Content

Have you ever spent a long time following news from one news channel? What do you find outstanding?

It is the fact that news items are repeatedly appearing as breaking news almost every hour.

Why is that?

The truth is that it is impossible to get enough bad news to fill a few hours, let alone the 24 hours media houses are supposed to be churning out news. It is therefore inevitable that news will be repeated, hoping that nobody has spent much time watching that channel.

A number of times I have decided to verify the amount of news in the most popular newspaper. I was shocked to discover that on aggregate only seven pages in an over 60 page newspaper consists of news. The rest is advertisements, advertorials and advertisers’ and features articles. In short, only about 10% of a popular newspaper consists of news.

It has become more hopeless with this virus as there is basically no new thing to expect when you watch, listen or read from news outlets. It has become so bad that the ‘appetite’ for news has all but evaporated. Very few people, if any, rush to watch news even as curfews make you constrained behind that screen.

Very soon I suspect newspapers will be bribing people to buy their newspapers and radio and TV media will have to probably offer almost free advertisements as the audience will all but disappear after the lockdowns and curfews are removed.

People are tired of repeatedly following badly packaged bad news without a hopeful end, or any end for that matter. People are tired of reading and hearing and watching the same thing again and again. But curfews and lockdowns offer no solution as they continue to force us to watch them again and again.

Many people have approached me to help them start magazines for churches or ministries. My first question has always been whether they have adequate content. And they quickly answer that that is not a problem. Instead of disputing with them, I ask them for the content for the first edition.

They will quickly gather the articles to fill the first magazine and discover that it was not that easy. I will therefore help them fill that first magazine and edit and arrange it for production.

They will disappear after the production of that first edition as they will discover that content is not that easy to get.

Let me now delve into the spiritual realm.

Do you realize the lack of content in things spiritual? Have you realized that the narrative from pastors has for a long time been as predictable as that of news items under the virus? 

Where is the freshness and newness of God’s revelation?

But I want us to look at the context of the complete Bible as we look at this topic. I especially want us to examine the doctrine of grace.

Just like the news media is boring us by lacking the freshness and objectivity of our inquisitive minds through their laziness in searching far and wide for news beyond bad and predictable occurrences, many preachers have narrowed their understanding of the same to just a few verses in a select pool of books. They behave as if grace began with them and the few verses they ascribe to.

Did you realize that grace began with creation? Do you know that it is the rolling topic of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation?

Or do you not remember that Christ was crucified before creation as the Bible says?

The whole Bible is the tapestry on which grace is woven. Choosing a few verses that agree with your persuasion is immoral, however cogent it appears.

The pardon of Nineveh was as much grace as the razing of Sodom. The rescue of Lot was as much grace as turning his wife into a pillar of salt. The adoption of Rahab the harlot into Israel was as much grace as the destruction of Achan. And the anointing of David was as much grace as the rejection of Saul.

Grace paints a portrait of God.Choosing the side of Him I want will not erase those aspects I do not fancy just as tearing your picture because it shows your unattractive face will do nothing to that face.

That God is love and forgiving does not erase the fact that He is holy and just and thus must punish sin.

Justification does not mean that we are declared righteous, it means that somebody paid for that to be possible. Like I have always said, free means that somebody else has paid for it.

And that is what grace stands for; Christ dying for our sins. It does not mean that He changed the way God looks at sin.

The fact that Christ dies for our sins is a greater demonstration of how much God hates sin. Just look at this

He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10: 28, 28)

And it is talking about a believer continuing in sin.

Yet the peddlers of a false grace will want us to criminalize addressing sin in a believer! They therefore do not address sin in their preaching, or anywhere else.

Sadly, that will not stop sin being what it is to God or even the believer.

Stopping to address sin will automatically mean we will be unable to address temptation and what it produces. It also means we cannot be able to handle spiritual growth when all it means is that we possess what was got for us without trying. In other words we have cheapened grace.

And that is why I am talking about content. Just like the media has become increasingly irrelevant as they have become fixated on the lazy reporting on what the authorities are churning out, so have the peddlers of this cheap grace become to their hearers.

You see, a drug addict will not cling to you when the only solution you offer to his prison is ‘it is finished’ and ‘just receive’. Valid and powerful as the statements may be in another context, they may become woefully condescending to him, even cause him worse despair than he had before he came to you.

Our doctrine of grace must be anchored on the whole Bible to accurately represent God.

And that is not the only one.

Do you realize that tongues are first recorded in Genesis? Do you realize that Paul quotes the prophets as he is instructing the church about their usage? Why then should we limit our theology of the same to just a verse in Acts?

Do you know that you see the words filled with the Spirit in Exodus? What are we then doing when we focus on a single incident in Acts when even the same Acts has several incidences of the same?

We are only safe if we took the whole Bible as our text book, if I may call it that.

Otherwise we could be dumped with the prophets of Jeremiah’s time who were called teachers of rebellion. All because they sought to give an easily palatable message.

By nature, man is rebellious. He will thus look for messages that will keep him comfortable in that rebellion. That is since the fall. In fact that is what the fall is.

Do you expect God to be fine with that?

That is the reason prophets died. They confronted man’s nature with God’s truth.

That is the reason Jesus was unpopular. He offered God’s solution, even by becoming it.

Sadly for us that solution kills our personal pride that incidentally is the reason we fell into the place of need in the first place.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

That is why we are looking for a grace that will make us comfortable. And that is the reason preachers want to preach a grace that will make them popular. That is why believers want to post spiritual posts that garner many likes.

Sadly, that is not God’s grace.

God gives us power over sin. Closing our eyes to sin is not the way we access that victory.

It is when we look at sin in the eyes that God has availed us in the scriptures that we can walk in victory over it. Otherwise we could be boasting at a victory that is nonexistent.

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. (2Peter 2:19)

You see, victory demands there being a fight. You cannot be more than a conqueror without any conquest. And there can be no conquest without a fierce fight.

It is therefore self-defeating to talk about overcoming without defining what it is you are overcoming. It is even worse when there is no process involved in the same.

Our content is therefore from the whole Bible or it isn’t Biblical, or even adequate.