Now, I thought that would catch the eye of you English majors when it should have been “And he had gone…” to the store or wherever. Recently, I heard a newscaster using that very phrase. I was talking with a public accountant just the other day and lo and behold, he used the same expression. It is good that we can laugh at ourselves. We need some humor along life’s way because of the great amount of seriousness we deal with in writing articles involving subject matters that often cause our hearts to be saddened. As a writer and public speaker, I have often used the wrong verb in a sentence. I still remember the time I inserted an adverb where I should not have done so. This occurred some 40 years ago, but this experience still lingers in my mind. I was preaching during the Sunday morning worship assembly, and I was speaking about the time when Peter denied the Lord. You know that Jesus had predicted he would and that something would happen when he did. Well, Peter did in fact deny the Lord and then I said, “And when that cock had…” It was then I began conjugating the word “crew” in my mind, and in that very moment I knew I was in trouble. The problem was I just did not know how to conjugate the word. A good friend who was a schoolteacher was sitting on the second pew knew I was in trouble, and she was enjoying every second of my dilemma. Say, have you ever tried to conjugate the word ‘crew’? Well, I backed up in a hurry and then I said “And when that cock crew…” Flawless in English grammar, I am not, but I still smile when I remember this experience.
Several years ago, I was on the campus of Alabama Christian College and was standing in the Rotunda talking with several friends. It was during the first week of the school year, and there were many new faces on campus. A young married couple came walking up to where I was standing, and we spoke. I had known the young man since my high school days. Brother Eris Benson asked him if he was going to take English, and the young man replied “I guess so. I ain’t got none.” Well, I wanted to say something but I didn’t. Now, all you who knew the late brother Benson also knew how he conducted his English class and that he required much of his students. Brother Benson did not crack a smile or say anything negatively. I said to myself, “Well, brother you are about to get some English.”
I was working in the yard one day, and a brother in Christ, a member of the congregation where I was then preaching many years ago, stopped his truck and walked up to me. The first words that came out of his mouth were, “The church ain’t doing nothing.” He did not understand that by using a ‘double negative’ he was actually saying the church was doing something.
Now, let us consider some serious matters. Question, “Have you ever read a sentence, and as you processed in your mind that it was saying one thing, but when you read it again, you understood it differently?” Perhaps we all have found ourselves making a sentence mean what we wanted it to mean rather than what the writer had intended. It may have been just a word left out of the context or perhaps you added a word that was not there. Sometimes, what we have been taught over an extended period of time will cause us not to understand a passage of Scripture as to its original meaning. Permit me to give a couple of examples.
While working in a campaign many years ago in the city of West Monroe, Louisiana during which time brother Harvey Starling was doing the preaching under a big tent, brother Charlie Boddy and I were conducting a home Bible study with a family who had attended the nightly services. We discovered that the students present believed in immersion; however, since they had been taught that water baptism was not essential to salvation, we encountered a serious problem that was preventing us from convincing them what the Lord would have them to do in order to make their salvation as sure as possible.
In attendance was a man who was not mentally stable and all of a sudden he spoke out and said, “I know a verse that tells us what to do in order to be saved and that is Acts 2:38.” Well, I could hardly believe my ears. I thought the Lord was going to use this mentally defective person to help his friends to understand the purpose of baptism. I told him to go ahead and quote it. He began slowly saying, “Then Peter said unto them repent and …believe.” I nearly dropped my Bible. He was a member of the same religious organization as the rest of the group. He, like the others had been instructed by their preacher that when a person ‘repents and believes’ there is nothing else needful for salvation from past sins. Oh yes, baptism would be required for church membership but not for salvation. I then turned to Acts 2:38 and read it. I am sorry to say that we did not receive a positive response from our study.
My long time friend and brother in Christ, Roger Dill, tells of the time when he was discussing the Bible with an individual, and they were dealing with the same subject regarding scriptural baptism being necessary for the remission of sins. So Roger had the man to read 1 Peter 3:21 from the King James Version of the Bible. The man proceeded to read: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also not save us…” It was then that Roger knew he had a problem, and he asked the man to begin reading the verse again and he did: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also not save us…” My friend asked the gentleman to read the verse one word at a time. When he got to “…even baptism doth also now save us,” the man stopped, his face turned red and he was embarrassed because he had always thought the word “not” was in the verse.
Often prejudice and a deep seated bias will prevent a person from accepting the truth whether it is spoken or written. The Master Teacher, Jesus Christ, used a passage of Scripture taken from Isaiah 6:9-10 and applied it to the majority of His hearers when He said, “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them” (Matthew 13:14-15). During the time the apostle was a prisoner, he used the same passage from the prophet Isaiah when he applied it to the spiritual condition of the unbelieving Jews (Acts 28:26-27). Someone has said that there is no blindness like those who will not see. Paul used the passage found in Isaiah (29:10) when he said of those who would not believe in Jesus, “God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, To this very day” (Romans 11:8).
When we study the Holy Scriptures, we should do so with clear glasses and not with ones that are discolored by preconceived ideas. It is a real challenge to interpret what the inspired writer meant rather than understanding the passage according to our culture, customs or our prejudices. Paul commended the citizens of Berea for a couple of reasons, namely, hearts that were receptive and their diligence in searching the Holy Scriptures (Acts 17:11). It is so needful today to have an ‘open heart’ and an ‘open Bible’ in order for us to be submissive to His will.
In conclusion, “Obey” is a verb that all of us should have in our hearts and in our lives. Hebrews 5:8-9 reads, “(T)hough He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (NKJV emphasis added).
