WHAT DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY?

"The Lord helps those who help themselves."

"Know thyself. To know thyself is the deepest knowledge of all."

"To thine own self be true."

How many of the above quotes are from the Bible? Stop for a moment and think before you answer.

In a recent survey of American homes, 91% had at least one Bible. Yet, eight out of ten American adults think the first quote above is from scripture. It's not. You'll find it in "Poor Richard's Almanac;" but it’s not in God's Word.

The second quote comes from an ancient Greek document called "The Delphic Oracle," ascribed by legend to Pythagoras; but it’s not in the Bible.

The third quote is interesting. New Age guru and sometime actress Shirley MacLaine, in her book “Out On a Limb,” claims that Jesus said it. MacLaine must have forgotten her Shakespeare. The Bard penned that line, and you can find it in "Hamlet;" but it’s not in the Bible.

Famous pollster George Gallup recently stated that America has “become a nation of biblical illiterates." Gallup and Christian researcher George Barna back up that claim with plenty of survey results. Look at the statistics revealed in some recent polls, and compare with your answers.

Fewer than half of all American adults can name all four Gospels. How many can you name?

Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the twelve apostles. How about you?

Sixty percent of Americans can't name more than four of the Ten Commandments. Give it a try yourself. How did you do?

Here are some more examples, even more astonishing.

One Barna poll stated that one out of eight American adults thought Noah's wife was Joan of Arc! A survey of high school seniors indicated that over half of them thought Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. Another poll asked who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and many respondents said Billy Graham did.

We are in big trouble!

It’s one thing for the general populace to be ignorant about the bible. The deeper tragedy is biblical ignorance in the church. Sadly, survey after survey shows the same thing: Christians know less and less about the Bible.

In a nation where more than nine out of ten homes have at least one Bible, why are so few aware of its message? Gallup answers, "Americans revere the Bible – but, by and large, they don't read it.” To know the Bible, you have to read it. Sadly, only four out of ten Bible-owners read it as often as once a week, while just 11% read it daily.

The result of such biblical illiteracy is that God's people are open to deception. God's Word warns of tragedy for those who don't know His decrees. "My people are destroyed by their lack of knowledge . . . because they have neglected the Law of God" (Hosea 4:6).

The world around us is full of deception. The only way you can know the truth is to read it.

Do you?

What's Possible

In the previous article I discussed the life transformation that can take place when you trust Jesus minute by minute and step by step with the details of your life. I proposed that He can and will change your life, and you will become more like Him, if you do that.

Even as I pushed the “send” button that transmitted my article via cyberspace to the local newspaper here in Sterling, I could hear the sound of unbelief saying, “Yeah, riiiiight! This is Sterling, and we’re different. We don’t change.”

I could hear those words, because I’ve heard them before. Indeed, any pastor who has been here more than a few months has heard those words, or read them in the archived minutes of his church’s business meetings.

Think with me for a moment about the magnitude of those words, “We don’t change.” Jesus came to change lives, to transform them utterly. Remember that Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, which would be miracle enough. No, He came to do much more than that. The transformation He works is nothing less than making dead people alive. Change, in other words, is so very at the heart of what Jesus came to do, that saying “We don’t change” is the same as saying “Jesus, we don’t want You here.”

With that in mind, let’s remember why we often don’t want to change. I think it has to do with our conviction about what’s possible. Let’s face it: we either live up to our beliefs or live down to them. I think a lot of the time when we say, “We don’t change,” what we really mean is “We can’t change.” Maybe other people can, in nicer towns, where people have more money or more opportunity, but not us, not here.

When we talk like that or think like that, we’re focusing on the wrong part of the picture, and by “the wrong part,” I mean us. The issue, at its most basic, is not whether we can change, but rather, whether God, Who spoke the world into existence and raised His Son from the dead, can change us. Do we believe God can change us?

Here are some questions we who claim to trust Jesus need to ask.

What’s possible . . . when human beings pursue the kingdom of God with Jesus as their Leader?

What’s possible . . . when we learn to bring the details of everyday living under the Lordship of the crucified and risen Son of God?

What’s possible . . . when we enter into apprenticeship in the service of the King, with the Holy Spirit as our Teacher and Guide?

What’s possible . . . when we dare to make radical obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ the cause and source of our life’s joys?

Anybody out there want to find out . . .

. . . what’s possible?

When You Trust Jesus

The Gospel, if it is about anything, is about Jesus transforming your life. During His earthly ministry, Jesus was all the time changing people. He changed a Roman tax collector and a Zealot into friends. He changed a prostitute into a servant. He changed Peter, a pompous boaster, into the leader of the fledgling church. He changed Christian-hunter Saul into world-evangelizing, empire-challenging Paul.

The common factor of all these lives changed by Jesus is not what they were before they met Him, but what happened when they did. And what happened was that they all began to act more like Jesus. His nature, His character, and even His actions came to dominate their very lives.

To them the Gospel was more than just something to be affirmed in church on Sunday. The Gospel was what introduced them to Jesus, and Jesus is what - or rather, Who - changed their lives. Changed them. Transformed them. Made them different from what they were before - radically different!

The world, when it takes time to be honest with the church - and by "the world," I mean those outside the church, those who have never truly met Jesus - has some great questions to ask the church and its people who claim to have met Jesus, claim even to know Him. One of the greatest of the world's questions is this one: "Why don't Christians act more like Jesus?"

The reason I say it's a great question is that it's very similar to one Jesus Himself posed to His sometimes-avid, sometimes-aloof followers of two millennia ago: "Why do you say to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' but do not do what I say?"

I think the answer to both questions is the same: we don't trust Him. Not really, not with the everyday things of this life where we live. Oh, there are plenty of people who trust Him with the sweet by and by. But what about the sour here and now?

Trusting Jesus in the here and now means saying to Him, "Jesus, I want You to be in my whole life. I want You to be in all of my living. Please transform every aspect of my life. Please, Lord, I want you to show what to do and how to do it."

And then learn to listen and obey.

And so the cure to the problem of not acting like Jesus, of not having a transformed life, is this. Trust Jesus. Trust Him in everything and with everything. Trust Him in your job. Trust Him in your marriage. Trust Him with that co-worker who's always on your case. Trust Him with your money. Trust Him with your health. Actively, consciously, in trusting prayer, bring all these aspects of your daily life to Him.

Then, see how He changes you, transforms you and remakes you . . .

. . . when you trust Jesus.