The Bible is God's Revelation

Christianity 101: The Bible is God’s Revelation

Scripture: 2 Timothy 3.14-17; John 1.1-18

For the next eight weeks we are going to think about what it means to be a Christian. In some detail we are going to examine basic Christian beliefs. We’re going back to school, so to speak – we’re all going to take Christianity 101.

Isn’t that exciting!

Now – if I asked you, “What are those basic beliefs, what must one belief in order to be a Christian?” what would you say? Don’t get too complicated – state the broad themes. Think of it as “Christianity for Dummies”. My friend Glenn tells me there is a book, NASCAR for Dummies, and asked him, “Isn’t that a bit of a redundancy?” Anyway. . .

Don Miller, in his book Searching for God Knows What, reports doing an experiment with a Bible class he was teaching. He presented them a form of the gospel but told them to listen very carefully because he was going to leave something critical out. He then talked about how man is sinful and must repent. He showed them scriptures. He used true-life examples. He told them how sin separates us from God. He talked about how good morals change people lives. He talked about heaven. When he was done he asked the class if they could tell him what important part of the gospel he had left out. The class sat in uncomfortable silence. None of the forty-five students realized that Miller had presented the gospel without once mentioning the name of Jesus. “The story bears repeating,” Miller writes, “I presented a gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out Jesus. Nobody noticed, even when I said I was going to neglect something very important.

The reason I cite this example is to get us to think about the Bible in a different way. Here’s how many look at the Bible. It’s a holy object. Having one around on the bookshelf is a good thing. When I was a kid my church choir director scolded us if we put anything else on top of a Bible, a hymnal, a sweater, a piece of bologna (I use to take bologna to choir practice). That view sees the Bible as holy relic. Gilbert Bilzekian, from whose book I borrowed the structure of this sermon series, calls this view of the Bible “bibliolatry.” People who hold this view may even read the Bible faithfully, memorize it, and believe it to be inspired and inerrant. But they do not allow the message contained within to affect their lives or change their values in any appreciable way. I’ll explain why this might be so in a bit.

Another view of the Bible is a treasure trove of facts. There’s an episode of the Simpson’s in which Bart and Lisa Simpson are staying with their holier than thou neighbors, the Flanders. The Flanders favorite game to play is “Bible Bombardment.” The Flanders perfect children, Rod and Todd, are very good at Bible Bombardment. They know the names of the fourth generation of Levi. They get all the answers just like their dad taught them. Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa sit there in glum silence. They don’t know these hard trivia questions. Finally, on one question, Bart weakly guesses, “Jesus?” on a subject that is clearly Old Testament. Bart is no good at Bible Bombardment.

Does a Christian have to be good at “Bible Bombardment”? Does being good at Bible Bombardment make you a Christian? Don Miller writes, “It doesn’t make a great deal of sense that a person who went to Bible college should have A better shot at heaven than a person who didn’t.”

Another view of the Bible is the secular view – the Bible is a human document reflecting the religious consciousness of an ancient people. This view is what it is, and is held by more people than perhaps we realize.

Now, if I were God and I wanted to change humanity thousands of years ago I wouldn’t write a book, because most people couldn’t read and books were rare things. And If I was God and wanted to change humanity today I wouldn’t write a book because most people don’t read and even the ones who do don’t believe a book can change their life. And in fact, both today and thousands of years ago, God didn’t write a book – not in the way we think. God spoke His word with his presence. God showed up.

John 1.1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . .(1.14) and the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” In the Old Testament God revealed his presence in a burning bush or a cloud or on a mountain top and spoke directly to Moses and a few others. Later, he spoke through his prophets. So God’s word was going forth, but it wasn’t written down right away and certainly it was heard before it was read by the people. In the Testament, Jesus preached and taught, but he did no more writing, as far as we know, than scribbling a little in the sand. The emphasis was always on knowing the Master, listening to the Master, and after the Resurrection and the Ascension, remembering what the Master had said and done. It took four centuries for the Christian community to assemble in written form what they recognized as the divinely inspired canon of Scripture.

So in one sense “the Bible is a very human document,” says Bilzekian. “It’s authors, people such as Moses, David, Isaiah, Luke, John, and Paul were much involved in the writing of their works.” But nevertheless the Bible speaks of itself that it is divinely inspired – God-breathed, if you will. And through a diversity of stories, poems, histories, prophecies, sermons, genealogies, and themes there runs the theme – a love letter from God to humanity. The Bible is the book of who God is and what God has to say to us. It is a message in a bottle. Space and time are too limited to include everything that an omnipotent God could say to his creation – this is the very critical message, this is one that could save your life, your soul. Stephen Curtis Chapman’s song, “The Great Adventure” has this line, “I opened up my Bible and I read about me.” Yes, exactly.

As Don Miller wrote, Bible students shouldn’t be the only ones to be able to understand God and hear his message. Anybody should have that chance. The technical word for this is “Perspicuity.” It means that the Bible, though deep and complex, can be understood in its essence and overall message by the commonest of people. “It is more beautiful and more true to believe that when a person dies he will go and be with God because, on earth, he had come to Him, that he had a relational encounter with God not unlike meeting a friend or a lover or having a father or taking a bride, and that in order to engage God he gave up everything, repented and changed his life, as this sort of extreme sacrifice is what is required if true love is to grow,” Miller writes. “We would expect nothing less in a marriage; why should we accept anything less in becoming unified with Christ?”

If the Bible is God’s love letter, then it must be read with care. And indeed, if love is to be found in these pages and that love is reciprocated by those who read then the Bible will be read again and again with greater understanding, appreciation, and subtlety. The Bible is not a rule book or a clever resource for confirming our own opinions. In fact, unless we read it under the guidance and by the motivation of the Holy Spirit, then this book remains closed to us, a dead letter.

The Bible is God’s revelation , i.e. God revealing himself to us so that we can know God and God can know us. I consider myself a reader, and when I read a great book I “fall in love it.” I consider it a gift to me. I want to call up the author and thank them. Shake their hand and buy them a cup of coffee. When we fall in love with the Word of God, the author picks up the phone and accepts our invitation.