Give Attention To...

So this morning, we're going to be continuing our study in 1 Timothy, chapter 4. We're going to be in verses 12 through 16. We read those last week. It was the first time we were in that section. We focused last week on verse 12, and we saw how Paul exhorted Timothy, this young pastor at Ephesus, to show himself as an example of Christian living. The exhortation was very simple. Teach the people what it means to be a Christian, what to believe, and how to live, and then accompany your teaching with your own life. Your life should match the things you teach, preacher. And so Paul exhorts Timothy in this way. He also tells him that he shouldn't use his age as an excuse for why he shouldn't be looked to. That even as a young man, God's the one who's raised him up and has put him in that place, and who's made him just exactly that age.

And that his age is no excuse either for the people to look down on him and go, oh, he's just a young man. What does he know? Nor is it an excuse for him to say, oh, I'm just a young man. It doesn't matter what I do right now. I'll get it straightened around later in life. And neither one of those are excuses when instead what the young men ought to do, what Timothy ought to do, and what we ought to do following in his footsteps is take hold of the youth, of our youth, and use it in service of God. growing in godliness, serving him, putting to death our sins, and growing in faith. That was last week. As I said last week as well, there are many hurdles that young men have to get over in this pursuit. This work is to be done on a battlefield, and it's no small task for them or for us to heed these Paul's words. This week, we're going to be focusing in on verse 13, and on what obeying Paul's next exhortation to Timothy would mean for us. If this were a topical sermon,

The topic would be the supremacy of God's Word in the life of every Christian. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's Word from 1 Timothy 4, verses 12-16. This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Persevere in these things, for as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Now there are three things in verse 13 that Paul is telling Timothy he's supposed to give attention to. The public reading of scripture, exhortation, and teaching. And so I want to work through these things in that order. And the question we have before us is, why are these things important? And if I were to ask you, why are these things important? Why is Timothy supposed to be engaged in these things and give attention to those as opposed to other things? In previous verses, Paul had warned Timothy against fruitless endeavors. Don't waste your time on old wives' tales. Be productive. Be profitable. Turn an increase in everything that you do. And so he told Paul, Paul told Timothy, in effect, don't pay attention to this stuff. And now we come to the part where he says, no, this is what you should pay attention to. This is where energy ought to be committed. Public reading of scripture, exhortation, and teaching.

So why is Timothy supposed to do this? Well, the first thing I want you to know is that this is not a new thing that Timothy is supposed to do. This is not a new command that Paul's giving to Timothy. This is something that's always been done in the New Testament and back into the Old Testament. I want to read you a couple passages. From Acts chapter 13, verses 14, it says this, but going on from Perga, they arrived at Pisidian Antioch, and on the Sabbath day, they went into the synagogue and they sat down. Now, what normally happened when they'd go into the synagogue? Well, they'd sit down and someone would stand up.

And someone would read scripture, and then they would give an exhortation. And so that's what's recorded here. They went into the Sabbath day, and they went into the synagogue, and they sat down. After reading the law and the prophets, the synagogue officials said to them, saying, Brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, please say it. And so this is something that would have been practiced even before Paul wrote this letter. This is something that would have been a common practice in the very early church, that when they would gather together, they gathered together to hear what God had to say. And you've got to make a little bit of a translation here because all of us have a Bible on our person right now, whether it's a literal Bible with pages or whether it's on your phone. I bet that everyone here who has at least a phone has access to a Bible and could have this passage pulled up in less than 20 seconds, right?

That's not the case back then. And I'd even argue that we're hindered in a way that they weren't because we have such immediate access to the Bible that we don't actually treasure it the way we ought to. We don't store up the things that are said. We don't listen as closely as we ought to because it's always right there. Whereas when they would have gathered together, it would have been their habit to get together and to read what God had said. And that would have been the time, the only time during the week when they would have had access to those words. Because they didn't carry around smartphones and printed Bibles with them. And so when they came to church, they came wanting to know only what God had said. What has God said? And that's why they read scripture every week. And this goes back even into the Old Testament.

that they would do this, that they would get together and that they would read from the book of the law. They wanted to know what God had to say. They read the scripture as they had it at that time, publicly. Again, in Luke, Jesus does the same thing. It says, and he, speaking of Jesus, came to Nazareth, where he'd been brought up, and as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and he stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Jeremiah was handed to him and he opened the book. And then he read, and when he had finished reading, he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, and this is his exhortation, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And so we see that both with Paul and here with Jesus, this sort of thing is what would have gone on. One more example. In Josiah's time, you remember King Josiah, the boy king, the eight-year-old whose father was killed, and then he becomes king at such a young age.

And he's king over Judah for a number of years, 31 years. And about halfway through that time, 18 years into his reign, he gets one of his scribes and he says, hey, go over to Hilkiah, the high priest. Go over to the temple. They're rebuilding that thing. Go over there and get the money from Hilkiah and tell him to pay the people who are working on the temple. Tell them to pay him for their work. And so Shaphan, this scribe, Does what Josiah says. He goes over. And when he goes over there, the high priest says, you know, in all of the debris and all of the shambles and all the stuff of the temple, we found the book of the law. And he read it to him. The priest read it to Shaphan. And Shaphan went, oh, we've never heard this before. And there's no indication of how old Shaphan was, whether he was one of Amnon's.

Ammon was Josiah's father, or whether he was one of Josiah's men, but you can understand if an eight-year-old is made to rule, he's probably not the one making most of the decisions. He's probably got a bunch of people around him in his court who are helping him, leading him, telling him what to do. And you recognize that Josiah went, and he's one of the good kings. He went from being eight years old, 18 years into his reign, 26 years old, and this boy has never heard the word of the Lord, never once heard it. It's a strange thing. His business as a king at that time, the king of Judah, reigning and ruling in Jerusalem, is to say, hey, scribe, go over to the temple and have them pay the guys who are working on it. That's something I need you to do today. He was just ruling. He was just managing. He was like a business owner. We need to get these tasks done. And yet when he sends this man over there, he hears the word of the Lord, and the guy goes, I need to take this back to the king. So he brings the scroll back to the king, to Josiah.

And he reads it to Josiah. And what does Josiah do when he hears the word of the Lord? He tears his clothes. He repents. And he says, whoa, we're in trouble. We are in trouble. These things that are written in this book from our God say that we're going to be consumed and destroyed. And this is the beginning of Josiah's reforms in Judah. After he hears the word of the Lord and he goes, We need to go and we need to find out if these things are true. And so he sends a bunch of people from his court to this prophetess, to Huldah. And she says, those things are true. But because you, Josiah, have, you know, tell the man who sent you, because he had a tender heart and repented, tell him that he'll go to peace. He'll go to death in peace. All the destruction that I've promised in this word, in the word, won't come to him. It'll come after him. And you have to think about Josiah for a minute and think what kind of man was...

was he, this young man, 26 years old, that's young, to interact for the very first time in his life with the actual words of the Lord that were kept in the temple because the people would have been reading them and would have been hearing them and would have been considering them and would have been exhorted to obey them when they would gather together there in the temple. You see that it had fallen out of practice in Josiah's time. He had never heard these words before. And it was to his detriment and to the nation's detriment. And when Josiah did hear the words of the Lord, what did he do? Sweeping reforms. The first thing he did was go into the temple and he says, you get everything out of that temple that doesn't belong there, that this God and this book and this word didn't say to be there, you take it all out of there, take it out of the city, burn it, and then get the ashes out of my sight. The first thing he does. And then he goes on this crusade through Judah, tearing down the high places, destroying the altars.

And restoring the true worship of God. Why? Because he heard what God had to say. And he believed it. Now that's an example we can follow. That's something we can aspire to. That's something we can admire. And it's something we ought to replicate and emulate. And that's the sort of thing that we should expect in our own lives when we come to church. That's why Paul tells Timothy, you should give attention to the public reading of scripture. We could gather together here for church and we could talk about all kinds of stuff. Right? I could be very persuasive. I could be very winsome. I could be very manipulative, even. Engaging, dynamic, right? I could be all of those things that public speakers are supposed to be. And I could do you no good if I don't tell you what God says. I'd do you no good. In fact, not only would I not do you any good, I would do you harm. Now, one of the things you have to know about me is I have very little experience in church.

Outside of our sending church. Less than a year in any other church regularly attending. And so the things I hear about what worship is like generally in other places is all foreign to me. I get it and it's hearsay. Because I haven't experienced it. Okay? But I have talked to some of you even about what your experience has been in other churches and what the difference is. And oftentimes when visitors come here, there are things that they notice and that they say, well, that's different and we don't do that. And are you guys Lutheran or Catholic? Because you do things that normal evangelicals don't do. But one of the things that they regularly note is the place of scripture. Why do you have a scripture lesson? Why do you read, like, they'll say, why do you read scripture? And they'll also say, the sermons are actually about what the Bible says. It's not a bunch of movie quotes and pop culture references. It's actually what the Bible says. Like, you actually talk about the Bible. And they go, that's right, I do. That's what we're here for after all, right?

But I say that to you not to bolster myself in any way or to make you feel good because you've found the right place to be, but simply to say that the word of God is supposed to be central to what we do when we're here. I could be all kinds of a man. I could say all kinds of things and you could think, oh, wow. But if what I say and what I do isn't built on what God has said, I'm not doing any good. And you're a fool to stay. And the way that you get into a time in a society like Josiah was born into is through the neglect of reading and hearing God's word and exhortations and teaching pertaining to it. The scripture says that the word of God will be a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path. You ever been in the woods at night and had your light go out? I have, tracking deer. And you can get a long way back into the woods tracking a deer. And if your flashlight goes out while you're back there?

You're in trouble. You spend the night. Right? It's not the kind of place you want to be. You want a light. You want a lamp. And so our lives are a trip through the wilderness. And we need a light. We need a path. We need to know that we're on the path. And that path, that lamp, that light is the word of God. And so when you come here to worship, one of the best things we can do for you is simply to say, this is what God has said. This is what God has said. And that's not something new with us, as I've shown you. That's something that's happened throughout all of the Old and New Testaments. And so this is the first answer. Why is Timothy supposed to give attention to these things, to the public reading of Scripture? Well, because this has always been the habit of God's people. They're people of the book. They care what God has to say. They need to know what God has to say. And so Timothy's supposed to give his attention to the reading of Scripture because it's God's Word, literally breathed out from God himself.

So that he and we would know him and his salvation. That's the first reason we read scripture in church. That's my responsibility as a pastor first. That's the responsibility of our elders. To feed you the word of God. That's our job. What's your responsibility? Well, we have lots of responsibilities. One, you're not supposed to grumble and complain about it. But what positively are you supposed to do? Well, what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to receive it. You're supposed to... improve upon it. You're supposed to connect it. It's supposed to help you. Now, have you ever been in church and heard something that was wrong in the sermon, something you don't agree with? Inevitably, you say, yeah, I have. And sometimes the thing you disagree with might be a point of application. Sometimes the thing you hear might be a theological difference. You go, no, I don't think that's what the Bible teaches. Do you have some sort of a sense that something's wrong with what's been said?

something's not true, whether that was on purpose or not. And I will say that that is different than you simply not liking what's said. It's one thing for you to say, I think that that's not right, and it's another thing to say, I don't like that, and I don't care if it's right. I'm talking about you saying, I think that was wrong. I think that exhortation was wrong. I think that interpretation was wrong. Now, I have a question for you. What have you heard that was wrong in this sermon? I expect you to know, of all people. It was pretty small. It was pretty meek. I did it on purpose. When I read to you from Luke, when Jesus stood up in the temple, and he read, oh, what? I said Jeremiah. So, what's wrong with that? It wasn't Jeremiah that he read, was it? No, it was Isaiah that he read. And I didn't read the passage. I cut out the section that he actually read from Isaiah. Now, some of you caught it, and that was very small.

And I did it on purpose, and I kind of hid it. So I tricked you on purpose. But my point is, I want you to listen to what's said. And I want you to measure it against your own knowledge of Scripture to see if it squares with what you know and what you believe. Am I saying I want you to sit as my judge? Well, in one sense, yeah, I want you to judge and consider whether what I say is true. But really what I want to do is I want to teach you and I want to help you grow in your understanding of what Scripture says. And one of the primary ways that that work will be accomplished is if you are a student of Scripture as well. Meaning, I said earlier, we may be at a disadvantage because we have access to Scripture anytime we want it. And you're like, no, that's not really a disadvantage. And I say, well, it's a disadvantage if we don't take advantage of it. But if we do take advantage of it,

The fact that you have scripture available to you any minute of the day, it can be a great benefit to you. That when you come and when you hear preaching and when you hear people say, thus saith the Lord, you can say, yeah, that is what he said. And he said these other things too. And this is how it all fits together. You know, oftentimes, well, I don't know if it's often, but I have heard it said that when people... When people stay at churches or when they leave churches, it's always because of the preaching. Now, they don't often say that. It'll always be like some other thing. But they'll put up with a lot if they like the preaching. And so they might say when they come, well, I really like the sermons. They're this or they're that or they're the other thing. And then they get upset about something. And one of the things they'll say is, well, the sermons, I'm just not connecting with the sermons anymore. They just aren't meaningful to me.

And what I want to say to you is if you've ever had that thought, I want you to consider first, could the reason be that you're not being a student of Scripture? And that's part of the reason you don't like what's being said. I said to someone one time who didn't like what I was saying, I said, you know what I want is I want you to tell me. If you don't like what I'm saying, that's fine. I've got big shoulders. I can handle you not liking what I have to say. Tell me from Scripture why you think what I'm saying is wrong. I'd love to hear it. But if you either won't do the work of figuring out why you think I'm wrong, or tell me, then your job is not to criticize and to complain, but rather to submit and to follow. That's our choice. Because we're not interacting simply with what I think. My job when I stand up here is not simply to tell you this is what Dave thinks. My job is to tell you what God says. And if you agree with it, then you should say yes and amen.

And if you don't agree with it, then you should figure out why. And if it's because you think I'm wrong, you should tell me. And if it's because you're wrong, then you should repent. Because we've gathered together here to interact with God, not simply with a man. One of the sweet things that can happen for you as you are a student of Scripture is that when you come and when you sit under preaching or when you hear teaching, it will be more meaningful to you because you'll have a greater context. to understand what's going on. We could use a sports analogy. We could use electrical circuitry as an analogy. If you lack knowledge, whenever some information is given to you, if you don't have a grid to process it through, you just don't understand a lot of what's said to you. I have a basic understanding of how circuitry works. I am not an electrician. I'm not. I can put in an outlet if I need to.

But if you get to a three-way switch, I don't know how they work. There's a number of you who do. I don't. And I've had someone try to explain to me a three-way switch. And because of my lack of knowledge generally, they start talking about this leg and the switch leg and all this other stuff, and I'm going, I'm paddling hard to keep up with just the terminology, let alone what they're actually talking about. Because I lack the knowledge that they have. Them trying to say, oh, the reason that switch isn't working is because you've got this wire and that wire switched. I don't know what wires they're talking about. I don't know anything. And so their information that they give to me to try to fix my problem is less helpful to me because I'm not an electrician, but you are a Christian. And so you ought not to be ignorant of the things God says. You ought not to say when someone talks about more than simply Jesus' death on the cross, but...

but actual Christian living and the commitments that Christians ought to have, you should have a framework and a wealth of knowledge to draw on, to process and understand and improve and implement what is said to you. And so that's your responsibility. So that when I read something like Luke and I put in Jeremiah instead of Isaiah, for those of you who caught it, if I asked, what did Jesus say? What did he read at that passage? What was significant about it? Why were all of the eyes on him? You would know from memory what he said. And what he said was, I'm here to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Deliverance for the captive, sight for the blind, hope for the hopeless. That's what he stood up and read. One area where I see this in my own life is when I read and I prepare, I read other sermons, and it's common in older sermons that they don't actually reference and read every scripture that they...

that they reference. They'll just say, you know, like it says in Romans 12. And that's all they say. They don't say, oh, and in Romans 12 it says this. They rely on a certain knowledge and a certain familiarity of the people, the hearers, with the word of God so that when they speak, they're not speaking to those who have no knowledge. And so that's your responsibility. And just reading it. And hearing the word here on Sunday morning or on Facebook memes or wherever it is you interact with scripture, it's not enough. It's not enough. None of us know scripture the way we should. And it's because we haven't given it the attention that it deserves. Paul tells Timothy, give attention to this. So I'm to give attention to it. You're to give attention to it. And so instead of filling our heads and our hearts with some mixture of truth and falsehood, very similar to how Josiah would have been previous to hearing the word of God.

We should give our attention to what God has to say. And as our society changes and as the pressures that we face as Christians change, it's going to be revealed who's done their homework and who hasn't and who trusts God and who doesn't. We need to know God because only he has the words of eternal life. We need to know what he says. So you need a church that teaches you that and you need to be committed to that pursuit in your private life as well. Now God's word. in our society is already headed toward. We've already got our toes curled over the edge of hate speech, right? Talking about homosexuality or talking about LGBTQ or these sorts of things are right on the verge of being called hate speech. You can't say that. You can't call people to repent. You can't say they weren't born that way. We're not quite there yet, but we will get there. I'm convinced in my lifetime. And a lot of you are younger than me. And those of you who aren't younger than me have kids younger than me.

And so this is our fight. This is our day. This is what we're up against. And so if we have any hope of being found faithful in that day, when we're questioned, what do you believe? First, we have to know what we believe. We have to know what God says. And for that to happen, we have to be students of the word. It's not the consequences of hate speech that we ought to be afraid of. We don't have any control over that. And God doesn't demand that we have control over whether... it's illegal to call people to repentance or not. He doesn't call us to have control in every situation. He calls us to have faith in every situation, to trust him and to trust what he said in every situation, no matter what the trials are that he allows into our lives. And so that's a difficulty that we're faced up with. And that's one of the things that reading scripture and dwelling on it, meditating on it, even in worship, is aimed at helping you stand against.

But, you know, I actually don't think that hate speech is the biggest problem that you're going to face as a Christian with regard to God's word. Getting in trouble for calling a homosexual to repent is not the biggest danger. This disease of the neglect of God's word and it being central to our lives is not simply a problem that the world has. It's actually a problem that Christians have. It's metastasized, if you will. And the biggest threat that we face as Christians is from within our own ranks. Now you might be thinking, well, what are you talking about? I'm going to tell you. In Mark 13, 9, Jesus says that we are going to stand before governors and kings for his sake as a testimony to them. Now if that's to be the case, if we're to get to the place in our lives where we're able to stand before the powers that be as a testimony of Jesus Christ, first we have to know what he says. What is the biggest threat, I think, to you not knowing what Jesus says other than you not being a student of it?

I think the biggest threat is that you're being lied to by other Christians about what God has actually said. Now, I'm not headed towards being like KJV only. Like, there's this perfect translation. But I do want to talk to you a minute about translations. When you read your Bible, you're reading the work of other men. And that work for them has been them taking the original manuscripts, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Aramaic, and saying, this is what it says. How close is this is what it says to saying this is what it means? Those are not the same thing. It's not the same thing to say this is what it says and this is what it means. In Bible translation, there's a spectrum, okay? Because none of us are Greek or Hebrew scholars. There's a spectrum of translation. And on the one end of that translation, you have what's called formal equivalence. Formal equivalence is them saying we want to translate.

Word for word, what was said. More literal translations, you might hear it said. On the other end of the spectrum, you have what's called dynamic equivalence. And that is going to be thought for thought or meaning for meaning. Not what exact words did they say, but what did they mean by those words. And what you have to know is you want to read what was actually said. You want someone... who views their work of translation as simply passing the text from its language into your language and doing the best they can to get you the words, but leaving what they mean up to you. You don't want a translator who thinks that it's their job to say, we're not going to just tell you what was said, we're going to tell you what they meant. Because when you do that sort of thing, bias becomes a problem. What sorts of things do we not want it to mean? And that's what we're facing in our day.

It's pretty heavy translation bias. And so if we read scripture, the battle for us is first, before we even get to reading scripture, what Bible do we read? There are so many translations. If I said, hey, everybody, tell me what translations you read, and you could get over being like, am I reading the right one? You'd find out, I bet there's 10 in this room, different translations that people read. And that's just to scratch the surface of what you could be doing. Some of us are reading the ESV, some of us are reading the NIV, some of us are reading the TNIV, some of us are reading the CNET, and some of us are like the Holman Christian, I don't remember the acronym for that one. Some of us like the NASB. Some of us like who knows what. Some of us have NLTs, which isn't even a Bible translation, it's a paraphrase. But it's sold right along next to the Bibles like it's a Bible.

But they'll even tell you that it's not the Bible. It's them telling you what they think it means. So what good would it be for us to stand up and to read Scripture if we're not conscientious, at least at some point, the leadership of what is being read to us? I'll give you an example. When I was in pastor's college, the first book we had to read was Martin Luther's Commentary on Galatians. And Martin Luther was a reformer in Germany in the 1500s. And his life's work was opposing the hypocrisy and the corruption of the Catholic Church at that time. He did many other things in his life, including translating the scripture and getting it into the hands of the people in their language instead of Latin, which was foreign to all of the people. But his commentary on Galatians is sort of the spark that started all of his work.

Because when he read the book of Galatians, he found that God was the one who saves us all by himself and that we don't contribute to that transaction. That we are dependent on God and his mercy and his grace entirely if we're to have any hope of salvation. And this is the impetus of Martin Luther doing all of his work. Now, if you've ever read Martin Luther, he can be intense. And he can be rude, and he calls people names. Now, who do you think Martin Luther has the worst things to say about? It's the Roman Catholic clergy, and particularly the Pope. So what would you expect his commentary on Galatians to be filled with? You'd expect it to be filled with him taking the Catholic Church and their doctrine to task. This is the first book I'm going to read in pastor's college.

And you know, we read an abridged version. And you know what they cut out? Everything. Literally everything about the Catholic Church. Everything. It was gone. Just gone. There would be a little ellipsis or a little footnote that says, and here Martin Luther went on a rant about the Roman Catholic Church or the corruptions of the Catholic Church. That's what they'd do. They'd footnote pages and pages of his warnings. That's not important. Now, why couldn't I just read his original? commentary on Galatians? Well, because I don't speak German and I don't read it. And so I need somebody to translate for me what he said. And in that translation, in that commentary that I read, they had lied to me. And so you know what we did? We threw that book away and went and got the Unabridged version. And it was quite different and quite longer. They had cut well over half of the book away. It's the same sort of trouble we face when it comes to Bible translations.

We actually need to be mindful of what we're being sold so that we're not lied to. And I think it's a bigger danger to us than getting in trouble for saying that people ought to repent of their sins, even though they're the pet sins of our society. I think you have the potential to have more harm done to your soul by unfaithful translations of Scripture. And I will tell you, there is no perfect translation of Scripture. Here, we use the New American Standard. Bible. It's clunky. It's hard to read. It even makes it harder to memorize. The sentence structure is a mess. Why? Well, because what they tried to do was stay as close to the Greek sentence structure as they could. And Greek sentence structure and English sentence structures are not the same. And so that's why it's so clunky to read. And it's especially clunky in the Old Testament, because Hebrew is even worse. Why do we use it? Well, we use it because it's a...

what I would judge to be a faithful translation of the scriptures. They do their level best to tell you this is what God has said. It's not our job to tell you what it means. It's our job to tell you what it says, right? If we were in a courtroom, it's not my job. If I was a lawyer, my job is not to interpret the facts to you. If you were the jury, my job is to present the facts to you and then to leave the interpretation to the judge or the jury or whoever's job that is, the pastor. When it comes to the word of God, it's us and it's me.

to interpret it. A translator's job is to translate it. And so we use the New American Standard because we think it's the best translation we have available to us that's readily available. Now, I'll tell you that the original New American Standard, the NASB, came out in 1977, right, if I'm remembering correctly. And there was lots of these and thous and Old English-y type stuff in it. So they updated that in 1995. They got rid of the these and thous because, lo and behold, none of us speak that way. And we don't know what these and thous and thines actually mean. We don't know who's actually being spoken about. And so they replaced it with you and them and us and we, because we understand that. There's a new translation of the NASB coming out now. Don't get it. Because they're not making these and thou translation corrections. They're translating it and changing it at the points of the rub between what God has said and what our society will accept. So...

My recommendation to you, as far as Bible translation, if you want to be inoculated against the sort of troubles that our society has, and you have an interest in knowing what God really has said, is get an NASB as your primary Bible. I know it's hard to read. I know it can be. It doesn't flow. It's not as pretty as the King James. It's not as easy to read as the ESV. But I think it's the most faithful translation we have right now. And if our interest is in knowing what God says whenever we interact with his word, I think the NASB is the best we can do. Does that mean it's the only thing we should read? No. What's your question? It's not even out yet. It's supposed to come out this year. It may come out next year. I'm not sure which yet. And I don't know exactly what it will be called. We read from what is the catchphrase is the NAS95. I'm guessing it will be the NAS20 or the NAS21 or given the year. I don't know what it will be called.

If we're going to give our attention to the public reading of Scripture and to knowing what God has said, we have to start not with the Greek and Hebrew. You hear me? I'm not telling you you yourself should start with the Greek and Hebrew. But I'm telling you, we have to stand on the work that other men have done who have been faithful and have the same commitments generally that we do to letting God speak for himself and not trying to muzzle him at the point of conflict with our society. That's what we need to hear, and that's what we need to know, and that's what we need to believe so that we can be faithful. Now, it's also, in my preparation, when it comes to reading Scripture, the NASB is not all I use. I actually will look at plenty of other translations to see how they translate it, to see what they did, to see what the breadth of whatever word I'm thinking about is, how they translate it. And that's fine. I don't mind you doing that. But when it comes to which one is going to give you the clearest picture of what God said, the NASB, okay?

The public reading of Scripture, being committed to it as God's people, that's the first thing that Paul tells Timothy he needs to give his attention to. Not the words of men, but the words of God. Now, exhortation. Would it be better, do you think, for me to just read Scripture to you and not talk or comment on it myself? I've wondered that myself. You all are going, no, I don't think so. But why? I agree with you. Actually, Paul tells Timothy, give attention to the reading of Scripture and to exhortation and teaching. And so he brings in a human element and says, not only is the reading of Scripture important, but exhortation and teaching go along with it. Why is it important that we have exhortation? There's a couple of reasons. First, we're pretty bad at application by ourselves, just to be simple about it. It's very easy to read something and learn the wrong thing.

And so it's really helpful to have someone who's given more time and energy to it and honestly is probably more gifted at it than you are and has been trained to do it to tell you what it means, to lead you, to teach you. That's the job of a pastor. My job is not only to stand up and say, thus saith the Lord, this is what he said. My job is also to say, and this is what it means. That's a pastor's job. It's a hard job. If I were to just stand up here and say, this is what God said, amen, and we're done, the chances of you getting angry at me go way down. They go up a little bit if I say, this is what God says, and this is what it means, if I teach you what it means. The chances go up a little bit more that you might get frustrated at me or disagree with me because you think, well, I don't think he quite knows what he's talking about. But if we rise to the level of exhortation where I say, this is what God has said, this is what it means, and this is what you're supposed to do now,

Then, all of a sudden, I'm persona non grata, or at least I run the risk of it, of not being liked. Who are you to tell me what to do? You're not God. I never said I was. And so Paul tells Timothy he's supposed to give his attention to reading Scripture, to teaching the people what it means, what they should believe, and also what they should do. And I think this is a weakness of the Reformed Church in general. those who love doctrine, those who love the details of theology. And I'm not opposed to knowing the details and you studying those things. Don't hear me saying that. Don't learn the wrong lesson. But I think that Reformed people tend to love the process and the study and not so much the application. Another way of saying it is they don't like to be told what to do because they're proud. You and I, we're proud. We don't like to be told what to do.

Unless we agree. But then it's okay because we're not being told what to do because we agree. And we think, well, you're very smart because you agree with me. Exhortation is the hardest part for all of us. It's the hardest part for me and it's the hardest part for you. Because my goal, the target I'm aiming at when we get done with this every week is that you would go away and think, I'm supposed to do something now. What am I supposed to do? Well, so far, I hope that you think... I'm supposed to read a faithful translation of Scripture. I'm supposed to read it, and it should be a good one. First application, first exhortation. Read your Bible and read a good one. It'll be good for your soul. And it'll make sermons and Bible studies more profitable to you. And I want that for you, and I think you want that for yourself. So do that work. But as I said, that's an application. That's an exhortation. Now, are you reading your Bible? Do you read it? Does it have dust on it?

What are you reading? How much time do you give to it versus the other things you give to your life? Where does it fall in your priority list? What do you say? I don't have time for that. I got this other. That's exhortation. And that's the part that we don't like. It makes us squirm. And it's what we need. Because I could tell you all the merits of reading your Bible. And you go, yes and amen. But if I say, are you reading your Bible? Who are you to ask me that? I try. I know I need to get better, and why are you making me feel bad about something I already know I'm not very good at? Well, because Paul tells Timothy that that's exactly what he's supposed to do. He's supposed to exhort the people to live out and to do what they believe. So read your Bible. Some of you may be familiar with the phrase that it's the Holy, it's the pastor, famous pastor once said, it's not my job to convict the people, it's whose job? It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict people. Now I'll grant that that's true.

If you're to come under any real conviction as a Christian, it will be the work of the Holy Spirit wrought in your heart by his hand. But I would go further and say, Pastor, it's your job to be the instrument of the Holy Spirit, to be used by him. Now, I'm not saying that it's a pastor's job to manipulate the people, to bind their consciences, to set up all kinds of other rules and expectations that you don't find in the Scripture. That's not a pastor's job. But it is a pastor's job to actually make the people sorry for their sins by exhorting them to repentance and faith. And so if you're like, man, I hope he doesn't talk anymore about reading my Bible until next week when I've done better, then I hope that I've done my job, at least in part. Because if we were left to ourselves, honestly, just simply with the issue of Bible reading, and we didn't have our shoulders pinned to the mat about...

How awful it is that we neglect God's words of salvation in favor of Facebook, sleep, homework, Legos. We wouldn't come to that conclusion for ourselves on our own. We'd say, I'm working on it. I know I need to get better at that. I feel bad that I haven't done better already. I'm going to try harder. Those are the things we tell ourselves. But then a week passes, and what do we have to show for it, honestly? Not what we would have to show for it if we knew that someone actually cared enough to say, no, this is important and you need to be doing it. And your excuses and your reasons and all of the things that you have to say and the fleeting thoughts that run through your mind, they don't count. They don't count. Your soul needs this. And you have to give your time and your energy to it. And there's no excuse you're going to make where I'm going to say, oh, oh, well, by all means then. That's the work of a pastor.

To feed the people the word of God. To teach them what it means. And to exhort them to believe it and to obey it. Not just simply to know it. So you should go away from today saying, my pastor really expects me to read my Bible this week. And not just thread the words through my eyes, but read it. He told me that my soul needs this nourishment. And that I'll appreciate church more and I'll be more of a help to my friends and my neighbors and my husband or my wife and my children or my parents if I do this work. And if I don't, he said, I don't have any excuse. That's what Paul tells Timothy to do here. Exhort the people. Teach the people. Win the people. Live as an example in front of the people. So this is our work. To serve God better and to be prepared to stand for the trials that we will inevitably face in our lives. This work is essential.

It's essential. There are many things that are not essential that are being called essential. This is essential. And we must do it. You and I must do it. Let's pray.