"What Does It Say About God?"

 

Acts 16:16-34

 

     Vacation Bible School begins tonight and there will be a class for adults: Biblical Interpretation 101.  In my mind I know that when I am studying a Biblical text the first question I should ask is, "What does this text have to say about God?"  But too often I forget that and ask "What does this text have to say about me?"

 

       If I begin with the question, 'What does this have to say about God?"  I learn about the sovereignty of God, that salvation is a gift, that God is a God of grace and love.  That is good news and a great joy. If I begin with the question, "What does this text have to say about me?" I end up with a theology that is based on reward and I get frustrated because I realize I can never do enough to earn my way into the kingdom. 

 

       For example, on Tuesday in Shepherds we were talking about the rich young ruler.  If we begin by asking what this has to say about the rich young ruler we walk away sorrowful because we know that we are like him, we are not going to give up everything to follow Jesus Christ.  But if we look at the text asking what it has to say about God, we discover that what is impossible for us is possible for God.  We can't save ourselves but God can save us.  Rather than walking away sorrowful we are filled with great joy, realizing that our salvation is not dependent on what we do but is a gift of grace from God.

 

       Which means that the first step for all of us in discovering who we are is to first discover who God is.  Once we have some understanding of who God is we can begin to understand who we are and how we fit into this universe.   In other words, we do not define God by who we are, we define who we are by who we believe God is.    

 

       And how do we define God?  Do we define him by listening to the gospel according to Oprah?  Do we define God by listening to what others have to say about God?  Do we define God by making God the way we want God to be?  Or do we define God by what we read about God in the Bible?

 

       I think the majority of us would say that the first place we should look to define who God is is in the Bible.  I also think the majority of us would say that what we believe about God should come from Scripture and not be simply what we want God to be.  Which means that the first step in Biblical interpretation should not be what does this text have to say about us but what does it say about God?       

 

        Our text in Acts for this morning is saying that salvation comes from God.  When we recognize that we have the freedom to act in new ways.  When the Philippian jailer realized that his salvation was granted by God he was no longer worried about self, he washed the wounds of the prisoners and he and his household were baptized.  Before that he was ready to take his own life because he feared what his superiors would do to him when he thought the prisoners had escaped.

 

         Paul is another example.  He had been persecuting Christians.  After he was confronted by Jesus on the Damascus Road he became possibly the greatest Christian missionary ever.  He was free to turn his back on his old ways and live his life in a completely new way.    

 

         There is an interesting line in verse 21.  When Paul and Silas were brought before the magistrates the complaint was that they were disturbing the city.  "They advocate customs which it is not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice."  The people who were complaining about Paul and Silas were bound by the Roman customs.  They allowed those laws and customs to define who they were and what they did.   The Philippian jailer was just like them until his life was changed by the Lord Jesus.  At that point his life was defined by God, not by the Roman customs, and that gave him the freedom to believe and change.

 

        The greatest gift that we can offer someone is the gift of salvation that comes from God, the living water that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well, being born from above like Jesus shared with Nicodemus, the ability to see the life in a new way that Jesus gave to the man born blind, the new life that Jesus gave to Lazarus.  It is the gift of salvation that gives us the freedom to be the people God calls us to be. 

 

        When our daughter, Kristy, was in high school she was thinking about applying to Duke University.  We took her to Durham to tour the campus.  Yes, we did go inside Cameron Indoor.  While on campus we bought two sweatshirts at the bookstore that have the Duke symbol on them.  I used to wear that sweatshirt every morning when we took Hurley for a walk.  I had that sweatshirt for ten years and then one day was looking in the mirror and realized for the first time that there is a small cross in the middle of the symbol on the front of the sweatshirt.  The cross of Christ had been with me and I didn't even realize it.

 

          I think the same is true of the freedom that comes from realizing that our salvation comes from God.  The freedom is there all of the time but we don't realize it.  We put self before God.  I think one day the light bulb goes off, someone like Paul shares the love of Christ with us, and we recognize that the freedom that comes from God has been with us all along.  We don't have to be bound by our past.  We don't have to fear what someone might say or do when we do something that we believe is God's will.  We are free like Paul and the jailer and his family. 

 

         It is in the salvation of God that we are set free.