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In This IS Love

As more see the current trends in our culture, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 have been selling well.  What the Catholic apologist, Peter Kreeft, once said is quickly coming true: control language and you control thought; control thought and you control action; control action and you control the world.  Sadly, many who profess to follow Christ are more influenced by the world than they are God.

I.  Isaiah 5:18-23.  Whether it is 1st Century paganism or 21st Century humanism, Christians have been persecuted for not following culture’s god, the state.  Increasingly, those who stand for truth in a politically-correct world find themselves as labeled “intolerant” by the “tolerant” because their beliefs differ.  The means of control and cancellation the state uses is language (James 3:1-12).  Terms such as ‘love,’ ‘gender,’ ‘marriage,’ ‘life,’ and ‘equality’ are hijacked to punish the populace into conformity.  The ramifications for Christian athletes, colleges, businesses, and churches are great.

II.  Exodus 4:10-12.  God reminds Moses that He made man’s mouth, and therefore controls the definitions of our language.  All man can do is choose to follow his own will or God’s in regard to this (Hebrews 13:15).  God alone defines love (1 John 4:7-12), gender (Genesis 1:27), marriage (Genesis 2:24), pre-born life (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 139:13-16), and equality.  Like the culture, He defines it as sameness in regards to sin (Romans 3:23) and the need for salvation (Galatians 3:26-28), but we are each different according to His sovereignty (Hebrews 2:4) and our abilities (Matthew 25:15).

III.  Romans 1:16-32.  The culture wants the church to remain complacent and compromised, but we know that the righteous live by faith.  We must wake up to the sin that we have so readily accepted in our lives and know the wrath that is coming because of it.  We must recognize how the bad company we’ve kept has corrupted our morals (1 Corinthians 15:33) and ask who has influenced us more–God or the culture?  Nearing the time of his death, Joshua asked the Israelites to choose God or the cultures of the land they had refused to eliminate from their lives (Joshua 24:14-15).

This same choice is before us.  What will you choose?

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Between You and Your God

The impact of the gospel becomes real at the moment Jesus cries out with “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” while on the cross.  This is the whole reason for the “good news” in the first place.  Man, who is separated from God because of sin, can not pay back the debt he owes, so God becomes a man, who does not sin, to pay back man’s debt to God.

I.  1 Corinthians 15:1-4.  From incarnation to intercession, Jesus’ redemptive work at the cross and the tomb is called a matter of first importance and works together to save us (Hebrews 7:23-25).  We each choose to obey or not obey the gospel (Romans 6:1-18) as Jesus overcomes our sin problem (Isaiah 59:1-4) by having our sins punished in Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21) and then solving our grave problem by resurrecting from the dead.

II.  Romans 7:18-20.  Sins are either those we commit (when we do what we shouldn’t) or omit (don’t do what we should).  Even the smallest hint of either will separate us from a holy God (Ephesians 4:17–5:7).  If we just look at the seven deadly sins (although every sin is deadly!), we can see how they all overlap in and work to destroy individuals’ spiritual, physical, and emotional/mental realms.  We need Jesus’ redemptive work of the gospel to remove the separation that sin has made between us and God.

III.  Romans 14:10-12.  We must own our sins before Jesus can take them away.  This means letting their devastating impact to our souls and the awaiting judgment for them truly strike us.  Then, we can appreciate what Jesus has done for us and can obey the gospel by believing (John 8:24), repenting of our sins (Luke 13:3), confessing Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9), and being baptized into His Name for the forgiveness of sins (1 Peter 3:21).

But the gospel doesn’t stop there … as those who have come into Christ must continue to live obediently (Philippians 2:12-13).  Jesus has died for you.  Are you living in Him?

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Bible.12: Rightly Handling the Word of Truth

I was in sixth grade when Atari came out with the first game system.  I never owned one until my kids got a Wii.  Even now if someone hands me a controller I spaz out-of-control because I have no idea what I’m doing.  Some are like that in their relationship with God.  Something goes wrong in life and they are like me playing Mario Karts.

It’s not enough to know the Word of Truth; you have to know how to use it!

I. 2 Timothy 2:14-15.  Several times in Scripture, God’s Word is described as a sword.  But, having a sword is not the same thing as knowing how to use it.  All the lessons on the Bible (see the sermonlines archive) leading up to this one gave great information about the uniqueness, inspiration, authority, and development of the Bible.  It is truth (John 17:17), yes, but it must be applied to be of any use (Psalm 119:11).

II. 2 Corinthians 3:12-16.  Knowledge is only the means to the relationship with God that we all strive to have.  A thorough and continual study of His Word, combined with an abiding prayer-life, will lift the veil on truly knowing the word of truth so that a person can truly know God.  As in any relationship, love is the key to intimacy.  God loves us.  It is our love in return that will draw us into intimacy with Him.

III. John 4:23-24.  Being a true worshiper should be our goal.  To be that, we must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  In other words, we must know God in a deep and abiding relationship with Him.  Therefore, we must be honest with the word of truth.  We must approach the study of His Word, not seeking justification for who we’d like God to be, but how He reveals Himself to us out the living and active pages of His Word.  Knowing the context and occasion of the passage helps as well.

Does your study of God found in the pages of His Word draw you into a deeper relationship with Him?  Do you know Him?

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Bible.11: You Search the Scriptures

Can you imagine a husband checking off a marriage list at the end of the day that included items like told her I loved her, kissed her, bought flowers, warmed her car ….  The very nature of a relationship defies a checklist.  It is intimate, deep, and abiding.  And, while you can gain knowledge about your spouse, it is the application of that knowledge in your marriage that makes it a good relationship.

So it is with God.  Knowledge of His Word is not the end but only the means to an end.  It is what we are doing with that knowledge that makes all the difference.

I. John 5:36-40.  Knowing the Bible isn’t the same as knowing God.  This is what Jesus tried to get the Jews who were seeking to kill Him to understand.  He does not refute that their Bible study was diligent.  Nor does He dispute that in the Scriptures can they find the way to eternal life.  Their struggle was in application.  They refused to obey to know God (1 John 2:3-6), live them out, and recognize that they testified about Him.

II. Matthew 7:21-23.  Bible study is the means to an abiding relationship with God.  Since Adam and Eve ate the fruit and became like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:6-22), we have had to perceive the world through knowledge.  Animals have instincts; we must be taught.  This has many downfalls, but the biggest one is believing that if we are doing for God, then He knows us.  In our attitudes towards worship, attendance, serving, prayer, and His Word, are we “doing His will”?

III. Hebrews 4:12-13.  One of the reasons they, and we, refuse to come to Jesus to have eternal life is because we don’t like the double-edge on the Sword of the Spirit that cuts back on us as we try to wield this knowledge on others.  Neither do we like our deeds exposed by the light (John 3:19-21), so we keep from applying knowledge of God’s Word from becoming obedience.  We do not commit to an abiding relationship with God and so live in a state of quasi-light and quasi-darkness.

Many books have been written about how to have a better marriage, and these are people’s best guesses at situations that vary from spouse to spouse.  But, only one Book has been written by God Himself that helps us have an abiding relationship with Him.  Do you study it to love Him more?

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Bible.10: May Be Thoroughly Equipped

With so many translations of the Bible to choose from, how can a Christian know that what he is reading will make him or her thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17)?

I. Acts 12:4.  Recognize that the problem with every translation is that it’s a translation.  Therefore, the perfect translation does not exist.  Unless you can read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, you are reading a translation of copies of the originals that no longer exist.  An example is “Easter” in this verse of the often touted KJV of 1611 (language revised in 1769) but is rendered closer to the Greek Pascha as “Passover” in the NIV.  The NIV was translated in an era with more access to research but may have other struggles.

II. Genesis 6:13-17.  Three schools of translation put every Bible on a sliding scale.  Translations in the word-for-word school like the KJV, in addition to often challenging readability, will give us measurements like cubits while one from the idea-for-idea or dynamic equivalent school in the middle, like the NIV, will give them to us in terms we can better understand, like feet.  A thought-for-thought or paraphrase translation like The Message will be very readable but will melt Scripture down and present it in the translator’s own words.  That can be very interesting when looking at figurative language in the ESV, a very popular word-for-word translation known for its readability, in verses such as Amos 4:6.  Compare how the NIV and The Message translate this.

III.  2 Timothy 3:16-17.  The struggle today versus 1611 is too much access to information.  How does a Christian cut through the confusion to become thoroughly equipped?  Reputable study helps help, but so do some common sense considerations for choosing a translation.  The preface of any Bible will tell you how it was translated.  Those done by committee are preferred over an individual to help eliminate bias.  Those done by various groups are preferred over one group for the same reason.  How did the translators deal with various languages, thought patterns, syntax, figures of speech, etc.?  What was their use of early and ancient copies that are so available today?  And finally, how did they deal with thorny translation issues?

God preserved His Word throughout the centuries.  We have it available to us today.  Our job is to become thoroughly equipped by the most accurate portrayal as is possible.

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Bible.09: Carefully Investigated Everything

When I had to do research as a kid, I just hoped that the school library had something on my topic or could get it for me on loan in several weeks.  Today with the internet, the problem is access to too much information … yet we tend to be lazy and take the top three searches on Google!  A person may be confused today by all the Bible translations out there, but we have greater access to better research than ever before in history!

I.  Luke 1:1-4.  Starting with Luke, we can see that careful investigation has always been a part of good Bible study.  Before the printing press in 1455 a.d., the problem was not enough access to God’s Word.  But, once Erasmus translated the Latin Vulgate that had reigned supreme for over ten centuries into Greek in 1516 that was mass produced and read by the common man, the Reformation was sparked, and a host of early English translations came about leading to the King James Version (KJV).

II.  1 John 5:6-8 and notes.  Contrary to popular belief, the KJV did not “fall from heaven in 1611.”  It’s called the Authorized Version because King James, not God, commissioned its translation.  Borrowing its phrases and words heavily from Tyndale’s earlier work, the language of the KJV was updated in 1769 to how we know it today.  The KJV does have the distinction of reigning supreme for over 300 years and settled the New World and fueled the Restoration, but there are struggles with it as with any translation (see “Easter” for pascha in Acts 12:4).  With access to thousands of ancient manuscripts, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the rise of research in the 1900s and now the advent of the internet, many translations and study tools are available that are often based on better study.

III.  Acts 17:11.  So, are you noble-minded like the Bereans who examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was preaching was true?  Do you, like Luke, carefully investigate everything to have an accurate account of what is truth for eternity?

Or, is your salvation based on your top three Google searches?

 

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With Fear and Trembling

With the invention of the printing press in 1455 a.d. there must have been a bunch of unemployed monks who no longer needed to painstakingly copy every jot and tittle of Scripture by candlelight in a dark monastery.  Suddenly, the common man had access to God’s Word.  Okay, it took a while for copies to no longer be smuggled into England in barrels of flour, but there was no quenching the thirst to know God’s will for mankind after fifteen centuries of spiritual starvation.

I.  Once Erasmus translated the Latin Vulgate that had reigned supreme for 1100 years in 1516 back into Greek, Martin Luther the very next year read God’s Word and nailed his 95 challenges to the establishment to a church door in Germany.  The Reformation had begun, and Tyndale published his English translation eight years later in 1525.  This and Erasmus’ work became the backbone of the King James Version in 1611 that reigned supreme for 300 years.

II.  John 4:24.  With greater access to God’s Word came a way to satisfy the spiritual hunger to know and live by the truth.  Contrast that to today with so much availability of God’s Word in stores, our homes, even our phones, and our excused for spiritual laziness fall so short.  Instead of squandering the leisure time that western culture has given us, we must once again recapture a hunger and thirst for God’s Word.

III.  Philippians 2:12-16.  Before this time when only some of the clergy had access to God’s Word, the people had no choice but to accept fallible human mediators for their salvation.  Greater availability to God’s Word meant that people could work out their own eternity with Jesus alone as their go-between.  Spiritual laziness again makes people today desire a return to such a system as they think the preacher is in charge of their salvation.

What a gift to have access to the Creator’s Word to us that tells us what we must do to find salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus!  How we squander that gift by not studying His Word to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

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Bible.07: By Living According to Your Word

In all 176 verses in this psalm about God’s Word, one in particular gives us the cure for sin and selfishness: we need to be “living according to your word” (Psalm 119:9).  Great!  But, someone new to Christianity can be overwhelmed by the hundreds of translations out there.  How can they each read differently and still be God’s Word preserved to us through the centuries?

I. Galatians 4:4-5.  After the canon was established, the gospel continued to be spread in Greek that, thanks to Alexander the Great who conquered a few centuries earlier, was a perfect and precise language to preserve God’s Word.  The gospel spread faster by use of the Roman system of roads and preached at synagogues that existed wherever at least ten Jewish families resided.  A few decades after Constantine made Christianity a legal religion and the “masses” were forced to leave paganism to flood the churches, Jerome translated the Greek Scriptures into Latin that would hold dominate for the next 1100 years.  Latin was not very perfect or precise but careful copying by the Masoretes and monks got us to the invention of the printing press in 1455.

II. Acts 12:4.  The greater availability of God’s Word spurred on the Reformation a half century later but also stirred Erasmus to translate the Bible back into Greek.  The problem?  He didn’t have access to the over 5,900 ancient copies of the New Testament that we do today, and so he largely drew from the Latin Vulgate.  His “textus receptus” was the basis for many of the early English translations, including the King James Version (KJV).  It is the filtering of the Greek Word, pascha, through the Latin and the compromises with the pagan masses come into the church that the KJV renders that word ‘Easter’ instead of ‘Passover.’

III. Psalm 119:9-16.  Later translations and the rise of textual criticism relied on better research and bring us ever closer to the originals, of which none still exist.  In 1947, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written about the time of Christ, confirm this in all the Old Testament books but Esther.  We can be confident, then, that the translation you have in your hand or on your phone will allow you to be “living according to [God’s] word.”

The big question is “will you?”  Most of us have more Bibles and various translations available to us than Erasmus could ever have dreamed of, yet we spend much time in other pursuits rather than studying God’s Word to live it out in our lives.  We must live according to God’s Word so that we can one day live–according to God’s Word.

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Bible.06: As They Do the Other Scriptures

The cross is the dividing line in history.  If the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, then the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.  So, how did we get the 27 books that fill the ‘canon’ or ‘rule of faith’?

I. 2 Peter 3:15-16.  God inspired and preserved the New Testament.  The new covenant was prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and spoken about by Jesus in Luke 22:20, but what a confusing time the 1st Century must have been for Christians wondering who and what to believe as God’s Word came first orally through various gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 2:13) to its written form (1 Corinthians 14:37).  Peter calls Paul’s letters ‘Scripture’ along with other books at that time.

II. Matthew 13:24-25.  The enemy has always operated by sowing weeds, and so the time of confusion during the 1st Century was no different.  While Christians wondered what was from God and what was not, the enemy sowed perversions (gnosticism), false teachings (Acts 15:1), and heretics like Marcion who declared just the writings of Paul and Luke’s gospel as authoritative.  This, though, caused the church to re-evaluate what books they already considered authoritative and used in their worship services.  The declaration of later church councils on the 27 books we have in the New Testament today did not “give us the Bible” but rather confirmed what Christians had already been using for centuries.

III. 2 Timothy 3:16-17.  We have all we need from that which we know to be ‘Scripture’ as it thoroughly equips us.  God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness “through our knowledge ….”

This means we can study and obey the New Testament.  Let us not be ignorant or unstable, twisting them to our destruction.  Rather, let us let God speak to us about His Son on the cross who rose from the dead.

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Bible.05: That is Written About Me

The starting bid on ebay for a “signed” copy of the Bible was $1,000,000.69.  That’s ridiculous for anyone who knows anything about the Bible–even if Jesus purportedly used a blue Expo marker and dotted the ‘i’ in ‘Christ’ with a heart!

Yet, God in the flesh did appear to two disciples on the way from Jerusalem to Emmaus and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets” reportedly “explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”  Besides being an incredible Old Testament study that most of us would have loved to be a part of, Jesus here confirms the inspiration and authorship of 39 books and reveals their purpose: Him.

I. Acts 2:16-36.  The Old Testament was the only Bible that 1st Century Christians had, outside of up-to-the-minute revelations through the Holy Spirit, to proclaim and confirm the gospel.  A look at the gospel sermons used in the New Testament shows how deeply they mined this resource.  God inspired and preserved the Old Testament through the centuries.  On stone, clay, leather, and eventually papyrus scrolls and codexes, the recording of God’s Word was commanded and maintained by God’s servants until the time of Ezra who, returning from the Babylonian captivity, organized these writings.  Just before Jesus was born, the Greek translation of the Old Testament (that He most often quoted from), the Septuagint, was written and the Qumran community stored away every book but Esther in clay jars near the Dead Sea.  When these were discovered in 1947, the careful copying of the Masoretes through the centuries would be proved true.

II. Romans 15:4.  So, what’s a New Testament Christian’s relationship with the Old Testament?  Why do we still have Genesis through Malachi attached to our Bibles?  The Old Testament deepens our understanding of the gospel (Hebrews 9:1-15).  Without it, we would not truly know God holiness, man’s sin and separation from God, God’s grace in taking a people and giving them priests, a temple, sacrifices, and laws.  We would not understand God’s plan to redeem sinful man from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses & Aaron, David, Ezra, and Jesus.  We would not learn from the past (1 Corinthians 10:1-13) and so know better how to live our lives in Christ.

III. Matthew 5:17-18.  The New Testament is a fulfillment of the Old Testament.  An illustration I use is that it was my law when our kids were young that they couldn’t go near the road.  Now that they are grown, they go there all the time but do not break my law.  How?  Safety has always been at the heart of it.  When they were little, they did not know how to be safe near the road, but now they do.  The book of Hebrews compares the covenants and explains how the new is, in every way, better than the old.  Jesus, God in the flesh, fulfills all (Hebrews 8:5-13).

And so, the expression, “the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed,” is true … and it’s all about Jesus (Luke 24:44-49).