Ministry of the Word of God, Part 3

The point: Learn greatly to prize this God-ordained means of your perseverance.

Some truths are presented in 'dawn or dusk light,' while others are in 'brilliant light of an unclouded midday sun,' emphasizing the clarity and importance of the truth of perseverance.

There are certain truths in the Word of God that are presented to us in what we could well describe as the dawn or the dusk light, but there are other truths that come to us in the brilliant light of an unclouded midday sun, and the truth that we have been examining for some Lord's Day mornings now is one of those midday sun truths, namely the truth that God's true people, all true believers, will be found persevering or continuing in faith and holiness and obedience. On to the end of their days. Having examined some thirty texts in the New Testament which teach the necessity of the perseveran...

0:12 - 1:29 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Well, you see, the word of God was given to be meat and drink to the soul, to be eaten, to be digested, to become part and parcel of the regulation of the totality of life.

This analogy distinguishes between listening to music for aesthetic entertainment and eating a meal for nourishment, illustrating that the Word of God is meant to be 'meat and drink to the soul' for transformation, not just pleasant feelings.

That's the fundamental problem. How all of us knows the difference between listening to music for entertainment and sitting down to eat a hearty meal for nourishment. Occasionally on a Monday morning, not as frequently as I would like, I find one of the most relaxing things I can do is to have my wife on the way home from taking the kids. The girls to school will often pick up two newspapers on a Monday morning.

17:34 - 18:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Come under the ministry of the word of God with your work clothes on, ready to take the hoe of holy resolution, the axe to cut off right hands, heavy boots to trample inordinate desires, and gloves to battle powers of da…

This analogy contrasts a man dressed for hard work with tools (hoe, axe, boots, gloves) with a couple dressed in finery for a recital. It illustrates that believers should come to the Word 'dressed' for spiritual work, ready to apply it to their lives, not merely for aesthetic enjoyment.

These poor Israelites had a mistaken, a perverted notion of what the word of God through the prophet of God was to be to them. Do you have a similar notion? As I was trying to put into the concrete reality of my own thinking what might be helpful for all of us, I could not help but think of the contrast between a man going out to work and a couple going in to Lincoln Center to a recital. Now if you were to go down into New York or over into New York, some evening when there's going to be a recital at Alice's, some evening when there's going to be a recital at Alice's, Tully Hall or at the Metr...

21:54 - 23:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Come consciously dressed to do business, to have dealings with God as his word comes, not to be aesthetically titillated.

A mother tells her son to wash for supper; he looks in the mirror, sees dirt, washes his hands, but forgets his face. This illustrates James 1:22-25, showing how hearers who don't do the Word delude themselves by forgetting what they saw about themselves.

is to put oneself in the path of self-delusion why why well he goes on to use an illustration that helps us to answer that question he said such a person self-deluded is like a man who beholds his face in a mirror and forgets what he's on he goes and forgets whereas the doer is like a man who looks and continues to look and regulates life in the light of what he sees now let me give an illustration of the illustration a mother calls out to her son and says to him son wash up time to come for supper so he goes in to the little washroom that they have just inside the door as he comes in from his...

28:34 - 29:56 Read in full sermon

The point: Every time the ethical and moral demands of the word of God impinged upon you, exercise yourself spiritually to do something about it.

Giving a beefsteak to a three-month-old child who cannot chew or assimilate it illustrates the inability of spiritually immature believers to receive and profit from deeper truths, emphasizing the need for spiritual growth.

Your spiritual perception is limited. It would be like giving a beefsteak to a three-month-old child. He has no capacity to chew it, to assimilate it. He must have milk instead of solid meat.

40:41 - 40:58 Read in full sermon