The Humble Study

The Jews were chosen by God and given His Law that was to govern their lives.  It contained the proper order of the worship of God, the designs for the tabernacle, priestly vestments and furnishings, outlined blessings for those who kept the Law and the curses for breaking the Law.  The authoritative word of God given to Moses and the people gave them the ability to know and assert objective difference between what was right and wrong.  The 10 Commandments were important commands and prohibitions in the Law of Moses that numbered more than 600.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 8:1, "Now concerning things offered to idols: we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies."  The Law identified the fashioning, worship and possession of idols to be a sin punishable by death.  It was very easy for Jews to look upon Gentiles with contempt for being given over to idolatry in their ignorance of God and His law.  What the Law did not explain in full, however, was idolatry is not limited to graven images made by craftsmen for veneration, but could be established by the love of self or anything rather than God in the hearts of men.  Jews who did not have images of Zeus, Jupiter or Diana and condemned those who did were not necessarily free of idolatry themselves.  Knowledge of the Law puffed many up and were themselves condemned by hypocrisy.

In my younger days I have been guilty of the same error as a person familiar with the Bible from childhood.  By exposure to the truth of scripture I became aware when a person in the Bible said or did something wrong and I took pleasure in identifying it with self-righteous scorn.  I would have done well to heed Psalm 1:1-2 in my Bible reading:  "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; ² but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night."  God did not give the Law for people to be puffed up but to be humbled by the scope and gravity of their own sin so they might repent.  The LORD has graciously provided His word to learn from the lives of others so we would follow the example of Jesus to walk in love and forsake the pattern of sin common to all other men.

While there are benefits to look back briefly upon our past decisions so we might learn from our mistakes, it is not possible to go back and change what we did.  It does us no good to use our Bible knowledge to criticise the sins of others in the scripture as a fault-finding exercise as if we do not need to repent of our sin or grow in love today.  It is hypocrisy to mock or scorn people for decisions that exposed their lack of faith when we are no better than they--and likely worse given the full revelation of God's word we read.  We ought to use our knowledge to edify the Body of Christ, and it is not loving to jibe or sledge people of faith whose failures are recorded because we fail and fall woefully short.  There's nothing funny about making fun of people God commends for their faith.  If there is humour to be found in a puffed-up approach to Bible study, it might be to realise whenever we did so the joke was on us.