I. Recap & Intro.
A. The Way of Love.
1. Ephesians 5:1&2
1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
1. Four Foundations of God’s Love.
a. Love is God’s very nature.
b. God loved us before we loved Him.
c. God’s love is eternal and unchanging.
d. Nothing can separate us from God’s love.
2. We can put this into practice with these three actions.
a. Accept that His nature is now your nature.
b. Observe His love in His Word & in your life & other’s lives.
c. Choose to love even if you don’t feel it.
B. The Three Legged Stool.
1. In the beginning we saw that the Ways of God are like a 3 legged stool. These are Love,
Life and the Word. We can’t have one without the other.
a. In the Garden of Eden.
b. In Deut 30:15&16
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.
2. All three elements of walking in God’s ways:
a. Love God
b. Obey His Word
c. Live & Multiply
3. What happens if we love God but don’t feel like obeying His Word?
a. The Word says to forgive but you’re still offended.
b. The Word says to seek 1st His kingdom but M-F we seek money 1st?
c. The Word says serve one another but you don’t feel like getting to church early.
4. What is the root of the issue, when we feel like this? We love something else more than we love God, and whatever we love more will win out.
a. In the case of forgiveness, maybe we love being the victim, being right, etc.
b. Money: always just a little more & then we’ll serve the Lord.
c. Serving: we love comfort more than the Lord and His body.
5. So what do we do when we find ourselves in this predicament? The Lord knows us so well that He gave us a strategy to overcome this and stay on the path of life.
a. But before we get to that, let’s look at the integral relationship between the Word and Life.
II. The Way of Life and the Way of the Word.
A. So many times in the scriptures we see the Word and Life working together.
1. Deut 8:3 “…man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”
2. Psalm 119:50 “You’re Word has given me life.”
3. Proverbs 4:20-22
20 My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21 Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; 22 For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.
4. John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
a. 1 John 1:1 Jesus is called “the Word of Life…”
5. John 6:68b “You have the words of eternal life.”
6. Phil 2:16 “…hold(ing) fast to the word of life…”
7. In God’s kingdom, life comes from receiving and obeying His Word.
B. The Word of God has the Life of God in it.
1. Words are carried on breath. You have to be alive to speak, because the words coming out
of your mouth are carried by breath.
2. When God speaks, He breathes His Word and the breath of God carries that Word to our heart and brings the life of God with it.
a. God’s Word, the scriptures, have God’s life in them.
b. Hebrews 4:12a “For the word of God is living and powerful…”
3. 2 Peter 1:20-21
“20 …no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
a. Godly men spoke (the Word) as they were carried along by the Holy Pneuma…
b. Holy Spirit: Gr. Hagios Pneuma, literally ‘Holy Breath’
4. What we need to know: God speaks His Word in love, the Word contains life, when we
receive it into our heart, we experience God’s divine life.
5. This is true for every aspect of our lives. This is where Proverbs 3:5&6 comes in “In all
your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”
a. Marriage and family, gender and sexuality
b. Work and money
c. Community life and belonging
6. In every aspect of life where we receive the Word of God, life will follow.
C. Analogy: God’s Word is like a seed.
1. The Word carries life inside it, like a seed carries a tree, a stalk of corn or a flower. You cannot separate the seed from the life it carries.
2. In the same way God’s life is embedded in His Word.
3. In the bible, God has given us an assortment of seeds to plant in the soil of our heart. God has seeds for every area life and every situation we face.
4. Every seed of God’s Word that we plant in our heart will grow up to produce the Life of God in us. You don’t argue with a seed, you plant it!
5. God doesn’t just give us commands, He gives us life inside of every command.
6. What if the life we’re praying for is already in the Word we’ve been given?
D. Receiving the Word of God.
1. So know we need to understand how to receive God’s word and plant it in our hearts, but first, let’s look at 3 common mistakes that people make that keeps them from experiencing the Divine Life through God’s Word.
III. Three mistakes to avoid if you want to experience the Life of God. (Because the problem is not with the seed— it’s worth the soil.)
A. Mistake #1: Intellectualizing the bible.
1. “Where the bible makes plain sense don’t look for any other sense or you will end up nonsense.” Kevin Conner
2. Intellectualizing God’s commands will make us think they are holy suggestions, good advice, moral teaching, etc. instead of what it really is, the Life containing Word.
a. Prioritizing knowledge over transformation.
b. Assuming intellectual understanding equals spiritual maturity.
3. We can explain the Word and still resist it. Understanding is not the same as surrender.
4. EX: The Woman at the Well
a. V 18 Jesus addresses her life “You’ve had 5 husbands…”
b. V 20 “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you Jews say that…”
c. Resisting an encounter with a theological debate.
5. The danger in this is that we miss the life that is in the Word because we receive it in our
mind and not our heart.
a. Matt 13:19 Jesus said the Word must be sown into our heart to be fruitful.
B. Mistake #2: Cultural influence are often stronger than the Spirit’s influence.
1. We must not allow culture to interpret scripture for us, or even to inform our opinion on
scripture. Culture says your experience is your truth. scripture says God’s Word is truth.
2. EX: “What does this scripture mean to you?”
a. Scripture means what it means already, it means what God says it means.
3. EX: Romans 13:1&2
1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
a. Culture says “If I don’t agree with it, I don’t have to obey it.”
C. Mistake #3: Not understanding God’s heart in His Implicit Commands.
1. An explicit command is one that plainly says “Do/Don’t do this…” whereas an implicit command is meant to be understood by God’s character & by the rest of scripture.
2. We tend to look for an explicit command in the Word and if we don’t see it, we think we can do whatever we want.
3. EX: The bible doesn’t explicitly say not to smoke marijuana.
a. We know that God wants to be our peace, we know that He considers it idolatry when we place a false peace higher than Him.
b. We know that the Word says to be sober minded, to put away drunkenness, etc.
4. Maturity is learning to hear what God implies, not just what He states.
IV. Four ways to receive God’s Word and experience His Life.
Since the Word carries life, then on elf the most important skills a believer can learn is how to receive the Word.
A. #1: Receive the Word with humility.
1. James 1:21 “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
2. When the soil of our heart has been prepared with love and humility, the WORD is able to thrive and produce life in us.
a. Remembering that His ways are higher, His thoughts are higher.
B. #2: Be a doer of the Word.
1. James 1:22-27
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
2. If we don’t put God’s Word into practice we deceive ourselves. We have to do what it says to walk on the path of Life.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
3. “Blessed in all he does…” means there will be life in all those areas that we do what
God’s Word says.
26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
C. #3: Speak the Word and live.
1. Deut 30:11-14
11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
2. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks..”
3. Speaking the Word is how Jesus resisted the evil one in the wilderness.
4. Speaking the Word sets the course of our life on the
D. #4: The Fear of the Lord.
1. Now we come to the answer of our question in the beginning, “What do we do when we
aren’t motivated to obey God because we love something else more than Him?”
2. Psalm 86:11 “Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to
fear Your name.”
a. Unite: joined together, single focus, an undivided heart
3. When rebellion, selfishness and stubbornness, etc., rears up in our heart and we’re not
feeling the love for God and His Word like we should, we can remember the fear of the Lord and let that be our motivation.
4. Psalm 111:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding
have all those who do His commandments. His praise endures forever.”
5. Proverbs 14:27 “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the
snares of death.”
6. Love for God should be our motivation, but when our feelings fail us, the fear of the
Lord kicks in to be our motivation. Because in God’s kingdom, life come from receiving and
obeying God’s Word.
7. The fear of the Lord is not fear instead of love, it is what protects our love for God.
V. Closing and wrap up.
A. God calls us to go against the current of the world and walk in His way.
1. Remember there are only two ways, the way of good that leads to life and the way of evil
that leads to death. The narrow way that is difficult but leads to life and the broad way that is convenient and leads to death.
2. No matter what the culture around us is doing, we need to be people that walk the narrow
by walking in love, planting God’s Word in our hearts and putting it into practice.
3. Receive the Word with humility, do it, speak it and let the fear of the Lord unite your
heart in a single focus to walk in God’s ways.
4. What we see now in the nations and in many cases in the church itself, is the fruit of
going our own way and doing whatever seems right to us.
5. But if we walk in God’s way, we shine as lights in contrast to the darkness around us.
People will see the life of God in our lives and it will be a great witness to them in the last days.
B. Prayer.
1. Let’s pray according to Psalm 86:11 “Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your
truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name.”