Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2003 : June 1, 2003
The Kind of Church God Wants Us to Be: A Church that Craves His Word
Easter 7 - First Service
I want to see if I can relate to any of you this morning by saying the first words of a song that I know pretty well and seeing if any of you recognize it. "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship." How many of you recognize it -- raise your hands. What is it? The Gilligan's Island theme. Why do you know it? I probably haven't seen Gilligan's Island for 25 years -- OK, more like 15 -- but why do I still remember that song? Because every day I came home from school and plunked myself down on the couch in front of the TV and watched the only decent thing that was on, which, in my mind, was Gilligan's Island. Does that mean I think it was a great show, that is was very meaningful to my life and that it was the most important thing in my life? No, of course not. But, on the other hand, people tend to spend their time on what they feel is most important. And just for the very fact that I, and some of you, can still sing the Gilligan's Island theme means that at one time we must have thought it was pretty important.
As we look at the Word of God this morning and for the next several weeks, we will be looking at the Kind of Church God Wants Us to Be. That's important for every church, but even more so for Living Word as we are just getting going. This morning we will see that God wants us to be a Church that Craves his Word -- for daily nourishment and for daily assurance.
In the book of Acts, we find Paul here on his second missionary journey. He had just crossed into the continent of Europe for the first time. He was at Philippi and now he was at Berea. There are only a few verses that speak of Paul's mission work in Berea. He had more success among the Jews here than at Thessalonica, and our verse tells us why. "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness."
When we hear the name Bereans even today it reminds us of one thing -- these are the people who received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Boy, doesn't that tell us a lot about them! The Bereans had a good handle on what the Bible said, but they didn't leave it there. When this new preacher came to them saying that the Messiah had now come, that his name was Jesus, that salvation can be found in no one other than Jesus of Nazareth, they listened eagerly and they receive the message eagerly. This is what they had been waiting for for thousands of years. It was something their parents and grandparents had been waiting for -- all their ancestors all the way back to Adam and Eve had been eagerly anticipating for thousands of years -- and if what Paul said was right, then they were on the cutting edge of what Jeremiah had talked about 650 years earlier as he wrote down what the Lord had told him: "The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." Then God gave the substance of the new covenant: "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." The old covenant, or promise, that God had made with Israel was two-sided. It was given on Mount Sinai to the Israelites when he rescued them from Egypt. It basically said, "If you follow my Law, I will be your God, and you will be my people." But God's people had broken their side of the bargain. Even before Moses came down from the mountain with the Law of God, the people were worshiping a golden calf. They were so quick to forget what God had done for them in bringing them out of Egypt and making them his chosen people.
We can take a lesson from the Israelites here. Have we at times forgotten what God has done for us? Oh, we maybe haven't forgotten it in the sense that we don't remember that God created and preserves us, that he saved us from our sins by sending his own Son to take them away by his death on the cross, that he brought us to faith through the gospel. We haven't forgotten those things -- we know they happened. But often in the way we live, it shows that other things take precedence over being eager to hear that Word of God in our lives. Ascension Day is a good example. How many of us were eager to hear about Jesus ascending into heaven this past Thursday? It was Ascension Day. It reminds us that Jesus completed his mission of saving us and that after showing himself for 40 days after his resurrection to his disciples to assure them that he was alive and that their sins were forgiven, that he then ascended back into heaven and took his rightful place of power and authority at God's right hand. Now many of us probably didn't even remember that there were Ascension Day services this past week. Others may have been at graduation services, and that's fine. But it just seems that every year more and more services are less attended. How long will Ascension services be something that we'll be able to go to? What's next? Maybe in the next generation New Year's services will go. Then maybe Advent and Lenten services. Am I calling into question your faithfulness and faith? No. But I am reminding you as I am reminding myself, that we can very easily take the message of Scripture for granted. Instead of searching through it eagerly and daily on our own as the Bereans did, we can let it become old hat. Why do we know the Gilligan's Island theme? Because we heard it day after day after day for years -- that's why it has stuck with us. How does God's precious Word stick with us? When we follow the example of the Bereans and eagerly examine that Word every single day to find all the treasures that it contains. Not only will we discover our utter sinfulness once again. But we will also hear about the New Covenant in Jesus' blood which tells us that Jesus paid the price of us taking God's Word for granted. Jesus suffered and died on the cross of Calvary for every time we thought there was something more important to do than eagerly searching his Scriptures to discover his will and how we can follow it. Jesus died for those sins so they need not worry us any longer. And he rose from the dead to assure us that those sins are paid for in full and we are now able to live a new life before God as his children, completely redeemed and forgiven. Then our attitude toward God's Word will be as Peter encourages us: "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." (1 Peter 2:2,3) As most of you know very well, newborn babies won't take 'No' for an answer when they are hungry for milk. They will cry and cry and wail until their needs are satisfied. That needs to be our attitude with God's Word. We won't be satisfied until we have drunk in deeply of our daily drink from the wells of salvation.
Peter's words about craving pure spiritual milk remind us of the Bereans again. Not only did they receive the message with great eagerness, but they also examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. The first time the Bereans heard Paul's message, they probably thought, 'I don't know about this guy. He's got some new teaching I'm not so sure about.' But how did they determine if it was from God? They compared what he said about Jesus being the Savior with all the passages in the Old Testament that talked about the coming Savior. When they did that, they came to the only possible conclusion: Paul was telling the truth -- Jesus was and is the Christ, the Savior of the world. Believe in him and live forever.
Just like the Bereans, we will be bombarded with all kinds of things these days that claim to be truth. If you don't have someone trying to convince you to believe reincarnation, then you'll have someone tell you that the god of the Muslims is the same as ours. If you don't have someone trying to convince you that Jesus didn't actually rise from the grave, then you certainly will have someone trying to convince you that homosexuality is just an acceptable lifestyle or abortion is OK or creation is a myth. The more we are in this sinful world, the more the world's lies can affect our thinking. When you dye Easter eggs, the longer you leave the egg in the colored water, the darker it becomes. The more coffee you drink the more stained your teeth become. That's why you have all these teeth whiteners these days. Well that's what we need when it comes to keeping our faith pure as well. The more we are into the Scriptures, the more we will be able to tell what things people are telling us are truly God's Word or just man's ideas. And just as you have to brush your teeth every day to keep them clean, so we need to be into the Word daily to keep our faith clean, founded on God's Word alone.
A U.S. army officer once told of the contrast he noticed as he was teaching new recruits at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In 1958-60 the attitude of the class was so lax that instructors had a problem getting the men to stay awake during class. But only a few years later, in 1965-67, the same officer remembered that his pupils were very alert, even though they were the same lectures that were being taught. The difference? These men knew that they would soon be on the battlefield facing the enemy in Vietnam. In the same way, searching the Scriptures today might seem to be irrelevant to many Christians because they probably don't have much interaction with non-Christians; they don't participate in a vital ministry in their church; they aren't on the front lines trying to win souls for Jesus Christ. This has special significance for us at Living Word. As a new mission congregation, we will focus almost exclusively on getting to know people who don't know Jesus and being able to share with them the amazing good news of salvation through Jesus Christ and him alone. We will be confronting the Enemy's lies directly as we refute them with his Word. How will we be ready for such a fight? By putting on the armor of God -- the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet ready to walk any distance with the gospel message, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Then we will be ready to take on all the devil has to throw against us, and we have God's promise as we are founded on his Word, that we will be victorious. Then we will be the kind of church God wants us to be -- a church that craves his word. Amen.
