For me, this evening is a quiet one indoors. Outside our home the rain is falling softly and steadily. Small shallow pools of water are on either side of the front steps. Our Cavalier King Charles does not want to go pee outside for fear of getting her paws wet. [She is truly a ‘Lady’ (that’s her name)]. And I just completed the reading of a slim volume of theology by Jim Boice entitled Standing On the Rock.
Like Boice’s other volumes, this one was winsome and wise. In this volume, Boice tackled common objections secularists and liberals have historically raised about the sufficiency, authority, and inspiration of the Scriptures. And just as in his other volumes, he more than withstood all inquiries via vetted scholarship. He answered honest (and often dishonest) questions and assertions raised against the authority of Scripture, and gently called naysayers and skeptics to the truth via evidence.
As one steeped in this sort of polemics, his answers were not new to me. The same questions have been around since the Patristic Era and before. And honest answers are not hard to come by if one will do a bit of study.
But what I was so moved by this quiet evening were all the stories he shared in this slim volume–of skeptics who came to faith in Christ in the most interesting ways. One was of a man shouting ad hominem attacks, who challenged Boice to a debate. Boice willingly accepted the challenge, but the man refused.
Another was of how W.A. Criswell told First Baptist Dallas that he was going to preach through the entire Bible as their pastor–from Genesis to Revelation–knowing that many folks could not even locate books like Habakkuk and Zephaniah in their Bibles. Critics laughed and scoffed at Criswell. But the result? The hearers could not fit inside the church, there were so many. His exposition was so accurate and the Word of God was so powerful, people were regenerated by God.
The stories go on and on. And all of them testify to the power of the Scriptures–the very breath of God.
When I see my own writing on my laptop, I sometimes chuckle now. Why? Because when I was a young man, full of intellectual pride and a sharp tongue, and I studied philosophy and literature, and went on to earn several graduate degrees, I get what the Apostle Paul meant when he said he had learned to count all those things as so much rubbish. He didn’t mean that he devalued the life of the mind. Just the opposite, in fact.
What he meant is that zeal without true knowledge/wisdom is vanity and pride. True knowledge comes when we fall under the recognition that this is God’s world and therefore God’s Word is the authority. It’s not man’s world or the words of men that carry ultimate authority. We are always the creatures; God alone is the Creator. We are borrowers of the creation only.
God is bigger than our trials, dear ones. His Word proves true. You can kick against it, besmirch it, shun it, and pervert it, but it survives and remains authoritative. As a friend of mine wrote earlier this week when she quoted Isaiah, I will do the same:
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)
MIND & MATTERS 