Since the beginning of Christmas week, I have been reading Charles Swindoll’s, The Church Awakening, which I will be discussing with fellow pastors the first week of the New Year. I cannot say I have read a lot of Swindoll’s books—however, I have great respect for a pastor who has ministered with integrity for more than four decades.
Swindoll begins his book with an excerpt from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. On occasion, Leno interviews people on the street to show how comically ignorant we can be about things that all of us should know. In this clip, Jay Leno’s topic is the Bible…
Leno asked one person, “Did Adam and Eve have children?”
A woman, after a few seconds of deep thought, said, “No, no, they never had any kids.”
“Name the two brothers, Cain and ____________.”
Absolute blank stare. Had no idea. They probably were thinking, Cain and Hurricane, or something like that. No…she had no answer.
“Okay…what happened to Lot’s wife?”
Zero response. And then one of the bystanders blurted out, “Who was Lot?”
Little hint: “She turned into ____________.”
The person said, “An angel.”
Leno turned to someone else. “Can you name one of the apostles?”
No reply. He continued, “Okay, then, name the four Beatles.”
Immediate response: “John, Paul, George and Ringo.” The crowd cheered.
To say that we live in a Biblically illiterate culture is to put it mildly. Now, Jay Leno does not necessarily pick the “brightest bulb in the box” for these interviews. However, even among our brightest, this Biblical illiteracy is a genuine issue. One simple example is found in the inability of college students to grasp classic literature because the Biblical allusions (which occur often in literature) are lost on them.
Of course, the issue here isn’t the importance of Bible trivia. I don’t believe Peter will be standing at the pearly gates giving pop quizzes on the Bible to see if people make the cut for entrance into heaven. However, the truth is, if people are ignorant of the Bible, they are very likely to be ignorant of the God of the Bible. And even in a nation with a stronger Christian heritage than many, we increasingly find ourselves among folks whose beliefs are more a product of Hollywood values (if you will forgive the oxymoron) than Christian values.
But Swindoll’s book is not about our culture’s need for God’s Word, it is about the need for the people in the church to know God’s Word. Hence the title—The Church Awakening. If we would be ambassadors of Christ in this world, if we would be in a position to practice and share Christ’s teaching—then we must know it ourselves.
It is this reality that motivated our less usual approach to telling the Christmas story this year by starting in the book of Genesis and making our way through key Old Testament passages before we arrived at the birth story Christmas morning. Part of the purpose in this journey was to give us a “big picture” view of the Grand Story God is telling.
As we enter the New Year, the new sermon series in the book of Proverbs should provide a good follow-up to our fall Bible series and our “big picture” approach to advent as we consider the importance of absorbing divine wisdom. And what is the Bible if not the most significant repository of divine wisdom?
Then, toward the end of January, we will launch the Know Your Bible Seminars, moving from some of the most basic questions about the origin of God’s Word to some of the most profound demonstrations of the supernatural and life-changing nature of the Bible story.
However, church awakening and personal spiritual renewal are most dependent on the daily devotion each of us gives to time in the Word and prayer in the context of a life of love and obedience. As we kick-off the New Year may the words of Micah 6:8 be our guide…
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
In Christ, Pastor Dan