Life today is so interesting. Combine technology with the English language and you find a myriad of meaning in just one word: Spike. I did a simple Google search on “spike,” then clicked on “images,” and found hundreds of pictures beyond the one above I screen-captured. My favorite definition of “spike” was #2 under “noun” which reads: “a sharp increase in the magnitude or concentration of something. (i.e. the oil price spike) The Google definition search went into great detail with how spike can be used as a noun, a verb, along with its origin, and specific allusions to sports usages. Gotta love the English language.
A spike might be a skewer, used to make my famous steak kabobs on a sunny spring afternoon. A spike might also be piton; a peg driven into a rock or crack in the rock to support a mountain climber or rope. Different from a skewer, or a piton, a spike might also be a stake the mountain climber uses to secure his tent on the side of the mountain. All three things could just as easily be called a spike. A rose by any other name, right?
I can’t image how folks from other countries, who learn English as a second or third language, make any sense out of how complex our communication becomes just by using words which all mean the same thing, but have different “monikers” to distinguish them within the group. I’m not sure I’m smart enough, and it’s the only language I speak. Unless of course you count “Texan,” then I’m fluent in both. Here’s a brief sample:
- “y’all” is “you all”
- “howdy” is “hello”
- anyone who lives North of the Mason Dixon Line is a “Northerner”
- a “looker” is an “attractive woman”
- to do something “fast” is “right quick”
- “dinner” is “supper”
- a “tank” is a “pond”
- “big hat. no money” means “all talk, no money”
- “eat up” means to “overtake something”
- any type of “soda” is a “coke”
- “tuckered out” means “exhausted”
- “over yonder” means “over there”
Sometimes the words people use in church are just as confusing as the Texas slang examples above, because many of the things said, come right out of the Bible, but paraphrased a bit.
Examples:
Are you washed in the blood?
You been sanctified?
Are you born again?
Do you have the Holy Spirit in you?
None of these sentences would anyone use in the normal context of human existence, except that someone found expressions in Bible terms, then attempted to turn them into catch phrases that sound religious.
To the church the Apostle Peter wrote: 1 Peter 1:2
“… according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.”
Jesus was attempting to explain a spiritual truth to Nicodemus when He said, John 3:3
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
See, I’ve only used 2 verses of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, (23,145 OT + 7,957 NT). Yet, in just these, I’ve found 2 verses to support all four of the questions in the example. For those who think they understand the Bible and all its many facets of knowledge, they have been skewered by their own ego, living in the delusion of such a belief.
Not only that, but the Texas slang above is pretty much fixed, or stable. You can go to any part of Texas and those words are almost always the same. But to have context for Biblical understanding requires understanding the language of the document (whether Hebrew or Greek), comprehension of the culture and age of time it was written, but most importantly, a relationship with Whom the document is about, God.
Like a stake through the heart, like a piton into the side of the hardest rock on earth, the Bible has the ability to skewer our minds with truth. It reveals. It convicts. It enlightens. It empowers. Yet the revelation, conviction, enlightenment, and power come only to those who know the Author. Not Moses, John, David, Peter, or Paul… no. These benefits of the Word only come to those who truly know Jesus.
The apostle John is the only Gospel author who doesn’t discuss or diagram the birth of Jesus on earth, instead focusing on His pre-birth position in heaven.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Spike (truth) with which God impales the world today is His WORD – Jesus.
John 14:6
I am the way, the truth, and the life; and no one comes to the Father but through me.
It’s really this simple: Know Jesus? Know the Word!
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As I was saying... 