Churches of Christ -- Sermons; Sermons, American -- 20th century
Furthermore, friends, we ought to regard it as final and complete and as
the standard of truth, the standard by which all of our religious
questions are to be decided. This conclusion is fundamental and very
important. It needs to be emphasized. If you talk to the people of this
world and see how many different human standards they are relying upon,
you can see the importance of settling all religious questions by the
divine standard, the word that God hath spoken through Christ.
I want to use a simple illustration. Suppose three men measure the
length of this room and one of them uses a yardstick 35 inches long,
another uses a yardstick 36 inches long and the other a yardstick 37
inches long. They won’t get the same answer because they are not using
the same standard. The same is true in the field of philosophy and
religion. If each man uses a different yardstick, nothing but confusion
and division can possibly be the result.
And, friends, that is just exactly what is wrong with this world today.
One man uses the “Pope” at Rome for his yardstick. He says that whatever
the “Pope” says is right. He measures everything by that. Then I come
along and measure by the Bible, the Word of God, and he and I get
different answers. Somebody else takes the church to which he belongs as
his standard of measurement. People say, “My church teaches so and so,”
and “My church practices so and so.” I have even had them come to me and
say, “What does your church believe on this point? What does your church
teach here?” They simply mean, “What does the group of people with which
you are associated have to say about this matter?” Over and over again I
have them ask me, “What do you _think_ about it?” I have heard that
expression many, many times during the last four weeks.
Well, you can see how all these different yardsticks will get different
answers. One man wants my opinion about it, that’s his yardstick;
somebody else uses his church’s opinion as his yardstick; another takes
what his parents think about it; still another takes tradition as his
yardstick; and someone else takes simply the way he feels about it. I
hear them say, “Well, I like it, and therefore it must be all right,”
or, “It seems good to me.” I recently heard a boy try to justify his
going to a particular church on the basis that it made him feel good.
Well, those are just all irregular standards. They are not standards.
People who reason like that are using the wrong unit of measurement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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