God's Word

This morning, have two readings, one from Psalm 119:1-16, and the second reading will be from 1 Peter 1:13-25. Psalm 119:1-16. Your word is a lamp to my feet. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in His ways.

You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. I will keep your statutes.

Do not utterly forsake me. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart, I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, oh, Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. I turn to 1 Peter 1:13-25, called to be holy. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you.

And our text for this morning are those last words where we read, you have been born again not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flowers of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Brothers and sisters, you may be aware that in the seventh and eighth century, there was a great challenge to Christianity with the birth of what eventually became known as Islam, although if you've been keeping up with the findings on the history of Islam, you'll realise there was a lot of funny business going on there. And but what is certainly true is that there were Arabian raiders who went through much of what was a Christian area of North Africa and Eurasia and made it very hard for Christians to continue, especially when Islam was adopted probably some hundred and fifty years after Mohammed supposedly lived, but we won't go into that.

The thing is this, that Islam displaced much of Christianity because at first it came as a kind of Christian heresy, but then it morphed into Islam and Christians were no longer permitted to worship, and we see that the churches that were in North Africa by and large disappeared with one exception, sorry, two exceptions. Christianity remained in Egypt and in Ethiopia. Why there? Let me tell you something else. When missionaries started doing mission work in China, for the longest time, they were not allowed to go into the interior but had permission to preach the gospel along the coastal lands only.

When at last permission came for missionaries to enter into the interior, to their surprise, they found the church was already there. Why? At the time of great spiritual darkness in Europe around the fourteenth, fifteenth century, there was suddenly an outbreak of the reformation which just spread like wildfire. Why? What do these three stories have in common?

The common factor here is the availability of the word of God. You see, what had happened in Northern Africa is, yes, there were Christian churches, but the Bible was only translated into two of the languages there, the language of the Egyptian Christians, Coptic, and the language of the Ethiopians. And because they had Bibles, the Church of Christ survived in those areas. Let me look again at the question of why were there churches found in inland China where no missionary had come. It's because the word of God had already come. You see, traders from the interior had come and had picked up Bibles and had gone back to their home areas, started reading the Bible, shared it with their neighbours, and started Christian fellowships based purely on the word of God.

And why is it that in the fifteenth century or sixteenth century, in the 1500s, we suddenly see an outbreak of reformation? It's because the word of God was made available to everyone through a new invention called printing, and people were able to read the word of God for themselves. Now at the end of last month, we celebrated Reformation Day, and we remember how Martin Luther pointed people back to what? To the word of God. And with printing coming in and this new mass encouragement to follow God's word, we see that the church of God was revitalised and set up in Europe once again.

Now I want to look at the word of God and what it does in terms of its vitality, its endurance, and its centrality in Christian life. The first thing we see is that it is vital, and we are born again through the living word. I'm afraid that this living word in the sixteenth century had become a dead letter in the church of its day. It wasn't taught that the word gives life, but in the Catholic tradition at the time it was taught that you were given life through baptism. The word for beginning life is regeneration, being born again, and so when you're baptised, you're born again, and so only the church could give you this rebirth because only the church could baptise.

And with this baptism, there was no guarantee of salvation, but you only received salvation if you continued to follow the teachings of the church, and those teachings said that you had to come and confess your sins to the priest and then he would give you absolution if you did penance, and without a priest there was no salvation. The priest also gave you the last rites and the church made available indulgences which was a kind of free pass into heaven without having to go to purgatory. And it's in this context that Luther came with the wonderful gospel news of by grace alone we are saved. And the wonderful thing is that the grace preached by Luther was not a grace that you could lose. No.

Because these living words came from imperishable seeds. Once you are born again, this cannot disappear. It is imperishable, and so we don't rely on confessions and absolution from sin, from priests, or last rites. No. We rely on our direct connection with God in Christ because He who began the good work in us will also bring it to its completion.

And the vitality of the word of God lies in the fact that the word is Christ Himself. Christ is the word. And perhaps this is best illustrated how this works through the parable Christ Himself told us about Him being the vine and we being the branches. I don't think you have to be a gardener to know that if you cut a branch off a vine, what happens to the branch? It dies, doesn't it?

Why does it die? Because it no longer gets its nourishment. A branch gets its nourishment from the vine and then it can bear fruit, but you cut it off from the vine, it doesn't get that nourishment. And so too if we cut off from Christ, if we were to be without Christ, then we would not get our nourishment because Christ is our nourishment. He is called the living bread, and He nourishes us through the words and also through the sacraments as you will remember next week.

Now the reformation tradition then really emphasised the fact that it's so necessary for you and for me to read God's word constantly. How often do you eat? Anybody who only eats once or twice a week? Well, I know lots of Christians who only read their word of God once or twice a week. How strong do you think they're gonna be in their faith?

As strong as you would be if you ate only once or twice a week in your body. Not very strong, would you? We normally eat three times a day, maybe fast a little bit because we tend to eat too much and it shows. But we need to feed constantly. And if we don't, we begin to feel faint, and if you keep doing that, you get anorexic and all kinds of problems arise.

I think one of the reasons why reformers made it a custom for people to read at the time they had their meal at the table was to remind people that even as food is important for your body, so God's word is important as nourishment for your soul. Now the second thing that Peter tells us here is that this word of God is enduring, and we see how it has endured despite attacks over history. Now there are two main ways in which Satan likes to attack God's word, by adding to it and by taking away from it, and he can do both at the same time. We see that happening before the reformation. We see how Satan added to it by making, well, the church came together for councils, and the first three councils were based on the word of God.

But after that, more councils were introduced which were no longer looking to God's word for guidance, and these councils introduced things like the veneration of the idols and the Virgin Mary in the church. It began as an aid to prayer, but became more and more like idolatry. We find that these councils introduced things like a doctrine of transubstantiation, that means that the bread magically changes, or I shouldn't say magically, but miraculously changes into the actual body of Jesus when the priest blesses it and a little bell is rung and then the bread becomes flesh and the wine becomes blood. And nothing like that is found in scripture of course, but these were the ways in which new ideas were added to the church's teaching. And on top of that, in the 1800s, the church decided that the pope himself could bring out doctrine, and these statements of the pope are known as bulls, which I always think is quite an appropriate name.

But in these bulls, we find that new teachings were introduced like the immaculate conception of Mary, that she was born without sin just like Christ was. That was in 1854. And then in 1950, they decided that Mary herself ascended into heaven just like Christ did. Now on top of that, the Roman Catholic church also brought in the apocryphal letters into their Bible, and the books of Maccabees, for example, give the foundation for their doctrine of purgatory. Now that's ways in which they added to scripture, but at the same time, they took away from scripture because scriptures were only available in Latin, which is no good at all if you don't speak Latin.

It's worthless. And the preaching was done in Latin so people had no idea of what was said. Translations were banned. If you were in possession of a translation, you would be, well, burned to death together with your translation. And so we find that the preaching had been replaced by sacraments and liturgy, and I'm happy to say there were many exceptions and it's these exceptions that then led to the reformation, but the official Roman Catholic church had strayed far from the word of God and people hardly had opportunity to listen to it.

Now I want to point out that this was not limited to Roman Catholicism of the Middle Ages, but that we find the same thing going on since the reformation. We see that people have added to scripture and perhaps the most obvious examples are some of the sects. Think of the Mormons in the writings of Joseph Smith, think of Jehovah's Witnesses and Russell's teachings and the Watchtower publications, the Seventh Day Adventists with the prophecies of Ellen White and so on, and most of the sects have some kind of supposed revelation of their own to guide them in their teaching. But it's not just sects. We also find it in the liberal wings of the church that people started to bring in all kinds of things in addition to the Bible.

For example, the supposed findings of science which they claimed as contrary to our teaching of God's creation, and mainstream science often attacked these doctrines. Secular history began to tell us that the whole story of Israel and Egypt was just a fantasy, some kind of myth, that there were never any Jews in Egypt and so on. And of course, the media with all its attacks on Christian worldview and the new promotion of the woke mentality with all its ethical problems that it brings. So in these ways, we see that there was addition to the scriptures. We also see it in some of the more charismatic wings of the church where people supposedly have private revelations to guide them and the church on where to go.

This already happened soon after the reformation in some of the Anabaptist churches and that new prophecy was accepted in addition to what God gave us in His word. At the same time, we see that since the reformation, there's also been subtraction from the word of God. There's a group of people known as neo-orthodox. They follow people like Karl Barth and they say God's word is contained in the scripture. Now you see the difference between saying God's word is the scripture and God's word is contained in the scripture, because in the latter sentence, the next question is where?

Doesn't it include Genesis one, two, three? And a lot of scholars said, no. No. That's not part of scripture. Does it include Romans one where Paul talks about the sin of homosexuality?

No. No. That's not part of scripture. What is God's scripture then? Well, that depends on who you ask, and people begin to put their ideas into scripture to get out of it what they put into it.

And that's not, of course, how scripture is to guide us. So some people use rationalism as their basis for deciding what is God's word or not, trying to find on the basis of logic that they would say, well, there are two creation stories in Genesis one and two, and since there are two, well, which one should we accept? Let's accept rather that these are, and here they talked about different genres of scripture, so you've got history and you've got poetry. Let's put Genesis one and two in the poetic section, just talking about, yeah, wonderful ideas but not really about historical events. Other people would, instead of rationalism, use empiricism.

I'll only accept what I can feel, see, hear, taste, and smell, nothing else. And if you start with that approach, then, yeah, you find a lot of problems with scripture because then, of course, you have no room for miracles. You can't smell or taste a miracle, can you? And so these people then find lots of errors in the Bible and end up yet diluting the teaching of scripture to some kind of we must love one another theology. Now I want to point out that although people came with these many new ideas, new teachings that contradicted scripture, they didn't go very far.

In 1800, the French Institute in Paris listed 82 errors in scripture. Now today, all 82 are solved through things like biblical archaeology and finding new copies of scriptures that took away some of the problems we had. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like there's a passage where it says you have increased the people and have not increased their joy, they will be joyful. Well, that's a contradiction, isn't it? But now we know that the "not," lo, can be spelled two ways.

One way, it means no, and the other way, it means to him. And we now realise it says, you have increased joy to him, and they will rejoice. So no contradiction at all. So in many ways there, we have found answers to these supposed problems. But what scripture tells us then is that men are like grass.

They flourish one day and disappear the next. And that's not just talking about their bodies, that's also talking about their scholarship, their ideas, the things they believe. Just ask yourself, what did people believe a hundred years ago? They believed that the atom was the smallest particle of matter. Well, today we know the atom can be divided in all kinds of ways.

They believed that the speed of light was constant and that's now questioned in many different ways. And they, yeah, in so many ways, were misled by the teachings of their day, and probably the one that many of us have had to struggle with in our lifetime are the challenges of evolutionism. And I know that I found it very difficult when I went to university about, well, over fifty five years ago, and I went to anthropology and the very first thing the teacher asked is, is there anybody here who still believes in Adam and Eve? And in the class of 200, myself and one girl put up our hands and as you can imagine, a lot of laughter, and the professor saying, don't worry, we'll soon cure them of it. Well, we've seen now how evolution itself no longer can be defended.

All kinds of problems that it faces, the missing links have never been found, they're still missing. Genetics now show us through DNA, the mitochondrial, the one from the mother, and the Y chromosome, both point to us that the world cannot be older than 10,000 years, probably quite a bit younger because of all the mutations coming, that was, yeah. And the fact that we can trace a common ancestry, I haven't got time to explain it here, but if you're doing the maths, it means that, well, for the Y chromosome, the one we get from our parents as men, this goes right back to the time of Noah and his sons, and for mitochondrial DNA goes right back to Eve. And both of them point to a much younger earth than what is expected. Now I could go to a lot of other examples from physics, palaeontology, sorry, and all of them now show us that the Darwinian theory just no longer holds and people are looking for something else to replace it because, well, don't be surprised, not everybody wants to become a Christian.

They want another lifestyle and so we've now come to an age where people have said, well, we'll throw logic out of the window and truth is what you want it to be and you can set your own rules for how you want to live and so on, the whole woke mentality. Now the third thing we want to notice about the word of God is that it is central to the Christian life. This was the word that was preached in the Christian church. In Acts 2:42, we read that the early Christians devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. That was their bread and butter. That's how they grew, and they would come together for fellowship and for breaking the bread in Lord's Supper and for praying together, but it was the word of God that lay at the centre of that service.

Paul writes to Titus, God brought His word to light through preaching. Now as I pointed out, before the reformation, preaching had disappeared from the churches, and in the centre of the church was the altar where the priest did the miracle of changing the bread to flesh and the wine to blood. But when the reformation came, these altars were taken away and it was the pulpit that was placed in the centre of the church, and that was symbolical of the fact that this is what should be central in the church, the word of God. God speaking to us, that is just such an important part of our Christian worship service every morning. Now the reformed reformation churches showed this in their architecture, that buildings were now built to allow all people to look at the pulpit so that they could hear the word of God.

No longer were there little rooms where you could worship saints and so on. Now all the centre was on the word of God. And sadly today, we do see that the centrality of the word of God is not always there in the church anymore. We see it where the pulpit has made way for musicians. Now musicians, I think it's wonderful to have these instruments here, and I love the way you lead us to praise God and worship.

But I have been to churches where the instruments were there and the pulpit was somewhere way down in a corner, and whereas all the people could see all the musicians, only the people in front could see the preacher. And in fact, in that particular church, I think we had a service of about an hour and a half, a lot of repetition in song, but the message was about five to ten minutes. I don't think that's how things ought to be. The Bible points us to the centrality of the word of God. I've also been to a church where the pulpit was removed, and not only the pulpit, but all the pews were removed and put in the room behind, and a nice thick carpet was put out because this was the time of Toronto blessing, because supposedly you were blessed when you were slain in the spirit, fell on the floor, and began to bark like a dog or cluck like a chicken, and that was supposed to be a spiritual blessing, and the word of God was missing.

But it can also be missing where there is preaching. But instead of concentrating on the word of God, people talk about the latest headlines, about how wonderful Trump is in what he's doing in America, or perhaps from the other side, how wonderful the Democrats were for introducing the gender debates and upholding the fight against global warming. It doesn't matter what side you're on. These are not the centre of worship. The centre of the worship is God's word that can guide us into these issues. Yes.

But let us not begin with the issues where we find them in the media. When we preach the word of God, well, how do you know the word of God is preached? When preachers preach Christ. Christ is the word of God, and Christ should always be at the centre of our preaching. Now some of you may know that when new pastors are being trained for ministry, they have to go to a classis exam, and they have to pass the classis exam before they can preach in the church.

And in the past, I don't know what it's like, but when I was active, about fifty percent of students did not pass their exam because they failed in the preaching. And you know what they failed on? They failed to put Christ in the centre of their message. And so they were told, sorry. You will have to try again.

And because they felt it was a good lesson, and from then on, they remembered, and it is so important, and you as a congregation, if you find Christ missing from the messages, make it known to the session, make it known to the preacher, because what we are to preach is Christ and Christ crucified. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2. He says it many places, but I'll just read this one from 1 Corinthians 2:1-2. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, but I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Brothers and sisters, we preach Christ because Christ is the word.

He's the one God gave us to make His will known. He is our revelation from God, and it's in Christ that we find all the answers to our problems, to our sin, and what He did for us, how He died for us, how He gave His life to make up for where we failed. And we put Christ in the centre of our lives so that Christ may be all in all and all the glory be given to Him. We thank you, Lord, for this wonderful message we have in Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Father in heaven, we do pray that where your word is preached, Christ may be at the centre of it. We realise that today being Sunday, all throughout the world, your words will be preached in many languages, many languages that we wouldn't understand at all. But maybe we would pick up one or two words. We hope we would hear the words Jesus and that we would hear the word Christ or Christus or Kristus or however it's pronounced because, Lord, this is indeed the most important part of the whole message. Help us to put your word central in our lives, and we thank you for the life, the new life we have in Christ through that word. In Jesus' name, amen.