 Let's begin. In Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Father God, we just thank you. We ask that you just be with us. That you guide us. And as you open our eyes and our hearts to your word, be with us. Speak. Or listen. And you all, I said, you just take a moment to pray for yourself. You know what you need. You know what you're looking for. So in your own heart, in your own words, silence yourself. Just look up your own prayers to God. And if you will, say, pray for me so I can be useful as a teacher. Father God, we love you. And we give you this time. Amen. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Yeah, I want to apologize in advance. I'm going to trip over this court about a thousand and a half times during this session. But I'll try and stand still. I just can't be behind the podium. It's too teacher-esque. And we've been together for about 24 hours. If I'm anything like a teacher or professor or a doctor, it would be like that. But it seems right. So I just can't stand behind this. I feel too official. I feel much better just being out with you. And because we're talking about scripture, I thought that would make the most sense to just dive right in with the scripture reading. This is going to be a talk. I'm going to tell stories. And typically, from being honest, I'll tell a story and I'll go technology. And you guys laugh. And hopefully that would be engaging. And you lean in so that you want to hear what I want to say next. But the hope of this whole session is not so much that you want to hear what I want to say, but we'll have to thank you this morning. So the first story that we're going to hear is going to be from the Bible. So if you have a Bible, we're going to go to the Gospel Mart. Chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible, that's okay. If you have a phone, you can google it really quick if we get service in here. And if you don't have a phone with service, you don't have the Bible, that's fine too. I'm going to read it. Or just grab the Bible from the person next to you. Either way. So Mark chapter 4. Somewhere after Genesis. If you get revelation, you went too far. It's a Bible joke. It's a Bible joke. I love that y'all laugh at that. But we're starting verse 3. So Jesus says to the crowd, Listen, a sower went out to sow. And he sowed, and the seed fell along the path. And the birds came and the bowered it. Others seed fell on rocky grounds. The bowered had not much soil. And immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away. Others seed fell on thorns. And the thorns grew up and choked it. And yielded no grain. And the other seed fell into good soil. And brought forth grain. Growing up and increasing and yielding very full and 60 full and 100 full. And he said, He who has years to hear, let him hear. What a crazy story. I mean we've heard this before, but what a crazy story. I mean this is Jesus teaching. I don't come down on Jesus very often. But all I'm saying is that if Jesus was here and he kind of gave that talk, me and my role as the emcee, I would be a little upset. I go, what, like if Pete or Sarah did this? And they just came up and said, Okay, there's a farmer. Kind of last day's equal. He's just throwing seed. Some seed fell on a sidewalk. Some came out and scorched it. Others, birds came and took it. Others thorns kind of came up and choked it. Some actually grew up. Do you have ears? That's it. That's the whole story. And he's like, Where's the context, Jesus? What is this about? And that's exactly the reaction that the people and the apostles heard when they talked to Jesus later. What was that? I know you're on the inside, you've done a great job with that. Can you please just back up a little bit and tell me what you're talking about with that farmer who was throwing seed everywhere? And do you remember what Jesus said? He said, the seed is the word. And he went on to explain. He said, sometimes you throw out the word and it lands on that rocky ground and there's just nothing there. He's like, and for those people like that, they're not mine with God. That was just going to take the right away. He said, some people, it serves to grow within the birds. Things are going well, but then things get difficult and it just snaps it up. And as soon as the suffering comes, so does the faith. The one that always gets me is the thorns. Remember the thorns? He goes to thorns and one translation says, that's the love of lesser things. Where the stress of the world and the desires of the things of the world just start to take hold and you love God and you love the world pretty soon. It just starts to become too much. What was supposed to bear fruit now is being suffocated because there's still many other things in its place. But, but, he says that some, see, that's all on good school. People who receive the word and they take in the word and it bears fruit 30 times, 6 times, 100 times over. And y'all, as I was praying for this session, I just thought I was going to be that far. I'm just going to throw out the word and if you guys want to grab onto it, you can grab onto it. But what I don't want to do is overcomplicate this. This book is the inspired word of God. And as Catholics, I don't know if we totally appreciate that. It's not because we don't think that it's great. It's just because we never really learned what this is. And we come to weekends like this and we hear speakers talk about things from this book and we see Bibles kind of like held up in the bookstore and it's great and it looks good. But the question is is how do we really implement this into our lives? Because let me be honest, I love everything about the last 24 hours. Again, I don't want to overstate this, but is it good to be back with people talking about Jesus and telling them what Jesus has done in our life? It is so good. And honestly, and I see you over here. I know who you are over here. But all of you hearing you worship, seeing you dive into this weekend, it is so inspiring. But I've got to tell you that there is nothing. There is nothing like diving into this book. For me, in my spiritual life, the times that I get to sneak away in this book and I just get to sit with God and let His words speak into my life, those are the moments that I've been most transformative for. And again, I'm not trying to take anything away from what we're doing here. Obviously, I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in a weekend like this. But I wanted to be able to take what God has given us here and take it back to our homes out there. Because the reality is, tomorrow, in about 24 hours, we'll be heading home. And the band probably won't be with you. That'd be weird. The speakers probably won't be following you. If we are, that's probably stopping and you should tell somebody. Yet, the inspired word of God is going nowhere. And so, if we can stay close to this book and if we can dive into this book, everything that we talk about this weekend, the Holy Spirit, the power, everything can be held together here. And this is what I want for us. Now, earlier, I had to talk to someone next to you about why you're here. And again, I don't know what you said. Maybe the conversation just kind of digressed quickly and I prefer to just talk about the weather outside. That's fine. But if I had to guess, the majority of us in this room are here for a couple various reasons. One, we just love this book. You know more about this book than most and you just love it, but you just can't get enough of it. We're talking about the Bible and you want to be here and that's fantastic. I'm glad that you're here. I'm probably not going to teach you anything new, but the beautiful thing is that this book just goes deeper and deeper and deeper and so we can't dive into it enough and so if that's you, awesome. Other people, you're here because well, this book is pretty perplexing. Like, why do we need to know the genealogy of all these baby mommas before we get to Jesus? What does that mean? What does that mean? Or what do we have to do according to the song and songs? What does that have to do? This love poetry makes me feel a little weird when I read it sometimes. What does Genesis have to do with revelation? It's perplexing. What does something that was written 2,000 years ago or longer have to do with me today? And others, we might be here because well, we just don't even know what to think of this book. It's our cake. It's ancient. But we know there's something here and so we need to kind of figure it out. And my hope again is that we can just dive into this to really come to know who this is so that as our hearts are opened to God His word and His seed may be planted so that it grows and bears fruit in our lives because I tell you that if we can read this book and if we can understand what we have here lives will be transformed. It's just that simple. This is a powerful book. There are tons of great books in the book store. I went and cruised through there. There are so many I just wanted to pick up myself. But none of them, the best sellers are not going to top this book. And so the question is, what do we do and how do we dive into this? What does this look like and what does this mean for us as Christians? Because I think sometimes we can get excited about this but we don't know how to really dive into it. Or we dive into it but we don't really know how to apply it to our lives. But the reality is is that this book was written for each and every single one of us. So wherever you are, whatever you're struggling with this book is for you. So if you have questions about relationships this book speaks into it. If you're dealing with a whole bunch of stress and anxiety this book speaks into it. You wouldn't know about discernment. You wouldn't know about how to deal with power, sex. You wouldn't know how to deal with money. This book talks about it all. It was almost like God wanted us to read it. Because we knew we were going to go through it. And so the question is what do we do and how do we do it? And why should we do this? And the why is fairly simple. Because this is the inspired word of God. Written by the very breath of the Holy Spirit. Yes, John, Luke all of the writers. They used their faculties. They were a part of it. But it was the breath of the Holy Spirit that inspired them. Right? So this isn't just words on a page. This is breath on a page. This is living and active. That there is a power. That there is a grace. That there is something here that reveals to us more of not just who Jesus is but who we are. That's right. This is the only book that you can read. And if you get into it the right way it's going to tell you who you are. And there might be parts of this where you feel like I don't know what this means or who I don't like that. But every single word was here and is good for teaching. And how do I know this? Well, because the book itself says this. The book itself speaks to its own power. Which usually you would say that's kind of pretentious. Right? Like if you got a book and you're just like what does this book say? Oh, this book says that this book is awesome. Like you may not want to read that book. And yet, as you go through the old and the new testaments, you see time and time again people reacting to this book or the author speaking directly to the inspiring word of God. In Second Kings there's a story where King Uzziah, he's a young king. It's spring cleaning. Maybe it's similar to the weather outside today. They just go to the temple and start cleaning. And in this kingdom they had forgotten about the Bible. I don't know if it's that hard for us to imagine about a culture that could forget about the Bible. But their culture did. And they find it and they're like what is this? And they literally dust it off. And they start reading it. And as they read it, they're just captivated and they realize what they found. And as they read it proclaim it to all the kingdom, they start just tearing their garments. You might think like that's weird. Just ripping their shirts. But it's kind of their hearts. And since they're having an internal they're having an external reaction as well. They are so moved. And it's not the only time you see that in the Old Testament. And the book would be in Mayan. After he builds this wall the prophet Ezra comes up. And they're going to read the word of God. And Ezra, he stands to turn around and reads. And it says that he opens the book. He opens the scroll and he looks up. They just start cheering. Can you imagine? I don't know what I'm doing. Please don't do this. But if tonight, if tonight I started teaching and I just went like this because that's what happened when Ezra did it. But the thing is, is again if you go into this book to read it, it will read you. It turns from cheers to weeping because they're so convicted of what God's saying to them. But they are moved by the power of this book. And of course we look at Jesus. He's in the desert. It's not by bread alone do you live but by the very words. We can go further. Acts 10. The Gentiles are just hanging out. Paul starts just reading the word and the Holy Spirit falls upon them. Hebrews says that this is too much sword. It's sharp. It's living. It's active. He cut through bone and marrow spirits and soul. Second Timothy says that this whole thing is good for teaching. This whole thing is good for teaching. Second Peter says it's like a lamp in the dark. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, good not to go. Time and time and time again we come into this book and you can see that this book is affirming itself. Why? Not because God is pretentious but because he knows that we need instruction on how to best live this life. When life gets troublesome when life gets hard we can turn to this book to find the words of God. It's far too often I talk to people and they say I pray and I pray and I pray and I pray and I pray and I just want God to speak and I get nothing. And I understand that. I understand that. You talk to him like all the time and God is always speaking to you. I was at Gospel the other day and I got to go to the other lane and he has this amazing mobile with someone and I was like I want to go to Gospel with God. How do you do that? And God just doesn't speak to me that way all the time. Sometimes sure, but not all the time. But my question is why are we trying to hear the word of God if we're not even trying to read the word of God. If we can't hear it, that's okay sometimes but we can comfortably go to this book and read it. Do you know how many songs I can sing from memory? Do you know how many movies I can quote? They get stuck in my head so simply. But these are living words from God to affirm my relationship with him and his love for me. Shouldn't these be a song that resonates in my heart day in and day out and in your heart day in and day out? This is what we have here. The question is what can I do about this? And don't get me wrong. I wanted to be able to quote scripture. Absolutely. But maybe, just maybe, you can imagine someone or picture someone who can quote scripture but they're still kind of a jerk. So the goal itself is not just to be able to understand what this book is or be able to quote a few popular passages. But to let this book truly have a moment with your life and for your life to have a moment with this book to chew on it to devour it to let it become a piece of who you are. You know what's crazy is that's actually an image that we see often in scripture. Ezekiel to Jeremiah says they both got the words of God they ate it. See in the book of Revelation 2. One translation says they devoured it. I love that verse. They just go for it. You can see my Bible. It's been through a lot. There's this old saying that you can tell if someone's life is stable, if their Bible is falling apart. If their Bible is falling apart, if their life is not falling apart. I feel like I put that to the test. But it's been through a lot. And I've had this book for years and years and years and this is my Bible. I have other Bibles. I have many Bibles things like that. But this is my Bible. When I pray, this goes with me everywhere. This is what I want to go to. It's like when it comes to all things in the spiritual realm. I love this book. But it's getting kind of shut. At least I'm the next to it. But for me every line and mark is a story between me and the word. But my favorite is this one right here and I know if you're in the back you can't really see it. But I can describe it because it kind of looks like a tooth mark. And that's because it is. Because a handful of years ago I was sitting at my house and again I have a handful of little kids and they're always doing something they're not supposed to do. And I got distracted for a moment and my Bible was on the coffin table. And I don't know what I was doing or what was so important but I took my eyes off my daughter for a second who was just starting to pee. And I turned around and she was gnawing on my Bible. And I was like, that's what Jeremiah was talking about. That's what it's supposed to look like. That's what it is. To just take it in and consume it. Now I don't want you to actually go home and start being a Bible like my daughter was as a two-year-old. But when I went to school here I saw what it actually looked like through one of my roommates. Because there was a time when I was trying to get really committed into this book. I was really trying to understand what was so special about this. I was a mathematics major. I was a theology major. The book was so important, so primary in so many people's lives. And so my roommate and I decided that we're going to do a Bible study. And we're going to start to read through the book of Colossians. Now if you've never read Colossians it's five chapters and Paul is not misnerading this. There's a lot going on in those few chapters. And so we just said that we were going to talk a week or two and we're just going to see what God was doing as we read through this book. We're just going to have a game plan. We're just going to read and then talk. And that was it. And so I went to the chapel that day and during my prayer time I put out Colossians. And I read all of Colossians. I thought that's great. And that was it. Okay, I did my homework. Now I'll talk to my friend Joe in a week or two. And so we finally kind of came back to the conversation and Joe was like Chris, what you think about Colossians? I was like, oh man. I love them in Colossians. Colossians too, when he gets into like the majesty, like oh, that's amazing. And then chapter three and four like really, really, really gets into like all of the important stuff. Like how we behave and what that means and what that looks like. That just was, I need to get some things straight up. You know, and I'm just, I'm going back and forth and trying to just remember everything that I read. And I finally just realized I'm talking a lot. And so I say like, Joe, like what was, what's it about for you? And he said, man. He's like, I haven't got to pass the first paragraph yet. And I was like, you forgot to do the homework? And he's like, no. He's like, no. He's like, every time I get to this verse I just become a recipe. And he just stayed there in that moment. And he wasn't going to pass it until he thought I could really digest it. Couldn't chew on this book like that. Couldn't be willing to just step into a relationship with Christ himself into a relationship with Christ in such a way that when we come to his word that we're not just looking for a word or actually looking for a phrase that's going to get us through the day, but that we're going to have an incredible experience that is so powerful and so real that it just stops us in our dreams. I think that was possible when you're in this book. Now I remember when I realized the power of this book and I'll tell this story and now we get to the practicals and stories and feelings I wanted to say to you about how to practically take this book home. But for me, I need you to know about the moment that I realized what we had during this book. Again, I was a college student and I was living in Arizona for the summer doing an internship. I was living with this youth minister and he was a great youth minister and had some invitations to go and give some presentations and when you're an intern, you just kind of go with the guy you were interning for, right? So I was just kind of his shadow all summer as I was following him around and we went to this conference and it was for young adults and it was a weird thing because I hadn't even talked to before and I had been a part of some teams with a lot of these presenters so I kind of knew everybody but I didn't really have a role. Again, I was just there. So I would be a part of some meetings but I wouldn't be a part of other meetings. They would kind of send me out to help with a workshop but then they weren't going to have anything for me to do later so I just kind of ended up like cleaning. So it was weird but the best part was is that when the sessions came around I just got to sit. Now I don't have to worry about logistics or worry about saying anything. I just got to sit down and enjoy the conference. It was a good conference but what was interesting was that the idea of God's word was kind of interwoven through all the talks. It just started to happen. There wasn't anything that was planned. The conference wasn't like the Bible conference. It was just a conference about Jesus but everyone just started kind of talking about the power of the word. And the reason I remember that is because the last night that we were all going to be together it was kind of cost something. And again, I'm sitting in the green room with no real responsibility and I remember the team comes around and we're sitting at this table and the leader says, so what do you all want to do tonight? I was like, you guys don't have a plan? And they just started talking about it and honestly for the conversation that I heard because I left pretty quickly because I thought it was pretty awkward in that room they didn't know what they were going to. They were like, we'll just pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show up and we'll see what happens and I'm just like, okay, you cool cats have fun. I'm getting out of here because if this thing blows up in your face I don't want to know what's coming. I'm just going to be a part of this tonight. So I leave the green room with a congregation and we just move into the night and we hear a great talk and it's a great talk and then we move into some kind of prayer because it's Pentecost the day that we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming down into the church we start praying with one another and it's super powerful but there's also part of it that just feels like there's something more and it's Pentecost like there's something more and it's crazy now it's time for the Holy Spirit to show up and so all of a sudden as I'm thinking this they actually start to set up an altar I'm like, okay, me and God are on the same page and they're setting up this altar and the music minister starts to change keys and I can tell that he's just starting to make up a song in the spot and what he starts to do is he starts to sing John 1-1 and if you remember the way the Gospel of John starts he actually sings a little different he sings but it's just an inverse of the Scripture he says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was God he just starts singing that over and over again in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was God and he's singing it over and over and over again and then all of a sudden in the back of the auditorium the doors open and in comes our priest but he's not carrying the monstrance that gold shiny thing that he put the Eucharist in he's folding the book of the Gospels and he comes walking down the aisle with the book of the Gospels held high and y'all it was like we were in the book of Nehemiah it was like a letter in that room and as the priest came forward he was a Byzantine priest if you've never seen a Byzantine or Eastern right priest they're just like our priests they have hats they have some more medals they're amazing and the way that they approach the liturgy in the Word of God is inspired and so he comes forward all checked out and he stands in front of everybody as the music minister is still singing John 1.1 and the priest opens up the Word of God and sings as he proclaims the first chapter of chapter this is amazing but then the priest takes the book and he starts to come back down towards us and he comes to every single person in the congregation to bring us the Word so we can have a moment where we venerated the Word of God and it's almost prophetic as they would say something to you this Word is for you God wrote this for you here's his love letter just to be with the Word of God and then they come back and they put the Word on the altar and in that moment the music minister switches gears and he starts singing John 1.14 and the Word became flesh in Baltimore and the doors in the back are open again and in comes the monstrous Jesus cries for body pleasure and Jesus comes in and again and we're singing and just like before after a moment of veneration Jesus comes down to every single person we have a chance to venerate and they come back and they put the monstrance next to the book of the Gospels and we have the Word and the Word the Catechism teaches that we can actually venerate the Word of God in the same way that we venerate the body of Christ and that night he worked for four hours and I gotta tell you it did not feel long enough and I remember driving back to the cabin that I was staying with with some of the other speakers and all we could say was what just happened and what I would never plan that I mean if there's any youth ministers here or people who work with the church and say okay this is what we're going to do we're going to pray for people we're going to pray for those people then we're going to bring in the Bible and keep on going crazy and then we're going to bring in Jesus and we're going to do the whole thing again and the whole thing should wrap up somewhere in the Bible and that would never work and yet for some reason that night God did something amazing and I should have gone to bed and I don't have inscriptions because I just couldn't get enough and I'm not saying they're perfect I'm not saying I understand everything about this book and I'm not saying that I pray it perfectly at all but I will say since that night there's probably only a handful of days that I've gone by that I haven't doughed into this book because once you see the power it's hard to warm and so the question that obviously becomes what would happen without inscriptions is what does it actually do because I've tried to read this and it just makes sense to me like maybe you've opened this book Genesis that's great stories from our childhood I mean they're not really child stories I came to thought about that the other day I was talking to my daughter about Noah I was like oh it's great there's like this Arkins you'll see like a giraffe with his head coming out and he's smiling and then like everyone else on the planet died all of these stories that we know and remember father Abraham Adam and Eve they're all there and we're thinking like yeah this is pretty good this makes sense I'm going to get to Exodus that's fantastic I've seen Disney movies about that I've seen Moses take the Israelites but then we're going to get to Deuteronomy and do my power through Leviticus will get you and don't get me wrong we talked about why those books are there but this book is actually a collection of books it was never meant to be read cover to cover like some other book this was really meant to be a library a collection of letters love letters for you so we can come to encounter God in a way that speaks to us right where we are and that's what's so beautiful about this and she might be thinking what does that really mean that practically speaking how do I read this book where do I start well the church in her wisdom says start with the Gospels because the Gospels are all about Jesus and so if you've never read the Gospels and if you've never opened the Bible this is probably the place to start and again I don't want to overstate this and I don't want to offend anybody because sometimes I've said this and people are like I'm wearing this bracelet I don't know if anyone's wearing WWJD bracelet do you remember those those are fantastic and when wearing one okay great here's the thing they're great to be able to ask WWJD what would Jesus do they're fantastic my mom and my grandma most of them went every year for about 12 years I had a plethora of them they're fantastic but here's the thing with the Gospels you don't have to ask what would Jesus do you can actually see what he did and so we can be asking like what did Jesus do when he was tempted we can see it what did Jesus do when he's betrayed we can see it what did Jesus do when he was angry he got angry he made a weapon I'm not saying we should make a weapon but we can see what he does with the righteous anger he came to not just save us but to be our perfect example and so we start with the Gospels and we'll talk more about that in a second if you're like you know what I've read the Gospels love the Gospels big fan of Jesus but I'm really looking to go a little deeper into this book what's the next step again there are plenty of ways to do this but for me I'm a big fan of the songs because the songs are just music and music moves the soul every human emotion is found in that 150 songs that we have here in this text most of them are from David but it's amazing because David doesn't hold back I think sometimes at least I approach this book and I think it's just fun to be like I love him and everything is beautiful and now I will just go have cookies big with sunshine and go around in my uniform because that is perfect and that's not what this book is about in some texts yes David would be like God is all powerful and all good and all wonderful and everything great and then the very next song of my life is horrible I ain't everything and you're like David needs hug what are you doing why is he doing that why does it seem like such a roller coaster because life is a roller coaster and David just bears it all the songs just tell you what it is and we can enter into that because again we experience the same emotions that these books were written by people for people and we can enter into that and that gets it there are 150 songs so I don't know if this is part of your daily prayer regiments again you're going to read this book for about half a year that's not a bad way to start it if you're thinking like well I don't know like the songs sound good but what about some of the other confusing texts or what about the Old Testament the New Testament is filled with letters the early church leaders writing to young church members who are trying to figure out how to live this faith the Old Testament there's a lot of history there's a lot of imagery but with a little study you can come to understand what to do with this and this is where we take a step further in our learning because I think sometimes we come to this book and we think it's like a magic apple I'm going to pray with this now I'm just going to ask God to give me something and try again when I was a student here I had a teacher who would call that scripture roulette and she was adamant against it because even though the owls are likely you could open up the scriptures and find verses that says go and be likewise which are words that are found in the Gospels and you could then close your Bible open again and see words that say Judas come himself am I supposed to do that likewise I don't think so I'm going to get into as adults a better way to understand this book because we don't want to just pull ice in Jesus what do I think this means we want to know what is actually happening here we want to exegete we want to understand this book in a way that makes sense and the church has given us the four senses really there's two but one is kind of broken down into three subcategories the four senses of scripture to help us better this book the first and the most important is the literal we need to literally understand what was being said that this book wasn't just written in a vacuum that Matthew Mark Luke and John David in the songs Moses in the early books the Bible they were writing with a very specific purpose so what was the literal meaning and no keeping wrong the meaning that everything is literal as a factual or historical Genesis 1 the creation story doesn't mention anything about dinosaurs maybe pick up on that at some point and sciences tells us that the world was formed for thousands and thousands and thousands of years before humans showed up so what would we do here is it proper but we need to look at the literal sense that maybe Moses isn't telling us exactly how God did what he did but the truth that God did do what he did that God did create and he is a creator and we are His creation I mean how do we know that there's maybe some truth that goes deeper than just literal history in Genesis 1 we'll go to Genesis 2 because it's another creation story and it's different from the first so how do we justify that we need to understand what Moses is trying to do and how he gave us something deeper say what the pair was Jesus said at one point if your hand caused you to sing go cut it off if it's your eye, scoop it out that Jesus literally wanted to just start cutting ourselves up so what was the literal meaning what was happening there that we're supposed to take away and this takes a little bit of study but maybe not as much as you think most Bibles perhaps if you use your phone or iPad or whatever it might be to read a Bible we'll often have some kind of description of the book that you're about to dive into sometimes it's a paragraph, sometimes it's a couple pages if you get a study Bible it can almost be like an entire chapter to just give you enough context to help you understand what is going on I mean that shapes our Gospels there's a reason we have full Gospels Mark Mark he's writing to the very early church to the non-believers of the Romans and because he's trying to get to an audience who's never heard this message before he's going quick, it's an action it's the sports center of the Gospels I open up Mark and I hear do do do do do do do because he just wants the guy's got that thing but it's because he just wants people to know who Jesus is in the power of this mountain so he's moving you don't see Jesus until he's doing his active ministry Luke it's kind of a sci-fi kind of a book you see there's a doctor and he wants to really highlight the majesty and the miracles of Christ Matthew documentary slash home video because he's writing to the Jewish people and he wants to be able to connect the Old Testament and the heritage of the Jewish people to what Jesus is doing and John he's down straight in the heart of Jesus the Gospel of John talks about love more than the other three combines but there's a purpose there there's a literal intent that when Mark sat down however many years ago he knew his audience and he was writing and trying to convey a specific message so we start with acts and then from there we move into the spiritual and the spiritual sense is divided into three categories big words allegorical moral and anagogical I'll explain those in a second so allegorical is how does all of this relate to Jesus Revelation tells us that God has spoken a single word in that word is Jesus so how does God's word point back to Jesus an example would be in the Old Testament when we read about the Israelites going through the Red Sea we can look at that and say well that's kind of like Jesus in the grace that he gives us in baptism where we have a past and we have our sin and we have our change behind us but we go through the waters and we come out on the other side free so we ask that we read what does this look like in my relationship with Jesus how does this draw me closer to Christ or sometimes we can go with the moral and this is simple this is what does this mean for me how does this change the way I behave when I read Corinthians and Paul says that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit what does that mean about the way that I should treat other people or treat myself any anagogical how does this point us ahead what does this mean for who I am in light of eternity so just going back to that last example of Corinthians and our temple being a our body being a temple of the Holy Spirit literally Paul is writing to the Corinthians a hodge podge crew a huge city with a port and there was a saying back in the day to live as a Corinthians which basically meant you would never the heck you would and there was a great booming church there but there was a lot of debauchery as well and people from all over the world would come to court and then you came into that port you would see all kinds of temples the most famous was the one of Aphrodite that sat up on the hill in the center of the city Aphrodite was the goddess of love and when he came to the city of port you'd be expected to go and make an offering which today we would say you'd be expected to sleep with one of the prostitutes who were there so literally Paul is writing to these people who would know that and he would know that they see this temple and Paul says that's not a temple, you are a temple do you see how the scripture starts to come alive when you start to understand the context what does this mean for me, how is this point to Jesus? when Jesus made me new the spirit dwells in me I'm valuable I'm important because of what I didn't know but because of who decided to dwell and have a relationship with me I am a temple shouldn't mess that up that should change the way that I act that should move into the moral sense I'm a married man that should be faithful to her and what does that mean going forward to heaven some day I'll be in gospel and all that he has given me I will give back to him and I will rejoice in that reality for all eternity this book is not boring this book is powerful this is why St. Jerome said ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ so if you want a deep relationship with Jesus we need to have a deep commitment to this book amen so those are practicals but what does that mean because before you said you can get the scripture and be a jerk and I stand by that and we don't have much time left so let me just go through a couple quick things and then we're going to try to quickly pray within this book so first and foremost this morning a nation prayer with Sarah she asked her to engage her senses saying nations has a whole way of praying with scripture it's called the spiritual exercises and it's an incredible way of praying if you've never done it you've died into the scripture using your imagination and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead you some of you that might be a little bit outside your comfort zone but that's okay some people here are making a little bit more analytical they pray but they also want to have a firm understanding of what's going on that's great, that's important you find the scripture that's the S you observe what's going on that's the O so what's happening here what's Paul saying, what's Mark saying, what's Jesus doing if that's difficult just follow the verbs and move the story along who's saying what that A is application what does this really mean how do I take this from the context of scripture and put it in the context of my life where does this best fit and what does this mean for me and then P is pray pray all of that to God as you just dove into the word of God and it's so difficult to express the word of God we're going to use the lexical meaning here so scripture zero apply pray and I think somewhere in between the nation as was just pointed out there's lexical meaning one of the oldest ways of praying scripture in the church where we dive into scripture when we dive into scripture when we dive into scripture it's a sacred reading where we give the space to the Holy Spirit to move and if you've never done this it's very simple all you do is you find a scripture injure it once just to get familiar with it maybe something will pop maybe something will stick out maybe it'll get some kind of inclination in a moment of prayer but you just sit there and you sit there with that word and after a moment or two of silence and as you get more comfortable with this that silence can expand and become longer and longer but you dive back into the same text and you read it again but this time it's got like what do you want me to see here what does this mean for me what's the application where's the grace in this verse for me right now that's the very final time we dive back into the same text and this time we pray for the grace to see what God is doing and how this change is going forward because I believe that we don't come in contact with Jesus and leave the same person and so what does this mean for us how does this change us and how is the way we're supposed to live today it's not difficult but it doesn't mean it's easy but the more we do it the simpler it becomes and so what I want to do now if you're not used to praying with Scripture this might be difficult but we're going to do it in just a few short minutes so for some of you you pray all the time this is going to be nothing for some of you it's a little warm in here caffeine from lunch is starting to run a little low and it might be easy on our mind's direction but Paul says in 2nd Prince that we need to hold our minds to capitalism and we need to act and so I'm going to pray that as we dive into this text that we should all be familiar with because it's from today's Gospel that we just take a moment to be present to God in his book and I'm not going to read the entire Gospel sometimes when it comes to Scripture less is more again our hope here is not just to consume the word like it's any other book but to do what it is to really take it in and so as I try and find it myself what book is it 41 what I'm hearing different things 38 Gospel reading 30 got it thank you I'm going to start at 41 verse 41 so let's just take a moment sometimes it's just too easy to jump in and although that's beautiful just take a moment to pray that the voice here will just come to be with us to be definitely the father of the Holy Spirit and become the Holy Spirit Lord we know that you've given us this word and we ask for eyes to see your movement here in this text over our hearts to receive so that we may be a good soil reading from the Gospel word and Jesus sat down opposite the treasure and watched the multitude putting money into the treasure many rich people put in large sums and a poor widow came and put in two copper coins which made him a pain and he called his disciples to him and said to them, truly a stadium this poor widow has put in more money than those who are contributing to the treasury but they all contributed out of their abundance but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had her whole living now it's been a few seconds since then Jesus sat down opposite the treasure and he watched the multitude putting money into the treasure many rich people put in large sums and a poor widow came and put in two copper coins which made him a pain and he called his disciples to him and said to them, truly a stadium this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury for they all contributed out of their abundance but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had her whole living Jesus sat down opposite the treasure and watched the multitude putting money into the treasure many rich people put in large sums and a poor widow came and put in two copper coins which made him a pain and he called his disciples to him and said to them truly a stadium this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury for they all contributed out of their abundance but she out of her poverty put in everything she had her whole living father we thank you for your word it's a promise to be with us the guidance and the team to open our hearts to you speaking to us in the word in our lives we ask of all of this in Jesus name Amen Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen y'all know that was brief that's because we're running out of time but there's usually one last step and it could be a conversation with God or just reminding to ourselves of what just happened and so very briefly many talks I want you to turn to someone and just share a little bit about what that moment was maybe you felt something, maybe something popped maybe you saw something in scripture like spoken to you maybe you didn't have much of anything, that's okay this isn't magic this is grace let's just share to take it from what we just did and share it extra and so let's go ahead and close in prayer and then we'll send y'all on your way Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen Father, God, again, we just thank you we just thank you for all that you're doing God, we just again ask for an opportunity for your spirits for your hope in your psychology and your school for us open our eyes, our ears, and heart to you now and forever Father, Son, Holy Spirit now and forever Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen