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Monday, August 20, 2012

“THE BIBLE’S POWER FOR LIFE”


A sermon based upon 2 Timothy 3: 12-17
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Disciple Series, 1 of  15, August 12, 2012

You can get into all kinds of trouble when you read, believe, live or teach the Bible.  A.J. Jacob’s, in his book, The Year of Living Biblically, reminds us of all kinds of Bible texts we had better not put into practice today, such as “the stoning of stubborn and rebellious children” . (Deut 21: 18-21).  There are many more.  

In our text Paul reminds Timothy right up front: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”(12).    To live “a godly life in a world that is not convinced nor sold out on God’s “revelation” of righteousness (Romans 1:17) can cost you.    It might cost you a friend.  It might cost you your job.  It might cost your reputation among some.  It might also cost you money and, but hopefully not, it could, as it does in some places, even cost you your life.     

The recent Chick-Fil-A controversy is a case and point to the “cost” of living “biblically”.   The controversy has not about using cows in advertising, nor eating chicken, and not even about eating fast food, but it has been over America’s continued stewing over what defines a marriage or a family.  It all started when son of Chick-Fil-A founder, Truett Cathy, made a bold statement recently in the Biblical Recorder stating how his company stands for the “biblical definition of the family unit”.   (http://www.brnow.org/News/July-2012/%E2%80%98Guilty-as-charged,%E2%80%99-Dan-Cathy-says-of-Chick-fil-A).

Stating that his company operates on “biblical principles” is a great witness to truth as “revealed” in the Bible, but it was when Cathy went from witnessing to “preaching” on a news talk television show that he got into trouble.   “…I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about." (http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2012/07/audio-chickfila-president-coo-dan-cathy-says-arrogant-same-sex-marriage-shaking-fist-at-god-invites-god-judgment.html .

When you move from selling chicken in the world and to “preaching” the worldview of the Bible to the world, you are asking for trouble.   As Paul says in our text, “Scripture…rebukes, corrects and instructs.”  Here, already, Paul knew what Dan Cathy now knows, the “world” cannot always receive, understand nor appreciate biblical values.  If you speak up for what you believe in the midst of the moral, spiritual and the increasing societal confusion of today’s “culture wars”, people will take shots at you.  Even if you are trying to say what you are for, rather than trying to be against anyone, as Cathy later explained he was doing, (He was not anti-gay, but pro-marriage).  Even though New York’s mayor Bloomberg, who disagrees with his Cathy’s view on marriage, defended Cathy’s constitutional right of “free speech” (www.nypost.com), the truth of matter is that speech is never completely free.  The words of God in the bible aren’t free either.  

The problem the Chick-Fil-A controversy depicts the greatest problem humans always have with the Bible.   Mark Twain once commented, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible I don’t understand which trouble me, but it’s the parts of the Bible I do.”   We can come to understand even most of the difficult parts of the Bible, but will we?  How do we actually receive, learn, believe, and hopefully, come to live the words of the Bible?  

READ THE BIBLE---- LIVE A GODLY LIFE IN CHRIST
If you want to find the power and authority for life in the Bible, it will require effort and learning on your part.  Paul tells Timothy to “continue in what you have learned …”  (14a).  The way of a Christian disciple is based upon the fact that you have “learned” the truth about Jesus Christ, and that you still need to “continue” learning, as the old hymn says, “more about Jesus.”  In fact, the very word disciple means “learner”.   A true follower of Jesus Christ continues to be a “life-long learner”, as you can only “grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ” when you keep learning, one day at a time.

But we surely can’t “continue” in what we haven’t learned, what we haven’t really read, what we aren’t reading, or haven’t studied.  The foundation of living the godly life revealed to us in Jesus comes from taking time to read, meditate upon, and pray Scripture.  Are you part of a regular Bible Study?  Are you daily reading and learning what God has said, and what the Spirit still says?  I know this sounds elementary (my dear Watson), but you can’t beat simplicity for grasping the truth.  You can’t know, find, discover, or learn God’s eternal truth for yourself unless you take time and effort to read and learn the saving story of Bible for yourself.  

The Bible is expansive in its scope, substance and subject.  It’s made up of two major sections: The Old and New Testaments or Covenants.   It’s tells about the History of Israel and the Coming of Jesus in that history to redeem them and us.   The Bible was written over a period of over 1,500 years detailing both religious experience, religious progress including religious failure, so that it can be now be “received” as a guide for faith and the “supreme revelation” of God’s redemptive truth in history.  In more recent Church history, scholars like John Wycliff and William Tyndale were hunted down and burned at the stake because they believed you and I should have a Bible to read for ourselves.   And do you know who hunted those men down and killed them for translating and printing the Bible?  Strangely enough, it wasn’t the world, but it was “church” that didn’t want people reading the Bible.  There was a time when the church assumed it could make up its own “authority”, just like people do today, rather than following the word of Scripture.  

So, at the very heart of learning the way of discipleship begins by learning the Bible, especially learning the Bible as children.  Paul reminds Timothy how “from infancy he has learned the Holy Scriptures” (3.15).  It is his learning of the Bible that will give Timothy the ability to endure, grow and continue following the way of Jesus.   Everything young Timothy has learned and will continue to learn about Jesus is grounded in the ‘authority’ of the Word of God.

BELIEVE THE BIBLE----KNOW THE GOD WHO GIVES LIFE
The second word Paul advices Timothy is to “continue…. in what you have become convinced of.”  
 When we speak about the Bible having “power or authority for life” we know that the word “authority” has become negative for our much of our culture.  Beginning in the 1960’s the prevailing mood of western society became anti-establishment and anti-authority, which continues in subtle and more obvious forms of protest today.   Ask many people what is their ultimate “rule” or “authority” in life and many will tell you “they don’t know” or “don’t have a clue” or that “they are their own authority” as they are “making up the rules as they go.”   As Jay Leno’s Jay Walking segment has shown, when asked what are the names of the writers of the gospels, you will get all kinds of answers, like the one person who answered, “Paul, John and George and Ringo.”  In this world where there are so much ignorance about the Bible, so many beliefs, so many angles for truth, and so many choices.   In a world where there is so much ignorance about the Bible, how can we, make a claim of ultimate saving, spiritual truth found in the words of the Bible?

I know there are many arguments for affirming the “truth” in and of the Bible.   Arguments never work to convince anyone.  But let me simply ask you: WHAT EMPOWERS YOUR LIVE?  What gives you the confidence and assurance to face each day?  Do you have the “authority” to live the kind of life that keeps on giving life and hope?  Some people pick and choose a lifestyle that drains them rather than sustains them.   In contrast, the Bible’s authority is based upon living by a set of truths, boundaries and rules which empowers love and life.  

On the very first pages of the Bible, we have an unforgettable image of God's claim on our lives.  In the second chapter of Genesis, we find that life is not absolutely free life without conditions, moral boundaries and God-given limits.  For human life to flourish and to continue on earth, humans must bow to the ultimate authority of God.  As the text in Genesis says:  “And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die." (Gen 2:16-17 TNIV).  The gift of God’s life-giving “yes” comes with a death preventing “no.”  As the giver and gate-keeper of life, God warns that there are lines we humans must not cross.  If we reject God’s word of truth for life, we choose death.    

Interestingly, on the very first pages of Scripture, God not only gives life, but God also puts our own lives into our own “human” hands.   Our God-given power to choose life or death, becomes even clearer with Moses, as he charges the Israelites with the God-given conditions for life:  “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.  See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction…. (Deu 30:14-15 TNIV)…. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life… (Deu 30:19-20 TNIV).   When I read such powerful words, already, even in the first books of Law, called Torah, it’s no wonder many Jews still say the “Torah tells us the truth all need to know about life.”  From the very beginning and continuing until the full revelation of God’s truth in Jesus, God has given his people the power and authority for life.   By giving us Scripture, God has put the choice for life into our own hands.  

LIVE THE BIBLE---GOD GIVES LIFE THROUGH SCRIPTURE
Finally, we can see this direct connection between God's life giving Spirit and the God’s life giving Word by comparing two unforgettable biblical images, one from Genesis and this one from Second Timothy.   Do you remember how God creates Adam?   The text graphically describes how God “breathes into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life.”   Even though Adam is only made from the dust of the earth, God breathes his own life-Spirit into Adam so Adam can live (Gen. 2.7).  Now, in today's text, the same kind of life-giving picture returns in Paul’s words about Holy Scripture.  Scripture is “God-breathed” or “inspired” by God (16).  This means that Scripture does not have a life of its own, nor is it limited by human words.  No, when Paul tells Timothy that God has breathed God’s life into Scripture, he says the “written Word” points us back to the life of God himself.  When we read, believe and live the true ‘word of God’ in Scripture, God gives the same “God-breathed” or “inspired” life he gave life to Adam, to Moses, to Timothy, and now makes available for us.  It is this very life-giving word from God’s own life, based upon God's on authority and power for life, the Bible becomes “useful” for “teaching”,  “rebuking” for “correcting” and for “training” in “righteousness” to help “God’s people be equipped for every good work”.   As sure as the word reveals God’s divine life, God continues speak the very words of life through Scripture.    

Notice once more, with a keener eye, the most basic truth Paul is reminding Timothy in this text.   He is speaking to this young Timothy who has known the Scriptures since birth, who is already a follower of Jesus, and who is studying to be a minister and missionary along with Paul.   Paul writes to this one who has known the Scripture all his life, even since infancy, these words: “But as for you, CONTINUE IN WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, WHICH ARE ABLE TO MAKE YOU WISE FOR SALVATION THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS. (2Ti 3:14-15 TNIV).  Do you grasp the meaning here?  Timothy needs to “continue” in the Scriptures not because Timothy can lose his salvation, but Timothy needs to stay in the Scriptures because God has not given all of life or salvation to Timothy yet.  God still gives the life-saving, and life-renewing conditions for life and hope through God’s revelation of himself, particularly revealed in life of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

This brings back to the word “authority”.   It also brings us back around all the hot button issues about who can rightly define marriage, or even about whether or not one should “eat more chicken,” ---or any other question a person might put to the Bible.   If God’s word  of truth found in Scripture “rebukes” or “corrects” our thinking, and hopefully “trains us” us about God’s “righteousness”, then the living Word of Scripture is only considered “useful” for the purpose of making people “wise unto salvation”.   We must not “use” or misuse Scripture for proving our own points.  Scripture already has a purpose and a point.   As followers of God’s word and people of the book, we don’t have to defend Scripture to the world, nor beat people over the head with its revealed truth about marriage nor even about its most important revelation of Jesus as God’s son.  The living Spirit of truth is perfectly able to protect the truth and judge the world.   Spurgeon, the great Baptists preacher of another age used to say, “The Bible is like a lion, just turn it loose and let it go.”   

So the question about God’s authority for life revealed in Scripture put to us is not “how we you using the Bible”, but do we let the Bible’s message find us?  Do we let the message of Scripture useful for “making us wise unto salvation” in Jesus Christ?  In the moral confusion of our times, sharing Christ’s love is how we show the life-giving power and authority of the Bible.  The apostle Paul gave us all way to express the ultimate “saving” message of the Bible, when he pronounced this final blessing.  In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul closes with this prayer: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”   (2Co 13:14-1 TNIV).   When we “continue” to mediate upon the “grace of our Lord Jesus” and “continue” to learn more of the “love of God” “for all”, and when we study the Bible, not alone, but in the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit”, we gain the very life of God.   This ongoing experience of grace, of love and of fellowship, is how God continues to inspire and instill the power of life and the authority for life in us and through us.   Amen.  

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