LOVE THE WORD, LEARN THE WORD, LIVE THE WORD
TEXT: Matthew 22:36-40
Introduction:
Jesus answered this question with finality. He was referring back to Deuteronomy 6:4-5, where Moses reminded the Israelites of what God had said – but more than just, “said,” He gave a “Commandment,” that we, His creatures, are to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. God gives no reason for this order. He simply states it as something that MUST be done. This is not a “suggestion,” or a good idea to observe, it is an order! The problem is, is that it CAN NOT BE DONE. No human, unaided by the Holy Spirit, can love God at all, let alone with everything that is in us.
In Romans 10, the Apostle Paul tells us how God, who requires that we love Him, gives the method by which we can obey His command. In verse nine Paul makes a statement, that if anyone confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus and believes in their heart that He was resurrected from the dead, SHALL BE SAVED, because with the heart, one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. In verse thirteen he makes another statement, putting a finer point on it, that if anyone is able in faith to call on the name of the Lord, they SHALL BE SAVED! Then, in verses 14-16 Paul asks a series of questions: 1) how can a person call on a God in whom they have not believed? 2) and how can they believe in a God they have not heard of? 3) and how can they hear of this God without a “preacher? The word, “preacher” is from the Greek, “kay-roos'-so,” and means, “to publish; to proclaim after the manner of a herald, always with…an authority which must be listened to and obeyed.” Paul then asks, 4) How can these preachers publish and proclaim this God unless God sends them?
And what is God’s way of accomplishing the goal He intends when He sends His preachers – His proclaimers of truth? “So, then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). John MacArthur comments on this section of scripture and says, “Paul’s main point in this series of rhetorical questions is that a clear presentation of the gospel message must precede true saving faith. True faith always has content—the revealed Word of God. Salvation comes to those who hear and believe the facts of the gospel.”
If people are to be saved, it is absolutely essential that they hear the Bible, the Word of God, because that is the method God has ordained by which we can learn about the God we are commanded to love, and isn’t it wonderful that the Word of God, applied by the Holy Spirit to our soul, will give us the faith we need to believe in Him? The Bible should be studied like no other book, because through it, God has chosen to reveal Himself.
We must realize that when we are listening to or reading or studying the Bible, we have come into God’s actual presence, and God is speaking His mind directly to us. Jesus Christ is the Word, (John 1:1), and the Word of God reveals Him. After His resurrection, we’re told of His encounter with the two men on the road to Emmaus. We read, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself" (Lk. 24:27). He told the scribes and Pharisees who condemned Him for healing a man on the Sabbath, and who doubted His deity, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39).
1) we are commanded to love the Lord; 2) we can only do this by learning about the Lord in the book He has chosen to present Himself: in the Bible; 3) if we follow these steps, we will live the Word of God, so we can present Him to a lost and dying world, that men and women, girls and boys, rich and poor, the high and the low, from every race and nation, can be saved!
I. LOVE THE WORD OF GOD
A. Loving the God of the Word through the Word of God is the chief of all mankind’s duties. Jehovah simply steps forth before His subjects – those whom He governs and issues His command” Love Me with all your heart.”
B. This is not an option - it is a command. His Word as revealed in the Bible is so important that Jesus said of it, "Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4).
C. The Bible tells us how much God loves us, which should cause us to love Him. “For God SO LOVED the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The Apostle John reemphasizes this by telling us that “God is love” (I John 4:8). Love is an essential characteristic of His nature.
D. The Apostle Paul wrote in Rom. 5:6-8: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But He demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And it is in learning of His great love toward us that will cause us to be drawn to love Him in return. “We love Him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).
E. The Psalmist said of the Word of God, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). The Patriarch Job said of God’s Word, “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12).
F. So, we must love God’s word, through which He reveals Himself.
II. LEARN THE WORD OF GOD
A. We cannot love a God we know nothing about. Since He created humankind, God has been speaking His word to reveal Himself to us. We were created by God and for God, to know Him, to love Him, and to seek after Him.
B. To do this we must LEARN ABOUT HIM! The purpose of learning God’s word is to know God. We must obey Paul’s command to Timothy: “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (II Tim. 2:15).
C. This is not just for preachers, but for all those who are His children. When I was a kid, I couldn’t eat breakfast without turning the cereal box around and reading what was written on it. I’ve had a library card since I was 5 or 6. I have over three hundred hours of university studies, but since God, through Jesus Christ, graciously revealed Himself to me, NO Subject – no study -- has been so engaging, so stimulating, so intellectually challenging, so emotionally rewarding, so spiritually thrilling, as the study of the Bible.
D. All other writings pale in comparison to the Bible. In it, we learn about the God who loved us so much that He came down to earth, to join Himself with humankind for all eternity by becoming a man – Christ Jesus, who said He was “...the way, the truth, and the life,” and that no one can come to the Father but by Him. (John 14:6).
E. As a former Hindu, I read and studied the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In my pursuit of spiritual truth, I read the Lost Books of Eden, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ, Mystic Christianity, and many others
F. But in the Bible, I learned that God and His Word are the same. We learn that His Word is His authority, and His Word is Him. I’m reading John Cooper’s “Awake and Alive to Truth.” In it, he quotes theologian John Frame as saying, “God’s Word (is) His speech. It is an essential attribute, inseparable from God’s being.”
G. Where else can we read such a wonderful truth as what Paul wrote to the Church as Ephesus? "In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets" (Eph.
3:3-4).
III. LIVE THE WORD
A. God has given us the Bible as a reliable compass that points our way home to heaven and tells us how to live a life pleasing to God.
B. Only by accepting the whole Word of God as our rule for life can we ever hope to live a life pleasing to God, and lead others to Christ.
C. We may approach the study of the Bible from a sense of duty, out of obedience to Him, which is a valid reason to approach this glorious subject, and it is an acceptable reason to do so, but the best reason to study God is so that we might learn to live as God intended us to live from the beginning.
D. In His prayer to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord Jesus defined what eternal life is when He said, “This is life eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). This is the only way we can live the Word of God – by knowing God and His Son. And the only place we can know the only true God and Jesus Christ is through the Bible.
E. So, we love the Word of God by learning the Word of God, and then we can live the Word of God, and to live the Word we must listen to God’s word and receive it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to ourselves.
Closing:
The Bible speaks about the spoken Word, the written Word, the preached/taught/sung Word, the Living Word, and the Revealed Word. In Genesis chapter 1 we see that God created the universe by speaking it into existence by the Word of His power, out of nothing. Nine times we read, “And God said…” He spoke and it was done. The Bible abounds with examples of God speaking audibly to people. I typed “God said” into the search bar at The Bible Gateway website, and it brought up 615 scriptures, where “God said.” Just from Genesis 17:1 to Genesis 22:12, I counted eight times that God “spoke” to Abraham. I gave up after counting 487 times, “God said,” and that was just through the Book of Jeremiah.
An even higher form of special revelation is His written Word, the Bible. Peter wrote, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Pet. 1:20-21). God miraculously guided the authors of Scripture to correctly record His message to humankind, while still using their own styles and personalities. The Bible tells us that the Word of God is inspired, profitable, and sufficient (2 Timothy 3:16-17). God determined to have the truth regarding Himself recorded in a written form because He knew of the inaccuracy and unreliability of oral tradition – of having it passed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next. He decided to reveal everything that humanity needs to know about Him, what He expects of us, and what He has done for us by putting it in words in the Bible. The Bible is the only true, accurate inspired, infallible, and inerrant holy book in the history of the world!!! There is no other so-called holy book of any other religion that is true and inspired by the One, True Living God.
But the ultimate form of revelation is the Living Word, Jesus Christ. John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS GOD. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14). God became a human being, in the Person of Jesus Christ, to identify with us, to set an example for us, to teach us, to reveal Himself to us, and, most importantly, to provide salvation for us by humbling Himself in death on the cross (Philippians 2:6-8). Jesus Christ is God come in human flesh, to live among us, walk among us and become one with us through all eternity, and to live a sinlessly perfect life, taking our sins upon Himself on the cross of Calvary, making the way of salvation open to all who by His grace are enabled to put their trust in His perfect, substitutionary atonement.
Then there is the preached/taught/sung Word. Eph. 4:11-12 says God “…gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ…” Eph. 5:18-20 says we are to “be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
Last is the Revealed Word. If we truly desire God’s presence, God will open up His word and reveal Himself. God wants to reveal Himself in all of His glory, goodness, and power. There is a deeper, more satisfying, and abundant life available to those who learn to seek after Him in His revealed word. Jesus said, “...I am come that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10b).
The Bible was written by men who experienced the revealed word. The disciple John described this revealing when he wrote: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Jesus is the revealed Word of God. Through Him, the disciples came to know God in His fulness and it transformed their lives forever. When a person meets the Living Word, Jesus, by Him revealing Himself, our life is never the same.
The revealed word is the word of truth. When the Holy Spirit reveals the truth of God’s word to us, we are enabled to use that word to discern between what is true and what is a lie, what is right and what is wrong. The revealed word is the word of love. Through the revealed word, we see how great and precious the sacrifice of God’s Son on the Cross of Calvary truly is, and why our lives must change forever on account of the so great a love He demonstrated for us.
If you’re hearing this message and you don’t know Jesus, listen to His holy words: “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “If anyone thirsts, let him to come unto Me and drink and as the scripture has said, out his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hand.” “I go to prepare a place for you and if I got to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive unto Myself, there where I am there you may be also.”
The Bible is our unerring guide. We must study and obey it. But it is the AUTHOR of the written words – the One who inspired the Words – and Who speaks to us through His Word, it is He who gives us life. The purpose of the written Word is to cause us to seek and love the God who inspired the Words. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and THEY are life!” (John 6:63).
