April 20, 2011: Verify!

When I was in school I heard about a professor who taught at three seminaries: Dallas, Fuller and Trinity. At Dallas, when he announced to the class "It is raining outside," students immediately took out their notebooks and wrote, "It is raining outside."

At Fuller, if he'd say "It is raining outside," students would leave their chairs and go to window to see if he was right.

At Trinity, when he told the class that it was raining, every student would raise his hand to ask, "Will this be on the test?"

The professor's parable was a clever way to poke fun at three types of students - the compliant sheep, the wary skeptic and the uncaring pragmatist - and the schools to which they tend to gravitate. But let me use his joke to make a point. When listening to anyone who claims to speak for God, be a Fullerite: doubt, verify and falsify. Subject every statement to rigorous intellectual cross-examination. Do not swallow every bit of slop tossed your way. And please shun the self-centered contempt for fact that never asks more than "Will this help me?". Jesus said "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32), and to know the truth you must engage your mind. You have to get up out of your chair and go to the window to look for yourself.

Noble people do that, and the Bible applauds them. In Acts 17:11, St. Paul's colleague Luke reports, "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Paul was not offended that they were checking out his message for themselves. He encouraged it!

Yesterday my lovely wife told me she heard a preacher maintain that in the Bible Jesus only answered three questions, and she wanted to know what they were. Good for her! First I had to verify that this was actually what the preacher said. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. But there wasn't - I listened to him online, and in fact he did say, "Do you know that in the gospels Jesus was asked 183 questions? Do you know how many he answered? Three."

Whenever a preacher says something like that, take it as a signal, a challenge, a command even - to dive into your Bible. Two good things will happen. First, you'll learn (or have reinforced) truths of Scripture. Second, you'll have evidence to confirm or disconfirm the preacher's credibility. Maybe you will wind up saying, "Wow! He's right! He's worth paying attention to - even when he says something completely counterintuitive." Or maybe you'll say, "My but he's careless. I had better take his words with a grain of salt."

I spent about three minutes reading passages in the gospels and found right away the following questions that Jesus answered. The questions and answers themselves are in bold.

(1) John 9:1-3: As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

(2) John 6:28-29: Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

(3) John 14:5-6: Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

(4) Matthew 19:3-6: Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

(5) Matthew 19:7-8: “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."

(6) Matthew 19:16-17: Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”

(7) Matthew 19:18-19: “Which ones?” the man inquired. Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

(8) Matthew 19:20-21: “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

(9) Matthew 19:27-29: Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."

In the other room my wife was reading her Bible, and when I walked in she said, "Jesus answers lots of questions!" He sure does, doesn't he. Do you know I can almost identify the moment when I first fell in love with her? It was at a Bible study two years ago when, sitting next to me, she pointed to Matthew 16:19 and asked, "What does this verse mean?", and listened intently while I went off on the verse. By God's grace I am married to an earnest seeker of truth.

We who preach like to say provocative things, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stunningly counterintuitive statements are more easily remembered than bland cliches. We learn a lot when we are surprised. For example, tell an ordinary evangelical Christian that, in the Bible, when people convert to Christ, they never say a prayer inviting Jesus into their hearts but they always get baptized immediately, and he might say, "Are you kidding me? That can't be right." But if he "goes to the window to look for himself," and reads all 20 texts in the February 13, 2005 Pastor's Page, he may well come away saying, "Oh. Wow. That's not the way they do it at my church."

Over the years I have disturbed quite a few good souls - and provoked some angry reaction - by saying, "Though you hear frequent talk of 'God's unconditional love,' the Bible in fact flatly denies that God's love is unconditional." But please don't take my word for that. Go to the window and look for yourself. Type the word "love" into BibleGateway's online search (or look it up in a fat concordance), read the passages listed, and see what you conclude. (While you're at it, type in the word "unconditional" and see if you get any hits.) You may find some help in my “Unconditional Love” Is Unbiblical Nonsense (June 11, 2006) and Nothing You Can Do Can Make God Love You More? (September 22, 2009).

Next week, Lord willing, I'll guide you to some online preaching you can practically always trust from a teacher who, in my experience, virtually never makes a careless statement about the Bible. But remember that even when listening to the best of the best preachers, the same principle remains. Verify.