The Centrality of God's Word

I love the Bible's simplicity. When Paul told Timothy, and all the pastors and teachers who would follow him, to declare God's Word, it was like taking a Bible, putting it into his hand, and saying, "This is your message." I know that the whole Bible had not been revealed, written down, and conveniently bound together in one volume in Paul's day, but the message to the church is the same. Whatever else the church does, we need to proclaim the Word of God in its entirety.

In fact, we have no excuse whatsoever for failing to preach the Bible, because we do have the entire Word of God in our hands. Years before writing 2 Timothy, Paul had told the elders at Ephesus, "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God" (Acts 20:27). Any church that can say this is doing a lot of things right. The Word must be central.

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That means a lot of other things must be peripheral. We are not told to preach our feelings, because feelings are notoriously unstable and offer no standard for truth. Neither are we told to preach human reasoning and intellect, which is flawed and limited and puffs people up with pride. The church isn't even called to preach good morals, in the sense of drawing up lists of dos and don'ts, because people have many different ideas of what's right and wrong, and what falls into the so-called gray area. What your momma told you may not be what my momma told me, in other words. So don't go around the church saying, "Well, my momma said."

The only issue that really matters is what God has said. His Word is the only standard and authority for the church. You may be saying, "Come on, Tony, that's obvious. Everybody knows the Bible is the church's standard."

No, not everybody does know that. And a lot of people who know it in their heads don't believe it in their hearts or practice it In their churches. It needs to be said again and again that the Bible.

Is the church's only standard for the message we preach. Without it, the ballgame is over.

I say that because this subject reminds me of Bill Klem, the legendary baseball umpire of the early 1900s. Klem ran the game with an iron hand and wouldn't allow the rough characters of those days to intimidate him. One day a runner slid home on a close play with the game on the line.

Klem was on top of the play, but he didn't call it right away. The catcher and the runner both jumped up and started yelling, and both dugouts screamed at Klem to call the play their way. But Klem just studied the situation, until someone finally roared at him angrily, "Come on Klem! What is he, safe or out?"

Klem shot back, "He ain't nothin' till I say what he is!"

We live in a world where everybody wants to call the play their way. But the authoritative word has not been spoken until God has said it. And God has spoken in His Word. Our job is simply to deliver the message, the way a king's herald in medieval days would ride into a town, unroll the scroll of the king's message, and read it to the king's subjects, who were then obligated to obey. To preach is to declare what God has to say to His people, that they might understand the expectations and demands of the King.