If we put Him first; if we grow in Him; if He is word is ’the’ thing that sways our hearts, no matter what the cost, then we have the relationship the right way up.

Firm Foundations

This week on the programme we are starting a new series that I’ve called ‘Reading the Bible for all it’s Worth’. Now for some people, reading the Bible is an every day reality, for others it’s something they think, ‘well, I should do’, but they don’t so they feel guilty about it. And yet for others, this particular thing, reading the Bible, is a complete anathema. In other words, they hear people talk about it and think to themselves, ‘why would you ever want to do that?’

Each one of us has a different reaction to this thing called ‘the Bible’. From ‘Yes! It’s something I love doing,’ right through to ‘you have to be joking! What do you think I am some kind of fuddy-duddy fundamentalist?’ So I wonder, what’s your reaction? Excitement? A sense of nagging guilt? Boredom, perhaps? But what if – what if the Bible is what it claims to be – a love letter from God? I mean what if the Bible isn’t some dry theology text but a riveting Book about life?

For most of my life, I guess – for two thirds at least – those two words ‘The Bible’ sent shivers down my spine. I used to think of it as boring and dry and irrelevant. The sort of thing only a ‘fundamentalist’ would read what ever a ‘fundamentalist’ is. A place where you have your mind and your thoughts stunted and lobotomised, almost a cultish kind of practice – this reading the Bible thing.

And I thought of it as inaccessible – I mean here were sixty six books written well, over a few thousand years ago, by different people in different cultures. It’s funny the ideas we can have, right in the middle of our complete ignorance – and I was ignorant. I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never really picked up a Bible and had a look inside for myself.

You can obviously gather I have kind of changed my perception since then. And today I’d like to share a little bit of that journey with you and over the next few weeks as well. Today, we are going to look at ‘what’s in it for me?’

If I pick up the Bible and I read this thing ‘the Bible,’ are there any good reasons to do that? Well, we are going at three very good reasons today. I guess for me the whole thing began with this Jesus character. I mean I was very anti God – very! I hated Christians; they made me feel uncomfortable; the notion of reading the Bible was completely outside my experience. But through some trials and difficulties in my life, I started taking another look at this God; this Jesus and for me, it just kind of felt like – well, He walked into my life and somehow, He softened my heart and opened my eyes and like, my heart was opened when for years it had been jammed shut.

It almost became the obvious thing to do, to have a relationship with God; a relationship with Jesus and to start to read about Him. So I opened the New Testament and looked at these first four Books, the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and I choose Mark because it was the shortest of the four. Can I tell you something? The more I read about Jesus, the more I realised how messed up my life was.

I’d always thought that, well, I was really clever; I had my act together; I knew what life was about. But as clever as I may have been, I actually had the basics of my life messed up. And this one thing that Jesus said really struck me. It comes from Luke’s Gospel – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it up – we are going to Luke chapter 6, beginning at verse 46. This is what Jesus said.

He said, “Why is it that you call me Lord, Lord and you don’t do what I say? I’ll show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and puts them into practice. That person is like a man building a house, who dug deep down and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent struck and that house would not be shaken because it was well built. But the person who hears My words and doesn’t put them into practice is like the man who builds a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck, that house collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

Now when you think about that, we all want and need firm foundations in our life. Come on, we’ve got to get our lives sorted out. No one’s life is perfect – the way we think, the way we act, what we do, how we react to things. They all have such an incredible bearing on how much we enjoy or lives. I mean, I was this super-critical perfectionist, everything just had to be ‘so‘.

I expected everyone around me to be like that and so because they weren’t, I was always angry; I was always disappointed; I was always having a ‘go.’ I was always talking behind their backs – I had this saying – you may have heard me say it before – ‘it’s so hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys,’ – that was my attitude.

Now this is just one simple thing but that was ruining my life. It was robbing me of relationships – I needed some rehab because I had cracks in my foundations. And when I met this Jesus I took a decision that it was time to build my house on firm foundations – on solid bed rock rather than on sand.

The problem for many of us today, truly, is that no matter what we believe or who we call ‘God’, we haven’t dealt with the issues that are robbing us of life. For me the decision was: ‘it’s time Berni, to get things sorted out.’ I’d tried before but it didn’t work so I thought, ‘this Jesus seems to make sense – I might listen to Him – Jesus’ words, God’s words – and put them into practice – to deal with my anger and my resentment and my selfishness and perfectionism.

We all have things to deal with. The decision for me was to deal with them, so, I started reading the Bible. You know what I discovered? It wasn’t dry at all. Ok there were some bits that can feel a bit difficult to get into; to understand. We’ll have a look at that over the next few weeks. But this stuff was about my life – it was like God speaking directly to me. Time and time again words leapt off the page and into my heart.

There’s something about reading God’s words for yourself – it’s incredibly powerful; it’s incredibly special. Now I love good preaching and teaching and I love to read books that other people have written about God, but you know something, there Is nothing; nothing as powerful or as life changing for me as picking up the Bible – something I do most mornings these days – and letting Jesus speak to me through His Spirit and His Word.

Can I tell you? It is so ‘not’ what I ever expected. Just this morning I was reading – I had a need; an issue – and the very next passage I was up to in Luke’s Gospel, God spoke directly into that need. It’s powerful; it builds me up and it encourages me. And God’s Word puts me on firm foundations.

Time to Stop Kidding Ourselves

Today we are starting this new series on the programme called “Reading the Bible for all it’s Worth” and I’d like to look at three good reasons for reading the Bible. Just before we found that we all need to have firm foundations, to build our lives on something solid. So many people spend life being tossed around like corks in the ocean.

Now the second reason kind of builds on that first reason. I don’t know about you, but I have such a great ability to delude myself about my own faults and weaknesses and the ability to ignore their consequences. Actually, my hunch is it’s pretty common all round. We develop, like blind spots in life.

You know, when you are driving your car and you want to change lanes and you have the rear-vision mirror and you have your two side mirrors. Well, everybody gets taught you should never change lanes without actually looking back over your shoulder. Why is that? Because we can’t rely on the mirrors – there are invariably some blind spots. A motor cycle racing up from behind or even a car comes whizzing up on the left or the right and we completely miss that they’re there. Those blind spots lead to collisions and what we need is we need to see into that blind spot to avoid the collisions.

It’s true in driving a car and do you know something – it’s true in life. A blind spot by definition is a place where we really can’t see clearly. Now we don’t like talking about our blind spots; they’re things we like to hang onto. If we have a critical spirit, we just want to keep criticising people. If we have a victim mentality, we want to keep being the victim. If there’s a brick wall that’s built up between husband and wife, they just want to leave it there.

One of the things you notice about Jesus is somehow, when He deals with people, His words slice straight through all of that. This morning I was reading in Luke’s Gospel about the Pharisee and the woman who was a sinner. Jesus when to this Pharisee place for a meal and this woman was convicted by this Jesus and she came and washed His feet with her tears and poured expensive perfume on His feet and the Pharisee criticised Jesus for allowing this to happen. And this is what Jesus says to Simon the Pharisee – He says, “Simon, two men owed money to a certain money lender – one of the men owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty. Neither of them could pay so he cancelled the debts of both – now which one would love him more? And Simon replied, “Well, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.” “You’re right,” said Jesus. Then He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house and you didn’t give Me any water for My feet, but she wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t give Me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered hasn’t stopped kissing My feet. You didn’t put any oil on My head, but she has poured perfume on My feet. I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven for she loved much but he who has been forgiven little, loves little.”

See how Jesus slices through that religious self-righteousness of Simon the Pharisee. But you know, in a loving way – in a way that’s not meant to belittle him, but just to state the facts, exactly the way they are. And there’s a reason why Jesus’ words slice through everything – because God’s words are special – they’re not just words. When God speaks things happen.

Have a listen to how the writer of the Book of Hebrews puts it. Grab a Bible again, open it up – Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12 – it says this: “The Word of God is living and active – sharper that any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing the soul and the spirit, the joints and the marrow – it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight – everything is uncovered and laid bear before the eyes of Him to whom we must one day give account.”

See, that’s why the Jesus’ words to Simon the Pharisee cut right to the quick. And that’s what happens when we get into God’s word today – the Bible. It’s written by men but inspired by God, the Holy Spirit – His words, His power – they cut through all our self delusion today, just as they did back then. Jesus said about the Holy Spirit, that He convicts us of sin and righteousness – He convicts, doesn’t condemn – He brings us to our senses.

You know, all this stuff – this sin – which we want to hang onto; that we delude ourself about, it ruins our lives. Other people try and tell us but we ignore them; we make excuses because we have this blind spot. Day after day we go on with this stuff, ruining our lives; ruining the lives of people around us. But God’s Word is like a surgeons scalpel and in His skilful hands, He puts His finger right on the cancer in our hearts and cuts it out.

I love how Hebrews puts it: “God’s Word is able to discern the thoughts and the intentions of the human heart.” He gets right down to that deep place; down where we need healing. For me, I came to the Lord with so much sin in my life – weaknesses and bad habits and arrogance and selfishness and right up front, I made this decision to lay those things down at the foot of the cross. Back then I somehow imagined that He’d take them all away instantly, but actually what’s happened is, as I have spent time in His Word, the Bible, He’s gradually helped me to confront each one and one by one, led me through a process where I got to a point where I could actually lay them down.

Now this is still very much a work in progress, between God and me, I have to tell you. But the Word of God is what He has been using to do that. It’s incredibly powerful, not just a book, not just words, ‘it is living and active, sharper that any two edged sword, able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the human heart.’ And I’ll have to tell you, for me, God’s Word has changed my life.

Blessing in God’s Word

Well, today in this first programme in the four part series that I’ve called ‘Reading the Bible for all it’s Worth’, we are looking at some really good reasons to actually pick the Bible up and read it for ourselves. I guess today we are looking at ‘what’s in it for me’. So many people kind of know they should read the Bible and it’s almost at guilt or an obligation thing. Well, that’s not where I come from.

I want to share with you three really good reasons for reading the Bible. And so far on the programme today we have looked at the fact that we all need firm foundations. And as Jesus said, God’s Word is the firm foundation that we can build our lives on. And just before, we were looking at the fact that you and I – come on, let’s be honest – we have our blind spots – we do things and we just need God to get in there and help us not to do them anymore.

The third one that we are going to look at today, is the fact that there is blessing in God’s Word – blessing and power. A little while ago we did a series called ‘The Power of Prayer’ and one of the things we looked at was, well, what can I ask God for in prayer? And there’s this passage – grab your Bible; open it up – John chapter 15, beginning at verse 7. There’s this passage that is so incredibly radical, where Jesus says to His disciples, “Do you know something? If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, you can ask for whatever you wish and it will be given to you.”

What a sweeping promise! What a huge promise! It comes after Jesus has just been saying, “I’m the vine and you are the branches,” and grapes are about producing wine and wine is a symbol of blessing, right throughout Scripture – God’s abundant blessing.

Now it’s obvious that if I’m a branch and Jesus in the vine, I’m not going to produce fruit unless I‘m in the vine and Jesus actually just said, before the quote we just read, He said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing. If you don’t remain in Me, you’ll wither and you’ll die and you’ll get tossed in the fire.” And it wasn’t just, “Remain in Me.” Look at verse 7: “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you.” See there’s a big ‘if’ before this promise. It seems like such a big promise – “You can ask for whatever you wish and it’ll be done,” but Jesus qualifies it. He says, “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you” – if you dwell in Me; if you abide in Me; if you’re close; if you’re in a permanent relationship and bond with Me – “and my words remain in you.” There it is again – just what we were looking at before the break, “My words remain in you”. ‘If you give Me sway in your heart, everything I’ve taught, everything I am; all about sacrifice. If that has sway in your heart and you’re close to Me, then, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.’

Why this caveat? This is about the Lordship of Christ in our lives. If we put Him first; if we grow in Him; if His word is ‘the’ thing that sways our hearts, no matter what the cost, then we have the relationship the right way up – then more than anything, we want His will to be done. ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ The very first part of what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer.

If that’s where we are, then we can ask whatever we wish and it will be given to us. Why can He make such a sweeping statement? Because it’s to those in whose hearts His word abides and has sway – it’s for those who have made Him Lord. It’s for those, who for more than anything want His will to be done and those ones; those ones He can trust with a promise like that. You know how we can get Jesus words into us; God’s Word? We have to connect with it.

How often do you hear people misquote this Scripture reference – ‘The truth will set you free?’ Well, that’s not actually what Jesus said. Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Now, if we don’t know the truth, the truth isn’t going to set us free. And that’s why we open our Bibles and let Him write that truth on our hearts – it changes us – it starts getting those firm foundations in place.

Sometimes we can feel like we are this cork bobbing round in this stormy ocean – it’s time to get into God’s Word. It is time to deal with our blind spots and our sin and then more and more and more, Jesus becomes the Lord of our lives. And when He is the Lord of our lives, He can trust us with that promise – that kind of blessing – because He knows that the blessing will be for God’s glory and that’s what He meant it for. Right after making that promise, He said, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

You know what the third good reason is for spending time in God’s Word? There’s blessing in God’s Word. We can beat around the bush; we can look at that Book and wait and hope and wonder what’s in it but you know, if I’m on this side of the room and my Bible is over in the cupboard on that side of the room and that’s where we stay, you know something, we’re never going to know the truth! We’re never going to let God write His promises and plans and will and word onto our hearts.

It’s only when we open that Book for ourselves and He comes along – and this has happened to me so many times – you know, I just open the Book – next chapter in Luke – that’s what I’m reading today – and there’s this one verse that the Holy Spirit just literally lifts off the page and drops into my spirit.
I tell you, God’s power and blessing for your life and my life is in His Word. God’s plans and journeys through life, to deal with our blind spots and our sin, to heal us and set us free, to bring us ever closer to Him – those things are in God’s Word. And when we prayerfully come to His Word, the Bible and we regularly open it up and read, you know what? God shows up; God honours that. God hasn’t stopped speaking – He wants to speak into my life and into your life.

It is such a sad thing when I see people who believe in Jesus and their lives are such a mess and I say to them ‘how much time do you spend in God’s Word?’ – and they look at me with a blank, embarrassed look.

The longer we just kind of hang around the edges of God’s Word; the longer we leave it before we commit to making the Bible a part of our everyday lives, the longer we’ll be hanging around the edges of His blessing and His power and His plans.

Listen to me! It is time to read the Bible for all it’s worth!

You and I are God’s workmanship! When He looks at us, He goes “WOW”, that’s My child – that’s who we are!

Asking the Right Questions

Last week, I talked a little bit about my preconceptions – my misconceptions of this whole thing ‘The Bible”. You know, reading the Bible is something I would never have done in a million years. I mean, what do you think I am some whacky, fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself was a life changing thing for me. It didn‘t stunt my growth; it didn‘t narrow my mind – no, it was the opposite – it opened me up. It opened my up to the wonder and the possibilities with life with God.

Over the last dozen or so years for me, I have spent a lot of time in that Book. In fact, the Bible is sixty six different books and it’s been a chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and I know that in twelve years I have really only scratched the surface.

The more I think about it, you know, this thing we call the Bible is about four things. Who God is: I mean, what’s He like, how does He react, what does He love, what makes Him angry? – the first thing – who God is.

Secondly: what God’s will and purposes are? I mean, what’s His plan, not just for you and me but for the whole world – where’s it all headed? The third thing: who am I? I mean, we are made it His image. How does He see us, who did He make each one of us to be? And fourthly, how should we respond? Some people think that’s all the Bible has to offer; you know rules and regulations, but you know, as you read it, how we can respond to God isn’t the main thing. It just kind of drops out – it’s a natural consequence of the first three.

This is the second message in a series that I’ve called, ’Reading the Bible for all it’s worth.” If the Bible is God’s Word, it kind of makes sense that we get as much out of it as we possibly can. And today I’d like to look at the sorts of questions that we can ask of what we read and the answers that God gives us.

You know these sixty six Books that together make up the Bible are all quite different. They’re written by different people, in different places, in different cultures, in different times. Some are stories like the first four Books of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Others, for instance, are prayers, like the Book of Psalms – the Book of Psalms is effectively a song book. Others are letters, like Paul’s letter to the Romans or the Corinthians or the Ephesian church.

We are going to talk about different styles next week on the programme. But you know what I think we can do? We just go to the Bible and we read something – we read a story or a letter or something like that – and we don’t think through what we have just read. In particular we don’t ask any questions about what we have just read. Now, I don’t know it you have heard that old saying, ‘He sits and thinks but mostly he just sits.’ You know we just sit there, we look at it but we don’t really engage our minds and our hearts.

If the Bible is principally about four things: who God is, His will and purposes, who we are and how we can respond, wouldn’t it make sense to read a chapter or a story or whatever we read in the Bible, then sit back and look at it and ask ourselves these questions?

This thing that I’ve just read, what does it tell me about who God is? What does it tell me about God’s will and God’s purposes? What does it tell me about who I am? What does it tell me about how I can respond? I mean, what if we ask God, “God, what are you saying to me through Your Word today? I just wonder whether we wouldn’t see a whole new side of God and His Word.

It’s a scary thing! God is still talking to us through His Word, the Bible, today – imagine if we don’t listen. Last week we saw the importance that Jesus placed on God’s Word. We read Luke chapter 6, from verse 46. Let me share it with you again. Jesus says, “Why do you call Me Lord but you don’t do what I say? I’ll show you what it’s like when someone comes to me and hears My words and puts it into practice, that person is like a man who is building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent struck that house but couldn’t shake it because it was well build. But the one who hears My words and doesn’t put them into practice is like the man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

See, Jesus said, ‘If you hear My words and really get them into you and you live by those words, it’s like you have got deep, solid foundations.’ How do we hear? We actually open the Bible, sure, but we need to listen to what’s being said. We need to ask the right questions; we need to ask the questions of what we are reading and He will give us the answers.

You know, I used to wonder early in my Christian walk, how some preachers could get up and talk for half an hour on one short passage, but the more I read the more I see how deep and profound God’s Word is. How much He has to say to you and me and when we let Him speak, what He does is He digs some deep foundations in our lives that hold us firm in every storm.

So how do we ask those questions? What do we get out of it? Today we are going to look at one really short passage of Scripture, just one. A passage that has had a huge impact on my life. It’s the sort of passage I have spent hours thinking about, constantly seeing it from different angles, as God opens up His Word to me.

The single verse we are going to look at is Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10 – we are gong to use that as an example of how we can ask different questions of God’s Word. And this is what Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.” The Apostle Paul wrote this in the letter to the church in Ephesus two thousand years ago. Jesus has been crucified, He has risen again and He’s ascended into heaven – the Apostles, Paul is one of them, are sent out by God into the known world. And Paul’s a church planter and he wrote some letters to churches.

Today I want to look at this very short verse and ask those four questions of it, by way of example, to share with you how I approach God’s Word and let it inspire you. Not just to gloss over things, not just to sit and not think but to have a passion for God’s Word. To read and ask the questions and put down some deep foundations in His Word for yourself through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This single verse, Ephesians 2:10, which says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that He prepared beforehand for us to walk in.” This single verse we are going to ask four questions – what does it tell me about God, what does it tell me about God’s will and purposes, what does it tell me about who I am and what does it tell me about how I can respond?.

God and His Plans

Well, let’s take a look at this one passage today and discover how we can come to God’s Word and ask questions of God’s Word – to unpack what God is saying to us today. God who are You, what are Your plans? Here’s the verse – we’re looking at Ephesians, chapter 2 and verse 10 and the reason we are looking at this verse is to use it as an example to see how, when we apply a couple of questions like that, God really opens up His Word to us.

The problem is sometimes we read it; we skim over it; we don’t engage with it and we miss out on what God is saying. In effect, we don’t listen to God. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.”

Now on the surface it seems to be talking about us, doesn’t it? Who we are and stuff. But you know something, the very first question I always ask of anything I read in the Bible is “What does this tell me about God Himself?” See, it’s so easy to read a verse like this, or a story about something that happened in the Bible and just, I don’t know, see the physical dimension – just see the here and the now. It’s all about me. It’s all about us. It’s all about the people in the story. But the great unseen play in the Bible is God Himself.

Later on in Colossians chapter 3 – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up – Colossians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul writes this. He says, “Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.” And again later in the chapter, he says, “Let the Word of Christ dwell richly in you.”

Can I encourage you to do that? Everything you read in the Bible, ask for yourself, “what does this tell me about God? How can I use this Scripture to take my eyes off the here and now, off all the stuff I can see? (Because you know, that stuff we can see will pass away one day.) How can I use the Bible to lift my eyes and lift my gaze to look at God Himself?” Everything we read in the Bible, ask “what does this tell me about God?”

I did an exercise with students at Bible College recently. We were talking about Genesis chapter 1, which is the account of how God created the universe and imagine you don’t know anything else about God from any other source other than Genesis chapter 1. And I said to them, “Go through and write down everything it tells you about God.” Just this one chapter – you know we could have spent hours talking about just what this chapter told us about God.

Well, ok, let’s look at Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10 – what does it tell us about God? It says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.” Well the three things it tells us about God are firstly, that God is a workman – He’s a Creator. Secondly, that He created us through Jesus Christ and thirdly that He plans ahead.

I mean, Jesus was a carpenter – can you imagine that He turned out any shoddy work from His father’s carpenter’s shop? You know a crooked chair or a coffin whose bottom would fall out when they put the body in it or a table with a weak leg? What sort of workman do we imagine that Jesus is. Because we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that He planned beforehand for us to do.

What sort of Creator do you think He is? I don’t know – I look at Jesus and He’s brilliant and creative and perfect. He’s a craftsman. Stradivarius was that great violin maker, Michelangelo that great painter and sculptor. Think of the most brilliant or creative or stunning person you know and they were hand made by God.

God is an amazing Creator. He made us – not just Stradivarius and Michelangelo. He made you and me and that tells us something about who we are which we’ll look at after the next break.

God is my Creator. He’s the one who handcrafted me – that’s who God is, here in Ephesians 2:10. In fact, we can link that up with Genesis chapter 1 which says that we are made in His image. And I’ll look at that a bit later too. God handcrafts us!

And secondly, if we look at what it tells us about His plans and purposes, well, we are created with a purpose. He actually plans ahead. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.”

Why did He create us? To do good works – and in fact, He planned those beforehand, well ahead, before time even began. Jesus didn’t sort of get there on some rainy Sunday afternoon and pull out His bucket of cosmic play-dough and knock together creation out of boredom. God has plans and purposes, not just for all of creation but for you and me. A plan for good works, good things – good things that He planned beforehand and then always knew that we would end up walking into them.

Now do something for me. Amidst the realities and the ups and downs of your life, just bring into what we learned from God about God and His plans in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. In the middle of your frustrations and obstacles and difficulties and hurts and disappointments and losses and loneliness – whatever the one or two things are that are ruining your life at the moment – bring in the fact that God is a brilliant Creator. That Jesus handcrafted you to His plan and specifications and set out every day of your life. A plan for good things that you would walk in over the next rise, around the next corner. That’s who God is, that’s what His plans are.

Just see how easy it is to skim over just this one little verse with kind of a ‘cocktail party’ attitude; a ‘cocktail party’ engagement level. ‘Oh well, ok, so, I’m God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good things that He prepared before for me to do. Big deal! Next!’ But tarry, ponder, wonder, pray, ask God the questions. Lord, what are You telling me about You here? What are You telling me about Your plans God, for my life?

We can spend a whole lifetime in this passage and it will transform us and our lives and our outlooks and our understanding of God and our hope for the future and our faith in Him. Don’t you think?

Who Am I and How Can I Respond

Today on the programme we are looking at how we can really engage with God’s Word and it comes down to asking the right questions. Every time we read something in the Bible, asking four questions: What does this tell me about who God is? What does this tell me about God’s will and His purposes? What does this tell me about who I am? And what does this tell me about how I can respond?

And we’re asking those questions today of just one little, simple passage by way of example – Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10 – “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.”

Now we looked at the first two questions before the break: What does it tell me about God and what does it tell me about God’s will and His plans? Now, let’s look at: What does it tell me about whom I am and how I can respond? Well, it’s pretty straight forward, it says, you and I, we’re God’s workmanship – we are created in Christ Jesus.

Now, just stop and rest our hearts in that word for a moment. Handcrafted by God. His masterpiece! How often do we suffer from ugly-duckling syndrome? You know, we compare ourselves to these glossy images of success, so afraid inside that people will discover that we are frauds. So down on ourselves all we can see is our own faults and weaknesses and how we don’t measure up and ….. Wake up! You and I are God’s workmanship. When He looks at us, He goes, WOW! That’s My child. That’s who we are.

Ok, Dad isn’t always delighted with what we do but that’s the next part – how we respond. Who we are is this: we’re God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus – that’s what gives us status and dignity. Never again do we have to be ashamed of who we are. We can have rest and peace in knowing that just the way we are, we’re handcrafted by God.

And what does it say about how we can respond – that fourth and last question? Well, you know, if we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in, maybe, maybe we just get on with life and walk in them. I mean, we walk forward, we take the next step – it doesn’t matter what happened yesterday; it doesn’t matter what happened in the last hour. We take a decision to walk into God’s plan – to walk in God’s plan.

When we see the good works we go and do them, no matter what the cost. He knows what He made you and me to be. He knows the things we can do and the things we can’t. He knows when He needs to bring other people to help us to do the things we don’t know how.

You know, as I look at growing this ministry, Christianityworks (and now we are reaching millions of people every week), there are some things in this ministry I don’t know how to do. But God has had the grace to surround me with some other people who do. He knows. Maybe our job is just to get on and live out His plan of good works that He’s put over the next rise and around the next corner.

I don’t know about you, but the more I ask those questions of just this one little verse, the more encouraged I am to just get on with life. To know who God is and who I am and what His plans are and how He wants me to respond.

I have a challenge for you today. When we finish up, go and grab a Bible and just look at the first two chapters of this letter to the Ephesian church and spend a half an hour in there and list out everything that God says in those two chapters that we are and that we have.

Just for example, starting at chapter 1, verse 1 – I am a saint, verse 2 – I have grace and peace from God, verse 3 – I’m blessed with every Spiritual blessing, verse 4 – I’m chosen in Christ before the foundations of the world, verse 4 again – In Christ I’m holy and blameless. And on it goes. In just two chapters of the Bible, write them down – there’s at least twenty in there – and read them a few times.

God, what are you saying about who I am? When we ask those questions, it changes our lives. It changes our image of who we are and where we fit and what God’s doing and what His plan is and who He is. Why do some many people believe in God but never let His Word transform their lives? Why do so many people call themselves Christians but never live a victorious life in Christ? What’s the matter with us?

I’m not talking about being Mr or Mrs super-Christian – not that at all. Just this simple, open up the Bible and let God’s Spirit lift the words off the page and write them onto our hearts. Go and engage with Him in His Word. Ask Him, Lord, what are you telling me here today about who You are? In what I’ve read, what are You telling me about Your plans? Who do You say that I am? How do You want me to respond? I guarantee you something, when we come to God’s Word hungry and believe in faith that we are going to be fed; we come with an attitude that wants to ask God questions and I guarantee you, that’s life changing.

If you’ve never given your life to Jesus, get into His Word – do that right now. Father, I’ve heard what this man has said and I want to give my life to You. I’m sorry for what I’ve done, I want to live my life for You and I accept Jesus as my Saviour. Lord, give me a new life. Show me how to get into Your Word and discover who You are. In Jesus name I pray.

Now, get into His Word and let Him change your lif

There are names and places, concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us. They might have made sense to the people back then but they don’t always make sense to us now.

About the Bible Old and New

We’ve all heard those word association tests that psychologists use, you know, they say ‘black’ you respond ‘white’, ‘rabbit’ – ‘carrot’, ‘day’ – night’, ‘God’ – ‘love‘, ‘devil’ – ‘evil’, Bible’ um ‘Bible’, how do you respond to that? Why, it’s stuffy, old, irrelevant – well, different people will have different views, and actually, in Australia, where I live, the Bible is one of the least trusted of all historical documents.

Over the last few weeks on the programme we have been talking about reading the Bible for all it’s worth. But this thing we call the Bible is a big Book – it’s massive and it can be daunting. So today I thought we would do something different. Rather than getting into the Bible, talk about ‘how’ to get into the Bible. I thought it might be useful to have a look at this Bible to see exactly what it is and how you and I can get into it. I mean real, practical stuff.

I’ll share a secret with you – it’s sad but true – I never read a book, cover to cover, until I was in my early twenties. I managed to get through school and university and do pretty well at them too, without ever reading books – I’d skim them. I remember at Uni the book, Wuthering Heights; we studied that in first year English at University. And there were these companies that write crib-notes, you know, they are summaries of what happens in the book and they sort of answer various questions – and I just quickly used to read those crib-notes and wrote my essays and did, by and large, reasonably well.

I just don’t know – I never liked libraries – they always struck me as this sort of dusty, dank, smelling thing – have you ever noticed every library you walk into? I thought about it for a while – I thought, Berni, why is it you don’t like libraries? And I guess the answer came in two parts. Firstly, for me they felt so big and inaccessible – thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of books. And back in the old days, when I was at University, they had a card system, before computers – the Dewy Classification System – and finding anything took such a long time. These days, we don’t do that – we just hop onto Google on the internet and we’re away.

The second reason I didn’t like libraries was that when you did find stuff, well, there was always so much of it – so much time to look at all those books and research them. I mean some people are natural book-worms – well, not me – I still don’t like libraries. I haven’t darkened the doorstep of one since I finished my last degree a few years ago.

You know something, I think for a lot of people, the Bible’s like that – it’s big and inaccessible.

Many, many people wouldn’t mind having a read, but where do you start? Let’s break that down a bit today – let’s make the Bible more accessible.

I remember when I started at Bible College, only a few months after becoming a Christian. Everyone took for granted that we knew about the Bible and I think, people like me, who get out there and preach, can do that too. We take this assumption that everybody we are talking to knows about the Bible. Well the reality was, I didn’t and my hunch is I wasn’t alone, so let’s unpack it a little bit – let’s demystify it. All of a sudden it becomes a whole bunch more accessible.

The Bible, this Book that we call the Bible, is actually made up of sixty six different books, written by different people over somewhere between one thousand and fifteen hundred years – not only by different people, but at different times, under different circumstances and in different cultures.

And there are essential two main parts to the Bible – the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, when I started Bible College I have to tell you the truth, I didn’t know which one was which. The Old Testament is God’s story and the story of how He interacted with His chosen people, the Israelites. It’s before Jesus Christ – B.C. if you like. What Christians called the Old Testament is in fact, exactly the same as the Jewish Scriptures – the Jews still use those today.

They’re mostly written in Hebrew, the language of the Jews – small parts like that of Daniel are written in Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus actually spoke in the first century. But by and large, the Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language. What we have today is an English translation of that. There are lots of Books with funny names in the Old Testament – Deuteronomy, Judges, Chronicles, Ezekiel – thirty nine separate books in all.

There are kind of four main parts to the Old Testament. The first five Books – Genesis through to Deuteronomy, are the Hebrew or Jewish Books of the Law – the Torah, as they refer to them. Then the next section Joshua through to Ezra and Nehemiah is kind of a history – it’s the story of what God did and how His people responded. And after that you have the wisdom books – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Lamentations – these books actually share with us some of the real, rich wisdom of God. And the rest of the Old Testament, right through to the end, is made up of the Prophets – men called by God to call Israel back to Him.

Now the New Testament is 27 books, mostly written in Greek, in fact, not classical Greek but Koine Greek, the language that was spoken in the known world in the first century. The first part of that are the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the story of Jesus life. Straight after that comes the Book of Acts – the story of the first twenty or so years of the church. And then there are a whole bunch of letters or Epistles, they call them, from people like Peter and John and Paul to various churches and sometimes to individuals.

That’s what the Bible is made up of – it’s a story; its documents and letters and stories written by men – and they were all men as far as we know – to various people in various circumstances. And before the printing press was invented by Gutenberg in fourteen fifty, the Bible was transcribed by hand. Can you imagine that? People called Scribes, hand wrote out each copy of each manuscript.

Now today, there’s a science of textural criticism and it’s remarkable that what the research shows about the high levels of accuracy, documented through thousands and thousands of these manuscripts. They can see where errors in transcriptions crept in, they can correct those errors and today, all of that is translated into contemporary languages. There are a whole bunch of different translations.

The Old King James version has the ‘thous’ and the ‘arts’ and the ‘thees’. Well, that’s been replaced by really easy to read versions of the Bible and you know, of the sixty six books in the Bible, over half of them you can read in less that half an hour.

I mean, in a few minutes we can’t hope to do anything but scrape the surface and today we have just talked about some basic stuff that somehow, no body ever bothered to teach me. But what I discovered is that when you actually get into the Bible, it’s a whole bunch easier and more accessible than we just may have thought.

Different Genre

In an increasingly media savvy generation, one of the things that we often don’t think about is that there are different types or different genre of media and we actually treat them quite differently. Take journalism – there’s straight out reporting and then there’s editorial comment or opinion. There are movies of pure fiction and others are documentaries. I mean, which one of us would take a poem and an article from a newspaper and read them the same way?

This week on the programme we are continuing our series called ’Reading the Bible for all it’s Worth’, and one of the things that you discover in the Bible is that in fact that there are different genre of literature in it, and you can’t treat them all the same. When someone first explained that to me it was like WOW, I just never realised that.

Now different people have different approaches to the Bible. What’s my perspective? I believe that the Bible is the living Word of the living God – inspired by Him, His Words and as such, it’s living and active and alive. It’s different from anything else that’s been written.

Other people might take an attitude – well, Shakespeare was inspired; Wordsworth was inspired; Beethoven was inspired, so were the writers of the Bible, it’s no different really. That’s not where I come from. When I pick up the Bible and read it, I do it in faith, believing that God uses His Words to speak His will and His purpose and His love and His grace into my life. And over the years, this thing we call the Bible, which I started off looking at thinking, ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ – the Bible has become so special to me.

To think that He has gone to all the trouble to have these sixty six different Books written over a period of a thousand to fifteen hundred years and then preserved with remarkable accuracy down through the centuries – for me, for you, here and now, so that He can speak His Word to you and me through His Spirit. He brings it to life somehow – that’s why it’s not dry or stuffy or irrelevant.

But I also believe that just as we need to learn to communicate with people we need to learn to communicate with God. His chosen thing, the Bible – the sixty six books written by those different people in different cultures and different styles of literature – is the way He chooses to communicate with us.

We going to look at some of those styles or genre today because it’s a simple thing, that once we understand, makes His Word, the Bible, a whole bunch more accessible. That was my experience. I used to read it as though it was all the same – it plainly is not.

Let’s look at some of the different genre. First, in a sense the most obvious is the narrative style. What’s a narrative? A narrative is a story – it’s an historical record. There are lots and lots of those in the Bible which are a narrative account of what actually happened. The Old Testament is full of historical accounts of Israel and how God dealt with them and how they constantly turned away from Him and He brought them back.

Now some people dismiss the narratives as fables, allegories from which we can learn – they never really happened but we just treat them that way. I don’t! This is the story of God and His people and we learn who God is and how He behaves and what He honours and what He rejects.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the fact that the Bible is about four things: who God is; what His plans and purposes are; who we are and how we can respond. You learnt all of those things, whether in the Old Testament historical narratives, like Judges and Kings and Chronicles, or in the New Testament narratives like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts. We should never dismiss them as fables.

Jesus clearly believed the Old Testament narratives. Those narratives hold themselves out to be true accounts. Now if this is God’s Word, either they are true or God’s a liar and I believe they are true, however miraculous they may appear. They are meant to be taken as a matter of historical fact.

Another style of literature is poetry – you see a lot of that in the Bible. Whenever you see the words In the Bible that are indented rather than being left aligned, you’re looking at poetry or songs. The Book of Psalms is basically the Hebrew Hymn and Prayer Book. It’s about people praying or worshipping God – it’s a place where you discover God through the responses of His people. It’s inspirational, it’s uplifting and it’s real. I love the way the Hebrews think so pictorially and beautifully and poetically. So you go to the Book of Psalms and you see Psalms of praise and Psalms of lamentation, Psalms of ‘of God, where are You? So poetry and songs are in the Bible and they’re a wonderful way of discovering who God is.

Another style are the prophetic writings – the Books of the Old Testament like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah – all of those guys. And in the New Testament you see letters from Paul and Peter and John – men inspired by God to speak God’s will directly to His people. In the Old Testament prophetic writings, God was calling His people back to Him through the Prophets.

In the New Testament, the letters to the churches – the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians and to people like Timothy – these are important documents – they are God speaking His will and we need to sit up and listen.

And the last kind of genre that we are going to talk about today is the apocryphal writings. Now, they are kind of a strange one because there’s no real obvious parallel in our culture. As I said, the Hebrews are a very picture-oriented culture – they’re into word-pictures to evoke emotions and to teach concepts.

You look at a book like Ezekiel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament – they are really strange books to read and it’s easy to take them and try and dissect them; chop them up into little bits and apply them literally. Now, don’t get me wrong, much of the Bible, like the narrative genre, is meant to be taken literally but you can’t do that with the apocryphal writings.

The Book of Revelation paints pictures of heaven and where things are going and what happens when Jesus comes back and the judgment and what will happen to those who didn’t believe in Jesus. And we need to stand back and look at the whole picture that is painted and ask, ‘Ok God, what are You saying to me through the whole picture? What are You trying to evoke in me?’ They’re a different genre of media and that’s obvious in our day to day lives.

And when we realise that the same is true of the sixty six Books of the Bible, all of a sudden, they start making a bit more sense, don’t you think? It’s an amazing Book, the Bible.

Some Great Resources

I have to tell you that this thing they call the Bible, was a real problem for me. First of all, coming to grips with the fact that it is what it says it is – the Word of God – but then, just getting into it – its sixty six separate books, written over about fifteen hundred years, in different times and different places and different cultures.

There are words and names and places and concepts and ways of thinking that weren’t always familiar to me because it’s been written such a long time ago. Today we are continuing in our series, ‘Reading the Bible for all it’s Worth’.

Let’s take a look now – let’s get really practically on just how to get into the Bible. Over the years I have discovered a few very simple helps or resources that have made such a difference. It turns out that there are a whole bunch of people, so much smarter than me, who’ve done some great detailed research and then they put that together in such easy, usable ways and all of their work makes getting into God’s Word, the Bible, so much easier for us.

Today I’m going to share some of those resources with you. I remember a dozen or so years ago, just after I became a Christian, I started attending a tiny little church – a Baptist church. Pastor Phil was a passionate Bible teacher and he had a great impact on my life. And I used to look at him and think, ‘how does he know all this stuff? How does he know what this from the Word means or how can he unpack the Scripture so well? Well, it turns out that Pastor Phil was using some of the resources and he’d done a lot of study over the years on his own and he knew stuff that I just didn’t know.

Now, to draw that out, I joined a home fellowship. The home fellowship is a little group that meets – we met on a Tuesday night – and at the time we were doing a Bible study through the Old Testament Book of Hosea – one of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. And right through that book, over and over again, Hosea talks about this thing ‘Ephraim.’ I remember asking these other people, most of who had been Christians for a good many years – I said, “What’s this Ephraim thing? Who’s that, what’s that?” You know something, nobody could answer the question!

Well, it turns out that Ephraim is one of the tribes of Israel. Ephraim was actually one of Joseph’s sons and there’s a whole history round this tribe and what God thought of them and how they rebelled. But in this little study group, we didn’t know that, so a lot of what God was saying through this Book of Hosea, was completely lost on us.

Actually, it happens quite a bit – I mean, look at the story of the Good Samaritan. You lose its whole meaning if you don’t understand who the Samaritans were and what the Jews thought of them.

There are names and places and concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us. They might have made sense to the people back then but they don’t always make sense to us now. I remember coming to grips with the Jewish system of blood sacrifice in the Old Testament – what a ghastly concept to me.

But somehow, it’s something I had to understand to understand what Jesus did for me on the cross, so I decided to find out for myself – not just skim the surface but when I ran into something I didn’t understand to take the time and the effort to find out. After all, if the Bible is God’s Word, it’s God speaking and I need to know what He’s saying.

Now it isn’t as hard as it first seems. Just three simple resources I’m going to talk about today. The first one was my Bible – I got myself a really simple, contemporary translation of the Bible. Not the King James with the ‘thees and the thous and the arts’ but the New International Version, which is the most popular. The New Revised Standard Version – there’s a whole bunch of them. There’s a translation called “The Message’ which is really cool. Which ones are the best? The one you’re going to read!

Can I suggest that you pick a Bible that is easy to understand for you and when you are buying you Bible, get yourself a Study Bible; it’s more than just the words of the Bible. There’s a whole bunch of resources built in, like explanations of words along the way; little maps and diagrams and cross references. You know, when you are reading through a passage like the Good Samaritan, a good Study Bible will help you to understand the story by explaining who the Samaritans were.

And just this act of getting a really good Study Bible, opened the Bible up for me enormously – it’s one of the best things I ever did. And you know what else they have? They have a summary at the beginning of each book which explains who wrote the book, to whom they wrote it and why they wrote it.

I mean, that concept is so important. Before I read Ephesians I read the four or five paragraphs in my Study Bible which explains the concept and it makes it all make sense – you know what I mean? It’s really worth the little extra investment, not just to get an ordinary Bible, but to get a Study Bible from your local Christian Bookshop or even online.

The second was a Bible Dictionary and I have one called the Illustrated Holman Bible Dictionary – it‘s just one volume. I mean, you can get twenty five volume ones. I just got one volume with pictures and diagrams so when the Bible talked about the temple, I could look it up and I’d see a picture and a plan and the layout and explain the different parts and a few paragraphs about it and in a few minutes I’m there – I understand what the writer is saying about the Holy of Holies. When they talk about Ephraim, I look it up – half a column – three minutes – I know who or what Ephraim is. I can understand the story – the story of the Good Samaritan – who were the Samaritans? What was their relationship to the Jews? It cost me fifty dollars – it’s one of the best resource investments I ever made.

And the last one is a fold out thing that cost me, literally, a couple of dollars it’s called a Bible Timeline – it folds out and it shows the chronology of the Bible. You read about King David – you can find out when he was King, what sequence things happened in; who were prophets who were writing around the same time and it puts the whole thing in a time sequence, rather than the Bible being this big, amorphous, grey mass that you don’t have a sense of chronology or history about. Just a few dollars!

A Study Bible, a Bible Dictionary and a Bible Timeline – simple resources that help us quickly and easily to bridge the time and culture gap and to fill in the blanks – God’s Word becomes so much richer.

This is not just the domain of preachers, and you know something? You can also find a lot of this stuff on line. Let me give you just quickly, to close up with, two great websites; one is called biblegateway.com – and you can compare different translations of the Bible online, it’s a great site. And the other one is studylight.org – it has dictionaries and Greek meanings and Hebrew meanings, all sorts of stuff.

Come on! The Bible is God’s Word – if we are going to take it seriously, just a small investment on our part can pay such huge dividends in our lives.

Let’s read the Bible for all it’s worth!

It’s God who bears fruit in us. God works through us when we have His Word in us.

Water is Life

Well, here we are – this is the last week in a four part series that I’ve called ‘Reading the Bible for All it’s Worth.’ Now we have specifically been taking a look over these last few weeks at how God wants to change our lives as we read His Word, the Bible. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not some sort of old fashioned, Bible thumping, fire breathing preacher – not that at all.

Well, here we are – this is the last week in a four part series that I’ve called ‘Reading the Bible for All it’s Worth.’ Now we have specifically been taking a look over these last few weeks at how God wants to change our lives as we read His Word, the Bible. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not some sort of old fashioned, Bible thumping, fire breathing preacher – not that at all.

I really believe that God wants to talk with us and He’s gone to a lot of trouble to write and preserve His Word so that He can communicate His heart to us. And you know, God isn’t always who we expect Him to be. God doesn’t always think the way we do. He comes up with some surprising things – some counter-intuitive things – and unless we get to know Him and His ways and His heart through His Word, we can end up missing the whole point.

If you have a Bible, grab it and open it up at Psalm 1 – it’s a great Psalm. We are going to have a look at it today because it’s about God’s wisdom filling us with His living water through His Word and what happens when He does that.

Let’s have a read – it’s Psalm 1 – it says this: “Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of the sinners or sit in the seat of the mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law he meditates day and night. This man is like a tree planted by streams of water which yield fruit in due season and whose leaf never withers and what ever he does, he prospers. Not so the wicked, they are like chaff, the wind blows them away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish.”

What does this say about how we can be blessed? Look at verse 1 – ‘Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of the sinners or sit in the seat of the mockers. But instead, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on this law he meditates day and night.’

Now this is an interesting contrast – it’s a very ‘Hebrew’ kind of construction. Verses 1 and 2 are the complete opposite of one another and really what this Psalm is saying is you can do either one or the other. That is, if you don’t end up delighting in God’s Word and meditating on it day and night, well you will end up in verse 1 – you’ll end up walking in the council of the wicked and standing in the way of the sinners and sitting in the seat of the mockers. Now that’s true – we ultimately all get our advice from somewhere – we learn our behaviour somewhere – either from God or from the world.

So many Christian’s lives are in a mess and when you sit down and talk to them and say, ‘Well, how much time do you spend listening to God? How much time do you spend in God’s Word? So many Christians, so many people who believe in Jesus Christ, just don’t and so they are not listening to God. They are getting their advice from the television, from the sitcoms, from the people at work. We end up mimicking someone’s behaviour and if we are getting that advice from the wicked and the sinners and the mockers, is it any surprise – is it any wonder that our lives end up in a mess?

Look at one of the classic mindsets of today’s world – living together before marriage is fine! You see it all the time – in movies, in sitcoms, in whatever you want to look at, the world is saying sex before marriage is fine. But you know what the psychologists are starting to say – even the world psychologists? They’re saying that people, who have an intimate relationship before they make a life-long commitment, are likely to have a much higher divorce rate. See we are giving away the way God wants us to live and we are ending up in the council of the wicked, standing with the sinners, sitting with the mockers.

God’s Word says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds – Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Now that’s a process, it takes time – God’s Word changes us when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day or night, we are blessed, but it takes time. If we don’t get God’s Word into us we are bound to end up in a mess. We are bound to walk with the wicked, stand with the sinners and sit with the mockers.

Let’s look at the next few verses, beginning at verse 2: “But his delight, this blessed man, is in the law of the Lord and on this law he meditates day and night.” Listen to this, “He is like a tree, planted by streams of living water which yields it’s fruit in due season and whose leaf does no wither – whatever he does he prospers.”

Now listen, these streams that the writer of this Psalm is talking about actually means streams deliberately put there as irrigation channels – that’s the meaning of the original Hebrew words. See God deliberately put His Word out there for us. He deliberately put the Bible together for us to plant ourselves next to. You know something? It’s a decision to put our roots down, either next to those streams or out in the desert – either next to the Word of God or with the wicked and the sinners and the mockers. It’s our choice and when we put our roots down in God’s Word we yield fruit in due season. Our leaves don’t wither, whatever we do we prosper.

Now that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have hard days. You look at Jesus’ life and Jesus’ life ended up on the cross. Jesus suffered; Jesus went through difficult things and if we are Christ followers, we are called to live our life through the cross. But what it does mean is that we end up living our lives for God’s purpose and God‘s glory instead of making a mess of them by living our lives for ourselves.

When we put our roots down in God’s Word, God’s Word becomes a part of us. Just think about that for a minute. When we get the right stuff into us, we end up yielding fruit in due season. Our leaves don’t wither and whatever we do we prosper. And that’s normal; that’s what God wants. He wants us to live for His glory. He wants us to know His Word. He wants us to have Him and His ways and His heart and His desires as the things that come first in our lives. And when we don’t do that, when we go in a different direction, we end up living out the consequences of those mistakes.

We sow seeds of wickedness and sin and mocking, we make our homes with those people and this Psalm goes on to say that, well, if you do that – look at verses 4 and 5 -”Those in God’s Word will be blessed but it is not so for the wicked, they are like chaff; the wind blows them away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgement nor the sinner in the assembly of the righteous.”

Isn’t that a picture of God’s church? If you go to church you will know that there are some mockers and sinners and whingers and complainers and underminers – I know lots of people like that – when instead, God’s church can be this orchard of fruit trees. Your fruit is different to mine, but fruit trees growing fruit in season because God’s very Word abides in us.

We have a choice – if we don’t permanently get close to God’s Word and drink it in, then God’s plan for us is not going to happen. Trees don’t just get up and wander off into the desert – they stay planted close to the irrigation channels, full of living water and they bear fruit. That’s how we’re meant to be.

‘Oh, I don’t bear any fruit!’ Well, I wonder why?

Where the Seed Falls

One of the things that we can do is delude ourselves into thinking that we’re receiving God’s Word, but we don’t let it influence our hearts and change our lives. Have a listen to what Jesus said – here’s the Parable of the Sower. If you have a Bible, go and open it – it’s in Luke, chapter 8, beginning at verse 4, because it’s really important. You see, it’s not just about reading God‘s Word but as Psalm 1 says, it’s meditating. It’s thinking about what God is saying to us and letting that influence us.

Let’s pick it up here in Luke, chapter 8, verse 4: “Jesus said, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some of it fell on the path and it was trampled on and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock and when it came up, the plants withered because there was no moisture. Other seed fell amongst the thorns which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on the good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” When He said this, He called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

His disciples ask Him later what the parable meant and Jesus said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of God have been given to you but to others I speak in parables. This is the meaning of the parable -the seed is the Word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they don’t believe. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no roots. They believe for a while but in the times of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among the thorns stands for those who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries and riches and pleasures and they don’t end up maturing, but the seed on the good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the Word of God, retain it and by persevering, produce a crop.”

See the seed is the Word of God – that’s what we are talking about today. God scatters it around to all of us – He makes it available to all of us through the Bible; through the teaching that we are doing today. This programme is being listened to by millions of people, but see, some of the people are like the seed that fell along the path – the devil comes along and steals it away. They hear something and think ‘yea’, but you switch off the radio or you put down the Bible and the devil whispers in your ear, “That wasn’t really for you; that wasn’t God talking. Just forget about it and go on your merry way. I don’t need the Bible – I don’t have to have one, I don’t have to read it or spend time thinking about what God is saying.” It sounds ok – deception always does!

Some of the seed falls amongst the rocks and there’s an initial joy, you know, a little shoot springs up inside you. But when the sun comes out, it dies because it doesn’t have any water. It’s the picture from Psalm 1 – if we don’t put our roots down in God’s Word we are going to wither and perish. It’s a harsh world we live in and it doesn’t matter how much initial joy and conviction and ‘Halleluiahs’ and ‘Amens’ we have, if we don’t do something about it, our faith just withers.

Think about this – a soft new, little shoot is a beautiful thing but it can’t bear fruit until it’s mature; until its roots are down; until its stem and branches are strong enough to carry the fruit. It’s beautiful but fragile. We need to nurture that faith in God’s Word and revel in it and put our roots down. ‘Those on the rock are the ones who received the Word with joy when they heard it but they have no roots. They believe for a little while but in the times of testing they fall away.’

Then there were other ones where the seeds kind of fell on good ground but amongst the thorns. You know, we hear God’s Word but life is so busy: “I don’t have time to pray or read the Bible or fellowship with other Christians” or “I’m busy and work and kids and sport and shopping and entertainment”, “the world has so much to offer, you know, movies and surfing the net and television and going out with friends” – on and on and on….. And you know the longer we let that go, the more those thorns will choke the Word of God in us and the seed can’t grow, it dies.

I remember being in the Army and going on navigation exercises through the jungle. There’s a plant that was introduced into Australia by European settlers called ‘lantana’. It’s got thorns and little pink and yellow flowers and it’s just taken over the native jungle. I remember navigating once and it took us about a half a day to hack our way through just one hundred metres – nothing else could grow. That’s what happens when we let the cares of the world clutter out God’s Word. ‘The seed that fell among the thorns stands for those who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries and riches and pleasures and they don’t mature.’

But then – then there’s the seed that falls on the good soil. That’s where it should fall – I mean, when you think about it – the farmers don’t go out to deliberately throw stuff on the footpath, on the rocks, amongst the thorns – they want most of the seeds to go into the good soil. The normal, good, healthy, proper thing for the seed to fall on good soil and once it’s watered and it gets sunshine, the roots go down and then you know what happens? Exactly what the farmer expected should happen – those seeds grow into healthy plants and produce fruit.

But the seed on the good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the Word of God and retain it and by persevering – by persevering, got that? Not by wandering off and planting ourselves in the desert, but by persevering – produce a crop – a hundred fold!

The Word of God is for you and me, not for someone else. If you don’t have a Bible, bite the bullet – go get one. And if you have one, read it – day and night and think and meditate and absorb and dream and pray and wrestle and digest and be fed by the Word of God. Listen to good teaching and preaching, read books that are soaked in the Word of God, hang around people whose roots are so deep down in the Word of God.

There’s a clear alternative in Psalm 1 – we can either walk in the council of the wicked, stand in the way of the sinners, sit in the seat of the mockers or we can delight in God’s Word – put our roots down and be filled so that we bear fruit. We either wither or prosper; it’s up to us really.

The Normative Christian Life

God’s Word is so specific, so direct, so particular on this subject, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Jesus taught about it many, many times. For instance, if you go to John, chapter 15, verses 7 and 8, where He talks about the fact that He is the vine and we are the branches. Listen to what He says, He says: “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you (The Word of God), ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you. This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.”

See, the two things are linked over and over and over again in the Bible. Firstly, God’s Word and when that’s alive in us – secondly, bearing fruit. It’s God who bears fruit in us – we don’t go and do things in our own strength – God works through us when we have His Word in us. None of us are perfect!

I had a man accost me in a coffee shop recently and he argued with me that we could all be perfect because all things are possible in Christ. But we all have our flesh – that part of us that wants to rebel and go our own way. And God’s way is to deal with it over time through His Word.

I know that as I have spent time in God’s Word, He has dealt with so many things in me – pride and arrogance and the way I speak to people – the list goes on and on. Galatians, chapter 5, verse 22, talks about the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – that’s the fruit of the Spirit of God in us.

You know, one of the main ways that He grows that fruit in us, day after day, month after month, year after year, is as we allow God’s Word to abide and dwell and grow in us – like the seeds in the good soil. And that fruit – that fruit isn’t for us. Listen to Jesus again in John chapter 15, verse 8, he said, “This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.” Fruit and discipleship go together. You know what a disciple is? It literally means ‘to be a learner’. And it is to the Father’s glory – God’s glory, not ours when we bear much fruit. Not just a bit, a lot; abundantly, thereby showing ourselves to have been learners of God’s Word – bringing God the glory.

Other people give God glory when they experience our fruit. A good tree bears good fruit, bad trees bear bad fruit. If we are not spending time in God’s Word we are going to be with the sinners and the scoffers and the mockers – that’s where we are going to be. Jesus said it in Matthew, chapter 7, verses 17 to 19, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree can’t bear bad fruit and a bad tree can’t bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus by their fruit you will recognise them.”

When people know that we are Christians and they see good fruit in our lives – they see love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – when they see that, they go ‘that persons a Christian, this God that they follow must be a good God’.

Psalm 1 makes it very clear, we have a choice – we have a choice of walking in the council of the wicked, standing in the way of the sinners or sitting in the seat of mockers or delighting in the Word of God – putting our roots down and being filled and bearing fruit. It’s clear; it’s taught consistently in God’s Word.

Let me ask you – what sort of fruit are you bearing? Have you ever stood back and looked at your life the way others look at you and say ‘am I producing good fruit in abundance or not?’ It’s not a guilt trip; we are all on a journey. We are all growing in godliness but are we growing? Are we producing fruit? Is He changing us?

I tell you – there is a direct correlation between the fruit that we grow and letting God’s Word have full sway in our lives. Even when it’s inconvenient; even when it means suffering; even when it means taking up our cross and following Him, because it’s not for our glory – it’s for God’s glory – even when it hurts like blazes; even when our flesh riles against us. God’s Word is what lets us take up our cross every day and die to ourselves so that we can be alive to Christ.

I don’t know about you, but if I go for a few days or a few weeks where I’m not spending time in God’s Word, those thorns grow up; my flesh takes over; I start going my own way and all of a sudden I find myself in a desert.

I mean, God has provided so much life through His Word. ‘My life’s a mess! My life’s not what it should be! My life will never change!’ Yes, it will! God’s Word is absolutely clear; it’s not a life free from pain and suffering – not that at all. But it’s a life that bears fruit in abundance to God’s glory, because we have His Word in us and it’s really simple.

All we have to do is pick up the Bible, God’s Word, and spend time in that every day. Not just skim reading; maybe we only read a few verses but we sit and think and meditate and digest and we let the very Spirit of God change us on the inside.