Easily Understood

I read a lot. I’ve acquired a wide vocabulary. In everyday speech, I’ve been found using three and four syllable words where three or four words would do. This past week I was talking with a couple of people and used a three syllable word that meant exactly what I wanted to express. It stopped the conversation.

Both stood there for a few seconds, then one agreed, “That’s right, whatever she said.”

The other responded, “You don't know what that means either?”

“Nope, but it sounded good.”

It reminded me of a time when a preacher told us we must be more eleemosynous in our giving. Took me a very long time to find the correct spelling of that word and it’s meaning. It would have been much more effective for his audience to have heard, “We must have a more loving, a more giving charity toward our fellow man.”

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians included verses regarding speaking in tongues, but there’s a lesson to all of us to speak plainly:

So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. (1 Corinthians 14:9 KJV)

For all the theological terminology, all the exegetical sentences when we teach, if the audience does not receive the God focused explanation of the lesson, we still speak into the air.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:13-14 KJV)

The Bible speaks for itself. Most of teachers I have heard allow it to do so, reading from God’s word then giving examples of how this applies to our daily lives. The best teachers I have heard include the good news that God loved His creation so much that He offered Himself as the means by which we can reach Him.

I can see this application early in the Bible as Abraham answered Isaac.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. (Genesis 22:7-8 KJV)

Through God’s love for us, the Lamb of God was provided as our offering. The Bible speaks plainly of how we are to return that love:

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (1 John 5:3 KJV)

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:36-40 KJV)