All right, destination. I'm I'm so pumped for this morning. This is our final message in this series that we're calling Foundations. If you haven't been around for this one, that's okay. These are standalone messages.

And these are all messages about building your foundation in your relationships and in your faith. So that way when the storms of life come, the bad days happen, you'll be able to stand firm because of your foundation in Christ. And so I hope that you've enjoyed these messages in this series as this is our last one in the series today. But man, am I so pumped for this one.

Because none of this of what we do in this series is done without this book. This book is just so important and so vital to our faith in Christ. And I get to talk about the foundation of scripture a little bit because we believe here at Destination that we should be opening this book as a means to get our teaching, as a means to look and see what it was like to to follow and find Jesus.

And so we open this intentionally every week because I don't want you to hear a glorified TED talk or hear my thoughts. I want you to open this book each week. And so, , my prayer for you today is that you'll leave here with just this desire to want to dig into scripture some more because unlike a foundation, the Bible that's falling apart is a good thing, right.

It's a good thing. Charles Spurgeon says it like this. A Bible that's falling apart usually belongs to somebody who isn't.

So, , this is one of the best books that you will ever read. And I just, we need to just have some fun this morning. Can we have some fun.

Can we laugh a little and have some fun. , we got to see where we're at. So, we're going to play just a quick five question game that I'm calling Bible or not. So, this is how it works. You guess if it's in the Bible or not.

I'm going to read a phrase and you have to guess if it is a verse or if it is not a verse. So, let's get the first one. Here's the first thing. Follow your heart.

>> Is it in the Bible. >> Is it in the Bible. There's some people that are just like listening to others. Follow your heart is not in the Bible. It says follow God with all of your heart.

That is the correct scripture there. Number two, let's try another one. Everything happens for a reason.

>> Everything happens for a reason. >> All right. The reason could just be because you forgot. Because that's not in the Bible.

It's not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him. And so the reason might be you or somebody else, but God will make things work together for the good of those who love him.

All right, let's try another one. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. >> Is it in the Bible.

>> It is in the Bible. It's in Anybody know what book it's in. >> Proverbs.

That's a good guess. Okay, we just had to I had to throw it out there. Ephesians, it's in Ephesians.

Okay, let's get a little bit more complicated here. Okay, >> here we go. God won't give you more than you can handle. >> God will not give you more than you can handle. >> Everybody who's listening in and hearing the the no is like, really.

Cuz because I got a lot of things going on right now, right. , this is not in the Bible. Let me tell you what the correct verse is.

The correct verse that people will take this out of is that God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. So, it's specifically to temptation. Let's see how much you guys pay attention to the message from a couple weeks ago. Number five, money is the root of all evil. It is though, isn't it.

This is not the correct phrase in the Bible. The correct phrase is the what. >> The love of money.

There we go. Is the root of all evil. Man, we got like five out of five.

So, I'm done up here. , no, but seriously, we could we could keep going and we could probably find something, right. Like, let's just be honest.

We could probably find something. Some of you did really good and some of you will not ever answer a question out loud in church because of something like this. And it's okay because if you're in that camp, okay, you're not alone.

The people who don't know this book and don't know how to read it or look into it or really discover what it means is very high. It's actually the statistics are that one in every six Christians reads their Bible most of the days of the week. But on average, most Christians only pick this up about two days a week.

And if your thought right now is good, I'm above average or I'm at average. That's not the goal. The goal is to be above average. And because what happens is if we're not living our lives in a way that is centered around this or discipled by this, we are going to be discipled by something else in culture, by social media, by different phrases like the ones that I put above. Okay, so it is so important to know this.

And can we celebrate for a second. For the first time in decades, Bible sales are up. Bible reading is up for the first time. And if you look at the statistics, they all trace towards that there is a a a biblical curiosity. Now that people want to know and understand this on a different level because the American Bible Society found that people who regularly engage with this, ready for this, have lower anxiety, lower loneliness, greater hope, a greater sense of purpose, and are more amped to share their faith than if they don't.

Isn't that crazy. You see, the point that I'm trying to make here is not to shame you into opening this book, but because I want to show you that as you continue to build your foundation, it's all about this. It's all about what scripture says. So, let's open it up, shall we. All right, let's open it up.

Hello, destination. Let's open up the words second Timothy chapter 3 because we have to talk about how this actually changes us. We need to talk about how this scripture continues to build up our foundation.

By the way, if you don't have a Bible, please take this one home with you. Just promise me that you'll read it so much that it falls apart. That's what I want.

It's on page 1,028 a little bit for the context of the verse. We're reading from this book book called Timothy. And this book is wrote as a letter from Paul who wrote a majority of the New Testament to Timothy who is like this younger guy who is kind of being trained up in doing ministry. And Paul is passing the torch on to Timothy.

And he talks to him about the importance of scripture and how it changes us. Okay, here's what I want you guys to do this morning. You with me this morning. >> I want you to keep your Bibles open to this passage cuz I'm not going to read through it.

We're just going to take it little bit by little bit. So, let's start in verse 14. If you follow the the numbers down, you'll see what Paul imparts onto Timothy is that scripture helps us understand.

He says, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it. " Okay, I'm just going to stop there. We're not even through a sentence.

But I need to stop here because what you need to see here is that Timothy, by the way, Paul specifically is talking to Timothy here. Sometimes we read the Bible and we think, "But as for you, oh, he's talking to me. " Okay, this applies to you. But specifically, he's talking to Timothy and he says, "Continue in what you have learned and become convinced of.

" Now, he's saying this to Timothy because what we'll learn in a moment and what you learn when you read about Timothy is that he had a great upbringing in the faith. His grandma, his mom, he had Paul, he had all of these people imparting scripture and leadership into him. And so what Paul is saying is like, look, Timothy, you've had really good mentorship in learning how to understand scripture and how to apply it to your life.

And I read that and I'm like, well, good for you, Tim. Like, what if you didn't, right. And so I can call him Tim.

, and so like what what happens if you didn't. Because for some of us, you learned scripture from your parents or from cliches or from looking at headstones or whatever it was that taught you what scripture was or what a Bible verse was. And so it can be really easy to get discipled by someone else that is not trustworthy.

So what this book does as we open it and as we learn it, it teaches us what voices to listen to, to let into our circle, to let into our circles of influence, right. And if you're like, well, how do I know if somebody is trustworthy. How do I know if somebody is worthy of of teaching me the scripture.

Because you've seen some of the churches out there are not opening this book or not really hitting some of the hard verses. And so, really quick, we're going to take a lot of bunny trails. Here's the first one. Just three quick things.

And I hope as your pastor, as you trust me with reading through scripture for you and with you, that you see these three things in me. That's my prayer. Number one, the truth.

Does it line up with the truth of the word. Does does what we're doing and what we're talking about actually line up with what this book says. Number two is it's spoken in love.

Okay, you can tell the truth, but you can do it without any bridge, any empathy towards somebody who doesn't understand or is far from it. Okay, so it needs to be the truth spoken in love. And then the third thing is, is it producing fruit. That's how you see who to trust.

Does it line up with the truth. Is it spoken in love. And is it producing fruit. And what I mean by producing fruit is not is it happening quickly.

Is it making somebody happy. What I mean is, is it producing in other people and in their own lives the ability to find and follow Jesus on a deeper level today or tomorrow than it was today. So that's what we look for. That's what scripture helps us to understand. But Paul goes on to say, look at verse 15.

He says, "And how from infancy," so Paul is saying, "From the beginning, from infancy, you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for your salvation through you faith in Christ Jesus. " So it not only helps us to understand who we're learning from, but how we learn. So for Timothy, he's getting all of this scripture kind of imparted to him from a very young age, from infancy. Okay, this really needs to be just one of those reminders to parents, especially of young kids, that your aim for your kids should be the same.

That they see you opening the word, that they that you open the word with them. So that way it's not a foreign concept. And that doesn't mean that they're going to listen to you.

Believe me, they don't. , but you never know what's actually clicking back there. I was so shocked a couple of weeks ago when I when I heard how many Bible stories my son could convey to me. And I was like, man, I had no idea he was actually listening all of those times that I was reading scripture.

And so, like, we have this kind of opportunity as parents to impart that onto our kids. But for some of us, we didn't get that. >> We didn't get that growing up or we didn't get that in in the right context or in churches or we don't we pick this up and we don't really know what to do or how to learn. But what Paul is telling Timothy here is to make known the scriptures. And we need to acknowledge this kind of as a church culture that everybody in this room is going to learn this book potentially a little bit differently.

Some of you need a study Bible. Some of you need to, like me, not only read it, but listen to it. I'm an auditory processor.

So, I'm looking at this and I'm like, I cannot pronounce your name. Your name, your name, your name. Like, I need to have somebody else say it to me. Maybe maybe I'm the only one.

Everybody's looking at me like, "You can't say all the names in the Bible. " You can't either. But my point here is that we have to embrace the different ways that we learn this book.

If God has you in in a place where you're reading through the same book of the Bible for a year, that's okay. I spent the better half of a year in 2009 in John. It's okay as long as it's producing fruit.

If it is producing in you a deeper sense of following Jesus, then you're doing right by opening scripture. Because the other thing it helps you understand is how to take action. This verse ends by Paul saying, "Make wise for your salvation through Christ Jesus. " So, this is something that we continue to do every single week.

And so, , I I'll I'll say it like this. I was talking to Wes. Where's Wes in here. I was talking to Wes a couple of weeks ago, and he was telling me about this guy that he was kind of like mentoring, walking with in faith, and he asked him, "How's your Bible reading going.

" And he's like, "It's good. I'm all done. " And didn't you say something like, "What do you mean.

" And he said, 'Well, I read it cover to cover. I'm all done. That's how we view books is like a movie, like a book. It's cover to cover and then we're done.

Genesis to Revelation. Check off the box. No, this is a living, breathing book, which means it is going to speak to you differently in different seasons of your life depending on your circumstances. Potent depending on the Holy Spirit, depending on all of the things that you are going through.

So, keep reading it. Keep reading it. This is the part of the message where everybody in the room feels convicted.

And I'll tell you why. Because, let's be honest, we forget to read it. What happens with this often times is we put Bible reading at such a thing that Christians should do, right.

And then we hear a message like this and we feel kind of crummy because we're not opening it every day. Let me just give you some pastoral encouragement here. If you miss one day, just don't miss two. If you miss two days, just don't miss three. God is not up there in heaven with a scoreboard saying, "Oh man, he missed three days.

That's that's one strike again. " No, that's not how it's working. We get to read this book.

>> We get to dive into scripture. And so, I just want to say this to conclude this section. It's not about how much scripture you get through.

It's about how much scripture gets through you. And so that means if Genesis is not doing it for you or the book of Leviticus is not speaking to you, it's time to flip over to one of the gospels. Just don't keep reading the same book over and over. There's a lot of good stuff in here.

You guys with me so far. I'm having a lot of fun cuz now we're getting to my favorite point because this is what it teaches Timothy. Now Paul's going to launch further into this verse into verse 16.

It says all scripture is God breathed and useful. We're not even going to get beyond those two words. God breathed and useful. What Paul is saying here is all of this, all of this scripture is true. It's God breathed and therefore it is useful.

Okay, can we go on just a really quick little bunny trail here. Will you guys come with me on this little journey. Okay, let me be nerdy just for two minutes.

Okay, somebody can time me. I'm being nerdy for two minutes. My question always goes to the person who's thinking, "How do I know this is true.

" Some of you today are thinking that and some of you know somebody who's thinking that. So, here's seven reasons. Okay, really quick.

Seven reasons. There's more than seven, by the way. This is my short version. The Bible was written by many authors over a massive span of time yet tells one unified story.

Okay, there is 66 books in here with 40 different authors over thousands of years. Do you know what is so cool about that unified story. There is 63,779 cross references. That means something that it's talking about here, it's referencing here.

And something it's talking about here is referenced here. If you put this on a chart with color codes, it looks like a rainbow. It's like everywhere. There's lines going from different books all over the place. And it tells this big overarching story of creation, of fall, of redemption through Jesus and reconciliation for you and I.

It's this beautiful love story that's wrote to you from Jesus. And that's why it's true. The second reason, the New Testament has more manuscript evidence than any other ancient writing.

So, if you go and you go back to your history class from middle school and they're talking about the Egyptians or Caesar from Rome and and and you're learning about all of those things, well, guess what. The New Testament has more manuscript evidence than some of the things in your history book like that. There's more evidence there.

There's more evidence in the archaeology of of biblical support. So that means the things that they're digging up, they're finding and they're like, "Hey, that's described here, right. " And so they're finding these elements all over Earth. We can nerd out about that sometimes, but I want to nerd out about this one. This one is my favorite one.

The Bible continues to align with scientific discovery. Okay, this is so cool. So, if you look and you read about the crucifixion of Jesus, you get a a a description of an eclipse. Okay, nowadays we can track eclipse cycles.

And you know that they've tracked an eclipse cycle to happen in such a way that is described in the word word as April 3rd 33 a moment that Jesus was crucified. It is so cool. >> It is so cool when you start to get into how some of our technology and the patterns that we observe start to line up with scripture.

The next one, the Bible includes embarrassing impersonal details you wouldn't normally fabricate. If you were writing a book about yourself, you wouldn't talk about the one time you got drunk in a tent. You wouldn't talk about the one time you beat Peter in a foot race to the tomb. These are all like weird kind of quirky details that if you wanted to put out your best self, right, you probably wouldn't share them.

But there are these details throughout the Bible. And not only throughout the Bible, but throughout human history. There's other books and other sources that talk about the early church and talk about Jesus from the perspective of not even holy scriptures. We can go back to some of the most early books that are printed.

And lastly, and probably one of the biggest, the Bible teaches the opposite of our sinful desires. It is one of the only books that looks at us as human beings and says you need this. You need Jesus. You need to deny yourself.

And every book is wrote in the complete opposite way. And so this book had it been wrote in 2026 would probably not be on the New York Times bestseller. Yet, this is the most sold book in human history.

>> This is the most given out book in human history. If you want to learn more about this, we're going to throw something up on our website. We're going to start a blog page just cuz I want to nerd out more about that.

But we got to we got to move on. This is why this is so important because if this is true, then that means that is useful. Well, what is it useful for.

Paul goes on to say, "It teaches and rebukes. " That's the first thing Paul says. He He says, "Teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains in all righteousness.

" Okay, so let's just stop at teaching and rebuking. Okay, now what is teaching and rebuking as Paul is referring it to. I'll give you a quick story.

When I was in elementary school, they were teaching us how to do how to write all of the the numbers. For some reason, this is like ingrained into my memory. So, you know, everybody in the class is up to the hundreds and the thousands and they're writing. I've been writing 1 through 10 for like weeks on in.

And I'm like, what am I doing wrong. I know I'm writing all of these letters, right. And so, I brought it up to my teacher and she's like, you're doing your eights wrong. I was like, what do you mean. Isn't it just two circles that intersect.

Like I thought it was literally like a vin diagram that you would turn on its side. Okay, that's what I thought. And then she said, "No, it's the figure8, right. " Okay, do I need to draw it out.

Are you guys with me on this one. And I'm going to I'm going to be honest, it felt crummy in the moment, but what it taught me was allowed me to get to that next stage of growth. Okay, that's what this book does for us. Not only does it teach and rebuke us, but it allows us to rebuke the enemy. Okay, think about this.

When Jesus was tempted by the literal devil in Matthew 4, do you know what his primary source of ammunition against the enemy is. Every sentence Jesus says starts out with this phrase. You know what the phrase is.

It is written Jesus quotes scripture against the enemy in a way to rebuke him. You see Dwight El Moody says it like this. This book will keep you from sin or it will keep or sin will keep you from this book. You see the way out of sin is through scripture.

The way to rebuke the hopelessness, the temptation, the lostness that you feel in your life is to know and live the scripture. Cuz not only does it teach and rebuke, but it corrects and trains. Now, this is probably the hardest part of the message, okay.

And I I'll get real vulnerable here in a second, but when we allow this to correct and train us, it sometimes can feel a little icky because what happens is we'll read this book and we'll come across something that maybe we don't agree with or maybe that we just want to pretend like we didn't see or didn't want to live out. Okay, I'll give you an example. When I was reading this book for the very first time as a 15-year-old, I didn't even know the difference between an old and a New Testament. And so, I'm reading it and I'm reading Paul talk about all of these things about sexual immorality. And I'm reading all of these things and I'm hearing my my youth pastor talk about this word purity.

I'd never heard this word in my in my life. And so, I asked him, I was like, "What does purity mean. " He says, "Well, the Bible teaches. " and he went to all the scripture for me. The Bible teaches that that sex is reserved between man and woman in marriage.

And for me, that was counter to everything that I knew and everything that I had been taught by culture and by the world word around me, by the world around me. And so I read that and I had to face this really hard truth that dang, I'm not doing what this book says I should be doing. And that's the icky feeling that a lot of us feel when we get corrected and trained.

But let me tell you, lean into that. Just lean into that because let's just take the other side of my example there. We know from culture and we know from documentaries and all of these other people that people who chase sex like that for a long enough time end up feeling lonely and selfish and unloved. And you see the Bible is telling us all these things not because it wants to take something away from us, not because it wants to take life away from us, but because it wants to give life. It wants to show you the way that God designed life to be and it will equip you for every good work.

Look at verse 17. This is how Paul ends this. So that everybody say so that.

So that you know what so that is. It is a result that when you have been corrected and trained in all righteousness, teach, taught, and rebuked, so that the servant of God, that's you, Christian, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. That is why we go through some of the icky teaching, rebuking things that the word says, okay. Because then we are equipped to take on all of the challenges of life.

And look it when you read this book, if you don't hear anything I hear to say today, hear this, okay. When you read this book, often times you're going to think, man, I am not good enough. I am not a good enough Christian.

I don't understand any of this. I don't know what this is talking about. I'm breaking that. I'm breaking that. I'm breaking that.

I want you to think about it like this. Every single story, when you get to know the characters in this book, they are just as messed up as you and I. And so when you get to know these characters, you see that man, nobody is good enough, but still God loves us, but still God equips us.

But still God gives us this instruction manual for life. Thank God, right. Maybe you're you're still not on board. Okay, let me let me just bring it home here. Have any of you ever gotten anything from IKEA.

I just need to know who to pray for. Okay, if we were to go to IKEA, okay, after after today, drive all the way down there and pick up some kind of shelf that your wife wants or something and we go and we go to put it together. I'm just using it as an example, okay.

I'm not saying it's real. , I if we go and put it all together, okay, you have one of two people. Number one, the person who looks at the instructions.

Number two, we have Jeremy. , no, I'm just kidding. , we have the person who doesn't look at the instructions. I was person number two a lot of times. Let me tell you, we've had a lot of things fall apart because I put them together in a way that was not the original intention of the designer.

And you could say, "Oh, that's IKEA stuff. " It's the same thing with blueprints for your home. You wouldn't want to hear, "Oh, if you're getting a house built, oh, they have no blueprints. They're just winging it.

This is important. This is the blueprint. This is the instruction. And so when God gave you this, it wasn't to say, "You're a terrible person. Here's how to make you better.

" No, he said, "Here is my love letter to you, my instructions, my blueprint for an eternal life with me in heaven and for an abundant life here on earth. So open it, use it, love it. " And so that is my ask to each and every one of you that the Bible teaches you and that you continue to build on this foundation and know that this is not informational. This is transformational.

That's what I want you to leave with today. And so my ask for you is to allow Jesus to speak to you through his word, through this book. So if you're a Christ follower, open it up this week.

And if you miss a day, don't miss two. Don't miss three. And if you're not a Christian, here's my invite to you.

Open it anyways, okay. Just open up one of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's perfect place to start.

And just start reading about Jesus's love for you. , and maybe you're in this place, too, where it's just you're feeling it. You're feeling that like that icky feeling about opening the word or you're feeling that feeling about like not feeling good enough.

And I just want to remind you if that's you and you're here today, Jesus sees you. He's not shaming you. He's not telling you to step it up.

He's telling you, "Come to me. " And so when we open our word, when we come to the table and take communion together, that is us coming to Jesus. Would you pray with me. Jesus, we thank you so much for being here, for sending us this love letter of scripture.

God, help us to live by its truth. Help us to be obedient to it. Help us to open it to really see the character of how much you love us unconditionally.

How much you pursue us. How since the beginning of creation, you've been pursuing us. Jesus, we thank you for your word and for your sacrifice for each and every one of us.

It's in Jesus name we pray.