The Main and the Plain

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(Play video from Dale & Wendy)

New series Vineyard 101: Finding Identity in our Distinctives.

You may not know, but as a Vineyard church we are part of a worldwide movement of several thousand churches that began in California in the 70s. If you watched The Jesus Revolution you are seeing our story since we actually came out of the Calvary Chapel movement.

Over time, the Vineyard movement developed a set of distinctive beliefs and practices that gave identity to who were are. The distinctives aren’t unique to the Vineyard, but they way we practice them and what we emphasize forms our unique expression within the larger body of Christ. We don’t claim to be the best or the most right, and this series won’t be a cheerleading session on how awesome the Vineyard is and how everyone else is wrong - even though they are ;) Ultimately, this and all our distinctives are about Jesus. Our identity and distinctives are just the unique ways that we have been called to love and follow him.

This past week I was at a pastor’s retreat in the Houston area. Danielle Pathak spoke about the rise of “expressive individualism”. The idea is that I am my ultimate source of truth. I have my truth, and you can’t tell me it’s wrong, because it is mine. And so you can’t tell a young person who thinks they are a cat, “No, you are a human” because that is your truth, not theirs. You will be cancelled, conversation over.

Over against this reality of finding truth and meaning within ourselves, the Vineyard standing in the ancient tradition of the church that truth and meaning are not found within, but from the One who made us. Ultimate meaning and truth and outside us, in the revelation of God, and we must conform our internal life to this external truth.

Before GPS crossing the ocean was fraught with danger. Beside the possibility of storms blowing up, there was the distinct possibility of losing your headings and wondering aimlessly in the expanse of the ocean until you ran out of water or food. However, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, ancient people discovered Polaris, or what we usually refer to as the North Star. It is this fixed point in the night sky that allowed ancient mariners to keep on course. As long as the stars were visible, you could always get your bearings by looking to the North Star.

We live in a time when our society has lost its North Star. The ship called the United States has become unmoored from reality, drifting in an endless sea looking to find meaning, purpose, and direction from within. The first distinctive I want to talk about this morning is The Main and the Plain. The big idea for this message is that the Vineyard holds fast to the idea that The scriptures give us our North Star for belief and practice.

Text

2 Timothy 3:14-17

People in Paul’s time were as unmoored as people today. They didn’t turn within themselves to find truth and direction; they turned to false gods. Unfortunately, much of the time these gods were just caricatures of the worst aspects of human weakness. They weren’t really better than people, just more powerful. They were incapable of giving people the truth and direction they needed to keep from drifting aimlessly.

Paul, writing to his ministry partner, Timothy, who he had left behind to establish the churches Paul had planted, reminds Timothy in this passage what the North Star is that he needs to direct people to: not the false gods of the culture, but the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ and taught in Holy Scripture. It is the main and the plain in the Bible that gives us our north star. What do we mean by the main and the plain?

Focus

Paul encourages Timothy to stay committed to what he has learned and firmly believed, and who he has learned it from. By the main and the plain, we first mean that we spend our time and attention on what is the main point of scripture and the plain meaning. We don’t major on the minors. This keeps us from both missing the point, and also from getting weird. For instance, we don’t center our beliefs on what Paul said when he talked about being baptized for the dead. We can speculate what he meant but that was a message that was specific to those people’s time and place and is lost to us. It’s only mentioned one time in the whole Bible and, therefore, is not essential to understanding the primary message of the Bible. It’s not the main or the plain.

The main and the plain are those thing that are emphasized, that are repeated, that are foundational to what we believe and how we live out our faith. The main and the plain includes things like what is outlined in the great creeds of Christianity, such as:

God as Trinity

Jesus as fully God and fully human

The virgin birth

The victory of Jesus over sin and death through his own death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father’s right hand

Salvation in Christ alone by grace through faith

These are some of the main teaching of the Bible. But it also includes the plain teachings on how we should practice our faith:

Our understanding of marriage and human sexuality

How we regard the poor and the immigrant

How we treat those who society has marginalized

Maybe most importantly, how we love those who disagree and even persecute us

These things are main things and the plain things in the Bible. We may not always like their implications, but Jesus’ words to us in scripture are pretty clear.

Bottom line, we focus on what is the main message of the scriptures, not on what is obscure, and on what is plain, refusing to get caught up in arguments over debatable matters that have no ultimate bearing on the good news of Jesus.

True

Paul also says that all scripture is “inspired” and able to teach, reprove, correct and train us. In Greek, theopneustos, or God-breathed. To say the Bible is inspired, we mean that it is both fully the work of God but also fully the work of humans. The mistake Christians often fall into is emphasizing one of these truth’s over the other.

When we say that we hold to the main and the plain, it means that we accept the scriptures as both inspired and infallible. However, because these words have come to mean different things to different Christians over time, I prefer to say that The Bible is true and authoritative.

That the scriptures are God-breathed means that they are true in what they intend to communicate. That is an important distinction. It means that we have to do our best to try and discern what both the divine author and human author are trying to say. I can pull together enough verses in the bible to make a recipe for brownies, but unless that was the intended message of the author it is not true.

The reformer, Martin Luther, helps us out here when he says that we must not read the Bible in its literal sense, but in its literary sense. We must read the Bible in its literary sense. In other words, what is the author trying to communicate? Is the author using metaphor? If so, it’s foolish, and even dangerous, to read it literally. For instance, Jesus said that if your eye offends you - meaning you sin with your eyes - you should pluck it out. Good grief, if we applied that literally we’d all be blind! We know to read this in a literary sense, that he is using exaggeration to make a point.

The main and the plain means we have to do the sometimes hard work of determining if a truth is timeless or situational. We must determine if a truth is timeless or situational. Timeless means it applies to all times, places and people. Situational means it was applicable to the original hearer and we have to decide if or how it may still be applicable for us. Quiz: is it timeless or situation:

Don’t murder (timeless)

Don’t commit adultery (timeless)

Don’t eat shellfish (situational, no application)

Christians can’t eat meat sacrificed to idols (situational, application to guard others)

Christians can’t drink alcohol (trick question, personal conviction)

Watching football is a sin (amoral, personal conviction)

When we fail to discern the literary sense and whether a truth is timeless or situational, we abuse the intent of scripture and, worse, lose its North Star. The good news is that we instinctively know this most of the time. When we read a newspaper or magazine, we know the difference between news, opinion, classified, and comics. We read things in their literary sense because that is the truth being communicated by the author.

So, we believe that the Bible is true.

Authoritative

Paul also said that these inspired scriptures are profitable so that everyone who belongs to God is equipped for good works. In other words, it guides us in how to live. Christians in the last century have used the word infallible. Again this can mean different things for different people. I prefer to say that the Bible is authoritative.

As followers of Jesus, we don’t get to decide what we will believe or practice based on the bits we like or don’t like. Just because a truth in scripture is hard or inconvenient doesn’t give us a pass to ignore it. In one light, as people who are called to begin walking now in the new kingdom Jesus is bringing, the Bible serves as a reliable guide to what that looks like. What does it look like for God’s will to be done now on earth, as it is in heaven. That is what is authoritative for us.

Human sexuality is a good example of this. The bible is both main and plain on marriage, at least to the Vineyard as a movement and to me. It is always between one man and one woman. Human sexuality is restricted to this relationship. This is both a hard and inconvenient truth. For those who struggle with same-sex attraction it is hard, because it means that there is a part of their humanness that must be sacrificed in order to be faithful to their calling in Christ. Those who walk this difficult road need the encouragement and support of a loving Christian community.

But it is also a hard and inconvenient truth for those who are heterosexual. It means that you can’t just sleep with whoever you want - that’s inconvenient. It means that you must remain sexually faithful to one person for the the rest of your life. That’s hard. The scripture calls both marriage and single people to a consistent sexual sacrifice. Again, we need a loving community that both encourages us and holds us accountable.

Ultimately, The Bible is our trustworthy guide that infallibly leads us to Jesus. So, we believe the Bible is authoritative.

Gospel

At the risk of beating this to death I’ll end there. Again, the Vineyard is committed to the main and the plain of scripture. The bible is true. The bible is authoritative. It is our north star and guiding light for faith and practice.

In the end, what the Bible does is infallibly lead us to Jesus. It unfolds in a reliable, trustworthy way God’s plan of salvation that culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus said to the Pharisees, John 5:39 “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.” When we speak of the main and the plain, we do not mean that we are Bible-centered. We are Jesus-centered. The message of the Bible points us beyond ourselves, and even beyond itself, to the one who stands behind it. The One whose story it tells and who invites us into relationship with him. We don’t have a relationship with the Bible; we have a relationship with Jesus who speaks to us through the Bible.

Practically speaking, this means that We have a responsibility to study the Bible. We must know what it says. What the truth is that it communicates. But it also means We have a responsibility to live the Bible, putting into practice the truth we learn. We must be doers of the word and not merely hearers.

As a movement and as a church we lean into the main and plain because we believe God knows best about how we should live and what will result in our thriving. When we make the main and the plain of the Bible our North Star, we find that we no longer drift aimlessly trying to find our meaning and direction from within. Instead, we look outside ourselves to our loving Father who revealed himself to us, both in the scriptures and even more perfectly in his Son, Jesus.

If you have been trying to find your meaning and purpose within yourself, being your own truth, I invite you to turn from that and turn to the one who loves your soul more than you do. The one who knows you better than you know yourself. They one who made you and who has good plans for you. If you’d like to take this step or talk about it, or if you are ready to follow Jesus in baptism, I invite you to reach out to me. (next steps slide)

Even if you are a Christian, you can find yourself lost in the endless sea of expressive individualism, drawn into the lie of the culture that says you are your own truth and no one else can speak into your life. This morning maybe you need to repent of this tendency to be your own boss, to make your own rules, to live life for yourself. Today is a good day to remember the commitment you made in baptism to Jesus being the Lord of your life, and not you yourself.

The good news is that God is good and that living under the Lordship of Jesus is not a heavy yoke. It is the way of life that leads to all the things you really want - joy, hope, peace, genuine prosperity, restored family relationships, healed marriages, and godly, stable homes. And so as a church and movement we will focus on the main and the plain.