[Victor Kubik] It is a wonderful and happy milestone event, the twentieth anniversary of the United Church of God and it couldn’t be a more beautiful occasion that God has smiling, and blessing us with beautiful weather, and more than everything else, a beautiful spirit of grace and peace upon His church.

I believe that in this environment that God is going to use us to be able to do His work in a very wonderful way, The best days of the United Church of God are yet ahead.

“Labor in the word” is the theme of this years’ conference and it’s actually a broader slogan. It is actually a slogan for a broader concept for training that the council of elders is in the process of developing for training ministers and eventually training for all. It is actually composed of three elements and the outcome from the books of Timothy, from 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, and 1 Timothy 5:17 - I will just read it quickly here,

1 Timothy 5:17 Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.

From that statement we have our theme for the conference. Next:

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to show yourself approved to God, a workman who needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Properly understanding it; properly interpreting it. And the third element is:

2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

My wife and I listen to the Bible sometimes in the morning before I go to work and about 4, 5 weeks ago, we were listening to YouVersion reading 1 Timothy and we listened to the whole book. It doesn’t take long at all, and then we listened to 2 Timothy being read to us and I thought to myself, there is my sermon! It has everything I want to say on this day when we are talking about laboring in the word.

The book is amazing as to what it says about Timothy’s attitude towards the word. Timothy’s training, Timothy’s passing on, Timothy protecting the churches through being careful about how the word was to be preached.
And so today I want to look at what Paul said in the book of Timothy and how he mentored Timothy. How he mentored a master student, disciple and servant, and also how Timothy was taught to teach and pass on the word of God.

Timothy came from a mixed background. His father was a Greek and his mother Eunice, was a Jewish believer. His grandmother Lois, was also a believer. The father was not a believer. Paul came across him in Lystra and Derby in south-central Asia Minor. The book of Acts speaks about Paul finding Timothy, and he joined the apostle Paul in the journeys and we will see here why.

Timothy is one who has many, many wonderful compliments given to him. Probably the most notable is in:

Philippians 2:19 But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, …

This is Paul writing from prison in Rome and he is talking to the Philippians, which is in the area today of modern day Bulgaria in the Balkans. He is sending Timothy a long distance as his representative, as his deputy, to care for these people.

V.19 … that I also may be encouraged when I know your state.

V. 20 - For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state.

V.21 - For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus.

V.22 - But you know his proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel.

Paul became, in a sense, surrogate spiritual father since Timothy’s real father was not a believer. There is a generation difference between them. Timothy travelled on behalf of Paul many times to strengthen the churches and that is repeated over and over again in the book of Acts and also in the other epistles. Paul used Timothy as his deputy in churches such as Ephesus, Philippi and Thessalonica and also, Timothy was mentored enough to where he took on responsibility of churches, whenever it was required. 

He is also one who came back and reported progress to the apostle Paul. Timothy was willingly serving Paul throughout the ministry of the apostle Paul. He was also willing to suffer for the Lord. The apostle Paul went though many, many trials and Timothy never abandoned him. Timothy was with Silvanus, or Silas, and Paul. When others, such as Demas would leave Paul, Timothy was always there. He was always by Paul’s side. In fact, Timothy even went to prison. The book of Hebrews speak about how, our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon I will come with him to see you, as Paul writes in Hebrews 13:23.

So I want to first give you a little bit, a thumb-nail sketch, of Timothy’s life and relationship to the apostle Paul but the real power of the relationship between Paul and Timothy, and the lessons for us, come from just a reading of the two books and I probably read through them a half a dozen times before this sermon. I found them, each time I read them, to be fascinating as to the power packed in the words that we can learn from.

We will just take a real fast tour of the books of Timothy.

1 Timothy 1:2 To Timothy, a true son in the faith: - because, you know his father was a Gentile - Grace, mercy, and peace from God our father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul always opened and sometimes closed all his letters to churches or individuals with that statement. But here is what he starts talking to Timothy about right from the get-go.

V.3 - As I urged you when I went into Macedonia …

Now we will be staying in the book of Timothy so if you want to turn Timothy and follow along - we probably won’t be going to too much else beyond that.

V.3 - remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other  doctrine,

Already from the very, very first verses of this book he says, make sure that they teach no other doctrine, and doctrine is a set of beliefs held and taught by a church, that we have arrived with on consensus. So there was a set of doctrine that was to be taught and Timothy was charged to make certain that no other spurious doctrine be taught.

V.4 - nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.

So, Paul tells Timothy to keep the church doctrinally pure and told him to clear the church, sweep the church of myth, of private calculations and things that led to disputes.

Has this not happened in our time? We continually have this type of thing erupt and come forward as people have their various ideas that stray from correct doctrine that we have come to on consensus. In our leadership and ministerial conferences that we have been holding over the past three years, we have an extremely important presentation by Roy Holladay about maintaining doctrinal integrity.

The reason we are here 20 years later is because of doctrine; because of a consensus of beliefs that we had come to establish in our hearts and minds and brains. That’s why you are here and not somewhere else. We are here primarily because of what we are taught and wanting to preserve what we have taught. We as a church are founded on doctrinal integrity.

Our source and revelation of doctrine and understanding comes from the 31,103 verses in this Book. This is God’s revelation to us. This is really the mystery of the ages, right here. Everything you’ve got to know about salvation, who God is, what man is, what our relationship to God is, it’s right here in these 31,103 verses. How may of them do you know? How many of them do you preach from? How many of them do you study? How many of them can you be conversant with? Well, this is the word of God, all of it - 31,103 verses.
This book was written over a 1500-year period by 40 authors that ranged from kings to slaves, from tax collectors to fishermen. It has a beginning in a Garden of Eden; it has an ending in a Garden of Eden. It talks about man being created in the image of God and man finally achieving his full potential. It could not have been written by any one group or one period of history. It was inspired by God.

When you take a look at the word of God, the beauty of it, and how it was put together, it is absolutely beyond all comprehension. I just absolutely marvel and stand in awe of this word and how it was put together. The closer you look at it, the more it makes sense of the greater picture of who we are, why we were born. The scriptures provide a foundation for authority that transcends the limitations of human reason and human experience. It gets us into that next spiritual level of faith in the great God who will soon be meeting us or we will be meeting Him, person to person. I can’t wait for that moment when it will be very clear what God has been doing throughout history and we will live forever and really do a work in this universe. I am looking forward to that.

The quantity of texts, of how this set of words has survived, is a story in itself. 5,000 Greek manuscripts have survived, 8,000 Latin, 1,000 Coptic and Syrian manuscripts. Of all the classics of the ancients not more than 20 have survived as manuscripts and God has shown the world that His word is not going to be broken. It will persist and it will be with us to the very end.

There are many interesting stories about the Bible such as this. If you go to bible.org, it has a lot of wonderful information about the background of the Bible. But the Bible for many years was available only in synagogues. In Timothy’s time you could not have your private scroll of Isaiah or the Pentateuch at home. First of all, it was very expensive and number two, it was forbidden. You couldn’t have your private copy and then copy it and then give it to somebody else because the fear was they would not be copied properly and so the Jews had for centuries a very, very specific way in which they passed on the word of God from one copy to another. Actually one reason why there aren’t many Old Testament manuscripts is because old copies were destroyed after a new copy was made.

Over the centuries the Bible always held a very high market share however, whether it was in the Middle Ages or whenever, because there weren’t that many other books around. It was very hard to really pass on written knowledge because you had to copy it by hand - not until the Gutenberg Bible in 1455, but it became the first book to be set to type. No questions. It was the Book. The book of civilization, the word of God, even held by people who were not really godly, as some think that it was very, very important then to be passed on.

It was the first book to cross the Atlantic ocean from Europe. My first software of a book on disc was the Bible. I remember how excited I was in 1983 when I could get the Bible on 7- 360k discs. It was not even indexed. Oh, where is Isaiah? It must by disc 4 or so. I got so excited! I see it on the screen - you can’t even print it, you can’t even search it, but you loved it because the computer age had now come to the Bible.

But the Bible is greatly proliferated now. There is a King James Version, which you probably all started with, NKJV,  NIV,  ESP, ASV, Amplified, Moffat, Phillips, you go on and on. You probably have many of those. Many of you have Bible software such as e-Sword which is free; PC Study Bible which I have, which I have been using for probably almost 20 years; Logos, the cadillac of Bible software; Scripture Typer, which I just got last week, to help me make my own memory cards. A nice little free bit of software. On the Kindle I have bought a number of Bibles so that I can have it available on my telephone and tablet, wherever I’m at.

YouVersion - 185 million copies of the Bible. Aspects of this software had been downloaded onto phones and tablets and their goal is to put it on 1 billion telephones and tablets. And then as you know there is the BibleHub; there’s Olive Tree; there is Gateway. There are so many places and you know how I do my Bible Study and my searches on the Bible? I just type in words that I think are close on the URL line in Google and Chrome and I find the scripture right away. It is getting to be so, so easy.

I have a Russian Bible. I have a Ukrainian Bible. I have commentaries, Interlinears, Thayer’s Lexicons, Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, Atlases, big Bibles, small Bibles, hand Bibles, or ones that I can put in my coat pocket. I used to visit with them all the time when I was a minister, especially many, many years ago. Those of you who’ve been around a long time used to visit with what you called, your pocket sword. You had a Bible in your coat pocket.

But now there are so many other books that these drown out the Bible’s market share. Becoming a minister in the Middle Ages - in the book that I was reading about Sabbatarian Ministers and I don’t have the title of it now, but it was a very interesting comment about Sabbatarian Ministers. One of the qualifications for an elder in the Middle Ages was to memorize the entire New Testament. That cuts down a number of people who’ll serve in the ministry. I can just see in our ordination format now, you know, little box checks: memorize the whole New Testament, but that is what they had to do.

Back to Timothy.

1 Timothy 3:1This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.

He wants to be an elder, but here are his qualities or qualifications:

V.2 - A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behaviour, hospitable, able to teach.

Able to teach what? Not teaching animal husbandry, not teaching farming - teaching the Word of God. That is one of the things that has been given to us as a responsibility, to be able to teach.

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,

V.2 - speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.

And here are some of the things that they were teaching:
V.3 - forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from (certain) foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

He says,

V.4 - For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;

V.5 - for it is sanctified - or set apart, or defined - by the word of God and prayer.

He is talking about some of the oddities that were springing up in the church. He says go to the Bible to find the definition of what is truth and what is error. Make certain that you have it defined by the Bible.

As ministers we are to be experts and when you go to a doctor and say, my head hurts; I have this thing in my arm that is hurting me. What do you expect the doctor to say? I don’t know? He simply is not a very good doctor. You want him to tell you what it might be. You tell him the symptoms, you tell him what the problem is, and then the doctor says, well, it could be this, it could be that. Let’s check this - he is knowledgeable. He knows. He knows from a wealth of experience about what this problem may be.

When people come to a minister and they ask questions about life you’ve got to be an expert in the word of God, in the 31,103 passages, scriptures in the Bible. That is something that we need to know, that that is our - this is our library right here, and so when people come and talk to you and want to talk to you about whether it be depression or whether it be about conversion, or about overcoming sin, or about doctrine, whatever, you’ve got to be knowledgeable. You’ve got to be right up there like a good doctor who knows what to say, what advice to give.

V.6 - If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.

See, he upholds and praises Timothy for the fact that he was knowledgeable; upheld good doctrine. Paul says stay with it and don’t let these people get to you. Make sure that what you talk about is defined by the word of God and then he says:

V.7 - But reject profane and old wives fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.

Either Timothy was a sensitive person and perhaps was sensitive to criticism or people came to him with a slick argument and Paul says, look, you have to know what is right and you have to know what to reject.

You know when I became President, all tips - I’ll share something very, very personal with you. When I became President one of the big misgivings I had about doing this job was the criticism that would come with it. I am a sensitive person. I don’t like criticism and I thought that I would just be criticized. People would be writing these horrible memos; people would be shouting and hollering at the council meetings or whatever and it will be just a hard and tough life. But you know something? It hasn’t been that way. I have actually adapted far better to it than I thought I would.

There are things that I respond to when there is an attitude that is right and good and there are some things that come in voluminous emails that frankly, I just reject. I don’t answer them. I know it is not going to do any good. I take the principle of a cold. If you have a cold, you take medicine, it will take 7 days to get over it. If you do nothing it will be a week and that is what it is with some of these other types of things that come about.

Those who work in the Secret Service - the Secret Service has the job of protecting the President but it also has a job of watching out for counterfeit money. They protect the currency in the United States. Agents of the Secret Service are taught how to spot counterfeit money. You know how they do that? And the number one bill that is always counterfeited, the biggest one is Ben, which is the $100 bill. The $20 bill just isn’t worth counterfeiting and others are still, you know, you will be caught to easily, but the $100 bill is the most vulnerable. When you go overseas, a $100 bill, boy, they put those under scanners, they put them through all kinds of things when we change them at banks. But you know how they are taught to spot counterfeit money? Well, the most important part of their training is to know what the genuine bill is.

They give them a $100 bill and they have to look at it under a microscope and say, here is how the blue and red threats are to be imbedded; Make sure they are not on top of the paper; Make sure they are imbedded throughout the paper; Make sure of the sparkle in Benjamin Franklin’s eye; Make sure the background isn’t kind of fuzzy and they’ll compare it and, we see the others - because if you look at a fake one, how do you know it is fake or not? You think it looks good.

Actually if you go on the internet and take a look at fake $100 bills most of us wouldn’t know the difference but they showed a true $100 bill and the characteristics that make up the trueness of that $100 bill. When you know what is the genuine one you’ll know that everything else is fake because it doesn’t have the treats imbedded the way it should be in the paper, if it doesn’t have a sparkle or background the way it should be, it is a fake and you know it.

And that is what we should do about understanding the word of God and the truth. You know there are people that come to us all the time with some type of - various doctrines. Things that they just either make up or they read something by somebody and all of a sudden, sometimes you know, after decades in the Church, their faith is upended. Do we have to know everything that they are coming to us with to be able to preach the truth? If somebody would have come to me and said that Christ was a created being for example - wait a minute. I know from John 1 that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “The Word became flesh”. 

You don’t have to go any further than that. Jesus is the sustainer of the universe; He created the universe. I know those things. I don’t have to read a 400 page book and dispute that and debate that. So I reject profane and old wives fables. I don’t have time for that and I have found that this actually works pretty well. It worked pretty well for Timothy and it will work well for us.

One of my mentors from years ago in my early education in the church - he was a great mentor and he taught me a lot of things. He said, you know, and he was kind of a repository of biblical knowledge and people went to him for, hey, is this true? What is this? Could you explain that? Whatever. He said, you know Victor, there are some things that are true. There are some things that are false and there are things that are also interesting. So it is neither true or false, it is interesting. Maybe it is very interesting but we don’t know whether it is the truth or false but we should know those things that are true because of what the Bible says and by the study of that word.

1 Timothy 4:12 Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, - now we may take that to mean just how do you speak and just the level of courteous language but it also means in the way that you understand the word of God. Be an example of being a knowledgeable person in the word of God, also in conduct, love, spirit, etc..

He says:

V.13 - Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation - to motivational messages and - to doctrine.

He really, really boosts Timothy and says these are the important things for you as a minister. Make sure that you don’t neglect reading. Now we can take that a couple of different ways. Back in Timothy’s time an important part of the church service was the reading of the scriptures. Again, people did not have their own private copies of the Bible at home. They had to hear the word of God by going to the synagogue. That is why Paul went to the synagogue. It is not only to meet people who were Jewish and to the Jew first, but people who had knowledge of the scriptures. That is also where the scriptures were found and Paul could say, my sermon today is from Isaiah, and he would pull out the scroll, turn to it and give the sermon. And a part of the service was a systematic reading of the Bible over a period of time.

So he says, Timothy, don’t neglect that part of your job. Also be sure that you give some motivational messages, exhortation and doctrine; the set of beliefs that the church has and holds. Make sure that you teach them.

V.14 - Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership.

V.16 - Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Paul says make sure you just don’t deviate. Make sure that you are strong in doctrine, that we teach doctrine, we pass on doctrine, we mentor in doctrine - Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

1 Timothy 5:17 Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially those who labor in the word - and we have chosen that phrase to be the theme of this conference - who labor in the word and doctrine.

1 Timothy 6:3 If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine, which accords with godliness,

V.4 - he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words,

And we have them today. They have always been with us and they always will be with us and perhaps another dose of Timothy-teaching will be helpful to all of us as ministers of how to handle it because these people who wrangle over words, these people who bring myths and fables and old wives tales into our midst need to be rejected. They are obsessed with arguments over words,

V.4 - … from which come envy, strife, reviling, - a wrong attitude comes in because people get caught up in these spurious teachings.

V.5 - useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. - What is the solution? What is the advice from Paul? - From such withdraw yourself.

From such withdraw yourself. Stay out of their blogs. Stay out of their websites. Stay out of their books.

V.20 - O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust,

What was committed to Timothy’s trust? Certainly congregations and people but also the word of God. He was to uphold it, look up to it, study it, know it.

V.20 - … avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge -

And I am sorry I don’t have time to read through some long paper about somebody who is two days out of sync with us. I honestly don’t.

V.21 - by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you. Amen.

What happens really with people that bring in doctrinal spuriousness is that they bring in a wrong attitude, and the apostle Paul tells Timothy to be knowledgeable in the word and to reject falsehood.

The second letter continues on with that same spirit. It is not a different subject. He continues on with Timothy about the importance of the word of God.

2 Timothy 2:1 You therefore, my son, - and we see a beautiful spirit of a father to a son, except that Paul was Timothy’s spiritual father - be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

V.2 - And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
I hope that an important aspect of us - I am speaking not only to our ministry that are here for the GCE, I am speaking to everybody, everybody hearing this. Every single one of us have a responsibility of being able to understand the word of God and be able to pass it on because we will see that what Timothy understood about the word of God was brought to him by his mother and by his grandmother, and from a child he knew the scriptures. That is what made Timothy a very strong person. He was knowledgeable in the scriptures. How well do you pass on and teach and mentor those around you?

V.2 - … commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

V.14 - Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers.

V.15 - Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Which again is one of the sub-themes or, part of the whole process of labour in the word, is to rightly dividing the word of truth. Properly understanding it and interpreting the word. And here he goes again:

V.16 - But shun profane and idle babblings - he says this over and over again. Again, this is fantastic advice and will save you time - for they will increase to more ungodliness.

V.17 - And their message will spread like cancer.

The message will spread like cancer. How much have we had a battle over the years when somebody gets into something about the name of God or the calendar issues? You know I know the name of God in Russian, in Ukrainian. It is not what they say it is. You know the name of God. I don’t want to hear them. Go away! That is the advice that comes from the apostle Paul to Timothy.

V.17 - … Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort,

V.18  - who have strayed concerning the truth, - and here was their thing - saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some.

The problem is, people are gullible who don’t study the word and they fall for these slick arguments that come from people. I remember one person telling me that he was kind of caught up in some of the teachings that we had come from. He said, I began to feel it. I was understanding more and more things I hadn’t before. It was intoxicating until I realize that I was paddling down a river and the water was getting faster and faster like there was a waterfall ahead of me. I headed for the bank - and this person was spared. Don’t get caught up in those things.

V.23 - Avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.

V.24 - And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, As Robin Webber told us.

V.25 - In humility correcting those who are in opposition - gently, from the word of God.

He says, here, let me show you what God says; let me see what the word says, and you know something? You should be able to because your job is to be a professional in explaining the Bible, in teaching, in passing it on. One of the qualifications of a minister is to be able to teach and explain the beliefs that we have.

V.25 - … if God perhaps will grant them repentance.

2 Timothy 3:10 but you have carefully followed my doctrine, - says Paul to Timothy.

You know when I heard this, and I was listening to this over and over again, reading this, I said it is amazing what Paul tells Timothy over and over again in these two short personal letters that have been preserved for all eternity. You have carefully followed my doctrine. Also, the apostle Paul had gone through so many persecutions and Timothy followed him. He didn’t abandon him.

V.14 - But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of -

Have you been assured of certain things that are bedrock teachings? Now I have been assured of certain things going back to age 16 or 17 about the truth of God. I’ve had people who wanted to bump me up out of that teaching, to see something else, some that have challenged me and said, are you seeing that you can change what you believed at age 17? I am so assured of this. It is my life. I will give my life for these teachings.

V.14 - … knowing from whom you have learned them,

V.15 - and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures,

It was through his mom and his grandmother. Timmy, let’s go to the synagogue, and Timmy would come with them. Dad wouldn’t go but they brought him to the synagogue and Timothy absorbed the words of God.

V.15 - from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

V.16 - All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

The Bible is a multipurpose book. There is some history; there is some correction; help me overcome; instruction in righteousness and how to do things correctly.

V.17 - that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And finally the third aspect of the program of “Labor in the Word”:

2 Timothy 4:1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:

V.2 - Preach the word! - Preach the word of God with boldness. It’s got an exclamation mark even in the translation here. The translator must have got excited about it.

V.2 - Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

He tells this to Timothy, the one who he was mentoring. The apostle Paul is mentoring all of us through Timothy in the same way.

V.3 - For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;

V.4 - and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

And it happens over, and over, and over, and over again.

V.5 - But you be watchful in all things, endure affliction, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Through Paul’s immortal letters to Timothy we have learned about mentoring, learning, enduring and valuing the 31,103 verses that make up the word of God and using it as our primary tool, not some other guide book.

And there are so many books. Books to no end. Right now on Kindle, if I order some book, they pop up with 4 more. Hey, since you bought this one here’s another buyers buy. Here is 4 more. Oh, I wish I had one of those. Should I have one of those? There are just so many things to read, so many things to go through but how much are we involved with this straight Bible itself, right here?

How much of the 31,103 scriptures are we really conversant with? Now some will read more than others but you know the problem is, it is that they say -  Barna research I believe did some thing about ministers - that ministers will basically stay with their favourite group of 200 to 300 scriptures for sermons. I hope it is not that true for us but they basically stay with the one that you know over and over again and you think of what will I be speaking about next Sabbath of next month? You may say to yourself, well, here are the ones I kind of know. Well, there is a lot more than just 200 or 400 or 500.

I am not saying that we are that shallow but perhaps there are sections of the scriptures that we have not gone back to in some time. There are some lessons that we have not reviewed from Job or there are some historical accounts that we have not reviewed from Chronicles; or that maybe there has not been another read through of even the short book of Philemon to learn the lesson of that again. It is short, it is there. I know it is there, but have we read it?

As Paul says, give diligence to the reading of the Scriptures. People will be looking on us as experts in the Bible. I am so thankful for this craft of the ministry. Most of us are very thankful that we can come together to learn. I am so thankful to the Council for choosing this particular theme this year about “Laboring in the Word” and all the things that are said about the word of God in the book of Timothy, not only upholding it but teaching us how to pass it on, how to continue in the word of God as it is imprinted on the minds of our children and the people in our congregations. That is what we have to do and that is our job.

So, let’s all be laborers in the word, rightly dividing the word of truth, preaching the word and may God’s grace, mercy and peace, from God the Father and Jesus Christ be with you.