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"The
Bible as the Word of God" October
5, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower For our text this morning I'm going to ask us to look at just one
verse out of Psalm 119. The verse
is 105. There's a lot of verses in
Psalm 119, and verse 105--a very familiar one--says this: Your
word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path. Some of us know that in closer to a King James, "Thy Word is a
lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." And there are even songs that some of us have learned that
have those words with a tune accompanying.
We're going to look at the idea, the conviction, that Presbyterians
together with many Christians have, that the Bible is God's Word to us.
The Bible is God's Word. And
I want to take advantage of this week's opportunity to supplement what I said a
week ago, because one week ago I was describing the Presbyterian belief that the
Bible and the Bible alone is our source of authority regarding insight into
God's will for us. You remember a
week ago that I was contrasting that with other approaches where there are
multiple authorities--maybe the Bible, but there are other sources of insight
that are respected every bit as much as the Bible is.
For instance, we said in traditional Roman Catholic thought (you may be
familiar with this), there is the Bible, but there is Church tradition--and the
tradition of the Church is regarded officially as every bit as viable a source
of knowledge and insight as the Bible is. The
Methodists (my goodness, the poor Methodists!) they have four sources of
authority. They call it the
"Wesleyan quadrilateral," so four different things.
And what that means is you might say, "This does not seem to be what
the Bible teaches, but on the other hand, we have these other sources of
authority that we can appeal to." Well, in contrast to that, Presbyterians would say, "No.
The Bible and the Bible alone is our authority."
And in just a minute what I want us to do is look at that and see if we
can't supplement that with some additional understanding.
But as we do, let me just give you this illustration, because I was
asked--after worship last week several of you asked some very important
questions. I want to see if we can
respond to those questions that you asked (then or throughout the week) on the
subject of: "Now, wait a
minute! Is that really true?
Is it really true that the Bible and the Bible alone is our one-and-only
source of authority?" And I'm
going to say, "Yes, it is." And
I want to give us a very vivid illustration of the type of thing that that
preserves us from. And here is my illustration. A
number of years ago (some of you remember this) Oral Roberts was a
televangelist. (I think it was back
in the days before we even had that word, "televangelist.")
He was a minister on television. And
there was a particular . . . I don't want to say "show ("there was a
particular episode of his show"--that's not so good) . . . on this
particular day Oral Roberts went on the air and he said that he had a dream from
the night before and in that dream--some of us remember when this happened.
Some of us were avid watchers of Oral Roberts. And maybe even if you weren't, you remember he said,
"Last night in a dream a 500-foot Jesus appeared to me and said that if
you, my television audience, if you don't send money right away, God is going to
take me home." And the amazing
thing is that his audience, the Oral Roberts faithful, responded very
immediately very, very generously. And
professional fundraisers sat up and took note!
(Professional theologians were aghast . . . but professional fundraisers
said, "Hey, there's something here we want to pay attention to because
we've never seen a response like this.") Well, that's because in that perspective, God speaking in a dream
to the evangelist and out to the people is regarded as a legitimate source of
insight into God's will. So you
don't really need to compare it with anything and say, "Now, wait a minute.
I mean, has God ever done that in the Bible?
Has God ever pulled a stunt like that?"
They don't even need to ask that question because God sends the
televangelist a dream, he announces it on the air, and that's it.
See, if you've got just one source of authority, you are rescued
from a heck of a lot of confusion. And
so I want to commend to you the idea that we would not have to weigh the Bible
together with other sources of authority (like dreams that the minister might
have . . . maybe because he had too many anchovies on his pizza . . .).
However, there are several objections that can be raised, and I
want us to really think about those because though we are different from the
denominations and the approaches that would have multiple sources of authority,
there is a kind of "Bible and Bible only" stance that we do not share,
that we are not a part of. And I
want to see if I can say we're really sort of in the middle here because there
is a--if you've seen the bumper sticker that says, "The Bible says it.
I believe it. That settles
it." There is a kind of a
"Bible and Bible only" stance that would say we're not even as good at
having the Bible as our only source as they are.
I'm thinking now of the churches where you would expect to see bumper
stickers on the cars as they pull into the church and they say, "The Bible
says it. I believe it.
That settles it." Churches
where Communion would not be celebrated like this on Sunday
morning, for instance, because you've got a two-hour worship service and an
hour-and-a-half of the two-hour worship service is a Bible lecture from the
preacher. Have you ever been to a
church like that? I don't know if
you've done it like that here recently . . .
But there are churches where there is an emphasis even heavier on
Scripture. So I want to argue with you that, yes, we are a "Bible is our
only source" and yet there are some misunderstandings that I think can lead
Christians off into too narrow of an approach, and I want us to understand what
those are. For instance, Christians
that make more of the Bible than we do would fault Presbyterians saying,
"Well, you guys have your Confessions. And your Confessions are bad because they influence your
reading of Scripture. We don't have
any Confessions, we don't have any creeds.
Our creed is the Bible alone."
That's an objection that if you talk to very many Christians for very
long, you run into that. So we just
want to clarify for ourselves. We
don't see our Confessions--starting with the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed,
and all of the others--we don't see those as a separate authority.
We just see those as summaries of what the Bible teaches.
And as summaries, they can be very, very helpful.
They can save us from having to reinvent the wheel every time we turn
around, as in: If someone
were to show up at your home Bible study and were to say, "Hey!
I was reading the Bible and you know what? I saw in the Old Testament all those sacrifices that God told
the people that they should sacrifice the lambs like this, and the temple
worship services. I think we as
Christians, we should start sacrificing lambs today."
Well, see, there's a lot of things that a person could say where
you don't need to do a thorough Bible study starting from Genesis and going all
the way to Revelation to say, "You know what? That's already been looked at and the Presbyterian Church has
an answer to that. Jesus Christ is
the one sacrifice who was slain so that we don't have to sacrifice lambs any
more. The every-year sacrificial
system was a foreshadowing of the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ that was
to come." Summaries like that
are what we have in our Book of Confessions. It's not a different source.
And if there's ever a point where we look at a Confession of ours and
say, "You know what? This is
not what the Bible really even teaches," we'd say, "Well, then, throw
the Confession out." It has no
separate standing. It's just a
summary for us. A summary can be a
very, very useful thing for some of these questions that have been looked at
historically and decisions have been reached. Here's a good one for you: the
Trinity--God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If you take your study Bible and look in your concordance in the back and
look under the letter "T" and you try to find "Trinity," you
can't find that word anywhere. The
word "Trinity" is never listed in the Bible.
But Christians over the ages, looking at everything that the Bible says
about God and about Jesus, and about God's Spirit, have decided, "You know
what? We can sort of sum up all of
this in a very helpful and convenient way so that we don't have to reinvent the
wheel." That doesn't make us
less biblical. And, as a matter of
fact, we think if your summaries of what the Bible teaches are good summaries,
it makes you more biblical, not less biblical.
Do you understand what I'm saying? Now, I was also asked this week, "Well, if the Bible is your
only authority, then what about the Holy Spirit?"
Well, that's a very important question.
The Holy Spirit can be the excuse of a church to follow things like the
Oral Roberts claim--you know, this is the Holy Spirit anointing Oral Roberts to
say, "Send money or God is going to take me home."
We don't understand the Holy Spirit that way.
What we understand is that the Bible is our one source for understanding
how to be faithful. Now, if you're within scriptural teaching, the Holy Spirit can
guide you in a particular direction. But
the Holy Spirit never inspires somebody to do something that the Bible doesn't
say. Do you understand?
We want to be complying with what God's standards within the Word are,
and then within that, we want to let the Holy Spirit guide us. For instance, a little over a year ago, Nancy and I were praying
about whether to accept a call to Minnetonka, Minnesota to come and be your
Interim Pastor. And you want to
know what? "Minnetonka"
is not listed in the Bible anywhere! It
ought to be . . . And "Faith
Presbyterian Church" ought to be, you know, but it's not!
And so you want to place yourself within scriptural teaching and then
pray and say, "Lord, we want your Holy Spirit to lead us, to prompt
us." And the Holy Spirit has a
very, very important job. But it
doesn't give us two distinct authorities where, "Hey, the Bible says that,
but--guess what--the Holy Spirit is inspiring me to do something completely
opposite." No.
The Holy Spirit inspires within scriptural faithfulness to answer
specific questions. "Go to
Minnetonka?" You remember
there was "Go to Minnetonka" and the other church was North Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina. And I think
that natural promptings may have influenced us to make the wrong choice, so I'm
really glad that the Holy Spirit can have an influence in this. Now, the biggie, the biggest.
I've got five concerns and the middle one is the one where I think there
can be the most misunderstanding because if we say "the Bible and the Bible
alone is our source of authority," does that commit us, for instance, to
the idea that in reading Genesis chapter 1, we would need to accept a six-day
creation where each day is a 24-hour day? You
say, "Well, Will, isn't it the case that if the only thing you listen to is
Scripture on these things, then aren't you just of necessity committed to a
particular stance?" In the next couple seconds we're not going to resolve the
creation-evolution dispute, but we do want to say our issue is always what does
"day" really mean in the Bible at this point?
And it's true before the advent of science, before we had the scientific
evidence about a trillions-of-years-old creation, we as Christians read a
"day" as a 24-hour day. That
was how the Church understood this. As
evidence that the earth is older than that began to mount, as evidence that the
universe is extraordinarily older than that began to mount, here's what they
did. You go, "Hmmm.
Well, then, let's look back at Scripture because this is our one source
of insight and let's ask what does 'day' really mean to a Hebrew."
And you know, what we find out--this does not settle all of the
questions, but what we find out is in the Old Testament "day" is
regularly used to mean something other than a 24-hour period the way a Westerner
figures it. When we say "day" we know what we mean:
It starts at midnight (12:01 comes around, right?).
How would you find things in your TV Guide if you didn't know
that? But the Hebrews used
"day" much more expansively than that.
We see references to things that were true "in Abraham's day."
That's a common expression in the Old Testament, and it doesn't mean a
particular 24-hour period. What it
means is "in Abraham's era." Do
you understand? That's what the
Hebrews used their word "day" to mean. If we weren't challenged by findings from other areas of
knowledge--if we weren't challenged, we would make some assumptions about what
"day" means, but because of those challenges we come back and we look
in Scripture and we go, "Oh, you know what? We didn't really allow for the fact that the Hebrews used
their word 'day' differently than we use our word 'day.' "
This is our one source, but we do want to understand what the Hebrews
meant, not what we are just naively going to assume they mean.
In Scripture it's very, very common to say that a "day of
wrath" is going to come. Now a
"day of wrath" scripturally is not referring to a particular 24-hour
period. It's an era. It's
an epoch. It's a possibly expansive
period of time. So there are those people who would take the Bible and would say,
"We're not going to let any finding from anywhere else influence our
reading of Scripture at all." And
they would say that they're more biblical than we are.
But I would say, "No, you're not--because you're taking your late
twentieth century and early twenty-first century American assumptions about what
these particular words meant and you're innocently and naively reading Scripture
in ways that are not even true to what those terms meant when those documents
were written." We are much safer in our reading of Scripture to allow for
challenges. But it doesn't mean,
"We've got the Bible [as one source] and we've got science [as another
source]" in part because how many different sciences are there?
My gosh, I think every year there's a new subdiscipline, of several of
them--I mean psychoceramics and all of the rest!
Do you know what I mean? So
if that were true, we'd have an incredibly expanding set of alternative sources. So we're happy to stay with this one [Scripture], but we like
the fact that we tend to be educated and we tend to treat what our education
brings into our awareness very, very seriously and we let those challenges
stand. Just two more quickly: "Hasn't
the Presbyterian Church changed it's stance on lots of public policy issues and
doesn't that mean that we're not very good at just having the Bible as our
single source of authority?" Well,
let's take a biggie. A biggie, if
you go back early enough in the history of America:
Presbyterians were not anti-slavery.
We changed on that one. Before
the Civil War, we changed and we became abolitionist.
But if you go back far enough, we were not anti-slavery.
We were not abolitionist as a denomination. (Some Presbyterians were, but officially we were not.)
We made the change on that and here's how that change went.
Enough people said, "You know what?
If you look at everything that the Bible says--if you look at everything,
not just this random verse here and that random verse there.
But if you look at the entire teaching about the freedom that God wants
us to have in Jesus Christ, we don't see how you can support slavery."
So it was a change made saying, "We are trying to be biblical.
We made some mistakes. We
were less than fully biblical and we're going to change on this one and we think
we're going to make ourselves more biblical."
That doesn't mean that we're going to throw our one source of authority
out. It just means that, yeah, as
time goes on, some of these things start to look differently and we realize that
there are some truths of the Bible that we've overlooked. That doesn't give us multiple sources of authority.
But it does mean that, "Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light
to our path" and as we move forward down that path, that lamp shows us some
things that we didn't see at an earlier point. Now, the last one is--and this I'm responding to concerns that you
have raised this week, and I want to thank you for those.
It is the case that we are like more-conservative-than-us churches in
that we only have one source of authority.
But we are not like those in that in our worship service we allow for a
very important, a very prominent place, for things like the sacraments, for
instance. You can find very, very conservative Bible Churches that have
such an emphasis on the Bible that you would not have a sacrament of the Lord's
Supper celebrated like we're about to do it this morning.
As a matter of fact, I remember going to Peninsula Bible Church one time
and this is literally what the pastor said--and this is at the end, after an
hour-and-a-half Bible lesson that was almost the entire worship service.
He said, "Oh, we have the Communion elements back by the back door.
Take your little bread and your little juice as you leave.
Thank you. God bless you. Good-bye." And
that's how Communion was celebrated at that church. You know--a little thing, sort of stop on your way out and
you're gone. Well, we are closer to
the "high churches," the liturgical churches, in saying this is our
one source of authority, but it's not the only thing that we do in worship.
We think that there are other aspects to worship that are very, very
important. And the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper is one of those. This is a hypothesis that has been floated recently that is a
fascinating one. And that is that
when churches lose a sense of the importance of celebrating the Lord's
Supper--not individually as you sort of stroll out into the parking lot, but no,
celebrating the Lord's Supper together as a communal symbolism of our oneness
with God and our oneness together. When
that starts to fade, there is a temptation to let the importance of the Bible
expand, and expand, and expand, so that Bible knowledge becomes the only thing
that matters to a Christian. And,
unfortunately, in churches like that sometimes being obedient to what the Bible
teaches is not important--it's just the Bible knowledge.
And so you want to have long, long, long sermons where we're told lots
and lots of Bible facts and not necessarily any sort of dwelling and allowing
the Holy Spirit to come into us like we're anticipating the Holy Spirit will
through the celebration of the Lord's Supper--to transform us, and to change us,
and to empower us to actually be able to do what the Bible says. So I'm commending to you, though, as you heard me say last week,
there are definite strengths to other approaches to being a Christian.
We don't have a corner on the best way to follow Jesus.
I mean, the Methodists are superior to us in some ways.
The Pentecostals are superior to us in some ways.
But on this subject, I would say for both letting the Bible be God's Word
to us and yet reading it with our minds and not just with our heart--reading it
with our mind so that we're really saying, "OK, when they said 'day,' what
did they mean by 'day'? Let's not assume it's what an American means by 'day.'
What did they mean?" In
that, I think we have a great treasure. It's
an emphasis that I invite us not to lose sight of. Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we indeed thank you that as we read your Word, what we discover
is that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Lord, we thank you that lots of Christians over the years and
even the centuries have thought about a lot of these things, and Lord, that it
is indeed possible to let your Word be our one source of authority and yet,
Lord, to allow our worship of you to include more than just studies of your Word
because, Lord, we remember that your Son Jesus sacrificed Himself for us on the
cross and left us a way to remember that. We ask, Lord, that the memory would be sealed to our hearts
this hour. And it's in the strong
name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
worship service on October 5, 2003.] |
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