I want to start out with two true stories this morning and I want to ask you what you notice is common to both stories and what is missing. Ready?
Aurelius Augustinus was born on November 13, 354 a.d. in Tagaste, Numbia … or what is known today as Algeria. We know Aurelius Augustinus today as Augustine of Hippo. For most of his life, Augustine was a famed academic in the Roman Empire but he lived a thoroughly dissolute, self-indulgent, immoral life. As he got older, he sought to overcome his fleshly passions but found that nothing seemed to help. While walking in his garden one afternoon, anxiously wrestling with his problem of lust and his overwhelming desire to engage in sin, he overheard a child's sing-song voice repeating a line from a game: “Pick it up and read … pick it up and read.” He picked up a collection of Paul's epistles on a nearby table that he had been reading and his eyes fell on Romans 13:13-14: “Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”
In that instant, says Augustine, “"No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away” (www.christianitytoday.com). Augustine’s life was changed by the words that he read in Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Rome and he went on to become the Bishop of Hippo, the greatest Christian theologian after the Apostle Paul, and one of the most formidable intellects of Western civilization.
Wow … amen?
Now let me tell you what happened to a man that Gaylord Kambarami met in Zimbabwe. In 1995, Mr. Kambarami traveled to the village of Murewa (mm-ray-wah) in Zimbabwe. At the time, Mr. Kambarami was the general secretary of the Bible Society of Zimbabwe, and he had traveled to the Murewa (moo-ray-wah) village in order to distribute copies of the New Testament. He met one man who refused buy a New Testament. Mr. Kambarami asked him why, and he said, “Because it pollutes people.” The secretary then told him that he would give him the Bible for free. The man said: “If you give me that New Testament, I will roll the pages and use them to make cigarettes!” Gaylord replied, “I understand that, but at least promise to read the page of the New Testament before you smoke it.” When the man agreed, Gaylord gave him the New Testament.
Two years later, Gaylord Kambarami went back to the Murewa area. He was speaking in a tent meeting, telling crowds of people how the Bible could change their lives. Here’s how Mr. Kambarami tells the rest of the story: “Now, the same man whom I had given the New Testament to smoke was in the audience. Before the closing of the service, he stood and said, ‘Please, let me say a few words to [Kambarami].’ … ‘This man doesn’t remember me; because when I last saw him I was a drunkard. But he came to our village and persuaded me to take the Bible. I told him I would use the paper to roll cigarettes, but I promised to read each page before doing so, which I did. So I smoked my way through Matthew. And I smoked the whole of Mark too. Then I smoked Luke. I started smoking John, but when I came to John 3:16 [and read “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life”], a light shone in my face. And now I am a church going person. I saw the light’” (Smoking the Bible – Bethel Chapel Church).
So … what do these stories have in common? Obviously the Bible. And what did you notice was missing? There was no great orator … no preacher that converted these people. What powerfully impacted the lives of these to men … and many, many, many others … and changed their lives forever was the Bible itself. [Pick up Bible.] When we pick up a Bible, I wonder if we realize just how much power we are holding in our hands. These aren’t just words on a page. This is more … much more … than a collection of ancient stories. This is the story of God and His people … us.
Hebrews 4:12 describes the Bible as living and active. The Greek word that the author of Hebrews uses for “living” suggests that the Word is teeming with life. It is living … it is active. The Apostle Paul describes the Word as “inspired by God” or “God-breathed” (2nd Timothy 3:16). Some of you may be familiar with Beth Moore. She is an evangelist, author, Bible Teacher, and President of Living Proof Ministries. I mention Beth Moore because I love the way that she uses these passage to describe the Bible: “… we might say that every breath comes to us still warm from the mouth of God. As if He just said it” (Moore, B. Voice of the Faithful. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub.; 2005; pp. 39-40). Beautiful, amen?
[Pick up Bible. Ask the congregation to pick up the Bible with you.] What you hold here in your hand is not just a book. When you read the Word, you’re not just reading words … you’re not just studying the works of dead writers … you’re not just taking in information. You are hearing the voice of the living God. You are taking in life … warm from the breath of God. “We should consume its truth as surely as we eat the food upon our tables. … You and I should inhabit its pages more fully than we reside in our physical houses” (Jeremiah, D. Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World. Nashville: W Publishing Group; 2009; p. 141. When this world is in crisis, and up seems down and right is wrong, this Book holds the answers that we need.
Somewhere between the years 760 and 755 b.c., God spoke these words through a shepherd and sycamore-fig farmer by the name of Amos: “The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:11). This was the kind of famine that was beginning affect the citizens of Ephesus. Awaiting his fate in a Roman prison, Paul was concerned about the young man he had left in charge of the Christian community in Ephesus, which was a melting pot of many cultures and new ideas. The teaching of Christianity was becoming just one among many new religions and philosophies that were popping up almost every day it seemed … which threatened to trivialize and dilute the message of the Gospel. Paul wrote two letters to his young protégé, Timothy. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul warned him that “in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons” (1st Timothy 4:1). In his second letter, he encourages Timothy to stay focused on his task because the work that he was doing had eternal implications. There is a much more urgent tone to Paul’s second letter because he knows that his ministry is coming to end … soon … and the fire still burned within him for new lands and new souls. He must now place the future of all his labor in the hands of the next generation of evangelists, preachers, and teachers like Timothy. “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,” Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy, “and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2nd Timothy 4:6-7) … amazing words from a man awaiting a possible death-sentence in a Roman prison, amen? But his concern is not over his future, but the future of his pupil and friend, Timothy, and the community under Timothy’s care and so the urgency of his letter is meant to inspire and encourage Timothy.
“You must understand this,” Paul warns, “that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!” Paul warns Timothy (2nd Timothy 3:1-5; emphasis mine).
Wow! Paul could have just as easily been writing this letter to us today, amen? Could we be in the midst of a “hearing famine” like the one described by the prophet Amos? Until fairly recently, God’s Word has been at the heart of preaching. Today, however, questioning scriptural authority is in vogue. Mega-preachers, tele-evangelists, theologians, and seminary professors advocate processing God’s Word through the cultural filters of today rather than the other way around … processing today’s culture through the filter of God’s word. People today are much more comfortable judging the Bible rather than letting the Bible judge them. In the words of one author, pastors and religious leaders and scholars “air-brush” the Word of God “to make it more palatable to those who go in for spirituality that costs nothing but the cover price of a best seller” (Jeremiah, ibid. p. 144). We live in a culture that not only says “If it feels good, do it” but also says “If it sounds good, believe it,” amen?
Timothy was facing the same challenges then as we do today. “For the time is coming,” writes Paul, “when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths” (2nd Timothy 4:3-4). In an age of electronic, global, instantaneous communication, people are looking for and finding a lot to “tickle” their itching ears. What they hear may sound sweet but has no nutritional value whatsoever. The path to happiness and fulfillment play to the ego while making almost no demand on obedience or sacrifice. They preach pluralism and tolerance but the result is less tolerance, less peace, and a whole lot more turmoil, amen?
The answer, says Paul, is right here. [Hold up bible.] “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2nd Timothy 3:14-17; emphasis mine).
Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season! Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching. Paul is telling Timothy what the church in Ephesus needed to hear from their new pastor and what our churches today need to hear from us.
Preach the word. The word that Paul uses for “preach” means “to proclaim with formality, gravity, and an authority that must be listened to and obeyed” (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 146). You don’t need to go to seminary to learn how to proclaim the Word of God with formality, gravity, and an authority that must be listened to and obeyed. My words have no more power in them than yours do. The real power of preaching comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. As Puritan author and preacher Thomas Watson put it: “Ministers knock at the door of men’s hearts; the Spirit comes with the key and opens the door” (Watson, T. “A Body of Divinity. In Puritanism Today; puritanismtoday. wordpress.com/). The Spirit comes with the key and opens the door … and you have access to the same Spirit that has the key, amen? Trust me, if the power of the Word of God comes through my preaching, it has nothing to do with me. If my words have any power, it comes from the Holy Spirit … which means that your words can be just as powerful at convincing people of the reality of Christ and getting them to commit their life totally of Him as I do.
Let me give you an example of the power of the Holy Spirit to speak to the human heart in ways that we can’t even imagine. Dr. M. R. De Haan, described how one of his dying patients was converted by a piece of paper. Someone had sent her a package from Australia wrapped in a printed version of one of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons. Now … the sermon was preached in England, the sermon was printed in America, somehow it made its way to Australia, where it was used to wrap a package that was shipped to England, where a woman lying on her deathbed read it and encountered Jesus Christ. The Word traveled thousands of miles on a crumpled-up piece of newspaper but the Word did not return to England void.
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).
Like Paul is telling Timothy, we must do more than just acknowledge what is right, we must announce what is right. All of us must take the risk to proclaim with formality, gravity, and authority the truth that must be Isaiah 55:10-11listened to and obeyed to a directionless world that is looking for something to scratch their ears, something that will play to their egos, and requires a minimum of personal effort or spiritual investment.
Be ready in season and out of season. The language that Paul uses is designed to conjure up the image of a solder standing watch in the middle of the night. He knows the enemy is near because he can see their campfires. The soldier is tense, on edge because he doesn’t know what the enemy is doing. They could attack at any moment. They could sleep through the night and attack in the morning. Or they could change their minds in a few days and retreat and go back where they came from. And it is that fear, that uncertainty, I think, that sometimes keeps us from being bolding in sharing our faith. I know because I’ve been there, but you might be surprised at what happens if you step out in faith. People are starving to hear the truth today. Not only are their ears but their hearts are itching to hear the truth. They need a sure word from God. Too many pastors today water down the power of the Bible to convict because they want to be … to use a modern catch phrase … “user friendly.” We need to deliver our message as though tomorrow depends upon it because, well, frankly, the truth is that it does, amen?
Paul says that we are to “convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2nd Timothy 4:2). Convince, rebuke, encourage … strong verbs that call for aggressive action. The word “convince” means to “present an argument or a strong appeal” (Jeremiah, ibid. p. 151) … something akin to a lawyer making their case in a court of law. But here’s the thing. We don’t have to be a lawyer to make our case. The Bible speaks for itself and makes its own case brilliantly. Pastor and author J. Sidlow Baxter makes this case for the Bible making its own case. “To my mind, the most satisfying proofs that the Bible is divinely inspired are not those which one ‘reads up’ in volumes of religious evidences or Christian apologetics, but those which we discover for ourselves in our own study of the Book” … with a capital “B”…. “To the prayerful explorer,” he concludes, “the Bible has its own way of revealing its internal credentials” (Baxter, J. S. The Master Theme of the Bible, Part One: The Doctrine of the Lamb. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 1985; p. 19). Nineteenth-century scholar A. T. Pierson put it this way: “Every study of the Bible is a study of the evidences of Christianity. The Bible is itself the greatest miracle of all” (Pierson, A.T. Many Infallible Proofs: The Evidences of Christianity, Volume One. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House; 1986; p. 90).
This seems kind of contrary to the popular belief today that Christians and Christianity are “anti-science.” Nothing could be further from the truth, amen? To me, science is one of the many ways in which God reveals the wonders of His creation … the complexity and the precision of the universe speaks to His imagination, His intelligence, and His creativity. The Bible, like science, is another way for God to reveal the truth of who He is to us. The Word of God is the most rational, accurate, well-documented body of literature in the history of the world … and I can make this claim with confidence because many, many great minds have tried to expose it as a fallacy for centuries … many of whom have ended up convinced of its truth and become some of God’s most ardent and effective evangelists. A recent example of this is Josh McDowell, a lawyer who sought to discredit the Bible from a legal, rational perspective and ended up converting to Christianity and writing a book, entitled “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” that outlines his experience and conversion. Christianity Today ranks McDowell’s book as one of the most influential evangelical books published after World War II (Josh McDowell - Wikipedia).
As Christians, we don’t check our brains at the door, do we? Many great thinkers have been or are Christians. Sir Isaac Newton, who gave us our basic laws of physics; Blaise Pascal, a world-class mathematician and scientist; Sir Francis Bacon, author of the scientific method; Michael Faraday, the foundational pioneer of chemistry and electromagnetism (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 153). Professor Henry F. Schaefer, a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize and one of the most distinguished physical scientists in the world is a devout follower of Jesus Christ. The popular consensus today is that the age of miracles over. Hardly. [Pick up Bible.] If you own one of these, my friend, you hold a living miracle in your hand.
Along with convincing people of the truth of the Bible, Paul says we must “rebuke” them. Another one of those uncomfortable words, amen? It means to “reprimand” but it is synonymous with the word “convict” … which is closely related to convincing someone of the truth. To convict someone is to open their eyes to the truth no matter how painful that truth might be. As a Christian, our goal is to share the truth of the Bible regardless of politics or particular philosophical trends that are popular today. The truth is the truth. Sin is real and the Bible speaks about it a lot because God is very, very clear about what the effects of sin can do to us, amen? For example, there’s this whole thing about “fat shaming” today … don’t hurt an over-weight person’s feelings by telling them the dangers that their obesity or their life-style puts them in. Not telling them truth doesn’t help them … it only hurts them.
The Bible talks about sin for a reason … and so should we. The Word of God can lift your spirit, it can make you cry tears of sheer joy, it can inspire you to worship … but it can also grab you by the collar, get right up in your face, and shine a light on your sin in such a way that that there’s nowhere to hide from it or deny it … and that’s a good thing … a painful thing perhaps … but a good thing because I can’t ask for God to help with me with my sin if I don’t know what my sins are and He can’t give me victory over my sins if I don’t acknowledge my sins and ask Him to help me overcome them that I might sing praises to Him for my victories over them and my victories bear witness to His great love and power and mercy, amen? Missionary and poet, Amy Carmichael, wrote: “If you’ve never been hurt by a word from God, it’s probable that you’ve never heard God speak” (Hughes, R.K. Luke. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books; 1968; p. 146).
Amy Carmichael also brings up another aspect of the Bible that Paul points out to Timothy. The Bible convicts, but the Bible also comforts and encourage. In her book, Edges of His Ways, Carmichael points out that we will find just the right word in the Bible that we need to hear or find the remedy that we need somewhere in the Bible. “It may not be the first passage we see when we open the Bible,” she writes, “but if we search the Scriptures diligently the Bible will answer every issue that arises” (Carmichael, A. Edges of His Way. Ft. Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade; 1998; p. 41).
The word that Paul uses for “encourage” … or “exhort” in some translations … means “to bring someone along a path toward a positive end result” (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 156). The Bible encourages us through out, bringing us along a path toward a positive end result and then it “encourages” us to go out and lift up others and bring them along a path toward a positive end result and then to share with them where we get our encouragement [hold up Bible] so that they can do the same for others … and in the process, we are lifted up and encouraged. The most remarkable and powerful words of encouragement and comfort you will ever find are right here [Bible], amen?
We look around us and we have questions about the direction of our nation and our world. We wonder what the future will hold. But when we open God’s word, we are reminded on every page that kings and countries, that political, economic, and social systems do not control our fate … only God does. When we read about God sending His Son into our world, when we read about Jesus calming the storm and walking on the water, we know that God is in control, amen? “Double-digit unemployment, trillion-dollar debt and bailouts … what are these to the One who created every star in the sky? He is a God of comfort and love. He has a future and a hope for us. He still reigns. He still speaks. His Word still offers us what we need for such a time as this” (Jeremiah, ibid., 145).
When you hold this [the Bible] in your hand, you’re not just holding a book. You are holding and reading a miracle. When you open it and read it, you’re not just reading words. You’re not just taking in information. You are taking in life … still warm from the breath of God. And when you come up to this table, you are not just taking in bread and grape juice but the very grace and love and mercy of God that was given to us by His sacrifice on the cross.
