God and His Words

Introduction

This New Year we are going to focus on the doctrine of the bible on Sunday Evenings. We will explore what the bible says about itself, what the benefits of being in the word are and contemporary issues related to the Word of God. But to kick off the whole series I want to begin with a concept that is basic to our understanding of the bible. There are many names for the bible: scriptures, the words of the Lord, the word of the Lord, the testimonies of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord. But foundational to them all is the belief that the bible comes from God.

Sometimes conservative Christians are accused of worshipping the bible because we place so much of an emphasis on the words of scripture. Those who make this accusation would prioritize an experience of God over the words of God. In some cases their accusation is correct. But Christian experience and our time in the word are meant to be hand in hand and not opposing forces.

AW Tozer warned against what he called textualism in many of his writtings including “The Deeper Life” and “The Root of Righteousness.” To him textualism was “Textualism is a dangerous habit. It is the practice of conforming our ideas to the text of Scripture without allowing the text to conform our lives.” It is understanding the teachings of scripture but never applying it to our lives. It is head knowledge of the bible, but ignoring the experiential dynamic of what the bible tells us. He warned that “We can know the right words and yet never come to know the Word Himself.” This is one ditch that we must be careful not to fall into.

On the other side is a neo-othodox view that emphasizes experience and diminishes the word. Many churches have adopted this attitude even when they haven’t adopted the philosophy of neoorthodoxy. Going to church is about the experience, how does it make me feel. In some circles, they will claim the Holy Spirit led me to do such and such but it directly contradicts scripture. I can guarantee you this: the Holy Spirit did not lead them because He Himself is the author of scripture. He will not contradict what He has already stated.

These are two dangers we must avoid. To do so, we must have a proper understanding of the relationship between God and His word. Tonight I want us to look at a passage in John 6:67-68 as our starting point. Jesus had just given a sermon where he claimed to be the bread of life. In this sermon, he stated that if anyone eats the bread, he will live forever. Jesus was clearly using a metaphor for seeing and believing, but those who heard his message where offended by the apparent cannibalism.

Begin in 60. Jesus knows their thoughts and seeks to correct them, but in vs 66 many leave because of this. He then turns to his disciples and says:

John 6:67–68 “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Peter recognized something about the message Jesus was preaching: they were the words of life. There are two pieces to this phrase words of life- first there are the words themselves which we read in scripture. The words God has left us are in the bible. Secondly, they are words of life. That word of tells us the source and the result of the words. These word’s come from the one who possesses eternal life and they will give us eternal life. Maybe that a complicated analysis of the phrase but let me simplify. God’s words come from God and produce experience of life in the believer. You cannot separate God from His words. To know God is to know His word. To experience God includes an experience in and through the word of God. These words also produce the experience of eternal life in the believer.

So you cannot separate the bible from an experience of God properly. The Christian life is about both. It may help for us to understand how God the person is related to the words of God. So tonight that is what we will focus on.

God acts in the world by the use of language

The first thing to see is that God often steps into our world and interacts with it by the use of language. What God says happens. The very nature of being God demands that what He decrees will happen otherwise He would not be God. But when we see God acting, more often than not, we see God speaking. We see a connection between God’s word’s and His actions in the following passages:

Gen 1:3 God spoke and there was light

Psalm 29- God’s voice (words) causes thunder and lighting, is powerful, majestic, breaks cedars, splits wildfires, causes the ground to shake, makes animals give birth,

Luke 7:1—10 he heals the centurians servant with merely a word

But greatest of all these, the word in Romans 1, the message of the gospel is the power of God to bring about salvation.

In Romans 10:17 it stirs up faith in the heart

An illustration of this can be seen in the way parents interact with their kids. How is it that parents get their kids to clean their room? Well, in a home where the kids have been trained to obey, the parents tell their kids to go clean their room. That’s all they need to do. The words are the impetus or the force moving the kids to go clean their room.

God words are a communication of His person

How is it that we know anything about anybody? There are two ways: their actions tell us something about them and their words tell us something about them.

Think back to when you were dating your wife or your husband. For you teens think about your best friend. Do you remember the first time that you saw them? As human beings, we inherently make a lot of judgments about other people based on our first impressions. Something about them drew you to them, but even then you couldn’t say you truly knew them. It is only as you began to talk to that person that you got a good grasp of who they are. You learned things like:

Do they like the same foods as you do?

What makes them feel happy?

What are some of the biggest struggles they have in their life?

Have they trusted Jesus Christ as their savior?

Communication allows us to get to the heart of the other person much faster than just observing their actions. So God communicates who he is through his word.

When we were working through our doctrine of God on Wednesday nights, we looked at the fact that God is transcendent beyond our world and incomprehensible meaning we can’t understand Him completely. God is also invisible and a spirit. So if we are going to know anything about God, He has to reveal Himself to us.

One of the very first lessons we learn about God is that He is a speaking God. Gen 1:3 God spoke to create the world. Creation tells us some things about God because it is part of his actions. He created and sustains the world. But there are limits to what we can know about God from creation. God’s word has to reveal more information to us.

How is it that we know God is love? If you just went through a wild fire where you lost everything, you might think God hates you. Our bad circumstances can slander God’s character if we don’t know who He is. But God’s word declares in

1 John 4:8 “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

So God’s words are Him telling us who he is.

God’s Words are identified with His attributes

The longest chapter in the bible is Psalm 119 and its entire focus is on man’s relationship with God through His word. Let’s skim through some of the descriptions of the words of God that are found in this passage:

Righteous- vs 7

Faithful- vs 86- faithful means they are trustworthy

Eternal- vs 89

Truth- vs 142

Perfect, Sure, Right, Pure, Clean, True and Righteous- Psalm 19:7-11-

Life- John 12:50 “And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.”

Authority- Isaiah 55:11 “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: It shall not return unto me void, But it shall accomplish that which I please, And it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

The bible says elsewhere that out of the heart the mouth speaks. What this verse implies is that my words are a reflection of what’s in my heart. So what i say and how I say it tells other people something about me.

You remember watching Sesame Street back when you where a kid. There was a character names Oscar the Grouch who lived in a trash can, but he was always grouchy. He would yell at people and say harsh things to people. They way he spoke to people revealed that there was something wrong in his heart. He was grouchy. His words revealed who he was.

So when we see the words of God, we have a chance to learn something about who he is because those words come from His heart. Who is God? What is He like? That answer can be found in His words.

God establishes Relationships by use of Words

If you go back through biblical history, God established relationships with His people using what we call covenants. A covenant is oath bound relationship between two people. The best illustration of what a covenant is, is the wedding ceremony. When a man and a woman appear before a preacher to get married, one of the most central parts of that ceremony is the exchanging of vows. This man and woman are entering into a unique, exclusive, personal relationship with one another by speaking words of promise to one another. So God enters into relationship with men and women by these word covenants.

When God called Abraham, he established an eternal, unconditional covenant with Abraham. Genesis 17:7–8 “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

Later God gave a covenant to Moses for the people of Israel- Exodus 19:5–6 “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.”

He would establish a covenant with David as well. 2 Samuel 7:12–14 “And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:”

Fast forward to the New Covenant which is initiated in the blood of Christ- Jeremiah 31:31–33 “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, That I will make a new covenant With the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand To bring them out of the land of Egypt; Which my covenant they brake, Although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, And write it in their hearts; And will be their God, And they shall be my people.” Hebrews 9:14–15 “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”

So from this we see that communication from God is also communion with God. God relates to us through his words. He speaks to us and shows us his heart.

God’s Presence is experienced in his words

We aren’t going to spend as much time on this point, but this point is going to lead into the central application of this message for us tonight. Have you ever sat next to someone, they were physically present, but you felt so far away from each other. Maybe they are sitting on their phone doom scrolling and checked out. There is a gap in the experience of your relationship. If only he would talk to me, If only she would put the phone down a say something.

Nearness is not just a physical thing, it is a personal relationship expressed through words and other forms of communication such as holding hands, hugging, leaning your head on their shoulder, cuddling. There is a time for silence, but even in those moments the physical expressions are a form of communication. It isn’t comforting to just sit next to someone while you are on your phone.

God’s presence is linked to His words throughout scripture:

Psalm 119:151 “Thou art near, O Lord; And all thy commandments are truth.”

Deuteronomy 30:14 “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.” This passage is linked to Romans 10:8 “But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;” In vs 6-7 Paul asks who is going to go up to heaven or descend to the deep to get Christ? The answer is this verse- the word is in your heart. The implication is he is easily accessible because he is where his word is.

Psalm 19:7 “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” God’s presence is experienced as God is acting in my life and as we saw before God acts through words.

John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Jesus is given a unique title. He is called the word. It isn’t that he is a different word than scripture in one sense because the reason he is called the word is that He is the greatest communication of who God is to mankind. Hebrews 1:1–2 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;”

John 15:7 “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Jesus abiding presence is linked to his words abiding in you.

Conclusion

Here is my question for your tonight: Do you approach God’s word as information, or obligation; or do you approach God’s word seeking an encounter with God Himself? Devotions are not primarily about learning more biblical truth although that will come with it. Devotions are about meeting with God. They are about an encounter with Him. The bible is not the only way this happens after all, we spent an entire year looking at the habits of grace, the spiritual disciplines that allow us to experience God’s grace; but the word of God is the primary way that we experience God’s presence in our lives. So how do you approach the word of God?

Tonight, the first Sunday of the year, it would be good to make a covenant with God that you are going to try to seek Him in his word this year. You aren’t just going to read it to get it done, to check of your reading chart or to feel better about yourself. You truly want to know and have relationship with God Himself through his word.

Pray with me tonight: Psalm 119:18 “Open thou mine eyes, That I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”