12/14/58

Scripture: (Read Luke 3: 1-18)

The Bible is for us -- here and now! All of the Bible is for us to have, to read, to use.

Just now, we are especially conscious of the stories of Jesus’ birth. They occur primarily in two books of the New Testament (Matthew and Luke). There are other parts of the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament, which shed light on the hope of people for a Messiah, a Savior, and on the conviction of many that the Messiah came in the person of Jesus Christ.

Of course this is only one of the multitude of treasures in these Scriptures. And these treasures are not alone just a store of helpful hints, or even something stronger, to be brought out by some preacher or teacher, when we need them (like the prescriptions of a doctor, from the available sources of drugs and treatments, for some particular malady of ours). They are treasures available to every reader who lives, and thinks, and searches, and uses life’s resources. The Bible is an “every day” book. It is the word of life, for living people, in living situations.

Some years after the birth of Jesus, the word of life came to John, son of Zechariah and cousin of Jesus. Part of that word was the stirring of John’s own conscience, and consciousness. Part of it was his knowledge of the prophets of the Old Testament. He knew his Bible well enough so that he was aware of its word of righteousness to him, and through him to others who would hear him.

John not only knew the word, he preached it. And a great many folk went out to the wilderness, where he was, to hear it. Fortified with what he had learned, John could pass on to others the distillation of what he had read and learned, for application to their own lives.

To people who had been selfish, he admonished them to share. To tax collectors for the Roman government, who came to be baptized, he said, “Collect no more than is appointed you.” In other words, “Stop living by graft.” To soldiers who practice plundering, he said: “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

Well, people like John in the Bible, speak like that today, to all of us, unless we be too neglectful, or too proud to know our need of the word of truth.

Now some of this comes to mind because of the fact that, in December, comes Universal Bible Sunday. And that Sunday is today, when we honor and especially emphasize, our Christian Scriptures. It may be that Sunday is not the best day for this special emphasis. Perhaps it suggests that the Bible is a Sunday book. Perhaps the observance, or reminder, should be put on Monday or Thursday, or some other day of the week to remind us that the Bible is for us not only on Sunday, but also, and especially, for us every day of the week.

The Bible is a thing of beauty -- often bound better than most books. It is rather decorative to have on the shelf or the table. It has aesthetic value; it has sentimental value; it has moral value; it surely has religious value. But aren’t all of these values treated by us as the frills, or periphery of actual living? If we read the Bible, is it not on the day of rest, or in the time of rest at the end of our busy day? We do not usually refer to it while our noses are bent to the grindstone of daily duty. When we do get to reading it, we may be looking primarily for its beauties and its comforting assurances.

When you and I come directly to it, this view of the Bible is inaccurate. The Bible is not a frill, an extra, a fanciness. It is not just for extra reading if we get time. For it speaks to us at our busiest, when we work hardest, try hardest, suffer most, become most aware of the greatness of living.

The Bible is about living people when they are most alive. It is important to us in the way we live and the way we die. The Bible’s news is not an extra, added attraction for living; it is the principal feature -- the main show. It is about what we are all about.

If we have lost hold on any sense of the Bible’s immediate and urgent importance to everything we do, the biggest single reason for our loss is that we have misunderstood the character of the Bible.

We hear it said, and so we say, that the Bible is the Word of God. And then we stand in awe of the book, and of everybody and everything in it.

Somebody holds up the Book in his hand and shouts, “The Bible says ---” and so on. And we say, “Yes, I guess it does. And of course that is gospel truth.” And then go on about our business. We put the characters of the Bible on pedestals, like a row of statues. And since we do not live on pedestals, we figure that these characters do not have much to do with our everyday living. So we save them and read about them when we are not busy.

And of course the whole tone of the Bible is so elevated that we have to be in the mood before we can rise to its meditations. Isn’t that the way we figure it? A lot of the Bible’s people are so godly as to be divine. And so they are far beyond the humdrum in which we live. Is not the Bible so much about the good that it is a bit goody-goody? Of course it still is something to be read, and even discussed. But it seems pretty distant from the practical, everyday urgencies which are our first concern.

If that is your attitude toward the Bible, it is high time someone disabuses you of a serious misconception. The people in the Bible are not all godly. Many of them, very many, are not even good. They are people. They were people before they were Bible people. And they are still people though they are now in the book -- sometimes good, often bad, perhaps indifferent, but all people.

There are heroes among them; but they are like most heroes --- admirable is some respects but with feet of clay in other respects. We may, and do, admire the heroic qualities of some. But we should not be overawed by them. For they were not perfect, not one of them. One hero lied, and cheated his brother [Jacob; Genesis 27: 18-29]; another killed a man in his wrath [Moses; Exodus 2: 11-12]; still another great man [David; II Samuel 11: 14-27] sent a friend to certain death so that he could be an adulterer with that friend’s wife; and yet another of the Bible’s great men [Peter] denied his Lord thrice. [Luke 22: 54-62].

They were just people. If the cast of biblical characters has seemed formidable to you by reason of the spiritual stature of the actors, you might rightly snap out of that idea right now. The men and women in this book are not, by and large, such spiritual giants as to make their experience foreign to ours. They are right down here in the mud and ruts of sin and anxiety and discouragement that beset all of us. Figure them in! They know what your problems are because the problems were theirs. And it is probable that they, and their records, will have suggestions on some possibilities which you haven’t seen in your situation.

The same attitude holds for the writers of the Bible. Don’t shut them off from consideration because they seem to have written from some ivory tower. They were not abstract meditators. Most of them were not even writers, in any polished sense. If they hadn’t been laid hold of by something greater than themselves, by Someone beyond themselves; if they had not grasped some relationship between God and man that aroused and inflamed them, most of them would have had nothing to say.

Perhaps the Psalmist might have written some poetic verses. And the dramatist who wrote the book of Job may have written some other play. Dr. Luke might have jotted down some medical notes in some permanent, settled practice. But these fellows were not primarily writers. And many of the rest of them were a lot poorer at composition. Why the very language of the New Testament books is not the classical Greek of educated folk, but the popular, street-language type of talk used by the most ordinary folk of the market place.

Even though some could write, these authors were not primarily writers. They were not primarily philosophers, nor religious scholars, though a few of them, like Paul, knew a great deal about those fields. Instead, the writers were a shepherd, a doctor, a king, a farmer, a historian, a poet, a fisherman, a government agent, a priest, a lawyer, and so on. They are people!

You know that we Americans set quite a store by education. In fact we’re a little exercised about better education just now. And at the same time we are a bit suspicious of the results of education. A cartoon of a professor in cap and gown is always good for a laugh. If he concentrates to the point of absent-mindedness on other matters, we poke more fun at him. We have derided the egg head, clobbered the brain truster, tried to shoo these impractical teachers back to the class room where they belong so that we can get on with the hard-headed realism of business and politics, and society as it is.

Well, if you have been among those who are suspicious of literary elegance and academic erudition, and if you figure the Bible in this bracket, give it another think! The Bible doesn’t come from cap and gown society. It is not a Phi Beta Kappa production. It is beaten out, often reluctantly, by people who saw something happening in themselves and their world, and knew they had to talk about it.

Left to themselves, they would have been laggard penmen like you and me. Ted Gill says they might have written nothing more significant than you or I do, when we scribble on a post card: “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.” But these fellows were not left to their own pleasant selves. And so they have written their letters, and books, often with so different a slant as this: “Having a terrible time. Glad God is here!”

The Bible authors were men and women like us, with concerns just as practical as ours. Their word pictures were far from gilded. Their linen was just as soiled as our dirtiest shirt. Don’t shy off from them when you are really “getting the business” -- or giving the business, either. They were there, too!

And another thing; don’t nurse the notion that all of the Bible is uniformly exalted in nature. There are plenty of ups and downs in Biblical teaching and materials. The aspiration of some Psalms is great. The vindictiveness of some is appalling. The account of Jesus birth is marvelously beautiful. Some of the Old Testaments “begats” are monotonous.

If anybody has ever tried to tell you that the Bible is too good to be true, just don’t believe it. There are plenty of problems in what some parts of the Bible say. A lot of thorough-going biblical scholars are still wrestling with some of these things. Martin Luther remarked that the Epistle of James was “a right [strawey?]” epistle, because it seemed to teach salvation by works rather than by faith. Luther also felt that the book of Esther had “a superfluity of heathen naughtiness.” As for the book of Revelation, he put it in an appendix to his German Bible, along with the apocrypha.

John Wesley remarked that “certain of the Psalms were not fit to be in a Christian’s mouth.” Both of these men found the highest kind of strength in the Bible, but certainly not from all parts of it.

So if it is a supposed theological perfection that puts a barrier between the Bible and you, read it again! Some of the Bible’s sentiments and statements are quite as inadequate and fallible as were its authors and characters, and as are our own. We must always read the Bible with discrimination and with attempt to understand. And we might as well read it expecting that we are going to differ among ourselves in interpretation of some of its contents. If you ever get into a company of people who all think alike on the Bible, you can be sure that there is not much thinking going on!

Read it with discrimination; read it with inquiry as to the writers’ purposes and limitations; but read it looking always for that word of God which comes to you, and the will of God as revealed in our Savior, Jesus. Work it into your everyday, work-a-day, world, because it is real enough to have imperfections, and still bear the Word of God for you and me and our world.

Remember that the Bible is not only people who are imperfect, but that it works the other way, too. For the Bible is also imperfect people who became something to note in God’s scheme of things -- just as you may become. Talk about where people live! There are shacks that get made into houses and homes! There are slums that get cleared and become areas of fine residence! There are people who quit groveling and become dedicated servants of God’s goodness. As Joseph R. Sizeo has observed about some Biblical characters and developments:

“A supplanter becomes a prince of God; a ploughman in Tekoa becomes a prophet of social justice; a man of unclean lips becomes a herald of a righteous Redeemer; a tax collector, never a popular man, becomes the writer of the first Gospel; a fallen girl by the well becomes a city missionary.

“A slave girl becomes the instrument through which a general is cleansed of leprosy; a boy’s noon day lunch becomes a feast for thousands; an ignorant bigot becomes a preacher of the universal gospel of love. The stone which the builders reject becomes the headstone of the corner.”

The Bible is practical in that direction, too. It is for us - for you and for me in our need to become something significant and meaningful.

Through the Bible, God says some awfully uncomfortable things to us about our orneriness and selfishness and sin; about our need for a profound difference in our whole direction of living. But He also speaks with great assurance of forgiveness for our confessed wrongs, and with great expectation for our dedicated selves, with more love and hope than we could dream of finding anywhere but in Him.

And so we may find that the Bible is pure gold for us -- not the completed gold brick that is stored away at Fort Knox, but gold dust to be patiently, persistently, expectantly, mined from the ore of hard living, in the Bible times and here --- mined and used by you and me for the glory of God and the honor of Christ the Savior of our souls.

AMEN

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, December 14, 1958

Wood County Infirmary, February 25, 1959

Wisconsin Rapids, December 10, 1967