Anabaptist Theology - The Supremacy of The Word of God

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. So this evening we're going to continue our discussion on Anabaptist theology. And now we're going to look at the four basic principles of Anabaptist theology. There are four, just four simple basic principles. [00:00:31] I don't know what would come to your mind as to what they would be, but I'll just be up front and just tell you what the first one is, and we'll just concentrate on that one alone tonight. And the first one is the supremacy of the Word of God. The first one there is the Holy Scriptures are the ultimate authority. The second one, since they are, I order my life and discipleship to Jesus Christ. The third one, when others do the same, I enter into a body relationship with them called the church. [00:01:05] And the fourth one, the church operates with love and nonresistance as it cooperates with Christ to build the kingdom of God. It's nothing new, but it's very, very basic. And this evening we'd like to look at just the first one and understand why it's so significant. You'll notice that at the top here, the statement is, something is providing the guidance system of our lives tonight. It's true for all of us. None of us accept it. [00:01:37] Something is giving direction. Now, if God is up here and outer darkness is down here, then we have all kinds of things in between that are seeking our attention. And you notice that all these arrows are pointing all kinds of ways, but it's only God's Word that's pointing to God. We have Christianity, we call it Christianity, but it's pointing off to the side. We have the world pointing in that direction, money pointing in this direction, human wisdom pointing in this direction, [00:02:09] human flesh this direction, mysticism, Islam, aimlessness, that doesn't know where to go. But here's me. Where am I? This applies to every single person in the face of the earth. You could put your name there. I could put my name there. Everybody in the face of the earth is going to find their direction somewhere. You can't live without finding some kind of direction somewhere. [00:02:40] And so, Anabaptism unapologetically says, the only place to get direction that's going to be a benefit for my soul and for my future is from God's word right here. We look to God for direction. The last time we looked at this, ideas have consequences. We have cause and effect and give us time. A certain cause will produce a certain effect. We also call it sowing and reaping time in between. But ideas do certainly have consequences. Now, if we're looking to the word of God, the word of God says some things about itself. The scripture simply says thy word forever. Oh, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. [00:03:33] Now that gives me a lot of confidence and security and strength, doesn't it for you? Human philosophies change. I'm only 55 years old. When I think about the changes in philosophy and the way people think in my short time, if you had told me whenever I was young that people are going to want, men are going to try to want to marry other men, And women are going to try to marry other women. I don't know if I would have believed you. But now that's the new thing. That's what's coming. It's supposed to be considered progress and enlightenment and we're going forward. [00:04:21] and also if you'd have told me when I was a boy that after a while it would be looked down on and even illegal to spank children, I don't know if I would have believed you. The country, our country and the way it thinks has lost its moorings and we're wandering around aimlessly And I personally feel that the economic situation we're in is just simply a simple result of immoral thinking when it comes to finances. [00:04:58] Let's suppose Brother David here is a banker. If I go to him and I want to borrow money from the bank and he asks me, well, how much money do you have? I say, well, I don't really have any money. He says, do you have a job? I say, yeah, I have a job. He says, okay, I'll loan you money. How much do you want? Say, $100,000. And so, that's not a very good basis to make a loan. Maybe I've been at my job, say, three months. [00:05:29] I don't know. I'm just talking off the top of my head. I might be wrong on this. And so he says, okay, I'll loan you. But it doesn't have a very good backing. He knows it, and I know it. And maybe even I know that I can't pay. but everything in recent times have been leveraged. We give extensions and we are hoping for the best against better judgment. If he thinks I can't pay or it's questionable that I can pay [00:06:03] and I know I can't pay but we're hoping for the best then we've made an immoral deal. And that's what has happened in Wall Street in our country. Time and time and time again, and now this whole thing has come crashing down. Well, again, ideas have consequences. We have to live morally if we're going to receive blessing. If we're going to live immorally, there are consequences to that. God teaches us by moral living, there's a right and there's a wrong. [00:06:35] How do we know what's right? Well, we read the word of God. He teaches us how he thinks. He built the world. He created the universe. He taught us what is right. He's also taught us what is wrong. And sometimes when he doesn't say exactly what's wrong, we know what is right and whatever is not this way must be wrong. And so morality we find from the word of God. And when we order our lives that way, we find all kinds of blessing. [00:07:06] Let me illustrate. If I love my wife, then my wife is secure and my children are secure and we're blessed in our homes. If I discipline my children the way the scriptures teach, my children are ordered and they're blessed. They find boundaries and security in their lives and they're peaceful, happy, and content. Now if I don't love my wife and I don't discipline my children [00:07:37] after a while my wife and I will have to have some kind of divorce and my children are going to rise up and rebel against me going to make all kinds of problems in my home and who knows what all it will turn out to be. And we could go on and on and on with illustrations. When God speaks we need to say yes, I bow my heart to whatever you say Lord Because you're the one who built the world. You're the one who built the universe. You know how it works. So teach me so I can think the way you think, Lord, because I understand when I think and walk the way you think and plan for us to walk, the only thing that results is blessing. [00:08:17] And for us here sitting tonight, we have untold blessings in our lives simply because we're people who believe the book and try to order our lives by the word of God. Now, are we perfect? No. But we heard read tonight that there's an advocate with the Father, even when we're not perfect. So what better, what, what could we have that's better? Except heaven. The thing that just troubles my soul [00:08:48] is that I find some of our people are casting this aside and think that we have some better ways. We know better than what God thinks. It's foolishness. Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven. The sooner we come to terms with that and the sooner we take that Word into our lives and live thereby, The sooner we'll be blessed and the sureer our future will be with blessing. [00:09:18] If God's word is forever settled in heaven, then it's our business to study the scriptures and to search the scriptures. Let's open our Bibles to John chapter 5, I think it's verse 39. This is Jesus speaking. Search the scriptures. And I notice here in this church we come together on Sunday mornings and we have Sunday school classes and we search the scriptures. We look at the scriptures, we ask questions, and we challenge each other. [00:09:55] And I think God looks down from heaven and he sees his people searching the scriptures and he just smiles and he smiles and he smiles. Because people who search the scriptures are seeking to know how God thinks about things and to order their lives and their thinking according to what he thinks. Now while we're at John here, let's go to chapter 1. When we're talking about the word of God, we often think about the written word of God. [00:10:29] And we hold it in our hands tonight. But this word in the very first verse here, is this the written word? What is this referring to? The living word. The living word of God, which is Jesus. Is there any difference? What's the difference? What's the difference between the living word and the written word? The word is also a living word. We're going to look at this a little bit more a little bit later. Is there anything in the written word of God that disagrees with Jesus Christ? [00:11:00] They are. They are. Well, the living word came from God and the written word came from God. The word was with God and the word was God. Now, we understand that that word refers to Jesus Christ coming and taking on flesh and dwelled among us. But, brothers and sisters, is this Bible I'm holding right here, is this physical? Yes. Was Jesus' body physical? [00:11:31] Could you touch Jesus when he was here? Yes. Okay, so the written word is also, in a way, not quite the same way, but the written word is also a kind of flesh. It's physical. Does it dwell among us? Does the written word dwell among us? Well, of course it does. We hold it in our hands. It's very precious. Now, it says, we beheld his glory. That's of Jesus. Do you see any glory of God in this book? Of course we do. Did you ever get blessed when you studied this book? Yeah, you get blessed. Yeah, so we get blessed as we get close to this book. But now it talks in verse 17 about the written word, the law. It was the Old Testament written word was given through Moses. But then we have something better. And we'll look at this a little bit later. The grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. [00:12:32] How do we know about this grace and truth? Well, we have the written word. That story. What do we call... There are four stories in this written word about this grace and truth when it was here. What do we call those four stories? Gospels. What does gospel mean? Good news. Good news. It came through Jesus Christ. Now, it says, nobody saw God at any time, but the Son of God and the bosom of the Father has declared Him. [00:13:06] Now, Jesus was here on the earth one time. Did you see Him? Did you see Jesus walking on the earth one day? No, I didn't either. How do we know He was here? How do we know? He said He was. We read the story right here in the written word. That's right. There's a record of the written word of him being here. And so we have the opportunity and blessing of studying the scriptures constantly. We can study them at church. [00:13:37] We can study them at home. And when we study them anywhere, when we bring Jesus close to us, he just gives us blessing. He gives us grace and truth. And you just can't get close to Jesus without getting blessed. And so in our private worship at home, it's an opportunity to get close to the living word. And his grace and truth will minister to us. [00:14:26] Sola Scriptura is a Latin term that means what, anyone? Only Scripture. Alright, if you would turn to 2 Timothy 3.16. On our overhead here we talk about Sola Scriptura, authoritative for doctrine. What is doctrine? What's a simple word for doctrine? Teaching. Teaching. The teaching that it gives is again teaching us how God thinks about the world. [00:14:58] And so whenever we read the scriptures and we read doctrine, we're learning how God thinks about issues. Then it says it's authoritative for life. That means how we live. Our lifestyle is also directed by scripture. And we've already talked about some of that. Let's go to B here. All worship and activity. Does it matter how we worship? Does God have anything to say in his written word about how we worship? [00:15:31] Does it? Yes, it does. I'll just share this with you. We have our own culture and forms of worship. I've been associated with the Russian immigrants in California that came over here from Russia. and I learned some things from them. Do you know that in their culture they believe that it's irreverent to pray when you're sitting? You must stand to pray. I was at a wedding in California one day [00:16:02] and we were having the reception and they asked somebody to lead in prayer and all the Mennonites sat on their chairs and bowed their heads and the Russians stood up. They also feel very strongly that to cross your legs is irreverent in church. You may not do that. They also believe, I guess this was a Romanian story, that it's irreverent to chew gum in church. And there's a story that somebody was chewing gum [00:16:35] and an elder or somebody went to that person and I want to make sure I'm saying this correctly, ask him to leave and not to come back because that is so irreverent in church I was personally in a service one time we were having a Sunday afternoon hymn sing and it was a rather small group of people and we got a little carried away with happiness [00:17:05] and we were just enjoying ourselves and finally the lady went over and talked to her husband and warned him that we're being irreverent And then he spoke to all of us and reminded us we just need to be more reverent. Well, we say, well, these are strange things. Are they? Are they really? Where do these people get these ideas of reverence? What does Isaiah say about being in the presence of God? [00:17:38] It's there. Personally, I feel that we are losing some things when it comes to reverence. The Word of God teaches us about some behavior that we're letting slip sometimes. Now, I'm not saying it's irreverent to pray sitting down. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is, I'm not sure that we are allowing the Word of God to regulate all of our worship. Because I see people coming to church, sometimes in casual clothes. It's like, well, it doesn't matter what you wear. You just come and you worship. Because worship is a heart experience? I don't think so. It's not just all heart. Yes, it's primarily heart. But God had a lot to say about how worship was conducted under the Old Testament laws. In a ceremonial worship. Not lower. And how we should worship. It's a challenge for us to think about. [00:18:44] And then all church regulation and discipline. One of the things that is basic in Anabaptist thought that the scriptures are the ultimate authority and the church is under that. You see, our Roman Catholic friends say that the tradition of the church and the word of God are equal. They don't make any apologies. They're equal. And the Anabaptist people said, no, that's not the case. The scriptures are supreme. [00:19:16] They're the ultimate authority. Even the church finds its authority in submission to the word of God. And whenever we as a church find something that's out of place, we need to bow our hearts to God and put it in place. The word of God is also over the state. And we say, like Acts 5.29 teaches, we ought to obey God rather than men. Yes, the word of God says we're supposed to obey civil authorities, and we should. When we disobey civil authorities, we're also disobeying God, because he told us to obey civil authorities. [00:19:52] But if the civil authority says we're supposed to do something that disobeys a command of Christ, we say no, because the word of God is above the word of the government. And we also understand by the Sola Scriptura here that the word of God is supreme over the individual. Now the individual is even lower than the church. But in our day, getting into post-modernism, Postmodernism says everybody as an individual and even groups of people create their own realities. [00:20:33] Let's talk about groups first. If we all here would agree on something that would disagree with the word of God, does it make it right because we agreed on it? No, but postmodernism says yes. Because we agreed on it as a group, suppose it's 100% and it's unanimous, well then it must be right. Because it's what we decided. And furthermore, postmodernism says that if I decide as an individual, my reality is for me, your reality is for you. [00:21:07] And you think your things and it's real for you. So everybody is his own God. Now what's the result of that? It doesn't take too much thinking to see what the result is. It's confusion. It's chaos. It creates meaninglessness. And that's what's happening to our country this very moment. Everybody's creating their own reality. Everybody's bumping into each other. Everybody knows something is wrong, but nobody really wants to bow their hearts to the scriptures. [00:21:38] And there are people in our country who find that life is just plain and plumb meaningless. and finally the end of post-modernism is nihilism that we don't even have to exist anymore. If my life becomes so meaningless, I might as well just take it. Just kill myself. It's okay. It's my reality. When it's time for me to be, if I think I'm finished with my life, I can just take it. What does God say about that? Is that right? Many people think that. [00:22:09] This is the kind of thought that's taught in the universities and institutions of higher education in philosophy. These kinds of thoughts. And it's, you know, brothers and sisters, this is a whole subject in itself. But we think about the Enlightenment, you think about, it used to be that medieval times religion was the basic philosophical guidance system. When you go into modernism, there was an enlightenment with science and so on. [00:22:41] You go into post-modernism, it starts to fall. When you get down here to nihilism, whenever you finally decide that life is meaningless, you might as well do away with it. You're basically at the end of the rope. There is nothing more. Except to drop off. And if you drop off, then basically civilization goes into chaos and you've got to start over again. It's just a horrible, horrible, horrible thought as to what is next in our country. And so, folks, brothers and sisters, it's extremely important for us to hold this sola scriptura, [00:23:17] to bow our heads and our hearts and our lives to the Word of God, because we get up in the morning and we have meaning and purpose in our life. We are living for something. We're living for someone other than ourselves. When we live for just ourselves, after a while we get tired of ourselves. Selfishness provides no long-term satisfaction. We get sick of ourselves. But when we serve other people, just like Jesus taught us to serve, He says it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. [00:23:49] When we do that, we find untold blessing coming into our lives. Think about it. You mothers, every one of you mothers, you just pour your life, for your family. Now, do you find that drudgery? Do you find that meaningless? I think you find a lot of fulfillment in that. And a mother's glory is that she pours out her life into her children and she finally dies, but the life that she poured out is in her children. They pick it up [00:24:20] and they pour their lives out into their children. And they end their lives when it's time. Then God uses that life and puts it into the next generation. Every generation pours its life into the following generation. That's the way God said it should be. But some of our people who are into this self-direction, they don't want children. Because children interfere with what we want to do. My wife and I, we want to go to Hawaii. [00:24:53] We want to go to Hong Kong. We want to do our thing. And if we'd have children, we couldn't do it. Besides, children are too expensive. And if you do have children, you only want to make sure you have two. This process, this whole set of thinking, in other world views, other than Christian, is catching up with some parts of the world. Do you know that in Russia right now, they are actually paying their families to have children? There's not enough children being born in Russia to even replace the population. The same thing is happening in Japan. [00:25:25] China, the most populous nation in the whole world was so scared of overpopulation they had a one child policy you're only allowed to have one child if you have two children, you have to pay a fine and in China, and again, this is not the way God thinks but girls were not as important as boys and so, I don't know what the average abortion is in China But in Russia, the average woman has four abortions. [00:25:56] In China, you just keep aborting them, especially if they're girls. Well, after a while, what happens to the population? We have a whole lot of boys and not enough girls. Now what are you going to do? You see, people don't think the way God thinks. They think they have better thoughts than the way God thinks. And they end up with a mess. In our country, the interesting thing about it is We have lots and lots of Latin Americans coming into our country [00:26:26] and they are keeping the birth rate up for us. I think the average, I'm not sure about this, but it's two point something in our country of children per family. But if it wouldn't be for the Latin Americans, I don't know where we would be. They're already scared. The government is already saying the baby boomers are aging and we don't have enough young people coming on to support the Social Security and the Medicare that's going to take care of, to supply the needs of all these people. Well, brothers and sisters, God allows us to get caught in our own traps if we don't think the way He thinks. [00:27:03] The outer word and the inner word. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. Now, we sometimes use that verse to talk about memorizing Scripture. But, brothers and sisters, I really don't think that's what it's referring to. It could. I think it could be involved there. But we can put memory up here. And we can just do it because we're supposed to do it. And if it does not affect our hearts, we have not hidden God's word in our hearts. Hiding God's word in our hearts means that we read it, the written word, take it into our minds, and then place it in our hearts. So it becomes the guidance system of our lives. That's what God has in mind. [00:27:51] Just to think about it is not enough. Just to quote scripture over top of something to sanctify it is not enough. It takes God's word in our hearts, giving us guidance in our thinking, our behavior, in every way. Now, Anabaptist forefathers talked about an outer word and an inner word. The outer word is this book right here, the written word of God. The inner word agreed with that. Now, the Quakers went too far with this inner word. [00:28:25] After a while, they talked about an inner light. And sometimes for the Quakers, the inner light could take supremacy over the outer word. And that's unsound doctrine. But the two should agree. If our inner word is going to be the way God wants it, It has to be the same as this. The written word, the outer word, and the inner word are basically the same. God's word is in our hearts, guiding us in our lives. [00:28:59] Fourthly, if we have a proper understanding of the word of God, we avoid appeal to visions and dreams and voices. You know, Galatians 1 says, even if an angel preach any other gospel, let him be accursed. I'm going to tell you a true story. A certain girl said, she was, I don't know all the particular circumstances, but she prayed and some kind of vision or dream came to her and this is what it said. [00:29:31] She was thinking about courting a certain person. And this vision said, it doesn't matter what your parents say, just do it. This girl was wise enough to go to her dad and tell her this dream. And she didn't act on that dream. You see, Menno Simons says, I'm not even seeking after visions and dreams because I'm afraid that if I get some visions and dreams, it may deceive me. [00:30:02] And he goes, that's well said. Now, this girl also refused to be misled by these visions and dreams. But can you think about how many people have been misled? Where did Mormonism come from? Joseph Smith said that he found some golden plates in a hill and they had Egyptian hieroglyphics on and so on. I also know that Joseph Smith looked into a hat [00:30:33] and there was a peep stone in the hat and he would look into his hat and the peep stone and he would tell his wife some things that he supposedly was seeing there. Well, if you read the Book of Mormon, it does not say the same thing as the New Testament. The Mormons say that the Book of Mormon is the Word of God. No, that the New Testament is the Word of God as correctly interpreted. Guess what correctly interpreted means for them? It's according to their books. [00:31:05] But the story doesn't stop there. The Mormons believe in continuing revelation. Right here. The voices supposedly keep coming to them. A few years ago, if you were black, you could not be a Mormon. Because the blacks, according to Mormon doctrine, were the accursed race. Well, then it became politically incorrect not to have blacks in the church, and so, conveniently, the president got a revelation that blacks could be in the church. Do you see where that can go? Well, thy word is forever settled in heaven. [00:31:39] And we don't have to be embarrassed or say, what next? What's the new vision? We don't have to worry about that. Because God's word is forever settled in heaven. And I think that Apostle Paul underlines this because in Galatians 1, I think it's verse 8 and 9, he says the same thing twice. If an angel or any other person preached any other gospel than what I have preached unto you, let him be accursed. He says it twice. [00:32:11] And I have to be honest with you. There were some wackos at the beginning of the Anabaptist movement who were not faithful on this one right here. This number four. And the whole situation developed at Munster partly as a result of this. In fact, largely as a result of this. Menno Simons was already coming to light. His own brother died because of getting involved in this kind of thing. And Menno was a priest and he knew better. And this is one of the things that just finally made him move. How can it be that these people are being deluded and misled and nobody's teaching them what the truth is? My own brother died now. And here I am having fun The tragedy that's involved with this number four is that for years and years and years and years, Anabaptism in church historical circles was basically dismissed completely off because of Munster. [00:33:26] Almost everybody read and understood Anabaptism in terms of Munster. It wasn't true. When I was in high school, I did a term paper on John Bunyan in relation to some of his writings. And I thought, wow, I wonder what John Bunyan has to say about Anabaptists. And I read, and he had no time for Anabaptists. What? How can this be? Well, I learned eventually that all Anabaptists were understood in terms of Munster. Somebody got this one wrong. [00:34:01] and has made for so much problem. In fact, the persecution that came upon our people early on was basically because of the failure of Munster. And they said, if you let these Anabaptists go, it's going to turn into Munster. See, we got one of them. We don't need another situation up there. We got to kill these people lest we have more Munsters on our hands. All because somebody failed on this number four. In fact, it was more than one person. Number five, the non-flat Bible. [00:34:34] Anabaptists do not believe in a flat Bible. A flat Bible would be, the Protestants would believe more in a flat Bible. If you take the Old Testament, you can justify war. But Jesus says, it hath been said, but I say unto you. So the New Testament standard is higher. We don't kill anymore. Even though God told his people to kill in the Old Testament, He says we're to love them, love our enemies in the New Testament. He says that about divorce and remarriage too. [00:35:05] It used to be allowed, but it is no more. Oaths. It used to be that they took oaths, but it is no more. And there's a number of doctrines like that. That the New Testament is supreme over the Old Testament. Christ is the mediator of a better covenant, Hebrews says. I'll just read this. This relates more to something else, but I'll just read it. This is Menno Simons saying, If you wish to be saved, you must walk in the way of the Lord, hear His word, and obey it. For nothing avails in heaven nor on earth unto salvation, neither baptism nor the Lord's Supper, [00:35:40] neither counsels nor usages, nor even Christ with His grace, merit, blood, and death, if we are not born of God, if we do not believe His word sincerely, if we do not walk in the light and do right, as John says, if we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie. He will not save you, nor forgive your sins, nor show you His mercy and grace, except according to His word. Namely, if you repent, and if you believe, if you are born of Him, if you do what He has commanded, and walk as He walks. Pretty clear. Now this is very practical, and this is where I want to end up tonight. The hermeneutic circle. In the hermeneutic circle, we have sola scriptura, which says God's word must be supreme. Here we have on the table controversies, a problem to solve, or direction. In this particular case, This church is seeking for direction. [00:36:30] Now, the hermeneutic circle says that the brothers in the church surround the problem. Hermeneutic has to do with interpreting. So, these brothers are interpreting God's word to the present situation. Now, granted, leaders probably have a stronger voice here than everybody. And young people basically are there to listen. So, it's not totally equal here. But anyway, you notice that some people are speaking. [00:37:02] There's a lot of people listening. And we have a new term here called Gelassenheit. How many of you folks here know what Gelassenheit means? See, some of us English people, I didn't know this. I only learned this a couple of years ago, what Gelassenheit means. But it's a wonderful word. It's not, you can't translate it into English. I understand. That's what I'm told. It means something like yieldedness. First of all, yieldedness and surrender to God. But it also has an element of yieldedness and surrender to each other. It's not just one person just pushing his way. [00:37:35] We're hearing God and other people. So the disciples of Christ surrender to God and each other as they seek to interpret the word of God to a particular issue. How do you do that? I don't know. It's a mystery. I don't know, it's just, to me it's like one of these places where God steps in, in a kind of a supernatural way. It's just wonderful, that's all I can say. But it has to be a hermeneutic circle. It can't be a group of men getting together and whatever they decide is what God decides. [00:38:10] We talked about that before. It can't be that. Or it's not a hermeneutic circle that way.