What in the Word!?

Intro: The Centrality of the Word in the life of the believer.

Psalm 119:92—If not…Your Law…my delight…

Like a man panting from exhaustion after a fight for his life, the psalmist attributes his survival for the prominent place the Scriptures had in his life. It is not hard to imagine the ancient psalmist spending his days mediating on the even more ancient texts handed down by the prophets. In them he discovered the very key to his survival, the battle gear with which the believer must be equipped in this dark world (see Eph. 6:10-17 & 2 Tim. 3:16, 17).

If not for your word …

… the giant would have demolished me

… the lions would have torn me to shredded

… I would have given up during the years when I felt like I was abandoned

But I remembered . . .

. . . that the giants of Noah’s day were swept away in the torrent of your power, and so I knew Goliath could not win

. . . that you escorted Lot safely out of Sodom, and so I realized that I’d escape my own lions’ den as well

. . . that Joseph‘s dream led to years of slavery and prison before he emerged into the brilliant life God promised.

The Word is central to the life of the believer because it is within the Word of God, where we discover the God of the Word. Since definitionally the Word of God must be God’s message about Himself, it makes sense that in knowing the Word we come to know God Himself.

Raising the Question

Think about it:

Though we humans stand at the apex of all God created, even mysteriously, marvelously bearing his image we are infinitesimally small compared with the One whose image we bear.

God is the totaliter aliter; as someone has rightly observed, God is not merely different, He is different than different!

——-> The human quest to know God is doomed to failure, because we humans who can only see within a small band of the full spectrum of light have absolutely no way of discovering Him who is altogether invisible.

If God and man are ever to meet then it must necessarily be the result of God’s intentional self-revelation, or in other words it must be through the auspices of the Word of God. He can reach down; we are utterly incapable of reaching up.

But isn’t this essentially what Paul reminds the Christians in 1st-century Rome, when he explains that faith is the direct result of hearing, and that faithful hearing comes from the Word… (see Rom. 10:17, NKJV)?

Since God’s Word is so desperately important for bridging the gap and for equipping the believer, we must ask this…

Question: As its core—what is the Word of God?

What is its scope? Where does it begin and end?

The texts of Scripture: Do they comprise the totality of the Words of God?

When Job’s friends (for instance) speak wrongly about God from within the texts of Scripture, are their words the Word of God?

Are the narrative stories which tell us about God’s ancient doings (like First Samuel and Ruth as examples) also to be considered the Word of God?

Or is it only the prophets who repeat the words from God’s own mouth which contain the Word of God?

For that matter, when a Christian today exercises a Word of Knowledge, is that the Word of God?

When a preacher preaches like I’m doing right now, is this somehow the Word of God?

Know the Word!

It turns out that we begin to discover the nature of the Word of God in it’s very opening passage: God leads with the topic. Make no mistake! The nature of the Word is unveiled as nothing less that the front-page headline in the first edition of Heaven’s Digest.

Genesis 1:1–2 NIV

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

An interesting inquiry, but relatively unimportant for today’s purpose: How did the creation of v. 1 become the dystopia of v. 2? For today I ask only that we take in the chaotic panoramic of Gen. 1:2.

Tohu vabohu = a descólate wasteland, a place ravaged by destruction

impenetrable darkness

a horrific primordial sea, monstrous waves crashing everywhere while also concealing God-only-knows within those waves

——-> Into this scene we see the Spirit of God sweep in. Now hear this: No matter how dark the present world, no matter how dismal, no matter how deranged and disordered, you can count on it that God has positioned his Holy Sprit right there, hovering just above the scene, ready to move.

Notice that in v. 1 we clearly see God the Father, then in v. 2 we clearly see God’s Holy Spirit sent by the Father. Well 2 out of 3 ain‘t bad, as they say, but when it comes to the Trinity I’m looking for all Three! So where is the Son? We’ll come back to that.

Behold the power of the Word of God: In the midst of the chaos, with the Spirit positioned perfectly to act, God suddenly speaks…

Genesis 1:3–5 NIV

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

2 Hebrew words: Yahiy ’or, and with that the impenetrable darkness of v. 2 is utterly conquered.

This is 3rd person command, which is a verbal form that we don’t really find in English. I imagine it as the godfather speaking, “I think it would be nice if light should exist.”

———> Throughout this text the Word spoken by God is the agent of the destruction of chaos. The seas are contained, the land is spread out, the sky is shaped. This is a huge difference between the God of Christianity and the co-called gods of the Ancient Near East. In those other stories the gods did battle to bring down monsters as they shaped the world. In the Biblical account the God of heaven spoke.

Again hear Isa. 55:11-13:

Know Jesus!

Seriously, know Him! Jesus is not simply a by-word for the non-Christian world, and it is not simply a catchphrase for the Christian world. Jesus is the answer for the whole world!

Ask the addict

Ask the child

Ask the spouse

Ask the murderer

Ask yourself

Jesus is the one who perfectly repeated God’s word with a human voice.

John 1:1–5 NIV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The Word is Jesus!

Now here’s the point about these points: Point 1 and Point 2 were not separate points! Discover the Word. Discover Jesus. THE WORD IS JESUS!

Revelation 19:13 NIV

He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.

Compare John 1:1-5 with Genesis 1:1-5