The Word Reveals

Prayer

Sermon Series of Lent - Why the Word

As we begin the season of Lent, we’re beginning a new sermon series we’re calling Why the Word. And what we want to do over the next seven weeks is to look at what makes the Bible, the Word of God, so essential to us as followers of Jesus. Even as I say that, I hope that’s no surprise, that it’s a given that the Bible is foundational. Why we’re constantly encouraging the regular - really, daily - reading of Scripture. We should know what the Bible teaches. As we talked about a few moments ago, it’s a core competency expected of leaders within ECO.

The Bible as foundational, that’s been true from the very beginning. The first followers of Jesus have looked to God’s Word to learn and to grow. Acts 2:42 - They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Notice that the very first thing listed is the apostles’ teaching - the apostles shared everything they experienced about Jesus as well as what he taught them.

And they wanted to make sure that that teaching was faithfully spread around to all the churches. So several individuals, namely Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, wrote their gospels, their account of the story, the good news about Jesus. It’s why those first letters written - by Paul, James, John, Peter, many of them to individual churches, nonetheless got passed around, copies were carefully made, so all the believers could know who Jesus is and what it means to trust in him and follow him.

That continues on to this day - though this is not true of all churches, but for the vast majority of Protestant churches, ours included, centers on the Word. That’s what we’re doing here, in our time of teaching, taking time to engage the Word of God, see what God, through his Word, wants to teach us.

Why the Bible continues to be the best selling book, year after year. It is the best selling book of all time, and it’s not even close. Of course, how much those Bibles are read and studied and lived out, that’s an entirely different question.

Dallas Willard goes as far as to make the point that he thinks that memorizing Scripture, not just reading it, but memorizing it, is the most important spiritual practice that we as Christians can engage in. The reason he says this is so that the content of the Bible, what it teaches us, becomes, as Psalm 119 describes, hidden in our hearts.

Psalm 119:9-16, How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word. 10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. 11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. 12 Praise be to you, Lord; teach me your decrees. 13 With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. 14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. 15 I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. 16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

Willard’s point is this, that as God’s word is in us, as we know it by heart, that we can living according to it. That we will seek after God. As we memorize it, meditate on it, reflect on it, it becomes more and more how we naturally think - and that begins to transform then how we act and live. As Paul writes in Romans 12:2, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We renew our minds through the Word of God.

In studies on the factors that distinguish people who engage in whole-life discipleship, where following Jesus is central versus those for whom discipleship is a part of, but not the most important aspect of their lives, the one factor that sticks out is the regular reading and study of the Bible, at least four times a week. That one habit is the greatest predicator of committed discipleship.

This is why it is so essential. Why the Word. This brings us to our first main point of this sermon series - is that through the Scriptures, God reveals himself. Through Scripture we can know who God is. This brings us to the idea of revelation.

Revelation is just another way of saying reveal, God reveals himself. There are different ways that God reveals himself. The first is what is known as general revelation. In that it is general, available to all. General revelation is God revealing himself through his creation. Let me give you a couple of examples:

Romans 1:20 - For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

We see the same idea in Psalm 19:1-4, The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. This is general revelation. God’s creation reveals to us knowledge of God.

But this is important - general revelation is limited. We can only learn so much about who God is through his creation. Which is why we can give thanks and praise that God choose to reveal himself through his Word, what we call special revelation.

The Bible, the Word of God, is filled with both stories of God acting in human history and with words that God speaks to us through his prophets, through the psalmists, wisdom writers, through Paul writing letters to specific churches and individuals, etc.

But what makes these stories, and these writings sacred (that’s what Scripture means, sacred writings), is the work of the Holy Spirit. As 2 Timothy 3:16 says, All Scripture is God-breathed, inspired (literally, in Spirit). What makes the Bible the Word of God is that all of these writings (66 books written by 40 different authors over 1600 years) is the leading, guiding, filling of the Holy Spirit.

The Word, both written and incarnate, John 1 -

To dig further into how the word reveals we’re going to look at John 1. In this passage, John harkens back to two different books, two central stories in the Old Testament. We’ll take them one at a time, beginning with John 1:1-13, where John uses language and imagery from the book of Genesis, and in particular, the story of creation.

John 1:1-5, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

In the beginning was the Word. John is referring, of course, to Jesus. Jesus’ pre-existence, Jesus was already there at the beginning, before all of creation. Not just there before, but he participated in creation, he himself brought all that exists into being. John here uses language to help us get an understanding of the Trinity, or at least two persons of the Trinity. Jesus, the Word, was with God, God the Father, and that Jesus was himself God.

When John describes Jesus as the Word, that’s a term packed with meaning, so much so that its hard to get a handle on. From a Jewish perspective, the Word is understood more of as teaching, as faithful teaching, the kind that you can build your life on, a foundation you can trust. We’ll get into that more next week.

But there’s also the Greek perspective (by the way, the Gospel of John, like all the writings of the New Testament, were written in Greek). So the Greek for the Word is Logos. And in Greek thinking, Logos means reason, force that gives structure to the universe. John is drawing on the understanding - he’s talking about the Word being there in the beginning, word that spoke all of creation into existence. God simply said the words, “Let there be light...and it was so.” But this Logos, the Word, isn’t an impersonal force, it is a person. It is Jesus. Jesus is the Word God speaks to us to reveal himself.

And this is interesting to consider - in the materialistic worldview, what most people default to, whether they realize it or not - is that everything started with stuff, with matter. That matter appeared at the Big Bang (no explanation of how or why, it just showed up). All that matter exploded out (hence, the Big Bang), gravity started pulling it together into all the objects we see in the universe - galaxies, stars, planets. Then they all started cooling into their various shapes and sizes, made up of different elements and gases.

That includes the earth, where somewhere on the surface, as the story goes, some of those molecules happened to start combining together in some sort of primordial soup. Formed into strings of amino acids, out of that proteins begin forming, all of this taking millions of years. Somewhere along the way, right combination forms into life. Out of that one cell, more cells form and evolve, and continue to evolve into multi-cellular organisms and on it goes. Formation of all life on earth.

Here’s the point - this view of the world, of creation, is that everything starts with matter. Stuff. Which eventually evolved into more and more complex life until you get to beings who actually have brains, minds, consciousness. In this view, minds come from matter. But that is not the Biblical story. The Biblical story is that a mind, a thinking being - God, intentionally and purposefully brought matter into existence. Not matter before mind, but mind before matter. Logos, the Word, started it all.

As an aside, this is why I’m a big proponent of Intelligent Design - which is the scientific theory that states exactly what the name implies, that the best explanation for what we observe in the universe points to an intelligence that brought creation into existence, that designed it all. It did not simply evolve.

Wonderful news is that this intelligence, this mind, God, created us with minds of our own, because he wants us to know and understand who he is. Through his creation, God reveals himself to us. God reveals himself to us through his Word, his written Word. And God reveals himself through his son, Jesus, the incarnate Word.

Even is this brief passage in John, we can learn so much about who God is - or at least get clues about. We get some insight into God as the triune God, that Jesus was both with God and was God. That Jesus was pre-existent - he was there in the beginning. He created everything, he is the maker of heaven and earth. Which means that he is powerful beyond belief. We learn that he is a person - by that I mean he has agency - he makes decisions, acts, acts with purpose and intention. It hints at his being all-knowing, omniscient - to be able to design and create such an incredible universe.

We could go on, but you get the point, I hope. I hope, too, that you are reminded about why it’s so important that we keep immersing ourselves in Scripture - so we will know who God is, we won’t fall into false thinking such as matter before mind, we’ll know that its mind before matter. We’ll know what is true, we’ll know where life is found (as John tells us, through the Word, through Jesus).

As I mentioned before, first part of John 1 connects to Genesis and the story of creation. Second part of John 1, which we’re going to turn our attention to now, connects to the story of Exodus - Moses, the Tabernacle, the Torah - the law.

John 1:14, 16-18, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth...16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

It begins with the declaration of Jesus, the Word, becoming the incarnate Word, the Word became flesh. And it’s there in verse 14 that we get the connection to the tabernacle (tent God had the Israelites build in the wilderness to house the ark of the covenant, it symbolized God’s presence with his people). Now the NIV translates it as made his dwelling among us, but in the original Greek it reads, Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

I want to skip down to verse 17, which reads, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So, here again, we see another connection to Exodus, where the law, the Torah, was given through Moses. But then the shift - the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through another word, the Word, Jesus. So the law was a good word to us, but the word we really needed to hear was grace and truth. Both the truth of who we are, our sin, our brokenness - and the word of grace, the wonderful gift of God’s unconditional love, his ready forgiveness, that comes to us through Jesus.

Finish with this, vs. 18, where John writes about the fact that no one has ever seen God - he’s spirit, invisible. No one except his one and only Son, who, though God himself, took on flesh so that he could help us see who God is, he could make him known. What’s even more wonderful about this is that there’s no one better, no one who’s closer to the Father. The Greek here reads that Jesus was at the side of the Father, literally, at his bosom, the suggestion of close to his heart. The one who knows him best can reveal him the most fully.

Let me close with this final thought, about Why the Word, why it’s so amazing and wonderful that God reveals himself to us through his Word. Virtually every Friday we have a prayer time over Zoom for Young Life here in Mountain State Region. Just this past Friday, before we prayed, Scott Berg, regional director, shared four things that happened in his area (Nicholas County) in the past week or so. A dad showed up drunk and disorderly, and with a gun, at a local basketball game. There was a murder-suicide. The mom of one of their Wyldlife kids (middle school), mother of four, hung herself - WyldLife kid found her. Another one of their Young Life kids threatened to sexually fondle the younger brother of a girl at this school.

It was hard to hear. It’s hard to share. When we hear about such terrible news, heartbreaking stuff - how incredibly important is it to know that there is a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. To know there is a God full of grace and truth, and in him is life. To know the one, this Word, who took on flesh, and not just dwelt among us, but taught us about the reality of the kingdom of God, and healed the sick, and most of all, who laid down his life for us that we might have everlasting life. Thank God, truly, that he chose to reveal himself to us. That he makes himself known. The Word reveals.

Spiritual Practices - If we’re going to know this God, we’ve got to be engaging the Word. If regular reading of the Bible is not a part of your daily habits (or at least 4-5 times a week), start there. Make a commitment to the practice. Ask someone to keep you accountable, if that’s helpful. Find a quiet space in your house. Try to do it at the same time each day. Begin with the Gospels. If you read a chapter a day, you can read through the entire New Testament in a year. Or do half a chapter. Read passage slowly, carefully, 2-3 times. Look for what the passage is teaching you about who God is. About who we are, and how we should live. Let God reveal himself to you through his word.

Closing Prayer - Time of Reflection (Thanks to God for revealing himself)