The Bible is About God's Agenda, Not Yours (Part 2)
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”Matthew 15:8,9
Last week, we started looking at how we are tempted to use the Bible to promote our own agendas rather than God’s. The first way we talked about was not actually using the Bible at all except as a prop for what we want to say. Today, we’ll talk about a second way we use the Bible to promote our own agendas.
#2 YOU APPLY WORLDLY PRINCIPLES TO BIBLICAL TRUTH
We gain a lot of worldly knowledge outside of what Scripture tells us. And that’s ok. God doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about this world in his Word. He leaves much of his creation for us to explore and come to understand on our own.
However, for us there’s a great temptation to put the study of God (theology) on the same level as other fields of study (history, science, philosophy) and to let them interact in a way that’s illegitimate.
Take, for example, one of the most egregious ways this is done. The Bible teaches that Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. He rose again on the third day. But history, science, and philosophy would not agree. Modern history records no resurrections. Science says once you’re dead, you’re dead. Philosophy posits that a physical resurrection doesn’t even really matter. Instead of allowing the Bible to speak the truth of the resurrection, following history, science, philosophy, and reason, many have denied the resurrection. In addition, many have tried to find the “true” meaning behind the resurrection accounts in Scripture on the basis of history, science, philosophy, and reason.
There’s a temptation for everyone to apply worldly principles to biblical truth. For example, Jesus commissions us, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). And rather than focusing on the tools Jesus gives us immediately after—”baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”—we sometimes fall into the trap of looking to the world of business and marketing and the principles that come from there. We put our confidence in our plan, our strategy, our goals, rather than in the gospel which is “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
But that plan, that strategy, and those goals ultimately won’t change people’s hearts. They won’t change people’s hearts from unbelief to faith. They won’t properly motivate people to do God’s will if they aren’t gospel-based. They may not even necessarily line up with God’s will if the end goal isn’t the salvation of sinners. That’s why God urges us to place our trust in the tool he has given us: the gospel, the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.