Bible Alone (the sermon that never was!)

‘..you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed..’ 2 Timothy 3:15-16

What is God Like towards me?
Throughout history people have sought to answer the question, what is God like? And many have attempted an answer to this question, by making claims about God’s nature and character.
People’s investigation on this matter, Maybe lead them to claim, ‘there is no God!’
Or ‘if there is a God they are unknowable!’

But for every claim that someone makes as to the existence or even the non-existence of God, there is an equally valid and important question to ask of them, the question, ‘How do you know, what you claim to know’.

You see the answer’s you will come to about what God is like, will be intrinsically shaped by How you went about answering the question, your method if you like. People will come up with vary different looking ‘gods’ depending upon how they go about finding their answers.

Our society says that any real knowledge has to be ‘scientifically based’, that is if you can’t examine it (smell, taste, hear, touch, see it) well it can’t really be known. And where exactly do national geographic send the expedition team to find and examine God?

For society today God is off the table, as a subject of ‘scientific and reasonable’ investigation.

And at one level this is true isn’t it?

I mean God is not physical like us, so how can we really know what he is like?

If God is behind this sensory ‘curtain’ that shields him from our prying investigations, how can we know what God is like?
How can we make any claim about him?

SO, what if I start by using my mind to look at the world and then conceive of what God is like from what I observe?
And people have often done that. And usually they say something like, ‘the god I find would be the greatest thing conceivable’, or they say ‘this god is all powerful, all knowing and all present’.

Or on the other hand, if I try and work out what god is like just by looking at the world, and then thinking big thoughts, well then maybe in reality there are two god’s, I mean how else do you account for all the evil and bad in the world. I mean it seems like the good god wins most of the time, but then the bad god wins in the end doesn’t he? because everyone dies in the end, so maybe life is just a tragedy as we get caught up in the battle of these two gods?

What about some other approach. In a significant contrast to using their minds to conceive of god, many religious people today make an appeal to a mystical Experience of God. I know God because I know him in my inner being, in my spirit. Which could well be true, but how can we really know what god is like based on someone else’s experience?

If mystical experience is the medium of god’s revelation How can we intelligently share our knowledge of God, other than to say; ‘well you just know’. And then how can I be really sure that I have the same experience as you?

And then what is to say that your experience is actually God?
And not just some mental or emotional aberration?

How do I know I really did experience God?
And not just fall victim to one too many expresso’s today?

And then again, in these days of post-modernism where the truth is just relative or subjective, what does your experience really matter to me anyway. I mean that is just your truth and not my truth or their truth, so it seems there really is no way to claim any sought of absolute truth anyway.

So how can we today talk intelligently and meaningfully about what God is like in a world where God seems absent to our advances and investigations, a world where God is behind the curtain from our senses.

Well, the important thing to note here from the approaches we just talked about is that there is an implicit assumption underlying this view that we find society today, the view is that somehow, this God if they exist, are ‘dumb’ and ‘mute’ when it comes to communicating with their creation.

But in total Contrast, Christianity claims We really can know God, because God has made himself known in our sensory world. God has publicly acted upon the world stage in history, in action that could be heard and seen and verified by many people. This kind of Public action that was physically verifiable by people, we can call the:


The Public Word of God (The Objective Word of God)
This public word of God is where God spoke to the entire community of Israel, and through them God addressed the world, as he did at Mt Sinai in Exodus Chapter 20
1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 You shall have no other gods before me.

In an act of brilliant clarity, the silence about God has been broken, because God has spoken publicly to tell Israel, and through them the world, about what he is like. God is a God who has spoken into this point of history to reveal himself, and in revealing himself he points out he is a God that can be likened to no other.

But he is also a God who has acted clearly into our world. If you were in Egypt, you would have seen the actual public events of the plagues, and the events of the mass exodus of Israel.

God has broken into our world, he has come from behind the sensory curtain to let himself be heard and known in public, by speaking and acting in time and history. In our sensory world.

I remember hearing John Chapman, whom most of you will know, talking about this point and telling the story, that one time he was babysitting a friends child, and they decided to play a game of hide and seek to pass the time. So Chappo was keen to get the local rules straight and asked the child, ‘how do play this game’. And the child replied, ‘well, you close your eyes and count to 20, and I go and hide in the laundry, and then you try to find me.’

You can’t help thinking the kid hadn’t exactly picked up on the subtleties of the game had he. It is after all a simple concept, if you don’t want to be found. Don’t say anything.

Well God could have remained hidden behind the sensory curtain forever, and we would have never been able to find him, even if we suspected that he was there. But God didn’t hide away, God broke into our world and made himself known. God spoke to us, at various times and many ways.

Exodus 20 is of course the classic speech and action of God in Old Testament times into our history. But we see it also throughout the events of the lives of the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah about the action of God to exile Israel and Judah into Babylon.

This action of God wasn’t just speaking the whole of his revelation to only one enlightened person either, like many other religions, where their god speaks to only one person, and so it becomes a matter of trusting one person’s subjective experience. God spoke to the public, through various individuals and God then acted in Public to enable them to verify the word he had spoken.

God may have used various individuals to speak, such as Moses and the other prophets, but he objectively put himself into time and space by his speech and action so that people may truly know him.

God really has made himself known into this world because he has revealed himself and his purposes in both speech and action.

But of course, the Public or objective word of God in our world, ‘par excellence’ is of course the breaking of God into our world in his WORD, in action and indeed even in the flesh.
Jesus Christ is THE WORD of God And John’s Gospel chapter 1 Tells us that:
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

God has acted to punch a whole through the dark ignorance of man, with the piercing light of his son. God didn’t just speak into time and space, he physically entered it through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Public WORD of God for all to see, a physical person walking the streets of our world. You could see this public revelation of God.
Hebrews 1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Jesus, the word of God, the exact representation of God’s being, the one who is in very nature God.. This person walked the earth.
If you like God had come from behind the sensory curtain and had an open house inspection!!
You really could see God in time and space… that is amazing isn’t it?

God’s person and God’s purposes have been publicly revealed, and what has been revealed is that all God’s purposes and promises are found in, and centred on, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s public declaration and guarantee that we can really and truly know what God is like. This is not just a matter of personal opinion, but a matter of public record of historical events.

The suspicion people have today about God’s objective Word and work, is kind of like that philosophical conundrum they give to first year university students. The question, ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it fall, did it really fall?’

And the question it seems to me is designed to ask the question ‘how do we determine what is reality’. Without getting too carried away, and in short..
well of course it fell!!
And why? well because humanity, and when I say humanity, I mean you - the individual, are not the centre of the universe!
And neither are you the determiner of what is reality.
The tree fell, just like if a man dies, and you didn’t know about it, he really did die. And in just the same way, If God speaks, and you didn’t hear it, it still means he really did speak. And so it follows that if God came to earth, and you didn’t personally see it, did it really happen?

And the answer is, of course it did.

Now God could have legitimately thought after his public action, I’ve done my bit and I’m off. I spoke to you, I came to you in my Son. Now you guys sought yourselves out.

But thankfully God’s concern and love is much greater than that, not only did he act publicly, but he has acted personally. So not only can we answer the question what is God like, we can answer the question ‘what is God like towards us?’

God has come to his world and acted through his Public word, but he has also lovingly condescended to coming to us personally, so we can know what God is like towards us. And this we can call the:

The Personal Word of God (The Subjective Word of God)
This is God’s Public word applied to me!
The personal word of God, is in fact the gospel of Christ, it is the message for me from God. It is how the Public word of God becomes my treasured possesion. The Gospel message is the private Word of God for us, that God is for us in Christ.

This reformers asked the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’.
The answer they found in the gospel, that God is for us in Christ.
The public work of God in Christ (of his birth, his revealing of God, his life of obedience, his atoning death on a cross and his resurrection and ascension) has become God’s personal word to us in the Gospel. And Christ comes to us personally and reveals the truth about himself in his gospel message, that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour.
The Public word available for all humanity, becomes the private word to you and me in the Gospel. The Public word of Christ is available to all, but the private benefits to us, of Justification, grace and faith and the like, only come to us in the Gospel of Christ, the personal WORD of God.

A personal word that must be receive by us personally through faith, but a word that can only be received because of God’s gracious gift to us of the Spirit of God, which enlivens our minds and empowers our hearts to receive this personal Word of the truth.

And what does this mean for us?
Well it means even the faltering and broken human words of a very average preacher, or a very average youth group leader, or a very average parent, can be the words that bring eternal life, the words that bring the personal word of God, the words that bring the Gospel of Christ. The words that tell the truth of the Public work of Christ, that God is pleased to use to bring his personal Word of God, the saving word to them, in the power of his Spirit.

But the big question is, we weren’t there to see the public word of God in Christ, how can we be sure that we have heard the personal word of God to us in the Gospel rightly?

The Bible is the Authoritative Public and Personal Word of God
2 Tim 3:
from infancy
you have known the holy Scriptures,
which are able to make
you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for
teaching,
rebuking,
correcting and
training in righteousness,
17 so that the man of God
may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work.

How do we know that the personal word of God that came to us is actually the Word of God?
Well it has been authoritatively written down for us to check we heard it right!

The Bible is the place where the Public word of God to all, and the private word of God to you and me meet, and have been authoritatively recorded, ‘all scripture is God breathed’. It is the place where God has chosen to leave his public and personal revelation for this world.
Jude puts it in these terms:
3 I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Jude reminds us that We need to check that the personal word of God, is true against the faith delivered once for all to the Saints. The delivered truth of Jesus Christ, a truth on which the scriptures are the final and ultimate authority.

The issue for the reformers faced was one of who has the final authority in speaking for God, is it the church itself, like the Roman Catholic Church teaches or is it the Bible?

Well, The Catholic church desired a good thing, in having a uniform and confident interpretation of the faith, but unfortunately they did it at the expense of what God had said in his final and authoritative word the Bible.

And I’m sure a few of you are thinking, ‘It’s all well and good to say it’s just the Bible, but then how come so many people seem to use the Bible to say different things, how can we be certain what the Bible says?’

Interpreting the Bible as the Authoritative Word of God
Well this is quite a massive topic really, and it is deserving of at least a sermon on its own. So I just want to make a couple of brief comments about this before we finish.

The central thread of the Bible is clear, Jesus Christ is the Lord of all, who has redeemed his people by his cross. But unfortunately not all the Bible is equally as clear, and that can be a frustration at times. So we need to have two attitudes when we approach the Bible, Confidence and Humility.

Firstly, Confidence!
Jesus said come unto me all of you who are tired and weary and I will give you rest.
But we can only hear the teaching and the words of Christ today from the pages of the Bible. Through the Bible’s words God comes to us personally, he reveals himself to us through his speech, and he wants us to know him personally.

So it means that Reading the Bible isn’t about religious observance, but about expressing our relationship with GOd. When you pick it up and read it, you are in a real way before the face of God, hearing these words of breath fall from his mouth to your ear. It is and incredibly personal experience of God, the Bible is his private word to us, through the power of his holy Spirit.

God has spoken publicly and authoritatively in the Bible, and God continues to speak personally to us today through this same living and active Word.


Secondly, Humility.
The ‘Bible Alone’ is the final authoritative word of God, and it is a personal word of God. But the body of Christ is a big place and God does use different people with different gifts to help explain his word. So we all need to be humble to hear what Christian brothers and sisters have to share, And in the same breath we always have confidence to check their words against the authoritative word of God in the Bible.

In light of this it is worth saying something about the blessing and curse of tradition.

In Luther’s day tradition needed a smack on the nose, it thought it was the master and God’s word the Bible was the servant. In contrast, clearly the Bible is the authoritative word of God.
So usually in this kind of talk, evangelicals get a bit fired up and put the boot into tradition. In Luther’s time, this was entirely appropriate, but in our time I suspect we actually need to hear the opposite, to hear the call to actually respect tradition a little more.

The Body of Christ not only spans geography across the physical world, but through writing and printing, it also spans time and history. Great Christian people throughout time have handed down to us, some trustworthy traditions that point out to us Gospel truth, like the creeds, or the prayer book or Calvin’s institutes of the Christian religion. They put these down to help future generations from going astray with the gospel, to try and stop us from making the same mistakes of the previous generations.

It seems our generation is in danger of being a little too enamored with its own discovers, and forgetting the important lessons of history that the Christians of the past have handed down to us. It seems to me we are faced with the very real danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, under the guise of ‘Bible Alone’.


God has given us other members of the body, to help to make sure the personal word of God we think we have heard, is the true personal word of God, the personal word of God that conforms to the public and authoritative word of God, the Bible. Those members of the body, who have long since departed this world to be with the Lord, still do us a great service in pointing out the truth of the gospel, a witness we would be wise to hear, and yet always checking it against the Bible itself.

God has done everything, personal and public, to ensure we can have confidence about knowing, that he is for us in Christ. That because of Christ:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn in the Bible alone.’