The Bible

People, like my parents or friends often ask what I am going to preach on. I don’t like to answer this question. For some reason it makes me uncomfortable to talk about a sermon that I am getting ready to preach. So I often answer the question jokingly “The Bible”. But tonight my sermon is titled “The Bible” and I want to notice a few things about it and since I have a rare alliterated outline I figured I would share it in the hopes that it both helps you see where I am going tonight and to remember where we got to in this sermon later. So tonight the Bible is: 1) A Book with 1 Message. 2) A Book with 1 Author. 3) A Book with 1 God. and Fourth and Finally A Book with 1 Way.

What is the Bible? A secular definition could be that it is a book that is made up of other books written by around 40 authors over a period of around 1500 years that contains the history of the nation of Israel as well as the main religious teachings of the Jews and the Christians. A simple Christian definition might be that the Bible is the living Word of God to man.

I notice as I consider the topic a certain unity represented by scripture and contained throughout scripture.

A Book with 1 Message

I notice first that the Bible is a book of one message. No you may say that there are endless messages in the Bible and that its teachings are of unlimited depth. You would be correct however all the teachings are part of one overarching message. What is that message. Well I have borrowed an outline for this point from Richard S. Taylor but it is not original with him for I have a similar outline for one of my messages and a similar outline is found in my dads college classes and yet again the points of this outline can be found on a poster in the youth room. This outline which the wording of is from Richard S. Taylor I believe accurately represents the one message given by God.

The Story of the Bible is:

Holiness belonged to man in the fall. All that God created was good. God would not call that which was unholy very good. God came and walked and talked with man in the Garden. God’s holiness has no fellowship with that which is unholy so for man to be in such a perfect relationship with God as is described in the Garden means that man was created holy.

Holiness was lost in the Fall. When man chose his own selfish desires over obedience to God man fell. It was then that sin was brought into the world. It came to be in our natures by the choice of the first man as he knowingly chose to disobey his creator. From that day to this every person with a human father has been born with an unholy nature inside. A natural predisposition to seek self above God and to do evil instead of right. Man at the fall became unholy.

Christ came to make possible mans recovery in holiness. Ephesians 1:4 “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” We have been chosen to be holy by God. His purpose for coming as described by the angel was to save us from our sin. This is one and the same with making us holy. We cannot be holy without being saved from all sin, we cannot be saved from all sin without being made holy. God chose to make us holy, he came so that we could become holy, it is his will that we be holy. How does this come about?

The Holy Spirit was sent to implement the recovery. Acts 15:8–9 “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” 1 Thessalonians 4:8 “He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.” 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14 “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is by the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit that we are made holy. It is not by growth or by persistence, nor by age, nor by works but by the work of the God the Holy Spirit purifying our hearts through faith. We must be holy to be with a holy God and we can only be holy through the work of God.

This is as Taylor says the Gospel in a nutshell. A Holy God created a holy people. That holy people became unholy by rebelling against the Holy God. So the Holy God sent His only begotten son that people might once again be Holy by the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. To put it even more succinctly the Bible is a book of one message and that message is holiness.

A Book with 1 Author

There is unity in the Bible because it is a book of one author. Now wait a minute, how many authors does the Bible have? Earlier I said it was written by around 40 men and now I am saying by 1 author. Now which is it? It is both, as contradictory as that sounds yet I think it is wise to remember that while 40 men participated in the delivery of the one message of the Bible, that message has but one author. If we are to believe scripture it is necessary that we remember and emphasize the unity and singularity of its authorship for that is what it claims for itself so either that claim is wrong and therefore the whole untrustworthy or that claim is correct and 2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:”

Now lets get back to that verse in just a second. Let me tell you some of the problems I have run across when the human authorship is focused upon too much. The first problem is people begin to pick and choose what of the Bible to believe. One of the first things to go is the Old Testament. The creating work of God can be disbelieved since that was a man who wrote that and that man did not know modern science therefore while he wrote the best he knew, he was just a man and was therefore wrong. Another common idea is that the Old Testament picture of God is discarded. The OT picture of God is one of immense patience and mercy and grace and yet one who is just. The idea that unrepentant sin must be punished and that sin, even after it is repented of has far reaching earthly consequences is made clear in the Old Testament. This does not fit with the false theology of many who believe that once God chooses a person and the person chooses God that future sin is beyond the sight of God’s justice. Israel chose God and God chose Israel and yet when Israel began to serve other God’s Israel was cut off and destroyed, yet when they repented they were restored for God did not utterly destroy them and even in their utter rebellion there was mercy at work preserving a remnant and conserving the land for this people to return to. I do not know why some wish to destroy such a wonderful picture of an almighty, loving, and just God but they do.

As people focus on the human authorship of Scripture they begin to cut away even at the New Testament. The words that Paul wrote and his admissions about life are regarded only as cultural statements and can be ignored since we live in another culture, really the only thing that some people believe matters is the words in red. The teachings of Jesus, yet even here there is a great subtraction done. Anything that is not liked is given the axe as something that was probably inaccurately recorded by the apostles, or advice about another place and time. We view these positions as extreme and unlikely to touch us, yet that is not the case.

In my studies I came across this often. Now I studied at a conservative Baptist school for my masters degree. This was done with intention for it is often easier to recognize the large and fundamental differences between us and Baptist theology that it is the subtle shifting of the modern Nazarene or Wesleyan schools.

In one of my classes I wrote a sermon on Jonah. While writing that sermon I was not allowed to refer to anything written after Jonah, and certainly not tie any part of the sermon on Jonah into the New Testament becuase they considered that this would be a dishonest representation of what Jonah intended by writing down his story and it would be poor preaching to draw a conclusion or a point from the story that the original author did not originally intend. Now this particularly did annoy me because in Matthew 12 Jesus refers back to Jonah showing that the 3 days and nights that Jonah was in the belly of the fish were representative or at least illustrative of Jesus spending 3 days in the grave and rising again. It is clear that there is at least that connection to the New Testament in Jonah, yet while preaching a sermon on Jonah I was not allowed to draw this connection.

I did not realize quite how much the human authorship is emphasized even among conservatives until I wrote a paper on the great commandment. I took my text from Matthew 22 and I explained what it means to love God with our heart, soul, and mind by referencing various other passages in the New Testament, especially I John which seems to have been written with the express idea of correcting error over what was meant in the Great Commandment! There is nowhere a more extensive explanation of loving God than in I John and yet I recieved a very poor grade. The reason given was not that my teachers disagreed with my positions, nor my writing ability, but rather with my hermeneutics or method of Bible Study. They told me that I could not go outside of Matthew to explain what Matthew meant by love since the other author might have meant something else by the term and John most certainly did! So Matthew and John meant different things by the same word. Peter and Paul’s words might not apply to us, and even the sermon on the Mount was discarded as a sermon preached to Jews and supposedly only applying to the Millennial Reign so its just a list of nice ideals but certainly has no direct impact on us today.

You might say, well what did you expect by going to a Baptist school? I would say, not that! But this is not a problem that is exclusive to Baptists. It has found its way into our circles as well sadly. I have heard of one teaching that when a certain Biblical author says sin he only refers to the guilt of sin rather than sin as commited deeds or inherited nature. So when we are saved from all sin we are instead saved from the guilt of all sin. and so on. I think you see the enormous difference this makes.

Now how can you know what the Bible says if this is your viewpoint? Well its very simple. You can’t, you just have to trust them, the teachers who have studied more than you. What they say is true, what you read, you cannot really understand without a full understanding of the specific context of that exact moment in history as well as a full understanding of everything that author has written and been through in his life, but not any understanding of any of the rest of scripture.

Now I am not putting down study, I am not saying not to trust your teachers and preachers. I am not saying that cultural context and authorial context is not helpful in fully understanding what God has said, yet I reject the idea that what scripture says and what it means can be completely opposite in one passage or another. I reject the idea that you and I cannot read the words of Scripture and have a good understanding of what it meant. God did not make the key messages of the Bible like Salvation from all Sin and being made righteousness and holy difficult or complex to decipher.

How then do we view the Scripture? It is a Book with One Author! To focus in on the first portion of 2 tim 3:16, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. God wrote scripture. Yes, God used people to do the writing, and their personalities and circumstances show through but not in a way that changes the message in the slightest. God inspired these authors so that what He wanted communicated was accurately and entirely communicated and anything He did not want said was not place in His Book. God told Moses that his name is I Am, signifying in mind at least God’s existence outside of the boundaries of time. God also knows what will be. As Moses wrote the first word of Scritpure God already knew every word that would be written down.

So yes we have a book that has been written by around 40 different authors and yet we have a book that contains 1 message from 1 author.

A Book with 1 God

Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The 1 message in our Book of 1 Author reveals 1 God, the divine creator. Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:” 1 God and 1 ruler. The message of man rebelling against God and God’s plan to redeem rebellious mankind shares a through-line of struggle against this 1 God. Satan’s temptation contained the idea that we could become God. It was this idea, this thought of being ruler over everything, or at least absolute ruler over ourselves that caused man to first rebel against God. Man found that instead of becoming God, man became a corrupted version of himself. This idea of lifting up oneself above all others is evident even before the fall of man for is it not what caused the angel Lucifer to rebel? He wanted the position of God for himself and rebelled and was cast down. Now he seeks to grasp whatever power he can by making man his plaything with his evil lies. He succeeded in the corruption God’s perfect creation. Death came into the world and man became corrupted. Yet Satan is not God. There is not and evil god and a good God. Only God is the almighty, divine, eternal, creator of all that is. Satan’s successes though they seem so prevalent and though his march seems unstoppable it is only temporary. There is 1 God and God will win. God already sees the victory while see the struggle and the battle. God’s plan for us is a redemption from the corruption of Satan and while this earth and all those on it will suffer from the curse of the fall until either are no more there will come a day where there will be a new heaven and a new earth! You see Satan’s advances are just a temporary condition. While they last longer than our lives in light of eternity they may as well not even exist because anything measured by time cannot be compared with eternity. James describes life as a vapor that appeareth for a little while and vanisheth away but even a vapor, a bit of steam lasts much longer in comparison to our lives than our lives or even this corrupted earth in relation to eternity. We often feel as if there is a good God battling and evil god and we hope that the good one wins and the evil one loses but all we see points to the good one losing. That’s not an accurate picture for there is but 1 God. He is good. And He does win.

A Book with 1 Way

Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:” This verse, while it focuses on the unity of the one God who is the one author of the Book with one message also shows us that there is but 1 way. The Lord our God is one Lord. He alone is the ruler. Now I guess this part of the point blurs the line between these two points, one God and one Way. For in our lives and throughout all of human history there has been an effort to add gods. As I mentioned Satan tried to become God. When that failed he deceived mankind into thinking that we too could become gods. Many pagan religions and many ancient religions have many gods, perhaps even hundreds. We today think we know better but I say that we have made many gods today. In the ancient world things were sacrificed so that the god’s would be favourable in battle or in harvest, or even just in the day to day lives of the people. The highest goal was to make the gods happy.

Today what is the worlds highest goal most often? To make oneself happy. Most often peoples main goal in life is their own pleasure. Other considerations do come into account but the root cause of so many foolish actions by ungodly people is self serving. People seek to make themselves a servant of themselves. Now what did the verse say. God is Lord. A lord is the one you serve. If you serve yourself then you are making yourself lord. Yet God stands as the only true Lord of the universe. All other lords will bow and serve Him in the end when every knee shall bow, yet only those who serve Him here will live with Him there.

What I am trying to say is the thing that we place the highest priority on is what we are worshiping as god and therefore setting up as an idol or false god in place of the true God. But there is 1 God. It is not ourselves. Nor is it this earth. You know God did tell us to take care of this earth. That is man’s purpose, to be caretakers of this earth, yet the earth is here to serve us and not us to serve the earth. Many today seem to have this entirely out of balance. They recognize that it is man’s responsibility to care for the planet but they view it as the planet having the priority not the people. When that is done to them the earth is an idol.

I think you understand that there are many such idols or false gods and that whatever holds the highest place in your heart is what you serve. But our book with 1 message, by 1 author who is the 1 God reveals 1 way and that way is by making God our Lord. John 14:6 says “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Jesus also says in John 6:44 “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” We see also in Romans 8:9 “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” We see in these three passages the unity of our one God. The Trinity working together to bring about our redemption. The Father drawing us to Christ who redeems us and sends the Comforter, the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. The one way to Heaven is through the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and that grace we believe is preceded by the drawing of the prevenient grace of God that goes before and draws us to the blessed Savior. Our Savior paid our penalty and now pleads the blood on our account but though He left this earth He did not leave us to serve God on our own. He sent the Comforter to guide and strengthen us as we live for it is the righteous who live by faith and those who truly have faith who live righteously. In God is no darkness at all. If we walk in darkness we do walk in Spirit. If we walk in the Spirit we cannot walk in darkness. 1 John 3:7–8 say “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

The 1 Way given to spend eternity with the 1 God who is the 1 author of the 1 message contained in this Book is the way of Holiness. There is no other way, there no other message. We must make the 1 God our 1 Lord. No man can serve two masters, we cannot sit on the boundary of selfish ambition and service to God. We cannot just flounder on edge of obedience fighting in our incapable strength to serve God on our own afraid to let to let God fight for us, afraid because of what it might cost to let Him win the battle. We cannot claim Him as our God unless we have submitted to Him as our Lord and we cannot have Him as Comforter and Guide without doing the same as well. The 1 way is to believe in the 1 message, written by 1 author, who is the 1 God and to believe with not just our minds but with our heart ( Loving God above all else and our neighbor as our selves), mind (believing in Jesus Christ as the 1 God and redemptive sacrifice for our sin), soul (resting our eternal destination in the work of God) and strength (living obediently and victoriously through the strength of the Spirit).