The Chapter 30 Diner (12)

 

“Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Proverbs 30:5 – 6.

 

Why is every word of God tested? Or perhaps better, why does God put His own Word to the test? Is this not for His great glory, and is it not so that we will be encouraged to trust Him with our very lives, both for now and eternity?

 

Paul writes that eternal life was promised by “God, who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2).  

 

In Psalm 12:6 we read, “The words of Yahweh are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.” In this passage, Yahweh’s pure words are contrasted with the words of those who “speak falsehood to one another; with flattering lips and a double heart.”

 

The KJV renders a portion of the above, “in a furnace of earth.” I have found this image helpful in that I see the furnace of earth as our own “earthen vessels” of 2 Cor. 4:7. As God’s Word is tested, our hearts are tested. As God’s Word is refined, our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies are refined. This is not to say that God’s Word actually needs purification or refinement, for His Word has been pure forever just as God is pure. Neither God nor God’s Word is subject to change, and Jesus Christ, the Word of God, “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). The language of the refinement of His Word is language that God condescends to use to accommodate our understanding in order to draw us into koinonia with Himself.

 

God wants us to trust His Word, He wants us to trust His promises, He wants us to trust His love and grace in Jesus Christ. We have an example of how deeply God wants us to trust Him in Hebrews 6:13 – 20:

 

“For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear an oath by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “indeed I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For people swear an oath by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath serving as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to demonstrate to the heirs of the promise the fact that His purpose is unchangeable, confirmed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to hold firmly to the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and reliable and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

 

Here is how F.F. Bruce interacts with the above:

 

“Our author emphasizes the fact that when God repeated his promise to Abraham after the offering up of Isaac, he confirmed it with an oath. When human beings swear an oath in order to underline the certainty and solemnity of their words, they swear by someone or something greater than themselves. “As (surely as) Yahweh lives” was the supreme oath in Israel. Abraham himself swore by God and made others do the same (Gen. 14:22; 21:23f; 24:23). But, says our author, God has none greater than himself by whom to swear, so when he wished to confirm his promise in this way, he swears by himself (we may compare the recurring “as I live” in divine oracles throughout the Old Testament)…”

 

“The bare word of God is guarantee enough in all conscience, but by confirming it thus he ‘makes assurance double sure.’” (The Epistle to the Hebrews, F.F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, page 154).

 

God gave Abraham reassurance that His Word can be trusted, and He gives that same reassurance to us through His timeless and eternal Word. David says, “As for God, His way is blameless; the word of Yahweh is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him” (Psalm 18:30). Paul writes, “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed…” (2 Timothy 2:12).

 

Is not life a matter of whom we trust? Of whose word we trust? Of whose understanding and perception we trust?

 

Jesus Christ is the ultimate Word of God, He is the deep Word of God, He is the exact Word of God – and He can be fully and completely trusted.

 

How foolish for the creature to think that he or she knows more than the Creator. How arrogant for a man or woman, born a sinner, born in spiritual death, born with deficient intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacity to think that she or he can sit in judgment on the Word of God; for to sit in judgment of the Word of God is to sit in judgment of God Himself.

 

If we would judge God’s Word, then let us, with Agur, judge His Word to be true and tested; let us submit ourselves to His Word and allow His Word to judge us so that we might be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. As saints in Christ, let us place ourselves under the authority and power and working of His Word so that we might know the glorious rest we have in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:11 – 16).

 

It is really the height of arrogance to judge and question the Word of God, that Word which has been tested in all generations. This does not mean that we “check our minds at the door” as some would suggest, it is rather an informed decision in which we choose to believe our Creator, our Father, our Lord Jesus – as opposed to all other claims of truth, beauty, and goodness.

 

Tell me now, when you breathe your last breath, do you want to have lived life trusting in God and His Word…or in the changing words of changing men and women?