“Ears to Hear...”
Receiving the Word of God
“When you read God’s word, continually say to yourself, ‘It is I to whom it is speaking, it is I to whom it is speaking...” - Soren Kierkegaard
As it was when Yeshua was here on earth teaching and sacrificing his blood to make God’s consummate point about our need for his love, so it is universally true that the Word of God speaks to the individual heart, that is, the one who has “ears to hear” what the Spirit is saying...
Now the “Word of God” includes more than just the “red letter” quotes of the Savior, of course, but encompasses all of the Scriptures that have been providentially preserved and sanctioned by those endowed with wisdom to establish and ratify the canon of the Bible. This is the essential context for the “red letters” themselves, and without it we would not understand the overall message. For those interested in how the canon of the Bible was established by the Jewish people (including the first followers of Yeshua the Messiah), there are a number of scholarly resources. Here I simply trust Yeshua’s endorsement of the canon of Scripture of his day, namely the threefold division of the Law (Torah), the Writings (Ketuvim), and the Prophets (Nevi’im) that was handed down from the elders of Israel and the men of the Great Assembly (Luke 22:44; Matt. 7:12). Similarly I trust the threefold witness of the disciples following his resurrection who recorded the Gospel narratives, the Writings (epistles), and the (Revelation).
All of the Bible is “inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16), and this includes its historical narratives as much as it its ethical teachings, its prayers, poems, sermons, parables, prophecies, as well as its theological and pastoral letters. In other words, while the Bible is a collection of various “historical books” written over different times and in different places, it composes a “grand composition” or unified story given by the Spirit of God that has been written down and meticulously preserved for every generation to read and internalize. This is a matter of faith and revelation, though thousands of years of personal testimony of the veracity of its message attest to its credibility and sanctity...
There is a timelessness to the Scriptures for those who read it as “contemporaries” and engage its meaning as relevant to their lives. As I mentioned the other day, this “interpretive principle” is valid because we are given “eternal life” and understand the presence of Christ to be contemporaneous with our lives today. He is alive today, now, this hour. He ever lives to make intercession for us. He is with is always and will never leave nor forsake us...
To illustrate the contemporaneousness of the words of Scripture, let’s consider the infamous account of King David’s adulterous affair with a woman named Bathsheva, and David’s unsuccessful attempts to cover up the affair that finally led him to conspire with his general Joab to have her husband Uriah killed in a battle. Some time later Joab sent a messenger to David saying that Uriah had been killed, and later still David summoned Bathsheva (who was pregnant with his child) to come live at his palace as his wife (see 2 Sam. 11:1-27).
Recall that God then sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his crime. Nathan told David the story of two men in one city, the one rich, and the other poor. “The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle, but the poor man owned nothing except one little lamb he had bought. He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children. It ate from the man’s own plate and drank from his cup. He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter.” When a traveler came to visit the rich man, however, he was unwilling to take one of his own flock to prepare a meal for his guest but instead took the poor man’s lamb and slaughtered it for the man who had come to him. Upon hearing this David was outraged and vowed that the rich man who did this deserved to die because he had shown no pity (2 Sam. 12:1-6).
Nathan then said, “You are the man.” Thus says the LORD God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and his wives and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And if that had not been enough, I would have given you much, much more. Why, then, have you despised the word of the LORD and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. This is what the LORD says: “Because of what you have done, I will cause your own household to rebel against you. I will give your wives to another man before your very eyes, and he will go to bed with them in public view. You did it secretly, but I will make this happen to you openly in the sight of all Israel” (2 Sam. 12:7-12).
David’s repentance for his crime is recorded in Psalm 51...
Regarding this story from Scripture Soren Kierkegaard lamented that many people are as detached from the point as was King David - until they realize “you are the man...” He wrote: “The authority of the Gospel does not speak to one person about another, does not speak to you, my listener, about me, or to me about you, no, when the Gospel speaks it speaks to the single individual, It is not speaking about us human beings, you and me, but to us as human beings, to you and me” (Works of Love: 1847).
Is the moral of the story to teach that God is righteous to judge sin, as David’s judgment of the fictional rich man was really upon himself, and God ratified his realization, or is the moral to warn the individual not to pass judgment on others while blind to his own sin? Does it speak to your heart when you catch yourself indignant over the hypocrisy or malice of others? Or when you judge others for their weaknesses and failures in order to justify your own lukewarm spirituality?
Yeshua lifts the veil from the hidden heart. “But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court; but if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell” (Matt. 5:22). Anger hidden within the heart is as worthy of punishment as murder was declared to be in Torah.
When we read the bible “objectively,” like a secular historian or a professor of world religion might, we try to understand what is saying in terms outside of ourselves, regarding other people, at other times, and in very different circumstances, and yet how we read it and “speak back” (or interpret) the words within our heart reveals more about us than anything else. And that this the cunning trap of Scripture, that like Nathan’s parable, you are the one to whom it is speaking. As Kierkegaard also said: “When you read God’s word, continually say to yourself, ‘It is I to whom it is speaking, it is I to whom it is speaking - for this is earnestness, precisely this is earnestness” (For Self Examination).
This is what our hearts seek, do they not? A personal and passionate engagement with God? Assurance that our lives spent here were not empty and vain. Engaging the Scriptures as the living word of God demands passionate, inward, and subjective commitment to one’s existence, with the task of becoming their true self before God. This is “education for eternity” where the language of imperative bespeaks the language of God’s passion.
It is written in the Torah: “Know within your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5). This verse expresses the idea of “musar” (מוסר), or moral education intended to develop godly character within us. This admonition occurs elsewhere in the wisdom literature: “My son, despise not the chastening (i.e., musar) of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction (i.e., tokhechah). For whom the Lord loves he corrects; even as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11; see also Heb. 12:5-6).
In light of Torah we infer that God disciplines us because we are his children, for the sake of our growth and maturity, and not for vindictive reasons. God’s correction indicates that he feels responsible for our character development, as a good father feels responsible for the character development of his child. Correction from the Lord is ultimately “soul-building,” since it enables us to be partakers of His holiness -- and is grounded in His love and concern for us as our Heavenly Father (see Heb. 12:5-11).
So hang in there dear friend. Persevere to the end. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). May God help us in our “education for eternity.”
Deuteronomy 8:5
וְיָדַ֫עְתָּ עִם־לְבָבֶ֫ךָ
כִּי כַּאֲשֶׁר יְיַסֵּר אִישׁ אֶת־בְּנוֹ
יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶ֫יךָ מְיַסְּרֶ֫ךָּ׃
“So know with your heart
that just as a father disciplines his son,
the LORD your God is disciplining you.”
Deut. 8:5 reading page (pdf)
this is so good to hear this morning, so good to know. thank you Brother for sharing this.