The Word of God – Part 4
2 Timothy 2:16-17 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
In every society we have what I call the ‘opinion makers.’ These are people who use words to make a living like the journalists, anchormen/women, lawyers, politicians, educators, etc. Often we find that they create the opinions that we all accept and live by.
Some years ago I was in Denmark and stopped at a little kiosk to buy a English magazine. When the owners saw that I spoke English they started to speak to me. They told me that they had lived in Canada for many years and had just recently moved back to Denmark having been gone for almost 25 years. They went on to tell me how they were scared with what they saw taking place on how people were being brainwashed. They were being told what to buy, where to buy it, what to wear, etc. In other words, what they were telling me was that their opinions were being formed for them.
I believe that we, as God’s people and especially those in leadership positions, should be the opinion makers. We should know the Word of God and make God’s opinion known in our society. Francis Schaeffer said: “The culture is to be constantly judged by the Bible, rather than the Bible being bent to conform to the surrounding culture. The early church did this in regard to the Roman-Greek culture of its day. The Reformation did this in its day in relation to the culture coming at the end of the Middle Ages. And we must never forget that all the great revivalists did this concerning the surrounding culture of their day. And the Christian church did this at every one of its great points of history.”
Isn’t this a problem that we have in the Western world today in that the Bible is looked down upon and is discredited and irrelevant to what we are faced with today? However, it doesn’t matter what the ungodly say about the Bible, but for those who profess a faith in Jesus Christ and believe that the Bible is the Word of God, we need to allow the Word of God to be the one guiding us in this world. This is what happened with the early church as well as the reformation during Luther’s day. Luther’s great statement should be the statement of each one of us who claims to be a Christian: “I stand on the Word of God.”
What is happening in our society is that all things are relative. The final value is what makes me, the individual, happy, feel good, etc. Nothing is fixed; there are no standards except what makes the individual happy.
I would like to bring home two things in this regard. First, in most of our states we have the no-fault divorce laws. They are based on the view that there is no right or wrong and consequently what gives them happiness at the moment is the only way to go. Today, divorce among God’s people is just as high as among the unsaved.
Secondly, we need to see the promiscuity that is taking place today in the light of the Word of God. In our generation people are asking why promiscuous sex is wrong. I can think of three reasons why.
First: Because God says it is wrong. For those of us who profess to follow Christ that should be enough right there. Second: We need to understand how the Lord made us in regards to our relationships with one another and to fulfill the way in which He made us for. Promiscuity tries to force something into a form which God never made us for and which cannot be fulfilled. Third: Promiscuous sex is wrong because it destroys the picture of what God means of marriage, the relationship between a man and woman.
We need reformation to see things set right in our society.