WORD OF LIFE

Sermon Summary (7/9/17) “How God Changes Us: The Word of Life” (Phil 2:3-11)

I can remember at 12 or 13 setting up machinery with my Grandpa at the shop.  I particularly remember setting up a sickle mower.  Grandpa told me to hold the A-frame as he attached the undercarriage (heavy).  Later, reading the instructions I found out that there was a special structure included just to do that!  We need assembly instructions.  More importantly, we need to read assembly instructions.

We have assembly instructions for our lives.  In fact, the first ones were read to us: “You may eat freely of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, you shall not eat.”  Remember that?  These are instructions not just for Adam and Eve, but for every generation, including us.  Yet we don’t heed the manual.  In fact, this is a disassembly story.  But if we heed the manual, it is a re-assembly story because of the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ.  With the manual, we assemble our lives.

Hebrews tells us that “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. (Heb 1:1-2).  Jesus gave us two commandments that he told us summarized all the law and the prophets, “Love God and Love neighbor.”  Yet these simple rules to “Do” are far more difficult than the “Do Not” instructions of the prophets.  We continually wrestle with sins of omission that we may over look or not heed. We need the power of the Holy Spirit with us to guide us and to hold us accountable.

Life is difficult.  Assembling our lives is difficult.  CS Lewis notes that we can almost never take Jesus’ words literally.  We need to be able to read between the lines.  Jesus spoke in parables.  Our Spirit-guided interpretations are individual and universal and timeless.  And under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they are life-changing!

We read the Bible for four reasons: Information (context, we need to interpret passages within the context of the whole).  In Relation (The Bible is a Theology Book.  We need to ask, “What does it tell us about God, us, and In Relation to God and us).  Inspiration (We need not only breadth, but depth; we let the Spirit focus on a passage, a verse, even a word that reaches into our depths. My favorite is Phil 2: “Think not of your own interests, but the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  We could solve the wolrd’s problem if we “looked… to the interests of others with the same mind as Jesus.).

And lastly for Transformation (Consider a broken young woman reading the incomprehensible Mt Ch 1, the genealogies.  She sees a single word, Tamar!  If God could forgive and honor Tamar, he could her.  The realization is to her is transforming!  So may it be with you.  Amen.