(from “Daily Thoughts for Disciples” by Oswald Chambers, June 10th entry)
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“He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” — Matthew 11:15
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We hear only what we listen for.
Have we listened to what Jesus has to say? Have we paid any attention to finding out what He did say? Most of us do not know what He said. If we have only a smattering of religion, we talk a lot about the devil, but what hinders us spiritually is not the devil nearly so much as inattention.
We may hear the sayings of Jesus Christ, but our wills are left untouched; we never do them. The understanding of the Bible only comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit making the universe of the Bible real to us.
Much is written about our Lord speaking so simply that anyone could understand, and we forget that while it remains true that the common people heard Him gladly, no one, not even His own disciples, understood Him until after the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the reason being that a pure heart is the essential requirement for being “of the truth.”
“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
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Taken from Daily Thoughts for Disciples, © 1976, 1994 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd., and used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.
[[Some words Chambers uses are not used often today — click [here] to look up difficult words.]]
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Brief commentary:
A few years back, my wife and I went to a Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium here in southern California. Afterwards, as we were walking out, we encountered this man who had a small crowd gathered around him. I’ve gotten used to these people, Pharisees of one branch or another either protesting against one of the speakers (Billy Graham, Greg Laurie, etc.) or espousing their own recipe for pure faith (“King James only”, Calvinists/Hyper-Calvinists, “Jesus Kills, Repent!”ers, etc.).
This guy was a bit different, and I could tell from the start. He was talking to someone else, and as I walked up and was listening trying to get a bead on what his deal was, he looked at me and said “You don’t have any faith, that’s why you’re wearing glasses.” Taken a bit off guard, I explained to him why I was wearing the glasses, that I had a work accident that resulted in a concussion and the neurologist suggested I try glasses to try to help my eyes counteract a suspected misalignment he felt could be contributing to a lingering headache issue.
“Doesn’t matter why. If you had faith, you’d take off your glasses and believe God will heal you.”
Feeling sufficiently engaged to begin a real chat with him now, I asked him what he was out there that night to tell people.
“The Sermon on the Mount is the key to a pure spiritual walk!” he declared. “Memorize it, meditate upon it, and live it. Those three chapters are all you need to read of the entire Bible; if you live those, you’ve got it all taken care of.”
I asked him to quote a very common portion of Matthew 6, right smack dab in the heart of what he’d just told us all to memorize. He stumbled over words, quoted wrong sections, and generally became flustered a bit.
Upon further questioning, he said he believed that the Sermon on the Mount was the only inspired part of Scripture, and that everything else was either corrupt or unworthy of being included with such divine teaching. I asked if he thought other sections of Scripture that repeated what was said in the Sermon on the Mount would also qualify as inspired; he backtracked a bit and said sure, but only those and the Sermon on the Mount itself. I asked what about the sections of Scripture that expound on or portrayed the same concepts either before or after Jesus taught them; he backtracked again and included those as well.
Suffice it to say that after about three hours of intensive, logically ordered questions and discussing through various subjects, the guy had come back to resembling something Scriptural again. It wasn’t that he was following something that was bad — on the contrary, his belief that the Sermon on the Mount was the pinnacle of practical instruction for the believer is very well founded. But his idea of taking that and separating it from its context and from the rest of Scripture put him in a dangerous and divisive place.
Truth be told, Jesus gave us a much more succinct explanation of how to live than even the Sermon on the Mount:
Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, ” ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Ideally, this should be all that the Lord needs to say to us. However, we are very sinful, us humans, and driven all too often by selfish motivations. And as a result, God has given us chapters and epistles of instruction regarding what good (and bad) examples of walking those truths actually looks like. (Jesus did give an even more succinct statement of how to live in Matthew 7:12 that pertains here; click the verse to read it.)
It’s not that the statement was insufficient; we’re just not capable of discerning what it looks like in every situation, hence the explanation.
Before we left the guy that evening (or early morning), I felt a peace that the Holy Spirit brings when I’ve completed such an assignment; the guy was demonstrating by his mannerisms and word choices that he had recognized his error and was in the process of repenting of the division he had been actively bringing against Jesus’ Body. We prayed for forgiveness for the divisive and un-Scriptural acts, for a cleansing of the minds of those he had confused with those teachings, and that the Holy Spirit would baptize him and give him the power to go out and be a witness of Jesus, plain and simple.
Through my mind flashed the thought-picture of the man who had dwelt in the cemetery because he had been possessed with demons, and how when Jesus departed from him that day, he had been back in his right mind and was testifying of the great things God had done for him. The same change seemed present in this man — not that I think he was possessed by any means. That’s just the type of change that took place, somewhat Paul-esque: first, railing against the church and speaking violently against its teachings, then becoming perhaps its most vocal and active member. I pray that is what happened in this man’s life.
As dangerous as any doctrinal confusion or divisive spirit is an undue satisfaction with wherever you’re at spiritually. It’s healthy to consider your life and think “I’m not yet where I should be, but thank God I’m no longer where I was”; don’t allow yourself to think “Hey, I’m doing well, time to hit the ol’ cruise control and just roll for a minute.” Don’t come across something that’s great in God’s Word and get so wrapped up in it that it becomes a rabbit trail you chase to the exclusion of everything else.
Those running the race don’t let up the closer they get to the finish line, they press towards it more intensely.
Go get it.
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