Encounter - Encountering God Through Scripture

Well, we've been going through last few weeks talking about the vision we've had for the new year and we've been using a few words, three words specifically that you may have heard.

One is the word encounter, then the word jubilee and the word prepare.

Encounter speaks about being open to what the Holy Spirit is doing, is transforming work in us.

Preparation is our celebration that God is giving us freedom and that our lives is becoming more like Christ.

We get free as we let God do His work in us and then prepare.

Last week you know, if you were here Neil spoke about how important discipleship is, that we pass along and show others who don't yet know the Lord or maybe are just struggling or walking to grow in their faith, and then we pass it on, help them pass it on to someone else.

So those are all important things and this is what we have set out there for the new year.

Question is, how do we embrace these things and grab hold of them for this coming year and make them practical?

And I think, as I set with the elders in the fall time in September, we were discussing these issues and I think we, as elders, we kind of we kind of sense this is going to be a critical year.

I don't know about you, but I think we all are kind of just thinking that that might be the case.

This is a critical year for us in so many ways, and we just need to get ready for what we see on the horizon, what we sense may be coming Dark clouds that don't look too encouraging, but you know what we're in Christ and Jesus said take heart, I've overcome the world, and we can be confident in that.

And you know, none of us know what's coming.

None of us knows what's going to be in this year, but you know what we can know, what God tells us, all we do.

We look back at the last two years, though, and we see where we've been headed, so that might give us a little bit of clue, because in the last two years, if you think, if they've shown us anything is that we are living in a pretty dark time, dark on the horizon, and things destroy the normal peace and security that we've known for so many years.

So now I think you know, I'm just thinking we probably are just holding our breath of wondering when the next form of a lawless act or law is going to come into place and we just wonder from day to day because it seems like it's coming almost faster than we can keep up with something new every day on the news or wherever.

So where is the church in all this?

The church has been right there, but in a lot of ways, to be quite honest, we've agreed with the culture and we've compromised the biblical principles that we've been taught.

And so I just have this question what has happened to us?

What has happened to us?

You know, if I think about what Jesus taught us, he said that, as our role in society should be, is that we are to be salt and light Salt as a preservative and a flavor to society, and light in a dark place, and so we can't afford to give those things up.

Jesus said, if you remember, if we lose those things, that we have nothing to offer to those and we might as well throw those things out because they have no effect.

We don't live them out like we should.

I don't know exactly what Jesus means with all that, but I know it's not good and you know it was said in the early church, the early Christians, and you remember this phrase they turned the world upside down.

Do you love that I don't know about you, but I haven't been to many or heard too many churches that have been turning their world upside down.

I mean, I think we're doing a great job, but you know how many of you know you can always go deeper, can always go deeper.

I heard one well-known pastor say that a realistic assessment would have to concede that the opposite has occurred the world has turned the church upside down, and Christians have allowed it to do so.

You know, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to kind of realize that we are.

We're living in uncertain times, and as I read Proverbs 22, for example, there in verse three it says the prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.

And that doesn't mean we stick our heads in the sand, but what it does mean is that we are wise and that we're careful about how we live in this world.

And so there's a precedent in scripture.

I believe that we should be making such assessments so that we can know how to live our lives before a watching world and we can be effective purveyors of the gospel, so that we can be what he's called us to be.

But to do that is to get rid of all the distractions.

We got a lot of distractions.

I mean, if I, if I'm driving down the road maybe you're one of these people and I see someone weaving down the road and I think I tell my wife, they're on their phone, they're on their phone that's not only dangerous in a physical sense but it's also dangerous spiritually to be distracted.

And so over the next few weeks we're going to be talking to, I guess, go extend our series a little bit going to the scriptures to see a church that I would say is firing on all cylinders, spiritually firing on all cylinders, and we would say this is the kind of church I'd luck to be a part of.

I'd love to be a part of a church like that.

So today I want to take a brief look at that church and see what they were doing, how they were focused and what was obviously taking place in their midst was the very presence of God.

Fascinating account here we're going to see.

And then I want us to look at how they took all these practices.

We're going to look at the first one today and see what they were doing to devote themselves to the things that mattered to God.

So let's read about it in Acts chapter two.

You want to turn to Acts chapter two, versus 42 through 47.

This will be familiar passage to many of you and let's just read it together.

It says and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.

So you can picture this, this cell.

What was, I think, at one point after Jesus resurrection?

A frightened little church of 120 people secretly hidden away in the upper room praying for and waiting for the Holy Spirit to be given.

And then, when Peter comes and he preaches his famous message in a few verses prior to this get this.

He shares the gospel and in one single day, 3000 people come to Christ.

And it says they were cut to the heart by the scripture.

And they ask what shall we do?

What must we do?

And Peter tells them repent and believe, repent and believe.

So here's the question how do you get 3000 new converts who have really, they don't know much at all, except they've trusted Christ?

How do you get them to begin to make an impact such that it turns the world upside down and they themselves experience the very presence of God?

You know, when I was a kid and I was playing literally baseball and played on a few teams and every once in a while we would have a losing streak.

Nobody liked it, nobody liked it.

We wanted to win.

But occasionally that would happen and after two or three games our coach would come to the team and he'd say guys, we're going to have to fix this, and what we're going to do?

We're going to go back to the fundamentals, the things we learned at the very first.

We're going to go back and we're going to relearn them.

And so what would we do?

We would practice, we would practice, we would practice the fundamentals, you know, say people, say practice makes perfect.

And that's not quite right.

No, perfect practice makes perfect.

And so when we do the things according to the way God wants them to do it.

We are devoted to the right things in the right way, with the way that God has taught us to do them.

So let me give you some basic observations to begin with on this passage On a church.

I just say it's the church with the right stuff.

It's a church with the right stuff, the number one.

Let's look at this one.

First one the secret of their devotion was love.

What did they, what did we need to know that?

They knew it's that the secret of their devotion was love.

Jesus said these words.

He said in Matthew 22,.

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment, and a second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

So Jesus is really summing up all the old and new, the Old Testament, and he said this is the commandment given by God.

It's the first and great commandment and at its core is this is a decision to give your whole heart to God.

He said love the Lord, your God.

How do you do?

How do you do that with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind?

And the second one how do you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself?

That's a tall order, and Jesus called us to that.

And here's the thing.

And the truth is this that you give love by first receiving it.

You give love first by receiving it.

We love, the Bible says, because he first what he first loved us First John 419.

So we can't ride a check If our bank account is empty, right.

So God fills our bank, he fills our love tank, our heart.

He gives a deposit of love inside of us so that we can love other people.

And without that being there you can't love people.

So when we come to Christ, he gives us his spirit.

And his spirit, it says, he gives us the love that comes from God.

And so that's how we begin.

You give love first by receiving it.

How did God do that First?

John 4-9 says by this the love of God was manifested, that is given in us, not just to us, but in us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him.

And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and set his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

What is that word propitiation?

It means that Jesus satisfied the wrath of God that was upon us.

He went to the cross, he paid our sin debt and he set us free, and so he paid that debt.

You give love by first receiving it.

Have you received Jesus this morning?

It's all important if you're gonna be a person who is able to love.

The second thing we see there is, the secret to loving is living loved.

Now, one thing I know is that if I know the person who has saved me loves me to the uttermost, has unconditional love for me, it doesn't matter what happens to me, because everything is filtered through his loving hands.

When you know that you're accepted and you're fully loved by God, you can feel free and confident to love other people.

See, most of the time we're so focused on ourselves, we lose sight of the other person, and but we can be free in that when we live loved like he talks about.

So here's the thing on this first point.

The starting point in all our devotion, then, is first to receive God's love, to receive God's love.

Here's a second observation about this church.

They knew this.

I believe, and we need to know it is that the outcome of their devotion was grace.

The outcome of their devotion was grace Later, in a couple of chapters later, in chapter four, verse 33, it says great grace was upon them all, not just a few, but on them all, which means the Holy Spirit was at work, he was doing things that they couldn't do themselves and God was visiting them in amazing ways.

Let me give you these six wonderful effects, and I'm just gonna give these two.

These are all effects of God's grace.

The first one is an atmosphere this is in verses 43 through 47, an atmosphere of holy awe that set the tone for their gatherings.

In other words, they had a credible, reverential fear of God when people came on to meet with them.

In fact, people were afraid to meet with them because God was doing things that they couldn't explain.

And that brings us to the second one amazing signs and wonders that revealed God's presence and power that came through the apostles, and then vital community that was occurring, that which was formed by the Spirit.

We were gonna talk about that in a couple of few weeks.

The word coignee you're gonna find out what coignee really is, but they were experiencing it.

And then loving general vital community formed by the Spirit.

Then loving generosity toward those who had needs.

They recognized people who had needs and they met those needs sacrificially.

Then an attitude of gratitude and celebration for what God was doing.

I mean, you would go in there and I'm sure their worship servers were off the chart.

You would wanna been there.

And then, finally, daily growth through the power of the gospel.

Every day someone seemed to come to Christ.

Does that sound like a church you'd like to be a part of?

Or a church maybe you'd feel comfortable to invite your friends and family to?

Yeah, me too, me too.

Some might say, well, that was then and this is now.

I mean, do you really expect that to happen in our day?

Here's the thing I think God's the same yesterday, today and forever.

He can do whatever he wants to do if we get ourselves in the position to receive His grace.

When we begin to devote our hearts and minds and our whole self to the living God and do the things that matter to him, he will respond in grace.

That's always true.

So when we pursue kingdom realities or kingdom priorities, we can expect to see kingdom realities.

To say that again, when we pursue kingdom priorities, we can expect to see kingdom realities.

And that's really all, folks, all about aligning our heart with God's heart.

And he just shows up.

You know, here's an interesting thing.

I think God has already shown up because this verse has already been heard today from different things.

Judy read this in her scripture reading and I think our worship team shared it this morning, but this is the verse from James 4-8.

That, you know, god's at work when he repeats this things over and over in our time together.

James 4-8 encourages us draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

That's a promise and all it's saying is come a little bit closer, come a little bit closer.

See, our goal is to be with God, face to face, and verse John talks about that fellowship that those who know Him deeply can experience together and see when we incline our heart toward God in the things that he loves, and he sees, he responds.

He just responds and we can expect it, we can encounter Him.

The result is that he treats us better than we deserve.

Right, and that's called grace.

That's called grace and there's power that comes from this.

It comes upon us in the degree of the grace is conditioned on what it's conditioned on how close we're willing to come right, our willingness to draw near and encounter Him.

Jesus said it like this seek the kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

So don't be afraid, little flock, for it gives your Father great happiness to give you the kingdom you want God to give you the kingdom.

You want Him to give us the kingdom.

Then begin to devote your heart wholeheartedly to the living God.

And then here's a third thing I observe here, and that is something they knew that we need to know this early church, the pattern of their devotion was simple.

I really liked that it was simple.

They devoted themselves to four things here the apostles teaching, the fellowship to the break and the bread and the prayers.

You know, as I was praying through this message this week, I just got a sense of a this doesn't happen very often just a picture of something that felt like it was worth, worthy of giving you sort of an analogy.

And it goes like this there's this story of a man who decided to take his young, four year old son to the zoo, and so they got in the car, they got to the.

They entered the gate and as they were walking along, they were looking at all the places and, hand in hand, just walking along, and all of a sudden his little four year old son saw the monkeys and broke away and pulled away from his father's hand and this father caught up with his son and they were both standing there in front of the monkey cage.

And the little son didn't know it, but the dad had brought a banana and he pulled it out of his pocket and maybe not that he should have, but he threw the banana into the monkey cage and guess what happened?

The monkeys went crazy for this banana.

They were fighting each other, calling each other, biting each other, pulling each other's hairs, hair, and they were just, they were having a cage fight, let's just put it that way.

And so they were watching all this, he and his little son, and they were just mesmerized by it and he didn't realize it.

But his little four year old son kind of slipped away and walked down to the polar bear exhibit and he slipped through the bars and he walked down the embankment and sat down right in front of the water there and as soon as his father realized that his son was not there anymore.

He quickly saw that he was over and he had made his way through there and as fast as he could he tried to rescue his son, to do what he could do before that bear would tear his little son limb from limb.

Now here's the analogy.

In the same way, the church, the guardian of salt and light in our culture, has become so distracted by the monkeys fighting in the culture of wars around us that we have lost sight of what's most important, and that is our intimacy with the God who knows us, the living God.

And we've lost something.

We've lost something that makes us distinct before a watching world.

See, the Bible has warnings for us of being distracted by the things that don't matter but seem to catch our attention so often.

You think about these.

In the parable of the soils, for example, jesus tells us parable because he's telling the secrets of the kingdom.

In the parable of soil, there's one soil that represents the human heart.

The other three are all.

They all don't grow anything.

The plant fails because of distraction.

And then we all know this one Jesus is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and Martha is up busy serving.

She's just making sure everything's done.

And where is Mary?

She is sitting at the feet of Jesus and Martha is upset.

It's like get over here, tell her to get over here and help me.

And Jesus says Mary's, she's chosen the better part.

She's sitting at my feet getting to know me better.

You're worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is necessary.

And then I think of what Jesus said in Matthew 24.

And he's talking about the end of days and he says as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of man comes.

Everybody will be eating and drinking.

And I'll just paraphrase the idea is that we will not be prepared when he comes if we live like that, distracted lives, instead of being prepared for his coming.

And this is a problem.

Isn't it For the church to be distracted?

Because if the enemy can't get you defeated, he can get you distracted and you'll fail to do what he's sent you for and what he's called you to See.

The tax for us, I believe, for us as the bride of Christ, is to be ready when he comes, prepared for him to arrive and to be about his business, not about our busyness, and we're just too busy.

So can I make a plea for simplicity, to so order your lives that you do the things that matter the most.

That takes a little bit of effort because we got so many irons in the fire and often they keep us from doing the thing that God wants us to do the most.

Well, here we see that they're being devoted to these things.

These four things.

It really just invited God's grace.

Let me read them to you again.

Think of these as conduits, if you will, of God's grace.

Number one the apostles teaching.

That is the word of God.

Second, the fellowship, which is spending life together.

You're gonna find out what that means.

That word, koinani.

As I said, the breaking of bread, which I call worship, plus there's things that kind of go into that include a few things, and then the prayers.

So those four things.

So this is what we're gonna be speaking about in the weeks to come.

So this morning I wanna kind of just look at the first of these, which is the word, and I think the order here that he gives about what they were devoted to is important, because everything flows out of the word.

We've heard about the primacy of the word.

It comes first for a reason.

So let's look at it about their being devoted to the word it says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching.

You know it used to be said a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

I don't hear that so much many times now, because most of the time our stuff is online and many people don't have a newspaper.

But more than that, what we get in the news and the media is often a little more than propaganda.

It's typically full of lies, and so the problem is that we have no reliable source outside of our little cultural place where we can get the truth.

But last night I was listening to a guy who was.

He was a former Border Patrol agent, an ex-Green Beret, a medical doctor, and as I listened to him online, he was talking about the border problem and he kind of got the idea this guy's a Christian and he gave his assessment of what he thought was really going on.

And as I listened more and more, I just said to myself this guy is speaking truth, because he was speaking biblical ideas.

It sounded like the Bible and you say well, is that possible to make those kinds of assessments about what in the world is going on?

You ever asked yourself this past year.

What in the world is going on?

Well, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians, 2, 15 and 16, listen to this the spiritual man, the spiritually material Christian, judges all things, questions, examines and applies what the Holy Spirit reveals.

Yet, as himself judged by no one, the unbeliever cannot judge and understand the believer's spiritual nature.

For who has known the mind and purposes of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ to be guided by his thoughts and purposes.

And so Paul here is quoting a portion of this.

Verses are quoting Isaiah, the prophet.

Who can know what God is up to?

Is basically what he's saying.

And the answer he gives is those who are spiritual, those who are Christians, those who have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.

That means every Christian, every person who knows Christ, has the ability to have discernment about what's going on in your world, and because you have the Holy Spirit living within you.

So to be spiritual is to live for Christ and think like Christ.

So let me read that passage again from the message and just see if you can kind of get a grab hold of this.

This is a paraphrase from the message that he says the unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's spirit.

There's no capacity for them.

They seem like so much silliness.

Spirit can be known only by spirit God's spirit and our spirits in open communion.

Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God's spirit is doing and can't be judged by unspiritual critics.

Isaiah's question is there anyone around who knows God's spirit?

Anyone who knows what he's doing has been answered Christ knows and we have Christ's spirit.

And so you think about this early church and these 3,000 believers who just really didn't know a whole lot in terms of Bible knowledge.

They understood the absolute necessity and priority of putting themselves in the Word, important and committed to the Scriptures.

And you know, think about it.

Wouldn't it have been amazing for you and I just to kind of been a fly on the wall?

I mean, these guys are teaching and preaching the very words that were passed on to them by the living Christ, and to hear what they were saying, that would have been amazing.

Well, let me give you 4 vital realities that I think it will change the way you and I take in the Word this year and if you just embrace them and it's just a matter of devoting yourself and devoting your heart wholeheartedly to these things that we'll be talking about.

What did these believers know that we need to know?

And the first one is that the apostolic word is the Word of God.

The apostolic word is the Word of God, first, or 2 Timothy 3 says all Scripture is God breathed.

All Scripture is God breathed.

All means all.

It means both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the statement that is God breathed is we.

It means that God breathed it out, and we use the term inspired.

It sounds a little backwards, doesn't it?

But inspired means God expressed it, he breathed it out, and everything that God says there's a creative power in it.

He created the world with His Word, and so what you have when you open the book called the Bible is both the Old and New Testament, or what they're, the very words of God.

Do you believe that?

I think they did.

No other book that's ever been written.

Think about this.

It comes on a par at all with what the Scripture is.

It's not even remotely on the same level.

So when you open the book, god is speaking.

God is speaking.

That means it has divine authority over your life and my life.

When God speaks, the old commercial EF button.

You should be listening.

When God speaks, you should listen.

So one's response or lack of response doesn't change the fact of the nature of Scripture it is God's Word.

So I think the teaching of this early church if you had been there, it was not a casual laissez-faire experience.

I mean they were intently listening because they knew God was speaking and they wanted to hear.

It wasn't like the latest Ted Talk or the latest novel put out by the New York Times or the Best Seller.

No, this was on a par far above human philosophy and human thought.

This was God speaking.

They knew God was speaking and so they were devoted to it on a daily basis.

Ever thought of this as that you can't wait to get along with God in the morning?

Because simply not because you're having to say well, I checked off my devotional today.

This simply is I want to hear, I've got to hear from God.

That's the right motivation.

And because that's true, I just have one question how carefully are you listening?

How carefully are you listening?

See, this early church was devoted first of all to the Word, because they knew it is the Word of God and secondly, they knew the Spirit of God transforms us by the Word of God.

Notice what it says in 2 Timothy 3, 16.

And it says there it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

Now that could be a little bit confused.

What does all those things mean, those different terms?

And it helped me, I think, at one point to kind of put an analogy in my mind about kind of picturing myself on a hike somewhere in the Smokies and then imagining myself getting lost, which would be horrible if you've ever been up there and you've ever had that experience.

That almost happened to me one time.

I was hiking with a buddy and I was at a point in the trails near the end of the day and we got to the fork in the trail and lo and behold, as we got there we were expecting to have a sign that pointed us back to the car and we found that someone had ripped off the signs on both of the signposts.

So we didn't know which direction to take and the only way that we could figure it out was we looked at the sun and began to well, we need to go that direction, because that's the direction the sun is going down and that's the direction where our car is.

And so here's an analogy for us the Word of God is speaking and it tells us the right way.

It tells us the walk this way.

And so if we take those words, it's useful for these things, for teaching, in other words, it shows us the right path to be on.

It shows us the right path to be on, it's useful for rebuking, that is, it warns us when we're off the path, it convicts us and it exposes our error and the error of our culture.

And then it says for correcting If you're off the path, it guides you back on the path.

The Holy Spirit will guide you when you're off the path.

The Holy Spirit, if you have scripture, he can lead you back to the place you need to be.

And then it says for training and righteousness it gives us the skills necessary to navigate a godly life.

Those are all useful to us.

By knowing the scripture.

Jesus said when the spirit of truth comes, what is this job?

He will guide you into all the truth.

So it's important, it's critically important, that we believe that the Bible is not only inspired, but it's also something else.

It's inerrant.

That means it is without error in its original autograph.

You say, well, we don't have any of those, do we?

No, we have no original copies of the original riotings.

But guess what we do have?

We have many copies written during the lifetime of those who knew the apostles.

And if I had to show you, there are thousands of manuscripts, 19,000, maybe more manuscripts that are copies.

And if you looked at all those manuscripts you would not find anything that's significance, that would change your mind about the book that you hold, called the Bible.

You can be confident that what you have is the Word of God.

So it is a reliable thing.

It is reliable as a standard by which we can measure and guide our life.

You can trust it.

The Spirit of God transforms us by the Word.

So, like the early church, if you want to encounter God the way they did, we must know that this Word is the Word of God.

We have to know that the Word can transform our life.

And then, thirdly, they knew something.

We need to know that God's Word is transcendent truth.

When you've got a culture, who's saying, well, that's your truth and my truth, no, there's a, that's a truth beyond your truth.

You just don't know it yet, right?

So Paul is talking here.

An example that I give is first, thessalonians, and it's the Thessalonian Church and Paul is talking to them and he says that we also thank God constantly for this that when you receive the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God which is at work in you believers.

That that word in you believers would be better, said you who believe, and we're gonna see that.

But the Word received and the Word for accepted, there are different words here.

You received it and you accepted it.

Received means that it was passed on as sort of a tradition from the apostles to the next generation to the next generation.

And we hear Paul saying it like this guard the gospel because it's a, it's a deposit given to you that you have to watch over and care for and not distort.

That's an objective way of looking at the truth.

He said you received it objectively.

It was outside of your personal experience.

But he goes on to say and, by the way, that the objective sense of Scripture it would have been true whether they accepted it or not the Bible is still truth, whether you accept it or not.

So here's the thing.

He goes on to say that their attitude toward the Word it mattered.

This is talking about our approach to Scripture and how you hear God's Word.

He is thankfully says that they actually accepted it for what it was.

It was the Word of God, and the Word accepted there means welcomed or embraced.

Welcomed or embraced, you know, when I was just starting out as one of the elders a few years ago, neil was kind of leading the elder team at that time and one of the things he would say and you guys will remember, he would say come on home with me now when we get done.

Come on home with me now.

And what he meant with that is just I love you guys and I want you to, I want you to feel free that you can, you can connect with me anytime.

That's the way I received it and that's the way we need to think of the Word.

Come on home with me now.

Have you let the Word come home to your heart?

Today?

It can change everything when the Word of God comes into us, comes to us objectively.

I said we should accept it subjectively, in the right way.

We should welcome it, and so when we talk about the Word of God, we talk about it being, as I said, the Word of God is transcendent truth.

It means that it originates from outside ourselves.

It's not subject to all the things that are going on down here.

In fact, it's outside human realms and it doesn't come from a human source.

It doesn't come from human philosophy, it comes from a God Almighty.

So it's a higher authority than what we would give to a human Word.

And then, finally, fourth thing, something that they knew, that we need to know, this early church, is that God's Word makes sense of life.

God's Word makes sense of life, he says in Hebrews 412, the writer there, for the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So there's some things that we need to see in that verse.

The first is that this Word is life to us by the Spirit, god's Word, as I said, it has creative power in our lives.

It can get in and it can do things where nothing else can.

It's like a surgeon's scalpel.

It can get into the depths of us, in our heart.

Make me think of, you know, when Jesus following as erection, he encountered two of his disciples walking down the Emmaus Road.

That road is about two miles long, from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and he was walking and talking in deep conversation.

The disciples were discouraged, they were disappointed because they thought things were going to happen and they it appeared that Jesus had died and was no more and their vision and dreams were gone.

And Jesus was talking to them.

And eventually they get to the end of the road and they arrive at these two disciples home and these disciples say well, let's get close, it's the end of the day pretty much.

Why don't you just stay and have dinner with us?

And it says in this account, in Luke, when Jesus had taken his place at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them.

At this point their eyes were opened and they recognized him.

Then he vanished out of their sight.

They said to each other didn't our hearts burn within us while he was speaking with us on the road, while he was explaining the scriptures to us.

This is why we must preach the word.

The Bible says preach the word, and our elder team tries our best to do that.

We don't, hopefully, give our opinion, but here's what I've learned over the years that people tend to be hungrier for God's Word than they know, and when they actually get the word they can't believe that they were starving.

You can go to a lot of places where many people who teach God's Word will give the word a little tip of the hat and maybe ad averse, and then they ever return to it again.

Don't be a part of church like that that doesn't teach the scriptures all the way through.

You know, for me it was probably the greatest privilege to sit under during my college days a man who preached God's Word like that, and it was interesting because, as we, he would preach from the old in the New Testament and every Sunday he had the Bible out and he would the whole sermon.

This is the phrase he used turning your Bible to, turning your Bible to, turning your Bible to turning your Bible to, and so the whole time was seeing what God's Word said.

And it was interesting because as we began to engage ourselves and what was being shared, the Holy Spirit would often and and it wasn't just me, many of those college students would get lost in the conversation they were having with the Spirit of God, based on what God was saying through the scriptures and you know, what would happen is we would sort of kind of wake up and realize the pastor was farther along in the sermon and we had missed three-fourths of it, because we were in communion with the Spirit of God.

It was interesting because many times the pastor would, would preach and he didn't necessarily preach an evangelistic sermon but almost every Sunday people were saved.

You say, how does that?

How does it happen?

Well, I don't know, that's the Spirit's job, not mine.

I just know that if we're faithful to preach the Word of God, he will be faithful to return it to us in ways that will benefit us.

You know, I think of this, I think of if you were describing this church, you might say, well, that looks like a revival, but you don't need a revival if you're already vived right.

So they were devoting themselves to these things we're talking about the first being the Word and they were vived every Sunday.

Jesus said in John 6 it is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all.

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

So not only is the Word of God life to us, it is active in us through faith and the word active in those verses actually means effective, powerful, capable of producing a result.

And as powerful though as the Word of God is, it's able to do whatever God sends it for.

But as powerful as the Word of God is, it's effective only where a believing attitude exists and continues.

So you have to, in other words, you have to combine what you hear with faith.

Faith, the nature of faith is it always acts, it always takes action.

So you can sit and listen to the Word, you can read the Word, and if you never do anything with the Word, the Word doesn't have any effect.

And I would just say this is not like a magic formula, really.

I think here's what happens Grace is always through faith, grace always comes through faith.

So if you want to see God's amazing grace at work guess what you do you see it.

You want to see it come alive, you must believe that what he says is true and you must obey it.

It's that simple, complete obedience, wholeheartedness.

The question I think we should ask and be asking every time we end our time alone with God and the morning time, every time that we leave this place after hearing the Word preached, is this question how can I live out what I just heard.

How can I live out what God has just revealed to me?

We're really, really important.

Not only then is the Word of God active in us through faith and alive to us by the Spirit.

It cuts to the heart of who we really are, sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So here's the thing when you're faithful to get into the Word, the Word will get into you.

It'll clear up any confusion about what you think about God.

It will clarify any questions you have about any relationship that you have.

It will reveal to you what God thinks about you and gives you the identity God sees you in Christ.

So it's powerful and worthy of our devotion.

Let me give you, to end up today, five practical ways to devote yourself to the Word in 2024.

You just hold up your hand like this and you kind of get this in your mind.

So five practical ways to devote yourself to the Word, or welcome the Word if you will.

The first one, hear it, hear the Word, then the next one, read the Word.

The next one, study the Word, then memorize the Word and then meditate on the Word.

Those five things.

If you read the Word, guess what?

You're going to get a comprehensive view of the Bible.

If you read it comprehensively, you'll get the big picture of what the Bible teaches, the message that God has called redemption.

If you read the Word, that happens.

If you hear the Word.

Guess what the Bible tells you.

You will gain faith as a result of it.

Faith comes by hearing.

If you study the Word, you're going to get deeper in your Christian life than maybe you've ever been.

If you memorize the Word, guess what you're going to do.

You're going to put the Word in your heart and the Bible says I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not what Sin against you and also the fact that the Holy Spirit, if you put that in there, you memorize it.

The Holy Spirit has something to work with.

And then the last thing what is it Meditate?

So we talked about this.

I taught class for Mark's class on meditation this past week, and a good analogy for this you remind me of sharing this, and too late now.

If you have a cup of tea that you want to make and you get the tea back, eat the water up and you put the tea bag in and you take it right back out, you don't have a very good tea, do you?

It's pretty diluted.

But if you take that same tea bag and you put it in hot water and you let it soak for a while, all the tea that comes out infiltrates the water and you have really something good.

And that's the way the Word of God works in us.

When we meditate on the Word of God, we let it soak in us and it begins to do its work.

So I've talked today really about a couple of things.

One is the fact that you can encounter God if you get devoted to His Word and the Scriptures, and the fact that when you do get into His Word, it is a means of grace.

God will give you grace that you don't deserve.

You know, there's a really precious verse from Hebrews 4.16, and I'll end with these couple of thoughts.

He says there and this is uncanny because we've heard this verse two or three times already today, which I think is not by accident Hebrews 4.16,.

Let us then, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace, and I think that's what God is calling us to today.

All of us, draw near, come close, come a little bit closer.

You know, one day Mary, a disciple of Jesus, came to him with an alabaster jar and she broke it.

It was full of perfume and the aroma of the perfume filled the room and she poured it out on the feet of Jesus and wiped her hair, her, his feet with her hair.

And I think that's just a picture for us.

What's costly to us?

Are we willing to give it away and put it at the feet of Jesus so we can be closer to Him, to have greater communion with Him?

If that's your heart's desire this morning, would you just stand, and I want to pray.

I want you to consider and pray this prayer.

Stand up and I want you to bow your head and close your eyes and then would you just pray this prayer.

If that's your heart today, don't pray it if you don't mean it.

God, I want to know you more, I want to be closer than before.

Simple prayer God, I want to know you more, I want to be closer than before, and so let me pray.

Father, we're just thankful that you give us the means to encounter your grace.

Lord, I pray today that you would open our minds to understand your word For those who are struggling to know you at all.

Lord, I pray that your word, your gospel, will go out and people will understand that they put their faith in you and confess their sins, put their trust in you for all that you've done and taken their sins upon yourself.

That they put their trust in you that can be saved.

And, lord, for those who may say today, I just need help, I just need help.

I don't understand.

So often when I read the Scriptures it's confusing.

I just pray that you would open our minds, lord, to understand your word.

That verse in Hebrews goes on to say to come close to find help in time of need.

You need help this morning.

Grow out to the Lord.

We've got people who pray with you after the service today.

But just encourage yourself in the Lord today.

Devote yourself to the word.

It will change your life.

In Jesus' name, amen.