To Encourage You

Psalm 139:6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”

Do you read the Bible?  If you do, what is the perspective from which you approach it?  Might I suggest there are at least three views we can take as we read it.  The first is to place ourselves above it.  We can think of the Bible as an old book full of errors, myths, and fantasy.  It’s a view in which we look down on the Bible as a book of which we can be the judge. We can think that we know more than to believe in such things.  We can view ourselves as having a perspective that is too progressive, highly intelligent, and too advanced to give any serious consideration to a book that was written by those who surely didn’t know as much as we do now. It’s this view that is the one taken by the skeptic, the atheist, the scoffer, or the liberal theologian who wants to tell us which parts of the Scriptures are true and which are not, for they think they know enough to tell us. 

Next there is the horizontal perspective.  This is the view that the Bible is nothing more than a book written by men – people who are just like you and me.  It’s a view that gives the Bible more weight than the skeptic, for people do have some good ideas.  It’s the thought that the Bible was written by men who were probably wise, so there’s some worthwhile information contained within its pages.  But this view doesn’t place the Bible on any higher plane than any other book – even any other “spiritual” book, for those other books were, likewise, written by men – wise men, perhaps, but they were just men. 

But then there’s a third view. It’s the view of those who actually penned the Bible’s Words.  It takes a very high view of the Scriptures.  It’s the view of the writer of Psalm 139 above. With these words the writer is telling us that, although he’s giving us a message about God, the fact is that the God He is writing about has a wisdom too high for the writer to completely grasp.  As he writes about God, he acknowledges that he can never fully attain to the knowledge of the One about Whom he writes.  It’s the view expressed throughout Psalm 19 that God’s Word is “perfect,” “sure,” “right,” “pure,” “clean,” “true,” “righteous altogether,” and “more precious than gold.”  It’s the view that the Bible really is God’s Word, because it tells us that it is, and as such, it carries with it the marks of God’s divine nature.  It’s the view that we must always look “up” to understand it, with a prayer to God asking Him to “open (our) eyes to behold wondrous things out of Your law (Psalm 119:18).”  It’s the view that the Bible is the express written “Word of God” which exclusively reveals to us the incarnate “Word of God,” i.e., the Lord Jesus Christ. 

So, again, what’s your perspective?  Is the Bible something you look down on?  Or, perhaps you view it as if you’re on its same plane? Or do you look up to it, way up, with a very high view of its words as having come down to us from a God Who is very “high and lifted up (Isaiah 52:13),” as He spoke by inspiration through the writers who wrote the words down?  How we approach it is a matter of perspective, but you can be assured that every writer who gave it to us had an even higher view than we can fully understand.