The Word of God

You have eternal life, and eternal life is eternal, it doesn't disappear tomorrow. This passage in Hebrews is not speaking about people who lose their salvation. It's speaking about people in whom God has begun a real work, but who have not allowed God to bring it to the new birth.

And God respects the choice of the man, and his spirit does leave him. This is what the Bible means by the unpardonable sin. It's a cold-blooded rejection of Christ when you've really come to know who he is.

Now, Jesus Christ himself taught the absolute necessity of knowing the whole Bible. In Matthew chapter 4, Christ was tempted by the devil. And in verse 4, he answered the devil by quoting scripture, as he always did.

He quotes Moses, saying, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Every word. How can you expect to grow in your spiritual life? How can you expect to live an abundant life if your soul isn't nourished by every word that God has spoken? The supreme sin of the Church of Jesus Christ today is ignorance of the Bible.

I am appalled when I find, even among Christian leaders, an ignorance of the Bible that's quite unexcusable. I am appalled when I find, even among Christian leaders, an ignorance of the Bible that's quite unexcusable. What can you expect of Christian leaders who spend ten times as much looking at television as they do reading the Bible? What can you expect of Christian leaders who spend ten times as much looking at television as they do reading the Bible? Christ says that it's out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Why is the Church of Christ so full of evil speaking and calumny and division? Why is there so much worldliness coming into the Church? It's simply because people don't know the Bible. It's simply because people don't know the Bible. I think I told you that when I was 23 I began to read the Bible seriously.

I was born again when I was 18. It was fantastic. I was so filled with joy I just had to tell everybody what I'd found.

When I went back to my school for my last year, I evangelized everybody from the headmaster down to the youngest pupil. There were about 20 guys who used to meet with me every day to pray. The Bible also became a new thing for me.

But nobody had ever taught me that I had to read the Bible systematically. Within a year or two I had lost all that blessing. I spent another three years or so, miserable years, trying desperately to find the secret of the Christian life and baffled by all kinds of spiritual and moral problems and without understanding what was happening to me.

Finally I lost my assurance of salvation and I had terrible doubts even about the deity of Christ In my heart I knew it was all true but intellectually I had no answer for all the philosophical arguments that were flung at me every day. And I think the most useful thing I did during those three years was to read four or five biographies George Miller, Stud, Hudson Taylor, Robert Chapman and one or two others. I was just staggered by the life of these men.

And I wondered what their secret was. I found that they seemed to know Christ in a way that I didn't know Him at all. I found that although these men were very different and did different works, yet they all had two secrets.

I found that all of them began the day alone with God and most of them had at least two or three dates with God each day. I noticed that they all spent a lot of time in prayer and the second thing was that I found that all these men read the whole Bible right through every year. And they all read it the same way.

They all began at Genesis and Matthew and just read straight through the two testaments together. Well finally I was ill, I was out of work, I was depressed I was walking around the streets of London wondering if I oughtn't to commit suicide and then God just seemed to put my back against the wall and He said, if you want me to speak to you, you've got to give me time. You're already giving me a tenth of your money, but that's nothing.

If you lose a thousand lire, you can easily get another thousand lire. But if you lose ten minutes, they've gone forever. God said, why don't you give me the tenth of your time? And I worked it out, it comes to about two and a half hours a day.

I said, I can't, Lord. And God said, OK, I can't reveal myself to you either. God just said to me, I'm giving you an offer, take it or leave it.

But if you give me a tenth of your time to seek my face and if during that time you will also read enough of the Bible to get through it in a year then I'll reveal myself to you. It took me several months of conflict before I was able finally to say yes. And then I began.

It was jolly hard. But God kept me. I made a bargain with God, I said, if you'll force me to do it, I'll let you force me.

And that was nearly forty years ago. And I thank God with all my heart that he's forced me ever since. And I thank God with all my heart that he's forced me ever since.

After a few months I began to realize that God was speaking to me. There were passages in my daily reading which just hit me like a thunderbolt. God began to remove the veil that was covering his face.

It seemed as if I was living in a whole new world, a whole springtime. As if God's thoughts were just springing up like flowers everywhere. I felt as if I was in front of a marvelous sunrise every minute, every month, getting more and more splendid.

And this went on and on and on. Day and night I only had one prayer which was, oh God, reveal Christ to me. And God revealed Christ to me in such a way that I just fell hopelessly in love with God.

And this is what changed my life. This is what kept me all through the war. This is what drove me to North Africa as a missionary.

This is what has driven me all around Europe and other parts of the world in these last few years. And this is what has driven me even to Poggio Bertini this time. I just have one desire that God will go on revealing himself to me.

I would rather die than that he should stop. And my desire is also that God will communicate to each one of you the same thing on an even greater scale. I can't give it to you.

Jonathan can't. George can't. Not even the Apostle Paul can give it to you.

It's a secret in God's own heart. You can't get it by any formula or doctrine or experience. You can only get it straight from God's own heart.

You can only get it when God is willing to speak, willing to give, willing to take away the veil. But the Bible is full of statements to the effect that this is the one thing God wants to do. God wants to express his word and reveal his heart.

God's eternal word is the sum total of all beauty and wisdom. And God is utterly in love himself with his own word. And he wants to reveal that word to you.

So that you are utterly in love with the beauty that is God himself. And when you see that beauty crucified, mutilated, spit upon, crowned with thorns, when you come to the torn feet of Jesus, you discover something that just takes you beyond all dimension. And you hear the word of God as Paul when he was caught up to heaven.

You hear words that you must not and cannot even repeat. But you can really sum it all up in one short sentence. God just says, I love you.

When you love somebody, you cannot bear to be separated from that person. During those years when I was seeking God, the first miracle that happened to me was when God opened his heart and revealed his love to me. When I discovered that he loved me so much that it really hurt him if I spent a second without being in fellowship with him.

So my whole life was just in and out of love with him. I was inundated with the light of his face, whatever I was doing. But the second miracle that I found was that I loved God like that too.

And basically, this is the victory. There have been so many moments that have just passed into nothingness. Now we understand that these were lost moments and also moments that we can never recover from.

They were moments of suffering for you. And they were moments of infinite loss for us. Oh Father, now we are all here preparing for a time of service.

But what is the purpose of this service? To communicate to others only the doctrines? To make them understand, as we say, the path of salvation? We have something else to communicate. We can communicate your presence, communion with you, life in the Spirit, contemplation of your face, victorious life. Can we communicate this, Lord? Certainly not.

If you don't give it to us, we don't accept it. Therefore, Father, whatever we do today, whether we eat, pray, discuss, who we have before us, this possibility, this desire, this need to know you, to know your word, and to live in that communion, we ask you in the name of Jesus.