This sessions comes from a course called “Church Essentials” 9Marks created with Lifeway in 2012.
If you want to take this course in a structured manner, please visit: https://courses.9marks.org
If you read the Bible, how do you read the Bible? Do you simply drop it on the floor and let it open to whatever page it happens to and read from there? Do you read it systematically, from beginning to end? Do you tend to focus on your favorite passages to the neglect of others?
Healthy churches not only teach the Bible, they teach the Bible soundly. Now sound is an old-fashioned word, but it basically means reliable, accurate, or faithful. At root, it is an image from the medical world meaning whole or healthy. A healthy church teaches the Bible soundly—it is faithful to the teaching of the entire Bible. It reliably and accurately interprets the parts in terms of the whole.
How does a church do that? And how do church members embrace it? They do so by understanding the entire message of the Bible and letting that message be the driving force in their understanding of God and their lives.
