286 ~ ALIVE & ACTIVE ~ PART 1

We welcome you to the Via Zion Sermon podcast.

We are a church based out of Chennai, India.

We are thrilled that you tuned in today and hope that you will

be refreshed, revived, and energized by what you hear.

Our desire is that you will live life with a renewed sense of

purpose that stems from a vibrant faith in Jesus.

God's Word is Evergreen in power and promise.

The month of November is the Global Bible Month and to

celebrate the Bible here at church we are going deeper into

what the Bible really is and how we can better spend time in the

world so that we are ready for the world.

We hope that you relish knowing more about God's Word and that

it spurs you on to greater intimacy with God Himself even

as we get into God's Word. I was just reminded of this

story. I once heard read about how this

couple invited their pastor home for dinner and called the pastor

home. They had a good dinner when he

left. After he left, the wife tells

the husband, you know what I think he stole our silver spoon

and her husband says you're nuts.

Like what's wrong with you? She says, I'm I'm telling you

for real. Our dessert spoon was there and

it's missing it left with him. I think he stole it.

And the husband said, you know what, let's just get over it.

It doesn't matter. It's just a spoon.

A year later, they invite the pastor home again.

And they'd grown in a bit of relationship with him now.

So she asked him as he was sitting down for dinner with

them. He said past.

She asked him, pastor, did you steal a spoon last year when you

visited us? And the pastor very sheepishly

smiled at her and said, no, I didn't.

But I did place it in your Bible, right?

Many times. We all have Bibles in our homes.

We have very fancy ones. We have beautiful ones.

We have antique ones. We have generationally passed

down ones. We have our digital Bibles.

We have our audio Bible. And yet the last place that

someone would find us is in the Bible, right?

It's so easy to just get through with our lives without making

time for it. You'll be surprised at how 24

hours sometimes doesn't feel enough.

But God is inviting us, especially this month.

God is inviting us into a space of sitting with Him in His Word.

As a church. We have been meditating on the

30 miracles of Jesus that we put together as a church, and we

wrote that down. And I'm just grateful as I've

been doing it with a couple of friends.

I'm just in awe at how God meets us even today, even today,

because the miracle is in the mundane, as hard as it is to

believe, right? And so even as we go through the

next 4 weeks, we're going to be looking today at what is the

Bible. The next week, we're going to be

looking at why we can trust the Bible.

Because maybe you have trust issues.

Maybe someone said, ah, it's written by humans and it doesn't

have any validity. We want to tell you otherwise.

The following week, we look at how we can read the Bible.

If you're someone who struggles with actually being systematic

and understanding for it, for what it's worth, that's for you.

And then on the final week, we look at why the Bible still

matters to us and to the world. It never is out of context.

It's never irrelevant. And so today we're going to be

looking at what is the Bible, you know, and before I tell you

what the Bible is, I want to 1st tell you what the Bible is not

for many of us growing up, I remember growing up, my

grandmother and grandfather, both of them are very prayerful

people. And every time I would walk past

their room or their, their, you know, dining table, their Bible

was always open. That is the memory I have of

their Bibles. So when after their time, when

they pass their Bibles over to their children, one of their

Bibles came to my mother. And it's a treasure heirloom for

us. Not because of any, anything,

you know, ritualistic about. It's just sentimentally because

this was the Bible they underlined and scored and prayed

through. It's, it was tattered and

frayed. My mum got it rebound just so

that she could preserve it. Right.

So I don't know what the Bible looks like to you, what emotion

it evokes. But I can tell you this.

It's not meant to just be an heirloom.

It's not meant to just be an antique that's left there on a

shelf. It is not a good luck charm that

you just hang on your bag and wish for good luck to happen to

you. It is not a lamp from which, you

know, you rub a genie out of it. You know, every time you touch

it, something miraculous happens.

That's not what the Bible is. It's not an emergency manual

that you open up just when there's a system shut down.

The Bible is so much more. And I today want to break the

intimidation behind the Bible. Maybe for you, you look at and I

don't even know the books of the Bible.

I don't know, you know, where this book comes or how this

sounds. I don't read the prophetic

books. I don't read, you know, the the

Psalms because I don't understand it.

I don't get it. I don't read the episodes.

Maybe you're on that place. But I want to just leave a few

things with you today. I want you to remember that the

Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us.

It was written to a different time, to a different people, in

a different culture, with different languages and

contexts. But it is written for us so that

we can be transformed and formed by it right from the first page

to the last. It's about Jesus.

You may not hear his name Jesus in the first half of the book in

the Old Testament, but it's all about him.

There are shadows of Jesus throughout.

There are two testaments, the Old and the New.

And a testament is basically a covenant.

It's, it's a promise between God and his people.

And in the Old Testament, God's promise was to bless and redeem

the world through Israel. And in the New Testament, God

fulfills that promise through the coming of Jesus.

And Jesus didn't just come for the people of Israel, He came

for the whole world, right? And he redeemed the whole world

and he created his church. He set up his church, and

redemption continues through the church.

So what is the purpose of the Bible?

If you're asking me what is, what is the big deal about it?

Well, if you had to get to know someone you know, in the old

days when someone was getting to know someone and fall in love,

letters were written. They would write letters saying,

you know, professing their love, telling about their everydays

they would post it and the other person would wait in

anticipation for the letter to reach that mailbox.

Today, in the times of e-mail text messages, it's much faster.

The point is this, the Bible is like a love letter.

It's a love letter from God to His people, and it's basically

where He reveals His heart for them.

If you don't read the Bible, you will never know God's character.

You will never know God's love for you.

You will never understand the intents of God's heart.

The second thing is it unfolds God's plans.

Many times we look at redemption like it's a clean and straight

line, but redemption is, is basically God's humanity

touching our messy humanity, God's divinity piercing through

our brokenness and bringing His glory through.

And redemption looks like that. And, and when you read the Bible

in, in all its fullness, you find that God used ordinary

humans like us, with messy situations like us, and did

amazing things through them. So it unfolds God's plans for

redemption, and it also invites us today to be shaped by it.

The Bible is not something that keeps you far at arm's length.

It invites you in. It draws you in.

You know, you can't help, but when you're reading the Bible,

you get engrossed in those stories.

You can't help but go deeper and say, God, what do you want me to

know from this? This worked for David.

This worked for Daniel. But what about me?

Lord? It invites us in.

So I want to leave three things with you about the Bible, which

I hope you will Mull about. If you're someone who's, you

know, doubting whether you even want to read the Bible or you

feel you have so many doubts about the Bible, I feel like I

want to just centre it on this. First of all, the Bible is

unique. Why is it unique?

Well, even though you have 66 books in one book, it was

actually written by so many different authors, almost 40

different authors, right? And these were 66 different

writings spend over 1500 years on three continents, Asia,

Europe and Africa. So they were written in these

different places by 40 different authors over 1500 years, right?

made-up of different languages. It was originally written in

Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and then they were compiled and put

together. It's made-up of poetry,

prophecy, history, letters, laws and biographies.

It is written by people who are ordinary as farmers, hent

makers, shepherds, fishermen. And then there was also the

elite. There were doctors and

philosophers and priests and kings who wrote it.

Such a mixed number of writers, such a lot of different

historical perspectives, such different literary styles, and

yet somehow they just fit. And so the Bible is so unique.

The second thing is the Bible is a God breathed collection of

writings. So like I said, so many authors

putting together all their thoughts and creating one book

that was brought in as the 66. They make the Bible up.

The interesting thing is in two Timothy 316 says all scripture

is God breathed, meaning the very breath of God was put into

these people for them to pen down these writings.

It was not ordinary. It was not written by their

will. It was written by the spirits

prompting, and because of that, if it was just a human writing,

it would inform you. But because it's the Spirit of

God, because it's the voice of God, it transforms you.

Isn't that amazing? When I work on a piece of

writing, it's my voice throughout.

There's a cohesive sound of my voice in the entire book.

How is it possible that when you read the Bible, even though it's

been written and breathed over by so many writers, it has one

cohesive voice? That's because of the breath of

God upon it. And the third thing is it's a

unified story. Like I said, it's unique.

Yes, it is God breathed. And because it's God breathed,

it's just like one thread holds it all together.

And the thread is Jesus from Genesis to Revelation.

The connecting point is Jesus in the garden.

There was the the situation of the creation, you know, the

perfect setting in Eden. There was the fall, and

immediately after the fall there was a substitution that was

done. There was animal sacrifice.

They were clothed with skins and sent out.

And that set up the entire Bible for what was coming next, right?

Jesus is foreshadowed in that because his sacrifice was more

than adequate. Any animal sacrifice will never

do, but Jesus is ultimate substitutionary sacrifice

covered it all. And so Jesus is literally he is

there throughout. He's the need for Jesus, the

need for a Redeemer, screams and shouts throughout the Old

Testament and continues into the new when he arrives, right?

The the beautiful part of this unified story is it that it's a

story of where God reveals himself as this triune

godfather, Son and spirit, right?

And he talks about a covenant relationship.

It's not ritualistic, it's not rule based.

It's one out of love where the Father, where God the Father

makes a promise to his people to be with them should they choose

to obey him and love him. You know, and this beautiful

relationship grew over time, But unfortunately, of course, there

were so many missteps along the way.

And so God's redemptive plan never left God's story of love,

redemption, restoration, all of it panned out in Jesus.

You know, when I was just going through this, there was just so

much content to look at. And I'm thinking, God, what do

we, how do we teach about your word?

We always teach from your word, but how do I teach about your

word? Right.

And I was looking through what the reformers, the guys who

broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and said we need

to go back to the basics. So Martin Luther and the other

reformers came up with the five solas, right?

What are the five solas? They talked about sola

scriptura, sola fide, sola christus, sola gratia, and sola

solidio Gloria, which is basically only by scripture

alone, faith alone, Christ alone, grace alone, and for his

glory alone. OK, what does this mean?

What had happened somewhere along the way is the scriptures

had been taken by the by the priestly clan and it had been

owned solely by them. The common man didn't have

access to it. So the common man was at the

mercy of the religious order to give them instruction about the

word and because it was not in local tongue, they couldn't even

read it. There was a huge divide between

the clergy and the lady. And what was happening was the

people were actually going down this road of just doing rituals

as directed by the church. They were just, you know, doing

a bunch of things that felt right, that were being taught to

them. But there was no proof that it

had biblical basis. And so at a point of time, I

think it was in the 1400s, when Martin Luther and others stepped

up and said enough is enough. We're going back to the

Scripture. Sola scriptura is a very simple

phrase, but what does it actually mean?

It means this. The Bible is a supreme

authority. It is sufficient and it is

clear. All three of these points are

essential to the people of God because you know and you have to

understand this, it is the supreme authority.

Many times over, over, over centuries, the Bible was

discarded as the authority over a nation, over, you know,

decisions that leaders were making.

And it was made in the flesh and then attributed to an act of

God. So it completely distorted, it

confused the common people, when in reality it was not looked at

as the supreme authority. Now, even before you take it to

a leadership level in our own lives, the Bible must be the

supreme authority. Many of us don't even consider

the Bible's opinion on anything related to our lives.

It's part of one part of our day.

It's closeted, left there. We move away, we get into our

day. We don't actually see how what

we learnt in the Bible transforms how I live my life.

The second thing it says is it's sufficient.

So what happened in in the early days of this kind of this

Reformation movement was the reformers had to say, hey, we

don't need to supplement or complement anything to the

Bible. This is adequate.

We don't need to add our rituals.

We don't need to add our own, you know, interpretations to it.

That's not needed. The scripture is adequate.

It's sufficient. And then he said the scriptures

are clear. Now, you may agree with me when

I say it's not always clear. There are some scriptures that

are so difficult to understand. But they said the reformers said

the passages that were difficult to understand did not threaten

the sufficiency of Scripture. Instead, the unclear parts of

Scripture were to be interpreted in the light of its clear parts.

Isn't that beautiful? So there's so many parts of

Scripture which are clear to understand, which we understand

right off the bat. They said use that to then

understand the unclear parts. And the truth is, on this side

of eternity, we will not understand everything.

There's a bunch of things that are going to remain mysteries to

us. The Sovereign Lord above us

knows everything, but we will not.

So what little we do get revelation on, I think it's for

us to cherish, to Mull over it and to live in that space.

And I love that. Eventually the reformers also

involved writers in that process.

One of the writers who came alongside them was William

Tyndale. William Tyndale was a, he was a

writer, he was a philosopher, he was a, he was a thinker.

And So what he started doing was what these reformers were

talking about. He started to work on it

practically. He took the Scripture, he took

the New Testament, he took the Old Testament.

He began translating it into the common tongue of the people

because this was his desire. He said I want the scripture to

be available even for the plough boy.

Who is the plough boy? A stable hand.

And that touched me because the Word of God is for everyone.

It is for everyone. Today we have it in more

languages than before. Still there are many who don't

have it in their languages. But the fact is the Word of God

is for everyone. It is not just for the clergy,

it is not just for people of high standing, it is not just

for the philosophical, it is not just for the theologically

sound. It is for everyone.

It is for everyone. And so he decided that the lay

people needed to be fed with the Word so that when a preacher

preaches, the lay people have the Bible and can double check

what they were teaching on, they can hold them to account.

That was what he did and Tyndale believed it so firmly he worked

on it. He was expelled out of his

country. He went to A, to another nation,

worked secretly there, got the Bible printed and pushed it out.

Unfortunately, William Tyndale died for this.

He died because of his efforts to get the Bible translated.

But he did his job in his lifetime.

He did his job. Why am I telling you this?

What we have is the Bible is precious.

The blood of the Saints are on it.

People who, you know, slaved away just to get that on print,

just to translate it into your language.

Even today, if it's in your language, there's some people to

thank for that, people who took a risk to put it in your hands.

My objective today, my objective, I just have a very

simple objective. My objective today is to get you

to fall in love with the Bible. Maybe you fell out of love with

the Bible for a time. I want you to fall back in love.

You are not always going to read what you like.

It is going to convict you. It is going to challenge you,

but it will transform you. The Word of God is something we

need, we cannot do without. So why do you and I need to

develop a love for the Bible? First of all, it's powerful.

It's powerful 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16.

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching,

rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

It's powerful to bring change. That's the first thing I want to

leave with you. Why should you love the Bible?

The truth is, all of us need to change.

Am I right? All of us, we might think when

my spouse needs to change first, then I will change.

All of us need to change and the Word of God is powerful to bring

change because the Spirit of God who is breathed upon it when we

start reading the word begins his transformative work within

us. It says over here how Scripture

is God breathed. It is useful for teaching,

rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

Now the interesting thing many times is we think that this is

to build it on someone else. But the more you read the word

for yourself, you find it teaches you, it rebukes you, it

corrects you, it trains you in righteousness.

So it's powerful to change you. Before I even impose it on

someone else and change them, I want the word of God to do its

work in me. The problem so many times is

that we tend to, you know, put our views, our opinions, our

ideas, our family background, our, our traditions, you know,

we tend to bog it down on our lives.

We tend to stick it on others. But here it's allowing God's

word to do the job. It's.

As simple as even when in our parenting, sometimes, you know,

we try to put our thoughts in our children's head.

We try to influence them. But I'm finding that the more I

read the Scripture, God is changing me.

And the more they read Scripture in their own little, each of

them read a bit. I know God's going to work

through that. And the, the belief that it's

powerful to bring change starts with me.

All of us need change. I need change.

God is going to bring it. We need to stop putting our

opinions, crushing people with our rituals, our traditions.

Bring it back to this place. Sola scriptura.

Is this in line with the Word? Is this in line with the world?

It will be with the Word or with the world, because when it is in

line with the Word, it will change my life.

When you're making a decision in your marriage, get to the Word.

You're making a decision for your children in your parenting,

get into the world. You're making a decision for

your job, get into the world. I tell this to people every day

of the month, if you can read 1 proverb in addition to whatever

else you're reading. The proverbs are just rich with

wisdom, especially for anyone who is doing anything with life.

If you're working or you're even a stay at home mum, it makes

sense for you. The proverbs are so powerful.

Every day if you make time for the word it will change your

life. Too many of us are just stuck in

this rut of thinking I'm great, they are the problem.

I would urge you today to go back to this place of saying

God. Maybe it's a me thing.

I will get into the word because I need to change.

The second thing is it's a life right?

Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12. For the Word of God is alive and

Hebrews 4:12

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. The Word of God is alive and

active, so it brings things to life constantly.

Isn't that amazing? See, all of us have areas in our

life that need resurrection, am I right?

We saw that all of us need to change.

All of us have spaces in our life which are completely dead,

rotting, decaying, having no breath of life in it.

God wants to breathe life into that space and it's beautiful

because it says the word of God is like a double edged sword.

What does a double edged sword do?

A double edged sword is is designed to draw blood at some

point of its contact, meaning it's so effective there is no

way it will not leave some impact on the person it touches.

One of these the writers in commentary wrote this.

He said the church's mandate is to wield, not blunt this

God-given sword, letting both edges accomplish their gracious

work convicting the world and sanctifying the Saints.

I want to take it further. I mean, it's a double edged

sword. We use it against the enemy, we

wield it against him because it's the sword of the spirit,

the word of God, but it also convicts us of sin.

Many times we're going into battle with the enemy with the

sword and we're using all these verses at him.

But I am living an unrepentant life.

I could have unconfessed sin in my life.

So as I I work through, you know, fighting the enemy on my

knees, I'm also asking the Lord, Lord, work on me, change me,

Lord, reveal hidden sin in my life.

So it's such a double edged thing.

It has a two way process. And the beautiful thing is that

the word of God being the weapon that it is, it, it divides

things that we don't know any division, for example, soul and

spirit joints and marrows, meaning it is so precise, it is

so incisive, it is so deep. This past week when I was

unwell, I was just lying down and just, I didn't have the

energy to get up and read the Bible.

So I was just playing the audio Bible and listening to it.

And there was many times in during the week when I actually

experienced the deep grief of unanswered prayers, of feeling

like God didn't come through, like I needed him.

And as I let the tears fall, I realized that that was the Holy

Spirit's work. Because, you know, in our

run-of-the-mill days, we're just running at, you know, 300 mph.

We have to get all these things done, sort out stuff for the

kids, you know, travel, come back, do this and that.

We don't have time sometimes to just sit with God and say, Lord,

I'm so tired. Lord, you, you didn't hear me on

this one thing. Lord, why is this still like

this? To feel the grief of certain

things, to heal and move on. We need to rest because the

Spirit of God through the Word of God comes in to divide soul

and spirit. Because if the spirit and soul

are not discerned, if you're not able to detect, OK, this is a

broken heart problem. This is not my, my spirit sense

telling me to do something. This is me basically God saying

hey, you're hurting, you're grieving, heal and move on.

So many times we confuse what we are feeling.

We make our feelings the centre of everything and we say, well,

God told me to do this. Maybe not, maybe not.

Maybe it is because your heart is aching, maybe it's because

your body is waning in strength. Maybe you have just not rested.

And sometimes God forcibly puts us on our back and says I want

you to rest. I want you to enjoy my presence.

You don't need to do anything. You don't need to overthink, you

don't need to be even talking too much to me.

You just lie down. You rest, enjoy me.

There are seasons when the Spirit of God will use His word

actively to show us what we're feeling, what we're thinking,

whether it's in alignment with his Word, whether it's in

alignment with him. But throughout, but throughout,

the Word of God is engaging with us to bring us into deeper

connection with Jesus himself. That's the beautiful thing.

It's alive and active because Jesus is the living Word of God.

Therefore, the written Word of God is also alive.

The beautiful thing, you know how I know it's alive, is I've

been reading the Bible, I think since I was about 15-16 years

old. Now at 41, every year I do the

whole Bible as part of justice, my discipline.

Every year if I look at my journals, the depth of things

that God speaks through His word is so different.

No two years are the same. In fact, of late I noticed that

the the things I highlight and write down are different from

the year before when I went through the same passages.

That is the power of God's work. It's dynamic, it is moving, it

is accelerating, it pulls back, it releases, it is so powerful.

So it's powerful to bring change because all of us do need

change. Secondly, it's alive and active

to bring things to life constantly because there are

areas in all our lives that are dead.

Maybe you've been feeling very numb as we come to the 11th

month of the year. Lord, it didn't pan out like I

wanted. Maybe parts of your life feel

absolutely lacking in luster. Maybe a relationship ended.

Maybe your health isn't where it you wanted it to be.

Maybe those friendships let you down.

But I want to encourage you that when you read the Word of God,

He breathes life through His word into those areas that feel

most dead. The problem is, we don't always

wield the word of God like a sword.

Many times we treat it like a machete to just hacked on

someone we don't like. We preach at them, we tear them

down with the word. Many times we look use it like a

Swiss army knife. Have you seen the Swiss Army

knife? Those beautiful little things, a

compact you can keep in in your pocket and they just look so

nice. They're in the little leather

pouch. We just post a verse image and

we feel we've done the world a favour.

We are so nice in the way we curate our table with our coffee

mug at our journal and our Bible and say spending my quiet time

with Jesus or this is with a view or whatever.

The point is this curate beautiful spaces.

That's beautiful in itself. Do all of that.

But is it all about how we position things and set it up

for a picture perfect moment? Or are we so scrappy about the

word and saying Lord I will just get time with you whenever I can

because the Word of God is so powerful.

We have to stop using it as a weapon to hack down people and

use it as a weapon against the enemy.

We have to start using it to convict and bring change to

ourselves before we try to change someone else with it.

We also have to stop using it like a cosmetic add on to our

lives and use it for the rugged piece of, of, of beauty and

strength and power that it is. So that's the second thing.

It's a life. So it brings things to life

constantly. And thirdly, it illuminates our

lives in a Dark World. All of us are living in a Dark

World. This last week I was watching

the news and I was so disturbed, so disturbed by the number of

rape cases in the southern parts of India.

In one in the north of India, I just remember thinking God this

is so devastating. Thinking of the lives lost,

thinking of the girl who had to make it out alive and justice to

think of what her life is going to look like was so

heartbreaking. I don't know her but was praying

so much for her, saying Lord please restore her life.

Psalm 1/19 was 105 says your word is a lamp for my feet, a

light on my path. As women in this country, we

don't feel safe. That poor girl was with a man

when it happened and a man couldn't save her.

And so you feel like you feel unsafe.

You don't know if you're going to be OK if you don't know if

your children are going to be safe here threatens to overtake

you. But it's in the midst of that

that God's word is a light, light to your path.

So the way I picture it is, imagine you had a band with a

torch light on it and you switch it on every day and you say,

Lord, I'm ready for you. Lead me today.

God's word is like that because the world around you is dark.

We live in a fallen world. We live in a world where evil

seems to be ruling the roost. We seem to be in a time when

there is doesn't seem to be justice coming quick enough.

It seems like crooks are getting smarter.

Naive people are getting dumb just like us.

We feel like we could get outfitted anytime, and yet in

the midst of this, God is moving.

His Spirit is on the move and for us to be aware of it, we

need to be in touch with His word.

The problem is many of us, you know, we use God's word like

this emergency lamp. I don't know those of us who are

millennials, we had this emergency lamp thing in our

homes. So I remember we had this

emergency lamp in our home and every time the the current went

off, that's supposed to come on automatically, right?

But invariably we would forget to charge it.

It was my brother's or my job to charge it.

We would forget. So in the night when the current

went off, it'll be pitch dark and then they'll be all of us

shouting at each other saying why don't you charge it?

You were supposed to charge it. And many of us look at the word

of God like an emergency lamp. Oh, I just lost my job.

I should probably read the Bible.

My boyfriend's about to ditch me.

Let me turn to Jesus. Let's see what he says.

Now, I'm all for turning to Jesus at all times, but the word

of God can't be your emergency lamp.

It has to be your headlight for every day.

Because the thing about lamp for my feet is like, you don't have

a lighthouse kind of source. The word of God is literally

your everyday blueprint. Today when I open the word, he's

going to speak to me for today. He's probably going to speak to

me for the month ahead as well, but that depends on me showing

up today. Do you eat a meal today?

Eat it enough so that it fills you for the whole month.

You eat enough for today. You need strength for today.

Just like the manna in the desert was provided each

morning, we need to be turning to God in His Word every day.

It has to be an everyday thing. Some of us treat the Word of God

like a night light. You know those Night Lights?

My kids have one in their own. It's just a placebo.

That night light is usually hidden by some bag or something,

but they need it on. They need to know it's on.

They need to know there's some light in the room and some of us

are looking at it. Like when I'm scared, I just

need to have it there. If my Bible is close to me, I'm

safe. Some of you in your workstation

have your Bible there. It's just a reaching point.

It is of no use if it's not opened and red.

It's of no use if it's not applied.

We need to come to a place where His word is a lamp to your feet,

meaning every step you take the word of God has to be your

guide. You know culture tells you in

this time follow your heart, but when the word of God is a lamp

to your feet, you are saying I will follow His word.

What he says I will do. You might ask me how does the

word exactly inform what I say? The word will inform it through

the ideas and the concept and the the direction it will give

you. It will give you a framework in

which to operate. It will teach you how to respond

rather than react. It will give you the heart of

Jesus rather than being led by your feelings.

It is life changing. So as I conclude I want to leave

this with you. Is reading the Bible enough?

No, it requires action from your end and mine.

I'm going to be reading from James 1.

James, the brother of Jesus, wrote this beautiful book.

And I was reading it this week and I was just so touched by how

he's unrelenting about the importance of the word of God in

our lives. He's one of the most practical

writers in the New Testament. He doesn't, he doesn't go too

deep into theology. He's just like, you know, treat

people right, don't show favouritism, you know, don't

talk too much, control your tongue.

He's that kind of guy. But he talks a little bit about

how to live in the world, and I want to leave that with you,

James one verse 18. It says he chose to give us

birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first

fruits of all he created. Therefore, get rid of all moral

filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the

word planted in you which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word.

Do so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is

like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after

looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he

looks like. But whoever looks into the

intently, into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues

in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they

will be blessed in what they do. Do you read the word and leave

it and just forget what you read or do you do what it says?

It's the perfect law that gives freedom.

If you've been told that it's a book of rules of the all bunch

of no's, that's not true. It is the perfect law that gives

freedom because like I said, Jesus is shadow falls on the Old

Testament completely. When you look at the Old

Testament, you realise I'm so glad I have Jesus.

I'm so glad I don't have to do those rituals.

I'm so glad I don't have to offer those sacrifices, that he

has done it all. And yet when you look at the Old

Testament, you remember just how frail and broken you are and how

much in need of a Saviour you are.

And so I would urge you that you would sit in God's Word, that

you would dwell in it, look intently into it.

That's what he says. They will be blessed in what

they do. There is a benefit to sitting

intently with God's Word. God's Word is as true today as

it has ever been. It doesn't change based on your

culture, based on a political system.

It is alive, it's active, it's trustworthy.

It will still guide you today as it did another in years before.

If you're someone who just washed your hands off the Bible

saying it's not done anything for me, I would urge you to get

back to it today. Be systematic, don't just

randomly open those things and just find a verse and then you

know, be like this. I'll take this for my day.

No, let's be educated about this.

Let let you know we put so much effort into the other things we

do. Why are we not doing it with

God's word? Take time, take a book, create a

journal. If you're meditating on one

verse, great, put that verse down, sit with it.

Ask God to speak to you from it. The Word of God is meant to be

lived, not to just be read. It's not to be read just on

Sundays and then left on the shelf.

It's meant to be lived out every day.

We're not meant to just study it.

We're supposed to live it in such a way it shapes our

decisions, our thoughts, our actions, our attitudes,

everything. You know, recently we were

watching a couple of videos at church about the world, cassette

audios, their outreach, what they do.

And as a church, we had supported some of their Bible

translations and I was amazed at some things that the old people

were saying. And in one of the things that

they said, bunch of them said the same thing they said.

It was, it's so amazing to hold this record and hear God speak

to us. And you know, when I was

listening to that it, it really got me emotional because when I

read the word of God every day, I don't look at it as God

speaking to me. I just look at it as I'm reading

the word. But here with these people, you

know, these are people from different tribal communities

around the country hungry for God's Word.

They have bare minimums, no access to hygiene or education

or health care or any of that. They live on the fringes of

society. But you should see the way they

receive God's Word and the way they say Bhagwan spoke to us

when we listen to it, it's God speaking to us.

And I want to leave this with you today.

Every time you sit with the God breathed Word, the Bible, you

are meeting with the author himself.

You can't expect to just meet with him on and off and then

expect things to just go smooth and you know your direction.

It requires that you fix this meeting every day.

Every day. Imagine every time you open the

Bible, the author sits in front of you.

Then with those people we can say, I heard God speak to me

through His Word. It was God's voice.

So as you go through this month, my desire for you is that you

will fall in love with God's Word because it is powerful.

It is powerful, it is so present, it is so relevant to

your today, and it will carry you into your future.

We cannot do this life. In days to come, things are

going to get harder globally. If we don't fix ourselves on

God's Word, we're going to have problems.

So can I urge you to fall in love with God's Word because it

is powerful to bring change. It is alive to bring things to

life that are dead, and it illuminates our life in a very

Dark World we can't do without. So can I just pray for you?

Father, I just thank you for all that you have done in our lives.

And we thank you for your word. We thank you for the 66 books of

our Bible. We thank you for breathing upon

the author's Lord and for putting this book together for

our benefit. We just pray that each of us

will value it for what it really is and that God we will

experience true transformation deep within us.

May your Word reach the ends of the world that Lord.

The most remote people groups will receive the Word in their

language. Bless Bible translators, bless

Lord the the ones who print the Bible.

We pray that Lord you will bless and keep your body, that we will

be centered on your word, Jesus. We thank you Father, for all

that you are doing in US and through us.

In Jesus mighty name I pray Amen, Amen.

God bless you. Have an amazing week.

I pray that as we go through the Bible month you will engage

actively. You can do a Bible plan.

We are doing a Bible plan as a church.

It's called the 30 days of miracles.

You can do the plan alone or with friends and trust me it's

beautiful to do it with friends. You get to hear their opinions

on things. You can pray for them via text.

It's an amazing experience. Most importantly remember this

that whoever finds Jesus finds life.

God bless you. Thanks for listening to this

message. We hope you were blessed to hear

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Remember, whoever finds Jesus finds life.