12/11/55

Scripture: John 5: 30-44.

Text: John 5: 39; "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness to me."

From the little town of Hippo, in Northern Africa, there came in the 4th century of our Lord a man whose name was Augustine. In years to follow, he was one of those who so profoundly influenced the thinking of many people as to change the course of history. He is often known as Saint Augustine. -- But he was no saint as a boy or a youth. His father was a pagan until late in life. His Christian mother worried over him greatly. And he gave her cause for worry. He was part of a gang of boys who pulled off such stunts as raiding a neighbor’s pear tree late at night, stripping off the green fruit and discarding it, just for the deviltry of plaguing the owner.

While he was a youth, he took a mate without marrying her, and became father of a son, born out of wedlock. His mother hated the whole affair so much that finally he sent the girl back home. But then he took someone else without getting married. His poor, distracted mother followed him from place to place, worrying over him and praying for him, until finally he began to worry about himself. His efforts to support himself and his dependents, by teaching, were only partially successful. But more than that, he came to realize that his life was wrong and much of his inner attitude was wrong. He wasn’t headed, after all, in the direction he wanted to go.

About that time he learned of the severe ascetic life of the monks, and he was astonished that people could live with such severe self-control. Full of worry about himself and his failure to control and rightly direct his own life, he went off in a garden and beat his breast and tore his hair in despair. It was queer, he thought, that when he told his hand to beat his breast or tear his hair, it did it. But when he told his mind to do something, it wouldn’t. In the midst of all this emotional distress, he heard a child’s voice in a house nearby. The child was repeating: "Take up and read. Take up and read." Going over to a seat, he found a copy of the New Testament. He took it up, opened it and began to read. It happened to be at the place where Paul had written to the Romans: "Not in rioting and drunkenness --- but put on the Lord Jesus and do not follow the desires of the flesh." [Romans 13: 13,14]. He surrendered his own mind and will to the power that Paul was talking about.

Later he wrote one of the classics in the literature of all time, Confessions --- great because they describe not only his own pilgrimage through deviltry and unhappiness to the serenity and strength of grace in Christ, but the same spiritual experience which so many others find in their own lives. He says: "I bowed my neck to the yoke that is easy, and my shoulders to the burden that is light, Lord Jesus, my strength and my Redeemer."

Most of this wayward living, and his eventual experiential salvation, was across the Mediterranean Sea on the European side. Now he returned to Hippo, in Africa. On the way, his mother sickened and died. And soon after he got back his son also died. But he was now able to live without bitterness. He wanted to enjoy the serene life of a monk, but he was called to the arduous and difficult life of a bishop in his own home town. Suffice it to say, again, that he became one of the truly great and influential souls of the time, and of all times, our own included. And his Confessions are good, solid reading for thoughtful people everywhere.

Today is marked on many a Christian calendar as Universal Bible Sunday. And the American Bible Society has chosen for its poster theme, in this Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season, a picture of the opened Holy Bible above a reaching, receiving hand, (you see it on page 4 of today’s church bulletin) with the inscription: "Take, read." It is the quotation from Augustine’s saving experience in that garden of despair.

And it is a word to the people of our generation, today. There is so much of anxiety and despair. Problems and dangers and raw evils loom so large in individual lives and all over the world. And a voice says again, "Take up and read. Take up and read" from the timeless Bible. For therein is eternal truth, ancient and modern, written in the lives of men of the past, and in the spiritual language of souls of our day and of all time.

Christian people take pride in saying that the Bible is the world’s best-selling book. And from the sales standpoint, we are justified in the remark; it is the world’s best seller. But, while the numbers of copies sold is very high indeed, the Bible is also one of the world’s sorely neglected books. It should, and could, be a lamp to our understanding, and a light upon our path. It is neither, if it not read, studied, perceived and understood. Thousands do read it, often and faithfully and regularly. Other thousands own copies which they never take time to read. It is priceless treasure. But it is buried treasure unless we take it up and read!

It is even possible to read this Book of books, and yet miss its treasures. Jesus pointed this out quite explicitly on the occasion when he healed a man at Bethesda. For thirty eight years, the man had been victim of his infirmity. For a long time, he had lain on his cot at the Bethesda pool, hoping to be the one who might be cured by a plunge into its waters. But he had no one to put him in the pool at the right time. To this frustrated life came Jesus one Sabbath Day, with the command: "Rise, take up your bed, and walk." Certain strict Jews, who knew their law down to its fine points, met this fellow carrying away his cot. They reminded him immediately that it was unlawful to carry any such burden on the Sabbath -- which day it happened to be.

The newly-cured man answered them that he had been made whole by a man who had then told him to carry away his bed. So the legalists then turned their attention to finding out who had told this man to break the law! The fellow himself didn’t know. But, later, Jesus ran across him in the temple, and urged him to avoid any further sin, lest something worse happen to him that what he had already experienced. Whereupon he told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him. The law-minded Jews were not impressed with the cure. But they were impressed and incensed at the labor of carrying the cot on the Sabbath. They knew it was wrong, because they had read it so in their scripture. And so they plotted to kill Jesus. [John 5: 2-18].

It could happen today. In fact, it is the sort of thing that does happen today, as it did then. Those fellows were ardent seekers after truth, but they had not found it. Jesus said to them: "You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." [John 5: 39-40].

There are many who read the Bible, and confess with humility that they do not understand what they read in it. Others read, and come away with curious beliefs that do more harm than good. If one reads that in early days of the church it was predicted that Christians might handle snakes without being harmed, this then becomes a test to some minds. Faith in God demands that one handle poisonous snakes to prove that it can be done by the believers. If one of the snake-handlers is bitten by a snake and dies of the venom, it just shows that he did not have enough faith.

Or, one reads that wise old King Solomon had many wives. It’s in the Bible, isn’t it? So, if you believe the Bible, go thou and do likewise -- at least until the government catches up thee and puts thee in jail!

One can add others. Here is the discovery that early Christians spoke in unfamiliar tongues. And so, if you have faith enough, you or I should be able to do so, also. There have actually been instances of people whose literal reading had so convinced them, that they set sail for foreign lands to preach the gospel, bully expecting the Lord of life to fill their mouths, if not their understanding, with the language of those to whom they went in all their unpreparedness. When they could not do so (for of course it takes months and years to become proficient in a tongue with which one has not grown up) they were not only dismayed and disillusioned, but stranded and "broke." Wiser, well-trained missionaries of the several denominations had to take up quiet collections out of their meager resources to send the poor stupid ones back home.

These, and other such misconceptions, are not the treasures of the Bible! Well, how then shall one find the treasure?

1) For one thing, have a right method of search. It is indispensable to realize how the Bible came to be. It didn’t just appear out of the skies like a bolt of lightning from a Creator who suddenly created a miracle. It is a historical document covering hundreds of years of chronology; the expression of many writers who earnestly recorded their observations, experiences, remembrances and convictions. Its account is full of the sins of man as well as his salvation. It reflects the times in which each of its books was written, as well as the spirit that describes life timelessly. It is description of the slow emerging of man’s understanding of God and His revelation.

Once in a while some verse, or story, of the Bible leaps at one’s understanding with newly understood meaning and inspiration. But no single verse or story should be taken out of its context, lest the reader jump off the deep end of some snap judgment that the Scripture did not intend at all. The acceptance of some kind of historical approach is essential to anything like a reliable understanding of holy scripture. And it is richly rewarding to the student who reads it in this frame of mind.

There are simple and sincere folk who believe that it is sacrilege not to hold to belief in the literal inspiration of every word in the Bible as the Word of God --- every word of the tough old "begat" chapters just as fully as the Shepherd’s Psalm and the Sermon on the Mount. Such interpretation leads one into the same fix as that of the earnest but simple old preacher upon whom some boys of his Sunday School class played a mean trick. (I may have told this story before). He made what proved to be a tactical error in telling them the lesson on which he expected to preach on Sunday. Those brats got out the worn old Bible from which he usually read in the pulpit and glued together some of the pages from which he would be reading, in a mischievous attempt to upset the old man. But they reckoned without the naiveté of his faith.

For the next morning he read from the bottom of one page, "When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was" and here he turned the page and kept on reading "one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood and covered with pitch inside and out." He was a bit puzzled, so he stopped and read the passage again. Then he raised his eyes to his little flock and said, "My friends, this is the first time I ever read this in the Bible, but I accept it as evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made."

Well, it takes a more questioning and understanding mind to gather the treasures of the Bible! Even the divine inspiration of the Bible becomes more apparent when one perceives the gradual, progressive revelation of God to the slow understanding of man struggling up through the ages.

2) The treasure of the Bible is durable. Moth and rust do not corrupt it; time and times do not change it. Adversity only makes it more precious. It stands in spite of cruel and vicious forces arrayed against it. Despite tyrants and scoffers; despite the foolishness of many of its readers as well, it endures. It is read in over a thousand languages and dialects. It endures, because it is of God and of that which is eternal.

3) It is instructive. Here we learn truth about ourselves, about our relationship with fellow man and with God. We learn that God loves us, not with pampering, but rather with a mighty love. We learn of His warnings against our sin, and its penalty. We learn that God does not choose favorites, but that each and all are precious persons in His sight, and that all "stand on the level" at the foot of the cross. We learn all this: not from isolated proof texts, but from the whole spirit of the Word which gives life.

4) We find in the Bible, a book of assurance and fortification. Jesus turned to it during his own sore temptations. "It is written," said he to the tempter, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." [Matthew 4: 4; Deuteronomy 8: 3]. He knew it from the book of Deuteronomy. "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve." [Matthew 4: 10; Deuteronomy 10: 20]. "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." [Matthew 4: 7; Deuteronomy 6: 16]. With this kind of fortification he turned aside the temptations to get easy bread, to bow down to evil powers, to make a display and spectacle of soaring down unharmed from some temple pinnacle.

5) The Bible is also a book of worship. Prayer is seen and experienced as at the center of Christian living. No better devotional help can be found than in the Bible. No devotional booklet, excellent and useful though many of them are, is sufficient to replace the Bible. They are effective only to the degree in which they spring in spirit or substance or both, from the Bible.

So, [at this blessed season of Good News], ask yourself again: "Do you have a Bible? Is it read?" Take it up and Read. For out of the message of its pages are the issues of life, and salvation unto eternity. It is the gift of God to us.

---------------------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 11, 1955.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, June 5, 1960.