2.3 Missing the Main Thing
2.3 Missing the Main Thing
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
What is the main thing about you as a person? Would I be wrong in stating that, if you were stripped of everything, all outward possessions and all physical and spirit abilities, that you would still retain the only thing important that is you, and that the main thing that is you is your heart?
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (John 5:39-40). What is really happening here? People search the Scriptures looking for and finding all sorts of things, everything except the only thing that counts.
A Familiar Poem. There is a very familiar poem that presents us with the same problem.
The Six Blind Men of Hindustan
There were six men of Hindustan, to learning much inclined, Who went to see an elephant, though all of them were blind, That each by observation might satisfy his mind.
The first approached the elephant, and happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl, "This mystery of an elephant is very like a wall."
The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, "Ho, what have we here, So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear, This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear."
The third approached the elephant, and happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant is very like a snake."
The fourth reached out an eager hand, and felt above the knee, "What this most wondrous beast is like is very plain" said he, "'Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree."
The fifth who chanced to touch the ear said, "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; deny the fact who can; This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan."
The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, Than seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope; "I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a rope."
So six blind men of Hindustan disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong; Though each was partly in the right, they all were in the wrong!
What Did They Miss? What was it that each of these blind men missed? It was not just that each element they had found was a part of a larger whole, but that the parts they were grabbing were members of a living creature, a living creature who was wondering what on earth they were doing with his parts!
The question that came to me comes to everyone. What are you doing with My Word? The Bible is not just a whole made up of specific individual parts; the Bible is a living Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Entire Bible. But if this Bible is not ideas for our intellects enabling us to direct our own steps by what God says, but rather a living Person, then where and how are we to KNOW this Person?
If we could reduce the intent of the entire Bible down into a phrase of seven words, which phrase would we choose? Others may well choose a different phrase, but I will always be up front and clear about the one phrase I choose.
Christ lives in your heart through faith (Ephesians 3:17a). All that salvation is and means and every word in the Bible is found here inside this one phrase. God has only one desire through the entire Bible, and that is to enable you to know what this one phrase really means.
God in Person. There is only one way the men of Hindustan, blind or not, could know the elephant – only if the elephant himself, sharing out from his own heart, out from the depths of purpose and desire in his soul, placed the function of every part of himself into alignment with that purpose and desire.
The Bible is not about the Bible, and it especially is not about you and me discovering God’s wisdom so that we can direct our own steps. God is about God, God in Person, and this invisible and unknown God would speak directly together with you and me. Part of how He does that is through the Bible. It’s not what we do with the Word God speaks; it’s what the Word God speaks does with us.
About Me. – The Bible is talking about ME, but instead of coming to ME, that I might live IN you, you spend all your time searching the Bible with your intellects, never looking for or finding ME. –
So – how do we look for and where do we find the Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus does say that everything in the Bible (and we are free to include the New Testament in His statement) testifies of Him. That means every verse in the Bible is pointing us to the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But what if, as every verse pointed us to Jesus, we thought to ourselves, “No, I will stay with figuring out the words on the page, I will not turn to connect with any literal ‘Person’”?
Every Verse Points. On the other hand, if we allow every verse in the Bible to turn us in the direction it is pointing, where will we find this Jesus and how will we perceive Him?
Christ lives in your heart through faith. First, we could make a reasonable assumption that if Jesus in Person is found inside the heart of any individual, that person belongs to Jesus, and if Jesus in Person is not found in a person’s heart, that person does not, at the present moment, belong to Him. We could reasonably assume that Jesus knows what He is doing and where He chooses to live. But, wait a minute, what does this seven-word phrase mean?
Where Is Jesus? When most Christians think of Jesus and “where He is,” they think of a solitary figure faraway, looking very much like that Italian fellow whose picture everyone pawns off as “Jesus,” sitting on a throne “in heaven” and “at the right hand” of a bigger fellow, “God.” How can Jesus be seated at the right hand of God AND be fully in my heart, Himself in Person?
And yet we know that God is omnipresent Spirit who fills all things with all of Himself. We know that we could go anywhere in the universe and at every point we must find ALL of God. If God fills all things and if Jesus lives in my heart, then living in my heart and sitting on God’s throne must be the same thing.
Who Is IN You? R.C. Sproul suggests that every verse in the Bible serves the purpose of teaching us the ways of a distant God so that we ourselves might order our lives by those instructions. Jesus said that every verse in the Bible serves the purpose of pointing us to Himself as a Living Person, and Paul said that the core of the gospel is that this Person, Jesus, lives inside of us, in our hearts.
Have you thought much about the King of the Universe, the resurrected Christ of God, in all that He is, living inside your chest? How can Sproul write an entire book about studying and interpreting the Bible and never discover that every verse is about the Glorious Person who fills Sproul with all that He is?
Far More Real. Christ lives in your heart through faith.
My wife and I have been married for 25 years and have raised four children. We love one another. Last evening, we sat in the living room watching together a documentary on cats, The Lion in Your Living Room. Our enjoyment was more our enjoying the documentary together rather than the information found in it. Jesus, of course, was also there, inside of me, filling me full with Himself in Person, a trillion times more real than my wife ever could be, and He was enjoying the documentary on cats entirely together with us.
Yes, Jesus is real! Many Christians don’t quite grasp that fact.
Know by Spirit. Consider these two statements, one from John, the other from Paul.
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). (This statement of Jesus is, in fact, the ONLY definition of eternal life in the Bible.) – But God has revealed (His purpose) to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. …Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received… the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:10-12).
Never Discovering Jesus. Let’s return to our illustration of blind men probing an elephant, desiring to comprehend what it is they are studying. Each one finds something different and gives an intellectual “guess” as to what it might mean, yet none of them ever considers a living, breathing elephant who is, in fact, wondering what they are doing to him.
The foundation of Sproul’s approach to interpreting the Bible is the use of the intellect to know how God wants us to live our lives, and he finds in the Bible little more than instruction. I do not disagree with Sproul regarding the importance and the role of our minds, but a mind not bathed in and filled with the Spirit of God will never discover Jesus in the Bible.
To Know Jesus Is to Live. The remainder of this text, Knowing God by Scripture, is based on the premise that the Word God speaks, every verse in the Bible, is Spirit, and that it enters into us to be life, that is, Jesus Himself in Person. The intellect certainly has a role to play in that transaction, but only as a servant to Spirit.
The Bible is not about what Sproul thinks it’s about. The Bible is about a living Person who lives inside of us in all that He is. And we read the Bible only by the Spirit, that we might KNOW the Word God speaks, the all-speaking of God, Jesus Himself, that we might live.
To know Jesus is to live; to know Jesus is to know the Father.