Sermon Notes, January 27, 2013
Can You Really Believe the Bible (Pt. 2), 2 Timothy 3:14-17, Hebrews 4:12-13
We’re in a series on Tim Keller's book The Reason for God. In this series we’re looking at
critical issues of faith, so again I encourage you to come to all the messages in this series. At
times it’s going to be kind of heavy sledding. So because of the importance of what we’ll be
talking you might want to check out the study on Monday night.
We live in a cultural atmosphere in which if you say that you believe in the Bible there’s a
good chance you’ll invite derision. So what is it about this book, the Bible, that causes people to
give their lives for it, causes oppressors to try to destroy it, and so infuriates the cultural elite
today? Clearly the Bible is unique. The reason is what the Bible claims to be the Word of God.
This is why the first few messages in the series, deal with a real critical issue of faith… Can
this Book be trusted?
We’re continuing to look at what are honest, sincere questions, reservations that
thoughtful people have about this Book that could keep them from taking it seriously or
trusting it. Last week we looked at three concerns, three reservations people have about the
Bible. We don’t have time to review what we talked about last week, so if you’re interested you
can get the sermon notes or you can go on our website and watch last week’s sermon.
1) Some people feel that the Bible may have valuable moral insights, but it ought to be
understood as a collection of myths, fables, once-upon-a-time kind of stories.
2) The Bible is full of contradictions that undermine its own authority.
3) We no longer have the original copies of the manuscripts of the Bible; and therefore, all
kinds of errors or legends may have gotten written into the copies we have.
Today we come to the fourth concern.
4) Everybody is selective about which Bible commands they obey and which they ignore,
so all talk about biblical authority is really bogus.
As a response to Christians who cite commands in the Bible about how we are to live, people will
say, "Yes, and the Bible also says you should stone adulterers and that you should not wear
clothes made of mixed fabrics, and you don't obey those, so you pick and choose. Everybody
picks and chooses."
The idea that comes across is that any approach to the Bible's authority is arbitrary, pick
and choose; therefore, the Bible doesn't really have any real authority. That's a very legitimate
concern. I don't think it's accurate, and I want to tell you why.
This really gets us into hermeneutics (the science of interpretation), which we surely don’t
have time to go into. Just take a comment from Doug Stuart (former professor of mine and coauthor of How to Read the Bible for All its Worth) to shed some light on this question.
“The Bible contains all sorts of commands that God wants us to know about, which are not
directed toward us personally. An example is Matthew 11:4, where Jesus commands, ‘Go
back and report to John what you hear and see.’ The original audience of that command was
the disciples of John the Baptist. We read about the command; it is not a command to us.”
This leads us back to the kind of book the Bible is. Something very helpful from Tom Wright.
He says, "The Bible itself offers the best framework for us to understand how we respond to the
story." I think this is just brilliant. He continues, “Think of the Bible as telling the big story of
the human race in five acts. Think of it like a play, but it's true. Our existence does have
meaning. The Bible tells this story like no other document. That's part of why it's had the impact
that it has. Think of it as a play in five acts.”
Act 1 is creation. Genesis 1 and 2; it's all good.
Act 2 is the fall. Genesis 3 through 11; everything is messed up.
Act 3 is God's working with the people of Israel. Genesis 12 through Malachi.
Act 4 is the coming of Jesus, His physical presence on earth.
Act 5, Jesus goes, sends the Spirit, and now there's the church.
The New Testament writers were not setting aside the Old Testament or parts of it arbitrarily.
 They were working out, how do those of us who live in Act 5 respond to the entire
story of how God revealed Himself in creation?
 And how everything was messed up through the fall, and how the people of Israel
became His redemptive people, and how that led then to the person of Jesus—the
Messiah, the Son of God—who is Savior and Lord.
 And then how we find a way of life centered in the Great Commandment of Jesus that
sums up all of the commands in the big play, love the Lord your God with all your
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself for all the law and
the prophets hang on these two commandments.
It all fits together. It is not arbitrary. Let’s look at the fifth concern.
5) Science has proven that you cannot take the Bible literally.
Science has enormous authority, prestige in our day. Now let's talk for a moment about what it
means to take the Bible literally. It does not mean, as folks often think, to read the Bible in a
thoughtless, careless, anti-intellectual way.
The Bible is full of many books from many authors, many genres. It has poetry. It has
narratives. It has prophecy. It has parables. It has letters. It has proverbs. To read it literally
means how do I read each one of those and then try to find out what the author intended his
audience to understand?
This leads to the question, should we treat every passage of Scripture as literal?
Critics of the Bible and often, the media, speak condescendingly, at times derisively, of
“biblical literalists.” It seems a foregone conclusion that the Bible cannot be taken literally. But
a literal approach follows the basic principle that Scripture is human communication. God
speaks to us in ways we understand.
A recent book by a former teacher of mine, and two of his colleagues (LaSor, Hubbard, and
Bush, Old Testament Survey, p. 15) puts it like this,
To assure verbal precision God, in communicating his revelation, must be verbally precise,
and inspiration must extend to the very words. This does not mean that God dictated every
word. Rather his Spirit so pervaded the mind of the human writer that he chose out of his
own vocabulary and experience precisely those words, thoughts and expressions that
conveyed God's message with precision. In this sense the words of the human authors of
Scripture can be viewed as the word of God.
As we look at reading the Bible literally, actually the battleground is ill-chosen. The real battle
is the question of trustworthiness, not literalness. Are those portions of Scripture that purport to
be literal actually true? And more basic, is the teaching of Scripture, whether literal or
figurative, true? The trustworthiness of the Bible must be identified as the key issue, not its
literalness.
If the Bible is to be authoritative, it must be understandable. As in all communication, you
begin with the assumption that the speaker or writer is saying something to be taken in its literal
meaning. But as the reader or hearer you should always be alert to the possibility that the
language may be figurative or poetic.
One day, like a beacon in the night came these words, "In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth." Over time, that one sentence changed the world, and that's no accident.
There is a God, and He is good, and He made everything that is. That's why creation is good,
and He made people in His image, and that's why we all know they're so precious because they
really are.
People have fallen through sin, and that's why nothing is the way it's supposed to be, and we
know in our guts nothing is the way it's supposed to be. God has not given up on His creation,
and so we live through hope in a redemption that must come from a power greater than
ourselves. Nothing anybody has learned through the scientific method is at odds with any of
this.
6) Doesn't the Bible support regressive practices like violence or slavery?
Again, a very legitimate concern. I think very often what falsely appears as problems to
people really come from a failure to understand the kind of book it is. What does it mean to
begin to read the Bible in its historical and cultural context?
For example, most people are familiar with the statement, "An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth." It's from Exodus 21. A lot of people in our day when they see that, they'll say,
"See that's what I'm talking about. What a bloody, vengeful way to live. The Bible must be
pro-violence." Okay? NO. Go back to ancient times.
There are no squad cars out on the roads, no police departments, no law enforcement
infrastructure like we think of it. If you hurt me, I can do anything in my power to hurt you as
much as I want to. See, in that world see, Exodus 21 is actually laying the foundation for
proportional justice. Unlimited vengeance is no longer to be allowed. Somebody knocks out
your tooth, you don't get to kill them. The punishment must fit the crime. It's actually an
enormous step forward in the direction of justice for the ancient world.
We come to another giant step forward with Jesus. Jesus says, "You have heard that it
was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you…love your enemies…" Now when
Jesus says "But," He is not saying Moses got it wrong. Jesus is a good rabbi. He loves the
Law—the Torah. He is saying the ultimate value that Moses was moving Israel toward one step
at a time was the value of love. Just love. But God always must start with people where they
are and move them one step at a time, and this Book must be read in that light.
7) If I start taking the Bible seriously, it might interfere with my plans for my life.
Well, here’s what I can say.
"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it
penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart."
Strange thing about this Book; it has a power to it.
 I think I'm going to read it, and it starts reading me.
 I think I'm going to judge it, and it starts judging me.
 I think I'm going to weigh its words, & it's my life that's being weighed.
There has never been a book like this Book. I know many parts of it often for us are frustrating
and confusing. A lot of why it seems strange to us is simply that it's ancient, and we don't
read much ancient stuff.
The ancient world is filled with sacrifices and polygamy and ideas of uncleanness and odd
customs, and we read it and we think, Why was life so much weirder then than it is now? I'll tell
you a secret. It wasn't! The only difference is we live now so we think we're not weird.
Since the Enlightenment we are guilty of what C. S. Lewis calls "chronological
snobbery"—the assumption that it's just not worth our time to learn from the past because we
are intellectually and morally superior just by nature of when we live.
Well if that's the case, tell me what's the book, source, authority, or idea you want to base
your one and only life on that you think will hold up in 2,000 years or 200,000 years or 2
million years?
See, this Book changed the world, and it did not do that by accident. It was Godbreathed. 2 Peter 1:20-21 tells us that not only is what they spoke from God, but how they spoke
it is controlled by the Holy Spirit. "Men, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke from God." It was
written by real people to a real world in a real historical place and time, and that can often
be frustrating and confusing to us, but it puts us in touch with a deeper reality.
There has never been a book like this Book. So read it. Start with one of the gospels.
 Read it with intensity.
 Read it with a humble spirit.
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Read it repentantly.
Read it and ask God, "God, would You meet me in this Book?"
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you…love
your enemies…"
Now when Jesus says "But," He is not saying Moses got it wrong. Jesus is a good rabbi.
He loves the Law—the Torah. He is saying the ultimate value that Moses was moving
Israel toward one step at a time was the value of love. Just love. But God always must
start with people where they are and move them one step at a time, and this Book must
be read in that light.