The Gospel's Conduit

 “The Gospel’s Conduit”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, March 11, 2012

Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-17 // Series: “The Gospel”

Well good morning.  Welcome to the teaching portion of our morning together as we continue in our series entitled “The Gospel”.  Last week, Pastor Keith highlighted for us that the gospel is a tough concept to define but it’s a phrase that churchy people use almost all the time.  So our question that we are exploring in this series is ‘what is the gospel?’.  We had some good chatter via our Twitter account last weekend, as always, we welcome you to join the conversation @jerichoridge and tweet your opinions, ideas, questions and observations about our teaching times.  Some of you had some great definitions or summary statements about what the Gospel is…  And some of you left confused and disappointed that we didn’t give you a tidy, pithy tweet-able phrase that summarized what the gospel is.  Well, take heart, I’m not going to do that this morning either.  It’s actually going to take us 6 weeks and a visitor on April 1 with a PhD to unpackage even part of the depth and the richness and the fullness of the gospel so you’re going to have to listen online if you’re travelling over Spring Break.  But let me paint a picture for you of where we are headed with the series.  You’ll find this on page 25 in your Momentum Journal – if you didn’t get one last weekend, the ushers will come around now, stick your hand up if you need a Bible or a journal and they’ll get you one. 

This teaching series is built on Four Compelling Questions…  Questions that every worldview must answer and every individual must have a solid handle on.  The first question is one of authority…   

1. To Whom are we Accountable?  If God exists, which He does, and if He created us, which He did, then we are not self-accountable.  If the text of the Bible is true (and it is), then we are accountable to God.  For our lives, for our actions, for our choices – little and big. 

The second question is a question not of authority but of reality.  That is  

1. What is the Problem?

Is there a problem?  If so, what is it? Who caused it?  Pastor Keith will talk more about this on April 25 when we address the problem of sin and evil, but the problem stems from our rebellion as humanity against a holy and loving God.  Which begs the third question which the gospel answers:

1. How has God acted in Response?

What is God’s solution to the problem?  Well, a quick summary might be to say that God, in His love, sends the second person of the trinity, His only Son Jesus to be our substitute.  He lives the life we should have lived. He dies the death we should have died.  Jesus is at the very heart of the gospel and God’s response. 

But it is possible for a person to say “well, that’s all fine and good, Brad.  That might be good news for some people out there but

1. How does that solution become Good News for me?

You see, the gospel for the writers of the New Testament is not just a question of who God is and what God has done.  It is also a question of personal response.  Jesus says “the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe”  Faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin…  That’s how the gospel gets appropriated into my life and yours.  And you need to know, if you are here and have not taken the steps of faith and repentance, that is our deepest prayer and desire for you.  That you would come to a place of responding to God, recognizing your sin, repenting of it and receiving the gift that Jesus offers – restoration of relationship with God.    

But if I’m in your shoes, the very next logical question that an intelligent person would want to ask would be “how in the world do I know all this stuff is true?”  Where did we get all this information about God, humanity, Jesus and response from?  Or another way of asking this question is

How does God communicate with us?

You see, we are all communicators by nature…  I gave up Facebook for Lent (though I forgot that my blog posts through to it so it doesn’t always look like I’m keeping my Lenten commitments J).  But think of how much time we spend talking, listening, texting, typing, being online on Twitter and Facebook and Pintrest…  Part of this insatiable desire that we have to communicate is because as human beings we are created in God’s image.  God is a communicator.  But how God communicates and what we understand from this communication is vitally important for our conversation about the gospel.  Let me explain why. Theologians & church historians and other smart people who study this stuff have organized God’s communication with us as humanity into two big categories. First:

1. 1.    General Revelation

General in the sense that it is general in nature and available to everyone everywhere at all times.  So this would be things like…  

• Creation –

The beauty of a sunset or starry night sky, the intricacy of the human body…  Psalm 19 says “the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands.. there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard”.  You don’t need a Bible in your language to know something of God’s character.  The second part of General revelation is

• Common Grace

In the third century, Augustine, one of the bishops of the early Christian movement rightly suggested that there were experiences of God’s love and His character that were common to all human beings.  Things like good food, the rain that falls on the just and the unjust, (though I could perhaps do with slightly less of this particular form of common grace these days).  Part of God’s heart and His love can be found in these things.  Things like good governance, philosophy and education and stable societies and the rule of law and all kinds of gifts that God has given to humanity.  The crazy thing to me is that even people who despise God and who don’t believe He exists are recipients of daily doses of common grace! 

The third part of general revelation is that God has given each of us a 

• Conscience

People know that its wrong to kill your neighbour because God has written a moral compass on the human heart.  We can damage it, silence it or attempt to educate it away, but it is part of God’s revelation and His communication to us. 

But the big question for me becomes if that’s all we knew of God – His wonderful created world, the outpouring of His common grace in our lives and the presence of a conscience, is it sufficient?  If it is, then why in the world do we have Junghoon and Pearl Lim, some of JRCC’s supported global workers out in Southeast Asia doing literacy and translation work?  One way to think about this is that general revelation is like getting to know about the nature of an artist through their work.  You can find out some things, but not all your need to know. And so God in His mercy and grace didn’t leave us there.  He invites us through general revelation for us to chase it down further and to encounter Him directly and personally through   

1. 2.    Special Revelation

If these three things were all we had, then “we would not know about God’s mighty acts of salvation; the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, Pentecost” or Christ’s second coming. (Pastoral Application, 30).  God communicated to us supremely through the incarnation and the saving work of Christ on the cross.  In other words, the Bible is the conduit through which the saving message of the gospel comes to us.  And today, it is the primary way in which God reveals Himself to us.  Article 2 of our confession of Faith, which is printed on page 29 in your MoJo reminds us that the Bible is the “infallible word of God and the authoritative guide for faith and practice.”  There is lots that could be said about the Scriptures but perhaps it may be helpful this morning to take you though

My Journey with the Bible: and compare this with what the Scriptures say about themselves in terms of their purpose and place in our lives. 

This is a short journey down autobiographical memory lane so bear with me if my experiences don’t match yours or may background doesn’t resonate with you. 

I grew up in a small country church in Northern BC.  The name of the church was Rolla BIBLE Baptist Church, where the emphasis is on the Bible.  It was a bibliocentric kinda place.  People had big, black leather bound Bibles.  Bibles had thin paper and gold edging and special cases.  And everything was spoken of as being biblical or un-biblical.  I experienced growing up that this was a unique and special book that these people were very, very fond of talking about.  But I also felt at times like

1. Felt the Bible was shoved down my throat

You didn’t ask questions about it, you just read it and believed it. You didn’t interact with it, you just memorized it.  It wasn’t living book to be engaged, it was a holy book to be revered.  You didn’t put it on the floor and you certainly didn’t put it in your smart phone!  You used the correct translation and you towed the line.  There was a kind of forwardness that bordered on aggressiveness when it came to the Bible that I didn’t quite understand but was a part of the culture of that place.  This wasn’t all negative, however.   

The other element that I picked up on quickly was that reading the Bible was important to these people.  Both publically and privately, people were talking about what they had read.  Kids in elementary school, even.  People had their own Bibles, which was new to me and to our family, I think we had one in the house that collected dust.  But here, people read them. Regularly. There was talk of moving through the Bible in a year so I

1. Felt obligated to read (and guilty if I didn’t)

Part of the problem that I encountered wasn’t quite sure why the Bible was important but the practice of reading it was elevated to the point of almost legalism so I do remember feeling guilty when I started the One Year Bible and then only got part way through.  It was a bit discouraging.  This is part of why we here at JRCC have a goal for 2012 that is more realistic:  We want to challenge everyone to meet God in his Word 4-7 times per week.  We produce the MoJo’s with two reading plans – one that takes just 3 minutes and 45 seconds 5 days a week.  We’re not about inducing guilt, we’re about giving you tools.  Because in the end, it’s not about getting through the Bible.  It’s about getting the Bible through your life.    

As I grew up in this environment, and as I read more of the Bible, however, I began to develop some ideas about what was in the Bible and how it related to my life.  One of the early ideas I had and you might share that

1. Felt the Bible was full rules

I think this is a common perception that is still very prominent in our culture today.  I love the way the Jesus storybook Bible puts this.  And while there are rules in the Bible, the Bible isn’t primarily a book of what not to do.  When you reduce the Bible to a list of rules, you shift your fundamental orientation toward God away from relationship and into a checklist kind of approach.  This is not what the Bible is for or about.  So some people in a desire to push back against that experience think “OK, if the Bible isn’t all law or rules, what’s in it?”  And some swing to the opposite extreme.  A year ago I was in Chicago listening in a seminar to New Testament scholar Scot McKnight and he highlighted that many people   

1. Saw the Bible as full of blessings & promises

It’s a kind of daily calendar approach to the Bible – that all you need is a nice little platitude to start your day off right, usually from the King James version so that you know it’s from the Bible.  365 little blessings and promises that begin with Psalm 23 and tell you all about the wonderful things in the Bible that God wants you to know.  The Bible is about happy faces and LOL messages.  And we come to church to be made happy.  We expect the Bible to make us happy.  The challenge with this approach becomes clear the first time you bump up against the pain and difficulty of the real world.  Fundamentally, the message is that God is good and that God is for us.  BUT there is a lot about life that is not good and does not make us happy.  So I began to read the parts of the Bible that spoke to the genuine emotions of life…  Jeremiah, Lamentations, Job.  The Bible was becoming something different to me.  More than rules or promises. 

I entered the next phase of my journey with the Bible when I went off to Bible College.  Here, I was exposed to deeper study of the texts and I began to have my faith in the Bible shaken a bit.  I learned about things like historical and literary criticism and that the meanings of the texts were not always what I had assumed that they were.  It got messy and complicated reading the Bible because it seemed like smart people could make the Bible say anything that they wanted it to say.  So I began push into this a bit.  And I began to justify some of my behaviour by taking certain parts of the Scripture and pitting them against other parts so that I 

1. Projected my own morals onto the Bible

I would say things like “well, that’s Old Testament and not new covenant.”  I highlighted and emphasized the parts of the Bible that I agreed with, mostly books like James and the Gospels, and I never read or I explained away the other parts.  Many, many people do this.  They take a virtual or a real of scissors and cut out of the pages of Scripture all the parts they don’t like or don’t agree with or that their lives didn’t particularly reflect at that moment.  The Bible becomes a tool for self-justification as opposed to the wonderful revelation of God’s nature and the gospel that it is. 

But what I discovered in my journey was that none of those things truly get at the heart of what the Bible is for or about.  And as I went further along in my journey with the God and as I studied what the Bible says about itself and how that related to my life, I began to come to some different conclusions and began to approach the Bible very differently in my day to day life.  I want you to turn with me to 2 Timothy 3:14-17, and if those are ways NOT to read, we’re going to ask how we should read the Bible.  

Do you hear already the contrasts to and direct assault on various aspects of my journey with the Bible?  I want us this morning to look at another young man’s Timothy’s Journey with the Bible and what we can learn.

The first thing that I see in this text is when this process started in Timothy’s journey.  He  

1. Grew up having Scripture spoken into his life

As a child, he was deeply privileged to have a mother and grandmother who were people of integrity – they could be trusted – and they were intentional about making sure that even from his childhood, Timothy knew about God’s revelation.  This is why we invest significantly in children and youth here at Jericho Ridge.  And not for entertainment.  If you head upstairs with Ruth Ellen and her team for Kids @ the Ridge or if you head downstairs with Mike to the Source, you’ll experience age appropriate biblical teaching and instruction.  We’re partnering with those of you who are parents to tell God’s story.  We don’t send the kids out so it’s quieter in here from 11 – Noon.  We do it because we want kids to grow up having the Scriptures spoken into their lives in ways that they understand and from people they trust.  Why? Because as they grow to know God in His Word, like Timothy, they    

1. Learned from it wisdom to see & choose truth

“The Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation”.  Most all of us what to live our lives in such a way that we are growing in wisdom.  Timothy experienced the Bible as that place because it is true and it is for our good.  The Scriptures gave him the wisdom to make right choices in his life.  Not only that but from the Scriptures, Timothy  

1. Gained assurance & clarity to walk in truth

Because Scripture is God’s divine self-revelation to us, it is useful for teaching and reminding us of what is deeply true and good and lovely.  The Bible teaches us and clarifies our motives, our actions and our thoughts.  And this is the exciting thing: You and I can live with a sense of assurance and clarity about what God wants from us because He has revealed it to us in the Bible and He invites us to get to know Him there.

The counterpoint to this is also found in verse 16.  That the Scripture helps us to realize what is wrong in our lives.  It     

1. Let it reflect back to him his mistakes & rebellion

It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  Hebrews chapter 4:12 says “For the word of God is alive 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.”  Think of it this way.  Let’s say you are driving in a place you’ve never driven in before.  So you do what most wives and few husbands do, you turn on your GPS.  The purpose of a GPS unit is to keep you on course.  When you veer off and make a wrong turn, you don’t want to drive around for hours or days or decades in the wrong places – you want to listen to the talking lady the first time she says in her British accent “make a U-turn”!  The Bible has much the same function in our lives, if and when we let it.  When we are beginning to veer off-course, the Bible corrects us.  If the Bible is our authoritative guide for life and practice, we need to be more familiar with it than we are.  We must allow it to do its job of…

1. Trained his character & showed him how to live

And here’s my concern pastorally.  In the survey that we did last year, we asked this question: “I study the Bible to find out more about God and to find truth and direction for my life”.  Only 6 in 10 people answered affirmatively across all segments of the survey.  If the Bible is our guide, then it appears that some of us are not very familiar with the guidebook.  Perhaps we’ve fallen into some of the unhealthy habits or perceptions that I referenced in my own journey with the Bible.  Perhaps you’re at a place where you think “my phase and pace of life really isn’t conducive to all of that Bible reading stuff”.  Or you’ve thought “once a week is god enough for me.”  Well, friends, today I wanted to take the opportunity in this series on the Gospel, to remind us again of the supreme value of getting to know God regularly in His Word.  I’m going to quote a short section from the Pastoral Application section of Article 2 of our Confession of Faith: “The Creator invites the created into relationship.  As we meet God in the scriptures, we find ourselves – like the women and men whose stories were captured in the Scriptures – invited into an intimate relationship with God.  As we get to know the heart of God through Scripture and as we serve God’s purposes, we grow in a dynamic relationship with God.  Getting to know God changes us.  As we get to know God as revealed in the Bible, we develop convictions about the kind of people we ought to be.  As we come to understand the Scriptures, we come to care deeply about a daily, moment-by-moment obedience to God. We learn to know God as revealed in creation, the Scriptures, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Christian community” (34). 

As we close our time here today, I want you to watch this video, which gives some practical and real-life examples of the power of letting God’s Word speak into your life, your marriage, your job and your day to day experiences.  And my challenge to each of us to let the Word of God speak

VIDEO: “Word of God Speak” (4 min)  // closing prayer & benediction