Skip to main content

Thirsting for the Word of God

What would happen if you could never read your Bible ever again?  What would you do if reading the Bible suddenly became illegal and Bibles were confiscated as contraband?  What would you do if you were deprived of the Word of God?  We humans tend to undervalue that to which we have constant access.  Most Americans have the Internet in their hands.  We can travel around the world in a matter of days.  We can communicate with people around the world instantly.  These possibilities are simply amazing, yet we take them for granted.  We get so used to the novelties of life--technology, food, transportation, etc.--that we take for granted those things for which others would, quite literally, die.  

 Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, and divine revelation is no exception.  The number of copies of the Bible in existence is difficult to fathom, and yet, even Christians, those who claim to love and follow Jesus Christ, fail to appreciate the revealed will of God and the privilege that it is to possess it in a tangible way.  There are disagreements as to exactly how God's revelation works and what form it takes, but every Christian should be able to affirm and rejoice that God has spoken to His creatures. We must put away our modern sense of entitlement and recognize that this is a mystifying and unspeakable blessing.  Consider Amos 8:11-12: 
"Behold, the days come," says the Lord Yahweh (GOD), "that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh (the LORD).  They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run back and forth to seek the word of Yahweh (the LORD), and will not find it." (WEB)
Would this sort of famine even bother us?  God promises judgement in the form of taking His Word from His people, but I doubt that the majority of the modern Church would even mind.  Heck, half the churches in America could probably proceed unaffected if the Bible were censured!  We must have a thirst for the Word of God.  We must develop an unquenchable appetite for the revelation of Almighty God.  We must fear a famine of the bread that sustains our physical life far less than we fear a famine of the Bread of Life!  After all, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  

 The Word of God is the sustenance of the Christian life.  It is the milk that enables us to grow up into salvation.  The increasing availability of the Word is one of the greatest legacies of 20th-Century Christianity, but we have squandered this inheritance.  What should be a blessing has become a curse through our abuse, and, I fear, we will reap the fitting punishment.  If we will ignore the Word, then God will take it from us.  Let us thirst for His Word.  Let us cherish it.  Above all else, let us do all we can to read it and to hear it preached.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Father, Forgive Them"

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Forgiveness is hard.  Forgiveness is really, really hard. It’s difficult to forgive others who have genuinely harmed or offended us.   It’s easy to say , “I forgive you,” but it’s extremely difficult to feel it–to make peace in our hearts with the injustices that others have perpetrated against us. It just doesn’t feel right.  Sin should be punished!  Wrongs should be righted!  Right?! It’s difficult to forgive others when they ask for it.  It’s even more difficult to forgive them when they haven’t asked for it–when they don’t even recognize what they’ve done to hurt us. As our Savior hung upon His Cross, He asked the Father to forgive those nearby–those who were unwittingly contributing to the greatest injustice in the history of the world. These thieves, soldiers, and standers-by had no idea what was happening.  They had no idea that the jealousy of the Jews had placed Christ on that Cross...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Real Presence & Paedocommunion: A Deeper Rift Between Reformed Churches

You're going back to Rome! Theological disagreements within the Reformed world, especially those of the last half century, often devolve into these sorts of accusations.  As controversialists like Doug Wilson and Peter Leithart began to break away from the larger conservative Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, it became clear that the rift was deeper than semantics and systematic minutiae.  Much like the Reformation four centuries before, the Table was a primary point of conflict.   What does it mean?  Who may partake?  What do we call it?    These questions, along with a few more, divided Reformed brethren as the physical elements of our religion reflected deeper conflicts.  Good men began to understand that the problem wasn't just in our logos, but in our pathos and ethos, as well. Paedocommunion (hereafter PC) has been one of the hottest points of contention.  PC has always been normal to me as I grew up with it.  I underst...
Post a Comment
Read more

"The More Things Change..." or "Joe Biden Doing Joe Biden Things"

1 Samuel 2  relates the story of Eli, the well-meaning high priest whose only flaw (apparently) was his refusal to discipline his sons.  These sons, described as worthless men , utilized their position to abuse the people and indulge their lusts with impunity.  Eli's dereliction of duty brought his otherwise noble career in service to God's house to an ignominious end.   There are, of course, important differences between Eli and Joe Biden.  Joe Biden is not a religious leader (though he is a practicing Roman Catholic ), nor would I consider his record to be otherwise spotless.  However, similarly to Eli,  Biden's pardoning of his own  worthless son, Hunter, will prove to be his legacy.  His long (and I mean loooong) career in politics will likely be overshadowed, even in the eyes of those who previously respected him, by this one shameless act.  By pardoning his son despite  promising not to, Biden has yet again demonstrate...
Post a Comment
Read more