Why Bother with the Bible - Part Two

 

Last week I began a short series titled, “Why Bother with the Bible?”  The question is relevant for everyone in 2024, even though it was written thousands of years ago and to a people living very different lives than we live. But as I said last week, and I hope you all agreed, the ancient texts of Scripture are, indeed, applicable to us today because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever – and therefore His word is applicable to humanity regardless of the age in which they live.

 

As Isaiah (40:8) wrote: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” And the Lord Jesus told us: (Matthew 24:35) “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

 

Last week I shared with you only one reason of many that God's word is so relevant to us in 2024 – that being the necessary reminder that He is with us. Always. Indeed, is that not what the prophet told us through Isaiah’s quill –(Isaiah 7:14) “Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.”

 

Immanuel. The name means, ‘God-with-us.”

 

But today I want to highlight yet another few reasons God's eternal and inerrant and infallible and inspired word is fully relevant to 2024. Those reasons are encapsulated in what St Paul wrote, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to his protégé, St Timothy (2 Timothy 3:13-17):

 

“But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 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.”

 

There are three important points Paul makes in this short text – three points that will form the frame of my message today, all related to the question, “Why bother with the Bible?”

 

First: Satan has placed his children – yes, Satan has children just as God has children. God's children are those who follow Him through faith in Jesus the Messiah. Satan’s children are ALL those who have rejected Christ. Jesus said so in John 8:44, Paul said so in Acts 13:10, and St John said it in 1 John 3:10. We won’t turn there now, but you have the references so you can look at them later.

 

So, Satan has placed his children throughout our societies, in the church and outside the church – and even in some church pulpits. Paul warned the Ephesian elders about them, as did Jude and the other writers of the scriptures:

 

Jude 3-4 “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

 

Paul, warning the elders of the Ephesian church (Acts 20:29-30) said: “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

 

The devil’s children seduce the faithful – especially the biblically illiterate faithful – into believing dangerous ideas such as, “God wants you to be healthy and prosperous in this life. All you need is sufficient faith;” Or, “Hell doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s empty;” Or, “A loving God would never send anyone to an eternity of torment.”

 

These false teachers and pastors vomit syrupy lies straight from hell, and at the same time dilute or sidestep God's commandments for holiness and righteousness. It’s no wonder so many churches support – either by their silence, or by actively promoting politicians who support damnable sins such as fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. No wonder so many in the pews and pulpits support – either by their silence, or by actively promoting politicians who support murderous policies of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.

 

Why bother with the Bible? Because those lying teachers and pastors seem to be multiplying across the face of the church. And unless you and I know – and obey – what Scripture says in context with the rest of Holy Scripture then we will likely succumb to the sweet-sounding seductions of Satan’s children, just as Eve succumbed to the devil’s insinuations in the Garden.

 

But God warns us: (Jeremiah 23:28-29) “Let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” 

 

And Isaiah warns: (Isaiah 8:20) “To the law and to the testimony of instruction! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no light.”  (My paraphrase)

 

That was the first point we can glean from today’s text. And here is the second point focusing on the question, “Why bother with the Bible?” Paul continues his guidance to Timothy: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them.”

 

Christian! Pay attention to this, please. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write what he did here for a very good reason. It was the Scriptures that would help Timothy to CONTINUE on the path toward the celestial kingdom. And it is the Scriptures that would enable him to guide others along that same path. The ONLY way anyone will keep on keeping on for Christ is to remain faithful to the things God has told us in His word.

 

Listen. It’s easy to DISCONTINUE with Christ. It happens a lot. We all know of Christians who started well but ended poorly. And I suspect they ended poorly because they discontinued reading the scriptures AND letting the Scriptures speak to them.

 

It happened to the disciple, Demas. Paul tells us Demas shared with him in ministry. You’ll find that in Colossians 4:14 and Philemon 1:24. But something happened to him along the way, and he discontinued his walk with Christ. Paul tells us this in 2 Timothy 4:10 “Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.”

 

And it is good that we also remember the warning Jesus gave us in the parable of the Sower. Speaking of the seed that had fallen on the rocky soil (Mark 4:16-17), the Lord said: “When they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.”

 

Did you catch that? They had no ‘firm root in themselves.” Said another way, as St Paul warned the Christians at Colossae (Colossians 2:6-8), “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”

 

What roots us to Christ if not our faith in Christ as informed by His Scriptures?  Listen again now to John’s words of encouragement to his readers – which includes us in 2024 who might wonder why bother with the Bible: (1 John 2:14) “I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

 

And yet there is more. Here again is our text from 2 Timothy: “From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

 

Why bother with the Bible? The third reason we glean from this text is because it alone gives us wisdom to salvation which is through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

I’ll say that again for emphasis, especially in our pluralistic culture in which it is widely accepted – even in many churches – that Jesus the Christ is NOT the only doorway to eternal life.

 

Let me give you only one of a multitude of examples I can bring to my recent memory. Not long ago, someone on Facebook asked this question: “If you had three children and one became a Muslim, one a Christian, and one a Hindu – would you love any of them more than the other? And could you send any one of them to hell?”

 

In other words, she was trying to make what she thought was a rational reason to believe all people on this planet are God's children, and therefore ALL people are saved. And such is the devilishly fatal error that sweeps across the landscape of the biblically illiterate and across the lives of those who dispute what God has written us through the pages of holy Scriptures.

 

When we judge God's decisions by human reason and human experience, we doom ourselves to complete failure before we even begin. Why is that?  Because every part of our lives and our thoughts and our ability to reason properly is corrupted by sin. We do not like to think of ourselves that way, but sin has so corrupted our souls and our minds that we cannot ever hope to fathom the mind of God or His utter purity. Listen to what He tells us through Jeremiah 17:9 - “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

 

Job 11:7-9 is another: “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? “They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? “Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”

 

We could not in a thousand lifetimes understand why God does what He does or does not do what He does not do. Nor could we – and THIS is critical – nor could we know what He wants of us UNLESS He tells us. The best we could do would be to make guesses – and they’d all be wrong to one degree or another.

 

Isn’t that, though, the history of religion? Man striving to reach God. And it is that blind striving which gave birth to EVERY pagan religion since the Garden of Eden, complete with their various sacrifices – including human sacrifices – all intended to please their god or gods.

 

But the Creator’s words to humanity on the pages of Scripture tell a very different story. They tell us it was GOD who sought Man. It was God who made the ultimate sacrifice – to reach US, to purify US, to bring US to Himself.

 

As the Creator tells us in Hebrews 2:17 – “Therefore, He [i.e. ‘God’] had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

 

And 1 John 4:10 – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [covering atonement] for our sins.”

 

And so, when we reason with ourselves and with others the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of eternally important questions such as how one can be saved, or what is God's requirement for eternal life, we inevitably travel the path that inevitably leads to our eternal destruction – because we assume God's standards are the same as our standards.

 

And so, back to that question earlier about the parent of the three children who’ve adopted different faiths: What does God do with them?

 

The answer, if we base our response squarely on God's inerrant, infallible, and fully inspired word will NOT satisfy most people. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: Our answer, if it is based unwaveringly on God's word, will NOT satisfy most people because most people prefer to think of God in their own terms and by their own standards.

 

But God's word makes the answer to that question quite simple: When Jesus said of Himself (John 14:6): “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me” – He was declaring an unchangeable and INFLEXIBLE truth. And let him or her who has ears – let them hear: No one comes to the Father in heaven by ANY OTHER door.

 

Listen, it is not our job to persuade others to believe or to obey Christ. We don’t have to – nor CAN WE – convince people that God is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. The overwhelming majority of those with whom we speak will never accept the truth that God’s judgments – ALL of them – are righteous and without fault. Get used to that sad reality, if you are not yet convinced of it.

 

But our job is to simply tell others what the Bible says. And we do not need to apologize for God. It is humanity that needs to apologize to him. Never forget that.

Why bother with the Bible? You and I meet people who have embraced false notions of God and who love to comfort themselves with those false notions. Why? Because false notions of God comfort those who prefer to create God in their own image.

 

Our merciful, tender, and affectionate Creator gave us His written communique – we call it the Bible, and I like to call it His anthology of love letters – He gave it to us because of His immeasurable love for us. He gave it to us – as Paul tells us in the last part of today’s text in 2 Timothy, because:  All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man [or woman] of God may be adequate, [thoroughly] equipped for every good work.

 

Oh, please hear this one last word as I bring this message to a close: Please: I hope you will make the time to bother with the Bible – the ENTIRE Bible; To read it, study it, memorize it . . .  and above all, obey it.