221016 Sermon on the inspiration of Scripture (Pentecost 19) October 16, 2022

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

Paul says in our Epistle reading: “From infancy, Timothy, 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 and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, well equipped for every good work.”

This statement about the Scriptures is especially important and relevant to us in our time. At other times in history this statement wasn’t controversial among Christians. In our time, though, the question of whether the Scriptures are God-breathed, that is, divinely inspired, as Paul says, is not accepted by all Christians or all Christian churches.

Those who hold to this passage, that the Scriptures are inspired, will go about being Christians one way. Those who do not believe this will do what they do in a very different way. If the Scriptures are inspired and truthful, then the Scriptures will determine your beliefs and actions. If they are uninspired or untruthful or unuseful, then there’s no reason to feel bound by what they say. Of all the controversies that divide churches, the inspiration and truthfulness of the Scriptures has to be one of the most important.

So today let us first deal with how we should think about the Scriptures being inspired. Whether the Scriptures are inspired and truthful is an article of faith. It is not something that can be tested with experiments or proved with rational or mathematical formulas. As an article of faith, either what the Scriptures say is from God and truthful or it is not.

Let’s consider a few examples from the Scriptures: Either God sent the flood to destroy the earth or he did not. Either God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac or he did not. Either God caused the iron ax-head to float in the Jordan River or he did not.

We could, of course, go on. Anything and everything that the Scriptures say could be doubted. I’ve purposely picked these because lots of people have problems believing them. Physicists and meteorologists might have big problems with a world-wide flood. Ethicists, philosophers, and theologians might have a big problem with God demanding that Abraham sacrifice his son. And God causing an ax-head to float in the water so that the worker who lost it could keep working just seems silly—a waste of a miracle.

So what we can see from these few examples is that doubting what the Bible says is not unusual. You do not have to be super sophisticated to doubt what the Bible says. In fact, what is unusual is when people simply believe the Bible says. Doubt and unbelief, in fact, are the default and normal conditions for mankind after the fall into sin.

The Bible itself says this. Jesus says that no one can believe in him unless he or she is drawn by the Father. Believing in Jesus as the Christ cannot be naturally known. God the Father must cause a person to believe it. Paul says that the natural man is hostile to God and his revelation. The only way anyone can truly believe is by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our Catechism sums up these passages nicely when it says concerning the third article of the Creed: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit [works and causes me to believe.]”

So if the Bible says stuff that you find hard to believe you shouldn’t be surprised. And you certainly shouldn’t regard your doubt or unbelief as a sign of greater intelligence or sophistication. Doubting is about the easiest thing in the world. We’ve been doing it almost from the very beginning. The serpent asked Eve: “Did God really say? Isn’t it possible that you human beings have misunderstood that?” Believing that God’s Word is uninspired and untruthful and unuseful is an old accomplishment. It was done way back then. Ever since then there has been no shortage of unbelievers. The majority, in fact, has always been unbelievers instead of believers. Thus you should not believe that you are doing anything cool or unusual when you doubt what the Scriptures say.

Nor should you believe that you are on the right side of history. This, also, is very commonly believed by those who think the Scriptures are uninspired and untruthful. We are given the impression by the way history is taught that folks used to believe in all kinds of childish, ridiculous things. Now, thank our lucky stars, we’ve gotten much wiser. Science and technology are used as a kind of proof for our superiority. Hundreds of years ago people didn’t burn nearly as much fuel as we burn, and they didn’t accumulate nearly as much stuff as we have, so we must be much smarter today. There is an assumption, then, that whatever the old Bible might say has been disproven.

This is not true. None of the words or actions or events of the Scriptures have been disproven. How could they be? How can anyone prove or disprove anything that has happened in the past? That will always remain an article of faith. Either what has happened can be believed or it can be disbelieved, but there is no incontrovertible proof one way or the other. To claim otherwise is dishonest.

Even the very idea that we are superior to the people of the past is vastly overstated. If you read the Bible you will find that we’re not that different from Adam and Eve. We’re not that different from the people at the time of Moses. At all times in history there have been people who have believed in what God revealed and people who have disbelieved. The Bible itself reports, for example, how the people with Moses simply couldn’t believe that God would take care of them. When Christians or Christian churches do that today, when they quit believing in the inspiration and truthfulness of the Scriptures, they are basically doing the same thing.

People not believing should never be surprising. What should be surprising is when those who claim to be God’s people allow this unbelief to go unchallenged, or even to allow this unbelief to be promoted. This is the strange thing about our times. There are groups of people who want to be known as Christians, but who do not want the Scriptures to be determinative. They believe that other sources of knowledge are more reliable and can trump whatever the Scriptures might say. Even though these folks believe in other things besides the God who has spoken in the Scriptures, they are allowed to remain in their churches and have even taken them over. These churches that allow unbelief in the Scriptures to be taught and defended end up being very different than those churches that still believe in the Scriptures.

Our church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, requires its pastors and teachers and members to believe in the Scriptures. We had something of a civil war over this issue in the 1970s called “Seminex.” Our St. Louis seminary was split in two. This was a difficult and painful fight. It divided congregations, schools, and families, but it ended up being a great blessing. Professors, pastors, and teachers who no longer believed in the Scriptures were, by and large, forced out. Then they went and got together with some other Lutherans. They formed in 1988 the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The ELCA does not require belief in the Scriptures. It shares our name of being “Lutheran,” but we are very different from one another. They cannot give any firm answer to the question of whether the Scriptures are inspired and inerrant. I do not believe that they even require a firm answer to whether Jesus rose from the dead. Since the Scriptures do not need to be believed or regarded as a reliable guide, you can be sure that they will never fight for those things in Scripture that contradict our modern sensibilities. What the Bible says about men being pastors and leaders in the church and heads of their families is an abomination to them. They will not allow themselves to be bound by anything in the Scriptures, but will go whichever way the cultural winds blow.

In fact at their 2019 church-wide assembly they passed a resolution by over 97% that faith in Jesus Christ is no longer required. They rejected and shamed a delegate who offered an amendment that stated Jesus’s own words—that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. What the tragic history of the ELCA shows is that unbelievers are not content just to deny the flood or the making of iron float in water. Previous generations in the ELCA would probably be horrified by the actions of the 2019 church-wide assembly. But, as Paul says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Once the principle that the Scriptures are inspired and truthful, as Paul says, is given up, then any and every statement of Scripture is open to doubt.

Paul speaks rather directly to all of this in our Epistle reading this morning. First of all, he answers the question about whether salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. He says to Timothy: “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Paul says that Scripture is what taught Timothy. Those Holy Scriptures say that salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ and not in any other religions.

We must not despise what Paul says next either: “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, well equipped for every good work.” Scripture is breathed out by God. It is inspired. It is breathed into by God. That means that it is the communication of God’s will to us. Furthermore, it is useful. It works. It rebukes, corrects, and trains us in righteousness. The Holy Spirit in that Word creates faith in Jesus the Savior.

Unbelief in Jesus, unbelief in the Scriptures, has always been common, ever since the very beginning. Don’t be taken in by story that the Bible has been somehow disproved. All that has happened is what has always been happening from the beginning. God’s enemies sow doubt with the question, “Did God really say? If you were God, would you do it that way?” It is always wisdom that is promised. Alienation from the only true God of the Scriptures is what ends up getting delivered. Don’t buy it.

The Scriptures testify of Jesus, the one who overcame the serpent. He is the Savior of sinners. This you will see, as Paul also says in our reading, “when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead.” Then you will know that Jesus’s rising from the dead is your salvation.