Are you operating without instructions?
DUST COLLECTORS
This last week Rachel and Linda were in Seattle for the better part of a week. They went to conference about reading your Bible better. For most this would seem like the most dusty and boring way to spend several days.
But, most people don’t know who God is, what we are, what His Son did, and what we ought to do in light of that. Don’t believe me? Read the perennial Ligonier State of Theology. By the accounts of that report, most people who call themselves Christian are either not Christian or standing in direct opposition to sound doctrine and historic theology.
Why?
Well, the burden falls on two sets of shoulders. First, it falls on the pastors who have abandoned clear expositional teaching in favor of movie series and felt-needs driven topics. The churchman has been relegated to the position of consumer, therefore the church must meet the demands of the market. But, the second place where responsibility falls is on your shoulders, oh Christian.
“ I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”
- Galatians 1:6
Paul here accuses, rightly, the Christians in the Galatian churches who have been deceived by false teachers. In doing so, they abandoned what they had been taught and what had been revealed to them in Scripture, losing the very Gospel in the process. Now, they didn’t even have the whole Bible yet. How much greater is our guilt that we are condemned by the very opulence of resources we have. More Bibles than we can count, apps, commentaries, online tools, etc.
Not only do you have a duty to know your Scriptures to hold fast to sound doctrine, but in them God has give you what you need.
“His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”
- 2 Peter 1:3
Sunday we discussed how we fix our eyes on the pools of Bethesda of our age, seeking healing. The lame man sat starring at a pool of water he couldn’t get to, that wouldn’t heal him if he did. Yet, his only true source of healing was there talking to him. We do this with Christ standing right next to us. We are medicating some area of our life that Christ has offered real transforming hope in the living and true words of Holy Scripture. This hope is within arms reach right now I guarantee it.
We need Scripture, but we need to be equipped to rightly divide it.
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”
- 2 Timothy 2:15
We can’t approach the Bible like a calendar devotional or true crime novel. It’s a book unlike any other. First, it requires spiritual illumination (1 Cor. 2:14). Second, it requires dedication and grit.
“It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out.”
- Proverbs 25:2
God has seen fit to generously give His eternal Word to us. To revive our souls, to strengthen us for battle, to lift up our downcast hearts, to instruct us in living godly lives, and supremely, to reveal to us who our God is. So we don’t end up confessing Christ but denying His divinity or leading others astray.
PERSPICUITY
One quick note about this fancy word. Perspicuity means clarity. So why not just say clarity? Because perspicuity is fancy, and a historically theological word. Fundamentally it means that the things of God’s Word are not inscrutable. Will you come to master the breadth of God’s wisdom in Scripture? No. But, can you understand what you need to? Yes. Furthermore, as we saw in Proverbs, it’s our job to plumb the depths even though we won’t get to the bottom.
It is essential that we take studying Scripture seriously. Else we will have little to nothing to pass onto the next generation. We will have little ability to make a defense of the hope that is in us (1 Pt. 3:15). We will worship God as though we were impoverished for vocabulary. But, God has given us revelation.
Don’t let your Bible collect dust.
SUNDAY’S SERMON
Sunday we learned about the healing of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. We asked ourselves the question, “Do I want to be healed?” and examined how we’re dependent on Christ’s mercy.
PRAYER REQUESTS
Pray for us as we have two more conferences in the next few weeks, Reformed Baptist Pastors Conference (with evangelism on our way back, and NWBC Annual Conference
Pray for our evangelism and outreach at Planned Parenthood and U of O this Friday.
