A quarterly magazine for truth, faith, and logic.

Vol. 2, Issue 2

Spring 2008

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Praying Hands
by Albrecht Dürer
1508

from Confessions
by Augustine of Hippo

Preach the Word
by Paul Lytle

The Church and Social Justice
by J.E. Heath

Statements of Great Faith:
"We are not going to serve your gods"
by Paul Lytle

I Fear No Darkness
by Paul Lytle

Primum Mobile Staff:

Paul Lytle

J.E. Heath

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.

Preach the Word

by Paul Lytle

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
-2 Timothy 4:1-2

t often seems strange to me how we approach Scripture. Preachers and teachers will find the most obscure statements in the Bible and spend countless hours unwrapping them, making obscure connections with other passages, and extrapolating meaning, but it is often the very clear instructions in the Bible that give us difficulty. I have heard pastors string together long lists of Scripture to support a tenuous point, and then later deny something in the Word that is as plain as day and is meant to be plain as day.

As an example, the Church as a whole seems to have gotten a pretty good grasp on the concept of the Trinity, a word that does not even appear in the Bible, and yet still argues about whether we are saved by faith or not, which is stated very plainly in several areas. It is the complicated things — the Trinity, in this case — that we have down, while the simple alludes us.

Perhaps the point is that with these complicated doctrines, we often are not asked to change our lives, while often with the simple ones, we are. We can give a hundred examples of this, but it hardly needs to be done. Just think of all the people you know who go to church on Sunday, and then live like the world on Monday. There is obviously no excusing their behavior: the Word strictly and clearly forbids acting in certain ways, but they do it anyway. Meanwhile, they can believe in the Trinity, because to declare the Trinity to be a true doctrine does not ask them to stop lying at work. In this case, it is very clear in the Word that we should not lie, but that is something that demands action on our part. So it is not accepted by certain people who call themselves Christians.

When this is brought to our attention, we are forced to choose. Will we change, or will we excuse ourselves? So we, as a people, come up with all sorts of excuses as to why we do not follow the Word. Obviously, few are just going to say, "I don't want to follow the Word," even though that is what we mean, so we alter our approach to the Bible to justify our actions.

The particular passage I want to look at comes from 2 Timothy. Few will admit to ignoring this passage, and yet so many do. Almost everyone, in fact, that I have met in the Church does. Look again at this passage, and the urgency of the instruction:

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

-2 Timothy 4:1-2

Paul is not making a suggestion here, but charging Timothy "in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus." This is not something to be taken lightly. And this is at the heart at what I have been saying beforehand. We make our excuses as to why we can ignore certain passages in the Bible, even though passages like this stress the absolute importance of the Word and how we need to be studying and teaching it.

But how lightly do we take it? More and more churches are abandoning preaching completely. So-called "Bible studies" do not even look at the Bible, but instead reads Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life or a book by John Eldridge or something of that nature. Christian counselors spend more talking about Freud than Jesus in their sessions. Christians in general speak with worldly wisdom, probably not even realizing that God calls such wisdom "foolishness" (1 Corinthians 3:19). When we witness to someone, if we witness to someone, we talk of "God-shaped holes" in people rather than teaching them about the Bible.

Of course, someone eventually brings these things to our attention, so what excuses do we come up with to justify ourselves? We ignore this passage by claiming to know better than the Bible. Again, few will admit to this in these terms, but that is what we mean. We disguise this habit in many ways. Many preachers will teach by experience primarily, saying that this generation learns better that way. There's nothing wrong with examples and stories, of course, for even Jesus used them, but these preachers center their sermons around the story rather than the Word. Other preachers forgo the sermon completely, having a discussion instead, and so the entire group never moves beyond themselves, because they only have themselves as teachers. Many preachers compromise truth, saying that they must give a little on one doctrine or another in order to get people into the church. Others teach from other philosophies and faiths rather than from the Bible.

Even when going to the Bible, we do not preach the Word. We say that the Bible is a personal thing, and so what does it mean to you? We acknowledge, rightly, that Jesus has a personal relationship to us, but then make the jump that revelation is also personal.

We say that we can only understand the Bible through cultural perspective, and so we twist the words to mean whatever we want them to mean instead of teaching what they say. This has been a quite common practice lately. One example I have heard is where Jesus is telling people that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). On several occasions I have heard people say that there was a very tiny gate in Jerusalem that was nicknamed "the eye of a needle." So it was very hard to get a camel through, but not impossible. So Jesus was saying that rich people just need to be careful and try hard and they will make it.

In another case, people explain the Scripture in Proverbs that says to be kind to your enemies, and in doing so "you will heap burning coals on his head" (Proverbs 25:22). The obvious interpretation is that if you are kind to someone who hates you, he will either come around or just get really mad about the whole thing and damn himself. But some people have said no, that you need understanding in culture to really understand this verse. In those days, they say, if your fire went out, you could go to a neighbor for coals. You would have a bowl on some sort on your head, and they would pour coals into it. Therefore, pouring coals on someone's head is a very kind thing to do, thus reversing the meaning of the verse from what it seems to mean. You aren't hurting the person in the least, but really helping.

Sometimes we teach that culture has evolved beyond that primitive time, so some parts we can ignore. Have you heard this? They say that the people of that time just weren't ready to be told that homosexuality is okay, but we were expected to evolve into a more modern understanding. I'm not sure why the Romans, for instance, would not have accepted homosexuality since their culture accepted it more than ours does, but that is the claim.

Or that some parts, being the parts we don't like, were cultural, and therefore don't apply. We understand the words of Scripture right in these cases, but they really weren't directed toward us, but for a certain town, for example. It was these cultures to which Paul directed his instructions that women should not preach, for instance, not us. These cultures had too much feminism, and he was merely trying to stop that. Certainly we don't have feminists now, so why would we need the passages?

Or that we cannot understand it at all, because words have no meaning. Words are just meaningless sounds we associate with certain things, but there is nothing inherent in a word that conveys meaning. Again, it is cultural.

These are some of the main reason we reference to explain why we don't understand the Word or that the Word says something contrary to its clear and obvious meaning.

So when Paul tells us, under the witness of God Himself, to preach the Word, this is actually a very controversial statement. This is something that we in the modern Church fight against more times than we accept it.

THE NATURE OF THE WORD

nd it's sad, really. It's sad because we miss out on something special when we try to change the Bible to fit ourselves rather than conforming ourselves to the Word. Listen to the way David talks about the Word:

The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.

-Psalm 19:7-10

"Sweeter than honey." "More desirable than gold." Is that how we see the Word of God? I've met only a few people who really relish the Bible in this way. I think we fear the Bible. I think that we fear that if we find something that we are doing wrong, God will expect us to change. So we just ignore it, or we justify our actions. We also fear the effort it will take to really understand it.

But look at the way the Bible talks about itself. This is not a source of pain, but of joy. It is not a source of condemnation, but of restoration. It is not a source of foolishness, but wisdom.

It restores the soul, it makes us wise, it rejoices the heart, it is righteous, it is clean, it is pure, and it endures forever.

Paul tells us that "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

In other words, the Word is all those things we talked about, and it is also useful in making us like that.

And yet we resist. We make excuses so we won't be confrontational, or we won't have to give up our lifestyles. But I tell you the truth: that the life Christ gives is infinitely better than anything this world can offer. What in this world can claim to be everlasting, pure, holy, able to restore the soul, able to make you wise, and able to rejoice the heart? Nothing. Nothing.

I could go on. The Word makes many wonderful claims about itself. But this is hardly my point, and I think I have said enough to show just how important the Bible is. So what could our objections possibly be?

OBJECTIONS

o let us take another look at them:

One of the things I often hear is that parts of the Bible are cultural, only pertaining to a certain people. It is true that parts are addressed to people or cities, but they still have meaning for us today. We must remember that Jesus was almost as far removed from the first books of the Bible as we are from the New Testament. Did Jesus ever say that part was cultural? Did He tell people to ignore Daniel, for instance, since Daniel was written in Babylon? Certainly Daniel was writing for a certain audience in a certain time, but Christ still quoted from Daniel quite often, and even His favorite name for Himself, "The Son of Man," comes from Daniel 7. The Word of God is eternal. It has applications for all ages and all countries, from Babylon to Rome to England to America and back again.