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Sermon
Summary Please press the play button below to hear the sermon (mp3 file).
SERMON TRANSCRIPT: Conversations with an Atheist: Who put the 'Good' in the 'Good Book'? Sermon January 21, 2007 Pastor Dave Michel Matthew 5:17-22: Do not think that I have come to abolish the laws or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them, I tell you the truth until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter not the least stroke of the pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago do not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment, again anyone who says to his brother “Raca” is answerable to the Sanhedrin, but anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of hell. The word of the Lord. Thank all of you for coming out on a snowing Sunday. You are to be rewarded for your effort by getting out your sermon note sheet and taking notes. There is an outline as noted below. I will challenge you with it this morning on the things that I have experienced challenges.
I was a little surprised in my dialogs and in my readings that this was such a huge thing. Sam Harris in his book, Letter to a Christian Nation, said boldly: “the idea that the Bible is the perfect guide to morality and leads us to an understanding of God is ludicrous, look at the junk that is in the Bible.” He had a challenge for us, he said if you want to debate me on scripture, you come debate me and if it is all true than here is the deal, you can come read scripture with me on my radio show but here is the deal” I pick out the scripture, you read it, you cant make any commentary on it, just let the scripture stand on its own. He runs a list of scripture and there are some pretty awful things in there. I have done some research and one of the groups is a well known think tank in Great Britain, they do critical cultural analysis and satire, it is called the Monty Python Institute. Anytime I can come up with a time to put up a clip form Monty Pythons the search for the Holy Grail I am going to do it. The clip is about Legend of King Arthur, 800 AD around then, they are looking for the Holy grail and they come to be convinced it is in this cave but they cant get in the cave because it is guarded by a ferocious bunny rabbit and they go and attack the bunny with their swords and the bunny wins, so shields and swords don’t work so they bring in the Holy hand grenade of Antioch. This satire group expresses what they think of scripture and religious writing. (Movie clip was shown during service) They think scripture is repetitive and you blow your enemies to bits
in “Thy mercy.” It goes over and over about counting to three.
That is what they view about Holy Scripture. Now Sam Harris has something
a little bit different, more nonsattiracal to scripture. He issued a challenge
and says any believer that believes the Bible is true and the Bible is
the word of God can come and debate this issue with me. But only read
the scripture and don’t make commentary and he will choose the scripture.
Then he lists them. He is right. These scriptures, some of the Bible,
contains some of the most bizarre and hateful stuff you will ever read.
He points to these noted below. Exodus 35:2 The Sabbath is a day of rest to the Lord, whoever does any work on the Sabbath must be put to death. Any work on the Sabbath punishable by death, they say this over and over in the Bible. This does not include cheering for the Colts on the Sabbath, anyone who has an extra ticket for tonight I am still open for that. Deuteronomy 13:6 If your very own brother, son or daughter or the wife that you love or your closest friend secretly entices you saying let us go and worship other Gods do not yield to him or listen to him, show him no pity, do not spare him or shield him, you must certainly put them to death. Do we do it if they say let me entice you, lets cheer for the Bears? The one true faith is Indiana’s team. If anyone has tickets, I am open for that. Proverbs 20:30 and 23:13-14 Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. We don’t need a counseling ministry, we need a flogging room. There were churches that used to do that. If you fell into error a good public beating would do the trick. Do we do that anymore? They quote this one. I interpret this one; they say this has been the grounds for a lot of child abuse. Proverbs 23:12-do not withhold discipline from children: if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save a soul from death. Leviticus 20:10-If a man commits adultery with another mans wife, the wife of his neighbor, both the adultery and the adulteress must be put to death. If we did that there would be a whole lot of killing going on. You remember the folks who caught a woman in the act and brought her to Jesus. They let the man go, the trouble here is biblical liturgist don’t always follow it literally, they brought the woman to Jesus and say here is the law what do you say? Did Jesus have any stones to throw? Do we follow that-no? Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, the father and mother shall take him to the elders at the gate, the court, and they shall say to the elders this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious and he will not obey us, he is a profligate (given over to immorality) and a drunkard, all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil among you. Did you know it was in there? I mentioned it in a work group the other day to Pastor John, our youth director and he took a hold of that. He took it to the next YF lesson and laid that down for them. Do we do this? Well maybe we should….maybe this one is ok, let’s go onto the next scripture. Take a look at these scriptures, Slavery and women: We won’t go into them but there are two things they really point out as stumbling blocks to scripture, slavery and issues on how to treat women. In the old and new testament there are guidelines on how to be a Godly slave owner. In counsel to slaves do not rebel, submit to your masters as we all submit to Christ. The Bible does not teach against slavery, thank God that 200 years ago there was a small group in the church that said for thousands of years the Bible has taught in support of slavery and we think it is wrong. It was only 150 years ago it was outlawed in this country. About women, the Old Testament women had very few rights; a man could
divorce her just like that she was out on the street. She could not inherit
property; she could not stand up and testify for herself in a court of
law. That is why they didn’t ask the woman who was thrown at Jesus
feet to testify she could not speak. And in the New Testament it says
that women cannot speak in the church, to do so is shameful, for them
to instruct a man, to read Gods word and to preach of such things should
not be allowed. Now, again this is embarrassing. I am thankful that 100
years ago, our culture realized women have the right to go and some churches
again said, the Bible said they cant preach Gods word but they seem to
have some pretty Godly things to say so we will have them be teachers
and even ordain them as preachers. Some of you may be saying you know
what I believe in that scripture, women should not be allowed to teach
or preach, if you disagree with me saying that is a stumbling block and
that is something in the scripture that is wrong you can tell me about
it after church but only if you are a guy. I love the irony in that; if
you believe that women shouldn’t speak in the church you can’t
say anything to me if you are female. Get your husband to talk for you.
I can picture someone back there saying I am going to write a note….I
am pretty sure this covers the written word and emails. Ok, I will get
him in the parking lot, no, I am pretty sure it means the body of Christ.
What do you do with all these things that I have just said I agree they
are in the Bible and we do not follow them. Problem Science- Charles Duell-you may not know this, I had read that in 1899 he was put in charge of the US patent office and he was quoted as saying that since everything that could be invented has been invented he proposed closing down the patent office. Before they invented wide screen t.v. So I looked that up and it was not true. He is not on record as having said that. They think that 30 years earlier one of his predecessors said “he thought that very soon they could decrease the number of people working in the office since so many good things had already been discovered he thought the levels of inventions would taper off”. Still ridiculous that in 1860 most of the good stuff has already been invented. I had heard that the President of IBM said that the world market for computers he estimated to be five. That was not true. But they attributed this to a guy names Hartree which was the father of computing in Great Britain, he was a scientist who was supposed to have said that these differential analyzers (computers) that he was developing, he thought that all the calculating that needed to be done in Great Britain at that time could be done on three computers. He is on record as having said that. I don’t know about you but I have access to three just for myself, my one at the office, one at home and the laptop for when I am in between. Now there are computer chips in the amphilifier, my cell phone and I don’t know how many are in my car. The big bang- 100 years ago scientific consensus was that the universe was static and what was eternal was the stars and the heavens and the planets. God was not. All the scientist thought that. In the nineteen’s and twenties Hubble began to investigate the heavens and he discovered that whole universe was expanding and everything was going away from itself and if you ran the clock backwards what happens? There is a big crunch, everything was in a point of singularity and there was nothing. Then there was something. You can get thousands of quotes of scientists in the 1920 and 1930’s that did not agree with the big bang because the universe is static. Religious people embraced the big bang back then because it sounded like Genesis. Scientist argued against it. So now it is ironic to hear religious people argue against the big bang and scientist to claim it as orthodox. They ought to learn history. If you went to a doctor in the 1800’s you could get a mercury enema. Think of how toxic that would be. That was standard procedure in the 1800’s or a bleeding. Or if you have mental distress a lobotomy. Medical science saying this is good for you. Take a long thin needle up through the eye socket and wave it around and cut off the front half of the brain, then lets see how you feel. There was also shoe fitting fluoroscopes, X-ray machines that scientist assured in the 1950”s that it was perfectly safe to go buy a pair of shoes and then get x-rayed to see if they fit you or not, there were 10,000 shoe stores with x-rays and people had massive doses of radiation and shoe salesmen started to die. So they figured out these aren’t safe. The last shoes sales x-ray machine was taken out of service in 1978. Standard science. Now scientists would take a look at this and say no, we keep evaluating things and we test them based on new evidence and those things were in error and now we understand more fully. I would admit that they are right. I am going to say that is what Christians should do with scripture as well. Here is the convicting part and where they have us in the cross hairs. Take this bumper sticker. Have you seen it? I hope you don’t have it. It says: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" No, it doesn’t, this statement isn’t even biblical. Nor is this statement: “the Bible is infallible without error in its original manuscripts.” I don’t know where they get that because it’s not in the Bible. It is a conclusion or a theory. I don’t even know what an original manuscript is. They are trying to get around the fact that the manuscripts are from 100 to 200 years after the books were written. It is obvious there are conflicts and errors. So they say lets imagine the originals which we don’t have are without error. I can remember being in Angola around 25 years ago as a family serving in the Angola church and I was having lunch with a pastor from another church and he was chiding me on how loosely the Methodist take the scriptures. We pick and choose what we want to do he said you know our denomination we take everything the Bible literally. It is without error. He said this as he ate a cheeseburger. Which is unbiblical in case you didn’t know that. I said hey, that sandwich is unbiblical. He said what do you mean? I said “well Deuteronomy says that you should not mix dairy and meats, to do so is a violation of the Bible, and you don’t take the kid and simmer it in its mother’s milk. Milk is the stuff of life. In the orthodox Jewish home which really follows this, there is a line down the middle of the kitchen and separate dishes for meat and dairy. You never use the two together. So, I said to him “That sandwich is unbiblical” and he said “We don’t follow that.” I said “Exactly." And then I said, "In fact your shirt looks to me like a polyester cotton blend and it is unbiblical.” I went on to say “The Bible states that clearly that you don’t take two different kinds of thread and weave them together in the same garment, to do so is an abomination before the Lord and to save you from that I am willing to take your shirt off your hands.” He said “We don’t follow that” and I said “Exactly.” I didn’t know him well enough to know if he was circumcised or not…but I don’t care how much of a prude you are….that was funny. (true it was) They are right -- those things are ridiculous. There are stumbling blocks in the scripture. How did we ever get the idea that the Bible is infallible in its original manuscripts and that we should take everything in it literally? The word of God is not a book. Take a look at the words written in red. John 1:14 The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. HE is the word of God. We have beheld his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. If you want to know the truth, you go to Jesus who said I am the truth the way and the life. So, here are the two things on how we go to the good parts. How do we know where to start? The good parts- you look to the words written in red. Jesus said “If you knew me then you would know my Father also.” If we know Jesus then we know God and then by knowing what God is like because we have seen it in Jesus then we know how God regards us. The first thing is to go to the scripture and learn about Jesus. I can’t tell you how many people new to the faith come to me and say I just started attending church and I wanted know more about God so I started reading the Bible and I started at the beginning. I cringe. I know where they are going. They say Genesis is beautiful it starts out great, then it got kind of bloody and then Exodus was way whacked out and then I got bogged down in Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I say well I can, but I had to pay a lot of money to go to school and they made me do it. I tell them, don’t start there please, my universal counsel to folks new to faith is to go to the gospel of Mathew, pay special attention to the words written in red, then go to the gospel of John, then when you know Him, you can go to the rest of the scripture. The third place I point them to is the Psalms, they hymn book of the early church. One of my favorite psalms is about singing to the Lord saying how can we sing the Lords song in a foreign land. They were in Babylon at the time and they said by the waters of Babylon we laid down and wept when we remembered you Jerusalem and the temple and the people of God together and they said how can we sing the Lords song in a foreign land, but lets sing it anyway and they looked and said Babylon, you who destroyed Jerusalem, happy will those be who take those little children and dash their heads out on the rocks. Let’s take a look at what Jesus said you do with that. The first purpose of scripture is to know Jesus, and then we follow his example. Mathew 5:17 reference Jesus said do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets (now by this he is referring to the first five books of what we call the old testament.) then all the prophetic works which they considered scripture. I have not come to abolish it. He said I have come to fulfill it; I am going to take it higher that is even closer to the heart of God because you will have seen it in me. I have come to fulfill it. You can’t take all this stuff literally; you have to look at it through me. Then he gave a series of examples on it, he said for instance you have heard it said to the people long ago and he quotes directly the law of Moses, do not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. Directly out of the law. But-I tell you he said, if anyone is even angry with his brother would be subject to judgment. So he takes it and he fulfills it and puts it on a higher plane. He does the same things with adultery. I tell you don’t even lust he says, be pure in spirit. Then he took a law of Moses where he said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Jesus said, but I say to you, love your enemy. He goes on and on of old, he says you know what if you want to get into the kingdom of God your righteousness has to exceed that of scribes and Pharisees because they can quote the scripture, big deal the devil can quote scripture, I want you to see it fulfilled in me He said. So if the first thing of scripture is to have it focus toward Jesus the second thing is that we turn then and look at the rest of scripture and interpret it in the light of Jesus. We know that I don’t need to be stoned because I am wearing a cotton polyester blend shirt. It is not just enough to follow a law, but to have it written on our hearts and to be changed. How do we do that? You check it out in community. This is in our tradition. When people get tripped up in this- You build your Christian faith and your walk on these four resources Wesley Quadrilateral Determinism-the sovereignty of God and God is in control. February 11th I believe I am really going to challenge some of you as I speak about science and God. For those of you who use the Bible as a text book on science are abusing the scriptures. They are misleading people. So, I want you to be here for that without any stones to throw. May you seek out the word of God, which is Jesus and become more and
more like Jesus in the week ahead and may the light of the word of God
shine light for your path, because the light of the world is Jesus and
may you be a light for a hurting world. Go in Peace.
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Tuesday, John 1:14 Friday
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