The Final Authority
Tom Shrader begins a series on staying anchored in an increasingly directionless world, arguing that America has lost its moral compass through leaders who "act lawfully but testify falsely." He establishes that Christians must accept the Bible as their final authority - not just containing God's Word, but being God's Word entirely. Drawing from fulfilled prophecy and Scripture's internal testimony, he demonstrates that the Bible is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
“We don't say that the Bible contains the Word of God. The Bible is the Word of God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2001)
Recorded: January 25, 2001
Duration: 44 min
Themes: authority, direction, foundation, truth, compass, anchor, guidance, stability, confused about truth, seeking direction, new believer, questioning faith, overwhelmed by culture, young adult, struggling with doubt, needing guidance
Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, 2 Peter 1:20-21, Hebrews 4:12
Theological Themes: biblical authority, scripture, inerrancy, biblical foundation, divine revelation, gods word, biblical sufficiency, sola scriptura
Full Transcript
This is, today, the first in a series, but I'm not sure how long this series is going to be. It's a series that we did nine years ago, called How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World. The premise of this series is not so much the world as an immoral place, although it is that, but as a place that's lost its direction. So what we're going to talk to you about is how to stay anchored in this world, stay on track.
Now, the minute I say staying on track, the implication is that you're already on that track. If you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you go to church and you go through the motions, or maybe you're just somebody who says, "I'm a pretty nice guy and I'll be okay," or "I'm a gal, I do a lot of good stuff, I gave a turkey at Thanksgiving, I've done some great things," and you call yourself a Christian, it's very important to understand what that means.
You have heard my classic, this is my classic favorite answer. I was with a guy, and it was very clear to me that what he believed was different than what I believed. So I said to him, "Are you a Christian?" And his answer was, "Not in the biblical sense." So I said, "Well, gosh, we might want to define what that means."
What It Means to Be a Christian
If you are a person who understands that you are a sinner separated from God by your sin, and that that separation is eternal in nature unless you can appease a holy, and here's a word you don't hear very often, a wrathful God. God's angry. God's going to judge sin. He's not messing around with this. But that sin can be paid for, your sin, if you understand and accept that Jesus Christ died on the cross and offered that payment, if you believe that that's true. I mean, it's as simple as that. It's as simple and yet profound as that.
Now, our view, and I think the Bible teaches it pretty clearly is, somebody who's a Christian sees their life change. You cannot say you're a Christian and not have an action in your life that corresponds with that. So if you are a Christian, we are going to tell you how to stay straight in a crooked world.
The World Has Lost Its Moral Compass
When I first did this series, I made this statement: The world has lost its moral compass. What we're saying is, there's not a direction anymore. So I'm just going to take the last week, I'm not going to go anywhere beyond, not a history lesson, the last week.
A month ago, in Tallahassee, Florida, Jesse Jackson was introduced as the moral compass of America. Now I'm not, because I know, we've got a bunch, let's be honest here, we've got a bunch of middle class white people, so you can't wait to jump all over this. That's not my point here. My point's not black or white. My point is, here's a reverend who says, "You know what, I've got a problem here, so I've got to pull out for a while. I've got to get out of the public limelight here for a while." That ended up being three days. Somebody pointed out to me today, Jason Kidd stayed out longer than that.
We've got this guy who now, we look at it, and we see everyone race to embrace him, to put him back into a position of leadership. What to me separates Jesse from Clinton or any of the others is, he's not a politician, he's a moral leader. He's a civil rights activist, he's the reverend. He's a moral leader. And then to be able to say, "Everybody sins, everybody does it, the cause is bigger than..." I don't buy that. That doesn't work for me. Any more than it worked when Jimmy Swaggart did it, or Jim Bakker did it, or a local pastor does it.
There's consequences to that kind of behavior. The consequences are, you, at least for a significant amount of time, while you're in very serious counseling and rehab, you lose your right to speak to moral issues.
More Evidence of Lost Direction
At the same time, Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco last week, announces that his assistant is pregnant by him. He's 66 years old. She asked him, "Is this going to hurt you politically?" And he said, "No, this is a celebration of motherhood." Here you go.
This is the statement. This is the former president's statement at the point of announcing his plea bargain last week. This is what former president Bill Clinton said. This is a direct quote: "I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal."
Now listen to what he's saying. He's saying, "Here's my goal. My goal is to act legally but testify falsely." It's not that I stumbled in. That was my goal. I thought about it. I contemplated it. All I keep hearing is this is one of the brightest guys that ever has occupied the White House. This is a bright guy. He doesn't make a move that's not calculated. He thought about it and he said, "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to use the bully pulpit. I'm going to be the moral leader of this country, and here's my leadership. Follow my model. I'm going to act lawfully and testify falsely."
Cultural Decay in Entertainment
Now I want to get all that to get to an article from World Magazine. There's a new show that's coming out. It debuts February 28th. It's being produced by the same guys that do South Park. Now some of you may be unfamiliar with that, but that is a rather satirical comedy show, cartoon show.
Let me just read you from the article. The creators of South Park, this satirical cartoon featuring foul-mouthed grade school vandalizing culture, are working on a sitcom about President Bush and his family. The cable network, Comedy Central, plans to air "The First Family" starting February 28th. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the minds behind South Park, have developed a live-action comedy set in the White House.
"The idea is to kind of stay away from a West Wing parody. It's not a working place sitcom, it's a home sitcom. It's 6 o'clock, the President comes home, and what does he have to deal with?"
The article goes on: "But this show is far from Dick Van Dyke Goes to Washington. The cruelest touch..."
The Moral Climate of Our Culture
According to the casting notes obtained by the New York Post, Stone and Parker plan to portray Bush's 19-year-old twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, as lesbians in their upcoming show. This was confirmed in an audition script posted on a website whose major theme has to do with oral sex. According to a Comedy Central spokesman, "There are plans to include the twin Bush daughters in the show. They'll be very hot and sexy. We will not use their name."
The creators describe how this new series will be "barely legal" and promise to "mess with reality." For eight years, I've been very gentle in giving this guy a pass because he's the president of the United States. But it just sounds so good to say former. And for eight years, when somebody asked, "Aren't you better off than you were eight years ago?" my answer is no, because my barometer is not the NASDAQ. My barometer is what's the moral climate in the country, and it's not better off.
Now you have a show that's "barely legal," and they learn this from the culture and the tone set by the leadership and the moral leaders. What I think is the most sickening part of this article is that the show will ridicule Bush and drag his children into the mud, but it is not, in fact, a political satire. Stone and Parker, who profess no interest in politics, were going to give the same treatment to Al Gore and his family if they won the election.
A Culture That Ridicules Everything
The point here is not that this is political. The point here is the country has sunk to a point where now you ridicule everything. There is no morality. When somebody stands up and says, "You know what? That's right. That's wrong. We ought not do that," all of a sudden, that's a hard line person. No, that's a person who understands that what you say and what you do ought to be the same.
They actually had this conversation the other night on Reliable Sources on CNN. They're having a discussion about Jesse, and the comment was, "Do we as the press have any right to go into this? And does it really matter about the private life of a leader?" The answer to that is obviously yes. It really seriously matters.
If you knew in 1962 that the President of the United States was sleeping with a mafia mistress, that the Secret Service had two chicks they brought in and out called Fiddle and Faddle, that you had him with Angie Dickinson and everybody else, that the mob brought in the election, would that make any sort of difference? Does it matter at all? I really hope that somehow you don't get lost in this and think this is political or racial. It's not. It's a comment on the culture.
The State of Our Union
Let me tell you where we are. I'll give you a State of the Union before he does it. We're sucking gas. We're in real serious moral trouble. We are morally on the verge of bankruptcy. We as a culture have been trying to act lawfully and testify falsely, and it's serious.
This is one of my favorites from Ann Landers. I don't read Ann Landers, but fortunately you do and mail them to me. This is written by a Californian—I don't know if it's a male or a female. The writer talks about their generation. The writer is 23 and discusses how they're perceived to be immoral and materialistic and apathetic, along with all the problems we have: nuclear armaments, AIDS, and all the others.
The letter closes this way: "It sounds hopeless, but I don't think my generation is apathetic. We just don't know where to start. Waiting for guidance in California." Ann Landers prepares to write back. She goes to the Wisdom Bank to discover only that she's overdrawn.
When the Experts Have No Answers
Here's what she fires back, and I quote: "Dear Waiting, I see no sign of apathy or resignation in your letter. I sense you're deeply concerned. I, too, refuse to accept the fact that we are doomed." Now listen to this. This is the lady that millions of Americans write to and read every day for direction. What do we do? This person asks a legitimate question: What do we do? Where do we go? I'm waiting for guidance.
Here's her answer, and it's not an answer at all—it's two questions: "But what is going to save us? Any answers out there?" This is the lady that millions turn to for direction, and she has no answers.
Maybe you came in today because we live in a time where everybody understands we're in trouble. All you've got to do is listen to talk radio and you see trouble. You know there's trouble all around us. You've got that figured out.
We Have the Answers
But here's what you've done today that's different than normal. You've come to a place where we've got answers. We aren't trying to figure this out. We know what the problem is in the world, and we're beyond that. We know what the solution is.
When she says, "What's going to save us?" I can tell you: Jesus Christ and Him alone. Any answers out there? Yeah. And there's one place that we can go to find answers that are certain, and that's the Scripture.
In a world that's continually looking for meaning and purpose, we can look to all sorts of human institutions. But here you go: If you want to stay straight in this crooked world, here's the first thing you have to do, and it's the only thing we'll talk about today. You must accept the...
The Final Authority
When we got into that whole voting mess in Florida, there was this situation where we thought, are we ever going to get out of this? Is there a way to get through this? We had different cities and different electors come up with different ideas and different policies, and they'd have a decision, and then that would go, and the Secretary of State made a decision, and then the Florida Supreme Court made a decision. But did you notice how quickly it was over when finally the Supreme Court said, "That's it"? When the Supreme Court said, "That's it," Al Gore came out and said, "Okay, I'm done. I give up." That's the way the Constitution is written. The Supreme Court is the final authority. That's it. That's settled. We're done at this point.
In your life, there has to be the equivalent of the Supreme Court. In your life, there has to be this equivalent that says, "That's it. No more." When it speaks, that's the end of it. For us, as Christians, that's the Bible.
What Do You Think the Bible Is?
This gets us into this discussion. What do you think the Bible is? I had a fellow in one of the studies who came up, been here a few weeks, and he said, "You're really into this Bible thing." I said, "Yeah, thanks." He said, "What do you think the Bible is?" I said to him, "I'll answer that question in a minute, what do you think the Bible is?"
Here's his answer. He said, "I think the Bible contains the Word of God." Now, do we accept that answer? No. We can't accept that answer. We don't say that the Bible contains the Word of God. The Bible IS the Word of God. There is a gigantic difference.
If I say the Bible contains the Word of God, the implication is it's in there. Get out your little hat and get out your pick and now go find it. That's exactly what he was saying. I said, "Wait a minute, if you say the Bible contains the Word of God, then I've got two questions for you, and you know exactly what they are." The first question is what? What part? What part's the Word of God? This is the Word of God, and this is what John was thinking, but this is what God was thinking. And then the other part is, how do I know which is the Word of God?
The Arrogance of Playing God
So in reality, what this guy had done is take the Bible, and he said, "You know what? I'll be God." This is beyond anything. This says, "I'll be God. This contains the Word of God. I'll just be God." We would go, "Man, I can't imagine that kind of arrogance."
What I have in my hand is exactly that. This is a classic. This is called the Jefferson Bible. That is exactly what Thomas Jefferson did. If you go to Monticello, you can go into Monticello, and you will see there the actual original drafts where he did this. He got two copies of the Scripture, and he just began to cut out the parts that he didn't like. How helpful a laptop would have been in that whole process!
As the historian Daniel Bornstein says, talking about this, "The Jeffersonian," and he's talking about Jefferson, "Jefferson projected his own qualities and limitation into Jesus." Here's what Jefferson did. Jefferson took the Gospels. Listen very closely, please, because this is really important, and this separates us from those who say they're Christians.
The Problem with Jefferson's Approach
Jefferson said, "Listen, I don't believe for a second Jesus was God, but I think you ought to follow the way He lived." I'm telling you, men and women, that's not going to do you any good. It's not about following the way Jesus lived. It's believing He's who He was, understanding He's who He was. Now, with that understanding, I inevitably follow the way He lives, but I don't start with the ethic. I start with the belief.
Jefferson said, "You know what, I'm a smart guy." By the way, just for the record, he's 500 times smarter than I am. I've got no problem there. He can out-debate me, smarter than me, got it all figured out. He said, "I'm so smart. Now, when I look at this Bible, I don't buy miracles. I don't buy that Jesus is God. That doesn't make sense. I don't buy a virgin birth. That makes no sense."
Well, what would happen if we applied that kind of rational, logical thinking to the Bible? I'll tell you what would happen. Here's the last verse of the Jefferson Bible: "There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed." You take away the supernatural, and what you have is a dead Jesus in a tomb with a stone over it. Thomas Jefferson, great mind, but an absolute idiot when it comes to handling the Word of God.
Our Belief About Scripture
Here's what we believe. We don't believe this contains the Word of God. We believe that when we hold the Bible, we have the Word of God. That it's infallible. That it has in it no errors. There's no contradictions.
I remember meeting with a guy early on, before I was a Christian, and we're talking about the Bible. I said, "You know, the Bible's filled with errors. It's got errors all over it." He said, "Hey, I've got to go. But why don't you come back tomorrow and show me 20 of them?" Well, the reality was, I'd never read it. I had just heard other people say, "Oh, the Bible's full of errors." I thought, "Well, that's an easy thing to say. That Bible's filled with errors." But I had no idea.
Maybe you're here today, and you're a person who's bought into, "Yeah, I like Jesus, and yeah, I've made a decision for Christ. But I don't buy the Bible." I'm telling you, you are lost without having that final authority in your life.
The Right Approach
So once we understand the Bible is the Word of God, all we've got to do then is interpret it accurately and try to apply it to our life. Someone asked W.C. Fields once, "Fields, do you ever read the Bible?" He said, "Only for loopholes." Well, that's not how we approach this thing. If I look at it only for loopholes, then I'm in real serious trouble.
I like this. Whenever I'm looking for a good Bible illustration, I always go to Marla Maples. Because she's just been a leader for me. But this is Marla Maples talking about her childhood. And listen to this. This is great stuff. And it's great stuff because I'm telling you, this is the way some of you think and all the world thinks.
Marla Maples is talking about her life and talking about it being a fairy tale. Her dad, when he was a junior in high school, was athletic. He was handsome. A voice, I'm quoting directly, a voice like Elvis could set the girls swooning. Mother was a gorgeous senior, homecoming queen. Looked like Sophia Loren. By the way, there's a picture of her in here, and she does. Being the only child, we were so close. And basically, religious values were pushed on me at an early age.
When Fairy Tales Turn to Nightmares
I thought the worst thing that could ever happen would be my parents splitting up. But when I was 16, the axe fell. Dad came into my room and said, your mom and I really need to separate because we're not getting along. Dad had built our dream house and was buried in bills paying for it, while Mom, turned 40, feeling lonely, wanted Him more and more. By the way, do you see the problem in the marriage? The problem in the marriage is two selfish people trying to make it work.
But Dad, the Bible says you won't inherit the kingdom of God if you divorce. But divorce? But the marriage was killing Him. At first, I blocked out the pain for the Bible-fearing girl to rethink my whole faith. By 18, I realized that my parents were good people, that God was not going to condemn them.
And then she says, and I quote, this is what she learned out of this lesson, not the horror of divorce, not how selfishness and pride destroy. Here's what she learned, and I quote, I've learned that you can't take the Bible literally and be happy.
The Path to True Joy
Well, let me tell you what I've learned in my life. I've learned unless you take the Bible literally, you'll never be happy. Unless you understand the Bible is the Word of God, there'll never be joy. Happiness is circumstantial. Your happiness, if you don't know Christ, your happiness goes with the circumstance. When the Nasdaq's up, you're up. When the deal closes, you're up. When the deal falls apart, you're down.
A Christian has circumstances that for sure go like this, but in the midst of them there is a constancy of joy, because we strive not for happiness, but for joy. And I think you see the distinction.
This is not going to be exhaustive. We have 15 minutes left. Let me just try. And there are books and volumes of books that you ought to go and you ought to read if you are not yet convinced that the Bible is the final authority.
Two Ways to Prove the Bible
Two ways to look at the Bible and prove it. One, externally. In other words, as we look at it in a rational, scientific way, what do we find? The other is internal. What does the Bible say about itself? Well, look briefly at each. First, internally.
Years ago, we had a gentleman who came to speak, and His name was Hugh Ross. Many of you know Hugh now, but at that point not many people did know Hugh. And I introduced Hugh. A friend of mine, Bob Shank, had recommended Hugh. So I just met Him, and I really didn't know Him. He came in right about the time we were going to start. I introduced Him, and He came to the podium, and He said, My name is Hugh Ross. Ever since I was seven, I've wanted to be an astrophysicist.
And I'm thinking, this is a joke. I don't even know what an astrophysicist is. I'm 40. This guy's wanted to be one since He's seven, and now He starts to speak. And He starts talking about all these wild things and science and planets and stars and moons and dimensions.
The Brilliant Astrophysicist
So we're done at 7:45, and He said, I'll take questions if you want. Normally at 7:45, everybody's looking at their watch. You may give me to 48, but you're gone at 50. And now it's 8:15, 8:30. The room's starting. It's probably still three-quarters full. Friends are calling friends. They're saying, How long are you going to be here? Friends are calling friends saying, You ought to come over and hear this.
And this guy's talking, and I can't believe what I'm hearing. And somebody put up their hand. This is a comment on how smart you guys are, very smart, and said, You know, such and such an author on such and such a book on page 472 made this statement. And that seems to contradict what you're saying. And I'm thinking, They got Him. Ross says, Yes, but on page 456. I'm thinking, Wow. That's when we named Him. That's when He got the nickname Hugh to the Tenth Power. That's how we started talking about it.
So we're at the end. We're now almost 11 o'clock, and they've got to tear the room down and set it up. So I said, Hugh, since this is my deal, and I've just been really passive, can I ask you two questions? And He said, Sure. And I said, I don't mean these in a flip way. Number one, what don't you know? What are you uncertain about? And He said, All right, what's the second question? And I said, If you were going to drive today to Yuma by yourself, no radio, what would you think about? He said, I don't know. I said, Are there any other questions? He said, No. He said, Okay, that's it. So that was the end of our day.
The Evidence of Fulfilled Prophecy
Hugh sells about 4,000 books that I'm sure nobody ever read, but He left behind this pamphlet called Fulfilled Prophecy, Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible. Let me read to you two paragraphs out of this. I love it. And it speaks to the external evidence. And all I want to do there is tweak your mind to let you know that there's a bunch of stuff more out there if you want to go get it.
Here's His opening paragraph. Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events and details many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which have been fulfilled to the letter no heirs. The remaining 500 or so reach into the future
and may be seen unfolding as days go by. Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than 1 in 10—that's a conservative figure—and since the prophecies are, for the most part, independent of one another, the odds of all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error are less than 1 in 10 to the 2,000th power. That's a 1 with 2,000 zeros after it.
He then lists 13 prophecies, just speaking of Jesus alone, and he closes with this, talking about these 13 prophecies. Since these 13 prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence of all 13 is about 1 in 10 to the 138th power. 138 is the sum of all the exponents of the 10 and the probable estimate above.
For the sake of putting the figure into perspective, this probability can be compared to the statistical chance that the second law of thermodynamics will reverse in a given situation. For example, that a gasoline engine would refrigerate itself in its combustion cycle or that heat would flow from a cold body to a hot body—that chance is 1 in 10 to the 80th power. Listen closely. Stating it simply, based on these 13 prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics. The next is my favorite sentence: "Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimate of probability for the chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited herein."
Here's what I got out of this: The Bible is the Word of God. When you look at the fulfilled prophecies, the fulfilled prophecies scream to the authenticity of this. As he says, thousands of them, over years and centuries, fulfilled to the letter. The external evidence is that the Bible is the Word of God.
The Internal Evidence for Scripture
But what's the internal evidence? That's what we're going to look at in our last couple of minutes. Here's what we suggest to you: all you've got to do is walk out the door, look up in the sky, and you understand there's a God. When you look at creation, it demands that there's a Creator. We know in its simplest forms, nothing cannot produce something.
There has to be what we call in philosophy the unmoved mover. There has to be an original cause. There has to be a God. There has to be a design. There has to be somebody. I'm not going to say there's evolution that took place—there has to be something behind it. We don't believe in that, by the way. But there has to be something behind it that moved it.
Look at the solar system. Look at nature. Look at the order. The order demands intelligent creation. You cannot logically say this all came from nothing. Jonathan Edwards defines nothing as what a rock dreams about when it sleeps. It can't happen.
So God revealed Himself in His creation. You can go to any place in the world where they've never heard of God, and you'll see them worshiping, because man instinctively knows there's something bigger than himself. What God did, too, is reveal Himself in Christ and in the Bible.
Divine Revelation Through Scripture
Revelation is an act of making something known that was previously unknown. I just add these two words in the case we're talking about: it's divine disclosure. God's saying, "Okay, you saw Me in the creation. Now I'm going to show you who I really am." And that becomes the Scripture itself.
What the Bible says—remember that's what we're looking at—the Bible itself claims to be the Word of God. What I would say in a very practical sense is if you want to know God and you want to follow God, and you say, "I'm really serious about it," you have to go to the Scripture. R.C. says it this way: "If you wish to know God, you must know His Word. If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how He works by His Word. If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word."
That's why we come back to the Word of God over and over and over and over again. Throughout Scripture, Scripture makes it very clear that it sees itself as the Word of God.
Scripture's Self-Testimony
In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, and he says, "And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the Word of God's message, you accepted it not as Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe."
Scripture makes this claim not just there. I'll give you a couple of other passages. 2 Peter 1, verses 20-21: Peter writes about no Scriptures inspired by man or thought by man, but only inspired by God. This would be the classic that would speak to Scripture itself. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16: Paul writes this—"all Scriptures inspired by God"—all of the Scripture for us, all of the Old, all of the New Testament, the Bible, is inspired by God. Literally, God breathed.
Don MacArthur offers this: "Sometimes God told the writers exactly what to say—for example, Jeremiah 1:9—but more often than not, He used their minds, their vocabularies, their experience to produce His perfect, infallible, inerrant Word." God inspired, God breathed into these 40 men the words of Scripture.
The Practical Application
Now, what we said at the beginning was our task is to accurately interpret the Scripture, but then, what I want to know—and I'll bet you do too—is, what's it mean to me? If you come to our church, I will go through, and on a regular basis, I'll say, "Listen, we've got three things we want to know when a guy speaks. Number one, what did he say? Number two, is it true? And number three, what's the third one? So what? Who cares?"
That was the Easter message we did last year: "Jesus rose from the dead. So what? So what?" We're sitting here talking about this is the Word of God. Does it mean anything to me? Is it just an academic study? Is it just some sterile, doctrinal, dull things reserved for theologians? Not at all.
The Bible is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Four things. First, it's profitable
The Bible Teaches and Instructs
The Bible is profitable for teaching, and that means speaking to its content, not the action. It speaks to the divine instruction. You have in your hands when you hold that Bible the mind of God. Everything God wants you to know about Him and about life is in that Word. If it's not in there, either A, you can't understand it—it's mystery—or B, God says you don't need to know it. Everything you need pertaining to life is there.
The Bible Provides Reproof
Here's number two: Reproof. This is really important. It helps us see what's right and what's wrong. So when you go in and you begin to talk in the office today with some friends and you say, "I don't think that's right," the first thing they're going to say is, "Who made you king? Where do you get off telling me what's right or wrong?"
The Scripture, unlike any document ever written, lays us bare. The author of Hebrews writes this: "For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of the soul and the spirit." He's not dividing those there. What he's saying is it appeals to and challenges the totality of man.
The Power of God's Word
How powerful is the Word of God? It's able to judge our thoughts and our intentions. I may be wrong in my estimate, but I can look at the actions and the words of a man, and to me, that's got to be a revelation of his soul. But the Word of God goes deeper than that. It doesn't look at our actions. It judges our thoughts and our intentions.
I can fool you. You can fool me. We can fool each other. You may even fool yourself, but you can't fool God. We saw on Saturday a transfer of power. And we got all this transfer of power, yada, yada, yada. There's no power in the world stronger than the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to a person. This lays you bare.
That's why when you're listening, you're at church and you're listening to your pastor, or you're at home and you're reading the Scripture, all of a sudden you go, "This is like it was written just for me." Here's the point. It was. It was.
The Simplicity of Human Nature
You know why? One of the things that bugs me is when they talk about so-and-so and he's a "complex figure." We are not complex. We are very simple. We're selfish, prideful, arrogant people who are continually concerned about how we look and how we're perceived, and our flinch is to always lie and to always cover our own tail. That's not complex.
See, this is the whole point. Man has not changed. Man is the same. And that's why the Word of God is not a dated piece of literature. It's timeless. It opens you up. It judges your thoughts, your very intentions. It lays you bare. In fact, the word that's used there, it's naked. You're naked before Him.
A Powerful Illustration
We had a great illustration. My favorite. I'm teaching one Wednesday night, and this gal comes in and brings a friend. And it happens to be her sister who's visiting from out of town. And so the sister's not a Christian, the gal's a Christian, very excited that her sister would come with her.
So in she comes, and I meet her and shake hands, and we do all that, and she sits down. And as I start to talk, I can't remember what it was, but the opening was that typical witty, humorous thing. And then I start to talk. And as I talk, she starts to close down. She's shutting down. She's got her arms crossed. She's got her legs crossed. She's almost in a fetal position by the close of this thing. She's not buying anything.
I say, "Let's pray. Yada, yada, yada. Amen." I say amen. And she's gone. She's out the door. And the sister just kind of looks at me like she's embarrassed, which she need not be at all. And they go out.
The Confrontation
Well, a couple of minutes later, I'm going out. And my car, my car is over here. But these two girls are standing over here under a light just like this. And I thought, "Now this is a very difficult decision. There's my car, but here's an illustration. I'll go over here."
So I walked over, and I said, "Ladies, how you doing?" And the one said, "Fine." She said, "Tell him." And she said, "No." "He said, tell him." "No." "Tell him. He can handle this. Just tell him."
So the sister, the visitor, said to me, "I know exactly what you did tonight." And I said, "Really? What was that?" She goes, "I know exactly what happened. My sister called you this week and told you exactly what to say to speak exactly to me. She told you exactly what the problems were in my life, and that's what that was all about. The whole thing was about that."
The Real Explanation
Number one, and I didn't say this, number one, that's pretty arrogant, because I'm not going to change everything for you. Number two, what I did say to her was, "Do you remember when we started, I said, 'Let's pick up where we left off last week.' I said, 'We just go chapter by chapter, verse by verse.'"
I said, "Let me tell you what happened tonight. The Creator God of the universe, in His sovereignty, brought you in at exactly this time, not before, not last week, not next week, this one, because the Spirit of God knows this is exactly where you are, and what you experienced tonight was the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to your heart. That ought to scare the snot out of you, because that's what happened tonight." See, only the Scripture can do that.
What the Scripture Does
Here's what the Scripture does. It's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction. It's the only time this word appears in the New Testament. It means to restore to its proper condition. In extra-biblical literature, it describes a statue that's fallen over, that's put back on a pedestal, and for training in righteousness. It gives positive instruction into godly living.
So, if you've been around, you know exactly what we say. The Bible tells us what's right, what's not right, how to get right, and how to stay right. That's what the Bible does.
The Essential Need for Final Authority
The Bible goes on in the very next verse to tell us that it is absolutely essential for man to live a godly life, to understand this. Here's the point. We've got to close. In this world that has lost its moral compass, you need a final authority in your life. There has to be a final authority.
The only final, true authority in your life ought to be the Bible. It's the Word of God. It's infallible. There are no errors in it. It does not have the capacity to err, because it is the Word and the mind of God.
In this world that sometimes looks very confusing, it sometimes makes so much sense when you talk to somebody who disagrees with this. At least for me, I talk to somebody who disagrees with my Christian faith, and they are what you would call and I would call good people. I mean, they're just great people. I've had to sit there many times and listen to this: "Hey, I'm a good dad. I'm with my kids all the time. I'm honest. I work hard. I pay my taxes. I never cheat. I tell the truth. I've been faithful to my wife for 40 years. I'm a good guy. You're telling me I'm going to hell?"
And I will always say to them, "I'm not. God is." God's saying, "Yeah, you're going to hell. Because there's no one good, no not one. We desperately need a Savior."
The Bible Gives Us Perspective on Life
My point in that is you'll never understand life or the meaning of life or the purpose of life or how life comes together apart from God's Word. Apart from God's Word, we're just trying to figure it out.
Years ago, we were on vacation and I think we were at Knott's Berry Farm. They had the greatest thing I've ever seen. They had a human maze. You walked in, and you're just lost. But what they had was an observation tower over it. You could go up and watch.
I loved it. They'd say, "We're going to go eat." I'd say, "Go ahead and eat. I want to watch this for a while." People go in there and they get frustrated and they're lost. You can't get out. There was one little kid in there and he was so frustrated and he's crying. His mom's next to me. All of a sudden, she starts: "Honey, honey, just go left there. Go right down there. Oh, go left again. Make a right. Go straight." See, what she had was a different perspective than this horizontal perspective.
That's exactly what the Bible gives me. When God says, "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, my ways are higher than your ways," what He's saying is, "I know life, pal."
The World's False Promises
And I know what they're telling you. They're telling you, "Close two more deals and get the new Beamer and you'll be happy." I'm telling you, go ahead and do it. I'm not making a judgment on the car. What He's saying is, "I'm telling you, you aren't going to find happiness there."
I know what they're saying in the office: "Hey, dump her and get one of these new 2001 models." And I remind you, when you think about that, these new models are very expensive. And the old one is not going to go away. But boy, if I just get a new one, I'll be happy. That's all lies. Appealing to your ego and your pride and your lostness.
If you want to understand life, you don't need to read some secular philosopher or psychologist. What you need to do is to know the Bible inside out. And now you'll know how to live.
Step one in staying straight in a crooked world: establish the Bible as the final authority in your life. Next week, step two.
Father, help us see this. God, thank You that You love us enough to give us Your Word, to tell us the truth. Pray that we have the wisdom and the understanding to pursue it. God, thank You for that. We pray to You this morning in Jesus' name. Amen.