Scripture is timeless. The lessons it teaches us are likewise timeless. To put it another way, the Word of God is evergreen, never withering, changing with the seasons, or with the times. You receive spiritual succor from God’s Word today, as readily as someone two hundred years ago, or five hundred years ago. The only thing that has changed is man’s willingness to humble himself and receive the truth of Scripture. Access to knowledge and its availability have increased exponentially, but those who avail themselves of it have not kept pace. Broadly speaking, it’s undeniable that knowledge has increased, but wisdom has not.
Even when it comes to knowledge, not all knowledge is created
equal. There is worldly knowledge, then there is knowledge that comes from God.
When God points out that His people perish for lack of knowledge, it’s not
knowledge of how to work a universal remote, but rather knowledge of Him, His
character, His will, and His attributes.
Knowledge has increased, but it’s knowledge of the wrong things.
As far as wisdom is concerned, by all available evidence, it seems as though
wisdom has fallen off a cliff, rolled down the side of a mountain, and tumbled
its way into a deep crevice.
That doesn’t keep us from beating our chests until we’re
bruised and screaming “look at me, look at me, I’ve built a better mousetrap”
from the top of our lungs. It wasn’t broken. We just didn’t like it in its
original form. There was nothing that needed fixing, but we took to changing it
with gusto nevertheless. That, in a nutshell, is the crux of the madness. We’ve
gone from “look to Him” to “look at me”, and because there’s only so much
market share to go around, we needed a hook. We needed something that would
make us stand out.
Given that I’ve run across both, I can say with a high degree
of certainty that the gypsy fortunetellers in the old country possess more real
power than many of the so-called prophets of today, who are being raised up on
pedestals as the newest spokespersons for the divine. At least the gypsy women
can guess your name, your age, your birthday, or your dog’s name without the
aid of Facebook. This is what ignorance of the word gets us, and since there is
never a mention of repentance from those pretending to be the next Oz Pearlman or
the next Amazing Kreskin, the sheep lap it up hungrily.
What does guessing the first three numbers of your home
address have to do with Jesus? What does guessing how many children you
fathered have to do with repentance, righteousness, or holiness unto the Lord?
We don’t want God, just our own spiritualized version of bread and circuses. We
don’t want sanctification; we just want a carney act to tell us how special we
are, because that just reinforces our beliefs.
Our conceit has convinced us that we know better than God,
that we can take liberties with the written Word as we will, do away with the
parts we don’t like, abolish context altogether, dismantle the text, then
clobber it back together in a way that best suits us, insisting it’s still as
originally intended, just an upgraded version. The hubris is mindboggling, yet
here we are.
Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and powerful,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and
spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart.”
That just won’t do; it won’t do at all. Piercing and
cleaving, even to the division of soul and spirit, sounded too painful, so we
found a workaround to mitigate the corrective attributes of the living and
powerful word of God. Rather than have the Word pierce us to the depths of our
hearts and expose the thoughts and intents of the heart, we decided to take a
hatchet to the Word itself, make it say things it never did, and so avoid its
sharpened edges.
It took a generation or more, but we’ve gone and done it and
couldn’t be prouder of ourselves. We managed to blunt the sharpness of the Word,
tone down the controversial bits, roll our eyes whenever anyone happened to
remind us of them, convincing ourselves that we’d gotten one over on God. Hi
fives all around; we’ve perfected the magic sauce. You can now have revelation
without relationship, be a servant without submitting to the Master, and live
like hell and be guaranteed heaven.
Isn’t that more appealing to the masses? Isn’t that more palatable?
No more talk of the Word being sharper than a two-edged sword. No more talk of
the Word having the ability to pierce even to the division of soul and spirit,
and of joints and marrow, or the most troubling part, discerning the thoughts
and intents of the heart.
It’s easier to wag our fingers and point at what the world is
doing than to look inward and see the catastrophic tragedy the contemporary
church has become. As far as God is concerned, however, his first priority is
His house, and that is where judgment will begin, flowing outward to the wicked
and the godless. God deals with His own kids first before taking the rod to
someone else’s kids.
1 Peter 4:17, “For the time has come for judgment to begin at
the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those
who do not obey the gospel of God?”
It makes no sense that we want to change the world while
resisting and refusing to be changed by the Word of God. It makes no sense that
we expect the wicked to be more righteous than those declaring themselves to be
ambassadors of Christ and prophets to the nations. Physician heal thyself,
indeed.
It is the church itself that must return to the living,
powerful Word of God, and not shrink back from its sharpness. It is the church
itself that must clean house and tear down its idols, and the altars at which
they worship that are as a stench in God’s nostrils, before it can be useful to
the Kingdom and preach the gospel with the power and authority that have been
missing for so long.
Will it? Will the church have a come-to-Jesus moment, a moment
of true epiphany wherein it not only realizes how far it has strayed from the
truth, but repents of it, acknowledges it, and returns to the basic tenets of
Scripture? Given what the word tells us, given what we can see with our own
eyes, it is unlikely. The getting’s too good, the vanity too deeply rooted, the
praise of men too intoxicating. The hubris has metastasized to the point that
we think we can dictate terms to the Creator of the universe. Rebellion has
become so commonplace as to have been normalized, and wickedness is now
considered par for the course, something we willfully ignore and sweep under
the rug because exposing it will risk the income streams we’ve made our de
facto gods.
Even so, a remnant remains, the few are being sanctified, the bride is being prepared, and those striving to enter through the narrow gate will see what their heart yearns for, their Redeemer, face to face, and hear two of the most profound words they will ever hear, well done!
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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