Colossians 3:16-17 Luke 6: 43-49 Disciplines of the Word

Col 3:16-17  Luk 6: 43-49   Disciplines of the Word

Put your hand up if you brought a Bible to Church with you this morning.  Put your hand up if you read something from the Bible at least once in the last three or four days.  We all know the Bible is important to Christians. Jesus took it for granted that God's word - what we call the Bible - was there in the background, and had a particular authority. Time and time again, when engaged in a discussion he would say, "it is written..."  I'm not going to go into the questions today about "Why we believe the Bible is so important." If you want to discuss that we can talk about it over a cup of tea after the service.  But having accepted that the bible is important, what are we meant to do with it?  Let's look at the Disciplines of the Word. Jesus gives us two verbs.  "Hear" and "Do"....

Hearing the Word 
I keep hearing Home Groups referred to as Bible Study Groups.  Some of you immediately are feeling at a disadvantage: you think, "study is what you do at School and I didn't get on too well at School!"    Let's start by opening this up to all the people in Church this morning who struggle with reading and study - even if that is a challenge for all of us to think again about how we approach the Bible...

Replica of early printing press

Jesus talks to people who "Hear" his words... Reading the Bible is not a bad thing: I recommend reading the Bible. Jesus read it; he knew "it is written". But "Bible Readign"  is a comparatively modern thing for every ordinary  Christian.  Remember that Johannes Gutenberg's Bible was printed in 1455.  That was the first printed Bible. Among other things the development of the modern printing press changed the way people read - for the first time silent reading became the norm (before it was normal to read out loud).  But printing changed the whole way culture works and created the modern world.  Remember the Bible wasn't written in a modern, reading culture. The bible has its roots in an aural culture, one of hearing not reading. Therefore to be true to the Bible, we need to recognise that is where it belongs and not assume it is all about a literary culture. (By the way, the development of computers, laptops, smartphones etc has partnered and fostered the development of something else - what we sometimes call the post-modern world: no longer just a reading culture but an immersive culture.)

So to insist only on "Reading the Word"  is to jam the Bible in the world of 1455-1985.  That means when we insist on treating the Bible as a text for reading, we are neither in our own culture nor in the culture of the Bible itself. That's good news for those who struggle with reading and academic study. Our first call is to hear it.

There are huge issues around how we "hear" the bible today.  By reading it we can let God's voice speak to us.  Buy one, and read it, if you can read.  But buy one that fits with your natural culture.  Consider the Message; the Street bible, the CEV... And if you're not a reader, you're going to have to spend a bit more money: try to get hold of a decent quality Bible on CD, and hear it.


Studying the Word
Hearing God's Word, like all hearing, involves making sure we understand what we hear. Finding out, in other words, not only what it says but what it means.  John 5:39  "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me."  We need to "Search"; to study (in whatever way our abilities and gifts will allow us to) so as to expand our knowledge.  We need to know the truth. (John 8:32)

That process involves looking two ways. We use the microscope and the telescope.

We need to listen carefully, to the words themselves: what do they mean? What story is being told? Who is speaking? Who is writing it down? What's the context? What other things were happening at the same time? Does that context affect what it means? It's like using a microscope to look closely at the words and sentences.

But we need to listen in another way.  How does the meaning fit into a bigger picture of all God wants us to know?  (What we would call "God's revelation to us") Does it give us a piece of the jigsaw of what we believe? Does it help us know of what God is like? Does it help build a picture of what it means to be filled with the Spirit? To be a disciple of Jesus?

That's all part of the hearing process.  The discipline of hearing in its own culture, of stepping outside of our written culture to enter the Bible's world.  And the discipline of bringing something back with us to "our world. It's like time travel.

Absorbing the Word.
Jesus speaks in verses 43-45 about what is going on in our hearts. Hearing also involves letting God's word touch you at a deep level. That means not just thinking what it means but "letting the word of God dwell in you" (Col 3:16) letting it permeate your mind and heart and emotions.  It means holding it in your heart and meditating upon it.  That, gazing, is the key to transformation.  (2 Cor 3. 18)  The ancient monks called this way of reading "Divine Reading."

There are four stages to this process. They have been likened to "Feasting on the Word"...

1. Bite.  Listening to or reading God's Word.  Read it more than once, slowly, carefully.  Or have it read out clearly, maybe at different paces.  Make a (mental or written) note of any words or ideas that impact you as the word is read.
2. Chew.  Think, prayerfully asking the Holy Spirit for his light, about what you have read.  Turn it over in your mind.  What is God saying to you through his Word?
3. Savour.  Pray the word you have read into your life.  Pray the world you have read, over the difficult things you are experiencing.
4. Digest. Simply to let the Word of God you have read/heard, become part of who you are.  Like digesting our food, this stage is one of rest.  You are simply letting God's word do its work within you.


Doing the Word.
That's the last discipline of the word.  Putting it into practise. Col 3. 17 says "whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Jesus says that the well-built house with the good foundation isn't just the one based on hearing the word.  It's the one based on doing the word.  In fact it is perfectly possible to be hearing the word, listening to it, studying it, thinking about it, meditating on it, praying about it... and still building your house on the sand.

Hearing God's word - including studying it and meditating on it - doesn't give you a strong foundation.  It's doing the word that gives you a good foundation.  Jesus hints that hearing the word is all too easy. Even Bible Study is all too easy.  No matter how hard you have studied, how carefully you have researched, how deeply you have contemplated, if you haven't dug the word in to the hard rock of your life, you're building on sand.  We are so used to the idea of Bible Study. I want to encourage us to call our small groups something else.  Maybe "bible doing" groups.

Jesus wants us to be producing good, pleasing fruit not rotten fruit. It's about the actual flavour and shape of our everyday lives...  Jesus wants us to be producing pleasant, noble, morally good actions (verses 43f) and useful, pleasant, upright speech (verse 45).  There is a discipline involved in living out, day by day, what we are discovering in God's word.

© Gilmour Lilly February 2011