Common Sense?
8 min read
18 It happened as the man of God had said to the king: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” 19 The officer had said to the man of God, “Look, even if the LORD should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” The man of God had replied, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!” 20 And that is exactly what happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died.
— 2 Kings 7:18-20
The moral of this account is pretty obvious. We must trust in the word of God. Everything that comes from the word of God is true and will come true. It would be foolish to not believe it.
As believers, we encounter this lesson so often, and this lesson is so obvious, it might just sit on the surface of our minds without ever making it to the depths of our hearts. Day to day and week to week, we may hardly grasp the great significance of this truth for our lives.
And that is because we tend to read the Bible too literalistically. Reading the Bible too literalistcally might lead to the following lesson from this episode: We will die a tragic and horrible death like the soldier at the gate if we do not trust the word of God.
That is a moral lesson we might teach to children. But we must not teach that moral lesson to our children—not because it is too macabre for kids (which it is), but because it is the wrong moral lesson.
A marginally better (but also shallow) moral lesson might go like this: The officer’s death is a metaphor for spiritual damnation, so we will die a spiritual death like his if we do not trust the word of God. That moral lesson might be more suitable for children.
But the moral of the episode goes much deeper than that.
In some ways, we might think that this officer was an innocent man, expressing an innocent opinion about the dire circumstances that they were in. But he was an officer of the army, and he attended to the king directly. He had a sphere of influence that few people have. And so it is not difficult to see how his common-sense, worldly perspective might have inspired hopelessness among his soldiers and the people in the face of a life-and-death situation. At the very least, he contributed to the desperate and unthinkable acts that the people were doing just to survive. He certainly did nothing to deter that hopelessness.
Of course, God gave us common sense as a gift to use. But in the kingdom of God, common sense only makes sense when we first trust the word of God.
We live in a world where “common sense” is now grounded in power, wealth, and individualism—not in the word of God. This worldly “common sense” is the reason for the utter mess that we find ourselves in today. We could say that this worldly “common sense” is what Adam and Eve demonstrated in Eden. This worldly “common sense” is the nature of every rebellious act against God.
The devil has had us in a siege, and, metaphorically speaking, we consume our children because of it. That is why so many young people are abandoning the church—because too many Christians have been led by a “common sense” grounded in the world and not by a common sense grounded in the word of God.
When worldly “common sense” deters us from acting in faith (“… and you will be My witnesses … “; “… as I have loved you, so you must love one another …”), we contribute to the mob scene that trampled the officer under foot. At the very least, we do nothing to deter the hopelessness that is in the world.
A life of faith is one in which the Holy Spirit shows us the futility of worldly “common sense” and teaches us the power, beauty, and truth of gospel common sense.
Father, every day I sin and fall short of the salvation You have given me. I easily make my confession that Jesus is Lord, and I readily accept Your salvation. And yet my “common sense” so often strays from Your word. Teach me Your ways, Lord, that I may lean not on my own understanding, but trust wholly in You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.