THE LIFE GIVING POWER OF GOD'S WORD

"Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." James 1:21

The first moment of my life when the doctor slapped baby Billy was the moment I took my first breath of oxygen. For the past 54 years I have continued this breathing. My life depends upon the gift of oxygen. Every moment I am alive my lungs are breathing in oxygen, not nitrogen, not carbon dioxide, nor hydrogen. As long as I breath into my lungs this precious oxygen I will live. If I cease to be able to breath in this oxygen I will die.

The Bible is our soul's oxygen. James says, “Receive the implanted word.” Just like a baby who has already received his first breadth of life, James says the word of God is already in you. And you should receive it. It is rooted and planted in you. It brought you life. It is there sustaining that life by feeding faith in Christ. John Piper says,

It is there like oxygen. It gives life and in giving life, it makes you breathe, and in breathing you receive oxygen. No one says: “I have oxygen; look how well it is working in me; it makes me alive; I don’t need to receive oxygen.”


James adds at the end of verse 21 “which is able to save your souls.” What saves our souls? The implanted word which we receive. The Bible like oxygen is necessary in order for our souls to survive. Piper says,

If you decide that you don’t need to receive the external word, you are like a person who decides he doesn’t need to breathe. If you are spiritually dead, you can carry through that decision. You can choose not to breathe. But if you are spiritually alive, you can’t. The implanted word is powerful; it produces life and breathing. It takes over the spiritual diaphragm and demands oxygen. It demands the life-giving external word. If the word is implanted in you, you can’t hold your breath forever. The implanted word will sooner or later conquer and be replenished. You will receive the word again. And you will love it.

Just as you can tell a person is alive or dead by whether they are breathing, so you can tell if a person is spiritually dead or alive by whether they are reading the word. Oh how many people are looking like they are alive because they are breathing yet spiritually dead because they have not been reading the Bible. David Roper used to say, "Just because you are breathing doesn't mean you are living."

A classic illustration of this we find in the book of Haggai. In 586 BC the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took most of the Jews into exile. About 50 years later Cyrus, the Persian, took Babylon, and brought the Babylonian Empire to an end. The next year (538 BC) he allowed 50,000 Jews to return to their homeland under the leadership of a man named Zerubbabel and rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. All of this was owing to the sovereign hand of God fulfilling the prophecies of Jeremiah (Ezra 1:1). There they found shocking devastation. Nothing had changed since the defeat some 50 years earlier. Immediately the returnees set about to rebuild the temple in about 536 B.C. They re-laid the foundation amid a great celebration (see Ezra 3 for details). Then suddenly the Samaritans (who hated the Jews) began to oppose them. After all, the Samaritans had no reason to want the temple rebuilt or for the Jews to return to prosperity. Because of their constant opposition, the Jews stopped the rebuilding the process and never got started again. After all there was plenty of other work to do—they were trying to restart a nation from scratch. As the years passed slowly but surely Jerusalem came to life again. Homes were built, stores opened, commerce established, fields planted, crops harvested, and life began to resemble something of a normal pattern. There was only one problem. The temple foundation still lay in ruins—overgrown with weeds. Every time the Jews passed it, it stood as a mute reminder of their failure to take care of God’s house. So after 16 years, God sends the prophet Haggai to proclaim the Word of God to the Jews.


“Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” Haggai 1:3

God hits the jugular! He gives a reality check on how He has seen the past 16 years of indifference and misplaced priorities. God was accusing His people of having plenty of time for themselves while pleading a lack of time for Him. It was an accusation of having plenty of time and money to spend on their comfort and pleasures while claiming to not have enough for God and His work and service. The people were prospering. How could it be that they were unable to get involved with God and the work He had given them to do? The prophet goes on...

"Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes… You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors."” Haggai 1:5-6,9-11

Here we come to a sobering reminder that what happens in your heart effects every other part of your life. Because the people had pushed God out of the center of life, they were now suffering in every other area. They had fields without produce, action without satisfaction, labor without profit. Fruitless toil, fleeting riches, unsatisfied hunger.

Then God issues the call ,"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD.” This was a time to act. God says very simply GO and BUILD. It was time to get on with what God had given them to do. So what happened after 16 years of disobedience and spiritual death?

“Then Zerubbabel the son of She-altiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD…And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.” Haggai 1:12,14

It is one of the discouragements of preaching when a pastor preaches with passion and power and then be greeted with yawns and indifference as they go back to being and living as they always do. Still, from time to time there is something quite different. The word strikes home and a life is changed. When it happens to a whole church or large numbers of people, you have a revival! That is what happened after Haggai’s preaching. Through the prophet, God was lovingly but sternly giving his people a state of the union massage and a call to put first things first and the people heard it, received it, and acted on it. This is amazing! 16 years have gone by and now the people desire what God desires and are doing what God has called them to do. Haggai reports that Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people obey and begin to work on the temple, on the 24th day of the sixth month. If we compare that with the first verse of the chapter where Haggai began to preach this message on the first day of the month, we find that the change came in just 23 days! Haggai spoke on August 30, 520 B.C.The work began on the 21ST OF September.

Don’t underestimate the power and the importance of the word of God to your life. Breath it and you will live.Ignore it and you will die. It's as simple as that. Look at it's power to change a nation after 16 years! We cannot easily overstate how profoundly powerful and important the word of God is for our lives. If the word of God does not rank with your most cherished possessions, you need to do a reality check on your life. Nothing apart from God himself is more important and powerful than his word.

Breathing in the precious Word of God in order for my soul to live,
Pastor Bill