HOW SHALL WE HEAR GOD'S WORD?

John Wesley’s heart was to be a man of one book, the Bible.  The 1996 edition of The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church explains, “"Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience and confirmed by reason."

The authority of Scripture is very much under attack these days.  People of the Church are knocking it around like a Ping Pong ball.  How it will all play out in the long haul, I’m not qualified to answer.  I do know that my heart resonates with Mr. Wesley’s.  I believe in tradition and personal experience and reason, but I also believe “the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as a article of faith” (Article IV of the XVI articles of Faith in the Church of the Nazarene).

In his book, Simply Christian, N. T. Wright says, “The Bible is nonnegotiable” (173).  I think he is correct, and I also think there is a lot Biblical negotiation going on in this, so called, post-modern world. 

Jude said “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (vs. 3). His reason for this appeal was based on the fact that “certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (vs. 4).

I suppose the ball is in our court now.  How is the contend[ing] earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints, going down in our culture and around the world these days?  I fear we have a negotiated Bible now, and that it is being used to defend worldviews rather than shape them.  It seems we need the Bible to say what we need it to say and once it says what we need it to say we, in turn, add to it, “Thus says the Lord.”

At any rate, and whatever the true condition might be in these early days of the twenty-first century, I invite you to hear the words of a Christlike man I admire.  John Wesley wrote,

To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over the great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, — the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore.

God himself has condescended to teach the way: For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri.

Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning of what I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of Lights: — “Lord, is it not thy word, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God?’ Thou ‘givest liberally, and upbraidest not.’ Thou hast said; ‘If any be willing to do thy will, he shall know.’ I am willing to do, let me know, thy will.” I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” I meditate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God; and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach.