Lloyd George, the British statesman and prime minister (from 1916 to 1922) had much to contend with during his ministry. There was World War I, the economic crisis, and the Sinn Fein movement for Irish liberation, among other difficulties. Asked how he retained his good spirits, he replied, “Well, I find that a change of nuisances is as good as a vacation.”
Yet, not everyone is so sanguine about change, particularly
in the sphere of biblical studies and theology. There is this notion among a
wide cross-section of evangelical and reformed Christians today that there is a
corpus of understanding that has been once and for all delivered to the church.
It is sacrosanct, inviolable, and fully known. And yet, the testimony of the
Scripture and the Christian life is that such a conviction is folly.
Spurgeon once said, “The proper study of a Christian is the
Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest
philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name,
the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great
God whom He calls Father. It is a study that has a beginning, but no ending.”
A few weeks ago I buried a dear friend who, until his dying
day, remained faithful, available, and teachable. And it’s the teachable part
that never ceased to amaze me. He never stopped learning, especially when it
came to the character of God and the truth of the Gospel. As an 82-year-old
engineer, he continued to preach (as a lay preacher). For more than 40 years he
taught large adult Bible studies in several churches. By his own testimony he
had learned so much about God’s grace in the final five years of his life that
he wished he could go back and redo much of his teaching.
But what really astounded me was that in the final months of
his life he began to deeply lament how much of his earlier understanding of God
and the good news of the Gospel he had gotten wrong. Through tears he said, “I
can’t believe all the things I taught that I thought were true, but weren’t. I
feel like I’ve led people astray.” I replied, “There’s no way you led them astray.
You always lifted up Jesus and pointed to Him. Besides you just proved the
point. Anyone who seeks to teach the things of the Lord who’s not growing and
willing to grow is most of the time just teaching their word, rather than God’s
Word. You repeatedly ask the Lord to increase your understanding of Him and He
answered your prayer!”
Robert Capon once wrote:
Whenever someone attempts to
introduce a radically different insight to people whose minds have been formed
by an old and well-worked-out way of thinking, he or she is up against an
obstacle. Jesus said, their taste for the old wine is so well established that
they invariably prefer it to the new.
More than that, the new wine, still
fermenting, seems to them so obviously and dangerously full of power that they
will not ever consider putting it into their old and fragile wineskins.
But now try to see the point of the
biblical imagery of wine-making a little more abstractly. The new insight is
always at odds with the old way of looking at things. Even if the teacher’s
audience were to try earnestly to take it in, the only intellectual devices
they would have to pick it up with are the categories of the old system with which
it conflicts. Hence the problem: if he leaves in his teaching a single
significant scrap of the old system, they, by their own effort to understand,
will go to that scrap rather than to the point he is making and, having done
that, will understand the new only insofar as it can be made to agree with the
old—which is, not at all.
In recent months I have been confronted over and over again
by the truth of Capon’s words. The resistance to new, well-grounded biblical
and spiritual insights has never seemed greater within the body of Christ.
Faithfulness? Yes. Availability? Yes. Teachability? Sadly no. There’s a dearth
of it in so many quarters.
That’s why Sunday’s message, “Growing God’s Way,” seems
appropriate. Here in Genesis 21 and the story of Isaac’s birth and early
matriculation is a primer on the way Christ calls us all to grow. Like so many
biblical texts, I’ve preached Genesis 21 before, but never like this.
In preparation for Sunday’s message you may wish to consider
the following:
Who is Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ writings?
The ancient rabbis spoke of four levels of meaning found in
the Scriptures: the literal, the suggestive, the investigative, and the
allegorical. What are the differences?
Did Jesus use each of them?
What do we see about Isaac’s birth from verse 1?
Why does Sarah say what she says in verse 6?
How is Isaac’s birth like every Christian’s rebirth? (See
John 1:12, 13)
How important is the context of Sarah’s command in verse 10?
How does Paul’s teaching in Galatians 4 instruct us as to
God’s purpose in verse 12?
What do you make of God’s promise in verse 18?
What does verse 20 tell us about the grace of God?
See you Sunday!
