Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2679
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly inn all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Colossians 3:16.
THAT is a very beautiful name for Holy Scripture. I hardly remember to have met with it anywhere else—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you.” Remember, dear Friends, that Christ Himself is the Word of God, and also remember that the Scriptures are the word of the Word. They are “the word of Christ.” I think that they will be all the sweeter to you if you realize that they speak to you of Christ, that He is the sum and substance of them, that they direct you to Christ, in fact, as John says of His Gospel, that they were “written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through His name.”
Remember, also, that the Scriptures do, in effect, come to us from Christ. Every promise of this blessed Book is a promise of Christ, “for all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him, Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” They all come to us through Christ, God speaks them to us through Him as the Mediator. Indeed, we may regard the whole of the Sacred Scriptures, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, as being “the word of Christ.”
The text tells us, first, how to treat the Scriptures. ’ ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” And, secondly, it tells us how to profit by them.’ ‘In all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”
I. First, then, we are told here HOW TO TREAT THE SCRIPTURES—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
In order that it may dwell in you, it must first enter into you. It is implied, in our text, that the Apostle says, “Let the word of Christ enterinto you.” Then you must read it, or hear it, for, unless you do, you will not know what there is in it. Yet there must be something more than the mere hearing or reading of it, for some hear the Truth of God with one ear, but let it go away out of the other ear. And others are great readers, yet they seem to read only what is on the surface. The letter passes under their eyes, but the deep spiritual meaning never enters into their heart. If you read a portion of Scripture every day, I commend you for doing so. If you make a practice of reading right through the Bible in a stated period, I commend you still more. Some I know read the Bible through every year, in due course. This is well, but all this may be done and yet “the word of Christ” may never have entered into the reader!
You know how children sometimes learn their lessons. I am afraid that, at a great many schools, there is no true instruction—the scholars have simply to repeat their lessons without ever getting at the sense and meaning of them. And, a week or two after, they have forgotten all that they were supposed to have learned! Do not let it be so with our knowledge of Scripture—let us not merely know it so as to be able to turn to its different chapters, or to be familiar with certain passages in it, or even to repeat all its words. This is but to let “the word of Christ” pass by your door, or look in at your window! Paul says, “Let it dwellin you.”
So I say again that in order that it may dwell in you, it must first enter into you. You must really know the spiritual meaning of it. You must believe it, live upon it, drink it in—you must let it soak into your innermost being as the dew saturated the fleece of Gideon. It is not enough to have a Bible on the shelf—it is infinitely better to have its Truths
stored up within your soul. It is a good thing to carry your Testament in your pocket—it is far better to carry its message in your heart. But mind that you let it get right into you!
How differently some people read the Bible from the way in which they read any other book! I have seen a young woman sitting down, on board a steamboat, completely absorbed in a very suspicious looking book. I have passed behind her and passed before her, but she has not taken the slightest notice of me. Presently, I saw a tear brushed away from her eye—I knew that she was not reading the Bible—and it was my firm conviction that she was reading a novel. I have often noticed how such people let the novels get right into them, trash as they generally are—but when the most of people read the Bible, they appear to be anxious to get the unpleasant task finished and put away! In some cases they seem to think that they have performed a very proper action, but they have not been in the least affected by it, moved by it, stirred by it. Yet, if there is any book that can thrill the soul, it is the Bible! If we read it aright, we shall, as it were, lay our fingers among its wondrous harp strings and bring out from them matchless music such as no other instrument in the world could ever produce! There is no book so fitted or so suited to us as the Bible is. There is no book that knows us so well. There is no book that is so much at home with us. There is no book that has so much power over us if we will but give ourselves up to it! Yet, often, we only let it look in at our window, or knock at our door, instead of inviting it to enter our very heart and soul—and therefore we miss its power.