Daily Word
A word of encouragement for your day.
UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE (1)
"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counsellor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen!"
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God"
(Matthew 5:8)
It takes a life-time to understand the Bible, because it is not understood by the intellect, but by our heart, the central source of our entire being – and unless our heart is pure and right, our understanding will be defiled and wrong.
Darkness of heart results in darkness of intellect, a perverted heart breeds a perverted intellect.
Unless our heart is purified and transformed into accordance with the God of the Bible, we will never understand the Bible of God. The ways of God revealed in the Bible will be unattainable to us unless we are reconciled to its Author and His ways and dealings with us personally.
Only when His ways of dealing with sinful man have been formed in us through painful, personal experience, will we begin to understand His dealings with fallen mankind in history, as recorded in the Scriptures. Otherwise we are bent to misinterpret them.
The thoughts of God are absolutely pure, holy and unblemished and can never enter into an impure and perverted heart – and above all not into a proud heart.
Purity and humility go hand in hand, as pride and impurity do.
And humility always breeds obedience – a key to understanding the Word of God: we will only understand to the extent that we have obeyed.
Obstinacy is resistance to the Holy Spirit as Stephen declared to the Jewish leaders (Acts 7:51). And since it is the Holy Spirit that opens up and interprets the Sacred Scriptures to us, He cannot do this until this wicked, obstinate resistance is totally broken and our heart is open to receive revelations of the precious secrets of the Word.
Have you allowed the Lord to do this profound work in you, so that you can understand the Bible?