Definiteness

The Bible seems throughout to have, among others, this continuous note of emphasis - Be strong! Be steadfast! Be unmovable! Go on! 

There is a tremendous amount along that line. 

And you ask about this, if from one point of view that is the whole Bible, what does it imply and what does it signify?

Why should the Bible find it necessary to keep that emphasis all the way along, to maintain that note from start to finish?

Well, quite obviously, the whole trend of things is in the opposite direction, to either turn us back, pull us back, hold us back, or in some way to keep us from an end.

The things are countless which would seek to have that effect upon us, and they are always present in some form or another, and we shall never know a time or a position when we are entirely free from that which would, if it cannot turn us right back, keep us or hold us back. 

There will always be something, and, if we listen to it, if we take account of it, if we stop to be occupied with it and allow it to be the thing which affects us most, then we are going to stand still; we are going to stop, we are going to cease to go on.

That is simple, but it is sometimes good to let the whole weight of the Bible come upon you, getting away from its detail and sitting back and getting its effect.

When you view it in this particular connection, you see, wherever you look, in the Old or the New Testament, there is this coming from God: 

Go on! Be purposeful! Be definite! Be positive! 

There is everything in this universe to make you otherwise, and, unless you recognize it, reckon with it, you are not going to go on!

The Bible is then throughout one long mighty emphasis upon God's desire that His people should be definite, and we find Him coming out again and again in the strongest way against indefiniteness.

How long limp ye between the two sides? 

Those words were spoken at a very big hour in a nation's history, showing what God's mind was about things.

Limping between the two sides. The Authorized Version has it - "halting between two opinions", but I am afraid we have rather given the modern English sense to the word 'halt' - standing still between two things. 

It also means hopping from one to another, limping, just crippled by indecision. The Lord is against that. 

If there is any one stronger passage in the Bible on that matter, it is Rev. 3:15: "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth" - God's desire to have definiteness in His people.

~T. Austin Sparks~