1. Running Readers
And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
Habakkuk 2:2.
It is the fundamental principle of communication, irrespective of the theoretical perspective, that information should successfully pass from sender to receiver; only then is communication said to have been effective. Effective communication is not merely the generation and transmission of information; it is the realization of an intended response from the receiver. It may otherwise be measured also by the deliberate reaction against the information in an attempt to frustrate its potential or intended result. At one time, Jesus preached so well that the people applauded, “Never man spake like this man” (John 7:46). At a different time, the outcry was, “Crucify him!” (Mark 15:13-14). In either case, there was a reaction resulting from the message. Communication had been effective.
When a letter is written, posted, and received, it may be thought that communication has been achieved because the message has gone from sender to receiver. Not necessarily. What if the letter was written in a language and in a script that the receiver cannot read, let alone understand; for example, a message in Swahili written in Chinese script, or a message in Korean written in Arabic script, meant for an English speaker? The receiver will remain uninformed, unable to carry out the instructions intended by the letter. The letter may have been intended to make the recipient move a table from one place to the other, or to change his or her attitude to prayer. If things remain unchanged, because the message was not understood (rather than because the recipient was averse to the message), communication has not been effective.
The situation is well illustrated by the rhetorical question in 1 Corinthians 14:8: “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” The hearing of the sound of the trumpet is not the aim of the sound. If the sound is produced, heard, but not understood, and if therefore an army is not mobilised, the trumpet has failed.
When we celebrate the beauty of voice or grammar of a preacher, rather than consider whether or not that preacher's message has been able to move us into meaningful and corresponding action, we are recording entertaining sounds, not preparing for war.
If someone buys a book but is not literate enough to read it, or cannot read it because the fonts are very tiny and the pages are blotched with ink, should the author rejoice that his or her book has reached an audience? No. If I picked up the microphone to speak, and listeners can hear my sounds but are not able to make out my words, have they heard me? No. I might have said, “Please, stand up, everybody.” So long as they remain seated, in spite of having heard my sounds (even though they could have stood up), communication has not been effective.
Not how loud the trumpet sounds; not how long; not what great and anointed trumpeter has been blowing the trumpet, or who manufactured it. So long as the hearers are unable to respond to its fanciful codes, because they do not understand its call, that trumpet has failed. For all the trouble, it could have been a noisy disturbance, or at best, a 'trumpetic' entertainment.
God said to Moses, “And thou shalt write …this law very plainly” (Deuteronomy 27:8). How? Not just plainly but “very plainly.” Why? Because the law is not for entertainment. It is supposed to be understood and to elicit a predetermined response of obedience from its readers.
Hundreds of years later, another writing prophet was instructed by God to “Write the vision, and make it plain” (Habakkuk 2:2). That instruction was specific not to the content of the message, not to the rightness or wrongness of it, but to its style, its delivery; to how the message should be communicated, with a view to achieving a specifically intended result: “that he may run that readeth it.” In other words, if the message did not succeed to make the reader run, it would have failed, no matter how eloquently delivered; no matter how applauded. We should therefore measure a book not necessarily by the beauty of its pages; not by the grandeur of its eloquence and intelligence, but by how it is able to make runners of its readers. Same for sermons. If the “very good” preacher's sermons, Sunday after Sunday, result in no significant change in the lives of the hearers, that preacher, perhaps, had been entertaining them. If they laugh and they dance but show no significant change in attitude arising from the “good sermon” or the “great book,” they have learned little.
2. Writing on Stones
And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly (Deuteronomy 27:8).
Writing that does not communicate is not effective. Loud trumpet sounds that convey no message may be tagged noise, or at best, fun. That is but one leg of the matter. The other is the writing of words that last; words that remain relevant beyond their time; words that are classics; words that would still be read long after the author has gone. That is like writing on stones. The works of William Shakespeare, for example, are still being read, hundreds of years after the writer. John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress of nearly 350 years ago, is still a classic in Christendom and in world literature. He was not the only writer of his day. His works were not the only writings of that time; yet many of the probably more famous “bestsellers” written at the same time John Bunyan wrote in 'stone,' have been washed away with their age. Their communication had, no doubt, been effective then, but their good message had been time-bound. It never survived its age. In Isaiah 30:8, we find a call to write not just for “now” but “for time to come” and “for ever and ever.” Even Job desired for himself such an everlasting biography in stone:
23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! (Job 19:24).
Your message should outrun and outlast you. There is a lot of writing today that is fanciful but not durable. It is like beautiful letters on toilet paper. It dies even before its writer, often defying resuscitative reprints. Writing on stones takes greater pains, but so also do the authors carve their eternal names on those unfading granite pages - dying men immortalised by their undying words.
3. Writing Plainly
And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly (Deuteronomy 27:8).
To write “plainly” means to write simply, to write legibly, to write clearly. It means to write what can be easily seen, easily read, and easily understood. Some writing is not “plain” because of tiny or indistinct font size and type, because of spilled or faint ink, or several other factors. The pages being thus hard to read, the message is farther from reach.
Some writing screams pompously above the heads of those it presumes to address. It strains to impress but neither succeeds to entertain nor inform. Beyond its possible beautiful print, it is a cacophonic firework of bombastic words and unknowable philosophies. Some other writing is not “plain” because the style is awkward, the language is clogged with errors, and the thoughts are not logical.
If anything should be written plainly, it is laws. “And thou shalt write …all the words of this law very plainly” (Deuteronomy 27:8). When laws are ambiguous, people cannot keep them, which gives occasion to pointless trespasses. Ambiguous commandments are a snare.
To write what can be easily read means avoiding unnecessary decorations and ambiguities. It means avoiding ostentations. Writing plainly is both a matter of form (how the book is printed, etc.) and of content (what has been written, or the message in the book). Writing plainly also means knowing and taking one's readers into consideration. A message for a Russian audience written in French, or a message for rural children written in the astronomical language of atomic research, will be like the proverbial “tinkling cymbal” and “sounding brass” (1 Corinthians 13:1). In Revelation 1:11, John was commissioned to write the vision he had seen, with his specified audience well in view: “the seven churches which are in Asia.”
4. Writing the Vision
God instructed the prophet Habakkuk to “Write the vision.” Some writings proceed from no vision, from no personal encounter. They proceed, sometimes, from a competitive pen aiming to score a point with some rival, from a haughty heart seeking a name, or from a plagiarizing head scheming to make money. Being therefore dry of fresh and invigorating insights, such writings bounce off the reader as abstract theories of no personal application. In Revelation 1:10-11, God tells Apostle John, “What thou seest, write in a book, and send it….” There is little that anyone can meaningfully write who did not “see” what they write about. If you called that “inspiration,” fine. “Write the vision.” Your children should read it clearly in the next hundred years.
It is often said that a people perish where vision is lacking, and that visions die where people are lacking (Proverbs 29:18). I add that visions are sustained not merely by people. They are sustained more by writing, or by writing people. Written visions have done much to shift the world. We can still see, towering pathetically behind us in recent history, the monumental impacts of the writings of such anti-Christ 'visions' as those of Communism and Socialism. The revolutions orchestrated by those visions could not have been as impactful had the visions never been written. And what shall we say if Moses had never written his visions, or if the Bible had not been there!
Visions may be birthed by inspiration, but they are sustained by writing. Many fine sermons have died with their powerful preachers, but not the books they wrote. I have often said, “What you say will live with you, but what you write will outlive you.” Write the vision. Write it plainly. Write it to outlive you. Write it on stones.