Well, thank you, Mark, for leading us in prayer. We're in a short series this morning, and we're going to read from two passages, 2 Timothy 2, and then a few verses from Acts 17. And if you wanna find places in your Bible for both, you may, and if not, just listen carefully. If you would, would you stand for the reading of God's word? Father, as we seek to receive your word, we know that these are spiritual words that you have moved by the Holy Spirit for holy men to write to us. And we need the aid of your spirit. Open our ears, quicken our minds, make our hearts soft that we might receive what you would say to us today. For we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Second Timothy 2.14, remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetius. who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened, they're upsetting the faith of some. But God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal. The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." And then from Acts 17, beginning in verse 10, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, And when they arrived there, went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. You may take your seats. Well, it was like a slap on the face. I was talking with my girlfriend's father about what it means to follow Jesus, and he summed it up this way. It's all about love, which in his mind made obedience, well, not very important. And I asked to borrow a Bible, turned to John's gospel and read these words of Jesus. If you love me, you will keep my commands. Jesus said that quite a few times in that passage. I mentioned that and then I tried to reason with him. He said the only way we can know if we're really loving Jesus is whether we obey his commands. Warm feelings are simply not enough. His reply was unforgettable. You can make scripture say anything you want to. Man, that hurt when he said that. I've since encountered many people who say similar things. That's just your interpretation. You can't really understand the Bible. It's full of contradictions. Or even more radically, no one can understand the true meaning of anything anybody says. Well, these comments beg the question, if there is a way to correctly interpret scripture, then why do so many learned people come away with different interpretations? This is a good question. It's a question I want to explore with you this morning. It's hard to understate how important this question is. Now, we're in this series because we're getting ready for the Transition Team Report, and the two greatest, well, dangers for you, potential threats for you as a congregation, in my opinion, are whether you're going to be inwardly facing as a church, whether you're going to use your time, talent, and treasure largely for yourselves, or almost exclusively for yourselves, and whether or not you can be united and not divided as you make decisions. And you have a lot of important decisions ahead of you. Now, last time I said the Lord has not left us without guidance about how it is we should maintain our unity. And last week I started with this foundational truth that the Bible must be our fundamental source of authority. This is in keeping with Jesus' high view of scripture. He said, among other things, but it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the wall to become void. In other words, the scriptures are enduring. And we saw briefly that because the scriptures are God's word, they actually share his attributes. They are powerful. They are clear and they are authoritative. And our statement of faith affirms this. But different interpretations seem to undermine the usefulness of Scripture as a way to preserve our unity. And even to raise a more fundamental question, can we trust the Bible? Now, let me be very specific and talk about one example that's often mentioned today. And it is something like this. We can't trust what the Bible says about social relationships because it teaches and affirms, endorses slavery. Obviously, slavery is inhuman and cruel. We've progressed beyond that. And this shows us that the Bible's teaching is stuck in the past. It's irrelevant. It can't be trusted. Now on the surface, this line of thinking seems unassailable, very convincing. But let's look into the Bible and see what the scriptures do say about slavery. The Bible opens with God creating human beings in his image and likeness. He invests into every human being dignity and worth that exists apart from anything that they do. Slavery makes people less than this. It dehumanizes people. It denies that they have dignity and worth. In its most extreme forms, it treats people as property, as having no more value than a hammer or a saw. And if you search through the Bible, you will never find a passage that says you should own slaves. If you search through the Bible, you'll never find a passage that says that God thought slavery was essential to what it means to be human, or it was his intention for human societies to have slaves. Marriage is God's idea. In fact, he speaks to it and he talks about how to live in marriage. Government is God's idea. He institutes that and he talks about how we should relate to it. Humans are commanded to work. It's part of what it actually means to be human, is to create, to work. And you'll search, though, in vain for any passage that says that slavery's a normal part of human life, that it's God's intended pattern for society, that it's somehow his plan for humanity. What you will find is that God regulates the institution of slavery, which was well established in the ancient world. Old Testament law forbids the slaveholder from abusing their slaves. And the Old Testament recognizes a couple of different kinds of slavery. One of the more common forms of slavery in the ancient world was to be taken captive in war and enslaved in that way. But there was also debt slavery, kind of what we call indentured servanthood, where people were not owned by others, but they gave up their freedom. And in the Old Testament sets a limit to that. You cannot be in that kind of slavery for more than seven years. Now it is a fact of church history and really not just an embarrassment but shameful that Christians use the Bible to justify slavery. What we find in the New Testament is once again a regulation of slavery. Radically, Paul writes in the letter to the Ephesians, Do not threaten your slaves, masters, because you have a master in heaven. Do you notice what he's doing there? He's saying to those who are masters and own slaves that, in fact, you're a slave to God, and you're going to give account as to how you treat other human beings. When Paul speaks directly to slavery, as he does twice in the New Testament, he says this. He says to his friend Philemon, you should set your slave Onesimus free. He's a brother. He'll be more useful to you that way. And in the letter to the Corinthians, he says, if you can buy your way into freedom, O slave, do so. Slavery's not the natural order of things. It was never God's intent for humanity, and the New Testament contains the very seeds that undermine slavery, including the idea that Christ died for slaves, and therefore, in God's eyes, they enjoy the same dignity and status as free people do. And so the Bible doesn't support slavery, it regulates it, it contains within it teaching that leads to its abolition, and this is in fact what happened in the Western world. In England, Christians used the scriptures to lead the fight to end slavery. In Britain, William Wilberforce devoted his life to that cause, and on his deathbed, the British Parliament ended the British trade in slavery and soon afterwards abolished slavery altogether. Let me just take one other example. It comes from the time of Abraham. Many men, especially of wealth, had multiple wives. Sometimes they had sort of second-class wives called concubines in many translations. But this practice was never commanded It wasn't approved of any place in the Bible, but it was regulated. You see silence in the Bible when you read that someone had multiple wives is not approval. And this is one of the things that sometimes trips people up when they read, especially the Old Testament. They think that because the narrative doesn't say, well, this was wrong, or this was bad, or this was good, that somehow the narrative and the Bible is, well, morally blind. It's simply reporting the facts. It's not a book of morality tales. It's telling a story of redemption. And very often it doesn't tell you whether the actions someone takes are right or wrong in God's eyes. But far from approving the practice of having multiple wives, the book of Genesis goes to Well, great lengths to actually show what terrible consequences came in the life of Abraham and other members of his family by having multiple wives. Their family dysfunction is written large in the book of Genesis. And you have only to think of Solomon, one of the most famous kings, and how his thousand wives led to the downfall of his kingdom. My point's this, you can trust what the Bible says about social relationships. I could work this out for sexual ethics, for marriage, and for family life. But the main thing I want you to see here is that you can trust the Bible. This trust is reasonable. Its statements, its prescriptions, its commands are not time-limited and culturally bound. So let's come back to this question. If God intends to communicate a particular meaning through the biblical authors, then why do people interpret the Bible so differently? Well, the fault does not lie with God or the scriptures, but with us. Here's the first fault, if you're following the outline closely. We are not neutral and receptive as we read the Bible. We're not neutral or receptive. In fact, we are sinful. We want certain things to be true when we close our eyes to other things we don't want to be true. One of the most famous mathematicians and atheists was Bertrand Russell, who candidly admitted that he rejected the idea of God because he didn't want anyone telling him what he could or couldn't do in his bedroom. And this happens all the time. People's ability to see clearly what the Bible says goes down in proportion to how strongly they're resisting God and his authority in their lives. This is what Romans chapter one tells us when it speaks of the darkening of our minds that comes through our rejection of the revelation of God. The more you turn away from it, the darker your mind gets, the less appealing God's Word is. And the scary thing is, is I've done this. I myself, I'm a sinner, and I've been blind to parts of the Bible. At times, I just want to go my own way. I don't suppose there's anybody else who's had a similar experience here today. And I have to pray, Lord, grant me a humble and willing heart to act on what I see in the Bible. The second reason that people end up with different interpretations is that they have controlling ideas or thoughts or commitments as they read it. People hold on to certain things as they read it that are in addition to their Bibles that they've really given control over how they understand it. And you can think of this, one very common example is if you don't believe in miracles, then when you read about a miracle in the Bible, well, you're going to discount it. You're going to say, well, that's a myth, that's a fairy tale, that's just made up. That's impossible. It can be this controlling idea or thought can be something that you got from your parents or your family or church tradition or your favorite Bible teacher or some idea in the culture or some unexamined assumption. And if the Bible's interpreted through this idea, or it's under something else, it's going to result in it being distorted. One example of this, a famous example, comes from the Catholic Church, which accepted Ptolemy's conclusions that the sun circled the earth. That was not only the accepted science of the day, but it was because the Bible uses the ordinary language of everyday observation when it says the sun rises and the sun sets. Of course, it appears to us that the sun moves through the sky when in fact it's the earth that's moving. Poor Galileo. first observed this and proposed that the earth circles the sun, and he was denounced as a heretic for saying otherwise. The third reason people end up understanding the Bible differently is they have personal agendas when they read. We have personal agendas. I have a personal agenda every time I read a newspaper or a magazine or my newsfeed. I'm always keen to look for articles about science, because I've always been interested in science. And there's all sorts of other things out there that just don't hold my attention. They may be important. I'm sure they're important to somebody, they're just not that important to me. Often this happens to Christians when they read the Bible because they have an itch and they expect the Bible to scratch that itch and if it doesn't scratch their itch, they kind of give up on the Bible. It could be that they want to read the Bible as kind of a self-help manual. And so they only look for verses that seem to directly speak to some issue that they want help with, and they really actually miss the grand story of the Bible. Because much more of the Bible speaks to every issue in life, but if you're only looking for a few verses that scratch your itch, you're gonna miss it. Our agendas, they are like rose-colored glasses. And often this results in our actually reading the Bible only to confirm what we already think it says. This is called confirmation bias, and it's very easy to do this. One of my famous friends from seminary, Kevin Van Hooser, put it this way, to the degree that we neglect some verse or part of the Bible, it's to that degree that we nullify its authority. we have to accept the entirety of Scripture. That doesn't mean we understand all of it completely clearly, but when we intentionally just turn our eyes away, looking only for the things that we like, that scratch our itches, that confirm what we already believe, we're actually undermining what the Scriptures say. Another reason that we end up in different places is that not everyone is using good principles of interpretation. Now, being highly educated doesn't mean that you're interpreting the Bible well. And the Bible commends and commands a careful reading and study of scripture. In the passage I read in Acts, Paul enters the city of Berea and goes to the synagogue and preaches the gospel to the Jews who are gathered there for worship. They accepted the authority of scripture. They understood that it was divine in its origin, but the gospel of Jesus Christ was new to them. And so Dr. Luke commenced them for their receiving the word with eagerness and examining the scriptures daily to see if those things were true. The result was is that many of them believed. You see, their faith rested on the clear teaching of scripture. Of course, they had to work at it. They had to apply themselves to careful study. They had to compare Paul's message to the scriptures. But this is really contrary to the cynicism and skepticism that asserts it's not possible to come to any definite conclusions from the Bible. What does this looking at it carefully involve? Well, we can be certain that they approach the Bible the same way you'd want someone to approach a personal letter you sent them. You would want them to receive that letter and read it in light of your intentions, your intended meaning. Well, the Bible's author ultimately is God. And God has revealed his mind in the scriptures. God certainly knows what he means. And we go astray if we try to impose or read into his words what we want them to say. It's God's meaning and not our ideas that we should read out of scripture. Undoubtedly, the Bereans read in context, they compared Scripture with Scripture. Paul also, in writing to Timothy, speaks of the importance of handling Scripture with care. He says, Timothy's to work at handling the scriptures so that he has God's approval. And this requires him to rightly handle the word of truth. Now this is a very unusual word that's translated rightly here. In Greek, it's ortho to munta. Now ortho is the same word that's at the beginning of orthodontist, the guy who straightens your teeth. Some of you have paid a great deal of money to one of them to have them do just that. Very literally, that Greek word means something like to guide the word of truth along a straight path. In fact, that very rare words, the word that's used in the Greek translation of Proverbs 3.6, he will make your paths straight. And the New Living Translation really gets at the sense of when he says, correctly explains. That's what Paul's saying. Paul's commanding Timothy to teach the church in the face of false teaching and false teachers who oppose him. False teaching is described not just as differing opinions, but as ruining hearers. It is likened to gangrene. a terrible, wasting disease. And Paul describes false teaching as quarreling about words. Now, we'd be very mistaken to think that Paul is forbidding a careful attention to the words of Scripture or the words we ourselves use. or even that Paul's forbidding and engaging with false teaching and these opponents. That's not what Paul's saying. His point goes beyond this. What he's saying is that Biblical teaching, doctrine or theology, right belief in matters is necessary for healthy Christians and a healthy church. And so every generation of believers has the responsibility to think deeply and carefully about what the scripture teaches. And this means we need to understand and utilize sound principles interpretation. A lot could be said here, and I'm gonna mention a couple, but you'll have to go or ask me later about where you can find out more about this if you're curious. You have to read text initially as literally as possible, but recognizing that there's figurative language in the scripture. When the psalmist says the trees clap their hands, of course, we know trees don't have hands. That's figurative language, to give expression to the trees, giving praise to the creator. We have to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. If you want to know about elders, then you need to read several passages in the New Testament, from Acts 20 and 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, but especially 1 Peter 5. And there, if you start digging into the end of that letter, you'll see three key words that talk about what elders are to do. They are to shepherd, They are to lead, and they are to be examples. And each of those ideas deserves careful study. You have to distinguish, it's very important to distinguish interpretation from application. Every text in the Bible has a single meaning, but many possible applications. And so we have to have humility about our applications. Well, much, much more could be said, but the last thing I want to highlight is why we pray before we read Scripture every Sunday and preach. It's because we need the ministry of the Spirit. We need His illuminating work to bring the light of Scripture into our hearts and minds. Well, this has implications for how it is that we protect and guard our unity when we have differences. And I want to put these implications in the form largely of questions to you. Are you willing to search the scriptures and see what they say when differences arise? Are you really willing to dig in and ask, what do the scriptures teach? Are you willing to hold and share your understanding and conclusions about Scripture with humility? With enough humility to recognize you could be wrong. You could actually be missing something. With enough humility to receive from the teaching office of the church, and even one such as I, as well as the doctors, the scholars the church has given to help us understand the Scriptures. Are you willing to let the scriptures change your mind? That's big. Especially when you have come to a point of view, you're quite sure it's the case, but when your brother or sister who loves you says, well, perhaps you're missing something. Are you open to actually considering that you might really have missed something, and you're really willing to look at the matter with an open mind? Will you listen respectfully to those whose understanding of the scriptures or their reasoning from them differs from your own? And will you recognize that the applications you're making don't have the same clarity or authority as the meaning of the passage itself? Well, one of the things that I've put in your bulletin that's really important for you to know is as the transition team report comes to you later this month, it's going to speak about strengthening some things. It's going to talk about developing some things, maybe some things that were present early in the life of the church but haven't been expressed in a long time. And it's even going to suggest that some things in the life of the church need to be reformed according to Scripture. And one of the more surprising things that came out of the congregational survey, the ministry insight tool that you did last year, was that the mission that CRPC has doesn't line up with the mission that Jesus has given the church. Now, that may seem very controversial to you. It may even seem like a new idea. Perhaps you've never thought about Jesus giving the church a mission, or perhaps you have and maybe you've reached a conclusion about that. And so I want to invite you to do a study on this. It's right there. You could do much more study that's on the two sides of that piece of paper. That's one of the things you need to be willing to study. And I'm sure that there may be some other things that will be mentioned in the report or recommendations that you'll have different points of view about. And it's really important how we handle that. It matters to God. It actually impacts our ability to influence our community. The way that you all interact with each other will impact the children in the life of the church. And ultimately, it's a question of what will please and bring glory to Christ. The living word of God is the Lord Jesus. He's the one that's given us life. He's the one on which all the scriptures center. And he wants us to hear his voice in them. And we hear that voice as we study, as we read, as we listen, as we learn from each other. Let's pray. Gracious Lord Jesus, thank you for the gift of scripture. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you've come. You appeared in flesh, that your first followers touched you, ate with you, heard your voice, walked with you. And we thank you that we have the record of that and the witness of scripture made alive to us by your spirit. Guide us in the days ahead. Enable us, Father, with much grace and eagerness to hear what you would say to us through the labors of the transition team. Help us, Lord, to carefully compare what they've said to us with scripture. Lord, do this so that we might mature as a body, that we might carry out all the work that you have ordained for us as a body. that it might bring praise to you, O Heavenly Father. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.