- Thanks, Brittany, and good morning, Life Church, I'm glad that you're with us this morning. We don't know one another. My name's James Sharpe, I'm one of the elders here. It's my joy to open God's word with you. We're gonna be in first Peter, the end of chapter one today. This is the fifth week, as we're walking through Peter's letter to a group of churches in Asia and ultimately for us. This morning as we look at chapter one, verse 22 to chapter two, verse three, that's our passage. I just think it'll be helped if you can have the passage in front of you, and so I love it. If you'd grab your Bible and turn there and wait for me. In the winter of 2015, a man in Scottsdale, Arizona was helping his elderly neighbor move. This elderly man was packing up all of his worldly possessions to move out of the house that he'd been in for many years and into a retirement home. And while the two of them were in the garage, the neighbor stumbled upon something, something that he immediately suspected was valuable. It was a framed, autographed photo, a really poster of the late Los Angeles Lakers star shooting guard, Kobe Bryant. In the neighbor, he sees this poster and he immediately wonders to his neighbor how much is this thing worth? And the owner of the home said it had never really occurred to him that the poster might be worth much. And so they called in an appraiser and asked him to come and determine the value of the signed poster. The appraiser arrived and he did eventually estimate the poster's value to be about $300. However, by the time he left, no one was thinking about the poster of Kobe Bryant anymore. That's because while the appraiser was in the garage, he noticed, leaning against the wall, a stack of old paintings. He looked through the paintings and immediately suspected that the style of one of them looked familiar. And so he called his boss, who then called his boss, who then called in over the next 18 months, a team of leading art critics and historians and private investigators and forensic scientists. And eventually all of those experts determined that this painting, Leeney against the wall in this guy's garage was an original Jackson Pollock. Apparently the homeowner's estranged sister had died in the 90s and she had been a friend of a friend of Jackson Pollock's in New York City in the 1950s. He had given her this painting at some point. When she had died, her brother had just shipped all of her possessions from New York City to his home in Arizona, left most of them in the garage, never suspecting that one of those items was a piece of art worth, eventually according to those appraisers, $15 million. Just think, for a few minutes, these guys were excited about a photo of Kobe Bryant. Our passage in first Peter this morning, it talks a great deal about scripture, about the Bible. Peter calls the Bible the living and abiding word of God in our text. And as we start this morning, I just want to, as gently and as humbly as I can, lay before us an idea. When it comes to the Bible, I think we all know that we have something that's valuable. We know that it's worth something. However, most of us, most of the time, we treat it more like a Kobe Bryant poster than a Jackson Pollock original. And what I mean is we appreciate it, we're thankful for it. Just like we'd be thankful if, you know, 300 bucks fell into our laps, but we all recognize the fact that our attitudes and actions would be quite different if a $15 million painting landed in our laps. Whereas you're glad for 300 bucks, a priceless painting is something that you would treasure and cherish. For most of us, that would be an object that changes everything in our lives. And so what I'm really suggesting this morning is that none of us treasure scripture, as we should, you don't, I don't, we don't. Like we recognize that scripture has value, we recognize that it's important. But when you look at our lives, when you actually measure or assess the things we do and the things that we don't do, the things that we love and the things that we don't love, the ways that we spend our time and the ways we don't spend our time. We actually boil down who we really are and what we really give ourselves to. I don't think there's one person here who can truthfully and credibly say, I live like the word of God is the precious treasure that it is. I don't say that this morning is a rebuke in any way. I simply think here, there is an opportunity for repentance. There's an opportunity for us to recognize that we don't respond to scripture as we should and an opportunity to ask the Lord to help us change. And so this morning we're gonna read 1 Peter 1, 22 to 2, 3. And I'm gonna point out from the text really three reasons why scripture should be a priceless treasure to us. And our prayer this morning is, it's just that the Lord would change our hearts, that he would cause us to recognize, to appreciate and to value scripture the way we should. So let's read God's word. Two Christians in Asia, 2,000 years ago, but for us inspired by the Holy Spirit through the pen of the Apostle Peter. This is 1 Peter 1, 22 to 2, 3 this morning. Peter writes, "Having purified your souls "by your obedience to the truth "for a sincere brotherly love, "love one another earnestly from a pure heart. "Since you have been born again, "not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, "through the living and abiding word of God. "For all flesh is like grass, "and all its glory, like the flower of grass, "the grass withers and the flower falls, "but the word of the Lord remains forever." And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Church, this is God's word for us today, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. So we're looking for three reasons why scripture should be a priceless or precious treasure to us. Think you'll be able to see all three clearly in the text by the time that I'm done. However, and this will irritate those of you who are especially OCD. I'm gonna jump back and forth in our passage in order to show you these things and I'm gonna begin in the middle. So here's the first reason why we should treasure the word of God. Should treasure the word of God because the word of God nothing on this earth endures forever. The word of God endures forever. Think you can see this idea emerging from verses 23 to 25. Look with me in verse 23. Peter, he says, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. Now, if you've been listening or reading first Peter very carefully with us, then you've noticed by now that Peter is almost obsessed with this idea of things that are perishable and things that are imperishable. He just keeps talking about this contrast again and again. So for example, in chapter one verse four, he talked about an inheritance that's kept in heaven for Christians. And he says that that inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. And then in chapter one verse seven, he says that our faith in the gospel is more precious than gold. And what's the problem with gold? Well, he says, because gold is perishable, whereas our faith in the gospel is imperishable. In chapter one, verses 18 to 19, he says that God has ransomed us from our sin, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. And now here in verse 23, Peter says that the word of God is an imperishable seed that brings us to new life. And so Peter, he just keeps talking again and again and again about things that are perishable versus things that are imperishable. And here he drives this home as he talks to us about the imperishable word of God by quoting from Isaiah chapter 40. This is what the prophet Isaiah said that Peter agrees with. He says, "For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory, like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever." I don't know about you, but one month ago, I couldn't mow my grass often enough. Right, it was just growing so rapidly. It was so green and so thick. And now it's withered, because we're in like the dormant season for the kind of grass that's growing in my yard, at least grass. It fades, it withers, it doesn't last forever. This is what Isaiah is saying. This is what Peter's agreeing with. Flesh and its glory, they're perishable, grass, no matter how healthy or lush or green it is. It will eventually wither. Flowers, no matter how glorious or beautiful they are, they will fall, but the word of the Lord, it remains forever. And so the things of earth, they falter and they fade over time. But God's word is imperishable. Scripture elsewhere teaches us that a human life is but a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. But God's word endures forever. And in light of those statements, I think we must wrestle with the fact that one of the main reasons why we don't treasure the word of God as we should is because we too often trust in the permanence of things that aren't actually permanent. Where we act like there are certain things in life that will endure even when they won't. We treat things that will wither and fall. Like they're certain and like they will last forever when they don't. Now we don't do this with everything. When you go to the store and you buy a gallon of milk, right, you basically climb into the cooler and reach all the way to the back of the shelf to get the freshest gallon of milk that is on that shelf because everyone knows milk has an expiration date and we know that the gallon of milk that's at the back of the cooler, that's the freshest one, the newest one. In other words, its expiration date is farthest away and nobody wants to buy a gallon of milk that spoils before we have time to drink all of it. This is what we do. Now in my family, I don't drink milk because it's gross. But my kids, they have always drank a lot of milk and when they were young, especially, like it felt like we could never make milk last, right, a gallon of milk would last a day or two at most. Sometimes it felt like they would open it and drink all of it before we had managed to put the rest of the groceries away. And we even would joke about the fact that we could just like openly mock the expiration date on a gallon of milk because we would just never reach it, right? My kids would drink it so quickly that it would not last. But still, we go to the store and we wouldn't buy the one at the front of the shelf. We buy the one at the back of the shelf because everyone recognizes that milk is perishable. And with some perishable things, we treat them the way we ought to treat them. We treat them like they don't last. But there are other perishable things that we foolishly treat like they will last forever. There are perishable things that we trust in as if they are permanent or enduring. We trust in them like they won't fall or fade. We build our lives on them as if they're a foundation that won't crack or erode. This is what we do every time we make a decision based on our feelings rather than on the facts of Scripture. And who among us hasn't done that? Who among us hasn't done that this week? Who among us hasn't let our hearts lead us into decisions that our heads would never condone? But when we do that, we're foolishly assuming that our feelings will last. But the truth is our feelings never last. What we feel we want or need in this moment is almost never what we will feel we want or need one month from now or one year from now or one decade from now. Because our feelings they're fickle, they ebb, and they flow. And they're never truly satisfied. So even if we do feel like we have what we need, soon after that we'll feel that we need something more or different because our feelings are not stable. They do not endure, they are perishable. And so building your life upon what you feel, it's like trying to build a house on a raging ocean. Right, your heart gives you nothing firm to stand on. Nothing's stable, our feelings they don't last. It's God's word that does. Others of us, we try to build our lives upon what the world around us believes is right or good or true. In other words, we look to the opinions and approval of others or we look to the rising tides and prevailing winds of our culture. And we try to build our lives on those things as if they are sure in certain realities. But the truth is other people change their minds and the world around us changes its mind all the time but what is right and good and true. Right, there are things that our culture celebrated 10 years ago that are trashed today. There are people that our culture celebrated 10 years ago who are trashed today because they haven't been able to keep up with the way that our culture is constantly redefining what is right and what is wrong. The way that our culture is constantly changing what is good and true and beautiful and valuable. Now the race to stay on the right side of history, that's a race that is impossible to win. And so building your life on doing or being, what the world says is worth doing or being. Well that will only be as stable as the winds of culture and the tides of public opinion. The only foundation that will last in life is the word of God church. Don't you want to build your life on something that will endure forever? Don't you want to build your life on something that has no expiration date? Then build your life on the word of God. It's precious, it's priceless. Because while the things of earth fade, it never does. There's the second reason why God's word is so precious. The word of God brings new birth to dead sinners, to people like you and me. Look again at verse 23, Peter he writes, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. And what I want to submit to you is that the word through is really the key word in that sentence. That's the word that tells us that the word of God is how God brings dead sinners to new life in Christ. Now again, if you're a careful listener or a careful reader or first Peter along with us, you've picked up on the fact that new birth is also a pretty important idea in this letter. In fact, back in chapter one verse three, Peter told us, according to God's great mercy, he's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So it's according to God's great mercy that we're born again, says chapter one verse three. Now in our passage, you've been born again through the living and abiding word of God. And as you hear those two things and hold those two things together, perhaps you're wondering, well, which is it? Are we born again according to God's great mercy or are we born again through the living and abiding word of God? And the answer of course is yes. Peter's explaining both the why and the how of our new birth. The why is God's great mercy? God looks down upon all of history from his sovereign vantage point over history. And he sees our sin, he sees our rebellion against him, or he's a God who deserves to be worshiped and treasured above all things. He deserves to sit on the throne of our hearts, yet we have forsaken him and chosen other kings, namely ourselves, and we've forsaken him and chosen other things, namely created things. We've ignored him and we've been completely and utterly against him, he's seen this, yet he has shown us his great mercy. And through that great mercy, he has caused us to be made alive. That's why he did it. But how did he do it? Well, he did it through the living and abiding word of God. But God uses the proclamation of his word to bring dead sinners to faith. He uses the proclamation of his word to pierce our hearts with the truth of the good news of how we can be saved. Right God, according to his great mercy, he has won and Lee's son to die on the cross in our place to endure the just penalty of our sin, the son bore the wrath of God for us and then credited to us his perfect righteousness by faith. The word testifies to this. And when it's proclaimed and believed by grace, God makes those who were dead alive. He gives new birth through his living and abiding word. And I pray that you can see this morning in light of that, just how precious the word of God is. Right God has made a way for us to be forgiven. He's made a way for us to be whole and new, everything that we long to be. He tells us of that way in his word. When we listen to his word and when we believe we can be saved, do you believe that? And if you believe that, do you then proclaim that? Do you preach it? Every Christian in this room, I am sure, every Christian in this room has on their mind and heart, a loved one, a family member, a friend and neighbor, someone who is far from the Lord, someone that you pray for, someone that you long to see come and know the Lord. That's true for every one of us. We need to be clear about this though. Right the Bible, it only speaks of two kinds of people in the world. There are people who have received new birth and people who have not received new birth. There's nothing in between those two extremes. And so what do we who have received new birth? What do we do for those who have not? Well, we have to realize that if someone is to receive new birth, they'll only receive that through hearing and believing the word, right? Unless they hear the word and unless they believe it, they'll never be reborn. And I'm making this point because it seems that there are some Christians who don't want to be as firm on this point as the Bible itself actually is. Like for example, this is just one example of this, but perhaps you have at different points in your life, heard people quote, this is a quote that's often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi and it says something like, preach the gospel at all times when necessary use words. Preach the gospel at all time when necessary use words. There are a couple of issues with that. One being the fact that it doesn't seem that St. Francis of Assisi actually ever said anything likes that. But the other issue is that the people who misquote him or attribute this quote to him, what they're really doing is they're hoping to encourage Christians to display the love of Jesus through their lives. And Christians should display the love of Jesus through their lives certainly. We should love other people, we should be kind, we should be Christ-like. The truth of our love for our Lord should be set against the backdrop of our love for other people. It should shine brilliantly and brightly against the backdrop of how we conduct ourselves in this world. But we should not confuse living godly lives with preaching the gospel. Because it's only through the proclamation of the living and abiding word of God, which verse 25 says is the good news that was preached to you. Right, it's only through the proclamation of that word that dead sinners can be brought to new life in Jesus Christ. In other words, random acts of kindness will not cause people to be born again. Helping old ladies cross the street will not cause people to be born again. It simply is not possible for someone to see you mowing your neighbor's lawn when he's out of town and suddenly conclude, you know what? So-and-so is a really good guy. I must be a sinner deserving the wrath of God. I need to repent and trust in Jesus. No, that is not possible. That conclusion will only be reached through the proclamation of the living and abiding word of God. And so as Christians, we must be people who proclaim the living and abiding word. But there's something even more that we can say about this. It's the truth that those who proclaim the living and abiding word can rely on the power of the living and abiding word. Right, because that word is, according to Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that word is powerful. Right, it does bring dead sinners to new life in Jesus Christ. Now, I stand up here before you. There is nothing in me that can persuade you of anything. Right, like I am a weak and fallible and powerless man. But I stand here before you with great confidence in the fact that God can use this book in front of me. That he does use this book in front of me. And that the word that is preached, it is living and powerful. I'm not living in powerful, but it is living and powerful. And so we can trust that God will use it to pierce hearts and divide, joint and marrow in intention of the heart and soul and spirit and bring dead sinners to life. Right, there's great power here. And so we should treasure the word and we should proclaim that priceless word. Because when we proclaim the word, our God who is powerful uses his word, which is powerful to do what weak, fallible, limited people like you and me could never do. I'm a Christian today because when I was 18 years old I had a friend in high school, his name was Jeff Green. And Jeff was somebody that I kind of looked up to and respected. He was really smart, he is really smart. And I wanted to be like Jeff in some ways. And Jeff, he just asked me one day. He's like, James, have you ever thought about reading the Bible? And I had never thought about reading the Bible. I had a Bible, but I hadn't read it. And he said, maybe we should read the Bible together. And for reasons that I still don't completely understand, I said yes to that invitation. And then for about three months, he and I sat down together once or twice a week, cup of coffee, our Bible's open and we read first John together. One chapter at a time, one verse at a time. And I pretended otherwise, but Jeff really had to explain to me what virtually every single verse that we read actually meant. And I can't put my finger on a moment in time. And I can't explain it in purely natural terms. But at some point, as he and I poured over those words inspired by the Holy Spirit from the pen of the Apostle John to Christians in the ancient world and for us. Like as we read those things, God powerfully worked through his living and abiding word. And somewhere somehow like a switch was flipped and my eyes were opened to behold things that I had never been able to behold before. My ears were able to hear things that I had never been able to hear before. And most critically, my heart found something lovely that I had never found lovely before. And I came to faith through the good news that was preached to me, not in a sermon like this, but in a coffee shop. It's two 18 year old who had no idea where their lives were headed. Like poured over the one thing that is imperishable in our lives, the living and abiding word of God. Right, that's why that's a priceless treasure. Because it brings life where there was only death. Here's the third reason why we should treasure scripture. The word of God moves believers toward maturity. Right, so it doesn't just save us. It sanctifies us. It doesn't just bring us from death to life. It also conforms us to resurrection life when we will live without sin and free from all the effects of sin. And so Peter tells us that the word is the engine that drives us toward maturity as believers. Let me show you what I mean. And I said this to the first service to you. I have to confess to you. I've searched all week. I've prayed all week. I've worked all week for a way to make this point as clear and simple as I can. And I feel like I've failed to get there. And so I need you to like shift through a few gears with me as I explain to you what Peter is saying here. So just fix your eyes on the text 'cause everything that I'm gonna say, you'll be able to see it in the text. Our passage has two commands. The first is in verse 22. Peter says, "Love one another earnestly from a pure heart." The second is in chapter two, verse two, when he says, "Long for the pure spiritual milk." Those are the two commands in the passage. Go back to the first one for a minute. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart. How according to Peter, are we to do that? Now we would agree that loving one another earnestly from a pure heart, that's a mark of Christian maturity. That's not natural for us. We'll love one another when it's easy. We'll love one another when it's convenient. And we'll especially love one another when we get something in return. But that's not what Peter's commanding. He's saying love one another earnestly from a pure heart. And the word picture that he uses, the specific words that he uses, it's like this image of like a runner straining or striving towards the finish line. Like picture runner is, he's about to cross the finish line and break the tape that indicates like he's the one who's run the race, like how a runner leans into the tape as he strides forward, trying to compete against his opponents. That's the picture here. We're supposed to be straining and striving from a pure heart to earnestly love one another. That's not natural. We don't do that of our own accord, of our own volition. How is it that we do it? How can we do it? What moves us to do it? Well, Peter, he says, it's the living and abiding word. Notice the culpable of things. He says, having purified your souls, this is verse 22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth. Now pause for a minute. Buy your obedience to the truth. When Peter says that in this letter, that's like a code word for because you've believed the gospel. Like so for example, in chapter three, like Peter, he's gonna talk to the Christian wives of non-Christian husbands. How does he describe those non-Christian husbands? He calls them men who do not obey the word. Or in chapter four, he talks about people who are outside the faith as people who do not obey the gospel of God in verse 17. And so this idea of obedience to the word or obedience to the truth or obedience to the gospel, that's just a code word in Peter for what happens when we are converted. So having purified your souls because you're converted by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love. There it is, like why do you obey the word? It's for this sincere brotherly love that then allows you to love one another earnestly from a pure heart. My point is that it's the word that is the first cause in the chain of effects here. Why are you purified in your soul? Well, it's because of your obedience to the truth. What is the truth? It's the living and abiding word that was preached to you. And what's been the result of that? A sincere brotherly love. This is clearer in the second set of commands. Skip down to those first few verses of chapter two that we're looking at today. Peter says, put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. When my kids were young, like I didn't have to tell them to put their toys away unless they had had those toys out and we're playing with them, right? Peter, similarly here, he says, put away all of these things, malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander. And he wouldn't have to tell his readers to do that. And let's say it had those things out and they were playing with them. He says, put them up, put those things away. But then, and this is only one thought, one sentence in the Greek. He changes the metaphor and he says, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Put these bad things away, Peter says. And in their place, long for, just like a newborn baby longs for his mother's milk, long for the pure spiritual milk that is the word of God. Long for God's word and it will help you put away malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, right? It's the appetite for the word that drives a Christian toward maturity. My father turned 76 years old this January and as long as I can remember, he's been a bit of an audio file. Someone who really loves like to listen to music. I remember when I was really young, kind of the cabinet in his house where he kept all of his vinyl records. This is before it was like hip and retro to listen to vinyl again, of course. And then in the early 80s like when the compact disc came out, he was an early adopter on that technology and he started a CD collection. We finally, just a couple of years ago, convinced him to get rid of all of his CDs because all that's available for free on YouTube now. But like before he did that, he had thousands of CDs on shelves in his house. They were always like meticulously alphabetized. This isn't my point, it's just for free. They were always meticulously alphabetized and any time I'd go visit him, I would take a CD that belonged in the Ds and I would put it over in the Ws just to frustrate him whenever in the future he discovered that. So I just love to do that to him. But anyway, like my dad, he's loved to listen to music as long as I can remember. Right now, his taste in music, it's changed over the years. He's really into smooth jazz, which I absolutely hate. It's ironic that music that's intended to like calm you down can drive me to a rage, but it does. My dad listens to it all the time. But when I was young, his musical tastes were a little bit better. I remember a really steady diet of music from groups like, I don't know, Rod Stewart or Blood Sweat and Tears or Chicago. And maybe for a while, his absolute favorite band was The Carpenters. Because he loved The Carpenters, I was very familiar from a young age with the story of Karen Carpenter. If you're under the age of 35, that's a good chance you've never even heard of her. Karen Carpenter was one of the first people to kind of like publicly, in the public eye, struggle with anorexia. Her struggle with anorexia was so severe that she actually died at the age of 33, tragically, of congestive heart failure. Her heart failed because she just wouldn't or couldn't consume enough nutrients to sustain her body. But like her body just shut down on her because she didn't consume enough. Spurred on by anorexia. It was in the end a chosen malnutrition. They killed her tragically. I say that because just like-- this is Peter's point-- just like good nutrition can keep you healthy. And just like malnutrition can kill you. Our appetite for God's word, it will always shape our level of spiritual health. If we don't hunger for God's word the way a child hungers for milk, we're going to waste away. Our spiritual organs will begin to shut down, and they will eventually fail. If we don't consume a regular and steady diet of the imperishable spiritual milk that is God's word, we will shrivel and die. But if we long to consume the word of God, the living and abiding word, we'll look at what chapter 2, verse 2 says will happen. By it, you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. In other words, we'll grow up into maturity. We'll reach the goal of our salvation. Just like a newborn infant grows up by drinking his mother's pure milk. We'll grow up by a steady diet of the pure spiritual milk of the word of God. Simply put what Peter is saying is that there's no such thing as a healthy, mature Christian who's not devoted to consuming the word of God. Our spiritual health, it's always going to be determined by our diet of the word. If we're not longing for it, if we're not hungering for it, if we're not craving it, we're not going to be healthy. But if we do hunger for it, if we do crave it, and if we do consume it, we'll grow up into our salvation. We'll grow into maturity. That's how precious and priceless the word of God is. It's imperishable. It brings people to new birth. And not only does it save us, it sanctifies us. Moving us as we steadily and prayerfully consume it into maturity, what will you do with this priceless gift? What will we do with this priceless gift? Think back to the dude who founded Jackson Poly painting in his garage. How tragic would it be if he just left it in the garage? What a waste it would be if he did nothing with it. If he forgot about it, if he left it where it was and ignored it, if he decided he was too busy to deal with it, if he was just bored by it. What a waste it would be to ignore a priceless treasure like that. Don't you long to be a person who treasures scripture? Don't you long for us to be a church that treasures scripture? I'll be honest, that's one of my deepest and most persistent prayers for us. I don't really care in the end if the Lord brings us tons and tons more people. I don't really care in the end. They care for our budget swells and allows us to do lots of new ministry. And I don't really care in the end if we're able to redevelop this building and make it a better place for us to do ministry. Those things are good and they're important. But church, I don't pray that the Lord would do those things among us. The thing that I pray the Lord would do among us, I pray that he'd give us an increasing heart for his word. I pray that we would love it, that we would long for it, and that our lives would be shaped by it. And just imagine what would happen if that was true. I think many of those other things that we might pray for would come to fruition. But just imagine what it would be like. If we were people who burst through the doors of life church every Sunday, eager to hear, not from me, but from God as we set our eyes on his word. Picture our Bibles falling apart in our hands because we're so devoted to them in personal devotion and in group study. Imagine the life groups that we'd have to start month after month or year after year because we realize that we need to set our eyes on scripture together if we're going to grow in God's word truly. Imagine how our families would be strengthened. But if God's word was what we discussed over the dinner table, and in the minivan in the car rider line, and then imagine how Salisbury would look different, and how the effect of what God was doing here would resound to the ends of the earth. Like if we were really and truly people who hungered for, who longed for, and who treasured the word, I believe our wildest ambitions as a church would be realized if we simply loved scripture the way we should. May we be a people who hunger for the word of God, and through his word, may God change us for our own good and for his glory. Pray with me.
