Let God Be True - Bible Overview 2
How do you know the things you know aren’t really the things you don’t know? I mean, sometimes I think I know—sometimes I’m pretty sure I know—but I know better. We’re all just a miscellaneous junk drawer full of stuff we picked up over our life. A big collection of half-baked assumptions based on things we saw on TV, half forgotten school lessons, and Sunday school lessons, things people told us, experiences we’ve had—the world is one great big optical illusion.
Is the dress blue and black or gold and white? Did they say “Yanny” or “Laurel?” Is this a photo of paper plates that are right side up or upside down? Are eggs good for you or bad for you? No one knows.
We can’t trust our eyes. We can’t trust our ears. We can’t trust politicians or the so called experts. We can’t even trust our own memory. Think back to the last time you went to the grocery store. How accurately do you think you could describe the person who was ahead of you in the check-out line? How many details do you remember about the person? What did the magazine headlines say? What color was the floor? What music played while you were there? I think we all know from experience that we can’t really trust our memory.
So why are we so sure about everything? So committed to our opinions? What’s all this confidence in how we see the world based on? It’s not based on experience—because we’ve all been fooled, we’ve all been wrong. We’re all gullible and likely to believe anything, especially if we think we’ll get something out of it.
Word of God I’m going to argue that the only absolute standard of truth, the only thing in this world that we can trust to understand what any of this means and what life is all about is the Word of God.
We have to look at everything through the lens of the Word of God, through the filter of God’s Word, or else we’re not going to really know what we’re looking at. We have to test everything we think we know by what God has told us through His Word. We have to let the light of God’s Word drive away all the darkness and shadows and illusions of our half-baked assumptions and confusing experiences.
Now, most people, if they were completely honest, would pretty much agree with everything I said about how we can’t really trust what we think we know—right up to the point that I mentioned the Bible, they wouldn’t agree about trusting the Bible, because they don’t think we can trust anything. Nothing is absolute, nothing can be trusted; not the Bible, certainly not any kind of theology or doctrine or religion—they don’t trust anything. There’s only “their truth” based on what works for them. Believe whatever you want to believe as long as you don’t hurt anybody, it doesn’t matter what you believe, just believe in something. This is the biggest lie our culture faces these days. It basically destroys the possibility of meaning. Of truth. If there’s no absolute standard, no absolute truth, then life is meaningless and we’re all without hope.
But the Bible tells a very different story. God has given us His Word that life is not meaningless, that it’s not without hope. God’s Word is the lens that we have to look at everything through, and when we do we’ll see that it all points to how He’s saving and restoring the world through Jesus.
Prayer: Father in heaven, have mercy on us. We are so easily confused and disoriented from what You have told us and promised us and revealed to us in Your Word. Have mercy on us, and help us to trust you, to have our faith in You, and to do whatever we can to keep Your Word in front of us. AMEN
So the Bible is the lens we need to look through in order to understand reality. But what’s the lens we need to use in order to understand the Bible? A lot of people have read the Bible and come to some very different conclusions. What makes us think that our particular interpretation is the right one? Any understanding of the Bible has to start with Jesus. No matter what else you hear me say today, hear this: it all points to Jesus. If someone starts thinking some part of the Bible is leading anywhere but to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus—they’re missing the point.
John 5:39 says,
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”
As you read through the Bible always be asking yourself this question: What does this passage mean for a follower of Jesus? Jesus fulfilled the law and commandments and lived a life that was perfectly in line with God’s holiness—all of that pointed to Him. All those Bible characters, those deeply flawed people that God called to do various things in their own time, Jesus is the greater and more perfect version of all of them. He is the better Adam, the better Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Israel, David, Solomon. He is the Angel of the Lord. He is the greater prophet, priest and king. He’s the suffering servant, the Messiah, the Son of God and Son of Man, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So the first lens to read the Bible through, so that we can understand what it means, is that it all points to Jesus. And if we want to understand Jesus, we have to look at His teaching, especially the way He taught us to pray.
I think it helps to look at the whole Bible through the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a pretty solid theological framework to understand just about any passage of Scripture—it’s like a glimpse into the mind of Christ. Let’s break it down, and I’ll show you what I mean, this is really cool:
It starts with the words “Our Father.” God wants a relationship with His people—so much of the Bible is God calling to His people, gathering them to Himself. He wants us to think of Him as our Father.
Hallowed be Thy name. He is holy, His name is holy, and since we are His people, He wants us to say and do things that reflect His holiness. A lot of the Bible is telling us what that’s supposed to look like in our life, and how He promises to make us holy. We’re to be in this world but not of this world.
Thy kingdom come. Jesus came announcing the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. He promises to come again. While we’re waiting, God wants us to establish His kingdom on earth, in every nation, every people group. It was the job of Israel to be a nation of priests and build a house of prayer for all people, and it's the Great Commission of the church to do the same.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God has a will for your life. There are things God wants us to do and things that He doesn’t want us to do. As we read the Bible, we will find out what God expects from us—we’ll find out what our purpose looks like, how to love each other and how to live a life that makes sense.
Give us this day our daily bread. God cares about our needs, our desires, the things we want, our hopes and dreams. The Bible is full of examples of people asking God for stuff and Him giving it to them. You can’t read the Bible without being encouraged about His willingness to answer our prayers.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God forgives. This is the Gospel, the mission of God—He forgives our sins. You can’t read the Bible without finding over and over that 1) there’s such a thing as sin, 2) God won’t stand for it, 3) He goes out of His way to forgive us in spite of it, and 4) He’s extremely serious about us passing that forgiveness onto others. Forgiveness is central to understanding the Bible.
And lead us not into temptation. Lead us away from temptation. There is story after story of people falling for the lies and tricks and empty promises of the world, the flesh and the devil. We’re all tempted. We’re supposed to read these stories in the Bible as examples of what happens when we give into temptation and sin against God. Everything goes bad for us when we give in to temptation.
But deliver us from evil. God is a God who rescues and saves His people, even when they wander away like lost sheep. There are many examples of redemption in the Bible as well as many times when people did not turn to God for deliverance. The story of the Bible is the story of God delivering His people from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. AMEN. There are many passages in the Bible that teach us how to praise and glorify God, give Him thanks, and simply agree with what He has said—which is what AMEN means. When we do this, we are living in the kingdom of God.
These are all familiar ideas. We all know the Lord’s Prayer. We say it every week. That’s why I think it’s a good theological framework to keep in mind while we’re reading through the Bible—no matter what section we find ourselves reading, it’s going to tie into one of those big ideas that Jesus gave us in this amazing prayer.
Another very simple lens for how to understand the Bible is the idea of Law and Gospel. It’s a very Lutheran way of looking at the Scriptures. It basically means we can look at any particular passage of Scripture and ask if it’s something that God promises to do for us, or is it something that God is telling us to do. Law is anything in the Bible that we’re supposed to do, and Gospel is anything in the Bible that God does for us. Since we are “Saved by grace through faith not by works so that no one can boast” it’s important to understand that the things we do are not the things that save us. Salvation is God’s work alone through Jesus. That’s Gospel. So even though God has a lot to say about what we should do and not do, how we should live our lives—we should never confuse those commandments with the way God saves, forgives and restores us. The law can’t save us, no one is good enough—that’s why Jesus did it all for us. Once He calls us to Himself and saves us, rescues us from sin, death, hell and the grave—then He also calls us to live holy lives. God saves us, then we love and serve each other. In response to His mercy, we worship Him and love people.
So as we’re reading the Bible cover to cover over the next year, keep those things in mind. The Bible is the only absolute standard of truth, the only lens in this world that we can use to see what any of this means and what life is all about. And, the only way to understand the Bible is to read it through the lens that it all points to Jesus, what He taught us (like in the Lord’s Prayer), and to not confuse what God does for us, His promise of grace, and the things He expects us to do as we faithfully live our lives.
Test everything you think you know by looking at it suspiciously through God’s Word. Believe what God says before you believe your own opinions, before you believe what anyone else says.
“Let God be true but every man a liar.” Romans 3:4
This exercise of reading through the whole Bible, not skipping any of it, letting it challenge everything we think we know—it’s going to be a different experience every time we do it. When I was 14 years old I started reading through the Bible, it took me a couple years. By the time I finished, I wasn’t an atheist anymore—I was a Christian who wanted to devote my life to telling other people about Jesus. That was a big shift in perspective.
When I finished Bible College, where I had been taught all kinds of things by professors and teachers, I read through the Bible again with a fresh perspective. I held everything I had been taught up against the text of the Scripture verse by verse. Some things had to be unlearned or adjusted a little to return to a more Biblical perspective. Not just theology, but what did it really mean to be a follower of Jesus on this strange warped planet?
I've done this over and over... I'll grow in my faith, learn new things, face new challenges, enter new seasons of life—then return to the Bible and check what I think I know line by line, precept by precept. Always with the idea that the Bible is correct and whatever else I think I know is not.
Now I've been a pastor for five years, I just finished a seminary education—I'm overdue for a checkup. I mean, I’ve read the Bible a lot over the past five years, for classes and to make Bible studies and sermons—but I haven’t taken the time to just read it cover to cover and let God’s Word challenge and course correct. Scripture always changes us.
“Let God be true but every man a liar.”
It doesn’t matter what other people say or what they think—the only thing we can really trust in this world is the Word of God. The best part is how personal it is for you. God has promised you that He wants to save you from all the madness and confusion of this world.
God’s on a mission to save His people. He’s on a mission to save you. To give you hope and comfort, and then to reorient you toward living a life that makes sense and clicks into place with the rest of His creation.
The whole Bible points to the promise of salvation. Salvation that’s only found in Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, the son of Eve, the offspring of Abraham, the Word of God made flesh. You can’t really understand how big a deal this is until you understand the context of the whole Word of God—that’s why I really want you to take the time to read it this year for yourself. You don’t have to live an empty life of meaninglessness, you don’t have to beat your head against the wall trying to figure out how to make life work. God has promised you salvation. Even you. Do you know how to receive His promise? Romans 4:16-17
“the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.”
This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.” Maybe you ought to know something about Abraham, he seems pretty important. Just like with Abraham, saving you is all God’s idea. He’s the one who wants to save you. He’s the one who made the promise. It’s all grace—a free gift—you just receive it by faith. You just believe. You’ll find the pages of the Bible just dripping with God’s grace. Believe, and God will be your Savior through Jesus.
Savior and Lord But Jesus isn’t only going to be your Savior, He’s also going to be your Lord. You can’t have one without the other. He will save you, and then He expects you to do what He says. That’s what it means if Jesus is your Lord—it means you do what He tells you to do.
But you can’t know much about either—Savior or Lord—if you don’t open the Bible and hear the Word of the Lord. It’s all in there: God’s promises. God’s mercy. Hope and meaning and absolute truth. What we ought to be doing and a few things that we shouldn’t do, things that are really bad for us so we oughta knock it off.
NewChurchTX.com/Bible Join me this year in reading through the Bible. Some of us started a couple weeks ago but there’s still plenty of time to jump in, it’s not too late. Maybe you’ve grown a little in your faith over the last few years—maybe you’ve had some experiences that have tested your faith, changed your perspective, maybe you’ve never really thought too much about why you think you know what you know—it’s time for a check up. It’s a good time for us all to return to the Bible and check what we think we know line by line, precept by precept. Always with the confidence that the Bible is correct and whatever else we think we know is not.
How does life work? What’s it for? How can we find meaning, purpose? What should we be doing with our lives? What shouldn’t we be doing? Who are we? What is sin, and what isn’t? What is love, and what isn’t? What does it mean to be holy? What is truth? What is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable—what is worthy of praise? God’s Word is the only way to know these things.
How do you know the things you know aren’t really the things you don’t know?
“Let God be true but every man a liar.”
AMEN