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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is the fourth in a series, Great 20th Century Christians. William Barclay. Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the second letter of Paul to

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Timothy. I begin by reading from chapter 2, a single verse, verse 15. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of Truth. And then moving over to the third chapter, I begin at the verse number 10. Now you have observed my teaching, my

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conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch and Iconium and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while

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evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith

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in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And may the same God who inspired these words by his Spirit inspire us as we seek to understand them.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. On this Teacher Dedication Sunday, I would like to think with you of one of the great Christian educators of the 20th century. Some years ago now, I was

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giving a guest lecture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. It was on sources for preaching, and toward the end of the lecture I made reference to the fact that one ought always to check Barclay when one was preaching from the New Testament, and my words were immediately

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greeted by a kind of a snickering laughter that went across the room. These were, you see, young theologians in training, and they had come to understand that while what Barclay wrote was adequate for laymen, it was beneath their level of need and of understanding. I proceeded to disabuse them. I pointed out

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first of all that Barclay's daily study Bible, which covers all 27 of the New Testament books, plus the other 30 volumes that he wrote, are amongst the most accessible to Christians all over the world. And further, while they are not written technically or theologically for the clergy, they are very much so

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written for the laity, and all, both clergy and laity alike, can learn from them. I pointed out to them that Barclay was probably the man in the 20th century who had taught more people more Bible than any other man of our century. That's true today and I think will be true for a lot of tomorrows. William Barclay was

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not only an excellent scholar, but because of methods of mass communication available to us today, he probably (and I will expand my exclamation here) he probably taught the Scriptures to more people than any other human being who has lived in the whole history of the Christian Church. Now this

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Scotsman was the son of a Scots Highlander who had no education beyond high school. His father was a bank manager, but he had a very fine library. Barclay said on more than one occasion that his father had the best library he had ever seen a layman have. And not only that, his father was a lay preacher who

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was much in demand in his day. So from his father, Barclay received from his earliest years an education in the faith and in other dimensions of knowledge as well. His mother was a very saintly woman. In fact, there is a place in his autobiography where Barclay describes his mother in terms of some words that

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Sir James Barry used to describe Margaret Ogilvy in his novel of the same name. "When you looked into her eyes, you knew why God sent her into the world. It was to open the mind of all who looked for beautiful things." His mother died in 1932, and many times after that Barclay said, "Nothing was ever the same when she

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was not there to tell it to." Barclay had a solid elementary and secondary education and then went on to the University of Glasgow and eventually to Trinity College of that university, which was its divinity school. And he continued to work there through his degrees and in 1933 married his beloved

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wife, Kate. Now Kate devoted herself to building a pastor's home as it ought to be built. The rugged strength of the Scottish people has always depended principally upon the unity and the strength of its families, and I am sure that that is true either by its presence or its absence in every nation and

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society. Kate Barclay made the home a place where love was and where truth was as well. It has often been said that there are only two people who will tell you the whole truth, your worst enemy and the one who loves you the most. Well, Kate was the one who loved William Barclay the most, and so with her love

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she brought to the home always a spirit of honesty and truth. Barclay's first pastorate was at Renfrew, and then shortly after he went there he was called back to Glasgow University to become a faculty member in the Theological School, Trinity College, and he continued in that work until the end

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of his life. Now some years ago the Church of Scotland called Barclay and asked him if he would write a book interpreting one of the books of the New Testament. This book was to be written specifically for lay people. Barclay did this, and the book became so popular that he went on to write a book explaining

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every one of the 27 New Testament books, and he produced another 20 volumes on top of that. Now interestingly enough, he often said that none of these books originated with him. People would come to him and say, "We need a book on such and such a subject, and will you please write it?" And he would, in response to their

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request, write the book requested. He never generated a book on his own himself. Now as he became more and more famous as an author, he also began active radio and television ministries. In fact, for many years his Bible studies were amongst the most popular television programs in all of Great Britain. Barclay

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had the custom when he was the guest preacher in a church to count not the seats that were full, but the seats that were empty. His primary concern was not for the people in the church, but for the people who never darkened the door of the church, and he saw the radio and the television as the best ways to reach

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those outsiders. And so he gave himself to those ministries with great ardor. He was not an original thinker. You will not find creative theological ideas in the writings of William Barclay, but his mastery of the Greek language, his learning of ancient history, and also his ability to write with such skill

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made him one of the premier Christian teachers of all time. His great joys were his faith, his family, his work, his hobby, which was model trains, and an occasional glass of Scotch whiskey, which he enjoyed very much. This was Barclay the man. Now what of his method? Barclay was an exegete. Now an exegete is a person who

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tries to help us understand what the words of Scripture meant when they were written. Not what they necessarily mean today in our culture and vocabulary, but when the author wrote those words, what did he specifically mean? And the exegete also tries to get us to understand one passage of Scripture in relationship to

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other passages of Scripture. Michael Polanyi, the great scientist, philosopher, once conducted an experiment in which he had people put on special spectacles that inverted and reversed everything that they saw. Now of course it was very difficult for people to become used to this. He found that on average it took a

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person eight days in which to become accustomed to the reversal created by these spectacles. Now what Polanyi was seeking to demonstrate by that was this. The minute that they put on those glasses, they perceived this reversed vision. Their perception was instantaneous, but it took eight days for

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their minds to catch up with what their eyes were seeing. You had to go beyond perception to conception. It took eight days for these people to become so accustomed to what they saw from the moment they put on the glasses that they could begin to function effectively in a world which was utterly reversed. Now in

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just the same way, the exegete is concerned not just that we perceive the words of Scripture, but that beyond that we conceptualize the world in which those words were written so that we can understand what was being taught, not necessarily what is evident in the words today, but what was intended by the

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author when he wrote down the passage of Scripture which was his. Let me make the illustration this way. Suppose 2,000 years from now some archaeologist digs down to the ruins of the ancient city of Pittsburgh, and he happens to find there a bit of a newspaper headline which says something about the Pittsburgh pirates.

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Now he knows that a pirate is a buccaneer, those criminals who sailed the seas and plundered other vessels and brought their treasure back and buried it. And knowing that that is the meaning of the word "pirate," perceiving that immediately, he might assume that Pittsburgh was a headquarters for this

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kind of seafaring crook. But now let's suppose that another archaeologist who is working finds a program from an athletic event. Let's say it's the World Series of 1991, and in it the name "Pittsburgh Pirates" appears, and it refers to a group of men who are playing a game. Suppose another archaeologist

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finds some cards that have pictures of men holding bats and balls on one side, and on the other side comments about this game called baseball. Eventually you see the archaeologist would come to understand that when it talked about the Pittsburgh Pirates 2,000 years before, it wasn't talking about robbers, thieves,

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criminals. It was talking rather about an athletic team involved in participating in a game. What he perceived immediately when he saw that word "pirate" was in fact not accurate. He had to get a conception of what that word meant in its own time in order to understand what the word actually said.

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Now what Barclay tries to do, and what all exegetes try to do, is to see the scriptures in terms of the culture and the conception in which they were first written down. Now let's take this method and apply it to our text for this morning. Our text is these words from Timothy, "Do your best to present

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yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work." Now the

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first phrase in that passage is, "Present yourself to God as one approved." Now the word "approved" in the first century meant one who had passed the test. It was used to describe the process by which gold was separated from dross. It was also the word which was used to describe genuine money as over against counterfeit money.

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So what's being said here is that the man of God is to be genuine. He is not to be a fake, because if he is a fake, he will undoubtedly be discovered and be ashamed. Now the second major phrase in the passage is, "rightly handling the word of truth." And that word "handling" means to cut precisely. It talks about a farmer

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who is cutting a furrow perfectly straight across his field. Or it's used to describe a mason who is cutting away at a stone so that it will exactly fit into the place in the arch which he has prepared for it. The idea is, you see, that the person who is handling or cutting the word of truth is to do it in a

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straight and a precise and a balanced manner. Now the third key phrase in the passage is, "all Scripture is inspired by God." Now that's a very difficult phrase to understand, for in the first place, when these words were written, only the Old Testament existed. So Scripture could include, at the most, only the books of

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the Old Testament. But not only that, this word "inspired" is what is called a "hop-hox logomena." And a hop-hox logomena is a word which appears only once in all of the Bible, so that you cannot see how it is used in a variety of different contexts and then come to a more accurate discovery of its full meaning.

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One thing of which we can be rather sure is this. The word "inspired," as it is used here, does not mean perfect or infallible. Now how do we know that? Well, we know that because a few verses earlier, verse 15, Paul is talking to Timothy about the sacred writings. In other words, he separates the sacred writings from the

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Scriptures. And not only that, but he separates it in such a way that the emphasis is placed not on all Scripture, but as is evidenced in the Greek, on that Scripture which is very specifically blessed of God. You see, what's confusing here is that in the Greek language there are no punctuation marks. There are no

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commas. And you see, it's very likely that what this phrase really means is not all Scripture is inspired of God, but all Scripture, which is inspired of God, is worthy, etc., etc. In other words, it is saying not that all Scripture is inspired, but that all of the Scripture which is inspired is worthy for teaching

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and for reproof. Barclay translates the phrase "all God-inspired Scripture." And this is probably quite accurate, because if the doctrine being upheld here is that every word in the Bible is inspired and perfect, absolutely infallible, then it is very strange that Paul never mentions this in any of his major

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theological writings like Romans or Ephesians, but it's only a kind of a marginal comment back here in a letter to Timothy where he completely distinguishes between the Scriptures and what he calls the sacred writings. Now, this understanding of the phrase is the understanding which Luther had, which

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Calvin had, and Knox had. It is our Presbyterian understanding today that the Scriptures inspired of God that talk to us about our faith and the practice of it are absolutely infallible, but this says nothing else about the remainder of Scripture. Now, if you take all those thoughts and put them together, then the

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translation of this passage would read something like this, "Don't be a counterfeit Christian, for you will be found out and ashamed. Be careful that when you handle the Old Testament and other sacred writings that you plow a straight furrow, that you carve carefully, that what you do is balanced. All of the

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writings that are inspired by God are useful for teaching, for conviction of sin, etc., etc." We could look at all of those other phrases, but there are too many for our time this morning. Now, after Berkeley analyzes this passage exegetically, he goes on to list twelve different illustrations concerning it.

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One is from Greek history, one is from Roman culture, some are from the mission fields in Brazil and in Chile, some come from Sicilian history. You can see why Berkeley has appealed to so many. The layman is fascinated by the exegesis. The minister, on the other hand, does his own exegesis. The layman might not be so

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interested in all the illustrations, but the preacher is very interested in the illustrations because they can help him put pictures in his sermons. And this brings us to the last thing I want to notice, which is not only the man or his method, but what Berkeley's mission was. His mission was to get the Word of God

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written accurately before the people. You know, many people have tried to hide the truth of the Scriptures. Dictators try to get rid of the Bible right away. There's probably no book in history that has been banned and burned as often as the Bible. Early kings did not want their people to read the Scripture. Slave

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owners in this country did not want their slaves to learn the Scripture, and in both instances the reason was the same, because these people would learn that they were to be free before God and therefore would rise up against the kings or would rise up against their owners. There are times when the church

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has concealed the meaning of the Scripture. One of the principal reasons for the Reformation was the desire of the Reformers to take the Scriptures out of Latin, which only trained churchmen could read, and put them in the language of the people so that everyone could understand what was written there.

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And some people hide the meaning of Scripture from themselves. I mean by that not that they attack the Scripture, but rather that they understand themselves to simply be too sophisticated to need it. Others hide the Scriptures by spiritualizing Scripture. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean this. They'll

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try to make Scripture something which applies only to the individual heart and not the world. They will say, for example, that the Scriptures are interested in the peace of the soul, but they are not interested of the peace of the world. They're not interested in things like justice or ecology or militarism or the

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like. And that attitude, of course, makes Scripture into a sedative and not a stimulant. And then there are those who conceal the Scripture by making it into something other than it is. Some try to make it into a science textbook, as if Moses understood quantum physics. Some people try to make it into a spooky

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source which predicts the future. These are the kinds of people that are always finding cryptic meanings in the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation. Some people try to make it into a theological answer book. These people, in many instances, come to have more regard for the book than they do for its author.

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They become bibliolators, and what is most tragic is that their bibliolatry is almost invariably built on their own prejudices. There are, you see, a number of ways in which the Bible has been hidden from people and a number of reasons why they have attempted to do this, but Barclay set himself over

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against all of this. He had five goals to make the meaning of Scripture crystal clear, not only in terms of perceiving the Word, but conceptualizing the world in which that Word was written. Secondly, he wanted people to understand that while it was important for them to read the Bible, it was more important for the

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Bible to read them, that they weren't really reading the Scriptures until they let the light of the Scriptures shine into every corner, examine every inch of their interior spiritual life. His third goal was to help people understand that the Bible is much more concerned with God than it is with people. God is the

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actor. People are the ones who are acted upon. He was also earnest in trying to get people to study the Bible for themselves, to take some commentary which would explain the verses, but to lay aside all of their preconceptions and their prejudices and to seek out the truth of Scripture as the Holy Spirit

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would speak through the Scriptures to them. And his last goal was to get people to hide the promises of Scripture in their hearts, for this would bring glory to God and goodness to the soul and blessing to the world. Barclay believed that when used by the Holy Spirit to present the person of Christ, the Bible

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is the greatest power on the face of the earth, and his joy in life was to introduce people to it. Well, he died a few years ago, though his books are still running off the presses by the thousands, and I think he would have been satisfied that people came to know his books and didn't know that much about

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him as a person. I think that because he tells of how he wanted a certain passage to appear in his last will and testament, and this passage is from a novel by Thomas Hardy called "The Mayor of Castor Bridge," and it reads as follows, "Let none be told of my death or made to grieve on account of me. I request that I not be

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buried in consecrated ground, that no sexton toll the bell, that no man be buried in the ground, that no man be buried in the ground, that no man be buried in the ground. And Jesus Christ, in turn, brought and brings those people into the presence of his heavenly Father and ours. And when Christ, by scripture, introduces someone to God the Almighty, why then the hovering angels sing and sing and sing the triumphant song of salvation?" Let us pray.

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Our Father, we thank thee for those who across the years of the Church, from its earliest days until this very day, have testified faithfully to the truth that they have found in thee through thy Son and thy Holy Spirit. We thank thee for the witness of these ones who have won so many for the kingdom, and we pray that

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some part of their dedication, that some scintilla of their commitment, that some degree of their dedication might become evident in our lives so that we can be workmen who do not have to be ashamed, not counterfeit, who are anxious always to seek and speak the truth and to understand that in thy word written the

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truth with regard to life and life eternal is printed for all to see. Make us profitable servants like this one whom we remember this day. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. [Music]

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you