November 18, 2008
Lame Duck
I can just imagine the mental picture that would form in the mind of a six year-old if you were to ask him to describe a lame duck. In politics we understand the President Bush is a lame duck because his presidency will soon end. Webster’s has another definition: one that is weak or that falls behind in ability or achievement. I’ve seen lame ducks in the church…not only that, I’ve been one. There is no doubt that if we neglect the study of the Word, even for a short time, we become weaker and fall behind in our Christian maturity.
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Gail;
-----I love Proverbs chapter two. It even begins right: “…if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments…” (vs. 1). Two important points are made. The first is that understanding the fear of the Lord and finding the knowledge of God (vs. 5) is conditional. We do not inherently have these by just calling upon the name of Jesus. We can choose to either not bother with His Word and commandments and not understand and know, or we can receive and treasure and understand and know. It is one or the other. Not much further into the chapter we learn that meeting the condition of receiving and treasuring comes only with intensity of desire and ambition. It is not that we would just kind of like to have understanding and knowledge, but it is that we cry out for them and search for them as hard as we would search for a pot of gold if we knew it was buried in the back yard, and that we would treasure them as much as we would treasure the pot of gold when we had found it. Second, it is His Word we must receive and His commandments we must treasure. All intensity of desire and ambition are for not our own opinions, but for the Word of God. There are myriads of baby books on the market with all kinds of cute things said about God. Many of them are not even written by people who acknowledge Jesus. And many of those written by Christians fail the logic of the Bible. There are just as many people willing to make a stand for the Biblical basis of these books without having searched the Scriptures. Worse yet, we too often receive our own ideas rather than His Word, and treasure our biases rather than His commands. None of this leads to understanding the fear of the Lord and knowing God. Instead, it leads to understanding the fear of religion and guessing God. The first five verses of Proverbs chapter two reveal the initial steps into the sanctuary of the new life after having passed through Jesus, the door. It is our choice to stand there, just past the doorway, like lame ducks, or to enter into the depths of the sanctuary searching the Word with strength of conviction.
Love,
Steve Corey
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