That Word Above All Earthly Powers – Nancy Guthrie on How God’s Word Makes All Things New

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Nancy Guthrie

   And still that Word above all earthly powers is speaking. In the final pages of the Bible, we hear him say, “Behold, I am making all things new. Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” We’re told a lot of things by untrustworthy sources, by people who have an agenda. But here we’re presented with a truth that is solid enough to build a life on. Now, the person speaking does have an agenda. His agenda is blessing, and his means of accomplishing this agenda is pervasive, permanent newness. This is the newness that we long for in a world in which everything breaks down, everything wears out, a world in which everything is impacted by the curse.

2. 00:58

   Nancy Guthrie

   The promise here is not that God is going to make all new things, but rather that all the things in his creation that have been impacted by the curse are going to be restored, renewed, resurrected. [End of cold open]

3. 01:16

   Nancy Guthrie

   I confess, it was my idea to get our adult son a puppy for his birthday last year. But what I didn’t anticipate was that two months after getting him the puppy, he would move temporarily to a place where he couldn’t have the puppy with him. And we had been very happy no-pet people for at least ten years when our son’s dog Farley came to live at our house for a while. Our house with its white couches and shiny wood floors, lack of fencing, and empty-nester lifestyle. We quickly realized we were going to need some help with Farley. So I hired a dog trainer.

4. 01:57

   Nancy Guthrie

   But here’s the thing. Dog trainers aren’t really for training the dogs. They’re for training the people. And this dog trainer was excellent, but her students, not so sharp. Our son got Farley from a rescue, so we weren’t exactly sure about his pedigree. But after investing in a doggy DNA test, we now know that he is a Treeing Walker Coonhound. And I’m sure he’s very trainable, but we haven’t done so well with it. He’s incredibly smart.

5. 02:30

   Nancy Guthrie

   He knows words. You just say “stick,” and he races to the back door to go out and have the stick thrown to him. You just say “treat,” and he trots to where we keep the treats. You say, “Where’s your ball?” and he’s digging under the couch to find it. So we know that he knows what “down” and “drop it” and “come” and “get in your crate” mean, but he doesn’t necessarily do these things when we tell him to. Our words seem to have very little power in his life, especially when he has one of our socks in his mouth and doesn’t want to let it go.

6. 03:09

   Nancy Guthrie

   We’re here to talk about that Word above all earthly powers. There is a word in this world that does have power. This word always accomplishes what it intends, and we are so very glad for that.

7. 03:30

   Nancy Guthrie

   This word first spoke into the world saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light. This word has the power to create newness. Just by speaking it into being, the world was made. With a word, the Lord brought form to the formlessness, light to the darkness, and filled up the emptiness. By his words of instruction, he filled the man and woman’s lives with purpose and meaning. They were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They were to exercise dominion over the created order, including over creeping things. They were free to eat of every tree in the garden except for one. He said, “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

8. 04:16

   Nancy Guthrie

   Now here was a threatening word, and it was not an idle threat. In the day they ate of that forbidden tree, they did die spiritually. But God was not done speaking. He spoke a word of mercy, calling them out of hiding, clothing them with skins. Most significantly, he spoke a word of promise. One day there would be an offspring of the woman who would put an end to the curse that ancient serpent brought into the world.

9. 04:50

   Nancy Guthrie

   Here is the word of promise that made all the difference in a world now impacted by the curse. It was a word of hope. But this was a word that required waiting, a word that called for faith. With every child born, they wondered, is this the offspring God promised who will crush the head of Satan and put an end to the curse? But over and over again, we read in Genesis chapter 5, “and then he died.” Then came the judgment of the flood, and then came the judgment on Babel. It would seem that the word that was getting its way in the world was curse.

10. 05:34

    Nancy Guthrie

    Until God’s word went out to one man, a man who wasn’t looking for him or listening to him, a man who worshiped the moon god of his people. And God said to this man, Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house. Go to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing.” And here was the most amazing part. He promised, “In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

11. 06:14

    Nancy Guthrie

    So far in the Bible, we’ve had the Word with the power to create newness, and now the power to bless in the midst of a world marked by the curse. Can it be so? Once again, this word of promised blessing required faith on the part of those who received it. Would they believe the word God gave that he was going to make them into a great people when Sarah was barren? Would they believe that he was giving them the land of Canaan when Abraham died owning only a cave in which he buried his wife? Would they believe that through this family all the families of the earth would be blessed when time after time members of the family brought misery upon those around them instead of blessing?

12. 07:05

    Nancy Guthrie

    When the family ended up enslaved in Egypt, God entrusted Moses to speak his Word for him. He was to go to the world power of the day, Pharaoh, and declare to him that he had come to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Now, what could make this Pharaoh—remember, he wears the sign of a serpent on his head—what could make him release his own slave labor force? Only that Word that is above all earthly powers. Indeed, that Word that sent ten plagues, that Word that called the waters of the Red Sea to part and then close over Pharaoh’s armies.

13. 07:47

    Nancy Guthrie

    If only these people who were delivered out of Egypt by this Word would also believe that he would deliver them into the land that he had promised to them. But they didn’t, and they ended up spending forty years in the wilderness. They got hungry there in the wilderness, and God fed them. And just as the next generation prepared to finally enter the land, Moses told them that the Lord—he said—“humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know.” For a purpose. And here was the purpose: “that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

14. 08:40

    Nancy Guthrie

    The Word of God is a power that creates newness. It has the power to bless. It has the power to save a people through the waters of the Red Sea. And it has the power to sustain a people as they make their way in the wilderness to his Promised Land. What good news this is for us! That Word above all earthly powers of God’s provision—it’s God’s provision to you and me to sustain us as we live out our lives in the wilderness of this world, awaiting our entrance into his Promised Land. Nothing else can satisfy or sustain us like his Word.

15. 09:26

    Nancy Guthrie

    So how would God fulfill his promise to bless them and bless the world through them once they were in the land? Through a kingdom led by the kind of king God wanted over his people, a man after his own heart. You see, when God put David on the throne over Israel, he spoke a very significant word to him—something that would be impossible to believe had it been any other person making the promise.

16. 09:59

    Nancy Guthrie

    Nathan spoke to David for God, saying, “The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” Did you hear the emphasis? Who in the world could ever make this kind of forever promise? Only one. Only the One who has the power to bring about whatever he intends. That Word above all earthly power has the power to rule, the power of sovereignty over history.

17. 10:57

    Nancy Guthrie

    Oh, how we love and long for the rule of God’s King in our world! We long for the King who casts his shadow in King David to come, the King who will rule in justice and righteousness, and not just for a few years, but forever. The King to whom every knee will bow. We long for the Word that is above every earthly power to have its way in this world through the rule of his great King.

18. 11:38

    Nancy Guthrie

    But when we come to the end of the Old Testament, there’s no son of David seated on the throne. God’s people, they’re wondering if God has forgotten or failed in his word of promise. They’re singing, according to Psalm 89—they’re singing, “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” You see, they’re wondering if that word God gave to David that they had taken hold of in faith could really be trusted. Maybe it had failed. Maybe it had been forgotten.

19. 12:19

    Nancy Guthrie

    And then the Word became flesh. The powerful Word of God began to be spoken through human lips out of a human voice box. Yet these words had divine power. When I lean in to listen to the words spoken by the Word made flesh, I begin to realize that these are the words that have had the power to shape and direct my life. And perhaps these words have shaped and directed your life too.

20. 12:57

    Nancy Guthrie

    Both Matthew and Mark record some of the very first words of Jesus as being, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus came calling for repentance—in other words, for a turning around to go a different direction. We see him zoom in on two sets of brothers whose lives are calmly and clearly headed in one direction. And he calls them to follow him and go a dramatically different direction, the direction he’s headed, the direction of declaring the good news of the gospel all the way to the cross. He says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

21. 13:42

    Nancy Guthrie

    Now, when we hear this, we might ask, is this a word of invitation, or is this a command? What is he asking of us? Well, these men seem to know exactly what he was asking of them. He was asking for everything. Total allegiance. Whole-life devotion. Everything. Surely they must have felt the tug of the comfort and familiarity of the life and livelihood they had inherited from their father and his father before them. They had families to take care of. But you see, it wasn’t just anybody who was asking. It was the King who was calling these two brothers to leave their lives as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee behind. And so we read, “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Jesus speaks a word that has the power to call and to draw people like you and me to want to leave everything behind to follow him.

22. 14:49

    Nancy Guthrie

    As we trace the story of Jesus, we see him go up on a mountain to speak to a huge crowd that has gathered. And when he finished, we read that the crowds were astonished at his teaching, “for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” You see, they sensed it—the power, the authority, the power above any and every earthly power. They’d never heard a word like this, interpreting the law of God like this. So we see the Word in the flesh. He’s got the power to call, and he had the authority to teach.

23. 15:33

    Nancy Guthrie

    We also see in the Gospels that he had the power of his word. It could cleanse and heal. As soon as Jesus got down from the mountain, we read in the Gospel of Matthew this short account: “And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’” When I read that, it’s interesting to me that he didn’t really ask Jesus directly for healing. It’s almost as if he didn’t want to be presumptuous. He sensed Jesus could heal him if he wanted to with just the power of his word. He just didn’t know if Jesus wanted to. And I can relate to that. Perhaps you can too.

24. 16:20

    Nancy Guthrie

    It’s what Jesus did in this interaction that is perhaps even more shocking than what he said. We read that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And that immediately the man’s leprosy was cleansed. This lonely leper must have been longing for years to feel the loving touch of another human being. No one besides other lepers ever touched him anymore. It was considered too dangerous, completely taboo. But Jesus, feeling deep inside himself the pain that this leper felt day after difficult day, reached out and touched him.

25. 17:04

    Nancy Guthrie

    Certainly Jesus could have healed the leper without touching him. Jesus healed people many times just by speaking that healing into being. But Jesus reached out and touched this man that most people avoided. In reaching out to heal leprosy, Jesus is showing us something. He’s showing us that his word, his touch can cure sin. In healing the leper, Jesus is saying to us, “My power can heal you of the most destructive, deadly disease in your life.” The disease of sin. In fact, every healing miracle of Jesus’s earthly ministry points to his power to heal our deeper spiritual sickness of sin.

26. 17:51

    Nancy Guthrie

    You see, with just a word, Jesus can heal our spiritual deafness so we can finally hear him calling us to himself, calling us to serve him. With just a word, Jesus can heal us of our spiritual paralysis so that our apathy and indifference becomes a thing of the past. With just a word, Jesus can heal us of our spiritual muteness so that we finally become willing to talk about who he is to whoever will listen.

27. 18:21

    Nancy Guthrie

    But what Jesus said was not always well received, even by those who were inclined to follow him. His word that had the power to bless and call and heal—it also had the power to repel. Jesus had just fed 5,000 people with five barley loaves and two fish. And when he was done, the people said, “This indeed is the Prophet who has come into the world.” It seemed at the moment like they were willing and open to hear whatever he had to say. They think that this is the beginning of a new experience like their ancestors had in the wilderness when manna was delivered to the doors of their tents every day.

28. 19:06

    Nancy Guthrie

    But then the next day, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” But this is actually a problem. You see, they want bread from Jesus. They’re not really interested in Jesus as bread. They don’t really want to feed on him and his words. He goes on, he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven, and if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And they begin asking, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And Jesus says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

29. 20:07

    Nancy Guthrie

    Well, this is simply too much. We read that after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. And so Jesus says to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” And Simon Peter answers him. He says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Only you have the words of eternal life.” There’s something about these words of Peter that always get me.

30. 20:48

    Nancy Guthrie

    They take me back to one of the lowest days of my life, the day we buried our daughter Hope. I remember my pastor there at the grave saying, “This is the place where we ask, is the gospel really true?” And then he read these words of Peter from John 6, saying that there was no place else to go to find the words of eternal life. I remember as he read the Scripture, I could relate to those in the story who found some of Jesus’s words difficult to understand and accept and simply walked away. Perhaps you can too, as you’ve struggled to reconcile your understanding of what you’ve read in the Bible with your own difficult reality.

31. 21:39

    Nancy Guthrie

    And I remember that day standing by the grave that Jesus’s question hung in the air, not only in the ancient setting, but also between him and me. “Are you also going to leave?” he asked. I could hear Jesus, the Word, speaking to me, calling me to a commitment to trust him with this heartbreaking sorrow. I remember thinking that my only hope for ever seeing my daughter again was what the gospel tells us about how we find life that continues beyond the grave. And to not have that hope to hold on to would have been an unbearable agony. But because our hope is based on that Word that is above all earthly powers, we do have genuine hope. I have genuine hope in the face of death.

32. 22:47

    Nancy Guthrie

    But not everybody wanted to hear these words. Instead, they wanted to silence the Word. They conspired against Jesus to put him to death. And in a stunning demonstration of love, that Word above all earthly powers submitted his power to earthly powers. He didn’t have to. He could have said no at his arrest, and all those who fell on the ground when he said, “I am he,” would have been unable to lead him off to being put on trial. He could have said “Enough” when they flogged him, and their whips would have fallen to the ground. He could have said “Stop” when they nailed him to the cross, and they would have been unable to hold him there. He could have said “Save me,” and his Father would have sent more than twelve legions—72,000 angels—to rescue him.

33. 23:52

    Nancy Guthrie

    You see, that’s what everyone around him was suggesting he do. We read in Luke’s Gospel, and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One.” The soldiers mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” And one of the criminals who were hanged beside him railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” They all implored Jesus to save himself. And of course, he could have saved himself. But if he had, he could not have saved us. Instead, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

34. 25:05

    Nancy Guthrie

    Both of the thieves who were being crucified next to Jesus were spewing insults at Jesus in the beginning. And then something happened. That same powerful Word that spoke the original creation into being in the darkness did a new work of creation in the darkness of Golgotha by calling a spiritually dead thief to new life. Though the words of the thief spoken reflected this newness of life were brief, they were revealing. Here’s what he said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

35. 25:52

    Nancy Guthrie

    It’s really quite amazing that this thief, agonizing in the hot sun, struggling for breath, could look at the person hanging next to him who had been beaten and abused far worse than he had been and was clearly an object of more derision and hatred than he was, and yet become convinced that he was a king who had a kingdom. This thief was probably like most Jews in that he likely believed in a great resurrection day to come at the end of human history as we know it. So when the dying thief spoke of Jesus coming into his kingdom, he was thinking about that resurrection day that he believed was far in the future.

36. 26:37

    Nancy Guthrie

    So he must have been surprised when Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” He wasn’t headed into some kind of soul sleep or purgatory or darkness to await a day of awakening far in the future. No, that very day he could anticipate being with Jesus in Paradise, the place where all who die in Christ enjoy life in his presence as they await the resurrection. He could die in peace rather than fear, in hope rather than in despair. He took his last breath there on the cross, and when he awoke, he took his next breath in the Paradise of God. And my friend, if you have put all your hope in Christ, you can expect the very same experience. When you take your last breath here, you can expect to take your next breath in the Paradise of God, in the presence of God.

37. 27:44

    Nancy Guthrie

    That dying thief heard Jesus say, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” And with that, the world went silent. Three days of silence in the grave. But the Word couldn’t stay silent. The life couldn’t stay dead. The light could not be consumed by the darkness. Jesus rose from the grave and ascended to heaven, where he now sits at the right hand of God. And still, that Word above all earthly powers is speaking.

38. 28:32

    Nancy Guthrie

    In the final pages of the Bible, we hear him say, “Behold, I am making all things new. Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” We’re told a lot of things by untrustworthy sources, by people who have an agenda. But here we’re presented with a truth that is solid enough to build a life on. Now, the person speaking does have an agenda. His agenda is blessing, and his means of accomplishing this agenda is pervasive, permanent newness. This is the newness that we long for in a world in which everything breaks down, everything wears out, a world in which everything is impacted by the curse. The promise here is not that God is going to make all new things, but rather that all the things in his creation that have been impacted by the curse are going to be restored, renewed, resurrected.

39. 29:38

    Nancy Guthrie

    But we don’t have to wait for this newness. It’s begun now in the interior of our lives. We read in 2 Corinthians 5:17, this verse we’re familiar with, “Therefore, for all those who are in Christ, the new creation has come.” The new creation that God is creating right now, it’s not solely reserved for the future. It’s breaking into the present, into the interior of our lives. This is our great hope and certainty. That Word above all earthly powers is doing something you and I simply don’t have the power to do. It’s creating newness in the interior of our lives. It’s giving us new thoughts, new desires, new priorities. And we’re so glad, so grateful. We want to welcome that Word to do its work.

40. 30:34

    Nancy Guthrie

    So let’s ask him to do that work. Living Word, we say, go to work in our lives. Use your power to create newness. Speak your word of mercy to me that saves me from the punishment I deserve.

41. 30:50

    Nancy Guthrie

    Use your power to bring blessing into our lives, to sustain us as we live our lives in the wilderness of this world. Make us willing to hear your call and follow your voice. Give us the faith to keep holding on to your word of promise. Give us the grace to keep listening even when your word to us is a hard word, knowing that only you have the words of eternal life. Use the power of your Word to save us, to sanctify us, making us new on the inside, and to one day welcome us into your presence. Until then, we’re holding on to the last word the Scriptures recorded from you. “Surely,” you said, “I am coming soon.” And we say—Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.