1st Timothy 4:13 "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine."
Gary,
You covered a much neglected command in God's Word yesterday. Timothy was a pastor of a church. In those days the Bible was only available in a few hand written copies and portions. In fact no one had the entire Bible in their possession, only portions. This was partly because the New Testament had not been completed, partly because the printing press had not been invented, and partly because only Jewish synagogues had a larger repository of what we call today the Old Testament. Because of these factors the Bible was not a household item.
The only way those believers received God's Word was when the pastor stood before them and read to them, and then exhorted upon what was read. The pastor would underline the doctrines or particular truths that the Scripture had dealt with. The important thing here is that congregations in the First Century Church got their Bible via their ears, more than their eyes.
I have come to believe that the ear gate is a very powerful doorway into our hearts and minds. The ear gate is responsible for no less than half and maybe much more of what we receive from the Word of God. The eye gate is also effective. BUT the eye gate has a weakness within it's strength. Our eyes have the ability to do high-speed scanning. High speed eye scanning is very much a part of modern life, for example in safe driving, seeing hazards and such. The gift of speed scanning is so much a part of life that unless we are very careful we tend to read in that manner. Reading the Bible that way can rob us of some of the truth. THE EAR on the other hand can be a more effective sensor of details.
It is true that many of us have "selective hearing," to some degree. If you don't believe that just ask my wife, Jan. She will tell you, as most wives will that husbands have "selective hearing." That is why she must repeat herself many times...and that repetition is a another secret power of the EAR GATE. Ears don't have to be aimed and tuned in all cases, in order to receive. I've found that my wife's musical voice is a medicine to my ear. And even if my selective hearing is filtering out current things, my ear will take in what she has said. And in a few moments I will speak what she has said, thinking that it has just come to my mind. Everyone has a good laugh at me, because I may be out of sync with what is going on. But my ears have heard in spite of my mind. The eye gate, must be directed like a radar antenna. The eye gate cannot read a book laying directly on the table behind me. But my ear gate can read a message coming from behind me.
I have discovered a great secret: when listening to the Dramatized Bible on CD. I can cover mega-amounts of scripture and absorb it if I take a certain chapter or maybe four chapters of some portion of the New Testament and listen to them over and over again. It comes alive and I find myself in the plot, walking the dusty road with my Master, Jesus Christ, or joining Saint Paul on an exciting missionary journey. It is glorious.
A true Dramatized Bible has no added or subtracted words. It sticks exactly to the true text. But it uses various voices and background sounds to bring the story to life. You can get a Dramatized New Testament for a very reasonable price here:
My favorite CD product from these folks is stock number N2KJV-CD. It costs $49.00, as of August 12, 2005. Go to the web page above and click under Products on "Bible Recordings." There page does change from time to time. Today's information may go out of date. But I have been greatly blessed by the wonderful ministry of "Faith Comes By Hearing."
After hearing a passage, perhaps 20 times, which by the way never gets boring to my spirit,...after the 20th or 30th hearing something supernatural happens. The Scripture begins to bypass my mental capacity. My mind says, "I know what that's all about...I'm smart you know...I'm your mind, Clint, and I'm not very humble. I got that stuff last time, and your getting very repetitive so I'm going to let you keep playing that CD...but I'm not going to stop checking out each phrase for analysis...I'm tired. I'm going to humor you, Clint, and let you keep playing your silly CD. In fact, I'm just going to sweep all these words on down this chute by my desk to your spirit man. Your spirit man is so boring. He never gets tired of hearing the Bible over and over. But I'm the mind and I need variety. I'm smarter you know! So I'm just going to pour all these words off my desk and down the chute to your spirit and be free from all this extra work you've been giving me. So there! Take that!"
In my spirit-man the Holy Ghost lives in vitality. All these gloriously inspired Holy Ghost words rain down, no longer filtered and messed with by my mind. Suddenly the Holy Ghost begins to gather all the loose pages and words and phrases, as my spirit man looks on in wonder. The Holy Ghost takes them and decrypts and decodes them. You see, the Holy Ghost put the encryptions in and coded it originally and HE is the only one who has the key to decode the multi-layered meanings. The mind doesn't have a clue...sorry all you Doctors of Theology, but you aren't as important as you thought.
So, the Holy Ghost takes the words raining down on the floor of the room where my spirit man lives and puts them together. Then he takes out his highlighter and starts making highlights and writing notes in the margin like, "This is what I meant when I told Paul to write this..."
When it is all together the Holy Ghost hands the completed and decoded document to my spirit man who jumps up and down with excitement. He runs over to the photocopy machine in the corner and makes a quick copy of this exciting and wonderful stuff and puts it in a chute and fires it back up to my bored brain.
Up in the brain room the mind is stealing a snooze when he hears this document go cur-flop on his desk. He wakes up and picks it up. He opens it and with utter amazement starts to read. My mind keeps saying, "Why didn't I see that!! That was so simple. That's so true. Wow...Praise God!"
So, hearing the Word in the ear gate has become a new dimension in my life. I still read the Word each day. But I like to do a lot more listening to the Word. It is more productive for me.
We believers in this modern day need to pay more attention to that verse that Paul gave as a command to Timothy:
1st Timothy 4:13 "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine."
So, let your CD player read the Word of God into your Ear Gate, okay!
April 26, 2001, (re-edited August 12, 2005)
clint