The power of God at work in his word is a power that God intended to be exercised by the faithful ministry of his word. Ministers are sinful people who need to be rebuked, corrected, and shaped by the word that they preach. But, in God’s economy, his plan was always to have sinful people preach it and minister it to others. We must never lose sight of the call to let the word do the work, but never assume that labouring in the word and with the word is a failure to let the word do the work. By God’s incredible grace and mercy, and by his unfathomable power, he wills to work in and through his word as we minister it. 

An Uneasy Relationship with the Scriptures
As we start to explore what it means to tremble at God’s word, I want to suggest that our relationship with the Scriptures as God’s word is more complex than most of us are willing to admit. On the one hand, we know that Scripture is powerful, it is the Word of God. The preacher’s job is to get out of the way so that God’s powerful word can work in the hearts of people. We quote Spurgeon’s famous, ‘Defend the Bible, I’d sooner defend a lion. Just let the truth free and it will defend itself.’ We exhort each other to ‘let the word do the work’ and we share those wonderful stories of people who were converted just by reading Scripture. On this view, we as preachers are in danger of muddying the power and beauty and wonder of Scripture by anything that we say and do. Applying the word of God can feel like an activity where we move beyond the Scriptures and are taking responsibility for people’s godliness into our hands rather than leaving it in the hands of the Holy Spirit. However, it is easy to parrot the ‘let the word for the work’ line and naively misunderstand the power and responsibility we have in ministry. After all, we choose the books of the Bible we teach and the chunks they are taught in. Additionally, years are invested in Bible college education developing exegetical skills. Why do we invest so much time and money if the preacher is doing nothing? A moment’s thoughtful reflection should reveal that there are complex ities in what we espouse and what we do. I think we have what I might call an ‘uneasy’ relationship with Scripture.
What does it mean to be faithful Bible teachers? How powerful is God’s word? And what part do we play in bringing that word to bear and ministering it in people’s lives?
God’s Powerful Word
What God’s Word does
A quick survey of the Scriptures reveals many ways that the power of God’s word is articulated. God’s word creates. God said let there be and there was. Ex Nihilo. Out of nothing. God did not fashion the world out of what already existed. He spoke, and things that were not, suddenly were. God is the creator, and we are the creatures. God is powerful enough, simply by a word, to create. The same word that creates also reveals. The God who spoke creation into being spoke to that creation. He made himself known. He explained himself to us, his world to us and he explained us to us (1 Cor 2:11; Rom 7:7). The word which creates and reveals must also be the word that judges. A holy and pure God cannot speak to fallen and sinful creatures without them experiencing the awfulness of sin and rebellion against God (Heb 4:12-13). It is with relief that the same word that creates, reveals, and judges, is also the word which raises the dead (John 11:43-44; 1 Pet 1:23). The Word which made something out of nothing is the same Word that brings life from the dead. God’s people are declared right, forgiven, cleansed, and made holy by the work of Christ brought to bear in our lives through the Word of God. And so, the word of God is powerful enough to relate us rightly to God and to each other, and to transform us to be like the one who was raised from the dead as our Lord and friend. We believe that the word of God is powerful, but how does it do all these things? How does it reveal, judge, relate us to God and transform us?
How God’s Word does What it does
God’s Relationship with His Word
When we talk about God and his word, we speak of a relationship that is utterly unique in our experience. God’s word is not like our word in at least two very significant ways. Firstly, his words always represent him truly. There is no gap between what he says and who he is. Secondly, God is always present when his word is spoken. This is a very big difference from us. When we speak, our words can be reported by others. They can come in a letter, an email or a text that can be read and interpreted apart from our presence. But whenever and wherever God’s word is read, God is there. He is there working for salvation or for judgement.
For both reasons, God’s word is full of his power and goodness. God’s word does what God does because it comes with all the power, authority and goodness of God who is at work in his world. We live in a world where goodness and authority are opposed. In fact, goodness is what is necessary to stand up to authority because, by and large, authority is viewed as evil. Authority restricts my autonomy, and my humanness. And so, what is good is what thwarts authority and allows autonomy to thrive. Of course, we know from the Scriptures, that God’s world works in exactly the opposite way. The acceptance of God’s authority is fundamental to goodness because God is fundamentally good. There is no alternate truth, no container of righteousness, no abstract definition of good that stands over and against God in order that we might judge God; no, biblically, good is what God is. He is the origin and definition of all that is good. We live in a world that wants to define goodness apart from God, and God will ultimately judge it. But this also means that when he speaks into our world, we ought to expect people to reject His goodness at every turn. This is always the way the world has been: Satan questioned God’s goodness and Adam and Eve rejected God’s authority.
The prophets spoke and were scorned. We live in the last days when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (2 Tim 4:3-4). God’s goodness and authority are mutually entwined in his person. They are deeply related issues in all of Scripture, fundamental to our understanding of sin and the human condition. In our sin we have rejected God’s authority and in so doing rejected God’s goodness. Nevertheless, God’s word has the power to judge us, raise us, relate us to him and transform us because God is present with his word and his word never fails to reveal him perfectly – in all his goodness and power.
God Speaks Intelligible Words
They are not words that mean nothing until the Spirit changes their meaning in our hearing.
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If you ever feel discouraged about your lack of progress in the Christian life, remember the words of 1 Corinthians 15. Let the words you find there bathe you once again as you reflect on Christ’s accomplishments, rather than focusing on your failures. He died and was buried in your place. Though you feel unworthy and condemned, in Christ you are graciously accepted and reconciled. And he not only bore your sin but was also raised again to new life, objectively—for you. It has already been accomplished.

If I were to ask you to write down the most important things taught in the Bible, what do you think you might include on your list? Worship, prayer, discipleship, faith, heaven, grace, the Trinity?
Now this next question is a little harder. Which of the topics that appear on your list would you end up placing at the very top? In other words, what is the most important topic in all of Scripture? Would you be able to come up with a single answer to that question, or do you think it’s just too difficult to rank biblical topics in this way?
Jesus himself said that some matters of the law were weightier than others.
You may be tempted by the thought that because the Bible is God’s inspired word, all its precepts are of equal weight and value. Yet, Jesus told the Pharisees, “You tithe mint and dill and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). Now of course it wasn’t that tithing mint, dill, and cumin were unimportant things, but according to Jesus they apparently carried less weight and significance when compared with the much more important themes such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
There is also another passage in Scripture where a lawyer asked Jesus which of the commandments found in the law of Moses was the greatest. And as you may recall, Jesus didn’t end up saying that all the commandments were of equal value and importance, but he instead cited the words of Deuteronomy chapter 6, which says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This he said, “is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:36-40).
There is an important distinction between the most important commandment in the Law and the most important thing in all of Scripture.
Perhaps, then, following Jesus, we could say that “loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength” is the most important thing in all of Scripture. Well, if we consider carefully the lawyer’s original question, he didn’t actually ask Jesus, “What is the most important thing in all of Scripture,” but rather, “What is the most important commandment recorded in the Law of Moses?” This, as we’ll see, is an important distinction.
The thing we should notice at this point, however, is that Jesus didn’t seem to have any difficulty ranking various biblical themes in the order of their importance. And so, in light of this, what do you think every Christian should place at the very top of their list? What biblical idea should be considered the thing of first importance?
The apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian church of the most important thing in all of Scripture—the gospel.
Thankfully, we don’t have to go through the difficult process of weighing and comparing all the doctrines of the Bible in an attempt to answer this question, since the apostle Paul has already done the heavy lifting for us in the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 15:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures… (1 Cor. 15:1-4)

According to verse 1, Paul makes clear that he is writing to the Corinthians in order to remind them of the gospel of Jesus.
In many churches today the focus ends up drifting away from the gospel to other things.
Now, I’m convinced that in far too many churches in our day the gospel appears to be taken for granted. And because it’s something that many pastors simply assume that everyone already knows, over time our focus ends up drifting away to other things—things that are more practical, relevant and me-centered.
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Just as the vastness of the sea dwarfs us and makes us mindful of death, so too, according to Calvin, should the falling of rain, for God’s providential ordering of its limits is no different from his ordering the limits of the seas. 

One of the quirkier parts of the early books of Genesis for modern readers is the way in which it speaks of “waters above” and “waters below.” We first get this on the second day, when God creates the sky:
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.Genesis 1:6-8
The idea seems to recur in Gen. 2:5-7:
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Then, when the flood arrives in Gen. 7:11-12, we find waters above and below once more:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.
The idea seems inherently odd to us, given our modern understanding of the water cycle. We see all water on earth as being in constant motion, evaporating upwards before forming into clouds and coming down again as precipitation. We no longer picture a static “storehouse” (cf. Job 38:22) of water above us, distinctly separated from the water in the seas, lakes, and rivers down here. Because of our understanding of gravity, we see the primary “resting place” of water as down here on the ground, since it will always go with gravitational pull in its solid or liquid forms.
This further contrasts with a prevailing medieval/ancient Christian view of creation, which regarded God as directly holding the limits of water in place, a la Job 38:8-11. This view rested on a few medieval/ancient physical and cosmological assumptions: they viewed the cosmos as being structured as a series of concentric, Russian Doll-like spheres, and these spheres included the four elements (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire). Earth sat at the bottom, clearly being the heaviest element. But if water is lighter than earth, why then is the earth not entirely covered with water, which should naturally rise above it? The broad Christian answer was the miraculous providence of God, who held the waters back to allow for human life. I’ve described this as an ancient/medieval view, but it remained in place in the early modern era, and was that of Reformers like John Calvin.[1]
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