======================================================================== THE WONDERFUL WORD OF GOD by Greg Locke ======================================================================== Summary: The Bible is the living, abiding, breathing Word of God, and it is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. Duration: 34:57 Topics: "Biblical Meditation", "Gods Word" Scripture References: Matthew 6:33, 2 Timothy 3:14-16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this sermon, the preacher begins by sharing about his travels and experiences, mentioning places like the natural bridge, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and California. However, he emphasizes that despite all the amazing things he has seen, nothing compares to the Bible. He then focuses on Joshua 1:8, highlighting the importance of meditating on and obeying the Word of God. The preacher expresses his gratitude for the privilege of sharing the message with young people and emphasizes the need for passion and sincerity in preaching. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Number 3, in just a moment we'll read verses 14 down through verse number 17. Very familiar portion of scripture, and I hope it'll be a great blessing to you. I tell you, this is a portion of scripture that God has used to challenge my heart and challenge my Christianity and my character and my Christian life on many, many, many occasions. And this is a near and dear portion of scripture to my heart, and so I hope it'll be a blessing to you. 2 Timothy, chapter number 3, verse number 14. That's all, stand please. Out of respect for the Word of God. 2 Timothy, chapter number 3, and verse number 14, please. The Bible says, But continue thou the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. And using this very familiar portion of scripture, I want to preach this afternoon a simple message entitled, The Wonderful Word of God. Thank you very much. You may be seated. Let's bow our heads and hearts, and let's ask the Lord to bless our time together here in our chapel, shall we? Now, Father, we need your help for the next few moments in this Christian school assembly. Thank you so much for the young men, the young ladies that are before me. Thank you for the privilege that I have all this week to share my heart with these young people in the mornings and then in the afternoons to go with Brother Smith over to the detention center, also to the juvenile boot camp, and also each night at seven o'clock to break the bread of life. Lord, you've given me a lot of responsibility this week, and you said to me, who much is given, much shall be required. So I pray that I'd be prayed up, studded up, and I'd be fired up for the things of God. And you would help me not to be lollygagged as a preacher and not just to preach some old mundane microwave sermons. But Lord, help my heart to be hot. Lord, help it to be full. And help me not just to preach from overflow of knowledge. But, oh, dear God, I pray that you would open up my heart and open up the hearts of these young men and young ladies before me and just knit us together as we preach and teach and study through the Bible this week. Use 2 Timothy 3 today, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. In person, as I travel and as my wife and I travel in evangelism and as we have for the past four years, I've met some interesting people. Now, I've met some people that were greatly wonderful in my ministry and I've met some people that were not so hot and not so nice to my ministry. My wife and I, we have been to museums, we've been to zoos, we've been to science places, we've been to fairs, we've been to some huge churches, we've been to some tiny churches, we've been to some medium- sized churches, and we have seen some wonderful things. Man, we've been to the Natural Bridge. I've got a meeting scheduled close to Buffalo, New York. We'll be going to Niagara Falls. And we've got meetings scheduled all over and I've been all over California and different places. And I mean, my wife and I have been privileged and honored and blessed of the Lord to be able to see some wonderful, wonderful things. But, you know, in all of my travels and all of my studies and of all the people that I've met across America and around the world, I have never come up to know anything more wonderful, more marvelous, and more supernatural than the Bible which we hold in our hands right now. I want you to understand a few things about the Word of God this morning. We're going to have three points and I want you to help me with the points this morning. But before we do, I want you to look back in your Bibles and I want to study, just for a few moments, verse number 16. Just make some preliminary remarks as we go down through this verse and just kind of teach you a few things and then kind of get into the preaching message. Verse number 16 of 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul is writing, and he says, "...all Scripture..." That means the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New. You put them together, do your math right, that's 66 books of God, all right? So he says, "...all Scripture..." Not some of it, but every bit of it. "...all Scripture is given by inspiration of God." Now, that word inspiration is a fancy New Testament word. It doesn't mean perspiration. The word inspiration has the idea of God-breathed. Did you know if you and I, every time we were to open our mouth, if every time I preached or every time you talked to one of your friends, if every time you was talking and opened your mouth when you walked around, if you kept your hand up in front of your mouth, one of two things would be true. Number one, most of us would die because of our bad breath. But secondly, you would find out that air comes from our vocal cords. It'd come across our tongue, out of our jaws, across our little flappy gums, and through our teeth, off of our tongue. And you would fear air or breath coming out of your mouth because when you speak, you breathe. That's the exact same implication here that Paul is writing young Timothy. He spoke, and as he was speaking, he breathed the very words of God into existence. So, let's see what he says about this inspired Bible, shall we? Verse 16, "...all Scripture is given by inspiration," or God-breathing, if you will, "...and is profitable." Now, a lot of people have a bad problem in America and around the world. You know what it is? They think the Bible was written by a bunch of old, foggy people for a bunch of old, foggy people. It's got old, foggy rules and regulations, dictates and commands, statues and testimonies, and it's not relevant to today's society. That's a lie. This is the living, abiding, breathing Word of God, and it is just as relevant today as it was when the ink pen of inspiration ran out in Revelation 22, 21. Young people, I want you to know this Bible is profitable. It's profitable for your life. It's profitable for your soul. It's profitable one day for your marriage. It's profitable for child-rearing. It's profitable for churches. It's profitable for Christian schools, for public schools. It's profitable, today's November 7th, for elections and for America and for around the world. The Bible is a profitable book. It's not a dead book. It's not an old, lethargic book that belongs on some Vatican shelf or some religious library or some biblical zoo somewhere. It is a profitable, profitable book. Now, if God, in fact, is going to say that His book is profitable, then isn't He going to tell us what it's profitable for? I believe so, and He does. Look back at verse 16. It says, "...all Scripture is given by inspiration of God." And it's profitable, number one, it says, for doctrine. Now, the word doctrine is a much overused and much abused term in modern-day Christianity. The word doctrine basically means teaching. There's a lot of people that say, well, doctrine's just not important. But that's a lie, young person, because doctrine's very important. It's very important what you believe. It's not just enough to know what you believe, but you ought to be able to base it on the Bible and know why you believe it. And doctrine is very, very important. We have the teachings of heaven and hell. We have the teachings of God and the devil. We have the teachings of the virgin birth of Christ. We have the teachings of the tribulation and the rapture and the second coming of Christ. And we have the teachings of the inspiration of the Bible. We have the teachings or the doctrines of creation. And there's all kind of doctrines and teachings in the Bible. And if we say that doctrine's not important, then who's to say what's right and who's to say what's wrong? So the Bible says that itself is profitable to teach us that which is right, to teach us that which is wrong, to teach us what is Scripture and what is contrary to Scripture. So the Bible's profitable to teach us some things, but it's also profitable, the Bible says, secondly, look at your Bibles, for reproof. Now, what is reproof? Well, reproof is God telling me what is wrong with my life. Now, you know, the word reproof is a negative word in the Bible. A lot of people think everything in the Bible is rosy-posy and everything's wonderful. It's a walk in the park and it's a nice little cream cake walk and there's nothing bad. And God is always love. God is always love, but now there's not only positive in the Bible, there's also negative in the Bible. And sometimes people have to be reproved and rebuked when there's open wicked sin in their life. For example, let's say I were to go outside and I was to get in my diesel trunk. And let's say right before I got in it and started it up, I cranked up the hood. I popped the little latch there on the front there. I lifted it up and I took the negative side cable off of my battery. Now, a battery in a vehicle has a positive cable, has a negative cable. Those two coming together, the positive and the negative, they make the car start, they make the car go, and they work all the little apparatuses there. They run this and they run that. But let's say I took the negative off and I thought, well, I'm just going to be positive all of my life. I don't care anything about negative. I don't like reproof and rebuke. And I'm just going to drive my vehicle on the positive. No, you wouldn't get very far. Matter of fact, you wouldn't even start the vehicle. You've got to have the positive cable and you have to have the negative cable to make the car go. And you've got to have positive in the Bible and there's also negative in the Bible. When you put them together, they cause everything to come together. So, OK, God shows me that His Word is profitable for teaching or for doctrine. But He also tells me that it's profitable to teach me what is wrong with my life. For example, God says, OK, Greg, you are living your life in a way that is not pleasing to me. You are living your life with sin. You are living your life for the world. You're not living for me. You're not pleasing to me. So God tells me what is wrong with my life. And specifically points out the area. But I'm glad it didn't just stop there. You know, sometimes some people will rebuke you and reprove you and say, Hey, this is wrong with your life. But then they don't tell you how to fix it. But God does. Look what your Bible says, verse number 16. It says it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction. So first of all, God says His Bible is profitable to tell us what is right and what is wrong. And then it's profitable to tell me what is wrong specifically with my life. And then thirdly, it's profitable to tell me how to fix that which is wrong in my life. So God says, Greg, this is wrong. And this is how you fix that which is wrong. But it doesn't stop there. The Bible even goes further and says this, for instruction in righteousness. You know what that means? That's God telling me how to keep it fixed. So God says, Greg, this is wrong. This is how you fix what is wrong. And this is how you keep it fixed for the rest of your life. And this is what keeps you in the Bible from ever going back to the place where I had to reprove you and rebuke you ever to begin with. So you can see how profitable the Bible is for daily living. All right. Now, I want to give you three undeniable, three unchangeable, and three most unforgettable facts about the Bible. And I'm going to say them to you. And then when I do that, I'll hold out my hands and we'll all say them together. And I want you to say them nice and loud. So make sure we get it not in our heads, but we get it in our hearts. All right. Number one, God's Word is true. Would you say that with me? God's Word is true. From Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21. There are no mistakes. There are no contradictions. There are no lies. There are no falsehoods. There are no misconceptions, if you will. This is the Word of God. That's why we have this Christian school. That's why we have revival meetings in this Baptist church, because we want to open people's heads and open people's hearts and fill them with the truths of the stories and the pages and the doctrines of the wonderful Word of God. This is not a comic book. This is not Sports Illustrated. This is not Reader's Digest. This is not USA Today. This is not the Chicago Tribune. It is not the Wall Street Journal. This is the Word of God. And we don't have to apologize for that. We don't have to back down for that. We don't have to say we're sorry for that. And as young men and as young ladies, you can know this afternoon that this book that we hold in our hands, this book that we memorize, this book that we study, this book that we read, this book that we learn, and this book that you work in your paces in your different studies on, this book that you hear taught from, and this book that you hear preached from, from this chapel platform every day, this book is not a book. It is the book. It is the Word of God. And young person, you can stake your life on that. God's Word is true every bit of it. Now, I want you to think about something just for a moment. Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them or set them apart from that truth or through that truth. Thy Word is truth. Now, there's a verse in the Bible that I want you to understand. Please don't turn there, but listen to me. Jesus was talking to a religious group of people called the scribes and Pharisees. And here's what he told them. John 8, 44. He said, you are of your father, the devil and the lust of your father. He will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and a vote not of the truth. Why? Because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. For he is a liar and the father of it. So, what did Jesus just state to those people? And what was Jesus trying to reiterate to you and I as God's people today? Simply this. The devil is 100% all lie. He has no truth in him. He is a false. He is a fake. And he is a phony baloney for sure. He is a liar. And the Bible says the father or literally the originator of lies way back in the garden. So, the devil is a liar. Now, let me paint you a picture here, all right? Not on a wall, not really drawing a map, but just think for something for a moment. If the devil is 100% liar. If he is all falsehood. If he is all fake. If he is all wicked. And if the devil has no truth in him whatsoever, which the Bible does say that. We'll put the devil right here. We'll go to this side of the platform. And we'll say that here over here is the Bible. We've already established that the Bible has no lies, has no misconceptions, has no things that are contradictory in one book and contradictory in another book. No lies, no falsehoods whatsoever. So, way over there on that side of the platform, we have 100% falsehood and lie. And way over here on this side of the platform with the Bible, we've got 100% truth and 100% right and no falsehood and no lies whatsoever. Now, if that be the case, and it is, does it not stand to reason logically that he who is a liar wants to do his best to keep you as far away from the truth as he possibly can? He wants to keep you out of the Bible. Why? Because he wants you to live a life of a lie. He wants you to be a liar. He wants you to be a fake. He wants you to be a masked Christian, if you will. He wants you to be a lying, phony, baloney, false Christian. He wants you to live the same life that he is living. And the devil is doing his dead-level best to keep people away from the truths of the Word of God, because those truths will transform your life. Those truths will help you be a better young person for God. Those truths will help you be a better student. Those truths will help you be a better son, a better daughter, a better brother, a better sister. They will help you one day be a better father, a better mother, a better husband, a better wife. They will help you be a better worker. They will help you be a better person. And yes, most certainly will help you be a better, more godly, sold-out, surrendered, and separated Christian. And the devil is a liar. And for years he's trying to tell people that the Bible is a lie, the Bible is a lie. But I will remind you, Titus chapter 1, verse number 2, the Bible says that God cannot lie. And if it's in this book, and since this book is from God, therefore my God cannot lie. So this book is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God. All right? So number one, God's Word is true. But number two, I want you to see this. God's Word has been tried. Would you say that with me, please? God's Word has been tried. Say, Brother Locke, what do you mean by that? There have always been people that have tried to stamp out the Bible. There have always been people that have tried the patience of God. There have always been people that have ridiculed the Bible, and kicked the Bible, and put the Bible under the rug, and tried to hide the Bible, and locked the Bible away. And there have always been people that said the Bible's full of lies, and the Bible's full of contradictions, and the Bible's full of all these presumptions from God. And there's no real miracles. And Jesus was just some old fictitious man. And He never really died. He was never really buried. He never really rose again. And the Bible's not the Word of God. It's just a nice little storybook. It's just a nice book to color in and to take notes in. And it's just some book that gets a bunch of preachers all riled up. And there's always been people that have tried to disprove the Bible. But you know what? They're dead and gone, and the Bible's still living. They're dead and gone, and the Bible is still believed, and is still breathing, and is still abiding, and the Bible is still with us. And the Bible says, Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven. Sometimes you ought to read, especially not right now, because it'll take you some time. But you ought to read Psalm 119, verses 1 through verse 176. A hundred and seventy-six verses, and every single one of them have one theme. David said in Psalm 119, verse number 9, Wherewithal shall a young man, or a young person for that matter, cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. And there's always been people that say, Well, the Bible's just a fictitious book. The Bible's just a storybook. It's not a real Bible. But you know what? They tried the Bible, and they tried the Bible. They put the Bible in the fire, and it comes out. They tried to drown out the Bible. They tried to burn out the Bible. They kicked it out of public schools. They kicked it out of the courtroom. They kick it out of here. They kick it out of there. And they say, The Bible's not the Word of God, but it's still the Word of God, no matter what they say. They can lie about the Bible. They can make falsehoods about the Bible. They can kick the Bible anywhere that they want to. They can rip up the Bible. They can retranslate the Bible. They can rewrite the Bible. They can reread the Bible. They can do anything they want to, but they can't change the fact that this is the eternal, precious, wonderful, perfect Word of Almighty God. And young person, the Bible's always been tried. On Sunday morning, I was in Sunday school here, and I was preaching from Matthew chapter number 6, from Psalm chapter 11, from Isaiah chapter 40, and also from 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 15 and 16. And as I was preaching that, I said something about, we don't need to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow the Bible will still be the Word of God. Perhaps you were here, perhaps you were not, but let me give you a quick little rendering of something that I said. I believe it'll be interesting to you. There was a wicked vile infidel by the name of Voltaire. Voltaire hated God. Voltaire did not believe in heaven, did not believe in hell, but he knows better now, I'll promise you that right now. He did not believe the Bible. He kicked around the Bible, he said that God was fake, he believed in evolution. And here's what Voltaire said. This was years and years and years before anybody's time in this room. He said, 50 years after I'm dead, the Bible will be a book of nonexistence. There won't be any Bibles in existence 50 years after I'm dead. He said, 100 years after I'm dead. Not only will the Bible not be in existence, he said, but no one will own a copy and no one will have ever heard of a copy of the Bible. Can you hear the great irony in what that man said? 50 years after I'm dead, the Bible will not be in existence, not be in circulation. No printings of the Bible, no readings of the Bible, no preachings of the Bible. And then he said, 100 years after I'm dead and gone, nobody will have heard of a Bible. Nobody will ever have seen a Bible and nobody will own a Bible. And it's been more than 200 years since Voltaire's been dead. And did you know that right now the very house in which Voltaire lived is the national headquarters for the British Bible Society? The very house in which this man lived is now headquarters where millions and millions and millions of scriptures are printed every year. Hey, the grass withers and the flower thereof fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. I remember when I was in fifth grade, and I knew a lot about fifth grade because I spent two years there, amen? I had the same teacher. Her name was Miss Grandstaff. I remember Miss Grandstaff, the Gladeville Elementary in Nashville, Tennessee, outside of Mount Judah there where I grew up. I remember I was there and I'd ride the bus and I'd get there and I failed for several reasons in the fifth grade. But the second year that I was there, I remember we went on a field trip. Now, we took the two fourth grade classes, the two fifth grade classes, and the two sixth grade classes. And I was the only fifth grader because obviously I was supposed to be a sixth grader. Probably this time I was supposed to be a seventh grader because I spent nine years in K-6, all right? So I don't command that anybody should try to do something like that, okay? It took me all those years, like I said yesterday, to figure out that F meant failure, not fantastic. And so here I was. We went on a little field trip. We got on our bus, we had our sack lunches, and we drove to Hendersonville, Tennessee to an Amish community. How many of you know what I'm talking about when I say something about an Amish community? All right, some of you do, not all of you. I'll put your hands down. It's just a way that people kind of live way back in the backwoods. They kind of live their own way, kind of have their own little community, if you will. They don't have any electricity. They don't have any running water unless you get a bucket and run down to the creek and pick it up yourself, you know. They don't have, like, trains and planes and Ford trucks and nice big houses and trailers. Whatever they have, they just build it all right there on site. You know, they don't go to Lowe's, they don't go to Walmart. They got their little horse and buggies and nothing wicked about that. If that's the way they want to live, that's fine. And so these people are just real primitive. That's the way they enjoy living. And, man, the men dress like men, by the way. Ladies got to dress on from their ears all the way down to the bottom of her toes. You know, you ain't got any trouble figuring out which one's a man, which one's a lady, that's for sure. And so these guys walk around, got these big old bushy beards sticking out, and they grow all their own watermelons and corns and cantaloupes and, I mean, everything. I thought, man, that's pretty neat. We're walking around, we're going to these little general shops and we're going to these little stores and they're making fudge and they make molasses and honey and they got this corn and all this kind of stuff. And I was pretty interested in what was going on. Then they took us to the blacksmith shop. Now, I'd never been to a blacksmith shop before then and I'd never been to one since. Many of you maybe have never had a privilege to go to a blacksmith shop. There's just not many around. Nowadays we got the big steel industries and we got the big earth movers and this, that and the other. And so unless you really live in the Amish community, unless somebody's really primitive and old-fashioned way back in the woods, they just don't do work like that anymore, but the Amish people still do. And so I went there and there was about, I suppose, there was maybe 185, 200 of us kids. And we was all in there. We crammed in a building about this big. It was the blacksmith shop, a little tent that he was in there. And he was in there and he had that great big black anvil and he had a big old sledgehammer and he had these little sickles and these little pipes and the stuff that he was using. Man, he was working in front of this big fire, big old, just big old tears of sweat just dripping all down. He had his overalls on, but he was all dirty. He's hitting there with them sparks just to fly. He's hitting them sparks just to fly. He'd bend that horseshoe and he'd bend that bar and he had all kind of beautiful tools and things and arrangements that he had made all over the wall. And finally he opened it up for a question and answer time. He said, now boys and girls, the only silly questions in life are those that go unasked. I beg to differ because I've heard some pretty silly questions. But anyhow, I thought it was my turn. I put up my hand. I said, mister, I've got a question. I said, I mean this with all my heart. I said, this might be common knowledge. It might be kind of silly. I said, but you're hitting that anvil pretty hard. By the way, if you don't know what an anvil is, if you've ever seen Saturday morning cartoons where the roadrunner and the coyote, it's what coyote gets dropped on his head about every five minutes. All right, so anyhow, here's this big black anvil. He's beating on it and beating on it and beating on it and beating on it. And I said, mister, I said, how often do you have to change that anvil? I said, listen to me, like it's going through a pretty good beating, you know. Kids are kind of snickering, but I wanted to know. Here's what he said, I'll never forget it. Years and years before I was even saved, but I'll never forget what he said. He said, you know son, that's a pretty good question. He said, this anvil belonged to my great-great-granddaddy. He said, pass it on to my great-granddad, pass it on to my granddad, pass it on to my dad. He said, now it's mine. He said, now we've got some certain little polishes and some little things that we go through and make sure that it's done right so you don't leave it out in the rain and mess it up. And he said, it might get a little dent in it. He said, you could drop this thing off the Empire State Building. He said, it wouldn't break open. He said, these things are solid through and through. He said, these things are wonderful. He said, these things work for years and years to come. And he said, more than likely. He said, I'll pass it on to the next generation of my family and down to him and down to him and down to him. And he said, these anvils are always the same. And then he said something interesting. He said, but these anvils are so hard. He said, we have to rebuild tools all the time. He said, our tools are a little bit different than that which you would buy down at a hardware store, Ace Hardware or Lowe's or something like that. So he said, we're all the time changing tools. He said, about every couple of years, we'll go through several hammers and we'll go through several bars and things that we hit with and sledgehammers. He said, we'll make another tool and then it'll mess up on the anvil. We'll make another tool, we'll beat the anvil, mess up on the anvil. And we'll make another tool and make another tool. And he said, we're all the time changing tools. He said, but the anvil is the same one that we've had for years and years. You know what, young person? The old hammers of evolution and the old hammers of secularism and worldliness and rock and roll music and wickedness and Hollywood and the secularism and the people that don't believe the Bible and the people that are wicked and immoral and the people of the world and the people that want to serve the devil more than they want to serve God, they beat on the anvil of the Word of God and they beat on the anvil of the Word of God and they beat on the anvil of the Word of God and they try to disprove it and they try to get rid of it. You know what? They keep changing their methods all the time. They change their avenues of science and mathematics. They change the rules. They change their laws. They change their own statutes and their own regulations and they beat on the Word of God and beat on the Word of God and they try to make the Bible go out of existence and they try to disprove the Bible and they're always changing their methods, but the old black anvil of the Word of God just stands the same, young person, and we've got the Word of God. It is true and it's been tried and it always comes forth and stands true like the rock of Gibraltar. It always stands strong and they beat on it and they spit on it and they burn it and they drown it and they kick it and they curse it and they scream at it, but we still have the Bible. And that brings me to the third point, and man, I rejoice in this particular part of the message. God's Word is true. God's Word has been tried. But thirdly, I want you to see God's Word can be trusted. Would you say that with me? God's Word can be trusted. You can trust your soul to the Bible. You can trust your life to the Bible. You can trust every decision you will ever make in life as a young person, as a teenager, as a middle-aged person, as an older gentleman or a lady. You can trust every decision you'll ever make on this Bible right here. Let me show you something. Go back to verse number 14 where we started, would you? 2 Timothy 3, verse number 14. Paul is writing. Look what he says. He says, "...but continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Verse 15, "...and that from a child," from just a young person, "...that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures," or the holy Bible, "...which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." What is Paul telling Timothy? This is the only book whereby we learn about God's salvation. This is the only book that can show us the true mercy, the true grace, the true love of Almighty God. And he said this is a book that you can trust your soul to, you can trust your never-dying soul to, your eternity to, based on heaven, based on hell, based on having your sins forgiven or your sins not forgiven. He said this is a book that can make you wise to know about God so you can know how to be saved. So you can trust what Jesus said about salvation, what Paul said about salvation, what is written in the pages of Scripture about salvation. You can trust your soul to the Bible, alright? I know I'm saved. I'm not worried about being lost. I'm not worried about the devil snatching me out of the grips of God. I'm not worried about some little petty sin or some big sin taking me out of the fold and going to hell one day. I'm not worried about that. I know, based on my Bible, that I have been assured that I have eternal, everlasting life. So you can trust the Bible when it talks about that. But you know what? You don't just have to trust your soul to the Bible and that be it. After you get saved, you can trust your life and every decision that you will ever make in life on the Bible. Is that not why God said in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, not the preacher, not yourself, not the teachers, but acknowledge Him, Almighty God, and He shall direct thy path. How does He direct our path? Psalm 119, 111, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. So you can trust this Bible. It never leads you astray. This is the road map for life's busy highway. This is the flashlight for the dark caves and crevices and crawled spaces of life. This is the instruction manual, if you will. I remember when I was a little boy, my grandmother and I, who's now in heaven, godly lady, I remember we used to put a puzzle together about every weekend. I guess we probably put this puzzle together 50 or 60 times. But I remember the first time we ever got that puzzle. It was one of these little three-way jobs. Not only was it a regular puzzle, but it was also one of them little 3-D deals. You kind of had to stack up pieces here and kind of stack the castle here and kind of build it here and then kind of stand it up, you know, type of deal, you know. And then also, the third thing it is, before you stood it up, you had to find all the little hidden pictures. After 50 or 60 times, you knew where all the hidden pictures was. But I remember the first time we got that thing out, I got the instructions, I looked at them for a minute and I said, I just threw them in there, closed the box up, dumped all the stuff out there. I had this piece here and this piece there. That thing was discombobulated and disconjolted and messed all over the place. And I thought to myself, what in the wide world am I going to do now? How in the world am I ever going to get this puzzle together? I was so mad. I was so frustrated. And all of a sudden, my grandmother went over there. She opened up that box and she pulled out the instruction manual. She got to reading this and she got to reading that and she got to looking at the pictures. And man, it wasn't an hour that we had that thing put together. Why? Because she found the instruction manual. And the Bible, young person, is your instruction manual to putting all the little bitty, itty bitty pieces of life together. Because life is very confusing. Life is very complex. There are high times of climax. There's low times of no climax whatsoever. There's discouragement. There's discontent. There's hard times. There's all these things. And we've got to have direction. We've got to have a source of somebody and something that is leading us down the right paths. And David said, that you lead me in the paths of righteousness for your namesake. How does he do that? Does he do it through the newspaper? No, he does it through the Bible. Let me give you this illustration and we'll be through it. I'll let you go back to class because I know you're dying to get some work done. Amen. Okay. And so let's say for a moment that we loaded up on a bus and we went to Nashville. And when we went to Nashville, I was not with you. Pastor Ward obviously was driving the bus. We got down there. And when you're walking around, the reason I'm not with you is because I'm living on Skid Row in the red light, dirty district town of Nashville. And I'm living in a cardboard box. And so you come all walking by. And Pastor Ward knocks by my little door there or knocks by my little box and knocks on my little door and I come sticking my head out of, you know, a big old washer and dryer box. Hey, what do you want? He says, you're Greg Rock. And I say, well, the last time I looked. But I didn't look quite like I look now. Big old bushy beard, mucus and mess all in my beard. Nasty. My eyebrows all bushy. Got wax coming out of my ears, you know. Look like a bushel of corn. And my hair's all messed up and matted. My fingernails are long and dirty. And my shoes are all cut off. My hole's in my socks. My old nasty big long toenail sticking out. Look like some kind of claw, you know. Some kind of beast. And I'm laying in there all nasty. I got a big old pack of cigarettes here. Got a big old can of liquor over here. Bottle of liquor laying over here. Got vomit all over the ground. And I stink and nasty. And I dig around through a trash can just so I can get a little bit of food every now and then. And I'm scrounging around like an animal just to find some fish or some chicken or some hamburgers. I find some old things old behind McDonald's. And I live like an old dirty bum. And so all of a sudden Brother Ward comes by and says, Son, I'm going to give you something. He reaches in his pocket. He pulls out a gospel tract. And he pulls out a checkbook. He hands me a gospel tract and says, Son, you read that. That'll tell you about Jesus Christ. Then he pulls out a checkbook and says, You got any needs? And I said, Any needs? I said, Look at me, I'm a bum. Go inside, I got some needs. And so he says, How do you spell your name? I said, G-R-E-G-L-O-C-K-E. Make sure you get the E on there, alright? And so he gets to writing out one million smackeroonies. Now if you're writing a check, by the way, And so he writes a check for one million dollars. He puts on the bottom, just for a love gift, signs his name on there, hands me the check, and goes on his way. And I say, Oh, thank you. God bless you. God bless you. Get out of here. Get out of here. And so y'all leave. And I look at that check and I pull it out of my pocket and this is what I say. He's crazy as a bed bug if he thinks I am going to take this check and go down to the bank and try to cash it. Because one of two things is going to be true. Either number one, he don't even have an account of this bank that's on the check. Or number two, he don't have anywhere near a million dollars. And so I take that check, stick it in my front pocket, for the next six hours, for the next six days, for the next six weeks, for the next six months, for the next six years, all the way to my death. I still live on Skid Row in Nashville, still have dirty shoes, dirty face, still talk dirty, act dirty, live dirty, still have dirty hair, old bushy beard, still scrabble through a trash can just to get a little bit of something to eat, and I live that way and I die with a million dollar check rotting away in my front pocket. You know what you would say if you found me doing that? You'd say, Brother Locke, that's the most foolish thing I've ever heard in my life. That's silly. Why would I not go to the bank and cash the check? Why wouldn't I cash that check that could take care of all my needs and all of my wants and I could even help other people? Why wouldn't I do it? I'll tell you why. Because I didn't trust the person that gave me the check. I didn't really believe that money was in the bank to begin with. I thought he was just being nice and cordial, just doing his Christian responsibility. You know what? I know a lot of Christians that live just that way. Because they will not trust the one that gave them the pages of the Bible. Because they will not trust in a loving God and they will not trust in Jesus Christ as the Lord of their life and they will not trust the pages of Scripture. Hey, they won't cash in on the product, if you will. They won't go to the bank of heaven and by the way, we've got something worth more than a million, a trillion, a billion, or a googolillion dollars if there's such a thing. We've got a Holy Bible and I know young boys and young girls and teenagers and men and women and people in schools and churches and colleges, all of this country, that they live the rest of their lives as Christians like spiritual bums. They have spiritual dirt in their life. They're not pleasing to God. Spiritually, they stink in the nostrils of a holy God and people look at them and they have bad testimonies and sorry testimonies and they have sorry Christian character. Why do they live that way when they have something that is more valuable than a million dollars? Well, there's only one reason some Christians would only live that way because they just won't trust the one that gave them the check to begin with. They just won't trust the one that gave them the Bible and if they just learn, hey, God said in His Word, so whether I believe it or not, that settles it because it's the Word of God and if they were just cashing on the product, hey, God would change their life. I'm not talking about God would give everybody health and wealth, but He'd show you how to live a victorious Christian life. He'd show you how to have peace. He'd show you how to have joy. He'd show you how you can have assurance. So God's Word is true. God's Word has been tried, but, oh, young person, please understand, God's Word can be, should be, and needs to be trusted. Now, with all of that in mind, I suppose I just can't think of anything more wonderful than the Word of God. He said in Joshua 1, 8, this Book of the Law, not another book, but this Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth. Thou shalt meditate therein day and night. Thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then, thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Let me ask you a question. Don't answer it out loud. Answer it in your heart. Then we pray. How much do you love the wonderful Word of God? Father, thank You so much for this time that You've given us to share. Thank You for the Bible. Thank You for the Word Lord, we could never thank You enough for a book that is so marvelous, so supernatural, so dynamic, and so wonderful. Thank You for it. I pray every teenager, boy and girl, teacher as well, under the sound of my voice, oh, dear God, help each and every one of us to love and admire and hold dear and near to our hearts the precious truths of the Bible. Thank You that Your Word is true, 100% true. Thank You that Your Word has been tried, and it showed us through all these trying times that it stood true and that it's righteous and that it's truly the living, breathing, abiding Book of God forever and ever. And thank You, dear God, most of all, that Your Word can be trusted and that we can have victory in Jesus and have peace and joy and assurance based on not what people say but based on thus saith the Lord. Bless these young people as they go back to class in Jesus' name. Amen. ======================================================================== Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/0/SID0445.mp3 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/greg-locke/the-wonderful-word-of-god/ ========================================================================