Washed by the Word

Scripture: John 15.1-8; Acts 8.26-40; Romans 10

There’s this guy, a very influential official high in government, sitting in his chariot reading his Bible. We’re told the man is a eunuch. It’s sort of a strange scene, but it gets stranger when a guy comes running up beside the eunuch’s chariot and says, “Hey, I noticed what you’re reading - do you understand it?” The eunuch says no, why don’t you explain it to me if you can?”

That image, a guy, Philip, running up alongside a moving vehicle to ask someone if they understand God’s word, that’s the quintessential image of a teacher of God’s word. That’s what we’re supposed to do - get alongside someone who is interested in the Word of God and help them understand it better.

Are you willing to walk alongside someone? Are you willing to run for God? You are when the Word comes alive. You are if you believe the Word of God is Jesus Christ, the living Word among us.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John 12.32

“But how are people to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? . . .’How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!’. . .So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” Romans 10.14-17

The Bible by itself is just a book, a dead letter if you will. The Bible speaking, whether it be read or listened to or preached, is accompanied by the very Spirit of Jesus and it becomes the Word of God alive, able to move mountains, calm hurricanes, and turn hearts of stone to fire.

Again, “How can we hear God speak to us?” Dallas Willard says, “We will truly be at ease hearing God only if we are at home with the word of God, with his speaking through creation and redemption. Hearing God is not a freakish event.”

Hearing God must become a regular and normal event for us. That happens when we regularly open ourselves up to the living Word of God.

The Word of God does two fundamental things for us:





1) The Word of God brings us from Death to Life.

Ephesians 2.1 says that we “were once dead in our sins, which was the natural form and course of this world.” (my paraphrase) What were we dead to? We were dead to Life and dead to God.

Everything that is alive has a power to act and respond in specific kinds of relations. A head of lettuce is alive, and yet it is not alive in the same way and relation as is, say, a German Shepherd. The lettuce can’t chase a ball. But in turn, though the German Shepherd is alive it cannot type out this sermon. Not even a roomful of monkeys can do that! It all depends on the kind of life that is in a thing. The lettuce is dead to the things that a German Shepherd is alive to. The Shepherd is dead to things that we are alive to.

All human beings were once alive to God. We became dead to God through sin. All human beings, of course, can still be biologically alive, but they cease to be responsive to and interactive with God’s rule in the Universe. Humanity became like a dog in front of a laptop, a head of lettuce next to a ball. We were cut off by our sin from this kind of spiritual life. The Word of God can save us and bring us back from that spiritual death.


By his word, God makes us his companions in life, his friends. It is the friends of God, and they alone, who are really at home in the universe as it actually is.

2) The Word of God washes us clean from our sins

The extent of the dirt is amazing. The past several weeks my sons’ teams have been playing baseball, the fields have been very dry. The layer of fine dust is inches deep, so that every step on the field means kicking up dirt into the air and onto yourself. We come home from games just covered in dirt and dust after every game and practice. The water in our weekly bath gets pretty brown let me tell you! It’s impossible to stay clean in that environment. Sin is not only specific wrongdoing, but it is that dusty environment we live in when we are apart from God. It is in the very air we breathe. Only the Word of God has the power to wash the dirt away. By water and the Spirit, the living Word, Jesus Christ, gives us forgiveness, cleansing and new life.

Baptism is a one time event, but this washing by the Word must happen continually, not because we remain in our sinful, pre-salvation state, but because the effects of the dust of sin is so pervasive. It’s like trying to get rid of sand in your stuff after you’ve been to the beach. The Word must seek out every area and aspect of our minds, hearts, and lives so that the truth and love of the Spirit may change us completely into the kind of person who walks with God.





A recent report from a mental health clinic told how the removal of coffee from waiting rooms transformed the patient’s behavior. Before, when there was coffee available, there was constant bickering and even violence between patients and staff. After the coffee and caffeine stimulation was removed, the unpleasantness noticeably decreased. Like caffeine, the poisonous thoughts, beliefs, fears, lusts, and attitudes inhabiting our minds compel us to destructive behavior that we ourselves do not understand and whose source we don’t recognize.

“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12.2

In other words, wash your mind with the Word and so live a baptized life for the world to see, life as it is meant to be lived. The Word of God removes old routines of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, attitudes, imagination, and action – and in their place He puts something else: his thoughts, his beliefs, his ways of seeing and interpreting things.

“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you,” Jesus said. His very word and presence prunes us, cutting off the withered and unfruitful parts of our lives, making everything about us come alive in relation to the True Vine.



Here are a few suggestions for Reading the Written Word of God properly:


A) As we read the Scriptures we must remember that our humanity by itself will not prevent us from knowing and interacting with this God. The stories in the Bible are of people like you and me. (James 5.17) The experiences recorded there are basically of the same type as ours would have been if we had been there. Their stories are recorded for us so we might lead the kind of life demonstrated in the Bible: a life of personal, intelligent interaction with God.

B) Read with a submissive attitude.


C) Pray the Scriptures

D) Start with the most familar parts to you - Psalm 23, I Corinthians 13, John 3. Meditate upon these parts, let them work in you and through you.

E) Don’t try to read too much at once. It is better in one year to have ten good verses transferred into the substance of our lives than to have every word of the Bible flash before our eyes. "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." We read to open ourselves to the Spirit.

F) Come to your passage as to a place where you will have a holy meeting with God.


There was a busy man who decided to landscape his grounds. He hired a woman with a doctorate in horticulture and emphasized to her the need to create a maintenance-free garden with automatic sprinklers and other labor-saving devices since he was too busy to spend much time on upkeep.

Finally she stopped and said, "There's one thing you need to deal with before we go any further. If there's no gardener, there's no garden!"

"This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."