THE WORD OF GOD
Arne Finger
I had in mind with the help of the Lord to speak about the word. This thought has occupied me for a long time and I have more scriptures in mind to refer to as we go along.
We know that ‘the Word’ is our Lord Jesus Christ but if you read the Bible we find the word from the beginning until the end. There are so many references about the word that it is not possible to follow them all, so we have the scriptures in order that we may read it all our lives.
I would like to start with a scripture, the first reference to the word as we speak it, say it or hear it. It can be heard, it can be read, and it can be spoken. The word is something very important, the most important is the word of God, but then the words we utter are very important as well. We have to be very careful as to what we say and what we do. The first way of speaking we find is in Genesis 1 where we see that ‘God said’. God speaks. That is an ability just the Creator God has. If we say something it does not do anything, but God, and God here is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, because it says, “let us make” (v.26), but when He speaks He can create. If I want to create anything, I have to use tools, but God can speak and when He speaks things come into existence. By this we understand how the whole world was made. It was not made by things coming out of the unseen, or evolving, the world came into existence by the word of God. The world and everything we see is held by the power of the word.
The first time Jehovah speaks in a vision to Abram it says, “After these things the word of Jehovah came to Abram in a vision” (Gen. 15: 1), that is the word could come to us in a vision. We might have a vision in a dream or during the day time; it might not be always a dream, sometimes we use the phrase impression, but an impression might be a vision. Here we see that Jehovah speaks in a vision to Abram. The first thing He says is to comfort him, “Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, thy exceeding great reward”. Abram had to learn and he believed the word. The word is to be believed. The first thing Satan did was to put doubt into the word of God; he says, “Is it even so, that God has said”, Gen. 3: 1. Was it really God’s word? Was it the thought of the word? Such questions exist until today, and I think we have to be very careful of doubting anything that we find in this precious book. This book is inspired by the Holy Spirit and if I do not understand it I should not doubt it. I can meditate and ask the Holy Spirit to make me able to understand it – it might take, forty, fifty years until I understand one verse. I have had some questions for many years and I have asked brethren for an answer and up until now I was not really satisfied, but it does not make me doubtful, it might be that I am very stubborn.
In Deuteronomy there is a scripture which the Lord uses, He says, “but by everything that goeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live” (8: 3); it says before “man doth not live by bread alone”. It is a very important scripture which some thousand years later the Lord Jesus Himself used when He was attacked by Satan, when He was in the temptation of Satan. It is very remarkable there that the Lord Jesus always quoted scripture. He never quoted anything else but the scripture. He says three times, “It is written” (Luke 4: 4) and after that Satan had to go away. It is very important that we read the scriptures and that is my appeal to everyone, even though I know that all of you will read the Bible all the time, but I would like to encourage you to keep on reading the scriptures. This is one book and yet it is many books. It is one book that we hold in our hand but actually it is a complete library, it is sixty six books. These sixty six books work together with thousands of cross references and it makes it into one. There is no book in this world which is so well laid out and so precious than the Holy Bible.
God speaks to Moses and others in the law. There was a law for the kings, what the kings should do. It says in Deuteronomy 17 if you will set up a king this is that what the king should do. “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites; and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear Jehovah his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them” (17: 18,19). Here we find a commandment to read the book. We know that when we believe we are made kings and priests; here is a law to the kings to read and to meditate all the days of their life as to the word of God. We can thank God that we have these Bibles. We might have several in our house and they are there to be used. But the letter kills, but the Spirit quickens – so it is very important that we believe and that we rely on the Holy Spirit who will help us to make these words live for us. The Lord says in John 6, “The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life” (v.63). All the words that the Lord Jesus has spoken are spirit and life and we find more of what the word is.
In Deuteronomy 31 we have that the law should be read before all Israel, “thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their ears. Gather the people together, the men, and the women, and the children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear Jehovah your God, and take heed to do all the words of this law; and that their children who do not know it may hear it and learn” (vv.11-13). Here it goes a bit further. It is a responsibility for the parents, which has been an exercise for me having children myself, to teach them in the things of the precious word. It is not that we just read it. I might read it and keep it for myself, but we have to read it to all men, “that they may hear”. If you do not read it, they cannot hear it. Further on we see that Joshua keeps this. When they came into the land we find that he built an altar and he wrote everything on stones, “Then Joshua built an altar to Jehovah to the God of Israel …an altar of whole stones, over which iron had not been lifted up. And they offered up burnt-offerings on it to Jehovah, and sacrificed peace-offerings. And he wrote there on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written before the children of Israel” (Josh. 8: 30-32). There was respect for the word of God and Joshua did what should have been done. He wrote all these words on these stones. It would take quite a while to copy a Bible. It is again something that Satan attacks. We speak about the Bible and you speak about it to other men. They say, this book has been passed on and passed on and there have been copy errors in it, but have you ever tried to copy a chapter? Take a pen and write down one complete chapter, it takes roughly forty minutes to do so; if you wish to copy the whole Bible it will take you about three and a half years if you do one chapter a day! If you did this you would not dare to make a mistake, there have been no mistakes. There are so many who have studied these scripts, the actual original manuscripts are not existing, but when other scriptures and Bibles are found they see that it has been copied to perfection. Joshua writes on these stones and afterwards he does not just write them on the stone but he says to the people go and read them, but afterwards Joshua “read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua read not before the whole congregation of Israel, and the women, and the children, and the strangers that lived among them” (vv. 34,35). Every word is important and every word is important to be said and to be told. It says here, “the blessing and the curse”. The word of God is sometimes very frightening, the word of God is like a two-edged sword. It is not ‘a wellness Gospel’ that everyone feels well and you do not dare to speak about hell, because the people might get frightened by it. I have heard brethren saying that you do not preach judgment. I do not totally agree with that. There is a heaven and there is a hell. If we preach the gospel we have to say that people get saved, but they must know from what they are saved, otherwise I wonder how these people who say we should not speak of these things would read the scripture in Matthew 25, “And these shall go away into eternal punishment, and the righteous into life eternal” (v.46). For whom is this scripture meant? It is meant for all men. We cannot just scrub out a bit of the Bible and say we do not speak about this, people might feel uncomfortable. If the sinner is not saved he should feel uncomfortable, he should feel uncomfortable until he is saved, saved for time and eternity. The word of God is serious, something which is very serious, not something which we make fun of, it should guide us all our lives and even as a believer if you read the whole Bible, sometimes you come into deep soul exercises. The word of God is sometimes very serious, but then the word of God is very glorious and we find the most heavenly thoughts there which help us to live a life down here where we are hated. The scripture says that the world hates us because of the word which we keep. We do keep the word until the Lord Jesus comes. It does not matter what happens to us, we keep the word, and we believe it. We should not let things which are not from God come into our ministry. I like to read about creation and evolution, it is a good way to start a conversation with a non-believer. In Christianity the thought of the ‘gap theory’ has crept in. They say, in Genesis 1 between verses 1, 2 and 3 there might have been a long period and the gap theory says that in these times the dinosaurs and fossils which we find now have lived, but that cannot be true, because that would mean that death had been there before the fall into sin, for the result of sin is death, and death came in through Adam and Eve. There was no death before, so this is not a true theory. The next is that God says, He made heaven and earth in six days and not in six days as a thousand years, in six days with twenty four hours. I believe that and I think that is the truth.
There are two very interesting kings in scripture, the first and probably the last good king was Josiah. Josiah was very young when he became king, just eight years old, “And Hilkijah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah”, 2 Kings 22: 8. I was recently with a customer and spoke of several things, and then we came to speak about faith, and they remembered that they had a Bible; the wife went to find a very old Bible which had hardly been read – they found the book but they had not read it. In 2 Kings they find the book and read it and they got a fright. They came to the king, “And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass when the king heard the words of the book of the law that he rent his garments” (v.10), he was concerned as to the words of the book which had been found. He read the book. It might have been that they had come to the ten commandments and the first commandment was that he should not have any idols, should not bow down before them, should not worship them, that there is just one God and you should follow Him. He got a fright, because there were idols everywhere at the time when he was king. Then he kept on reading, and he might have come to the law of the kings and got another fright because God said he should read it all the days of his life. There the word of God was like a two-edged sword poking into Josiah’s heart. He did the right thing, he took all the idols, all the wrong altars and all these things which were idolatry and he crushed them into dust and smashed them into bits and pieces, he burnt them and got the land free of all the things which hindered the serving of God. He put them in the torrent of Kidron – an interesting part on the east side of Jerusalem – this torrent of Kidron is mentioned several times. When David had to flee from Absalom, he went bare foot through the torrent of Kidron on the mount of Olives, and we find our Lord Jesus Christ going the same way, there where all the sins were before everything which hinders living a life with God. God blessed Josiah and there was great joy.
We find in the times of Nehemiah when they were rebuilding the city walls that when they had finished they had a scribe called Ezra. It says of him that he “stood upon a high stage of wood” (Neh 8: 4). We see that the people of Israel had absolute respect of the word of God. It says, “And he read in it before the open place that was before the water-gate from the morning until midday, in presence of the men and the women, and those that could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law” (vv. 3,4) and it goes on to say, “And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up” (v.5). They had total respect for the word of God, they stood up, stayed in their place, listened to the word of God. It was not laid out yet, just a plain text, the word sometimes speaks for itself. Then there were certain other people next to Ezra and they, “caused the people to understand the law; and the people stood in their place. And they read in the law of God distinctly out of the book, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (v.8) – we find here that there was respect for the word of God and that they read it, that is something which is very good. You will always find that if there is a recovery, that they read the book, it was very important.
Another interesting story is in Jeremiah 36 – God speaks to Jeremiah and says to him, “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee” (v.2); Jeremiah dictates to Baruch, the writer, all that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Baruch wrote it down. Jeremiah then told Baruch to go to the king’s house and read what he had written down. The king was Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah – the people were frightened by the word which Baruch read. In the end the reading came before the king, around him were all the princes, all the scribes and priests. and they were sitting in their winter house. Jehudi read the roll to the king, “And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four columns, he cut with the scribe’s knife, and cast it into the fire that was in the pan until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was in the pan” (v.23). Here we find Satan destroying the word of God. Satan surrounded by religious people, all these people who are in religions powers, it says, “they were not afraid, nor rent their garments” (v.24), as Josiah did. There were three people who made intercession to the king that he would not burn the roll, but he would not listen to them. There we find the total attack of Satan. They read the roll and said that it is not right, they were not even frightened, they were totally cold towards the word of God, filled with Satan. Could that destroy the word of God? No! Jehovah speaks again to Jeremiah and says to him, “Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned” (v.28). The words were repeated again and it says, that words were added to the first words, the word of God cannot be bound. They can bind men, they could put Paul into prison and so on. Paul says, “the word of God is not bound” 2 Tim 2: 9. The word of God is eternal. The Lord Jesus says, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall in no wise pass away”, Matt 24: 35. It was not the first time something was rewritten. Think of Moses when he had the two stone tables and the law written on them, he came down from the mountain and saw all the evil of the people of Israel and he smashed the tables on the floor. God says to him, go and write it again. Some thousands of years later we still have these wonderful words. We see that Satan is always attacking these wonderful words.
I would like to say something as to our Lord Jesus Christ being the Word Himself. We find in John 1 the precious words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being” (v. 1). When I was young I often thought that Jesus was just there when He was born and that He never existed before, but Jesus is eternal, He was always there. He became flesh and He was called the Son of God, but He was there from all eternity. He must have been because He is the Creator, He created everything, Jesus Christ our Lord. Is it not wonderful that we have to do with such a powerful Lord? Nothing came into existence without Him, He created all things. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us and we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father, full of grace and truth” (v.14). What a wonderful Person! Here is Jesus being a Man like you and me (always far from sin). He Himself who was God has emptied Himself and come down and become man for you and for me. He was really Man and He was God, He was the Word, and it is not that He said, I am the Son of God, but He testified that He was the Son of God. He testified it by doing wonders. Wonders are things which we cannot imitate. For example, if someone is blind and you make him see, that is a wonder, the doctors cannot do that. If Jesus walks on water that is a wonder, gravity would not allow us to do that, but He holds everything through the might of His word. Every atom, every molecule is held by His word. If He were to let the word go everything would disappear. Every one of us who lives, lives through the word of God whether you are a believer or not. Life comes from God. No one can live without Jesus, He is the life. He is the way, the truth and the life, He is the Word and He keeps everything together by the power of His word. That is Jesus. When He walked over the water He was able to change the laws of nature. The laws of nature would not allow this. You can test the laws of nature all the time and this would not work, but if you believe on Jesus you can triumph. Peter actually walked on the water, he believed. The Lord said, Come, and he went out of the boat and he walked on the water. He believed in the word. If you believe the word we will overcome.
There are other things which the Lord has done. Think of the time in Joshua when he made the moon and the sun stand for one day. That is not physically possible, it is not explainable. The earth turns with a very high speed, if it was to suddenly be stopped, all the water would fly off, the energy which is in everything would not let it work. He must have stopped the earth for one day. This is a wonder! That is what Jesus can do.
The Holy Spirit inspired the word of God; when we read it we can see that the word of God is inspired. We find something very precious in the word that God gives us often very small simple answers. Sometimes He just says one sentence. Many could speak about just one sentence for a long time because there is so much fulness in one simple sentence. I recently came across an article about a man who studies nature. He looked at all the animals and found that animals do not have many problems in giving birth, they do it themselves and do not have problem. If any one of us has been present when a child is being born, it is not easy for humans. Humans are the only creature who have problems with birth because sin came in and God said that “I will greatly increase thy travail and thy pregnancy; with pain thou shalt bear children” (Gen 3: 16). A very short sentence but full of truth, it is very plain and true and God will not change it because we are fallen man. Even if we believe we still have the same problems, God is absolutely righteous.
Coming to the end of this occasion I would like to encourage every one of us to read daily in the word of God. Bibles are quite cheap today, if you read one, it might take you roughly a year to go through the Bible. You can take a coloured pencil to highlight scriptures. Study the Bible above every other book you have. We have this book, we can read. I do not say you should not read other books, but I think as a believer this is the most precious book that we have. There is the most truth in it. It is a book inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself, by God Himself. It is the Word of God and if you read through it you will come to scriptures at times which fit exactly to the day in which you live, or an experience you have just gone through. There is everything that we need in our life found in the Bible. This is so encouraging.
The word of God is truth, the word of God is life, the Spirit and is everlasting, it never finishes. We should be careful with what we say; in Matthew the Lord says that we will be judged by every word, which we have said. If I think about this I feel very humble, all these words and thoughts I have had in my life makes me feel very humble. Every one will stand before God once and have to hear what we have said and done. It is forgiven, yet we will hear it again. I think then when we enter into glory we will realise the absolute grace of God, that we all, everyone of us there being saved here is absolute grace when we shall be in eternity with Jesus Christ our Lord. That is that we are, saved through grace. We have to believe but we are saved through grace. This book is like a love letter to us. When you are young and you are courting and you get a love letter from a loved one, you cannot wait to read it, you do not put it off. Today we have mobiles and send texts – if the mobile sends a signal that a text has arrived we leave everything and run to the mobile and read and answer back. This is our text (the Bible), the texting from God to us and it can occupy us our whole lives long. There is so much in it, whenever you read in it, even those who are quite old still find something new in it, because it is inspired by the Spirit of God who searches the truth of God Himself. There is no end, He will always bring something new, it will never end, even in eternity. We have nice things and appreciate them for a while, but after a time we get used to them, and they do not mean so much, but in heaven we can never get used to it, it is absolutely eternal, always something new. That is because it is living. Everything we have around us is dead, but we have life in the word of God and let us consider this precious word which is no one else but our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of the living God.
Walton
23rd October 2004