The Power of Vision, Part IV

Life-Changing Teaching. A Sermon Preached September 5, 2004

by The Rev. David Harper

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Life-Changing Teaching

Lord Jesus, come and reveal yourself to us through the preaching of the word this morning. Come, Lord, and cause your word to run swiftly among us and not to return to you empty without first accomplishing all that you intend it to do. We ask this in your name. Amen.

We’re roughly at the mid-point of this series on the power of vision. I started out by saying that God has given a vision to our church: “To make visible the power of God’s love so that all will come to know Christ.” And I asked the question, “How are we going to do that? How are we going to make the power of God’s love visible?” I’m answering that by preaching through our church’s mission statements, each one describing how we’re going to make visible the power of God’s love so that all will come to know Christ.

Each of these mission bullets relates to one of the five purposes of our church, which we studied last year in the Forty Days of Purpose. That helped us see how they apply to us as individuals. In a very few weeks now we will enter another forty day program called Forty Days of Community, which will focus on how we live out these purposes in our life together as a church.

Today, I want to talk about Life-changing Teaching, the third of our mission bullets. The first was dynamic worship, the second authentic community, and now life-changing teaching.

I want to begin with a story that won’t seem to relate easily at first to what I’m going to say! In a few minutes’ time, though, I hope you will see the connection. I heard it from Harold Caballeros, pastor of a large church in Guatemala, at an international SOMA conference in Cape Town in 2000 where Harold was a keynote speaker. He recounted the story of a ministry trip he had been invited to take in Canada. His son, who was quite young at the time, asked, “Daddy, could I come to Canada with you?” Harold was curious: “Why would you like to come?” His son replied, “I’ve always wanted to go fishing.”

They weren’t living in a part of Guatemala where fishing was a possibility, and this little boy had always longed to put a fishing rod into the water and catch a fish. Harold took a day off from his ministry responsibilities, chartered a boat, with a professional fisherman aboard, and went out into a Canadian bay with his son to catch fish. After several hours, the little boy hadn’t caught anything, and was feeling discouraged. He complained to his dad, “I haven’t caught any fish.” Harold replied, “Have you prayed?” His son admitted that he hadn’t. His father said, “I think you should pray.”

The little boy prayed. Now prayers are not always answered quite this quickly or in this way—but in this case, the Lord answered the prayer of faith of this child. He felt a tug on the end of his line and he landed a big fish. When they had returned to the bay, the professional fisherman and boat owner placed it on the scales. It turned out to be the largest fish anyone had caught that season! That was exciting!

After the fish had been weighed, the professional too it off the scale, and setting it down immediately slit and gutted it. Not knowing anything about fishing, Harold asked “Why are you doing that? Why are you gutting the fish so quickly?” The fisherman said “There are toxins in fish. If we don’t deal with that immediately, the toxins will poison the fish, and you won’t be able to eat it.”

Harold continued, “Immediately, God spoke to me. He said, “That’s what you need to do with your people.” He explained, “We’re pulling many people into our church in Guatemala.” At that stage his church had 8,000 members. Their evangelistic success was huge—droves of people were coming in and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. Harold confessed: “Despite our success, we had not done a good job in terms of knowing what to do with the people once they came in. These people carried toxins with them from the old life that they had been living, and we weren’t dealing with them.”

He began to develop ministries of teaching and pastoral care, of healing and deliverance. “That’s how you get rid of the old things in people’s lives,” he said. “Our church plants a new mission every week.” And then he added, almost apologetically, “The only reason we don’t plant more than one a week is that we don’t have enough money. We have thousands of healthy people in our church, any of whom would be capable of planting a church—because we’ve done a good job of healing and cleansing people. Our people are well.”

Jesus Christ is a fisher of people. When he catches us, he needs to clean us as well. We are not healthy when we come to know Jesus.

In John 15, Jesus tells us: “I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful.”

“Now, hang on!”, you might be thinking. “Weren’t we talking about fishing? Vines and gardening are about agriculture! Aren’t we switching the metaphor?” Yes, we are; but understand that the process of cleaning fish and pruning a fruit tree is much the same! In the next verse, Jesus says to his disciples (I’ll return to this in a few minutes, so I’ll just touch on it now): “You are already made clean . . .” In this text he talks about pruning, and then about being made clean. There’s a deliberate play on words here in the Greek. Pruning (kathairos) and cleaning (katharos) sound almost the same. Jesus is saying that being clean and being pruned are the same thing.

Being pruned is where something is cut out of the plant. That’s what the fisherman did with the fish Harold’s son caught.

Jesus understands that, when the fisher-of-men pulls us into his boat, because he wants us to belong to him, there’s some internal work that he needs to do—and not just when we first come to Christ either. He says: “Every branch in me...” He needs to go on doing that in our lives. We bring toxins from the old life—all of us do. We come from family systems that, in most cases, have varying stages of disease in them. Most of our families were not as healthy as we wanted them to be—and neither are we, because we are products of those family systems.

We see those toxins at work in the old ways of thinking that we can still have. We may not think of ourselves in healthy ways. We may not think of others in healthy ways. We see the old toxins at work in the way we behave, in the choices we make, in the things we find ourselves wanting to pick off the shelf of life to gratify our needs and desires. We know these things are not healthy, so we feel a certain amount of guilt regarding the things that we reach out for. But because there’s a craving, a compulsion, an addictive tendency at work in us, we find our hands reaching out for and wanting to touch even the things we know are wrong.

And we see the old toxins at work in how we can relate to other people. Our relationships can be self-centered: we can tend to choose to bring people into our lives because we want them to meet our needs! Our relationships often lack the quality of agape love, which is defined by what we give rather than by what we expect to receive.

These things are not just true of our generation and culture. Paul recognized the same things in the church in Ephesus. The letter he wrote was a circular letter, written to a community of churches in a fairly large region—so Paul didn’t even know these people personally. He isn’t choosing what to write to them because he knew they were more diseased than people in other churches! In Ephesians 2, verses 1-3, he says: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.”

“Frankly,” Paul is saying, “we were not just under the toxins of old systems and ways of thinking and behaving: we were under the father of lies!” So much of what we think about ourselves is actually a lie. We don’t think of ourselves in the way that God does. The way we can think of others, the way we can behave, is based on lies. Paul says that we weren’t simply misled by our wrong choices: we were being led by “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”

So how does Jesus get those dark toxins out of us? Imagine him as the professional fisherman in this Canadian bay. He’s weighed us, finds were pretty healthy in terms of our weight, and he’s pleased that he’s pulled us out of the water; he’s proud of us. The fact that he wants to clean us doesn’t mean that he’s disappointed in us! He realizes that to make us healthy, something else needs to happen. So how does he set about doing that?

The answer is, “Through his word.” To go back to the verse that I touched on a little while ago, he said to his disciples, you are already clean (kathairo) “because of the word I’ve spoken to you.” The word does it; the word had made them clean. His teaching was life-changing.

We need, then, to talk about the word. What is it about the word that has the power to transform our lives? How does God’s word transform us?

I want to talk about three things that the word does.

Firstly, God’s word is potent. It’s alive, it’s a living thing. It’s not just a book with ancient words that are a little bit out of touch with how we live in our postmodern, scientific, technological age. It was written, of course, when people didn’t have very much of what we have, and frankly didn’t know very much of what we know today either. Their access to knowledge was much more limited than ours. And yet, this book is a living book. It speaks to every generation, to every culture, to every language group, to every life stage. This is a living, dynamic, powerful word. Hebrews 4:12 says, “The word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires.”

You might say, “Why would I want to mess with the word? If it’s like a surgeon’s scalpel, if it’s going to find the deep places in my life that I don’t even know that I want to recognize or look at or deal with, would I really want to expose myself to something that’s potent and alive?”

The answer to that is, “Absolutely you would!” If I’d gone further in the quote from Hebrews, you would have heard the writer going on: “Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith to be professed for we don’t have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way as we are yet without sin. Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with confidence because there we find mercy and grace to help in time of need.”

This potent, living, laser-like Word is Jesus himself! He is compassionate about what he shows us about our lives. The potency of the word is a compassionate potency. And so the word is loving and merciful.

He wants to get the old toxins out of us, but first he has to open us up to get at what’s hidden in there and poisoning our system. Nothing other than the

word of God has the potency and the life to get into the deepest places in our lives. Anything other than the word, like self-help programs or anything else, isn’t going to get all the way down there. It’ll stop at the level where it is still self-serving in what it shows us about ourselves. It will not fundamentally reorient our lives. Only the word of God has the power to do that.

So the word finds us where we are, sets us free, and points us to where we long to go.

Truthfully, most of us are dissatisfied with our miserable existences. Even if we are comfortable, even if we are successful, we are dissatisfied. There is something fundamental about us that is dissatisfied with anything less than God’s best.

The word of God doesn’t just find us where we are and leave us there: it sets us free, (I’ll say more about this in a minute). Having set us free, it points us to where we long to go.

I find in my own prayer time that scripture so often forms the foundation of my prayer. When I read the daily Psalms and other scriptures, often they become the focus of my prayer. I’m stunned by the ability of scripture to find me where I am. Often I don’t know where I am. When I read the scripture, I resonate with it. I recognize that it’s talking about me. It cuts down into a place that I didn’t even know was there, or that needed attention. The reason I am still in my marriage, in my ministry, and am who I am becoming, is purely and simply because the word of God is living and active. There is no other reason. That’s the power of God’s word.

Secondly, God’s word is liberating. It sets us free. In John 8:31-32, Jesus says “If you hold to my teaching...”

Jesus says this to people who have already put their faith in him. It’s not just professing him as Lord and Savior that he wants: you need to hold to his teaching, because it’s life-changing, it’s potent, and it’s alive and active. Belief isn’t enough: you’ve got to hold it. When you do, “...you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

How does the truth set us free? By releasing supernatural power. I’ve already talked about the potency of the Word of God, but I want to talk more into that now, to see how that power works.

Let’s look at Luke 4:36, part of our gospel today: “All the people were amazed and said to each other, ‘What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out.” They said this was after he had set a demonized man free. Notice that they don’t talk to each other about Jesus’ deliverance ministry: they talk about his teaching.

Mostly, the church draws a distinction between the teaching of Jesus, and his signs and wonders. The teaching is contained in his Sermon on the Mount, his parables, and the portions of the Gospels where he is instructing people through various means. But most of the church has written off the signs and wonders as something that God isn’t into any more. “God abandoned that after the generation of the first apostles had died out,” people think. “It was just to get the church going that he did that, but now we have other means.” The Gospels say something different.

The people recognized that what Jesus did and what he taught were one and the same thing. You can never distinguish between the two. When Jesus healed the demonized man, I imagine that what he had been teaching about in the synagogue was the power of God to set people free. “My father’s kingdom is here,” he might have said, “to set you free from the old ways. I have authority and power over darkness.” That was part of what he taught, and now the people could see it being demonstrated: they saw a demonized man being delivered. The teaching flowed into what he did!

The reason why we are a healing church at Church of the Apostles is because we refuse to draw a distinction between teaching, as though that imparts only knowledge, and healing, as though that is what fixes up our lives. We believe that teaching not only gives information: it also produces transformation. This is key. It is very important.

And thirdly, God’s word is nourishing. It builds us up. I Corinthians 3:2 Paul writes: “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.”

Paul understood that there are stages, especially when we first come to Christ and before we mature, where the Word of God is like milk that you give to a newly born baby. It is able to be absorbed by the child’s immature digestive system. It contains all the nutrients and all the goodness, all that the child needs for healthy development, in a form that the child can digest.

I found this on the internet:

“The first milk that a baby receives is colostrum, which is rich in certain immunoglobulin, and other antibodies, which help to build up the baby’s defense against infection caused by bacteria and viruses. It also contains gamma linalenic acid, the precursor to beneficial local hormones. These have many health enhancing functions, among which is raising the immune system and controlling inflammation.”

Milk is not a bad thing to give to an infant, because that is what is going to help the child avoid certain things and develop in certain ways!

If we come to Christ, and don’t begin to drink the milk of the word, we will become malnourished. We will take other things into ourselves—babies need to feed on something—but we won’t be able to absorb what we take into us. It will contain things that are not right at that level of development, and we will pay a huge price for that. If you are new to the Lord, get into this word. Drink it, absorb it.

When I first came to the Lord, through a Billy Graham crusade, they gave out packets of materials to people like me who had given their lives to Christ. They contained, among other things, memory verses. Every day I would learn a new verse. That was like drinking milk. I was getting the basic principles of the Bible into myself. It wasn’t deep Bible study; I wasn’t ready for that. I just needed to get the basic truths of God’s word into my life. And now, I’ve been able to mature, as a child does. You reach a certain point where a mother begins to give solids to her child. And then the child develops to where it can hold something to its mouth and feed itself. It’s probably still a little bit messy, so the child still needs help. But soon we reach the point where we can eat from a plate of food holding our own implements.

Most of us should now be on meat and solid food. And we should know the food that we like and is good for us, and also the food we don’t like and is bad for us. God isn’t like the parent who forces vegetables on a child who hates them. God’s word is nourishing, it is sweet. It builds us up.

So how can that happen in your life? How can you experience the potency of God’s word, the liberating power of his word and the nourishment of it?

Firstly, desire a changed life. I Peter 2:2, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”

Desire a changed life. Crave the word. If you are new in the Lord, it’ll be pure spiritual milk that you crave. Even if you’ve been in the Lord a while, perhaps you are like the Corinthians. Paul wrote them something like this: “I don’t think you’re ready yet for me to give you anything beyond milk, because your digestive systems and your physical frame are still immature. I see that immaturity by the way you treat one another. Your lack of love tells me that you haven’t yet reached the point where I can begin to put deeper truth into you. So let’s just go on with milk a little bit longer, because you will grow to the point where you can take something more solid. But crave it.”

If you’re a Christian who’s got this book fundamentally closed—it’s there on your nightstand, and you have good intentions of getting to it, but it’s gathering dust and you aren’t really into it, it’s not part of your daily sustenance—then it’s not able to nourish you. It’s not dynamically changing you.

You will recognize if this is true of you if you feel stuck in your relationship with God. You will feel that you have basically reached a certain point but aren’t really going any further. The old ways are still there. There are still toxins at work in your life. You are troubled by them, but you don’t know what to do about them.

If that describes you, ask God to give you a new appetite for his Word. Pray this practical prayer: “Lord, will you give me a new appetite for your word?” And then begin to develop the habit of getting into it. Desire a changed life, but know that a changed life comes through this Word.

And secondly, let’s move into action. Devote yourself to God’s word. Acts 2:42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” Every day they used to meet. They had home groups, where the word of God played a key role. Devote yourself to his word. Find bible study helps. Come on Sunday mornings to Neal’s class. Become involved in the life of the church where the bible is being taught. If you’re a man in the church, come on Saturday morning to Charlie Young’s men’s bible study. All of these are means to get His word into our lives, so that all of these incredible gifts and benefits from it can begin to change us, because teaching is life-changing.

Let’s apply all this to the calling and vision of our church. How does it “make visible the power of God’s love so that all will come to know Christ?”

There are many answers that we could give to that, but here is one that is key. It’s found in Romans 8:19: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed”—to be made visible. Our calling statement, “To make visible the power God’s love...” addresses creation’s longing for the sons of God being revealed. Paul says that all of creation is really frustrated. It knows something’s wrong, that decay has set in. There are things going away from us that ought to be coming towards us. We seem to be losing vital things rather than gaining vital things. All around we see signs of decadence. We see all kinds of things going on in our country, and in our world, that should not be. Paul says that all creation is experiencing that. What they are looking for—though they may not realize it—is for you and me to become visible, to be revealed. They are longing to see our changed and transformed lives! That’s what it means for the sons of God to be revealed: for us to come into the fullness of who we are in Christ.

There’s so much in my own life that isn’t right yet! But the word of God is still trying to get in there and mess with that stuff, to rearrange the furniture in my life. I’m a work in progress, and so are you. And for the sons of God to be revealed means that people begin noticing us. They might come up to us at work, and saying: “Look, you seem to be like me in lots of ways; we’ve got comparable jobs (or we went to college together, or whatever it was)— but there’s something about you that’s different from me. There’s something about your life that intrigues me.” If someone asks you that question, then a son or daughter of God is being revealed to that person. Perhaps they go on: “I’m pretty content with my life, but when I see yours, there’s something that you make me want. Can you help me to know what it is?” Or, “I’m going through a real problem in my marriage, or I’m struggling with my singleness, or whatever it may happen to be. I really don’t know what to do with that. Can you help me?”

All creation is waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. Life-changing teaching will change us, and through our changed lives we will make visible the power of God’s love, so that all will come to know Christ.