Bill Johnson - Loving the Living Word
Good morning! Still morning? Yeah, still got a little bit left. A police officer pulled over a driver and informed him that because he was wearing a seatbelt, he had just won a thousand dollars in a safety competition. The officer asked, «What are you going to do with the prize money?» He responded, «I guess I’ll go to driving school and get my license.» At that moment, his wife, who was seated next to him, spoke up and said, «Officer, don’t listen to him. He’s always a smart aleck when he’s drunk.» This woke up the guy in the back seat, who blurted out, «I knew we wouldn’t get far in this stolen car!» Right about that time, there was a knock from the trunk and a voice asked, «Are we over the border yet?» I don’t know why that’s funny, but it is. I read this one a couple of months ago, but you deserve to hear it again. This is how I learned to mind my own business. I was walking past a mental hospital the other day, and all the patients were shouting, «13! 13! 13!» The fence was too high to see over it, but I saw a little gap in the planks, so I looked through to see what was going on. Some idiot poked me in the eye with a stick, then they started shouting, «14! 14!» Oh goodness, that is just classic—classic! It is one of the better ones.
All right, well, I have the privilege today of talking to you about the Word of God. I remember as a young man in school, I got good grades. I keep saying I wasn’t a good student; my mom always corrects me afterward, but she’s not here, so I can say it—I wasn’t a good student. I didn’t learn some of the study skills that you should learn in school. I was able to kind of cram before a test and get a good grade on the test. Anyway, it was creative learning on my part. So I didn’t read—I hated reading. I hated reading, and I hated writing. The two things my life is spent in right now are, like the Lord says, hmm, divine humor—let’s see how this works out. But I didn’t enjoy reading at all; I hated it. I remember when I really gave everything about my life to Jesus—everything, lock, stock, and barrel, as they say—in my commitment to Christ. I remember I loved to hunt and fish, and honestly, I didn’t care if I ever hunted or fished again. I didn’t care if I ever owned anything besides the clothes on my back. Honestly, every ambition I had was laid on a cross on an altar, and I just said yes to Jesus. That was my response to what He was doing and speaking into my life. I remember I started reading, which was a miracle. I read seven books back-to-back in a fairly short period of time, all on the subject of prayer, for example. I just couldn’t get enough. I’ll never forget where I started. I started reading this book called «Normal Christian Life» by Watchman Nee. Has anybody else read that book? It’s a classic, a great book. My experience of reading this was that I was blown away by his insights. I was reading this book thinking, «This is all from the Bible.»
While I had a hunger for knowledge, so I would read people’s books, I especially had a hunger for the Word of God. You can be fed with people’s books; I write them, I hope people read them. I hope they help them, but they’re supplements. The meal is the Scripture. The Word of God is perfectly fit to speak into any and every given situation of our lives. So when I said yes to Jesus—to absolutely serve with Him as my Lord and to be a true disciple—I just had this hunger for the Word. I’ve never stopped that pursuit of hunger. I’ve had times where I’m hungrier than others, but one of the things I learned in the Kingdom is that in this natural world, you get hungry by not eating, but in the Kingdom, you actually get hungry by eating. So putting yourself in a place where you have continual exposure to what God is saying actually creates an appetite for the Word itself.
I began to read somewhat randomly; I found that it was helpful for me to have a disciplined place of reading. For me, I like to read from Genesis to Revelation or maybe just the New Testament—I’ll read just Matthew through Revelation sometimes. In fact, when we moved here, I took about ten years where the bulk of my reading was just the Gospels and the Book of Acts. I just read over and over and over again. I remember at one point, John Paul Jackson was here, and he spoke to us about this next wave of revival and what would be involved in that. The Lord had spoken something very clearly to him that it would be all around Romans chapter 4. So I remember in that meeting, I started that day; I read Romans 4 every day for three years, besides what else I was reading, but I made sure to read it every day for three years, with the exception of five days because of international flights. The point is to stay exposed to what God is saying and doing. There are times I read just the books of law, sometimes just the poetry books. The point is, I encourage people to have what I call recreational reading and also disciplined reading—not one or the other—do both. Recreational reading, for me, is I have history with God. I have been in trouble; I’ve been disheartened; I’ve been discouraged; I’ve been challenged in my faith; I’ve been confused, not knowing what decision to make. My habit throughout these 40-some years is to always go to the Word of God when I’m in one of those moments. I read literally until He speaks. I’ve sat down and read 20 chapters—20-plus chapters—just back to back. I will just continue reading until He speaks to me, and I find life here—literally life.
There’s this statement in Scripture: «Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.» I’m alive; I live because He talks. I live because He talks. So I would read, and still to this day, if I have a challenging situation, oftentimes what I do is I go back to a place where I met the Lord before. For example, I’ll go to Joshua chapter 1 and spend time there. I’ll go to Isaiah 60; I’ll go to Psalms 27 and 37. I go to these places where I have history with God. I’ve wept before God in some of these places, and the Lord has spoken to me, and He’s fed me—He’s fed my soul—with His Word, and it’s changed my life simply because He spoke. I’ve come desperate; I’ve come hungry. I come with His Word in front of me. There are just those moments in life with Him where He breathes upon the words that are on the page. You can’t always explain what you just read. I love that part of learning in the Kingdom. He doesn’t touch my mind first; He touches my heart. If I come to Him and surrender, He’ll impact me where the change begins before I understand what He’s doing. That’s a huge part of learning—that’s the way learning takes place in the Kingdom. He would speak that Word to me. So what I call recreational reading is to go to a familiar place in Scripture where I’ve been many, many times before, and I will go back to those verses. I refer to them as my cabin in the mountains. You know, you want to get away, have a break; you just go up to the cabin. There’s a little lake there; you go fishing, or you can sit by the fireplace, or you can do whatever you want to do, but the point is you’re just in rest mode—just recuperating, recovering. I have places in the Word of God where it’s my cabin in the mountains. It’s my place of personal refreshing. This is where I have history with God. This is where I’ve taken time with God over the years, and He’s met with me over these portions of Scripture. I have them marked, and I know where to go. I know because I have history—it’s like you being married for 30 years and you still have the love letters from when you were engaged. You go back and read those letters; that’s what it is—a love letter to me.
So many people approach the Scripture so carelessly. I saw a video; I watched a part of it again this week. I had seen it maybe a month or two ago—no more than two months ago—in China, where they’re not allowed to have Bibles. In some places in China, you can’t get a Bible. In fact, what these believers will do in these underground churches is they’ll have one Bible, and they’ll tear individual pages out of that Bible and pass them around. One family will have one page for a week or two weeks, and then they’ll exchange with another family to get another portion of Scripture. In this particular place, someone was able to smuggle in a box full of Bibles. Here’s this home with all these believers, and somebody brings this box, and you have all these people videoing. All these people stand around, and they cut open this box—here’s a box filled with Bibles—and they just run, grab, hold it to their chests, and begin to weep and weep and weep because they have the privilege of reading Scripture. The great sobering warning to me is famine always follows misused abundance—to have so much liberal access to something and yet have that thing close off in your heart to where it no longer feeds you. There’s this summons—there’s this invitation to come and engage with God Himself as we read that which gives life.
People will sometimes say, «Well, I don’t remember what I read.» I’ve told you this before, but people will say, «I don’t remember what I read.» I said, «Yeah, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast last Monday either, but it still nourished me. It still had its place in me.» It’s going through the privileged routine, if you will, of going through Scripture. Now, I like the random reading—the cabin, the weekend at the cabin. I love that kind of reading, but I always try to have the disciplined reading through the Scripture—maybe through the four Gospels, maybe through the Old Testament. Whatever it might be, the point is, what you’ll find is you’ll be in a point of crisis or need or clarity for something, and you will find that Jesus has you in the chapter you’re in on that given day. You turn to where your bookmark is; you open it up, and you find there’s the exact thing that I need an answer for because He’s set you up. He’s big; He’s sovereign, and He loves to set you up for life. The point is we do the discipline, and then as the sovereign God, He sets us up for divine encounters—the encounters we need. We just have to keep the thing going.
I hear people say, «Oh, I read a scripture this morning; it was so deep, it just fed me all day long.» Whatever! I like food. I consider food to be the will of God for my life, and I will choose quality over quantity. I like good food. I have favorite restaurants around the world. My favorite restaurant is down in Napa Valley called The French Laundry. I have been to a number of three Michelin star restaurants around the world, and oh goodness gracious, you just almost get a whole new release in your prayer language eating that food. I mean, it’s just encounters with Jesus at that table. I remember the first time I ate at The French Laundry. We’ve been blessed enough to go there a number of times, and I remember the first time, there’s like nine courses, and then they throw in some freebies. It’s all just the finest food on the planet. I remember sitting there, and they bring out this little bowl with caviar and oysters. It’s called Oysters and Pearls; Chef Keller is world-famous for this specific dish. Now, you need to know I hate oysters, and I hate caviar.
All right, so here I have this set before me that I would not order if I had a choice. What we do is choose either the vegetarian menu, which is never going to be chosen by me, or the meat menu. So they brought out this little bowl, and it’s a big plate but a tiny bowl with caviar and oysters and sauce. I looked at Benny, and I said, «I’m spending too much money for this meal not to at least try it,» which is not my norm, but I thought, «I’m going to be bold. I’m going to express great faith.» I took a bite of the oysters and pearls, and I could not believe what was happening in my mouth! I turned to Benny and said, «I want a chili bowl full of this stuff!» I don’t know what’s in the sauce. You know what we do? I, as you already know, am a cookbook buyer even though I don’t cook. Let’s say you go to The French Laundry or some nice restaurant, you taste the finest thing you’ve ever tasted, and you go into the reception area of the restaurant, and there they’ve got cookbooks by Chef Keller or whoever happens to be. You say, «Man, I want that again.» You pull off the menu—the cookbook—and you find oysters and pearls, and you start looking at all these ingredients, and you go, «You know what? I don’t like that—that’s oysters. I don’t like that caviar. Oh, look at that spice; I never liked that. Oh, they put that in, but that’s kind of bland. I don’t know why you put that in a recipe.» You go through this recipe and find there are not very many things on there you would ever enjoy by itself.
Unless, of course, you throw in chocolate chips at the end. So you’ve got this recipe of bitter-tasting things, fishy-tasting things, sour-tasting things—too salty, too sweet, too bland—but somehow, the master chef has put it together in perfect balance, and it becomes the best thing you’ve ever eaten in your life. This book has bitter things, sour things, things that are so sweet, things that are so confrontative, things that are so challenging, things that are so exotic in and of themselves, but when they’ve been blended into the whole, it is the absolute finest meal you will ever eat. This is what you were born for; it’s the whole counsel of God. It’s not just some people—they just drive me nuts. They just go through and find just the feel-good verses. No! You need to be slapped! It’s called a sword for a reason. There are things clinging on to you that shouldn’t be there. The Bible says the Word of God is good for correction. Proverbs 12:1 says—and this is in the New King James translation, not the Message Bible—"He who hates correction is stupid.» He who hates to be corrected by Scripture is stupid. I tell you what: We’ve got an option because you will be corrected. It will either be in private with a sword or in public with the community, but it will be exposed.
Oh, just looking at your faces is such a joy for me right now—watching the squirm in people’s faces. This is a relational journey. I’m so thankful I have goodness—I don’t know how many Bibles and Bible programs and study materials and books I have on my iPad. I love it! I sit on the plane and go, «Yeah, what does that word mean?» I look it up and touch the word; it just opens up. I love it! But I want to tell you: Do not have a relationship with God over the Scripture that is on a screen only. Have something you could write on because this is going to be your history. I got up about three o’clock in the morning in August 2009; I think it was the year I was headed to Argentina. I went in to use the restroom, and there was a book sitting there by Kim Clement. I looked at the inside cover; he wrote a note to me. He was here; he wrote a note to me and wrote a Scripture reference down. I looked at that reference; it spoke so deeply to me that I went to my Bible and marked it and put the date down because I never wanted to forget the date. So it’s on the right page in my Bible at the date when Gus' book. You want your history with God. You want to underline; you want to make cross-references. God speaks to you out of the Gospel of John, and you see a similar thing back in Joshua. Then find it in John; then go back to Joshua and write the reference down. You want to have that silver thread of your redemptive journey with King Jesus, who is teaching you how He thinks and how He sees. You need the confrontive stuff. You need the stuff that’s harsh—the Book of Judges—the things that, by themselves, maybe aren’t that pleasant. But in the whole of Scripture and our journey to come to know Him and be a true disciple, we find that these things don’t contradict each other, as we thought. They actually complement each other. This flavor that’s bitter by itself, when it’s added to this part of the meal, enhances the flavor of that part of the meal. This thing is written in its entirety to minister who we are—to bring us into our sense of purpose and into our sense of destiny.
I want you to open your Bibles; we’re going to read two portions of Scripture. The first one is going to be in Psalms 119. I’m going to read the whole psalm to you. No, no, I’m not doing that. Actually, yesterday I was thinking about it; I just flew in from New York, by the way. God is doing so many amazing things in New York. I’m so thrilled to be there—New York City, right downtown. Wow! Fun, fun, fun to see so many hungry people. I flew home yesterday, and because of the work on the runway in San Francisco, we needed to redirect our flight. I arranged to fly out to Sacramento; then I had a couple of interns who came and picked me up and brought me home. On the way, sitting in the back seat, I started thinking about Psalms 119. It’s a psalm that is so rich in defining the role of the Word of God in our lives. I actually want to challenge you: Sit down at one setting and read the entire Psalm. It doesn’t take as long as you fearfully think. You know that we read faster than we talk, right? If we read out loud, we read at a certain pace. If you don’t read out loud, you actually read faster; that’s true for just about everybody on the planet. Do you know how long it takes to read this entire Bible if you read out loud? It’s only 72 hours! 72 hours—it tells you how much we read! 72 hours for the whole thing, Genesis to Revelation.
119th Psalm: Take note of the words «word,» «statutes,» «precepts,» «testimony,» «commandments"—all those kinds of words—because they are all different angles of this one thing called the Word of God. What I want to encourage you to do is read this at some point in one setting if you can split it up. But go into this with this question: What role is the Word of God supposed to have in my life? If you go to this book with questions, you’ll find answers; otherwise, you’ll find random information. Psalms 119—we’re going to read about five or six verses here, beginning with verse nine: «How can a young man or old man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your Word.»
«With my whole heart, I have sought You; let me not wander from Your commandments. Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.» I can still hear my grandma quoting this verse. I think she was trying to help me; she would quote it for me. «How can a young man cleanse his way?» And then she’d go into this one: «Your word I’ve hid in my heart that I might not sin against You.»
Let’s stop and look at that concept for just a moment. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You. Do you know what happens when you worry? You’re actually planting a lie into your heart until the roots grow down and affect your soul. They actually impact your thinking, your values, your emotions—all those things come under the influence of whatever it is you’re worrying about. Anxiety, fear, resentment, jealousy, suspicion, offense—all of those things, when held dear, the longer you hold it, the deeper the roots get. That’s why repentance has to be so deeply felt when we turn things over to Jesus.
It’s not a mere, «Oh, by the way, forgive me. Sorry about that.» When it’s a lifestyle for many years, where the roots have gone down deep, and they’ve actually affected my personality, my soul, then that thing has to be deeply dealt with. I don’t mean through self-abuse; I mean just through deep, deep confession: «God, I see the impact of my sin—of this way of thinking. It has affected who You’ve made me to be, and it has been wrong. I’ve held to this thing for 20 years. God, please forgive me and deliver me from this way of thinking.» Repentance has to be deep, especially to uproot those things we’ve held on to so dearly for so long.
What happens is, with offense and jealousy, the Book of James actually calls jealousy wisdom. It’s one of the craziest things you’ll ever see. The Book of James calls jealousy wisdom, but it calls it inferior wisdom—that which is natural and demonic. So why call it wisdom at all? Because what it’s saying is by acknowledging that it is wisdom, jealousy is kept alive by information. Jealousy, suspicion, resentment attracts information to reinforce the position of offense. You will attract more information to make you feel secure in your conclusion, but it does not exist in the heart of Christ. That’s why we keep the Word of God in our heart—why? That we might not sin against God. If our reaction is anything other than love, it will lead to sin. If our reaction comes from any other place than love, it will lead to sin. Jesus is very serious about having us well represented in the earth for how we deal with the things that come our way.
There are only two responses in life: fear and love. There are only two places from which we speak: fear or love. There are only two places from which we act and make decisions: fear or love. There are a lot of believers who get confused in this area, and they think they’re discerning something when they become suspicious, resentful, or filled with offense at another person. That offense actually attracts information to keep them locked into that place. The Scripture says, «Your word I have hid in my heart; I’ve kept it there so that I might not sin against You.» It’s Your word in me releasing its spiritual nutrients, if you will, that helps me stay centered in an accurate and authentic representation of who Jesus is. Jesus was talking to a crowd in John 5, and part of that crowd was a group of Pharisees. He looks at the Pharisees and says, «You don’t believe Me because my word was not in you.»
Think about this: Here are the Pharisees, doing their routine—reading Scripture, studying, doing all this stuff—but they never let it get into their heart. It only was in their head. They had the concept so they could debate, they could argue, they could accuse, but it never transformed their heart. So Jesus shows up—the Messiah—He shows up on the scene, and they do not believe. He says the reason you don’t believe is that the Word wasn’t in you. You didn’t put it in your heart, so the implication is: what the Word of God in my heart sets me up to believe for whatever He’s about to do next.
Verse 11: «Again, Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord; teach me Your statutes. With my lips, I have declared all the judgments of Your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts; contemplate your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.»
You can see statement after statement after statement aiming to draw our hearts into an affection for Scripture. The Scripture says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by what? The Word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes—the capacity to hear comes from Scripture. There are two words in the New Testament regarding the Word of God that would be wise for us to know. One is the word logos, and the other is rhema. Some of you have heard these words before. Logos generally refers to the printed or written Scripture. Rhema generally refers to that which is freshly spoken by God in a given moment. You may be reading, for example, out of the Book of Ephesians; all of a sudden, this phrase just leaps out at you and just brings comfort to your soul or direction, wisdom, or insight, or faith, or whatever it might be—but He breathes on that which is written.
So there’s the logos, which is printed, but the rhema is that which is freshly spoken of God in the anointing. The line between logos and rhema disappears; it all becomes empowered to feed us, to empower us, to direct us, to correct us. I return to the Scriptures frequently, for so many—well, every day I just don’t miss a day. I missed a day 37 years ago because I got kidney stones. You know, those are way overrated. It wasn’t near as fun as they said it would be. I, in the middle of the night, had the boys. Leah wasn’t born yet, so however long ago that was, 38 years ago, I guess, and I was in such pain, I thought hell had come. I was in pain; it was unbelievable. I called Benny; she wasn’t there; she was at a women’s retreat. Then I called my doctor, who was a personal friend, and he said, «I’ll meet you at the hospital; come down right now.» I said, «I can’t! I can’t move! I can’t!» Oh goodness gracious, I was so doubled over with pain. He said, «All right, I’ll come to your house.» So I called Chris next. I said, «Chris, I need help. Meet me at the hospital. I need you to take my boys because there was no one to take them.» So Chris came down; he was in the lobby with my boys. I was there in such pain, and I just want to give praise to God for whoever figured out demerol is magical!
Demerol, as far as I’m concerned, is an absolute gift from God. They gave me however many shots I needed of that stuff until I was in la-la land and until that thing passed. The next day I was fine, but I didn’t read that date! I didn’t read that day! But unless it’s something like that, I’m going to start my day; I’m going to end my day, and if I have the chance, I will during the day read. Wigglesworth, I think it was, said of him: If he wasn’t speaking or doing something, he wouldn’t go 15 minutes without reading the word. He had a little New Testament in his back pocket; he just pulled it out, sat down at a bus station, sat on a park bench, wherever he was at—just stop and read. Keeping ourselves connected to what God is saying is a life source; it is not optional. It is life itself! I live because He talks.
The power of His Word, way back at the day of creation, He spoke and said, «Let there be light!» Do you know that at this moment the universes are expanding at least at the speed of sound, if not the speed of light? They’re continuously being formed and created. Why? Because He never called His Word back. How powerful is His Word? What He declares, He enables, He empowers, and He makes possible. He wants us to delight in the privilege of having Him speak to us! Go to 1 Timothy chapter 2, Timothy chapter 3, and we’ll wrap it up with this one. Are you alive? Everybody alive? I wrote just a quick list this morning—things I could recall from the Bible—what it says about the Bible.
The Bible says the Word instructs, corrects, directs, inspires, empowers, gives faith, heals, and gives promise. If you want to know what divine health looks like, study the Book of Proverbs and look at every time you can find life and health and find out how often it’s actually connected to the Word of God. The Word actually inspires health in the human body. It’s the gospel!
That was bad. Sorry, that was pretty stinky! Let’s hurry and get on to the Scripture. 2 Timothy chapter 3—here’s a promise for you to put on your refrigerator: «Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.» Let me read it again. This is one of the tart verses that helps the rest to be enhanced. Cleanse your palate; you ready? All right, here we go. «Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.» Wise for salvation—interesting phrase! You say, «Well, Bill, I’m already saved.» Yeah, I believe that. I believe the moment you received Christ, you were saved—you were born again. But Paul talks about working out your salvation daily, so there’s this threefold dimension of salvation. I was saved at such and such a time, but I am presently being saved, and when Jesus returns, or I die and appear before Him, I will be saved. There’s that triune dimension of salvation he’s talking about here—the Word of God as being that which enables us to work out our daily salvation! In other words, we would be more saved today than we were yesterday!
That should have excited you much more than it did, but we’ll just move on. I’ll pretend it was a good response! Yeah, verse 16: «And all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete or the woman of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.» Here’s the deal: The Word of God equips me—spirit, soul, and body. Intellectually, emotionally, and mentally, which is different than intellectually—it’s the state of my mind—physically, in the natural—thoroughly equipped for every good work. In other words, any challenge that comes before me, I am ready to represent the King with adequate service to invest into that situation so that Jesus is well-represented. It’s the Word of God. The Word of God working in my life equips me to be adequate and successful in any opportunity I have to represent the King in a given situation— «that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.»
Keep reading chapter four; we’ll wrap this up. It says, «I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the Word!» Now this is everybody in the room. This is not just a pulpit; it’s not an exhortation for pulpit people. Every one of us should be declarers of the Word of God. It may be in a small group meeting; it may be over coffee with a friend, but the point is you’re engaging in fellowship, and there’s the exchange of insight and life that comes from Scripture. «Preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season.» In other words, do it when you feel like it. Do it when you don’t! Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. «For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap for themselves teachers.» They will turn their ears away from truth.
Here’s this incredible warning in the context of the purpose and power of Scripture. There are people right now that are just making a mess of the Bible because they’re pulling out any words of judgment, any words of correction, any words that make them feel insecure—removing all of that—and just anchoring into promises that are rewarding them so that there’s absolutely no sting left in Scripture! There’s supposed to be a sting there; that’s supposed to be! It’s never from a Father who wants to destroy us; it’s a Father who says, «I am working intently and seriously in your life, and you will look completely like Jesus when I’m done. To do that, I need to use a sword. It’s only going to hurt for a moment,» and He speaks and cuts off that thing that was completely unnecessary.
He invites us into the excitement with Scripture, and sometimes it’s inspiring—you can’t stop reading—you need to get to the office. Or whatever it might be! And there are other timesyou’re there just pushing through because you know there’s life there. I read the genealogies when I’m going through Scripture, and it’s genealogy time—that’s the bland part of the recipe! But it helps the recipe! It helps—it helps the whole meal to be what it is! That which nourishes, challenges, and changes me!
There are some people that are running around saying we don’t have to pay attention to the teachings of Jesus because all of His teaching was actually in the Old Testament. That’s true because the New Covenant was when His blood was shed, so all of His teachings during His three and a half years of ministry were actually in the Old Testament. So they say we don’t need the teachings of Jesus. Well, think about this: Was Jesus the greatest teacher of all time? Yes! If God the Father had Him teach at the tail end of the Old Testament for three and a half years, and that was the only time that teaching was worthwhile, then God is the worst steward ever to exist to have the best at the last tail end of several thousand years for three and a half years with just a few thousand people under its influence!
It’s crazy to deal with that—that the writers of Scripture knew would be coming in the future. In 1 John, he says anyone who comes to you that does not have the teachings of Jesus, do not even receive them into your home! It’s that serious! Don’t even receive them into your home! That’s not saying your neighbor who doesn’t know Christ; it’s saying those who are masquerading as believers— they’ll have nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. If they refuse to repent and they hold to those ideals, because they will infect your value of Scripture!
All right! People come and say, «Well, there are errors in the Bible.» No, there’s not! But let’s just pretend there are for discussion’s sake. There are not as many errors in here as there are in you! And I’m not going to let you redefine what is valuable in here for me! Other than that, I’m quite happy all the time!
I pray that the Lord would gift you with a grace for the Word of God, for Scripture, for understanding. The Bible says knowledge comes easy to him who has understanding. If you can imagine a mail room where there are slots for different individuals, different offices, when you have the slot, you have a place to put knowledge. When you have understanding, there’s a context for what God would like to say. But He’s not a bad steward, and He doesn’t release revelation knowledge to a person that doesn’t have a context to put it in! So one of the things that we do is we get hungry; we fully respond to what He’s spoken to us so far. We live from His Word; we have history with Him. Then we attract ongoing understanding of revelation so that we can impact the people around us.
So I want you to stand up because we’re going to pray! I’m going to pray for you. «Jesus, make it come alive!» I remember I was probably 19 at the time; the church was in the old facility that no longer exists. There was a little library there. I remember pulling this little tiny white book off the shelf. I remember, I’m not a reader, but I was just starting to engage with reading. And I pulled this little tiny white book off the shelf, and I just opened it in the middle and started reading. As while I was reading, I thought, «This is amazing!» I could feel it coming off the page! Honestly, I could feel life coming off the page! I kept reading, kept reading, and then there was a Scripture reference, and I saw, «Oh, I was actually reading the Word, and I didn’t even know it! It’s why life was coming off the page as He was quoting a passage of Scripture to prove a point!» Life—I live because He talks!
So, Father, I pray that You would make Your Word come alive at a level we’ve never known before. That every person in this room— all of our friends that are scattered around the globe with Bethel TV—that there would be this fresh, fresh gift of hunger for the reading of the Word of God—for delighting in it! You’d expand our wisdom, expand our devotion to the written Word. I pray this for the honor of the name Jesus. Amen!
Now I want to have the ministry team come to the front. There’s been an altar call; people have already been invited to Christ. Did Chris do that? And he did do it during the communion, okay. If you could hold on a moment, it really would help us. Thanks! Just ministry team only—come to the front. If there’s anyone here, in fact, let me just ask the question: Is there anyone here that would just say, «Bill, I’ve never been a disciple of Jesus,» or «If I was, I chose my own way entirely, and I want to return to Him today. I want to place my faith in Him and become a true disciple of Jesus?» «Disciple» means «learner.» When we stop learning, we stop being a disciple, and you would say, «Bill, I want to be the Lord. I want to be forgiven of sin and really healed from the inside.» If that’s anybody in the room, put your hand up real quickly, because I want to make sure anybody right over here is one.
Anybody else? Would you just say—anybody else right over here is another one? Right over there—one? That’s so beautiful—come on, right over here’s another one! That’s so cool—so clear! Right over here to my left—are you guys setting that up? Right over here to my left is a group of people that we know and trust; there’ll be a little banner there so you kind of know where they’re at. But right over here to my left, those four of you—and if there’s more, I want to ask the four of you to please come quickly to this group over here, because I want them to talk with you. I want them to pray with you. Just leave your seats; come to them right now, and this team is going to pray for you because I want you to be blessed beyond measure! Yeah, church, bless them as they come! That’s awesome—right over here! Come on! Amazing!
All right, are you wrapping up? Come and grab the mic; tell everybody what to do! Hold on just a second—let me get to the back, and he’ll tell us what to do. Come on! Can we just give Pastor Bill a round of applause? That’s such a powerful word!