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Pointers along the way #893

Claiming to be wise

- Jacob Ninan

You can listen to this on YouTube

"Claiming to be wise, they became fools" (Ro.1:22). "They exchanged the truth of God for falsehood" (v.25). This is a problem some Christians have when they read the Bible. The context here was about people going away from God to idols. But we can apply it to another context also.

God in His love for us has given us the Bible for revealing what kind of a Person He is, how He created us, what went wrong with us and what we need to do to get back to Him. He managed to use a variety of authors to convey what He wanted us to learn about getting into a relationship with Him and living the kind of life that represents His character (2Pet.1:3). We may wish sometimes that He had told us many things in more detail and more plainly, but what we can see is that to understand God's ways we have to seek it like people look for hidden treasures (Pr.2:3-5). We also have to have a heart that is willing to obey God after He shows us the truth (Jn.7:17). Then we will begin to have our spiritual eyes opened and see things from God's point of view. That is to be spiritually minded.

But isn't it possible to study the Bible as if it is merely a human writing, just as we study books in our schools and colleges? We may think that if we learn the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the original Bible was written, we will then be able to get to the 'real' meaning of the text. Of course, that knowledge is very helpful as far as understanding what the authors had in their mind. But spiritual insight will come only when our 'heart' seeks after God (Ps.42:1).

When we come to the Bible and find there things that are not unambiguously clear, one temptation is to speculate about what is not given there. The cleverer and the more knowledgeable we are, we may imagine that our ideas must be right. Then we may go on to publish such ideas and the greater the reputation we have or the more marketing we do, we may convince a lot of people to accept our new ideas. But the question is whether these ideas are true or merely speculations (1Ti.1:4). Even new churches have been started based on some unique ideas that none of the others knew!

Can't we accept the idea that whatever God thought we needed to know, He has revealed, and what He has kept hidden are really not necessary for us to know at this time (De.29:29)? Why then do we go on to speculate about what God has chosen to hide? To show off our cleverness? As we saw in the beginning, that is a path that will lead us away from God and perhaps even to destruction.

A preacher called Thomas Campbell (1809) said, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; and where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent," as a general guideline for avoiding controversial opinions of men. This is not God's law which is to be followed literally but a helpful concept to think about. One part of humility is to abide within the boundaries God has laid out for us in His wisdom. Why don't we major on what God has revealed clearly?

Pointers are available in YouTube audio from #789.

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