Drew Dabbs
Mon, Sep 23, 9:24 AM (3 days ago)to me.
As many of you know, we’re in the midst of a sermon series on the Letters to the Seven Churches in Revelation 2-3. The book of Revelation (as a whole) is about as enigmatic as it gets. There are so many signs, symbols, and numbers. I was thinking the other day how nice it would be if we had a secret decoder ring like the one little Ralphie got in “A Christmas Story.” Do you remember the secret message he was so excited to decode? For weeks, he’d been looking forward to getting that decoder ring and deciphering the secret code at the end of his favorite radio program. When he finally did, he was quite disappointed. The secret message he’d been so looking forward to uncovering was this: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” To say he was deflated is an understatement. Were we able to decipher all the signs, symbols, and numbers in the book of Revelation, I don’t think we’d be deflated. Quite the contrary! I think we would be elated to know that the message was actually a lot simpler than we’d thought. However, rather than speculate about the parts we can’t fully understand, I personally choose to drill in on the parts that we can understand. One of my senior colleagues used to say, “Part of the reason we have such a hard time finding God’s will is that we’re not already doing the parts of God’s will we already know.” Let’s apply that concept to Bible study, in general. Study hard. Pray hard. Read good, reputable commentaries. But, if we’ve done all that and still can’t understand it, don’t worry about it. Just focus on applying and living out the parts that we can readily understand.
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