3-26-06 The sufficiency of Scripture – Proverb 2:6
We talk a lot about the truth of Scripture. We talk about the importance of Scripture. We talk about the power and the inspiration of Scripture, but do we really, at the core, believe in the sufficiency of Scripture? Do we really, at the core, practice the sufficiency of Scripture? Do we really rely on the full sufficiency of Scripture in everyday life?
I believe this may be the most important question we should ask, and answer appropriately, for Christians living in today’s culture. Do you go first to God’s Word for answers, or do you go elsewhere? I started listing this week all the issues where people elevate Man’s truth over God’s Wisdom, and guess what? The list includes everything. As we talked about a few weeks ago in this class, Christians should take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ – every issue in life needs to be processed Biblically. But tragically, many Christians do not “think like a Christian.” Instead, many of them think like the world.
There are at least three top “worldly thinking” sources of information:
People trust their FEELINGS for answers. If it feels right, then it must be right. If I feel like I can fly like superman, I must be able to. If I feel like I can overcome the forces of gravity, then I must be able to. Feelings are a very treacherous source of answers.
People trust other peoples’ OPINIONS. If Dr. “So and So” said it then it must be right. He’s an expert on the matter. But whose opinion do you value the most? Did you know that there are over 250 different viewpoints on human psychology? Which one is right? Can they all possibly be right?
We also put our trust in SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. If science has proven a certain thing to be true, then we must trust it, right?. Now science is very helpful and certainly has it’s place, but unfortunately, much of what is called science is not based on observation and repeated experiments; much of it is really someone’s opinion and it’s falsely called science.
I’d like to suggest that we trust in God’s Revelation for our answers. My purpose this morning is to present two reasons why we should fully rely on the sufficiency of Scripture in every day life. These two reasons are found in Proverbs 2:6: For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Here’s the first reason:
The Lord GIVES wisdom.
The Bible repeatedly states that God Himself is the source, the origin, and the creator of everything that is true and right and wise. Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding do not originate with humans, but with God. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:19-20
19For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? …. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Even the greatest foolishness of God (if there could even be such a thing) is much greater and much wiser than the greatest, wisest thing man could ever come up with. We think that in this day and age that our technology is going to solve every problem. We foolishly believe that we are smarter than God. The passage in 1 Corinthians goes on to say that the ultimate expression of the wisdom and power of God is Christ himself, and the PREACHING of the gospel message – is the ultimate in foolishness to the world. Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are from the Lord, not from us.
Have you ever paused to consider the result of what God creates verses the result of what people create? Sometimes during the fall our family will go out and pick up walnuts. In just a few hours under two or three trees, we can fill up a whole trailer.
We also pick up trash beside the road at times. When we do this, my boys work diligently and with good attitudes, but there isn’t much joy in it. It doesn’t take long to collect a whole trailer load of stinky, disgusting trash in just a small area! As we work, sometimes we talk about littering, laziness, and how gross trash is. We talk about beer and whiskey and driving drunk - we always find more beer cans and bottles than anything else on the road right by our house.
We were doing the same action: picking up a great abundance of stuff off the ground, but there was a key difference between the two: God made the walnuts, and provided a blessing. Humans made the trash, and provided a mess to clean up. That’s the difference between God’s wisdom, and man’s wisdom. James 3:13-15 says:
13Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.
Where do you find the answers to your questions? Really! Where do you go? Do you go to the Lord – the source of wisdom and walnuts – or to man – the source of treachery and trash?
I want to warn you to stop listening to human wisdom. Human wisdom says we’re all OK – Human wisdom says God’s a great guy – he’s not going to send people to hell. Human wisdom says don’t admonish people for their sin, but just build up their self-esteem. Human wisdom, at its core, is wisdom that is WISE in its own EYES. God’s wisdom is objective and absolute – it is outside of us – God sees us as we really are – desperate sinners in need of grace.
Proverbs 3:7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.
Proverbs 26:12 Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Proverbs 28:11 A rich man may be wise in his own eyes, but a poor man who has discernment sees through him.
Now you might be wondering, “Jim, are you saying we shouldn’t ever get advice from anyone? If people are so messed up, how do we know who to LISTEN to?” Here’s the deal: you had better know the worldview of the person you are seeking counsel from. What is your potential counselor’s STARTING point – the source of truth? Does that person get their answers from God’s Word, or from somewhere else?
Does that person have a growing maturing RELATIONSHIP with Jesus Christ? Isaiah calls Jesus the wonderful counselor. Does that person have the FRUIT of the Holy Spirit in his life? John 14 says the Holy Spirit is our counselor who lives in us and will guide us into all truth.
One of the reasons that God gives His wisdom to people is so that we can SHARE it with others. But we had better make sure we are giving and listening to Godly wisdom instead of worldly wisdom. Psalm 1:1 says;
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…
Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding come from a holy and perfect God, but here is the great part: He chose to give it to us. The Lord gives wisdom. God could have made us to be dumb animals, but He made us in His own image, so that we could learn who he is and have a relationship with Him. God didn’t have to give us anything; He chose to give it to us.
So how exactly does God give His wisdom? This brings us to the second reason from Proverbs 2:6 that we should rely on the sufficiency of Scripture in everyday life, and that is that:
Wisdom, Knowledge, and understanding come from His MOUTH.
God is infinitely smarter that we are, yet He chose to give us His infinite wisdom through a specific delivery method: speaking in a language we could understand. Now God does not literally have a “mouth” with physical lips and teeth and a tongue like we do, but the point is that God’s truth was spoken so that we could hear it, understand it, and apply it. Hebrews 1:1-2 says
1In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, …
We are living in the last days – and in these last days God has spoken to us through His Son Jesus. How do we know what God has spoken through Jesus? We need to know all the red words in the book – and all the others as well, because Jesus confirmed the truth and sufficiency of the Old Testament in the Gospels. Peter and Paul and the other New Testament writers confirmed the truth and sufficiency of the entire Bible when they wrote, and they testified that God himself breathed into or inspired the writings of the Bible. (See 2 Timothy 3:16 – All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for…)
So God’s specific method of delivering His Wisdom to sinful man was human LANGUAGE, compiled by the Apostles and the prophets into a collection of books we now call the Bible. Frail humans like Moses and David and Matthew and Mark took their pens and wrote the words –each adding their own style and experiences, but all of it guided and inspired in its truth, accuracy, completeness, power, and sufficiency by the mouth of God.
Please meditate on this Proverb: God has given it to us, and he has given it to us by the way that we can most easily ACCESS it: he has spoken it in understandable human language. God could have kept his wisdom to himself! Or He could have delivered it in some unintelligible code, but He didn’t. And how powerful is that today, two thousand years after Jesus walked this earth, that we have God’s wisdom, knowledge, and understanding presented to us in the most effective communication device ever – a book in a language we can understand.
Books are great because, once they are printed, books don’t change. Books don’t walk away (unless someone takes them for a walk!). Books might get a little faded and torn up, but you can replace your copy. Books are handy to take anywhere. Books don’t need sleep, and they don’t have expensive parts to replace. Books don’t have to be fed, they don’t need batteries, and praise God they don’t need anything from Microsoft.
But there is a problem with books, especially the Bible. It’s really a problem with us, not the Bible itself. The problem is MISINTERPRETATION.
I am convinced that the single most important issue that the Church needs to address today is how to interpret the Bible correctly. One church says that the Bible means this – the other church says the Bible means that. Nearly every disagreement between churches and denominations is in some way related to the interpretation of the Bible.
The Bible is the most widely read, most misunderstood, book that there is. And I think there is really one main reason for that:
The main reason God’s Word is so misunderstood is that we want to put our words in God’s mouth, instead of letting His mouth speak His wisdom, His knowledge and His understanding to us. The key is that it is given to us by the Lord from His mouth. Don’t you hate it when someone puts words in your mouth? When they make it sound like you said something that you would never say? Unfortunately, we spend an awful lot of time and energy putting words into the Lord’s mouth. We need to let the Lord say what He wants to say instead of forcing a preconceived opinion onto the Bible.
The difference is basically reading an idea “into” the Bible, verses reading an idea “out” of the Bible. Putting words into the Lord’s mouth is called “EISEGESIS” – reading into the Bible what we already think beforehand. Allowing God to speak what He wants from His Word is called “EXEGESIS” – reading out of the Bible what it says. We want to preach and teach exegetically – our church is committed to interpreting the Bible this way.
Ken Ham on his Answers In Genesis.org website has an excellent article about the difference between “eisegesis” – reading into the Scripture man’s fallible ideas, verses “exegesis” – reading out of the Scripture what God wants to say.
Look at these illustrations from his article. Eisegesis – putting words in the mouth of God - looks at Genesis one (and the rest of the Bible) with a marker, ready to mark out what you don’t like. The Hebrew word for “day,” “Yom,” cannot mean “day,” because everyone knows that the earth is millions and millions of years old. That is “reading into” the Scripture a human bias. That is putting words in the mouth of God that He never intended to say.
Exegesis – “reading out of” looks at Genesis one with a magnifying glass. It is an honest, humble approach. We look at the Hebrew word “Yom,” and we find out it means, guess what, “Day.” But we look at the grammar and the style of literature and by honestly studying God’s Word, we “find that whenever yôm (day) is qualified by a number or the phrase evening and morning, it always means an ordinary day. Thus, critically looking at the text and then reading out of Scripture, one cannot come to any other conclusion except that these days were ordinary (24-hour) days.” –Ken Ham
Ken Ham says in his article that…”Understanding the difference between ‘eisegesis’ and ‘exegesis’ is really the KEY to the effectiveness of the church in today’s culture. “ I totally agree with that statement. All over this country and the world, Christians are being taught to interpret their Bibles by throwing out the highlighter and grabbing the black marker – saying “this can’t be true” because we are foolish enough to attempt to put words in the mouth of God. How effective are churches going to be working off of human wisdom?
But when we train Christians to properly listen to the mouth of God speak what He wants to say, we as a whole body have the discernment to judge the theories and ideas of fallible, sinful, treacherous humans like ourselves in light of what the Scripture clearly says. Like Mark Twain said, “it’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts of the Bible that I DO understand that bother me.”
We don’t change the meaning of Scripture based on cultural whims – the meaning of Scripture should be changing cultural whims as Christians fulfill their calling to be salt and light in a wicked world. We don’t adjust the truth of God’s Word – it adjusts us. In fact, you could even go so far to say, that we don’t even interpret the Scripture, but the Scripture INTERPRETS us.
We need to understand that there is only one “meaning” of Scripture – that is what the author intended to say. (It is from the Lord’s mouth, not mine, or anyone else’s!) Any other meaning than the author’s meaning is wrong. The ultimate author is the Lord, and His meaning is the right one. We need to constantly analyze our study of Scripture to make sure our thinking and our methodology is correct. Maybe you have heard this question: “What does this Scripture mean to you?” That question should be banned in our study of Scripture because it leads us to put words in God’s mouth that He did not intend.
Instead we should ask, “What is the author trying to say here? And a good follow up question would be, “How does this Scripture apply to your life?” A great thing to remember in studying Scripture is, “Am I getting the AIM – the AUTHOR’S INTENDED MEANING? Or am I putting words into God’s mouth?”
Now someone might say, “well, Jim, you are standing up there spouting off your ideas about what the Bible means…are we not supposed to listen to preaching and teaching of the Bible?” Well, God’s Word tells us that we need to listen to the preaching and teaching of God’s Word – in fact, we as a church need to seriously grow in our commitment to studying the Bible.
Growing in our knowledge and understanding of the Bible is not an option for the maturing Christian. And no I am not spouting off my own ideas – I am using the authority of God’s Word to preach. God’s Word gives us the wisdom to give to other people.
I am nothing by myself, just like everyone else. I am a wretched sinner, saved by God’s grace alone, through my active, living faith. The authority to preach or teach lies in the Word of God itself spoken from the mouth of God. My job as a teacher is to accurately present to you the whole counsel of God. Your job as church members and listeners is not to sit there and be sleeping sheep, but to be active participants – to realize that the wolf is always about looking for some sleeping sheep to munch on.
As a church body, we need to seriously commit ourselves to be like the Bereans in Acts 17. In Acts 17, Paul preaches the gospel in Thessalonica, and then gets run out of town by a very irate mob. He then goes to preach in Berea, and listen to what the Scripture says about the Bereans in Acts 17:11:
11Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Now please chew on this for a second. If the Bereans were commended and encouraged for daily searching the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true, how much more so should we be daily searching the Scriptures if some schmoe like me is preaching? How much more should we daily search the Scriptures to see if what the TV and radio preachers are saying is true? How much more should we daily search the Scriptures to make sure we are not putting our words in His mouth?
Paul was an Apostle with a capital A. Paul wrote most of the New Testament. Paul took the gospel to the entire world of His day. Paul is undoubtedly the greatest pastor, missionary, preacher, scholar, writer, and teacher in Christian history other than Jesus himself- and the Bereans are COMMENDED for digging in their Bibles and checking Him out. They weren’t prideful and arrogant about it – they had a noble character – they received it with great eagerness.
That word translated “examined” in Acts 17:11 means much more than mere reading. They carefully investigated the Scriptures – it is the same word used when a judge is INVESTIGATING a case before Him. What I wouldn’t give to hear the conversations they must have had. Can you imagine them? Staying up all night long talking and arguing about these things – and then coming back the next day to Paul. Can you imagine Paul having to preach to these guys? Talk about a smart crowd! They were not going to be deceived – they had a Godly discernment and they knew their Bibles.
Guess what they found out? They found out that Paul was right! They found out that Paul was right because Paul was proclaiming God’s Wisdom spoken from God’s mouth and not Paul’s own opinions. They did not wait to be spoon fed – they were active participants in the learning process.
Where do you go for your answers? Life is a difficult, messy business. God’s Word is fully sufficient to deal with the tough issues in every day life. Let Him speak His wisdom from His mouth to your life today.
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