Words of Life

Good afternoon. Happy Sabbath, everyone. Recently I sat down to read my Bible, and it was hard. It was hard. It felt that day like an absolute chore. This is what it felt like I was doing. Have you been there? Have you been to that place? You know, we hear a lot about prayer and Bible study, and it's important for our Christian walk, for our personal growth. But what about when these tasks feel like a lot? Perhaps you've been here with your prayer life. There are times in our lives where we can feel completely overwhelmed by life, by circumstances, by the things that we're going through, trials, trials that we know people we love are going through, and you just can't find the strength to reach out. Have you been there? Because spiritually and emotionally and maybe physically, you just can't. Have you had this block when you've been trying to read your Bible? Or am I just bearing my soul today? If you've been in that state, you know, and you read sentence over sentence, and your brain just can't log in, and it feels like a slog, what it takes sometimes is a change in perspective. And hopefully I can share a little bit about what I've done to help in these times. Let's go to Matthew 4. Let's start off here. Matthew 4. This is a great place to start here. Matthew 4. Starting in verse 3, we'll read, And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he, Jesus, answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. You know, oftentimes when I'm overwhelmed with life and I'm distracted with everything that's going on, whether it's work stress or family stress or, you know, the car's broke down or the air conditioning's not working right, it feels like everything is just weighing on me. It kind of keeps us from focusing, at least it does for me. It's like I have so much that I'm thinking about, so much that I'm worried. It sort of clouds everything else. Here, Jesus is being tempted. Now, does he have anything in this scenario that can be distracted distracting him? He's been fasting for 40 days. He is absolutely hungry. He's absolutely hungry. It's a hunger that I can't even imagine how all-consuming it would be. He has every physical thing that could pull him away, and he says something that is like super instructive for us today. The Word of God is a form of sustenance. It's where we can get life. Jesus tells us that there is something that we should live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. God's Word is life-giving. Do you see the Word of God that way? Do you see it like, I need to have this so that I can live. When we stop eating, when we get hungry, our body tells us, oh, I just need something to keep going.

And then we have that feeling when we think about our Bible study. When we're spiritually hungry, we could either fill up on proper spiritual nutrition, or we can do what we often do as humans, and that's fill with junk food. We fill the hole with Netflix, more work, scrolling for hours, everything else that can really fill the spiritual need that we're looking for.

So when you're in a space where you have all these fears and worries and anxieties of life weighing you down, and you feel that you are just hungering for something else, that's where we need to turn to God's Word and see it for what it is. It's life-giving, changing our focus about what God's Word really provides for us, and that's sustenance. John 6. John 6. See another. Another example from the life of Jesus. John 6 and verse 60. When many of his disciples heard it, which I'll come back to here in a second, they said, this is a hard saying. Who could listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense to this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life, and the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some who did not believe. I hear Jesus just came off of saying something that was so shocking to everyone that some people were like, I cannot even with this guy. And what he said, he said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my body has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. And there were people whispering like, I don't know who this guy is, but he is not who we're following. And Jesus heard that. Verse 63, the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life, and there were some who absolutely recognized that to be true. This is part of the perspective change that we need to have when we get to that point where it just feels grueling. There is spirit and life. What Jesus is saying is, when we take in what he's saying, when we take in the Word of God, this God-breathed-inspired words, that we see that there is something even more than we can even explain. It's life. It's spirit. Jesus was telling more of—he was talking to them about this and taking in his life. Take his life in. Take his life in and make it part of yours. I have heard it said before, and I get the sentiment that the Bible is a textbook for life, but that does something—it breaks something in my brain when I hear it said spoken about that way. I get the sentiment, the idea coming from 2 Timothy, that Scripture is God-breathed and it's good for correction and reproof. I understand the sentiment, but in my brain, when I hear a textbook, that's something I've had to slog through in my life, and I'm sure you have too. I understand, again, where it's coming from, but it does something in my brain, and when I think about this as a textbook or just information, this is just important information—good information. When I hear that, it takes away the depth of what it really is. It changes my perspective, and I think that it also makes me feel like my relationship is very transactional with God. If I could just read this and understand it and do what it says, then if I do those things, then boom, boom, boom, boom, these are the things that will happen next. And that's not true. That's not exactly true. They are God-breathed. They're words of life. They become spirit and life. The words of Jesus, they're not just giving me a way to go, but they're opening up a path to a life through Him. And when I think about that, that's what I want to drink it in. It's more than just information. It's more than just, you know, oh, this is good stuff for you to know. Yeah, it is. But as you'll see in our next section, it's much more than that. So let's go to Hebrews 4. Hebrews 4. Kind of walking backwards into the Bible.

There we go. Hebrews 4 verse 12. For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and the marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from its sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him, whom we must give account. This book is not dead. It's not irrelevant. But there is power in the words of our Bible, and it has the power to cut if we let it. It has the power to cut if we let it. It allows us to open up to expose the innermost core of who we are, even the things that we think we're really good at hiding and stuffing down there. You know, we're really good at growing this thick skin and putting up boundaries and walls and saying, you know what? That's not really a part of me. Well, deep down it still kind of is. But we let the Bible pierce us and cut us to the innermost core of who we are. It does something to us. It's not a manual. It's not a textbook. It's the word of God, and He has given it to us to expose ourselves for something that we couldn't do without. And that's to transform. To transform.

When you sit down and you read the book, and you don't read it for what it's saying and for just to learn about what it says, but I want to read this so that I can change. That's where things begin to shift our perspective. That should be the goal when we pick up this book. It should be to expose ourselves to who we are and to help shape us into what we want to become.

You know, the imagery of the sword, you know, it seems a bit like an overkill at first. It seems like, oh, it seems like so over the top, but it's not. If you really think about it, you know, we do put up these barriers. We do put up these things, these strongholds about our character. We stuff things down. We set it aside and we pretend we, you know, we trick ourselves. We're really good at it. And we're really good at saying, you know, I'm doing just fine. Fantastic, even. I'm doing great. But Peter's sermon, when he spoke to the people in the book of Acts, and he said they were cut to the heart. They were cut to the heart. And that's what the sword, the Word of God can do. It is dividing all of those body parts. It's opening us up to a place of transformation. And how does the Bible do that? Well, it does it in several ways. It does it through stories. It does it through instructions. It does it by giving commands, straight commands, sharing prayers and hymns, songs of people who are striving to follow God. It gives it to us in the life of Jesus. We have several books that we read about the life of Jesus and also the letters to the churches. It's not a textbook. It's a tool for us to help transform.

So if you are in a slump, I have found it helpful to read the life of Jesus and the book of Acts back to back. That's where I start. When I know that I've just been struggling, that's where I begin. Because I know where the goal is. I know what I'm striving to be, who I'm striving to be like, and that is God in the flesh, His Son, Jesus Christ. You cannot go wrong with that. And then when I start to read the other parts of the Bible, I found another question that helps me really focus on what is happening and what I should be taking away from the Bible. Reading parts of the Old Testament, the question is, what is God doing? Not what the people are doing. It's easy to point the finger at the people and say, oh, look at them. They didn't know. They didn't have the Holy Spirit. Oh, look at the grumbling and complaining. I would never do that. But look what God is doing despite the people.

It's moving. And that encourages me to help to want to transform. This will help take the pressure off you as a mere human being, just striving to overcome and, you know, just really white-knuckling through like, oh, I got to get over this sin. And you realize that, you know what, despite all that I am, all the weaknesses that I have, there is a God who's moving in my life and he wants to be. And it's at that point you'll start to find yourself wanting to pick up this book for encouragement and strength and guidance, not just knowledge, but that's when we're able to transform. And when that happens, that's when God can start to do his work and all of us.