[AI translation] Between Easter and Pentecost, confirmation is at the heart of the life of Reformed congregations in Hungary, including our own. Here, in our congregation, 51 boys and girls are preparing to confess the faith of their ancestors and to confirm their allegiance to Christ and His Church by taking a vow of allegiance. In order to make Confirmation as much as possible a common affair for the whole congregation, the preaching committees of the two dioceses of Budapest have developed a preaching plan for the period between these two feasts, with a theme that is very similar to the theme of the Confirmation classes. Therefore, on the coming Sundays, we will now talk about the so-called means of grace also here in the church. God, who has received us into the covenant of His grace, has also given us the so-called means of grace. These means of grace are, on the one hand, God's gifts to us, that is, they work out our salvation, and, on the other hand, they enable us to fulfil our mission. According to our general Reformed confession, these are the means of God's grace: the Word, the sacraments and the Church. Today, we are taught about the Word in the Bible passage we read. So now I want to talk about a very simple but fundamental question: what is the Bible for? What is the use of the written Word of God? Let us try to find an answer to this question in the Bible verses that we read, so that we can better love and appreciate our Bible.Let me first say a few words about the Bible itself. Let's see, what does the Bible say about the Bible? Here's this: "All Scripture is inspired by God!" So it is essentially different from all other writings because it is a book of divine origin in a special way. The Bible is therefore from God, because it is from a divine source. Imagine that in this volume there are 66 complete works of Scripture in themselves, all bundled together. 66 different books, a whole little library. The authors lived in a wide variety of ages. More than 2000 years have passed between the time the first and the last book was written. They were written by people of the most diverse cultures: shepherds, kings, fishermen, tax collectors, theologians - in three different languages, yet they wrote a coherent story. These 66 books form a single work! It is as if an editorial board, over thousands of years, had divided up the material to be written, according to a single point of view, instructing the writers to pick up where one left off, and to continue directly where the other left off a few centuries later, each one elaborating on the same theme, step by step, from the creation of the world to the recreation of the world.
Thus, under the systematic editorship of an editor above earthly space and time, this book, which over the millennia has been hated as much as admired by men, has been created. Which has been read to rags by many a longing man and torn to rags by many an angry man. Which many a time has been thrown on the stake, and many a time has men bravely gone to the stake with it! There is no other book in the world that has been so often tried to be destroyed and exterminated, and yet it is still intact! And it is the most widely read book in the world, translated into most languages! This mere fact reveals something of the thrilling mystery that Paul says: "All Scripture is inspired by God!"
But these are only appearances. The divine inspiration of this book is even more evident from its contents. The contents of the whole volume of 66 books can be summed up in one word: Jesus! Jesus Christ is not only the New Testament, but also the Old Testament. The Bible is not a book about the fate of Cain and Abel, David and Saul, Abraham and Job, Peter and the Apostle Paul, but always about Jesus Christ. When Pharaoh commands all the new-born Israelite boys to be thrown into the Nile, this is an attack on the unborn Christ, then hidden in the bosom of Israel; and when Herod holds a bloodbath in Bethlehem, it is just as much an attack as that, but now on the born Christ. Both are episodes, parts of the permanent struggle between darkness and light, between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman! The book of Acts ends as abruptly and unexpectedly as if someone had cut it with scissors. The apostle Paul is in Rome, in prison. What will happen to him? There is no more talk of that. It is not important. The Bible is not a novel. The apostle Paul is not the main character, Jesus Christ is! It tells the story of Jesus Christ's journey from Jerusalem to Rome, to the centre of the mighty Roman Empire. What happened next to the apostle Paul may be very interesting from a church-historical point of view, but it is not relevant to the triumph of Christ over the nations and countries of the world!
But even more than that is the divine inspiration of the whole of Scripture. So it is not only that the whole Bible is about Jesus Christ from beginning to end, but it is mainly revealed in the fact that it is about Jesus Christ in a way that actually speaks to us. That is what makes this book so special and unique, that God uses this book to speak His word to man through it, to speak to man in human words! The same divine word that took on the flesh of man in Jesus of Nazareth, took on the flesh of the letter written and printed by man in the Bible. In the literal sense, Jesus Christ himself, the Word made flesh, walks among us in the robes of Scripture. The heavenly energy of the kingdom of God made manifest in Jesus Christ is in him in the words of the Bible. Thus the whole of Scripture is inspired by God. So that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, flows in it. God communicates Himself to man, calls man to Himself, intervenes in our thoughts, orders our emotions, our will, and takes hold of our whole personality!
That is why the apostle writes that this inspired writing of God is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfected." He nurtured them, he rebuked them while he walked the earth with them: well he continues to do the same, only now through the words of the Bible. Think of your Bible as Jesus himself, sitting down with you in person to talk to you, to discuss the big and small issues of your life, to teach you how to live, to reveal your sins, to guide your steps, to shape you, to mould you, to work on you and in you! Indeed, those of us here who have a need to live in personal, living fellowship and relationship with God cannot do without the Bible! Whoever wants to grow in faith, in love, in joy, in humility, in the Christian life in general; whoever wants to walk under God's guidance in this world, whoever wants to know what God wants of him and with him, cannot do without the Bible! Anyone who desires to see Jesus Christ as a living reality can only be convinced of this by the effect of the Word spoken through the Bible! Jesus continues to work for the total recreation of our human life through His words to us.
He teaches, rebukes, corrects and educates us with His Word so that "the man of God may be perfect." The word "perfect" in biblical usage means fit for purpose, according to its original purpose. That is what Jesus wants to make us all. Not only did he redeem us by his death, not only did he forgive us of our sins, not only did he make us heirs of eternal life, but he is working tirelessly to make us perfect human beings: people who are fit for the purpose, the destiny, for which God created and redeemed us. There was only one perfect man ever on this earth who fulfilled perfectly the purpose for which he was made: Jesus Christ! To him alone can be said what Pilate said, "Behold the man!"-the man of God's mind, the new type of man! That is what he wants to make you who believe in him. A man, a man of God, a new man, a perfect man - even on this earth! That's what he teaches, that's why he corrects, that's why he improves, that's why he nourishes, that's what he educates - and that's through the whole of the Scriptures inspired by God! That is what the Bible is for, as an instrument of His redeeming and regenerating grace.
This is how the power of the Spirit of Jesus works through the Scriptures! This is how the heavenly energy of the kingdom of God is stretched out in Him through the revelation of the Bible. Someone might say now, "but I have never felt that high voltage when I opened my Bible. "Well, that high voltage current is in this book, but not like electricity in a wire. Not mechanically. Not in the way that I open it, touch a text with my eyes and feel it strike me. No! Somehow different. And what is important here is what Paul says in the passage he reads, "You persevere in all that you have learned." This abiding, I feel, is the opposite of that fleeting touch. It's like when one walks through a forest in a hurry: one hardly sees any birds or animals. They hide. But if you sit down and wait - stay with it - they come out! Even in the Bible, passing quickly and in a hurry, you cannot hear that certain quiet and gentle word! We must watch and wait for the Holy Spirit of God to make the Scriptures a living Word for us. I am often amazed at what people who are involved in music can hear in the same piece of music that more uninitiated ears cannot notice. We, too, must live in God, always going back to His Word. Then we can truly understand. I can't do it without listening at other times, but now I'm sharpening my ears, because I'm in trouble, because I need it. So I turn to Him in vain, because if I did not need His word when He needed me, I will not find Him and hear Him when I need Him. So, "Hold fast to all you have learned."
But - and this is the most important thing - abide in Him even when you are no longer reading, when you have closed your Bible and are heading out of the room, or to the factory, or to the street, or to wherever life takes you. Then stay in it, because the last verse says that God gives us the Bible, Jesus puts it in front of us, to prepare us for good works. Reading the Bible is not to read something else sometimes, not just always a newspaper or a novel, not just always something ugly, but something beautiful. Not just mathematics, but also spiritual things! That's not what he's for! It is for that which the violin is tuned for before a concert: that is, to purify it from all false, false sounds, so that all our actions may sound pure, so that all our actions may sing the praises of God in the great concert of life! It is that - according to our Word - the man of God may be prepared for every good work! He who reads the Bible well will then see and seize the opportunities for good works among men. You will only ever know as much of God as you are willing to put into practice His will for you to do!
Let me conclude with the testimony of someone who tells you what the Bible is really for. Psalm 1:3 was His Word as He was setting out for the darkest, most unpromising future of His life: "And it shall be like a tree planted by the rivers, which yieldeth her fruit in due season, and her leaf withereth not; and in all her works shall she prosper." Everything seemed utterly senseless, and then, in this horror, this Word was to him like a morning star in the night sky. All at once the hopeless darkness was illuminated, for, he thought, there was opportunity for fruitfulness and good deeds everywhere. Whoever walks with the Lord in this way cannot have a fruitless and therefore meaningless life, even in the death camp. There too there will be people, with people there will be tasks, with tasks there will be fruit, with fruit there will be meaning in life! So there is no reason to despair, even if your heart aches for your loved ones. Even losing them cannot make life meaningless for him. It all depends on getting the root of his faith into that particular river of water. And this will not be lacking, because this water flows with them, it flows there: Christ Himself, as He is present in His Word. A source of life that never lets you down, never dries up, the water of life! If it nourishes and waters him, even death by starvation will be reconciled, for it can take him nowhere but to eternal life!
Try to go to work every morning, to the everyday things of life, to the people, with a current message from the Lord, which you have received personally from the Bible! If you put it into practice that day, you have not lived in vain! Every time you have truly lived a Word, fulfilled a will of God, made Christ's word come to life in you, you can wake up at night and say, "I have not lived in vain today"!
Amen
Date: 15 April 1956.
Lesson
Zsolt 1