Knowledge can be a very good thing, or a very bad thing depending on how it is used.  Increases in man’s knowledge have brought cures for diseases, increased the speed of travel and communication, and continually increased the standard of living overall worldwide.  Knowledge has also brought with it a greater capacity for evil, namely it has been used by someone like Hitler or Sadaam Hussein to systematic murder hundreds of thousands of people with chemical weapons, it enables greed from someone like Bernie Madoff to steal money from thousands of people on a large scale, and it has facilitated the suppression of people in North Korea by a combination of modern weapons, world banking, and communication advances.

So, with greater knowledge comes the possibility of greater good, but also of greater evil.  Which direction knowledge will be used is a matter of the heart in the individual who weilds it.  That’s the focus of today’s WFTD.  Most people today are religious consumers.  They will listen on Sundays, they may belong to a small group, gaining a large amount of knowledge about God and His desires for us, but without doing much about it.  Here is what I would say to that group of people – stop going to church and stop reading the Bible.  It would be better for you not to clearly see the commands of God, than to see them, understand them, and ignore (reject) them.  It may seem like passivity when a Christian goes to church, but doesn’t do anything with what is heard, but something actually is happening – their heart is hardening against God.  Whenever you hear the commands of God, and do not do them, you may deceive yourself into thinking that “I will get to obedience in that area later”, but what you’re really telling God is “No, I rule my life, not you.  I’ll use you God as I see fit, take what I want, and leave the rest”.

For someone who goes to church on Sunday, maybe reads their Bible some, but to where it never results in a passion to obey God, this is how God will judge them – Revelation 3:15-17 – “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.Would that you were either cold or hot!  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

2 Peter 2:20-21 – “if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.  For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”

James 1:22-25 – “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” 

I do not believe those receiving this message are hearers only, and not doers, but I say these things as a way of reminder to always be vigilant to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, knowing it is God at work in you.  A passion for God that results in obedience, is something we must all pray and ask God for daily.  Christians can not “coast”.  We are always moving closer to, or further away from God.  Our hearts are always softening, increasing in joy in the Lord or hardening, pursuing joy in the world.  My exhortation is this – do not read the Word of God lightly nor take your time amongst Christians in community casually.  Claim for yourself these as a gift from God, a means of grace to transform your heart and mind into the image of God.  Be doers of the Word, and so prove yourselves to be disciples of Christ.  May God grant mercy to each of us in our failings, give us grace to know Him more, and grace upon grace as we follow in the footsteps of Christ as His ambassadors into a fallen world.

Grace and Peace,
Adam