Well, we’re heavy into the political season aren’t we? Candidates are backtracking faster than I can walk forward as they try to talk about the issues without isolating potential voters. And as volatile issues get trotted out one by one, I’m struck by how the church deals with them.

It seems that once an issue becomes identified as a hot political issue, we become very reluctant to deal with it in the church, especially in sermons.

This leaves us with a twofold challenge. First, as more things are perceived as “political” issues, we have more and more things to avoid talking about. And secondly, I believe these “political issues” are profoundly spiritual ones for someone trying to live a godly life. But at least from my perspective up here, as soon as the preacher speaks a controversial word in a sermon, the atmosphere tenses, we all lean forward and at least some of us say,

“Why is he getting political?”

I’d like to diffuse any tension this morning by just throwing out a bunch of hot moral and political issues and setting them on the table. I have to tell you, though, that I tried doing something similar in another setting.

Years ago, Anne and I were invited to speak at a high school youth camp in Minnesota. A week before the camp, they told us the topic they wanted us to do a seminar on. It was, of course, S-E-X. A hot topic for any age, especially high schoolers.

Most of the other seminars running simultaneously with ours had 10-12 kids there; we had 75-80 kids crammed into a small room. You could feel the electricity crackling in the room; it was bouncing off the walls.

I decided that this topic, and this word sex had so much power, that we were going to start by just diffusing it all, getting it out on the table. So the very first thing I said was,

“You know…this word is so strong, I just want to invite you to say it out loud with me: 1-2-3 SEX.”

That was good. A few giggles, but lots of kids sheepish and a little subdued. So I went a step further, and said,

“Nope, not good enough. I want you to SHOUT it! In fact, SCREAM it! I’m going to count to three, you yell as loud as you can three times, SEX, SEX, SEX!”

They did it, and that seemed to work well. Anne and I went on and gave our talk. Then a couple of hours later, I went to the leaders meeting. I found out that in the room next to us was another seminar…on the topic of contemplative prayer! They had just started into quiet listening when this mighty shout came up from our room! I won’t ask you to repeat anything this morning.

So. I wonder how you will feel if your pastor stands up here today and says, in general without all sorts of nuances:

• I believe we need far stricter gun control laws.
• I believe that abortion is the wrong answer in 99% of cases.
• I think the U.S. has made huge mistakes with Iraq, and shouldn’t be there.
• I do not think we should change the definition of marriage to encompass gay relationships.
• I believe it is ridiculous that millions of people in our country have no access to healthcare.
• I think we need to legally control the access children have to scenes of violence, sex and pornography whether on television, video games or the Internet, even if it means limiting our freedom of speech.

And then it got very quiet!

I suspect that as I went down this list, you cheered some of my positions. I suspect that some of them probably made you mad. I suspect that some of you said,

“Why is he talking politics in church?”

But what I hope you said was

“Why does he believe that? On what basis?”

Our culture has lost its unified basis for making moral decisions and establishing values. At one point in time, it was a function of the Christian faith in our country. For better or for worse, Right and Wrong generally were tied to God as revealed in the Bible. Truth was seen fundamentally as something that came from above, outside of ourselves. That is no longer the case.

Instead of a divine unifying basis for values and decisions, there is now only a conglomeration of human desires and feelings. Truth has been grounded, right and wrong is from a human point of view. There is no higher authority. Nothing beyond ourselves to guide us. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, but the repercussions and speed of change are amazing. You can pick your moral issue, but when I stop and think about what has gone on in just my lifetime it is astounding. I am 45 years old (not that old!).

At the point I was born in 1958, America was on the brink of what we call the Sexual Revolution. Though obviously not universally adhered to, in general the sexual standard in the United States was: Sex is for marriage between a man and a woman, abstinence outside of it. Soon that changed to “sex is for loving relationships,” and later “sex is for wherever it is desired with mutual consent.”

You can pick your moral issue. Sexuality, abortion, the wars the U.S. has been in, the increasing gap between rich and poor. Things have changed, and changed rapidly.

Strong segments of our society argue persuasively and persistently and with great political power that these are good changes. All would agree they have been dramatic ones. And my question is,

• On what basis have these occurred?
• When you throw out “God revealed in scripture” as a player…then what?

But we really shouldn’t be surprised. We live in a culture that has no transcendent way of establishing values. My larger concern is this:

• What about in the church?
• What about you and me?

Standards for moral behavior on most of these same issues have changed dramatically within the church as well.

On what basis are we living our lives, making our decisions, teaching our children? Our careful study and interpretation of scripture? Our deep theological thinking?

The thing that scares me is that I believe much of the time we are changing based only on what we read in the newspaper. We are accepting what our culture tells us is now true. But on what grounds?

In the Christian community, we appeal to an authority that is beyond ourselves. We are in a relationship with the living God, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ and attested for us…in the scriptures. The Bible. We have an authority that is outside, beyond, above just ourselves, God in Jesus Christ who for better or worse has chosen to communicate most faithfully to us through the pages of the Bible as the Holy Spirit breathes through them. And I can assure you that if we are listening, our decisions will sometimes be radically different than those appearing in the New York Times.

Sometimes when I talk about this topic, I feel like I have to defend the scripture. Then I remember what the old preacher Charles Spurgeon used to say. He said,

“I don’t have to worry about defending the Bible. The Bible is like a lion, you just let it loose, and it will defend itself.”

So what happens when we read and study the Bible? Just in cracking open the pages, we begin in a very healthy spot of acknowledging that there is Someone higher than us, wiser than us at work. We don’t have to rely just on ourselves, we open these pages and say,

“God, are you there? It’s me, Dan, I need you, I need help! I need your comfort! I need to know you love me!”

What happens when we open this Bible? We invite God’s Holy Spirit to speak to us through these words.

• What will we see?
• What will jump off the page?
• What will challenge us?
• And what if I read something that I don’t want to hear?

Thomas Jefferson solved that very easily. He just took a pair of scissors and cut the things out of the Bible that he didn’t want there! One of his old Bibles still exists, full of holes. But St. Augustine, way back in the fourth century, said,

“If you believe what you like in the Bible, you really don’t believe the Bible, you believe yourself.”

Are we reading the scripture? That’s really my question today. If you walk away with just one thing today, it’s the question,

“Are you reading the Bible?”

But let’s not be naive. The Bible can be a tough, tough read. It’s not an answer book with the hard issues alphabetized. It's 66 books, two old languages, written over many centuries, with all sorts of cultural and historical biases that we have to wade through. And even if we now can read that tough Old Testament through the lens of the New, it can be hard to understand. But the question is,

Do we want to hear God?

If we do, we read…and look for tools.

Richard Hays is one of my favorite Bible scholars. He talks about tackling hard issues like the ones I’ve mentioned by studying scripture and looking at four things:

• the description—Simply, what does the passage say? What is it claiming?
• the synthesis—We need to read the whole Bible, all of scripture. If you have a tough issue, you can’t pull out a verse here and there. Read all the passages, old and new, that apply.
• the interpretation—Always we have to grapple with applying it to our situation today. This has been a job of the Church’s for two thousand years. This book was not written in our day and culture! So how do we hear what God would say…into our world?
• the pragmatic-—living it out.

“The most powerful argument for the truth of scripture is a community of people who exemplify the love and power of the God they have come to know through the scripture" (Hays).

No…we don’t always want to hear it. In July we had men’s and women’s groups who studied the Old Testament prophet Amos. Have you ever read Amos? There are some very rich things there:

“Let justice roll down like a mighty river.”

But there is a lot of threat, doom, gloom, judgment, destruction. The rich are constantly under judgment for mistreating the poor. And by many criteria, I fit Amos’ description of the rich. What do I do with that?

• Dismiss it as a cultural anomaly?
• Sell all my possessions?
• Share the things I have in a way I hadn’t considered?

I will continue to grapple with this for a long time. But it was only in reading through Amos word by word, verse by verse, chapter by chapter and talking about it and arguing about it and praying about it that God put it on the radar screen.

If you are around Bethany very much, you will get a chance to study scripture. One adult Sunday School class is always studying scripture. The summer Bible Studies. Men’s groups, Women’s groups, home groups…most study scripture together.

And sermons. Since 1999, besides some individual topics, we have preached through Genesis 1-12, the whole story of the Exodus, all of the King David story, and the book of Isaiah…the gospels of John and Matthew, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, 1 & 2 Peter and Philippians. If we are not in the scripture, we will miss hearing God’s voice.

For thousands of years now, God has been faithful to His church to speak through scripture. Sometimes the church has not listened well, and that has been terribly painful. Sometimes different parts of the church have totally disagreed over what God is saying, and that has been terribly painful. But it doesn’t change the fact that God speaks, consistently, and in some mystery.

“The Word of God in the words of men,” Karl Barth called the Bible. And there is some mystery. This Tuesday our staff gathered for our every other week meeting here in the sanctuary. We brought our lunches, and we read the gospel of Luke (which we start a sermon series on next week) out loud. One by one, staff members would step up to the podium or the lectern and read a chapter of Luke. Then someone else. In two hours, we made it through about seventeen chapters. Straight reading, no comments, no questions, nothing.

And I have to tell you, I think we all felt like we were standing on holy ground. Some of us were teary at times. We caught a glimpse of the heart of Jesus, always turning to the poor, always looking out for the one on the fringe. The pages turned, the word went out…the story was told and it changed us.

And there are surprises. When I read the short passage from Matthew, I heard Jesus surprising the people who thought he would overturn the ethical laws of the Old Testament, calling out,

“Don’t think I’ve come to abolish what God has given you before. No I’m here to fulfill it, to complete it, to embody it. And…I want to see you in the kingdom of heaven.”

The Spirit breathes through the scripture, leads us to the living God, and teaches us how to live. The hard issues aren’t going to go away. And we need to keep our eyes on that newspaper and this Bible.

• When do they agree?
• When don’t they?

But know that we don’t depend only on our own resources. God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ, and in this scripture we have a faithful record of that revelation. We have said yes to being under such an authority. But if we don’t read the scripture, study it, pray it, listen to it, then it is an empty yes.

Listen again to the passage Gary read from 2 Timothy, this time from The Message:

“There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another -- showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks ahead.”