PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The Bible: Relic or Relevant?

     The Bible continues to be the perennial best seller of all books!  That being said, there is a legitimate question about the impact that it is currently having on lives in this 21st century.  Just before he gave up hosting the Tonight Show, Jay Leno did an on the street interview of people, and asked them Bible questions, and aired it on his show.  What was the results?  It was hilarious and horrific at the same time!  The questions were not tricky or hard.  They were intended to be easy.  That’s what made it so funny…and frightening!  Leno asked one person, “Did Adam and Eve have any children?”  After a few seconds of deep thought, a woman responded, “No, no, they never had kids!’  He then asked, “Can you name the two brothers…Cain…and———” Absolute blank stare.  Had no idea.  They were probably thinking Cain and Hurricane!  No… she had no answer.  Okay—“What happened to Lot’s wife?”  Zero response!  Someone blurted out, “Who is Lot?’  A little hint-“She turned into________” The person blurted out her guess—“An Angel?”  Leno then asked someone-“can you name one of the Apostles?”  No reply.  “How about one of the Beatles” Immediate response-“John, Paul, George, and Ringo!”  The crowd cheered!  “How many commandments are there?” One guy replied boldly-“Three! There are three commandments!”  Another corrected him-“No, everybody knows there are twenty…twenty commandments!”  Another in the crowd heard that and answered “no, it’s like the Apostles…there are twelve!”    Leno, assuming someone in the know asked, “can you name four of them?”  No one could name four.  “How about one?”  The man replied, “Something about not coveting your neighbor’s wife!”  (Leno said, “Interesting that is the only one he can remember!”).  Leno said, “You mean if she’s pretty?”  He said, “yea, I think that’s it!”  “Is your neighbor’s wife pretty?”  The man replied, “No!”  Leno told him, “I hope she is not watching tonight!” “Who was swallowed by a whale?” Leno asked.  The man responded, “A whale?  Is this a trick question?”  Let me give you a hint, Leno replied—“Jo….”  “Joan of Arc” was the quick response!  “No… Jo……..?”  “Joe DiMaggio?” “No” Jay told them.  Someone in the crowd asked…”Pinocchio?”  “Which two cities were destroyed in the Book of Genesis?”  “Let me give you a hint—Sodom________?”  “Saddam Hussein?”  This brief episode revealed that we live in a whole new world, and nothing has been more adversely affected by postmodernism than the Church and its relationship to God’s Word-The Holy Scriptures!  The sad thing may be that the Church may not have fared much better!  Bible Illiteracy is rampant.  But it hasn’t always been that way.  The Bible has impacted civilization all through out man’s history.  Some of the greatest thinkers of all time have been those who were literate of the Bible, and let it have an impact on their thinking and therefore their lives! 

     Novelist, Philosopher, Author, and Literary critic George Steiner wrote, in the New Yorker, some very affirming words on the influence that the Bible has had on civilization…until recent years.  He wrote, “One is indeed tempted to define modernism in Western Culture in terms of a recession of common currency recognition of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  That recognition was once the sinew of literacy, the shared matter of intellect and sentiment from the sixteenth century onward…not only in the spheres of personal and public piety, but also in those of politics, social institutions, and the life of literary and aesthetic imagination”.  Virginia Stem Owens, agreeing with Steiner, went on to say, “All Western literature… is a Midrash, (a commentary) on the Bible”. But she went on-“It has become like an unplayed Stradivarius, this once-Holy Text now inhabits the air-conditioned glass case of DISPASSIONATE DISREGARD!”  In other words, this Bible that used to be so revered and relevant…has become a revered but relegated relic!  George Herbert, in his book The Temple—1633 wrote, “Bibles laid open…millions of surprises!”  We have forgotten that!  Not only is it full of surprises…but full of power that we are desperately in need of.  John Calvin wrote, “No human writings, however sacredly composed, are at all capable of affecting us in a similar way.  Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato or Aristotle, or any other of that class.  You will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to reading the Sacred Volume, and it will so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow that the comparison to that of orators and Philosophers will disappear, making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a Truth Divine, something that makes it superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man!”  C.I. Schofield, (author of the Schofield reference Bible), wrote “I gave much of my earlier life to the study of Homer and Shakespeare, and while my understanding undoubtedly profited from that study, I found keen intellectual delight in it, these books held no rebuke for my sins, nor any power to lift me above them, but, when I came to the Bible and received Him, concerning whom, after all, the whole Book is written, I entered into peace, joy, and power.  The Bible led me to Jesus and Jesus transformed my life!”

     That truth is expressed so well in a poem by the great Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier: 

“We searched the world for Truth; 

We cull the good, the pure, the beautiful;

From graven tombs and written scroll. 

From all old flower fields of the soul;

And weary seekers of the best,

We come laden back from our quest,

And find that all the sages said,

Is in the Book our mothers read!”

We could save ourselves a lot of fruitless search if we understand that the “beginning of wisdom is in God’s Word”.  Luther sought for salvation, God, and truth desperately.  To no avail.  But as he studied Scripture he not only found the Jesus Christ as Savior, but truth for his generation, and just sharing it brought about the Great Protestant Reformation, that is still evidenced today in Evangelical Christianity.  Luther spoke about how that happened.  He wrote: “Take me for example.  I opposed indulgences and all papists; but never by force.  I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word.  Otherwise I did nothing.  And then, while I slept…the Word so greatly weakened the Papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.  I did nothing.  The Word did it all!  Had I wanted to start trouble…I could have started a little game at Worms that even the emperor wouldn’t have been safe.  But what would it have been?  A mug’s game.  I did nothing.  I left it to the Word!  The Word did it all!”  It still does!  If we will embrace the Word and unleash the Word.  The greatest quote concerning the Bible comes from The Prince of All Preachers-Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  Someone had asked him about whether we should defend the Bible.  He gave his answer in an Address to the Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society, May 5th, 1875.  He spoke-“There seems to me to have been twice as much done in some ages in defending the Bible as in expounding it, but if the whole of our strength shall henceforth go to the exposition and spreading of it, we may leave it pretty much to defend itself.  I do not know whether you see that lion-it is very distinctly before my eyes; a number of persons advance to attack him, while a host of us would defend the Lion, with all our strength…pardon me if I might offer a suggestion.  Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself.  Why, they are gone!  He no sooner goes froth in his strength than his assailants flee.  The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible.  The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible.  Defend the Bible?  I would just a well defend a lion!”  Good advice!  Open the Bible and turn God’s ferocious Word loose.  Isaiah said, “Unleash God’s Word…It will not return void!” (Isaiah 55).

SERMON:  The Firm Foundation of the WORD.

                               Matthew 5:18

               I.     THE WORD EXPLAINS

               II.    THE WORD EMPHASIZES

               III.   THE WORD ENDURES

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “A Reach That Exceeds Your Grasp”.

     Despite anything that secularism can undermine; or that materialism can inhibit; or that humanism can defy-there is still a rampant interest in the question is there life after life?  Does life, in whatever form, exist after life, as we know it?  There have been various attempts to answer this question indeed!  One attempted answer proved to be quite a novel approach.  Shirley MacLaine wrote a book titled Out On A Limb. In her autobiographical book she affirmed her belief in life after life, because she believed that she was currently living out another life that was following previous ones.  In a previous life she believed she was beheaded under Henry XV.  Others in Hollywood picked up on her theme.  Glen Ford believed he had been a Christian Martyr in a previous life and had been fed to the lions in the Coliseum.  Lorretta Lynn believed that she had been a Cherokee Princess in a previous life.  Sylvester Stone believed that he had been beheaded during the French Revolution.  Though he now embraces a more evangelical view of the afterlife, since professing to be born again, and embracing a more Biblical faith.  But for these their hidden past experiences were proof enough for them of life after death, at least in some form.

     Dr. Kenneth Ring, Professor at the University of Connecticut, has been studying near death experiences for years.  After studying these experiences of millions of Americans, and listening to them describe common features of experiencing light and love, he was convinced that there had to be something to this life experiences after death.  After all- 8 million Americans can’t all be wrong, can they?  Then too there was Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who was so convinced of life after death that he did scientific experiments on dying subjects to determine that the soul has weight when it leaves the body.  He studied several terminally ill patients as they died, on beds fitted with sensitive beam scales, to determine that each time the dead bodies weighed precisely 3/4 ounces less.  He calculated that the soul weighed precisely 21 grams.  While he was convinced, certainly the scientific world was not convinced then, nor now!  But if you have encountered death up close and personal then you know that there is something significant and holy that exits at death that leaves a completely empty lifeless shell of what used to be a living soul.  Regardless of the exact weight, there is no doubt that the deceased is absent from the body, and the living are “bereaved” in every way!

     In John chapter 11 we have the record of how death came in and devastated a leading family of Bethany.  Jesus was a dear friend of this family.  This chapter shows us how much we need the Lord of Life present if we are ever going to understand the truth of life after death.  Of course, you know the story.  Jesus’ good friend Lazarus became ill.  He grew worse.  They sent an urgent word for Jesus to come before it was too late.  By the time Jesus got there Lazarus was dead.  He had been dead now for four days.  The Jews believed that the spirit hovered around the body for three days, but on the fourth, after decomposition set in, the spirit left with a finality of never returning.  That dead-line had passed.  Lazarus was irreversibly dead!  Nothing could be done.  Death was final.  Into that scene came the Lord of Life!  Note what happened.  Martha went out to meet him with the words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  With all the weeping, and the heartbreak.  We are told, from the Greek New Testament that “Jesus burst into tears”.  He mingled his tears with Martha and Mary’s tears.  Martha was devastated.  Is there life after death?  She looks to Jesus.  Notice that first of all she expresses a Word of Agitation.  She cries out, “Lord, If you had been here my brother would not have died!”  She spoke out of frustration and disappointment.  We have felt that haven’t we?  Why doesn’t the Divine Arm move with more velocity?  It seems at times He could have prevented a lot of heartaches, sickness, and bereavement, if He had just heard our cries and responded to our needs!  So, she spoke with a word of aggravation.  We can rest assured it is ok to express that kind of hurt of our loving Lord.  He is big enough to handle it. 

     But notice something else.  She did not stop with aggravation.  She next spoke a Word of Aspiration.  She said, “Even now, I know that what you ask of God, he will do it for you!”  HER REACH EXCEEDED HER GRASP!  Let me say it again, “HER REACH EXCEEDED HER GRASP!”  She had a sense of faith she could not even articulate.  She would not even dare to believe, that after 4 days, after decomposition has set in, after the spirit has deserted the dead body, and arrived in Abraham’s bosom, that she would ever see Lazarus alive.  YET SHE REACHES OUT FOR SOMETHING.  SOMETHING SHE KNOWS NOT WHAT.  HER REACH EXCEEDS WHAT SHE CAN GRASP.  But Jesus’ presence and power has a way of creating a faith deep within us that trusts Him to do something impossible; something we have no power to grasp in our own power, but faith in Him gives us a reach that goes beyond our grasp.

     Then notice that He gives her a Word of Affirmation that leads to her Word of Affirmation.  He tells her “Your brother will rise again!”  She responds, “Yes he will”.  We all have exchanged those affirmations at the funeral home.  We have been bewildered as we look down on the frozen features of our dead loved ones.  Eyes that will never open again.  Eyes that will never sparkle again.  Lips that will never speak again.  Hands that will never reach out for us again.  And our hearts well up with affirmation and we tell each other-“You will see him again”.  “You will see her again”.  And we respond, “Yes…we will!”  It’s at that time that Jesus promises more than a resurrection.  He assures us-You have Me.  I do more than give life.  I AM LIFE.   I do more than give Resurrection.  I AM THE RESURRECTION!  His presence and power enable us to REACH FOR WE KNOW NOT WHAT-BUT WE TRUST HIM.  FAITH IN HIM ENABLES OUR REACH TO EXCEED OUR GRASP.  HE THEN BECOMES OUR ANSWER TO THE QUESTION IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH.  BUT MORE THAN THAT JOHN WOULD REMIND US THAT BECAUSE OF JESUS-THERE IS LIFE BEFORE DEATH.  That is what John has been saying all along.  With Jesus our reach exceeds our grasp even before death.  We reach for a deeper life.  We reach for an abundant life.  We reach for a life filled with Life, with Light, with Liberty, with Love.  Because of His presence and power, we grasp a genuine life that comes from Him, and allow us to “live as He lived, in the World”.  Today’s message gives us staying power for the last days when many are abandoning the faith in alarming numbers.  If you hold on to these three spiritual anchors you will be assured of staying power!

SERMON: THE LOSS NO ONE RECOVERS FROM

Mark 8:34-38

I.  DEFINITION OF THE SOUL

II.   DECISION CONCERNING THE SOUL.

III. DESTINY OF THE SOUL