Getting Back on Track with God’s Word
Part 3 in a Series on Revelation 1:4-3:22
Revelation 2:8-17; 3:7-13
A Sermon Preached by Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.
At Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile, AL, July 21, 2007

I’ve been wearing glasses nearly my whole life. Now for those of you who might not appreciate the marriage that evolves with glasses, I'll put it simply: without glasses life doesn’t work. Whether its choosing between my toothbrush or flossing tool, recognizing a friend from across the room, or dialing someone on the phone, unless I have my glasses I'm hopeless. Without them typing on the computer would produce who knows what, and reading? Forget it. While I used to deplore them for the sake of names such as Four Eyes and Coke Bottle, I've since come to appreciate my codependency on them so that I can pick up a glass of water, communicate, learn, dress myself in matching clothes, drive, write a check, watch the Bay Bears try to win, or see the latest movie. Without glasses, life would be a lot harder.

Is it any wonder, then, why of all the things he could pick John Calvin used glasses as an analogy for scripture? As with glasses, “Scripture,” he writes, “gather(s) together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.vi.1). Have you ever been curious about God, or wondered how being a Christian should influence the choices you make in business or your personal life? Has it ever been difficult to discern God’s voice from the plethora of influences that fill your senses? In 2 Timothy we read that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (3:16). To use Calvin’s language, God’s Word is like glasses that God has given us to see things more clearly in a life often obscured by ungodly distractions. It’s easy to get sidetracked by them, or even be persuaded against God’s will by them, and this is at the root of what threatens the Christian communities we read about this morning.

John’s conviction is that scripture needs to be at the core of the Christian mind and of our quest to understand godly life when we’re in a time of chaos and are tempted to rely primarily on our own resources. Have you ever noticed that when we’re in crisis mode we tend to resort to our own resources for ways to work things out? This is similar to what the Christians in Smyrna, Pergamum, and Philadelphia were facing: high stress moments that tempted them to get off track with scripture. But in their case the stress was extreme because it was a matter of life and death. If you’ve ever been with someone at death’s door, you’ll know that the conversation isn’t about how pretty a dress is, or how nice the hair looks. It’s about salvation and about tying up loose ends with family. When it comes to a time of death making sure that person is at ease with Jesus and knows forgiveness is the most important thing. So when John decides to make an appeal to these Christians that in their crisis of life and death that they continue to adhere to God’s word, he’s not speaking lightly. With eternal life in the balance, God’s Word is the most important thing to keep in one’s view.

John’s letter to the Christians in Smyrna doesn’t give us details about their crisis, but the language he uses makes it clear that their problems were going to be severe. The question Christians in Smyrna were asking wasn’t why they’d face trouble, but how they would remain faithful to God despite it all. And at the critical moment he doesn’t tell them to turn to themselves for answers or appeal to political solutions. He tells them to keep focused on God’s Word and they will be conquerors.

The letter to the Christians in Pergamum talks about the same sort of crisis even citing an example of a Christian named Antipas who was faithful even in death. Unlike those in Smyrna, though, John writes that some of the Christians in Pergamum haven’t remained faithful, by committing themselves to teachings of Balaam. We don’t have any idea what this is about, unless we know our Old Testaments well, but for Jews in John’s day the message was clear. It was an appeal to remain steadfast to God’s word.

You see, according to Jewish traditions in the Bible and rabbinic literature, Balaam was the Canaanite responsible for influencing a Jewish leader named Balak to convince other Israelites it would be okay to associate with religious prostitutes in Canaan. When God’s people were crossing into new lands, they were ordered by Moses not to intermingle with natives of the land lest they take on their religious customs. It was an ancient form of the battle between culture and Christianity that we face daily. Israelites followed Balaam’s suggestion and sure enough they began to adopt a variety of influences other than what had come to them through Moses. Consequently, their faithfulness to God was blurred by powerful forces in society opposed to God. Add to this that Christians in Pergamum prided themselves in living in one of the more famous literary centers in the known world, so there was plenty to rival the teachings of the Old Testament and apostles.

We see the battle between culture and Christ today, and sadly even in our seminaries and denomination. It has been the fashion for years now to rip scripture apart and remove its prophetic power to transform our lives. Attend a graduate course that deals with the Bible these days and you really don’t learn a lot about the text itself, but more about what gave rise to the text, or how it doesn’t really mean what it seems to say. Stories are discounted as unreliable, and even Jesus’ words are labeled either as authentic or non-historical. It’s really a sad situation brought upon by historical-criticism, which has left us with a scripture that’s hard to understand and distant from us. But let’s get back to the letters.

Christians in Philadelphia likewise faced an imminent time of testing during which they’d be tempted to deny being followers of Christ and return to their former Jewish faith. To them John says that they’ve endured with patience and remained faithful to the Lord. Christianity began as a sect within Judaism and the earliest Christians were Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus. It wasn’t a threat to Rome, but rather a cause for concern among orthodox Jews who believed that God would punish Israel if it allowed unorthodox teachings to flourish. As Jews, the earliest Christians faced exclusion from their families and communities, which had serious ramifications in nearly every aspect of life. The temptation to move away from Jesus’ teachings in the face of such exclusion and family pain was enormous, and was a significant problem in the early church.

If you’ve ever experienced friends distancing themselves from you because of your faith, or been refused a promotion because you were open about your faith, or been in school and had a prayer meeting refused, then you know this type of pain. The world doesn’t like it when we bring Christ into its midst either by word or example. And the higher the stakes for us the more tempting it is to put Christ into the background, if even for just the moment. This temptation is what John is writing against.

At the heart of these three letters is John’s strongest conviction that his brothers and sisters in the faith must adhere faithfully and with patience to the lessons of the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus that have become our New Testament. “Don’t buy the lie,” John might say. And if you don’t know what the lie is, then he’d say that’s a sign you’ve already begun to buy into it. For John, what was at stake here was nothing short of a person’s salvation because without scripture at the core of our influences we have no way of telling between what is of God truly and what is mere tripe from worldly wisdom, scientific evolution, or good philanthropy. In short, John’s conviction was that it’s impossible to follow Christ without scripture to guide us.

The Spirit has convicted me deeply about this lately so I must speak boldly. If we’re to be courageous Christians then we must get back to the Word of God as the principal influence in our lives. It’s not about how many Bibles you own, its about how much of it is influencing your worldview. I’m not suggesting that we simply open the Bible and do what it says. We have to bring a degree of intellectual honesty to the task. If we don’t do that then scripture becomes open to our whim and fancy.

Instead, I’m speaking about our attitude when we read God’s word. Whenever we read scripture we’ve got to do it with the utmost humility. Reading God’s word with humility means that we submit ourselves to its influence rather than insisting that it has a limited view on modern life. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are God’s creation and we’ll never be otherwise. If we think for one moment that we’ve become too sophisticated for scripture, or that science has reduced scripture’s input to the behavioral arena, then we’ve bought into the rubbish that John was writing against. There’s no such thing as evolving beyond scripture’s influence.

When we open this book we’re exposing ourselves to the influence of God Himself, and in doing so we must choose either to buy into it or make the mistake of putting culture over it. We can’t have it both ways. If eternal life with Jesus is our goal, then putting scripture as the leading influence in our lives isn’t optional, it’s mandatory.

I confess that I wish I could be standing here with a more complex message than it all boils down to reading your Bibles more often. But, that seems to be what John is suggesting is the key to knowing the right path from the wrong one. The world poses so many influences that are vying for ownership of our minds. But, being a follower of Christ means that we don’t surrender that space. Rather, we humbly submit ourselves to the authority of scripture, not the authority of culture. I know this is a hard battle, though.

It means that we risk appearing unsophisticated or intellectually simplistic. It means that we risk seeming as if we’re old fashioned. It means challenging the voices of those who use their education to deprive scripture of its authority over life. It means allowing our decisions to fall under the influence of God’s wisdom. That’s the way to lead a Christian life in its purest and simplest of forms. The more we open ourselves to the influence of God’s word, the more we’ll see a correlation between it and our peace and spiritual confidence in a world that quite frankly is deceptive at its core. That’s the essence of what John Calvin and the author of 2 Timothy were writing, but that’s the good news, too.

I’m going to close this message by reading the good news that comes at the end of each letter, where John writes, “To those who conquer.” In this case, to conquer means that to put scripture on the top of the list of our influences. [Read the closing sections]. In other words, to those who conquer we will be granted that which we most earnestly desire, eternal life with God. I don’t know about you, but to me that prize makes all the effort and humility worth it and for that I say hallelujah. Amen.