Allen Jackson - Life Giving Word
It will give life to you, the Word of God. I wanna start in Hebrews chapter 4, in verse 12. It says, "The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart". I'm an advocate for the Word of God. I'm not confused. It's not an idol. I don't worship the Bible. It's not the object of the focus of our worship. It's a tool that God has given us. I believe it's the inspired Word of God.
The author of Hebrews says that the Word of God is living and active, that it's able to divide or to discern in a way that the sharpest blade cannot. It can discern between soul and spirit. Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. Your spirit is the part of you that's eternal, that's created most directly in God's image. And God's Word can help you make a distinction for yourself between what is simply from your emotions or your own thoughts and what comes from the eternal purposes of God. That's a very helpful tool to have, isn't it? It says it'll help you discern or divide between the thoughts and the intent of your heart.
One of the most difficult things to do in life is to rightly discern the condition of your own heart, 'cause with a little bit of license and a little bit of liberty, you can convince yourself of almost anything, can't you? The scripture will help you. It's a tool in your hands. Look at what the 1 Peter has to say. 1 Peter chapter 1, it says, "You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God". Peter refers to the scripture as a living, enduring thing. I wanna encourage you today to spend time routinely, systematically engaging with the Word of God.
For several years now, it has become a habit in this place, in fact, it's become a part of our routine that every year we systematically read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It matters enough to us that every week on the sermon outline, we bring you the reading portions for the week. Some of you are old-school, and you like a hard copy to hold in your hands. If you go to the church's website, every week the readings are posted there, so if, for some reason, you don't have access to your Bible, you can do it electronically. Some of you are a bit more portable. You can download the World Outreach app to your smartphones or your portable devices. The daily Bible readings are there. In fact, on the app, it will read it to you.
So if you're commuting to work and you need to listen to it, or you're doin' chores around the house and you wanna listen to it, you can hear those daily portions. The idea is that in about a ten-minute investment, you can read through the whole Bible in the course of a year. Why would you do that? I don't know of another way to get to know the character of God, to know who he is, what his intent is in the earth. Don't take my word for it. A little hors d'oeuvre occasionally at church on the weekend is not the same as getting to know God from the character of his Word. I know it's no longer particularly the most fashionable thing to study.
In many quarters, in our culture, at least, we're told that the Bible is a little bit out of date. It's kind of an old book. It's written in antiquity. It reflects a set of values and cultural ideas and worldviews that really haven't kept up with the times. We're a bit more enlightened now, many would suggest. And that if you're really a part of the intelligentsia and you're academically up to speed and you're intellectually fully developed and you're emotionally forward-thinking that the Bible is a little too restrictive. It's a little too constraining. It'll diminish you.
Well, I hold another opinion. I believe what the author of Hebrews said... that it's a living thing and that it will help you discern between your soulish self and the things that are eternal. It'll help you understand the true condition of your heart. It will give to you a revelation of Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth. I not only don't believe that the Bible isn't out of date, I think it's the most remarkable book that's ever been extended to human beings. And I would encourage you to never apologize because you believe it, because you invest time in reading it. I would make it the foundation of my life. I would let my worldview emerge from the principles in this book.
In fact, I have. I encourage you to read it. Don't ever apologize because you believe the Bible. Amen. And if you've never read it, if you've never made that investment, I wanna encourage you to consider doing so. Now, the focus of this week and next weekend is really to add a little momentum to that. Right now, we are reading through the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They're often referred to as the books of Moses. By Jewish tradition, Moses is the author.
Now, we don't have a signed autograph from Moses. We don't have the legal pads on which he sat down under the tree and knocked the thing out. The book of Genesis is an introduction. It's the story of beginnings on how we're introduced to God and his interactions with us on planet Earth. But Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy tell us how God used a man by the name of Moses to establish his people. So it is legitimately the story of the books of Moses. They're also known as the Pentateuch, the first five books, or the Torah, the Law. Some people just call 'em the first five books of the Bible. I don't care which label you use, but once you... you know, Genesis is kind of fun. Hollywood's made a fortune out of Genesis.
There's some good stories in there. Big boats, lots of animals, high water, all kinds of stuff. And Exodus is pretty dramatic too. Hollywood's leaned into that. And you've met Moses or the Prince of Egypt or Yul Brynner or Charlton Heston, however you process that stuff. But when you get to the book of Leviticus, it slows down a little bit, doesn't it? And you think, "Well, I get through Leviticus," and then you break into the joy and enthusiasm of Numbers. And if you're not a persistent sort, you get disheartened. So I wanna try to use the weekend to see if I can add some momentum to where you are right now. You're finishin' the book of Leviticus, and you're lookin' at Numbers, and you still gotta get through Deuteronomy. And you're thinkin', you're not even sure God reads this stuff. All right?
So I wanna try to give you the big picture and add some momentum, 'cause I have an, I have... of the opinion that it can, Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy are as transformational as Genesis and Exodus. You didn't believe me. I could tell. But I'm gonna try to help with that, all right? So let's step away from it for a minute. There's two themes in the books of Moses that I don't want you to miss. They're over, in fact, they set the tone for the whole rest of the Bible. First and foremost, it's a deliverance story. It is a story of deliverance from slavery to freedom. When the book of Genesis concludes, Joseph has moved to Egypt and gotten a really, really good job. And Joseph has gotten such a good job that his whole family decides to join him and ride the gravy train. That's how Genesis ends. It's really good. They got the blessing of Pharaoh. I mean, it's as good as it's gonna get.
So the whole family comes down to join Joseph. It's kind of a messed up family, but they work through that. And when the book of Exodus opens, Joseph's extended family is still in Egypt, but we're hundreds of years later, and they have really flourished. They have multiplied so much that that family has become a mixed multitude of people. There are hundreds of thousands of descendants from that family lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph's forebearer's. And the book of Exodus opens with this little statement. It says, "The Pharaoh arose, who didn't remember Joseph".
A Pharaoh arose who didn't remember the good job they gave Joe. And he was threatened by this large number of foreign, this mixed multitude in their midst, so they enslaved the Hebrew people. And for hundreds of years, they were slaves in Egypt. No hope of ever being free. They went to Egypt as a family. They weren't a nation. They never stood beneath a flag. They never had a constitution. They never marshaled an army. They never sent a team to the Olympics. It was simply a family that moved to Egypt, and they flourished and ended up being enslaved. And now, hundreds of years later, there is no hope of freedom. There is no one to advocate for them, except.
And in Exodus chapter 3, you have it in your notes, God recruits an Egyptian. I mean, he was born to the slaves, but he grew up in Pharaoh's palace. He spoke like an Egyptian. He liked the Egyptian menu. He knew their gods. He celebrated their holidays. Until he murdered an Egyptian and he had to flee. His name is Moses. And God said, "I can use this man". Exodus 3, you've got it in your notes. It's verse 7: "The LORD said, 'I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. And I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I'm concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good land, a spacious land, a land that flows with milk and honey.'"
God said to Moses, "I have seen the misery of my people". "My people," he said. If God says, "You are my people," it means by definition there are some people that are not the people of God. You know, it's true that God loves everybody, but it's equally true that God's people are at the center of his purposes in the earth. God plays favorites. And he said, "I've come down to deliver these people from the slave pits of Egypt to take them to a land that flows with milk and honey". Now, Pharaoh was not gonna receive that news with great enthusiasm. How much better would it have been for Pharaoh if the first time Moses walked in and says, "Hey, I wanna pitch you an idea," if Pharaoh had said, "That works for me. Why don't you go"?
Think of what he would have spared himself and the land of Egypt. Because he didn't cooperate with God, by the time that God's purposes finally work out anyway, Egypt is decimated. Pharaoh is financially bankrupt. His leadership has been devastated. His nation is in tatters. I point that out because cooperating with God is not always easy. Sometimes it feels threatening to the status quo. But it always brings a better outcome. One of the great lies, we live in an age of deception, and one of the great lies that has gained significant traction in this age is that cooperating with God will diminish your life. It will not. Godliness will not diminish you. It will expand your life.
The joy of your life, the contentment of your life, the value of your life, the significance of your relationships will all be improved by cooperating with God. The books of Moses are a deliverance story. The second theme in those books is a theme of revelation. We are introduced to God, and we get to know his character a bit. If you didn't have the books of Moses, you would know very little about the character of God. When Genesis opens, we aren't told much.
Genesis 1:1, most of you know the verse. It says, "In the beginning, God". It doesn't tell us where God came from. It doesn't tell us how he got here, why he's messin' around on planet Earth. We don't know, we just don't know. It's not there. There's no information. It says that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, and God began to speak order into the chaos that was in this earth. And when he got to the end of his creation, he took a little dust and a little mud, and he made a little fella. Then he called him Adam, and Adam got all swelled up and said, "Look, I'm runnin' this place". And God smiled and said, "We'll see". But we really don't know too much about him. When we get to the books of Moses, we're invited into the character of God.
Look with me in your notes. It's Exodus 3. This is the recruitment narrative for Moses. Moses doesn't want to go back to Egypt. God has a plan for Moses, and Moses said, "If it's all the same with you, sir, I'm busy". Haven't you said that to the Lord? "God, that's why you called pastor. Let him go be spiritual". Never mind. "Moses said to God, 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your fathers sent me to you," and they ask me, "What's his name"? What will I tell them?' Then God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM. This is what you're to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you".'" Now, God could have stopped right there. But the next line to me is a statement of such remarkable compassion towards Moses.
"God also said to Moses, 'Say to the Israelites, "The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you".'" He says, "When you get back to there, to those people, you tell 'em, 'God sent me to lead you out of here.'" And they've been slaves forever, as long as they know. "God sent me to lead you out". When they say, "Which God? Egypt has many". He said, "You tell 'em I Am sent you". And then he says, "Moses, you can tell 'em I'm the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob". What's the only unifying theme in the midst of this mixed multitude of people? They've never occupied a piece of land. They've never been a self-identified nation. They've never had those things to bind them. They're not a single ethnicity.
The Bible says they're a mixed multitude. He said, "You tell 'em that the same God that watched over Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and brought them to Egypt is the God that's come to lead 'em out". Wow. So now God is watching over his people and his purposes in the earth. Now, that is the book of Moses. It's a salvation story, a deliverance story. It's the greatest deliverance story in all of the scripture, with one exception, and that's the redemptive work of Jesus. And you can learn a great deal about what was accomplished for you and me in the redemptive work of Jesus as we learn to understand the deliverance narratives in the books of Moses.
The Bible uses the term holy and clean and unholy and unclean. Now, the word "unclean" is translated in different translations in different ways. One translation prefers common. Another uses profane. Profanity isn't simply a collection of four-letter words that aren't appropriate for polite conversation. To be profane is anything that makes you unclean, that diminishes your holiness. Look at Hebrews chapter 12, in verse 14. It says, "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord". To be holy is a stative verb. It's not an active verb. Holiness isn't something we do. It's something that begins within us and then is expressed outwardly.
So you can't establish or determine holiness by just observing external behaviors. What did Jesus say? It's not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean. It's what comes out of your mouth that makes you unclean. The point of the books of Moses isn't to teach you just the right foods to eat. The point of the books of Moses is to teach you that even what you eat matters to God, that your whole life is open before him. In fact, those books will become more interesting to you if you can step away from them a little bit. When you get so pressed into them, you kind of missed the forest for the trees. Now, we do this in life in other ways. You can do it with church.
Have you ever gotten up on a Sunday morning have been awakened on Sunday morning and thought, "You know, I don't think today is my day. God's called me to meditate". I feel that way some Sundays. Then you have that little internal tug, and you say, "Okay, I'll go". So you get up and you get in the shower, and all the hot water is gone. Then you have a little praise the Lord moment right there. All right? And you get dressed, and you get in your car, and you start to church, and every traffic light between your home and church is red when you get there. Every one. Not most of them, every one of them. And by the third one, you know the devil himself is orchestrating this journey.
And then you realize that every person in the state of Tennessee that should have never been issued a driver's license has collaborated on this day. They are coordinating their efforts to impede your progress. And so you begin to call down the botch and the itch and the scab on them while you're trying to get to church. And maybe your normal service is 8:30 on Sunday morning, and it's not always the busiest service, but this week because you had your little meditation session, you're comin' to 10:30.
And you finally get to campus, and the parking lot is, like, full, so you park on the edge, three time zones away, and you start into the building, and you think, "You know, if I'd wanted to walk from Cannon County, I'd have picked a church in Cannon County. Stinkin' big church. It's just about ego and donuts and cupcakes and a bunch of foolishness, and I don't know what's goin' on here anyway, and why, if my wife hadn't brought me, I'd have never come. Never wanted to go to a big church anyway. Look at that big church. Big cross, big church. It's gotta be a mess. Big problem. What's goin' on here? Why am I here"?
And you get into the building where you normally come, and because you're not at your service, you come to your seat. Everybody knows it's your seat because it's your service. Nobody would sit there 'cause they know you. You're that grumpy old cuss that sits in that seat, and they're not gonna sit there. But now you're here at 10:30, and somebody clearly is not enlightened. "They're in my seat, and they're just sitting there smug and smiling and looking at me. Like, why am I glaring? I'm glaring 'cause you're in my seat. And, oh, by the way, there was cold water when I started the day and traffic lights and idiots on the highway, and I'm parked in Cannon County, and now you're in my seat".
And then the perky little Katinas walk out and say, "Let's worship the Lord". And if Gabriel himself had a message, you couldn't hear it. And if you don't guard your heart, you can do that with Leviticus. "What do you mean we got a ram skin dyed red? And you gotta have a pomegranate on what"? Step back a minute. God is trying to help a group of people get to know him. And he said, "Every part of your life matters to me. I don't wanna just interact with you on Sunday morning for a few minutes". He said, "Everything from your food", He said, they complain. They say, "We're hungry". He said, "Look, I'll give you manna".
And they said, "We want meat". He said, "I'll give you quail". They said, "We're out of water". He said, "Watch this. I can bring it out of the desert". Every part of their life matters. It said their clothes didn't wear out. There were no sick people amongst them. Holiness is not burdensome or loathsome or diminishing. It's a pathway to abundance. The desire in us is to be a holy people. Not always, but we want to cultivate that. Don't avoid the scripture. Give it ten minutes and watch what God will do for you. It will change your life.
Now, we'll pick up some more of these this evening, we'll finish them this evening, God willing. Yeah, right. Let's pray. That's not nice. You better fast and pray. Somebody said to me this week, it wasn't this one. In the last couple of weeks, they said to me, "I read my Bible, but I don't like reading it on that plan you've got. I'll read my Bible. I don't need anybody tellin' me what to read or when to read it or how fast to read it. I can read it. I know where Genesis is, and I know where Revelation is. I can read it".
Well, I'm happy for you, John Wayne. And I believe that too. I'm not overly enthusiastic about people providing too narrow of boundaries to me. But let me encourage you: there is a benefit to reading it through collectively. It gives you a talking point when you interact with one another. It puts your family on the same page, which is not easily accomplished. It puts your family and the families that are interacting with you in a similar point in your journey through the Word of God, and it's only about a ten-minute investment. So if you wanna read at your own pace in your own Bible, I got no problem with that at all. But just offer God that little block of time every day as a corporate journey and see how God will respond to you.
All right, I brought you a prayer. It's at the end of your outline, the part you never see. Why don't you stand with me? We are a people learning to pray, and one of the things we want in our personal portfolio is the confidence to pray out loud in public. And this is one way to add a little momentum to that. So I would encourage you to read this prayer with me. Have you found it?
Heavenly Father, I rejoice in the provision of Your word. Grant me a hunger for the things of God. May Your truth become more precious to me than the things of this world. Guide me in paths of righteousness and deliver me from evil. You are my hope and my redeemer, amen.