Introduction

Last time I preached I began with a text that describes immaturity as a failure to grow in “the word of righteousness” (5:13). Similarly, Jesus explains failure in fruitfulness as the inability to understand and obey the “the word of the kingdom” (Matt 13:18-19).

Where the church fails to grow and multiply (cf. Acts 6:7; 12:24), either in numbers, devotion or good deeds, the root cause is an inability to discern the difference between words spoken by man and words spoken by God. The word of the kingdom always releases the works of God’s kingdom (John 14:10), but the word of man lacks the power to transform lives (2 Tim 3:5).

New converts hear God easily, but as time goes on many Christians become “dull of hearing” (Heb 5:11). A famous hymn[1] honestly states, “Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and his word?”

The church of God needs to hear the word of God afresh and to undergo radical renewal. This can only happen through a journey into God’s heart.

Creation and the Word of God

The Word of God is the means by which God makes himself available in love for all people. All things were made by the Word (John 1:1-3; Heb 1:1-2) so that all of creation might reveal its Maker (Ps 19:1-4). When human beings pay attention to God’s speech everything becomes clear, “The unfolding of your (God’s) words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” (Ps 119:130),

It was a wonderful thing to live in Eden and delight in the myriad of colours, scents and tastes that the LORD God had made by his mighty Word. (Gen 2:8-9). Adam must have spontaneously proclaimed to his Creator, “How beautiful/how wonderful is your Word in all you have made.” The height of his appreciation came when he delighted in the divine fashioning of Eve, the man was astounded by the excellency of God in his wife’s physical form, character and companionship. Adam had no doubts that the Word of God revealed the immeasurable wisdom and goodness of God. He loved being a creature, receiving things from the Creator and offering them back in gladness in his role as prophet, priest and king of the earth. As long as man obeyed the voice of God he happily shared in the rule of God over the world.

Why Reject the Word?

There was one Word however that was the most difficult to delight in, it was the Word that addressed man as a sovereign command demanding raw submission, ““You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Gen 2:17). Yet this Word which appeared to demean human dignity and demand mindless submission contained the key to the mystery of eternal life.

God’s Word is above all things holy (Jer 23:9), this means his Word is fully and utterly transparent, you can see right through the divine Word into the divine heart (John 1:18). When God spoke to Adam about the danger of eating the tree, he spoke with a depth that conveyed his heart-felt grief at the danger that humans could die (cf. Gen 6:5-6). The Lord’s tender heart (Hos 11:8) was laid bare so that an eternal principle might enter the life of man, “The deeper the obedience to the voice of God the deeper the indwelling of the Word of God.”

If Adam had by faith obeyed God’s voice, his Word would have taken up residence in his heart with a new depth. He would have been so deeply penetrated by the Word that he would have become glorious and immortal; becoming the very embodiment of the Word, separation from God would have been impossible. Of course, none of this happened.

The root sin of Adam was not an inner feeling of pride, envy or greed, but that he took the “eyes of his heart” (Eph 1:18) off the command of God. He turned to Satan’s words which were smooth, flattering (Rom 16:18; Ps 55:21; Prov 2:16; 5:3; 6:24; 7:5, 21) and delicious to the ear (Job 12:11). Satan’s offer seemed so much better than God’s, Adam could still be “like God” and live forever but without the need to submit to God’s Word (Gen 3:5).

Adam was tragically deceived, for he failed to discern the difference between the words of the devil and the heart of the devil, Satan’s heart holds no love for man. The results of this deception were disastrous.

The presence of the holy God in the Garden of Eden became unbearable. Instead of being experienced as an intimate inner witness of heartfelt love from the Creator, the Word was now experienced as wholly external to man, a word full of wrath instead of glory (Rom 1:18-32). In fear of ruthless punishment, Adam and Eve fled in terror from the presence of God (Gen 3:8-10), as people have been doing ever since. Since everything had been created by the Word of God everything was now disturbed. The animals, created as helpers for man (Gen 2:18-20) turned into enemies, the woman, God’s greatest gift to her husband, became a source of strife and contention (Gen 3:16), and the earth, once a means of dominion and delight became a symbol of cursing and death (Gen 3:17-19).

Living without the Word

Following Satan’s words (Eph 2:2) brings terrible inner darkness (Acts 26:18; Col 1:13). Jesus said, ““The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt 6:22-23). Those who turn away from the Word of God lose all understanding of themselves, rejection of the indwelling Word means the loss of the light of God concerning our own hearts. Those who think their eyes are open (Gen 3:4-7) apart from the God’s Word have lost all true discernment, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Eph 4:18). With hearts hardened by “the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13) we lose discernment about our own motives. The outside and the inside are no longer the same, people say one thing and mean another, for “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). Solomon wisely prayed to the Lord, “you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind” (2 Chron 6:30).

Children start life with openness and trust, an attitude Jesus commended as the way to receive the kingdom of God (Mark 10:14-15). This simplicity is lost when little ones discover the twisted and changeable nature of the words of others.

This lost of transparency was brought home to me powerfully at the recent funeral of a Down’s Syndrome woman. People told of her straightforward natural affection, simple delight in sharing the things of God and emotional vulnerability. She lacked the learned ability to cover up what was really going on inside.

Sin curves our hearts into ourselves (cor incurvitas ad se Luther), so we cease hearing God’s heart through his voice as it comes to us through creation, conscience and scripture. We hear only ourselves and others. The culture we live in today is more self-obsessive than any that has ever existed. With Facebook, Twitter, Iphones…people love talking about themselves at the centre of all things. It should not surprise us that 20% of young people experience significant depressive symptoms by the time they reach adulthood, around one in six Australian men suffer from depression at any given time and the rate for women is about double![2]

Have you ever reflected on what it would be like to live alone with yourself forever – if you have, then you have some understanding about the pain of hell, a pain so acute, that it once drove me towards madness. Anyone who is finally cut off from the voice of God will be left with only the voice and verdict of their own conscience, the eternal terror of self pronounced guilt.

The truth of life without God is too much for human beings to bear (Amos 7:10), it must be avoided by all sorts of repression, idolatry and pleasure seeking (Rom 1:18-32)[3]. The vast majority of humanity flees from God like Adam and Eve in the Garden, they want the Word to stay outside of them, the fallen human conscience is terrified by the prospect of a piercing angry Word “discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb 4:12). Outside Christ, people cannot believe that God could totally forgive them.

The Word Amongst Us

When the Word who created the world became flesh (John 1:1-3, 14)[4]; the Saviour and Judge of all (John: 4:42; 12:48) drew unavoidably near. In the light of Christ (John 1:4) God’s holy and all penetrating Word of truth (John 17:17) had come. Those who had lost faith in the power of their own words, the abused, lonely, broken and outcast, drew near to Jesus, but those whose words carried religious and political power could not bear to hear him and drew back into the darkness (John 3:19-21).

Christ the compassionate and all merciful Word powerfully drew those who listened to him (Matt 11:15; 13:9) away from all forms of EVIL and into the heart of God the Father. Those who refused to hear were left alone (John 8:37) in the corruption of their own minds and hearts. Given Israel’s history of stoning the prophets, it was inevitable that in Jesus the Word of the kingdom would be rejected (Matt 13:14-15).

God however had a plan to radically transform human nature so that it would be empowered to receive his Word as it actually is (1Thess 2:13). This involved the work of the cross. Throughout the course of his life on earth, Jesus, as the sinless and obedient Son of God was constantly aware of the indwelling Word of the Father, this consciousness was his very heart and life (John 6:57), and it was this consciousness that had to be sacrificed for us.

Jesus struggle in Gethsemane to obey the Father and take “the cup” is a struggle to obey the voice of God and to accept the divine wrath[5]. Jesus must trust that the goodness of the Father’s will means for him to be taken away from the manifest presence of God (2 Thess 1:9). Hell is Wordlessness, and Jesus must be torn away from the heart of the Father by the weight of our sin. To bear our sin on the cross (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24) means that Jesus loses the awareness of the indwelling Word of God, he loses the source and sense of all that is delightful. When he cries out at the height of his anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34), his words are the words of another sufferer (Psalm 22:1), a quote from a psalmist who long ago believed himself abandoned by God. Jesus never spoke in this indirect way about God before, and he has never spoken in this way since.

On the outside, men heard Jesus’ words from the cross as failed words, but on the inside an eternal saving principle was working in Christ; the principle that that been given to Adam from the beginning, “The deeper the obedience to God’s Word, the more intensely his Word indwells us”[6]. Through his perfectly obedient faith in going to death for us (Heb 12:2), Jesus’ humanity became so penetrated by the all powerful creative Word of God that he was raised from the dead glorified and immortal[7]. Resurrection power always follows obedient faith.

The Restoration of the Word

Paul applies this principle to us, “Christ dwells in our hearts through faith” (Eph 3:17). Through dwelling in the heart of God we become aware of the true nature of the Word of God, “the gospel, …the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). Paul says to the Thessalonians, “the gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction… you received the word of God not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess 1:5; 2:13).

In another place he commands the church, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16). We need to be filled with the healing and forgiving words of Christ. For this to happen we need to be stripped of our own changeable words and filled with the “imperishable…living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet 1:23). We need forgiving for our words and healing from the words of others.

What is stopping this happening? What must take place for there to be a restoration of the power of the Word of God in the church?

Resisting the Word

Firstly, we must accept that where there is a lack of the indwelling presence of the Word the people of God are always in rebellion, ““Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Heb 3:15). Christians are mostly secret rather than open rebels, but nevertheless we are people who do not delight in submitting to the Word of God (Ps 40:8; Heb 10:7).

Secondly, and more foundationally, we must recognise we are deceived about the nature of the Word of God. Let me explain with an illustration. When lecturing I would always ask my students whether their sins would be exposed by the Word of God on the Judgement Day.[8] After all, when Jesus comes to judge the world riding on a white horse, “the name by which he is called is The Word of God” (Rev 19:11, 13). Students were naturally frightened when I said all sins would be exposed by the Word (2 Cor 5:10; Rev 20:12), until when I explained our sins would be laid bare by the Word of Christ as forgiven sins. Christians avoid the power of the Word of God because they think it will accuse, condemn or manifest anger towards them. The truth is that it is a Word full of grace (John 1:14; Acts 14:3; 20:32).

Thirdly, we need to open our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by the power of the Spirit that took Jesus to the cross and raised him from the dead (Heb 9:14; 1 Tim 3:16) that Christ indwells us (Eph 3:16-17). The Spirit of God inside our hearts is intensely interceding for us (Rom 8:26-27) that we may receive the Word by which he draws us into the heart of the Father’s love (Rom 8:14-16; Gal 4:4-6). Why are we not hearing the prayers of the Spirit deep inside us, as Jesus did?

The answer is simple but difficult to bear – the “word of the kingdom” always brings opposition. Jesus said, “(the seed) sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.” (Matt 13:20-21). They stoned the prophets, crucified the Lord Jesus and in over 50 nations today faithful believers are openly persecuted on account of the Word[9]. Jesus said, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” (John 17:14).

To grow to maturity in Christ, we must accept that obedience to his Word will lead to hardship, deprivation, unpopularity and persecution. It means to accept the principle that tribulation is the means by which we are called to obey God more deeply that his Word may dwell in us more intensely[10]. Accepting hardship on account of the Word is the only basis by which we may say that we love God’s Word and love to hear it above all else.

Conclusion

Men and women of all other religions and ideologies struggle to believe that God is fully interested in speaking to them, but we know that in Christ the Word of God completely embedded himself in creation to make himself wholly available to us. To reflect this infinite commitment of the Word and his supreme sacrifice is the call and challenge of the Christian life.

Paul says, “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (Rom 10:7). The word in our hearts and on our lips is the Word which created the universe (Heb 1:2), became a human being, died on the cross, rose from the dead and is coming again to judge the world. Inside of you is the power by which God calls all human life away from evil and to Christ[11]. This is that Word which has the authority to revive the church and transform society so that men and women gladly return everything they have to its source in God.

Today the church is so terribly ineffective in discipling its own members that it cannot possibly alter society. Rare is the church that treats the lost state of humanity with due seriousness. Rare is the church moved by the compassionate heart of God to pour out all it resources in intercession and action to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Such a crisis is a crisis over the sovereign authority of the Word. We have become weak in the Word, practically denying its power to bring salvation, not in the mere sense of getting people to heaven, but to motivate the offering of all of life back to God.

Our prayer together must be, “Cause us to hear again.”, and individually, “Cause me to hear again.” This is a prayer that God will certainly answer (1 John 5:14-15).