7. Dealing With Error Whilst Preaching Truth

7-1 The Word Will Not Return Void

As Israel moaned and groaned their way through the wilderness, so the condemned generation in which we live are likewise full of a negative spirit. Many of the movies and songs which fill the subconscious thinking of many men and women are likewise negative in their essence. For those who work long hours doing repetitive work (and that in principle includes almost everyone, wherever they live), a complaining, grumbling spirit can easily develop. Everything becomes a burden, a load we must bear because we have no choice. Familiarity with family members can slip into a lack of respect, those we should love become simply another of life’s irritations, grudgingly tolerated because there is no way out of the family structure we are in. And in the repetition of the activities of ecclesial and spiritual life, a like chafing at the bit can so easily develop. Especially is there the tendency to look at one’s fellow man in a critical way. We can look at the unbelievers around us and consider them so far gone that we don’t even try to preach to them: ‘Well, he’s a Muslim…she’s so caught up with her new baby…he’s so rich’. And we can look at our brethren in a similar way, noticing their faults, irked and irritated by their ways (this is especially true when we are meeting with the same two or three believers, as many readers are).

Yet there is a hopefulness in the Father and Son which must rub off on us; a spirit of grace, a grace and love that thinks no evil and delights in what is positive. The grace of the Father, and the life of grace lived and shown through His Son, is so essentially outgoing, so unregarding of human response, piling “grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16 Gk.), that if we sense it, we will show it too. The Father is ever seeking for some positive response, and is highly sensitive to it. He told Moses: “If they will not believe…neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign [but] if they will not believe also these two signs…” (Ex. 4:8). The God who knows the end from the beginning gives the impression that He is sure they will believe- even though they didn’t. He is so seeking for faith in His creatures (cp. “surely they will reverence my son”, Mt. 21:37, and Ex. 19:21 cp. 20:18). In this, Isaiah says, He shows His matchless grace: “For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie: so [therefore] he was their Saviour…but they rebelled, and vexed his holy [gracious] spirit” (Is. 63:8,10). Our tendency is to notice the negative in others, and let it outweigh the positive. God works quite the other way. He hopes for positive response, and even speaks as if He will get it when He knows He won’t. Consider how Job shook his fist at God through many of his speeches- so much so that Elihu, on God’s behalf, had to rebuke him at the end. Finally, Yahweh asks Job to “declare thou unto me” (Job 40:7; 42:4): to make a declaration. And Job does, in a matchless humility:  “…therefore have I uttered that I understood not…I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. And Yahweh immediately comments to the unrepentant friends: “Ye have not spoken of [‘unto’] me the thing that is right [Heb. ‘prepared’], as my servant Job hath” (42:7). Evidently Job hadn’t spoken “right” earlier; but it’s as if God seizes upon this one recognition of failure and is so pleased with it. He was looking for repentance in Job, and triumphantly seizes upon it once it is stuttered out by him. And so with our preaching of the Gospel and in our seeking to win back brethren who go astray [and I do hope we all make some personal effort to do this…]: seek for response. As the disciples came upon the Lord talking to the woman by the well, it looked as if He were seeking something (Jn. 4:27). But they didn’t ask what- for it was obvious. His body language reflected how He was seeking her salvation. He seeks the lost until He finds them, even now (Mt. 18:12; Lk. 15:8); as He looked up into the branches of the sycamore tree seeking Zacchaeus, He was epitomising how He came (and comes) to seek and save all the lost (Lk. 19:5,10). Our preaching to others isn’t a cold-hearted witness, or a theological debate; it is a seeking of glory to the Father; we exhort one another, considering how we may provoke to love (Heb. 10:24). But let me ask: do you consider how you might encourage your brethren, or those in the world around you; what words to say, what to do or not to do…?

The Word Will Not Return

We must believe, really and truly, that the word will not return void, but it will accomplish what it is intended to achieve. We are not scattering seed with the vague hope that something might sprout up; we are planting, fully expecting to see a harvest. “The word of God grew and multiplied” (Acts 12:24) surely means that the number of converts to the word multiplied- for the same word is repeatedly used in this sense (Acts 6:1,7; 5:14; 9:31; 19:20). Thus “the word of God” is put by metonymy for ‘the response to the word of God’, as if the word will inevitably bring forth response. The RV translates the parable of the sower as if the seed sown is the convert: “he that was sown…” (Mt. 13:19 RV). And later on in Mt. 13:38 we are told so again: “the good seed are the children of the Kingdom”. Yet the seed was a symbol of the word of God. The parallel between the seed and the convert is such as to suggest that the word of God will produce converts in some sense; it will not return void (Is. 55:11). The apparent dearth of response to some  preaching therefore poses a challenging question. Are we preaching the word of God alone, or our own ideas? Does God withhold blessing for some reason unknown to us? Is this parable only part of a wider picture, in which somehow the word does return void due to man’s rejection? Thus the word of God was ‘made void’ by the Pharisees (Mk. 7:13 RV- a conscious allusion to Is. 55:11?)…. This is perhaps one of the most defiantly unanswerable questions in our experience. As an aside, one possible explanation is that “the word” which is sent forth and prospers, achieving all God’s intention, is in fact Messiah. The same word is used about the ‘prospering’ of the Servant in His work: Is. 48:15; 53:10 cp. Ps. 45:4. Another is to accept the LXX reading of this passage: “…until whatsoever I have willed shall have been accomplished”. Here at least is the implication that something happens and is achieved when we preach God’s word. The same idiom occurs in Ez. 9:11 AVmg., where we read that “the man clothed with linen”- representing Ezekiel or his representative Angel- “returned the word, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me”. The word ‘returned’ in the sense that someone, somewhere, was obedient to it even if others weren’t.