The Word
Cornwall/Montreal
April 16, 2005
On your laps, in your case, or, at least, in your home, you have one of the most incredible books- the Bible. When we understand how we got it, we have to appreciate that we have a miracle in our hands each time we read or, even, hold it, and when we consider the words of the Bible, we can appreciate that we really do have words intended to guide our lives. Our faith is founded on the conviction that God is there and that he is not silent. He has revealed himself to mankind, and the record and the focus of that revelation is Scripture. It’s interesting, and valuable, to understand how authoritative we can understand scripture to be.
1. The biblical writers were confident that they were speaking from God. So often, we read, especially in the OT, the words, “Thus says the Lord.” And the NT is no less clear- 1 Peter 1.10-12- Peter, understood to be the author, is clear that the Holy Spirit who inspired the prophets was present in a unique way in Jesus of Nazareth, and was at work in ‘those who preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven’. In the second letter, Peter sees the inspired OT scriptures confirmed by the coming, transfiguration, and the voice of Jesus (2 Pet.1.16-21). Paul clearly felt that he was involved in God’s work- 1 Cor.2.12-13- this was the authority back of Paul’s spoken word, and he was no less clear about the authority of the written word- 2 Tim.3.16.
2. The preaching of the NT evangelists shared a common content, using a basic outline, which provided a framework for the simple, but powerful, scriptural message: “The age of fulfillment has dawned, as the Scriptures foretold. God has sent his Messiah, Jesus. He died in shame upon the cross. God raised him again from the tomb. He is now Lord, at God’s right hand. The proof of this is the Holy Spirit, whose effects you see. This Jesus will come again at the end of history. Repent, believe, and be baptized.” (C.H. Dodd in “The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments”. Those who heard the message believed it came from God- 1 Thess.2.13.
3. When you look around the world, and look at churches which believe the Bible, teach the Bible, allow their outlook and attitudes to be molded by the Bible, they are the growing churches in the world. This is as true in the First World as in the Two-Thirds World- it makes no difference. There is a power in biblical preaching, which is never present where scripture is not the centre.
The fact is that there is power in scriptural Christianity. It has power to build up believers, and enable them to face the temptations, problems, and crises of this life. It has a unique power to convert. God’s word is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword- Heb.4.12, and time and again, the person who makes good use of it will find that it has pierced to the hearts of his hearers in a way that his own words could never do.
In the second century, Justin Martyr, a disciple of the apostle John, wrote, “The Scriptures and the words of Jesus possess a terrible power in themselves and a wonderful sweetness. Straightaway a flame was kindled in my soul, and a love of the prophets and of those men who were friends of Christ possessed me.’ His disciple, Tatian, wrote, “I sought how I might be able to discover the truth, and I happened to meet with certain barbaric writings, too old to be compared with the opinions of the Greeks, and too divine to be compared with their errors. And I was led to put faith in these by the unpretentious cast of the language, the genuine character of the writers, their intelligible account of creation, the foreknowledge they displayed of future events, the excellent quality of the precepts, and their declaration that the government of the worlds is centred in one Being.”
We need to know these things to be confident with the writings that we call Holy Scripture and when we think of using them in our contemporary world. We don’t want to have the wrong tools at our disposal. We want to do good in the lives of those we touch, and we need confidence, in a time when people downplay scripture, that it is not to be downplayed, but to be lifted up. The most important question we have to decide for ourselves is whether or not we will accept the Bible’s claim to bring us God’s own word. On that foundation, all else depends. We have such an impact of secularization around us, and are so much affected by it, ourselves, that we can feel less than confident with the tools that we know mean something to us, as individuals. Can they mean as much to others? However, the authority of Scripture can be rationally held and competently defended by modern, critical theologians.
Can you and I trust the biblical teaching about man, God and salvation? We must know the answer to that question. Billy Graham has written and spoken of the tussle he had over this issue. When he came to trust the Scriptures, he began to preach with the power and authority that has made him far and away the most effective evangelist in our lifetimes.
How is this for a story of the power of scripture? “Towards the end of the nineteenth century a young Malagasy woman of a slave-owning family purchased a slave girl in the market at Mandritsara, in northern Madagascar. In the days that followed, the slave girl relieved her loneliness by reading the one book she had- a Malagasy New Testament. Her mistress was intrigued to find the girl could read: she herself could not. So the slave girl taught her mistress to read, and the textbook was the Malagasy New Testament. Others were soon invited to the reading, and before long a small crowd of seekers gathered round the slave girl, and a church was born. It is still live today, apparently, with many daughter churches. All of this is a simple testimony to the value and power of scripture.
If you believe that Scriptures come to you marked with the stamp of God’s authority, what difference will that make to what you do with the scriptures, especially, in the area of using them in evangelizing? (In Montreal, many took the Becoming a Contagious Christian course- and we learned the need to be able to use scripture and scriptural ideas. Is this a valuable source for any strength?)
1. We’ll not be embarrassed about opening the Scriptures/Bible, and will come to turn there naturally, as to any other relevant book. The Bible is the world’s best-seller, but, as we know, it’s not read as well as most best-sellers. We don’t have to be ‘Bible thumpers’ to be able to turn, with confidence, to the Bible in conversation. As Christians, we’ll always be at our best when we use our ‘primary source’, the Bible.
2. We’ll feel free to lend the Scriptures. We know that the Bible can have great power, just in the reading. Let me tell you a story I found. Tikichi Ishii was a WW2 criminal of incredible cruelty, who awaited execution in his cell. He had been a Japanese guard who had murdered men, and children, and had reveled in it. Two Canadian women visited him in his cell, and told him of the salvation, which Christ had achieved even for such as he. He glared at them, cursed them, and they went away without, it would seem, having achieved anything. But they left him a NT. He began to read it during the long hours of solitary confinement. He was fascinated by the person of Jesus, who was tortured so brutally, but without a word of resentment, and he had prayed for his tormenters. Ishii declared, “I stopped. I could not go on. I was stabbed to the heart, as by a five-inch nail. Was it the love of Christ? Was it his compassion? I do not know what it was. I only know that I believed, and the harness of my heart was changed.” When the executioner came to Ishii he found not the hardened brute he had anticipated, but a smiling, radian man whose remaining days in that prison had been utterly transformed by the new life he had found in Christ. We can have confidence in lending Scriptures to others- it’s a quiet but powerful means of evangelism.
3. When we’re involved with people, and we’re always involved as evangelists, we need to be prepared to challenge people with the Scriptures. Yes, I mean in our private conversations. We can point people to particular areas of the Scriptures that might speak to their particular needs of the moment, or to their particular intellectual need. This, of course, requires that we know them and understand how they were written and for whom. Or it requires that you keep track of those passages that have been particularly meaningful for you, and to which you can direct other people going through similar conditions. With this in mind, we have to be very careful in choosing passages with care, and to verbally translate what we’ve read into the language and understanding of those we speak with. People think that the Bible is old- it isn’t. We see this in the Bible, itself. The apostle John, who was the last gospel writer to write, translated what Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote of ‘the Kingdom of God’ with the term ‘eternal life’, which made more sense to the Greeks to whom he, primarily directed his writing, and which was void, then, of the social and politically negative overtones that go with ‘Kingdom’. Also, Paul took the non-Jewish idea of ‘adoption’, which was common in Roman circles, and used this as a brilliant description of what God had done for us in Christ. Both John and Paul were faithful to the content of the message, but were free to update the language, accurately, for the audience to which they spoke. So do we need to do.
4. Above all, we need to trust the scriptures. They have a power our words do not have. We, speaking ministers know this. Sometimes, after a message, we’ll get rather opposite comments. I’ve had comments, from the same message, that it was one of my weakest or worst and that it was the best that someone had ever heard and really spoke to them that day. Isaiah 55.11 declares that God doesn’t allow His word to go to waste. One person will be moved to tears by a message, perhaps, at the same time as the person sitting next will be watching the watch to figure out when it will be over. This is the reality of things; this is the power and wonder of the Word of God, too.
As I spoke of a few weeks back, Jesus has given us a Helper to aid us in properly understanding His Words. We must not read our own interpretations into the Word, but must draw His Word out. How is your personal time with the Word? Are you reading and studying much and long? Or are you simply giving the Word short times? Are you attempting to go deep? Or are you content with broad and shallow?
Today, I want you to have a renewed appreciation for the value of the Scriptures that you hold in your hands today, or that are in your home. Please renew your commitment to time with the Scriptures. How much time do you need to set to spend with Scriptures daily? When does this time need to be? Commit, now, to something definite with God. Respond to Him, now. He’s calling on you to do this. This is not to have been a message just to fill time at church today, but is one through which God is challenging and stirring you with regard to His Word. Listen to Him, yourself, right now, and make some commitment to Him. Pray about it, now, not later.
