Foundation
for Living Lesson 10 December 11, 2005
How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy
word; Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light
unto my path. Jesus prayed to the
Father, sanctify them in truth; Thy word is truth. For the grass withers and the flower
fades; but the word of our God stands forever.
Father,
we do thank You that You have given us Your word, that Your word illuminates
our thinking, reveals to us truth and gives us the framework for interpreting
everything in life. It is in the light
of Your word that we see life. Now
Father, as we continue our study in the basic Foundations for Living, we pray
that You would challenge us with Your word, in Christ's name. Amen.
In
the course of our study on these basic Foundations for Living, I have been
looking at the responsibilities and duties of the priesthood for the last
couple of weeks.
We
looked at prayer and the importance of prayer in the believer’s life. In
Acts 2:42 we talked about the fact that the early church devoted
themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship. And fellowship was then broken down into a
parenthetical clause. Fellowship was the breaking of bread and prayer. Prayer was one of the things that the early
church devoted themselves to in terms of fellowship with God, as well as the Lord’s
table. But in the list of those things
the early church was devoted to, the first thing was the apostles’ teaching, the
exposition, explanation, the instruction of the word of God; teaching the word
of God. Open your Bibles to Romans 12
:1. The believer priest not only responsible to pray before the Lord, to go
directly before His throne of grace, but he is responsible to the word of God,
to know the word of God, to understand the word of God and to place the word of
God in a position of high priority. We
come to Romans 12:1 and read:
1 I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service.
These
initial two verses, in Romans 12 really form a structural shift in the book of
Romans. A very important shift takes
place here. In the first 11 chapters of
Romans, the apostle Paul has been going through an intensely logical development
of the basic doctrines related to the Christian life. He started off talking about justification and the righteousness
of God, which is the foundation for everything in the book of Romans. But in Romans 12 he shifts gears from talking about the doctrinal foundation of the
Christian life, the basic doctrines related to sin, justification by faith
alone, sanctification, and God's justice in relation to His people Israel,
which is covered in chapters 9-11, to
application. Chapters 12 -16 focus on the application of the teaching in the
first 11 chapters. There is a
transition here that begins ‘therefore’, he is drawing a conclusion. Therefore, in light of everything that is
covered, from Romans 1 through Romans 11, Paul is going to challenge his
readers to a particular course of action.
In the New King James which I use, there is some vocabulary here that is not quite as contemporary as other
places in the New King James, so we need to explain it a little to the English
reader. ‘I beseech you’ is the Greek word, parakaleo, which means to urge someone to do something, to
challenge another believer to a particular course of action; to appeal to a believer to advance in the
Christian life. It is a verb that has its
root in the concept of encouragement, exhortation and challenge. The verb here is a present active imperative. Now, grammar is important because it shows
us the emphasis of the author’s thought. The present imperative means this is
supposed to be an ongoing action that is characteristic of the believer’s
life. So he is encouraging, or
challenging his readers to a particular course of action. So he says, Therefore, in light of all that I
have said, I urge you, I challenge you to this course of action, brethren, that is believers, by the mercies
of God. So that
his basis is grace. The basis is the grace of God. Mercy is grace in action. There are a couple of different words here in the Greek that refer to mercy, but the concept is a reference to the character of God. What Paul is saying, is, because you understand the character of
God, specifically with reference to His grace.
Now why would he say that?
Because he has gone back and he has given a detailed, logical
explanation of God's grace from chapters 1-11.
The focal point of the whole book of Romans is righteousness. It deals
with the righteousness and justice of God, that the person who is righteous by
faith shall live. I think there is a
mistranslation in that initial chapter,
it is usually translated, the righteous shall live by faith and they have ‘by
faith’ associated with the wrong concept there, it is the one who is righteous by faith, that is, the justified individual, shall live. And the ultimate thrust of the book of
Romans is how the justified person shall live.
So he begins in the first three chapters, talking about the fact that
all men are sinners. In the first chapter he talks about how the gentiles have
rejected God and are all under condemnation.
In chapter 2 he focuses on the Jews, and how the Jews are all under
condemnation. Gentile and Jew alike
have fallen short of the righteous standard of God, they have not lived up to
God's righteous standard. So how then can a man be justified? In
chapter 3 he concludes that by showing
that the penalty of sin is death, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift
of God is eternal life. And this comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. In chapter 4 he talks about the principle of
justification. We become justified, not by our own works, efforts or morality, we
are justified by trusting in God. The Old
Testament model is Abraham. Abraham was
not justified because of who he was, or what he did, but because he trusted
God. At the instant of trust in Christ
as savior, God imputes to each one of us the perfect righteousness of Jesus
Christ. 2 Corinthians 5 says He who
knew no sin was made sin for us, that the righteousness of God may be found in us. That is what justification is all about. At the instant of faith alone in Christ alone, we are
justified. That is grace, it is not due
to any thing we have done. We are
justified freely by God's grace. By His
grace then, by virtue of being justified, we have peace with God, this is
Romans 5:1. We have peace with Him, we
are reconciled to God in actuality. That
lays the foundation for our spiritual life which is developed in Romans 6-8,
which is the best development of Paul’s concept of sanctification, or the
Christian life. The believer, because
he was identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection at the
instant of faith alone in Christ alone, is now in a new position, with new
privileges, he is a new creature in Christ.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 therefore,
because we are identified with Christ in
His death burial and resurrection, we are to live a different way, that is Romans 6 and
7. Romans 6 lays the foundation, Romans
7 Paul explains the struggle he had trying to live up to God's righteous standard
on his own, and he concludes he just could not
do it. The more he tried to keep
the Law, the more he tried to do what the Bible said to do, the more he
realized what a miserable rotten sinner he was. But finally, when you come to Romans 8, for the first time he
mentions the Holy Spirit. He begins in
Romans 8:1 Therefore,
there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ.
There
is no basis for judgment to those who are in Christ. Why, because we are
justified by grace. (Romans 4). So we have no condemnation, and God has
given us the Holy Spirit, and we have an exposition in Romans 8 on the
relationship to the Holy Spirit as the power source for living the Christian
life. Romans 7, he could not live up to God's justification on his own.
Romans
8: because of the Holy Spirit, or by
means of the Holy Spirit, Paul is able to live up to God's righteous
standard. He concludes by showing how God's
righteousness is related to how He has dealt with Israel and their rejection of
the Messiah in Romans 9, 10 and 11, ending with the fact that God's righteousness would indeed be
vindicated historically because He would be true to His Old Testament prophets and
all Israel would be saved, and that is
the conclusion of Romans 11. And all of
that demonstrates God's grace, to the Gentile and to the Jew.
Therefore, he says, I urge you, on the basis now that you have an understanding of
the mercies of God, that you understand His grace in action, down through
history, that you do something, that you present your bodies, and here, the word bodies
doesn’t just mean your physical body, it is a figure of speech called a synecdoche,
trust me, you were never taught that in any English class you ever took. There is a classic book out written by
Bollinger in the turn of the last
century on figures of speech in the Bible, about 3 inches thick, and I just about tore my copy up in one
semester in Psalms class in seminary.
And a synecdoche is when a noun that stands for something it is related
to, so the noun that refers to a part of something, actually stands for
everything in relationship to it. It is
called a synecdoche of the part, when a part is put for the whole. It is a figure of speech, by which one word
receives something by transference from another word which it is internally
associated with by the connection of two ideas. What that means, if you boil it all down, is that body, here, is
used to refer to the totality of the person, body, soul and spirit, everything
in a person’s life. What Paul is saying
here is I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present
yourself, the totality of your person, everything in your life. The word present is the Greek word parestano, it is an aorist active
infinitive of purpose, this is the purpose of his challenge and it means to
make something available, to place something at the disposal of someone else,
to serve someone else. The idea in
presenting yourself to God is to make yourself usable for God in the Christian
life, in Christian service, to not be in rebellion to God, but to be in a
position of obedience to God, so He can use you as He is working out His plans
and purposes in life. The basic mandate
here is that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. What exactly does sacrifice mean? Some people get real concerned because they think of sacrifice only in terms of loss of life, for example in the Old
Testament, sacrifice is an offering, and a distinction is made sometimes between an offering, being giving something
to God, and a sacrifice is where a life
is taken. Some people also get the idea
that sacrifice somehow involves some sort of torturous giving up something that
hurts, that is something that is so dear to me that it is such a painful thing
to give this up. That is a
misunderstanding of the concept of sacrifice.
So we are to present our bodies, a living sacrifice.
The word ‘present’,
parastano,
is a word that means to place something at ones disposal, at the disposal of
God, this word is used several times in Romans 6, which lays the foundation for
our spiritual life, and the word is used there a number of times. For example, in Romans 6:13 Paul says, do not
present your members, that is your body, your life, as instruments of unrighteousness,
or sin. In other words, don’t make your life
available to the use of your sin nature, but present yourselves , in other words, make
yourself available to God, as being
alive from the dead. Why? Because, you are alive
form the dead, you were born again at the instant you put your faith alone in
Christ alone. And we are also to
present our members, and again, our whole life, as instruments of righteousness
to God. We are to be, as it were,
instruments in the hands of God as surgical instruments in the hands of a surgeon,
of course, a surgeon would not want to use infected, dirty rusted tools, he
would want to use cleansed tools, and so we have to be sanctified first, that
is 1 John 1:9, and we have to be in that process of growing as believers in the
Lord Jesus Christ, being instruments of righteousness to God. In Romans 6:16 he reiterates that idea
16 Do you not know
that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves
whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading
to righteousness?
………………………..
There
is an emphasis here on volition, presenting yourself emphasizes your volitional
responsibility. The Scripture, in Romans
6 shows that you are doing one of two
things in any moment in time, you are
either presenting yourself to your sin nature to be a slave or servant of your sin nature or you are presenting
yourself to God to be a slave or servant to God. There is no middle ground, there is no position of neutrality,
there is no gear shift in the Christian life with a position called neutral
where you can just coast along. You are either in drive or reverse, one or the
other, you are in a position either to be utilized by God or not to be utilized
by God. Romans 6:19
19 I speak in human terms
because of the weakness of your flesh. (sin nature) For just as you presented
your members as slaves of uncleanness, (this is the characteristic of
the unbeliever, who presents his life in uncleanness) and of lawlessness leading
to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of
righteousness for holiness.
I
would translate that last word in the sense of sanctification. The word holy is often misunderstood as
having some level of moral purity. It
is the fact that we are to be growing and advancing in the spiritual life. So Romans 6 emphasizes this idea again an
again and again, that is the focal point of Romans 12 :1, and that is that we
are to make a volitional decision to present to put ourselves in a place of
service to God. Those two ideas are
inherent within the word, volitional responsibility and service to God. In terms
of application, before we can effectively serve God, we have to make certain
decision, not one shot decisions, but day to day decisions, sometimes moment to
moment, hour to hour decisions that we are going to serve God and operate on a
changes scale of values, a different scale of priorities, and this is
foundational to our spiritual advance.
So Paul says, I challenge you, I urge you therefore brethren on the
basis of your understanding of God's grace in your life that you make yourself
available, the totality of yourself available, as a living sacrifice. Now let’s look at the meaning of sacrifice. Sacrifice, according to Webster’s Dictionary,
this is just a definition if the
English term, it is a sound translation of the Greek, sacrifice is an act of offering
to a deity something valuable. It is
not emphasizing the act that somehow hurts or takes something away. It does not have the ascetic notion, of oh,
I am hurting, I am taking something I love away from my life, there is some sort
of giving up til it hurts idea, it is simply the fact that you are recognizing that you are not going to do
some things that are fine, good, decent activities, because you want to do
something else that has a more significant or valuable emphasis. So, it is the idea of offering to God
something valuable. Furthermore, the
definition goes on to read, it has the idea of the giving up of something or setting aside of something of
value, such as time, money, energy, in order to do something else. So sacrificed can involve the fact that I have a certain amount of money and
I could go out and buy something I want, or just go out to dinner or whatever,
and instead I want to use that to help somebody else, or to give it to the church, or to a missionary or
something else. It doesn’t have the idea necessarily of hurting. It is simply a choice, that I am going to
use this resource, whatever it may be, in order to serve God. It could be time,
I am going to use that time to teach prep school, to help in some other
ministry around the church, or some other ministry, helping a missionary, it could be just giving up
energy in order to do something else, and the something else has to do with
serving the Lord in some capacity of Christian service, it could be just giving
up time when you could stay home watching sports, or tv, or participating in
sports or some hobby you enjoy, so you can go to Bible class and take in the
word of God. That is, according to a
strict definition of the word sacrifice, a sacrifice. But some people, when they hear the word sacrifice think it means
something that hurts. Some people,
thing when they hear the word suffering it involves some sort of pain, or you really suffer subjectively in the midst
of adversity, whereas the biblical
concept of suffering is adversity. So sacrifice is the act of simply taking
something of value in our life, time, money, energy, and we are going to use it
in the service of God. So Paul says, I beseech
you therefore brethren, on the basis of your understanding of the grace of God, that you
present, that
is make available, every area of your life as a living sacrifice that is
holy, that is
sanctified, that is set apart to the service of God, that is what
sanctification is, so all of these ideas are synonymous. Paul has taken these terms that are very
close to one another, piling them up, using these different synonyms, presenting your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Holy means set apart to God, acceptable to God has
to do with the fact that is based on
the reality that you are already justified.
Then he concludes by saying, this is your reasonable service. In fact, in the New American Standard, it translates it your
spiritual service of worship.
Which certainly brings out some
important nuances of the idea, but I don’t thing it really nails the
concept. The word translated
reasonable, is the Greek word, logikos,
from the word logos, which means
word. We think of it in terms of word,
but logos also has to do with reason, or rationality, because what lies behind
words is reason and thought, in terms of communication. So logikos,
which is the word from which we get
logic, means that which pertains to reason, that which is reasonable or
rational as in something based in
rational thought, intelligent meditation, reflection and understanding of the
implications and instructions of God. In
other words, it is not just some sort of emotional dedication of your life.
This verse is often used in some churches
to say, well, you need to
dedicate your life to the Lord and they take the presenting yourselves as a
living sacrifice as sort of a one shot decision, but that is not it, it is
emphasizing a standard operating procedure.
That you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable, that is, it is the result
of thought, it is a result of understanding doctrine, it is the result of
understanding what God has communicated to you, it is a thought out decision
based upon an underlying rationale. The
last word is the word I am really focusing on in this whole study, and that is lutrea, the word translated
worship. It is a word used in the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Tesatment again and again to
describe the work of the priests in the
tabernacle or temple. This one word
that is used here that is translated
service or worship, is a word that
focuses our attention on our ministry, our service to God as priests to
God. This is part of what the text
means as part of our rational or logical service that is the result of
understanding the grace of God, presenting our entire life, body, soul, spirit,
everything we do as a living sacrifice, as something made available to the use
of God during our life on the earth , that this is part of our service to
Him. It does not stop there; the next
verse develops the idea in terms of more commandments. Romans 12:2: and
do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind.
First, there has to be a
decision that I am going to have a certain scale of values, a certain priority
in my life, that I am going to put service to God first, but
for the service to God to be effective, flows from knowledge, it is not, I’m just going to go serve God,
let me start doing this and that around the the church, teaching prep school or
whatever, and somehow spiritual growth will result, what is given in verse 2 is
the foundation for being able to carry
out the mandate of verse 1. Do not be
conformed to this world, that is do not have your thinking conformed to the thinking
of the culture around you. Every people
group has a culture, there are large groups of people, for example in the
United States or Europe or Asia, who have certain cultural distinctives. Or there are smaller groups, Western Europe,
France, Britain, Italy, each group has different characteristics. Even then, those groups can be subdivided
into smaller groups with different cultures:
Northern Italy, Southern Italy, versus the culture in Sicily. Or you could talk about the culture in New England versus the culture in the South,
versus the culture in Texas. The
culture in East Texas, versus West Texas.
You can talk about the culture of Houston versus Antonio. Every group has a culture. You can talk about the culture of West
Houston Bible church versus the culture of some other church. Each business has it’s own culture and
characteristics. You can talk about the
culture of Exxon Mobil versus the
culture of Texaco, versus the culture of Citgo. Culture is an outgrowth of the values and priorities of that
group of people. It is ultimately an
outgrowth of their belief system in reality.
What is reality, what are we
trying to do, why are we here, what is our purpose in life?
Everything
in a culture is ultimately grounded in religious presupposition.
Ultimately
it is always going to be grounded in the concept of what is the ultimate reality and what am I trying to do in this life in terms of ultimate
reality. If ultimate reality is just
eternal matter, then that is all man is, matter, and that is going to produce
certain values, who man is and what
society is all about. But if their ultimate reality is a God who is a
personal, infinite God, then that is going to produce a completely different
set of values. And if man is created in the image of God, as Scripture says,
and we believe that, then that is going to change how we understand who and what we are. So that is the concept of worldliness, man’s culture apart from
the impact of the word of God. And we
are all influenced by that in some way or another. Every human culture is a mix of human viewpoint and divine viewpoint,
and, by the blessings of God, we grew up in the United States of America, where
we had tremendous freedom to hear about God and the truth of His word. And many of you have been faithful students
of the word of God for many years and for others of you, this is something
new. But all of us, at the starting
point, had a mixed bag of ideas and
values, and all our Christian life is a
process of going through that mixed bag
of ideas and values and throwing out that which is not biblical and replacing it
with that which is biblical, and that is what verse 2 talks about.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable
and perfect will God.
The
verse begins, don’t be conformed to this world. Another element to that concept of world is the spirit of the
times, the spirit of the age. We live
in a time characterized by post modernism.
That is the idea of the spirit of the age. The German word is zeitgeist, that is why the Greek word is ionos and not cosmos. It has to do with
the spirit of the age, don’t be conformed to the spirit of the age, but be transformed with the renewing, the
metamorphosis, the overhaul, of your thinking.
How does that take place? That
overhaul of your thinking is foundational to what verse 1 is challenging you to
do in terms of your priesthood, in terms of serving God. The starting point for serving God is to overhaul
your thinking with the word of God The
starting point with God is not getting involved in Christian service activities. The starting point is sitting in
Bible class to learn the word of God so
that your thinking is transformed, and from a foundation of spiritual maturity,
and biblical knowledge, you can then serve God from a foundation of knowledge,
and not from a foundation of ignorance.
Unfortunately
most churches try to reverse that and try
to argue that Christian service
produces spiritual growth , and that has the cart before the horse. It is the study of God's word and the
changing of our thinking that is the foundation for accurate spiritual
service. All of this is simply to
establish the principle that the only way that we can exchange the human
viewpoint in our soul for divine viewpoint is to study the word, that’s it,
that is related to being available to God, to serve Him as part of our
priesthood. So the believer priest is
to put the Bible at the center of his life.
The believer priest, to carry out his role as a priest, has to put the Bible
at the center of his life. Let’s begin
with a few passages that emphasize why the Bible is so important and so
valuable.
2 Timothy
3 16 All
Scripture is, literally,
breathed out by God, not inspired by God in the sense that Shakespeare was inspired when he
wrote his plays, or Milton was inspired when he wrote Paradise Lost, or some musician is inspired when they write
a piece of music, it is the idea of God
breathing out, that God is the ultimate
source of what is in the Scriptures. All Scripture, is breathed out by God, this
is not the product of just human authors, there is a divine author who writes
through a human instrument, but the product is the word from God. It is not the word about God, this is not
just human beings reflecting upon their religious experiences, as liberals and
neo orthodox theologians hold, it is the word that comes from God. So
it is God's communication to man, of who He is , who man is what mans
purpose is, and what God has done for man in providing life and for providing
salvation. So, all Scripture is breathed out by
God. That means there is nothing more important
than to know what God has said. Because
God has spoken. If God has spoken, then
is there anything in life that is more important than understanding what God
has said? If God has not spoken, then
we are all just wallowing around in a cesspool of ignorance, but if God has
spoken, then there is nothing more significant than for us to know and understand
exactly what God has said. Furthermore,
in 1 Corinthians 2:16 Paul says, 16"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may
instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
So
the Bible is the thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ, it explains to us how God
thinks. It is not only revelation
designed to communicate certain things to us from God, but it gives us His way
of thinking. Now, as I take time to
reflect upon the word of God and how it is structured and revealed, it is not
the way most of us would do it. If most
of us were going to write a book that was an instruction manual, it would look
pretty much like most human instruction manuals. That means most of the time we
would leave something out. Just think
about this on Christmas morning when you are trying to put some toy together,
or assemble some product you purchased at some store. Remember how it was when most of us were kids, you bought stuff
that came assembled, now, nothing comes assembled. You have to get home, and
somebody in some third world country drew pictures to try to communicate to us
how to put it together, and they have never before used anything like this in
their life, and it is quite a challenge sometimes to figure those things
out.
But God has communicated this to us for the
purpose of being understood. Our
presupposition is that it is not designed to be confusing, it is designed to
open things up, it is designed to be enlightening, to be informative. So when people open up their Bible and read,
and say I’m really confused, they are immediately making a mistake. They may not understand some things, but the
Bible was not written to cloud your mind or confuse you. It was written to clarify,
explain and to enlighten. So you have
to approach the word, thinking, this is understandable, I just don’t have what
I need to understand it right now. God
wrote this in such a way that it can communicate truth to people in any
historical situation, in any language, and in any cultural context. So that whether you are a more primitive
South East Asian, or a more technically sophisticated and
educated Western European, whether you are an African, or whether you are an
Indian in South America, whether you live up in the North Pole or down in
Tierra del Fuego, wherever you are ever you are, you can understand what God has
communicated. Now that is incredible,
because if you know anything about Islam, the Koran can only be understood ifit
is read in Arabic. You just cannot
understand it, according to Islamic theologians, if you read it in any other language. But, the Bible was
written in such a way that it can be translated, and even if you do not have access
to the original languages, you can
understand the message of the Bible, you can understand that all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God, you can understand that the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, you can understand that it is
not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercies,
He saved us, you can understand the truth of Scripture without knowing the
original languages. That does not mean
it doesn’t help to know the original languages, but you do not have to know the
original languages to understand the truth of Scripture. That is one of the marvelous aspects of how
God designed this.
Furthermore, God articulated His truth in
different literary formats. What scholars
call genres, different literary types. There is historical genre, legal genre, the Pentatuch is based on
the Mosaic Law. There is poetry in Job, Psalms, in fact over 50 % of the Old
Testament is written in poetry. Almost all the prophets are written in poetry. Job, Psalms, Proverbs,
Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes are all written in poetry. Many of the sections
within the historical narrative books from Genesis to Ezra, Nehemiah, Ester,
all have poetic sections in them. So
God communicates through historical narrative, through legal literature,
through poetry, through more didactic explanatory messages, such as the
epistles in the New Testament. Through
historical gospel tracts , they are not history, they are not biography, they
are gospels, they are written to explain the good news that Christ died on the
cross for our sins. So God uses all
these different literary structures in order to communicate truth and each
different structure has different characteristics and aspects to it. If you or I were writing an instruction manual, we would write a categorical doctrinal
notebook. We would write a systematic
theology. But that is not what God did. In fact for the most part, the Old Testament
is historical narrative. There is even
a tremendous amount of historical narrative, historical information given in
the prophets in the Old Testament. Why
did God reveal Himself that way?
Then in the New Testament, there
is historical narrative in the Gospels and Acts, then there is prophetic information in Revelation and the you have
the didactic doctrinal sections in the epistles. Why does God do it that way?
Because He wants you to think about what you are reading. The analogy I like to use is the analogy of creation. God created
everything, all the different life forms, all the different kinds, and He then
called upon Adam, and He said, I want you to name the animals. That does not mean he is going to go around
and say, that is Sparky over there, and that animal with the long neck over
there, we’ll call that Spot. He has to
analyze, categorize and classify all of these species. It is going to take time. He just began the process in that early
chapter of Genesis. Every biologist today
is still carrying on that process. It
is through the process of inductive logic and reasoning, and the analysis of
all the data, that they come to more and more conclusions and understanding of the nature of God's creation.
And so then we used to have just science, and you had science broken
down into physics and metaphysics. You
went from physics to biology, zoology, botany, dendrology, all the various
sciences, and the more we study the more we classify and the more we create sub
categories. And the same thing happens
in the study of God's word. We are given
the core elements in the word of God in order to force us to think deeply and
profoundly about what God has said. If
God gave this to us in a list format, as a systematic theology, we would
memorize it and go on our way. But what
God has done is to give it to us in such a way that it forces us to as to
engage our thinking His revelation, in order to see how it applies to our
thinking in every dimension of life, as we go through life, so that it is a never ending process of study, and learning and growth and
development. And you can’t just
stop at any point in the Christian life and say, well, I’ve learned it al, because
it is a never ending process. There is always more to analyze, more to
understand. You can go back to the Old
Testament and read through the narratives in Samuel and Kings and there is so
much there that has to do with law, and government, and politics, and the structure of society, and the more you
study, the more there is to study. The
more you are then forced to go out and read about Ancient Near Eastern cultures, and what was
happening, what was going on. It builds
our understanding today of government,
law and politics. This is what the
puritans were doing in back in the 17th
and 18th centuries, as they were delving into the Old
Testament. We may not have always agreed with their theology or eschatology or aspects of what they were
doing, but they understood the
principle. It was on the basis of their in depth study of the word, and not just the clergy , the pastors and theologians,
but the everyday believers who were interested in science, law, government,
they were getting into the word in order to extrapolate these principles. This is all part of what the Scripture
emphasizes when it talks about the fact that we need to change the human viewpoint in our soul to
divine viewpoint. It comes from an in
depth study of the word of God. So the
Bible is important because it is the word of God, it is important because it is
the thinking of Christ. And it is
important because it is the source of light.
So the psalmist
concludes:
Psalm 19:10
10 More to be desired are they (that is the knowledge
of Scripture)than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey
and the honeycomb.
This
is a priority for the believer priest, to know the word of God. Next time I want to bring this to a
different level of practicality for us.
What does all of that mean? Look
at a subject such as meditation, the
importance of every individual believer reading the word of God to know the
word of God, how to read the word of God, how can you come to understand
the word of God and read it for yourself. What are the principles what
is its value? And eventually I want to
get into some things related to what kind of Bible you use. I get questions all the time about
translations and study Bibles. The difference between and translation and a study Bible.
What
about the newer translations that have come out? We will address some of those next time. This morning was designed to focus on the fact
that if the word of God is a priority for you as a believer priest, it needs to
be at the center of your life. The first thing in your scale of values, because
if the Bible is not at the center of your life, and not just knowledge of the
Bible for academic sake, but knowledge for relationship with the Lord, if that is not at the center of your life,
then nothing else will come together.
But when the Bible is at the center of your life and the highest
priority in your life, then all the other aspects of your life come together
and relate to one another in ways you will never appreciate until you get to
the end of your life.
Father,
we do thank You for the opportunity to study Your word. To be challenged by the apostle Paul in
Romans 12, that we are to present ourselves as living sacrifices. And this involves being retrained, having
our thinking reprogrammed, to completely exchange the human viewpoint ideas in
our souls with the divine viewpoint truth in the Scripture. Father we thank You that the motivation for
this is grace, because Your grace provided perfect salvation. A salvation based
not on who we are or what we have done, but a salvation based on who Jesus
Christ is and what He did on the cross.
There He paid the penalty for
our all our sins, past, present and future, so sin is no longer the issue. The issue is trusting in Christ for our
salvation. This morning, if you have
never put your faith alone in Christ alone, this is your opportunity to receive
God's free gift of eternal life.
Scripture says, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It is not a matter of good works, it
is not a matter of what you have or have not done in life. It is not a matter of religious affiliation.
It is simply a matter of trust. Do you
rely on Jesus Christ and His work on the cross, alone, for your salvation. Father, we pray that you would challenge us
with the things we have studied this morning, we pray that God the Holy Spirit
would make them real to us and that He would help us to see how to change our
scale of values to fit that which is presented in the Scripture. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.