Who's In Charge Here? A Series on Authority
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Authority Bible Study Calendar
Daily Bible Study Menu
A note about online study
My Prayer Today
Heavenly Father, after investing the past week in examining 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and other passages related to the authority of Your written word in our lives, I am even more grateful that You called folks to write down the history of Your people, and the great truths and principles that You wanted us to know for living. I am so grateful that four writers recorded the life of Jesus and shared with us both who He was and the many ways that His life demonstrated that He is, indeed, Your Son. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit today that I may glorify You with all that I am. This I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Bible Verses
2 Timothy 3:15-17
15You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. 17It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do.
The Authority of the Bible and What It Means in Daily Living
All week long we have focused on 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and a couple other Scriptures that remind us that the Bible is God’s written word to us and the final authority for determining what is right and wrong, and what to do in daily life. Today, let’s take a look at the practical implications of God’s word being the final truth for our lives. If all Scripture IS inspired by God as Paul told Timothy, then whatever it says is true, and it is intended to be obeyed in our daily lives. Each of us must decide whether we are going to accept the Bible as truth. While the Bible IS true whether we accept the truth or not, it will have little power to impact our lives until we accept it as truth! The point is obvious. Our parents told us many things that were true as we were growing up, but if we failed to heed the words of truth, we inevitably lived with the consequences. The same is true with the truth of the Bible. For example, God tells us in His word that we are to love Him with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we accept those words as true, and call on the Holy Spirit to empower us to live them out in daily life, then our lives will be radically different than if we fail to accept this teaching and apply it in our lives. Rather than saying that we don’t believe God’s teachings what we often do is selectively believe and obey them. Let’s use the command to love God and neighbor as an example. We may say, “Oh, yes, this is most definitely true,” but then we ask ourselves the questions: “What doers God mean by love? What does He mean by neighbor?” We want to hem and haw to the point that the difficult passages of Scripture become more manageable for us!
When it comes to matters that our before us in our culture today, matters of “choice” or “lifestyle,” God’s word is clear on nearly every matter, and yet we debate and discuss, and try to find ways around His truth, by saying that the Bible is a culturally conditioned book (which is true to some degree, since the writers were to some degree bound by the cultures in which they wrote), and therefore the truth it contains is relative truth—which is not true. When God said that he created male and female and that they were to be fruitful and multiply and to subdue the earth and have dominion over it, for example, He was being unambiguous about His plan for the relationships between men and women. In the fabric of creation, God planned a man and a woman to become “one” in the union of marriage. This precludes homosexual union or “bisexual” union. We don’t need to investigate the various Old and New Testament passages which condemn homosexual activity to see whether they are culturally biased in order to determine whether homosexual activity is right or wrong. We see in the design of creation that it is. The other Scriptures simply stand to clarify that. Some have said, “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, so it must be right.” Such logic is no logic at all. That would be the same as saying, “Jesus never said anything about abortion, so it must be right.” Both activities are condemned as sinful in the Old Testament, and Jesus told us that He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not to destroy them.
When it comes to all the “issues” that have been argued and debated in the last half of the twentieth century and now into the first several years of the twenty-first century, they all boil down to one: biblical authority. If the Bible is the word of God, and the final authority for our faith and daily living then, we must abide by its teachings. If it is not the word of God, then our faith has no roots to hold us from drifting aimlessly through life. While it is no longer popular to contend that God’s word is the truth, unless we hold to that position then everything IS relative in life. The key for us who believe that the Bible IS the word of God, is to be gracious as we share that reality with others. We are to share the truth in humility and love, not pride and hatred. In fact, to demonstrate anything other than humility and love in our relationships and dealings with others is to tell them that we do NOT believe the Bible is the word of God, because throughout the book we are told to demonstrate God’s love to others. The greatest evidence for the Bible being the final authority in life is Christians living out it’s teaching in the power of the Holy Spirit. May we demonstrate such evidence in our lives today—and everyday!