Sermon HT 26.5.02 am AJM
Good morning. Does your life ever feel like this?
Or like this?
I don’t know about you but I often feel bombarded by words. Often it feels like words are everywhere, and you can’t get away from them.
When I collect my children from school they all talk to me at once, and I have to explain that although God gave me 2 ears he only gave me one brain.
When I turn on my computer to do some thinking, words turn up in little parcels and ring a nice bell to announce their arrival.
More of them thud onto the door mat every morning
More of them come when the phone rings…
Words. Every Friday morning I go swimming, then I go and have breakfast in ASDA. But ASDA is the winner of the best employer of the year award, and that means they give the man who hands out the baskets a mike so he can feel fulfilled, and you get ‘good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome to your ASDA superstore in Oadby’ every few minutes. More words.
So I want to ask you, what do you feel about words? In particular, what do you feel about the words of God? Does the prospect of engaging with them seem like just another obligation, another intrusion, another thing to find time for? Do you manage it at all? And when you do, is it worth it?
Let’s pray…
Well, we’ve got to think about the word. So let’s start at the beginning. Let’s be basic. What is the word of God? And where do we find it?
Well, the answer seems quite simple, doesn’t it. Here it is, look. The word is in the Bible. We’ve got it here in black and white. This is the word of God. The Bible is the word of God, and it is there for us to study and apply.
And that’s right. The Bible is the word of God, written down. From the very beginning God has communicated with us through the written word. He spoke to Moses, the first person to hear the word of God. He obviously didn’t trust Moses to remember it, so he gave him it written down on tablets of stone. That’s how we got the 10 commandments. Look, here they are in the chancel, the words of God, written down. The 10 commandments are the word of God, and they are so important that we’ve still got them carved up here over three thousand years later to make sure we don’t forget them.
God carried on speaking. He spoke to the psalmist. Psalm 119 is full of praise for the word of the Lord, how we must live and observe it, how it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. When we read and obey the word of God it brings us life and peace.
The coming of Christ didn’t change that.
The new Christians still clung to the scriptures as the word of God. Hundreds
of years after Moses and David, Paul
explained it to Timothy: do your best to present yourself to God as one
approved by him, rightly explaining the word of truth. All scripture is
inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, or correction, and for
training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be
proficient, equipped for every good work.
And on that basis we continue to study the Bible today. The word has a central place in the life of the church and of the individual, and in it you will find life. The Bible is the word of God.
Well, that’s all true. But maybe it isn’t the whole truth. Listen to this. This is the book of Acts. Jesus has died and been raised, the Holy Spirit has come upon the disciples, and they are travelling around telling everyone all about it. This is what it says.
many of those who heard the word
believed…
those who were scattered went from place
to place, proclaiming the word…
when they arrived at Salamis, they
proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews… the next sabbath
almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.
What were the apostles teaching, when they
spoke this word of God? They weren’t teaching scripture, because at that point
they only had the OT, and obviously that was already familiar to all these
people who were rushing out to hear this new word. They were teaching some
other kind of word. To think about the Bible as the word of God is correct, but
not sufficient. The word is in scripture, but it isn’t scripture. It’s more
than that.
Well, let’s look around us a bit more. We’ve got the Bible, and that’s the word of God. What else have we got?
If you look back up there above the 10 commandments what do you see?
Last Supper, yes.
To be more precise, Jesus presiding over the last supper.
This is what John wrote about Jesus:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and lived among us.
The word became flesh and lived among us. So Jesus was the word of God. The Bible is the word written, and Jesus is the word incarnate, to use the technical term. That is, Jesus is the word brought to life.
Now what does that mean? Remember, we are trying to understand what the word of God is. We can’t receive the word of God until we know what it is. The word of God is in the Bible. It is also in Jesus. It was Jesus the disciples were telling everyone about. The news about Jesus. The news was this: that he was the word of God. The Bible is God’s word written, and Jesus is God’s word made living. God’s word isn’t just this book of black and white marks. It isn’t even just these black and white marks plus the Spirit who inspired them and dwells in them. God’s word is Jesus. Now that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. How can a person be a word?
Let’s go back to the emails and the letters and the phone calls for a moment. Those are just human words. But what is a human word? What does it do?
A word is different from a thing, isn’t it. This is a table. We call it, table. But the table isn’t in the word. We could also call it mensa, or table, or tavola, or tisch, or meza. The word and the thing aren’t the same. The word just communicates the thing.
It’s the same with the word of God. Words are a form of communication. God communicates in the written word, which is the Bible, and he communicates in the living word, which is Jesus. How do we know God? We know him because we find him in the Bible, but also because we know Jesus. The word of God is what happens when God speaks.
Now that’s important because it means we can’t reduce the word of God to information. Sometimes we are tempted to look at this, the Bible, and see it as information. We study it to understand God. We try and live by it to please him. But we can’t do that with the living word. You can’t study a living word. You can only let it communicate with you. We aren’t meant to understand God, we are meant to know him. Jesus said, if you have seen me you have seen the Father. Jesus is the word. And what he speaks is God.
So, the Bible is the word of God. Jesus is the word of God. Both these things are God’s way of communicating to us. They enable us to know him. The word of God is something we can receive. The question is, how do we receive it, and what happens then?
When the disciples travelled round Asia they announced the word of God to the people. The people responded to the word of God.
What was the word?
One of those who spoke it was Peter. This is what Peter says, 1 Peter 1.25: the word is the good news that was announced to you. OK, the word is the good news.
So what was the good news?
The good news was essentially this. This is
what they said: “God exists, he loves you, and he wants a relationship with
you. The whole of scripture tells you that. God has been writing to you for
centuries. Letters of love, letters of complaint, letters of guidance, letters
of warning. Now God has sent his son to speak to you. You rejected him and put
him to death. But he has been raised from the dead, and he is alive. Still he
hasn’t given up. He has sent his Holy Spirit to help you to talk to him.
Instead of writing his words on tablets of stone, God will now write them on
your hearts, as the prophet Jeremiah had promised years before. Jeremiah 31.33,
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their heearts; and I
will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one
another, or say to each other, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from
the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
That is what the word of God is.
OK, so we’ve got some way to answering the question we started with. What is the word of God.
But that just raises another question. What difference does it make? I hear it, and it sounds wonderful, that God is there and he loves me. But what actually happens after that?
And that’s the question we started with. Why is the word of God good news for those who receive it? What difference does it make?
Let’s look back up at the chancel.
We’ve looked at the word written, the 10 commandments. We’ve looked at the word living, Jesus at the last supper.
But what about the windows? What do they show?
Well, they show the parable of the sower. Xxx read it to us. Let me remind you of it.
Mark 4. A sower went out to sow.
1. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up.
2. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away.
3. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.
4. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.
So here we have 4 pictures.
Jesus explained them to us.
The seed is the word of God. It is the good news that we can know God and belong to him. But people react to it differently. Just like the junk mail and the emails, I suppose. Some of them I chuck away without opening them. Some I open, glance at and then chuck away. Some I open, look at, think that sounds good, and keep for a while, till eventually when a bit of time has passed and I’ve done nothing about it I still chuck it away. And some I open, shout great, and reply to.
It’s the same, Jesus says, with the word of God. Except he didn’t talk about mail, he talked about seed.
1. Sometimes it doesn’t grow at all, and those are the people who chuck the letter away without opening it.
2. Sometimes it grows beautifully but doesn’t take root, and those are the people who open the letter, think that looks good, and then find something goes wrong in their lives and they decide it’s not worth the hassle.
3. Sometimes it grows and puts down roots, but thorns choke it, and those are the people who open the letter, read it and think I want to do something with that, but then worries and money and other things get in the way and they forget about it.
4. And sometimes it falls in good soil and produces grain, and those are the people who answer the letter and get stuck into the relationship or buy the product.
Now that all seems quite clear, doesn’t it. This is a very familiar story. We’ve heard it lots of times. We all know what it means. The Bible is the word of God. It explains God to us. Our job is to understand it.
Seen that way, this parable is quite straightforward. It’s about evangelism. When you explain the good news to a person, he or she may react in different ways. Some people won’t be interested. Some people will be very interested but it won’t last. Some people will be interested but they won’t have time for it. And some people will be interested and go all the way, and they in their turn will sow seeds and bear fruit. So we aren’t to get discouraged as we offer people the good news, because at least three times out of four nothing takes. Our job is just to carry on sowing the seed and hope for the best.
Now there’s nothing wrong with interpreting the passage like this. It is what happens when you tell people the good news. It’s what happens on Alpha. When we were in Corby we used to find it was what happened with the people who brought their babies for baptism. We used to potter away dropping seeds here and dropping them there, and for 10 seeds we got 1 Christian.
But is that enough?
Think back again. Instead of thinking about the results, let’s think about the seeds. After all, Jesus doesn’t say mailshots, he says seeds.
Jesus is the word of God.
Where was he first sown? In Mary. The word of God was sown as a seed in Mary, and he grew. She gave birth to him. It’s easy for us to dismiss Mary. We went to this church in Spain that was a pilgrimage centre to Mary. No Jesus in sight. And we all know who Mary was, she was a dead Roman Catholic. But that isn’t so. Mary was the first person in whom the good news grew. Jesus grew in Mary.
And the same is true for us.
Listen to this. Deuteronomy 30.
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard
for you, nor is it too far away. It is
not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and
get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you
should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get
it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart
for you to observe.
Once the word has been sown, by the telling or the reading, where is it? It is within you. It is within your mouth and your heart. Note he doesn’t say, in your heads. It isn’t in the thinking bit of you, it’s in the living bit of you, the mouth and the heart. It is sown in you just as the living word was sown in Mary. Paul quotes that verse from Deuteronomy in his letter to the Romans. The word is on your lips and in your heart, because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. Romans 10. James calls it the implanted word that has the power to save your souls, James 1.21. John says the word of God abides in you, 1 John 2.3. So where is the word of God? The word of God is in you, sown like a seed.
What does it do? Well, like the seed in the ground, it grows. Paul writes, We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers. That’s 1 Thessalonians 2.13. The word of God changes you. It isn’t just a head thing. It isn’t a mailshot, it’s a seed. It’s not information, but the nucleus of life itself. And so a seed grows. It starts to grow. It produces shoots and roots. It keeps on growing. It produces leaves and buds. It keeps on growing. It produces flowers and fruits. The first fruit is faith: faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. Romans 10.17.
As it grows inside you, it changes you. You
are pregnant with the word of God, just as Mary was. You receive the Holy
Spirit, God’s spirit to live inside you and help you relate to him.
In him you also, when you
had heard the word of
truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with
the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. That’s Ephesians 1.13. And
when you have the Holy Spirit living inside you, you begin to change. You begin
to acquire some of the characteristics of God himself - love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Those are the fruits the seed produces, the fruits of the Spirit, Galatians
5.2-23. You begin to receive gifts, the
gifts of the Spirit; different gifts to different people, but you might find
people are healed when you pray for them, or you receive words or pictures from
God, or you can tell what is going on spiritually in a person or a situation.
There are other gifts. Paul gives examples in 1 Corinthians 12. And when you
receive gifts, you will find you are able to pass on what you have received to
others. God asks people to do this in different ways. Some are called to serve.
Others to teach, to witness, to pastor, to be hospitable. These things are
described in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4.
What happens, in other words, is that you begin to change. When you receive the word of God something new starts in your life. The things you don’t like about yourself begin to fade. The things that have happened to you begin to be healed. Your life takes on a new dimension, a new meaning, because you are rooted in the principle of the cosmos, Jesus Christ the living word of God. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens gradually. When you receive the word, it isn’t that something has ended, it’s that something has started. You have started on a new relationship, a relationship with God. It’s a relationship in which there will be many words, and all those words will change you. It’s like starting on a journey, not arriving at a destination. 2 Corinthians 3.18, all of us are being transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another. Christ in you will change you.
Well, that all sounds very odd, doesn’t it. It is odd. The word of God is written in the Bible. The word of God is living in Jesus. The word of God carries the good news that he wants a relationship with you. We can read it. We can live it. We can share it.
But how does it work? This is more than just communication, surely? How is it that Christ can live in me and in you? How is it that he can change me and you?
Well, I have a wonderful answer for you. I
found it in the pages of the Bible. This is what Paul wrote to the Colossians.
He said this was his job: to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden
throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To
them God chose to make known how great are the riches of the glory of this
mystery, which is Christ in you.
Colossians 1.25 –26. So there
you go. It’s a mystery. We are not called to understand God. We are only called
to know him.
I think there’s only one way of getting any closer to it than that. Let’s
go back to John chapter 1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with
God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. In
the beginning. John is quoting the first 3 words of Genesis. This word of God
is more than the printed pages of the bible, the word written. It’s more than
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the word brought to life. The word of God is
what created the universe in the first place. The word of God is the energy of
creation. It speaks everything that is. Nothing is bigger, more powerful, or
more fundamental than the word of God. It’s called Christ. And it lives in you.
We live our daily lives surrounded by words. Too many words. We spend
half our time filtering them out, not listening to them, not reading them. But
you don’t want to do that with this one. God’s word is different from ordinary
words. It is written, living, and powerful. And it lives in you, if you will
let it. It will grow in you, if you want it to. It will transform you, if you
ask it to.
What all that means for you, only you know.
Amen.