This time of year many struggle with all manner of colds, flu, infections and other health-related problems. We tend to take our health for granted until we get sick. Once we are better again we have a new appreciation for that healthy feeling. We know what it means for our bodies to be healthy, but what does it mean for a local church to be healthy? What standards do we use to evaluate church health? What criteria should we utilize? I’ll tell you how the average church in America evaluates its own health. They follow the ABC’s–Attendance, Building and Cash. Do they have a lot of people in the pews on Sunday morning? Do they have a nice building, maybe a new spacious addition? And do they have cash–money in the bank to be used to expand their attendance and building space. Based upon the ABC’s, let’s see how Grace Church measures up. A-attendance: we have been growing slowly, but we certainly are not busting at the seems with people. B-building: we have a terrific building here, and even though some of our tax monies went into building and maintaining this facility, we do not own any part of it. C-cash: if you attend our congregational meeting next moth you will see we don’t measure up there either. Perhaps it is not fair to measure a young church such as our with these ABC’s. OR, perhaps we are using the wrong measurements to evaluate church health.

Instead of using these ABC’s, which I don’t think are a good way to evaluate any church, let alone a new church, the leadership of Grace Church has determined to evaluate the health of our church based upon eight Core Values. These are listed for you on the back of your bulletin insert. The leadership team of Grace Church developed these standards over a period of about six months based upon our collective understanding of Scripture. We believe these are the standards by which to measure the health of any local church. Here is a good definition of a core value. Core Values are consistent, passionate, Biblically distinctive convictions that determine our priorities, influence our decisions, drive our ministry and are demonstrated by our behavior. If it is not a core value, then we will have no part of it. Do you see how foundational these are? For the next ten weeks we are going to be studying these core values in detail. These are the standards we should use to evaluate church health.

Speaking of church health, there is a church near Los Angeles that seems to be healthy. They have 7,000 members and each Sunday the congregation sings praise songs and gospel hymns led by a 160-member choir. This church has 31 ministries including a prison outreach, 12-step programs, and other support groups. Wouldn’t you like to join a church like this? If you attended their church, this is what you would hear: "We don’t believe you are born into sin, we believe you are born into blessing. While some seek salvation, we call it self-elevation." This church appears to be healthy in many ways, but if you use the standard of our core values, they couldn’t be more sick. The first standard is what we call the Centrality of Scripture. Centrality of Scripture is defined as follows: All of our teaching, decisions, actions, and ministries grow from a foundation of Biblical truth. That church in Los Angeles does not pretend to base everything they do on the Bible. It takes a lot of confidence in the Bible to base our whole lives on this one book. We will address three common questions in regard to the Bible that should help boost your confidence in the Scriptures as being the foundation of our church as well as the foundation of each of or lives. About two months ago I suggested that a fundamental doctrine is one that we are willing to literally die for. If we are not willing to die for the truth in the Scriptures then it is not worth living for either.

The first question, "Is it true?" Another way of asking the same question would be, Can I trust the Bible, does it actually convey God’s truth? This is addressed in v. 16. Scripture is said to be "God-breathed." Older translations say, "All Scripture is inspired by God." What does it mean to inspire? It means to breathe in, so the NIV translation is closet to the original meaning, All Scripture is God-breathed. God-breathed communicates better than inspiration for other reasons. Most musicians artists, Christian or otherwise , often state that their song or poem or painting was inspired. What do they mean by that? WHAT inspired them? A sunset or an ocean breeze? A breakup from their girlfriend? Was it God–did God tell them which words to write or which colors to paint with? That use of the word inspiration is muddy at best. But when we say that Scripture is God-breathed we mean that the words have been spoken by God and the words are his words.

Another helpful verse to understand this is 2 Peter 1:20-21 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This passage twice denies that the prophets or authors of Scripture were responsible for writing their own words. On the contrary, it says that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This means that even though human authors were used to do the writing, that God superintended the process so that the end product resulted in a perfect written form of His words. These are the words of God without error.

Do you think most people believe this? Surveys demonstrate that people respect the Bible and they think of it as containing God’s word, but most do not believe that you can take these words literally. The Jesus Seminar example. Local ministerial example.

Several objections usually arise at this point. When Paul says "All Scripture" here, is he not just referring to the Old Testament? There is no disputing the fact that when the Bible uses the word "scripture" it is a very precise word which refers to the written words of God. The Scriptures, for the apostle Paul, would have been the entire Old Testament. But there is strong evidence that the apostles knew they were rightly adding to the "scriptures" through their writings. Paul claimed that the words of Jesus were also scripture. Turn back to 1 Timothy 5:18, For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain," and "The worker deserves his wages." The first part about not muzzling the ox is a direct quote from Deut. 25 and the second part about wages is a direct quote from Jesus in Luke 10. Paul claims that both are scripture. Also, Peter claims that Paul wrote scripture in 2 Peter 3:16, He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. These two verses help us understand that All scripture is God-breathed, both the Old and New Testaments.

Another common objection is: the Bible is thousands of years old, how can we be sure it has not been changed and is now full of errors? Do you want to see one of the biggest errors in the Bible? Turn to John 5:4. Would someone please read that verse? Anyone with a King James Bible is not allowed to volunteer. So where is verse four? Who stole this verse? If you have a NIV, look down at the footnotes. Notice it says, "some less important manuscripts..." It is time for a quickie lesson on how we got our present Bibles. The original authors wrote the words, and as we said, they were spoken by God and without error. Since there were no computers or printing presses at the time, all copies that were made were copied by hand. All of the original copies are lost, but we do have over 15,000 manuscripts of the NT, either whole books or pieces of a page. Here is what happened with John 5:4. In the process of copying the text, once in a while, a scribe would add a side note in the margins. (O.H.) This was more than likely based upon some strong oral tradition or story passed down. The scribe knew that it was not a part of the original. That is why it was put in the margin. Eventually a scribe came along, and for whatever reason thought the margin note should be included in the text itself. After all it does seem to explain why this lame man would want to get into the water. Then over the years many more copies of this error were made. When the scholars go back and look at all of the information, it is quite clear to them that the oldest manuscripts did NOT include this note n the text and therefore it would not have been in the original. This text in John is one of a handful of texts with this kind of discrepancy. Others that exist are only a matter of a word or two here and there.

The point of all of this is that even if this addition is kept, as it is in the King James version, it does not change any significant doctrine about God or salvation. So much hard work has been done with these Greek manuscripts that for every practical purpose, we have the original words of the author and therefore, the original words of God. Is the Bible true? Can it be trusted? The answer is a resounding yes. What remains for you and I is to determine why we have tendencies to not believe certain parts of Scripture. Are there parts of the Bible that you understand but still do not believe?

Our second question, "is it necessary?" is answered in two ways. First, as a logical deduction from the first question, again the answer is yes. If the Bible is the very words of God and there is no other way you can learn about God, then of course the Bible is needed. But even more specifically, v. 15 answers this question. Paul says that the Scriptures have made Timothy wise for salvation. The words of Scripture are necessary for anyone to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The opposite is also true, no one can be saved without hearing the message of the gospel and understanding that we have sinned and that only through the blood of Christ can we be saved. The Bible is completely necessary for salvation.

What about those who have never heard, what about natives in South America, are you saying they need the words of the Bible to be saved? I am not saying that, the Bible is saying that about itself. How do those who have never heard hear for the first time? You and I go tell them. This is our number one calling in life, to introduce people to Jesus and help them grow in him. Can they be saved if they never hear? This is not for me to say. Could God use an angel to speak to them? Could the Holy Spirit directly speak the message of the gospel to someone? Yes, this could happen, God can do what he wants, but this is not very clear to us. What is clear, however, is that the Scriptures are necessary for salvation. This is motivation to learn scriptures and share its message to as many as possible in this lifetime.

Our third question, "Is it sufficient?" Again, this question is answered logically from v. 16, if it is God-breathed, the very words of God, yes, it is binding. But this passage in Timothy explains precisely the way in which it is binding on our lives. It is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness. Here we have two positive uses–teaching and training in righteousness and two negative uses–rebuking and correcting. This is what we do for one another. We teach and train, we lay the foundations of who God is, what he has done for us, what he asks in return. Then if we start to stray from this foundation, we are given the responsibility of rebuking or correcting one another. Would you rather be taught and trained or rebuked and corrected? No one likes to be rebuked and corrected, but even this we should view as positive. It all comes down to our T.Q. We all know what an IQ is, your Intelligence Quotient. It is supposed to be an indicator of how intelligent you are. God does not care about your IQ, what he cares about is your TQ, your teachable quotient. The more teachable you are, the less rebuking you will need. When you learn a new promise, are you quick to believe it and live it? When you are convicted of sin, are you quick to confess? This is your TQ. If you are sensitive to God’s word and you have a high TQ you will be taught, trained and corrected and not rebuked as much. If your TQ is low you will be rebuked more often, at least if those around you are doing their job. Here is the dilemma. If you have a low TQ, you will be rebuked more but you are also less sensitive to being rebuked, your spirit and will are hardened. What is your TQ? Unlike your IQ which is mostly unchangeable, your TQ can increase indefinitely. The primary exercise for strengthening your TQ is to read the word, believe the word and do the word.

Also, if it sufficient, we cannot add words to it. We cannot add to it or claim that we need something else to know about God.

When I preach I always have people evaluating my messages. This is one of the criteria they use. I ask them to indicate whether the force of my message was teaching, rebuking, correcting or training. My goal is to have an appropriate balance over time. If I spend all of my time teaching and never correcting, I am out of balance. However, if I beat you over the head with rebukes every week, I am also out of balance.

How are we doing with this first core value? Let’s go down the checklist.

Rich Maurer

January 6, 2002