His Word Will Not Return Empty

In one paragraph

This was not a typical Sunday morning sermon working through a Bible passage. Pastor Ray walked the congregation through a sweeping chronological history of how the English Bible came to exist, tracing the long, often costly effort to put God's word into the hands of ordinary people, and closing with Isaiah's reminder that God's word will accomplish exactly what He intends. Pastor Ray opened by...

Read together

1. Isaiah 40:3 quoted as the theme verse for Old Faithful Christian Ranch's summer camp, about preparing the way of the Lord
2. 1 Peter 3:7 cited as the verse whose marginal note in Matthew's Bible became known as the wife beater's Bible, about treating a wife as the weaker vessel so prayers are not hindered
3. Isaiah 55:10-11 quoted at the close of the sermon about God's word not returning void but accomplishing His purpose, likened to rain and snow watering the earth

Talk about it

1. Pastor Ray described Jerome, Wycliffe, Tyndale, and others as people who were humble before God's word, wanting to bend to it rather than bend it to themselves. What does that kind of humility actually look like in your own daily reading of scripture?
2. The 1395 church document accused Wycliffe of giving the gospel to 'swine' by putting it in the hands of ordinary people. Pastor Ray pointed out that Jesus himself taught fishermen, tax collectors, and carpenters, not the clergy. How does that tension between institutional authority and personal access to scripture show up in your own experience of faith?
3. Pastor Ray noted that Jerome, Wycliffe, and Tyndale all invited others to come along after them and make corrections if greater scholarship allowed it. What does that kind of openhandedness about your own understanding of scripture look like in practice, and where do you find it hardest?
4. Pastor Ray said, 'Either the Bible is going to bend me, which is what I want, or I am going to bend it, which God forbid.' Can you think of a time when you came to a passage hoping it would say something specific, and it said something different? What happened?
5. The sermon closed with Isaiah's image of rain and snow that do not return to heaven without watering the earth, and Pastor Ray applied that to God's promise that His word will accomplish what He desires. Where have you seen that actually happen, either in your own life or in someone else's?