Word of Salvation – Vol.42 No.28 – July 1997

 

The Bible, God and Us

 

A Sermon by Rev M P Geluk on Acts 17:11

Scripture Readings: Acts 17:1-15

Suggested Hymns:

BoW 95; 217; 421; 514; 479

 

Congregation,

In the Greek city of Thessalonica, Paul, and his helper Silas, preached the gospel of Jesus Christ on three consecutive Sabbaths.  The Lord blessed that preaching, and some Jews, a large number of God-fearing Greeks, and a number of prominent women became Christians (Acts 17:4).  However, other Jews in that city became very jealous about these people turning to Christ and they incited some bad characters to start a riot.  The shouting and screaming mob went to a house where they expected to find Paul and Silas, intending to give them a beating, maybe even kill them.  But God protected Paul and Silas and they were not there.  That night fellow Christians helped them to escape from the city.

Undeterred, Paul and Silas went to a neighbouring city, Berea, and again preached the gospel, just like they had done in Thessalonica.  And again God blessed the preaching and once more there were conversions.  Many Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men [Acts 17:12].  But unlike Thessalonica there were no jealous Jews in Berea to start a riot.  “The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message of Paul with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

What we want to do now is to give our attention especially to what the Bereans did – the examining of the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.  In their daily examination there would have been three things that they were busy with.

Firstly, they were busy with the Bible.  They had heard Paul refer to the Scriptures a great deal, so daily they were reading the Scriptures.

Secondly, they were busy with God.  Paul and, as they discovered, so also the Scriptures, spoke a lot about God.  But what did the Scriptures really say about God?

And thirdly, they were busy with themselves.  They became involved as they heard and read about the gospel.  It spoke to them, took hold of their emotions and required a response from them.

The message of our text, therefore, has to do with The Bible, God and us.  And we will look at three important questions:

1.  How do we read the Bible?
2.  What is the Bible’s main theme?  And…
3.  What are we to do?

In the first place:

1.  How do we read the Bible?

Before I proceed to describe how I think most people read it, let me tell first you how the apostle Paul preached it.  It was Paul’s practice to visit a town’s synagogue and speak to the Jews who came there to worship God.  The Jews were familiar with the Old Testament, and that was for them the Scriptures.  So when Paul spoke about the Messiah then they knew what he was talking about.  But when Paul went on to say that Jesus was the Messiah, then that was for them a new thing.

Maybe they had heard about Jesus from fellow Jews who had travelled to Palestine.  But how could they be sure that this Jesus was the Christ?  Well, Paul reasoned and argued from Scripture that it was so.  He spoke to them of Jesus’ teaching and miracles and showed them that many Old Testament passages pointed to Jesus.  He then urged them to repent and believe in Jesus.

After the preaching of Paul in Berea, its people did the right thing.  They examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true.

Now the question we are interested in is how did they read their Scriptures?  We’re told they examined them.  The word used in the Greek means that they sifted through the Scriptures back and forth.  They carefully compared Paul’s teaching with God’s written Word.  They wanted to find out “whether these things were so.”  Did the Scriptures really say what Paul said?  Their examination of the Scriptures made them see that the whole of the Old Testament was pointing to Christ.

They found themselves agreeing with Paul’s teaching that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah whom they were waiting for.  In fact, they began to understand the Scriptures much better.  They could now see how many Scriptural teachings and practices pointed to Christ.  And in this way the Bereans became Christian believers and grew in their faith.

Now I want to follow on from this and ask – how do you read your Bible?  I said earlier that I was going to describe how I think many Christians read the Bible.  So how is that?  Well, I think that many believers read the Bible in the wrong way.  In fact, many no longer know how to read the Bible in the right way because the wrong way has become so popular.  And that is really surprising because we know the right way when we read most other books.  When you’re making up your mind to read a novel then you might just dip into a page here and there to sort of get the feel of the story.  Or if it is a study book then you look at the contents to get an idea what’s ahead of you.  But once you have decided to read the whole book then you don’t want to do too much browsing for that would either give the plot away if it is a novel, or you won’t follow the flow of the argument if it’s a study book.  So usually you begin from the front of the book and read through to the end.

But for some unexplained reason we don’t read the Bible that way.  Our reading is quite different.  We read it in bits and pieces.  We see it as a book with lots of different stories from which we choose at random.  We look for texts and passages to do for us what we want them to do for us.  To either prove a point, clinch an argument, or offer us moral advice and comfort.  We know the Bible is true for it is God’s Word and, therefore, having authority.  So whatever we plug out of the Bible we feel that it is God speaking and frown on anyone contradicting that.  The Bible says so’, we say.  We also hope that no one raises a too serious challenge on our understanding or interpretation of the text or passage.

Now it is understandable that the Bible is used in this manner because so many are doing it.  The Bible is seldom read through anymore these days.  It used to be.  When there were as yet no daily devotion books and meditation booklets around many people simply started with Genesis and read through to Revelation, and then began all over again.

Now this way of reading the Bible is not necessarily the only way.  There are Bible books or parts thereof that you might want to skip the first time through and come back to later on.  And some Bible books have no connection with what went before it or with what comes after it.  So the Bible does not quite read like a novel.

But we have now gone too far the other way when we treat the Bible as though it is a mere reference work, or some kind of encyclopaedia or dictionary.  We lost the habit of reading through the Bible.  Many don’t even read through one particular book, gospel, or letter.  We are no longer Bible readers but Bible dippers.

What helped make us Bible dippers are the many meditation booklets in which the author gives a little write-up about a Bible text which is listed on top of each page.  Some are excellent and you get a lot out of them, especially when they follow a particular theme or work their way through a whole Bible book.  Others are less helpful when there are lots of stories and anecdotes with a moral tale that takes your attention away from the Bible text or passage.  But if all the Bible reading we do is these types of meditations and devotions, then we are really not Bible readers but Bible dippers.

Thus we have many Christians who probably never read the Bible from front to back.  You may be one of them.  You grab the Bible for a few minutes each day, read a few verses at random, see what the devotion says about it, and that’s it.  But it’s all unconnected.  How well would you know an ordinary book and its author when you haven’t read the whole book?  Not very well I would say.  It’s the same with the Bible.  From the bits and pieces we read we sort of know what it says but many are quite ignorant of the flow of the Bible.  They have little idea of how God’s plan of salvation unfolded through time and history.

I think that I can safely say that God wants us to read through the Bible and if not from cover to cover then through the various Bible books.  God wants us to journey through the Scriptures to discover who He is and what He says.  Just like the Bereans did.

Most of us know only bits and pieces of each other.  After all, not everyone gets to write a detailed book about themselves.  And because we don’t really know each other that well we can easily make wrong assumptions about someone or we ourselves feel misunderstood.  Now that’s life of course.  But let us not do that to God who has given us the whole Bible to get to know Him so as to not misunderstand Him or make false assumptions about who He is and what He does.

Admittedly, it takes time and self-discipline to get to know God.  But why should we not make an effort?  Look how we pour over our books in order to pass the exams; how we spend hours with that road traffic booklet in order to get our driver’s licence.  Why then do we come to the Bible just to dip and dabble here and there?

Yes, there are many parts of the Bible which are hard to understand.  And even the easy-to-read parts can have a profound meaning.  Yet it’s absolutely vital that we don’t give up.  The Bible has lots of meaningful treasures and as with most treasures one has to do a little digging before their mysteries are unlocked.  It’s not always that the Bible is so hard to understand; frequently it’s also our mental laziness.  So God wants us to be like the Bereans, examining the scriptures.  The psalmist prayed that the Lord would open his eyes so that he could understand the wonderful things in God’s Word.  But now, what is the Bible’s main story?  What is it really all about?  Let’s try and answer these questions.

And so we look at our second main question:

2.  What is the Bible’s main theme?

Well, surprisingly perhaps, we will discover that the Bible is more about God than about man.  People may pick up a Bible and search for some helpful statements about themselves, only to discover that it keeps on saying things about God.  About His Person, His holiness His awesome power, about His work in this world and how nothing can stop him from completing it.  And then also how God uses prophets, psalmists, wise men and apostles to further explain His aims and purposes.

So the main theme of the Bible is not in the first place about the ins and outs of people, their life stories and experiences.  It’s about the being and work of God and God justifying the way He is and His actions so that no man can accuse God of wrong-doing.

We have this tendency to be more concerned about people than about God.  But the Bible puts God in the centre.  God is, in the first place, more concerned about His own purposes and He goes to some considerable lengths to explain how all what He does is for His own glory first of all.

Once we have discovered that about the Bible, then, as we read it through to get the overall picture, we also begin to pick up God’s continuous efforts to establish His kingdom.  God claims He is supreme.  He is the Creator and Upholder of all things.  He wants His standard of righteousness established, for He alone is good and perfect.

But then along with this we discover that God seeks to establish His kingdom for the well-being of people.  When man obeys God then he experiences a better world.

So if God at first seems selfish by having Himself in the centre, then afterwards it appears that this is actually for the good of mankind.  People are much better off with God ruling their lives than they ruling themselves or being ruled over by some other power.

And in order to establish His kingdom on earth, God sets out to destroy the kingdom of evil.  Reading through the Bible we also discover that Satan is constantly trying to oppose the works of God so that he can destroy humanity.  But then we discover the selfless love of God because He sent His Son Jesus into the world in order to undo the power of sin and Satan in peoples’ lives.  Jesus did not come straight away, however.  It had to take place at just the right time.  But all the time God was directing events and happenings in the world so that Satan could not prevent Christ from coming.  And God had to preserve a people from whom the Christ would be born.  At first they were just some individuals but then they became a nation,

And so we read about the line of the covenant From Adam it passes on to Seth and his descendants, then it continues on to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It’s still mainly individuals but then the descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons became the people of Israel.  From there on God is concerned with a whole nation.

Finally Jesus came.  And in Jesus’ ministry, in His teaching, miracles and His compassion on people, we see God as He really is.  Yes, in Jesus we really understand more fully the nature of God’s kingdom.

Then there’s Pentecost and the Holy Spirit gives power to the apostles to go beyond the people of Israel and to spread the gospel of God’s kingdom into all the world.  That work of God is still going on and then when all the elect have been saved Christ will come back again to make all things new.

Now when you read through the Bible then you begin to see all this.  You learn to see that God has been working towards this new creation from the moment Satan spoilt the first creation.  In fact when you try to take in the final completion of God’s work of salvation in the world, you then discover that the end points you back to the beginning.  It all began with a perfect world.  Then man’s fall into sin spoilt everything but from the very moment that happened God began the holy war with Satan and started to work towards the renewal of all things.  That’s God’s work of salvation and it takes in the coming of Christ and His kingdom.  Now all this becomes fundamental to a good grasp of what the Bible is all about.

So the main theme of the Bible is creation, fall, salvation.  And creation and salvation is all God’s work.  And when Satan brought about the fall of man, God straightaway implemented His plan of salvation.  That’s why the Bible is in the first place all about God.  And unless we read the Bible through, unless we take time to carefully work through the different books of the Bible, we will simply not catch on to the Bible’s main theme.  But when people do begin to catch on, when they do begin to see how great God is and how necessary it is not to be in the kingdom of darkness but in the kingdom of light, then what is to happen?

Well, that brings us to our third and final question:

3.  What are we to do?

So this is about us.  Well, we are to do what every sinner is expected to do.  When Paul spoke about Christ and His kingdom, and people began to see their need to be on the side of God, they asked – what must we do?  The answer was and is always the same: repent and believe.

Now repentance means more than just being sorry for your sin.  It’s becoming aware of having gone against a holy and righteous God who is all the time calling on you to come out of the darkness of sin and into His marvellous light.

Repentance is actually a two-step activity.  In the first place we must recognise our wrong-doing and consciously turn away from it.  In the second place we must deliberately turn to God and follow Him.

In all this we must believe God.  Faith is also a two-step activity.  In the first place we must have a knowledge of God if we are going to believe in Him, and we have made it clear that this involves knowing the main theme of the Bible.  The second step is trust.  Once we get to know God from reading through the Bible and getting the whole picture, then we find it is easy to trust Him.  You can’t trust Satan for he is out to destroy you.  But you can trust God for He, in His grace and goodness, is aiming to save you and have you enter His kingdom.

But note this well, God is not going to do this to you automatically, treating you like a robot.  No, in His Word He explains who He is and what He does and that He wants you to accept Him and believe in Him.  That is, to know and trust Him.  Doing it in this way, the way of faith, honours and glorifies God.  And that’s what God deserves.  To be exalted.

So all that, then, seems simple enough.  Repentance and faith.  Unfortunately it isn’t.  Let me in conclusion explain in five brief points why repentance and faith do not easily take place.  And once you have realised the forces you’re up against, then you can see all the more why you need to become a Bible reader and not a Bible dipper.  For you need all of God’s Word to overcome these forces that seek to stop you from turning to God in faith.

Firstly, we’re not hearing as often as we should the call to repent.  Today the wider Christian church is too much occupied with the wellbeing of man and less concerned about the honour of God.  So the emphasis in many churches has fallen on how to be healed, how to deal with stress, how to overcome anxiety, how to make people feel good about themselves, how to praise God in such a way so that you feel great about the way you did it.

But in so doing the church is not paying enough attention to what God has done in time and history in order for sinners to repent and believe and enter His kingdom.  The Christian church must stop with putting man in the centre and get peoples’ focus back on God.

Secondly, our society is constantly telling us that nothing is really sinful as such.  Your parents may have held the view that something was sin, and you yourself might have felt that way for a long time, but in society today many people are telling us that what was previously regarded as sin was just different behaviour.  Not wrong but just different.

We are told that in the world there are so many people with different backgrounds, cultures and ideas that you can’t expect them all to agree with what the Bible and you think is right or wrong.  In a multi-cultural society people have a right to be what they want to be.  But you can see, of course, that if God’s standard of what is right and wrong is no longer accepted then no one will know anymore what sin is.  And if there is no such thing as sin, then what is there for people to repent about?  Why should they repent at all!

Thirdly, destructive behaviour which doesn’t go away, of course, not even when people feel so good and positive about themselves, is often seen as a psychological disorder.  Rape, stealing, murder and the like, happen unfortunately because such people have been denied in their lives good influences and were exposed to bad examples.  Such people need understanding and treatment.  But hardly anyone is prepared to say that destructive behaviour stems from sinful hearts and sinful minds.  Thus very few will call for repentance before God.

Fourthly, the culture we live in continually portrays what God says is just plain sinful as being okay and cool.  Clever advertising and many movies make people think that way.  No wonder it’s difficult for people to see that they are sinning and need to repent before God.

Lastly, people are always justifying themselves.  There are always these explanations and excuses why things went wrong.  Not very often do we hear of people openly admitting without excuses that they have done the wrong thing and must face the consequences.

These, then, are some reasons why people do not readily see that they are sinners over against God and need to repent and believe.  In order for that to happen again on a much wider scale, in order for many more conversions to take place, in order for convictions of sin to be much deeper than we generally see and therefore having a deeper need for Christ’s forgiveness, we must return to reading the Bible through.

Nice and cosy devotions and meditations won’t bring about a turnaround.  We need to stop being Bible dippers and become Bible readers.  Only when you begin to understand the Bible’s main message about God will you truly know about yourself.

Then you will be as excited as the Bereans were when they examined the Scriptures.  It will make you believe God and turn away from sin and follow Christ.

Amen.