[Listen to this sermon]

The Bible is the revelation of God to us. Anything that contradicts the Word of God, as it was intended to be understood, is deception. That being said, there is a never-ending discussion of how Jesus comes to us, how he ministers to us, how he speaks to us.

In Christian circles there seems to be a lengthy continuum of thought on this. Some would seem to say that almost anything you hear in your head is a message from God – little restrictive filtering. On the other end there are those who seem to shake with righteous anger or fear if you imply there might be more than the cognitive reality of reading the Bible.

Presence

Matthew 18:20 (NIV) – Jesus
“For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV) – Jesus
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

John 14:16-17 (NIV) – H.S.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

Romans 8:9-11 (NIV) – H.S.
You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

Hebrews 13:5 (NIV)
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Fellowship

John 14:23 (NIV)
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

1 Corinthians 1:9 (NIV)
God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

1 John 1:3 (NIV)
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

1 John 3:24 (NIV)
Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

1 John 4:13 (NIV)
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

Revelation 3:20 (NIV)
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

God speaking/communicating to us

John 10:27 (NIV)
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

John 14:26 (NIV)
But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

**John 16:13 (NIV)
“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide (or lead) you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.“

Romans 8:14-16 (NIV)
...because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by [the Spirit] we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit (or to our spirit) that we are God’s children.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10 (NIV)
However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

1 John 2:27 (NIV)
As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit-just as it has taught you, remain in him.

The following four points are from “Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? The Uneasy Conscience of a Non-Charismatic Evangelical” by Dan Wallace, Dallas Seminary. I have, in places, put them in my own words

• A dominating emphasis on knowledge over relationship can produce “bibliolatry” – the Bible becomes an idol.

• The net effect of “bibliolatry” is a depersonalization of God – relationship with Christ fades and it is replaced with information, faith in our faith (not in Jesus). God becomes more and more the object of investigation and less and less the One whom we give ourselves too. every part of our being – including

• There may be an underlying, human reason we tend to not get this right. We want to stay in control. We must systematize and categorize everything – we need to break it down, reorganize it and draw a box around it.

• Many of the power brokers of evangelicalism, since the turn of the century, have been white, obsessive-compulsive males. We think the left side of the brain is God’s side and the right side was an afterthought. As a result we relegate the artistic, the creative, and those who don’t process information the way we do to a different status. Often we fail to listen to the women in our fellowship.

Does this mean knowing the Bible in any way is not the highest priority – absolutly NOT. The better we see Jesus in the Scriptures, the better we know him, the clearer he will speak. Never, never will God’s will for us be contrary to Scripture

2 Samuel 6:12-15 (NIV)
Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.