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We are at the third in a six week series on
the Six Marks of Discipleship and their importance not only for
the growth and fulfillment of the life of an individual follower
of Jesus Christ but also for the growth and fulfillment of God’s
purposes for His Church. In our case, for Shepherd of the Hills
to be the church that God wants us to be the followers of Jesus
Christ making up this collective group of disciples known as
Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church must be pursuing these
marks of discipleship: Pray daily, Corporate worship weekly,
Read the Bible regularly (today’s topic), Serve at and beyond
Shepherd of the Hills, Be in relationships with others to
promote their spiritual growth and your own, Give of their time,
talents and money toward the work of God’s Kingdom in the
world. All of those marks are ways we, as disciples of Jesus
Christ, seek God and discover His plan for our life—as an
individual and as a church.
Today’s mark is “Read the Bible regularly,”
and our Scripture reading is from Paul’s second letter to
Timothy, the third chapter, verses 14-17. (Read 2 Timothy
3:14-17)
A couple of weeks ago I had a problem with
the stereo in my car. I was leaving my car parked for a
significant length of time and, as people often do in such
circumstances, I removed the faceplate from my stereo to
discourage anyone from breaking into my car and stealing the
stereo. The absurd part of that is I drive a 1997 Pontiac Grand
Prix and the stereo system is equally ancient. Nobody wants my
car, let alone the stereo in it. But for some reason—force of
habit, overly cautious, whatever—I removed the faceplate. I do
have satellite radio (it came with the car when I bought it used
from a private seller!) and maybe that’s why I remove the
faceplate and the receiver for satellite radio. The
satellite part might be of interest to someone of questionable
character. In any case, I removed the faceplate. And it was
off for over 24 hours. When I got my car and put the faceplate
back on I discovered a problem—the digital display was suddenly
very dim, barely visible. Thinking I might have inadvertently
hit a button somewhere on the faceplate that changed the
brightness of the display I began pushing buttons in an attempt
to correct that. I wasn’t driving while doing that—I had to put
one hand over the top of the faceplate to shield any light
hitting it in order to make out anything on the faceplate. So,
I began pushing buttons and when that didn’t produce any results
I began pushing combinations of buttons. Which resulted in
wiping out everything on the stereo—my presets for preferred
stations were gone; the clock went back to the default 12:00
time; whatever bass and tone settings I had were gone.
Everything. The radio worked, but I had to seek out whatever
station I wanted to listen to…and if my preferred station was in
a commercial break I had no way of knowing for sure it was the
station I wanted because I COULDN’T READ THE DISPLAY TELLING ME
WHAT STATION IT WAS. Fortunately, I had my watch on so I could
keep accurate account of just how much time I was spending
on the project.
The root of the problem is this…I don’t
have the manual for the stereo. As I mentioned, I bought the
car used from a private party and they didn’t give me the manual
in the process. I didn’t think to ask for it and they didn’t
offer it. You’ll be pleased to know I eventually found a
station I wanted to listen to, drove home and once in the
comfort of my garage (and relative darkness of my garage so the
display was a bit easier to see) I was able to get my
preset stations back. That was relatively easy, although the
three different “sets” of FM 1, 2 and 3 were difficult to see (I
still don’t know if my preferred stations are set on FM 1, or 2,
or 3). I haven’t yet bothered with the clock because I pretty
much can’t see the time display so it’s useless for the moment
anyway. Besides, I still struggle getting the right combination
of moves to change the clock which I have to do every time we go
on or off daylight savings time. Why do I struggle with that,
you ask? Because I don’t have the manual! As for the other
settings for which I have no clue what combinations of button
need pushing, the idea finally hit me—go online and find the
manual. Which I did. The good news is I now know which buttons
to push for whatever function I need. The bad news…there’s
nothing in the manual about changing the brightness of the
display. So, I emailed the company through their “contact us”
link on their website and got this reply:
Dear Mr. Holmes,
Thank you for contacting Kenwood USA Corporation. We value you
as a Kenwood customer and appreciate the opportunity to be of
assistance.
I understand that the display on your KDC-2011S is dim. We
apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Please try
resetting the unit by pressing the reset button located between
[ATT] and [1] buttons. (I had already tried that because I
now knew of the reset button from the manual!) If the problem
persists, unfortunately we need to refer you to our authorized
service center to evaluate and repair the unit.
A click on the link in the email to find
the nearest service center resulted in two locations—one in
Loveland and the other in Sandy, Utah. Frankly, I think
resolving my display problem is going to cost more than it’s
worth. It may be time to move out of the 90’s and into at least
the early 2000’s for my car stereo.
The obvious point is…consult the manual.
While it didn’t solve my problem of the display brightness it
would have spared me a lot of other headaches regarding my
settings.
And the obvious point towards our life as a
disciple and as a church is…consult the manual. The Bible is
God’s manual for life. You can go through life randomly pushing
buttons in search of solutions and answers to circumstances in
life, or you can regularly consult God’s manual for life. And
my strong suggestion to you is don’t wait until a particular
circumstance rises up in your life and then consult the
Scriptures for an answer. Certainly do that when the answers
aren’t coming to you. But regularly read and meditate upon the
Scriptures so that their values and standards become a part of
who you are and how you respond to situations. Reading the
Bible regularly is one very important way in which we
seek God and His plan for our life—again as an individual
disciple and as a church. The Scriptures are useful for
“teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
Want to know God’s plan of hope and future for you and for us as
a church? Regularly read and meditate upon the Bible. Want to
know what a life of “righteousness” looks like, how to correct a
course moving away from God’s righteousness, how to teach others
the pathway of God’s righteousness? Regularly read and meditate
upon God’s Holy Word. Without that we are just randomly pushing
buttons in hope of finding answers.
Now, it occurs to me that there can be some
obstacles working against our approaching the Bible as God’s
word for us. One came up in a conversation I had a week and a
half ago. The conversation started around what makes
Christianity distinctive from all other beliefs. My answer to
that was, and is, simply “Jesus Christ.” What we say about
Jesus, who we say Jesus Christ is is what makes Christianity
distinct. I went on to say that we have to deal with what
Christ claims for Himself. It’s one of the first points of
Alpha. Saying Jesus was a great teacher, a great moral leader
isn’t enough. He doesn’t leave us room to say that because He
makes some strong claims for Himself. He is the Son of God, God
in human flesh, fully human yet fully God. The person I was
speaking with is very bright and well-versed on some of the
technical issues of Biblical scholarship. “But how do we know
what Jesus really said?” he asked. “The gospels were written 60
years after His life.” He’s partially correct. While we can’t
say for certain the dates when the gospels were written, the
range is from 20 years to 60 years after the life of Jesus—60
being at the high end. But even at 20 years, that’s a lot of
years, to us, between the events and words of Jesus’ life and
ministry and the writing down of those events. It’s the
problem, particularly for our culture today, of oral tradition,
which was my response in this conversation. We’re skeptical of
stories repeated 20 minutes later let alone 20 years. If I were
to tell Barbara a detailed story of some event I witnessed last
week, and she were to pass it along to Diane, and Diane to Mike,
and so on and so forth throughout this room until it came around
to Kim and she repeated the story she was told, it would be very
different from the story I started. We’ve come to rely on
notepads and recorders, nightly news and DVR’s, iPads and smart
phones to record the events of our lives. Consequently, we
don’t hear and repeat stories very well and are therefore
skeptical of oral tradition. However, that’s not true for the
culture of Jesus and the Gospels. They heard and repeated
stories and events accurately. Tribes and groups had
storytellers whose job it was to carry on the oral tradition.
When the stories got written down as our Gospels—and portions of
the stories were already written down—they accurately reflected
the events and words they depict. Don’t let our loss of
accurate oral storytelling diminish your view of the reliability
of the Gospels and other books of the Bible.
The second barrier, and one I didn’t have
opportunity to voice in the conversation but will when I have a
chance to do so, is the inspiration of Scripture. It won’t be
persuasive to someone skeptical of God’s existence. It is
a statement of faith. But I believe what Paul encourages
Timothy and us to believe—the Scriptures are “God-breathed,”
written down by people inspired by God for God’s purposes. The
apostle Peter puts it this way, “Above all, you must
understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the
prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had
its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke
from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1
Peter 1:20, 21). God did so because He wanted to give us a
manual for life. He does not leave us wandering alone in the
“stereo” of life, with the only option being to randomly push
this button or that, randomly trying this option or that
behavior. He promises, first of all, to be present with us
through His Spirit alive and active in us. And He’s given us
His manual for life, inspired by His Spirit at work in His
people—God-breathed—and applied to life today through His
people’s regularly reading and meditating on His Word, assisted
in our understanding and application by the work of His same
Spirit in us. For the Word of God is “God-breathed and is
useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness.” We must be a people of the Book, a House of
Study, in order to be the church God desires us to be. |
