2 Kings 22:1–5, 8, 10–13, 15–20 23:2, 3, 24, 25 (26, 27)

*October 31 was the day on which Martin Luther nailed his reformatory proposals to the church door and it has come to be thought of as the birthday of the Protestant Reformation. Remembering that Reformation and considering that our societies’ programs center on Bible study both suggest that we take a fresh look at the way God brings reformation through the rediscovery of His Word. Our subject is therefore:

A Biblical Reformation

1. The Way God Has Worked It In The Past

2. The Way God Is Still Doing It Today

1. The Way God Has Worked It In The Past.

An especially dramatic example of the way God brings reformation through the rediscovery of His Word is found in the twenty second and twenty third chapters of the second book of Kings, the account of the reign of King Josiah. Coming to the throne when be was only 8 years old, after the very long and bad reign of his grandfather and the very short and bad one of his father what good could one expect from him? Yet, in the mercy of God, he turned out to be the best king that the country of Judah ever had. During one of his early reforms which included repairing the temple, the long lost book of the law, or Bible, was found there—Isn’t it ironic that the Bible got lost in the church—When that book was read the king was shocked. He had realized that much needed correction, but hadn’t realized just how bad it was and in what way it needed correction. The discovery moved him to deeper repentance and more aggressive reform. It guided and drove his reformatory career throughout his own country as well as beyond it.

Despite the enthusiastic and comprehensive reformation under King Josiah it did not last long beyond his lifetime. Grandfather Manasseh’s apostasy had gone too far and eaten too deeply into the life of the nation and the Lord finally brought the long threatened judgment in the 70-year captivity in Babylon. When He brought back a remnant from Babylon He gave new reform leaders in Nehemiah and Ezra. That reformation too is characterized as a “back-to-the-Bible” movement. It seems significant that Ezra was a descendant of Hilkkah the High-priest who in Josiah’s time had found the lost book of the law and we read of him (Ezra 7:10) “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” Accordingly the reform in which he had a big part was a revival of Bible study and biblical living that helped to make his people the people of the Book. Its influence was still evident after 4 centuries—if often perverted in the teaching of the scribes of the time of Christ.

Today it has become rather common in the churches to hear people who resent this orthodox concern about the Bible argue that this preoccupation with the Bible is really outdated. It belongs to the Old Testament rather than the New. When Christ comes He fulfills and replaces it. He is set off against the Book and the orthodox who stress the Bible may be ridiculed for worshiping the book instead of the Lord. Before you accept this claim that when Christ came He led people away from the Bible to Himself, you need to take a look at the New Testament and ask whether the claim is true. I have here an unusual New Testament. What makes it unusual is that although in the Old King James version it has Old Testament citations in bold type. Paging through it, you will often be surprised at how large a part of it is in the bold type. After almost 45 years of being fascinated as a minister with this subject I am still surprised at what New Testament texts are really quotations from the Old. In the sermon on the mount Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5: 17). Notice how often in the gospels Jesus appealed to the Bible with “‘It is written.” Luke 24 even shows that after His resurrection He showed from the Bible (vv. 25–27; 44–48) that He must arise, before letting His followers see that He had risen! Taught in that way from the Bible by Him, we see them going out to preach His gospel in the same way. Like all of the rest of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul taught his younger helper, Timothy how to help the church meet false teaching and confusion when he wrote, “But continue . . . in the things which thou hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:14–17).

We can trace that pattern of reformation by way of the Bible after the New Testament through the history of the Church. We see it clearly before and after the year 400 A.D. in the career of St. Augustine. A.D.R. Polman wrote a book, The Word of God according to St. Augustine to tell about it. At first as that church father was led from paganism to the Christian faith he saw Christ as an example and the Bible as a starting point to get acquainted with Him. But as he began to sense more deeply man’s sin and how much saving he needed, he came to appreciate the completeness of Christ’s salvation and the importance of the Bible as the guide to all of the Christian life. And Augustine became the great teacher of the reformers who came 1300 years later.

If we had time we could trace the same emphasis in the fascinating story of Luther. A. Skevington Wood has told it in a book Captive to the Word. You can find the same pattern in the career of Calvin, the pattern of reformation worked through the Word of God. We can find it 150 years ago in the career of our secession father, Hendrik de Cock, and 100 years ago in that of Abraham Kuyper.

   

2. The Way God Is Still Doing It Today.

It is truism to observe that we are living in surroundings of spiritual, moral and social decline, very like the people of Judah in Manasseh’s time. Of all of the vices of that long reign, what is mentioned as having most provoked God’s anger and called for their judgment by exile to Babylon was the “innocent blood” that the king shed , filling Jerusalem with it, “which the LORD would not pardon” (2 Kings 24:4). If that is the way God sees it, what must He say of our country which just in the last ten years has murdered 15 million children before birth with the approval of our highest court and the hearty endorsement of main–line church leaders? (One of the newly merged big presbyterian churches’ first actions was to give that kind of endorsement!)

But in these demoralized times we need to see how God is still bringing reformation through His Word.

A few days ago at noon we were surprised by an unexpected visitor, Mr. Neal Kooyers of what is now called the Pacific Island Ministries in New Guinea. Their work in a very primitive jungle area began with translating the Bible as Wycliffe Translators. Today it is thrilling to hear and read of changes that have come with transformed lives and societies, growing churches and four Christian schools.

Recently Dr. G. Aiken Taylor retired after editing the Presbyterian Journal for 24 years. (fhat paper is in a number of ways like our OUTLOOK, but 10 yeas older.) His last editorial, which we are reprinting, calls attention to the big changes for the better that that editor has seen among the conservative presbyterians—especially in the new, fast-growing Presbyterian Church in America. Recently my wife and I were taken on a tour of the Reformed Theological Seminary at Jackson, Mississippi, which has seen a similar remarkable development in its 17-year history. There are signs of some of the larger churches working and, where necessary, fighting to get back to the Bible as their standard. We have heard of the “Battle for the Bible” among the Missouri Lutherans bringing that church back to its gospel message. Something like it on an even bigger scale now seems to be taking place among the Southern Baptists.

The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy has been drawing together a remarkably wide variety of Christians all concerned about getting back to a firm, clear confession of the Bible as God’s Word. This getting back to God’s Word is provoking renewed interest in its doctrines. That is being demonstrated, for example by the rapid growth of the Philadelphia Conferences on Reformed Theology, now held in 5 places across the continent, attracting especially many young people.

As in our churches we resume our society meetings for Bible study, such developments around us ought to be an encouragement to us. The serious, prayerful study of God’s Word is the way He uses to reform His church. We need that reformation as badly as many around us do, and this is the way He leads men to it.

In our time we are facing some objections to such a program. James I. Packer in his little book God Speaks to Man, later revised and called God Has Spoken, observes that there has never been so much study of the Bible and has never been so much confusion among theologians about its message as now. Some of our synod studies have been evidence of that. Why do people presumably study the Bible, and yet come to opposite conclusions? Dr. Packer pointed out that what is creating the problem is the “critical” approach which many are taking to the Bible. As soon as we adopt it, he pointed out three things happen: (1) The Bible is really taken from the ordinary reader and he is made dependent on the up–to-date scholar. (2) It becomes impossible to say about anything in the Bible, “This is God‘s Word” because that is what the critic is supposed to decide. (3) The critic by his placing himself over the Bible makes it impossible to submit himself to it and to hear and obey what it is saying. All this, however “new” it may be alleged to be, is really very old. These allegedly “new” interpretations resemble most closely the same kind of techniques by which Pharisees and scribes of the New Testament, despite all of their Bible study, found endless excuses for denying or escaping what it plainly said. Our Lord particularly irritated them when he unmasked their “critical” study as hypocrisy. R.C. Sproul at the Chicago meeting of the Council on Inerrancy pointed out that the Lord in facing the temptations of the devil exposed his fraudulent “critical” misuse of the Scriptures.

We must learn from our Lord to study the scriptures as they lead us to Him (John 5:39; 2 Tim. 3:15).

Our changing times are demanding that we go back, not only to our Reformed creeds and doctrines, but to the Word of God itself, to see where and how they are grounded in what God says. Many in our churches, as well as others, have not gotten into the habit of doing that. At a minister’s conference, when this subject came up for discussion, and old minister remarked, “We don’t have to go to all that trouble; we had professors who did that for us in seminary.” That kind of answer is not good enough, especially not when old beliefs and practices are being questioned. We must, like the Reformers, ask and answer the question, “What does God say?”

Our lives need to become not merely following a church tradition, but we must learn again in personal experience what the Psalm means, “Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105).

We need such daily direction from God’s Word for ourselves; and we need to make every effort to help our children and young people get it. Some of the movements I have mentioned, notably the Philadelphia conferences on Reformed Theology, have had a remarkable appeal to young people. The writer of Psalm 71, as he expressed his own unbounded enthusiasm over the Lord’s direction of his long life, was eager to share this with the younger people who especially needed such guidance (v. 18). The old Apostle John had the same eager concern to see the “children walk in truth” (3 John 4).

Let us pray and work that in our individual and collective Bible study we may experience the reality expressed in the hymn:

When we walk with the Lord In the light of His Word, What a glory He sheds on our way. While we do His good will, He abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey.

*This address was given at the annual area men’s society rally on October 25, 1983, at the Beverly Christian Reformed Church, Wyoming, Michigan.