"Heavenly Father,
We come before you today, to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.
We know Your Word says,
By A W Tozer
GOD'S THE TRUTH IS A LOVELY SONG, BECOME SWEET BY LONG AND TENDER ASSOCIATION
Charles G. Finney believed that Bible teaching without moral application could be worse than no teaching at all, and could result in positive injury to the hearers. I used to feel that this might be an extreme position, but after years of observation I have come around to it, or to a view almost identical with it.
There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less. Theology is a set of facts concerning God, man and the world. These facts may be, and often are, set forth as values in themselves; and there lies the snare both for the teacher and for the hearer.
The Bible is among other things a book of revealed truth. That is, certain facts are revealed that could not be discovered by the most brilliant mind. These facts are of such a nature as to be past finding out. They were hidden behind a veil, and until certain men who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost took away that veil, no mortal man could know them. This lifting of the veil of unknowing from undiscoverable things we call divine revelation.
The Bible, however, is more than a volume of hitherto unknown facts about God, man and the universe. It is a book of exhortation based upon those facts. By far the greater portion of the book is devoted to an urgent effort to persuade people to alter their ways and bring their lives into harmony with the will of God, as set forth in its pages.
No man is better for knowing that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. The devil knows that, and so did Ahab and Judas Iscariot. No man is better for knowing that God so loved the world of men that He gave His only begotten Son to die for their redemption. In hell there are millions that know that. Theological truth is useless until it is obeyed. The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action.
What is generally overlooked is that truth as set forth in the Christian Scriptures is a moral thing; it is not addressed to the intellect only, but to the will also. It addresses itself to the total man, and its obligations cannot be discharged by grasping it mentally. Truth engages the citadel of the human heart and is not satisfied until it has conquered everything there. The will must come forth and surrender its sword. It must stand at attention to receive orders, and those orders it must joyfully obey. Short of this any knowledge of Christian truth is inadequate and unavailing.
Bible exposition without moral application raises no opposition. It is only when the hearer is made to understand that truth is in conflict with his heart that resistance sets in. As long as people can bear orthodox truth, divorced from life, they will attend and support churches and institutions without objection. The truth is a lovely song, become sweet by long and tender association; and since it asks nothing but a few dollars, and offers good music, pleasant friendships and a comfortable sense of well-being, it meets with no resistance from the faithful. Much that passes for New Testament Christianity is little more than objective truth sweetened with song and made palatable by religious entertainment.
Probably no other portion of the Scriptures can compare with the Pauline Epistles when it comes to making artificial saints. Peter warned that the unlearned and unstable would wrest Paul's writings to their own destruction, and we have only to visit the average Bible Conference and listen to a few lectures to know what he meant. The ominous thing is that the Pauline doctrines may be taught with complete faithfulness to the letter of the text without making the hearers one whit better. The teacher may, and often does, so teach the truth as to leave the hearers without a sense of moral obligation.
One reason for the divorce between truth and life may be the lack of the Spirit's illumination. Another surely is the teacher's unwillingness to get himself into trouble. Any man with fair pulpit gifts can get on with the average congregation if he just "feeds" them and lets them alone. Give them plenty of objective truth and never hint that they are wrong and should be set right, and they will be content.
On the other hand, the man who preaches truth and applies it to the lives of his hearers will feel the nails and the thorns. He will lead a hard life, but a glorious one. May God raise up many such prophets. The church needs them badly.
From the book 'Of God and Man,' published by the Christian
Publications, Inc., 25 South Tenth St., Harrisburg, PA. 17101.
By Kenneth S. WUEST
THERE ARE four grammatical rules in the Greek language which lead us to four truths relative to this great subject. The words in Ephesians 5:18 are, "Be filled with the Spirit."
First, the verb is in the imperative mode. That is, it is imperative that we be filled with the Spirit, first, because God commands it, second, because the fullness of the spirit is the divine enablement in the life of a Christian which results in a Christ-like life. Failure to be filled with the Spirit is sin and results in failure to live a life honoring to God.
Second, the tense of the verb is present, and this tense in the imperative mode always represents action going on. We learn from this that the mechanics of a Spirit-filled life do not provide for a spasmodic filling, that is, the Christian is not filled only when doing service such as preaching or teaching. But the Christian living a normal life of moment by moment yieldedness to God, experiences a moment by moment fullness of the Spirit. No Christian can do with less and at the same time live a victorious life.
Third, the verb is in the plural number, which teaches us that this command is addressed, not only to the preacher and the deacon, and the teacher in the Sunday School, but to every Christian, to the business man, the laborer, the housewife. It is the responsibility of every Christian to be always filled with the Holy Spirit.
Fourth, the verb is in the passive voice. This grammatical classification represents the subject of the verb as inactive but being acted upon. This teaches us that the filling with the Spirit is not a work of man but of God. We cannot work ourselves up to that condition by any amount of tarrying, praying, or agonizing. A simple desire for that fullness and a trust in the Lord Jesus for that fullness will result in that fullness (John 7:37-39).
But what is meant by the fullness of the Holy Spirit? We find the answer in James 4:5, "Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, ‘The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy’?" The word "lust" is an obsolete English word meaning "to earnestly desire." The translation reads, "The Spirit who has taken up his permanent abode in us constantly and earnestly desires to the point of envy."
Now, what does He desire even to the point of a divine envy? In Galatians 5:17 we read, "For the flesh has a strong desire to suppress the Spirit, and the Spirit has a strong desire to suppress the flesh, and these are firmly settled in an attitude of opposition to one another that you may not do the things which you constantly desire to do." The constant desire of the fallen nature is to sin. The Holy Spirit is the divine provision against sin in the life of a Christian. The evil nature wishes to use the faculties of the believer for sinful purposes. The Holy Spirit desires to use them for God's glory. The choice is with the Christian. He chooses which of the two will control his faculties. Thus the passage in James reads in paraphrase, "The Spirit who has taken up his final abode in us jealously desires the whole of us."
Yieldedness to and dependence upon the Holy Spirit results in the Spirit putting down the evil nature in defeat and producing in the believer a life pleasing to God. Thus, the fullness of the Spirit refers to His control over the believer. The translation of our text is, "Be ye being constantly filled with the Spirit."
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Source: Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament, Three Volume Edition, 1973
