I preached this sermon earlier today at my home church.  It relates to our series on homosexuality - I hope you enjoy it.

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Throughout history, human society has been in constant flux. In our lifetimes, fundamental shifts have taken place in the world as we know it. The shifts have caused many religions to have to self examine, to look again at their own fundamentals and ensure that their message is appropriate to the new emerging realities of the world as we know it. Christianity is no different. Throughout its 2,000 year history, Christianity has had to deal with some of the legacies of its own past and change some of its previously held traditional beliefs on a variety of different issues.

God has not left us stranded drifting without a rudder on a sea of change and uncertainty. His Word, the Bible, stands solid across all time unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable.

Our verse for today is 2 Tim. 3:16-17: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (NIV)

BUT, the problem is that we often settle for a cursory understanding of Gods Word and incorrect applications. This is because we more often than that rely on what we know about what we think is inthe Bible, rather than going back to Scripture to check.

 

Unfortunately, we live in the world in which biblical knowledge is at an all-time low. Because of computers and the ability to easily carry around books in paper or digital format, the art of memorisation of Scripture, and the need for it, has largely disappeared. Unfortunately, at the same time it seems that we have reduced our children's intake of Gods Word to simply the Bible stories. Especially those stories with lots of blood and guts and intrigue - stories that capture the attention of a PlayStation generation used to fast moving computer games and cartoon network speed.

But there is equally a problem amongst adults. For many of us, brought up in Christian homes, where the Bible was revered and taught regularly, we have long reached the point where we feel we know everything that there is know about the Bible. There are very few times that we are able to open Gods Word and be surprised by what we read, because many of the words are so familiar. Our intake of Gods Word has been reduced to repeated readings of our favourite passages, and three or four verses as directed by today's daily devotional. We have long since abandoned the discipline of deeply studying Gods Word from cover to cover. Most of us have long since abandoned searching Gods Wordfor answers - not the pathetic search for proof texts for the next career move that we need or some other kind of divine guidance in our relationships. No, I'm talking about the type of in-depth study that takes an issue of today's society affecting the people that we know and love, and goes back to Gods Wordto ensure that we have truly and fully and deeply understood what it is that God is trying to say to us today.

You see, Gods Word is unchanged and unchanging. But, human society is constantly shifting. God does not ask us to deal with issues that are not real issues in our time. That is why, for example, there is no mention in the Bible of cloning or space travel or keeping speed limit on the roads or the democratic right of people to vote in Parliamentary elections or references to China or America or retirement, or any other issue of modern life that did not specifically exist already in either Old or New Testament times.

Of course, that does not mean that God has nothing to say on these issues. The Bible contains principles that can be applied to every area of our lives, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it is our task to make these applications as each new day unveils a new issue for humanity and for each of us personally, to deal with.

History is full of lessons about Christians making these necessary new applications to changing circumstances. Even Jesus did this. He often said, You have heard it said, but I tell you that... as he corrected a misunderstanding the people had about the OT Scriptures. Often, as history proves, an emerging societal reality or a shift in social valueshighlights the fact that our previous understanding of the Bible was faulty or incomplete. And God then asks us to go back to His Word to ensure we respond correctly. Our response must be on the basis of His Word, and not on the basis of our prejudice or man-made traditions.

Come with me quickly and as I show you a few examples of how this has happened in history in the last 500 years, and let's see what we can learn from the amazing Christians who lived in each of those eras.

(I have preached on some of these things before. I hope you don't mind me trying to make this point strongly and clearly and setting up the theme for my preaching in 2006.)

1. The enlightenment, the discovery of the telescope and modern physics and mathematics

Using newly discovered mathematics, physics and observations of the world, Nicolas Copernicus overturned centuries of belief that the world was the centre of the universe. In 1514 he made his Commentariolus a short handwritten text describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis available to friends. The book that outlined the theory in detail was released in the year of his death, 1543. Legend says that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was placed in Copernicus' hands on the day he died, so that he could take farewell of his opus vitae. He supposedly woke from a stroke-induced coma, lookedat his book, and died peacefully. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus The book was banned, however, and the Church labelled it heretical and completely incorrect.

In 1616 Galileo wrote the Letter to the Grand Duchess which vigorously attacked the followers of Aristotle. In this work, which he addressed to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, he argued strongly for a non-literal interpretation of Holy Scripture when the literal interpretation would contradict facts about the physical world proved by mathematical science. In this Galileo stated quite clearly that for him the Copernican theory is not just a mathematical calculating tool (as the Church had officially deemed it to be), but is a physical reality:-

I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover ... I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.

Pope Paul V ordered thatthe Sacred Congregation of the Index decide on the Copernican theory. The cardinals of the Inquisition met on 24 February 1616 and took evidence from theological experts. Their arguments pointed to sections of Scripture that indicated that heavens are built on four pillars at the corners of the world, and that the sun rises and sets rather than the world turning. Their arguments were theological ones, based on their understanding the Bible. They condemned the teachings of Copernicus, and conveyed their decision to Galileo who had not been personally involved in the trial. Galileo was forbidden to hold Copernican views. In 1623, Galileo's book Il saggiatore (The Assayer) was published by the Accademia dei Lincei. The work described Galileo's new scientific method and contains a famous quote regarding mathematics:-

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.

Pope Urban VIII invited Galileo to papal audiences on six occasions and led Galileo to believe that the Catholic Church would not make an issue of the Copernican theory. Galileo, therefore, decided to publish his views believing that he could do so without serious consequences from the Church. However by this stage in his life Galileo's health was poor with frequent bouts of severe illness and so even though he began to write his famous Dialogue in 1624 it took him six years to complete the work.

Galileo attempted to obtain permission from Rome to publish the Dialoguein 1630 but this did not prove easy. Eventually he received permission from Florence, and not Rome. In February 1632 Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican. It takes the form of a dialogue between Salviati, who argues for the Copernican system, and Simplicio who is an Aristotelian philosopher.

Shortly after publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernicanthe Inquisition banned its sale and ordered Galileo to appear in Rome before them. Illness prevented him from travelling to Rome until 1633. Galileo's accusation at the trial which followed was that he had breached the conditions laid down by the Inquisition in 1616. The truth of the Copernican theory was not an issue therefore; it was taken as a fact at the trial that this theory was false. This was logical, of course, since the judgement of 1616 had declared it totally false.

Found guilty, Galileo was condemned to lifelong imprisonment, but the sentence was carried out somewhat sympathetically and it amounted to house arrest rather than a prison sentencefor the last 8 years of his life. Source: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galileo.html

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say that the world was the centre of the universe, that the world was flat or, actually, had anything really to say about astronomy or physics.

Galileo was finally released from purgatory on 31 October 1992. The Vatican admitted erring for over 359 years in formally condemning Galileo. After 13 years of inquiry, the Popes commission of historic, scientific and theological scholars brought the pope a not guilty finding for Galileo. Pope John Paul II himself met with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to help set the record straight, but stopped short of apologising. Source: http://www.todayinsci.com/cgi-bin/indexpage.pl?http://www.todayinsci.com/10/10_31.htm In his pronouncement, the Pope argued that the church needs a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of inspired word, especially in avoidingmaking Scripture say what it does not intend to say.

2. The printing press, and the ability of people to read the Bible for themselves

When Guttenbergs printing press made Bibles freely available, a young German monk smuggled a copy for himself, and using a reading candle under his bedclothes at night, was struck by the book of Romans. He realisedthat what the entire Roman Catholic Church had been preaching for 1,500 years was incorrect. We are saved by faith, and by faith alone. It was going back to Gods Word that showed Martin Luther wherethe church had been mistaken, and emboldened him to state and nail his theses to the door of the WittenbergCathedral, on 31 October 1517. Amongst other incorrect beliefs and activities, the church had been selling indulgences, exchanging money for so-called eternal pardon from sin, had been teaching that Jesus is literally crucified again at every communion service, and that the Pope was an infallible representative of Christ and had the divine right of Emperors to rule politically as well.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say that the indulgences required by the church were acceptable, or that the Pope was infallible.

3. The rise of the anti-slavery abolitionist movement

Probably the most iconic change that has taken place in the past two centuries has been the issue of slavery. For most of the history of the Christian church, asthrough the history of the Jewish nation, slavery has been an accepted norm. Slaves and masters are a topics dealt with in the Bible with instructions given to both. The church of the New Testament was meant to be an egalitariansociety, where slaves and masters of really interacted with each other, learnt from each other, worshipped and prayed together, and served the Lord has equal brothers and sisters in Christ. But the slave - master relationship was never removed economically and socially. The writers of the Bible did not, and could not, imagine a world in which slavery did not exist.

Two centuries ago, when the massive global fights were taking place around the issue of slavery, from the United States of America to Britain and across Europe and into Africa, there were many people who used the Bible to support slavery. They pointed to verses in the Bible that dealt with masters and slaves and said that if God was against slavery, surely he would have abolished it already, or said so in the Bible. Others went even further back, to the Old Testament, especially looking at the story of Ham, the son of Noahwho came into his father's tent, saw his father naked, laughed at him, derided him, and in some Jewish histories it is even suggested that he sodomised him and defiled him. Because of us, Ham was cursed along with his descendants: that for ever more they would be the carriers of sticks and water and would be the slaves of their brothers descendants. Some of thegenealogy is lost in the mists of time, although it is traditionally thought that Ham became the father of the Egyptians.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say that slavery was acceptable. In fact, it said the opposite, by illustrating through the NT local church that slaves and masters worshiped together, and were equal in Gods eyes.

William Wilberforce, a member of the British government, became a Christian in 1787, and was immediately convicted of this issue. From 1788, as member of the British House of Commons,together with other abolitionists, he was tireless in his efforts. It was not until 1807 that the English Parliament abolished slavery and it was not until August 1833 - a month after Wilberforce's death - that the slave trade was abolished throughout the Empire. Thirty more years were to pass before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in the United States. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml

There are no Christians today, or at least no Christians that you and I would be interested in associating with, who would use the Bible, or any other means, to justify slavery. In our more enlightened times, we realise that the Bible and its authors were products of the times in which the Bible was written times when slavery was such an accepted norm that it was taken for granted. We now apply the verses aimed at masters and slaves to our relationships at work - relationships between boss and employee, between farmer and labourer, between foreman and worker, between company and clients. In other words we look at the Biblical commands about slaves and masters and understand that it was not meant to be an instruction for all time about an economic and social relationship of slavery, but rather it was meant to be open how people worked together where their primary relationship was an economic relationship. Reading this way, the Bibles instructions about masters and slaves are entirely sensible, and even today, are vital instructions for how Christians should behave in the workplace.

4. Globalisation and the opening up of trade with China, after the trade embargo of centuries.England just colonised Hong Kong.

It was that type of approach to Gods Word that led Hudson Taylor to investigate opportunities and methods for taking the gospel to the developing world as trade routes opened up to Africa and the East and realising that we needed to get the gospel to people who had never heard it before and he took on the church and he fought to create the world as we know it with modern missions. Hudson sailed from Liverpool to Shanghai, September 1853. He was the first missionary to venture into inland China. He founded the China Inland Mission, June 1865.

But, as we tried to get people in England to join and support his mission, he was met with resistance. One infamous response from a churchman went something like this:

If God wants the heathen Orientals to hear His Gospel, He is quite capable of doing so without your help or mine.

One of the big controversies was when Hudson decided to wear Chinese clothes. His church, supporters and even his own family berated him for dressing like those inferior people in a barbarous way. They even quoted Scriptures about men not wearing womens clothing, and about not taking on the customs of the surrounding nations. Hudson was unmoved, knowing that the only way to connect with the Chinese was to adopt their language, customs and way of life.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say that we should leave the heathens to their own devices, or that we should protect our own cultural expressions. In fact, it said exactly the opposite, even commanding us to go to the ends of the earth, taking the Gospel with us.

5. The womens suffrage movement

It was a hundred years ago this year are that the first country in the world allowed women to have a vote in their Parliamentary elections. That country was New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark and Iceland (1915), Canada (1917) then floodgates opened: USA (1920), South Africa (1930 whites only). Over the next few decades, most other countries in the world were to follow suit. There are many countries in the world, especially Islamic countries, that still do not allow women the vote at all. Most of us would see these countries as quite backward, not keeping up with the enlightened times in which we now live. At the time of womens suffrage, many Christians opposed them, citing all of the Biblical verses about women remaining silent, indicating the lack of women leaders and pointing to the creation order and women being submissive to men.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say thatwomen should have no rights. In fact, it said exactly the opposite that all people are equal before God. But equally, we discovered that the Bible has very little, if anything, to say about how countries are to be structured or what should be in their Constitutions.

Most of us would accept the rights of woman to be equal members in society, contributing equally with men in all aspects of society, including and especially political and corporate leadership. In fact, South Africa is a leading lights in the world -second only to Sweden in its representation of women in government structures. Under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki, it has instituted policies that ensure that women are equally represented on all significant committees and policy-making processes in Parliament. In fact, South Africa insisted that the same principle apply in the African Union and the African Parliament when it was being set up - an insistence that nearly scuttled the entire African Union process, as Muslim countries in Africa resisted the involvement of women at a continent level. South Africa won. And the African Union has similar requirements for its own structures, seeking to ensure equal representation of men and women. I believe that most of us would applaud this.

But there are many Christians who because of their understanding and reading of the Scriptures, still feel very uncomfortable about the role of women leaders and women teachers andpreachers in our churches. I do not intend this morning to deal with this issue, although I thinkthat my own personal views differ from the views of the majority of the leadership of this church. The point I want to make is that we need to be very careful about how we interpret Scripture. I am convinced that there are many Christians who do not use Scripture, rather they abuse Scripture.

6. The struggle of African-Americans for equal rights in the USA

Martin Luther King, Jr stood up against racism in America. He rose to prominence as the leader of the non-violent bus boycott, that lasted for 382 days from November 1955 to 21 December 1956, when the US Constitutional Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. Source: http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html He was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Why? Because people believed that African-Americans should not have the same rights as their white counterparts in the USA. The same Biblical arguments that were used to defend slavery, were rehashed in these debates.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say thatblack people were inferior to whites. The mark of Cain and Hams curse were not applicable to all black people everywhere. In fact, the Bible says exactly the opposite it instructs us to love all people, and treat them as equal human beings.

7. Apartheid

In our own country, we have another more recent example, that might still feel a little bit rawfor some people. It is the example of apartheid. Although you don't find too many people these days who claim to have supported apartheid wholeheartedly, there is no doubt that churches of all kinds and from all denominations played a culpable role in extending and enhancing the life and influence of the apartheid regime. If only by the omissions not only by their own missions, but also by their deliberate actions of using the Bible to justify our part at regulations, churches were part of the problem.

When I was 19, as a young Air Force conscript, we had official chapel services every Friday morning. On one morning, in early 1990, we were ushered into chapel, and a visiting chaplain, a highranking officer, addressed us. In Afrikaans, he preached about Ham, and the story of his curse. He told us that this was Biblical evidence that God had designed the black man to be our servants, for all time. I tell you this story for two reasons. Firstly, so that you know this is not theoretical for me. I know personally how Christians have abused Scripture. But, secondly, I tell you this because to this day I wish I had walked out of that chapel service. My unsaved friends, knowing my Christian beliefs stared at me with incredulity. Their eyes asked, Is this really the God you serve?How I wish I had shown them how far away from that chaplains belief my own worldview was. But those moments come and go so fast, sometimes you dont even get a chance to breathe.

These issues I write of in this article are not theoretical for me. They are deeply personal. They are about people. They are about who is in and who is out.

Of course, not everybody supported apartheid. Not everybody abused Scripture. It was the amazing Archbishop Desmond Tutu who once said, when the white man came to this country, he had the Bible and we had the land. Now he has the land, and we have the Bible. I think we got the better deal.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say thatapartheid and separation of the races was acceptable. In fact, it said the opposite, especially to Christians. Like the early church, we are meant to be a multi-cultural group of people, all equal before God.

8. Cross-cultural marriages

In SA, under apartheid, for example, it was illegal to marry across cultures. In fact, in the mid 1980s, as a prominent Christian leader and theologian, my father was called totestify before a government commission on the issue. They heard testimony from many Christian leaders about the issue of inter-racial marriage, and finally decided to maintain the ban. Arguments were put forward about being unequally yoked, and passages from the OT about Jews not being allowed to marry people from the surrounding nations.

BUT, as people went back to Gods Word, they discovered, of course, that the Bible did not, in fact, actually say thatpeople cant marry across cultures. In fact, it says the opposite, deliberately insisting that there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

Preaching in 2006

This year, as I preach in the morning services at BBC, I want to have a look at the use and abuse of Scripture. I want to help each of us here to gain a better understanding of Gods Word, and to be able to use it wisely within our own lives and the life of the communities that we influence. I don't believe that God ever intended His Word to be a big stick to beat people up with. God's Word is not an encyclopaedia of God, containing foolproof definitions and bombproof answers to every possible question that could be asked. God's Word is not some dusty volume on a shelf or a Constitution that speaks from the past and belongs in a museum. God's Word is living and active. It can cut through bone and marrow, and touch our hearts. It is an emotional and a spiritual thing. It is also no surprise that throughout Scripture it is made clear that without the help of the Holy Spirit it is impossible for us to fully understand God's Word. The Bible was never meant to be studied simply as an academic textbook, or a religious text. It is meant primarily to be understood by believers.

And God's Word is also a person. There is no coincidence that Jesus is referred to as the Word of God. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh and lived among us." And we have written down the words of the Word. God's Word, the Bible, is God's message to us throughout the ages, illuminated daily by the Holy Spirit, incarnated by Jesus, useful for teaching correcting and training in righteousness.

Please understand what I am saying. This is not the church just capitulating to the demands of society. No, far from it. What I am suggesting is that whenthe church and society seem out of step,Christians need to be to go back to Scripture to make sure that we are 100% convinced about the position that we have taken. On the basis of that, we are then able to boldly proclaim what we believe to be God's truth in the world in which we live. This takes boldness. This takes guts. Because we are likely to find, that some of the truth is we have held onto so dearly are actually incorrect. As society develops, we discover that we were incorrect. It takes humility and wisdom and boldness to admit that, to reconcile ourselves to people that we may have hurt because of misheld beliefs in the past, and to change our attitudes, our actions and our behaviours based on a new understanding and appreciation of God's Word.

It would be much easier for us to just hold onto the beliefs that we have so deeply and so easily entrenched inside of us. It would be so easy to believe that everything that we have been taught and everything that we currently believe is 100% the truth, and absolutely God's will according to God's Word. But I think that you know that that would be arrogant. Let the lessons of slavery, of apartheid, of the democratic rights of women, of Galileo, Taylor, Wilberforce, Luther and so many others, bethe lessons for us today as we think about our entrenched prejudices and beliefs. Let us make sure, in fact, that the things we hold deeply are beliefs and not simply prejudices. And there is only one way that we can do that. And that is to go back, again and again and again, to God's Word - our sure foundation.

As society changes, new issues emerge. Just as the physics of the world, slavery, justification by faith and apartheid have challenged Christians views of themselves, the world and the Bible, so, too, womens suffrage, fights against racism and intercultural marriages, and Darwinian evolution continue to challenge Christians today. New struggles are also emerging. We have to know how to handle GM foods, cloning, massive exploitation of our environment, homosexuality and many other ethical issues.On these, and other issues, I am not convinced that our current understanding of Scripture is correct.

So, in the next few months I want to give us some practical tools that we can use to ensure that we are using God's Word and not abusing it. I hope that you will join me as we embark on a journey of rediscovering God's Word for the 21^st century.

 

Hi Graeme

Did you ever complete your series on Homosexuality by looking at the Romans passage?

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Posted by: Brendon Asch 01 Feb, 2008 - 10:27:38

Thank you for this article. I want to send it to my mom. She and the members of her church are convinced they know everything (although they would never say so, they act it out).

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Posted by: Rebecca 25 Mar, 2008 - 05:40:02

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