going to mess the whole process up. But you get your Legos, and brick by brick, page by page, you follow the instructions until you get to the final creation. Now, there's probably some engineers in here that would confidently tell me, I don't need the instructions. I could definitely build what's on the box on my own. Perhaps, or maybe you're somebody who used to read the instructions, but I kind of grew out of that, and I started to build whatever I wanted to build with the pieces that came in my box. Some people might even be able to build the creation that's on the box. And they build it and they make it look great. And, hey, good news, there's actually extra pieces left over I didn't need. Clearly, we didn't need these pieces because I was able to finish it without them. We don't think all these pieces are useful, and it seems to be working fine. How many people have built their life to look like what's on the outside of the box, but inside, they're actually missing critical pieces that will unfortunately cause it to not work how it should and eventually fall apart. That is God's word. God is the Creator, and He's given us, as creation, a defined purpose and a plan. He loves you and he wants you to serve him and to live out the purpose that he's destined for you. But the Creator looks down on the creation that's not fulfilling its design purpose. And he's saddened by the outcome that people take in their own life. Scripture is God's revelation to us on how to know him and how to serve him. And only through revelation from God can we know what he wants from us. The reason why we need to go to prayer rather than our understanding is because we did not write the B. God wrote it. And if God wrote it, then he's the one who gets to explain what it means to us. The author always gets to share the intent of their work. I remember this because I was not very good in English class. I would read these books, famous books, and to me it seemed like it was a green light flashing in the Great Gatsby. But apparently there was a lot of depth that I didn't comprehend of what the green light actually signified across the lake. So shout out to high school honors English that I did not get an A in because I didn't know. I didn't know the author. I didn't know what the author meant. And a lot of us don't know what the Bible means because we're not asking the authority what his intent was. And I can tell you there's actually a singular explanation for the entire Bible. There's literally a one word answer. It's not a what, but it's a who. And you probably already know the answer to that. It's the Sunday school answer for everything. It's Jesus. Jesus is the answer of the Bible. Literally the entire plot of the Bible is about Jesus. The New Testament is the guide on how to read the Old Testament because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament that is revealed in the New Testament. Does that make sense? That's fine. It kind of reminds me of Star Wars a little bit. They start with episode four. You're like, hold on, hold on, hold on here. Episode four, what does that imply? That there's gotta be a number one, a number two, and a number three. You are thrust into a story that seems to already have been halfway done. Who is Luke? Who's this Obi Wan guy? Oh, he seems to know Darth Vader. Darth Vader killed Luke's dad. Darth Vader is Luke's dad. Wow, this is getting really interesting. Luke and Leia are brother and sister. What happened to the mom? There's a lot of questions that I need answered. And then you watch number one and number two and number three and you go, actually, let's just stick with four, five, and six. I'm kidding. No hate on the prequels, okay? No, no hate on the prequels. But then it starts to fill in the gaps, okay? This is why this happened. The Old Testament can feel a little bit like that, where God is revealing, hey, there's gonna be redemption. Well, when is the redemption Coming. It's coming. Well, when Will you just wait? There's gonna be a Messiah. The Messiah's coming. When is the Messiah coming? And God is leaving these little breadcrumbs all throughout the Old Testament. He's gonna come from Bethlehem. The government's gonna rest on his shoulders. This is what's gonna happen. These are the signs of what's gonna happen. And then Jesus appears in the New Testament as God and man. He reveals himself to us how to have right relationship with the Father. He dies on the cross so that we can be reconciled to God. And then he goes back up to the Father. So we see that Jesus reveals himself all throughout the Old Testament. And it's that aha moment that we see that Jesus is the answer from the New Testament on how to engage with the Old Testament. Now here's the thing. I don't want you to see the Bible the way I see it. I want you to see Jesus. When you read the Bible, you should see Jesus, because Jesus is the answer of the Bible. Now isn't it interesting that God the Father describes Jesus as the Word? It says in John, chapter one, verses one through five, in the beginning was the Word. And this is meaning Jesus. And you could substitute that word in Jesus as I read through this. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life. And the life of was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Jesus is the Word. Now, what I'm not trying to say here is that Jesus is not the Bible and the Bible is not Jesus. But another interesting parallel that we see between Jesus and the Bible is that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man, and the Bible is 100% God and 100% man. Isn't that interesting? God used human authors to write the Bible, but it was his words that he was inspiring them to write the Bible. The mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that he is 100% God and 100% man is still something that we can't fully wrap our minds around. And could it be that the reason why we sometimes get uncomfortable with the Bible is because we too are struggling to understand the mystery that The Bible is 100% God and. And yet 100% man. The mystery is what should compel us. It's not that we're always meant to comprehend every single thing. There is beauty in the mystery. Of Jesus, humanity and his divinity. And there is beauty in the mystery of of the Bible. It's a beautiful thing. When we wrestle with the God of Scripture, it's the same as wrestling with the Scripture of God. We can't separate the God of Scripture from the Scripture of God. We can't do that. We can't explain away the passages that we don't like. Something that is unfortunately all too popular now is that we pit the God of the Old Testament against the God of the New Testament. Say, yeah, the God of the Old Testament. He was pretty mean. I didn't like him a lot. Really glad that in Act 2, it seemed like God got a lot nicer. You can't do that. God is unchanging. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament. You can't explain that away because unfortunately you are doing more harm than you are good. This is something that I see clearly as a pastor about the Bible is that everyone who loves their Bible loves God. But not everyone who says they love God loves their Bible. If you love your Bible, if you read it regularly, if you meditate on it and you wrestle with things that you don't understand and you bring it to God in prayer, that is someone who loves God. But there are a lot of people who say that they love God, but they never, hardly ever read their Bible. Can I be honest with you? Owning a Bible doesn't do anything. You downloading the Bible app, thanks for helping them reach a billion. It doesn't do anything. Putting this on your coffee table or on your shelf, it doesn't keep the bad vibes away. Even reading the Bible. Dare I say reading the Bible is a great place to start. But in the end, that won't even lead you to life. It is actually doing what the Bible says that is going to lead to. To the abundant life. That is what's going to lead to right relationship with God. That is what's going to lead to all of those things. And as a pastor, I wanna be very clear. I wanna be very clear that you should not care about my opinions on God. Like, why am I here then? You should care about what God says about God. And you need to make sure that every pastor, every leader, every small group, every place you go, that our opinions of God match up with what God says about God. Not what I say about God, not what the news says about God, not what your favorite influencer says about God. What God says about God. Cause a lot of people say, well, God would never do that. Well, have you asked him? Well, God is a lot like this. Is that what God said about himself, or is that what you're saying about God? We downplay the story of the rich young ruler all the time. We downplay it all the time. It's the story of a rich young ruler, came to Jesus and asked, hey, what do I need to do to. To inherit eternal life? And Jesus told him, sell everything and come and follow me. And we like to read that story and go, wow, that's really rough for that guy. Good thing that that doesn't apply to us today, Jesus. We have over 300 missionaries from our church that would beg to differ. Thank goodness that they didn't talk to a Christian that told them that that scripture was optional because God was speaking to them and said, the call that I have on your life is for you to go, for you to sell everything and to proclaim my name among the nations. And so good news that they didn't pick and choose which verses applied to them, that they prayed and they. And they wrestled and they struggled and they cried and they didn't understand, but they chose to be obedient to what God said. Because you don't get to decide how God is. God already decided that. And he told us, you just don't read your Bible, so you don't know who God is. When we give off a false sense of who God is, it exposes that we have not spent time with Him. And this is not an indictment. This is a conviction for me and for you and for all of us as his witnesses, as his representatives, that we would know who God is. Who is the God that we serve. And he told us, he told us already. We don't need to keep asking. We just need to keep reading. When we decide who God is, we're actually breaking the first of the Ten Commandments. The first commandment, the very first one. You shall have no other gods beside me. And then he explains how not to craft idols of wood and stone and precious metals. And can I tell you, we're not carving wood and stone, most of us here, but we're creating an image of God that we worship. We're creating an image of God that is not who God has revealed himself to be. And we worship that image instead of worshiping the true God. You cannot separate the God of scripture from the scripture of God. What image have you created of who God is? Who is the God that you worship? Which voices are you listening to? Do they point you to back to this or do they try to explain it away? Do they give you some new discovery? Be very careful when people say new discovery about the Bible. It's been around for 2,000 years. People have figured out a lot of things. I'm not saying there's nothing new to figure out, but go back, look at what the Bible says and see what God is saying. So my goal today is I'm not telling you how to read it, like what kind of plan or what you need to do specifically, but why you should read your Bible. So ask yourself, honestly, do I actually love the Bible? And more importantly, do I love the God of the Bible? Because if you say you love God, but you neglect spending time with him and getting to know him, you are not a friend of God. You are just a fan of God. I want us to bow our heads and close our eyes all across this place. I want to pray for each and every one of us that we would love our Bibles, that we would spend time with God, that we would read them and learn and grow. But more importantly, above anything else, that we would fall in love with the God of the Bible, the true God, the God who loves you, the God who saves you. You, the God who is reaching out right now to those who are far from him and wants to be in relationship with you. So God, I pray all across this place. Lord, give us a reverence for your word. Jesus, we love you and we serve you. Forgive us, God, of not spending time with you. Forgive us for building our lives how we see fit and not how you've commanded us to. God. Forgive us for creating a God in our own image. And Lord, I pray that all of us here today would read your word, would spend time with you and get to know you, Lord, that we would know you. Get deeply. And as we read our word, it would lead us into the posture of prayer. In your name I pray. Amen and amen.