Sola Scriptura is Latin for “Scripture alone”. The early Church had to make many line-in-the-sand decisions in the first and second centuries, and clinging to the Bible as their sole source for absolute truth was one of them. Today, we as the Church have drifted from “Scripture alone.”
Our faith is more experiential and teaching more greeting card-ish. We don’t STUDY our Bibles, we read celebrity pastors’ Tweets ABOUT our Bibles.
Many of those among modern evangelicalism wonder, “How did we stray so far from the truth of God’s Word?” The answer is not found at a conference or seminar with some title that normally remains reserved for use in a physics lecture. No. The answer can be found at your breakfast table or the desk in your study that sits vacant each morning before dawn. Your Bible unopened. Your sin unaddressed. Your Savior unknown.
It takes little effort to blow a ship off course when it has no bearing. The ocean is broad and every wave looks similar. But not to the man who dutifully studies his map and becomes skilled with his compass. That man waivers not from the course but holds true to the narrow way.
Why don’t you study your Bible? Are you content with the depth of your sanctification being limited to whatever pop worship lyric has stuck in your mind? If we don’t know our Bibles then we don’t know our God.
Pastor Tom Nelson once said, “Any attempt we make to know God outside of His revealed Word is mysticism.” He’s right. The late seminary professor Howard Hendricks once said, “The Bible does not yield its fruit to the lazy.” He’s right. The late founder of the Navigators, Dawson Trotman, once said, “If you can’t give God 1/48 of your day, don’t expect Him to use you for much.” He’s right.
Those men aren’t saying anything that God Himself hasn’t already said, “This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” Joshua 1:8.
In an age where we can study the Bible in whatever language or translation we prefer, we are without excuse. Find your Bible. Set your alarm. Study it. There will be neither smoke nor lasers. There will be no cheering section. God will not open the cosmos and give you a celestial fist bump. But you will be a sailor one day better at using his instruments. You will be a marathoner with one more day’s worth of endurance. You will be a surgeon one day sharper at placing his scalpel. You will be one more day invested in 2 Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”
Sola Scriptura