Pastor Stuart D. Robertson Sermon Archive
Sermon: November 08, 2009
“Why Have the Bible?”
Psalm 90
Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 8
Matthew 5: 13-20
I haven’t preached in a morning worship service since the last Sunday in April 2007. As I prepared for this morning’s sermon I confess to considerable fear and trepidation! This morning I was still wondering, “What really should I say?”
I chose my sermon topic, ‘Why Have the Bible?” because it’s an important question. And of the six courses I’m been teaching at Purdue since I ceased to be your pastor five of them have to do with the Bible so I thought maybe it would be pertinent to offer you something on this question.
All of you would say you believe the Bible is God’s Word. But we all would probably confess that as important as the Bible is we don’t read it as much as we should. Maybe there are parts of it we’ve never read, or if we did, we read them pretty quickly because they were hard to understand or seemed to have little to do with your life.
We read three portions from the Bible this morning, from the Book of Psalms, from the Book of Nehemiah, and from the Gospel of Matthew.
The 90th Psalm is dear to me for several reasons. The Scottish poet Robert Burns, wrote a paraphrase of its first six verses I have repeated at Scottish dinners in town. “O Thou the first the greatest Friend of all the human race, whose strong right hand has ever been their stay and dwelling place. Before the mountains heav’d their heads beneath Your forming hand; before this pondrous globe arose at thy command. That pow’r that stays and still upholds this universal frame for ever and unending days has ever been the same.” This is just one example, precious to those of Scottish descent of how the Bible infiltrates our literature and vocabulary. We speak Bible words and ideas not even realizing it.
I’ve never intentionally memorized all of Psalm 90 but most of it has found a place in my heart. It is the only psalm that tradition tells us was written by Moses.
I think often of verse twelve: “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” I pray often, “Lord, teach me how to think.” We are what we think. Our thoughts prompt what we say, what we do. So we like Moses need to pray often, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
When I remember that the one who prayed this was the great Lawgiver of Israel, Moses, it gives me pause. According to the tradition Moses composed the first five books of the Bible. It was these words, or some of them, about which the Lord spoke to Joshua, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.” Why? “For then you will make your way prosperous and then you shall be successful?” Do you think God had in mind the prosperity Gospel peddled incessantly by TV preachers today?
We need to be wise to know what is real prosperity and real success. I remember often praying when I was a pastor as I saw church growth treated like an industry, “Lord, give us the kind of success as a church that matters.”
Then Moses prayed that God would establish the work of his hands. That is, that his life’s work was worthwhile. All of us hope our lives are lived in a worthwhile way, that our work, whatever it was, was indeed what God called us to do. We may find ourselves praying with Moses, “Establish the work I did.”
Certainly Moses’ life’s work was worthwhile. He had no way of knowing his efforts produced the first installment of Holy Scripture. Indeed, the rabbis taught that even God studied the Torah, the five Books of Moses in heaven.
Moses’ began a heritage of listening intently to God’s word that was to be one of the duties of the people of Israel. In Deuteronomy 31 we read that “Moses wrote this law . . . and he commanded them, ‘At the end of every seven years, at the . . . Feast of Booths . . . you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing . . . and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that [your] children who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God.”
Before the identity of the Israelites was established as a nation Moses made the point clear that obeying the Torah, the Teaching of God, was an essential part of their life as a people.
seven years might seem not often enough for the people of Israel to hear these words so as to obey them.
But this was NOT the only exposure they would have to the Teaching of God—teaching is what Torah means.
Twice earlier in Deuteronomy we read that in the home-life of every Israelite family this teaching of God should be echoed throughout the day. First in Deuteronomy 6: “These words . . . you shall diligently teach to your children, and you 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
Every inHebrewisoften translatedobey. ____Theword forhear
bind them as a sign upon your hand . . . and as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” The same thing is echoed in Deuteronomy 11. Why?
Well we can guess, can’t we? Because it is when we are exposed to something often it makes an impact on us. Families in which the children hear the Bible read a lot learn what the Bible teaches. When they see that obeying the teaching of the Bible is important to their parents, the idea is not lost on the children.
I have been teaching biblical Hebrew at Purdue for ten years now. This course is enjoying increased enrollments each year. This semester I had 27 students sign on in August for first year Hebrew and only one fell by the way— petrified at those pigeon tracks that read from right to left. Only two of these that I know of are going into the ministry. Why would so many engineering, chemistry, mathematics, sociology, history, nursing and communications majors, sociology majors want to learn to read the Old Testament in Hebrew?
It is because many earnest young folk realize that there is something exceedingly precious in this Book that we have received. It is so precious that it is worth the bother of trying to learn to read it in the language in which it was given, even if that language is written in those peculiar letters that read from right to left. This is an idea that is catching on.
I’m so glad that here at Faith Church you have the opportunity to learn New Testament Greek in Sunday School. hope many of you will take advantage of this privilege.
I think that there is more than one reason why these young folk are so eager to learn to read and study the biblical in its original languages. First, they’ve read it a long time and seen multiple translations that sometimes read quite differently. They want to know, “What does the Bible really say?” Second, they see it as a way of honoring God to take the effort to learn to read the Bible in this way.
But it is the first question that really drives them. I’ve pondered this matter of all the translations. An issue of the Duke University Divinity School bulletin was devoted to evaluating several of the translations that appeared in the twentieth century and one of the conclusions was that some of them seemed to target a particular theological audience. They were aimed at sectors of conservative Christians that wanted to feel they understood the Bible better. So, we might say that these translations air-brushed the Bible to make it seem more attractive to the reader.
What has happened as translations multiply is that the translators have air-brushed the picture so as to take away the wrinkles in the text. When you read the Bible in its original languages you’ll see at the bottom of the page footnotes that show the readings found in other manuscripts of the Bible. Sometimes it’s really hard to make sense of the Hebrew and Greek text. So we polish up what is rough when we translate it, even if the polishing up renders something not quite what the original version meant. If it sounds about right, that’s OK.
It is somewhat like what takes place when we go to the photo-studio for family pictures. The photographer takes the image she found on her digital camera and spruces it up with a technique that used to be called air-brushing. So grandpa and grandma look at the proofs and see that they don’t have as many wrinkles in the picture as they see when they look in the mirror. And mom and dad look nearly as young as in their high school pictures and little Charlie and Sarah look like absolute cherubs— no hint of the tantrums thrown the morning before.
The old King James Version was a wonderful translation made in 1611, quite literal, that served many generations of Christians. I grew up on it, and its cadences still seem to me the “right way” to hear the Bible in English. Its principle defect was that its translators didn’t have access to the many very old manuscripts of the Bible that became available in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, they knew nothing of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947. Some people still swear by the KJV and think the KJV is the way God gave it all to Moses and the prophets. But people in the twentieth century don’t talk like people talked in the 17th century.
So in the mid-twentieth century the Revised Standard Version appeared that made use of manuscripts that became available after the King James Version was translated. But afterward it was published many Christians didn’t like the wording of some its passages so they prepared translations that they liked better. And so the twentieth century saw multiple translations of the Bible appear in which the text was more pleasing to particular groups of Christians. Some of the changes had to do with inclusive language. A lot of it has to do with what is thought to be a better way to express the meaning of the Bible. Sometimes it seems the translations try to protect theological viewpoints.
When you read the Bible in the languages it came to us none of this is important. Instead you have to really think to see what those unusual words and sentence patterns mean. Before we read Scripture in church we offer a prayer that God will illumine the page that we read, to help us understand it so as to obey it. How much more this prayer is needed before you tackle the text in Hebrew or Greek. And I found, over the years, that the hard work of listening to God’s word in its original language meant that I listened more intently.
When we realize how the next has been passed on for thousands of years, and that the script in which Moses wrote was not the same script Israelites in David’s time read the Torah, and the script used in David’s time was not the same as the way of writing found now in the Hebrew Bible you may get some idea of what went in to the transmission of the Bible. You can’t help but realize the miracle of our having this sacred book at all. No other sacred text from ancient times has been preserved so completely as the Bible.
In our New Testament reading this morning we listened to Jesus say, “Till heaven and earth pass away not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law till all is accomplished.” The iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. The dot, ______ refers to the little hook found at the top and bottom of this letter.
Jesus was passing on a teaching that began with Moses. It continued with the prophet Isaiah who said that the word that proceeds from God’s mouth is like the rain and snow that come down from heaven, watering the earth. “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” We remember the words of the Psalmist, “Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119: 89).
When Jesus, Isaiah, and the Psalmist refer to God’s word, I think they don’t just mean the Bible. Remember “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament His handiwork.” All nature, without words, is part of the way God speaks to us. We love to sing, “Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.”
Not only that but the Bible itself lets us know that the acts of God in history are part of God’s communication to us.
We believe that if we earnestly ask God for wisdom He will give it to us. Some people go so far as to say, “God spoke to me.”
But the Bible itself is perhaps the most specific part of God’s word to us.
Jesus spoke of the Old Testament when He taught that not an iota nor a dot would pass away till it was accomplished. So it was important to pass on every smallest letter and the smallest parts of each letter of the Torah, the teaching of God’s word. Moses tried to get this going in ancient Israel. In the spring, I will teach for the third time a course on early interpreters of the Bible. Part of this course shows how later written parts of the Bible interpret earlier written parts of the Bible. This shows that to some extent what Moses taught was followed.
But when you read the historical books of the Old Testament you read very few references to the five Books of Moses. What happened? I wonder how much the ancient Jews read it. In fact, the two places where we do read about the Torah being read it comes as a surprise to the people.
During the reign of King Josiah, a copy of the Book of the Law was found in the Temple, hidden away in the treasury. When he heard the written Law of God had been found he didn’t know what it was. The Bible? What’s that? The high priest found Huldah, a lady prophet who told him what it was. Then King Josiah had it read publicly to a command gathering of all the people in Jerusalem. They heard it and joined the king in promising to keep the commandments of God with all their heart.
Not long after the Jews were taken into exile, and after seventy years permitted to return to rebuild their temple that had been destroyed. After the temple and the city wall of Jerusalem were completed the event happened that we read about this morning in Nehemiah 8. All the people of Jerusalem and its suburbs were gathered inside the square before the Watergate to listen to a reading of the Torah, their Bible. Ezra the great teacher read from the Bible from early morning until midday. Most of thse that listened didn’t understand it because they no longer understood Hebrew. Yet, it was very important to hear. Numerous elders mingled with the people and translated what they heard into the language they understood. And thus was born the first translation of the Old Testament.
The response to this reading and translating of the Bible was astounding. All the people wept. Why? It seems they wept because they had not heard this before and knew this was a great loss. It was a day of mourning.
But Ezra told them not to weep but to rejoice, to feast and make merry. Why? Because you have heard and understood the words that were read to you from the Bible. It is good that we have a coffee hour after church so that we can get together and be happy together that we have heard and understood the teaching of God.
And so we have the Bible, restored to the Jewish people in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah and preserved ever since. What did Jesus mean by saying that every smallest letter and part of the smallest letter of the Law would be accomplished?
The Bible isn’t made up entirely of commandments to be obeyed or prophecies to be fulfilled. It has a lot of other kinds of material in it. It has stories. It has some stories, in fact, that don’t seem all that edifying. It has poetry and parables. It has rules about offering sacrifices in the Old Testament that maybe most of us think aren’t very pertinent to life so we skip over them. It tells of commands God made to exterminate Israel’s enemies. Understandably such commands of God are hard for us to understand. How could a good God command His people to wipe out every last man, woman, and child of the Amelakites?
All of this will be accomplished. What does that mean?
The Law of God is being accomplished in us when we obey the Ten Commandments, or when we pray with Moses for wisdom. The Word of God is being accomplished when try to obey Jesus’ teaching to love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. When we trust that Jesus died for our sins and gratefully live in obedience to everything He taught that we understand, the Law of God is being accomplished.
I think God’s word is being accomplished when the overall effect of the Bible makes its impress on us so that we have a humble attitude before God. The very difficulty of understanding parts of the Bible pummels us into submission before God. We can look at difficult passages and either say, “I don’t believe it,” or “There’s no way God said that.” Or we can say, ‘Boy, it’s hard to understand what God intends for me from this.” I think the latter way of thinking not only makes sense but may be part of God’s design in offering us in Scripture those parts that are bewildering to us.
Third, I think God’s intentions for this world are hinted at in Scripture and are being accomplished in ways we’ll never recognize until the end of time.
When Jesus said all would be accomplished I am suspicious that He had in mind something that does not depend on our ability to understand the Bible. Indeed, I am confident that in ways none of us can understand in the warp and woof of the Bible, including the many parts of it we cannot understand, the purposes of God are spread before us. Some of them we may understand, but we are not saved by what we understand correctly. We are saved by grace alone, through trust alone.
So our biggest task as Christians is to live before God, one by one, with a heart well disposed toward God, toward others, and toward ourselves.
Thus we sing in Charles Wesley’s great hymn,
Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
In the first two chapters of Genesis two different sets of words are used to describe God’s work of creation. In chapter one the two words are created and make. In chapter two the two words are from and build. The word used to describe God’s making of Eve from Adam’s rib is “build.” God built Eve from Adam’s side. I see a useful progress here. God began by creating and making us. Then His project was to form and build us.
What is God trying to build in us? A home for Himself. In Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the Temple he noted that if heaven and earth can’t contain God, how could a temple made with hands. But the place where God really wants to live is in you and me. But God won’t impose Himself on us. He wants our welcome. If we are to welcome God into us we must offer to him a humble and contrite spirit.
In our competitive and often angry world it seems that humility and a contrite spirit is a bad idea. Instead, go on the attack. Defend the truth as you see it against all enemies. But if you and I have such a spirit, God will not feel at home in us. And in the end those whose idea of right thinking is to attack all who are their enemies will self-destruct. But if God is at home in our hearts, giving us wisdom, giving us His peace even in a troubled time, then God will be accomplishing in us exactly what He wants and that will give us peace even in troubled times.
Pastor Emeritus Stuart Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 11:03 AM