The Living and Active Word

1987

By way of more remarks about “Are you this man’s disciple?” there’s a difference between deciding what you’ll believe about something...I want you all to listen to this carefully, because this will affect the rest of your lives. I really believe that.

There’s a difference between deciding what you believe about a particular subject and propagating what you’ve found to be true. I’ll expand on that a little bit. There’s different levels of involvement that we have with so-called truth. There’s a possibility of being stone cold, where we won’t receive the word of God, and there’s nothing that anybody could ever say to us in the Name of Jesus that would have any impact on us at all. It could be totally proven, absolutely beyond any shadow of a doubt, that’s what the word of God says, and we find some way to skirt the issue somehow, someway.

Usually the way people skirt the issue is they attack the person that told them that. A situation happened just today, with her, where the response wasn’t, “This is the word of God.” It was, “Well, you haven’t been a Christian near as long as I have, so who are you to tell me these things?” It jumps to the level of not dealing with the word of God, but dealing with things about the word of God, things about you. Or “Your life’s not any better than mine so what right do you have to tell me?”

Wait a minute! That’s not the issue. The issue is what did God say? You’re not going to be judged by God comparing me and you. You’re going to be judged when the Book of Life is opened, and the Word of God, Jesus said, is going to judge us on the last day in John 12:48 and that’s true.

So our job is to say, not whether or not we like it, not whether or not we’ve ever heard it before, or ever believed it before, or whether anybody else is doing it. It’s just simply to find out, did God say it, yes or no? That’s the only issue that matters. There’s no ramifications that need to be considered. “Yeah, but if that’s true then this might happen.” Baloney! What did God say? That’s the only issue that will ever matter. So somebody on the stone cold level, they’re not going to receive the word of God, and they’ll give you 38 logical reasons why it’s not necessary that they believe what you say.

“It’s only your interpretation!”

“But wait a minute. You just read it word for word. I didn’t interpret anything.”

“Well, that’s just the way you interpret it.”

There’s going to be a way to get out of it. And people usually aren’t so dumb as to just say, “Well, I know it says that, but I’ve decided to be disobedient.” I’ve never heard anybody say that. They always have a good, logical reason why they’re not going to do what it says. So that’s one level.

There’s a level above that of somebody that acts exactly the same way possibly in a day-to-day situation. And yet their problem really isn’t rebellion of the heart and a hardening of the heart. But rather it’s a famine in hearing the word. They just simply never heard the living and active word of God. There was nothing available to penetrate into the motives of their heart. The light has to shine. The word of truth has got to shine to divide between bone and marrow, soul and spirit and to expose the motives of the heart. That’s God’s way of opening us up.

The seed is the word of God, and trees don’t grow without seed. They just don’t. You’re not going to grow a disciple of Jesus Christ, strong and vigorous and fruitful without the seed of the word of God. Unless you abide in Him and His words abide in you, you cannot bear much fruit, let alone 30-, 60- and 100-fold.

There can’t be a famine in hearing the word. The word of God has got to be out there. And there are a lot of people that have never heard a living and active word. They’ve heard a lot of Bible, they know a lot of doctrine but they’ve never had anybody say to them, “Here is the word of the Lord. Here is your life and here is Christ’s life. Here is Jesus Christ and all of His fullness and all of His glory. He’s alive! And you’re not! He who lives, or she who lives for pleasure is dead even while they live, and you’re dead. You’re living for pleasure. Your life is not in balance, in check by the word of God. You’re not under the government of the word of God and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you’re dead even while you live.”

If they heard that, there might be a little bit of a problem or a little resistance because of the empty traditions handed down by their forefathers. Jesus said traditions make null and void the word of God. And it takes a little bit of time to clear away the rubble in order to build. We have to uproot, tear down, destroy and overthrow sometimes, in order to build and plant, it says in Jeremiah 1.

So some of that has to happen. To speak the word of God into somebody’s life, to lay down your life for them in a willingness to communicate that word of truth to them, it might take a little bit of time. In fact, you may never see the result personally of what’s happened. But don’t despair. It’s not your place, really, to judge what’s going to happen anyway. It’s just your job to be faithful with the word of God. You may never know the difference between those two categories with your own eyes. But there is a difference in God’s sight. But sometimes it takes an uprooting, a tearing down, an overthrowing and a destroying, in order to be able to see any life begin to blossom out of that. And it takes a little bit of time.

But a person with a good heart is going to respond to the word of God ultimately, if they hear the word of God. If they don’t hear the word of God, they’re going to go to their graves in mediocrity, never being any more than just a Sunday morning, go-to-meeting kind of person, unfruitful. And that’s a shame and I don’t know. I can see both sides in the word of God, as to what that person’s destiny might be. I can show you verses on both sides. I just want to live to make sure that people aren’t unproductive and unfruitful in their knowledge of Jesus, because I just don’t know what’s going to happen. The unfruitful branches are thrown into the fire it says in John 15. So I want to help if I can, and I hope that’s what you all are living for too.