God Is Not Silent 082910
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Series: Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalms M2: Sermon Notes (10 08 29)
Title: God Is Not Silent
Text: Psalm 19; Psalm 119: 97-99
BIG IDEA: The Word of God brings us life, wisdom and light.
(DJ, AB)
Some years ago my seminary professor, Dr. Haddon Robinson, was speaking here at Tenth. Haddon says that when God was making our part of the world with its beautiful oceans and beaches; forming the magnificent mountains the backdrop of our city, God was really taking his time and painstakingly crafting the details of this place. But when he got to the prairies, he made up for lost time. Whether we prefer oceanfront cityscape with mountains in the backdrop or the stark beauty of prairies with its endless sky, God’s creativity and artistry are evident.
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The earth is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This morning as we continue our series, Practice the Presence of God; Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer, we are looking at Psalm 19. In Psalm 19 we see that God is not silent. He has spoken through the world and through his Word.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Psalm 19.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice [b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
5 which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
6 It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure,
and all of them are righteous.
10 They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
11 By them your servant is warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
12 But who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
13 Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
In his first section of the Psalm, David the shepherd-King of Israel, speaks of how the heavens declare the glory of God, and how the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Some of you here probably went camping this summer, or spent some time in a small town in the interior. When you get out of the city and into a more remote place, on a clear night don’t you love to stare up at the star-spangled sky? When I look up at a night sky dotted with stars, I sometimes think of the words of Abraham Lincoln: “I can see how it might be possible for a person to look down upon the earth and be an atheist. But I cannot conceive how you could look up into the heavens and say, ‘There is no God’.”
David, perhaps, as a young shepherd camped out in the fields in Israel under a star-lit night saw how the heavens declared the glory of God and the skies proclaimed the work of his hands. Perhaps he began to pen this Psalm.
In Romans, Chapter 1:20, the apostle Paul writes: “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
The psalmist is saying the world witnesses to the reality of God.
A boy that I know, who is going into Grade 1, has recently been asking questions like, “Where do clouds come from? How is rain made?”
In the Book of Job 5:10, we read:
10 He bestows rain on the earth;
he sends water on the countryside.
As far as I know, this boy has never been to church in his life. He has never had any really exposure to teaching about God. But, this boy’s questions are causing him to think about the possibility of some great power in the universe.
When I was working for the Sony Corporation, I got to know a Japanese young man named Shintaro, who was earning his PhD in physics from the University of Tokyo (Japan’s Harvard). He was travelling to science conferences in different parts of the world making presentations on his research. One day at work Shintaro approached me privately and asked if we could get together to talk. Not long after, we went for lunch. He said, “I understand you are a Christian. Well, I have been doing some ground-breaking work how to measure spheres. As far as I know, I am the first person in the world making these particular discoveries. The more I study these spheres the more it seems to me that someone has actually designed them. I’ve also been reading the work of the Russian novelist Tolstoy—who, of course, is a Christian. So my work in science and my reading of Tolstoy have made me wonder if there might be a God and I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Even if you grow up in a very secular space without any association in Christianity or religion, God speaks to people through creation because God is not silent. God has spoken through the world, and God has also spoken through his Word. Though these terms were not in use, of course, in David’s day, today theologians talk about God’s revelation through the world as being general revelation, but God’s revelation through Scripture as being special revelation.
When David speaks about God being revealed in the world, in general, he uses the term “elohim,” the general word for God, or the Divine. But when he shifts in verse 7 and speaks of God being revealed in the Word, he uses God’s personal name Yahweh, translated LORD in English versions. The world reveals God generally, but the “Word” (Scripture) reveals God personally.
In verse 7 we read:
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The Word of God revives us… it brings life. When God speaks, life is birthed.
In Genesis we read that when God spoke the heavens and earth emerged—a poet’s way of saying everything we know, and everything in our universe came into existence. When God spoke to Sarah, a 90-year-old barren woman gave birth to Isaac. (Isaac means “laughter,” and the reason she called her son Isaac was because when God told her, this woman who had never borne a child---well past her childbearing years--would conceive and give birth to a son, she laughed at God.)
When Jesus speaks over the dead body of his friend Lazarus, he is raised to life. God’s Word creates the life. And when we expose ourselves to God’s Word, our soul is revived.
The Hebrew word that the TNIV translates “refreshed” can also be rendered “revive” or “restore.” Another meaning of the Hebrew word that is typically translated refreshed, revived or restored is the phrase “repent and obey God and his Word.”
And it may well be that David here may have an intended double meaning, suggesting that person who exposes herself or himself to the Word of God experiences reviving a new life, but also experiences a call to repent and follow God’s Word. Throughout Scripture we see that as people are exposed to God’s Word, they are convicted and repent, which simply means to turn to God and begin to follow him. Last Sunday, we looked at Psalm 1 and saw how God’s Word, in the Hebrew come from the root word yarah which means “aimed words”--words like a javelin which wound and heal.
One of my favourite hobbies was shoplifting. As a teenager, I loved to steal electronic toys and sporting goods equipment. After meeting Jesus Christ, I felt convicted by sin. I turned to Psalm 139:
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
As a result I felt convicted and led to make restitution to all the stores I had stolen from.
But afterwards, I still felt heavy.
So one day reading Psalm and found it a great promise (and committed it to memory):
8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
It brought life. God’s word brings life.
In the bottom of verse 7, we read that:
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
Earlier this month my family had a reunion here in Vancouver. My siblings rented a duplex here in town. There were 20 of us who gathered. There were 8 children. I noticed that the children who were in school were doing quite a bit of homework every day on their vacation—especially those from San Francisco and LA. If you are parents with school age kids, you may feel like your kids need to have an advantage to get ahead academically… The cold war is over, but the arms race continues…
But, succeeding in our education is not the same thing as growing in wisdom. Having a high IQ is not the same thing as being a wise person. I remember a high-ranking naval officer working in Washington DC saying, “There are many intelligent people here, but where are the wise people?” Having lots of university degrees, or having a high IQ isn’t the same as being wise.
The late professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago, Dr. Alan Bloom, said, “My grandparents were ignorant people by today’s standards; my grandfather held only lowly jobs.” Professor Bloom went on to note how his grandparents were spiritually enriched and wise because “They interpreted their special suffering in light of the teachings of the Bible…in the context of a great ennobling spiritual heritage.” You can have a lowly job and have never finished elementary school, but be wise if you immerse in the teachings of this Book. According to Psalm 119, verse 99, you can be wiser than even your teachers. From this Book, you can understand how to suffer with grace, as Professor Bloom’s grandparents did. You can discern what’s really important, what’s secondary, how to relate to God, how to love people, as true wisdom through the Bible enters your heart.
Professor Blooms goes on to say, “I do not believe my generation (my cousins who have been educated in North America, all of whom have their MD degrees or PhDs) have any comparable learning. He says, very candidly, “When I hear them speak, I hear clichés and superficialities. Bloom, a PhD and professor himself, points out that you can have a PhD, or an MD degree and be unwise; but, on the other hand, like his grandparents, you can be uneducated by world standards and wise if you, like them, live in light of the teachings of the Bible… in the context of a great, ennobling spiritual heritage.
God is not silent. He speaks in the world and through the Word. When we open ourselves to the Word, we experience life and we become wise.
I’m not going to cover every single verse in this particular sermon, but let’s look at verse 8 for a moment.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
A simple, but powerful, image. The Word of God gives light to the eyes.
Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount speaks about vision: "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” This sounds complicated, but the point here is quite simple. If our eye is working properly, it will let in light and we can see properly. But if our eye is not working properly, the light will not be able to come into our body properly and it will seem like everything is dark. The Scriptures enable us to see by providing us with light.
Some people assume that if they rely on the Bible, their world will become narrow. It is true that if your life is guided by an extremely conservative fundamentalist Bible teacher, your world may become narrower. But the Bible itself, when rightly interpreted, and illuminated by the Spirit, will not make your world more narrow, but it will make it much more expansive.
The great Swiss theological Karl Barth tells this parable of the Warehouse.
I’m using a version re-worked by the long time pastor and writer Eugene Petersen.
“Imagine a group of men and women in a huge warehouse. They were born in this warehouse, grew up in it, and have everything there for their needs and comfort. There are no exits to the building but there are windows. But the windows are thick with dust, are never cleaned, and so no one bothers to look out. Why would they? The warehouse is everything they know, and has everything they need. But then one day one of the children drags a stepstool (stands on stool) under one of the windows, scrapes off the grime, and looks out. He sees people walking on the streets; he calls to his friends to come and look. They crowd around the window—they never knew a world existed outside their warehouse. And then they notice a person out in the street looking up and pointing; soon several people are, looking up and talking excitedly. The children inside the warehouse look up but they don’t notice anything, but the ceiling of their warehouse.
The kids inside the warehouse finally get tired of watching these people out on the street acting crazily, pointing up at nothing, and getting excited about it. What’s the point of stopping for no reason at all, pointing at nothing at all, and talking up a storm about the nothing?
But what if those people on the street were looking at was an airplane (or geese in flight, or a gigantic pile of cumulus clouds)? The people in the street look up and see everything in the heavens. The warehouse people have no heavens above them, just a roof.
What would happen, though, if one day one of those kids cut a door out of the warehouse, coaxed her friends out, and discovered the immense sky above them and the grand horizons beyond them?
That is what happens, writes Barth, when we open the Bible—we enter the totally unfamiliar world of God, a world of creation and salvation stretching endlessly above and beyond us. Life in the warehouse never prepared us for anything like this.
Typically, adults in the warehouse scoff at the tales the children bring back. After all, they are completely in control of the warehouse world in ways they could never be outside. And they want to keep it that way.
The Bible scrapes the grime off the window, and, in fact, opens the door to a whole new reality, a whole new world, the world of the Spirit, the world of God.
A small example of how this works. I am reading a fabulous book called Acedia and Me by one of my favourite authors, Kathleen Norris.
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Kathleen Norris resurrects this word Acedia which for years had fallen into disuse. Acedia can be defined as “apathy, a state of listlessness, of not caring about your life or the state of the world, indifference, boredom.”
Kathleen has struggled throughout her life with depression. She writes transparently about how she in various times in her life struggled in a dark valley of depression. She writes about how the world will attribute depression to a lack of the neuro-chemical serotonin or to the loss a person has experienced. Norris certainly acknowledges that a depression can be caused by a serotonin deficiency or because of a significant loss in a person’s life. She also understands that depression or acedia may have a spiritual root, as well.
If your world is one where you only see depression as the result of neuro-chemical imbalance or some kind of loss in your life, your ways of dealing with it will be limited. You might see a psychiatrist or a counselor, and these resources may be very helpful. But if the cause of your depression is more spiritual in nature, you won’t think to use the resources of prayer and God’s Word to deal with your depression. Entering the world of the Bible we come to understand the world of the spirit. We will understand that what we are experiencing may have a social or bio-chemical cause, but it may have a spiritual cause. We begin to understand in a more comprehensive way.
Entering into the Bible wipes the grime off the window and opens a door and expands our world.
It adds light to the eyes so that you are able to see. C.S. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In a similar way, the Bible will be like sun to our world, because by it you will see everything else.
God is not silent. God speaks through the world. He speaks through the Word. The Word brings life to the soul. The Word brings life to us. The Word makes us wise. The Word gives light to our eyes so that we can see. God is not silent. He has spoken through the world and through the Word.
There is more that we can look at in this psalm, but let me go to verse 10.
David writes:
10 God’s words are more precious to me than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
Is the Word of God precious to you? (Pause)
How could you demonstrate that the Word of God was truly precious to you?
We don’t demonstrate the Word as precious by placing it in a glass box as if it were some museum artifact. We demonstrate that the Bible is truly precious to us by reading it, by letting it become part of our life.
Have you seen the movie, The Book of Eli, (show jacket) with Denzel Washington?
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It is not a movie that I can recommend wholesale because it is quite violent (not suitable for family viewing). I don’t want to give the plot away if you haven’t seen it, but Denzel Washington plays a character who places great value on a book. The book that he holds is precious—he demonstrates this because he is into the book all the time. He seeks to live by it. He doesn’t live the teaching of the book perfectly, sometimes not by a long shot, by his own admission. But, he’s in the book every day, and desperately wants to live by the book.
We are in this series called Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through the Scripture and Prayer. In the coming weeks we will be encouraging people in this community to meet Jesus through Scripture and prayer. We are hoping and praying that a thousand people out of the two to three thousand connected to Tenth will commit themselves to being in the Word and prayer at least four times a week, 15 minutes a day.
We have some resources at the book table in the back that will provide some tools for you to get into the Word—a Bible reading guide, devotional Bibles, Bible audio. I personally use the audio Bible for my personal time in the Word each day.
By being in the Word at least four times a week, what we are encouraging you to do is to demonstrate to God and yourself that the Word of God is precious to you, more precious than gold. You will experience greater life, greater wisdom. You will be able to see more. You will be able to embody a prayer that includes Psalm 19, the famous words:
“May the words of my mouth (words we not only speak, but chew on) and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD my Rock and my Redeemer.”
Series: Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalms M2: Sermon Notes (10 08 29)
Title: God Is Not Silent
Text: Psalm 19; Psalm 119: 97-99
BIG IDEA: The Word of God brings us life, wisdom and light.
(DJ, AB)
Some years ago my seminary professor, Dr. Haddon Robinson, was speaking here at Tenth. Haddon says that when God was making our part of the world with its beautiful oceans and beaches; forming the magnificent mountains the backdrop of our city, God was really taking his time and painstakingly crafting the details of this place. But when he got to the prairies, he made up for lost time. Whether we prefer oceanfront cityscape with mountains in the backdrop or the stark beauty of prairies with its endless sky, God’s creativity and artistry are evident.
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The earth is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This morning as we continue our series, Practice the Presence of God; Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer, we are looking at Psalm 19. In Psalm 19 we see that God is not silent. He has spoken through the world and through his Word.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Psalm 19.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice [b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
5 which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
6 It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure,
and all of them are righteous.
10 They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
11 By them your servant is warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
12 But who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
13 Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
In his first section of the Psalm, David the shepherd-King of Israel, speaks of how the heavens declare the glory of God, and how the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Some of you here probably went camping this summer, or spent some time in a small town in the interior. When you get out of the city and into a more remote place, on a clear night don’t you love to stare up at the star-spangled sky? When I look up at a night sky dotted with stars, I sometimes think of the words of Abraham Lincoln: “I can see how it might be possible for a person to look down upon the earth and be an atheist. But I cannot conceive how you could look up into the heavens and say, ‘There is no God’.”
David, perhaps, as a young shepherd camped out in the fields in Israel under a star-lit night saw how the heavens declared the glory of God and the skies proclaimed the work of his hands. Perhaps he began to pen this Psalm.
In Romans, Chapter 1:20, the apostle Paul writes: “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
The psalmist is saying the world witnesses to the reality of God.
A boy that I know, who is going into Grade 1, has recently been asking questions like, “Where do clouds come from? How is rain made?”
In the Book of Job 5:10, we read:
10 He bestows rain on the earth;
he sends water on the countryside.
As far as I know, this boy has never been to church in his life. He has never had any really exposure to teaching about God. But, this boy’s questions are causing him to think about the possibility of some great power in the universe.
When I was working for the Sony Corporation, I got to know a Japanese young man named Shintaro, who was earning his PhD in physics from the University of Tokyo (Japan’s Harvard). He was travelling to science conferences in different parts of the world making presentations on his research. One day at work Shintaro approached me privately and asked if we could get together to talk. Not long after, we went for lunch. He said, “I understand you are a Christian. Well, I have been doing some ground-breaking work how to measure spheres. As far as I know, I am the first person in the world making these particular discoveries. The more I study these spheres the more it seems to me that someone has actually designed them. I’ve also been reading the work of the Russian novelist Tolstoy—who, of course, is a Christian. So my work in science and my reading of Tolstoy have made me wonder if there might be a God and I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Even if you grow up in a very secular space without any association in Christianity or religion, God speaks to people through creation because God is not silent. God has spoken through the world, and God has also spoken through his Word. Though these terms were not in use, of course, in David’s day, today theologians talk about God’s revelation through the world as being general revelation, but God’s revelation through Scripture as being special revelation.
When David speaks about God being revealed in the world, in general, he uses the term “elohim,” the general word for God, or the Divine. But when he shifts in verse 7 and speaks of God being revealed in the Word, he uses God’s personal name Yahweh, translated LORD in English versions. The world reveals God generally, but the “Word” (Scripture) reveals God personally.
In verse 7 we read:
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The Word of God revives us… it brings life. When God speaks, life is birthed.
In Genesis we read that when God spoke the heavens and earth emerged—a poet’s way of saying everything we know, and everything in our universe came into existence. When God spoke to Sarah, a 90-year-old barren woman gave birth to Isaac. (Isaac means “laughter,” and the reason she called her son Isaac was because when God told her, this woman who had never borne a child---well past her childbearing years--would conceive and give birth to a son, she laughed at God.)
When Jesus speaks over the dead body of his friend Lazarus, he is raised to life. God’s Word creates the life. And when we expose ourselves to God’s Word, our soul is revived.
The Hebrew word that the TNIV translates “refreshed” can also be rendered “revive” or “restore.” Another meaning of the Hebrew word that is typically translated refreshed, revived or restored is the phrase “repent and obey God and his Word.”
And it may well be that David here may have an intended double meaning, suggesting that person who exposes herself or himself to the Word of God experiences reviving a new life, but also experiences a call to repent and follow God’s Word. Throughout Scripture we see that as people are exposed to God’s Word, they are convicted and repent, which simply means to turn to God and begin to follow him. Last Sunday, we looked at Psalm 1 and saw how God’s Word, in the Hebrew come from the root word yarah which means “aimed words”--words like a javelin which wound and heal.
One of my favourite hobbies was shoplifting. As a teenager, I loved to steal electronic toys and sporting goods equipment. After meeting Jesus Christ, I felt convicted by sin. I turned to Psalm 139:
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
As a result I felt convicted and led to make restitution to all the stores I had stolen from.
But afterwards, I still felt heavy.
So one day reading Psalm and found it a great promise (and committed it to memory):
8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
It brought life. God’s word brings life.
In the bottom of verse 7, we read that:
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
Earlier this month my family had a reunion here in Vancouver. My siblings rented a duplex here in town. There were 20 of us who gathered. There were 8 children. I noticed that the children who were in school were doing quite a bit of homework every day on their vacation—especially those from San Francisco and LA. If you are parents with school age kids, you may feel like your kids need to have an advantage to get ahead academically… The cold war is over, but the arms race continues…
But, succeeding in our education is not the same thing as growing in wisdom. Having a high IQ is not the same thing as being a wise person. I remember a high-ranking naval officer working in Washington DC saying, “There are many intelligent people here, but where are the wise people?” Having lots of university degrees, or having a high IQ isn’t the same as being wise.
The late professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago, Dr. Alan Bloom, said, “My grandparents were ignorant people by today’s standards; my grandfather held only lowly jobs.” Professor Bloom went on to note how his grandparents were spiritually enriched and wise because “They interpreted their special suffering in light of the teachings of the Bible…in the context of a great ennobling spiritual heritage.” You can have a lowly job and have never finished elementary school, but be wise if you immerse in the teachings of this Book. According to Psalm 119, verse 99, you can be wiser than even your teachers. From this Book, you can understand how to suffer with grace, as Professor Bloom’s grandparents did. You can discern what’s really important, what’s secondary, how to relate to God, how to love people, as true wisdom through the Bible enters your heart.
Professor Blooms goes on to say, “I do not believe my generation (my cousins who have been educated in North America, all of whom have their MD degrees or PhDs) have any comparable learning. He says, very candidly, “When I hear them speak, I hear clichés and superficialities. Bloom, a PhD and professor himself, points out that you can have a PhD, or an MD degree and be unwise; but, on the other hand, like his grandparents, you can be uneducated by world standards and wise if you, like them, live in light of the teachings of the Bible… in the context of a great, ennobling spiritual heritage.
God is not silent. He speaks in the world and through the Word. When we open ourselves to the Word, we experience life and we become wise.
I’m not going to cover every single verse in this particular sermon, but let’s look at verse 8 for a moment.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
A simple, but powerful, image. The Word of God gives light to the eyes.
Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount speaks about vision: "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” This sounds complicated, but the point here is quite simple. If our eye is working properly, it will let in light and we can see properly. But if our eye is not working properly, the light will not be able to come into our body properly and it will seem like everything is dark. The Scriptures enable us to see by providing us with light.
Some people assume that if they rely on the Bible, their world will become narrow. It is true that if your life is guided by an extremely conservative fundamentalist Bible teacher, your world may become narrower. But the Bible itself, when rightly interpreted, and illuminated by the Spirit, will not make your world more narrow, but it will make it much more expansive.
The great Swiss theological Karl Barth tells this parable of the Warehouse.
I’m using a version re-worked by the long time pastor and writer Eugene Petersen.
“Imagine a group of men and women in a huge warehouse. They were born in this warehouse, grew up in it, and have everything there for their needs and comfort. There are no exits to the building but there are windows. But the windows are thick with dust, are never cleaned, and so no one bothers to look out. Why would they? The warehouse is everything they know, and has everything they need. But then one day one of the children drags a stepstool (stands on stool) under one of the windows, scrapes off the grime, and looks out. He sees people walking on the streets; he calls to his friends to come and look. They crowd around the window—they never knew a world existed outside their warehouse. And then they notice a person out in the street looking up and pointing; soon several people are, looking up and talking excitedly. The children inside the warehouse look up but they don’t notice anything, but the ceiling of their warehouse.
The kids inside the warehouse finally get tired of watching these people out on the street acting crazily, pointing up at nothing, and getting excited about it. What’s the point of stopping for no reason at all, pointing at nothing at all, and talking up a storm about the nothing?
But what if those people on the street were looking at was an airplane (or geese in flight, or a gigantic pile of cumulus clouds)? The people in the street look up and see everything in the heavens. The warehouse people have no heavens above them, just a roof.
What would happen, though, if one day one of those kids cut a door out of the warehouse, coaxed her friends out, and discovered the immense sky above them and the grand horizons beyond them?
That is what happens, writes Barth, when we open the Bible—we enter the totally unfamiliar world of God, a world of creation and salvation stretching endlessly above and beyond us. Life in the warehouse never prepared us for anything like this.
Typically, adults in the warehouse scoff at the tales the children bring back. After all, they are completely in control of the warehouse world in ways they could never be outside. And they want to keep it that way.
The Bible scrapes the grime off the window, and, in fact, opens the door to a whole new reality, a whole new world, the world of the Spirit, the world of God.
A small example of how this works. I am reading a fabulous book called Acedia and Me by one of my favourite authors, Kathleen Norris.
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Kathleen Norris resurrects this word Acedia which for years had fallen into disuse. Acedia can be defined as “apathy, a state of listlessness, of not caring about your life or the state of the world, indifference, boredom.”
Kathleen has struggled throughout her life with depression. She writes transparently about how she in various times in her life struggled in a dark valley of depression. She writes about how the world will attribute depression to a lack of the neuro-chemical serotonin or to the loss a person has experienced. Norris certainly acknowledges that a depression can be caused by a serotonin deficiency or because of a significant loss in a person’s life. She also understands that depression or acedia may have a spiritual root, as well.
If your world is one where you only see depression as the result of neuro-chemical imbalance or some kind of loss in your life, your ways of dealing with it will be limited. You might see a psychiatrist or a counselor, and these resources may be very helpful. But if the cause of your depression is more spiritual in nature, you won’t think to use the resources of prayer and God’s Word to deal with your depression. Entering the world of the Bible we come to understand the world of the spirit. We will understand that what we are experiencing may have a social or bio-chemical cause, but it may have a spiritual cause. We begin to understand in a more comprehensive way.
Entering into the Bible wipes the grime off the window and opens a door and expands our world.
It adds light to the eyes so that you are able to see. C.S. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In a similar way, the Bible will be like sun to our world, because by it you will see everything else.
God is not silent. God speaks through the world. He speaks through the Word. The Word brings life to the soul. The Word brings life to us. The Word makes us wise. The Word gives light to our eyes so that we can see. God is not silent. He has spoken through the world and through the Word.
There is more that we can look at in this psalm, but let me go to verse 10.
David writes:
10 God’s words are more precious to me than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
Is the Word of God precious to you? (Pause)
How could you demonstrate that the Word of God was truly precious to you?
We don’t demonstrate the Word as precious by placing it in a glass box as if it were some museum artifact. We demonstrate that the Bible is truly precious to us by reading it, by letting it become part of our life.
Have you seen the movie, The Book of Eli, (show jacket) with Denzel Washington?
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It is not a movie that I can recommend wholesale because it is quite violent (not suitable for family viewing). I don’t want to give the plot away if you haven’t seen it, but Denzel Washington plays a character who places great value on a book. The book that he holds is precious—he demonstrates this because he is into the book all the time. He seeks to live by it. He doesn’t live the teaching of the book perfectly, sometimes not by a long shot, by his own admission. But, he’s in the book every day, and desperately wants to live by the book.
We are in this series called Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through the Scripture and Prayer. In the coming weeks we will be encouraging people in this community to meet Jesus through Scripture and prayer. We are hoping and praying that a thousand people out of the two to three thousand connected to Tenth will commit themselves to being in the Word and prayer at least four times a week, 15 minutes a day.
We have some resources at the book table in the back that will provide some tools for you to get into the Word—a Bible reading guide, devotional Bibles, Bible audio. I personally use the audio Bible for my personal time in the Word each day.
By being in the Word at least four times a week, what we are encouraging you to do is to demonstrate to God and yourself that the Word of God is precious to you, more precious than gold. You will experience greater life, greater wisdom. You will be able to see more. You will be able to embody a prayer that includes Psalm 19, the famous words:
“May the words of my mouth (words we not only speak, but chew on) and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD my Rock and my Redeemer.”
posted by Shigematsu at 5:07 PM
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