Sunday, August 10, 2014: Romans 10:5-15
Our age is tremendously excited about the visual. Yet here is Paul, firm in the conviction that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."
When I went to college, it was still possible to major in rhetoric. I was not surprised to read Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, but I was unprepared for the work of Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky. Like most ministers, I have too many books. But our central room has just one bookcase, and Vygotsky has a place of honor there. That’s because he taught me about the relationship between speech and thought. People think in language, not pictures. The words people have are important, because words are the foundations of thought.
As a young person studying to enter the Presbyterian ministry, this made sense to me. God’s word to us is important precisely because it is the word of the Lord. It made an intuitive kind of sense given that my pastor at the time was always going on about the necessity of personal Bible study. If the Bible was necessary, clear, and sufficient for salvation, then Bible study was an activity of great importance—because it was the words and thought patterns of scripture that taught Christians how to think Christianly.
Then a college chaplain gave me the task of preaching on Romans 10:5–15. Either he was very perceptive or he had a wicked sense of humor—perhaps both. It was suddenly my task to proclaim the word of faith.
