God’s Word Transforms
Do you know what God’s Word can mean for your life? We learned with the kids last week, that it was by His Word that God created everything. God said, let there be light, and . . . there was light. But do we trust God’s word to work the same way in our life? Do we trust that what we read in Scripture is working in our lives and that the promises there will come to pass? Do we trust that if we get a word from God in prayer, he will make it happen and lead us to it? Do we trust God’s word to do the work? God’s word can and will accomplish its purpose. If we trusted in the truth, power, and accomplishments of God’s word this much, we would be way more excited about reading Scripture and we would spend a lot more time listening to what God has to say to us in prayer.
The first thing we hear in our reading from Isaiah is that we need to seek God while he may be found and call out to Him while he is near. Right there, we are told that, at least for now, we can find God if we seek him and he will come to us if we call. It is a simple and profound truth, God is discoverable. He is here in our midst. He does want you to know him. The creator and sustainer of everything wants to be known by you. More than that, he wants to come to you. He is close by just waiting for you to call to him. We seek out a lot of things in our lives that are of nominal benefit. We call out to friends passing by, for a moment of connection, but only imagine what seeking and calling out to our creator could mean. Prayer can be that and so much more.
The amazing thing about praying to God is that if we take time and are willing to listen, God will speak back to us. I don’t just mean the way God speaks to us through creation, through situations, through Scripture, and through other people, especially Christians. God does speak to us in all those ways, but God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us, so he wants to speak to us each individually in words, in acknowledgment, in visions, and more. This may seem strange to you if you have been a Christian for a long time, but have never heard God’s voice. I will admit, for the majority of my Christian life, and even sometimes now, I can’t always hear God’s voice, or discern the difference between my internal voices and his, but there is a difference. In my experience, there are a few things that stand in the way of me hearing God’s voice. 1) I don’t always know him well enough to recognize his voice over my own. 2) I don’t often leave the time and space to actually listen and 3) I think this is the biggest one, that oftentimes I do not want to, or I am not willing to receive what God wants to tell me. Sometimes in prayer, a simple opening and willingness to follow God has opened up a plethora of communication from him. It has often been humility, patience, and faith that have led to me hearing God and as a result a much deeper and fuller relationship with God.
One of the first and most difficult things that we often need to hear from God is where we have gone wrong. Sometimes in my prayer life, I have been asking questions out of fear or selfishness, and so I need my heart changed so that I might ask the questions that will actually do good. Sometimes, I have told God who he needs to be, instead of being open to his greater good. Sometimes, I have not been willing to be who I need to be or was created to be. So, we need to be open to God’s correction, ask for forgiveness (which he gives), and seek to do better. You would be surprised at how this is often already an answer to prayer and God’s word has only worked on you at this point.
The next part that Isaiah directs us to recognize is that when we are speaking to God, we are speaking to a transcendent mind. He knows far more than we ever will. So, his word to us is far more true, exact, and knowing. The Word of God, Jesus, in Greek, is Logos, which is reason or wisdom itself. So, when we hear a word from God we can trust it absolutely because it is wisdom itself. It is truth. This is far beyond us as Isaiah says, so even when we don’t understand it, or see how it could come to pass, we can know that it will because we know God’s wisdom. Remember, it seemed impossible the Zachariah that his wife Elizabeth would have a baby in her old age, or to Abraham and Sarah at 100 years of age and for virgin Mary it would have seemed even more impossible to have a child, yet God does it – he is wiser than all of our understanding and predictive models. In fact, you might not realize it, but through history, some of the greatest leaps of science have come from visions, monks, prayer, and faithful people - even the education system itself - because God reveals his far surpassing wisdom.
God’s word doesn’t just challenge and change us, it doesn’t just reveal what is true or going to happen, Isaiah tells us that God’s word accomplishes what it is meant to. We get the vision that God’s word is like the water or snow swelling plants to create seeds and food. Already within this vision, we can begin to understand a little bit of what God’s word can do. Like water to a plant, it can nourish us, it can help us grow, it can strengthen us, it can make us fruitful, and can turn us into something that shares God and his goodness. Isaiah goes on and says that God’s word will empower us to go out in joy, it will lead us in peace, and even creation itself will sing and clap in that joy and peace. If God’s word was only to do this, shouldn’t we want it more?
Something is interesting here. Isaiah knows full well that not everyone receives God’s word, in fact, that was part of his calling at the beginning of the book that people would have their ears closed. So, how does God’s word accomplish something if people don’t listen to it? Honestly, I don’t know completely. I know God’s word can slowly work on people’s hearts. I know that God’s word changes more than just the individuals listening. I know that people’s refusal to listen has often been their own condemnation. I know that God’s word is powerful and does something to people and whole cultures, even when it is not forefront of their minds or hearts.
Isaiah’s vision gives us the idea that God’s word transforms thorn bushes and briers into myrtle and juniper. Thorns and briers hurt us, cut us, make us bleed. Where myrtle and juniper are used for food, spices, building, healing, and more. In the time to come, there will no longer be the things that hurt us, death and suffering will be no more. Right now, though, God’s word is still at work, and so when we listen to God’s word, even those things that hurt us will have no power over us, instead they can do the opposite. Take the example of Jesus’ crown of thorns. This would have hurt him, yet it was the thing that revealed to us the shape of his kingship. A loving God who suffered for us, to save and heal us. Somehow, through the work of God’s word and our willingness to trust and follow it, even the things that would otherwise hurt us, actually become avenues for healing, sustenance, and even flavour. As much as I don’t understand or see all of this, I know it accomplishes more than this because I know and trust in God’s promises and the way God’s promises have already been realized and accomplished.
That brings us to Mary. We heard the Virgin Mary’s wonderful song of faith and praise, often called the Magnificat. Here is a very young woman who had not yet seen God’s word to her realized. Mary had felt something stirring inside of her, she had seen her old cousin Elizabeth 6 months pregnant, but she was still waiting on God’s promises. Somehow she trusts God’s word. In a worldly sense, Mary would have had a lot of reasons to mistrust. Her fiance, Joseph had almost left her, because she was pregnant and unmarried her community would have ostracised her, she came from and joined a poor family that was later forced to travel long distances with no place to stay while she was 9 months pregnant. Yet again, somehow she trusted God’s word to her. She more than trusts what God said to her, she trusts what God’s word will mean for her and the world. She magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices. She knows that God has looked down on her. She knows, in the midst of her ostracisation, that one day everyone would call her blessed - and so we do. Somehow carrying this child, which would have been a struggle, was how she saw God doing great things for her.
God’s word had accomplished something in her. God’s word, Jesus, was actually living in her. This didn’t mean things were easy for her, or suddenly perfect, it was the opposite. Yet, Mary knew that God was doing something in this time and that it meant far more than the struggles she was enduring. The same is often true for us. When we hear God’s word is accomplishes something and comes to live in us. This doesn’t always mean that things are easier for us, but it does mean that God is leading us to something far greater and full of blessings. As Mary recognizes, God has been doing it for generations before us, he did it for her and now he is doing it for us.
Lastly, Mary recognizes and sings about how God’s word, promise, and ultimately Jesus’ birth are going to continue and accomplish this great overthrow where kings are torn down, the humble are lifted up, the proud wander, but the God-fearing see God's work, the hunger are filled, the rich are empty. Mary sees all of this because God has given her a promise, a word - and as the angel said to her, “No word of God will ever fail”.
God’s word to us is powerful. It has the power to create from nothing. It has the power to change us. It has the power to change others. It has the power to change the world. What is more, is that God wants to and His word will accomplish this. God is close, he wants to speak to us, he wants to send forth his word into the whole world. So let us with excited expectation read his word, pray, and know that as God speaks his words will never fail and they will accomplish what he wills.
God’s Word created everything
Does that Word work the same way in our life?
Do we trust God’s Word to do the Work?
Call on God
Pardon
Words from a transcendent mind
Word will accomplish - as the water and snow water the seed
Even when someone rejects it, it has accomplished something
Creates “seed and food”
Accomplish my desire - achieve
Some of what it accomplishes - Go in joy - leading in peace - creation will sing and clap their hands
No longer harmful plants, but spice, oil, incense, healing, construction material and more
Word is truth - trust
Filled, overfilled with joy and rejoicing
Given a new status - called blessed
Overthrown the low and the high ways
The Promise - hope - realization
Mary caught up in the story of God living into his promises - as he did for those before me
