Responding to the Word

He was trying to highlight the danger of assuming that, because we grasp some of the truth, we therefore know all the truth - in particular, the inference that the spiritual dimension can be ruled out because of our insights into the physical world, the tendency to say that reality is "nothing but" the physical world. To illustrate his point he uses an illustration from the use of lamps to signal from ships at sea.

When a man sends a message from ship to shore, in one sense all that is coming from the ship is a series of flashes of light; but the trained sailor who sits on the shore watching this light says, 'I see a message ordering so and so to proceed somewhere', or, 'Look, they're in trouble!' Why does he say this? All he has seen is 'nothing but' flashes of light. The whole pattern of activity can be correctly labelled thus by a physicist, and described so completely that he is able to reproduce at any time exactly what the man on shore saw. He does not add 'the message' as a kind of 'extra' at the end of his description, and it would clearly be silly to say he is 'leaving out the message' as if it were very wrong for him to do so. What he has done is to choose one way of approaching a complex unity, namely, the sending-of-a-message-from-ship-to-shore, one aspect of which is purely physical, allowing of complete description in such terms as the wavelengths of the light and the time pattern. On the other hand, if he reads it also as a message, it is not as if he had found something mysterious going on as well as the flashing. Instead he has discovered that the whole thing, when he allows it to strike him in a different way, can be read and can also make sense in non-physical terms. The message here is related to the flashing of light, not as an effect is to a cause, but rather as one aspect of a complex unity is related to another aspect. ("Man as a Mechanism" in Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe and other essays edited by Donald M. MacKay, IVF 1965, pp. 57-58)

I am sure that all of us have, at some time or another, been astonished that people can come to wildly different conclusions after being exposed to the same evidence. More than we realise, our assumptions affect our perceptions.

I recall hearing Alan Wilson, then professor of Geology at the University of Queensland. He complained that too many Christians have a "god-of-the-gaps" - acknowledging the prevailing mechanistic view of the universe but bringing God in to explain the gaps of our knowledge. The god-of-the-gaps is a shrinking god as scientific knowledge continues to expand. We need to understand, Alan Wilson insisted, that God is in it all - in all the processes from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the vastness of the universe.

Hearing the Word

Following the earthquake, the Roman officials make an embarrassing apology to Paul and Silas - Roman citizens who had been publicly whipped and imprisoned without a trial. They are "led out of the prison and ordered to leave the city" (Acts 16.39). Before leaving, however, they "went to Lydia's house. There they met the believers, spoke words of encouragement to them, and left" (v. 40).

From Philippi they travelled west through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica. Unlike Philippi, "there was a synagogue" (17.1). Paul's practice was to offer the Christian good news to Jews first. They were the ones who had received the divine revelation, who should be expecting the promised Messiah. Over three Sabbaths Paul entered into discussion with them on two issues. The first was that the promised Messiah "had to suffer and rise from death." The second was that "This Jesus whom I announce to you is the Messiah" (v. 3).

This was the issue for the two disciples going to Emmaus. They had hoped that Jesus of Nazareth "would be the one who was going to set Israel free" (Lk. 23.21). But the Stranger said, "How foolish you are, how slow you are to believe everything the prophets said! Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and then to enter his glory?" (v. 26). And as Jesus prepared his disciples for mission - "everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the writings of the prophets and the Psalms had to come true... This is what is written: the Messiah must suffer and must rise from death three days later, and in his name the message about repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem" (vv. 44-47).

These were the issues. The Scriptures were pointing to a suffering and rising Messiah. The Scriptures have been fulfilled in Jesus. Now is the time to repent and believe the good news.

The response was mixed. "Some of [the Thessalonian Jews] were convinced and joined Paul and Silas; so did many of the leading women and a large group of Greeks who worshipped God" (v. 4).

But others were jealous and stirred up a mob. Strikingly, the catchcry as they dragged some of the Christians before the city authorities was designed to arouse non-Jewish sentiment and to force official reaction - "These men have caused trouble everywhere!... They are all breaking the laws of the Emperor, saying that there is another king, whose name is Jesus" (vv. 6-7). The KJV has "These men have turned the world upside down..." It is a matter of your point of view which is "upside down" and which is "right way up".

Paul and Silas were in no way inciting civil disobedience. Paul wrote that Christians should obey the state authorities "as a matter of conscience" (Rom. 13.1-5). However, it is true that our ultimate allegiance and obedience are to the Lord Jesus once we acknowledge who he is.

Studying the Word

John 5 records the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethzatha on a Sabbath day. Following this healing the Jewish authorities were "all the more determined to kill him," not simply because it was the Sabbath - it was even more that "he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal to God" (v. 18). Instead of searching for the truth, they were acting on prejudice. He says to them, "You study the Scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life. And these very Scriptures speak about me! Yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life" (vv. 39-40).

Here too was the difference between the Thessalonians and the Bereans - the willingness to study whether these things were so and to follow the conclusion of that evidence.

Berea was only some 80 kilometres or so from Thessalonica. Word reached the Thessalonian Jews that "Paul had preached the word of God in Berea also," so "they came there and started exciting and stirring up the mob" (v. 13).

Responding to the Word

We need to hear the Word, to study it, reflecting deeply on it - but finally the question is how we respond to it. There is an old prayer which put it this way:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

We may find the language somewhat archaic, but we can grasp it well enough. For we do need to hear the Scriptures in such a way as to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them - so that they become part of our being, so that the life which is God's gift to us in Jesus Christ will transform the rest of our life. May our minds, our hearts, our lives be open to him.

Back to Sermons