Lutheranism 101 - Part 4 Revealed Knowledge and Authority

I was going to put a test on here today, but then realized that I had not covered the revealed knowledge of God or authority.
One of the questions from a previous lesson was; is the natural knowledge of God enough to gain salvation? The answer to that is no. As was pointed out before almost everyone has a natural knowledge of God whether they are Christian or not. There are very few Atheists in the world. But if all you have is a natural knowledge that some supreme being exists where does that leave you? Well at most it leaves you with a bunch of questions. What is he like? Does he like me? What is he going to do with me when I die? Can he be trusted? If you look back at most primitive religions you find that they lived in fear of God. They did everything they could to appease him. In fact the Greeks just wanted their gods to leave them alone. If all you have is that natural knowledge you never know what this god may do. Maybe he will just decide someday to stomp you into nothing. It really leads to fear. Or at best it leads to a god of your own imagination.
That is why we need the revealed knowledge of God. This is where God reveals himself to us in a way that we can understand and get to know him. That is what the Bible is. It is the revealed knowledge of God. In Scripture God shows us who he is. We get to know his personality, his will and what he is doing and is going to do. Only in the revealed knowledge of God for instance do we find that we have a God who does love us. We find he is a God who has sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins. We are shown in Scripture that we have the forgiveness of sins and salvation through our faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to find these type of things out on our own, God has to tell us and he does that through the Bible.

Now that leads us to another topic, that is authority. To talk about God and truth we have to have a source of authority. The question is what is that authority? Where is your ultimate source of authority from about God and truth? This is not a minor question, especially in our modern society. For instance some people's source of authority is Oprah. Now Oprah is a very successful woman and obviously very bright. She brings a line up of people on her show that speak about spiritual issues and finding truth. It is a fact that if she endorses something or someone they many times become an instant success. For many people Oprah is a source of authority about God and truth. For other people it might be their parents. Their parents taught them about God and installed a sense of morality in them. By the way parents, you do this whether you realize it or not and whether the god you teach them is the true one or not and whether the morals you teach or good ones or not. So for many people their parents are ultimate source of authority for the rest of their life. For other people it might be a book they read or a show they watch that provides interesting information. For others it might be the church. The church has certain traditions and ways of doing things and these things are accepted as truth. For other people it is their experiences or feelings. This source of truth has become very important for a number of people. You hear the I've lived it statements and I've experienced this so it must be true.
These are all sources or foundations of authority. The question is can they be trusted? Well I like Oprah, I think she has her heart in the right place and I also love my parents and other people who have taught me importants truths through the years. But at the end of the day all of them are sinners just like me, which means they are not always right. So I am not completely trusting of them as my ultimate source of authority about God and truth. I also know that the church has not always been right and many times gets truth confused with traditions to the point that the traditions become as important as the truth. So I am not going to totally trust the church. I have also gained much from experiences but I also know that experiences can be very subjective. So I am not completely trusting of experiences. The same thing with emotions. Sometimes we can't trust our emotions. Emotions can be wrong and can't be taken as source of authority. They are important, but what makes you happy may make me sad.
So what is the ultimate source of authority. As Christians we look at the Bible as the ultimate source of authority. It is the only book written by God himself, through human authors. It is the only book with no mistakes and it is where God has clearly revealed his will. So when I have a deep question about God that is where I go. Humans err, the church errs, experiences and emotions are too relative. Only God's Word can really guide me to the answers that I need about God.

When I post the test on Friday I will also post the answers to last Tuesday's questions. Feel free to give me your answers ahead of time. The test itself will cover everything we have been talking about.

Pastor Fred