- It’s impossible to obey God’s Word, no matter how accessible Bibles are, if we aren’t exposed to it.
I am pretty sure I suffer from selective hearing. If my wife is talking about interesting nuances of her day, I have learned the fine art of muttering seemingly receptive sounds while largely not attending to her perspectives. But, really, I’m not hearing anything she is saying in any kind of meaningful sense.
But if she ever interjects “Hey – want a surprise?” (code language in our language for some kind of snack), then my ears go on high alert.
I might get away with that in my home sometimes (actually–not usually), but Israel had a really tough time using the same listening strategy with God. Amos, prophesying eight centuries before Jesus, was God’s mouthpiece to Israel, a nation which outwardly had seeming prosperity and political stability but was characterized by God as a people with inward rot. Exhibit A? Habitual unjust practices towards the poor and the worship of multiple gods. If Yahweh wasn’t assuaging their every whim…they created other deities and followed a strange morality.
In Amos 8:11, the Lord God made a pronouncement that should have stunned the nation:
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,
“when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
To accentuate the point, the word “hearing” in the above passage is the Hebrew shema, a verb that means hear and obey. More than just the perception of a holy sound, God wanted action.
An argument could be made that America is already to this point in her cultural history. A few years ago, Lifeway Research found that 9 out of 10 American homes have at least one Bible. The average American citizen, whether a believer or not, owns at least three Bibles. Anyone with a smart phone can instantly access an immense treasure trove of biblical data, but that resource is largely neglected. In fact, only 45% read the Bible more than once a week. Nearly 1 in 5 never read it at all.
At. All. The Bible – ubiquitous and ignored. A strange kind of famine.
It’s impossible to obey God’s Word, no matter how accessible Bibles are, if we aren’t exposed to it. The answer might be to read Scripture more…much more. But, again, what does it profit someone to read the Bible and not do it? The real antidote to a shema famine is almost certainly to be found in meeting with other believers to not only read and discuss the Bible but also make plans, together, to put that truth into action. Jesus showed the way with the disciples – people steeped not only in the thought life of Jesus but in His application. Anthropologist Margaret Mead is frequently attributed with saying “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Thoughtful change agents. It beats quiet, willing listeners of sermons, studies, podcasts and seminars who do nothing.
Shema demands more.
