January 5, 2003 Romans 10:17
¡§Faith comes by hearing¡¨
INTRODUCTION
A new year has begun, and with the coming of the new year, many people make new year¡¦s resolutions. One man called his parents to wish them a happy New Year. His dad answered the phone. "Well, Dad, what¡¦s your New Year¡¦s resolution?" the son asked him. "To make your mother as happy as I can all year," he answered proudly. Then the mom got on, and the son said, "What¡¦s your resolution, Mom?" "To see that your dad keeps his New Year¡¦s resolution."
Often those resolutions have something to do with losing the weight that we gained over the holidays. A woman walked into her bathroom at home. As she did, she saw her husband weighing himself on the bathroom scales, sucking in his stomach. The woman thought to herself, "He thinks that he will weigh less by sucking in his stomach." So, the woman rather sarcastically said to her husband, "That¡¦s not going to help." Her husband said, "Sure it will. It¡¦s the only way I can see the numbers."
Regardless of whether or not you have made any New Year¡¦s resolutions in some written or thought out form, I would imagine that all of you would agree that you have a desire to make 2003 better than 2002. You want to be a better parent, a better spouse, a better employee, a better son or daughter, a better Christian. Whatever area of your life that you want to improve upon, or whatever resolution you have made for this year, so long as it is a good thing, I want to give you something this morning that will empower you to achieve that goal for 2003. And surprise, surprise, it is all wrapped up in this book that I hold in my hand.
In this book are the means for improving every relationship that you have. In this book, all things being equal, are the means for you to be in better financial shape at the end of 2003 than you are right now. In this book are the means for you overcoming all those habits that seem to have a stranglehold on you right now ¡V things like smoking, overeating, alcohol, pornography or even biting your nails.
I want to take you through a 3-step process that, if followed, will enable you to become not only what you want to become in 2003, but will help you become what God wants you to be for all eternity.
Step #1 ¡V Possession of the Word ¡§the Word of God¡¨
The first step is the easy one. All the work had already been done for us.
The Word of God is the starting point. It originates with God. It belongs to God. It is God¡¦s revelation ¡V or revealing ¡V to mankind. He has revealed His character, our condition and His plan to change our condition so that we are formed to match His character, and we can be in relationship with Him. The Bible makes several important claims about itself:
„X Inspired ¡§All Scripture is given by inspiration of God¡¨ (2 Tim. 3:16)
„X Profitable ¡§and is profitable¡¨
„X Powerful ¡§sharper than any two-edged sword¡¨ (Heb. 4:12)
„X Eternal ¡§my words shall not pass away¡¨ (Matt. 24:35)
We, as a church recognize that if we are to prosper and if we are to please God, then all that we do must be built upon the truth of the Bible, God¡¦s Word. That includes when and where and how we build a building to house this body of believers. When that time comes, I want to copy the practice of a church that I heard about this week.
Several months before the church moved into their new building in, the ministry staff met at the new site for a special staff meeting. Most of the building still wasn¡¦t carpeted, and some of the rooms still had no drywall. They handed out hard hats, magic markers, and a few Bibles. The senior pastor instructed the staff members to go to the classrooms and offices in the building where they would be working and write Scripture verses on the concrete floors. He told them, ¡§Someday soon the Scriptures will be covered with carpet. But I hope you will always remember what you have written today. And what we do today will be a visible reminder that we are always to stand on God¡¦s Word.¡¨
Those in the children¡¦s ministry wrote things like, ¡§Let the little children come to me¡Kfor the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.¡¨ In the education wing, the education ministers wrote, ¡§Study to show yourself approved unto God,¡¨ and ¡§Your Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you.¡¨ In the music practice rooms, the music ministers wrote, ¡§Sing and make music unto the Lord,¡¨ and ¡§Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.¡¨ In the offices of the preaching team, they wrote passages like, ¡§Preach the Word in season and out of season,¡¨ and ¡§Watch your life and doctrine closely¡Kif you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.¡¨
The Scriptures on the floor idea caught on, and soon hundreds of church members followed suit. In a matter of weeks, there were Scriptures all over the concrete floors ¡V down hallways, on stairways, on the steps leading up to the pulpit. The senior pastor saw moms and dads bring their children to the building just to write their favorite Scriptures on the concrete floors. They actually considered asking people to stop because they started writing in places they hadn¡¦t planned to cover with carpet! But they decided it wasn¡¦t a good idea to make people quit writing Scriptures. The building became a dramatic reminder to all of them that the church has been called to stand upon the Word of God. ¡V from the experiences of Bob Russell
In verses 6-8, Paul talks about the fact that we don¡¦t have to go to all kinds of extremes to try and possess God¡¦s Word. [read it] We don¡¦t have to travel into the heavens to get it from God. Jesus already brought it down to us. (Jn. 1) We don¡¦t have to travel to the grave or the after-life (or the occult) to get it either. Jesus came back from the grave. The Word is not far from us. So the problem is not with the unavailability of the message.
For people of Paul¡¦s day, though the message had come down from God to mankind, there was an unavailability to the individual person. They didn¡¦t have access to the Bible like we do today here in the United States. That¡¦s why Paul went everywhere that He went proclaiming the message (vs. 14-15). For people of our day, there is still unavailability of the Word. Many dialects and languages still do not have the Bible in their own tongue. In other cultures, the Word is unavailable due to personal finances or the antagonism of the people or gov¡¦t toward the Bible. Tommy Williams, who is a Christian businessman in Macon, Ga. and who was with us a couple of months ago, takes a group of people with him to Russia every summer. He takes cases of Bibles with him and passes them out there. People gobble them up. They¡¦re starved for the Word of God.
If you did not possess a Bible, how much effort would your be willing to go through in order to get one?
Listen to the journey to faith in Jesus Christ of Pastor Vsevolod Lytkin from Siberia. His parents were atheistic university professors at a local university who raised their son to ¡§think for himself¡¨. During his teen years, he struggled with many spiritual questions. When the communists told him there was no god, he reasoned that there might be a God and so began a search for reading material where he might find the answers. The only books of religion available at his local library were atheistic, but they often quoted verses from the Bible to mock or refute them. His greatest discovery was a set of encyclopedias on atheism from which he copied every Bible verse by hand. It was not very long before he began to pray to God and ask Him to forgive his sins. How often do we have to WORK this hard to receive the word of the Lord?
An evangelist named Ravi Zacharias tells in one of his books about a trip he made to Vietnam in 1971 to travel the country and preach. Wherever he traveled for a month in Vietnam a Vietnamese man who translated for him accompanied him. Their preaching had good results, and they saw people respond to the Gospel. After he left Vietnam, Zacharias did not see his translator again for many years. Then, one day, in 1987, sixteen years later, he received a phone call from his translator, and he began to tell this story. After the Communists took control of the country, his translator was arrested and spent a great deal of time in prison. They tried every possible means to get him to deny his faith, all without success. He had no Bible, except for the verses he had memorized, and that helped sustain him. Then one day, he was ordered to clean the commandant¡¦s latrine. While he was cleaning, he found a piece of paper with writing on it that had been used for toilet paper. He noticed it was a page from the Bible. He put it in his pocket and took it back to his cell where he cleaned it off and used it for devotions. He found it was this passage from Romans 8, and the verses sustained him. He then volunteered to clean the commandant¡¦s latrine everyday, and discovered that he was tearing pages out of a Bible to use for toilet paper. He would take them back to his cell, carefully clean them off and use them for his devotions. He did that in order to possess the Word of God because He considered it to be of greater value than the humiliation he would have to endure in order to possess it.
We have the Word of God. We take it for granted. It sits on our shelves at home. Some of you may have even gotten new Bibles for Christmas. Both Tammy and I did. How many of you have more than one Bible at home? Out of curiosity, I counted this week to see how many Bibles were in our house. I am embarrassed to say that I counted 27 of them. That doesn¡¦t count the Bible that I have on my computer, all the verses and passages recorded in books that I have in my library or the unlimited access that I have to many different translations of the Bible on the internet. But just possessing all those Bibles doesn¡¦t make me better. It just makes me more accountable.
A minister was visiting one of his members. The lady of the house was trying to impress him about how devout she was by pointing out the large Bible on the bookshelf and talking in a very reverential way of it as "the Word of God". Her young son interrupted the conversation, "Well, if that¡¦s God¡¦s book we better send it back to him because we never read it!"
A Bible on the shelf or on the coffee table may make you look religious, but it won¡¦t change your life, and it can¡¦t reveal to you God¡¦s plan for your life. That brings us to the second step.
Step #2 ¡V Proclamation of the Word ¡§hearing¡¨
You may have a multitude of Bibles in your house, but have you taken the time to read your Bible over the last week other than during a church service?
Jerry Vines said, "An unread Bible is like food uneaten, a love letter never [opened], a buried sword, a road map unstudied, gold never mined" (A Practical Guide to Sermon Preparation, p.69). The Bible is full of powerful promises, important commands, exciting events and heart-reaching examples. But you cannot believe promises, act on commands, get encouraged by events or learn from examples that you have never heard.
Paul knew the power of God¡¦s Word. He knew what it could do in a person¡¦s life. He also knew that it could do nothing in a person¡¦s life unless that person heard the message. So he became a missionary ¡V taking the message to people in other parts of the world so that they might hear. In verse 14-15, Paul talks about the necessity of someone going with the Word in order that people might hear the message. [read verses] On Monday of this week, three of our Southern Baptist missionaries were killed in Yemen because they were taking the Word to people in order that they might hear. Their names were Bill Koehn, Kathy Garierty, and Martha Myers. Another missionary, Don Caswell was injured seriously. The brother of one of these had warned her not to go back to that country because of the threat of terrorism. She did go back because of her love for the people and her faith that the message that she brought could change their lives. It is difficult for people there to hear the message because they have to have missionaries deliver it to them and because it goes against what they have been taught.
For us, it is not difficult for us to have access to the message. Bibles are everywhere. Churches that teach the Bible abound. So why are so few willing to listen? And why do we, who say that we believe the Bible with all our heart, leave it sitting on a shelf until we need it for the next Sunday morning? Can I suggest a few reasons?
One reason is that we don¡¦t like to be confronted with what it says. A lady of society whose vision was not too clear was gazing upon an image she had never seen before in the city¡¦s art museum. "My dear fellow," she said condescendingly to the Curator, "I have never seen this painting before. I find the image shallow and rather crude in appearance. What do you call this?" The curator answered without giving the slightest expression," That madam, is a mirror." The Bible is a mirror for us. It shows us our own imperfections and all the cracks in our character. Some people stay away from the Bible because they are afraid of what they might see.
Others stay away because they have had some faulty expectations of what is supposed to happen when they read the Bible. Some seem to expect the Word of God to hit them like a jolt of adrenaline each time they read or study it. Although the "jolt" may hit us periodically, the benefits of the Word of God act more like vitamins. People who regularly take vitamins do so because of their long-term benefits, not because every time they swallow one of the pills, they feel new strength surging through their bodies. They have developed a habit of consistently taking vitamins because they have been told that, in the long haul, vitamin supplements are going to have a beneficial effect on their physical health, resistance to disease and, general well-being The same is true of reading the Bible. At times it will have a sudden and intense impact on us. However, the real value lies in the cumulative effects that long-term exposure to God¡¦s Word will bring to our lives.
Some of you just plain don¡¦t like to read. You don¡¦t enjoy it. You have a hard time pronouncing some of those words. Your brain wanders.
Of all the reasons that people might give for not reading the Bible, for most of us, time is the biggest hindrance. Someone who must have had a real time crunch decided to condense the Bible into 50 words. "God made, Adam bit, Noah built, Abraham split, Joseph ruled, Jacob fooled, bush talked, Moses balked, Pharaoh plagued, people walked, sea divided, tablets guided, promise landed, Saul freaked, David peeked, prophets warned, Jesus born, God walked, Love talked, anger crucified, hope died, Love rose, Spirit flamed, Word spread, God remained." -- Author unknown. The Bible is a big book, and it does take time to sit down and read it especially if your desire is to really understand it and let it impact your life. You¡¦ve got so many things going on in your life that to fit one more thing in is just an impossibility. The prophet in me would deal with your excuse this way. If you¡¦re too busy to read the Bible, then you are too busy. Something has got to go. After all, what¡¦s more important ¡V that thing that you¡¦ve got to do in a temporary, changing world or reading God¡¦s eternal world that can change you forever? But instead of dealing with the problem that way, let¡¦s start from where you are. Each of you said you have a Bible, so that is not the problem. The problem begins at the hearing step. That¡¦s where you need to decide to make a change. What if you could hear the message of the Bible, and it didn¡¦t take up any more time than you are already using in your day? What if there was a way that you could take advantage of time that you already spend on mundane chores and use that time for your exposure to God¡¦s truth? Time that you spend going to work each morning, or doing the laundry or fixing dinner?
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a ministry called ¡§Faith comes by hearing¡¨. This ministry produces audio versions of the Bible on tape and CD. Each of you should have received in your bulletin a card listing the different audio options that are available. Think about the opportunity for a minute. Every morning, when you¡¦re in your car, instead of listening to a talk show, the news or music that may or may not be honoring to the Lord, you can be listening to the Bible. Or as you put your children to sleep at night ¡V instead of playing them a lullaby or leaving the TV on so that they can get to sleep, put a tape or CD into the player for them to listen to. The options are endless. I¡¦m not suggesting that you listen exclusively to the Bible in your car or wherever you would normally listen to the radio although that would not be a bad idea. I am suggesting that you be willing to listen to the Bible for 19 minutes a day for 60 days beginning Sunday, January 26. If you follow that plan consistently, you will have listened to the entire New Testament before Easter Sunday. This is something that I would like for the entire church to participate in ¡V adults, children, everyone. Some of you may already have a NT on tape or CD. If you do, just use that one. You don¡¦t need a new one. At the conclusion of the message today, I¡¦m going to ask you to make a decision to join me in committing your family to spending 19 minutes a day listening to the truth of the Bible.
But why should you? What will it do for you?
Step #3 ¡V Persuasion by the Word ¡§faith¡¨
1. Building faith is possible.
Paul could make this claim about hearing producing faith because he had seen it happen so many times as people listened to him proclaim the message (talk about different cities that Paul had gone to and the results that he saw). Paul himself had been radically changed through the hearing of the message.
„X Faith to believe in Jesus. This was the message that Paul first proclaimed so that people could hear (vs. 9-10).
Ramad was an Indian man who was a member of a gang of robbers. On one occasion, while burglarizing a house, Ramad noticed a small black book containing very thin pages just right for making cigarettes. So he took it. Each evening he tore out a page rolled it around some tobacco and had a smoke. Noticing that the small words on the pages were in his language, he began to read them before rolling his cigarettes. One evening after reading a page, he knelt on the ground and asked the Lord Jesus to forgive his sins and to save him. He then turned himself in to the police, much to their amazement. Ramad the bandit became a follower of Jesus Christ. And in the prison where he served his sentence for his crimes, he led many others to the Savior. The Word of God became to Ramad "the power of God to salvation." Romans 1:17-18 - Peter V. Deison, in his book The Priority of Knowing God
Many years ago, something unusual happened in a Moscow theater that illustrates the convicting and transforming power of the Bible. Matinee idol, Alexander Rostovzev was converted while playing the role of Jesus in a sacrilegious play entitled, ¡§Christ In A Tuxedo.¡¨ He was supposed to read two verses from the Sermon of the Mount, remove his gown, and cry out, ¡§Give me my tuxedo and top hat!¡¨ But as he read the words, ¡§Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted...¡¨ He began to tremble. Instead of following the script, he kept reading from Matthew 5, ignoring the coughs, calls, and foot stomping of his fellow actors. Finally, recalling a verse he had learned in his childhood in church, he cried, ¡§Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.¡¨ Before the curtain could be lowered, Rostovzev had prayed to receive Christ as his personal Savior. - Why Christians Sin, J. K. Johnston, Discovery House, 1992, p. 121
Michael Billester once gave a Bible to a humble villager in eastern Poland. Returning a few years later, he learned that 200 people had become believers through the use of that one Bible. When this group of believers gathered to hear him preach, he suggested that before he spoke he would like each person to quote some verses of Scripture. One man rose and said, ¡§Perhaps, Brother, we¡¦ve misunderstood you. Did you mean verses or chapters?¡¨ Billester was astonished. ¡§Are you saying there are people here who could recite complete chapters of the Bible?¡¨ That was precisely the case. In fact, 13 of them knew half of Genesis and the books of Matthew and Luke. Another had committed all of the Psalms to memory. Combined, these 200 people knew virtually the entire Bible by memory. - E. Schuyler English, the Net 153 Christian Magazine.
I encourage you to bring your unsaved friends because I know that there is power in the spoken message of God ¡V there is power to instill faith and change lives. They can¡¦t come to faith if they never are in a place where they can hear.
„X Faith to believe that you can be a stronger Christian in 2003 than you were in 2002.
How can your faith help but grow when you hear the stories of all that God has done in the past?! ¡V stories about Daniel in the Lion¡¦s Den, and David defeating Goliath, and Jesus rising from the grave. Or when you hear the stories of what God is doing right now. In my hand, I hold the annual report of the IMB. It tells me that due to the work of our overseas missionaries, 5775 new churches were started in 2001 and that 395,773 people were baptized. It¡¦s hard for me to get excited about statistics and numbers. But when I realize that each of those numbers points to the existence of a new church where people can come and hear the Word of God and have the opportunity to respond in faith ¡V I can get excited about that! And when you think that each of those numbers represents someone who was on their way to hell but heard the Word, responded in faith, got saved and baptized and is now on their way to heaven ¡V I can get excited about that too!
The more that you are present ¡V the more that you hear from God¡¦s Word ¡V the stronger your faith becomes. That¡¦s why it is so important that as much as is possible, you allow nothing to hinder you from being present each and every Sunday morning. That¡¦s why I consider it a big deal when you miss even one Sunday of being in church.
„X Faith to believe that you can impact your neighborhood, family or job for Christ in 2003.
„X Faith to believe that you can do whatever God calls you to do in 2003.
2. Building faith is not automatic.
Hearing or being exposed to Scripture will not always produce faith. (vs. 18 ¡V Israel heard and understood the message but did not respond in faith) But faith will never be produced if there is no exposure to the Word. We have a generation of children growing up, many of whom have never been under the teaching of God¡¦s Word even once.
3. Building faith is not up to you. It is God¡¦s work.
4. Building faith is necessary in order to please God.
Hearing is not enough. James 1:22 ¡V ¡§Be ye doers¡K¡¨; Mt. 7:24-27 ¡V ¡§¡Khears these words of mine and puts them into practice¡K¡¨ Having a Bible is not enough. Hearing the Bible is not enough. Acting on the Bible is what is required. And to act on the Bible requires faith.
CONCLUSION
A boy told his father, "Dad, if three frogs were sitting on a limb that hung over a pool, and one frog decided to jump off into the pool, how many frogs would be left on the limb?" The dad replied, "Two." "No," the son replied. There¡¦s three frogs and one decides to jump, how many are left?" The dad said, "Oh, I get it, if one decides to jump, the others would too. So there are none left." The boy said, "No dad, the answer is three. The frog only DECIDED to jump." Does that sound like last year¡¦s resolution? Great inspiration and great resolutions, but often times we only decide, and months later we are still on the same limb of do-nothing. - SOURCE: http://irsweb.com/ Citation: Help4Sunday, January, 1999.
INVITATION
You¡¦ve made resolutions before, and you never kept them. That¡¦s why you didn¡¦t make any this year. You figured that there is no use. You will always be the same. But you can be different. You can be changed. And it starts with the Bible. This morning, I am asking you to make a decision. I am asking you to join me in committing yourself and your family to listening to the Bible for 19 minutes every day for the next 60 days using an audio Bible that you presently have or one that you are willing to purchase. If you don¡¦t have the money and want to participate, you let me know, and we¡¦ll get you one. How many of you would join me in making that decision this morning? Let me see your hands.
Now, I want you to do more than just make a decision. I want you to join me here at the front of the church with that card that was in your bulletin. The primary reason that most people never follow through on the decisions that they make is that they never told anyone about their decision. So this morning, I want you to make public your decision. In so doing, you will be an encouragement to someone else to make that same decision. Put yourself in a place where you can hear the Bible on a regular basis and allow God to change your life through it.
