It’s been four years now since I was first asked to pastor here. I didn’t know what to say at first, I didn’t know if this was really where God wanted me to be, but it has been a blessing.
And it’s been one year since my ordination. And if you remember Pastor Harry Vellekoop, who presented my ordination, he’s been having a monthly pastor’s get-together at his church in Livonia since January, and he had one on Friday. The guest speaker was the president of the local Gideon camp that covers Northern Ontario and Livingston counties. It was just amazing to hear some of the testimonies regarding what the Gideon Bibles have accomplished. When people needed scripture the most, there it was, right in front of them.
What was really amazing was the way in which God reaches out to people. He knew who would need a Bible before the person knew. And he often led them to a Bible. The person didn’t cry out for a Bible and wait. God knew and had one already provided for them at the time they cried out for one.
When it was time for Pastor Harry to speak, one of the things he talked about was church membership. We’ll be taking in Katie next week, and it’s great to have someone young who is interested in becoming a member of this church and making commitments to this church.
Pastor Harry talked a little bit about the challenges he had when first coming into that church a few years ago. One of them was how the pastor before him admitted two individuals into church membership who were living together, but not married. He wondered how to handle that and eventually decided the best thing to do was preach the actual gospel and set standards for future members.
Another thing he mentioned was asking a church member who lived close by if they wouldn’t mind mowing the lawn. They said, “No, we have our own lawn to mow.” As if no one else in the church did. And I don’t remember if it was that same couple or if it was even in that same particular church, but he said that when he asked someone if they would like to join the church, they said, “yes, I’ll be a member, but don’t expect me to do anything.”
It kind of makes you wonder what makes a person think membership is all about? I guess to some, it’s just another card to carry in your wallet. Maybe it’s just to make you look good or feel good socially.
But what does all of this have to do with today’s sermon? Well, one thing that ties in with what Pastor Harry and Dennis, the Gideon president, had to say was the Bible. Reading the Bible and believing the Bible. The two, of course, go hand in hand. You wouldn’t think that we would have to even explain that or go into detail about that, would you?
I often say, in just about every sermon, about the false teaching infiltrating the churches. And when Pastor Harry began to speak, he said that he was raised in a church that not only didn’t teach the Bible, but he said he remembers the priest taking the Bible, throwing it on the floor for dramatic effect and saying, “It’s just a book like any other book.”
So if it’s just a book like any other book, what authority does it have, and moreover, what authority do we have to reference? What do we have as The standard of God’s truth?
According to those who don’t believe that the Bible is God’s standard, then, I suppose man’s standard is God’s standard? Wouldn’t that make man’s standard higher than God’s? Wouldn’t that make man, God?
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to 2 Timothy 3, and we’ll read verses 14-17. And as you’re turning there, let me tell you another quick story about scripture and its critics. This is from Chuck Colson.
The Bible has, amazingly—no doubt with supernatural grace—survived its critics. Thirty to sixty million copies are produced annually. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes. Voltaire, for example, who passionately sought to erase the Christian influence during the French Revolution, predicted that within a hundred years no one would read the Bible. When his home was later auctioned off after his death, it was purchased by the French Bible Society. As one pastor said, the Bible outlives its pallbearers.
Scripture: Let’s take a look at what The Bible says about itself. I’ve recently quoted the beginning of this chapter regarding the type of society we will live in during the last days. Paul ends his point to Timothy with this charge.
2 Timothy 3:14-17:
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Now, most people who are skeptics, especially the priest who threw the Bible on the floor, and any others that we might encounter, would say, “you can’t prove the Bible with the Bible.” And that’s true. Just because The Bible says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because the Koran says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because The Book of Mormon says it’s true, doesn’t make it true.
And that’s another thing Pastor Harry brought up the other day. According to statistics, 25 percent of evangelical Christians––which we Baptists are––believe that The Book of Mormon is scripture.
I could see 2-5 percent, but not 25 percent!
The apostle John tells his readers to ‘test the spirits.’ This is another way to phrase the Psalm that said “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Test the spirits would also mean to test the Bible for yourself. Paul dared his readers to go ahead and ask the 500 witnesses that were still alive at the time if they saw the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes.
And in Acts, we read that the Berean Jews, “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” The Greek synonyms for ‘examined’ would translate to: “scrutinize, investigate, interrogate, determine.” The King James Version translates the word variously as “ask, question, discern, examine, judge, search.”
So, skeptics will still say, “Yeah, but you’re still using scripture.” Okay, well what about the examinations of theology, history, and thought over the past 2,000 years? It’s a study called apologetics. What did they come up with? Christianity wouldn’t exist if it weren’t true. In fact, if it weren’t true, it would have never existed at all. The followers of Jesus would have never started The Church or The Church age. It would have ended with Jesus’ death on the cross.
Then there are geological and other scientific discoveries that align with Genesis. There are vast archaeological discoveries, and most importantly, the greatest apologetic, the billions of testimonies of people throughout the past 2,000 years.
I could go on and on, but I don’t want to get bogged down in apologetics. The point is, we need to be filled with the truth of scripture. The Bible is God-given for us, for a reason. It’s not just “The Good Book” or “a religious book which has given its readers inspiration for thousands of years,” it is God’s truth revealed to us and preserved for us for all time.
If you remember not too long ago when I talked about discerning the end times, I read some verses out of Matthew 24, and this is one of them: “35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Kind of reminds you of what I just read from Chuck Colson: The Bible has always outlived its pallbearers.
And the Bible has always been preserved for us. Some people will argue that the only true Bible for the English-speaking people is The King James. And I’m not going to get into that, but I have to say that we may find a poor translation here or there; that does not mean that God’s word has not been preserved in stone so that we can’t understand it. I don’t read the King James Version because I can’t understand it. So how can I preach the word of God if I can’t understand the word of God?
His Word has been preserved for centuries, and it is still to this day being translated into languages that it has never before been translated into. When Dennis, the Gideon representative spoke, he said that in some third world countries, The Bible is handed out by Gideons in schools. And because of that, it’s how children learn to read because it’s not only the first book that children get to own, but it may be the only book that some children have. So the teacher can use that to teach reading because it’s a book that all of the children have.
God’s word has been preserved for all people of all the world for all generations and all languages, including the ever-changing English language.
Some will say, The Bible was never really preserved well to begin with. How do we know that what we have today is original and not tampered with?
Well, it’s true. We don’t have the original hand-written works of any scripture. The earliest copies that we have of New Testament scripture are hand-written copies from within the first to the second century. But when it comes to other writings from that time period, the earliest copies we have date hundreds of years later, and they are not exact copies but have a lot of embellishments. But with The Bible, they are exact copies of one another, all the way down through the centuries of hand-written texts.
And in his book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell said, the earliest (partial or whole) New Testament manuscripts found date between 114 and 325 A.D. McDowell refers to Sir Frederic Kenyon who states that when it comes to ancient manuscripts, “In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament.”
In addition to the relatively short time span of existing documents to its original date, McDowell points out that there are some 25,000 copies of the New Testament in existence today—the greatest number by far of any other ancient text. The Iliad comes in second with a mere 643 manuscripts. All New Testament copies are nearly identical to each other, which cannot be said of other ancient writings. This accuracy is also seen in various translations.
God has carefully and intentionally preserved His word for all people, and for all time.
But don’t get me wrong, I love to talk about apologetics––there I go, slipping into it again. But I think that in order to really examine why we need to read scripture, it’s important in this day and age to examine, “what is scripture? Is The Bible truly the Word of God or the Word of man? Is it truly reliable? Was it made by just a bunch of guys who decided to make a religion?”
I could go on and on about that, but I’ll just remind you that researchers truly believe that if Christianity were not true, then it would have died with Jesus. The truth of Christianity hinges on the Bible being true, more specifically, the resurrection of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit also resides in our Bible reading. I couldn’t think of a better way to say it, only to say that the Holy Spirit resides in our Bible reading. We have a living Word. The Holy Spirit is there as we read. The Holy Spirit speaks to us as we read. Not only does the Holy Spirit live within us, but is active in us as we read God’s Word.
The writer of Hebrews put it best when he said, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Eugene Peterson said, Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.
And going back to our scripture verse in 2 Timothy, Paul says that scripture, “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Enduring Word Commentary says this: When we come to the Bible and let God speak to us, it changes us – it makes us complete and transforms us.
i. One way the Bible transforms us is through our understanding. Romans 12:2 says, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” When we let the Bible guide our thinking, our minds are renewed and transformed, so we begin to actually think the way God wants us to think.
ii. But there is another level by which the Bible transforms us: by a spiritual work, a spiritual blessing which God works in us as we come to the Bible and let Him speak to us. This is a spiritual work that goes beyond our intellectual understanding.
I suppose we can let the Bible be nothing more than just filling us with information. But I doubt someone filled with the Holy Spirit is going to have that kind of experience. I believe that someone filled with the Holy Spirit is going to be fed by the Holy Spirit as they read.
Now, that doesn’t mean that a person is going to understand or even be able to obtain or retain everything they read all at once. It’s a process, and it’s why we preachers harp on our congregations to read the Bible constantly, because the more you read, the more you’re going to be fed.
Going back to Enduring Word, it says, “Because of this spiritual level on which the Word of God operates, we don’t have to understand it all to have it be effectively working in our lives.”
A critic once wrote a letter to a magazine saying, “Over the years, I suppose I’ve gone to church more than 1,000 times, and I can’t remember the specific content of even one sermon over those many years. What good was it to go to church 1,000 times?” The next week, someone wrote back: “Over the past many years, I have eaten more than 1,000 meals prepared by my wife. I cannot remember the specific menu of any of those meals. But they nourished me along the way, and without them, I would be a much different man!” The Bible will do its spiritual work in us, if we will let it.
And again, if we let it. Like I said, The Holy Spirit will do His work in us as we read, but we also have to be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work.
A few hundred years ago, the prince of Grenada, an heir to the Spanish crown, was sentenced to life in solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison. The dreadful, dirty, and dreary nature of the place earned it the name, “The Place of the Skull.” Everyone knew that once you were in, you would never come out alive. The prince was given one book to read the entire time: the Bible.
With only one book to read, he read it hundreds and hundreds of times. The book became his constant companion. After 33 years of imprisonment, he died. When they came to clean out his cell, they found some notes he had written using nails to mark the soft stone of the prison walls.
The notations were of this sort: Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except the letter J; the ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther is the longest verse in the Bible; no word or name more than six syllables can be found in the Bible.
This individual spent 33 years of his life studying what some have described as the greatest book of all time. Yet he could only glean trivia. From all we know, he never made any religious or spiritual commitment to Christ. He simply became an expert at Bible trivia.
Let’s not allow that to happen to any of us. Let us be transformed by the Bible. Let us know and understand that it was written for us, through God’s inspiration to man, so that we can know God. We can know salvation. We can know righteousness. We can know that we are sinners and what God’s standard of holiness is. We can know forgiveness, and we can know peace and we can know purpose.
Let God speak to you. Let the Holy Spirit do His work in you as you read and study the Bible. Pray as you do, and pray the blessings of God’s promises over your life as you come to them. Pray for holiness when the Bible convicts you. Pray and forgive others as the Bible commands. Do good works as the Bible commands. Draw closer to God through this process, be filled with his peace, be filled with his joy. As a chaotic world swirls around us, let God’s word refresh you and strengthen you.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
