“Either the Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture or He doesn’t.”
From a portion of a “White Paper” by Dr. Malcolm Yarnell
The apostle’s method and message: the Bible alone
Before leaving Paul, we should consider his evangelistic method and message. Books and websites and conferences promoting various modern methods are all the craze in these crazy days. Maybe we should step back a moment and ask about the biblical method. If we believe that the Bible is sufficient for our doctrine (as it most certainly is), then certainly the Bible is sufficient for our practice, too. Isn’t it?
Are there really any believers who would dare say that the Bible is insufficient for missions and evangelism (Matt. 28:18-20), or pastoral qualifications (1 Tim. 2:11-3:7),
or questions regarding suing Christians (1 Cor. 6:1-8), or proper ecclesiology, or the counseling of Baptist Theology, souls, or personal ethics, or politics? I was recently told I was an “agonizing preacher.” Anybody care to agree at this point? It is okay if you do. You do not have to like the preacher of the Word, who may stutter, stagger, and stumble. But you should sincerely ask yourself whether you are “kicking against the goads” of Christ by contradicting God’s inspired Word, which never errs.
Now, what was Paul’s missionary method? There are three aspects to Paul’s missionary method that leap to the mind from this biblical text:
1. As we noticed, Paul was willing to stray off the beaten path, where he might not have preferred to go. In the case of Berea, Paul trusted divine providence through
the Thessalonian brothers, who rushed him out for fear of his life.
2. Paul usually started with the traditional base of the Jewish synagogue. It is certainly necessary to reach across cultural boundaries, as Paul did at Athens; but even there,
notice that Paul started at the synagogue (Acts 17:17). I have resided in numerous cultures and sub-cultures, a man without a home, three nations and ten states, never for
longer than 3-4 years. I can tell you this. Every culture has its positive aspects, but every culture is also dominated by sin. Don’t follow your culture, and don’t follow their culture, whoever “they” happen to be; follow Christ alone. Be His disciple. Obey Him completely. I can also tell you this. The sustenance for Christian life has always come through traditional churches, those churches glibly dismissed by postmodernity as irrelevant.
3. Paul preached the Word of God from the Bible. In Thessalonica, he pursued a threefold paradigm. First, he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (v. 2c). Paul’s preaching began with the exposition of the Bible; in this case, the Old Testament. In our case, we have both Old and New, reading the former through the gospel of the latter. Paul was an expository preacher. Second, Paul explained “that the Christ had to suffer and rise again
from the dead” (v. 3a). Paul was a theological teacher, a doctor of dogma. Third, Paul proclaimed, “This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ” (v. 3b). Paul was an
evangelistic preacher. We know from other passages that the kerygma, the apostolic preaching, always closed with an appeal for repentance and belief, followed by receiving
believers’ baptism (cf. 2:38-41). Like Peter, Paul boldly invited everyone to respond to the confrontational message that Jesus, the crucified man, is the Messiah, the Lord of the world: You must repent and believe (cf. 9:20-22; 13:10, 39, 40-41, 46). Paul and Peter emphasized “repent and believe,” simply because that is what Jesus also emphasized in His preaching (Mark 1:14-15).
That really is core to the biblical method: Proclaim the Bible, explain its gospel doctrine, and demand believing submission to Christ. Now, why look anywhere else for our method? Maybe all the books and conferences and websites are subliminally intended to assuage falsely our guilty consciences for not actually engaging in evangelism. Paul didn’t write books and hold conferences on how to engage in evangelism or identify the elect, although he certainly wrote gospel books and proclaimed the gospel in public venues. Paul just went ahead and engaged—by preaching expositionally, theologically, and invitingly—whomever he could, wherever he could, anytime he could! Perhaps we need to do the same.
Now, what about the message? What was Paul’s message? Well, that is the interesting thing: The biblical message is the biblical method. The method is the message, and the message
is the method. You cannot separate the Bible from the Word. The Word of God is the Bible, and the Bible is the Word of God. The Greek word logos is twice used in this pericope to refer to Paul’s preaching. In verse 11, the Bereans compared the Scriptures, the graphas, to the logos of
Paul to see if it really was of God. The noble Bereans understood that the logos, the Word or message, is intimately bound up with the graphas, the Scriptures or method. The incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, is revealed in the inscriptured Word, the Bible, and proclaimed through the intoned Word, preaching. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Those who claim methods are adiaphora [indifferent], as long as you hold to the message, are in fundamental error. The method, biblical proclamation, and the message, Jesus Christ himself, cannot be separated from one another. You cannot divorce the Word of God from the Bible and attach it to the Koran or any other fallen book. You cannot divorce the Word from the Bible and attach it to art. You cannot even divorce the Word from the Bible and attach it to preaching. To preach the Word, preach the Bible. The Bereans treated the
message of the gospel and the method of the Bible as inseparable, and so should we.
there really any believers who would dare say that the Bible is insufficient for missions and evangelism
Yes. Of course it is not sufficient, especially if one reads "water" and thinks "womb", or reads "body" and thinks "symbol". Nor does the scripture itself say it is sufficient.
St. Paul's method was personal instruction, when unavaliable in person, he sent someone else or wrote a letter, to which indispensable to every pastor notes about articles of clothes Paul left behind and jokes about failing eyesight were attached. The New Testament was not written yet; at any even he is not mentioning it, and the Old Testament he directly contradicts,. That is supposed to be Sola Scriptura? This "white paper" is laughable.