Text: 2 Timothy
3:14-17
14But
as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from
whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred
writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ
Jesus. 16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone
who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
“ The Bible Tells Me So”
October
12, 2008
Stan
Smith
A Minister once told the story
of a little boy in his churches that was having difficulty with his school
lessons. He could never seem to recite his ABCs correctly. One day he asked his
mother for permission to do something, and his mother told him, "Not until
you know your ABCs." The boy replied, "Mama, I know my ABCs. It's
just that my ABCs are different from your ABCs!"
Most of us, in one way or
another, claim the Bible to be the source of our understanding about God and
the way God wants life to be lived.
However, we could easily say, “I know my Bible. It’s just that my Bible
is different from your Bible.” Last week
I suggested that there is a significant problem with prayer that we each must
resolve for ourselves. The same is true
about the Bible. The plain fact of the
matter is that different people can and do find greatly different meanings when
they read the Bible. A prime example
came about during the Civil Way years in America. One group of Baptists interpreted the Bible
to support the ownership of slaves.
Another group interpreted the same Bible to be in opposition to slavery
and the resulting division created the Southern Baptist Convention and the
Northern Baptist Convention--which ultimately became the American Baptist
Churches in the USA.
Of course our Bibles really are
not different, barring our different preferences for a specific
translation. What is different is how we
interpret Scripture and the reason for that difference in interpretation comes
clear when we read Paul’s word to Timothy: The RSV says “All scripture is
inspired by God…” The CEV says,
“Everything in the Scriptures is God’s Word…”
The biblical scholar William Mounce offers his own translation: “All
Scripture is God-breathed[1]…” Christians have argued for centuries about
exactly what this phrase really means.
The fundamental debate is divided into two camps. There are those who
believe that inspired Scripture means that God provided the words and the
writers did nothing more than write them down.
The other camp suggests that the writers were inspired by God--even
guided by the Holy Spirit--but wrote their portions of Scripture with their own
interpretations, filtered through their own situations and colored by their own
purposes. I live in the second camp,
taking Scripture very seriously, but not literally.
However, like many of you, I was
taught as a child that the Bible should be read literally. We were taught that it was a mark of faith to
overlook inconsistencies and an even greater mark of faith to simply accept
what it said, no matter how unreasonable it may seem. Questions were a sign of weakness. Well, if that were true, I was very weak then
and even weaker now because Scripture raises all manner of questions for
me--perhaps more questions than answers.
I was leading a Bible study in
one of my student pastorates and kept using the phrase, “Paul said…” this or
“Paul said…” that. Finally, one young
man in the group interrupted and corrected me:
“Paul didn’t say those things, God said them.” In support of his position in the matter, he
brought me a copy of a paper he had written for a class he was taking in the
local Bible college. In the paper he
went to great lengths to research the Greek version of this morning’s passage
and concluded that the Bible was unquestionably the divinely inspired word of
God because the Bible said it was the divinely inspired word of God. I decided to go no further with the argument
and did not point out the error in logic that he had made. The fact was that he held a position that
could only be defended by his statement of faith and not by his scholarship. This helps me clarify the dilemma about
Scripture a little. The issue we must
all sort out for ourselves is this: how does our faith require us to
interpret the bible? Our approach to the
Bible needs to be consistent to what we believe about God and God’s
relationship to the world.
I’m sharing all of this with you today to clarify
how I am going to interpret this passage.
I am not a literalist, so I am not going to insist that Paul urged
Timothy to be grounded in the Scriptures because they were the inerrant words of
God, but because it was there, in the rich testimony of faithful people that
Timothy could meet God, experience God, and in that relationship find
power for living. I believe, as do many
biblical scholars, that when Paul speaks of biblical inspiration he is not
thinking of the manner of the inspiration so much as the source of it. The Bible can be trusted, not because God
wrote it, but because God is actually to be found in it. What Paul had in mind was for Timothy to be
grounded so completely in the narratives of the Bible that he would come to
know intimately the living God. With a mind shaped by Scripture through this
living relationship with God, he could confidently address life’s challenges
with discerning intelligence that would result in living a full and rewarding
life. You see, I believe that one does
not have to be a literalist in order to find God in the pages of the
Bible. From my perspective, it is easier
to find God in the Bible when I understand that the narratives there describe
God through the eyes of faithful people who were living real-world lives and
finding real-world help because they were in a real-world relationship with
God.
That being settled, this is what
I think Paul was trying to accomplish by urging Timothy to “…continue in what you have learned and
firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you
have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus.” Today I
am urging you to know the sacred writings that will instruct you in the ways of
living in God’s world. You and I need to
be grounded in the best record we have--or could hope for--that describes God’s
presence in the world. It is important,
then, to know what it means to be grounded in the Bible. I’m suggesting that it means reading it
regularly, reading it intelligently, and reading it expectantly.
In my first congregation there
was an elderly man confined to a nursing home, debilitated by multiple
strokes. By the time I knew him, he was
completely helpless, unable to communicate in any way, curled into a permanent
fetal position in his bed. He had had
his first stroke decades earlier at the age of 35. Mercifully, he passed away a not long after I
came to town. As I prepared for his
funeral, I asked his daughter if he had a personal Bible. Sometimes I can find marked passages there
that give insight into what was important and meaningful for a person. When she handed me his Bible, it was no help
at all--It was in tatters with notes and highlighted passages in virtually
every book of both the Old and New Testaments.
The only insight I could glean from it (and this is no small insight)
was that he read it constantly when he had been able to do so. His Bible stands in my mind in sharp contrast
to others I have seen where the owner had obviously seldom if ever opened its
pages. Don’t raise your hands or reveal
any family secrets here, but I’d like you to think about where your Bible is at
home. Many people don’t even know where
theirs is much less read it regularly.
You have heard me say any number of times that it is important for you
to develop a close, intimate, personal relationship with God. If, as Paul believed, God is to be found in
Scripture, you must spend time in the Scriptures in order to spend time with
God.
So the first part of being
grounded in Scripture is to read it regularly.
The second is to read it intelligently.
When I was in Seminary, I reconnected with an old high school friend who
had been away in the service while I had been going to college and graduate
school. He had, as we say, “gotten
religion” during that time and as we were getting caught up with each other’s
lives he challenged me. “Why are you
going to seminary?” he asked. All they
do is teach you to doubt!” Well, he might have had a bit of a point--I had not
been taught to doubt, but I had been taught to ask questions and seek
meaningful answers. I had been taught
not to accept matters of faith just because someone told me to. Nothing about the Bible is lost when we read
it intelligently. Knowing the context of
the writings and understanding the purposes of the writers only opens up more
meaning as we see how their faith was formed.
If we are to treat the Scriptures seriously, we have to understand them
in their entirety which includes the times and the cultures and the languages
of their origin. We cannot draw
trustworthy conclusions about what the Bible means to us in our context unless
we understand first what the Bible meant in its own context. I hope you all have a good Bible dictionary
at your disposal and refer to it often as you read through your Bibles. These dictionaries have helpful introductions
to each of the books of the Bible and can help with definitions of words and
discussions of themes that you will encounter.
I know you have had Bible studies here at Panther Lake and we will have
more as time goes on. Join them. Knowing more about the Bible helps us
understand it better.
The first part of being grounded
in Scripture is to read it regularly.
The second is to read it intelligently, and the third is to read it
expectantly. When we pick up our Bibles,
we need to expect God to help us live life more fully and successfully because
of what we read. You’ve probably heard
the story of the man who had a difficult personal problem and had been told
that if he just opened the Bible at random, God would guide him to a passage
that would help him solve it. So he
decided to give it a try. He prayed to
God for an answer to his problem and let the Bible fall open on his lap. He closed his eyes and pointed his finger to
a passage. He opened his eyes and read:
“and Judas went out and hanged himself.”
Well, he was pretty sure that this was not the answer to his dilemma, so
he tried it again. This time when he
opened his eyes, his finger pointed to the words, “Go thou and do
likewise.” I’m not suggesting that you
should expect this sort of easy answer, but I am suggesting that in the process
of reading the Bible you will find insight and encouragement. You should expect the Bible to be
helpful. Remember what I said earlier
about God being in the Scriptures and that grounding yourself in Scripture will
help form a personal relationship with God.
In that relationship we will find both answers and the courage to live
with a certain amount of ambiguity. If
you read your Bible expectantly, God will show you things that you need to
know.
I still have the Bible my home
church gave me when I went into the fourth grade. It’s a little beat up around the edges as I
guess it should be after being lugged around from place to place for well over
50 years. I marked it up a little--I see
here that I even edited the presentation page by crossing out the letters “ley”
on Stanley. This Bible went with me to
Sunday School, summer camp, and youth Bible studies. I hope that in another 50 years the kids that
got their Bibles today will look at theirs and feel the same fondness that I
feel for this one. I also hope that
those Bibles will be tattered and marked up, testifying to the fact that these
kids have found in them a relationship with a living God that has been, through
thick and thin, the ground of their being.
As for the rest of you--it’s not too late. Start reading and marking and as Paul said to
Timothy: “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from
whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings
that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”