God’s Word, God’s Power
If you are going to be spiritual, you are going to need to do a lot of reading and listening to words.
For many people that doesn’t sound very exciting.
We like action. We like images. We like experiences. Words not so much. Words don’t seem quite as exciting or powerful to us.
In fact, we typically think of speaking words as very different than actually doing something.
We even have sayings about it. We might say for example, that person is all talk and no action. Imagine if you asked me to do something for you and I respond by speaking to you for a long time. You might think, “Oh, you didn’t do anything. I asked you to do something, not just talk.”
While we sometimes think of words as static, lifeless things, God’s Word could not be more different. As one author has pointed out, in the Bible you often find that God's saying of a thing and God's doing of thing are the same thing. The Scripture makes this point clear through all sorts of passages which highlight the power of God’s Word. Take Psalm 29 as an example. This psalm describes God’s voice or God’s speaking. It says, “The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars”.
Now notice, who is breaking the cedars? God. But how does he do it? Through His voice.
This kind of description is typical in the Bible. As Timothy Ward explains, “God performing an action by means of his voice is equated with God simply performing that action.” When God wants to do something, He speaks and as He speaks, He’s doing something. Listen to this quote. He writes, “God’s Words and actions are intimately related in the Bible. To say of God that He spoke, and to say of God that He did something, are often one and the same thing.”
We see that on the very first page of the Old Testament. In Genesis 1:3 we read, “And God said, Let there be light and there was light.” How did God make light? He spoke. In verse 6, it says, “And God said let there be…” and then verse 7 begins, “and God made.” These phrases are parallel - saying and making are the same thing. God is making clear at the very beginning of the Bible that there’s a connection between God’s Word and action.
After God creates, man rebels. In Genesis 3, we read about God’s judgment. But, how did God judge? He spoke. Think about the significance of that. Again Timothy Ward explains, “It would have been quite possible for God to have introduced child-bearing into the woman’s life, and to have made the snake crawl on its belly, and made the man’s labor on the land difficult, all without speaking, by wordless acts of judgment. However the God who is presented to us in the Bible is quite unlike that: he is a God who by his very nature acts by speaking. The divine word that created in the first place continues to speak in warning humanity against disobedience to God, and subsequently in uttering curses when disobedience occurs. And the act of cursing from God is as effective as the act of creating: for God to say the words is to perform the action.”
In Genesis 6, God comes to Noah and tells him that he is going to judge the world. His word to Noah is part of how He rescues Noah. After delivering this message to Noah, God sends him around to preach about it. No one listens however. But through this flood God is cleansing the world and protecting the promised Seed. When those who were warring against God’s plan have been judged, God comes to Noah and makes a covenant, and that covenant does something. It guarantees that we’re going to be around until salvation happens. It makes God’s salvation plan certain. This is important, because just a couple chapters later we find man’s shaking fist at God again. But instead of destroying the world, God sets His saving plan in motion. What’s the first thing we find him doing? Genesis 12:1. God’s speaking! "Now the Lord said to Abraham, and He makes a promise. That promise accomplishes something. It’s part of why Jesus even came into the world.
God creates through words. He judges through words. He rescues through words. He sustains the world through the word. Psalm 147:18 illustrates how involved His Word is in the day to day operation of the universe. The Psalmist writes, “He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.” Did you catch it? Snow melts at his word. The wind blows at his word. His Word is acting in tangible ways. Isaiah 55:10-11 gives us another picture. God says, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth; making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” As the rain comes down and accomplishes a purpose, God sends His Word out to accomplish a purpose, and it succeeds in doing what God sent it to do.
Make no mistake, God is acting in this world through His Word. In fact, that’s how we are even saved! When you wonder about the power of God’s Word, think about what happened when you were converted. Perhaps you have forgotten how absolutely remarkable it is to truly be saved. But, is there anything on earth quite as amazing as genuine conversion?There’s a great description in 2 Corinthians 4:6 of how salvation works. Paul says, “For God who said, ‘let light shine out of darkness.'” He’s talking about creation there. God spoke and it happened. He made the light shine out of darkness by speaking. But, why does he bring creation up? Because that’s what happens when you are saved. Before salvation all was dark. We couldn’t see the hateful nature of sin. The great and shining beauty of God was surrounding us and we saw and enjoyed none of it. What a horrible condition! How we would feel for someone who goes through life physically blind. Imagine standing next to Victoria Falls with a blind man. To stand so close to something so stunning and not be able to really enjoy it! At least the blind man has ears to hear and other senses, however. Spiritually, before we were saved, we had none of those. We could have stood in the most beautiful place spiritually, and still, we would have had no capacity at all to enjoy it. In salvation however, God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. He enables us to see beautiful and amazing things that we never saw before. And how He do it? He did it through His Word.
There may be a lot of pressure from the world and sometimes even from within to minimize the importance of the Bible in our day to day relationship with God. If we forget the power of God’s Word, it can be tempting to give in. But if we really want to see God do things in our lives, in our churches, and in this world, we must pay even closer attention to what He says because when God talks, we know, God acts!
