Isaiah 55:11: “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it.”

 

We hear this passage all the time that the Word of the Lord will not return void. When we hear this we automatically think that God’s Word is never wasted. There is power in the Word of God and whenever we use it there will be some sort of result, we may not see it but it will have some impact.

 

Is that what this really means when we say that it will not return void? First let’s look at the Hebrew word for word. It is debar, not amar.  This is a word from the heart of God.  The difference between debar and amar is the difference between saying “I am sorry,” and “I am sorry.”  Actually, you cannot tell this difference by reading it, you must hear it and you must feel it and many times you must see the person saying it. In other words you want to know if that “I’m sorry” comes from the heart or the lips.   These are words spoken from the heart of God, such words have power.  A man will call out to his wife as he leaves for work “I love you.”  She likes hearing it, it sounds nice, it is reassuring but it has no real impact.  But if the husband holds his wife, looks into her eyes, gentle caresses her cheek and says, “I love you.”  Those word have power.  They have power because he sharing his heart with her.  This wife could be feeling depressed, overwhelmed, discouraged and just those three words spoken from the heart of her husband will instantly heal all that hurt.

 

If a man speaking his heart to his wife will have an impact, then how much more will Words from the heart of God have impact and not return void when spoken to us. The word void in Hebrew is reqam which means empty, to be worthless or no value or having no effect.  I mean that is pretty heady stuff.  If you get a word dabar from God you are guaranteed it will have some effect on you.

 

So where do we get this Word from the Lord?  Where does God speak His heart?  Well, we don’t call the Bible the Word of God for nothing. Yet Christians seem to spend so little time in the Word.  At the beginning of the year pastors often hand out little pamphlets to read through your Bible in one year.  It breaks the Bible down so that if you read a certain amount of passages in one year you will have read through the entire Bible.  Many people cannot even that do and if they do they feel like it was a great accomplishment.  Yet that same person can pick up a bestselling book the same length of the Bible and read through that in one week.

 

Can you imagine that, the God of the universe, the God who created you and me, who set this world is motion spoke His heart, poured out His heart in a little book and we cannot even read through it in one year, let alone spend an hour a day reading it.  I tell people I get up at four in the morning and study the Bible in the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic for a minimum of three hours and people are amazed at that.  What is so amazing?   This is the God of the universe pouring his heart out in a book and three hours of studying in this book, breaking it down in its original languages is not nearly enough time.  Not only that every verse, every word is spoken from the heart of God.  I want to analyze every word and even every letter.  I get criticized for studying the Hebrew letters, but hey, every letter was arranged by God in its own particular order for a purpose and I cannot help but speculate on what purpose the order and even number of each letter in each word may have.  Sure maybe I often come up with nothing, but that does not mean I am not going to keep digging that well. Is it so terrible to be so in love with God that you want to grasp every little morsel you can, squeeze every bit of juice out that fruit?  Does that make me a bad person?

 

My book Beyond the Lexicon and the accompanying workbook is a guide in analyzing the Hebrew letters and their order in a word.  I am not saying there hidden messages in all that.  All I am saying is if you are bored reading the Bible then grab a copy of my book and learn to take apart the Hebrew words and see if there is anything in there that will make it more interesting. I am just giving you a pair of glasses which might help you read God’s love letter to you a little more closely and clearly, maybe you have 20/20 vision already, maybe it will help maybe it won’t but at least you are spending time in the Word.

 

My study partner suggested we see a play at one of the theaters in downtown Chicago.  She played one of the songs for me from this play.  I was not in the slightest bit interested in that type of music, it meant nothing to me. But if I used that as the basis for not wanting to watch the play I might miss out on something very enjoyable.  Until I actually see the play, listen to the development of the plot, the development of the characters analyze each character, take them apart and try to discover what makes the tick and start becoming absorbed with the action in the play, yeah, I can say I am not interested in this play.  But if I just judge the play by the music, I am not interested. I am willing to give it a chance. If the critics like it and they can charge the big bucks to watch the play and still attract an audience, then there must be something I am not seeing.

 

You know you may find the Bible pretty boring and difficult to read. But 2,000 years of reviews and the book is still on the Best Seller list, and thousands upon thousands have paid for this book with their very lives, then maybe you should give it chance, you might like the music, but there must be something to it if the entire lives of people are changed by just reading it.

 

Of course you are not going to be interested reading the Word of God with all it begats and thee’s and thou’s.  But if you take the time to analyze each verse, each word, take it apart, examine it, see what makes it tick, look at each letter you begin to experience and feel the heart of God and when you do, well I am telling you not a dabar Word in that book will return reqam, void, empty, of no effect.

 

Hey, I have a list of a dozen things I could and should be doing right now, but I have to feed my addiction, my addiction to the Word of God, the debar, the Words from the heart of the God I love.

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