Scripture
23Each time Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king took a knife and cut off that section of the scroll. He then threw it into the fire, section by section, until the whole scroll was burned up. 24Neither the king nor his attendants showed any signs of fear or repentance at what they heard. 25Even when Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, he wouldn’t listen. Jeremiah 36:23-25
Observation
The prophet Jeremiah was locked up in prison for being obedient to sharing God’s Word with God’s people. They didn’t want to hear the promise of judgment from God if they didn’t repent so they threw him jail to try and silence God’s voice. Instead, Jeremiah called his scribe Baruch who wrote down everything God was saying to Jeremiah. The King of Judah didn’t want to hear the word of God either so he cut it out and burned it up convinced that there was no need to repent. As if to cut out or burn up God’s Word would somehow remove the certainty of God’s will being carried out. In fact, the chapter ends with this, “So Jeremiah took another scroll and dictated again to his secretary, Baruch. He wrote everything that had been on the scroll King Jehoiakim had burned in the fire. Only this time he added much more!” (Jeremiah 36:32) Jesus said it this way, “Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear.”
Application
We are living in the age of individual expression, customization, and deconstruction. From what we wear, what we say, where we live, and what we believe it’s all based on the subjective stance that “my truth” is something we is something I can craft and create. We will pick and choose what we like and don’t like from Scripture and feel no conviction in doing so. Now, I don’t like everything in written in Scripture either, but what kind of arrogance assumes I can edit God’s Word and determine God’s will? It’s not about what I like, it’s about what I believe. I believe in the infallible Word of God, the Whole Word for The Whole World. This idea of editing scripture isn’t unique to our generation. Did you know King Jehoiakim had something in common with Thomas Jefferson? AJ Swoboda, in his book “After Doubt”, points out the tragic tendency we all have to self-edit scripture, Thomas Jefferson—a framer of the US Constitution—professed a form of Christian faith known as Deism. Like many of his contemporaries, Jefferson adored the Jesus of morality, justice, and ethics but believed morality was the sole domain in which Jesus could have import. Jefferson deeply resented all the Bible’s miracles, supernaturalism, and witness to Christ’s divinity, which offended his European, Enlightenment sensibilities. Jefferson embraced the morality of Jesus while rejecting his supernatural divinity. Housed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, is a lasting witness to his worldview—Jefferson’s actual Bible. Perusing the pages of Jefferson’s Bible, one discovers whole sections—those referencing miracles, Christ’s claims of deity, and resurrection—cut out with scissors. Gone. What remained were the parts of Jesus’s teaching and ministry that fit within his European sensibilities. Jesus was useful for Jefferson minus the “superstitious” miracles, claims to divinity, demons, and physical resurrection.” Jefferson did the exact same thing as King Jehoiakim. It didn’t mean the parts they cut out were any less God’s Word or God’s Will, it just mean they didn’t have to read or obey the parts that offended them. If we aren’t careful, stored in the halls of our hearts, we have a sliced and diced version of God’s Word to include only the parts that appeal to our modern sensibilities. A God made in our image is not The True God. Anything less than The Whole Word for The Whole World is not God’s will for our lives.
Prayer
Lord, forgive me for the times when I sit down to read and I skip over the scriptures You actually want me to take time to journal, pray and repent through. I’ve never taken scissors to Your scripture, but I have definitely ignored passages of Your Word that challenge my comfort, confront my self-centeredness, and convict me of sin. I don’t want to be like King Jehoiakim or Thomas Jefferson. I want to be like Jeremiah who was determined bring the whole word to the whole world no matter what it cost him personally. Your Word is the hope for our world. I’m not here to edit Your Word to fit my lifestyle. Your Word is here to edit the way I live my life.
“To paraphrase Augustine, if we believe what we like in the Gospels, and reject what we don’t like, it is not the gospel we believe, but ourselves.” -Swoboda, "After Doubt"
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