PUMPING IN PERFECTION
#053b PUMPING IN PERFECTION
Scripture II Timothy 3:12-17 Orig. Date 10-22-61
Rewr. Dates 4-19-75
Passage: 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Purpose: To speak to my people early in the year encouraging them to give stronger consideration to the need to study God’s Word with a renewed intensity.
Keywords: Bible Christian Responsibility Baptist Belief
Introduction
I stood there that day talking with a lady about a need for a music worker. She shared some reluctance, but I felt that she was almost convinced. I moved in like a fisherman at his favorite fishing hole. I reminded her that we simply wanted to see her talent invested in this important “kingdom” cause. Her response was sincere. “Brother Skinner, I love to sing, but there’s a lot I don’t know about music.” I felt like a chess payer moving in to checkmate. Said I, “I love to preach, but there’s a lot I don’t know about preaching and sermons.” I was just getting ready to pat myself on the back when she took the wind out of my sails. She responded, “Yeah, but YOU can fool people, and you can’t when you don’t know music.”
People as a rule have capabilities to master just about anything. There are musicians who have dedicated their lives to mastering music. There are theologians and preachers who have mastered the art of sermon and rhetoric.
As difficult as it is to believe, there are people who understand, and who have mastered, American foreign policy. To most of us it is beyond the scope of comprehension. One of the nemeses of the school years is always testing time. It’s bad enough to spend hours preparing for the subject, and then leave the classroom wondering if we even passed. Then we look at the posted grades and see the names of those who not only passed, they had perfect scores.
One of the most significant doctrinal emphases of Baptists over the centuries has been our regard for the Bible. I do not know of anyone who has claimed to master this book. None of us will ever be able to exceed in understanding what the Word of God proclaims in revelation. But, oh how we need to set ourselves to the task.
We will never know all that we would like to know about our chosen vocations, but we work at improvement. Knowledge abounds in the avocational areas of sports, arts and crafts, travel, history, and a thousand other subjects. That we can not know everything does not hinder our determination.
“Pumping in Perfection” is an apt title because the only way that we will ever get close to what we ought to be is by the embrace of the assimilation of God’s Word creatively applied.
I. We Discover that This Book was Written By Men Inspired. II Peter 1:21 “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
There are a lot of different reasons that people write: Some to share knowledge; some to entertain; some to express their prurient thoughts. Others write simply because it is easier than working. The Bible was written as a storehouse of redemptive knowledge. Its purpose was not science, not astronomy, not even history. God is at work redemptively.
Psalm 110:105 “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Jeremiah 23:29 “Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” Luke 24:32 “Did not our hearts burn within us as he opened to us the Scriptures?” Romans 15:4 “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
Patrick Henry referred to the Bible as “a book worth all other books which were ever printed.”
II. Written By Inspired Men, It Had God for Its Author, Salvation for Its End. Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” God is then eternally responsible for His Word. In man’s beginning, he struggled to communicate with other men, and language was born, a language capable of expressing the deepest of thoughts. In man’s entrapment in the nuclear age, communication has been replaced by détente. God’s Word is now more than ever man’s only surviving means of brotherhood.
God’s purpose according to His Word will not and cannot be averted. The writing of the Bible as we know it today covers about 1600 years of man’s history. The Old Testament was born and woven in three fragments—Law, Prophets, and Writings. By 150 A.D. a complete New Testament canon was in circulation. Many translations preceded the ones we know: Jerome, mid 4th century; Wycliffe 1380; Tyndale 1611; King James 1611. The TEXTUS RECEPTUS was the basic King James text. Though some 5,000 manuscripts have been found since, there is a total alteration of less than one percent.
III. God’s Word has Truth without Any Mixture of Error for its Matter. Proverbs 30:5-6 “Every work of God is pure. Add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee and thou be found a liar.” There is not to be found any book with the integrity, credibility, and authenticity of the Bible. Why do people waste time on the trashy books that offer only a fleshy sensation at best? They may do worse. This is the real evil of pornography: What it does to us, and what it keeps from us.
The truth of man’s gravest need is found and continued in the book we know as the Bible. We were concerned with Watergate. We are concerned with Southeast Asia. We wonder about ecology and energy supplies. There is an answer to “Why am I here?” and “Where is it all going?”
Psalm 43:3 “Send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me.” John 8:32 “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” II Corinthians 13:8 “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.”
IV. The Bible Goes on to Reveal the Principles by Which God Will Judge Us. Romans 2:12 “As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law." John 12:47-48 “If any man hear my words. . . . the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”
The most significant aspect of that judgment is faith in Jesus. Whatever good there is, or merit, in any human life comes about as a result of faith.
Aristotle said of his own writings that they “were given for action and not for discussion.” Even so, with the Bible, it is easier to get people to talk about the Bible, even to study, than to get us to do what it says. We marvel that Codex Sinaiticus sold for ½ million dollars. Vaticanus was so closely guarded that it was not known until Napoleon conquered Rome.
V. The Bible Is and Will Remain to the End of the World the True Center of Christian Union. Philippians 3:16 “Let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.” We have learned some things worthy of keeping: We are judged by the same standards. We are forgiven alike through Jesus. We are saved for equal purposes.
It will do us well to remember that the totalitarian state is enemy to the purpose of sharing this Word from God. One is reminded of a Hitler quote to youth-oriented groups, “Whether it is the Old Testament or the New Testament, or the sayings of Jesus, it is all the same old swindle. . . . One is either a German or a Christian. You can not be both.” A Hitler mouthpiece was head of the German people’s church. National socialism must not be judged from a biblical or ecclesiastical standpoint.
VI. The Bible is the Supreme Standard by Which All Human Conduct, Creeds, and Opinions Should be Tried. I John 4:1 “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
CLOSING
Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door,
and heard the anvil ring the vesper chime.
Then looking in I saw upon the floor
old hammers worn with beating years of time.
“How MANY anvils have you had,” said I,
“to wear and batter all these hammers so?”
“Just one,” said he, and then with twinkling eye,
“The anvil wears the hammers out you know!”
And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s Word,
for ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
the anvil is unharmed—the hammers gone.
Attributed to John Clifford
Don’t you think it’s time for a little of God’s perfection to be pumped?