I will borrow the illustrative words of Jeremiah Johnson to say this:
“Imagine you’re sitting in church this coming Sunday morning. Your pastor steps up to deliver his sermon and starts speaking in a language almost entirely foreign to you. You might recognize a few words, but the majority of what he says flies past you as gibberish. You can’t even follow along with the text—there are no pew Bibles, and you don’t own a copy to study for yourself.
Imagine if that were your entire spiritual intake for the week—a message preached in a language you don’t understand, from a text you can’t read, in a book you’re not allowed to own. Such was life in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.”
Do we have anything like this nowadays? It is true that some countries and people groups still don’t have access to a bible, but the majority of us do have access to multiple bible translations, bible dictionaries, good books and technology which gives the capacity to access even more. How did we come to avail all these resources? There were people such as the reformers who greatly suffered, bled and died as martyrs, defying popes and people in great powers so that we may have our bibles today, now in different languages.
It is Charles Spurgeon who said:
“ The blood of martyrs is on the bible, the blood of translators and confessors. The doctrines we preach to you are doctrines that have been baptized in blood.”
Apathy over the sacred
We have had so much abundant access to biblical materials, religious freedom, and sound preaching which is in our maternal language, that the church today has become complacent and taken it all for granted. Our generations have not learnt or at least forgotten what the reformers have left us as a heritage. We have become cold and careless to what the bible really says, let alone uphold its sufficiency, its authority, conform our lives to it or even die for what it says.
I’ve always had a righteous indignation toward many evangelicals and prosperity preachers in Haiti. Some who cheapen the grace of God, sell physical healing for money, some who have associated witchcraft with the name of Christ, preach worldly fables instead of the bible, and cheapens biblical evangelism for the sake of decisionism, etc.
Now let’s face it this way: It is one thing to be righteously indignant at those heretics out there, but we do have a major disease within our body: It is the cancer of spiritual apathy. Those of us who have the knowledge of the Holy, surrounded with a variety of biblical materials, and sit under sound preaching, what do we do with all of that? The devil doesn’t care if we go to church, uphold reformed theology, or listen to sound preaching as long as we don’t apply what we hear to our lives or preach it to the lost.
In other words, do we apply what we hear? God’s purpose in the reading and preaching of His word is our sanctification. Is this also our spiritual goal ? Do we evangelize the lost? Do we long to see the lost ones come to the knowledge of the reformed truths? In the book of James we read: But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was (James 1:22-24).
In this regard Thomas Brooks also wrote:
“If it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do-or else you are undone forever.”
To whom much is given
It is not an exaggeration to say that a new reformation is crucial for the ongoing life of the church today. On one hand our churches are filled with blatant sins, worldliness, heresy, and purposeful entertainment; on the other hand complacency and apathy is destroying the church.
Now Jesus told his followers a parable concerning their spiritual readiness which was apparently easy to understand. To which Peter asked: “Lord, are You addressing this parable to us, or to everyone else as well?” The Lord answered with another parable that ends like this:
“ And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12: 47-48).
Can we not see the danger which we face? If not, it may be that we are not paying attention.
