CPCBA Sermon: Words to Live By
What if the Bible isn’t simply there to prove us right? Christians can read the same Bible, believe in the same God, and still come to very different conclusions about what faithful living looks like. So how should we approach Scripture?
In “Words to Live By,” Rev. Heather Schoenewolf invites us to encounter the Bible not as a collection of verses to defend positions we already hold, but as a living word capable of teaching us, challenging us, and changing us.
The question is not simply, What does the Bible say? It is also: Are we willing to show up with enough humility to listen?
Three invitations from this sermon
Receive Scripture as a word of life - Heather reflects on Psalm 119 and 2 Timothy, both of which describe Scripture as something that teaches, corrects, strengthens, and guides. Even when God’s word challenges us, she argues, its purpose is not destruction. Scripture should never become a weapon used to diminish, exclude, or elevate ourselves above someone else.
Come ready to be changed - It is easy to approach the Bible looking for confirmation of something we already believe. The harder—and more faithful—posture is one of humility: acknowledging that none of us possesses a perfect understanding of God and remaining open to learning something we did not expect.
Read deeply, not selectively - Heather encourages us not simply to read a verse and stop there. Learn its history. Consider the language and culture in which it was written. Read Scripture in conversation with other Scripture and with the traditions of the church. Pray. Study together. Ask questions. And then listen for what the Spirit may be saying to us today.
A question to carry with you
When have you encountered God’s word—not simply read it or heard it, but experienced it in a way that changed you?
And perhaps another:
When you open the Bible, are you looking for confirmation—or are you prepared to be surprised?
Words from the sermon
“God’s word, even when it redirects us or corrects us, is never meant to destroy us or anyone else.”
— Scripture is presented as life-giving nourishment, not an instrument for harming or marginalizing others.
“Rather, we are to approach scripture with open minds and open hearts, ready to be changed.”
— Faithful reading begins with humility rather than certainty.
“If we want the Bible to reinforce our biases, we can easily find a line and twist it to make it so.”
— Heather cautions against using isolated verses simply to validate positions we already hold.
“Our challenge is simple. Engage God’s word.”
— Read Scripture, but also study its history, language, context, and meaning in prayer and community.
Read the sermon
Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Loving God, living Word, as we approach your Scripture today, may we do so with humility and awe and with an abiding gratitude that you are a God who reaches out in love to us. And so we pray that we will hear your Word, that we will be changed, and that we will live according to your love. May the words of my mouth and the meditation on all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
I’d like to invite you to take a minute to consider this question: When have you encountered God’s Word?
Now, for some of you, the language of encountering God’s Word might help you call to mind when you were at a baseball game or driving along a highway and seeing a Scripture verse lifted up and lifted out, inviting you to encounter God’s Word through that text. You may have encountered God’s Word in Sunday school as a young child, as we hope the kids are doing as they head downstairs to receive a message of God’s stories in Scripture.
But when have you encountered God’s Word? Not just heard it or read it or been taught it or been asked to memorize it, but encountered God’s Word in a way that changed your heart.
I remember a story from when I was 16 years old that, in many ways, feels embarrassing and trite. I was faced with a very difficult decision for a 16-year-old. And what that decision was is of no consequence. But I was struggling to do what I knew was right to do. I was weighing options. I was talking to family. I was leaning on friends. I was shedding tears. I was agonizing.
And then I decided to open up the Bible and see what God might tell me. And so I closed my eyes and I flipped through the pages, and I opened the book and I stuck my finger inside. And to this day, though many decades have passed since I was 16, I remember that my finger landed on the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 18, that said, when the day of evil comes—it’s about putting on the armor of God—and it invites you that when the day of evil comes to be firm and remain standing.
I remembered that this one verse that I read under the nightlight in my sister’s room, because it was too late to be up even reading the Bible according to my parents—Mom, I know you’re watching—even though it was that late at night, that verse jumped out at me as though God were coming to me to tell me directly, “Heather, hang in there. You know what is right to do. And I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to do it.”
And I did.
Now, whether it was the Holy Spirit or the heart of a teenager looking for a solution to a problem, I felt that I encountered God’s Word that day and continued from that day on to read God’s Word every day.
Throughout my life of faith, even before that night, I was taught what most of us have likely heard: that the Bible is fundamental to our faith as Christians. Now, it doesn’t matter if we grew up Roman Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the central texts of our faith.
They are, as we say, the Word of God for the people of God. They guide our prayer life. They order our worship. They lead us in our understanding. And they inspire us to not just keep our faith tucked inside of our minds and our hearts, but these words remind us that our faith is meant to be lived. That our call is to serve. That love is not to be hoarded but shared out in the world.
We know that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are how we encounter God’s teaching and understand what it is that God desires of us and this world. But we know that something else is also true, don’t we? We see it everywhere.
We see and we know that one of the fundamental challenges of our life as Christians is the fact that people can profess belief in the very same God and read the very same words of the very same texts and arrive at very different conclusions of what this might mean. Now, this is not a new phenomenon.
When the Protestant Reformation sent shock waves throughout the church, one key point of the dispute was based on Scripture. Reformed theologians wanted to push against the authority of the pope and the requirement that all of Scripture needed to be ordered and interpreted through one human. Reformers argued that Scripture belonged in the hands of the people, in the language of the people, to be read and memorized and studied and enacted by the people.
Access to Scripture did not need to be mediated by priests. They challenged those who taught that Scripture needed to be interpreted by a pope lest it be misinterpreted. But they argued that, contrary to Catholic doctrine, the pope was not an infallible authority on God. He was human, which meant that sin claimed just as much of him as it had any of the rest of us.
They argued that Scripture alone was an infallible authority of God. And Martin Luther said this: “A simple layman armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.”
Now, although Luther’s words were meant to be a corrective to a church that empowered only one to interpret God’s Word, we also know that there are two sides to every coin, aren’t there? And Scripture in the hands of other regular old sinful, imperfect people led to its own fair share of interpretive problems, too.
So what do we do?
Today we have heard two texts, as Patty pointed out, texts that point us to Scripture about Scripture. We hear what Scripture says about itself, acknowledging also the beautiful reality that the words of Scripture are what others have written about Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The psalmist, as we heard, put into writing a treatise on Scripture to instruct others on what they need in order to rely upon God and learn from Scripture. And as we read in Paul’s letter to Timothy, Paul teaches Timothy that these words of Scripture are to correct and guide and inspire him.
Now, Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in Scripture. It is 176 verses divided—and we’ve only read, as Patty said, a handful, so nine with her addition. It has a unique structure that’s hard to understand in our own English translation, for it was written and structured around the Hebrew alphabet: eight verses aligning with each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
But the structure of the psalm points to its substance. This psalm is a celebration of God’s Word itself, giving thanks and praise to God for God’s law, instruction, and wisdom that God is communicating to God’s people.
Excuse me while I grab my water.
God’s Word is celebrated as a word that brings life. And whether that word is offering instruction or rebuke, God’s Word offers direction that helps to protect and sustain and guide God’s people onward. God’s Word is a source of life.
And Paul’s message to Timothy is similar. He reminds his young protégé to remember what he has been taught, affirming the lessons of faith that had formed him since his childhood. He encourages him to stay rooted in the truth of these texts when pressed upon with other ideologies.
Paul says, “Hold fast to what you have learned,” including the sacred texts that prepared him, that readied him to receive the gospel of Jesus. “All scripture is God breathed,” Paul writes, valuable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, and equipping us with the power to do every good work.
These Scriptures about Scripture, of which there are many more in the Bible, teach God’s people that Scripture helps us to follow God. When we encounter and engage God’s Word, the fruits of that practice are our deepening of wisdom. Where ideologies fail us, God’s Word can convict our hearts and correct our actions.
God’s Word prepares us to receive with joy the good news of God at work in the world. And God’s Word strengthens us so that we might hear God calling us to do this work in the world ourselves.
And yet we name the challenge that is the challenge still today. What is it that we do about the fact, as I said earlier, that different believers believe different things, and the fact that Christians across this world, even across the city, have very different understandings based on the Bible about what it means to be a Christian and live a faithful life?
I am going to encourage us to take our clues from Scripture, which might feel like circular logic, but let’s see where it gets us.
The texts that we read for today remind us that God’s Word is a word of life. God’s Word, even when it redirects us or corrects us, is never meant to destroy us or anyone else. God’s Word is like a mother’s milk, living nourishment that helps God’s beloved children to grow.
It strengthens us. It helps us mature in our faith. And although God’s Word can be sharp and powerful, it’s not ever meant to be an instrument of harm. It is not designed to kill or to alienate or to abuse. It’s not meant to be a weapon that marginalizes another. It’s not meant to be a justification for setting one’s own self high above another of God’s beloved. It is meant to guide us and nurture us in faith.
Second, we notice that each Scripture that talks about Scripture reminds us of what we already know while inviting us to notice that we have a lot to learn. When we read Scripture about Scripture, we are challenged to engage in a posture of humility and to prepare ourselves to be changed.
Scripture lifts up the fact that we are God’s people, but in need of transformation according to God’s Word. Scripture is not a tool for magnifying our own arrogance or for suggesting that any particular human being has a grasp on godly matters that some will never know.
Rather, we are to approach Scripture with open minds and open hearts, ready to be changed, to be strengthened for faithful living, to be made new by God’s grace.
And finally, when we encounter Scripture, we are challenged to receive this gift, to engage these words of these ancient texts in a spirit of gratitude, knowing that God desires to encounter us, too.
When we find ourselves as people living in a complicated world wondering what Scripture really says about things like war or inclusion or the role of women in the church, we are invited to look at Scripture, not to set it aside. For it is only by engaging these gifts that we will learn what it says and develop not only the knowledge but the wisdom to understand God’s Word to us.
It is with this information that we can have thoughtful discussions and even constructive debates where we seek together to learn what God is saying. But we have to show up ready to learn.
If we want the Bible to reinforce our biases, we can easily find a line and twist it to make it so. If we want the Bible to be a resource that supports our own opinions, we can do the same, just as we have seen others do time and time again. If we want to find a verse that proves our perspectives, it is possible to do.
But then we run the risk of doing the kind of damage that has harmed the church for centuries and pulling us further away from the will of God.
And so we need to show up to receive the gift of God’s Word, but come prepared to engage Scripture with humility, that we might see what it really says in conversation with itself, in dialogue with the traditions of the church, as it speaks into the culture in which it was written and as it reaches into our culture today.
For it is only by acknowledging these layers of wisdom that we will draw near to the living God and receive God’s Word to us in Scripture.
Our challenge is simple. Engage God’s Word.
Read a verse or a chapter or a book of Scripture, but don’t stop there. Learn about it. Learn about its history and the language of its origin. Learn about the cultural clues that inform its meaning. And discern in community and prayer what the Holy Spirit is saying to us through God’s Word today.
For we do gather to worship a living God, through a living Word that’s here to guide us as God’s people even still.
So with fear and trembling and hope and gratitude, let us continue to celebrate and encounter God’s Word.
Let us pray.
