Judas Walked With the Word and Traded It for Something Less

Sermon outline

The Word of God must be the final authority in a believer's life, because it is the food that makes us grow from milk to solid food, the weapon against deception, and the very Word through whom all things were made.

1. Why the Word must be your final authority

   He gives the purposes of the Wednesday training: to make God's Word the final authority over your life; to understand its power and be fully persuaded of it for yourself, not for your pastor or spouse; to know it was inspired by the Holy Spirit; to know Jesus better through it; and to understand its influence on every believer. Most professing Christians he meets during the week have not opened a Bible in years and cannot say how to grow from a four to a ten, and that is where deception gets in.

   Illustration: One woman told him the last time she read a Bible was in Sunday school, when she was still a child.

   “Deception is one of Satan's biggest trick because when you don't know truth, then it's easy for you to be deceived.”

   • Romans 10:17
   • Romans 4:21
   • 2 Peter 1:21
   • Revelation 20:7-8

2. Man does not live on bread alone

   God humbled Israel in the wilderness and let them hunger, then fed them manna, to test what was in their hearts and teach them to live by every word from His mouth. Jesus answered Satan with the same verse: it is written. The written Word is your weapon, but you cannot run to find it in the middle of the battle if you have not been meditating on it. Just as the body tells you when it needs food, the spirit grows weak and malnourished without the Word.

   “The written word of God is your weapon.”

   • Deuteronomy 8:1-3
   • Matthew 4:4
   • Joshua 1:8

3. Neither hot nor cold

   To Laodicea, the Amen, the faithful and true witness, says they are lukewarm: rich and needing nothing in their own eyes, but wretched, poor, blind and naked. On the outside everything looks fine while the spiritual condition is wrong. He stands at the door and knocks, looking for fellowship, and we must not let the world's distractions cloud us from opening it.

   Illustration: He likes his coffee hot, and if it arrives lukewarm at a restaurant he sends it back to be reheated. A Christian he spoke with that day saw nothing wrong with living with a partner outside marriage because he thought God wanted him happy, and then asked what the right way to date was, because there was no Word in him.

   “On the outside it looks like everything is fine, but the Lord in the inside that our spiritual condition is not right.”

   • Revelation 3:14-20

4. Milk: crave it, and grow

   Like newborn babies, crave the pure spiritual milk of the Word so you grow up in your salvation: have a baby's hunger, not a baby's behaviour. Every believer is expected to grow up and then teach others, and it is a problem if after years you still cannot exercise your own spiritual authority without someone else praying for you. Small indiscretions turn the milk sour and make you indifferent.

   Illustration: His eleven month old daughter now grabs and holds her own bottle when she is hungry. If his older son still cried for a bottle at nine, or held on to his old cot so the baby could not use it, they would take him to a specialist. Judas walked with the Word, loved the Word and saw its miracles, then became indifferent and traded it all for something far less.

   “Judas walked with the word, Judas saw the miracles of the word. But Judas decided one day to become indifferent.”

   • 1 Peter 2:2

5. Bread: believe the Word

   Jesus is the bread of life; whoever comes to Him will never hunger. It is one thing to know the Word and another to believe it, and nobody, not even God, can force you to believe. Choosing to believe the Word is swimming against the current, and those who build without it are building on sand. With some 35 cells to open by the end of 2025, leaders must have something deposited in them to pour out.

   “It's one part to know the word. It's another part also to believe the word.”

   • John 6:35
   • Matthew 5:13-14
   • Matthew 7:24-27

6. Solid food: by now you ought to be teachers

   Hebrews exposes believers who should be teaching by now but need the elementary truths taught to them all over again. A baby must move from milk to solids. Nobody can make you mature; you must decide to grow up, put foolish things away and put a plan into practice: read your Bible every day, tell people about Jesus, and fellowship with the Lord.

   “Nobody can make you mature. We can teach you maturity, but it's a decision that you have to make.”

   • Hebrews 5:12-14
   • 2 Corinthians 3:18

7. The authority of the Word

   In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God, and through Him all things were made; this settles any claim that Jesus was merely a prophet. Creation itself speaks, and the heavens were made by the word of the Lord. God once spoke through the prophets but has now spoken through His Son, who is the image of the invisible God and by whom all things were created, and we are in His body. The Holy Spirit leads new covenant believers and only confirms the Word you have put inside you.

   Illustration: Saying you went up and down the stairs a thousand times looking for a charger when it was four times is a small lie that trains your spirit not to believe your own words. Correct yourself quickly, because if you cannot believe your own words you will struggle to believe God's. A woman who demanded to hear God's audible voice moved away from Scripture and was led astray by a voice close to, but not, the Word.

   “If you cannot believe your own words, how can you believe God's word?”

   • John 1:1-3
   • Psalm 19:1-4
   • Psalm 119:105
   • 1 Timothy 4:2
   • Psalm 33:6
   • Psalm 119
   • Hebrews 1:1-2
   • Romans 8:14
   • Colossians 1:15-16
   • Colossians 1:27
   • Romans 10:8

8. Sow the Word and it will grow

   When you eat, your only job is to chew and swallow; the body does the rest. Your job is to take in the Word, meditate on it and speak it, and your spirit knows what to do with it, so that it rises up when you need it. The farmer sows and the earth brings forth fruit without him knowing how. Zero put in, zero comes out.

   Illustration: He keeps Bibles and Chronicles in his car to give away. A young man he gave a Bible to in Chinatown later wanted revenge on the man who killed his friend, read Jesus' words on forgiveness in Matthew, and said those words were the only thing that kept him from doing wrong.

   “Zero put in, zero comes out, something put in, something comes out.”

   • Mark 4:26-29

In this message