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Good morning. So this morning is Celebrate the Bible Sunday,

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and the title of the sermon is Celebrate the Bible, and I'll tell you how this came to be.

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So we have a ministry here called KidZone that meets right at the same time

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as this sermon. That's where the kids are all dismissed, and they go over to

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the other building, and they do their kid stuff. And the KidZone uses a curriculum that's called the Gospel Project,

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and the Gospel Project goes through the Bible in chronological order from Genesis

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to Revelation every three years. So 150 lessons teaching the whole Bible.

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I mean, they don't literally read every single verse of the Bible, but all of the major stories from Genesis to Revelation over the course of about

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150 lessons is taught each, every three years in a cycle.

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So if you are someone who attends here and you bring your kid,

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and let's say your kid is five years old and you check them into KidZone.

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Okay. Whatever day was the very first day you showed up here and imagine that

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kid is five years old. They go to KidZone and they continue to go to KidZone

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until they are 11 years old. Okay. That kid would have learned the Bible twice during that time period. How cool is that?

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It's really cool. So it doesn't matter what time that the kid shows up.

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Like if your kid showed up and it was their very first time was on Ezekiel,

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okay, they learned Ezekiel. And then three years later, they went all the way through the Bible,

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the back of the Bible, back to the front and got back to Ezekiel again.

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And then three years later, they went all the way through it and then back to

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Ezekiel again. And so in six years, they would have learned the Bible twice.

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And so that is very cool. They just recently finished one of of their cycles.

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And so it was, I believe it was last Sunday, they did the final chapter of the

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book of Revelation in KidZone. And so if you're following the cycle, if last week was the final chapter of

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Revelation, then what was this Sunday supposed to be?

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Yeah, Genesis chapter one, start right over again. But the director of our KidZone

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ministry, Jenny Stanley, came to me a few months ago and she said, I don't want to do that.

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Like, I don't want to just, we finished Revelation, like we finished the Bible

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and then we just unceremoniously just move on to Genesis one the the next week,

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like, could we at least take a week and celebrate that we learned the Bible, right?

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And so I'm sorry, that made sense to me. So she said, okay, well,

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so she created Celebrate the Bible Sunday as a way to celebrate this milestone

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that they've completed a whole cycle. And so finished Revelation last week. They're going to talk about the Bible in there.

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I'm sure they're doing it right now. And then they'll start with Genesis 1 next

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Sunday, but they wanted just one Sunday in between to celebrate this milestone.

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So she created Celebrate the Bible Sunday, came to me a couple of,

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I don't know, maybe months ago. And she said, Could this celebration be church-wide?

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Could Celebrate the Bible be not just a KidZone thing, but the whole church?

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Well, it did not take a lot of arm twisting for me to devote a Sunday service to celebrate the Bible.

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I feel like we already do that. I think every Sunday is Celebrate the Bible Sunday.

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We are always celebrating the Bible and teaching the Bible here.

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But in this particular case, I realized that what that meant for me was taking

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a break from the series on Hosea and backing up and preaching a sermon that's

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on the Bible more generally, and then getting back to our series in Hosea, like zooming back into Hosea starting

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next week, but that we would pull pull back for a week and just talk about the

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Bible. And so I said, sure. And so that's what we're going to do. So this is Celebrate the Bible Sunday

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and have an outline for you that's going to come up on the screen. I do not always have outlines for my sermons. So this is a special gift for you guys.

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So here we go. So that's, this is the question I want to answer.

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Why would we celebrate the Bible, right? Why celebrate the Bible?

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I want to give you two answers to why celebrate the Bible.

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I'm sure there are more than two answers. These are just two of my answers.

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Okay. Why celebrate the Bible? Number one, because it's God's word.

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And number two, because the alternatives are worse.

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Okay. Those are the two things that I want to talk about.

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Okay. Why would we celebrate the Bible? Because it's God's word is 0.1 and the

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alternatives are worse is 0.2. And if you notice, I have two sub points under each point.

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Very fancy. All right. So under 0.1, we've got two sub points.

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The first sub point, so 1A is that the Bible claims to be God's word.

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I want to show you the places in the Bible where there is a claim that God's

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word presents itself as God's word.

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And then I also want to talk about the fact that the resurrection of Jesus backs it up.

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And then the second point under alternatives are worse. I want to talk about

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how other holy books are not backed up by the resurrection. And I also want to talk about without a holy book, your heart becomes your Bible.

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And I'll explain what I, what that means when we get there. So let's go ahead and start with why celebrate the Bible. Point number one,

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because it's God's word. Well, how do we know it's God's word?

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So we'll start with the fact that it claims to be. So where does the Bible claim to be God's word? Actually in a lot of different places.

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And the first one I picked, well, this one would be, I don't know if ironic

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I don't know if Aaronic is the right word or not, but there are some of you

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that thought you were getting out of Hosea this week, and you're not.

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So the first verse I'm gonna turn to is actually in Hosea, because for the past

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nine weeks, we've been learning the book of Hosea, and so I was reminded that

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the book of Hosea starts in a particular way that matches this sermon.

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So if you go to Hosea chapter one, verse one, right, we've learned all these

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different chapters of the stuff that's been in Hosea these past weeks,

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but if you go back to the way that Hosea begins, this is the first word,

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in fact, this is the first part, like this is how Hosea opens, Hosea 1.1.

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The word of the Lord that came to Hosea.

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And then there's chapters and chapters after this that we have been studying lately.

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But we go, well, what is this? What are this group of words that we've been

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studying? What is it? According to the book of Hosea, it's the word of the Lord.

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The Lord had a message and he gave it to Hosea and Hosea wrote it down.

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And so as we're reading Hosea, we're not just reading something somebody wrote

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down. We're reading the message of the Lord, the word of the the Lord that came to Hosea.

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So this is one of those places where the Bible claims to be the word of God.

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I want to also show this to you in the New Testament. There's a great passage

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about scripture in the New Testament. It's 2 Timothy chapter 3, starting in verse 14.

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It says this, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed.

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You know those who taught you and you know that from childhood,

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you have known the sacred scriptures, which are able to to give you wisdom for

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salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching,

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for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness.

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This is one of those places in the New Testament where scripture is spoken about.

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And the principle here, I think, applies to both the Old and New Testaments,

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although this is referring to the Old Testament. So what we have here is a communication between one person and another person.

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Paul is the one who wrote this, and Paul is writing to a guy named Timothy.

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So Timothy is the you in this passage. So he says, but as for you,

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Timothy, I'm telling you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and firmly believe.

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You need to keep believing the things that you believe, Timothy, right?

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You know those who taught you and you know that, this is interesting,

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from childhood, you've known the sacred scriptures.

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Since you were a little kid, you had access to this message, this body of truth.

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Since you were a little kid, you've known the sacred scriptures,

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which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

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So Paul, as he's talking to Timothy, is saying, hey, you got to keep believing

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what you you believe. And the thing that he points out is it's the scriptures, the sacred scriptures.

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So you can tell by the way this is written, the apostle Paul believed there

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existed somewhere a book.

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Called the sacred scriptures, right? He didn't say where it is,

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but he mentioned that Timothy's had access to it since he was a little kid.

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There's a collection of documents, there's a book somewhere that Paul calls

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the sacred scriptures, and you can tell he believes that it is a holy book that

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is filled with God's wisdom. So what book is he referring to?

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He's referring to the Old Testament, right? Because the Old Testament would

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have been the sacred scriptures that they had at this point.

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The New Testament was being written at this time. In fact, the New Testament

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was literally being written at this time, okay?

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But he's referring back to the Old Testament. He calls them the sacred scriptures,

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this holy book filled with God's wisdom. And then he says here, all scripture is, what's the word?

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Inspired. Now this is big. We need to spend a little bit of time on the word

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inspired because the word inspired here means something different than the way

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we use the word inspired in English, I would say most of the time.

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We use the word word inspired to mean like something is sort of inspiring. Like somebody will say.

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Oh, granny, she just inspires me. My granny, I went to her house last week and

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she was working on another quilt and it's the third quilt that she's made this month.

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And she just inspires me. I hope that when I'm her age, I am as productive as

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she is, right? That's how we use the word inspired.

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Oh, she inspires me. That's not the way the word is being used in this verse.

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It is not saying all scripture gives us a feeling that makes us want to quilt or anything like that.

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All right. It's saying all scripture is inspired. A way to like more literally

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translate this is all scripture is breathed out by God.

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That's what inspired means, to be breathed out by God. That there was a day

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that God went, and the Bible came out, right?

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The scripture came out. The Old Testament like comes from the word of the Lord. It came out of his mouth.

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Now, Paul is referring to the Old Testament here, but we will eventually see

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that more documents came to be included in in the category known as scripture.

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There were more documents that eventually were included in the category that was known as God's word.

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By the time you get to the New Testament, there was these other documents that

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were like, well, these are the scriptures, or these other things that they were

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saying, okay, this is God's message. In fact, this is God's new message.

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We have what he said, and then we have this new message from the Lord, or this new testament.

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And so the beginning of the New Testament, you can see the beginnings of how

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there's this new message that's from God, or there's these things that are now the scriptures.

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You can see the beginnings of that in 2 Corinthians chapter 2.

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You can see it in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 13.

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You can see it in 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 16. Okay, this idea that there's these

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scriptures and there's this message from the Lord, this new message or this new testament.

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So I am contending that scripture claims to be God's word.

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So that's point one and sub point, the first sub point under point one.

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And then I'm also saying the resurrection of Jesus backs it up.

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I suppose any book can claim to be God's word, but in the case of the Bible,

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God showed up in person and did miraculous things like the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

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authenticating this book in particular.

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So yes, any book can claim to be God's word, but there's only one book that

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I'm aware of where God came down and authenticated that book or that message

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as his with things like the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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I'm claiming that Jesus's existence, his teaching, and his resurrection are

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historically reliable. And by historically reliable, I mean that they happened, right?

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That Jesus's life and death and resurrection are historical events.

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Now, I realize as I say that, there are going to be people who go,

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how can you say that? Like, don't you know that's debatable?

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Don't you know that people argue over that? Don't you know that there are people

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who don't believe that Jesus rose again from the grave? How can you say it's a historical event?

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Well, I mean, yes, I am aware of that. And so let me go ahead and start somewhere else.

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Let me start with something that's more simple than Jesus rose again,

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or something that's more easier to defend, and then I'll move to my main point.

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But let me start with something that's more simple and easier to defend, and we'll go from there.

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Okay? So I'm just saying, this is history. You ready? Ready?

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So in the first century, there were people.

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So far, so good, right? So nobody was objecting to this, right?

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So historically speaking, in the first century, there were people who said that

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Jesus did miracles and he rose from the dead.

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Like they claimed that they saw it with their own eyes, right? That is history.

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By that, I mean like even atheist historians will agree that in the first century,

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there were people there who said that Jesus rose from the dead,

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and they said that they saw it, okay? So it is history that people claimed that that happened.

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Now, I'm aware someone could say, okay, yes, Mario, but anybody can claim anything

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happened, right? Yes. So let me continue.

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So we now have people in the first century who said that they saw this.

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And so then we also have people now in our century who are going,

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well, we know someone can't die and come back to life. So we need to come up

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with reasons, like, since we know they they said it. Why did they say that? They obviously said a false thing. That couldn't have happened.

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So why did they say this thing that's false, that Jesus did these things and

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he rose again from the grave? So I want to go through what I think are the top three theories.

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First one is very simple. They're liars.

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One explanation is people said stuff in the first century about Jesus, but they were lying.

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People lie all the time. People make up stuff all the time. These people are

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liars. In fact, this is the way that it's formulated sometime.

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I remember hearing someone say it this way. They said, so my options basically are Jesus actually died and three days later came back to life.

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I could believe that, or I could believe some men lied.

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Lied. Well, since I've never seen anybody come back to life,

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and I've been lied to many times in my life, I'm going to go ahead and believe that some men lied.

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And that sounds like logical and reasonable, doesn't it? But here's the problem.

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Especially the specific men in the first century and the specific thing that

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they were saying, there's a problem with that, and that is they had no motive to lie.

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They had no motive to lie this particular lie at this particular time.

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In fact, if you know enough about the history of that time, they had motive

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to lie in the other direction. It would have made more sense than them. It would have kept them safer to just

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say that it didn't happen, even though it did. And so these people were saying, this is what they saw, and they were getting persecuted for it.

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People were saying, Jesus rose again. We saw him. We saw him alive.

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We saw him dead. We saw him alive again. And then, so he must be the Lord. The Roman Empire did not like that.

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And so these people were being, some of them were crucified. Some of them were beheaded. Some of them were stoned, right?

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And so we see them and we go, okay. In fact, this is the the way it's phrased a lot of times. The way it's phrased is, who would die for a.

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You have to have some sort of, it doesn't make sense why they would lie because

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humans do lie, certainly all the time, okay?

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But humans lie to benefit themselves.

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They don't lie to hurt themselves. Humans will lie in a heartbeat to save their lives, but nobody lies to die, right?

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People will tell a lie in order to avoid persecution or avoid being,

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you know, killed, but nobody lies so that that will happen to them.

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Why did these people in the first century say this thing that was not helpful

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to them. There was no motive to add that to the story.

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It made things way worse for them, and yet they swore that's what they saw.

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Who would die for a lie? Now, that's actually so compelling that there are a

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lot of people that don't believe in the resurrection that go, you're right, they're right, that can't be it. So maybe they were crazy.

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Maybe they were hallucinators. And this is, I guess, a fairly popular theory.

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Bart Ehrman, I believe, just saw online that he goes by this.

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He's a non-Christian Bible scholar, I think, in North North Carolina.

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And the idea goes like this. No, you're right. They wouldn't have lied.

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Why would you say that? Lie and then get killed. They actually believed it, right? It wasn't true that Jesus came back to life,

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but they thought it was true. They thought that's what they saw.

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They hallucinated this, that there were these people back then who were so emotional

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about what happened to their rabbi Jesus that after he died,

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the weeks later and the months later, they started seeing him.

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They started seeing visions of him when he wasn't there. And that's what caused all this.

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Now, for that to be true, one would need to believe several people all had these hallucinations.

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Several different people all had the same kind of hallucinations.

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And even that there were several group hallucinations.

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Because there were times where the accounts are, there was 10 of us in a room and then he was there.

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There are times where we were on the boat and he was on the beach and he was there.

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There are times where there's 500 people that were there all at once.

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Like a lot of these accounts of what they said happened, they're saying there

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was multiple people there. So the belief is, and there are people that believe this,

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Where everybody that was there, they saw something that was not there.

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And they all saw the same something that wasn't there.

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And that's unbelievable to me. And so that brings us to point number three,

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which is, it's a legend, or like sub-point, theory number three. This is a legend.

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It's not that anybody lied, okay? It's not that anybody was crazy.

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It's that this stuff formed over time, and it was so way later.

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We don't actually know what the people who were around at the time believed.

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We just know generations later the story crops up.

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The stuff didn't happen in the early part of the first century.

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Something happened and then it kind of got exaggerated and retold and retold

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and then you end up at like, you know, in the year 80, 90 or 100 or 110 and

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you now are at a point where all the eyewitnesses are dead.

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Nobody's able to say yes or no what happened and you now have these exaggerated

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accounts of what happened.

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And the problem with the legend theory is 1 Corinthians 15.

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And I think 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is actually a pretty huge problem with

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the legend theory. So I got to show it to you. 1 Corinthians chapter 15,

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you can turn there. I'm going to read to you the first eight verses. Before I read them, I want to tell you a little bit about what you're about to read.

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The verses I'm going to read to you were written by a real person who existed.

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In fact, I guess before AI, all things were written by real people who existed.

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This was written by a real person who existed in the first century,

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a real historical figure named Paul. And so as I read this to you, I can imagine someone might say,

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well, Mario, you can't use the Bible to prove the Bible, and I will say this.

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Okay, then don't even believe this is the Bible for now, okay?

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Just for the purposes of this argument, you don't have to believe that what

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I'm about to read to you is the Word of God. All you have to believe is what historians believe, which is this is a document

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that was written in the first century by somebody, okay? Because it is.

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There was a real historical figure named Paul.

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I don't think any serious scholar disputes that. Like, there was a real guy

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named Paul in the first century. He was just, he was an unusual bird. He did some very unusual things, okay?

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And he wrote a bunch of things down, and his documents were were preserved.

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And so to this day, 2,000 years later, we have some of the stuff he wrote,

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some of the correspondence he wrote to people, okay? So he really lived in the first century.

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He wrote the words that I'm about to read to you somewhere in the 50s AD,

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not way later after everybody was dead, okay?

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Somewhere in the 50s AD, he wrote what I'm about to read to you.

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And like I said, even historians who don't believe in the resurrection would

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say, well, yeah, there was a guy named Paul who wrote this.

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Whether it's God's word or not, we don't know, but Paul wrote these words.

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So let me tell you what they were. This is from the middle of the first century. He says, now brothers.

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I want to clarify for you the gospel I proclaim to you.

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You received it and have taken your stand on it. You were also saved by it.

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If you hold to the message I proclaim to you, unless you believed for no purpose,

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for I passed on to you as most important what I also received.

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And here's the message, okay? And this is not generations later.

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This is a really early document. In fact, what I'm about to read to you,

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you're going to see, it says Christ was raised on the third day.

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Okay, this is the earliest piece of paper. this is the earliest written document

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that we have that says this. As far as I know, 1 Corinthians was written before Matthew, before Mark,

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before Luke, before John. Okay, this is the earliest, and that doesn't mean this is the first time anyone

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said it. It's just the oldest copy that we have of it being written down.

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So before, way early on, okay, before even there were gospels like Matthew,

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Mark, Luke, and John, we have a correspondence between Paul and some people in the town of Corinth.

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And he says, here's the message, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

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They were believing that really early on, okay? That he was buried and that

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he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

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Verse five, and he appeared to Cephas. Cephas would be the guy that we all know as Peter.

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Then to the 12. Then he appeared to over 500 brothers at one time.

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Most of them are still what? Alive, but some have fallen asleep. Now this is very interesting.

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You can see what's going on. on, you can see the time period that this was written in.

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He's saying that Jesus, people saw him alive after he was dead.

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And he said, there was one time where there's 500 people there. And look what he says. He says, most of them are still alive.

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This is not a hundred years later. This is not, you know, this is not after

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all the eyewitnesses are dead. He's saying, no, they're alive.

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There were people who saw him alive and they're alive.

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They're still alive at the time I'm writing this. Not every single one of them.

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He says, but some have fallen asleep. sleep. That was a euphemism for dead, right?

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And that's because every year, every day, people die every day, okay?

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People, they're dying all the time. And so obviously between the time that it

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happened and the time he writes this, some of them had died. Most of them had not.

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Most of them were still alive at the time he writes this. People who could say,

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yeah, I actually saw it with my own eyes. This is not a legend way later on. So when you look at this account,

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you can see what we are seeing here is in the 50s AD, in the middle of the first

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century, not second century, not all these years later we can see there is a

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man who is claiming that Jesus rose again the man who's writing the stuff down

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is claiming to be an eyewitness himself,

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okay no yeah he also appeared to me that's Paul saying I saw him I saw him alive

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after he was dead so he's claiming to be an eyewitness he refers to other eyewitnesses

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like Cephas and James he refers to other people not by name but you could figure

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out their names when he uses words like the twelve and the apostles.

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And you notice that the time that he's saying this, the story is not new.

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He is not all these years later at the time he's writing this message going,

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hey, I just got a new story. No one's ever heard this, but I'm going to let you know here's this thing that happened.

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No, this is not something that is just starting in the year AD 50,

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whatever, when he wrote this. He writes this to people who've already heard it.

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He is reminding them or clarifying for them a message that had already been

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circulating before he wrote this. So that's why I say this is the first time we have it written down.

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It's not the first time the news was ever uttered, right? right?

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We just have this piece of paper now. We have access to this document where we can know this is what was written.

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But it was said before that. The whole passage starts off with,

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I want to clarify for you. You are saved by it if you hold to the message I proclaim to you. You received it, right?

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This was a message that already existed before Paul brought it up in 1 Corinthians.

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He was reminding them by letter of news that had been circulating actually for

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years before he He wrote it down. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a legend that formed 75 years or 100

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years later after that whole generation was dead.

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That's not what happened. We have evidence that that's not what happened.

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So the scriptures claim to be God's word, and they are backed up by the miraculous

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resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, let me go back to my outline and let's move on to point number two.

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So we've got God's word, a holy book that claims to be God's word,

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and a time where God showed up and authenticated his word, right?

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ backs it up. Now, here's the second reason

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to celebrate the Bible. The alternatives are worse.

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You could do worse than believe the Bible. So my first sub point here is other holy books are not backed up by the resurrection.

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I won't spend a whole lot of time on that because I feel like I've already made

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that point up here, but I will point it out to you.

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There are other books that are are considered, that are also considered to be holy books.

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Those other holy books are not backed up by the resurrection.

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And so that's one of the reasons why, if you're wondering, Mario,

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why did you spend so much time talking about the resurrection in a sermon that's

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supposed to be about the Bible? Well, that's why. Because the resurrection is one of the things that sets the

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Bible apart from other holy books. It's not the only thing that sets the Bible apart.

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I think the Bible's view of like the human condition and sin is also sets it

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apart from other holy books. But But the resurrection is one of those things that sets the Bible apart.

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But let me move on to the second point. Well, it's the second sub-point of the second point.

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Without a holy book, your heart becomes your Bible. This one,

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I think, is probably the point that will be relevant to most people here.

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What do I mean by that? It seems to me in America as a whole,

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and probably Central Florida in particular, it seems to me that most people

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who reject the Bible are not doing so in favor of other holy books.

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Most of the time, I mean, it's happening, but not in huge numbers that I can see around here.

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It's not that I have to say, well, you need to choose this book over the other holy books.

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For the most part, it seems in our country as a whole, and in this area of the

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country in in particular, the people who reject the Bible typically reject all holy books.

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Have you noticed that? Okay, but this is what's fascinating.

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Once you reject holy books, you still end up having a Bible.

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Once someone rejects holy books, they still, for all practical purposes, end up with a Bible.

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They still have one, and by that I mean everyone has a set of narratives that they live by.

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Everybody does. For some people, it might be, well, my grandma always said,

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and my daddy taught me, and when I was in my 20s, I did this,

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and I'm never going to do that again. I learned my lesson. But everybody has a set of narratives that they live by.

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Everybody has a standard for what to value and what decisions to make.

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Everybody has a collection of rules and thoughts about right and wrong that they live by.

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Everybody has something that they believe determines their purpose in life.

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And so in the absence of a holy book, your Bible is usually your heart.

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The stories and the thoughts and the rules and the feelings that are within

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you become the determiner of good and bad for you.

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And so it's follow your heart. It will never lead you wrong.

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Isn't that the message of this generation? Isn't that the plot of a thousand

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movies? And TV shows and popular songs? Yes.

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And here's the problem with it. Following my heart has gotten me into all sorts of trouble.

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Is that true of any of you? Yeah. It turns out that God's word,

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especially with God's spirit, like without that, I'm a bad determiner of what's good and bad for me.

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I think you'll take my word for it, but let me get you to think it through.

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I became a Christian just before high school, between the summer,

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between eighth grade and ninth grade. I want you to imagine, what if when I was in high school, I did whatever my heart told me to do?

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I just want you to imagine me as a 15-year-old, 16-year-old,

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17-year-old, with all the hormones I had shooting around everywhere at that

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stage in my life, I want you to imagine, what if I did whatever my heart told me to do?

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Would that have been good for me? No.

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When you make, oh yeah, well, you were young and dumb back then.

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That's different. Okay, okay, let's go a little forward. What if in college, what if when I went to college, I did whatever my heart

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led me to do, like whatever I would do apart from God, okay?

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I just did the way that my heart would lead me. Would that have been good for me in college.

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No, in fact, I probably wouldn't even remember huge chunks of college if I had done that.

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Yeah, but you were young back then. Okay, fine. What about right now?

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What if right now, as a 44-year-old man, what if I did, what if I went by my

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natural inclinations as I live this life?

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Like apart from God, the way that my heart, the way that that my internal self

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leads me? What if I went by my natural inclinations?

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Would that be good for me or not? No, I'm telling you, if I did that, Heidi would be mad at me.

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And my kids would be ashamed of me. And you all would be ashamed of me too.

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Because it turns out I'm a bad determiner of good and bad for me on my own.

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Anybody willing to admit they're in the same club? Yeah. Yeah. All of us need God's guidance to live the life that he has for us.

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And I know there are some of you in this room who are agreeing with me at this

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point because you've actually lived it.

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You could say, oh, I know he's right about this. I don't even know everything

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in here, but I know he's right about this part because I've actually experienced it personally.

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There are some of you in the room who one day you woke up in the middle of an

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addiction or you woke up in the middle of like a moral or relational crisis

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and you realize that you you shouldn't be the ultimate authority of good and

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bad and right and wrong in your life. And so you're sitting here going, well, I know that's by experience, I know that's true.

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Following our hearts has gotten you and me into all sorts of trouble.

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And that's true for society at large. Like if that's true for a bunch of individual

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people, you can take all the individual people and put them together and then

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it becomes true of the group. And so we are living in a morally crazy time.

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You know what I mean by that? We are living in a morally crazy time.

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What I mean by that is this. There are sentences that less than 20 years ago, people said them and people

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actually needed to say them in order to be respected.

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They were considered respectable, good things to say.

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If you wanted to be a respected member of your community or if you wanted to

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run for governor or if you wanted to run for president of the United States,

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there were certain things you needed to say. you didn't even have to believe

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it, but you needed to say it to be respected. There were certain things that

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were considered good and respectable. And some of those sentences now, and we're less than, it's been less than 20

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years, are now considered to be like forbidden.

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They are hateful. They are bigoted. You better not say them if you want to be respected.

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You cannot say that if you want to become governor or president of the United States.

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And when a society changes that much, that fast, meaning that things,

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things that were considered good, they don't just become come neutral.

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Things that were considered good are now bad.

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Like good became bad over the course of like 15 to 18 years.

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If when that happens, you're going to have a chaotic time morally because you're

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in a time period where society is switching religions and doesn't know it.

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And if you're wondering, well, why is all this happening? I'll give you my opinion.

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I believe that we are reaping the consequences of everybody being told,

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do whatever you want to do. We are reaping the consequences of being told heart is the new Bible.

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Now, if you're discouraged by any of this, let me tell you, I have good news for you this morning.

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You don't have to live apart from what God has revealed. There is a Savior who

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died for the sins of the world. He will forgive your sins if and when you you turn to him as your Lord and Savior.

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He will rescue you from the judgment that you deserve and he will even give

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you his spirit so that you may be made new.

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That's our message here at Good News Church. And that's our message because that's his message.

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And that's why we celebrate the Bible. Let's pray.

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God, we thank you and we praise you and we worship you. and in particular today,

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we worship you and thank you for your word that you have not left us in the dark.

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You have not left us ignorant. You've given us a message.

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You've given us light by which we can walk by.

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We thank you and we praise you for that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.