3 May 2026

An Inspiring (Frustrating) Book

1 Timothy 3:14-17; 1 Peter 3:14-16

Our scripture today is a scripture on scripture. We read 2 Timothy 3:14-17.

14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.  

Growing up Southern Baptist, I heard this scripture passage my whole life. I memorized it once in Sunday School, another time when I was training to be a counselor at a Billy Graham Crusade, and yet again in the Master Life Discipleship Course that I took in my college ministry. Don’t ask why I had to re-learn it – twice. The point is that my church held a profound respect for scripture, and so this verse appeared a lot. That reverence showed in a lot of ways. For instance, we got points in Sunday School for “Bible Brought.” When we lived in Arkansas, our son’s Sunday School teacher asked us why he didn’t bring his own Bible to church, and we said, “Well, he’s five. He can’t read yet.” Didn’t matter. He was missing out on easy points. 

But our reverence for scripture showed in non-silly ways, too. As far back as I can remember, I was encouraged to read the Bible daily – not just by my church (we also got Sunday School points for “Bible Read Daily”), but by my parents. They both began every day with a time of Bible reading. From my mother, I learned that if you read three chapters a day and five on Sunday, you can finish the whole Bible in a year. And if you read four chapters a day for a year, you can read the whole Bible and the New Testament twice. I began trying to read the Bible in a year, without much success. I usually made it through Genesis. Once, in eighth grade, I made it all the way through Leviticus, before my resolve finally flagged in Deuteronomy. 

Then, when I was a freshman in college, my younger sister Marilyn died in an accident. The night I got that news, alone in my room, I picked up my Bible and read the Book of Philippians, which I’d recently heard a sermon series on. The next day I read it again. And in Paul’s words to the church at Philippi, written from the prison where he expected to be executed, I found comfort. If Paul could rejoice in the Lord from the shadow of death, maybe there would be joy again for me one day. On the third day, I started my reading goal again, and this time it stuck. I have read the Bible every day since Marilyn died in 1981. It would be fair to say that all my deepest convictions, core values, and aspirations derive in some way from this book that has shaped and changed my life. Yes, 2 Timothy 3 is right. This book has been my source of teaching, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness. 

Our second scripture is also about scripture, specifically the writings of Paul. We read 2 Peter 3:14-16.

14 Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; 15and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, 16speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Here’s another affirmation of scripture, sort of. It reminds us of the challenge of holiness as expressed in Paul’s writings. But then it moves right away to a warning. Paul, we are told, can be really hard to understand (And all the people said, “Amen!), and because it’s so difficult, it’s easy for people to twist and abuse it for their own purposes, as they do the other scriptures. 

As I said, I was encouraged from an early age to read the Bible regularly and faithfully. Here’s what can happen when you actually do that. You will notice right away that some parts are not particularly useful for teaching, correction, reproof, or training in righteousness. Like the genealogies. Or the measurements of the tabernacle. Or the measurements of the temple. If every words of this was written by God, why are so many words devoted to that stuff? Then, you’ll notice that some passages make no sense when held up to other passages – like when God in one breath in Exodus commands the people to take care of the weak and the foreigner, and then a bit later sends the Israelites out to conquer the promised land, massacring everything that breathes – men, women, children, and livestock. You will then notice that an awful lot of what we read in the Old Testament conflicts with Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness, restraint, and loving your enemies. You will notice passages that run smash into the understandings of modern science. As a result of these conflicts and contradictions, some people tie themselves into unconvincing knots trying to maintain, for instance, that the earth really is only 6000 years old, while other people are giving up on the Bible entirely as a ridiculous mixture of ignorant myths and outright lies. 

What do we do with this? How do we sort out a book that is a tremendous source of insight and wisdom, a book through which we have experienced the very breath of God, but that is also a book filled with conflicting voices, scientific inaccuracies, and uncomfortably regressive attitudes? Well, over the next couple of months, we will be trying to offer some ways to deal with those questions. 

Let’s do a comparatively easy sample exercise today, though. Who here is in favor of slavery? Now, I can’t see those of you who are joining us from home, but I’m going to guess that none of you raised your hands. “Anti-slavery” is one of the few universally agreed-on social positions today. Anti-Nazi used to be one, too, but … well, at least we still have anti-slavery. But, frustratingly enough, the Bible never says slavery is wrong. In fact, throughout the Bible, slavery is treated as a just a part of life, which it was when the Bible was written. It was part of the background of every society in all the years of the Bible story. Abraham had slaves. Your English Bibles probably say servants, because of our modern sensibilities, but the Hebrew word means slave. Now, it is true that God used Moses to set his people free from slavery – that’s good – but that doesn’t appear to be a condemnation of slavery as a whole, because the law of that same Moses includes laws for regulating slavery. But let’s look at those laws. For instance, one law says Hebrews could keep foreign slaves for their whole lives, but they could only keep Hebrew slaves for seven years. That’s interesting, actually. It implies that at some level, slavery is wrong – not wrong enough to stop it entirely, but wrong enough to establish some limits. Another law says that when the Hebrews observed the Sabbath, their slaves were to get the day off too. Again, very interesting; this law clearly treats slaves as deserving the same blessing as their owners. Most interesting of all is the reason that is given for treating slaves well. The Mosaic law says, “remember, you were once slaves, too.” Whatever differences there are between people in human society, remember, you’re not that different. All this is remarkably humane compared to other law codes of that time, but the fact remains that the Old Testament doesn’t ban the institution of slavery.

Neither does the New Testament. Jesus himself says nothing about slavery, for or against. All we can say is that, like the Mosaic law before him, Jesus treated the slaves that he met with the same compassion and respect as everyone else. The rest of the New Testament is a mixed bag. In Galatians, a book all about the freedom that is found in Christ, Paul announces, “For there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus!” Yay! At last an unequivocal statement! But a little later, in books also attributed to Paul, we find instructions telling Christian slaves to obey their masters as if they were Christ. The book of Philemon sort of encapsulates this ambivalence. In that book, we see Paul actually sending a runaway slave back to his master (See! Paul supports legal slavery!), but that slave is bearing a letter reminding his master that he is a brother in Christ, to be forgiven and treated as an equal (which would be hard to do to someone you own as a slave). Why is scripture so wishy-washy here?  If God wrote this book and was against slavery, why didn’t he just say so?

Here’s what I believe. In the Bible, God speaks to people in terms that they can understand, from within the worldview that those people hold. Throughout the years of the Bible’s composition, no one could have imagined a society in which slavery did not exist. It would be like us trying to imagine a society without money. How would the economy even function? So God spoke to people within that worldview – but at the same time God pushed them to the edge and planted the seeds that would eventually destroy slavery. Starting in the first chapter, the Bible teaches that all people, even slaves, are created in the image of God, are creatures of sacred worth, and should be treated with equal respect. Jesus confirmed that message by example, treating all people exactly that way, and in a moment of divine insight Paul even grasped the concept of a group in which the division between slave and free (among others) no longer existed. If all humans are equal in the eyes of God, then slavery cannot stand, but biblical society was not yet ready to make that connection. When it happened, though, who made the connection first? It was people steeped in the Bible. People like the American colonial Quaker John Woolman. People like William Wilberforce and John Wesley in England. People like Fredrick Douglas and Sojourner Truth. These people, all devout Christians, saw behind the cultural trappings of their history and culture and argued that slaves, too, are children of God. Where’d they get that notion? From the Bible.

Understand what this means. It means that the Bible may contain the word of God, as I believe, but it is not synonymous with it. The Bible also contains much that reflects the culture of the time of its writing, and much of that cultural background conflicts with the word of God. That, in turn, means that when we read the Bible, we have hard work to do. We have to sift the grain of truth out of the cultural chaff, and that’s so hard that we have to expect there to be disagreements. Different Christians of good faith seeking to understand the Bible are going to draw those lines in different places. Over the next few months, I plan to talk about ways to determine what is God and what is Ancient Near Eastern culture, but let me give you one for the road. Jesus is where we start. Can you imagine Jesus, under any circumstances, owning a slave? Yeah, me neither. It’s wrong.

We conclude with a prayer from Kenya.

From the cowardice that dares not face new truth,

from the laziness that is contented with half-truth,

from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,

Good Lord, deliver me. Amen.