Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

January 20, 2008

Obadiah Holmes: Whipped, but Not Beaten

Jeremiah 31:31-34

From Sunday to Sunday when we gather to worship, the group changes just a little bit. It is not quite the same group one Sunday as it is the next, so whenever I am preaching a series I like to help people who perhaps weren’t here last week or the week before to know what we are doing.

During the month of January, we have been defining distinctive characteristics that make us Baptist. These four Sundays there have been four beliefs that are central, particular to this congregation’s understanding of why we are part of the Baptist faith tradition. One of the common ways of saying this has been Baptist distinctive, and someone this past week suggested, “Why don’t we say core values?” Why don’t we say that these are the core values because that is the language in which we live today? Four core values that we hold dear as Baptist Christians.

To introduce today’s core value, I would point out to you that for the past 200 years or so, there has been no real danger in being a Baptist. Perhaps the only danger that might come from being a Baptist in the past 200 years would be that some people might think that you are a particular kind of person, usually judgmental, usually narrow minded, and that’s about the only price many of us, most of us, would have to be pay for being Baptist. There is not much danger in it. When people define Baptists, they often use, just like any group, stereotypes.

I have mentioned this before but I always think it kind of portrays succinctly what people think of us. Growing up, men were told that men don’t smoke, don’t chew, and don’t go with girls who do. That was kind of what it meant to be a Baptist. Women were sometimes told that a dancing foot and a praying knee did not grow on the same leg. The idea that Baptists are rigid in these beliefs is one of the primary ways that people understand us in our faith tradition.

In the 19th, 20th, and now in the 21st Century, there is not much danger in being a Baptist. If you say, “I am a Baptist” to someone, they may look at you with a certain prejudice but there is really not any imminent danger to you, is there? Not to me.

When we look back, and we have tried to look at different people who are characters in our Baptist heritage, Felix Manz, a Swiss Anabaptist who is part of our faith tradition, was baptized to death. He was drowned because he dared baptize people. John Smyth, an English Baptist, was persecuted and forced to go to Holland from Great Britain because of his beliefs about the Bible, and it would be very easy to say, “Well, that’s back on the continent of Europe way back when, and it doesn’t really hold very much for us today.”

Let me bring you forward a little bit into the Colonial period in the United States and tell you the story of Obadiah Holmes. A lot of people like to name their children after a Bible character. Obadiah has kind of fallen from favor, but anyway, that was his name. Obadiah Holmes, John Clark, and another man were Baptists in Rhode Island. At the time, it was legal—odd—to be a Baptist in Rhode Island, but it was illegal to be a Baptist in the Colony of Massachusetts. There was a friend who was sick and confined to home so these three men left Rhode Island, went to Massachusetts and conducted a private home worship service for this person who was sick.

The constable broke into the home, arrested the three men, and eventually gave them the choice of paying a fine or being whipped publicly for being Baptists. John Clark and the other man allowed someone to pay their fine, but Obadiah Holmes said, “No. I will face the punishment.”

So they took him into a public street. They tied him up, stripped off his shirt, and with a three-corded whip gave him 30 lashes. It is reported that the magistrate who conducted the whipping gave it all his might. Obadiah Holmes, during the whipping, preached to the people.

When it was done, he turned to the magistrate who had whipped him and said, “Sir, it is as if you had beaten me with roses.” Now, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration because we know that instead of returning home after his punishment, he was forced to stay in Boston for weeks to recover from his wounds. He had to kneel on his knees and elbows in order to eat because the pain was so great he couldn’t sit up and he couldn’t stand up.

What on earth would happen that a person would be whipped with 30 lashes, with a three-corded whip—that would mean there would be at least 90 wounds—what on earth would it mean for a Baptist to need to be whipped like that? Is it simply because the people of Massachusetts at the time thought that men should be able to chew and go with girls who do? Was it because the women of Massachusetts really wanted to dance and didn’t like the Baptists coming in and saying, “You can’t do that?” That doesn’t seem to be a good enough reason, does it? There must be something more and something deeper to what it means to be Baptist if that is why Obadiah Holmes was whipped.

Let’s go back and fill in the gaps. When the constable came in and arrested the group, before he took them to jail, he took them to a congregational church. It was the official church of the area. There, in church, they were supposed to take off their hats and submit to the authority of the church, and they would not do it. Obadiah Holmes refused. To take off his hat was a way of saying that “I subject myself to your authority, and whatever you say I will do.” Obadiah Holmes believed in the freedom of conscience. He believed that by the relationship he had with Jesus Christ he was able to speak on his own behalf, that he was able to make up his own mind, that he had freedom of conscience, and that is dangerous. That is much more dangerous than the stereotypes of what it means to be Baptist. The whole sense of what we think of as freedom of conscience in this country today, one of the great roots of that is the Baptist faith tradition. It is dangerous because once you begin to believe in freedom of conscience, then that means nobody has any control over you and that is often viewed as dangerous.

This isn’t something that Obadiah Holmes just thought up and wanted nobody to be able to subject him to control. We find the roots of this belief in the Old Testament and the prophets. If you follow the flow of history through the Old Testament, most of the people of the Hebrew nation thought that their faith came from being a part of the faith community. Everybody who was born into it was a part. Everyone who was born in had a relationship with God, but that proved not to be true. It always does, even today. To assume that just because you are born into a group that that faith will be your own is a false belief.

So as the history of Israel progresses and as the prophets come, they begin to understand that God is saying to them that every person, each individual, must have a relationship of their own with Jesus Christ.

The prophet Jeremiah is foretelling a new covenant. He says, “Behold the days are coming, and no longer will a person have to say to a neighbor, ‘Let me teach you about God.’ No longer will a family member have to say to another family member, ‘Let me teach you about God,’ because the people who are part of the covenant each have their own personal relationship with Christ.” It’s not just this one passage and it’s not just the prophet Jeremiah. If you read on into Ezekiel, Ezekiel says, “No longer use the proverb that says, ‘The father ate sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” Isn’t that a great image? Somebody is eating sour grapes that have made your mouth dry and your teeth sort of stick together. Another way to say it would be that the parents ate spicy food and the children got heartburn. Ezekiel says, “Don’t use that anymore because if the parents eat sour grapes, they have their own heartburn.” If you’ve got heartburn, it’s because of your own relationship to Christ. Every person is called to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Out of that personal relationship everybody has the opportunity, everybody has the responsibility to follow Christ as Christ speaks to their conscience. We can do no other.

In traditional Baptist language, sometimes this is called soul competency. Competence of the soul. Each soul, your soul, my soul, everybody’s soul is capable of standing before Christ on your own. The idea that you may do this is called soul freedom and it is dangerous stuff. It is dangerous stuff because we believe that each person may and can and must stand before Christ. When you do that, you lose control.

If you will read the meditation text, in 1652, John Clark, one of the ones who was arrested with Obadiah Holmes, the whole point of this is that no one may or can restrain our conscience, and that every person must appear before Christ to give account and, therefore, every person is responsible for what they choose.

In Colonial America, Baptists believing in the freedom of conscience, not only asked for it for themselves but also advocated it for Jewish people and for Muslims. The language then was Turks. They called it Turks. Even Turks have the right to believe as they feel called by God. But Baptists in Colonial America believed in the freedom of conscience, not only for themselves, but even for people who differed from them, and that is dangerous stuff. It is no wonder they were whipped because people were scared to death.

Now this sounds interesting in theory. How does it get played out in our daily lives? Perhaps you can remember as a child maybe your family came to the church in the car and you were driving home. The parents were in the front seat and your father said, “I was in Sunday school today and John Doe had some whacky things to say about the Bible.”

Your mother says, “Well, you know what we believe. We believe that every person has the right to interpret scripture for themselves.”

“Well, I know, but it was awfully whacky.”

“Well, don’t you want the right to interpret scripture for yourself?”

“Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

That doesn’t mean that every person is right. It doesn’t mean that if we go around the sanctuary this morning and pull out a passage of scripture and say, “What does this passage of scripture mean to you?” and if there are interpretations as far from each other as east is from west, it doesn’t mean that they are all right. It doesn’t mean that everybody is correct. What it does mean is that everybody has the right to interpret and, therefore, everybody has the responsibility to stand before God and say, “This is how I felt your spirit led me whether I was right or wrong.”

In Baptist life, this is the bedrock, this is where so much of what we do as Baptists comes from. The way we conduct ourselves. It’s the reason why the pastor serves at the pleasure of the congregation. The congregation votes. No one else says; no one else has to approve. It’s why when we make decisions we vote as a democratic body because everybody’s conscience is free under the dictates of the Holy Spirit to act and to say as they feel called to act and to say. One of the things that we have tried to do as a church is to stand up for the right of anyone, even if someone disagrees. That’s what it means to be Baptist. That’s dangerous stuff. It’s dangerous stuff, particularly in the world in which we live that it has become so complex. It has become so complex and so frightening that we would like somebody to just write it down and tell me what I am supposed to believe but that would take away my necessity to pray for myself, to read scripture for myself, to ask God to lead me to understand what I am supposed to believe and what I am supposed to do. This is dangerous stuff. No wonder they whipped Obadiah Holmes.

As we have talked about these core values, we have talked about them as they reflect our church, the way that we have organized, the way that we have made decisions together. Some congregations might not say that this is one of their core values. We believe this is one of the historic things that separate Baptists from others, freedom of conscience.

In this complex world, in this world where there are so many divergent beliefs and opinions, this is the hardest kind of Baptist to be. To be free and faithful, to believe that God speaks to each of us, and each of us is, therefore, responsible for that, that’s the hardest kind of Baptist to be. But it’s true. It’s true to the heritage and true to the experience that Christ speaks to each of us. Amen.

In the small town in which I grew up in West Virginia, the two largest faith traditions were the Roman Catholics and the Methodists. Roman Catholic because for decades Italians, Poles, and Czechs had moved in to mine the coal and they brought with them their Roman Catholic Religion. Methodists, I don’t know why the Methodists. West Virginia is the only state where Methodist is the largest faith tradition. Did you know that? So in the town I grew up in, there were more Methodist churches than Baptist churches. I think it is the only place I have ever lived that has been like that.

As a child, probably similar to some of the children who were sitting on the steps listening to Miss Prissy, as I tried to understand what it was that set apart Baptists from others, particularly the Methodists and the Roman Catholics of which there seemed to be so many, one of the things that I was taught was, “Well, they have a creed.”

“What’s a creed?”

“A creed is the Apostle’s Creed.”

That was the answer I got.

“It’s the Apostle’s Creed.”

Every Sunday they say the Apostle’s Creed, and they have to say this creed in order to be Roman Catholic or Methodist. Now those of you who grew up in one of those faith traditions or one similar, you know what a caricature that is. That is going to be my point. But as a child, and then later as a teenager, often I heard that Baptists believe in no creed but the Bible. How that distinguished us from other faith traditions was that they used the Apostle’s Creed. That’s what I understood as a child and as a teenager, and I have come to understand that is wrong.

I was talking to a member of this church on Wednesday night. It was very good. I am glad I had the conversation because I get to use it in my sermon. But he grew up in a small town here in Georgia, attended the First Baptist Church where they said the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday morning. Now, there is something wrong with those Baptists, isn’t there? No, not really.

In 1905, when the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance—which is sort of this huge convention of Baptists that get together from all over the world—meet in England, one of the things they did in worship together was recite the Apostle’s Creed.

In 2005, on the 100th anniversary when they met in England again, they also recited the Apostle’s Creed. I have discovered that what we believe as Baptists about no creed but the Bible really doesn’t have anything to do with the Apostle’s Creed. If you have grown up thinking that, then I am here to help clarify that for you this morning.

At the end of this month, and I mention this because every Sunday there is somebody here who wasn’t here last week, but at the end of this month there is another large Baptist meeting that will take place in Atlanta. Most of my adult lifetime, when Baptists meet in groups this large, they tend to make headlines about agreements and disagreements. So one of the things we have set forth to do in the month of January in the morning worship services is to speak about those parts of our Baptist heritage which we cherish, to talk about these things so that if at the end of the month there are things in the news and you think, “Is that what we are like?” so that everybody will have a common base out of which to operate to say that this is what we understand, as our congregation, what it means to be Baptist.

In saying this, I want to tell you that I believe all Christian faith traditions have value and there are pieces, elements, and beliefs of every Christian faith tradition for which other faith traditions should be thankful.

Presbyterians. One of the major components of their belief is the sovereignty of God. We believe in the sovereignty of God, probably not in the exact same way that Presbyterians do, but we are indebted to Presbyterians for holding that particularly element of Christian theology up and reminding us of it.

Methodists. If you grew up Methodist, one of the things that I think about from my time of encountering Methodists is that Methodists believe that after you come to faith in Christ, you should grow to become more like Christ. What do you call that, those of you who used to be Methodists? Do you call that sanctification? All Christians, I think, owe a debt to Methodists for holding that up to us as a reminder that it is not simply becoming a Christian but it’s growing to become more like Christ throughout our lives.

One of the things that we hold up as Baptists for which I think all Christians should be thankful is the fact that we believe scripture is alive. We believe that scripture is alive and life shaping and you just never know when you might pick up this book and open it up and God speaks to us through it in a way that God hasn’t spoken before. The way that we have often phrased this is we say, “No creed but the Bible” but what we really mean is “This book is alive.”

Let me just mention a few experiences that maybe you have had one similar to that emphasizes this. There are times where we have read passages of scripture ten, twenty, thirty times, and then somebody reads it out loud or somebody sends it to us in an e-mail or we are having a moment of bewilderment or confusion or crisis in our lives and we pick up the Bible, open it up, and read this passage that we know we have seen before, but all of a sudden, it is just like BAM! It hits us between the eyes. Words that had never quite meant what they mean to us on that day, all of a sudden come alive to us and we hear God’s voice from these pages.

The passage of scripture for this morning is that famous statement in John’s Gospel “that the Word became flesh.” The Word, the revelation of God that is the same as we read in scripture became flesh in Jesus Christ. We believe that Christ rose from the dead. The Word is alive. The Word is alive in Christ. The Word is alive in the Book. The Word is alive and will not be contained. It will not be held down. For this reason, the Bible has often been perceived to be dangerous, and most commonly, it accompanies some sort of revival. Think about this dangerous part.

If you have ever traveled to countries where Christianity is repressed, a lot of times when you go through customs, one of the things they don’t want you bring is what? Bibles. There are countries in the world today where you better not take a Bible. Why? Because the Bible is dangerous, not just because it is printed on a page and not just because it is associated with Christians but because this book is alive and you don’t know when this book is going to speak. This is the part of our heritage that, as Baptists, we emphasize and I think all faith traditions should have some appreciation for what we do.

In the Reformation, one of the primary things that took place was the fact that the Bible was translated into the language of the people. Most of the early translators from the early period in the Protestant Reformation who brought the Bible from either Greek and Hebrew or from the Latin of the day into the language of the place where they lived were persecuted.

John Hus was from the area today that is the Czech Republic and John Hus believed that the Bible should be read in the language of the people. He propagated that idea, they arrested him, and they burned him at the stake. When they burned him at the stake, what they used for the bonfire were Bibles. They used the Bibles that had been translated into the language of the people to build the fire by which to burn him.

John Wycliffe had come before John Hus and many of the Bibles that they burned were Wycliffe Bibles because he had dared translate them. John Wycliffe had died a natural death in England. They decided this was so bad that they dug him up, burned his bones, and scattered his ashes at sea because it is so dangerous to put this Living Word into somebody’s hands.

In this tradition of the Bible, being dangerous, because it changes and shapes people, because it accompanies movements that other people cannot control, we come to the lives of Smyth and Helwys. Smyth with a “y.” They were Dutch and English. Helwys met Smyth in Gainsborough, England. Smyth was preaching at a Church of England parish as a fill-in when there was no pastor. When officials of the church became aware of this, Smyth was forbidden to preach. He left the Church of England as a result and hooked up with Helwys. Helwys, already the Separatist, was meeting with a group that included John Robinson, William Brewster, and William Bradford. The reading of the scripture and having scripture available in their language and the scripture working on their hearts, their lives, their minds, and their commitments is what brought them to this place. In our faith tradition, two of the names most commonly associated with the belief of using, holding up the scripture, and not needing anything else is associated with the names Smyth and Helwys.

We think about the Puritans. The Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England. The Separatists thought it was beyond help and they wanted to separate. Helwys was a Separatist as was John Robinson, one of the Pilgrim fathers. Robinson has one of my favorite quotes about scripture. He said, “God hath yet more light to break from His holy word.” God hath yet more light, more than what we have already read, more than what we have already understood, more than has already shaped our lives. God hath yet more light because this book is alive and growing. God hath yet more light to break from this Word.

So when Baptists talk about “No creed but the Bible,” what we really mean is that no other statement, no other summary, no other writing, says what the Bible says. Anything that I try to write about the Bible or if I try to write my best summary—I am going to write you a letter and tell you what the Bible says in ten pages—whatever I say is just my words and it is not going to live. So when we say “No creed but the Bible” we are saying no summary of the Bible, no statement about the Bible, none of those things can convey what scripture conveys. We will have no summary that we use in place of, or as equal to, the Bible. Nothing will take the place. Now why is this important today?

I don’t know how to say this but just to say it. We get portrayed a little at times as being the weird Baptists in town. If you are not aware of that, I will just tell you. If you are a guest today, it’s a good day. You are going to hear all about it.

For more than 150 years, this congregation was a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. We are not any more. The one primary key reason why we are not is this reason right here. There is a statement that Baptists have used since the early 1900’s called The Baptist Faith and Message. I tried to figure out a way to describe this for you, and I decided that it would be good if we thought about this like we think about software. The current Baptist Faith and Message is the Baptist Faith and Message 3.0.

Do you remember Windows 3.1 and 4.1? I have Adobe Acrobat 7.34 or something like that on my computer. Do you know how we number software by the number of versions that come out? The current version of The Baptist Faith and Message is 3.0. Why is it 3.0? It’s because no statement that we can write lives enough to stay current like scripture. So what was written in 1925 was 1.0. What was written in 1963 was 2.0. What was modified in 1998 was 2.1. Finally, in 2000, we got 3.0. If we all live along enough, we will probably hear about 4.3 or something like that. No statement that tries to summarize the Bible can say what the Bible says.

We voted like 97%. It’s hard to get that kind of vote in a Baptist church, but we decided that to say we are going to believe a statement 100% is not Baptist and that is what we were told we had to be. We would have to buy into this thing and we said, “No.” So as a congregation, we have very firmly said, “No creed but the Bible.” What that means to us is that the Bible is sufficient. The Bible is trustworthy. The Bible is unequaled by anything else somebody could write about it or try to summarize it. We believe that God speaks to Christians, not just to us but to all Christians through these pages, and the Bible will be sufficient for whatever challenge Christians face today or whatever challenge Christians face 10, 20, 100, 1,000 years from now, if Christ tarries.

Think about slavery. Two hundred years ago, a lot of Christians used the Bible to say that God ordained slavery but the Word of God would not be contained. The Word of God would not be restrained. Simply because slavery is mentioned in the Bible does not mean that God ordained or desires slavery. So the Word kept moving and it would not rest. I don’t know anybody that has any credibility in the world today who would say that the Bible ordains or condones slavery. The Bible moves. The Bible is a power. The Bible is alive with Jesus Christ moving the church, moving Christians in every place, moving us to understand better what God wants, and it is sufficient. Anything that I write today about something that may take place or something that is an issue 100 years from now is going to be dead words. The Bible is what we need. The Bible, in and of itself, is enough.

I had Keith print the Apostle’s Creed in the order of service today as a way of reminding us that when we say, “No creed but the Bible,” that statement is much deeper and much more profound that saying, “We don’t use the Apostle’s Creed.”

It is really kind of funny. If you grew up in a faith tradition that uses the Apostle’s Creed, I don’t know any church, any denomination, that says, “If you are going to be a part of us, you have to sign this or you have to say you believe it 100%.” It’s really not a creed. It’s really a confession of faith. It is a summary. It is a concise summary of faith that is intended to be just that. Some Baptists are the ones who have a document that says you have to sign it to be a Christian. Isn’t that ironic?

So let me say today, when we say, “No creed but the Bible,” I guess it is an unfortunate Baptist way of stating something positive in the negative. We do have a propensity to do that. What we really mean is that scripture is alive. We believe that scripture lives, moves, breathes, and speaks to each of us in such a way that there is no other statement that will do. There is no other document that will do because anything else will fade into oblivion as dated. It will fade into oblivion as the words of a particular generation that no longer hold weight. But scripture lives forever. Scripture lives, moves, changes, and causes me to relate to God in a new way. It causes me to change the way I think about things that happen in the world because scripture is alive.

So we may say, “No creed but the Bible,” but it has really nothing to do with The Apostle’s Creed. It has to do with the high conviction, the high trustworthiness, the high sense of impact upon our lives that this book has.

“No creed but the Bible” because the Bible is above all.

Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

Obadiah Holmes: Whipped, but Not Beaten

Jeremiah 31:31-34

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