Summary: What a tremendous gift we have in God’s Holy Word - a gift that gives us life and causes us to tremble.

Trembling at the Word of Life

TCF Sermon

April 18, 2010

It all began with a coded message. The coded message read: Expecting so many people that we have arranged 21 teacups and cooked 18 bowls of rice.

This was a message to Christians in China in 1981. The 21 teacups meant 2100 hours, or 9 p.m. The 18 bowls of rice meant that delivery would be on the 18th of November. The cargo to be delivered was 1 million Chinese language Bibles, weighing 232 tons.

That’s not something that’s easy to sneak into a country that, especially at that time, rather frowned on such things. This was called Project Pearl. A group teamed up with Brother Andrew of Open Doors, who’s preached from this pulpit a couple of times.

In getting the Bibles ashore in the dark, some of them got wet and eventually dried out. They became known as the Wet Bibles. The Chinese authorities intercepted some of the other Bibles, and threw them into latrines. Yet, they were eventually retrieved by Chinese believers, washed, sprayed with perfume, and later became known as Perfume Bibles.

Today, you can purchase Bibles in China at registered churches. But that wasn’t the case back then. Followers of Christ in China were willing to go to extraordinary means, and risk their freedom, to obtain copies of the Word of God.

Malcolm Muggeridge once said, “The truth is that the light which shines in this incredible book simply cannot be put out.”

When Open Doors engineered Project Pearl, putting a Bible into the hands of a Chinese Christian was like giving him a block of gold the same size.

(Story from How you can have confidence in the Bible, by Harold Sala)

What kind of power must a book have to cause people to risk their lives to get it? It’s the kind of power that should cause us to tremble.

Isaiah 66:2 (NIV) Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?" declares the LORD. "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.

Why should we tremble? Last week, Bishop Onguko talked about this idea. We see this phrase in a few places in the Old Testament – the idea that believers tremble at God’s word. It’s similar to what we see in

Psalms 119:161 (NASB95) Princes persecute me without cause, But my heart stands in awe of Your words.

Essentially, this is not unlike the idea of the fear of the Lord which we see often in scripture. When we fear the Lord, or when we tremble at His word, we’re acknowledging and recognizing His power and His authority.

In Isaiah, we see the Lord speaking – “has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” This is the Creator of all things. What power! What authority! When we tremble at His word, we’re acknowledging His holiness. We’re recognizing His omnipotence. Think about this. We call this book “The Word of God.” Doesn’t that very idea alone make you tremble even a little bit? That this book contains the very words of the One who made us all! The One who literally spoke the universe into existence.

It’s not just His wrath, which is written of in this book, that makes us tremble, or should. It’s not just the reality that scripture presents that He’s a holy God, and that He will judge sin. No – it makes me tremble to consider that the Maker of the Universe knows me. It makes me tremble that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the almighty One, has such grace and mercy, such love for you and me, that He sent His one and only Son to pay the awful price for my sin. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble, as the old hymn says.

So when we tremble at His word, one of the realities is that we’re trembling at what His word reveals about Him. It reveals enough about Him, teaches us enough about Him, that God uses His word literally to change lives, and cause some to sacrifice much, just to gain access to His Word, as in the story we just heard. And we could multiply that story by thousands of times across the globe and across the centuries.

Contrast that almost desperate hunger for the Word which causes people to go to extraordinary means to make it available, or to get it for themselves, with the abundance of Bibles we have here.

How many Bibles do you own? I counted 21 in my house, and that doesn’t include at least a half-dozen I have in my office here at church.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having several Bibles in your home. Different translations can help in understanding. Some Bibles have study helps that others don’t have.

The problem in having a lot is when we don’t read any of them. There have been many studies showing how our Bible-rich nation of Christians is not using what God has so wonderfully provided in His Holy Word. One survey was actually quite embarrassing.

Among Christians surveyed, 22% thought there was actually a Book of Thomas in the Bible. Only 61% knew that Jonah is a book of the Bible. Almost a quarter of those Christians surveyed either thought the Book of Isaiah, was in the New Testament, or just didn’t know where it could be found in the Bible.

How about this finding? Only 36% of Christians knew that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible.

There’s only one reason for these stats: people don’t read their Bibles.

So, though studies have shown that more than 9 out of 10 Americans have at least one Bible in their home and most own more than one, yet, these same studies have shown that half of all Americans don’t read the Bible at all. More than half of born-again Christians read the Bible once or twice a week, or not at all. Less than 2 out of 10 Christians read the Bible every day.

So, I can look at numbers like these and shake my head and say, boy, I’m sure glad we’re not like that. Or are we?

I would guess that, if we did a survey at TCF and could get honest answers – don’t worry, I’m not asking for a show of hands this morning – my guess is that we’d really do much better than the national averages.

I know many of you here have great devotional habits and are very regular Bible readers. But even if we at TCF did twice as well as national averages, that means that one out of every four TCFers don’t read their Bibles more than once or twice a week, or not at all.

Before we continue, let me be clear about one thing. There’s nothing about reading our Bibles that earns us anything with God. Yes, He uses His Word to bless us, to encourage us, to strengthen us and speak to us – as we’ll see clearly this morning. If we never read His Word, we miss out on a lot, but it doesn’t affect our salvation, and it doesn’t make Him not love us. So, at the outset, let’s dispense with the reading of God’s Word as a duty. Let’s dispense with the idea of our Bible reading as an obligation.

However, just because it doesn’t earn us anything – just because it shouldn’t be viewed as an obligation, doesn’t mean that it’s not important, and it doesn’t mean we needn’t make an effort to consume these life-giving words on a regular basis. Reading God’s Word doesn’t earn us anything, but it still has great value.

For centuries, the church has seen the critical importance of the Bible in the lives of everyday Christians. Let me read a section of the Westminster Confession of Faith, written in 1646.

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation; therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare his will unto his Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the holy Scripture to be most necessary; All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life. Westminster Confession of Faith 1646

The Bible itself speaks of its own usefulness and purpose in the life of a believer.

2 Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV) But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

One thing we note in this passage is that the scriptures point to Jesus – make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus. Add to this that the gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word made flesh. He is the embodiment of the Word. Jesus is the Living Word. This Bible is a living word, too, in a different way, but it’s written down for us as a permanent, never-changing record of God’s redemptive plan and purposes for us.

John tells us in

1 John 1:1-2 (NIV) That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

So, Jesus is the Word made flesh. He’s the Word of life. And this Bible is the Word of life. It’s the word of life first because it’s God-breathed. Some of your versions say inspired.

Breathed out by God translates a Greek word (theopneustos) that does not occur in any other Greek text (biblical or otherwise) prior to this letter. Some therefore suggest that Paul coined this term from words meaning “God” and “breathed,” which is certainly possible. The term stresses the divine origin and thus the authority of Scripture. Paul does not point to the human authors of Scripture as inspired people but says that the writings themselves (“Scripture,” Gk. graphē, “writing,” which in the NT always refers to biblical writings) are the words spoken (“breathed out”) by God. ESV Study Bible

Again, here’s something that should make you tremble. These are the very words of God. Just as much as if God Himself, or Jesus in the flesh, was here speaking them audibly to us.

And not just the red letter words of Jesus in your red-letter editions. This is scripture’s testimony to us about its power and authority. Because this is a word that’s authored by God, and points to Jesus, it has authority in the life of a Christian.

This is a huge challenge in the church today. We have a segment of the church essentially denying that anything is authoritative. One book about the movement called the emergent church tells us this:

The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility. It seems to honor God’s immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power. Postmoderns harbor such distrust for language and disbelieve God’s ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what D.A. Carson calls “the gagging of God.” (yet) The God of the Bible is nothing if He is not a God who speaks to His people. To be sure, none of us ever infinitely understand God in a nice, neat package of affirmations and denials, but we can know Him truly, both personally and propositionally. God can speak. He can use human language to communicate truth about Himself that is accurate and knowable, without ceasing to be God because we’ve somehow got Him all figured out.

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck in Why I Am Not Emergent

There are many other things vying for authority in our lives. “Who are you going to listen to?” is the question we have to face. Are we going to listen to our culture? Are we going to listen to our own impressions, or those of others? Or is the Word of God our final authority, as the rule of faith and life, or faith and practice as some might put it.

Is the word of God the means by which we weigh every other claim to authority or truth?

Jude 1:3 (NIV) Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.

That faith about which Jude wrote is contained in the Word of God.

This is a crucial question. It’ll make a difference in how we respond to all the challenges to our faith from outside the church, as well as to the winds of doctrine that are always blowing inside the church.

We all therefore have to face this ultimate and final question: Do we accept the Bible as the Word of God, as the sole authority in all matters of faith and practice, or do we not? Is the whole of my thinking governed by Scripture, or do I come with my reason and pick and choose out of Scripture and sit in judgment upon it, putting myself and modern knowledge forward as the ultimate standard and authority? The issue is crystal clear. Do I accept Scripture as a revelation from God, or do I trust to speculation, human knowledge, human learning, human understanding and human reasons - Or, putting it still more simply, Do I pin my faith to, and subject all my thinking to, what I read in the Bible? Or do I defer to modern knowledge, to modern learning, to what people think today, to what we know at this present time which was not known in the past? It is inevitable that we occupy one or the other of those two positions. The…position of the early Church in the first centuries, is that the Bible is the Word of God. Not that it ’contains’ it, but that it is the Word of God, uniquely inspired

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

So, we must always ask the question, when faced with any question about our faith, that is, what we believe, or when faced with any question about our practice, or what we do – what does the Word teach us?

Paul told Timothy that the Word has a purpose. It is, he wrote: useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

Now, of course, you might think, I always rely on the Word. But what I think the Word means doesn’t always match what others say the word means. And that, of course, has been a challenge since the beginning of the church.

And while it’s way too big a question to answer in the context of a Sunday morning sermon, let me say that there are many sound, guiding principles that can help us interpret the meaning of scripture, and we can and should learn these principles so we are, s Paul encouraged Timothy just a chapter before the passage we just read, able to “rightly divide (or correctly handle) the word of truth.”

This tells us there’s a way to rightly or correctly understand scripture, and the corresponding reality that there’s a wrong way.

But back to the main point. As followers of Christ, we need the Word of life in our lives. We get it here on Sunday morning. And if you attend a house church, or BASIC, you get it on Wednesday nights. But that’s not enough.

Group study is wonderful, but all by itself, it’s no substitute for the regular reading of God’s Word as part of God’s shaping and molding influence in your life.

Hebrews 4:12 (NIV) For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

This verse may make you tremble, too. Who wants their hearts thoughts and attitudes judged on a regular basis? Sounds painful, doesn’t it? Especially with the analogy of a double edged sword. Especially with the thought of that sword dividing, and penetrating. But it’s a critical part of the process of God’s sanctifying influence in our lives. Regular reading of the Word of God is the primary way He speaks to us.

He speaks to us about who we are, and what He desires we become.

The Word of God then acts as God himself, so that one’s innermost thoughts and intentions are exposed. This happens constantly in Christians’ lives. ESV Study Bible

But it’s not just about changing us. The Word is also about giving us hope. I think that’s a primary reason believers in persecuted church countries are willing to risk so much to get a copy of the Bible.

Romans 15:4 (NIV) For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

There’s probably no book or chapter in scripture that speaks more eloquently and fully about God’s Word than Psalm 119. While it uses different words to describe scripture, they’re all essentially synonyms for the Word of God. Here are just a few examples.

Psalm 119:16 (NIV) I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

Psalms 119:25 (NIV) I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word.

Psalms 119:37 (NIV) Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.

Psalms 119:50 (NKJV) This is my comfort in my affliction, For Your word has given me life.

Psalms 119:107 (NIV) I have suffered much; preserve my life, O LORD, according to your word.

So, paralleled with the passage in 1 John we read, we see that the Psalmist clearly viewed the Word of God as life-giving. The Word of God is the word of life. We have so much more of God’s Word than this Psalmist did, so much more revealed about God and His character, His nature, His truth, His plan for our salvation...

We have all that this Psalmist had, plus much more. What’s more, we have experienced Jesus, the living Word. Yet, we still struggle sometimes in taking God’s Word lightly. We often do not give it a primary place in our lives. We often are ignorant of what it says, and this is a dangerous place to be, because, as Scripture notes in 1 John 2:3-6:

We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands. The man who says “I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him; Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.”

This very strong, very direct passage begs the questions: How can we obey His commands if we don’t know them or understand them? How can we live in Him and walk as Jesus did if we ignore or forget His Word?

Back to Ps. 119 - vs. 16 says: I will not forget (NIV says “neglect”) your word. We read all the statistics about how poorly Christians do in their Bible reading.

Now, obviously we must respond, but God’s word does the convicting, the judging... and as 2Tim 3:16 notes, the correcting and training in righteousness. In fact, that’s where the problem sometimes comes in.

There may be some of this at work: We don’t read the word because we don’t like what we see. Not so much in the word, but in us. It reveals too much... it convicts too much, it shows us too much what we’re really like. Now, it doesn’t leave us there. God’s Word also shows us what we can become through God’s grace in Jesus Christ. But sometimes we don’t get far enough to see that, because it’s so hard to see and admit what we really are.

Someone once said:

Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them...

At the height of her fame as the other woman in the Ivana and Donald Trump breakup, Marla Maples spoke of her religious roots. She believed in the Bible, she told interviewers, then added the disclaimer, “but you can’t always take [it] literally and be happy.” C. Colson, The Body, p. 124

Consider this. The Word of God may at various times bring us joy. It may bring us peace and hope. But the primary purpose of God’s Word is not to make us happy. It’s to make us holy.

Andrew Murray wrote: The first need for Bible study is a great hunger after righteousness - a desire to do God’s will in all things.

How do we accomplish this? The more we feed ourselves on the bread of life, the more we hunger. The word is called our milk (1Pet 2:2), bread (John 6:51), meat (Heb 5:12-14), and honey (Ps 19:10) .

Do you get the connection between food and the Word? It’s our sustenance. The word gets better tasting the more we eat.

You may have heard me say this before. It’s the Lay’s potato chip principle - bet you can’t eat just one. Some of you aren’t old enough to remember that ad campaign.

The more we partake of the life-giving word of God, the more enjoyable and richer it will become to our souls. The reverse is true. The less we partake of the word, the less we desire it.

You may have also heard this story from famine relief workers. It’s surprising for famine workers to find this fact: having nothing in their stomachs for so many days, the victims felt no hunger... They had actually passed the stage of desiring food.

This is a picture of many Christians. The Bible doesn’t appeal to them anymore because they have gone without its nourishment for so long.

There’s also a need for diligence. We looked a moment ago at this passage from 2 Tim 2:15: be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.

The word workman implies work. Diligence implies discipline, study, commitment and sacrifice. We can’t be microwave Christians. I guess One-Minute Bibles are better than nothing, but not much.

And I’m not saying that you have to read a couple of hours a day, although that’s not a bad idea either.

George Mueller in A Narrative of Some of the Lord’s Dealings with George Mueller said:

It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer. The truth is that in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying. The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.

The important thing is giving God time and regularity in whatever devotion He leads us. Whatever time of day or method we choose, we must make the word a priority in our lives. Now you say, "I don’t have time."

Nonsense. We have time, and we make time, for what we feel is important and what we enjoy. We have time for what we want to do. To say I don’t have time is to say, "In the day to day of my life, it is just not important enough."

The supreme revelation of God – far greater than the revelation of Himself in nature, history or providence – is found in the sacred scriptures. Without the revelation contained in the Bible, we would be ignorant of God, His nature, will, plans, purpose; of Christ and the great doctrines of our salvation; of the Holy Spirit and His wonderful ministrations towards believers in Christ; and of our future destiny in the great eternity. At the foundation of all our spiritual knowledge, then, lies the Word of God.

William Evans

While we can be clear that the Bible doesn’t contain everything there is to know we can say with confidence that it tells us everything we need to know about our life of faith, and about God. It’s the foundation. It’s the rock on which we must build our Christian lives. And to build on something else, which is effectively what we do when we don’t regularly partake of the Word of Life, is like, as Jesus said, building our houses on sand.

The Bible is a God-given guide to sinners for their salvation, and for the life of grateful godliness to which salvation calls them; (2) the Bible is equally the church’s handbook for worship and service; (3) it is a divinely inspired unity of narrative and associated admonition, a kind of running commentary on the progress of God’s kingdom plan up to the establishing of a world-embracing, witnessing, suffering church in the decades following Christ’s ascension and the Pentecost outpouring of the Spirit; and (4) the incarnate Son of God himself, Jesus the Christ, crucified, risen, glorified, ministering, and coming again, is the Bible’s central focus, while the activities of God’s covenant people both before and after Christ’s appearing make up its ongoing story.

ESV Study Bible

What an amazing gift God has given us in His Word. What will we decide to do with this gift, today and always?

1 Peter 1:23-25 (NIV) For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.

Pray