- " The pride that apes humility" says
all that is necessary. We can appear to be humble, and by doing
so actually express our pride. The point has been made elsewhere
that a brother may say to a sister full of praise for his Bible
study: " It was nothing really, no, not that good" .
But if another sister says to him: " I thought your Bible
study was nothing really, not much good at all" ; how does
he react? Did he really mean his 'humble' words to his
admirer? Ahaz is one of many Biblical examples of this kind of
false humility. He refused to ask a sign of Yahweh, when invited
to, lest he be like apostate Israel in the wilderness, and tempt
Yahweh (Is. 7:12 cp. Dt. 6:16). But this was actually a 'wearying'
of God, and he was given a sign relating to his condemnation (Is.
7:12,13).
- It makes a good exercise to go through Isaiah
2 and look at all the times when words like ‘bow down’ and ‘lift
up’ are used. Judah are condemned for ‘bowing down’ before the
idols, when in fact they were ‘lifted up’ in pride (Is. 2:9,11).
- Nebuchadnezzar was made to eat grass like an animal
until he learnt that “the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men,
and giveth it to whomsoever he will” (4:17). But earlier he had
learnt this lesson and accepted it, at least momentarily, when
Daniel explained the image of chapter 2 to him.
- Our Bible reading can be so easily performed on a merely surface
level, skimming over words without letting their real import be
felt at all. Fred Barling truly observed: “Through long familiarity
we have come to read [the Gospels] with a phlegm and impassivity
which are in sharp contrast to the amazement felt by those who
came into actual contact with Jesus, and by those who first read
these accounts” (1). Philip realized
this when he quizzed the eunuch, with a play on words in the Greek:
" Understandest thou what thou readest?" (Acts 8:31):
ginoskeis ha anaginoskeis? 'Do you really understand,
experientially, what you are understanding by reading?'. James
1:22 plainly states how easy it is to hear the word, and deceive
ourselves into thinking that this very process justifies us. But
if we are not doers of the word, we only “seem to be religious...(deceiving
our) own heart, this man’s religion is vain” (James 1:26).
We are invited to see a parallel between the process of hearing
God’s word, and seeming to be religious.
- We can fail to personalize God’s word, in the sense of realizing
that it speaks to us personally. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar what
would happen to him unless he repented; and he wouldn’t listen.
When his judgment came, God told him: “O King Nebuchadnezzar,
to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from thee”
(Dan. 4:31).
- The good soil is characterized by understanding (Mt.), receiving
(Mk.) and keeping the word (Lk.). We can hear the Bible explained
and at that point understand intellectually. But this
is something different to real understanding; for if we truly
apprehend the message, we will receive it deep within us and keep
that understanding ever present in our subsequent actions.
- The Hebrew word for ‘hear’ is also translated ‘obey’ (Gen.
22:18; Ex. 19:5; Dt. 30:8,20; Ps. 95:7). We can hear God’s word
and not obey it. But if we really hear it as we
are intended to, we will obey it. If we truly believe God’s word
to be His voice personally speaking to us (see The Power Of
Basics), then we will by the very fact of hearing, obey.
The message itself, if heard properly and not just on a surface
level, will compel action. We can delight to know God’s
laws and pray daily to Him, when at the same time we are forsaking
Him and His laws; if we are truly obedient, then we will
delight in God’s law (Is. 58:2 cp. 14). We have a tendency
to have a love of and delight in God’s law only on the surface.
John especially often uses ‘hearing’ to mean ‘believing’ (e.g.
Jn. 10:4,26,27). And yet the Jews ‘heard’ but didn’t believe.
We must, we really must ask ourselves: whether we merely hear,
or hear and believe. For we can hear, but not really hear.
- Am. 5:18 and Mal. 3:1,2 warn that just desiring the coming
of the Lord isn’t enough; for what end will it be, if we don’t
truly love His appearing? Yet Amos goes on to say that
Israel “put far away” the reality of the day of the Lord, in their
minds (Am. 6:3). And yet they desired it. We can study prophecy,
but not really love His appearing in seriously preparing ourselves
for that day. Indeed, we can subconsciously put it far from us.
When we grasp for a fleeting moment how very near is
the second coming for us; can we dwell upon it, retain that intensity?
Or would we rather put it “far away”? This is surely why the Lord
brings the list of signs of His coming to a close with some chilling
parables concerning the need for personal watchfulness. It’s as
if He could foresee generations of believers straining to interpret
His words carefully, correctly matching them with trends in the
world...and yet missing the essential point: that we must watch
and prepare ourselves for His coming, whenever it may be for us.
Having given so many indicators of His soon appearing, the Lord
then says that His coming will be unexpected by the believers
(Mt. 24:36,44). He wasn’t saying ‘Well, you’ll never properly
interpret what I’ve just said’. He meant rather: ‘OK you’ll know,
more or less, when my return is imminent; but all the same, in
reality it will be terribly unexpected for most of you unless
you prepare yourselves. You need to make personal changes, and
be watchful of yourselves; otherwise all the correct prophetic
interpretation in the world is meaningless’. Those described in
Rom. 1:32 know the judgment of God; they know it will come. But
they have a mind “void of [an awareness of] judgment” (Rom. 1:28
AVmg.). We can know, know it all. But live with a mind and heart
void of it. Tit. 1:16 AVmg. uses the same word to describe those
who “profess that they know God” but are “void of judgment”. We
can know Him, but have no real personal sense of judgment to come.
These are sobering thoughts.
- In Lk. 10:25-27, the Lord recited some simple, well known facts
of Biblical history: it was to a Gentile, not to anybody in Israel,
that Elisha was sent to cure leprosy. But the Lord’s doing so
raised such a howl of protest that the people thrust Him out of
the city and tried to do the Son of God to death there and then.
The point is, meditating upon well known facts can really cut
us to the quick, and powerfully motivate us. Yet like those people
until that moment, we can know these facts and do nothing about
them, not feeling anything.
- Solomon had the wisdom of God. And yet Ecclesiastes has two
contradictory layers of thought- Divine wisdom, and yet a philosophy
of life “under the sun” that disregards that wisdom as irrelevant
and pointless. I reconcile these by concluding that Solomon knew
God’s truth and preached it, and yet at the end of his life he
concluded it was all just so much theory. When he was younger,
as a good king of Israel, he had copied out the portions of Deuteronomy
concerning how a king should behave, not making links with Egypt,
not loving horses, silver, gold or many ways. And yet early in
his reign he flouted these principles on a grander scale than
anyone else. He warned “my son” in his Proverbs of the dangers
of the Gentile (“strange”) woman, but at the same time married
them himself, writing an unashamed series of love poems about
one of them (in the Song of Solomon). He knew, but simply failed
to personally apply all the wisdom to himself. The very sensation
of having the wisdom and preaching it world-wide as he did must
have lulled him into a sense of numbness to the personal reality
of it all. And the greater and deeper goes the Biblical research
of our community, the wider we preach, the more the Truth we preach
brings joy and salvation to others, the more prone we are to sink
into the Solomon syndrome. On a lower level, this, perhaps, is
why lung cancer specialists and sportsmen smoke (albeit on the
quiet), why skilled and experienced pilots take incomprehensible
risks and crash... The possession of knowledge and truth, when
mixed with the perversity and untruth of human nature, can tempt
us personally to do the very opposite of that which we know we
should do.
- God prophesied that those to whom Ezekiel witnessed would not
hear His words (Ez. 3:11). And yet they came and sat before him,
desiring to hear God’s word (Ez. 33:30-32). They wanted to hear,
they heard, and yet they didn’t really hear.
- The man who hears and does not appears to be building- he has
the sensation of going some place in his spiritual life. He did
dig a foundation- in sand, where it is easy to dig. But the Lord
said that he built “without a foundation” (Lk. 6:49). Are we really
hearing and doing- or just going through the motion of it, experiencing
the sensation of appearing to do it?
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