Creekside Church Sermon of October 14, 2001 "Living From Exposure " 2 Timothy 2:8-15	Rev. David Bibbee
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Exposure to the elements can be dangerous, especially extreme elements. If caught in intense cold, you will freeze. If it is intense heat, you will succumb to heat stroke. Death from exposure, we call it. It can happen through prolonged exposure to pollutants, second-hand cigarette smoke, radon, or radiation. It can happen from exposure to lethal viruses or high-risk behaviors or by life style choices. We know about death from exposure. But have you heard of living from exposure? There are influences to which we can be exposed and be better people for it.

Over the next two Sundays I will be talking about a specific life-giving exposure to which we must submit ourselves. It is something that teaches us how and what to see, how to live and whom to serve. It is a product of God's reaching out to humanity and humanities attempt to respond to God. It covers a period of some 3,000 years and it took over 1,000 years to be compiled. It contains 66 books divided into two parts consisting of distinctively different literature written in different styles by different people in different times for different reasons. It contains instructions for living and is a guide to learning about God and ourselves.

The Bible is a book. You read it one sentence and one page at a time like any book, but it isn't like just any book. It makes old claims. It is not an end in itself, but points beyond itself to God. It is a book which inspires devotion, but as someone said, "One's devotion begins when one closes the Bible." The written word becomes the living word when it takes root in living people who demonstrate by their manner of living that it is trustworthy and true.

The Bible is a book, but not just any book. The philosopher Francis Bacon said, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested." There is an old advent prayer that expresses the same thought. It reads: "Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: grant that we may learn them, read, mark, and inwardly digest them…" The Bible is a book-ink on paper, but as we approach it with discerning hearts and minds, becomes a part of us, and ultimately draws us to a relationship with the fullest expression of God's word in Jesus Christ. As we sing in the hymn "Break thou the bread of life", … "beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord."

The Bible is a book that is difficult, dangerous, misused, misinterpreted, yet remains the most read book of all time. It can bring people to Christ and make them new creatures, or it can be used to put people in their place. But despite what has been done to it and with it, the word is not bound. The passage that was just read from 2nd Timothy was composed by Paul while incarcerated in prison. To further prevent his escape, he was chained to a Roman guard. "Because I preach the gospel I am suffering and in chains," he said. "But the word of God is not fettered." Paul was in chains, but not God's word. His voice would be silenced, but not God's word. Nothing anyone can do can bind God's word. But we will know nothing of its promise, purpose, or power without exposing ourselves to it.

Kathleen Norris wrote about a conversation she had with a wealthy South Dakota rancher named Arlo. He was the grandson of dirt-poor immigrants. Arlo was a shrewd business man who made all the money he could, but was in a situation where money could not help him. He was facing terminal cancer. As Kathleen spoke with Arlo, he talked about his grandfather who was a deeply religious man. As a wedding present, the grandfather had given Arlo and his bride a Bible. Arlo said he admired it mostly because it was an expensive gift. Bound in white leather. The bride and groom's names and the date of their marriage embossed with gold letters. He kept it in its box and stuck it in the bedroom closet.

Month after month Grandpa asked Arlo how he liked the Bible. They had sent him a thank you note. Even thanked him in person, but he kept asking about the Bible, and Arlo wondered why. He retrieved it from the closet, opened it and found a $20 bill at the beginning of Genesis, but that was not all. "He put a $20 at the beginning of every book of that darn thing…over $1,300. And he knew I'd never find it." Arlo had only one regret over the incident…that was the interest he could have made had he found the money sooner. He shook his head and said, "1,300 bucks was a lot of money in them days."

We are drawn to what captures our affection. St. Augustan went a step further and said, "We draw the object of our affection to ourselves." We attract what we adore. It makes a big difference if it's a hunger for God that captures our affection or the hunger for money, security, success, sexual experiences, or a good name. How much of our week is spent reading the Bible? Whether for devotions, or as a spiritual discipline, or just for the sake of reading it, how much exposure to scriptures do we get? Two or three minutes in worship each Sunday? A few minutes before breakfast or bed? Could you spend 28 minutes a day? I received a call this week from someone promoting a Bible reading program. The object is to enlist as many people as possible in the church who will commit to listening to a recording of the entire New Testament in 40 days. It works out to 28 minutes a day. No commentary. No preaching. Just scripture.

With this amount of time spent learning the guitar, you could play some decent music. You could learn a lot in 28 minutes a day for 40 days about operating a computer. What might be the result of such exposure to scripture? We can learn a lot about God through reading of other's experiences or through experiences and insights from worship, meditation and prayer. But we cannot have adequate insight into the character of God or the knowledge of Jesus, or the story of how we have sought by God's love over history and into the future, without an ongoing encounter with the book which chronicles the story and offers us hope for the future. Or, as Paul wrote in the 15th chapter of Romans, "Even if it was written in scriptures long ago, you can be sure it was written for us. God wants the combination of His steady, constant calling and warm personal counsel in scriptures, to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever He will do next."

Obviously if we are to reap a harvest from the Bible, it will require retrieving it from the bookcase. It will require more than an occasional, hasty reading of it. It requires understanding and understanding is a product of interpretation. Next Sunday I will suggest several approaches to reading the Bible, but for now I want to offer some simple observations which I think are helpful in our exposure to scripture.

The Bible is not magical. Some believe you can crack the cover, close your eyes, put your finger on any verse, and know that God has directed you to it. Perhaps you heard the story illustrating the inadequacy of this approach. A man was in a troubling situation and in need of guidance so he opened his Bible at random, and put his finger on a verse. It was, "And Judas went out and hanged himself." Finding no comfort in this verse, he poked another one. It said, "Go and do likewise." The Bible is not magical, and the Bible is not a fortune cookie you can break open and read passively in hopes that a verse will promise you a goodie. It is not an encyclopedia where you can find an answer to a problem that means one thing and one thing only. It is not a cookbook where you will find a recipe for life that will make things turn out like a perfect pie crust. It is not the yellow pages where you can find everything you need by letting your fingers do the walking through its passages.

The Bible was never intended to be an object of worship. Doing this with the scriptures would have been offensive to a God fearing Jew who knew that God commanded, "You shall have no other Gods before me, and you shall not have any images or idols before you." The Bible is not God. It is a means to God. The chaplain at a Christian college made this point in a vivid way. After he finished reading the lesson, he closed the Bible, opened a chancel window and threw it out saying, "Well, there goes your god."

From the time the scriptures first appeared, they have raised questions. What does this mean? How is it true? The meaning wasn't always self-evident. The text required interpretation. The teachers and saints and fathers of the early church wrestled with the scriptures and relied upon the Holy Spirit to guide their thought. They realized that interpreting the Bible is never finished. The word is changeless, the same yesterday, today, forever. But it is not bound. If it was fixed, there would be no need of the Spirit to show us what it means for today.

So what is the connection between this ancient book and our lives we live today? The church. The Bible is the church's book. The truth of the Bible isn't based upon historical accuracy or scientific proof. This proof proves nothing. The evidence is the church. The Bible isn't a collection of rules and regulations. It contains lessons in ethics and morals, but it isn't an ethics manual where you can pull out a lesson and neatly place it into some contemporary problem. The gospels and the epistles are about the questions and concerns of the church. The church gets the Bible's sharpest criticism and it's most compassionate promises. I like the way someone put it:

"The Bible is a conversation between God and God's community, the church. Its story only makes sense in a community that is dedicated to forming itself by what God says."

There can be no revival in the church that doesn't expose itself to the Bible. There can be no personal transformation minus the understanding that we learn from the Bible best when we learn together. We'll think more about this next Sunday in a sermon I've titled, "Doing It By the Book."

Until then, I want to leave you with a picture from a toll booth on the Chicago Skyway. Two weeks ago I was on my way to Wisconsin for my fall fishing trip. It was three a.m. I had the $2 toll in hand as I entered the plaza. I expected the usual warm response from the attendant…the kind reserved for a sack of potatoes. Instead, there sat an attractive, young African-American woman obviously engrossed in a book. Marking her place with a finger, with the other she took the toll money, smiled and said, "Have a good morning." "What are you reading?" I asked. "The Bible…I'm reading the Psalms right now." She was being exposed. The need in her life reminded me of the need in my own life.

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