You know it's coming. I bet you are reading this and because of the picture you know that the right answer is the Bible. But is it really the authority in your life? It is an important question to ask. The answer you get will determine whether you listen to God or whether you just plain ignore him.
The belief that the Bible was the ultimate authority about God and salvation was a big battle in the reformation. The reformers were battling the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic belief is that the Bible is God's Word but that the traditions of the church and the word of the Pope (when he makes certain decrees) are of equal authority to the Bible (in other words they are as much from God as the Bible is).
It doesn't sound too bad, right? The Catholic Church is still saying the Bible is God's Word, it is just saying other things are as well. The problem with this is that as soon as you make something equal to God's Word you have issues when things disagree. To be fair, Roman Catholics believe that the Bible, their traditions and the Pope's decrees all match up, though myself and the reformers do not think they do. Such traditions and decrees usually end up being treated as a greater authority than the Bible because they tell us how to read and interpret the Bible.
"Interpret" is a really important word. The dictionary says it means "to explain the meaning of". When we have equal or greater authorities to the Bible we no longer explain the meaning of the Bible, instead we start to inject and put our own meaning into the Bible. We are meant to read ideas out of the Bible not into the Bible. We must not sit over the Bible, we need to sit under the Bible and let it rule us. We could put it this way; we don't interpret the Bible, the Bible interprets us. Here is what Hebrews 4 says:
12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Did you see that the Bible judges us and not the other way around. Don't get me wrong. We still need to interpret (in the sense of analyse), comprehend and understand the Bible. Like any book we simply read the Bible to work out what it is saying. But the Bible is different to any other book because it is God's book. This book is God's Word, God's message, God's voice. This is a book that God has written (through human authors) and so it has the authority of God, the ruler of the universe. To go against the Bible is to go against God. This means that when we read the Bible we should tremble at it. This is what Isaiah 66:2 says about who God favours:
“This is the one I esteem:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit,
and trembles at my word.
If the Bible is from God, we better listen to it carefully. There was an awesome little habit that many people in the Anglican church hundreds of years ago used to do. Before they read any Bible passage they would read Psalm 95. It is a great Psalm, but they read especially for the end part:
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
9 where your fathers tested and tried me,
though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
“They shall never enter my rest.”
The Psalm is talking about how Israel failed to listen to God in the Old Testament and missed out on God's rest and blessing. It is a warning Psalm. It tells us that if we hear God's voice today we better not fail to hear his voice or we will miss out on God's rest too.
In Mark 7:1-23 (worth reading later) Jesus shows us how the Pharisees loved their traditions made by men more than they loved God's Word. This is exactly what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church. To add to God's Word is a very dangerous thing. To not tremble at God's Word may mean you miss out on the truth it teaches and the eternal life it offers. So how will you read the Bible? Is it going to rule your life?
The Nuts and Bolts
- We need to analyse and comprehend the Bible correctly and carefully so we avoid error.
- We need to sit under God's Word and let it change us.
- There is always a temptation to add or change God's Word to suit what we want. When we find that the Bible makes us uncomfortable than it is a sign that we need to change not the Bible
No comments:
Post a Comment