2 Timothy 2:7
One of the great challenges I find in pastoring today is the radical influence our culture has on people in regards to thinking. Now days I find that many people are easily deluded and undiscerning. John MacArhur put it this way, "Evangelicals have spiritual AIDS.” They do not fight off the spiritual disease of heresy, because their immune system or discernment is lacking." Others are way to comfortable in what they think and believe. They are stuck in what they no and think and believe and have no ongoing desire to keep learning and progressing. Others are just plain apathetic toward learning, distracted by the numerous diversions that allegedly improve our lives but in reality make us shallow, hollow, and empty. Finally, there are those who are just plain intellectually lazy in regards to critical thinking and analysis. Doug Groothuis says,
"Intellectual sloth is age-old. Both Socrates and Jesus combated it through their probing questions, dialogues, and debates. But cognitive apathy is strengthened in the contemporary world by several defining features of post modernity. This apathy is not only justified in the name of tolerance...but also encouraged by the endless diversion supplied by a culture of entertainment. ”
The infinite God has revealed Himself to us in His Word. When it comes to reading the bible there are things that are hard to understand. The apostle Peter tells us so. He says that in Paul's letters "are some things hard to understand."(2 Peter 3:16).Yes, there are many precious simple truths that do not take much thought and reflection, but yes there are also deeply profound truths that demand much thought and reflection. I believe that God wants us to have a mind and a heart for truth.
I understand how we can be towards the knowledge and understanding of God and His truth. God. Some have just cold knowledge and some have zeal without knowledge (Romans 10:2). True zeal is grounded in right thinking about God and right thinking about God is meant to stir red hot zeal towards God. John Piper once preached a sermon I love that described this that he called A Mind in Love With God.
The apostle Paul goes right against the grain of much contemporary way of thinking. He gives us a command: "Think over what I say". He is commanding us to think. Specifically, to engage our minds in the reading of scriptures. It’s a command for us to ponder the word we read and we hear. Think. Use your minds. Engage your mind. God's way of imparting to us insight is not to short-circuit the intellectual process.
But then he shows us that we are to think in a particular way: " ...for the Lord will give you understanding in everything." This next phrase warns us against intellectualism by wrongly presuming that we can think our way into right understanding without God’s help. So many people divide this up and believe that you are either the one or the other.
Some stress “think over what I say.” They emphasize the indispensable role of reason and thinking. They rely on and exalt their thinking and reasoning faculties. Unfortunately, they often minimize the supernatural role of God in making the mind able to see and embrace the truth.
But others stress the second half of the verse: “And the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” They emphasize the futility of thinking and reasoning and instead focus upon God’s illuminating work apart from reason.
But Paul will not be divided this way. He says: not either-or, but both-and. “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” The willingness of God to give us understanding is the ground of our thinking, not the substitute for our thinking. “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding.” There is no reason to think that a person who thinks without prayerful trust and dependency in God’s gift of understanding will get it. And there is no reason to think that a person who waits for God’s gift of understanding without thinking about his word will get it either.
Paul commands us to think about what he says. Use your mind. Engage your reasoning powers when you hear the word of God. Jesus warned what happens if we don’t and what blessing may come if we do. In the parable of the soils, he said concerning the seed sown on the path: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.” Understanding with the mind is not optional. Our lives hang on it. And concerning the seed sown on good soil, he says, “This is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (Matthew 13:23).
It is true that, as Paul says in Romans 10:17, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” But Jesus says that hearing without understanding produces nothing. When we hear the word of God, Paul says, we must “think over” what we hear. Otherwise, we will fall under the indictment of Jesus: “Hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13:13). We are called to be not childish or immature in our thinking but to be "babes in evil but in thinking be mature" (1 Corinthians 14:20)
The writer of Proverbs exhorts us in Proverbs 2:1-5, “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom ; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright.”
The writer says: You thought you were seeking, reading, studying, thinking, pondering, meditating till you were blue in the face and finally found it? Well you did because the lord gave it to you. That's how it works. You sought, you prayed, you thought, and GOD GAVE IT TO YOU!
"THINK over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything" (2 Timothy 2:7). Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! God has ordained to give the gift of supernatural light through thinking. And the LORD WILL GIVE YOU UNDERSTANDING THROUGH YOUR THINKING. Pray for God to renew your mind (Romans 12:2); to incline your heart, to open your eyes, to give you wisdom, to not only know and see, but to understand and to savor. Depend upon His spirit to guide you into all truth and illuminate your mind to see and apprehend what is there.
"From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory!" (Romans 11:36). God is the ground of all thinking and God is the goal of all thinking. Yes, it is the Lord who gives understanding. But he does it through our God-given thinking and the efforts we make, with prayer, to think hard about what the Bible says.
Desiring to think hard and deeply and utterly dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord to give me understanding,
Pastor Bill
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