Each week, let’s reflect upon Sunday’s teaching through further exploration…
We have the results of your recent test and need you to come in to speak with the doctor this morning.
“Let the Word Study You” (Growing in the Word Sermon Series)
“We have the results of your recent test and need you to come in to speak with the doctor this morning.”
I’ve received that specific phone call twice in the last 12 years. Both times I was diagnosed with cancer. As a result, I’m reluctant to go to doctor’s appointments, even routine ones… the routine, seemingly benign appointments are what have uncovered the malignant monsters lying underneath.
Have you been there? Have you feared what the study of your test results, lab reports, and physical examinations will uncover? How your life might be changed or even threatened?
Jason used an illustration Sunday to compare how a doctor studies us physically and how God’s word studies us spiritually. I’ve been thinking about that comparison for my own life and study of the Bible. I can identify times when I didn’t open my Bible because I knew God would show me things about myself that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I can pinpoint times when I did read His word and thought more about how someone else needed to meditate on that passage rather than myself. Splinter – chunk of wood/speck – plank, right? (Matthew 7:1-5)
It can be frightening to think about God’s word studying us. We can fear what may be uncovered through that just like we fear what a doctor might find through his/her study of our bodies. There are significant differences, though, of which we must be aware.
- A doctor only knows the diagnosis upon studying various symptoms and running tests, all of which we must submit to having done. God, on the other hand, knows our specific issues regardless of whether we submit ourselves to His revealing.
- A doctor may not be able to pinpoint what’s ailing us, may only offer things to treat the symptoms rather than cure the cause, and cannot guarantee we won’t become ill again. God, on the other hand, knows sin is our problem, understands how that sin manifests in each of our lives, and offers the cure to us as a gift that seals our healing – the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
With that in mind, maybe we can approach differently the study of God’s word and His word’s reciprocal study of us. Maybe we can approach God’s written word like the Samaritan woman at the well responded to the living Word – Jesus (John 4:1-42)…
Jesus told the woman her problem. She did not answer with fear. She sought more information, she listened to His claim of being the Messiah, and she went back to her hometown to tell others about Jesus – the same “others” she would have been attempting to avoid by going to draw water from the well at midday. She even, in her haste to tell others, left her water jar at the well! She came for one thing that her physical body needed over and over again to function, and she left with the one thing that her spiritual body needed once for all eternity.
Let’s not be afraid to study God’s word or let it study us. Let’s not fear what that study may reveal. Like the woman at the well, let’s find out what God has to say to us, leave behind our agendas and what we think we need, and go to our places to tell others we have encountered Jesus.