The Power Of The Word

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.