Sermon from March 30, 2008
I just finished hearing for the second time 12 hours of lectures on the history of the Bible – not history the Bible tells, but the history of how the Bible came into existence and made its way throughout the world. Today, the Bible can be found in print in more than 2000 languages.
The lecturer, Luke Timothy Johnson of Candler School of Theology, tells the story of a fifth century Jewish woman, a Christian, who took the Bible to a kingdom in Central Asia. The kingdom became Christian, and because of the Bible it developed for the first time a written alphabet and a national literature. That story can be repeated hundreds of times around the world.
Another Christian historian, Philip Jenkins of Penn State University, released a book two years ago called The New Faces of Christianity. It tells the story of the Bible in the Southern Hemisphere, which is rapidly becoming the population center of worldwide Christianity. Among the books of the Bible, which Christians there are drawn to, we find surprises. They love Proverbs from the Old Testament and James from the New Testament. Most astounding of all is the interest with which African churches read the Old Testament book of Leviticus.
If someone were to ask me why I am a Christian and not a Muslim, one answer would be this: I am a Christian, because for 200 years the Bible has been subjected to withering criticism. The Bible has withstood the criticism, has gained greater credibility because of it, and is being read by ordinary people more often and in more places of the earth than anything else in writing. And it holds a place of increasing honor among some of the brightest minds in Western intelligentsia.
The Qur’an knows nothing about that kind of scrutiny. Jihadists would burn down a university that subjected the Qur’an to such criticism. They would say they were defending the honor of their sacred writing. No doubt that’s part of it. But we know they also fear what critical scrutiny might turn up.
The Fourth Habit of Highly Effective Christians
From all of this you would rightly assume that the fourth habit of highly effective Christians has to do with the Bible. You would be right, and it would be nice, if I could announce to you that the fourth habit of highly effective Christians is to know the Bible. It would make my job as a pastor and my experience as a Christian simpler, if biblical knowledge was the target.
Both experience and the Bible itself prevent that. One passage that blocks the way will take us to the heart of the fourth habit. Along the way it will demolish the notion that biblical knowledge is our goal. We find this passage in 1 John 2:3: We know that we have come to know him (Christ) if we obey his commands.
The astonishing promise of the Christian faith is that we who have never seen Him can know Christ. The Gospel of John 17:3 says that it is eternal life to know Christ. This short verse in 1 John says we can know that we know Him, but it doesn’t say that we know that we know Him, because we know the Bible. It doesn’t say that we know that we know Him, because we can quote scripture verses. It says that we know that we know Him, if we obey his commands.
The next verse reinforces the gravity of this condition. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. To know and not to do is not to know in the biblical worldview.
30 years ago, a young man left his job here, took his wife and went to Dallas Seminary. After graduation he pastored churches in Houston, Slippery Rock, PA and Florida. On a trip through Wilmington we had a chance to catch up. He told me an impression he had of the church in Houston that I’ve never forgotten.
He said, “It seems to me that what they wanted me to do every Sunday was to open up their skulls, pour in Bible knowledge, and then close ’em up again.” He cut far too close to the quick. I smiled and agreed and inside I knew he had put his finger on my own unwritten assumption about preaching and even about discipleship.
I just hope there was enough love for Christ and my congregations mixed in with my faulty assumption about biblical knowledge to preserve some integrity in my preaching and in our living.
So, what is the fourth habit of highly effective Christians? Based on 1 John 2:3-4, it would be acceptable to say that it is the habit of obedience to the word of God. Well, obedience is certainly part of it, but I see or I think I see something else that feeds obedience to the Lord.
Here’s what I see. The fourth habit of highly effective Christians is seeing life through a scriptural lens. What does that mean? Well, we talk about people who see life through rose-colored glasses. That means they hold certain beliefs that cause them to look at life with unrealistic optimism and behave with unrealistic optimism.
All of us hold certain beliefs that cause us to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way. To see life through a scriptural lens means that the Bible shapes the core beliefs that cause us to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way, no matter what day of the week it is or what the circumstances are.
It will help to have a working model of what I am talking about. Fortunately, we have one from the life of Jesus. Please turn with me to the first Gospel, Matthew 4:1-10.
Jesus and the Bible
The first ten verses present us with the temptation of Jesus by the devil. These three temptations take us, I believe, inside the soul of Jesus. They tell us the temptations that dogged Him during His public ministry. This means that to one degree or the other He found these temptations attractive to Him. If they weren’t attractive, they would not have been temptations.
His responses to these temptations also take us, I believe, inside the soul of Jesus. They tell us the core beliefs of His soul that caused Him to look at life in a certain way and as a result to resist these besetting temptations. Let’s read Matthew’s account. I will focus on Jesus’ responses, not on the temptations themselves.
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. The temptations came from the devil; all temptations do. But the Holy Spirit saw to it that the devil had his chance with Jesus. That phrase led by the Spirit is unambiguous and very disturbing. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Wasn’t that a clever comeback?! Yes, it was, but Jesus didn’t make it up. Keep a finger here in Matthew, and turn back to Deuteronomy 8:3. Moses here recalls to the Children of Israel their 40 years’ wandering in the wilderness and points out God’s purpose for their wandering. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known (and here comes the purpose), to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
It looks like that teaching became a core conviction that caused Jesus to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way. He looked at life through that scriptural lens and as a result resisted the devil’s first temptation. Back to Matthew four!
Verse five: Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Does it trouble you for the devil to quote scripture? Unlike Jesus, the scripture the devil used did not express a core conviction that caused him to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way. He was twisting the scripture to make it serve his sinister purpose. That’s how “the Bible in the hand of one man can be worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of another.”
Jesus was having none of it. Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Wasn’t that a clever comeback?! Yes, it was, but Jesus didn’t make it up. Keep a finger here in Matthew, and turn back to Deuteronomy 6:16. Moses here recalls a time, when the Children of Israel turned on Moses and complained that God was not among them. Moses said: Do not test the Lord Your God.
It looks like that teaching also became a core conviction that caused Jesus to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way. He looked at life through that scriptural lens and as a result resisted the devil’s second temptation. Back to Matthew!
Verses 8-9: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” I said a moment ago that the devil had twisted scripture to make it serve his sinister purpose. The third temptation lays that purpose bare.
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Wasn’t that a clever comeback?! Yes, it was, but Jesus didn’t make it up. Turn back one more time to Deuteronomy 6:13. Moses here reminds the Children of Israel not to forget the God who brought them out of Egypt. Fear the Lord your God, serve him only.
It looks like that teaching also became a core conviction that caused Jesus to look at life in a certain way and to behave in a certain way. He looked at life through that scriptural lens and as a result resisted the devil’s third temptation. Jesus’ core convictions about God, which He learned from scripture, established the basis for His obedience.
Biblical Knowledge and the Third Habit
The fourth habit of highly effective Christians is to look at life through a scriptural lens. Do you know what core convictions govern the way you look at life and the way you behave? We all have such convictions. Followers of Christ, who seek to be highly effective Christians, build those convictions by looking at life through the lens of scripture. That makes it safe to talk about biblical knowledge. Once again, Jesus’ experience points the way.
He knew three lines from the book of Deuteronomy. You can’t read the four gospels without realizing that He knew a lot of lines from the Old Testament. That was His Bible, and we have some reason to think that His family may not have owned a Bible. Scrolls of scripture were not plentiful, and they were expensive. Most likely, He learned it in synagogue. But it was not knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It was knowledge that shaped the way He looked at the world.
And did you notice? He expressed His core convictions in one-liners. His knowledge was easy to use. It’s another reminder: it’s not how much we know; it’s how much we use what we know that matters.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
So, how do you reap the most benefit from all these sermons you listen to? Maybe it will help to know what I think is going on in my sermons. That will make you better listeners, and that will help you to develop this fourth habit of highly effective Christians.
First, you will notice that I ask you to turn with me to the different parts of the Bible, as I read them. We are doing the same kind of behavior, as when we buy a new gadget. If you buy a new i-Pod, you want to push all the buttons to see what they do. It’s part of learning how to make the instrument work for you.
Turning with me to various parts of the Bible is like pushing all the buttons. It’s part of helping you be at home in the Bible, making it easy to get around in the Bible. I’m your guide, and that helps the Bible to be less intimidating, more accessible to you.
Second, when I preach, I am less like a professor than I am like an advance scout, coming back to camp to tell people what I’ve seen of God and His ways. I try always to see life through a scriptural lens, and sermons for me offer a way of expressing what I see. That serves as a model for you, as you cultivate this fourth habit of highly effective Christians. I am a voice that competes with the other ways of looking at life that bombard all of us on TV, the Internet and in our circle of friends.
Third, the Apostle Paul once said to the leaders of the Ephesian Church: “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” – Acts 20:27. I have often said to you that I never say an original thing. My ordination laid on me the responsibility to declare the whole gospel, which came to me through an unbroken succession from Christ.
That means that sooner or later in my preaching I touch on every important truth in the treasury of biblical revelation and the Church’s understanding of that revelation. I am your portal into 2,000 years of Christian thought and experience – all in the service of fostering the habit of seeing life through a scriptural lens.
Well, that’s what I do. What about you, as a receiver of sermons, what do you do? James 1:25 puts our responsibility plainly: But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.
Tim Glavin, one of our deacons, has given a perfect commentary on this. He likes to talk about a take-away, something useful for his life that he takes away from a sermon or Bible study. No one remembers a whole sermon any more than we absorb everything we eat.
So, let’s try to take away something from every Sunday that shapes those core convictions, which help us see life through a scriptural lens. Five years from now, you will not be the same person. Scripture will renew your mind and transform you.
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, Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. All rights reserved.
