‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
92nd teaching
11.3.2014
“Keeping the
Silence”
Review:
Last week we began to delve
into the actual narrative laid down in the Gospel according to Luke. Last time,
our study was entitled “Breaking the Silence” since Zacharias’ encounter with
the angel in the Temple represents the first time in 400 years that a message
from God comes to His people. Luke began his narrative with what event; not the
birth of Christ but the announcement of the birth of…? He also began with three
characters: two men and one woman. Who were they? Who was Herod the Great? Who
was Zacharias? Who was Elizabeth and what was her trial? What does their long
trial tell us about how much God values faith? What was Zacharias’ job at the
beginning of this story and what does he have to do in the Temple? Is this the
same Temple that the minor prophet Haggai encouraged the people to build back
in the Old Testament? What about angels: what branch of theology is concerned
with the study of angels? What do we know about angels from the Bible? Since we
left Zacharias praying at the altar, we closed with some final thoughts on
prayer. The discipline of prayer involves at least these three things:
Perseverance, Selflessness, and Anticipation. That is, we should persevere in
prayer even when all hope from our perspective as humans is gone, and that we
should interceded for others and finally pray with excitement and anticipation
of incredible things that God may desire to do in our lives and in this group.
I was challenged in thinking last week about the revolutionary things that God
accomplished through believers in the past, and there is no reason that anyone
in here cannot accomplish the same things when surrendered to God.
End
of Review
Though
last week our title was “Breaking the Silence”, referencing the first words
from God that shattered the silence of the 400 years between the Old and New
Testaments, tonight we’re going to see that silence in some way perpetuated. Therefore,
tonight’s study is entitled: “Keeping the Silence”.
Turn to Luke 1:5-25.
“There
was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias,
of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name
was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child,
because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years. So it
was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his
division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn
incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of
the people was praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the
Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And
when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel
said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your
wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you
will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be
great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He
will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he
will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go
before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to
make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ And Zacharias said to the angel,
‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well advanced in
years.’ And the angel answered and said to him, ‘I am Gabriel, who stands in
the presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad
tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these
things take place because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled
in their own time.’
“And the people waited for Zacharias, and marveled that
he lingered so long in the temple. But when he came out, he could not speak to
them; and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple, for he
beckoned to them and remained speechless. So it was, as soon as the days of his
service were completed, that he departed to his own house. Now after those days
his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself five months, saying, ‘Thus
the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me, to take away my
reproach among people’.”
We left poor old Zack there having the
scare of his life at the altar of incense, and we’re picking up the text in v.13 where, notice, the angel tells
Zacharias that his prayer had been heard. Last week, we established the
probability that Zacharias had already stopped praying for a son many years ago
and was most likely in this moment
praying not for an heir for his household but for a Savior for his nation.
By telling him that his prayer had been
heard, and announcing to him that he was going to have a son, both the past
prayers and the present day prayer of Zacharias would be answered. For he would
not only have a son, an heir, but this son would go on to play a pivotal role
in the redemptive plan of God.
His son would be called “John”. Like
the Herods of the Bible, there are many men named John in the Bible. John was a
popular name, evidently. Maybe not to the degree that it is in our time, when
you can meet several Johns on any day, but it was popular nonetheless. And why
not? John is a great name.
John comes through the Latin Johannes through the Greek Ioannes through the Hebrew Yohanan, which comes from the
phrase meaning “God is gracious”. So the name “John” has to do with the grace
of God, the Lord being gracious toward people. Certainly there could be no
better name for the son of Zacharias and Elizabeth. Here the angel is making
clear by the choice of the name “John” that this son is a gift of God’s grace,
an undeserved gift. True, Zack and Liz were righteous and blameless people,
we’re told, but even they were not good enough to match God’s perfect standard
of righteousness.
The prophet reminds us that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”
(Isaiah 64:4). The son they were
about to receive was not earned by Zacharias or Elizabeth because they had done
so much for God. No, God is making it clear that this son is given to them
because He is a gracious God. They couldn’t even have kids anymore because of
their age! Of course this son would be a gift. He’s showing them that He’s not
Santa Claus, with some cosmic checklist of naughty and nice people getting good
or bad gifts, but that He is our loving heavenly Father who gives good gifts to
His children by His grace, despite the fact that His children do not deserve
His gifts.
So the kid is going to be named
“John”. This isn’t John the Evangelist, one of the apostles, the guy who wrote
John’s Gospel. This is, as we should find out if we kept reading, none other
than John the Baptist, who got his title because that’s what he did: he
baptized. He was a baptizer. So thus he’s known as John the Baptist. And he
will be the one to announce the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, the King of
the Jews.
We see that moment in John 1:29 where John the Baptist sees
Jesus and cries out “Behold! The Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world!” And also that is where we get the
title of our college group from.
Now what kind of a man will this John
grow up to become? Let’s see what the angel says about him:
v.14,
of course their baby boy would bring them joy and gladness. That’s to be
expected. I’ve seen even the hardest of folks who say they don’t like children
simply melt whenever a little baby is brought around. And Zack and Liz would
have so much joy with this little bundle of life that would be brought to them
at last.
Even, it is to be expected that many
would rejoice at his birth. I’m sure that Zacharias and Elizabeth had friends.
They seem like good-natured, friendly people. Perhaps there were still a few
lone prayer warriors that had continued to pray for them to have children long
after the old couple themselves had given up on that.
But the joy this son would bring goes
way beyond just Zack and Liz and their friends and neighbors. Their son had a
destiny awaiting him as forerunner of the Messiah.
v.15,
“For he will be great in the sight of the
Lord…”
What made John the Baptist a great
man? Was it because of all he accomplished for God? Was it because he baptized
many, many people over the course of his career? Was it because he got to utter
those words “Behold! The Lamb of God!”?
How does God equate greatness? What
makes someone great in the eyes of God?
Well, certainly, we know that it is
not the same things that make a man or a woman great in the eyes of the world.
In our society, we equate greatness with wealth and possessions and
accomplishments and prestige. We look at the outward things, whereas the Bible
says “the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
That statement was made in the context
of the prophet Samuel choosing the next king. He’s looking at all these big,
handsome, strapping young men and thinking “these guys look like king-material”
but God’s choice ended up being David, the youngest of his brothers and the
little guy they left out to tend to the sheep. Yet the littlest of the brothers
ended up being the greatest king Israel ever had.
To us, a great person is an wealthy
CEO or a tycoon landowner or an accomplished writer or filmmaker or a
successful actor or athlete. To us, the stature of a man or woman, their
physical appearance and fitness, their outward beauty and the money they make
each year determines how great they are. In our standards, Herod the Great was
a great man, accomplished, powerful, and Zacharias and his son were nobodies.
Actor Robert Downey Jr. topped Forbes
magazine’s annual list of the highest paid actors for the second year in a row,
and according to one article I found written in July of 2014, he made an
estimated $75 million over the past year. Isn’t that success? Isn’t that
“making it”, right to the top? Isn’t that greatness?
Not in my book. Not if he’s playing
lame Iron Man and not Batman, but that’s another story.
J.C. Ryle wrote in his commentary on
Luke: “The measure of greatness which is common among men is utterly false and
deceptive.” Greatness is measured in the world by wealth, accomplishments, position
and prestige. Not so with God. Not so with John.
What kind of wealth did John the
Baptist have? None whatsoever. He didn’t sup on sumptuous foodstuffs. He didn’t
dress to impress. He didn’t roll around Jerusalem in a Rolls Royce. Matthew 3:4 tells us that his
particular choice of threads was camel’s hair and a leather belt, and that he
dined not on caviar and foie gras, but on locusts and wild honey, by no means
the food of the wealthy. What’s more, where do we find John: in Caesar’s palace?
In Herod’s court? In the posh lounges of the Pharisees? No, he was out in the
wilderness, the wild, the desert, baptizing people in a dirty river.
What kind of accomplishments did John
the Baptist have? None by human standards. He didn’t build any great buildings
like Herod. He didn’t have a powerful guard of soldiers at his disposal. He
didn’t write any great books or poems or pieces of philosophy. He didn’t even
establish any churches. Not one. All he did was preach repentance and baptize.
What kind of position did John the
Baptist have? Hardly any. We call him not John the Prince, John the Duke, John
the King or John the Great, we call him John the Baptist.
What kind of prestige did John the
Baptist have? Probably, not much. Certainly not much by our standards. He
didn’t own any corporations. He was not the head of any councils or governing
authorities. He ruled nothing and had control over nothing but himself.
So then what made John great in the
sight of the Lord? His humility. He owned nothing, he built nothing, he had no
power, no authority, no prestige and no position, he had nothing. But I like
what Pastor Alistair Begg said about this “Nothingness is everything in the
sight of the Lord!”
And look at the kind of humility that
John exemplified. He was active in the wilderness, he dressed in ordinary, even
dirty clothing, his job was dirty, he could hardly get any lower. Nobody would
look at him and think “greatness”. That would be the ultimate paradox: a great
and low man, someone looked up to while you look down at. But when the crowds
came to be baptized and his ministry was found successful, it couldn’t be
because of lowly John. Everything he did would automatically go to the glory
not of himself but of God.
Flip over to John 1:19 and look at the realism of his humility. “Now this is the testimony of John, when the
Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’”
That was the chance for his pride and
his flesh to rise up: “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that the angel
Gabriel, yes the Gabriel, announced
my birth? Don’t you know that Isaiah prophesied about me? Don’t you know that I play an important role in God’s plan to
bring your Messiah into the world?”
Yet that’s not what he said. Who are
you, John?
“He
confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they
asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the
Prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you, that we
may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?’ He
said: ‘I am ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness; make straight the way
of the LORD’, as the prophet Isaiah said’.”
You’re
not Elijah. You’re not the Prophet. Who the heck are you, then? And he replies
“I’m just a voice crying in the wilderness”.
Toward the end of John’s life
(remember he was beheaded by Herod) said of Jesus “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). People were beginning to leave John’s ministry of
baptism for Christ and what does he say? Does he bemoan that the success of his
ministry is beginning to fade? Does he complain that his attendance is
decreasing? No, he says that Christ must increase and he must decrease, showing
his obvious preference not for himself but for the Son of God instead.
What made John great in the sight of
God was John’s humility, his nothingness so that Christ would be his
everything. We’re told that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble
(James 4:6). How appropriate since
John’s own name references God’s grace! Not only his name, but his very life,
exemplified the grace of God upon this great and humble man.
*One more note on humility before we
move on. Beloved British author C.S. Lewis said it best and most succinctly:
“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself
less.” There’s a fine line there. But humility, realize, is not the same thing
as self-abasement, of constantly saying how bad you are at things, how
incapable you are, how everything you do is rubbish, etc, etc.
Do we ever see John going on like
that? Do we ever read about this humble saint saying “Oh, my baptisms aren’t
that great. And you know, I’m really not that good at preaching repentance. I
really suck at public speaking… you can make me feel better any time”. That
sort of self-abasement talk is almost like fishing for comments and a pat on
the back. John didn’t necessarily think less of himself so much as he thought
of himself less, because thinking of yourself in bad terms is still just thinking
of yourself as a masked form of pride. John was truly selfless. A good role
model of humility for you and I.
v.15b,
that is a pretty incredible statement that he would be filled with the Holy
Spirit even from his mother’s womb. Again, that reminds us of God’s grace.
Receiving His Spirit is a gift, not something we earn. How could John possibly
earn it in his mother’s womb? It was something he could only receive by grace.
But notice the juxtaposition of wine
and strong drink with being filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a contrast
that other biblical writers picked up on. Paul, for example, writes in Ephesians 5:15-18 “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,
redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but
understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in
which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.”
That word “dissipation” is a golden
oldie. We don’t have many words like that anymore. But dissipation simply means
decadence, excess, overconsumption, self-indulgence, depravity, squandering and
waste. You’ve got a contrast between being filled with strong drink, liquor,
alcohol, spirits or being filled with the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the
Guide. And further, there’s a contrast here between the kind of lives that are
filled with either “spirits”, drinks, or the Holy Spirit. Being filled with
wine leads to a waste and squandered existence. Dissipation. Being filled with
the Holy Spirit means being guided into all truth, having the fruit of the
Spirit, sanctification being produced in you. The first means a quick run to
the toilet to puke. The second means a race run for the glory of God. The first
means a life is wasted on self-indulgence. The second means a life is used to
further God’s kingdom. The first means confusion. The second means direction
and leading. The first means drunkenness and sleep. The second means waking up
to the reality that life is a gift of God and that it is too short and too
important to be wasted.
“Do
not mix with those who drink too much wine or with gluttonous eaters of meat;
for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will
clothe a man with rags.” Proverbs
23:20. Could a stronger warning be said? Read the rest of Proverbs chapter
23.
Or what about I Thessalonians 5:4, “But
you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a
thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night
nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and
be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are
drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the
breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.”
I realize that this is a massive
subject with all sorts of questions and things to be said: like is it a sin to
drink? All I can say to you now, so that we don’t have an entire night’s study
on the subject of consuming alcoholic beverages, is read what the Bible says on
the matter. Yes, the saints drank wine. Jesus turned water into wine. Paul
recommended Timothy drink wine for his stomach problems. What I think
personally right now is that I have known alcoholism to cause too much damage
to friends, families and lives for its self-indulgence to ever be worth it. So
don’t even go there. Like it says in Proverbs as we read, don’t mix with, don’t
hang around with people who are getting drunk. Don’t overlook your own
humanity. You may think you can withstand any temptation, but all it takes is
one drink too many. And many times, history has shown that temptation is often
too great rather than too light.
John the Baptist had a special calling
upon his life and he was to avoid the spirits and be filled with the Spirit.
You and I have special callings upon our lives to serve God as He reveals to
us. You do the math.
v.16-17,
prophetically speaking, the Jewish people were confident that the prophet
Elijah would herald the coming of the Messiah. The angel is touching upon that
belief. But while John would not actually be the man Elijah, he would come in
the spirit and power of Elijah, in the kind of likeness of the Old Testament
prophets.
But notice the lofty goals set for
John’s life: he would turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord and he
would turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the disobedient
to the wisdom of the just. John’s ministry would create change. It would create
a spiritual change, in turning Israel to God; a family change, the fathers to
the children; and a social change, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.
Aren’t these the things that we long
for? Don’t we want social change? Don’t we want our generation and the
generation to come to rise up and turn from disobedience and all the frivolous
rebellion and wild-hearted carelessness of youth to the things that really
matter? Don’t we want family change? Don’t we want to see families brought back
together and healed? Don’t we want to see fathers stop from abandoning their
fatherly duties and raise their families? Don’t we want to see less single
mother’s struggling through life? Don’t we want spiritual change, revival in
America?
But notice we’re not going to get it
by focusing on each of these things. We can work out all the strategies we want
for politics and healing families and raising up the next generation, but one
more anti-divorce seminar, one more youth outreach, one more man in office is
not going to cut it without the preaching of repentance. That was John’s thing.
Do you think he would create all this
social change because of who he was?
Of course not. Remember God’s grace and remember John’s nothingness. It was
John’s message that was going to do the job. And it is exactly the same for you
and I and our country today.
What will solve America’s troubles is
not a boost to the economy, not better schools, not keeping families together,
not even getting a better man elected president. What will solve America’s
troubles is getting at the root of America: her people, and the trouble with
people is not a lack of education, organization or employment so much as it is
a sickness of our souls, a sickness which is targeted only by the message of
the gospel. Thus when the gospel is preached and the good news of Jesus Christ
dying for the sins of mankind seeps into the hearts of mankind and changes the
human soul from within, then we can expect spiritual change, we can expect
social change, we can expect changes in families and government and education
and politics and economy.
Let’s not get the cart before the
horse. Change comes through the gospel. Change does not come by trying to fix
every little part of the problem one at a time. If we want real change, it has
to begin in human hearts and it has to begin in our hearts.
Hear the voice of God: “If My people who are called by My name will
humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”
(II Chronicles 7:14).
Revival will begin here if it begins
at all. The land will be healed, if it is healed at all, only if God’s people
are humbled and are praying and seeking. There is no other route to any kind of
lasting social, cultural, familial, political, spiritual change.
*That’s quite a lot for one man’s
life. John the Baptist has his work cut out for him. But that’s also quite a
lot for one old man to take in. Look at Zack’s response:
v.18,
“Look at me, Gabriel. I’m an old man. I’m stricken in years, as it will read in
the KJV someday. How could an old man like me and an old woman like my wife not
only… how do the young folk say it? Get jiggy-with-it? But how could we
possibly bear children?”
Now note that when this same angel
visits Mary later on in the chapter and tells her about a miraculous virgin
birth, Mary responds “How can this be,
since I do not know a man?” that the angel there doesn’t jump on Mary and
claim that she was doubting. What’s clear then is that while Mary will later
ask how such a thing could happen, technically speaking, that Zacharias’
concern was not with the procedure of the whole thing but with the fact of its
impossibility. With old Zack, it was a problem of doubt.
v.19,
Who is this Gabriel? Remember how the Bible only mentions angels rarely and
scarcely as we talked about last week? Well there are only a handful of angels
that are actually named in the Bible (that is the 66 books of the Bible not
including the apocryphal books some groups ascribe to).
Can you guess the names of these few angels?
Michael, Gabriel, Lucifer. It’s possible that another angel, a fallen one named
Abaddon in Hebrew, Apollyon in Greek, is different than Satan. That’s from Revelation 9:11 which talks about the
angel of the bottomless pit.
So there are only a few named angels.
Obviously, Gabriel is one of them and he appears not only in Luke’s gospel but
also in the book of Daniel. Whereas Michael, identified as an archangel, seems
to be a warrior-being that does battle with the devil, Gabriel seems to be more
of a messenger delivering God’s words to His people. So apparently there are
some different functions that an angel can have.
Gabriel identifies himself as one “who stands in the presence of God”. You
get the sense of a servant standing at his master’s side, awaiting his master’s
orders.
The angel Gabriel answers Zacharias’
doubts much in the same way that God answered the doubts of the saints in the
past. When Moses showed some doubts and anxiety about his mission to deliver
Israel from bondage in Egypt, God reminded Moses of who He is. In a sense,
Gabriel is saying to Zacharias and his doubts “Hey, remember who it is that
you’re talking to. I’ve been sent from the presence of God to tell you these
things!”
v.20,
realize, ladies and gentlemen, that unbelief has consequences. I’m not talking
about “searching” or “seeking”. Please, you can be a seeker.
Some weeks ago we talked about doubts.
Luke wrote this gospel narrative so that Theophilus would know with certainty,
in other words, have no doubts concerning these things. And we talked about the
fact that we all have our doubts. The Bible anticipates that we as human beings
will have our doubts. And we do ourselves and each other a great disservice if
we try to hide that fact. If we struggle with doubts, let’s talk through them.
Let’s confront them.
Let me be a little firmer than what I
had said previously on the matter of doubts. Previously I had said not to hide
doubts but for us to help each other through them. Let me add to that by saying
that hiding doubts, living with unbelief can be dangerous and it can have
consequences.
We see that in the case of Zacharias,
a righteous man, a good man, but a man who had grown old and doubtful. What was
the consequence of Zacharias’ unbelief? That he would not be able to speak
until these things would be fulfilled, at least 9 months… that is if he
immediately brought in the chocolates, put on Barry White and turned the lights
down low as soon as he got back home to his wife.
By the grace of God, 6 months later
Gabriel appeared to Mary and the silence was broken again, but here we have the
consequence of unbelief: the silence of the 400 years since the last word from
God had been shattered and Gabriel had brought God’s message to one man; the
silence was broken, but now it would have to be kept, prolonged for at least
another 6 months. For another 6 months, no one would get this message from the
Lord, for another 6 months there would be silence, no rejoicing, no
instruction, no hope for the future because that would all be laid up in one
little old man’s heart as he remained speechless for all that time. Do you see
the irony in that? God hadn’t spoken for 400 years and when He did, this man
did not believe the words and so he couldn’t speak and the silence, the
anticipation, the suffering of a nation in waiting through this long famine of
God’s words would be prolonged.
What is this a picture of (two men
carrying a large vine of grapes)? It’s two of the twelve spies coming back from
the Promised Land in the book of Numbers, and if you remember the story, here
is the point: God had brought Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to the
foot of Mount Sinai, given them the Law, given them the priesthood, fed them
with the bread of heaven, and prepared them for war and now they were ready to
march into the Promised Land that God had sworn to give to their ancestors
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, now they were ready to go in and conquer the pagan
tribes that lived there… only when the twelve spies came back from scoping out
the land, only two of the twelve gave a good report of the land and the other
ten gave a bad report. How so? Well, the two said that if God was behind them
surely they could do it. They had faith.
But the other ten spies had looked at
the giants that lived in the land, the massive warriors and armies and
fortifications and they began to doubt. In their spiritual eyes, God became
smaller and smaller and their enemies bigger and more dangerous. And the rest
of their people suffered and died in that wilderness wandering around for forty
years before they had the chance to try to enter the Land of Promise again. For
them, the word of God, His promise, was not good enough and their unbelief cost
everyone their lives.
The book of Hebrews takes up this
exact point of the danger of unbelief, so let’s look there at Hebrews 3:7-19.
How dangerous is unbelief? It is
dangerous enough to ruin lives. It is dangerous enough to be ascribed to an
evil heart. It is dangerous enough to waste all the work that God has done. It
is dangerous enough, in the case of Zacharias, to keep the word of God from
being heard.
I was challenged over the past few
days in listening to some teachings and debates centered on the cults like the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. One of the teachers who had participated in one of the
debates was talking about all the things that Jehovah’s Witnesses do in putting
in so many hours of service, in going door to door, in evangelizing and handing
out all their material, in strategizing how they can reach as many as they can
and then what he said cut my heart right open: “It’s amazing that what they do
for a lie, we won’t do for the truth.”
And I still can’t get that thought out
of my mind. Why is that? Why is it that groups like any member of any cult can
be so devout and work so hard for their religion when here we are and we are still grappling with studying and
knowing and understanding this one book. The same teacher in the audio I was
listening to also said that your average Jehovah’s Witness studies 5 hours a
week just to talk to you, and we prepare ourselves with an hour and half Bible
study on Monday nights, an hour on Sundays, and whatever meager scraps of
minutes we can scrape together during the week?
“The Bible study is so long. I can’t
sit for that long. My butt hurts.” Tough! Tough on your butt. Sorry, but it is.
Think about the insanity of it: how can we expect to be effective in the world
with so little training, dedication, study and so light faith?
Here we’re talking about a group,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, that memorizes the Bible for a lie when we could hardly
even think of memorizing a verse or two. I had heard that the average Jehovah’s
Witness is more than a match for the average seminary graduate. That’s the
amount of dedication and training they put into it, for a lie and for a
deception.
We have the truth, but why don’t we
act upon it. Why do we flee from evangelical conversation? Why do we hesitate
to communicate the truth we just learned to our friends when we see the
opportunities? Why do we let slide the most important study of all studies? I
think it comes all the way back to this one fundamental problem: unbelief. We
don’t believe it enough, if we did then don’t you think we’d act upon it?
We believe God exists and loves us and
has a plan for us and all that handy-dandy cotton candy, but what about when
the Bible describes us being watchmen, describes us as the light of the world,
as going out into all the world to make disciples. We shrug that off for the
missionaries, for the pastor/teachers. But it is said to every Christian
disciple.
My friends, it is true that these
cults that surround us have built up such a system that demands that they work
to earn their salvations, and that may be to blame for their zealous overachievement,
but we certainly have a motivation that, if felt, is truly greater. We realize
that we don’t earn our way into heaven by completing so many tasks, by making
pilgrimages, by going through certain ceremonies, by being baptized, by keeping
laws, by proselytizing and evangelizing, by going door to door, but Paul said “the love of Christ compels us, because we
are convinced that One died for all…”
And that’s it. Christianity doesn’t
hold out the prize of salvation to those who can complete some religious
checklist. True biblical Christianity is centered around the person of Jesus
Christ and it is the love that He demonstrated on the cross for your sins and
mine which motivates us to talk about it, learn about it, share it and make it
central to our lives. There is an entire world all around us literally starving
to death because of the famine of the word of God, and we cannot let our
unbelief in the truth keep the silence.
What am I asking you to do tonight,
then? Three things in closing:
One,
recognize that unbelief is dangerous. We can have our doubts, but let’s not lie
with them. Let’s not wait passively by for someone to come along and cure them
or not. Let’s actively study and research to see whether those doubts are
founded or unfounded, whether they are real or unreal. Unbelief is too
dangerous to just let it slide. Deal with it actively. Don’t play around with
it.
Two,
read your Bibles. Such a simple phrase, and yet it carries such complexity and
difficulty and promise. Study your Bibles. Research your Bibles. Even *gasp*
memorize your Bibles. We can’t expect to shut down heresy if the heretics know
more about our book than we do, if we’re walking around with the theological
foundation of a six-year-old. Get in the game. Learn the original language.
What? Yes! Read some commentaries. Listen to more teachings. Get it into your
head and into your heart.
Third,
my point of it all: Unbelief will keep the words of God from being heard. Unbelief will keep the silence. As in the case
of Zacharias, as in the case of you and I. If we’re not studying the Bible, it
may be because of laziness or busy-ness, but unbelief is somewhere in their
too. And unbelief will not only keep us from hearing the word of God in turning
to it to study it, but unbelief will also keep us from causing others to hear
the word of God since we won’t talk about it.
The cure is in reading the word of
God. It’s one of those things that the more you do it the more you get out of
it. The more you do it, perhaps, the easier it gets. How do you get more faith?
Ironically, you get it by going to the thing that unbelief will keep your from:
the word of God. Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God.” Unbelief will keep you from God’s words when that is exactly
what you need to cast out unbelief!
If we want to see change, change in
our country, our culture, our friends and in our families it’s not going to
come from more programs, more strategies, more business and more organizations.
Rather, it is going to come here: through the hearing of the word of God, the
gospel, the preaching and teaching and studying of the Bible.
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