We Love God’s Word

Psalms 119:47-48 NKJV  And I will delight myself in Your commandments, Which I love.  (48)  My hands also I will lift up to Your commandments, Which I love, And I will meditate on Your statutes.

Psalms 119:97 NKJV  Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.

Psalms 119:103 NKJV  How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Psalms 119:140 NKJV  Your word is very pure; Therefore Your servant loves it.

• Here at Christian Life Church WE LOVE GOD’S WORD!
  • We love the instruction, we love the commandments, we love the promises, we love the encouragement, we even love the rebuke.
    • WE LOVE GOD’s WORD!
  • We love learning God’s word, obeying God’s word, praying God’s word, teaching God’s word.
    • WE LOVE GOD’S WORD!
• See, over the past four weeks we have been going over the value statements of CLC.
  • As you know, our mission is the great commission: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has taught us.
    • That is our mission, that is our goal. To make disciples and baptize and teach people of all nations.
  • We have also talked a bit about our vision, to be a light on the hill in Cedar Rapids, and the missions arm of the body of Christ in Cedar Rapids… to be especially known for international missions while not neglecting our own cities and towns.
• But, as you should well know by now, these vision and mission statements are big picture… but the day-to-day stuff all falls under our value statements.
• The Gospel is for Everyone
  • Every person, every nation, every generation.
• A Place to Belong
  • There are no outcasts in this family.
• We Go All In
  • All in for Worship, All in for Prayer, All in for Serving, All in for Christ!
• Everyone Grows
  • From the newest believer to the senior pastor, we are called to grow.
• The Gospel is for Everyone… that is why missions is so important in our church.
• We are a place to belong… Every borna gain believer has a place here, and those who are not born again are invited to come and receive Christ.
• We go all in –  All in for Christ, all in for preaching, all in for prayer (we need to be better at this, this house should be a house of prayer)… we go all in.
• Everyone Grows – Until we are perfect, we still have growing to do, all of us!
• But as we were putting these values together, I realized that we were missing something… God’s word is not explicitly mentioned… and it is so important that we decided to add a fifth value statement. WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.
  • So the FIVE values of CLC are:

• Every person, every nation, every generation.
• So this morning, one last message before we get back into genesis… we are going to talk about this fifth value of CLC… WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.

• At CLC God’s word is the ultimate authority. It trumps our feelings, it trumps our experience, and it certainly trumps the flawed wisdom of this world.
  • WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.
    • And I hope you love God’s Word as well, God speaks so highly His own Word that He calls Jesus the Word of God.

John 1:1 NKJV  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14 NKJV  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

• If you don’t love God’s Word, I am not so sure you can even love Jesus… but that point is moot here at CLC, why? BECAUSE WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.
  • So let’s pray this morning, then we will here from the Word of God about how we should LOVE the Word of God!

• So, three points this morning that explain our fifth and final value statement. We Love God’s Word.
• We Love God’s Word
• We Love to Read the Word of God.
• We Love to Preach the Word of God.
• We Love to Obey the Word of God.
• Now if you have been at CLC for a while, this might be a bit of preaching to the choir… but I think this message will encourage all of us in different ways as the Spirit sees fit.
  • And if you are new to CLC, then let this message teach you about who we are as a church, and hopefully encourage you and all of us to love God’s word more and more…
  • So let’s get right into it with point one, We love to read the Word of God

Point One – We Love to Read the Word of God

Psalms 119:103 NKJV  How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth!

• I don’t know about y’all, but I LOVE HONEY.
  • My wife just got some of this stuff called Mike’s Hot Honey, it is honey infused with peppers… and it is AMAZING!
    • It is also supper high in calories, so I have to limit myself extremely…
    • But man, if that stuff was calorie free, I would eat a bottle a day.
      • It is especially good on Peperoni and Jalapeno pizza, drizzled over the top… guy’s… It is the best thing ever…
  • Now maybe you don’t love honey as much as me and the Psalmist here, probably King David… but I bet there is something you love.
    • Some food that just hits every time… pizza, burgers, French fries, Ice cream… Molcajete from El Bajio… SOMETHING that just brings you an extreme level of joy and comfort when you eat it…
      • If it is not honey for me, then it is homemade chicken fried steak, mashed potato’s with white gravy, canned corn and canned French cut green beans on the side, served with ice cold sweet tea.
      • The meal my mom used to make, it is like a big ol’ country hug on a plate!
• And you see I think King David, or whoever wrote Psalm 119, understands that food, even junk food, can bring comfort, and joy, and even a feeling of love when consumed in moderation…
  • And so he compares God’s Word… saying “Your word is like the sweetest food available to man, in fact, it is sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
• Now the question must be asked, and it is a challenging question, try to be honest with yourself…
  • Do you love God’s Word as much as, or even MORE THAN, you love honey, or comfort food, or whatever treat or meal you love the most?
• Jeremiah 15:16 NKJV  Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
• Jeremiah searched the Word of God, he studied the Word of God, he consumed the Word of God… and he loved it, it was a joy to him, it made his heart rejoice…
  • Does this describe your relationship with the Word of God?
    • Are you feasting on the Word of God?
      • Do you open your Bible and read it, and enjoy it, and be filled with it… like warm bread on a cold winters day…
    • Or, are you like toddlers who were never properly weaned from the bottle?
      • You ever meet that kid, the 4 year old who still is drinking milk from the bottle?
        • His parents try to get him to eat meat, and bread, and vegatbles… but he tantrums until he get’s milk?
        • That is like a Christian who refuses to read the whole word of God…

1 Corinthians 3:1-2 NKJV  And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.  (2)  I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able;

• Church, let not these verses describe us at CLC! AT CLC WE LOVE GOD’S WORD! All of it! Not just the easy to digest stuff.
  • We were once babies, yes, but we have grown up… we now feast on the Word of God, it sustains us… Jesus said it best in Matthew 4:4

Matthew 4:4 NKJV  But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD.’ “

• And listen, if you don’t love God’s word, and you are a born again Christian… it is probably because you are not reading it enough!
  • Studies have shown that it takes trying a new food 8 to 15 times before your pallet adjust to it and starts to like it.
    • For some people it can take 40 to 60 times.
  • I love broccoli… but I started off hating it.
    • I love black coffee, but it started off being way to bitter for me.
  • Stacey Hughes brought by a homegrown watermelon and it was SO AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS AND SWEET… but when I was a kid I loathed watermelon.
    • What changed? Did broccoli suddenly become more savory? Did black coffee suddenly become more smooth? Did watermelon somehow get more sugar content over the years?
      • NO! What changed was not the food I was eating, what changed was ME! I changed! The more I ate, the more my taste changed… the more I enjoyed it.
• Guy’s if reading your Bible is a challenge, if it feels like a grind… let me encourage you. READ IT ALL THE MORE.
  • Pray before you read, pray after you read, journal about what you read. Start a reading plan with your wife or friends and talk about what you read, challenge yourself to go through the B90 with us at the beginning of the year.
  • READ AND READ DAILY AND YOUR TASTES WILL CHANGE. GOD WILL BEGIN TO SHINE THROUGH HIS WORD… The Word will start to prophesy to you, guide you, teach you, encourage you, and sometimes even rebuke you… AND YOU WILL LOVE IT.
  • Have the discipline that the four year old toddler doesn’t have and read God’s Word, because here at CLC WE LOVE GOD’S WORD!
• Now that brings me to point two this morning… we love to preach the Word of God!

Point Two – We Love to Preach the Word of God

Psalms 119:97 NKJV  Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.

• At CLC we love God’s Word, sometimes called God’s law… and yes God’s word is His Law because when God says something HE MEANS IT! It is not a suggestion, when God speaks, it is LAW.
  • Oh how I love Your Law, Your Word, Your Commandments, Your Promises…
    • All ways this verse can be translated…
    • And if we love God’s Word, and we love to read God’s Word… then it stands to reason that we love to PREACH GOD’S WORD.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NKJV  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,  (17)  that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

• All Scripture is God breathed… it helps us grow in doctrine, it corrects us, it instructs us, it leads us to righteousness in Christ Jesus… all of this so that we as children of God can be complete and fully equipped for every good work.
  • Church should be a place of growing, at CLC everyone grows.
  • Church should also be a place of equipping… so if Scripture equips us, and grows us, and corrects us… Then shouldn’t we be getting a lot of Scripture when we come to church?
    • So at CLC we want all of our sermons be chalk full of scriptures!
    • Our sermons should driven by scripture!
    • Our sermons should be guided by scripture!
• And so at CLC the standard operating procedure is that we preach through the Bible, because we love God’s word.
  • That means that MOST Sundays we will be going through a book in the Bible line by line, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter.
    • I realize that these five sermons have not been in that method, because sometimes the Holy Spirit has us do a special series, like this one on our church values, but EVEN THEN our sermons should be straight from the Scriptures… because we Love to Preach the Word of God… which makes sense as we are a church that LOVES GOD’S WORD!
  • But it is more than just loving God’s word, preaching from scripture helps us preach a full and less biased message.
    • You see when I was in college we had to write a lot of essays… and we had to quote a certain number of sources, APA or MLA style depending on the professor, in order to get credit.
    • So I might have to write a research paper on the aftermath of 9-11 and it’s effects on the political arena… it would need to be 3,000 words long and have 8 references.
      • What you were supposed to do is go and do a bunch of research and then quote all the places you researched as your references…
      • WHAT I WOULD DO was far more lazy and biased… I would write the whole essay without looking anything up, I am quite good at creative writing after all, then after I was done I writing down all my opinions, I would go and google different things in my paper to find people who agreed with me and then I would reference them in my paper until I had the bare minimum of 8 references.
    • Instead of studying and informing myself… instead of researching for my RESEARCH PAPER… I would write down my own opinions, and find people I could quote, often times out of context, to count as references… NEVER ONCE DID I CHANGE MY OPINION OR ESSAY BASED ON A REFRENCE.
• I was a lazy college student… and I think there are many pulpits filled with lazy and heretical pastors who do the same thing, but with sermons… they write down their own opinion then find the bare minimum number of scriptures to add in so they can say their sermon is Biblical.
• Then they preach on the same 5 topics every Sunday because they honestly don’t know that much about scripture, and they just repackage those topics in different ways.
• But when you preach through scripture, as we do at CLC, or at the very least have a sermon based on and full of and guided by scripture… as any one who Love’s God’s Word should do… Then God’s word changes you, instead of you trying to change it.
  • There have been countless times that I have had to stop halfway through my sermon writing, 3,000 words in, after reading a scripture that challenges my prior beliefs… I have rewritten lines, rewritten points, rewritten entire sermons, and even changed my entire doctrine and theology on things as God’s word guides me…
    • And that’s wonderful, because I am still growing, because at CLC EVERYONE GROWS, amen?!
• And more than that, when we preach THROUGH God’s Word, line by line as we do most Sundays, we end up preaching on subjects I would never CHOSE to preach on on my own…

2 Timothy 4:1-4 NKJV  I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:  (2)  Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.  (3)  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;  (4)  and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

• You see if I am just preaching topical sermons… “well today I am going to preach on holiness, and next week on grace, then maybe a series on forgiveness”… there is a temptation to preach on what I want to preach instead of what God wants me to preach.
  • Now, Pastors who preach topical sermons will pray and seek the Lord on what to preach, and that can be very fruitful and holy… as long as it is still rooted in God’s word…
  • But when we take that approach there is a temptation to stay away from tough topics… a temptation to preach whatever the people in the church desire, to satisfy their itching ears… and then that leads to turning away from truth and following after nonsense.
    • The antidote to this is right there in verse 2… PREACH THE WORD!
• So at CLC we have preached through 1 Corinthians, then through Luke, then through Revelation, then through James, and next week we are back in Genesis…
  • And because of that we have preached on things I never thought I would ever preach on.
    • Yes we preached on holiness, and righteousness, and forgiveness, and blessings.
    • And yes we preach the gospel every Sunday, because the Gospel is for everyone.
  • But we don’t just preach those sermons, because we are a church that goes all in, it means we are a church that preaches ALL of the word.
    • And so I have preached sermons about Nephilim, giants that were produced through women and demons making babies… and I have preached on the four horsemen of the apocalypse… I have preached on weather or not men are allowed to have long hair, and if women need their head covered when prophesying… I have preached on the Name of God, YHWY, and how even the demons believe and tremble… I have preached on selling your cloak to buy a sword, and not cutting off ears whenever you feel like it… I have preached on the six days of creation and how they correlate with Noah’s flood and the events that happened after.
    • We have seen Jesus in every book of the Bible and our faith in Him grows stronger with every sermon….
      • Because at CLC we LOVE GOD’S WORD!
        • And if you ever leave this place to find another church, which I hope never happens, please find a church that Love’s God’s word and preaches God’s word. Amen?!
• Finally, at CLC we love to Obey the Word of God.

Point Three – We Love to Obey the Word of God

Psalms 119:47-48 NKJV  And I will delight myself in Your commandments, Which I love.  (48)  My hands also I will lift up to Your commandments, Which I love, And I will meditate on Your statutes.

• And I will make this point quick because I don’t want this sermon to drag on, but listen we are not just a church that hears the word of God, we are a church that DOES the word of God.

James 1:22-25 NKJV  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  (23)  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;  (24)  for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.  (25)  But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

• Listen, let’s pretend you are going on a first date… shouldn’t you look in a mirror before you go on that date to make sure you are presentable…
  • To make sure your teeth look nice and are not full of white tartar and plaque build up…
  • To make sure you don’t have chocolate on your face from that dessert you ate earlier?
    • But how stupid would it be to look in the mirror, see your teeth are filthy and then NOT brush them before your date…
    • Or how crazy would it be to go on a first date with a smudge of chocolate on your forehead… your date would be disgusted thinking you had poo on your forehead!
      • No, anyone who looks in a mirror and sees something wrong FIXES it!
  • So when we look into the Bible and it shows us things wrong in our life… what madness would it be not to FIX what was wrong.
    • What madness would it be not to OBEY what God instructs us… for we know that His instructions are for our own good.
      • Church I have been a Christian for 20 years, well, I have been a BORN AGAIN Christian for 20 years. 10 of those years has been as the full time pastor of this church.
        • In those 20 years I have never seen someone obey the word of God and it turn out poorly for them.
        • I have seen HUNDREDS of people, however, disobey the word of God and it turn out poorly for them.
          • Now that is not to say that God does not have grace for the disobedient, and patience… but do not mistake God’s grace and patience for His approval.
        • Those who obey God are blessed by God.

Deuteronomy 30:9-10 NKJV  The LORD your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your land for good. For the LORD will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers,  (10)  if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

• But I think the best reason to obey is not the blessings that are promised, or the wisdom of correcting your own folly… but the best reason to obey is because we love Jesus.
  • After all, Jesus is the Word, as we read in John chapter 1… but Jesus Himself makes this clear as day in John 14:15

John 14:15 NKJV  “If you love Me, keep My commandments.

• At Christian Life Church we love Jesus, which means we love God’s Word.
  • And at Christian Life Church we love Jesus… which means we love obeying God’s Word.
• Now with that, let’s conclude our fifth and final value at Christian life church, so next week we can get back into Genesis and keep preaching through the Word of God.

Conclusion

• Church, if you ever wonder why we preach through Scripture at Christian Life Church, it is because we Love God’s Word.
• If you ever wonder why we stress obedience here, it is because we love God’s Word.
• If you ever wonder why discipleship at CLC includes Foundations notes… it is because Everyone Grows… and because We love God’s Word.
• Maybe you wonder why CLC is diverse? It is because we are a place to belong… and Scripture says there is no Greek or Jew in God’s Kingdom… and we want to be a church that looks like the Biblical church… BECAUSE WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.
  • So if God’s word says church should be diverse, then we think church should be diverse.
• If you want to know why we preach the Gospel of Christ every Sunday, it is because the Gospel is for everyone, and ALL SCRIPTURE testifies of Christ… therefore we preach the Gospel because WE LOVE GOD’S WORD.
• Why do we go all in at CLC? Because we are called to Love God with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength… and one of the best ways to know God is to read His Word… and we LOVE GOD’S WORD.
• Our fifth and final value is the anchor that holds us steady in the storm that is 2024 American Christianity… and it grounds us to the Rock of Christ… it is the belt of truth that holds the rest together… it is the sword of the Spirit that strikes down our enemy, it testifies of the Salvation that guards our head and guide our eyes, it instructs us in righteousness that is our breastplate defending our body, it is through reading it and believing it that our faith grows quenching the darts of the evil one, and it’s gospel contained from Genesis to Revelation changes our lives and drives our steps. WE LOVE GOD’S WORD!
• So before we close with the Gospel let us remember our five values at CLC:
• The Gospel is for Everyone
  • Every person, every nation, every generation.
• A Place to Belong
  • There are no outcasts in this family.
• We Go All In
  • All in for Worship, All in for Prayer, All in for Serving, All in for Christ!
• Everyone Grows
  • From the newest believer to the senior pastor, we are called to grow.
• We Love God’s Word
  • Open your Bible, read it, and do what it says.

Join us this Sunday at either 8:30AM or 10:30AM for worship followed by this message from the Word of God. Christian Life Church of Cedar Rapids. 2808 Schaeffer DR SW, Cedar Rapids, IA   52404. www.CedarRapidsChurch.com