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Steph, thank you very much. Please keep your Bible close at hand. We're going to come back to Matthew, chapter four in just a minute. Tonight we're thinking about the Bible. That's what we'll be thinking about tonight.

You might think, well, that's obvious, duh. But we're going to be thinking particularly about this book. What does it mean? What's it all about? And when we think about the Bible, some people in our world, in our society, maybe even in our churches, think, well, actually, the Bible is broken.

It's not really fit for purpose, is it? You know, we might look at the Bible and think, well, it's a bit of a shaky foundation.

Interesting book, perhaps, but is this the kind of thing I can really build my life on? Is it dependable? Is it trustworthy? Is it big enough to hold the weight of the big questions I've got about life and the world? Is it going to be a sure enough foundation to be able to deal with some of the big issues that are going on in my life?

Is the Bible broken? Is it a firm foundation or is it pretty shaky and, well, is it a questionable authority? We might hold the Bible up and think, well, this is the word of God, this is authority. This is good news.

It doesn't always feel like the best authority, does it? There are all sorts of things in this book which are frankly morally dubious, ethically questionable.

Does it just feel a bit out of touch with the reality of the world in which we live? Is the Bible broken? Now, over the next few weeks, we're going to be thinking about what we've called our core convictions, those things which help talk about, well, what kind of church is all saints? People might say, what kind of church is all saints? And it's easy to look around and look at the building or look at the type of songs we sing and think, oh, well, that's the kind of church we are.

But get more to the heart of it, what do we believe as a church? What things do we think are really important? What things do we want to cling on to and say, this is what we're really about. And we've got six things. We're going to be looking at them over the next few weeks, three now and then three a little bit later in the terminal.

We're number two tonight, which is Bible rooted. Bible rooted. And we summed it up like this, Bible rooted. We obediently submit to God's word as our supreme authority in all matters of faith and life. And you might all be thinking, gosh, I don't really.

After all you've said about that, really? That's what you think? I'm hoping we're going to see tonight why we think that and why it's really important that those who follow Jesus think that too.

We talk about it in two ways, don't we? Bible rooted. We are talking about the Bible as a foundation. These are our roots and we're also talking about it as authority. We obediently submit.

We bring ourselves under this authority, the Bible below and the Bible above. And as you picture that, you might immediately think, gosh, how crushing beneath and above. Isn't this book oppressive? We're restricting, crushing. Is this really what we want to believe as a church?

Now, last week, Steve helped us think about the first core conviction being Christ centred. And so what I want us to do tonight is to apply that first principle to the Bible. I love us as a church and as individuals to make our view of the Bible, Jesus view of the Bible, because that's surely what it means to be Christ centred, isn't it? If we want to put Jesus in the middle. Well, let's think about what Jesus thinks about the Bible.

Does Jesus think it's broken? Does he think it's a shaky foundation, questionable authority? Or is Jesus in fact himself Bible rooted? When we talk about something being rooted, Bible rooted, it's a picture of strength, stability, of balance, strong roots. And at the same time as well, it's a picture of source and sustenance and life.

That's where the tree gets its life and energy from, isn't it? And this picture is not unfamiliar in the Bible. Psalm one pictures a tree and it says, the one who delights in God's word, in God's law, is like a tree. You can picture it planted by a stream, and the stream is the kind of water, the source of life, and it's got big roots going down. That's the picture of the one who delights in God's word.

What does jesus say about the person who hears God's word and puts it into practise? What he says. They're like a wise builder. You remember the story, don't you? What does the wise builder build on rock?

A firm foundation? Or in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus tells a story about a sower, a farmer sowing seed. And he pictures the one who hears and receives God's word as like seed falling in good soil where the roots are able to go down, so the plant grows. You see, jesus thinks that God's word as a foundation is essential. In fact, there's all sorts of things that Jesus says about the Bible and they often come up when he's debating or having arguments with people in the gospels.

So, for example, in John chapter ten, he's having an argument with the Pharisees and he says to them, John 1035, scripture cannot be set aside. Well, actually, if you go translate that word more literally, scripture cannot be broken. You can't break scripture, you can't break God's word. You can't put it to one side and pretend it doesn't exist. Or in Matthew chapter 22, jesus is debating the Sadducees and they're having a bit of a debate about theological stuff.

And jesus says to them, you are in error because you do not know the scriptures. Or in the next chapter, Matthew chapter five, he's talking to his disciples and he says to them, I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets. That's shorthand for the Old Testament. But to fulfil them, jesus says, the Bible is really important. Scripture matters.

It can't be set aside. It's not broken. I've not come to abolish it. I've come to fulfil it, to complete it. But then he goes further.

He tells them that the Bible itself is Christ centred. John, chapter five, he talks about the scripture and says, they testify. They tell the truth about me.

Or in Luke chapter 24, when he's talking to his friends on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, it says, beginning with Moses and the prophets. Again, shorthand for the Old Testament. He spoke about the scriptures concerning himself.

Jesus says, the Bible is not broken. It can't be broken. And the Bible is Christ centred. It's all about him. Jesus thinks the words in this book are unbroken, authoritative, Christ centred.

But what about all the hard bits? What about the bits that we read and think, really, you want to put your life under that? Surely you don't actually believe what that says to you. And some ways it's often in the light of Jesus own teaching that those bits feel broken. Hang on a minute.

Jesus. Jesus feels like all about God's love. He's come to rescue us. And then we read those bits over there, think, really, is this the same book?

Here's a few verses that you might think, oh, the Bible's broken, isn't it? And they all come from the same book. These are all from deuteronomy. So the Lord God also gave into our hands og king of Bashan and all his army we struck them down, leaving no survivors.

The rest of the book goes on. There's lots of laws. There's lots of rules. There's commandments. Here's another one.

If any man or woman living among you in one of the towns the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, in violation of his covenant, take the man or woman who has done evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death. Great. So we've got stoning now. However, in the cities of the nations that the Lord your God has given you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Kill everything.

We carry on a bit. There's more stoning. There's more death penalties. Here's another one. If two men are fighting, you'll like this one.

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to the rescue of her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizing him by the private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. And there's more curses and all sorts of things. And here's the final one. I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them.

This is God speaking. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague. Okay, deuteronomy.

Good authority, good foundation. Maybe the Bible is broken, but look at how Jesus uses the Bible in Matthew, chapter four. Thank you, Steph, for reading that for us. Perhaps you just want to flick that up again.

Jesus is in the wilderness. He's being tempted by Satan.

Satan tempts him about his identity. If you're the son of Goddesse, he tempts him, saying, God's not really good, is he? Use your power. Jesus responds with scripture, doesn't he? Three times it says, Jesus says it is written.

Jesus, in order to fight this temptation, goes back to scripture. Where does he respond from? You guessed it. Deuteronomy. Three times.

He could have quoted from anywhere. Jesus quotes from deuteronomy. And we may hear some of those words and think, gosh, this book's broken. There's no way I want to build my life on this. There's no way I want to treat this as an authority.

But the place that Jesus goes to remind himself of the trustworthiness of God's word and the goodness of his father is deuteronomy.

And so when we hear some of those verses, I can sense what our reaction is.

Jesus has a very different view, doesn't he? He comes to this book thinking, this is where I find life. This is where in the wilderness in the midst of temptation. This is where I'm going to find hope and security and the will to keep going. I don't know about you, but when I hear that this is the place that jesus goes, I want to read more of deuteronomy.

Why did jesus go here three times? What's it about this book that keeps him going? Jesus was Bible rooted. He loves even these books that we find strange, like deuteronomy, to find the resources to fight temptation, to fulfil his calling. But you might think, well okay, all churches are Bible rooted, right?

That's just a christian thing, isn't it? Of course we're Bible rooted. Of course we open up the Bible. That's what we do, isn't it? You'd be surprised.

Someone actually just recently joined the church and they smoothed the area and said, went and had a cup of tea with them and they said it's really strange at Linfield you go to a service and you open up the Bible and someone reads it and then someone gets up and explains it. I'm like, really? That's what we do every week. But for them this was completely new and amazing and fascinating. Wow, someone's opening this up and explaining this to me.

You see when we talk about roots, roots can be long lost, can't they? Oh my roots back in the day. Long lost roots. Or when we talk about foundations, we might be talking about a kind of starting point. Well there's a foundation stage over here, but well we've moved on over here now, haven't we?

Old roots mean we might need to update and adapt and rewrite for today. We might have a foundation over here but of course we'll need to add to it. We'll need all sorts of other things like history and science and archaeology and philosophy and tradition and experience to kind of help us really understand the world. Of course people might say, well I'm Bible based. Everything I do is based on the Bible.

Okay, well what do you mean by that?

Often I've heard people talking about the Bible in other terms. They might say, well I'm Bible based but the Bible is more of a conversation, isn't it? Its not so much God speaking as it is people speaking about God and to God and about the world. Its fascinating. Its insightful.

In some ways its even inspired.

But now its our turn to have a conversation, isnt it? That we can do the same thing today or others might talk about the Bible as a trajectory, you know, the details of the Bible. That's just the history but what I really want to know is that the big picture, what does this mean for me today? Well, that's a great question to ask, but the implication is, well, that was good for them then. But what we really need to do is update the story and find out what it means for me now.

Stories develop themes for a guest. Perhaps even God changes. You know, we can trace lots of themes like love and hope and peace through the Bible and say, well, okay, but what does that mean for me now? Really interesting what it meant for them then. But that's history.

What's the trajectory? Where does the story finish?

But is that how Jesus sees it?

If the Bible is a conversation, I think Jesus would see it more as well. It is rather God speaking to his people. When Jesus speaks to the sadducees, he corrects them. He says, you're wrong. This conversation you're having amongst yourselves, you're wrong because God's word says something else.

If we're having a conversation here, I wonder, do we think that Jesus might correct our conversation? Are we infallible in ourselves because our story's true for us? Or actually, might jesus have a different verdict on our conversation? We might think about this trajectory. Where does the ark end up?

What's the end of the story? Well, Jesus tells his disciples what the end of the story is on the Emmaus road, doesn't. He says, all this has been fulfilled in me. If you want to know the story of history, the big theme, look to me now, of course there's all sorts of questions we might have about the Bible. What about the different translations?

Isn't that just your interpretation? What about the coherency? It seems like some stuff doesn't make sense, even internally. Great questions to ask and we can help you work through some of those answers. But big picture, what does Jesus think about it?

That is surely the christian view of the Bible. What does jesus think about it? We want to be Bible rooted. And what I think we see that means is having the same view as the Bible that Jesus has about the Bible, but just briefly. Secondly, we talk about obediently submitting to the Bible.

You see, if it's not the Bible that's broken, Jesus doesn't seem to think it's broken. Well, maybe it's me who's broken.

I actually wrote down a Taylor Swift lyric here to try and be cool. She says she's the problem, it's me. And maybe that's true. Maybe the bible's not the problem. Maybe I'm the problem.

You see, lots of people think the bible can actually be a good foundation, can't theyeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh? It's a good framework for life. It's good moral teaching, but actually as an authority, as something that says, do this or don't do that, here's the best way to live. Don't go that way. Well, I wonder if we're less sure about that, because to obey is to say someone else is right.

To submit is to say someone else is in charge. And that's rather humbling. I'm not sure I like that.

You see, we seem surprised when the bible disagrees with us or disagrees with our culture. The bible used to change society and we thought it was a really good thing. The teaching of the bible brought things like monogamy and democracy and human rights and abolishing slavery and liberating women. And yet now, somehow, that same trans transformational force is seen as outdated and regressive. We'd rather cancel the Bible than change ourselves.

And that tends to be, from my experience, why people give up on church. It's not that the Bible is contradictory from what science says or what archaeology says, but it contradicts the way we want to live. And sometimes it's really hard, even costly, to obey God's word. But did you notice how Jesus obediently submits to God's word? The devil tempts him with food and fame and fortune.

He could take them all, right, but he says no. He humbly and obediently submits himself to God's good word. You see, to submit, to come under God's word, isn't to be crushed, isn't to be repressed, but it's to find true freedom and true life in God's purposes. So what does it actually mean to be Bible rooted?

Sometimes it's hard to define. It's perhaps easier to talk about what it isn't. But very briefly, three things. One, I think it's about being open. Open Bibles.

We want to actually read this book, don't we? We want to find out what it says and what Jesus thinks about it. We want to ask those hard questions of it. What does that mean? How does that make sense?

But it's not open. We'll never have that opportunity to read it and ask. We also want to have open hearts as well, don't we? We want to think, actually, this book, these words in here, might have something to teach me or change me or help me grow. We want an open posture towards the Bible.

But secondly, we want to be humble. We need to be willing to be wrong that the Bible might change us. We also need to be willing to be wrong about our interpretation. We might say, well, I might be wrong about this, but what's the best way to find out? Well, the best way to find out is open up the Bible.

See what it says. See what Jesus says about it. We want to listen to others, because it's not that I'm right, it's that Jesus is right, and we want to listen together to him. Open, humble. And thirdly, we talk about this.

We want it to be interpreted by Jesus. People will say, oh, that's just your interpretation. Okay, it is just my interpretation. How does jesus interpret it? Let's ask him.

Let's see what he says. That's the best place to be. That's the common ground, isn't it, for christians? What does jesus say about this? How does he live it?

How does he fulfil it? How does he fill it out? Let me just close with this verse. It says, jesus says to. I think he's talking to the Pharisees.

You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me and have life. Jesus is talking to them, saying, you love the Bible, don't you? You're Bible people.

But you don't love Jesus. You don't love him. See, Jesus saying, bible people aren't always Jesus people. There's all sorts of people that use the Bible as a tool to crush and repress. They want to take every word literally and draw over it, rather than, what's this book actually about?

Who is this pointing me to? It's pointing me to Jesus. I don't want to have a relationship with a book. I want to know Jesus. Bible people aren't always Jesus people.

But you know what? Jesus people are always Bible people. Jesus people are always Bible people. Some people say, oh, I love Jesus, but, oh, not the Old Testament. That's too hard.

Oh, I love Jesus. But Paul, he's a bit much, isn't Hedden? I. You know, when we love Jesus, we learn to love the things that Jesus loves. And Jesus was a Bible person.

He loved God's word. That's what kept him going. He loved the Bible, and he knows what we need. Let me close with this one verse from Matthew four. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

That's what kept Jesus going. God speaking to him as he opened up God's word. Amen.