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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Absolute Need of the Bible |
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Twenty-fifth
Sunday after Trinity November
9, 2008 Once man rejects God as God and demands to be his own god, thinking people become aware of two issues. First all rules are arbitrary. Second, we must have rules. Let’s talk about arbitrary rules first. If there is no God, all rules are arbitrary. This may be expressed in more appealing words, such as “situational ethics,” or “relativism,” or even “peace,” and “the good of the people,” but these are all code words. They are words that disguise the real truth, which is that the rules are entirely arbitrary, chosen only because the people in power want them. Second, we must have rules. Even though this seems to directly contradict the first assertion that all rules are arbitrary, thinking people realize we must have rules. No one actually believes 6.7 billion people can live on this planet without some rules. That would result in utter chaos with each person making his own rules, as long as he can make them stick. Having become aware of these two issues, the thinking person is forced to ask who will make the rules and what will be the purpose of the rules. Let’s talk about the purpose of the rules first. Will the rules exist to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people? That is the definition that is popular in the West today, but then we have to ask another question; who defines good? Right now people tend to favor the freedoms defined for us in the time when our culture believed in a loving God who had endowed all people with certain inalienable rights which could be easily drawn from the revelation of God’s truth, the Bible. Yes, they have twisted and distorted these rights, but they still hold to a belief in human rights, and the idea of human rights comes from the Bible. But when the idea that all rules are arbitrary replaces the idea of God given rights, what will keep the purpose of the rules from changing to, say, the preservation of the state at all costs? Such a change would turn the rules away from securing freedom for the people to making us servants of the state. In a world with only arbitrary rules, what will prevent such a turn of events? What will prevent the rules from favoring certain groups at the expense of others? Then, how will the rules be enforced, especially on those people whose only crime is ideological dissent? How will the rules handle those who would live peacefully, though by a different set of principles and world view? Will we see gulags and psychological “asylums” for them? Then we have the question of who makes the rules. If there is no absolute standard, the rules are made by the group in power and enforced upon everyone, according to the will of those in power. By definition this means an arbitrary enforcement of the rules. Some people and groups will be favored while others will be treated harshly. The other option is that there are no rules and we are reduced to “the law of the jungle” in which everyone does whatever he can get away with. As you can see, these are issues we are already facing in our own culture and nation, and there is no solution to be found in arbitrary rules. For if everything is arbitrary, then whatever is, is right, and there is no standard by which anyone can judge it to be otherwise. We have no rights, and the rule makers have no bounds. He who has the power makes the rules, or, there are no rules and everyone does whatever he can get away with. Tyranny, or chaos. Those are the two choices in an arbitrary world. Fortunately there is an alternative. There is an unchanging standard by which we can live as individuals, and upon which we can build rules that are not arbitrary and which will assure liberty and justice for our citizens. This standard is found in the Bible. The Bible teaches us what to believe about God. It gives us truth about God. What it says is true, not the product of human imagination. When it says God is eternal, or God is of purer eyes that to behold evil, and can not look on iniquity, as our reading in Habakkuk teaches us today, it speaks truth about God. The Bible teaches us how to be right with God. Sooner or later we all realize that we are sinners who will one day give an account of our lives to the Almighty and Holy God. How can we cover our sins so we will not be condemned on that day? How can we know God will meet us in mercy instead of wrath? The Bible gives the answer. In short, God paid for your sins on the cross. Jesus is God in the flesh suffering the wrath of God for your sins, and dying in your place. He offers forgiveness as a free gift to everyone who will receive it. How do you receive it? Simply accept it by faith. That simply means, trust God to give it to you if you ask Him. That’s it. That’s the whole secret of being right with God. You don’t have to be smart. You don’t have to know all the details of theology. You don’t have to clean yourself up first, to make yourself good enough for God. You simply trust Him to forgive your sins. If you have questions about this, please talk to me. I would consider it a privilege to talk to you about it. Finally, the Bible teaches us how to live in this world. The Bible is vitally connected to this world and to life in this world. Part of the purpose of the Bible history studies we have been doing after church is to show the connection between the Bible and everyday life. Isaiah was connected to life in his own day, and he wrote, under the inspiration of God, in the context of that day. So if you know about the Babylonian Captivity, you can understand the book of Isaiah a little better. But, and this is important, the truth does not change, and the truth of the Bible gives us a solid and unchanging right and wrong and good and evil and truth and falsehood. It gives us truth about life upon which we can build lives and homes and families and nations, for as long as the world remains. We are delivered from the tyranny of the arbitrary into the freedom of the absolute. We can make laws based on the knowledge of truth. We can make laws that respect and protect the rights of individuals, and, at the same time, keep those individuals from running amuck and taking us into chaos. We have a standard by which to judge laws, and rulers, and college professors, and movies, and news reports, and sermons, and churches and preachers. This is liberty. This is freedom. This is peace. And this is responsibility. Someone has said if there were no god we would have to invent one immediately. How true. We would have to invent one to keep us from falling into tyranny or chaos because of arbitrary rules. Likewise, if there were no Bible, no authoritative word from God, we would have to invent one for the same reasons, to prevent us from chaos or tyranny due to arbitrary rules. But we have one, and through it we are delivered from all the problems of not having it, if we read, believe, and do what it says. God grant us wisdom and grace to do so. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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