Recognizing the Shepherd's Voice

Introduction

How many of you know who AW Tozer is? Aiden Wilson Tozer was a pastor from Pennsylvania who is mostly known for his contributions through literary works, two of which are considered spiritual classics: The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God. I follow an AW Tozer feed on Twitter and have some of his writings that I regularly review. About a week ago, I came across a quote that really spoke to my heart, and this is what it read, “So skilled is error at imitating truth that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other. It takes a sharp eye these days to know which brother is Cain and which is Abel”!

For some of you who may not be aware, Cain and Abel were the eldest children of Adam and Eve, Cain a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Both made sacrifices to God, but Cain’s sacrifice was rejected while Abel’s was accepted. Out of anger and jealousy, Cain killed his brother.

Tozer’s comparison of Cain and Abel with his statement about the difficulty of recognizing truth from lie in today’s world got my attention because I have been thinking a lot lately about all of the things in today’s world that are presented as right and good, yet they blatantly go against biblical mandate. Today’s socially acceptable norms are often an abomination in light of biblical directives. Conversely, what the bible presents as God’s will is often rejected by mainstream society as hatred and intolerance. So, how do we, who want to honor God with our lives, navigate the common outcries of today in a way that enables us to recognize God’s truths and to separate them from the lies of the world? There is something that we learn in theology that I think is very helpful with this: the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

If you’re a football nut like me, don’t get too excited. I am not teaching you some new offensive play you’ve never heard of, though it does sound like it, right! “We’re gonna run Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Major Dan, you go long”. It’s nothing like that. However, we, as Christians, really should get excited about it because when appropriately applied, it won’t gain us any yards on the field, but it will help us understand God through scripture a little better. So we are going to review these and I want you to hang with me, this won’t take long, and we are going to test it out at the end against a particular scripture.

SCRIPTURE: The Authoritative Word

The first thing that you need to know about John Wesley and what has been deemed his “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” is that scripture is the only authoritative word of God. We may be reviewing four things today, but scripture is primary. If you were to visualize the four points as bubbles, the most accurate picture would be one giant bubble of scripture in which the other 3 smaller bubbles that we will review would be contained. So scripture is regarded as the only authoratative word. We affirm it in The Salvation Army as doctrine numero uno. “Captain Ivan, will you please recite the first doctrine of The Salvation Army for us”?

So, as I said, we as a Salvation Army affirm the authority of scripture alone as “constitut[ing] the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice”. The other three things we will look at today could be considered lenses through which we look at scripture. Throughout the whole of scripture, God’s directives are shared and they have been passed down through the ages, first in oral tradition, and later textualized so that we, too, are able to know His will and to adopt it into our daily thoughts and actions. God has expressed in scripture its importance. God speaks of His scripture, particularly His law, in Deuteronomy 11:19-21 “Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors.” So I cannot overemphasize the importance of scripture!

TRADITION: The Link Through Time

So moments ago, I said that the other three things we would review could be considered lenses through which to review and interpret scripture. The first lens to consider would be tradition. When considering tradition, we want to understand the early church and how it responded to scripture. The idea is that the early church had the clearest understanding of following Jesus, so their adopted cluture and the way they lived their lives individually and communally would be closest to His desire. Over time, cultures change, and the scripture no longer make as much sense as it did in the context of the early church. So, if we review the scriture through tradition rather than only through today’s lens, it can make much more sense.

REASON: The Holy Mind

The next lens is reason. God gave us a brain and expects us to use it. Faith is great and should be exercised every day in every way when it comes to biblical things we do not understand. Yet, there is no sin in trying to make sense of things either. It is okay to try and reason through scripture. If you can make sense of one scripture by linking it to another, that would be reason. This is also where revelation kind of falls. Not the book in the back of the bible, but God revealing Himself to us in various ways. So, reason is another powerful lens. But be careful here because it is really easy to rationalize scripture in light of today’s culture which can be dangerous. That’s why scripture is the authoritative word of God and reason is merely a lens through which to view it. If your reason and scripture are misaligned, throw reason out the door and look from a different angle, use a different lens.

EXPERIENCE: The Testimony of the Saints

There is nothing more formative than personal experience. That is why your testimony can be so powerful! When the bible affirms God as a good, caring, all powerful savior, and you can testify to it from personal experience, that is powerful in evangelism. Similarly, when you read scripture and personally understand it through personal experience, that solidifies it within, leaving no question or doubt of its accuracy and its truth.

The Application

So, let’s put the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to the test now. There is a scripture that I love to use in teaching young adults because they really struggle with this one until you walk them through its study. Who has an NIV Bible this morning. Can you please read Deuteronomy 25:11-12 ““If two Israelite men get into a fight and the wife of one tries to rescue her husband by grabbing the testicles of the other man, you must cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”

What is your first reaction when you read that scripture? You get a little confused, right? Maybe even a little angry. You might even find yourself questioning the goodness and fairness of God. I will point out that it does not say the woman’s husband is an innocent victim here. That could make a difference. But if you read those verses and just left them alone as they read without trying to understand them, you would walk away confused about God as best. But if you work to understand it, your work might go something like this:

TRADITIONAL: If you read the previous few verses, they speak of a deceased man having died without his wife having bore children. It goes on to say that in this scenario, his brother would be responsible to take her as his wife, and that their firstborn son would carry the name of the dead brother so his name would not be blotted out in Israel. Then you might start studying the importance of lineage carried on in Israel, and you would find that for a man to die with no children is the same as being erased from history. It would be as if he had never existed. So the lens of traditions is getting you as least in the realm of understanding, and that helps a little!

REASON: Maybe there is a way to reason through this. I also remember that Genesis 1:28 says to “be fruitful and multiple, and fill the earth and subdue it”. So there’s a blessing and directive from God. I also know from reading scripture that widows with no children in the Old Testament were considered vulnerable members of society. Therefore, I could reason that God placed this partpicular scripture just after His law on a brother’s responsibility to fulfill the deceased’s responsibiliy.

With all of this combined knowledge, I might conclude that while the verse in question seems shockingly offensive, the woman’s husband may not be innocent, and her action could remove the ability to fulfill God’s blessing, could erase the name of a man for all eternity, and could place his widow in a vulerable category even putting at risk her own livelihood. All of the sudden, God doesn’t seem cruel as much as He seems thoughtful. He has a plan that considers the flourishment of His creation, and He is just in protecting them. It doesn’t say that they cannot hinder the plan, it just says that they will not go unpunished if they do.

EXPERIENCE: Now, all of the sudden, this can relate to my own personal experiences because I have had people get between me and the blessings of God, even I have gotten in the way a few times. But now I see that He likely always intended good for me, but because He allows free will of others and self, those blessings can be interrupted. However, I can rest assured that justice will be done because I see that God takes justice very seriously. I also see in the brother’s responsibility here that He works to make a way for the blessing in spite of disruptions. So now, my faith in Jesus and the assurance of my salvation feels more secure than ever before.

Conclusion

Friends, that is the importance of reading scripture through the lenses of tradition, reason and experience. God has given us every tool we need to understand Him, even choosing to dwell within us, inspiring us, rebuking and correcting us. I pray that this exercise has been a blessing to you today and that it offers a resource to more deeply and richly understand the Lord that we serve.

Let’s pray!