Focusing on the Main Things

I got this yesterday from my daily Insight for Leaders:


Pastoral Ministry: Some New Mystery Bagged

For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their
time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.
--Acts 17:21

The temptation to forget the few spiritual essentials and to go
wandering off after unimportant things is very strong, especially
to Christians of a certain curious type of mind. Such persons find
the great majors of the faith of our fathers altogether too tame
for them. Their souls loathe that light bread; their appetites
crave the gamy tang of fresh-killed meat. They take great pride in
their reputation as being mighty hunters before the Lord, and any
time we look out we may see them returning from the chase with some
new mystery hanging limply over their shoulder.

Usually the game they bring down is something on which there is a
biblical closed season. Some vague hint in the Scriptures, some
obscure verse about which the translators disagree, some marginal
note for which there is not much scholarly authority: these are
their favorite meat. They are especially skillful at propounding
notions which have never been a part of the Christian heritage of
truth. Their enthusiasm mounts with the uncertainty of their
position, and their dogmatism grows firmer in proportion to the
mystery which surrounds their subject. The Next Chapter After the
Last, 12-13.

I think of this fairly often as I lead our small group. It's so much easier to chase "deeper truth" than it is to deal with what we already know. Of course, I'm all for learning more about God's Word. It's the only firm foundation for life and the more I know of it the better off I'll be. However, I do believe that the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things. So while it can be fascinating to wonder about the seventy weeks in Daniel or the meanings of the wheels on the creatures in Ezekiel, this seems very plain to me:


Mat 22:33-40 ESV
(33) And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
(34) But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
(35) And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
(36) "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
(37) And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
(38) This is the great and first commandment.
(39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
(40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."


I still could use a lot of work on both of these.