Bible Survey. The Bible: Alive, powerful & transforming

As I was studying and preparing for this class, the title is The Bible Alive, Powerful, and Transforming, what really struck me is the underpinning quality of language. And I know that might sound a little strange, but language is really, really, really important. We kind of take it for granted.

How many times do you walk into a situation and you think, I'm going to have to invent a new word for this. Or, oh, this person is communicating to me and they probably don't mean what they say. And I'll never be able to understand what this person intends. Now, of course, if there's a language barrier where someone doesn't speak whatever your language set, if you're a polyglot, what your language set is, you might have issues there.

We take language for granted to a certain degree, and so that was part of what kind of struck me about what we're looking at here. So the first question I have here is, why is language a significant factor in the Bible? Translations. Okay, translations. There's a quality to that there. What else?

Why does language matter? If we talk about the origin of mankind, why does language matter in that context? That kind of ties into the second question. Stan? Primary means of communication. Okay, it's communication. With language, we have meaning and intent.

When I'm up here speaking, it's really useful if I'm saying something with a purpose and you're listening and understanding that I'm saying something with a purpose. I know that in my relationship with my wife, miscommunication is a major issue, right? When you're communicating with somebody and you don't understand, I had some co-workers in Texas that developed the term circummunication. When you talk around one another, you never actually get to the point of something.

But language is a significant factor in the Bible because it carries meaning and intent and it carries with it a historicity. It carries with it some qualities of literature. And it also allows us to understand how we should start to interpret the content of the Bible. Because if we're going to call the Bible alive, and it's a book that's finished about 2,000 years ago, we better have an understanding of how language works. Because we don't read Shakespeare and describe Shakespeare as alive, do we? I'm not even getting any head nods.

So language is a significant factor in the Bible because the Bible is made up of language. And it carries intent and meaning. And it talks about authorship and things that we talked about in past classes. So the second question I have here is, who started the creation of language and languages? This is really important. Stan? One major time was the Tower of Babel. OK, so the Tower of Babel. And God did that, right? OK.

When Adam was created, God makes a mound of dirt, makes it look like Adam and breathes in him. And then what? Is Adam the first human and the first mime? What does God do with Adam? God talks with him. He made him the steward of the things in the earth, brought the animals for naming. So he didn't have language there to say that he meant giraffe and not horse. There's two pieces to that. One, God communicates to Adam. God spoke to Adam.

Adam innately or inherently had an understanding of language from when God breathed life into him. And that matters a lot because if you're going to have Genesis chapter 1 mean anything, where did Adam get Genesis chapter 1? Or where did Moses, if we're going to say it that way, we'll assume God communicated that to Adam. words, meaning, language existed. So God created it and then God brings the animals and says okay now you have a base understanding of language now I want you to use that to create names for animals. So language matters a lot and we'll get into that a bit more next week when we talk about Genesis 1 through 11. But God made language and God instantiated it and put it in place and when Adam was breathed into existence, he had language. And then, of course, with the Tower of Babel, God confuses their language.

Does that impact today at all, just for the rabbit trail of it? Stan's nodding his head, yeah. It matters a lot. Language still matters a lot. I mean, I know that when I go to work and I have to talk with people who have thick accents, because they didn't grow up speaking American English, there's a communication barrier, even though they're trying to speak English. Or when I go to, Kaylee Kayes came back from England and it was funny, she asked a few times, wait a minute, is that a British or an American phrase? Because she had gotten used to the British phrases, but even then it was still, language can be a barrier today. Let's take a look at question three, which will dive more into the purpose of the lesson.

Why does language impact the words being alive? If we say the words alive, how come language can impact that? Stan, go ahead. Because it's tied to emotions, and emotions are connected to life. It expresses feelings. I guess we should ask, what does being alive mean in this case? That probably matters a lot if we say the word is alive.

It jumps ahead a little bit to number four, but when we think of dead things, we don't think of something that impacts our life other than to look at it historically or to honor the memory of or have respect for, but it doesn't impact and change our behavior, our worldview. It doesn't require a response from us. So when God created language, since I think we can safely attribute language to God, when God created language, he meant for it to carry meaning and intent and instruction unto what?

Let's ask that question. We'll get into that a little bit more later. But what was the purpose? Was it so that we could just have more books? So it would still be relevant to us every day. Okay, so relevancy is part of that. But relationship and the quality that's there. So language impacts the words being alive because without there being this sense of life or language carrying meaning, then we don't have anything.

And that leads to question four, which is what is wrong with the word being dead? If you go to a college class at a secular college, 9 out of 10 times, or maybe 99 out of 100 times, the professor is going to teach you about the Bible as either a work of fiction, a work of literature, a work of religion in the sense that all religions are equally false. They might say equally true, but by which they virtually mean equally dead. So what's wrong with the word being dead?

Well, same thing as I said before, it doesn't call for any response. It doesn't call for any response? Go to sleep and don't think about it anymore. As opposed to meditating and responding. If something is dead, I can't interact with it. That's a kind of general statement. Or it's not relevant. Whereas being alive says that I can interact with it.

And most importantly, we should open our Bibles. This is definitely one of those places where we should spend some time in God's Word. Turn your Bibles to John Chapter 1, because I think this is pretty key. John Chapter 1, the Gospel of John 1. John writes, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So if the Word is dead, you'd be Nietzsche, who said, God is dead. Maybe that's the perspective, but if the Word is God, then He can be dead. And the Bible can't be dead, the Word can't be dead.

John 1.14 says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. So the Word became flesh and was alive. Now Christ did die, right? But did he stay dead? Everybody seems to be at least in mild agreement that Christ didn't stay dead. He was resurrected.

But the word being a person matters a lot. Now we can start talking about the word being alive in a totally different way than we just talk about it being a living document. The word that they use there is Logos, right? Yeah. And isn't there another word, Rhema, or something that also means word? Yeah. So it's kind of, you know, they're referring to a specific type of word more than as life, like you were talking about earlier, correct, in Logos? Yeah, you have the principles of who God is in this very being coming into physical form. So now the Word is alive, and the Word is taken on flesh, and so we have that.

Now then, this being Holly Hills, we have to ask an important question. If Christ was the Word, and you're identified with Christ, what does that mean? What do we do with that? It's not on the handout here, so we should talk about it. If you're identified with Christ, and Christ is the Word, Okay, you have the Word in your life. But Christ, if the Word is alive and we've been made alive in Christ, there's a relationship there. I'm often, well, we'll get to this. I jumped ahead of myself on accident. But keep that in mind, that we're identified with Christ and Christ is the Word.

Question six here says, if the Word is alive, why does the content of faith change? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. of what you're believing, or what saints believe throughout scripture, changed. Why does it change? Stan? Can you word that differently and say, since the word is alive, we would expect faith to change. But the faith changes only in very specific places and ways.

Not the faith, the content of your faith changes in specific ways at specific times. So it's worded poorly on my part. If you turn in your handout, I talked about this a little bit in a past class. On page three, you'll see at the top of the page content, object, means, and basis. And this is talking about salvation.

The content changed as the revelation was given. So the word was being, at least from a conditional time-space continuum standpoint, The word was being revealed throughout history, right? So what did Adam believe to be saved? Do we have a written word of what we would call the equivalent tenets of his faith from Genesis?

This isn't a trick question. So, Stan? Before or after he fell? Well, before he fell, he didn't need to be saved. So after the fall, what's the only thing we find revealed in scripture for Adam to believe? God comes and he speaks, and God gives them consequences.

But in Genesis 3.15 we get the prophecy of a seed or a Messiah that would come through the womb. But they just had to believe what God revealed at that time, but we don't have the fullness of what God may have spoken to Adam in the garden. He didn't know that Christ was going to die on the cross for his sins and be buried and resurrected. I mean, that specific content of not being revealed yet. He only knew him as creator, pretty much.

That's it. So Adam believed God, whom he spoke with and saw, and was unfortunately sent out of the garden by, and he believed God enough to take the pelts of the animals and put those on, And that's all that we know that he believed. Stan? And what we talked about a little earlier, obviously there was a certain amount of fear that was now associated with that relationship. Knowledge of sin changed the way that man approached God. Then when you get to Abraham, what did Abraham believe? He believed God. God came and spoke to him. Abraham believed. God said to go take a walk.

Okay. Bring your sister with you. Okay. I'm abbreviating, of course. But the content changed a little bit, but the word was alive and the progression of revelation was taking place there. Moses comes. What do the people have to believe? They're descendants of Israel. What do they have to believe? Even Gentiles who were grafted into Israel.

Adam believed God and he obeyed him. If you think of the consequences, he was instructed to go out and do things, and I think at that time he did what every generation has to do, is believe God. And he obeyed God for that time period. So during the periods of time God revealed up to that point in time when the people believed what God had revealed.

It wasn't complicated. It wasn't a bunch of hoop-jumping. Of course, we get to the law and there's 613 things to obey. But even then, God was pretty gracious in how He handled the sin, except for when they got stoned. There wasn't a way to get out of that.

There's a lesson here for us. based on the fact that the word is alive, and that the relationship with God is possible through Christ, that we, although we have much more revealed than Adam or Abraham or Moses, it is still the same kind of faith walk that We start with a grain of faith, so to speak, and if we stay tuned in to God, and seek Him, and continue to walk in the light as He is in the light, we don't just have the blood of Christ cleansing us from every sin, but we have this growth in faith and knowledge. So that old buzzard like me, who has spent more than 60 years in faith, has a very different content of faith now than I had when I received him as a 19-year-old college student. So there is an aspect of faith that just like the Word is alive, God asks us to have our faith alive and not just have it as some Nicene Creed or some statement of fundamental beliefs, but as something that impacts our daily life and how we interact with the people and with the world around us. So we're going to get into the powerful and transforming nature of the word in just a moment because that's the result of the word being alive applied to our lives. So the content might have changed, but what I want to get to is the object of our faith is always God. It's never his agents. So we don't put our faith in Moses. We don't put our faith in Isaiah. We don't put our faith in Noah. We don't even put our faith in the King James Version of the Bible. We put our faith in the God who wrote it.

There's a difference. There's a lot of people who will stand solidly on the Bible as the King James Version. get into awkward places. Yeah, it's hermeneutically difficult, but that's its own other class, and actually it's an interesting topic.

The means of salvation is always by faith, right? We want to make sure that we cover that. And the basis of salvation is always Christ's work on the cross. So there's the acronym COME. But the living word, we see the progressive revelation, the content changed up until, does the content change now? Just like your dad's been preaching to us for some period of time now, things were completed in terms of the basis or content of our faith. Christ finished it.

We don't have to look for further revelation in the Book of Mormon. So the answer to question 6, if the Word is alive, why does the content of faith change, is because revelation is progressive. Question 7, how is the Word's power shown in the universe?

And we should look at some scripture again, that's the place to go in all of this. Paul writes in his epistle by the word of His power, the universe is sustained. So let's read that together. If you'll turn to Colossians 1, 16 and 17. This is the powerful nature of God's word.

In Colossians 1, 16 and 17, For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, Visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. And in 17, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together, or he sustains them. He is the God particle, but he's not the particle, he's just God. He's holding everything together.

So is that the spiritual definition of gravity? Well, it is the spiritual foundation for gravity is really what it is. But it says that if you try to take a humanistic understanding of the universe, you're going to come up short. You're always going to be looking for how does this all work?

The Higgs-Boson particle is a concept that science is trying to fully articulate and understand, because they think, ah, now we'll have an entirely naturalistic understanding for why everything in the universe is not just falling apart in massive scale right before our eyes.

But Christ sustains it. Christ holds it together. So how does that impact the universe? That means that without Christ the universe wouldn't exist, without Christ the universe wouldn't be here today, and without Christ the universe wouldn't have a future. Everything is pivotal and contingent on Christ, the Word, having created and sustained the universe.

Then, and this gets back a little bit to what Al said earlier, how is the Word's power shown in your life, in the life of a believer? In a sense you could say the same thing. He's sustaining us in a physical sense. He created us and he sustains us. So what is the power of the living word in the life of the believer?

What's the result? Is it that we get to be better people? Come on, don't we want to be better people? We get saved and suddenly we're perfect? People don't hate us for being Christians because we're so good. They all want to be Christians. Isn't that how that goes?

We start living out the Philippians 2, 12 and 13 that says it's God who works in you both to will and to do according to his pleasure. So instead of wamping up lots of self-effort and concentrating and scrunching our We rest in the finished work of Christ in a practical way, which means we trust God to work in us to conform us to the image of his Son, and not keep trying harder. That's one of the things that this church has really brought out in the time that I've been here and has given me a great amount of peace and comfort in the various activities that I'm engaged in. So let's take a look at Romans chapter 8 and look at 29 and 30, although I always want to look at all of Romans chapter 8 all at once, but we're going to be, I'll be restrained. I'll show some restraint.

Romans 8, 28, and we know that God causes all things to work, oh that's 28, 29, for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, and I put in parenthesis the word. So that he would be the firstborn among many brethren, and these whom he predestined he also called, and these whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

So the Word is alive and active and doing what? According to this passage. It's the title of the lesson, the last word in the title of the lesson. We're being transformed through the Word. So the next place we need to go, taking a look at scripture in this, and this ties in with question nine, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, which we've spent a little time in already in this class, but we want to make sure we're thorough here.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. So question nine says, in 2 Timothy 3, 16-17, we see that the Word is fundamental to our growth and ability to be reproved and corrected, and I should add taught and trained. How does God apply His Word to our lives in that way? How does the Word actually practically get applied to those four things?

Four transformations. You need to go to church, right? To be told what the Bible says and what to believe, right? Turn your brain off and let somebody else feed you what's there, right? What do we do? In the life of a healthy believer, what does it look like? Steve?

Well, as you read the Word, Through the fire of the Holy Spirit, you are inspired to live in a certain manner. And if you are not, then as you read the word, the word shows you that you're on the wrong road, you're on the wrong path. So it's like a compass. So it's like a compass.

But how would we go about saying that it's applied into our lives? Really practically, when we're talking about the glue of the faith of the believer, how does the word get applied to our lives? Do we just read it and internalize it, we put it in our brains, we store it away, and we pull it out like a database? Or I do at work, database all the time. What do I do here? You know, a little query, close your eyes for a second, and ah, it's this Bible verse. I just need to live out this one particular verse in a very literal fashion. How did that work? Let's ask it this way.

How did that work for the Jews with the 613 laws? They had a 613 law database that they could go to. and ask questions of. How about the Pharisees that are, as my dad has mentioned before, still in action today? How do they deal with that, with modern technology? They make buffer laws, right? We can't push the button on the elevator, so we will just wait for the elevator to come to us, and it will stop at every floor, and I never have to worry about it. So the database approach isn't very useful.

What's the real actual biblical way that the Lord takes his living and active and powerful word and applies it to our lives for transformation? Through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit illumines His Word and He opens up the truth of His Word to us and He makes it real and practical at the moment. If we're abiding and the Spirit directs our steps, that means that when I'm out on the road and I'm driving, and I'm driving by the Spirit, Paul didn't have to write driving by the Spirit, did he? He could say walk by the Spirit. We'd understand the principle was overarching.

It means that if a believer becomes an astronaut and goes up into outer space, he doesn't panic because God's word doesn't cover going into outer space. Right? And if a believer is going into a situation, I work in technology, there is nothing in God's word that is really concerned about Intel chips. Really. But how can I be a believer and abide and do those things? The Spirit, through the transforming power of His Word, changes my perspective, renewing my mind, Romans 12, so that as I look at the context the Lord has given me, I'm transformed and I'm looking at that context with the mind of Christ, with a new life.

And it doesn't matter about the 613 laws. But we have to ask an important question. It's not on your handout. Why, when somebody is a new believer, aren't they perfect? Or even in Al's case, I've been a believer for 60 years and I can tell you, he's not perfect. Kindly, not condescendingly. Why is that? That there's imperfection, even still, after being saved. Several reasons.

What does the word transform mean? What's the time scale for transform? There's a process that's involved. We're being conformed to the image. When will the transformation be done? When we get our glorified bodies. So the rapture happens, we get our glorified bodies. We continue to struggle with the old man. On the earth we continue to struggle with the old man. Or the flesh. The old man has been crucified with Christ. So we do have an earthly conditional situation we're dealing with.

But the transformation is a process and sanctification and growth happens over time. And the Spirit, you know what's awesome about the Spirit is great at being patient with us because I'm at least maybe no one else in this room suffers with this problem but I'm dense sometimes I'm dumb as a bag of rocks because it's like you know that over there is awfully shiny and I get excited about that one thing and then it's like you're not really abiding right now but you're super excited about that thing And it's like, no, no, reign it in. The Lord is patient with us and He grows us. And the word gets applied practically, so coming back to the 2nd Timothy passage, the word gets applied over time as those things occur. How about training? The word training there is actually really kind of a powerful word. In training in righteousness, do you train once? It's a lifetime of training.

Imagine Usain Bolt, at least presently, as far as we know, the world's fastest man that we've put in front of a stopwatch, decided he didn't need to train anymore. And the 2016 Olympics come around, and he's out on the field, and he's got a belly like I do, and he's on the line there, and he's squatted down, and the rest of the runners are trimmed because they've been training. What's going to happen? It's not going to be a very impressive run. He won't be the guy at the head of the pack looking behind him to see everybody else when he crosses the line like he did in the last Olympics.

So the training, it's a process, it's a thing. But the next part of that question is how often should you be training with the Word then? Not legalistically, but just in the relational aspect. How often should you be training in the Word? Continually. a regular relationship with the Lord, which really ties into question 10.

How does it's being alive, or God's Word being alive, powerful and transformative, how does this change our perspective on God's Word? I think I've got a grammar in there, which is pretty awesome. How does this change our perspective on God's Word? It's a live, powerful, and transformative document. Stan? But to me, if that's true, then we know that his word is true and it's also absolute.

So from that standpoint, if it's alive and it truly is coming from God, and we can accept the fact that it's true and absolute, then it's something that we can focus on and something that truly can guide us because it holds a higher priority than dead words or just words. There's nothing special about God's Word. The difference between life and death, basically.

So it's not a rule book, it's about relationship. It's a book where you can go and explore. The human nature is not masked in scripture. I love the story of David because he is really, really raw. You don't get this painted pretty picture of David. You get to find out that he's probably a bit of a rogue individual. He was a bit criminal, frankly, in a few ways, and he was disobedient, he was strong-willed, and yet we see that his relationship with God and the amount that was revealed at the time, which again was significantly less than we have now, he already understood that God was way more concerned about the relationship than he was about the rigidity of the law by itself. Because the law didn't save, right? What does he do when Nathan comes to him and says, hey, you stole this man's wife, and then you had him killed. What does David do? He repents. Does he run to the temple and repent though? When does he repent? Right there. He doesn't say, oh, I've got to go through the ceremony. He knows it's a personal relationship. And the ceremony is a reflection of the personal relationship having been restored.

And that's a big, powerful element in the scripture. So the Word is alive. The Word is Christ. It's powerful. Do we think of God's Word as powerful? Let's ask that. Or is it hard to think of God's Word as powerful? I think if we're surrounded by constant data and information, we tend to think of words as being passive. And God's Word asks us to think differently. I was thinking about the other day, you know, how does this affect us in Genesis? So what?

But the interesting thing is, God has never left us alone. From the instant Adam was created, God has never left the scene. It tells us that He's always there. Yeah, He's faithful and reliable. I will never leave you nor forsake you. The power of God's Word is transforming.

The power of God's Word is one of those things where when I When I've talked to various people about evangelism, how many of you have ever had somebody tell you, here's the technique you should use for evangelism? Ever been to an evangelism class where they're like, here's your formula. As long as you use this formula, everybody will become a Christian. Then you go out and you try it, and somebody's like, ah, no. And oh no, this is the only formula I have, right?

But the truth of the matter is that God's word is fundamentally the source of where we begin to engage people with the gospel. It's not our gospel. Whose gospel is it? It's God's. It's God's word's gospel. It's about that. When 1 Corinthians 15 says the gospel, according to what? According to the scriptures. According to the word, the prophecies given to Isaiah, the prophecy given to Adam and Eve and the serpent in chapter 3 of Genesis. According to the scripture, this thing carried out.

So it's powerful and it's transformative. I think I'm way early. I think we've got about seven or eight minutes before we're supposed to be done with our time. Huh? Fine. Any other thoughts, questions, things you wish I hadn't said? Nobody has stoned me yet, so that's good.

Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would continue to impact our lives and bring the truths of your word into our hearts and minds so that we would be transformed into the image of your son on a daily basis in fellowship and in relationship with you. Thank you for this time that we have together and thank you for making your word alive, powerful, and transformed. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.