- " 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. The Pharisees, who read
the Bible daily, letter by letter, were rebuked that: "Have you not
read even this..."? (Lk. 6:3 RV). We can read, but not really read.
Just as the Pharisees did.
- 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. We are to
hear and give ear to
God's word (Jer. 13:15). We can hear on a surface level, but not give
the ear of our heart to God's voice.
- 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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