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Scripture Reading: 2 Tim. 3:16-17; John 6:63; Matt. 4:4; Eph. 6:17-18; 1 Tim. 2:4
We have seen that in nature the Scripture, the holy Word, is God’s breath. The function of the Scripture is to unveil, to roll away the veil. Proper teaching is always a kind of unveiling. After the unveiling, we have conviction, correction, and instruction in righteousness, “that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17).
Let us now go on to consider further another important verse related to the nature of the Bible—John 6:63. Here the Lord Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” This indicates that the Lord’s words are the embodiment of the Spirit of life. When we receive His words by exercising our spirit, we get the Spirit, who gives life.
When we read the Bible, we should receive life; and when we teach others concerning the Bible, they should receive life. If we do not receive life when we read the Bible, something is wrong. In our reading of the Bible, there may be no spirit; and in our teaching of the Bible to others, there also may be no spirit. For there to be no spirit means that there is no life. We may read a portion of the Bible, several verses or a few chapters, without receiving the life supply. The reason for this lack of supply is that in our reading of the Word there is no spirit. If we do not sense the Spirit as we are reading the Bible, we should realize that something is wrong, and then we should adjust ourselves.
In the same principle, as we are teaching the young people in the Summer School of Truth, we need to check whether there is any spirit in our teaching. If there is no spirit, we should change our way of teaching. Teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth should not be the same as teaching a class in a secular school. In a secular school there is no need of spirit, but in our summer school there is the need of much spirit.
From experience we know that in order for there to be much spirit in our reading and teaching of the Bible, we need much prayer. We must be a person of prayer. In other words, we must be a person who is continually breathing the Lord, a person who is always inhaling God. Our reading of the Bible should be a kind of inhaling, and our teaching of the Bible should be a kind of exhaling. As you are teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth, you should be exhaling God into your students.
The Bible is God’s breath, this breath is the Spirit, and the Spirit gives life. When you breathe the Spirit, you receive not only unveiling, rebuking, correcting, and instructing—you receive life. Whenever you touch the Spirit as you are reading the Bible, you receive life. Likewise, as you are teaching in the Summer School of Truth, you need to touch the Spirit. You should have the sense that you are touching not only the Spirit but also the spirits of your students. You should have the sense that you are exhaling God and that they are inhaling God. This means that there is a communication between your exhaling and their inhaling. This indicates that your way of teaching is right, for you are exercising to minister life to the young people.
In teaching the Bible to others, you must be very strict with yourself, adjusting yourself again and again. During one class session you may need to adjust yourself a number of times. If you experience failure the first few times that you teach, you should go back to the Lord with much prayer. Pray yourself into the Lord, breathing God into you. Then, having become a praying person, a person who inhales God, go back to your class and exhale what you have received of God.
In Matthew 4:4 the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.” Here we see that the word that proceeds out through the mouth of God is our real food. This indicates that the Bible is not only for life-imparting but also for nourishing. When you teach the Bible to others, you should nourish them. I hope that all the young ones in your class will have the sense that they are not only being taught but also being nourished. Whether or not they are nourished through your teaching depends on you.
The instructors in today’s seminaries may claim that they are teaching the Bible to their students. Yet most seminary students are being starved to death. They receive no nourishment, because their instructors teach the Bible in a wrong way. They teach the Bible in the same way as instructors in secular schools teach subjects such as geography, history, science, and mathematics. Thus, there is no nourishment. Our way of teaching must be different. When we teach the Scriptures to the young people in the Summer School of Truth, we must nourish the students with the life supply, with words that proceed out of God’s mouth.
We all need to be living persons, those who are living channels with the words of God proceeding out through us. God’s word proceeds out through God’s mouth, and we should let it proceed also out through us as a channel. When in the meetings a certain brother reads the Bible or teaches from the Bible, we do not receive any nourishment, but when another brother does the same thing, we are nourished. The reason for the difference is that the first brother read or spoke without any spirit, but the second brother read or spoke with much spirit. The principle is the same in your teaching a class in the Summer School of Truth. Your teaching must be in spirit and must be with spirit. As you are teaching, you need to be a living channel out through which the word of God is proceeding. If you are such a living channel, then the students in your class will receive spiritual food for their nourishment.
Let us now turn to Ephesians 6:17. Here Paul charges us to receive “the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.” When I was a young Christian, I did not understand how the word of God could be a sword. I understood what it means to be enlightened by the Bible, for by reading the Bible I was enlightened. To some extent, by the Bible I was also rebuked, corrected, and instructed to be right with God and man. But I did not know how the Bible could become a sword, an offensive weapon to deal with the enemy. To understand this requires spiritual experience.
It is common for Christians to be enlightened, rebuked, corrected, and instructed by the Bible, but not many experience the word of the Bible as a sword that kills the enemy. The reason for this lack of experience is that we may receive the word of the Bible for teaching, rebuke, correction, and instruction without touching the Spirit. Even unbelievers may be enlightened by what they read in the Scriptures. Also, they may be rebuked, corrected, and instructed by what the Bible says concerning honor, love, humility, and honesty. However, in their reading of the Scriptures there is nothing of the Spirit. However, if we would take the word of the Bible as a sword for fighting the enemy, we must touch the Bible in a way that is full of the Spirit.
According to Paul’s word in Ephesians 6:17, the word of God is the sword not directly but indirectly. Paul speaks of “the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.” Here we have indirectness. The sword is not the word directly. Rather, the sword is the Spirit directly, and then the Spirit is the word. This indicates that if we would deal with the enemy Satan, the Bible must become the Spirit. Without the Spirit it may be possible for us to teach from the Bible that the young people should honor their parents and ask for forgiveness for what they have done wrong. But if we would use the word of the Bible as a sword to kill the enemy, in our experience the word must be the Spirit.
At this juncture I would ask you to consider how, in a practical way, the word of the Bible can become the sword of the Spirit for fighting against the enemy. Can you give an illustration of this or a testimony concerning it? Ephesians 6:12 reveals that our enemies are the evil spirits, “the world-rulers of this darkness,” “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies.” Can you testify from your experience how you have slain these enemies by taking the word as the sword? In order to give such a testimony, we need to understand Ephesians 6:17 experientially by handling the Bible in the way of the Spirit and not merely in a mental way. I am concerned that in the Summer School of Truth you will teach the young people merely in a mental way, as if you were teaching in a secular school. We all have to learn to teach the Bible in the way of the Spirit.
Ephesians, a book on the church as the Body of Christ, talks about the Body life, the oneness of the Body (4:4), and the Body being the fullness of the One who fills all in all (1:23). We need to realize that things such as our opinion, thought, temper, emotion, natural life, and point of view are often used by the powers of darkness in the air to damage the Body life. As brothers and sisters in the church, we all have our emotion, thought, opinion, and natural life, and we all have our own point of view. Quite often we are offended, not due to the wrongdoings of others but simply due to our emotion or opinion. A chair cannot be offended, because it does not have feelings. No matter how you treat a chair, it will not be offended. However, it is easy for brothers and sisters in the church to be offended.
Due to their emotion, sisters are easily offended. Suppose an older brother speaks a word to a particular sister and she is offended because of her emotion. Then the evil power in the air comes in to take advantage of her emotion, and she determines not to forget that she has been offended. Apparently, the problem is her emotion. Actually, the problem is that her emotion has been taken over by the evil force in the air. This means that the real enemy is not this sister’s emotion but the evil spirit in the air who takes advantage of her emotion in order to damage the church life. Because of the enemy’s use of her emotion, this sister first has a negative effect on her husband, and then she goes on to have a negative effect on several others. As a result, part of the Body is poisoned. If the enemy is to be defeated in this situation, the sister must learn to receive the word as the Spirit, which becomes the sword to deal with the enemy.
This is something I have learned through many years of experience. I am not a “marble” person who cannot be offended. I have often been offended by others in the church life or in my family life. How have I been able to get through all the offenses? I get through by receiving the word as the Spirit. The word I receive as the Spirit then becomes the sword to slay the enemy. Apparently, the sword of the Spirit kills my emotion; actually, it kills the evil spirit in the air who takes advantage of my emotion. Whereas my emotion is killed directly, the evil spirit is killed indirectly. In this way I have been able to get through the offenses.
When some hear this, they might say, “Brother Lee, show me a verse that can kill your emotion directly and kill the evil power in the air indirectly.” This is not a matter of a particular verse that touches our emotion but a matter of applying Ephesians 6:17 in an experiential way. Suppose in the evening I am offended by one of the elders. Because I fear the Lord, I do not dare to talk about this with others. The next morning I rise up to contact the Lord in the Word. I do not read any verses that touch the matter of my emotion. Instead, I simply begin to read the Bible with the exercise of the spirit. I may read Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” As I read this verse, I receive the word in a living way as the Spirit, and the Spirit, which is the word, becomes the sword that kills my emotion directly and kills the evil force indirectly. Spontaneously, the offense is gone, and no damage is done to the church. However, if the offense were allowed to remain, it would cause serious damage to the church life. I believe that many of us have experienced receiving the word of God in this way.
Without the word as the Spirit to be the killing sword, there would be no way for us to be kept in the church life over the years. For more than half a century, I have been traveling, visiting the churches, and contacting thousands of saints. Without the word as the Spirit to kill all the enemies, I would not still be here ministering. If I had allowed myself to remain offended with a certain church or saint, I would have been finished with the ministry. I have been kept in the church life and in the ministry through the killing of the word as the Spirit.
Suppose a particular brother is not happy with the church in his locality. He moves to another city, supposing that he will like the church there. However, after a short period of time, he becomes unhappy with this local church, so he moves to another place. But soon he is offended by something or someone in this church, and he moves to yet another locality. Such a person cannot participate in the building up of the church. On the contrary, because there is no killing of the enemy within him, he causes the church to suffer damage.
According to Paul’s word toward the end of Ephesians, a book concerning the church, we need to receive the word of God in a living way, that is, receive the word as the Spirit. The Spirit will then become the killing sword. This sword first kills us directly and then kills the power of darkness in the air indirectly. We may compare this kind of killing to the effect of an antibiotic on the germs that cause illness in our body. In order for our body to be saved, the germs need to be killed by an antibiotic. The word that we receive in a living way as the Spirit is a spiritual antibiotic that kills the “germs” within us. When the germs are killed, the evil forces in the air have no way to take advantage of us. Then we can live a healthy Body life, a healthy church life.
This is the way I have been preserved in the church life and in my ministry for so many years. Apart from the killing of the word as the Spirit, my ministry would have been terminated. Once again I would emphasize that we need to receive the word of God in a living way so that in our experience the Spirit becomes the killing sword. When the word becomes the Spirit, the Spirit becomes the sword—the sword of the Spirit that kills the germs in us and the evil spirits in the air. In this way the Body, the church life, and our ministry are saved. This will enable our ministry to have a long life. However, the ministry of certain brothers has not lasted long. In their situation it was their ministry and not the enemy that was killed.
Let us all receive the word of God in a living way! As long as in our experience the word becomes the Spirit, the word will not only heal us but also kill the enemy.
All those who teach in the Summer School of Truth should help the young ones not merely to receive the word for the learning of certain biblical truths but to receive the word as the living Spirit. When they receive the word as the living Spirit, in their experience the Spirit will become the sword. Receiving the word in this way requires much prayer. This is why we need to have the proper pray-reading. Through pray-reading the Bible, we receive the word in a living way as the Spirit.
In 1 Timothy 2:4 Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth.” Today it seems that most Christians bring others only into God’s salvation; they do not go further to bring them into the full knowledge of the truth. The purpose of the Summer School of Truth is to bring our young people not only into God’s salvation but also into the full knowledge of the truth. In this verse truth does not mean doctrine; it means reality and denotes all the real things revealed in God’s Word, which are mainly Christ as the embodiment of God and the church as the Body of Christ. Every saved person should have a full knowledge, a complete realization, of these things. In our summer school we should endeavor to bring the young people into the experiential knowledge of the reality of the Triune God. In order to do this, we ourselves need to be persons who are in this reality.
