The Word Of God

[00:00:01] Hello and welcome to Tal Paul's Preaching. This ninth sermon focuses on the word of God and does not have a main scripture reference. This sermon was recorded on October 14, 2018 and is of course titled the Word of God. [00:00:23] Let's take some prayer requests. The mighty Lord, He. He so wants us to cry out to him and rely on him and he is willing and able. So who's got a prayer request? [00:00:41] All right. [00:00:42] Heavenly Father, you are so incredible, so awesome. Lord, your power and your love, your healing and your caring is. Is overwhelming. [00:00:57] And we cry out to you, Lord, down here we're hurting sometimes. And so, Lord, we seek and we claim your promise of the Holy Spirit that you would give that to us and it would teach and comfort and guide. And as we open up your word, Lord, let the Holy Spirit settle in our hearts and plant in our hearts that which, what you want us to know. Lord, we pray all of this in Jesus name. [00:01:33] Amen. [00:01:36] Well, we are going to be talking about something amazing today. [00:01:42] Today we're going to be examining the Bible, or more specifically, the word of God. [00:01:49] Why is the Bible so important? Well, traditionally in ancient cultures, the transmission of their culture and ideas was all transmitted by word of mouth. [00:02:03] They would explain legends and heroes or why they came to live there, or why that mountain is up there, or why they dress or do things in their culture. It was all passed down by word of mouth. And we don't have too far back to look at the Native Americans who Even in the 1900s, still, their language was all verbal. It wasn't written down, it was by word of mouth. [00:02:31] Now, Israel was unique in its culture to have everything written, especially for in the day which they lived, the other people, the other cultures, it was all word of mouth. [00:02:45] And Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible 3,700 years ago, or roughly, that's a long time, thousands of years ago, it was important to God that it be written and not just verbal, the Ten Commandments. You'll note God didn't just say, hey, Moses, go tell the people these most important top 10 commandments. No, God himself wrote it by his own hand into tablets of stone. [00:03:21] Now, Moses, he misrepresented God when he struck the rock again to have water flow forth instead of just speaking to the rock. [00:03:33] And God said, I wasn't angry at the people, but you made the people think that I was angry at them by your actions. [00:03:42] And so he wasn't able to enter into the promised land. [00:03:47] Now, when they entered into the Promised land, God told them, when your Children ask, hey, why can't we have leaven this week? Why do we have this lamb living with us? And why do we have to live outside under these tents? You know, they were to explain the ways of God and the reason for the Passover and Israel. Didn't they stopped doing that? They stopped transmitting that culture by word of mouth. And they fell away from the Lord. And we are fickle, but God is not like us. Praise the Lord. God's ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. He knows we are prone to wander. And his writing his ways down for us is what we need. See, God's Word is the truth. [00:04:44] And the truth can be hard to face. [00:04:48] Our ways are generally the easy way out. And for us to go to our neighbor who has offended us and seek forgiveness, seek reconciliation, that is hard. And that is hard. We want to gossip about it. We want to say, hey, I was right about that boy. [00:05:09] Or our ways are to stuff it, to ignore, to be silent or to shout out in our pride. [00:05:20] I mean, you want me to love my enemy? Are you crazy? [00:05:25] Who would come up with that? God would. That's God. [00:05:31] See, the kind of things that we would pass on verbally are the things that would make us feel good or tickle our ears. [00:05:40] The Word is precious, and we kind of forget that we take it for granted. In the book of Nehemiah, this is after they were carried away to Babylon. They'd forgotten God's Word. They rejected God's Word and just living the way they wanted to. And they returned to the land and they found the Word of God again. [00:06:05] And In Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 9, it says, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. [00:06:15] They were so sorrowful that they had drifted away from God's Word. [00:06:21] Today we are blessed. God's Word is everywhere. I've got it in my hands. It's in your laps and on your chairs. [00:06:32] Here in the usa, we can take it with us. We can read it. We can stand up and preach to a crowd where in other cultures and other places in the world, you can be thrown into jail for having a Bible or even put to death. [00:06:52] And with the advent of printing and the conversion of the Bible into all these languages, it's gone throughout the earth. It's across the globe. God's Word everywhere. Especially when you consider in this digital age, you can download it, get it online, and then you think, there's all these helps out there. There's commentaries and study guides and even sermons. You can listen to a sermon online. [00:07:24] There's no excuse today for not reading and studying and knowing God's Word. [00:07:31] And when we study the Bible, it will go as deep as you go. [00:07:37] You're never going to exhaust the Bible. [00:07:41] You'll never master it. I mean, it's as big as God will be ever learning. [00:07:47] Isaiah 55:11 says, so my word that goes forth out of my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. [00:08:05] God's Word is important to God. [00:08:10] God wouldn't be the almighty and powerful God he is if he was not able to preserve his Word through the thousands of years. [00:08:20] And God supernaturally preserved his word. [00:08:24] He chose Hebrew and Greek. The Old Testament is Hebrew and the New Testament is Greek. And they're very unique and precise languages. Both of those languages. [00:08:36] Each word has a numerical value. [00:08:39] And so when they would copy it, they would basically play Sudoku. They would have the words and columns and rows and you could add up the add up the rows and add up the columns. And if they didn't match what they were copying, they would just burn it. They wouldn't try and figure out where they went wrong. They would just get rid of it. [00:09:00] The Bible can be proven that it's the unfailing Word of God. [00:09:07] Many have set out to disprove the Bible and they've come to realize it is God's Word and his prophecies have been fulfilled. God spoke hundreds and thousands of years before it happened. [00:09:24] There's hidden meanings and things when you dive into it that all show that only God who's outside of time could have spoken this word. [00:09:39] So we should have faith. If we're doubting, we can verify, we can check for ourselves. Our God will withstand the scrutiny of his Word. It is tried and true. [00:09:52] And the Bible is attacked because many don't want to hear the word of God. Because when you've heard the Word, you have a choice to make. You can obey or disobey. [00:10:06] You can act or not act. And you can believe or not believe. [00:10:11] And from the beginning, Satan has attacked God's word. We look at the Garden of Eden there with Eve and Satan said, did God really say that? [00:10:24] When that didn't work, he went to slander the meaning of what God said. Did God really mean, you won't die, you surely won't die? God knows that you're going to become just like him. [00:10:41] Oh, if only Adam had written it down and stuck it on the fridge, you know, put a sign right in front of the tree reminding. [00:10:52] And you'll notice that Eve, she even changed the word of God. She embellished or modified and, and forgot it. And she said, oh, if I touch it, I will die. Well, Satan had her right there because he could put that doubt into her mind of what God had done by simply having her touch it. God said, if you eat of the tree, surely you will die. And she added, if I touch it. Well, all she had to do was pluck the fruit. And Satan says, see? [00:11:26] And there was doubt in God's Word. [00:11:29] But God's Word contains everything we need to know about God and life. [00:11:36] It reveals God himself, his character, his attributes, how he's loving and graceful and powerful. It's all in there. It teaches us how we should view the world, our morality and our standards. [00:11:54] It's in the Bible. [00:11:57] God's Word is the foundation on which we build our lives and grow. [00:12:03] Now the Bible is full of scriptures. I mean, I could spend all day reading scriptures that talks about itself, talks about the Word. [00:12:14] And I'll just highlight some of the most well known or some of my favorites here, and I'm sure you'll all know these when I say them. [00:12:24] Psalm 119:105 says, you, word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. [00:12:32] Psalm 119:160 says, Your word is true from the beginning, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever. [00:12:42] The gospel of John 17:17 says, Sanctify them through your truth. Your word is truth. [00:12:51] Romans 10:17. [00:12:53] So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. [00:13:00] Psalm 33, 4 says, for the word of the Lord is right, and all his works are done in truth. Proverbs 35 says, Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. [00:13:16] And Luke 4:4. And Jesus answered him, saying, it is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. [00:13:26] Even in the parable of the four soils, the seed that is being sown is the Word of God, and the soil that is planted is the heart. [00:13:37] And Matthew 13:23 says this. But he that receives the seed into good ground is he that hears the word and understands it, which also bears fruit and brings forth some a hundredfold, some 60 and some 30. [00:13:53] The word of God is also spoken of as a sword. [00:13:59] In fact, when it's talking about the armor of God, it says Ephesians 6:17 and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. [00:14:12] And Hebrews 4:12 says, for the word of God is quick and alive and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart. [00:14:31] Matthew 5:18 says, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, not one yacht or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till it all be fulfilled. [00:14:43] The Word of God. It is so simple to understand, but it's difficult to practice. [00:14:50] We can comprehend it easily, but when we go to practice it and put it into execution, it can be difficult. [00:15:01] Why should we do what the Word says? [00:15:05] Well, it says, if you love me, obey me. [00:15:09] We do it for the love and we also do it because we represent God here on earth. We are the salt and the light. [00:15:19] The world can spot the fake Christians, they can't spot their own deception. That is why it is called deception. They are blinded to the word when it applies to them. But oh man, if we step out of line, they are quick to be become biblical experts. All of a sudden they are pointing out, oh, you shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have done that. [00:15:45] And they will jump on you calling you a hypocrite. [00:15:50] That is often what we are. [00:15:53] In that case we should ask forgiveness, explain to them our God and his grace and forgiveness and show them how to repent. [00:16:04] And being an example to them, it is actually much, much harder or more devastating I should say, when a person says nothing, when you step out of line and goes away thinking Christianity is a farce, it is a lie. [00:16:21] We don't want to give any occasion to them to blaspheme our God or denigrate the Christian faith. So we need to live the word of God out in our lives and be that salt and light. [00:16:36] Luke 11:28 says, Jesus said, yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. [00:16:45] Now Jesus is the Word incarnate. He became flesh and blood and living breathing word of God. [00:16:56] Now there was a drought for many years before Jesus came on the scene. And Jesus spoke. He became the voice of God to us. [00:17:11] John 14:24 Jesus said, He that doesn't love me doesn't keep my sayings. And the word which you hear is not mine, but it's the Father's which sent me. [00:17:26] Now I've kind of married John in 1 John. The gospel of John chapter 1 and 1 John 1 just plainly explain how God, Jesus is the Word of God. [00:17:42] And so I've kind of married the verses so you won't be able to follow along. But. But first John and John say, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled the Word of life. [00:18:01] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same in the beginning was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth in him was life. [00:18:28] For the life was manifested, and we have seen it and bear witness and show it unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifested unto us that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you that you may also have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. [00:18:50] This then is the message which we have heard of him and declared unto you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And the life was the light of men, and that was the true life which enlightens every man that comes into the world. But if we walk in the light as he is in light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanses us from all sins. [00:19:15] And these sayings we write unto you that your joy may be full. [00:19:20] Now, the Bible instructs us to consume the Word. [00:19:26] We don't want to just read and have it tasty like honey on our lips. The Bible in Revelation and Isaiah and Ezekiel talks about it's honey on the lips and bitter in the belly. We don't want to just let it go through our head just by reading it, because we're supposed to read it. We need to consume it, to think on it, to meditate on it, to digest the Word. [00:19:52] I mean, love your enemy. Isn't that nice? [00:19:58] What a pretty thought, right? I mean, we can just dismiss that as a fanciful notion, but when you try and practice that and you pray for your enemy, that's where the rubber hits the road. [00:20:15] We can read, the Lord is my shepherd. But what does that really mean? What does it mean to have a shepherd? It means I can't just go where I want to go, right? I'm going to have to follow this shepherd and thank God, we have a good shepherd who will lead us by still waters and green pastures. And when you just think on it and meditate on it, instead of just, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. [00:20:48] We want to digest it. [00:20:51] We should be purposeful. [00:20:53] We should pray. When we're going to read the Word of God, we can open with prayer, say, lord, teach me what you want me to know. Let me hear what you want me to hear. [00:21:08] How do you get full when you're eating? [00:21:12] Or as someone once said, how does someone get drunk? [00:21:17] They don't stop drinking. [00:21:21] How do you get full? You don't stop reading the Word of God. [00:21:27] And there's many ways to do that. There's Bible in a Year programs. You can get a Bible that has every day of the year and the Scriptures that you should read for that day. [00:21:41] So many Bible in a Year programs. You can pick a book of the year of the Bible, like the Gospel of Mark, with lots of dialogue of Jesus, the red letters, and just kind of go through that. Or a short book like the Book of Ruth. [00:21:58] Such meaning and wonders inside the Word. [00:22:03] There's even Bible apps and programs that will read the Bible to you on your phone. [00:22:13] There's another way, and this is the way that I was taught, and that's you read the Psalms and the Proverbs every month. [00:22:22] There's 31 proverbs, so obviously 31 days in a month, you read chapter one on the first and so on, and there's 150 Psalms. So if you read five Psalms a day, you'll read the Psalms and the Proverbs every. Every month. So you start today is the 14th. [00:22:44] So you'd read Psalm 14 and then you add 30. So you'd read Psalm 44 and then 74 and then 104 and up to the 5th and 134, and then there's only 150. So you're not going to find 164 in the Bible. [00:23:07] So that's a way that you can read the Psalms and the Proverbs each month. Now, the Psalms, they cover every emotion, every mood. Each day you'll wake up, you'll be different. [00:23:21] And you could read that Psalm and it might speak to you and it might not. [00:23:27] It's the Spirit that teaches. And there's no new mood or feeling that we feel today that David didn't, who wrote a lot of the Psalms. [00:23:39] The problems that we face, the situations we're in when we're having someone come against us or whatever it is, it's not new. They've experienced it and written it down for us. We're all in the Bible and we should find ourselves in it. And some psalms might speak to you. Sometimes you'll be like, eh, you know, but sometimes it'll be like you'll be in the same mood. You're like, yeah, knock their teeth out, Lord, or woe was me or God is good. [00:24:12] And so the proverbs, that's wisdom. That's how to live. [00:24:17] And there's. It's Solomon writing to his son and he presents the world as. As the adulterous woman and you don't want to go there. [00:24:27] He presents wisdom as a woman and she has eternal life, which is God. [00:24:37] It's God's instruction manual. Boy, don't we wish we had a manual for our spouses? Or even when something breaks down? Man, I wish I knew how this remote worked. Right, you just want a manual. Well, that's the manual. The Bible is our manual for God. [00:24:56] It's what God loves, what God hates, and it's how to grow and have a better life with God in us. But it's much more than that. In it, the scriptures are the words of life. God is in there and it's for all. It's not just for pastors, this word, or teachers. We're all learners. [00:25:22] It's not secret, it's not hidden, it's not hard. It's just laid out plain for people like you and me. [00:25:31] James puts it this way, James 1:5. [00:25:35] If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that gives to all men liberally and turns not away, and it shall be given him. [00:25:43] It's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches God did all the work on the cross. He sent his only son. He's not going to just leave there. [00:25:55] God gave us his word, not going to just leave us floundering without instruction. He's instructing us. [00:26:04] The Holy Spirit is amazing. You could read the same passage every day. And every day the Holy Spirit can teach you something different. You'll be in a different spot or a different place and God will touch your heart in a different way. The Holy Spirit interprets and teaches us. It's like a code for God's enemies. Oh, someone went out and planted some seed. But to us it's the bread of life. It reveals the truth and it feeds us. [00:26:36] So let the Holy Spirit teach. [00:26:39] Drop your preconceived notions. [00:26:43] Oftentimes we can read the Bible and we're just trying to get what we want out of it to prove our point. [00:26:51] That's how we end up sowing divisions within the body of God when we only take what we want. You see, we could say God is a. As a chicken. And you're like, what? Well, it says he wants to cover us with his feathers like a hen. [00:27:08] And if you only took that part out, you're left with a weird view of God. [00:27:15] And so the Spirit, it's like hindsight. It shows us clearly it's not just the facts. But why? Why did God. [00:27:25] And it helps you and me to be doers of the Word and not just hearers only. [00:27:32] I got a little story about this, my own Bible. [00:27:38] In high school. [00:27:41] For my 18th birthday, my girlfriend gave me the greatest earthly gift I have. It's this, my Bible. It's my favorite possession. [00:27:53] Now, my girlfriend at the time, she asked her grandfather to help her. [00:27:59] And he spent the time he lived in Ritzville. He came to Spokane and he personally picked out this Bible for me. [00:28:07] Now, a girl who would do that, you've got to marry. [00:28:13] So she became my wife. [00:28:17] Her grandfather picked this Bible out for me for my 18th birthday. [00:28:22] It has changed my life, my relationships, my way of thinking, my life now is because of the word of God. Now, it wasn't always that way. He would come over and he'd go to the Bible on the bookshelf and he'd check it for dust, and, oh, there'd be dust. [00:28:42] It was many years before I grew to love the word of God, to have that hunger and thirst for the word of God. [00:28:52] And it takes a while to sometimes develop that love. But that's where I am now. [00:29:02] Why did I tell you that story behind my Bible? [00:29:06] Because Christmas is just around the corner. [00:29:10] It is a great idea to give the gift of God's word. [00:29:15] Give something physical, something that they can take with you. You can read. When the Internet goes down, you know, a lot of people, they hand down the family Bible and people fight over the family Bible, which I think is wonderful to have the word of God fought over. I want it. I want it. You know, and to some of these young kids, you know, these teens, this day it might be the only physical book they'll ever own. Everything else they might have might be digital when they grow up. [00:29:56] And I'm telling you this now because you've got time to highlight your favorite passages, buy a Bible for someone, maybe a grandkid, whatever, highlight your favorite verses or go through and write down in the table contents or something. Hey, this helped me. Or this got me through this time. It is a great way. Or have your grandkids come over and teach you and have them set up one of these audio programs that will read the Bible to you, you know, and when they see, hey, it's pretty easy to set up, they might start using it themselves. [00:30:43] Give to sons, daughters, grandchildren, boyfriends and girlfriends. [00:30:47] Give them the word of God. You might just change their life forever. [00:30:55] With that. Let's pray. [00:30:57] Lord, you have gone to great lengths to give us your word and we just thank you for it because we can trust in it. It is truth, it is life. And we can trust that you are loving. [00:31:13] We can read that you care, that you love and you've done everything for us. And Lord, all we have to do is just say yes, accept it. [00:31:27] Lord, we thank youk for that. We thank youk for the Holy Spirit. We thank youk for the Word of God. [00:31:34] And Lord, as we transition into this time of giving, we ask that yout would bless our offerings and bless our reading time, Lord, that we wouldn't just read it and move on, but we would read it and change within ourselves and become closer to you. Lord, we pray this in your Son's name, Jesus Christ. [00:32:05] Amen. [00:32:09] Thank you for listening to this message. We hope you enjoyed it. Our prayer is that the message, in some way or another, helped in your walk with God and that your relationship with God was strengthened and grew more intimate. [00:32:27] If you would like to contact us with questions or comments, you can email us at the following that's meredletters.com or me-l e t t e r s.com thank you.