Bible Sunday Sermon

Billie warned me not to make ‘Bible Sunday’ boring. So I thought I’d begin by showing you my collection of bibles...






6 very different books – one thing they have in common is that none of them are in fact bibles!
QUESTION:- What are the publishers of these books claiming by including the word ‘Bible’ in the title?

Elicit:-
• Authority and Expertise
• Full Coverage of the Subject
• Answers and Guidance
• ...

These are the kind of things that many people (myself included) would claim for THE Bible, the HOLY Bible, the book which tops the bestsellers list year after year.
A famous passage from the Bible tells us that:-

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2Timothy 3.16-17)

This makes the Bible sound wonderful and indeed it is! But it isn’t always easy to understand and can be a real struggle, even with expert help. Unlike a reference book about knitting or collecting mushrooms, the Bible is not set out in the most helpful order and does not give up its treasures and truths easily. Perhaps this should not surprise us in a collection of writings that was composed over about 1500 years by many different writers and editors.

Understanding the Bible and meeting God through the Bible involves hard work and struggle which not everybody would consider worthwhile. The great Welsh preacher Martin Lloyd Jones once said how good it was that every house in Wales contained a big black leather Bible, but he added that, unfortunately, most of them had plant pots standing on top of them!

My Bible will do me no good if it has a plant pot on top of it, or even if it is gathering dust on a shelf. But if I’m going to discipline myself to read and study and struggle with the meaning of my Bible, I need to have good reasons for doing so.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans suggests some.

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15.4

Life was not easy for the early Christians in the Roman empire. They needed to be encouraged and to develop qualities of endurance and a perspective of hope. Paul tells them that this is what the Scriptures (OT) are for. The reason the OT has this focus is that most of its books were collected/finalised during the Babylonian captivity – looking back over the Israelites’ up and down relationship with God to the Exodus, when God had previously heard their cry and set them free.

Our lives today are very different but we all have to cope with the pressure and stress and often the hopelessness of life. We also need encouragement, endurance and hope and the same help is available to us, thanks to the work of Bible translators and publishers.

As well as the OT, Paul points to the example of Jesus. Here we have an advantage over Paul’s original readers in that our Bibles include the 4 Gospels, as well as the writings of Paul and other Apostles. The key quality of Jesus that Paul points to – and which the gospel writers confirm - is his complete unselfishness and commitment to the needs of others (see 15.3, 5). This is the way he lives consistently, all the way to the cross and beyond. Paul sees that Jesus is God in the form of a man and that he shows us exactly what God is like.

Paul urges his readers to imitate these same qualities so that God will be glorified in the world (15.5 and 6).

Jesus and the Old Testament

A bit more needs to be said about the relationship between Jesus and the OT. Some of you are reading your way through the whole OT and raising a lot of questions. I know many of you who study your Bibles struggle with the difference between the loving, gracious, forgiving and non-violent picture we have of Jesus - and OT portrayals of a God who is often angry, vindictive and cruel.

The way we resolve this tension is very important and basically the Christian answer is to read the OT through special lenses – like watching a 3D film – the lenses of
Jesus and especially his death on the cross. Jesus clearly told his disciples and the religious leaders of his day that they had misread the OT, as we can see in today’s gospel reading from very early in his ministry:-

Read Luke 4.16-21

The people all started talking about Jesus and were amazed (or shocked). Soon afterwards they chased Jesus out of the synagogue and he narrowly avoided being thrown off a cliff. Ever wondered why?

Because he had missed out their favourite verse! Quoting Isaiah 61.1-2 Jesus stopped before the bit about the day of God’s vengeance, closed the scroll and sat down. The part he left out was the bit they liked most - the verse that would be cheered to the rafters! They were looking forward to the day when the Messiah would come and pour out God’s vengeance on their enemies.

The Jewish religious leaders had not read their Bible in a way which led them to love, serve, forgive and pray for their enemies and they were offended by Jesus’ reading of the passage.

And it wasn’t just the religious leaders who had got the wrong end of the stick, it was Jesus’ disciples too. When he was rejected by the people of one town, the disciples asked if they should command fire to come down from heaven to destroy them. Jesus gave them a severe telling-off for this.

Jesus consistently claims authority over the Old Testament and reinterprets it in a way that shows the central message is about mercy, forgiveness, healing and reconciliation.

Think of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus keeps on saying ‘You have heard that it was said... but now I tell you this.’
‘You have heard that it was said ‘love your friends, hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven.’

Each time he refers to the OT Jesus fills it with deeper meaning and clarifies God’s nature and intentions. This claim of authority to reinterpret the Scriptures and to reinterpret God offended the religious leaders but it was his right as the Son of God, as God in human form.

We might wonder at times why God didn’t just make himself clearer the first time around, so Jesus wouldn’t have to come and explain and reinterpret ... and suffer.

But another way of looking at it would be that people could only be led out of the darkness of sin gradually; in the same way as the rescued Chilean miners had to be protected from sunlight and allowed to adjust gradually.

We could go a lot further with this and I’m happy to recommend further reading to anyone who is interested. But the central point is simply that when we read the Bible we need to remember to put on ‘Jesus lenses’, because when we see Jesus, we see God. Without those lenses we are likely to draw wrong conclusions and ideas.
On Bible Sunday I want to challenge and encourage all of you to read and study your Bibles more, taking advantage of all the help which is available (Study notes, commentaries, home group, Roots and Routes courses etc).

Somebody once wrote that ‘The Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.’ (Vance Havner)

Remember your Jesus lenses and remember also that the help of the Holy Spirit is promised to everyone who sincerely wants to know God and follow Jesus (John 16.13-14).

Get stuck into your Bibles and don’t be shy about sharing what you learn with others. The Bible Society is calling tomorrow Take your Bible to work day. (I do that every day, you’ll be pleased to know!) They are encouraging churchgoers to take their Bible to work, to make the point that the Bible is not just for Sunday, it is for every day and every part of our lives.

I pray for each of us here today and for our neighbours, that we would increasingly find this to be true as we discover the treasures of the Bible.