The Old Testament was the Bible Jesus knew, read and memorized. As a child he saturated his heart and mind with the Hebrew Scriptures such that by age twelve his parents found him in the temple teaching the teachers (Luke 2:41-52). During his earthly ministry, he took every opportunity to affirm the trustworthiness of Scripture. This is one of those places.

Jesus held a high view of Scripture and so should we. He made it clear that the Scriptures he came to fulfill were trustworthy down to the smallest markings in the Hebrew alphabet. I love the way the King James version of the Bible renders this verse, using words like “jot” and “tittle.” We would say it this way: you can trust God’s word – all of it! – because the Author dots his is and crosses his ts.

In the Hebrew alphabet, the “tittle” is a small seraph-like marking that differentiates one letter from another, and thus one word from another. Think of the slight difference between the capital letters “R” and “P” in the English alphabet, and the difference between the words “Raid” and “Paid.” Small markings really do matter because they change the meaning of words and sentences.

Through the centuries, Jewish scribes carefully copied the Scripture onto parchment, paying attention to every jot and tittle and making the Bible the most well-attested ancient book ever written.

Elsewhere, during a hard conversation with the Pharisees, Jesus said, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail” (Luke 16:17). What is your view of Scripture? Is it the same as Jesus’s?

Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount from IBC on Vimeo.

This weekend I start a brand new series of messages called Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount. This series begins at the same time we are launching our new Saturday Night Worship service. I will be preaching the same sermon and series on both Saturday night and Sunday morning. I begin this weekend with a message titled INFLUENCE from Matthew 5:13-16.

We now have six (6) exciting worship services to choose from at Immanuel:

• Saturday night at 6:30pm (Union Station at 5pm)
• Sunday at 8am, 9:30am and 11am
• Hispanos en Cristo at 12:30pm led by Pastor Juan Ancalle
• Venture Young Adults service at 11am (in the gym) led by Dr. Danny Leavins

“The body’s appendix has long been thought of as nothing more than a worthless evolutionary artifact,” says Charles Q. Choi, a writer for LiveScience.Com, “good for nothing save a potentially lethal case of inflammation.” Apparently, all of that has changed. Choi goes on to say, “Now researchers suggest the appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant.”

Most of us know someone who has had his appendix removed and lived to tell about it. In fact, slightly more than 1 in 20 people, says Choi, have the simple procedure and experience no negative side effects. The common medical notion is that we really don’t need our appendix. It’s a useless organ.

The idea about the good-for-nothing organ first came from Charles Darwin. Yes, Darwin! The man so many people trust for an accurate understanding of the origin of life. Darwin believed the appendix was a vestige of evolution. He theorized that the tiny organ was once part of a larger structure called a cecum that was used for digesting food in an extinct ancestor that ate leaves.

Now researchers believe the appendix is a “safe house” for good bacteria that could be used after a bad case of diarrhea. Other studies suggest that the appendix might play a role in the creation of important white blood cells.

According to Choi, William Parker, an immunologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., believes “it’s time to correct the textbooks.”

We need to correct Darwin? Exactly, but evolutionists like Parker are not conceding as much ground as you might think. He is quick to silence any Darwin criticizers with, “We’re not saying that Darwin’s idea of evolution is wrong – that would be absurd, as we’re using his ideas on evolution to do this work. It’s just that Darwin simply didn’t have the information we have now.”

Dare I? If Darwin can’t get it right about something as small and seemingly insignificant as the appendix, why should we trust him about the origin of life itself? What other bits of information will we learn (have we learned) some time later that prove Darwin was wrong?

Parker uses phrases like “if Darwin had been aware” and “he probably would not have thought” to back peddle his way into restoring confidence in Darwin’s faulty theories. Christians, on the other hand, submit to the following criteria: The Bible must be right 100 percent of the time or it cannot be trusted. That’s because the credibility of the Holy Scriptures rises and falls on God’s ability to speak the truth, beginning with the first verse of the Bible (Gen. 1:1).

This new discovery about the body’s appendix raises important questions. What or who should we trust about the origin of life? Where’s our starting point? Should science really be given the trump card when it comes to the big issues of life, even though its theories, axioms and postulates are subject to change with new information? For centuries people have tried to destroy the Bible and the creation story, and yet, having stood the test of time, it remains the best-selling book ever. How many science textbooks have been corrected in the past two thousand years?

If Darwin were alive today, he would at least need to write an appendix (pun intended) to his book The Origin of Species, correcting this and other mistakes he made about the origin of life.

Saturday Night Worship from Immanuel Videos on Vimeo.

Saturday Night Worship at Immanuel begins in 27 days! Mark your calendar for Saturday, September 19 at 6:30pm. Here’s a glimpse from one of our preview services last spring. R U coming? Bring a friend. Send an evite. Learn more on our website.

Most of us who live in America have never experienced real hunger and thirst. Poverty in other parts of the world and the life-threatening hunger that results is locked inside a television screen. Perhaps we’ve traveled to the Sudan or South America and seen poverty up close, but we began the day with breakfast and anticipated two more meals before the sun dipped below the horizon.

The closest we’ve come to feeling the pangs of hunger and thirst is when fasting on the night before a visit to the doctor. “Do I really have to do without food to prepare for this medical test,” we groan. By noon the next day we’re complaining of a headache, blurred vision and the loss of energy. After the test, we rush home to the refrigerator and pantry to satisfy our hunger.

For that reason we might have difficulty feeling the intensity of this beatitude. Jesus’s first-century audience didn’t. They were among the truly poor and hungry. They immediately connected to his words.

It’s no accident that Jesus refers to hunger and thirst which are basic physical drives within every living creature. By doing so he describes the intensity and passion by which we are to go after God, who is the ultimate source of our satisfaction.

A Methodist minister named Charles Allen tells the story of a man who learned this idea from Buddha. He came to Buddha to find the true way of life. Buddha took the man to the bank of a river. The man thought Buddha was going to introduce him to some kind of purification or baptism rite.

Suddenly Buddha, who by now had led the man into the middle of the river, grabbed his head and pushed him under the water. He held him there for what seemed like minutes. Finally, the man freed himself from Buddha’s grasp and came up out of the water gasping. Buddha asked calmly, “When you thought you were drowning, what did you desire most.”

“Air! I wanted air!” the man shouted.

Buddha replied, “When you want salvation as much as you wanted air, then you will get it.”

Have you ever wanted something so badly it was a matter of life and death? In the fourth beatitude Jesus tells us the way to satisfy the deep hunger and thirst in our souls – how we can be happy, hungry and satisfied.