Come on in. God has never promised to bless my words, but He has promised to bless His word. He said it will not come back unfruitful. Therefore, the task of a preacher is to set God’s word before God’s people, so that we may be fed and we may be nourished. Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and Colin, at the heart of this ministry is the proclamation of God’s word… It’s absolutely the core conviction of everything that we do… And I wouldn’t dare to try and preach a single sermon if I didn’t believe this with all of my heart. I mean, how in the world are you going to sit down there with a bit of paper and try and write something that’s going to address the needs of a vast number of people, with all kinds of diverse situations? I mean, it’s impossible. You could have the audacity to even attempt that kind of thing, but the reality is that the Bible, it’s not some kind of an empty box. It’s like a full treasure chest and you open the Scriptures and the riches of God’s word actually speak into the realities of all of our lives in multiple ways, and simply to be able to open the word of God, and to hold it up, and to share it in its meaning, God uses that in an extraordinary way. And it’s not only in preaching sermons. For all of us as believers, where we can appropriately share what God has said in the Scripture, we are always going to be saying something that is good and relevant, and God will bless it. So, let’s do just that. If you can, join us in Romans chapter 10 as we continue the message, Listening to the Word of Christ. Here’s Colin. You may be thinking at this moment, OK, I’ve come to church this weekend, and I’m facing all this stuff in my life, and the last thing in the world I need is a sermon about how to hear a sermon. The last thing I need is a message about how to hear the Word of God. Can you consider the possibility friend that that may be exactly what you need? That what God is saying to you from the scriptures right now is that your greatest need is not for a quick fix for the problem that’s uppermost in your mind, but for you to develop a regular pattern of receiving the Word of God into your life with faith so that you will bear long-term fruit that you have not been bearing for years. You never know what God is going to say to you, but you know what he’s going to say it to you from. It’s through His word. Let me encourage you, just with a couple of practical things before we move on here. These are just practical things that I and others, many others here, have found very helpful. If you’re going to come expectantly, bring a Bible to church. Just bring a Bible to church, not any Bible, not the smallest Bible you can find with the smallest print in all of the world. Bring your Bible. Have one Bible. I just commend this to you. Have one Bible that you get to know over a couple of years or three years, and once you wear it thin then get another one. But use our times together to discover your Bible. I’m assuming that you have a hunger and thirst for God’s Word. And bring a pen and a paper to write down what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. I’m not suggesting that you… you write down everything in the sermon. That’s not the point, that’s not particularly important. But if you are expectant that God will speak to you as you sit under the ministry of his Word, then it makes sense that you would want to capture what He is saying to you, and where you need to think further and to follow through. Listen, folks. I do not go to breakfast with the church chairman without a paper and pen. Why? Because I know that when I have breakfast with the church chairman to whom I am accountable, he is going to say some things that I need to follow through on. I just know he’s going to do that. And I don’t want to mess up. I take him seriously. Now if that’s my disposition when I’m listening to the words of a man to whom I am accountable, how much more should that be my disposition when I am listening to the Word of God? Don’t be a passive listener when God is speaking. Come to the settled conviction that God speaks through His Word. I’m expecting God to speak to you. And here’s a second thing – come with a hearty appetite. You know when Jesus says man shall not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God He’s making the connection between the analogy of food and God’s words which are like food to us. He’s inviting us to think about God’s Word as a nourishing meal. So I think of it this way that the preacher’s task is to prepare for the people of God every week a nourishing meal from the Word of God. The table should be spread in a way that is attractive. The food should be placed where it is accessible to the guests. Most of all what is served should be the nourishing food of the Word of God because God’s people are certainly not nourished by the dry bones of a preacher’s opinions, nor are we nourished to eternal life by the preacher’s latest thoughts on how to improve your marriage or how to get better self-esteem. God – think of this – God has never promised to bless my words, but he has promised to bless his Word. He said that it will not come back unfruitful. Therefore the task of the preacher is to set God’s Word before God’s people so that we may be fed and we may be nourished. That’s what’s happening here. But when the meal is prepared and when the meal is served what’s our part? Come with an appetite. Come hungry. Come, all you who are thirsty, Isaiah says, come and eat. Listen to me. Notice the connection between the Word and the food. Listen to me and your soul will delight in the richest affair. You say, okay, how do you develop a healthy appetite? Here’s how. Use the pressures of your life to increase your appetite for the Word of God. That’s how you do it. Use the pressures of your life to increase your appetite for the Word of God. You’ll not be a passive listener then. You say, where do you get that from? You’ll find it all over the Psalms, everywhere. Let me give you just three examples. Psalm 42, here’s an appetite. Where did he get that appetite from? My tears have been my food all day long. So he uses his tears, his grief to increase his appetite to receive from God. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That’s some appetite. Where does it come from? Answer, for in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling you see. I’m facing trouble, therefore I need to draw near to God. I need to hear from Him. I need to be strengthened by Him. Psalm 73, as for me, it is good to be near God. There’s an appetite. Good to be near God. Where does that appetite come from? My feet had almost slipped, my heart was grieved, my spirit was embittered until I entered the sanctuary of God. You can use the pressures of your life, whatever they are, to increase your appetite for the word of God. Folks, if everything in life was apple pie, I might not feel this hunger and thirst for God, but the truth is I face great pressures. So sin are many. Therefore, I am hungry and thirsty for God. So to use the pressures of your life, whatever they are. Sometimes, here a pastor’s saying at the beginning, you know, in a call to worship, now let’s just shut out all the realities of our daily life just for this time with God. That’s impossible. We don’t come here to kind of have a little retreat, a little vacation from all the realities of life. We use the realities of life to increase our appetite for the Word of God so that we come hungry and thirsty to receive from His hand. So cultivate this settled conviction that God speaks through His Word. Come with a healthy appetite. Use all that’s weighing on you right now to increase that appetite. Here’s the third thing. Learn to use a knife and fork. You’re listening to Open The Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called Listening to the Word of Christ. And today, it’s a message all about how to listen to a message so I hope you’ll stay with us for the second part of the programme. It’s part of a series called the Anatomy of Faith and if you ever miss one of the series or if you want to go back and listen again, you can always do that by coming online to our website openthebible.org.uk. There you can hear any of the previously broadcast messages. You can also find a link on our website to the Messages as Podcasts and that’s another way to catch Pastor Colin Smith’s teaching. You’ll find us on all the regular podcasting sites. So today, we’re in the letter to the Romans chapter 10 as we return to the message listening to the Word of Christ. Here’s Colin. So, cultivate this settled conviction that God speaks through his Word. Come with a healthy appetite. Learn to use a knife and fork. By the way, I could make a case that no American knows how to use a knife or fork, but that’s beside the point. Here’s what I’m getting at. Infants need to be spoon-fed. At some point in your life, that was true of you as it was for me. My mother tells me about how I did very well except when there were baked beans and she said, blech! We just never took them down. Spoon-fed. The rest of the family were sitting at the table eating. And you were in your high chair with your food ground to pulp and your mother or your father or perhaps a sister or a brother feeding it to you with a spoon. But it was not long before you learned to use a knife and a fork. Listen, the preacher’s task is to prepare the meal. But when the dinner is served, it is your task to use the knife and fork to eat what is laid before you. You can sit at a table lavishly laden with a banquet. You can come to that table really hungry. But unless you use the knife and fork, whatever is on the table and however hungry you are, you will not be fed. Now, I’m using a picture here, so what am I trying to say? Here it is. When the word of God is preached, you need to make the applications of truth to the particular circumstances of your life. Let me say that again, because it’s so important. Here’s what it means to use the knife and fork. When the word of God is preached, when it is served to the table, when it’s laid before you, you need to use the knife and fork to make particular applications to the unique circumstances of your life that are different from anybody else’s. You say now, wait a minute. Isn’t it the preacher’s job to give me the applications? When God spoke to me this week about patience from 2 Timothy and Chapter 4, I was sitting in an auditorium with seven thousand other people. Seven thousand situations where patience is needed. Seven thousand situations where in some way impatience is being displayed and all of them different. And that’s on the assumption that each of us only has one. I could think of at least three! It would be impossible for any preacher to make every application to every life situation in the congregation, and if it was possible, folks, it would be interminable! We’d be hearing to tomorrow and the next day! The Holy Spirit is given to you so that you may have wisdom to apply the Word of God as it is being taught to the particular circumstances of your life that the speaker may never even be aware of. Infant Christians want to be spoon fed. You know them. Because they are always saying, what’s the bottom line? Here’s the takeaway, give me the takeaway, they say this time and again, you know, give me the application as if there was only one. And you know what? When the preacher is lulled by that kind of spiritual infancy into reducing the Word of God to a short list of to do’s, you know so all of us have got to go and do this or do that or whatever else it is, it obscures the unique way in which God, by the Holy Spirit, takes the one Word and applies it in different unique circumstances of human life in more ways than either the preacher or any individual hearer could ever begin to imagine. Only God can do that.’ Listen, God is not building robots. He is raising sons and daughters who hear His Word and develop the capacity to apply it to the particular uniquenesses of each individual life and so to respond to it with faith and with gladness. So, folks, there are two acts of faith involved in the communication of God’s Word. There is an act of faith in the speaking flowing from the conviction that God speaks through His Word. I would never dare to preach if I didn’t believe that, because how on earth could I say something that meets the needs of people? God speaks through His Word and by His Holy Spirit he is able to apply that Word in more ways than I could ever think up in my entire life. And there is an act of faith involved in the hearing of God’s Word, in which you ask the Holy Spirit to show you how the Word applies to your particular circumstances of life, just as when I heard from 2 Timothy, Chapter 4 and verse 2 and it came to me with freshness, to do all your work with great patience. I saw several ways in which I needed to apply that in my circumstances of life, and no doubt 6,999 other people had to use their knife and fork to apply it to their situation that no doubt was quite different from mine. Come with a settled conviction that God speaks through His Word. Come with a healthy appetite. Learn to use your knife and your fork. Come to the Word of God with faith, and your faith will increase. Without faith, it will never do you any good. For to whoever has, more will be given. That’s what Jesus said. That leaves one last question in these last moments and it’s this. You say, well, wait a minute. What if I have no faith? How can I bring faith to the Word of God if I have no faith? How can I ever derive any benefit here? I have no faith? Listen to this text one more time in this last moment. Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. Here’s the amazing mystery that God not only sustains faith through His Word, but He creates faith through His Word. You may have no faith today, but what this verse tells us is that God is able to create the capacity for hearing in you which will produce faith in your life. God creates by speaking. That’s how the world was created, and that’s how faith comes. You are in this situation. You have no faith, but you are hearing the Word of God that points us to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And what God is telling you is this. Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God. If you are saying, I have no faith, where do I go from here? Here’s three things you can do. You place yourself regularly under the Word of God. You read it. You listen to this Word. And don’t listen to it as if it was the Word of men, but it is the Word of God. Come with that settled conviction. Come with an appetite. You know that you need. So place yourself under the ministry of God’s Word as you are right now. Second, recognize that you need God to do something in you that you cannot do for yourself. You need Him to give you ears that can hear. You’ll want to come to Him today, and say, Lord Jesus, I need You to change me, because otherwise I will be the kind of person you spoke about who is always hearing and never understanding, always seeing and never perceiving. Lord Jesus, You said He who has ears to hear, let him hear. I need You to give me ears that will hear. I need You to do for me what I cannot do for myself. And you know, when you come to that place, faith has just been born in you. You’re beginning already to reach out to Him because you see that you need Him to do what you cannot do for yourself. The very last thing then, look to Jesus Christ. It’s so significant that Paul says here, faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the Word of Christ. The whole Bible is about Jesus Christ. The message of this book, that although you are a sinner, or although you are a rebel, and your rebellion is seen most in your unbelief, God loves you and has sent His Son into the world for you, who died as an atoning sacrifice for your sin, and was raised again on the third day and lives with power so that He is able to create in you what you do not have by nature. And when you see this Christ and see that He is for you, you will be drawn to come to Him, even today and to say, Lord Jesus Christ, save me. Give me what I do not have and make me one who is united to you in the living bond of faith. That’s a fantastic message today. Come to the Word in faith and your faith will increase. So the message today is all about how to listen to a sermon. It’s a message called Listening to the Word of Christ, part of a larger series called The Anatomy of Faith. And if you ever miss one of the series, you can always catch up, or go back and listen again online. Come to our website OpenTheBible.org.uk. You can also find our messages as podcasts. Go to your favourite podcast site, search for Open the Bible UK and subscribe to receive regular updates. Also on our website, and available as a podcast, is Open the Bible Daily. And that’s a series of short 2 to 3 minute reflection pieces based on Pastor Colin Smith’s teaching and read in the UK by Sue MacLeish. There’s a new one posted on our website every day, or if you prefer, as a podcast. And it’s a great way to start the day, just 2 to 3 minutes reflecting on hearing the word of God today. Again that’s on our website OpenTheBible.org.uk. Open The Bible depends on the generous support of our listeners. And if supporting Open The Bible financially is something you’ve been thinking about, we have an offer for you this month. If you are able to setup a new donation to Open The Bible, in the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to thank you by sending you a new devotional by Pastor Colin Smith. It’s called Green Pastures, Still Waters. And like today’s message, it’s based on Psalm 23. Colin, why did you write this devotional? This goes back to the pandemic and in these dark days, I guess along with every other pastor, I was asking the question, what will help and encourage God’s people to get through these difficult days? And I turned to Psalm 23 and just found such joy and help in mining the wonderful treasures that are in this marvelous chapter of the Bible. And my colleague Tim Augustine has now arranged that material in the form of a 31-day devotional and I’m just delighted that we’re able to offer this. Looking at the Lord Jesus Christ through Psalm 23, will bring strength and encouragement and peace and joy. And to do that for 31 days, to meditate on one of the best known and best loved Chapters in all of the Bible and to get our eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ. So, if you need some encouragement, Green Pastures, Still Waters is going to be a great help to you. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of Pastor Colin Smith’s devotional, Green Pastures, Still Waters, all about Psalm 23, to say thank you if you’re able to set-up a new regular donation to the work of OPEN the Bible, in the amount of £5 per month or more. For all the full details, on our website, that’s openthebible.org.uk For OPEN the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I am David Pick and I hope you’ll join us again next time. There’s a direct connection between faith and serving. Serving well, the Bible tells us, will give you a more confident faith. Find out why next time on Open the Bible.