Pastors and scripture

God is in heaven and does whatever he desires.  I read that in Psalms a while back.

Lately (by which I mean the past 10 years) I've been wrestling with biblical authority, preaching, and pastors who don't know what they are talking about.

I hold to the deepest, most specific view of inspiration - that all scripture is inspired by God, or God-breathed (Timothy passage).  I take that to mean that if God takes the time to breathe scripture, he is also going to take time to do it exactly as he desires, meaning pick the ideas, concepts, phrases, and words he wants to use.  He uses human hands, but ultimately it is his eternal Word and even the smallest letter will disappear from it.

When pastors preach, they proclaim the Word of God.  They study God's Word (scripture) and they hear God's Word (his voice, leading, etc) by praying and listening.

What about pastors who preach, but say things that aren't true?

 Sure, that's a wide spectrum for wrong versus right, with lots of grey and room for debate.  When I say wrong, I have a specific situation in mind:

A pastor was teaching through the book of Job, and was talking about suffering.  He made a comment that he did not believe God curses people for any reason, because God isn't like that.

Apparently this pastor has not read much at all of the Old Testament because it is such a vastly dominant theme that I knew about blessings and cursings years before I even went to seminary. Well, I was there, and I was going through a large number of serious issues all within the same week, so I suppose I was suffering in a sense.

What I heard was "Basically, I don't know anything at all about the Old Testament, so I will make something up that's not true.  Now let's talk about how I studied this book here in Job."  So I left, because my heart was torn, and I was not willing to listen to poor teaching particularly when it was relevant to me, but not taught faithfully to scripture. If the pastor was wrong about that, who knows what else he could be wrong about?

Afterwards I came back in, mentioned my life was falling apart, and he prayed for me.  Not just a mere prayer to get me to leave him alone, but truely prayed for me.  Seminary has taught me there are two kinds of knowledge - head knowledge and heart knowledge.  He had clearly studied, but just didn't know what he didn't know about scripture.  He deeply cared though, and deeply showed the love of Christ.

So, to all those pastors out there who long to be faithful to scripture, and preach from the depths of its riches and proclaim the vastness of the glory of God....  You need both, though generally people will care more about heart-knowledge.  They care more that you pray and listen to God's voice than that you studied for 20 hours and know everything there is to know.

But don't neglect the Word, because heart-knowledge flows out of knowing who Christ is, how vast the depths of sin we were in, and how glorious the redemption through God himself paying the price of our sin.

God's Voice in the Old Testament

In looking at the Old Testament passages referencing the voice of the Lord, I noticed several dominant themes paralleling God’s speaking.  The first is the vastness of God’s attributes, particularly in Psalm 29 which declares God’s voice as being majestic, powerful, and uses imagery of God’s creation to describe the superiority of the mere voice of the Creator.  The second theme throughout the Old Testament is that  obedience and repentance are an integral part of the passages referencing God’s voice. 

The Creator’s voice over his creation
Psalm 29 begins with the mandate to give to the Lord glory and strength, and to worship him in the glory of his holiness.  Following that, there are 7 references to the voice of the Lord – it is upon the waters, it is powerful and majestic, and it breaks cedars.  It makes flames out of fire (NIV: strikes with flashes of lightning), shakes the desert, and strips forests bare.  In his temple, all his creation (which his mere voice has power over) declares his glory.

Theologically, there is a distinction between general and special revelation.  Special revelation being the written word of God and Jesus Christ, and general revelation being God’s glory revealed through his creation.  Here, there is a strong focus on general revelation declaring God’s attributes.  Cedar trees are broken at his voice, flames are made out of fire when God speaks, his voice shakes the desert.  Even more so, “everything in his temple says ‘Glory!’” 

God’s immense power and majesty are seen in that by merely speaking his creation falls apart at his glorious word.  Psalm 29 ends with the Lord as king over his creation – but then the glorious omnipotent creator is declared as one who gives strength to his people.  While creation bows down before him, he cares so much more about the hearts of his people bowing down to him – and he will give them the strength they need to serve him faithfully.  God’s voice easily dominates nature to an unimaginable scale, yet strengthens those who love him and serve him.

I'll try to get another post up with the second theme of God's voice in the Old Testament, of repentance and turning away from a hard heart.  It it such a larger dominant theme of the Old Testament though, so it will be more than one post.