Put Yourself Into It

A seminary student was showing little promise of developing into a good preacher. One day, as he stumbled through a practice sermon in class, his homiletics professor called out to him from the back of the room: “Why can’t you be more enthusiastic? Speak louder. Open your mouth. Put yourself into it!”

No better phrase could describe the energy and enthusiasm of the New Testament writers: “They put themselves into it!” They wanted us to know and love Christ as they did. And they made a particular effort to try to get us to think of Christ as the Word of God. The Apostle Peter has written,

Your rebirth has come, not from a destructible but from an indestructible seed through the living and enduring Word of God.

Then, quoting from the Old Testament Prophet, Isaiah, Peter says:

All mankind is grass and the glory of men is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower wilts, but…