A Pastoral Exhortation
In the past
few weeks I have worked through three messages introducing a series on the book
of Revelation. As a pastor, they are directing me to treat the Bible as the
breathed-out word of God, to treat every part of the Bible as profitable for
teaching, reproving (bringing sin into the light), correcting (replacing sinful
habits with godly conduct), and training in righteousness (II Tim 3:16-17).
Pastors must
preach this word, reprove with this word, rebuke with this word, and exhort
with this word (II Tim 4:1-2), while guiding God’s people to refrain from going
beyond what is written (I Cor 4:6), and teaching about things that are not
written in accord with everything that is written (Titus 2:1).
As we seek to
live by faith in God’s breathed-out word, we must keep in mind that everything
God is working to do in using his words to lead us to maturity in Christ (Col
1:28), Satan is seeking to counteract with whatever attacks, bullying,
counterfeits, and deception he can present (II Cor 11:14).
This brings me
to the question: If it is God’s will that we “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4), and
it is Satan’s will that we do not live by the words of God, whose will is most
characterized by our relationship to the Scriptures?
If we do not
think about the two wills that are at work we fall into the deceptions of
thinking that our relationship to the word of God is only between God and us.
We think things like, “I know God wants me to be devoted to his word today, but
I just can’t get into it.” That sounds a lot better than thinking, “God wants
me devoted to his word today, and Satan wants me distracted from God’s word
today, so I will do things Satan’s way.”
While God has
breathed-out his words for us to live by, Satan is working to steal, kill and
destroy our relationship to God’s words (Jn 10:10). He is prowling around the
church like a roaring lion looking for prey, hoping to devour people’s lives (I
Pt 5:8). In the book of Revelation he is pictured as the red dragon, that
ancient serpent, the devil who is constantly and furiously trying to destroy
the work of God (Rev 12).
Here is how
God describes the people who are victorious over the red dragon: “they have conquered him by
the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (vs 11). We must come to the word of God in order to experience the
blood of the Lamb cleansing us from sin; and we must come to the word of God in
order to have words for our own testimony. As soon as believers spend some
morning time meditating on the word of God they have a testimony of how the
words that come from the mouth of God are at work in their souls. Satan will do
anything to shut down such a testimony. We must receive Isaiah’s trumpet call: “To the teaching and to the testimony!”
(Is 8:20)
As I begin
meditating on the book of Revelation today, John tells us that his part in the
presentation of this Scripture was that he: “bore
witness to the word of God and
to the testimony of Jesus Christ”
(1:2). John was actually in exile on an Island “on account of the word
of God and the testimony of
Jesus” (1:9). Let us all be devoted to meditating on the breathed-out Scriptures
so we can follow John’s example of living by every word that comes from the
mouth of God.
From my heart,
Monte
© 2012 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, Canada, V1K
1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
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