Sermon Tone Analysis

Living by the Book

August 18, 1996

 

Scripture:  2 Kings 22

 

*Prayer:*

 

*Introduction:*

 

          There is no spiritual discipline more important than the intake of God’s Word.

There can be no healthy Christian life apart from a steady diet of the milk and meat of Scripture.

This life-giving food is the message of God to us about Himself, the immense need of our sin-fallen nature, God’s profound mercy to us through His Son Jesus Christ, and the assurance of life eternal through personal faith in Him and what He accomplished in our behalf.

Scripture shows us the requirements of God’s Law, how far short we have fallen, and yet how we can still meet its requirements through what God did for us that we could not do for ourselves.

It helps us to apply this eternal truth to our lives so that we may increasingly and willingly come under its holy influence.

The Bible is the Christian’s “Blue Jacket’s Manual.”

How far we ere when we forget the Book of Life and the truth it holds to intimately touch our own lives and the lives of others.

Where is your Bible?

Is it close at hand in your home, at your work, in your church, and in your life?

I have books at home that are from past phases of my life that I occasionally take out to look something up.

The first thing I do is blow the dust off the top.

Someone once remarked that the worst dust storm in history would happen if all the church members who were neglecting their Bibles dusted them off simultaneously.

Dust, just like hardening of the arteries accumulates from inactivity, time, and perhaps even the wrong diet or genetic predisposition.

We must exercise our Bible through hearing, reading and studying God’s Word.

It will do our hearts good.

It is difficult to take time out of busy schedules to put God in.

But just like Christ said, without me you can do nothing (Jn.

15:5), but with me you can do everything (Phil.

4:13).

How frustrating our days can be when we try and try to spin our way out of our rut when we could have started out with a firm foundation.

A rut is nothing but a grave with both ends kicked out.

But Christ said He has come that we might have life and have it to the full (Jn.

10:10).

It begins with salvation but growth in our salvation takes place beginning with the daily intake of what he has to tell us through the conviction, enablement, obedience, and joy of His Word.

It is the most important of the spiritual disciplines, but perhaps also because it is the most broad.

It is the spiritual discipline that stimulates the other spiritual disciplines.

It certainly is the most convicting.

*I.

Hearing the Book:  Dust off your ears.*

A.

The easiest discipline related to God’s Word is to discipline ourselves to hear it regularly.

We must become a regular part of a New Testament church, not a church hopper, but a committed and accountable member whom God can teach on a continuum of truth, training us to become able to teach others.

We learn from each other as God teaches us.

Church hopping carries no steady accountability when we tell ourselves that we can just pull up stakes whenever we feel uncomfortable or convicted.

B.

Hearing (really listening) leads to obedience in the development of Christlikeness.

Jesus placed a primary importance upon his own word of testimony.

After all, he is the Word.

Hearing the Word of God is hearing Christ.

Obeying the Word of God is obeying Christ.

*Lu 11:28  He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it."*

C.

Hearing stimulates faith as the vehicle to obedience in becoming like Christ.

It is faith that pleases God (Heb.

11:6).

How many of us have been moved not only by the power of God’s Word but by the power of its testimony as it is worked out in someone’s life?

Gifts of faith are given to those who discipline themselves to listen to God’s Word.

We hear it preached in the pulpit, but also on radio, TV, tapes and videos.

God so often brings us a word of truth just in time (Ray Rising and Voice of America when he heard a word of faith from his wife).

*Ro 10:17  Consequently, faith (believing the message) comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.*

\\           D.

Hearing is to be in concert with other believers as we are stimulated not only in our common need but in our common calling, to worship Almighty God.

To purposefully act independent of one another is to play precariously with a spirit of independence from God.

We may be able to worship God alone in nature, but Christ said (Mt. 18:20) he would bless two or three coming together in his Name.

We cannot separate the ongoing worship of God from the spoken Word of God.

This brings us to a challenge to prepare ourselves to hear the Word of God.

We must have a spirit of reverence in seeking Him (Koreans).

*1Ti 4:13  Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.*

E.      Hearing the Word of God with reverence is the continuation of our part in becoming God’s workmanship (Eph.

2:10) to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to do.

It is not passive, but active listening, with a heart ready to receive it as truth and not as many liberal scholars from a standpoint of disbelief in which God must prove himself to us.

One can soon tell the works of such men because there is no conviction in them - just questioning God.

But if we receive it for what it is, the very Word of God Himself, it will do its work of transforming our lives.

*1Th 2:13 ¶ And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.*

 

*II.

Reading the Book:  Dust off your eyes.*

A.

Only a small % of Americans (11%) read their Bible every day.

Not much better, only 18% of evangelical Christians read their Bible every day.

And 23% say they never read it.

1Tim.

4:7 sounds like a command for the man of God.

If each day has enough trouble of its own (Mt.

6:34) then we must supply each day with enough strength of its own (Mt.

6:33) by first seeking his righteousness to meet the trouble.

How can we hope to make it through any day with the sin and trouble that will “blind-side” us without the sustaining strength of the Word of God?     

 

*1Ti 4:7  Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly (discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness).*

\\           B.

Jesus assumed that people would be familiar with God’s Word by asking, “have you not read?”

He himself was familiar with it as he refuted Satan in the wilderness.

He equated God’s Word with life itself.

But then he called himself the “bread of life” (Jn.

6:48).

He is the Word (Jn.

1:1-4).

His lesson to us is to be familiar with every word, which would seem to mean familiarity with all of Christ.

*Mt 4:4  Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"*

 

          C.

Again, we are told that God’s Word is useful, even imperative, to all things godly, “so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

We are talking about the “whole counsel of God,” which we cannot know unless we hear it and read it.

*2Ti 3:16  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,*

 

          D.

And in so doing we are promised blessing when we take it to heart.

And how can the one who loves God not read what he has to say to us and not take it to heart?

But we must discipline ourselves to do it and we will encounter the transforming grace of God.      

 

*Re 1:3 ¶ Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.*

E.

The most influential factor in shaping a person’s moral and social behavior is daily Bible reading.

1.

But there is a danger even in that when we just go                                              through the motions.

*Mt 13:14  In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.*