As you read the Bible, it’s easy to shake your head at some of the characters. We think we would never behave that way or make the choices they did. Knowing what we know of Jesus today, I think it’s easy to be confident we would react better if we were in their place. Let me assure you, none of us would. I know this because I know myself and I know what I observe in others every day.
Perhaps our actions are even worse than those of our ancestors. We have the complete Word and revelation of God in our hands and our native language (2 Timothy 3:16-17). This phenomenon is only a few hundred years old. None of those we read about in the Bible had access to the Word like we do. Despite that, our commitment to Jesus is no better than theirs.
Ancient Israel had the Ten Commandments and the various other laws Yahweh dictated to Moses. That was the book they had, and they knew how fortunate they were to have it. Parents would recite it to their children, adults would speak it to one another as they went about their days. King David declared the word of God was always on his lips (Psalm 34:1). The people loved the Word. Fast-forward a few hundred years and you find the nation only a shell of what it once was. They had fallen so far that “the book” was found in the ruins, forgotten and ignored (2 Kings 22:8-13). When it was read to the people, none of them had any knowledge of the things written there. God had been removed from the consciousness of the nation and from the hearts of the people (Jeremiah 7:28).
Sound familiar? When my parents were growing up, the school day began with prayer. Today, that is illegal. In my lifetime, it has been commonplace to see the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and scripture verses displayed in government buildings. Those have all but disappeared. The church was once the moral conscience of the nation (Proverbs 14:34). Now many churches have closed and their buildings repurposed. No longer do we possess a shared understanding and vocabulary about the truth and authority of God and His Word. Despite all our blessings, we too have removed God from the consciousness of our nation and the hearts of the people (Romans 1:21-23). We are following the same playbook as those we shake our heads at.
The Pharisees were a regular target of Jesus’s teaching. At least we aren’t like them! Just before these same Pharisees killed Stephen, he was preaching and declaring that the Pharisees were always resisting the Holy Spirit, doing just as their fathers had always done. They were always persecuting those who would preach the name of Jesus. They had the commands of God but refused to obey them. (Acts 7:51-53). That’s our story too. If we are honest, we will see that we are just like those we read about and think we would never do what they did. But we prove otherwise every day.
Brothers and sisters, have we learned nothing? How can we be so dull as to fall into the same traps and behavior of those who came before us? We can read where they went wrong and learn from them. Instead, we choose to follow the same paths invoking the same wrath of God on our lives (Hebrews 3:12-13). Don’t you want to live a different way? Don’t you want to live for God with all your heart, never turning aside to the right or the left (Joshua 1:7-8)? That is my desire and my prayer. We must repent of all our evil ways, cry out in despair and anguish over our sins, and plead forgiveness and mercy from our Savior (2 Chronicles 7:13-14). Let us no longer walk in the ways of our fathers but turn instead to the holy King who gave His life so we might live (1 Peter 2:24).