spoiled

The Anglican book I’m reading now is English Reformations. I really like it (Thanks to the good professor who mailed it to me!) and will review it in due time.

For now, I want to focus on one passage I’ve read in it. Early in Elizabeth’s reign, there was quite a shortage of Protestant preachers.

Through the first half of Elizabeth’s reign the shortage of Protestant preachers was acute. A survey of the diocese of Peterborough in 1560 found only nine preachers among 166 clergy. . . . There were more preachers in some areas, and fewer in others . . . . But virtually everywhere preaching resources were inadequate and over-stretched.

. . . there had been no sermons in six years at Ellerker, none in seven at Skerne, none in ten at Wressle, and none in twenty at Thorp Arch.

Compare that with today, when we have a multitude of good teachers and Bibles and good books teaching from the Bible. Today, the problem in the church is that we are spoiled and lazy. We have a great wealth of God’s word and the teaching of it to feed on, but do we?

Too often, we are like the sluggard who is too lazy to eat the food right in front of him. (Prov. 19:24) Therefore “the soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing.� (Prov. 13:4)

The church in the West would do well to get some historic and spiritual perspective and realize that God has lavished his grace upon us by providing us so much of His word and good teaching of it -- a wealth unprecedented in the history of the church.

But instead we are all too often bored, spoiled, and lazy, not even reaching with our eyes and minds to feed upon His word. Or we reject God’s grace in His word altogether. Sad -- and contemptible.