Pastor Jeff Anderson consistently teaches the superiority of the Scriptures over all human ideas, human opinions, and human efforts. Following are excerpts from one of his sermons, "Being a Berean," from Acts 17:1-15. The entire sermon can be heard here.
...The apostle says in 1
Corinthians 2, "And I, brethren, when I came to
you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the
testimony of God. For I
determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified
... And my speech and my preaching were
not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of
the Spirit and of power, that your faith should
not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." (NKJV)
... Our greatest reasoning and
our greatest logic when it comes to biblical persuasion is to reason from the
Scriptures ... because "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of
God."
... The modern apologetic, the
defense of the faith that you find in so many Christian colleges, so many
books that you read, is somehow an attitude that says, "Let's take the
Bible and hide it behind our back and now we're going to convince people ...
and somehow we'll sneak in a little bit of Bible, maybe at the end." That
is not the biblical way. The biblical way is to make sure the Scriptures are
there and the Scriptures are the first thing. "Then
Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with
them from the Scriptures, explaining and
demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying,
'This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.'" (Acts 17:2-3, NKJV)
...The Logos is not just our persuasive words.
It's the reasoning that comes from the Scriptures, and when you go to all of
the Scriptures it becomes obvious ... Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the
Christ. Jesus is the one we need to trust in ... Why? Because they received
this, not as the words of human wisdom, not just because we are compelling, not
just because we are persuasive, but because the Word of God has brought them to
faith, and it's the Word of God that we must use ... There's no place for us to
manipulate people just by sheer emotion ...
...
turn on the television and watch all the commercials ... they're all about
emotion. They're trying to stir people to feel a certain way rather than to
think a certain way in order to buy whatever it might be that they have.
As
Christians we must not fall into that ... If we fall into that, we can tell nice stirring stories, we can
move people to tears, we can play music, and we can get them to walk an aisle
and make a certain profession of their faith in Christ, but ... people who go out and with emotion they're
trying to convince people and they only use stirring things and manipulate
people and they get a certain response but the response doesn't last ...
In America
... We
must be sure we are not doing that. We must be sure we are depending
on the Spirit of God to compel people and drive them. Why? Because the natural
man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; they are spiritually
discerned. And the thing we can do is pray that the Spirit of God would grant
people repentance to acknowledge the truth. And we can plant the seeds of the
Scripture and give them reason from the Scripture. Give them the Word, because
faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. These are the things
that we must give ourselves to. We must not ever give ourselves to whatever it
is that produces results and seems to help us pad our figures and count our
results and somehow feel good that, "Hey, we accomplished something
today."
... If
I were to just get up and tell you emotional stories, and we'd play a little bit
of music that could kind of manipulate you, then we could have you come down
forward, and I could write to all my friends and say, "Hey, we had twenty
people come forward today. Look at me. Success! Successful day! God was
glorified! Twenty people came forward!" Who knows what happened with those
twenty people who came forward? If instead we're simply reasoning from the
Scriptures, we might not see a visible response. We might not be able to report
a certain number of baptisms or a certain number of responses or how many
people came forward to pray. Instead, we are depending upon the Lord Himself to
stir and move in the hearts of people to where HE is persuading, and they come
to genuine faith.
...
We should go to the Scriptures ourselves
and reason with them and see if these things are indeed so ... We have no excuse
... Be a Berean ... Go to the Scriptures and see if these things are true ... We
should be Bereans - people of the book. We should give ourselves to
understanding and seeing if these things are true, and then we use these
Scriptures to persuade other people. We reason from the Scriptures to convince
them of who Christ is. We don't figure out how to have some huge city-wide
meeting, have the best music we can possibly have to entertain and get people
in, get the most compelling speaker who's going to come and tell us some sad
stories, make sure we have a couple of testimonies, make sure everyone cries by
those testimonies that come - and then somehow give them an appeal for which
they can come forward.
That is
not how we're going to change America
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