Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.
So there are those who receive the Word, but it doesn’t take root, it is shallow.
I became a Christian when I was thirteen and I grew up in a church and I knew what I believed. But I didn’t know why I believed what I believed, then. And there is a world of difference between those two things. As I got older I got into some conversations with my friends and my faith was challenged and it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me as far as deepening my faith was concerned.
I’m convinced that doubt forces us to ask the right questions and seek more answers. In a sense, our faith needs to be lost and found and lost and found over and over again. And there was a moment by the end that season in my life, I felt I had a sense of why I believed what I believed. I no longer had a faith with my my pastor’s name. It was my name. I continue through that process even now but you have got to go through that transition from second hand faith to first hand faith. Second hand knowledge is learning from what someone else has seen or heard or done. You know this. First hand knowledge is seeing it, hearing it, doing it for yourself, and you begin to own it in your life. You can’t live off of someone else’s testimony.
If the sum total of my congregation’s spiritual diet are my messages, I fear for them. The Bible was unchained from the pulpit about 500 years ago, during the Middle Ages, and we can all read it. I hope and pray my messages challenge and encourage and nourish, but at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own growth, for feeding ourselves by being a student of the Word. I think some of us doubt the Scriptures because we’ve never done been responsible to study the scriptures for ourselves.
John Calvin, brilliant mind, once said, ‘all right knowledge is born of obedience’. Obedience will open the eyes of your understanding far more than any commentary or concordance. I remember reading years ago, dynamic properties are not revealed in their static state. I’m not sure I fully understand that, but I do know this – truth is not discovered in a static state. In fact, in Hebrew thought, there was no distinctive between knowing and doing. Doing is knowing and knowing is doing, and if you haven’t done it, you don’t really know it. You’ve got to put it into practice.
The Bible must have two translations. The first translation is with your mind. The goal of knowing the Bible is not knowing the Bible, that’s bibliolatry. The goal of knowing the Bible is knowing God. The way you master the text is by submitting to it. Obedience is the thing that keeps knowledge from becoming pride in our lives. For too long, we have equated knowledge acquisition with discipleship, but that’s not it. It’s the Word getting into our hearts and beginning to transform our lives so that we look more and more like Christ.
I want to share this, I’m picking and choosing at this point. I thank God for the Bible. I’m grateful for the hundreds of translations that come in every size, shape, and color. We take it for granted. And I’m grateful for the 72 Jewish translators in Alexandria who translated the Hebrew text into what is called the Septuagint into a Greek language. I’m grateful for the 47 scholars that were recruited by King James and turned the Textus Receptus into Elizabethan English, a language that I can understand. Some translators, like William Tyndale, even gave their lives to give us their translations. Tyndale was burned at the stake. If we knew all those stories, maybe we would appreciate how the Bible got into our hands, but here’s my point: you are among the company of translators. Just like the Septuagint or King James Version, your life is a unique translation of the Bible. And you may be the only Bible some people read. You’ve got to translate it into your life. That’s how it takes root and begins to bear fruit in your heart.
