Experience and Revelation

Announcements

Go over ground rules

Raise your hand before you speak

Let’s have fun, but listen to your leaders. Too much of something is too much.

Thank Joyce Allen for hosting at her home for so stinking long. She rocks.

This Wednesday is our first Mid-week gathering. It’s not going to be a regular Youth small group night. We’ll eat tacos, spend time together, and and see how our Wednesdays will look as a church. We’ll have our first time breaking into our small group on the 13th.

Next Sunday we will meet at the Worden’s for our 10 year anniversary as Reliance Fellowship. It’ll be fun. There’s a bouncy obstacle course!

Review

Did you guys have fun last week?

Has school started for everyone? What’s exciting about school right now?

We were talking about the gospel, and then we talked about anxiety and dependence on the LORD. Who remembers something we talked about regarding giving our anxieties to the LORD?

Next time we meet on Sunday night we’ll be in the book of James. I would encourage you to begin reading it. It’s an awesome book and I’ll explain more the next time we meet.

Pray

Introduction

Tonight I want to turn our attention to something I think is really important for us before we turn to the book of James. I want to talk about how our experience as humans meets the divine revelation of God.

I’m going to open it up for discussion for a minute and then keep moving.

Here’s the first one:

What does the Bible have to do with the troubles you face in life?

Here’s the second one:

How do you know God’s perspective of those troubles if they are not specifically mentioned in Scripture?

How to be biblical with the Bible

We can know God’s perspective because His character is revealed in Scripture.

Pornography example (closed discussion)

Matthew 5:37-40. Does the bible address pornography? You won’t find modern pornography in the bible. However, the Bible is sufficient by implication. We should be circumspect in how we arrive at the meaning. Jesus is showing that the law isn’t about physical adultery with another person but that its internal as well. It is possible to commit adultery internally rather than merely externally. He identifies it with the word “lust.” Watching a woman in the street was Jesus’s visual information for his audience. We have more now. But we have a stewardship with what we place before our eyes and minds. That activity can be used to grow sin in us. Pornography fits within this definition.

maybe talking about how all of our sin is rooted in the heart. Mark 7:20-23

Mark 7:20–23 ESV

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

How to be biblical with human experience

Being biblical isn’t the end of our task. We need to have relational ministry in what we do. It’s more difficult than preparing for a bible study lesson. Preaching may be easier to prepare for than personal ministry of the Word in counseling. Human experience needs to be read rightly under that purpose. When someone comes to us and they spill their story isn’t going to be very organized. You think critically about understanding someone’s experience. We are always reading what people say considering God’s Word. Then you can speak to them in a relationally appropriate way.

Three Grounding Principles for Scripture’s Relationship with Human Experience

Scriptures

Let’s turn to 2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

What does this passage say about God’s Word?

What does it say about us?

Now let’s turn to Ephesians 5:1

Ephesians 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.

What does this say about God?

What does it say about us?

Since we were made in the image of God as finite people (which is a good thing! it means we are dependent on God as a part of our very nature) part of our nature is to imitate God, yet we imitate the wrong things as seen in the fall when we imitated the serpent by trying to become “like God” rather than continuing to depend on him. Sin is against God’s design.

I want to give three principles on how we. as finite people, rightly discern life through the Scriptures and human experience.

Grounding Principle 1: Human Experience is not authoritative in interpreting Scripture

We see the world subjectively. That is part of our experience. There are a number of things that condition the way you see the world. We are subjective in nature. We see the world in our perspective. It’s not saying that’s a bad thing, but God made us to see the world from one set of eyes and one brain. We aren’t God! John Frame uses “omniperspectival.” God sees all things in the dimension of reality. Humankind has a limited perspective.

Our perspective is also corrupt. After the fall, we are limited and corrupted. We no longer see things accurately and in every way. We approach scripture subjectively. We read from a limited perspective. All of our values, beliefs, and concerns are not authoritative over what scripture says.

Grounding Principle 2: Scripture is authoritative in interpreting human experience

Lots of conservatives love the first principle which is good!, but are terrible about the second. The Bible isn’t just religious, it’s a pair of glasses that expose the world to us. It gives us a new sense with which we read experience in the world. We need objective truth outside of ourselves to discern what subjectively is right and wrong within us. This is why his words come from outside of us. God designed us this way from the beginning.

The Holy Spirit resides in us. His function is to bring to our minds the Words of Christ. Scripture was given by God to ground beliefs and values we need to make sense in our experience. Human beings know a proper order by what has been revealed by God.

Grounding Principle 3: Human experience is the necessary context for responding to Scripture.

We don’t just stay in the book. We know the book to move over and show how the truths and values in the pages of scripture manifest in human experience. Human experience can’t be ignored. It can’t be ignored in preference of Scripture, because when God speaks, he expects to be obeyed. Human change is biblical and commanded in Scripture. We can’t live outside of human experience.

Theological reasoning and formation is important. Our job isn’t just to know stuff about the bible and theology. We need to think about our context and its people. They are called to imitate God in the unique location, situation, gender, occupation, and opportunity of their life. This takes effort and work. What does it mean to disciple my children in an age that is different from when I was a teenager.

You must read the bible, you must read yourself, you must read other people.

Adam and Eve know what life was like with God, and what life was like apart from God. We cannot know God unless we walk with him which means we should commit to the regular reading of God’s Word.

We need the Bible so we know how to act as people who, by God’s design, are dependent on God. Like Ephesians 5:1 says, we need to imitate God. We can’t imitate someone we don’t spend time with. Pray through what you read, bring it before the Father, and ask Him to change your heart and mind and body to imitate Christ Jesus.

We also need to be around others. Faith expresses itself around people. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 isn’t so we’re equipped to continue reading the bible or only being in bible studies. It’s to equip us to do hard work. Hard work of being in this world and being around people in this world. No one comes to faith on their own. They need to be told the Word of God. Part of imitating God is exposing the redemption of Jesus that the world wants to cover over. Romans 10:14

Romans 10:14 ESV

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

Pray

Small Groups

What does the Bible have to do with the troubles you face in life? What passages are on your mind this week?