1.
Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our rock and our
Redeemer. Amen. In the message from God’s Word today we’ll be
looking at the importance of God’s Word for our lives as Christians. The message is entitled, “The Bible We Study,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
According
to John Burwell’s
report of the 2012 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, church delegates
got an unexpected education when discussing a resolution to include the English
Standard Version of the Bible to the list of approved Bibles for the
denomination. But controversy arose when
one delegate discovered that the ESV’s translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9 clearly
includes those who unrepentantly practice homosexuality among those who won’t
inherit the Kingdom of God. Immediately, a new vote was called and the ESV was
rejected. Anyone who thought the matter was finished was disappointed when
someone discovered that the same wording is found in the RSV, the NIV, the CEV,
and several other versions already approved for use in the Episcopal Church! As
John Burwell wrote, “Who Knew?” The decision was then made to send the bill
back for more study. Wonder what they’ll find in there next? Or, take another example from this past week over
the Chik-fil-A controversy. Mr. Dan Cathy, the Chik-fil-A
CEO, stated that he supports the traditional BIBLICAL view of marriage. That’s
the “controversial” news. His words
were, “We’re very much supportive of the family —
the biblical definition of the family unit.” “We’re
a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we’re married to our first
wives. We give God thanks for that.” For this reason, Boston Mayor
Thomas Menino has urged Chick-fil-A to “back out” of its “plans to
locate in Boston.” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says Chick-fil-A has no place
in the city of Chicago. In his comments
to the Baptist Press, Cathy didn’t even mention same-sex
marriage. He simply said he and his company supported traditional marriage. It’s
clear that anyone who supports the authority of God’s Word in all areas of life
is frowned upon by those outside of the church and yes, even those within it.
3.
Some
people think the Bible “contains” the Word of God. The Bible’s origin, coming from the one true
God, and the Bible’s purpose, communicating God’s life to us in Jesus, makes it
unique. No other book in the history of
the world has had that origin and purpose.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work.” All Scripture
is God breathed. God the Holy Spirit
gave His chosen writers the thoughts they expressed and the words they
wrote. Even so, the holy writers didn’t
simply take down heavenly dictation.
They weren’t robots. Each wrote
in his own style, and each book reflects the experiences of its writer. The Bible is unique.
4.
The
Bible is also completely reliable. It’s
God’s Word, not the word of human beings.
Inspired by God, it’s inerrant.
That means it’s free from error.
We can depend upon it as God’s truth for our lives. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is
God’s message of love to sinful human beings.
Unlike other books, even other so called holy books like the Koran or
the Bhagavad Gita, the Holy Scriptures are uniquely God’s Word. It’s wrong to pick and choose those parts we
believe because we consider them “reasonable.”
We can’t decide which parts of the Bible we want to believe. Our reason, flawed as it is by sin, must
submit to the authority of God’s Word.
5.
We
can despise God’s Word by ignoring it or parts of it. We can also abuse God’s Word by twisting the
meaning intended by the Holy Spirit. Each
passage of Scripture has one intended meaning.
We can’t get away with thinking that person A can arrive at one
interpretation while person B arrives at the opposite interpretation. But the Holy Spirit’s intended meaning in
each text doesn’t and can’t change. Neither
does the Holy Spirit contradict Himself.
This is why we interpret the harder verses of Scripture in light of the
much clearer to understand texts.
6.
But how do we decide what the
meaning is? How do you interpret the
Bible? In one sense, those who say, “It’s all a matter of interpretation,” are
right. As we interpret the Bible, our
questions needs to be this, “What is God
trying to tell us?” There are
several principles of interpretation that can help us answer this question in a
way that we can be sure of. The first
principle of Bible translation is that Christ is the center of the Bible. The Bible must be interpreted in Light of
Jesus. Luther once asked, “Take Christ out of the Scripture and what
do you have?” His answer was, “Nothing.”
The second principle is, all Scripture is to be interpreted in the
light of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, God declares us right with
Himself freely, as a gift, not because we deserve it but because Jesus lived,
died and rose again for us. The third
principle, is that we approach Scripture not with a “prove it” attitude, but
with an open mind, a repentant heart and faith that clings to Christ
alone. As Luther has said, “Reason is held captive under the obedience
of faith.” We come to the Scriptures
asking, “Lord, what would you teach me
here?” The fourth principle is, we
approach Scripture asking the Holy Spirit to work through His Word to convict
us of our sins, and then, confessing our sins, we ask for God’s forgiveness in
Jesus. The fifth principle is, we read
the Scriptures asking the Holy Spirit to reveal their meaning for our
lives. We look for blessings God has
given us for which we can return to Him thanks and praise. We ask, “Lord
what would You have me do?” as we look for ways to respond to His mercy in
acts of loving service.
7.
From the principles of Bible
interpretation you can see that the Bible isn’t a book of rules for living a
good life. Not at all! The central teaching of Scripture is God’s
call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. From the Scriptures we learn that Jesus lived
a perfect life in your place. He obeyed
each one of God’s laws perfectly for you.
Then He died on the cross in your place.
He suffered the punishment that you by your sins deserved. And He rose from the dead to give you eternal
life, a life with God that never ends.
That’s why we read the Bible, not looking for lists of do’s and don’ts,
but asking God to transform us more and more into the image of His Son Jesus.
8.
But, some people believe that the
New Testament is more important to us today than the Old Testament. The New Testament does portray the life,
death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus for us. But the entire Old Testament also points to
Christ. It abounds in the revelation of
God’s grace--His promise to send a Savior after Adam and Eve fell into sin, His
answers to prayer in the Psalms, His message of forgiveness spoken by the
prophets. We don’t pit the Old Testament
against the New. Nor can we conclude
that the Old Testament carries a message of law and the New Testament a message
of gospel. Both Law and Gospel are
central in both the Old and New Testaments.
Both testaments tell of God’s judgment on human sin, but both testaments
also tell of God’s mercy toward repentant sinners.
9.
There are a lot of “mistakes” in the
Bible! In its pages we read of many
people who made “mistakes.” But these
“mistakes” were sins against our holy God, sins that deserved His punishment. But the Bible doesn’t contain mistakes about
who God is or what He’s done through history for us and our salvation. Sometimes people point to “mistakes” in the
Bible, to supposed “contradictions” or to conflicts between science and the Bible. Certainly some textual problems exist. But given the length of the Bible, these
“variant readings” are few and far between.
More important is the fact that none of them detract from the central
truths of Christian doctrine. In fact,
those who refuse to study the Bible because “it’s unscientific” need to study
it more closely. True science and the
Christian faith don’t disagree at all. All truth is God’s truth. Pure science discovers the truths in the
natural world. It deals with empirical
data, not with matters of faith.
10.
One
final comment about the reliability of the Bible we have in English. Some people have come to the idea that
because we have so many translations of the Bible, no one can really know the
truth. “Which translation can you trust?” they ask. If this is your question, take an hour to
compare the NIV, or the New King James Version, and the New American Standard
Version, or the ESV. Look at verses like
John 3:16, 1 John 1:8-9, and compare Psalm 23.
Check out some of your own favorite texts. If you do that, you’ll almost certainly
conclude that the translations all say the same thing. Certainly no differences in the major
doctrines of the Christian faith can be found among the major translations. In fact, the variety of translations can help
you gain fresh insight into the meaning of specific texts by looking at how the
translators chose to phrase words and verses.
11.
God
the Holy Spirit is always present to strengthen us when we pick up the Bible
and take a long drink of the “milk of the Word.” Some have suggested that the Bible we have in
our homes never be closed, that they always lie open, the better to remember
the invitation of our Lord to “take up and read.” But, even if our Bibles are left open, how
can we develop the right attitude toward reading them? How can we find time
each day to read the Scriptures for our own personal spiritual growth? For one thing, we need to view the Scriptures
not just as divinely inspired, but also as living power. If the Scriptures are only a code book of
texts that prove our intellectual understanding of Him is a correct one, then
no wonder they are of little help to us in real life.
12.
The
Scriptures are our Lord’s Word to us. An
active powerful Word. A Word that works
changes in our hearts and lives. We can
go to it when our spirits are low. We
can read it as God’s letter of love written to each of us personally. We can think of it many times a day. We can refer to it in our daily conversations. And as we let God’s Word have its way with
us, those around us will see evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in us. We will become more and more the living
epistles Paul once wrote about, “Known
and read by all men” (2 Cor. 3:2 RSV).
Amen.
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