Our Church Has A New Name

This week the members of our church voted to change the name of our church from Brookville Baptist Church to Brookville Bible Church.

Now that our church has this new name, I hope and pray that we will become more dedicated and devoted than ever to know what the Bible says, and live according to what it says.

In Paul's second letter to Timothy he wrote:  All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,  that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  (2 Timothy 3:16-17) ESV

A banner in our church declares that this is a church where Jesus is Lord and people are loved. In order for that to be true, we must know what is in the Bible and live by it. Even Jesus Himself confirmed the authority of Scripture by saying again and again "it is written" when speaking and teaching. He was reminding people that what had already been written in Scripture by Moses and the prophets was the word of God.

If Jesus is to be our Lord we must know what He wants us to know. It's not up to us to make up or to imagine what He might want us to know and do. We need to go to the Word of God and read what it says and how it says it in context.

If we are going to use the word Bible in the name of our church we want to be sure that we and all who teach in our church heed Paul's instruction to Timothy when he wrote Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15) ESV

We are to do our best. Our very best. We are to take care that we rightly handle the word of truth. We don't want to add to it or take away from it. We don't want to change it to make it more acceptable to people. We don't want to make it say what it does not say.

We don't want to misrepresent God or what God has said in His Word. If we ever do that, even unintentionally, we won't be rightly handling the word of truth.

We want to follow the example of Paul in declaring to others the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). To do that we have to study the Bible carefully. We need to know what comes before and after passages of Scripture. We need to know what the rest of the Bible has to say about the subject that one passage addresses.

The Bible contains what God wants us to know about Himself, and what He has done, is doing, and will do.

The Bible tells us how God wants us to relate to Him, in awesome fear, obedience, worship, and thankfulness for the salvation provided by the sacrifice of His only begotten son, Jesus.

The Bible also tells us how God wants us to relate to one another, in our churches, in our families, and in the world.

The more we know what the Bible truly teaches, the more we will be able to live as the people and the church He commands us to be.

Let us all, whether members of Brookvville Bible Church or not, be diligent in learning what God want us to learn from His written Word. May the new name of our church inspire to us to do our very best to know what the Bible says to us so we can become better equipped for every good work.