Scripture
Sermon
Let’s test our general knowledge this morning.
Who knows what kind of tree this is?
That’s right. It’s an avo tree I grew from a pip.
So let me ask you another question, “What is the most significant difference between this tree and the lectern.”
The difference is that the tree is still growing; it has life flowing through it.
This lectern is beautiful, but it will never be an inch taller than it is today.
It will never bear a leaf or grow an acorn.
By contrast this tree will get taller, and grow thick branches. It will continuously shed its leaves and grow new ones. In a few years it will bear its first pears. Each of those pears in turn has the potential to become another tree and grow to bear pears of their own.
If these are two kinds of people, what kind are you?
Just take a moment to think about this:
If this tree or this lectern could symbolise the condition your spirit,
which one does your spirit look like?
If Jesus had ascended to heaven and left us alone, I suspect we would have no choice but to look like the lectern. We would be all neat and tidy, religiously appropriate, but there would be no life in us.
But Jesus never left us alone.
We live in the era when the Holy Spirit is the life giving breath in the Church to keep us growing.
This morning I want to look at 3 ways in which the Holy Spirit continues to grow us.
The first is through Scripture.
Do you remember the TV Series, “MR Bean”? At the start of each episode it opens with a dark cobble street and suddenly a spot light shines down, and then asif from heaven, Mr Bean drops to earth.
Sometimes as Christians we think the Bible came to earth like Mr Bean, shrink-wrapped in one leather bound version.
But the Bible is actually a library of books written by different authors during specific times of history to capture what God is doing in the life of His people.
Some Christians think the Bible tells you what to think, but more accurately the Bible teaches us how to think.
Because Scripture reveals to us the nature of God, the answers in Scripture aren’t limited to the problems addressed in Scripture. Scripture has a voice in our modern world as we consider things like brain stem cell research and cloning, things the writers of Scripture couldn’t even dream of.
2 Timothy 3 v 16 tells us that “All Scripture is inspired by God”, some versions say, “Is God breathed”.
If I can spend a moment on the word inspired.
For an artist, they watch a beautiful sunset and are inspired to paint.
A musician falls in love and is inspired to write a song.
They are filled with a sense of amazement by what they experience, and need to capture that for others to share. They are INSPIRED
In the same way the writers of Scripture contemplated the actions of God and felt inspired to write about them.
In another sense, sometimes we think that Scripture is “Breathed out by God”. Asif God sat and dictated Scripture to the writers as He did with some of the prophets.
That is a far more Muslim idea of Scripture than a Christian one.
If Scripture was dictated in that way, it would be a terrible mistake to try to translate it into different languages because the meaning would change with every translation.
But we believe that the Bible should be translated into as many languages as possible, because we don’t believe that Scripture is breathed out by God, but breathed into by God.
The image Paul seems to have in mind is the same image as the creation story, where God moulded ordinary mud and breathed His life giving Spirit into it and it came alive.
In Ezekiel 37 there is a valley full of dry bones which come together and are miraculously covered with flesh and skin, and then the breath of God is breathed into them and they come alive.
Could Paul be telling us that God takes these words, strung together by people, fully human in their writing, AND THEN HE BREATHES HIS SPIRIT INTO THEM and they come alive?
Scripture breathes in God. Scripture inhales the Holy Spirit as a tree drinks up water.
This makes a whole lot of sense when we consider how some people can read the Bible and be unchanged, they remain dead wood. While other people read it and their lives begin to sprout new growth all over. The difference is not the text; it is the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit brings Scripture to life.
Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of salvation”.
Left closed, or read without the Holy Spirit, Scripture is dormant.
But opened and breathed into by God it is filled with power and life.
When we read Scripture, there are two questions which should be uppermost in our minds:
1) What does this actually mean?
At school we learnt to read for comprehension.
I could already read in grade 2, but that does not mean I could understand what the writer was trying to tell me.
I had to learn techniques to read for meaning.
In the same way when we read Scripture, we have to explore the passage to understand what we are reading.
A huge concern of mine is that Christians never learn the comprehension techniques to read Scripture, but read the Bible with the comprehension ability of a grade 2, and the result is that we remain spiritual dwarfs.
It’s been said that the spirituality of Africa is a mile wide, but only an inch deep.
The second question should be
2) In what way does this passage require me to change?
Scripture in not a manifesto to change the world, it is first and foremost to change me.
Scripture is not just for mental entertainment. Scripture is not a self-help guide or the key on how to make friends and influence people.
Scripture is incredibly demanding, and what it demands are not just changes in our attitudes, but changes in our actions.
The Second way the Holy Spirit continues to grow us is through sermons.
Living in 2008 we are prone to forget there was a time only a few hundred years ago when printed Bibles did not exist. Every copy had to be hand written at huge expense. Most people, even most priests, never held a Bible, or even a piece of Scripture.
In those times the faith of people wasn’t sustained by having a morning quiet time with a cup of coffee and a Bible, it was sustained by sermons.
Again and again in Scripture we read of preachers who preached the word of God.
In Acts we read that when Barnabas and Paul arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. The writer is telling us that the words they spoke were not their own, they spoke the word of God.
What we have to note about this account is that they were full of the Holy Spirit. And so as they spoke the Holy Spirit breathed into their words and they became the actual word of God.
The Helvetic Confession says “The preaching of the word of God is the word of God”.
I want us to take a moment to really get this.
To the extent that a sermon is in line with Scripture and is filled with the Holy Spirit, it is God speaking to the congregation.
This puts a whole new meaning on coming to church. We come to worship God, and we come to hear God speak to us.
So often someone will comment on a sermon, and say, “When you said XYZ it just spoke to me, like the sermon was just for me”.
I usually smile politely and feel quite awkward, because in all honestly I never said anything like what you heard.
God takes the words and makes them the word of God.
The third place the Holy Spirit still grows us is through personal witness.
God can be revealed to others in the words we say and the things we do.
I love the story of Bishop Desmond Tutu’s conversion. As a boy he walked through the streets of Soweto with his mom. One day an Anglican priest walked by and simply tipped his hat in greeting to Desmond’s mom.
Desmond said, “I want to meet the God that can make a white man show respect to a black woman”.
That priest’s actions were the visible word of God.
For many of us we will never preach a sermon. Most of us are more likely to speak like the man born blind in John 9. When he was questioned by the authorities he said, “All I know is that I was born blind but now I see”.
In John 4 we read of a Samaritan woman who knew virtually nothing about Jesus, except that He knew everything about her and still wanted to stop and talk to her. When she went back into the town, she shared her testimony, and John says, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”
When we share our stories of God’s intervention in our lives with others, The Holy Spirit fills those words.
1 John 5 says anyone who believes in Jesus has His testimony written on their hearts, and it is the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
If you are feeling like this lectern today, all pretty on the outside but lifeless on the inside, know that God’s plan for you is to be a Spirit filled growing person.
Just between you and God, I urge you to cry out and say, “Lord speak Your word to me, Your servant is listening. Lord fill me with You Holy Spirit that I may be alive”.