But first we must give
reason for why “treasuring” and “delighting” is the desired response from
God for our reading of Scripture. The Psalmists lead us to see God’s word in its
proper context, as a word from the Lord to be both treasured and delighted in:
The law of
the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul…more to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
(Psalm 19:7a,10)
In the way
of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your
precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will
not forget your word. (Psalm 119:14-16)
The law of
your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm
119:72)
The image of the Bible the Psalmists paint is a grand mural of human
affections. The words chosen to display the proper understanding of how we view
God’s word are not weak; they do not use words here that connote a lukewarm
affection. Instead the words chosen convey the utmost affection. God’s word is
to be more desired than any wealth, or any sweetness to the tongue. It is to be
not obligingly read but delighted in, to come bounding toward with a sense of
joy over the privilege to read the very words of God to us. Jonathan Edwards, the great New England preacher, exhorts us to be like-minded with the Psalmists:
“But that treasure of divine knowledge, which is contained in the
Scriptures, and is provided for everyone to gather himself as much of it as he
can, is a far more rich treasure than any one of gold and pearls.”[1]
Edwards and the
Psalmists knew the reason we are to hold Scripture in such high regard for our
lives is because the word of God is the only thing that can transform our lives
from what they are to what they were created to be! We have a created purpose
to live in relationship with God almighty. To delight and treasure Scripture
then is to simply delight and treasure God
Himself. To delight and treasure Scripture is to prefer God and His word
over anything else the world paints as desirable for the purpose of your life;
it is to reclaim from the outset that God has created you with a greater
purpose than that which the world purports your purpose to be.
Chances are we don’t
wax eloquently about our love for the Scriptures. We probably don’t refer to
our Bible as our delight and treasure in conversation. Maybe we should. What if
Scripture was truly a delight to take up and read instead of something we come
to as an obligation, as something we are supposed to read as Christians
(Pharisaic legalism)? What if instead we took up God’s word out of delight, how
would our reading of God’s word change our relationship with God? Here’s what
would happen: If we delighted in God’s word we would therefore delight in God
Himself because the words contained within are God-breathed, they are the words of the Lord Himself. Take a
love-letter for example. When the recipient reads the letter they are
delighting in the words on the page, but the delight is not in the words only,
the delight that transpires is directed towards the author of the letter,
showing their affection for the recipient. So too a delight for Scripture
dashes a lukewarm love of God and inspires a person to treasure Him.
You were created to
treasure God with your life. As I have been aiming at the affections of your
heart, to delight in God’s word and therefore to delight in God, Jesus also has
much to say about your heart. In Matthew 6:21 He says, “For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also.”
What we treasure aligns the center of our being, our aim in life. I want you to
treasure the Lord and so does Jesus! He states His greatest desire for your
life in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind.” In order to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” he
must be your treasure because what you treasure aligns your whole heart. Heart
and treasure and inextricably linked and the aim of delighting in Scripture is
that it would lead you to treasure God.
As we look forward to how
the rest of this series might awaken an affection for God’s word and God Himself
within you, I leave you with the story of Augustine of Hippo’s conversion in AD
386. Augustine had struggled with the search of truth for years. It brought him
eventually one day in a garden in Milan, Italy to break down into tears where
he was in the midst of wrestling with the truths of the Christian Scripture.
While on a bench in the garden God brought him to see the capital T truth of
the Gospel:
“I wept,
my heart crushed with very bitterness. And behold, suddenly I heard a voice
from the house next door; the sound, as it might be, of a boy or a girl,
repeating in a sing song voice a refrain unknown to me: ‘Pick it up and read
it, pick it up and read it.’ Immediately my countenance was changed…taking this
to be nothing other than a God-sent command that I should open the Bible and
read the first chapter I found…I seized it, opened it, and read in silence the
first heading I cast my eyes upon: Not in
riotousness and drunkenness, not in lewdness and wantonness, not in strife and
rivalry; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh
and its lusts (Rom. 13:13-14). I neither wished nor needed to read more. No
sooner had I finished the sentence than it was as if the light of steadfast
trust poured into my heart, and all the shadows of hesitation fled away.”[2]
It was a delight to
pick up the Bible, not a begrudging duty, that led Augustine to become a giant
in Christian history with respect to delighting in God. Augustine fell in love
with the Lord and with His Scripture. Through the Scripture, God became
Augustine’s highest delight.
Do you love God? Do
you want to know Him? Do you want to earnestly say He is your treasure? Then heed
the call of the Psalmists crying out to you to delight in God’s word, heed the
call of the neighboring children in Milan to “pick it up and read it.” I pray that
God would awaken a delight in your hearts for His revealed word. I pray that he
would incline you to wear out the pages of your Bible. Wipe off the film of
dust possibly covering your Bible and embark on a journey of delight, a delight
in God’s word and therefore a delight in God.
* * *
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