# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1995_S85 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) listeners to see me not as one standing above them, nor, God forbid, standing above the Word, rather that they see in me, and hear in me, a fellow pilgrim, a fellow learner. And one who is trying to be like the Old Testament patri- arch Jacob, a wrestler with God. The wrestling occurs during the sermon’s writing. With patience.and persistence and determination. I will not. let God, who is present in the biblical text go until He blesses me. That is, I want the victory of having received some morsel of understanding from His Word for my spiritual growth. - Then my congregation will hear in my voice my having been admonished by some word from God in the biblical text. And they will also see by the smile on my face and the lilt in my voice that God through His Word has gifted me again with forgiveness, comforted me, and thereby raised me up to better serve them with some nourishment from God’s banquet table of salvation. One of the greatest compliments I feel I ever got from a young parishioner is when he said to me after a service, “It sounds like you really believe that stuff.” I do! Well, these are just some of the things I want to receive personally and professionally through growth in the Word: Power emanating from God’s presence in the Word, Confi- dence! Courage! Spiritual authority! In summary, I want to be an effective instrument of the Word. Part 2 How It All Comes About How does this all happen? To use some bad grammar, “It ain’t easy.” Yet when I am faced with the choice of ei- ther taking the stairs or taking an escalator, I think you know which one I prefer. But, as many of you business peo- ple out there already know on the road to success, the first sign you will see is “be prepared to stop and pay the toll!” Christ tells us to be prepared “to bring forth fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:15). Perseverance is a form of pa- tience. We need to pray often for the gift of patience. We need to be patient with the way God is working in our life, and we need to be patient with ourselves and others as well! Growth takes time. (When God wants to make an oak tree, He takes a hundred years. When He wants to make a mere squash, He requires only two months.) We all are still work in progress. Sometimes I’m asked, “Is there one best way to grow in the Word?” Meaning. “Is there one best way to study the Scriptures?” . Realtors tell us that there are three things that help to quickly close a sale on a property: location, location, loca- tion. _ (A) There are also three things that we always need to do to successfully grow in the Word: read, read, read. But with this continual reading there must always be a certain attitude. We need the attitude that we have not uncovered all the nuggets of truth that God has in the text, for there is al- ways something new that we can learn! Our purpose in reading is not to “master” the biblical text, but that God, through the biblical text, would “mas- ter” us. We come, therefore, to the Scriptures, always with CONVENTION ESSAYS 85 a prayer to God that He would open our ears to hear and hearts to receive whatever new thing we need to be taught. Only then will we have come to any section of the Scrip- tures with the necessary “teachable spirit.” You remember that Jesus said to His disciples, “You must become like little children” (Matt. 18:3). Those with the most teachable spirit are young children. They have no difficulty with putting themselves into a Bible story. They come to a text with such innocence of eye that by their questions they get us to look at the text from an entirely new perspective. I'll never forget the time a child asked me, during a les- son regarding the priest Zechariah in the temple, “Where did all the smoke from His incense go?” Since then, I, too have attempted to adopt the child’s in- volved attitude toward a Bible story. I’ve thought, for ex- ample, about the little boy whose lunch Jesus used for the feeding of the five thousand. When he went home and his mother asked him if he had eaten all the lunch she packed, what did he say? “Mom, I think you better sit down—lI got a whopper of a story to tell ya!” And there are other questions you might come up with, such as, “How did the wisemen feel kneeling in worship be- fore a crib? And whenever Joseph was praying to God, did he ever look up and wonder why Jesus was listening so in- tently?” The more you meditate upon the Word, the more you savor it like a good wine, the more its richness will unfold upon your palate. After all, we are invited to “taste the Lord and see that He is good!” (Ps. 34:8). (B) Doesn’t He want to be good to us? The answer will be given to you through knowing what the Bible’s primary purpose is. It is like the setting for a great diamond. When for some reason that “diamond?” is not seen in its center, as for example, when the Bible is treated merely as a book that encircles us with moral laws, then the most precious purpose for its existence is missing from our sight. One way or another, all that is recorded in the Scrip- tures is related to God’s redemptive plans, centered in, seen most fully and accomplished forever in Jesus Christ. For this reason Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is these that bear witness to me” (John 5:39). There can be no growth in the written Word without a continuous focus on the incarnate Word. For this reason the apostle Peter tells us, “But grow in the grace and knowl- edge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Through the Bible the Holy Spirit brings Christ to us. So, whatever Christ would say to-us today, He says through the Bible. Do you know that of the 99 names of God in Islam, not one of them says, “God is love”? That God has an intense, personal, self-giving, totally involved love for us is the unique revelation of the Bible and the focus of Jesus’ self- communication: Because “God so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son.” In so doing, our heavenly Father has delivered to us the most precious jewel in heaven’s crown. The only diamond that is forever.