too much of me this month. I think easy to get confused. You're going to say it yourself. We're talking about the issue of my attitude toward the Word of God. We had discussed a little bit last week some of the ways in which we mistreat the Word. Is this a little bit too loud? It seems a little loud for me. That's what I was saying. I don't know if that's going to help enough. Does that help some? Okay. We did not get past question one last week. So let me, we will not break in the group so you can sit comfortably. Number two, do we Christians ever treat the Bible superstitiously or magically? And how do we do that? Maybe you've never thought about this question. How do we do it? Okay. Is that superstitious? Yeah, but in theory, the idea of doing that isn't superstitious or magical, is it? Right. How else do we treat the Bible superstitiously or magically, you think? Have you ever felt that if you had a Bible with you, you were more protected than if you didn't have a Bible with you? Or they had Bibles with metal covers, metal crates to them, didn't they? And we had illustrations now, but I sometimes wonder if we Christians think, if I just walk around, if I have my Bible with me, Or if I have a Bible in the car, I'm less apt to have a car accident or that kind of stuff. Those would fit into the category of treating the Bible as kind of... Say it again? More holy and more spiritual. Okay. So just by possessing the Bible, we're more holy, we're more godly. Let me give you three ideas of what I'm talking about here. When I say we treat the Bible sometimes superstitiously or magically, you might want to write these down. Sometimes I think we treat the Bible like a kind of religious rabbit foot. Religious rabbit foot. You know, some people actually have a keychain with a rabbit foot. Must be a lot of footless, feetless rabbits running around. But in Western culture, rabbit foot is considered a good luck charm. I think sometimes Christians treat the Bible as a kind of religious rabbit's foot, like a good luck charm. If you have it with you, your day is going to go better. Things are going to happen to you that are nice. Other people treat the Bible, other Christians might treat the Bible as a kind of holy horoscope. I don't look at a horoscope. You shouldn't look at a horoscope. I'm not advocating looking at a horoscope. I'm only using a figure of speech here, okay? But there are people every day who check the newspaper and they look at the section called the horoscope. Now, the horoscope breaks down, divides people into groups having to do with their birthday and connected with the stars and all this kind of stuff. And they get certain statements each day about how their day is going to go. Do you think we ever treat the Bible that way? I say, no way. Yeah, we do. There are people who treat the Bible and they pop it open and they drop the finger down and they say, well, that must be my verse for the day. All who make idols are nothing. I don't know what that means, but that's my verse for the day. You see what I'm saying? You've got that kind of blank look that scares me as a teacher, okay? If you can kind of unblank yourself a little bit, just work with me here, okay? I'm saying some of us. Some of us, not you, I'm not saying you, but some of us, some of us treat the Bible almost like the non-Christian treats a daily horoscope. Anybody agree with me? Can I hear an amen? And I heard the third day he dropped his finger in a verse that said, whatever you do, do quickly. That's a very dangerous way to treat it. This sounds like a trick question to me. Well, I guess my question would be, why would you want to destroy the Bible unless it's so damaged, you know, books are missing or pages are missing? That's a very good point, a very good point. Do we, let's say we had a Bible like that. How would you just, for some of us, it'd be terrible to just throw it in the garbage. They say, what am I doing? That's God's Word. Here's the question. Are we treating it magically as that form? Like it's a special kind of book. It's a super spiritual kind of paper. I think we need to be real careful there. We're not to mistreat the Bible. We are to show respect for the Bible. So some of us are a little bit too casual. We get home and take our Bible and toss it on the desk or something. Maybe we need to think about that a little bit, but it is not a magic book. I heard a voice. Is it yours? I think we need to do a special book. Of course. It's God's Word. But the paper is not special, and the binding is not necessarily special. The power is not in the physical book itself. Would you agree with that? That's a good point, too. There are places where you can take your own Bible. Do you have information about that? Yeah? So there are things that can be done. unless it's missing books, and then I'm not sure what we want to do in that scope. The only problem is you use the wrong kind of tape. Down chapel, we need duct tape. That's not the point, though. It's another use of duct tape. Let me give you a third and a final suggestion or illustration of how we treat the Bible magically. And this was my favorite. Sometimes we treat the Bible like a religious rabbit's foot. Sometimes we treat it like a holy horoscope. I think thirdly, sometimes we treat it like a fundamentalist fortune cookie. Write it down. Write it down. Something to think about. A fundamentalist fortune cookie. We're fundamentalists, okay? We believe in the fundamentals of the faith. We believe in the basic major doctrines of the Christian faith. And you've all been to Chinese restaurants, right? At the end of your meal, what does the waitress or waiter do? They bring you a fortune cookie, usually wrapped in plastic, clear plastic, and you break open your cookie, you break open that plastic, break that cookie, and you usually read the little flip that's aside, don't you? Come on, tell the truth, you're in church now, okay? We all do it. It's kind of fun to do. Read that little flip of paper. That flip of paper may say something like this. It may say, you nice person, and you have good week ahead, you know, something that I say. I think sometimes Christians treat the Bible almost like it's a fundamental fortune cookie. You break it open and you find that happy little saying, and that's your verse. We're wrong to do that. By the way, I have sometimes fantasized about breaking into a fortune cookie factory. I'd like to break into a fortune cookie factory, and I'd seek in little white slips of paper that would say things like this. If you don't know Jesus, you in big trouble. Or drive home safely tonight, you just might meet God. Can you imagine those who read that? Or if you think the food was bad here, just wait. You're not working with me this morning. I can tell you. A little slow, that's okay. I want to do that before I die. Don't worry, I probably won't. But wouldn't it be interesting? for a little white flip of paper to say something that dramatic. Everyone I've ever read always says something nice. Why do they say something nice? Because that's what they're supposed to say. They're supposed to say something that makes us feel good, that makes us smile, that we chuckle about, or that people say, you know, that's more accurate than I thought it would be, right? And after a night of Mugu Guy Pan, you know, you don't want to read a saying that says something pretty internal and pretty earth-shattering. I suspect there are times when we treat the Bible as a fundamental fortune cookie, we get out of it, what we want to get out of it, we gravitate toward the nice sections of Scripture, the happy uplifting sections, and we don't read the whole Word of God. Does that make sense to you? Those three images? Give you three little pigs? Three little pickles. Oh, the first John. Okay. I know you're mixing things there. It's going to look like this. Okay. Question three. If your non-Christian friend says to you, what is the Bible to you, how would you respond? And what scriptures would you use to back up your opinion? What would you get down here? The Bible to me is blank in the scripture which teaches me to hold this view is what? The Bible to me is the Word of God in what scriptures? First John I, one to five? Matthew. Oh, you mean John's Gospel. Okay. How about Genesis one, one? Well, do both questions. The Bible to me is blank. Scripture which teaches me to hold its view is. The Bible to me is the Word of God, okay? And Genesis one, one is the Scripture, okay? Okay. Okay. But did all of you answer the question the same way? The Bible to me is the Word of God. Is that the only answer you gave? The Word of God. Okay. Okay. I'm looking for other answers too. Psalm one hundred. Okay. Okay. So how did you answer this question? The Bible to me is. Can you say the Word of God? Okay? Because I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just wondering if you might have chosen a little different way to express that. That is, if you might have said, Psalm one hundred, shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. In other words, someone could have said, the Bible to me is the reason to be a happy person, or the Bible to me is the reason for joy. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can pick a lot of different scriptures here. Go ahead. What I want to do with you to wrap up this lesson is to give you five helpful images of the Word of God that I've discovered as I kind of thought about what my attitude ought to be toward the Word. And I would encourage you to jot these down and jot down the scriptures that I use and think about them. We would all agree the Bible is the Word of God. We would all agree the Bible alone is the Word of God. It's not the Book of Mormon. It's not science and health. It's the key of the scriptures. It's not the Bhagavad Gita. It's not the Quran. It's not divine principle from Amunis. It is the Bible and the Bible alone. And we have good reasons for believing that. But as I thought about this, I've asked the question, what is the Bible to me? Yes, it's the Word of God. But what are some other ways to look at it? So let me give you some of this material and feel free to stop me as I kind of race through this. The first image that comes to my mind of the Word of God is that it is a hidden treasure. It is a hidden treasure. And just get these references down if you would. Psalm one nineteen verse fourteen. Psalm one nineteen verse fourteen. The psalmist declares, I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. Psalm one nineteen fourteen. Psalm one nineteen verse eighteen. One nineteen eighteen. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Psalm one nineteen verse seventy two. One nineteen seventy two. The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. And then Psalm one nineteen verse one twenty seven. One nineteen one twenty seven. I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold. The Word of God is, to me, a hidden treasure. Story is told of Roger Miklos, one of the world's foremost modern-day treasure hunters. Miklos works for a large salvage company, and back in nineteen seventy-eight he said this, he said, a very conservative estimate of the treasure still lost off the U.S. coast between North Carolina and Florida. indicate that there's enough to put one million dollars in the pocket of every man, woman, and child living in New York City. Some contrary. Off the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Enough to put a million dollars in the pocket of every man, woman, and child living in New York City. My question is this. Why give that money to New Yorkers? Okay. I mean, North Carolina to Florida, that last time I looked out was the South, wasn't it? The treasures that are waiting for us in the Word of God are immeasurable. But many of us stand on the shore refusing to launch out in the deep to mine them for ourselves. The Word of God is a hidden treasure. And I'll give you a second after each of these. This will see if you've got a quick comment. I see it's still only five minutes and nine, so I've got over an hour here that we can work together. Any quick questions or comments here? Word of God has a hidden treasure. How many Christians go through their whole Christian lives never engaging in the salvage operation, digging into the Word, mining out that gold and silver thing. Okay? Second image. The second image that comes to my mind about the nature of the Bible is that of the believer's food. The believer's food. Absolutely. That's not one of the ones that I have, but that's a good one. Job twenty-three twelve. Job twenty-three twelve tells us that Job treasured the words of God's mouth more than my daily food. Job twenty-three twelve. Jeremiah fifteen sixteen says, Jeremiah fifteen sixteen. When your words came, I ate them. They were my joy and my heart's delight. The Christian who wants to become strong must feast on the word of God. It should be the disciple's diet. Heard about a man who says he was watching a new mother feed her new baby. As soon as she spooned food into his mouth, he pushed it out with his tongue. She would scoop the food off his chin and again place it in his mouth. This was repeated many times, interspersed with coughs and fudders by the baby. The man watching this new mother asks, how can you tell when he's had enough? That's easy, she said. The meal is over as soon as one of us begins to cry. For many Christians, the meal has not even started. God must weep when we allow His Word to sit undisturbed and undigested on ourselves. One of my favorite passages here is Hebrews chapter five, and you know the text. Hebrews five says, In fact, though, by this time you ought to be teachers, Hebrews five, twelve through fourteen, by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk being still an infant is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. You'll notice in those verses in Hebrews five that the writer moves from the idea of a student needing remedial education to the idea of an infant who can only digest milk. Now, we don't criticize infants who need milk, but it would be sad for an adult to be unable to consume more solid food. There was a slogan used by dairy farmers a number of years ago that said, milk does a body good. Yes, it does. But it must not be the only nourishment that that body gets. A milk-only diet leads to what I call milk toast Christian. You ever heard of milk toast? It's spelled M-I-L-Q-U-E. I had to look it up. Milk toast is a British dish of warm buttered bread soaked in milk. Yuck. The British eat strange things, right? Milk toast. It's the idea of something for someone frail, someone who is weak. A milk-only diet leads to milk-toast Christians. The Christian who lives on milk is criticized here, for that believer ought to be moving to a more substantial diet. In Hebrews five, we read in verse fourteen, solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Did you catch it? We are to train ourselves. I am not to go through life blaming other people for my lack of advancement in the Word of God. I cannot go through life saying, well, I grew up in a chapel that had poor preachers. Or I went through a string of very ineffective Sunday school teachers. Or I had a spouse who didn't read the Word of God as much as I did, so she didn't encourage me. I'm to take responsibility for my own life. Hebrews five, fourteen says that I am to train myself. Christians must stop blaming their pastors, their Sunday school teachers, their churches for not training them. We must train ourselves. We must use the word of God. And when we do, we will gain discernment. We will be able to discern between good and evil. One of the things that I've developed over the years that I've had fun with, especially in some of the assemblies in North Carolina, is I developed a little one-day seminar called Studying Scripture for Yourself, a little notebook of about twenty pages and through, I think it's about four or five sessions on a Saturday and then a Sunday morning, I go through some of the basics of how to study scripture for yourself. I mean, really, very elementary stuff. But the feedback that I've gotten from those places where I've done that, they've really appreciated it. I talk about things like how to outline a passage, how to study figures of speech, what are some things that should guide us as we read Scripture, and so on. We need that kind of stuff. I think we make mistakes if we assume that all Christians know how to sit down with the Bible and study it for themselves. We assume people don't know how to do that. No. A lot of people don't know how to do it. They don't know where to start. They don't know the kinds of questions to ask. They don't know what books to start studying. Very important that we go over that. Hebrews five says we are to train ourselves. And if we train ourselves, we will begin to develop a discernment. We will be able to discern between good and evil. Occasionally, I listen to Prairie Home Companions, which is a radio show. Anybody else confess we're listening to Prairie Home Companions once in a while? Garrison Keeler is the American humorist, and he professes to be a believer. In fact, grew up in an exclusive or closed brethren family. But there are times when he gets a little bit too risque for my taste, but most of the time I enjoy his humor, and he has a live radio broadcast on National Public Radio, I think it's called, from Minnesota. Once in a while, he'll read a poem that he's found that he thinks is good, and one that he read a few weeks ago, I like. It's slightly irreverent, but it sums up nicely what I'm trying to say in this second image of the Word of God, that the Word of God is to be the believer's diet and that we are to train ourselves to discern between good and evil. It's a poem written by Philip Appelman, real short, called, Oh, Karma, Dharma, Pudding, and Pie. Here's what Appelman says. O karma, dharma, pudding and pie, give me a break before I die, grant me wisdom, will and wit, trustworthy, loyal, sorry, pure, let me start again.O karma, dharma, pudding and pie, give me a break before I die, grant me wisdom, will and wit, purity, probity, pluck and grit, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, give me great abs, and a steel-trap mine, and forgive ye God some humble advice. These little blessings would suffice to beget an earthly paradise. Make the bad people good and the good people nice. And before our world goes over the brink, teach the believers how to think. Isn't that good? Teach the believers how to think. How do we learn to think? Hebrews five says, it's by training ourselves in discernment in the Word of God. So if I think about the Word not only as a hidden treasure, but also as the believer's diet, as the believer's food, it should make a big difference. Maybe you have a comment there. That's the second image that I've looked at, and then I'm going to move to third. Soul food. That's good. Yeah. which is of course what Paul says in Ephesians, isn't it, that we're blown here and there by every wind of doctrine? We live in a pluralistic society. That is, we live in a society that says no opinion should be discriminated against. But that's a far cry from saying all opinions are equally valid. You see the difference between the two? If you choose to believe that the earth is flat, I can't persecute you for that. But you can be absolutely certain. I'm not going to get you to be my travel agent if I'm going to take a trip somewhere. You can choose to believe what you want, but that doesn't mean that what you believe or I believe holds equal validity. So in its quest for tolerance, our world has lost an ability to discern truth. And that's where we as Christians need to be in the world. We need that diet. And I wonder sometimes whether or not, though physically we may look well-fed, Spiritually, we might not be rather anorexic or bulimic or starving ourselves to death. You just can't see it on the outside. You need to be feeding on God's Word. It's the diet for the believer. And I think sometimes that part of our job as Christians is not just answering the questions people are asking. Sometimes it's saying to them, that's a good question, but there's a more important question than you do ask. Because young people today are often asking the question, how can I find somebody to love me? Or how can I find meaning and significance in love? And those are important questions. But just because they're the questions being asked does not mean they're the most important questions. Sometimes we have to help people learn to ask the right questions. And I think that's part of this assignment. He did five of them. There's a third image that comes to my mind. If you're counting, I've only got five of these. You jotting them down. Third image that comes to my mind about the nature of the Bible is that it is a collection of taste studies. A collection of taste studies. Now, the expression taste study may be a new one to use. But the Bible is a collection of taste studies of those who live for God and those who did not. Romans fifteen four says, Romans fifteen four, for everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. You ever thought about the Bible that way? That the Bible is a collection of tastes. By a case study, we mean it's a person's life or even a story about a group of people with respect to how they either lived for God or did not live for God, and their story is given to us in the Word. We can study that. We can learn from that. Let me give you some illustrations of this. The sheer richness of Scripture, especially the Old Testament, allows us to study the lives of men and women and their failures and successes, including God's commentary on their lives. Wise is the Christian who studies Joseph on the sovereignty of God. Genesis chapters forty-five and fifty. David on the steps leading to great sin, second Samuel eleven, as well as Nathan on the steps in restoring a fallen believer, second Samuel twelve. Balem and his matter-of-fact discussion with his donkey on doing the will of God. Numbers twenty-two. The three Jewish young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, on not committing idolatry, no matter how many times the pagan king strikes up the band. Daniel chapter three. Kings fall on God's definition of true obedience. Ghosts. I don't hear any ghosts. First Samuel fifteen. You get it? Remember in First Samuel fifteen? Saul says to Samuel, I've done what God wanted me to do. I've obeyed the Lord. The next verse says that the blinking of the goat, Samuel hears it. And he says, what is this Lord? God can't destroy all of it. And you spared the best of the flock. You disobey God. That's why I said studying the life of King Saul on God's definition of true obedience would be interesting to do. Studying Isaiah on God's hatred of empty ritual, Isaiah chapter one, the book of Habakkuk on the absurdity of idolatry, Habakkuk chapter two, Solomon on the emptiness of life without God, the book of Ecclesiastes. By the way, you've got to be careful there with the book of Ecclesiastes. Let me tell you why. I believe that Solomon writes the book of Ecclesiastes almost tongue-in-cheek. It's what I call, you've heard of the expression reverse psychology. I think he uses reverse theology. I think Solomon writes Ecclesiastes to say, if you're going to live your life without God, let me tell you how to do that. If you're going to live your life under the sun, S-U-N, ignoring God, then let me tell you what I've learned. All of vanity. All of life is infinite without God. using a kind of reverse theology. You've got to be careful with Ecclesiastes, by the way. Let me give you two verses here that are interesting. Did you know that Ecclesiastes eight fifteen says this? Ecclesiastes eight fifteen. So I commend the enjoyment of life because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and do glass. Do you know that in the Bible? It's got to read within its context. Ecclesiastes eight fifteen. Even worse is Ecclesiastes ten nineteen. Anybody have that one memorized? A feast is made for laughter and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything. Did you know that was in the book of Ecclesiastes? That's in the book of Ecclesiastes. Because Solomon is writing this book saying, let me take the position of someone who is ignoring God, is living life under the sun without God. If there is no God, if life is not to be lived for God, then money is the answer for everything. One does make the life merit and so on. And, of course, once in a while in Ecclesiastes, Solomon will, in a sense, let it slip and say, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. So he's not a thoroughgoing skeptic or unbeliever in a book of Ecclesiastes. It's a fascinating book. As a friend of mine says, the stories in the Old Testament are just too good to confine to our Sunday school children. We adults need to learn from those like Enoch who walked with God, Genesis five. Sarah who laughed at God's promise, Genesis eighteen. Jacob who wrestled with God, Genesis thirty-two. And Joseph who knew what to do with sexual temptation, Genesis thirty-nine. And those examples are from only one of the sixty-six books making up the Bible. You see what I'm doing here? Who's making sense to you? This means yes, this means love. Okay. I'm saying the Bible is a collection of taste studies. I can study the life of Enoch. I can study the life of Sarah. I can study the life of Joseph and learn things. A few more examples. We learned about the power of greed from Elisha's servant Gahazi, second Kings five. The power of self-deceit from King Saul. We looked at that already, first Samuel, fifteen. The power of prayer from Elijah, first King seventeen. We receive a crash court in bad spiritual counseling from Job's friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, most of the chapters in Job. And we see the disastrous effects of lying to the Holy Spirit in the life of a deceitful couple in the book of Acts, Acts chapter five. I tell my theology students that the doctrines we believe are really there in Scripture. although we always need to test our beliefs by what the Word of God actually says, who can overlook the truth of the deity of the Holy Spirit as one examines the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts five. Remember Peter said to them, you've not lied to men, you've lied to God. You've lied to God. Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? You've not lied to men, you've lied to God. You see it? You lie to the Holy Spirit, you lie to God. And God has to come down and scourge you both in asking you. We learn about the danger of false teachers and their teaching set forth in the little epistle of Jude. And God has to come down and scourge judgment and execute both of them. Absolutely. We learn about the danger of false teachers and their teaching set forth under the little epistle of Jude. we see the wonder of heaven as described by one who actually went there. Second Corinthians twelve, Paul being caught up to paradise. The awful fate of dying without a knowledge of God is told by, in Jesus' story, the rich man in Lazarus in Luke sixteen. The powerful truth of the purpose of tragedy as shown in the stories of the man born blind, John nine, and the friend Jesus purposely allowed to die, John eleven. He purposely allowed his friend, Lazarus. Time to die. Case studies, one's entire earthly life could be dedicated to pouring over these visible vignettes of God's grace and judgment and never complete the study. Do you ever look at the Bible that way? Not only a hidden treasure, it's not only the believer's food, it's a collection of case studies so that I can read about people that are so much like I do. And I can see when they obeyed God. I can see when they disobeyed God. And by God's commentary in the Word, I can see the process they go through. It's an amazing thing. Again, David's sin with Bathsheba in Second Samuel eleven is so illustrative here. You see the steps leading to David's moral downfall that impact any one of us semi-conscious men. You see the same steps in our lives, potential steps. Somebody's asked the question, why is the Bible so big? I think it's like, what, fifteen hundred pages. Why so big? I think because God loves us that much. He loves us enough. He loves us so much that he gives us example after example after example from a wide variety of perspectives. Men, women, children, kings, servants. Have you thought about that? The sheer variety in the Word of God. You can spend your whole life studying all these people and lying on your deathbed. Somebody says, well, you really understood the Word of God, haven't you? He said, no, just scratch the surface. I think one of Satan's greatest victories is convincing Christians that the people and events of this book are so long ago that it no longer applies to me. I think that's where he's gotten a great victory. Because these are not events that took place in the nineteen hundreds or in the year two thousand or in the twentieth century. These are things that took place thousands of years ago. And sometimes that time distance causes us to say, well, that can't apply to me. How am I like them? How am I like Isaiah? What do I have in common with Daniel or Peter until I start studying the information? And I look at Simon Peter and I say, that's exactly the way I am. Mark Twain once said, it's not the part of the Bible I understand that bothers me. It's not the part of the Bible I don't understand that bothers me. It's the part of the Bible I do understand. Sometimes it's more too close. Two more images. The fourth image, the fourth image which occurs to me concerning the nature of the Bible may surprise you a bit. It surprised me when it dawned on me. You've seen that the Word of God, help me with this. Word of God is a hidden treasure. Can you talk in church? Is that legal? The Word of God is a, let's see, a group activity here. Is he your designated representative here? Go ahead, I'm a group. Okay, so give them to us again. Give them to me later, okay? The fourth image that occurs to me is this. The Word of God, the Bible, is the autobiography of God. You never know about that. The Bible is the autobiography of God. Do you know the difference between a biography and an autobiography? Yes. If I were to write my own life story, nobody would buy it. But if I wrote my own life story, that would be an autobiography. Auto means self. That means I'm writing my own life. A biography is somebody else writing about me. The Bible is the autobiography of God. Now, what we don't mean is that everything about God has told us in the Bible. Not everything we would like to know about God has told us. There are things that we don't know. The Bible's truth about God is sufficient but not comprehensive. We also don't mean that the Bible tracks the history of God in the sense that God ages or matures or even learns. If you were writing a biography about me, or if I were writing a biography about myself, I'd talk about where I'd learned things, where I'd matured, where I'd change my mind. Follow me? We don't get any of that with God. He's perfect. He changes not. So that's not what we mean by the autobiography of God. What we do mean is that the Bible discloses the mind and heart of God. We learn of His passion for lost people, Matthew, where Jesus says, as a mother hen would gather her chicks around her, that's what I wanted to do, but you would not, you would have none of it. We learn of God's care for his creation, Psalm one forty-five, Acts fourteen. We learn of his joy and delight in those he has redeemed. Psalm one forty-seven, Isaiah sixty-two. The Bible is God using and protecting fallible men to record his truth about himself and his plans for his creation. So when I say the Bible is the autobiography of God, it is God's vehicle of teaching us about Himself. It is God describing His own attributes, His own characteristics, His own plans, His desires, His longings, the things that bring Him joy, the things that bring Him greed. And it's that. So if I want to know the heart of God, I better get into the Word of God. If I want to know the things that really get Him furious, I'd better study the words. I'd better study the words. If I want to know what it is God is seeking to do in this world, I need to do the Word of God. There was an article in the September, two thousand issue of Reader's Digest by David McCullough called Read My Lips. And he said this, he's talking about reading, he said, he makes the important point that nothing ever invented can give you a bigger life than a book. And he continues, we're being sold the idea that information is learning and we're being sold a bill of goods. The greatest of all avenues to learning, to wisdom, adventure, pleasure, insight, to understanding human nature, understanding ourselves and our world and our place in it is a reading book. Now, I don't really disagree with Mr. McCullough in what he has said. I came to the love of reading late in my life, so identify with his passion in encouraging others to read books. My concern is for these books. And getting to know the God of the Bible brings the greatest wisdom, adventure, pleasure, insight. Beginning to study His nature is the key to understanding ourselves and our world and our place in it. How sad it would be to spend all of one's life reading books but missing the book. There's a writer by the name of Herrick Johnson who asked this question. He says, if God is a reality and the soul is a reality and you are an immortal being, what are you doing with your Bible shut? You have to. You say it again. If God is a reality and the soul is a reality and you are an immortal being, What are you doing with your Bible shut? So if the Bible is the autobiography of God, then that means there are tremendous blessings waiting for me as I dig into the Word, as I spend time in the Word of God, as I get to know the Word. Let me move to a fifth and final image of the word, and that is as follows. Not only is the Bible a hidden treasure, the believer's food, a collection of case studies, and the autobiography of God. The last image I want to touch on is that of the Bible providing the divine agenda for the believer. The Bible provides the divine agenda, the divine agenda for the believer. God's plan, yes. When I think of the term agenda, I think of a well-planned and conducted meeting for a specific