Is it sound to feel safe?
Where do we put our trust, in the Word of God or … other places?
I started preaching when I was eighteen years old. Fifty-eight years ago! It’s a long time and, thank the Lord, I have revelled in every moment of it. When I trained for the ministry in my twenties, a dear African friend, who later became a Bishop, gave me a Puritan quote which I still have on my study wall. It says, “Thou art a preacher of the Word: mind thy business!” It focuses my thinking every time I sit at my desk to prepare an article, a sermon or a seminar.
All expository preachers of the Bible are greatly indebted to others who down the years have dug deep into God’s Word. These include the writers of commentaries, Bible dictionaries, concordances and Hebrew and Greek lexicons. We lesser mortals stand on the shoulders of giants. Some of these brilliant scholars were and are great communicators; gifted with a common touch that makes their work – though profound – easy to understand. Other scholars lack that common touch and their work is not so easily accessible to simpler folks like me. When it comes to communicating God’s Word either in spoken form or written this is clearly a vital matter. I recall a relevant catchphrase doing the rounds when I was a young preacher; “it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what they hear!” A preacher can think himself a brilliant communicator, but if the people cannot understand him he is wasting his time.
Personally, I earnestly desire the ability to disseminate the truth of God’s Word in a way that, while it may lack erudition, is easy to understand and consequently straightforward to receive and apply. After all, the whole purpose of making disciples is to help them to CHANGE, and we can only change when we understand how! How should I repent and adjust what I believe? How should I repent and adjust how I live? The word “repent” is the Greek METANOIEIN, which in context means “change your own thinking, believing and behaving and return to God’s way of thinking, believing and behaving … and do it now!”
Bible Babel!
We are confronted in our day with a huge number of preachers and Bible teachers, both home-grown and foreign with a consequent mass of theological opinion. Unfortunately, this hasn’t produced a victorious and holy Church; indeed, it can curiously prove to be something of a curse. My father had an amusing way of putting it, he said he sometimes felt like a fly in a colander faced with so many holes that he could not choose which one to fly through! Confusion can so easily reign! Without the solid foundation of Scripture we are vulnerable.
The Israelites were in a state of confusion when Elijah stepped into the arena on the heights of Mount Carmel. The Baal and Asherah religions had invaded the land, ably promoted by King Ahab and the notorious Queen Jezebel. The “old faith” – the worship of YHWH – was still secretly embedded in the hearts of multitudes, but the “new faith” had a strong appeal and was heavily backed by the government. The confusion it produced is exposed in 1 Kings 18:21. “Elijah went before the people and said, ‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said nothing.”
The Israelites said nothing because they were so confused. What could they say? They were torn between these rival claimants to truth, the LORD and Baal. They had drifted so far from YHWH that their commitment to Him had become seriously weakened, but they retained sufficient faith to prevent them from wholly committing to Baal! That’s confusion. The situation facing believers today is, if anything, more confusing! Leaving aside the rival claims of pagan religions, we have to contend with a barrage of teaching from “Bible teachers”, each demanding a hearing and claiming to base their doctrinal position on the Bible. The Corinthian believers of Paul’s day were in a similar situation. They were faced with a choice of who to follow and Paul refers to the selection in 1 Cor 1:11-12. “My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas (Peter); still another, “I follow Christ.”
Who does your thinking?
What was true in Corinth is all too true in churches today. We are riven by “party spirit”. I mean the way in which we encamp around our favourite teachers and look askance at those in a different camp. “I follow Stott”; “I follow Lloyd-Jones”; “I follow Prince”; “I follow Pawson”; “I follow Prasch”; “I follow … (fill in the name of your own favoured champion)”. The apostle was rightly distressed over this tendency that we all recognise. The fact is, we each have a responsibility before the Lord to dig deep into the Word for ourselves. If we are continually relying on second-hand revelation we are no better than babes in Christ. Paul makes that point forcibly in 1 Cor 3:1-2. “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly (carnal) – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed you are still not ready. You are still worldly (carnal).”
I have always understood Paul’s colourful imagery here to be a description of a mother’s milk that she feeds to her infant.
Babies cannot cope with solid food, but one of the wonders of Creation is that a mother digests solid food for herself and her body changes it to milk, a simple yet fully nutritious form of food that the baby can digest. But here’s the thing, the mother would not feed her teenage son on mother’s milk! If she did so, he would be in very poor shape! Mother’s milk, though wonderful in itself, is not going to serve her growing son’s needs. If he is a mature son, he needs to feed like one, picking up his knife and fork and piling into a square meal!
Are we depending upon second-hand revelation? It will not do. We need to be digging deep into God’s Word for ourselves so that we are in a strong position, not least to recognise errors and half-truths when we hear them. Paul’s powerful advice to Timothy in 2 Tim 2:15 cannot be bettered: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” ‘Correctly handles’ is the Greek word ‘ORTHOTOMEO’, which means “cut straight”. It applies to careful workmen who take pains with their work. Paul says that’s how we need to approach God’s Word. We need to be precise and we need to be thorough.
Because it all sounds like hard work, we tend to ignore such advice (even though it comes through Paul from the Holy Spirit Himself!) and we prefer to rely uncritically upon what we are told. We simply gulp down whatever our champion says! A further example of the correct attitude is recorded by Luke in Acts 17:11. It is the familiar account of the Christians at Berea who took considerable trouble to gain access to Hebrew scrolls of the Scriptures in order to check Paul’s teaching. It is highly unlikely that they would have had their own copies, such were hand-written and wildly expensive, so they must have gone to the local Synagogue to gain permission from the Rabbi to examine the Scrolls lodged there. The Bereans were determined. They wanted assurance that Paul’s teaching was exactly according to the Word of God.
Dangerous territory
Following our champions without digging deep for ourselves is a “mug’s game”. Of course we need to respect our teachers and to value their ministry, but if we are not certain of the unalloyed Biblical truth of the teaching we are receiving we can easily be “led up the garden path” and that could be very costly in terms of our relationship with the Lord, sending us off in all directions.
Peter was also most concerned about false teachers emerging in the churches. He describes the subtle dangers that threaten when believers are undiscerning. A classic example is 2 Pet 2:1. “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”
The phrase “secretly introduce” is a single Greek word, ‘PAREISAGO’. It means “draw alongside”. It was used of a boat lying alongside a jetty. The meaning is clear. False teachers lay their “nearly truth” next to Scriptural truth and the unsuspecting can mistake it for the genuine. Put your weight on that “nearly truth” and you are sunk. The only protection from such disaster is familiarity with the genuine Word of God. That will enable a believer to distinguish between truth and error. But it requires hard graft and permanent watchfulness. Sadly, many believers are not prepared to pay such a high price.
How safe do you feel?
One of the major doctrines concerning which there is profound difference of opinion is that of assurance. Is it sound doctrine to suggest that true reborn Christians can fall away from Christ and thereby lose their salvation? On the other hand, is it sound doctrine to claim that once we are truly in Christ we can never be lost?
This is where our “camp identity” kicks in. Where does my champion align himself? The position my champion adopts will tend to be mine not because I have “cut straight” into the Bible for myself in order to discover the truth, but because that’s the way he sees it and I trust him! If he is right, all is well: but if he is wrong … trouble.
So let’s get back to this matter of assurance. It turns on a very simple premise. If I am truly regenerate it means I am a born-again believer, a child of God for whom Christ has died. And I am someone who by faith has received the Holy Spirit, the very life of God. I’m safe. I am sure of my acceptance by God because the price of my salvation is fully paid. It is the finished work of Christ. Can I rest in it or must I for ever be looking over my shoulder and wondering, “Have I gone too far this time? Has my compromise pushed me over the edge and negated the work of Christ on my account?”
In this new series I intend to address that crucial question. Pray for me, brethren!