A Thousand Times and Never Once

For the believer whose mouth knows the words far better than the rest of him does.

Paul is writing to a church in Corinth that has managed to argue about almost everything, and he stops arguing to hand them something.

He doesn't introduce it as his own. That's the part worth slowing down for. A man with his history could have written a fresh summary of the faith and it would have carried weight, and instead he says he's passing on what he was given.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.1 Corinthians 15:3 (KJV)

Received, then delivered. He's a link in a chain rather than a source, and he says so in the same breath as the content. The words were already worn smooth by other mouths before they reached his.

That's the shape of every old sentence you've inherited, including the ones you say without hearing. Somebody handed them to somebody, who handed them to somebody, and now they arrive at you on a Sunday morning while you're thinking about parking.

You are holding words that were handed to you, and handling them is not the same as meaning them. The written Word shows the oldest summary being received before it was ever delivered, and the Holy Spirit is the one making it live in your mouth today.

What a Thousand Repetitions Do

He worked it out during a funeral, which is where a lot of people work this out.

Everybody stood, and the words started, and he was four lines in before he noticed his mouth was moving. He hadn't decided to begin. The sound in the room started and his voice joined it the way your feet find a staircase in the dark.

That's not hypocrisy and it isn't unbelief. It's what happens to any sentence a person says several hundred times. The brain hands it over to the part of you that ties shoelaces, and after that it runs without supervision, faithfully, for years.

The cost is quiet. You can spend two decades saying what's true about God at a steady rate and never once arrive at the moment where you notice you're saying it. Then a funeral comes. You hear your own voice as if from the next room, and you wonder what you've been doing.

Handed On Rather Than Composed

Look again at what Paul does with that sentence.

He doesn't improve it. He doesn't make it his. He passes it along in the form he got it, and the reason is that this is how the faith has always traveled, from mouth to mouth, mostly among people who had nothing else to give each other.

That means the old words in your mouth are not a formality that grew up around the faith. They're the faith being handed over, by somebody who received it, in words worn down by use like a step in a doorway.

You are standing in a chain of people who handed this to you rather than reciting a formula. The written Word puts the oldest summary in the language of receiving and delivering, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it the last few inches into you.

Worn Smooth Is Not Worn Out

Here's what I'd carry out of that funeral if I could take a single thing away with me.

There are two reasons a sentence goes smooth in your mouth. One is that it's empty and slides through without touching anything. The other is that it's been said by so many people, in so many rooms, under so much weight, that the edges have gone.

Those are opposite conditions and they feel identical from inside. A step worn into a hollow isn't a broken step. It's a step that thousands of people have needed, and the hollow is the evidence.

So the smoothness in your voice on Sunday isn't the proof of a dead faith. It might be, and you'd know. It's far more often the proof that the words have carried a very great deal of weight before they got to you.

The wear on those words is the record of everybody who needed them first. The written Word gives the summary already worn by other mouths, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping it load bearing in yours.

Nothing Here Makes These Words a Test

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do harm and I won't write it.

I'm not saying these words are binding on anybody, and I'm not suggesting that a believer who's never said them is missing something. Plenty of rooms full of people who love Christ have never recited a line in their lives, and they're holding the same faith with the same grip.

I'm also not asking you to feel bad about a thousand automatic Sundays. Nobody here is grading your attention. The words waited through all of them without going anywhere.

You can hold these words as a gift rather than a test, whoever does or doesn't say them. Scripture offers the summary as something handed over, and the Holy Spirit does the meaning rather than the measuring.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Zev This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.