We live in an age of doubters. People who are constantly worried about what a firm belief in the truth might do to their reputation. They are happy to taste the menu but refuse to let the truth go all the way down.
Their convictions are more like wine tasting than wine drinking. Round the mouth it goes until it’s finally spat out.
And why not? Wine tasting is fun. We all get to muse and pool our opinions and noone gets too offended.
No one is transformed or changed, either.
Jesus wept. That, they can swallow. But that He made the world in six days? “Hmm, well, science says…..”
Did the sun stop mid-stream in the days of Joshua? Hmm, who can say? Perhaps it was the earth that stopped our 1,000m/hr rotation while simultaneously halting its 67,000m/hr spin around the sun.
Did God make man in His own image from the dust or did we creep into existence via the genetics of a swamp?
For many, nothing is ever really certain and nothing ever swallowed so that it becomes part of the eater. In other words, nothing is deeply believed. All truths are negotiable.
For us, the tobacco gets chewed and we stick a finger in the pie. But we are tasters only. Nothing goes down to the soul. Nothing is certain and so, nothing is transformed.
The New Humility
We boast that our doubting is but a form of humility. We don’t want to be charged with arrogance and so, in our cowardice, we defer to not really being too sure of anything. Which may be the reason that we are now so willing to believing everything (or nothing).
But this is not humility. It is the ultimate arrogance. “Did God really say..?”
The man who says, ‘Amen!’, who takes in the words, “male and female created He them”, is not being arrogant. He is a humble man.
He is digesting the truth and being transformed in his thinking by the word of life and the authority of God under whom he lives.
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We have turned humility on its head. To be humble today is to know nothing for sure. To be sure, say they, is to be arrogant. We do this, I suppose because we want to look good.
But it leaves us emaciated. Our bellies may be full, but our souls remain empty.
We avoid swallowing truths that might make others think poorly of us.
God wants us to become more than tasters. We have not been invited to sample the menu but to sit down and feast on a banquet.
You are What you Eat.
Jesus, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah said,
Your words were found, and I did eat them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)
He then promptly laid down His body as food for the world and calls us to do the same.
Jesus wants you to drink the wine and eat the bread and then share with others the certainties that these things represent – all of them. The whole bleedin’ lot. The entire counsel of God.
Food and wine are metaphors for truth. All of it is good food. All of it is food and wine to be shared with hungry souls.
Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:10)
Some will find the food indigestible (John 6:56, 66), and some won’t (John 6:68-69). Let that be as it may, only let us not be cowards when it comes to the menu.
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