This morning, our topic is the power of the Word in our lives, the power of this book and everything that is contained between its covers. So let’s just pause for a moment to consider what a treasure trove we have in these pages.
First, we have narratives, or stories. Not fanciful, imaginary stories, but history. The story of how the world and the entire universe came into existence by the Word of God. Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and being cast out of Eden. Noah and the ark being saved from a global flood. The Tower of Babel. We have the story of how God miraculously delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, through the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. God giving Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. David the Shepherd boy using a slingshot and five stones to kill the giant, Goliath. Samson destroying the Philistine temple with his bare hands. Joshua bringing down the city walls of Jericho with only the sound of a trumpet blast. In the New Testament, we have the narratives of our Lord’s virgin birth, with the angels, and the shepherds and the wise men. We have his miracles—turning water into wine, walking on water, giving sight to the blind, feeding five thousand people with only a few loaves and fishes. And then his tragic crucifixion and glorious resurrection. All the stories which have shaped our culture and our civilization, stories which have fired the imaginations of artists, and poets, and playwrights, and composers, and authors for over two thousand years—all of that is in here.
And not only stories. We have poetry and songs in the Psalms. Wisdom in Proverbs. Prophecy. Letters from the apostles to the early church which tell us how to lead our lives as his disciples. And finally, the book of Revelation, which uses wild, allegorical imagery to give us a picture of what is to come in the future.
I’m reminding you of all this because I think that sometimes we take for granted what incredible riches we have in this book, a treasure which most people throughout human history have not possessed, and which many do not have even today. Until Gutenberg’s printing press in the fifteenth century, all Bibles were hand copied, by highly trained scribes or monks, and they were very expensive. It might take two or three years to produce a single copy of the Bible, and only very wealthy people or royalty could afford one. The Gutenberg Bible, by the way, was in Latin, not English. Because translating the Bible into the language of the common people, rather than the Latin of the educated priesthood, was punishable by death. William Tyndale was strangled, and then his body was burned at the stake, for the crime of translating the Bible into English. Church authorities didn’t want ordinary people reading the Bible for themselves; they wanted them dependent on the experts to tell them what it said and what it meant.
It took centuries for the Bible to be translated into many of the world’s languages; in fact, even today, the Wycliffe Bible Translators organization tells us there are over three thousand languages in the world which have no Scriptures at all. People who can only hear God’s Word in a foreign tongue. And yet, you or I can walk into Barnes & Noble, or go to Amazon.com, and we can have all of this for a few dollars, for the price of a Venti mocha latte at Starbucks.
And the question is why. Why did people spend their lives laboriously hand-copying the words in this book, letter by letter, for centuries? Why did they risk imprisonment and death to translate it into a language that ordinary people could read? Why, today, do people leave their homes and families and travel to remote parts of the world, and spend years learning the languages of villagers in Africa, or tribes in Papua New Guinea, so that they can translate the Bible into their native tongues? Why do people risk everything to bring the Bible into countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran, where it is forbidden? Why? Because of its power.
Listen to what Paul writes in Second Corinthians 10:4-5:
4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
This book has the power to demolish strongholds. It has the power to overcome everything which is contrary to the knowledge of God. Including religions which worship false deities. Including political philosophies built on lies and tyranny. Including social movements which deny the reality of human nature, and which contradict God’s creation. The Bible has the power to overcome every kind of falsehood, or error. It has that power in the world, at the scale of nations, and civilizations. It has that power in cities and towns, and families. And it has that same power in individuals. Which is where I’d like to focus today. Because families and nations are made up of individuals. That’s where we need to start. So let’s look at the power that God’s Word has in our lives, power to change and transform us.
The Bible tells us that it is God’s intention to reshape us spiritually into the image of Christ. Paul writes this, in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
We all are being transformed into the image of Christ. Every one of us here this morning who is a follower of Christ is in the process of being remade, spiritually, into Christ’s image. God is making us like him—in our character, in our thinking, in our desires, in our thoughts, and in our conduct. And one of the most important ways that God is doing that is through his Word. Here is what the author of Hebrews tells us:
“12 For the word of God is alive 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. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:12-13)
This is what makes the Bible different from every other book. “The word of God is alive and active”. What does that mean? What does it mean to say that the Bible is “alive”? It means that it isn’t lifeless or inert. It isn’t an inanimate object, just words laying there on the page, just paper and ink. No, God’s Word has life and energy. And its energy is innate; in other words, it has power within itself. It doesn’t receive its power from you or I, or from any group of people, or from any source other than God. Its power comes from within itself.
And therefore, God’s Word acts. It acts upon us. It acts upon people, and situations. It does things, on its own, independently of us. We don’t control what it will do, or what it will accomplish. It isn’t guided or directed by us; it is guided and directed by the Holy Spirit, and it will accomplish his purposes, not ours. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah wrote about God’s Word:
10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
(Isaiah 55:10-11)
Here we see at least two things. First, that God’s Word will always accomplish his purposes. Once it goes out; once it is proclaimed, and taught, and printed, and preached, it never fails. It has a power that cannot be successfully resisted, and which will not be denied. It will accomplish God’s purposes. That’s a promise. And second, God’s Word is carrying out his purposes, not ours. It does what God wants, not necessarily what we want. On Sunday mornings, I stand up here and preach the Word. I do my best to explain what it means, and to explore how we should bring our lives into agreement with its teachings. But I don’t determine the effect that the Word has on you, and on your life. That’s not under my control; it’s under the Holy Spirit’s control. And so from my perspective, the effect of these sermons is unpredictable. Because the Holy Spirit will do what he will do with his Word. And that’s amazing, and encouraging, and exciting, but also a bit unsettling.
By the same token, every time you open the Scriptures, every time you read a chapter, or a paragraph, or a single verse, you are submitting yourself to the changes that the Holy Spirit wants to make in your life. Because the word is “living and active”; it has an inherent power, an innate energy. From our perspective, it’s more like a wild animal than a tame pet, it’s more like a tiger than a housecat. As soon as we invite the Word into our hearts and minds, it begins powerfully to act upon us. It begins to change us, to mold us and shape us. And that feels a bit risky. Because we can’t predict what, exactly, those changes will be.
All we know is that God intends to make us more and more like Jesus Christ. And so, when we engage with the Word—when we read it, when we think about it, when we study it, when we discuss it with others—we have to be willing to allow God to do what he desires in us, by the power of His Word. And so I ask you: Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to allow God’s Word to make the changes in you that he deems good and necessary?
As we go through life, we experience many different things. Highs, lows, victories, defeats, joys and sorrows. But it’s not only what we go through that shapes us. It’s how we think about our experiences; the stories we tell ourselves, the internal narratives we write about our lives. And that’s why we need the Bible, so that we can understand and interpret our experiences from God’s perspective; so that we can draw the appropriate lessons from what we have gone through. Otherwise, we will interpret our life experiences according to the world’s perspective rather than God’s.
Let’s look at those verses again:
“12 For the word of God is alive 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. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:12-13)
The Word of God “penetrates”. Like the sharpest sword ever forged, it penetrates deep into the hidden places of our mind, the concealed recesses of our heart. The places that only we know about, even places that perhaps we’re not aware of ourselves. Nothing is hidden before God, and before his Word. “Everything is uncovered and laid bare”. And so God’s Word exposes us. It slices right through our defenses. All of our protective armor, all of the ways in which we harden ourselves, all of the walls we put up, the false fronts, the masks—they don’t work against God and against his Word. It passes right through them.
But here’s the key point for us to understand. When God’s Word is at work on us, it isn’t the sword of an enemy. It’s a scalpel in the hands of a loving, skillful surgeon, who cutting out the dead and diseased tissue. It isn’t harming us; not at all. On the contrary, it is cutting out what is corrupted, or sick, or sinful and which needs to be removed. It is cutting out fear. It is cutting out pride. It is cutting out malice. It is cutting out regret and bitterness. It is cutting out worldly values. It is cutting out envy. In other words, it is cutting away, and removing, everything in us that is unlike Christ.
There’s a story told about the great sculptor Michelangelo, who was asked how he created his masterpiece, the statue of David. His answer was that he first envisioned David in the block of marble, and then he gradually chipped away everything that wasn’t David. Easier said than done, I think. But God is doing the same to us. He sees Christ in us, and he is chipping away, and carving out, everything that is unlike Christ. It’s a lifelong process. But even though we know that it is our loving Father who is performing the surgery, it’s still uncomfortable, and sometimes painful. And our tendency is to resist it. Even though we know that God will cut away only what is necessary. Even though we know that the result will be health, and strength, and freedom from the disease of sin.
C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, writes about the resistance which we sometimes put up when God begins to change us:
“Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life? Well suppose you could really have brought them to life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoiled He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it.”
Just as a little toy soldier would resist being turned into a flesh-and-blood human being, and would fight to keep itself made of tin, so our own sinful flesh will often resist the change that God is making in us, to transform us into fully-formed sons and daughters of God. But that spiritual surgery is necessary. And it is being carried out by means of the powerful Word of God. No matter how deeply embedded sin may be in our hearts, the Word of God will find it and cut it out, so that it can no longer make us spiritually weak or sick.
Listen to what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:
9 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. (Psalm 119:9-11)
Here, the Psalmist states that he seeks God with all of his heart. He desires to live a holy life, walking in purity and obedience to God. I hope that’s your desire as well. And so, how can he accomplish this? How can he, and how can we, live in obedience to God and avoid sinning against him? By exerting our willpower? By making resolutions? By punishing and shaming ourselves whenever we fail? No. In order to live a holy life, we need to make sure that God’s Word is in our minds, and in our hearts. If there are areas of our life where sin is dominating us; where sin is controlling our thoughts, and our words, and our actions, then we need more of God’s Word in our minds and hearts. We need more of its power to fight sin.
John Bunyan, the author of the classic Christian book Pilgrim’s Progress, wrote in the cover of his Bible, “Either this book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.” And that’s very true. Having the Scriptures in our heart, reading them and thinking about them, will help to protect us against temptation. It will warn us when we are about to step off the path. It will convict us of sin, and prompt us to repent and turn away from it. The Word of God is powerful, living and active. And it can powerfully protect us from the temptations that Satan puts in our path. But on the other hand, if someone knows that what they are doing is not pleasing to God, they will avoid reading the Bible. They will avoid hearing the Bible preached. Because they know that the Word of God will challenge them to forsake their sin, and they don’t want to do that.
But not only does the Word of God protect us from temptation and purify our hearts, it also nourishes and strengthens us. Here is another Psalm, Psalm 1:
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3)
The person who delights in the Scriptures, and who meditates on them—the person who makes it a practice to think about them, who considers the meaning of what they read in the Bible and how they should respond to it—that person will be refreshed, and healthy, and fruitful. And so, if you are feeling spiritually dry, or weak, or unfruitful, open your Bible. Read it. Think about it. Think about what it means, and how you can put it into practice. Because a person who regularly fills their mind and heart with the Scriptures will enjoy spiritual health and fruitfulness, like a tree planted on the banks of a stream.
And again, as the Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:28,
28 My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.
When we are tired and weary; emotionally and spiritually, when we need to be refreshed and encouraged, when we feel that we are close to the breaking point and we need more of God’s strength, we can look to God’s Word to provide what we need.
Finally, there’s one more power the Word has that I’d like to mention, and that is the power to convert. The power to open someone’s eyes to the truth of the gospel. The power to draw them to Christ. Because Jesus tells us, in the gospel of John 6:65, that no one can come to him unless they are drawn to him by the Father. No one can come to Christ unless the Father has enabled them to do so. No one has the power to convert themselves. No one has the power to give themselves sight, or to bring themselves from death to life. They need the power of God to make that happen. And that power is contained in his Word. As Paul writes in Romans 10:14-17:
“14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:14-15, 17; ESV)
How this happens, we don’t know. How it is that the Word of God, being read or heard by an unconverted person, somehow works upon their mind, their heart, their soul, so that they come to see what formerly they were blind to; so that they come to understand what previously made no sense to them; so that they come to embrace the truth that in times past they had rejected—it’s all a mystery. It’s a supernatural process, something which the Holy Spirit accomplishes. But what we do know is that it requires the power of God’s Word. And so if we are going to see our friends and family members converted, we need to share with them God’s Word. We need to share with them the good news of forgiveness of sins and eternal life through faith in Christ, as revealed in his Word.
I would like to close by giving you something practical; a way to get these powerful Scriptures into your life. There are many ways to do that. You can memorize verses that are meaningful to you. You can read through the Bible in a year. You can come to church, and hear the Word being taught. You can listen to preachers on the radio, or on podcasts. You can attend a Bible study group. And I endorse all of those. But if you need a place to start; or if it’s been a while since you’ve been consistent in reading the Bible, I have a foolproof Bible reading plan. Here it is. “Read the Bible today”. That’s it. That’s the plan. Step one: Is it today? If so, then Step two: read the Bible. Now, you may have questions:
• How much should I read? As much as you have time for. If you have time to read a chapter, do that. If you only have time to read a paragraph, do that. If you can only read a single verse, read one verse. Just read the Bible. Today.
• What part of the Bible should I read? Anywhere you like. Many people find it helpful to read sequentially through a book, like the Psalms, or the gospel of John, but you don’t have to do that. You can just open the Bible and read. Today.
• What if I didn’t read the Bible yesterday? That’s the beauty of this plan. It doesn’t matter. The plan is to read the Bible today, not yesterday or tomorrow. So read the Bible today.
This is a plan that anyone can follow. So let’s read the Bible, today and every day. Because the Bible, God’s Word, has the power to change us, to keep us from sin, to refresh our spirits, and to build us up and strengthen us in faith.
