The Power of the Word

"The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?" says the LORD. ²⁹ "Is not My word like a fire?" says the LORD, "and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?"

Jeremiah 23:28-29

These were key verses from the sermon preached today at Calvary Chapel Sydney.  The supremacy of God's word over the imaginations, ideas, and dreams of men is without question.  The irony is we can give great credence to the claims of people who claim to speak for God without comparing their words with the scripture once delivered unto the saints (Jude 3).  This chapter reveals many priests and prophets in Israel who claimed to have received revelations from God spoke falsehoods from their own hearts.  Compared to the nutritious grain of God's Word their words were worthless as dry and dusty chaff.

Those who have God's word ought to speak it faithfully, and when received in believing hearts God's word grows and produces spiritual fruit in our lives.  The chaff is nothing to the wheat and even a slight breeze will cause it to blow away and be lost forever.  There are many books in Christian bookshops which are useful to convey spiritual truth, but they can only do so by revelations from God's word.  A lot of books and DVD's available today are nothing more than chaff, glitter that sparkles, dazzling the eyes but cannot meet our real spiritual need.  A person can fill their belly with chaff but ultimately will starve because their dietary needs remain unmet.

Verse 29 is a glorious truth:  God's word is like a fire, like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.  It is not the passion of the preacher in the pulpit or his hammering on a point which affects any change in men:  it is the divine work of God's word which accomplishes dynamic, transformational change.  God's word consumes like chaff the empty dreams, deceit, and lies of men.  The scripture can crack the hardest heart and break the stubborn will of those with ears to hear.  It is not the pounding of a pulpit which impacts listeners but the still, small voice of God which speaks in the pages of the Bible.  God sets our hearts aflame with shame of our sin to purify us and breaks us so we might be healed and restored to fellowship with Him through repentance.

Moving Day

Over the past week my family and I have moved into a new house down the road.  Our prayers to own a house in Sydney have been answered by our gracious and generous God who has fulfilled His promise to establish us in Australia.  Like Joshua affirmed, not one word has failed from God's promises to His people and we are thankful and grateful for His faithful provision.

The days this week ran together as we rose early and stayed up late packing, moving, arranging, and organising in the new house and cleaning the house we vacated.  My thoughts have been as scattered as the books, boxes, and furniture around the house and the chaotic mess around me.  I have been easily distracted by jobs unfinished and I forgot as soon as I remembered.  A couple of maxims have been confirmed during this move, and one of these is it is better to be done than perfect.  Striving for perfection from the onset leads to analysis paralysis or sets up an impossible standard to meet.  Better to be satisfied with your best effort given the circumstances rather than giving up or procrastinating and accomplishing nothing.

As we moved furniture and boxes into the new house, I learned new doesn't mean perfect.  One might assume a new house is free from defects or flaws but this is an unrealistic expectation.  We have found several flaws in the design and workmanship the professional builders ignored or missed, and this should be expected because no one is perfect.  Our second day of living in the house I dug tools out of boxes to fix a fitting on our rainwater tank that had been dripping for months.  The inspector we hired wrote reports of defects and commented on the poor quality of aspects of construction and thankfully none of them are serious.

The concept of new not being perfect reminds me of our lives after we come to Jesus in faith.  After being born again the Holy Spirit regenerates us through the Gospel and makes us new creations.  Not one person who is made new is instantly made perfect.  As long as we live in these bodies we will fall short of perfection.  We retain deeply flawed in our ways of thinking and feelings can lead us to stray from Christ.  Moving into a new house means carrying a lot of your old stuff (and junk!) from the old house into the new one, and we can bring sinful habits into the new relationship we have with God.  We are wise to make the most of the new start God gives us initially (and every day) to keep our minds and hearts clean of rubbish and filth.

Praise the LORD for the opportunity for relationship God extends by grace to all.  Knowing Him is better than a new house which will grow old, fade, gather dust, and require expensive maintenance.  Even now Jesus is preparing a place for us to live together with Him forever, and as suitable as this new house is I am really looking forward to moving day with Him.

Life from Life

Since my youth I have always had a great interest in science.  Over the years I took classes of biology, chemistry, physics, and geology.  It is evident through my studies there are certain aspects of science which are "settled," like the law of gravity and biogenesis.  The composition of elements have been established, and mathematic formulas have been discovered to unlock technology and even make space travel possible.  One aspect of science which I have always struggled to process (and my feelings on the subject range from comical to even the ridiculous) is how Darwinian evolution has been crowned by many a "consensus view" and the answer to origin of the universe, our earth, and even life itself.

The other day I was looking up the work Louis Pasteur on biogenesis, the scientist who is credited by many for proving by a simple experiment how living cells can only be reproduced by living cells--a counter position from spontaneous generation.  Pasteur was making no claim to suppose how life began, but he and others through their tests and corresponding evidence confirm life only naturally arises from life.  The Wikipedia page is concise and brief (with only a handful of sources) because biogenesis was effectively proved long ago.  On a whim I decided to look at Wikipedia's offering concerning abiogenesis, and it did not disappoint.  The very lengthy page, sporting hundreds of sources heavy with modern scholarship, begins like this:

"Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life, is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds.  While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes.  Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, its possible mechanisms are poorly understood."

This is how I would sum up this fancy statement:  "Abiogenesis is a given but no one has any idea how."  And when it comes to origins, science is absolutely in the dark concerning why we exist.  Based on my survey of the article on the subject, abiogenesis is as far from "settled science" as science gets.  It was settled by Pasteur but no one seems to care.  We live in an incredibly complex world full of design, order, microscopic cellular machines, and biological marvels yet Pasteur's study shows me the truth can be simple.  If life only comes from life it follows a living being created our world and all living things in it.  The evidence all around us shows cells, plants, animals, and people reproduce after their own kind.  It is no stretch for me therefore to believe Genesis 1:1 is true:  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  Of course this verse does not scientifically prove the existence of God or how the miraculous creation of life on our earth (finely-tuned to support life in countless forms) was made to flourish--but it seems adherents to abiogenesis can do no better.

Who God Teaches

"Who is the man that fears the LORD? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. ¹³ He himself shall dwell in prosperity, and his descendants shall inherit the earth. ¹⁴ The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant."

Psalm 25:12-14

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and Jesus Christ is wisdom for us.  His wisdom is infinite and absolute yet God chooses unique ways to teach every person.  Unlike a school environment where the course curriculum is set and all students take the same exams, God teaches each of His children in the way He chooses.  It is awesome how God individually tailors the way He instructs us though His Word does not change.  We read the same Bible and see the same sun rise and set every day but the way He teaches you is different to how He teaches me.  The scripture assures us the man who fears the LORD shall be taught by God.

In an attempt to be efficient and ensure the necessary information is conveyed and understood many schools and countries have standardised tests.  When we walk in the fear of the LORD and place our faith in Him the wealth of God's wisdom is opened to us.  The souls to whom God has revealed His covenant through the Gospel will prosper now and forever.  Jesus said in Matthew 5:7-9, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. ⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. ⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."  God is the source of divine mercy, purity, and peace.  The only way a man can meet the conditions to be blessed in these ways is to be born again through faith in Jesus Christ, and having been born again God makes us to grow.

It is amazing how fast infants begin to develop and grow, gain awareness, dexterity, and discover their finger and toes.  Slowly they gain strength to hold their heads up, roll over, sit up by themselves, crawl and walk.  Their personality begins to shine through and it is delightful for a parent to observe the process.  What the future holds for our children largely is a mystery, but our future is not a mystery to God.  He created our personality and knows what He is preparing us to do.  We do not always understand why God allows trials and difficulties in our lives, what He possibly could be accomplishing through lessons we would rather avoid.  Teachers are powerless to teach the student who skips school but not God--as Jonah learned in the belly of a great fish.

Do you trust God to teach you and others in the way He chooses?  Clothing is not "one size fits all" and the same God teaches His children in different ways.  Praise the LORD the good lessons He teaches us are applicable to others and provide encouragement to fear the LORD.  As we walk with Jesus He is faithful to teach us many things.  To celebrate a revelation from God is to rejoice in Him, and God delights in this prosperous soul.