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August 28, 2005
The Holy Spirit and the Prophets of Old
Psalm 145 / Jeremiah 14: 11-16
II Peter 1: 16-21
August 28, 2005
The Bible is a pretty important book, we’d all agree. I don’t know if the Bible is still the number one best seller every year, but it sells by the millions. Many people own more than one copy of the Bible. We have taught generations of our children a little chorus, “The B-I-B-L-E, yes that’s the book for me.”
There are so many translations now of the B I B L E that people who are curious to know what it “really” says buy more than one translation, comparing one with another as they try to figure out what it “really” says. Once we just had the old King James Version. Then everyone knew exactly what it said.
There are some of us kooks who even think it’s important to study the Bible in the languages in which it was written—in order to know what it really says. Here at Faith our Christian education includes classes in Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament. The Bible must be a pretty important book for all of this attention and money to be spent on Bibles.
The Bible is a very important book. Even though the Bible as we have it today is not the same that Joshua had twelve hundred or so years before Jesus was born, what the Lord said to Joshua about the Book of the Law pointed in the direction of the Bible’s importance to us. We read in Joshua 1: 8:
This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.
Do what the Bible says and your way will be prosperous; you’ll be successful. Of course, this success and prosperity will be of the kind God thinks is important. This may not be the same as Wall Street’s idea of success and prosperity.
When Christians think about how important it is to instruct their children in the Bible they often call to mind what Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 6: 4 ff.
. . . these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise . . . And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
This suggests a Bible-saturated home. We update what Moses said about the words that God commanded then to include the New Testament. At every worship service here we always read significantly from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Our worship is saturated with listening to the Bible. I insist on this because this is how we listen to God speak to us most basically.
The Bible is very important. I have heard Christian friends say wistfully, “If only people would live by the Bible . . .” It is an expression of longing that assumes we’d all be better people if we lived by the Bible.
I bring up these matters about the Bible this morning because we have come to that phrase in the Nicene Creed that continues to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. The Creed reminds us that the Holy Spirit “spoke by the prophets.” This is the only place in this ancient Creed, the first complete statement of faith composed by Christians, in which something is said pertaining to the Bible. By contrast how VERY much more we find in later statements of faith about the Bible in our Book of Confessions.
For those of you who might not be aware of the books we consider important in the Presbyterian Church, let me remind you that there are three of them. First is the Bible. Second is the Book of Confessions. Third is the Book of Order that is a wise and biblical guide to doing our church business, offering worship, and caring for disciplinary problems. The Book of Confessions includes a record of the thinking of Christians since the Reformation about important matters to our faith. And nearly all of these confessions include detailed remarks about the importance of the Bible. “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” written in the 17th century, is perhaps most basic to how we Presbyterians think of the Bible.
But soaring high above the other any other authority that we accept is the Bible. It is our authority because it contains the books inspired by God the Holy Spirit.
The two key New Testament passages that underscore the centrality of the Bible for us are II Peter 1: 21, which we just read together, that ends with saying, “no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved [or carried along] by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” We assume that this pertains to the New Testament as well as to the Old Testament.
The benefit of Scripture is outlined by the Apostle Paul in II Timothy 3: 16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Now I would be less than forthright if I didn’t remind us all that when the Nicene Creed speaks of the Holy Spirit speaking by the mouth of the prophets it does not refer only to the written words we find in the Bible. There were prophets in Old Testament times that never wrote a thing, but what they said carried the punch of the Holy Spirit’s authority.
You remember a prophet named Nathan who spoke to King David after his sin of adultery and murder involving Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. There is no book in the Old Testament telling us all Nathan said under the Holy Spirit’s impulse. Elijah and Elisha were prophets who spoke but didn’t write anything. Not all prophets were like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the authors of the twelve Minor Prophets. What these non-writing prophets said as the Holy Spirit moved them was as important then, and very much more specific, as what the Bible says to us today.
When we think about the Holy Spirit as the One who breathed through the words the prophets spoke, or as the One who “carried them along” as they wrote, we don’t all think the same thing, and some of us may think quite inadequately about what this means.
At first what was most important was that people listened and obeyed what the prophets said. It would have seemed worse than odd if the ancient Israelites examined every word of the prophets to discover how the Holy Spirit moved them to speak, and then put these words up on a pedestal to be looked at as an icon. No. Listen to the prophets and obey them.
Increasingly in the past four centuries other issues have clouded the importance of obeying the Bible. These issues have arisen as Christians argued about how the Bible was inspired, and the most “conservative” elevated the Bible as an icon to talk about and look at. But meanwhile the authority of the Bible over the lives of Christians became less and less evident. I find it interesting that the Bible now seems mostly seen as a law-book pertaining to sexual matters of a certain kind and a guide to prosperity. Does God now say nothing more than this in His Word?
We don’t know exactly how the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets of old. Christians sometimes argue about the level of involvement of the writers in what they wrote. Did the Holy Spirit dictate every word? Were the prophets only stenographers? What are we to make of the evidence of different personalities in the various writers in the Bible? Apparently it isn’t important that we know this because the Bible doesn’t tell us.
It is quite possible to be very fascinated with the Bible as a God-breathed book and rarely read it. Its authority is actually lost in a fog of ignorance.
In fact, the remarkable ignorance of the Bible among many “Bible-believing Christians” suggests that these good folk are more concerned about making clear that they believe “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” than in reading what God said that they believe that settles it--in the Bible. Ironically, although the Bible sells well, it remains a closed book for many Christians. If I am very concerned to emphasize that the Bible is completely inspired by God but if I don’t read it, of what use is it to me?
I know there are good reasons for not reading it. Many of the books of the Bible are hard to understand. Some are loaded with ancient history or obscure symbolism or lists of names and details of the sacrifices that are very uninteresting. But instead of generation after generation wading through it all, often being surprised with nuggets of guidance found here and there, generation after generation we have not read it so that it becomes more obscure with time. At one time the Bible and the works of Josephus that paraphrased the Old Testament were the two books on many bookshelves in English Puritan homes.
I would urge you to try to begin a systematic reading of the Bible, even the difficult parts. My older brother, a Presbyterian deacon, began this two years ago. How often our Saturday morning conversations begin with something new he’s discovered.
I might say that the trickle-up effect of Christians who believe the Bible is the Word of God but don’t read their Bibles is that we pastors can get away with murder in what we say from the pulpit.
It started out that the purpose of the sermon was to explain more deeply, to teach more deeply than the ordinary Bible-reader could learn from her daily reading of the Bible. Once upon a time, and I suppose ideally, the reason why pastors studied the Bible in the languages in which it was written was to provide this deeper teaching to their hungry people. But as Christians stopped reading their Bibles, we pastors were let off the hook.
Pastors too stopped reading their Bibles—even in English. Pastors read magazines instead. All that came to be expected of pastors was that they be interesting, that they give entertaining religious discourses that inspire their people to go out during the week and get one for the Gipper.
Even though the Bible is not widely read, selected portions of it that inform certain points of view, have led Christians to argue and to separate from one another on the basis of their differences. This points to a kind of problem illustrated in the short passage Will read to us from the prophet Jeremiah. Strong personalities often dominate the points of view that make Christians argue and separate from one another. Strong personalities can take a quotation from the Bible and make it say whatever they want. This is not the same thing as hearing the authoritative Word of God in the Bible.
Jeremiah describes a problem that the Jews faced in the latter days of the Kingdom of Judah. People respected prophets then in the way people respect pastors today. There were prophets whose words carried a lot of influence because of the strength of their personalities.
In the last day of the Kingdom of Judah, even though the Assyrians were surrounding them, powerful enemies who had been successful in crushing countries larger and more powerful than the Kingdom of Judah, some popular prophets put their ears to the wind to find out what people wanted to hear, and told them what they wanted to hear. People wanted to hear the prophets say, “Don’t worry. The enemy will not win against us.” These prophets quoted Scripture, reminding the people how God fought successfully all their battles for them—in far different times.
When Israel was young and still finding its way, God defended them miraculously. Gideon used a small force of three hundred men to route the fearful Midianites. Joshua toppled the walls of Jericho with the blast of trumpets—because God was the great force behind those trumpet blasts.
But times had changed. And God’s people had let themselves succumb to spiritual and moral decay. Every time this happened God would say, in effect, “OK, so you have no interest in Me? Then I’ll leave you to care for yourselves.” And they’d get pounced on by their enemies like mice before cats. Then they would pray to God, “Lord, what’s wrong?” And true prophets would say, “Get right with God again.” And they would, for a time. And on and on the cycle went.
In the days of Jeremiah there were many prophets who told lies, but the people believed the prophets that knew which side of their bread was buttered. They knew people like to hear nice things. So they told them what they wanted to hear. But what they wanted to hear was false. It was a pack of lies. They said, “Peace, peace, when there was no peace.”
Peace is a good word. The Apostle Paul calls God, “the God of peace.” But there are times when peace is not God’s message. What is important for us is to obey what God says to us. Not everything is equally clear. But what is clear is for us to obey.
In the movie, “Chariots of Fire,” Eric Liddell’s dad says to a friend as they walk back home from church, “The Church is not a democracy. God is an autocrat.” In a way this is true. The opinions of the people are not the words of God. It is understandable that we should want to hear pleasing words Sunday after Sunday rather than to be confronted with the Word of God that points out where we are falling short of living out the way of Jesus. But it is the prophet’s duty, and the pastor’s duty to say, “Thus says the Lord.” It is my duty to say this based on faithful study of the Scriptures in which the timeless truth of God as it bears on our lives is made plain. It is then our duty to take this to heart and appropriate to ourselves the correction and guidance we hear.
I sometimes become weary with earnest Christians who are greatly fascinated with talking about the importance of the Bible, about how God inspired it, about how it is God’s very Word to us—but who linger in disobedience. It is our chief duty to hear and to obey. It’s remarkable how trying to hear and obey arouses humility in us, while lingering on matters of controversy arouses arrogance as we defend our points of view.
I pray that we may be hearers of the Word of God, and then doers of it—so that we may be prosperous and have good success—as God sees prosperity and success.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for making known your will through people for the benefit of people like us. Give us ears to hear and hearts to obey that we may find the pleasure and prosperity of your ways.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at August 28, 2005 09:30 AM