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Standing on the Word
John 1:1 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I had to think about this opening, following a an event that happened at a weekly gathering of saucy Christians in Bacliff. One member finished his cigarette and then began fussing that there isn't a clear declaration of the Word every week. It was odd because this happened on an evening when we had gathered an unusually large group to celebrate a baptism. Another man was so inspired that he asked to be baptized as well. At this event, I led with my grape crushing communion, and a former pastor officiated the baptism, complete with a presentation of what it means to be baptized.
The man who was fussing loves Jesus and attends a church that preaches evangelism every week. He is one who likes to say that he is “Standing on the Word.” Our Tuesday night fellowship, normally includes communion and a brief statement of the meaning of the Eucharist, often by someone who has never tried to explain it before. We actually like putting people on the spot; it makes them think about it more deeply, and the spontaneity often reveals fresh insight. But, there is rarely a long drawn out testimony or evangelical Bible message, and there is never an alter call. This is an evening to simply be Christian. And for those who aren't, (we have one who called himself as a witch, so we questioned what he meant by that… he now refers to himself as a pagan), they get to hang out with real Christians, and even share communion with them. So our question to our zealous friend is, “What does it mean to share the Word?” For our pagan friend, it means that he can say something inflammatory, without an inflammatory response. He is accepted in his foolishness.
All too often, the phrase “share the Word” immediately evokes the idea of sharing a Bible message, quoting or explaining the Scriptures. We forget that the Word of God is God! Sharing the Word is making God real to someone who doesn't know God. We live in a post-Christian world. Atheist philosophers know Scripture. Convincing someone of the value of knowing Jesus takes more than Scripture. Those with whom we share the gospel are often those who have been drugged, that is, drug to church, drug to Bible study, drug to vacation Bible school. They have heard the written Word time and time again, but, they have never known the Word. For them, our preaching is a hindrance and not a help. Preaching causes them to tune out and leave. Tired of Bible talk, they are craving God's presence.
So where does our evangelical sense of the Word come from? The phrase “Standing on the Word” harkens back to the Reformation, when Luther and Calvin proclaimed “Sola Scriptura”, which is Latin for, “only by Scripture.” This was a creedal statement reacting against the non-biblical church doctrine, all the ideas and concepts not found in the Bible, added by the Catholic Church who posited the Pope as an infallible source in addition to the Bible. Luther's Ninety-five Theses listed many abuses of the clergy, most prominent among them being the raising a indulgences, money given to the Papacy to free souls from purgatory. The Reformers wanted to line up Church doctrine and creeds with what the Bible says, and remove additions, particularly those intended to line the Papal pockets. Reform in practice, finds Calvin and Luther in a nasty disagreement over just exactly does “It is the body and the blood” mean. The ongoing microscopic dissection of Scripture has led to a myriad of schisms and fractures within the body of Christ. Each time, the true Word becomes harder and harder to see.
In today's usage “Standing on the Word” seems to declare that the Bible is my roadmap, which is admirable. But, the Bible is a roadmap to living the Word by knowing the living Word! It was never intended to be an end in itself. Our Word battles are an offense to God the Word. Augustine, in his testimony Confessions discourages us from becoming stuck in the ideas of Scripture:
“Marvelous is the depth of Thy oracles. Their surface is before us; inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is their depth. O my God, marvelous is their depth. It is a fearful thing to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love.” (Confessions, p. 292).
John 1:14 — And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This written Word, the Bible, has the purpose of bring us to a relationship with the Word that is God. When Jesus came among us, He began to radically expand our understanding of the Word. Scripture is the light guiding our path to knowing the Word, now the Word Incarnate! On the road to Emmaus, two young men receive instruction from the resurrected Jesus, who they do not recognize:
Luke 24:27 — Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.
The lover of God, the disciple of Jesus, the carrier of the Holy Spirit soon learns that the Bible is more than a learned book, full of good advice and sound thinking. The Bible is not our roadmap to life. To use the Bible as life's roadmap is to miss the incredible significance of what the Bible is to the believer. The Bible is the roadmap to our relationship with God. Anything less is tragic. Francis Frangipane states the case:
“The Word is God. The Scriptures are not God, but the Spirit that breathes through the words is God… Place your Bible at the foot of your bed and kneel as you read…” (Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God, p. 49).
I want to look at this from the perspective of theologian Emil Brunner, from a book describing his thought. It is a dense quote, so I will read it, and then, highlight some of the important thoughts here:
“…the discernment of truth is not at all a form of scientific thought, but is rather the response of faith to the God who meets one in the Word. Only as a believer may one perceive this theme. This is the case because what God communicates is not a ‘something,’ but rather himself. and likewise, instead of a pondering of ‘something,’ one is here confronted by a Person who speaks and discloses himself, thus taking over the role which thinking otherwise would take.
“In perceiving this unique theme, one does not thereby gain disposal of it, as would be the case in knowing, thinking or possessing something. Rather, one is himself thereby disposed or determined. And again, one is not left in his solitariness as would be the case if he were merely thinking in an I-orbit. He no longer has a monologue existence, for he is now confronted by another who says, ‘I am the Lord, thy God.’ He is addressed personally, and he gives a personal answer in the form of confession and prayer. In this personal exchange, the Word of God is not a formula to be believed, but it is directed address. Likewise, the response of faith is not a formulated credo, but it takes the form: ‘My Lord, and my God.’” (Emil Brunner, Makers of the Modern Theological Mind, pp. 39-40).
The first statement, “the discernment of truth is not at all a form of scientific thought, but is rather the response of faith”, is a radical departure from religion as it is normally practiced. Even in Christian circles our thought can get stuck in creedal statements. Our connection is not with creeds, doctrines, or right thinking. Preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards points out that the apostles, “never insisted on a theological understanding” (Religious Affections, p. 283). Down through the ages believers have come to Christ, some, like Augustine or Edwards, highly educated, but others, totally illiterate. We come to Jesus, not because he makes sense, but because we see beyond the fog of life to see God Himself. The first disciples, if they could read and could afford books, did not have the full Bible we read. What they did have was snatches of Scripture, letters from apostolic leaders, and the presence of men and women endued with the Spirit of the living Word. In that atmosphere, they were “confronted by a Person who speaks and discloses himself,” Jesus Christ. When Jesus appears to us personally, our response can only be to run to Him, to take hold of Him, and to dwell with Him wherever He may lead.
A Christian who is truly a part of the ‘Way’, is not marked by “knowing, thinking or possessing something”. We are not solitary individuals in possession of some higher knowledge, some new sage. We have been drawn into relationship with God. We “no longer have a monologue existence”; we are not praying, looking up at the sky, hoping to be heard. We know that He hears us. We can never be alone again. God “gives a personal answer in the form of confession and prayer.” God put the prayer into our mouth. Now, God is able to direct our destiny.
Moreover, to be out of fellowship with all of God's other children is not possible. We stand together to decare, “My Lord, and my God!” Disunity within the body is unfathomable for a true believer in Jesus Christ. I just received a book of advent readings with one reading entitled: “He Will Reign.” My immediate response is that if you declare “My Lord, and my God,” He should already be reigning.
Luke 8:9-10 — And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’”
Last week, pastor Bo used the example of the parable of the sower in describing how he came to Christ. You may have noticed that he talked about friends saying they had found Jesus and their lives were changed. Yes, he had read Chick tracts, and listened to witnessers outside the nightclub, but the clincher was someone sitting and talking to him quietly for more than an hour. Jerome, now pastor Nelson, came at the right hour, to be the Word of God before a troubled young man. That man, our pastor, is now a pillar of our community. The Word, as pastor Jerome knew it, was multiplied when the seed was dropped and Bo came alive in Christ.
My own testimony is entirely different. I had heard the Scriptures many times as a youth, but I never felt life in the presentation. I wanted to be a religious sage. In college I studied all the major world religions, as well a various pagan beliefs. I circled back to Christianity because I felt Christianity had the best ideas. Even then, my Christianity was heretical, not properly biblical. “seeing I did not see, and hearing I did not understand.” But, I did learn how to sit in silence before God. That is when my world began to change. From the first moment that I knew God's presence with me, I was drawn to a path that caused my self-sufficient knowledge to unravel. I had become a part of the ‘Way’, and I didn't even know it. No properly doctrinal Christian would have recognized it either. On the outside I was still a heretic. But, God knew me. Moreover, I was suddenly comfortable with Christians whom I had formerly judged with disdain.
I have never lost my interest in good, clear thinking. But, the Word that changed me is not right thinking, it is the presence of the Living God. What my head knowledge allowed me to do, was to stop, to take a deep breath, to talk to God and to listen for a response. Until then, I was seeing, but I did not see; I was hearing, but I did not hear.
We, as Christians, are all to often too eager to speak, but too slow to listen. On the mount of transfiguration, Jesus turns to Peter, James and John and warns them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead” (Matt. 17:9). Oswald Chambers adds this:
“So many do tell, they tell what they saw on the mount and testify to it, but the actual life does not tally with the vision; the Son of Man is not yet risen in them.” (The Place of Help, p. 122).
I was that guy. No, I wasn't smoking cigarettes, using drugs or chasing women. But, I was still preaching a twisted and confused gospel, even though my confidence in it had begun to wane. I finally had to stop trying to be God's mouthpiece and learn let God come into me and begin remodeling everything on the inside, even my sense of righteousness. Forty years later, I am singing a different tune, to the glory of God.
Matthew 7:24-27 — “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Jesus, speaking to gathered crowds, attempts to make clear that hearing the Word, or seeing Himself, the Word, is not enough. We must allow the Word, Jesus Himself, to move us to the water and the blood. We are baptized, a dying to our selves, and we are cleansed by the blood of Christ. Dying to our selves is an ongoing process. Jesus cannot do this for us. We must choose to lay down our lives, by choosing to release our right to our own way, be it in body, mind or soul. In dying to ourselves in Christ, He washes us clean. That cleansing is contagious. Without that dying… let me quote Chambers again:
“If we are craving spiritual sponges, always taking these things to ourselves, we have become a plague; other people will not get their horizon enlarged through us because we have never learned to pour out anything unto the Lord.” (The Place of Help, p. 122).
We crave gold, but not Jesus as Lord, the Son of God who owns everything that there is. The Word is not a call to get busy. It is a call to drop everything, to place all of our judgments, our anger, our mistakes and failures, but, also our righteousness, our accomplishments, our talents, Everything, on the alter of God. It is a call to wait patiently and quietly for Him to speak.
Another one of our Tuesday night gentlemen was always ready to produce his testimony, a long three page affair that he kept in his pocket. He disappeared for a long time. Later we discovered the reason. He had gone on to marry three women and divorce three women all in the space of one year. The testimony rang hollow because large parts of his life had not been washed in the water and the blood.
It is so easy to get excited and to want to do something for Jesus. This can be working in a food pantry, evangelizing, or even serving as a foreign missionary. These are all great things, and the world has learned to emulate Christians in many ways. But living in Christ calls for something different. Look at this statistic from the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE):
“A recent survey of 40,000 missionaries and 600 missions agencies found that 43 percent of missionaries do not fulfill their long-term commitment to their field. They come home. They quit. That percentage equates to 17,200 missionaries who left the field.”
They list a number of reasons, but before all of those reasons, I would like to respectfully submit, that the number one reason for failure is because they jumped at the chance to do something, but never waited for the still small voice that is the Word of life. Our religion is not one of a written word, our religion is the Word that our Scripture points us to. That is Good Religion.
John 5:37-44 — “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen,and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
Jesus is aiming this directly at the religious leaders of His time. But, if we are honest, do we not occasionally fail in this way? All too often we find ourselves searching the Scriptures for ammunition to back an argument, or perhaps reassurance, and comfort, or solutions to life's mess, and we forget that God doesn't need an argument, our reassurance and our comfort is the nearness of Jesus, and our solutions are in the Holy Spirit's direction.
“The context of the Bible is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures do not give us life unless Jesus speaks to us.” (The Place of Help, p. 146).
Jesus is the Word of Life!
John 5:24-25 — “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
In the beginning the Word went forth from God and all things were created. Adam was called into the creative process naming all the creatures. But, in chapter three of Genesis Adam chooses his own word, his own good and evil, shutting himself off from the direct Word of God. The world fell into turmoil, as the sons of Adam took charge. We are all born of Adam. When Jesus came as the manifest Word of God, His advent gave us the opportunity to heal Adam's wound. We can stop, listen, and obey. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Heb. 3:15). We can be reborn of the water and the blood, and we can return to a life in God's Word.
The bottom line is this, the Word of God is not an idea, it is a person, and that person is God with us. When we believe in Him and empty ourselves before Him, His Spirit comes to richly dwell in us. The Word, the Holy Spirit is in us opening our eyes and ears to the voice of God. Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas puts his spin on John 1:14 “the Word became flesh”:
“In the eucharistic assembly God's Word reaches man and creation not from outside, as in the Old Testament, but as ‘flesh’—from inside our own existence, as part of creation. For this reason, the Word of God does not dwell in the human mind as rational knowledge or in the human soul as a mystical inner experience, but as communion within a community.” (Being as Communion, p. 114).
We are the people of the Word, not because we know our Bible, which I hope we do, but because we know our God. And because we know our God, we are family members with all of God's children, those who are awesome saints, those who are almost saints, those who are barely saved, and those who are yet to be saved. We stand together, lifting each other to the glory of God, as we breath in and breath out the breath, the “ruach” of God.
Jesus came, not to explain Scripture more clearly, but to be the Word! His advent, which we will celebrate next month, was the earthly manifestation of the Word come among us in flesh and blood. His life, death and resurrection calls us into a relationship by which that Word comes to reside in us as the Holy Spirit. As we yield to the Spirit's voice, we are able to be the Word for a world in desperate need of our manifesting the risen Lord.
Numbers 6:24-26 — The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you
and give you peace.