The Whole Truth

Following up on our last article, to be able to get our minds around the idea of the Bible being one whole message, or word it helps to understand what we read from Moses, and from Jesus that, "Man shall not live ..but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." In order to understand that Book as one whole message we have to understand that every word is there on purpose, and is important to the message as a whole. For some folks, this might be a matter of fact, for some it's a radical idea. For a slow learner like me, I can say I believe it and then discover all over again how radically true it is.

In the Psalms, David writes that God has a blessing for those who are "undefiled in the way," who seek the Lord "with a whole heart." [Ps. 119:1,2] Who were these people? Did they only exist in David's time, or can there be people like that today? What kind of blessing does God hold for them? The king of all Israel, in the process of building the nation from a dozen scattered tribes to a place of real prominence, would go on through this longest Psalm to show that blessing was the one greatest desire in his own life, and to build a series of meditations on how to gain it.

The first challenge that we face today is simply believing what we read. It seems to be saying that such people exist (and if then, why not now?), and that there is a real blessing for them. It is interesting that so many people today will stand up and say that they believe in God, and in miracles, and that there is nothing too big for Him to handle. He made the Universe. He brought the Hebrews out of Egypt. The Flood. The Virgin Birth. The Resurrection. Healings, and all kinds of miracles are right in His domain. But can He actually make a change in a yielded human nature? Jesus conquered death, but can He overcome sin? The easy answer, for a lot of people, is to assume that sin is somehow beyond His reach, or that He's really not all that concerned with it.
The obvious answer is that He has made it clear that there is nothing outside His concern, or His reach, especially that which He abased Himself from the highest throne down to Hell to eradicate.

Back to the Psalm we see two things, or maybe three. The first is that David knows that there are people who do love the Lord with all their hearts, and that he wants to be one. Also, maybe he envies the "undefiled" because of God's building that purity in his own heart. Some people, it seems, have a guilty conscience, but others are conscious of God's own holiness. We read in Hebrews that God's Word discerns the difference between soul and spirit. What does this mean? One example is right here, as , and this is one example as it says in 2nd Corinthians that a godly (spirit ual) sorrow leads to a change, while a worldly (selfish or "soul ish") sorrow is deadly. In short, what does that awareness produce? So we see a question raised in the Psalms, an assurance in Hebrews that the answer is available, and a clue for understanding it in 2nd Corinthians. More clues can be found in probably every one of the sixty-six books, or else someone can ignore the whole landscape and claim it's not there. We find that in the Psalms also: "O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the
man that trusteth in him! [Psalm 34:8]"