“BIBLE: Sacred Text”

(Exodus 24:12-18; Ps 99; 2 Pet 1:16-21) JG White ~ 10:30 am, Sun, Feb 15, 2026, FBC Amherst

I know today is the day after St. Valentine’s Day. I know we are celebrating our camp, Pagweak. I know it is Transfiguration Sunday. I know tomorrow is Heritage Day in NS, this year in honour of Acadian Joseph Willie Comeau. We are also in the midst of the Great Backyard Bird Count and Amherst’s Winter Carnival. Today, our worship focus is the Bible, and the use of our collection of sacred texts. What is a practicing Christian? Someone who esteems and uses the Holy Book. 

The bulletin front cover image today is from the window just over there. It illustrates a sword, on top of a Holy Bible, with some grape leaves, and text on a scroll, quoting Ephesians 6:17. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Sometimes in the New Testament, a sword, especially when Jesus wields one, stands not for a sharp metal blade, but for powerful words. 

I think immediately also of this sentence from Hebrews 4 (12). I think this was a memory verse for me, in my youth. Indeed, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

That phrase, ‘the word of God’ can mean a few things. One of them being a book, the written down ‘word of God,’ scripture, the Holy Bible. This is so important to some Christian groups they name themselves Open Bible Church, or Bible Believer’s Church. 

Let’s get this out of the way, at the start. What is a ‘Bible-believing Christian?’ My short answer is that, in our world, it gets used basically for Christians who take the Bible more literally than others do. Just take it at face value. What it says is basically what it means, the stories and histories happened just as they are written. Don’t doubt that or criticize that. 

This is not my approach to the Bible. So, I don’t call myself a ‘Bible-believing Christian.’ Yet I, and maybe you, believe in the Bible, and we are Christ followers. I confess to believing the Bible, all of the Bible, as best I can, respecting it, having confidence that it is here for us with power and truth and a direct connection with God. It is special, for me the most special, the specialist book of them all. 

To be a Christian is to use the holy scriptures. There are a variety of approaches to use scripture, to understand it, to interpret it, to figure out its parts and be guided by it. One Bible and spiritual teacher (R. Rohr) tells us that some of the early Christian leaders saw seven ways the Bible works: the literal, historical, allegorical, moral, symbolic, eschatological, and “primordial” levels of a text. Maybe this is a sermon series for another time. Better yet, a Bible study.

We who are pew or pulpit or Choir people get some scripture every time we are here together. Today we have quoted Psalm 99, Ephesians 3 and 7, Exodus 24, 2 Peter 1, and Hebrews 4. How is your Bible content going the other six days of the week? Your use of scripture may be all over the map. 

Some of you are people who read through the whole thing. Maybe every year, or every so often as the years go by. You are getting to know what’s here in it more and more and more. 

Some of you study it, together in groups or classes, or also alone on your own, maybe using study books or video and audio teaching. 

Some of you meditate upon it. You take time to ponder chapters and verses of the Bible, quietly or silently praying over it. Soaking in it. Remember the old Palmolive dish detergent commercial? “You’re soaking in it.” Yeah. You soak in bits of the Bible.

Some of you memorize parts of the Bible. This was always a part of the curriculum of Sunday Schools and other youth programs. The verses I memorized as a kid still stay with me. In adulthood, the memorizing was not even on purpose, it just happened when there were scriptures that we kept reading often in worship services. 

Some of you use daily devotional aids, like The Daily Bread, Christ in Our Home, and such things. I use a book called Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. We at First Baptist write our own for Advent, don’t we? These each have some part of the Bible to read every day, in a moment of reading and praying. More about this next Sunday when we focus on spiritual practices.

Along with a few things I just mentioned, what are some tools for using the Bible? First off, we have the many English translations. The original scrolls are in old Hebrew and Aramaic and Koine Greek. These have been put into English hundreds of times through history, since about 1382, by John Wycliffe. Different English versions have put it into this language in different ways, and the diversity can be helpful. But if you can read in one or more other languages, reading the Bible in that language can be very helpful. Frederick Buechner recommended this, with this illustration. “Blessed are the meek,” we read in English. But listen to Jesus’ beatitude in French. “Heureux sont les débonnaires.” 

Some of you use a study Bible, which has introductions to the parts of the Bible, footnotes explaining things, essays on Bible topics, maybe some maps, an index for finding things, all sorts of helpful materials. There is a study Bible for every need. Plus, other books, like Bible dictionaries and concordances. You know what a concordance is? A book of words not with definitions but with where to find it in the Bible. [James] Strong’s for the strong, [Robert] Young’s for the young, and [Alexander] Cruden’s for the crude! 

So much of this is available on the internet, of course. Many other study books help explain things. 

Some of you use a reading plan, for working your way through the whole thing. You can even get ‘The One Year Bible,’ that has some of the First Testament and the New Testament for every day of the Year. So, today would be Exodus 39 and 40, Mark 1, Psalm 35, and Proverbs 9:11 & 12.

The more we dabble in it, the more the Bible can make sense. And, the more the Bible can be a challenge. I’d say scripture informs scripture. Reading one part connects with many other parts, things fit together, the flow of the story becomes clearer, we understand it.

For example, look at some mountaintop experiences in different centuries of biblical history. We read of Moses, with some helpers, climbing a holy mountain to receive the Commandments. Maybe 1,400 years later, the second book of Peter mentions how a couple disciples went up a mountain with Jesus, and in the bright shining vision saw Moses there too, and prophet Elijah. So we might remember, way back, how Elijah fled to a mountaintop once, and there heard from God in a still small voice. Jesus, transfigured on a mountain, marks a turning point in His story. From here He is headed to the city of Jerusalem, and there He will be captured, tortured, and executed, upon yet another hill, called mount Calvary. 

There is a lot of ‘connecting the dots’ in our use of scripture. What an incredible gift this holy text is! And here we meet with our God and Saviour. The Spirit speaks. It is when we experience what we have read about that we are moved, and our faith grows. 

As it says here in 2 Peter, we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. We, in our day and age, don’t have only what was written down long ago. We have our own moments in life with Christ, and this is our proof. 

It says here in 2 Peter 1, scripture is not just a matter of our interpretation, but the Holy Spirit of God is involved. Active when it was being written; active when it is read again now. Often, there has to be a wow factor when we delve into the Bible. There is more here than meets the eye.

A professor speaking of Jesus’ miracle stories – a Jewish professor at that – once taught: Look, you're all skeptical, right, you’re skeptical of miracle stories. Well of course you’re skeptical. You’re supposed to be skeptical, its a MIRACLE story, that's the whole point. Its supposed to perplex and astound. If you simply believe it, no questions asked, then you aren't really astounded, are you? Anymore than if you simply disbelieve it, dismiss it out of hand. Either way, you're not taking the story on its own terms.

So too with the Bible parts that are not miracles, but songs, or prayers, or day-to-day stories, or wisdom, or tragedies. It is when a holy connection is made that this comes to life. We meet the living God here. 

I end thinking back to our Bible study that just finished with the book of Job. At the end of that man’s terrible suffering, and all the long speeches he and his visitors give about why pain happens, God shows up. And not with answers for Job. With more questions, that point out this whole world is a lot bigger than Job. 

But God shows up. Job gets to meet the Holy One he longed to confront. Job gets the confrontation. In this case, God brings to Job’s mind not the texts of scripture, but the creatures of creation. In the midst of that, God comes up close and personal. 

So, when it is all said and done, Job confesses

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

    but now my eye sees you;

 May it be so, for you and for me, with our Bible. May we rejoice to declare 

I had heard of Christ by the reading of the eye,

But now my soul meets You!