”Until I am coming, be paying attention to the reading, to the exhortation, to the teaching.”
-Reading with comments. This is what Jesus did in Luke 4.16. It was customary - dating back to the very beginning when God’s people first received His written Law - that when God’s people “syn-ago-ed” (hence our word, synagogue), when they assembled together, they took the time to read passages of Scripture and then comment on them (cf Deuteronomy 31.11; Acts 13.15, 15.21). Teach about them. Exhort the hearers to respond and put them into practice. Comfort and encourage their hearts from the Word as they journey through brokenness in all its forms. Paul is commanding Timothy to keep doing that there in Ephesus, doing that in a place where the only access people would have to God’s Word would be in the assembly. No printing press, no family Bibles sitting at home, no Bible app or Bible on CD, no Right Now media. Just the oral reading in the assembly. So, don’t miss this. Don't forget this. Don't neglect this or let it fall into disrepair. Don't slack off one iota on this. Point God’s people to His Word, and to the God of the Word. Reserve space in your services for this. Give them the chance to be exposed to it, to get steeped in it, even if only just a little. Let them hear it. Help them to focus on it, on it’s life-changing truth, and on it’s Author. And if their focus is there, by the way, then it is not on me (the preacher) - not on how old (or young) I am, not on my appearance or gifts or abilities or education. As it should be. Be getting them into the Word, he says. Never goes out of style, that Word of God. For all our progress, all our technology and audio-visual prowess, there is no media more powerful or life-changing than the always-profitable living and active inspired inspirational God-breathed Word of God (Hebrews 4.12, Isaiah 55.11). Never outdated. Never irrelevant. Yes, we do it a grave disservice when we read it and comment on it with so little joy or reverence or enthusiasm or conviction. When we turn it (and ourselves) into just a bunch of dry do’s and don’ts, weened on so many lemons, wielding a veritable guilt-hammer with which to pound people into greater involvement in this that or the other of my programs. A bully pulpit. Performance legalism. Noses and nickles - when that’s the upshot of our reading-and-commenting then we’ve done the Lord and His Word a grave disservice. And I would add parenthetically, that when it comes to helping God’s people get into His Word, using contemporary vernacular (i.e. an understandable and accurate modern translation)(cf Nehemiah 8.7-8) certainly can be helpful for the hearers.
-But by the way, excellent litmus test for a preacher, this. After listening to him do his read-and-comment thing, is your focus more on him (and his programs), or more on the Lord and His Word? And when all is said and done, it’s not the words - it’s the attitude of our hearts, whether we’re the one reading-and-commenting or the one hearing-and-responding. How’s your heart? How’s mine? What kind of two-way transmitter is it? Because isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? Receive and broadcast, right? Sea of Galilee not the Dead Sea, right? Both flowing in AND flowing out. We all of us long for (or should) and humbly hear and receive the Word (1Peter 2.2, James 1.21-22), and we all of us are (or should be) learning to handle accurately and speak Good News and edifying encouragement to others and one another with the very same Word (2Timothy 2.15, 1Thessalonians 1.8, Colossians 3.16, Ephesians 6.17, 1Corinthians 14.26, Matthew 28.19). Surely this is what the author of Hebrews has in mind as well (cf Hebrews 10.24-25), believers gathering together to encourage and be encouraged from God’s Word. It’s a two-way radio, made not in China but in Heaven! A heavenly walkie-talkie - and while that really fails to capture the incredible breathtaking gloriousness of the situation, you get the idea. Hopefully. :) Lord-willing...!
-And as an aside - with such mind-boggling access today to the Word of God, not only in print but in all kinds of media - have we not been gifted something of which the ancients could have barely hoped, certainly not imagined, not in their wildest dreams? Thanks to Gutenberg and Wycliffe and Steve Jobs and Al Gore. Almost all of us have instant access to God’s Word pretty much all the time, anywhere we are. And do we not take this oh so for granted? Be paying attention to the reading, he says. Constantly. Why should any of us leave it up to the preacher to do our reading for us? So many of us are like baby birds, who depend on a parent to regurgitate some morsel of food which they have already ingested. Isn’t that the level to which many of our parishoners have descended? Our assemblies are no longer these convenient smaller gatherings where each person engages with the Scripture such that anyone might have something to say to exhort or instruct the group as to the Word of God (small groups, anyone?). Rather, most of us, we come to the slick big program and we sit and we stand and we sit back down and we listen and the preacher is the one who does pretty much all the heavy lifting, doesn’t he? He did the reading and the studying, and he does the speaking and the teaching and commenting, and for the masses - their Scriptural aplomb, their degree of adeptness, their level of biblical fitness and confidence can be downright dismal, can it not? Thankfully there are many glorious exceptions to this trend, but surely, on the whole, when it comes to God’s Word God’s people do leave quite a lot of meat (and bread and milk and honey) on the bone, do we not? But this is not for the birds. We ought not be making like baby birds in our intake of heavenly manna. Let us each one of us join Jeremiah (Jeremiah 15.16), and let’s find God’s Word (daily! cuz we can!) and dig in to the spiritual feast which it offers and indeed is, and may it truly become the joy and delight of our hearts (Psalm 1.2, 19.7-10, 112.1, 119.103), like it was for David, a man after God’s own heart!
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