September 27, 2016 @ 9:30 AM
I have the perfect passage of Scripture for last night's presidential debate. Before I point you to it and expound upon it let me asks you a question. Are you as horrified as I am that the race for the highest office in our land has come down to these two candidates, whose first debate was reminiscent of schoolyard fights we were accustomed to in our childhood? Rather than presidential, they both appeared petty. Clinton called Trump names and Trump spent most of the night defending himself against Clinton's name-calling. All in all, Clinton did what the liberal elite in this country always do, demean everyone who disagrees with them, while Trump, being the egomaniac that he is, did what he always does, talked about himself, bragging about his business accomplishments and trying to backpedal his way out of past atrocities.
The Apostle Paul's second epistle to Timothy was the last divinely inspired letter he ever penned with his divinely inspired pen. He knew it was his spiritual swan song (2 Timothy 4:6). Therefore, the great missionary apostle understood he was writing this epistle for posterity. These were his final words to those to whom he was handing off the Gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:2). Having spent his life propagating and preserving the purity of the message of God's salvation in Christ, not to mention the fact that he was about to give his life for Christ’s and the Gospel’s sake as well, by being taken from Rome's infamous Mamertine Prison and beheaded, Paul wanted to leave some final and vital instructions to those who would succeed him as the stewards of Christ's Gospel.
In 2 Timothy 2:15-18, Paul instructs us, as the stewards of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the world today, to give ourselves to the serious study of God's Word, so that we will never be ashamed before God for having misinterpreted, misunderstood or mishandled the truths of His Word. Paul goes on to warn us that at the same time we are devoting ourselves to God's Word, we must avoid at all cost wrangling with others over the words of men. According to Paul, men's words, unlike God's Word, ruin those who listen, increase ungodliness, and spread like gangrene.
Today in America the American people will be talking and talking about the words of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in last night's televised presidential debate. They will post and tweet and message. The words of Hillary and Trump will be today’s hot topic at office water coolers all over our country. Cable news will drone on and on about what the candidates said; pundits will argue about who had the best one-liners or the worst gaffes; and surveys will be taken to find out which candidate public opinion feels won last night's wrangling over words. At the same time, the Bible, God's Word, will be ignored today by the American people, who no longer view it as God’s divinely inspired written revelation of Himself to mankind, but as nothing more than an antiquated collection of ancient superstition, fable, and folklore.
As disheartening as all of this is, what is far more disturbing to me personally is the fact that most Christians in America today will also spend their day carefully scrutinizing the words of Trump and Hillary rather than seriously studying the Word of God. Let's face it, serious students of God's Word are a dying breed in America's Christian community. Most churchgoers today are so ignorant of God's Word that they believe the epistles are the apostles' wives and that Joan of Ark was marred to Noah. This plague of biblical illiteracy is not just plaguing our country, but our churches as well, where it's not just found in church pews, but even in church pulpits. America’s contemporary church pastors are far more adept at handling their cell phones than they are at handling Christ's precepts.
As the Bible collects dust in the homes of Americans and is seldom dusted off to be seriously studied in any of our churches, the American people, including the vast majority of America's Christians, wrangle over the words of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, while completely ignoring the Word of God. Is there any wonder, therefore, that our country is ruined, that ungodliness is increasing, and that it is spreading across the “fruited plain” like gangrene?