Do You Believe God’s Word As He Does?
Scripture: John 1:1-5; Genesis 1:1-3; 18:9-14; Jonah 1:1-3; 4:2-3
Introduction
Do you believe God’s Word as He does? Two weeks ago I stood before you and asked you to stop speaking against your blessings. The focus of that message was to help each us of understand that oftentimes we do not realize that when we speak our words become alive and take on a mission of their own. What give those words life is the faith (our belief) in them. When we speak from our heart, we speak what we believe and that belief, that faith, gives life to those words, regardless of what those words are meant for, either good or bad. Remembering what I shared in that message, I want you to now consider the question I just asked you: “Do you believe God’s Word as He does?” John 1:1-5 says “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 were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” We know that John was referring to the Word as Christ. Christ was with God from the beginning. So there are two things we need to consider when thinking about your answer to my questions; God’s word as spoken by Him and God’s Word in the form of and spoken by Christ. Remember that Christ said in John 6:38, “…I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” As we read the Scriptures, we find God speaking, but do we assign to His words the same belief that God does? Let me use this example:
Your kids are in their room playing. You yell to them to stop playing and go to bed. When you spoke those words, you meant exactly what you said. You believed what you said and thus you expected that your children who heard what you said would immediately follow your instruction. (If life was that simple they would have, but it is not.) In reality, your kids thought something differently. Your kids heard what you said and gave the correct reply “Yes daddy/mother”. However, your kids did not assign the same belief in your words that you did. In their minds they understood that you would repeat yourself several times before they actually had to act. They knew that they only had to act when the tone of your voice changed and they heard you coming towards the room. Although they heard you the first time, they waited until they “believed” you were serious before they acted. There are many people out there playing the same game with God, they hear what He says but they do not assign to His words the same belief that God assigns to them. Consider the following examples from the Old Testament.
I. When God Spoke
Turn with me to the first chapter of Genesis. The chapter opens by saying “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Now there are those out there that believe that this all happened by accident, that there was a big bang and then the earth was. Well if there was a big bang, guess who caused it to be - God. Regardless of how it happened, God’s hand was in on it. In the beginning, God made everything and as we examine how He did it, you will be able to see my point. Look down at verse three: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” How did God create everything – He spoke. When God spoke – those things that He said came into being. Now consider this, do you think that at any point during creation or any other time that God spoke that He ever considered that what He spoke would not happen? Imagine God saying let there be light and then wondering if it would happen. Can you imagine God repeating Himself, “Let there be light; I SAID let there be light; I SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!” and only after He got to the third request that it actually happened? I cannot imagine this happening and I know that it did not happen. When God spoke it the first time, it happened. God did not have to repeat Himself and He never wondered if what He spoke would happen. When He spoke it, it happened because God believed what He said. Throughout creation, when God spoke things happened.
Now jump down to Genesis 1:26. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness….” Have you ever thought about whom the “Us” was that God referred to? It could not have been the angels because they did not have the power to create – that power only rested with the Godhead. God was speaking of Himself, Christ and the Holy Spirit, what we refer to as the Trinity. This confirmed what was spoken in John 1:1-5 concerning Christ being present and totally involved in the creation of everything. When the decision was made to make us in God’s image, God knew what that meant. He knew that once we were given a choice, we would have the ability to decide if we believed His word as He does, yet He gave us a free will anyway. He gave us a choice. He decided to let us decide if we believed His word as He does. I want to impress upon you that when God speaks, there is no doubting on His part. He does not speak it three or four times waiting for it to happen. When He speaks, things are set into motion immediately. That is why part of the Lord’s prayer contain the statement “….Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10b) What this line speaks of is the day when God’s will shall be done on earth as His will is carried out in heaven. When God speaks His will in heaven, it is carried out immediately. There is no prayer session to see if they heard God right. There is no counsel being sought from other leaders to get their opinion on what God said. There is no fasting being done to get one’s flesh ready to submit. There is no vote being taken to decide if what God is saying should be carried out. There is no offering of alternatives being presented to God because someone thinks there is better way. There is no consensus building or time taken to try and convince everyone in heaven that it is the right thing to do. No, when God speaks in heaven, there is no negotiation, there is just action. Only here on earth do we go down the road to “qualify” what God has said to see if it makes sense to us and our own beliefs. We qualify it down to the point that what God actually said is so watered down that the meaning of what He has said is completely lost and we feel good about continuing to live our lives with minimal disruption. Do you believe God’s word as He does?
II. Our Response To When God Speaks
I want to share two stories with you that are good examples of how we respond to God’s word demonstrating that our belief in His word is not always the same as God’s. Turn with me to the 18th chapter of Genesis. Here we find where God tells Abraham that he was going to have a son.
“Then they said to him, ‘Where is Sarah your wife?’ So he said ‘Here, in the tent.’ And He said, ‘I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself saying, ‘After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?’ And the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old? Is anything to hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life and Sarah shall have a son.” Genesis 18:9-14
In these verses we find Jesus (not God the Father) having a conversation with Abraham. Yes you heard me correct, I believe that this was Jesus having this conversation with Abraham. Remember the verses we read in John 1:1-5 which tells us that Jesus was with God during creation and therefore He would have been present during Abraham’s time. In John 8:48-58 Jesus was questioned by the Jews and He replied to them “…..before Abraham was born, I am!” meaning that He existed before Abraham. Also, when they came upon Abraham, there were three men and verse one of chapter eighteen says that “The Lord appeared to Abraham…..” When they left Abraham and went to Sodom and Gomorrah, there were only the two angels for the Lord was not with them. Also remember in Exodus 33:20 when Moses had requested to see God, God responded by saying that He would grant Moses request, but there was a condition. Verse 20 says “But, He said, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” There is one finally reason I believe this was Jesus and this takes us to Sarah’s response. When Abraham heard that he would have a son, Abraham believed God. As a matter of fact, because he believed God and took Him at His word, the scripture says that it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham did not doubt that God could do just what He said He would. However, this was not the case with Sarah.
Sarah had come up and stood at the entrance of the tent, behind the men where she could not be seen. As she stood there, she listened to the conversation that was taking place between her husband and the three strangers. When she heard that she would have a son, she “laughed within herself” at the thought that she would have pleasure in her old age. She laughed because she doubted that it would happen. Sarah did not take God at His word – she laughed when she heard that she would have a son. Furthermore we know that she did not take God at His word when she gave Hagar, her maidservant, to Abraham so that Hagar could bear a son in her stead. Her laughing and her later action of giving Hagar to Abraham proved that within her heart she did not believe that God’s word as God did. When we examine this story a little more, we also find that Sarah did not laugh out loud, she laughed within herself. Even though she laughed within herself, the Lord knew it. He asked Abraham why did she laugh and Sarah said that she did not laugh. On the surface it would seem that she outright lied, but when you look at the story closely, you find that she laughed within herself. Although sometimes we laugh within ourselves without showing a facial expression, this would not have mattered in Sarah’s case. She was standing behind the men so even if she smiled as she laughed within herself, they would not have known because she was standing behind them. So how did one of the men know that she laughed within herself? Because that man was Christ Himself. Even when Jesus walked the earth He was able to tell what was in a man’s heart. As far as I know the angels do not have this ability so it had to have been Jesus. Jesus recognized what was in Sarah’s heart and asked about it. How would you feel if you stood in the presence of Jesus and He told you something that God was going to do in your life and you said within yourself “whatever” and Jesus called you on it? Would you lie and deny it? If you were talking to Jesus and you knew it was Jesus, would you accept His words at face value or would you have to wait and see if what He said came to pass?
There is one more example that I want you to look at before I close. Turn with me to the book of Jonah. Jonah 1:1-3 records the following: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before Me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” Here is an opposite response to God’s word from the response we found with Sarah. Jonah doesn’t have the best of reputations as it goes with being a prophet. From all indication he was a man who disliked the very group of people that God was sending him to preach to. He disliked them so much that he wanted God to destroy them and that is why he did not want to go and preach to them. When you consider his response to God’s request, although you may not like how he responded, his response showed that he actually took God at His word. Jonah believed God and because he believed God he did not want to go and preach to the people of Nineveh. Jonah knew that if he preached to the people of Nineveh, they would probably repent and God would have compassion on them. He did not want God to have compassion on them and that is why he did not want to go and chose to flee. When God finally yanked his chain and he went to Nineveh, you know what happened? The people repented. You know what God did, God had compassion on them and forgave them. Do you know what Jonah’s response was, he became angry. Listen to what Jonah said to God in prayer as found in Jonah 4:2-3: “…..Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Jonah probably felt like he had been made a fool of. He had told the people that they would be destroyed and then God forgave them, just like he knew God would. I can see Jonah saying to God why he was still at home “Lord, why should I go? You know if I go you will just have compassion on them and forgive them. Why don’t you just go ahead and do it, why do I have to go and preach to them – they can all die for all I care.” This was the attitude that I think Jonah had. But the bottom line is this – Jonah knew God and took Him at His word. He believed him so that instead of doing what God told him to do, he did the opposite because he knew if he did what God would have him to do the people he hated would be saved.
When one heard God’s word, she laughed within herself as if God’s word was impossible. When another heard God’s word, he immediately accepted it as fact, but because he did not want the end result to happen, he refused to act on what he had been instructed to do. Where are you? Next week I will continue this message, but we will go to the New Testament. Between now and next Sunday, consider this question, “If Joseph was alive today and was getting ready to marry someone who said they had been impregnated by God, would he be considered to be a fool?”
May God bless and keep you is my prayer.
