Tidings for Tuesday
And he looked up and said, I see men as trees, walking. Mark 8:24
A country couple had begun attending a church that practiced sprinkling as its form of baptism. After a time, some of the leaders in the church met with the couple, to try to convince them they should be baptized. But the man objected to the sprinkling aspect, saying, ‘I always was taught that you had to be soused in all over’. His wife replied, ‘What’s the difference? A barrel full or a bowl full as long as it gets the bugs.’ Such stories make us laugh and wonder how people can be so ignorant about such things that the Bible makes plain. But ignorance affects us in God’s Assembly, too. And it’s not just the rejections we get from people who we invite to meetings, who refuse to come because they have heard we have a dress code. There are people in Assembly fellowship who are seeing ‘walking trees’ where they should be seeing clear and simple truths.
Our text today is taken from Mark’s description of the blind man who Jesus healed by placing mud on his eyes. Like many who are newly saved, this man didn’t see things clearly at first. He needed more attention, to correct the misunderstandings and to instruct him. His case spells out the need to provide adequate support for new Christians.
What do we tell young Christians as they are starting out? Our primary advice is for them to consistently pray and read their Bibles, and to attend all of the Assembly meetings. These are essentials. But they are not the only essentials. We often leave it to the new Christian to sort out all of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that cause him to see men as trees walking in his early days as a Child of God. Such babes in Christ need to be given clear and simple teaching. They need to be guided into rightly dividing the Word of Truth. They need to have explained to them why we as an Assembly do the things we do. They need to be urged to ask questions and to be given simple, scriptural answers. We need to make sure they see men as men and trees as trees.
Can you provide support for a new Christian, to help him or her to see truth clearly? Follow the Lord’s example and make sure things are clear. -Jim MacIntosh