A Word in Season: The Treasury of Truth (Psalm 119:162)

The Delight of Opening God’s Word

With what delight did King David open the scrolls upon which he had the Word of God written? How did he turn to them with eager expectation, with deep delight? With what anticipation did he come to the very words of the living God, delivered by the mouths of the prophets, to seek through them, to search out what was in them, to discern what God had made known of himself?

Well, we know something of his spirit because we read in Psalm 119 and verse 162, I rejoice at your word as one who finds great treasure. Now, we have Bibles. Most of us, I imagine, have multiple Bibles.

We have them on the page, we have them on the screen. The Word of God is all around us. Do we approach God's book with the same sense of eager anticipation and deep delight as the psalmist in Psalm 119?

Have you ever marveled at what happens when you open the pages of your Bible? Perhaps you're looking for a particular book and, depending on the nature of the printing, it might only be a page or two.

Are you never struck by the fact that in those one or two pages you have part of God's revelation to mankind, that here the God of heaven and earth is speaking to you? Have you ever marveled that though the Bible is in some respects a big book or a big collection of books, that nevertheless, to have the wisdom for salvation, to have the knowledge of God within the covers of such a small span, relatively speaking, the wisdom and the beauty and the glory and the depth, the excellence, the purity of what you have in those pages?

Have you ever looked through the chapters and the verses and stopped to consider some of the particular words, the insights, the concepts, the notions, the thoughts which are too deep for us, the thoughts of God which are higher than ours, the beauties that are contained here as God makes himself known?

Christ Revealed in the Scriptures

Have you considered the treasuries of the King as the excellence of Christ is paraded before us? The scribes and the Pharisees, they searched their Bibles because in them they thought they had everlasting life.

But, said our Lord, these are the things which speak of me. Surely that is the brightest jewel in the whole of Revelation, the fact that here we find God in Christ set before us. So, do we come with joy at God's Word as one who finds great treasure?

There is here an abundance for us. This is the most precious truth. This is the truth that delights the heart. This is the truth that shows us God. This is the mirror in which we see not just our own sinfulness, but also the revelation of the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is where we learn how to live to the praise of the glory of God's grace. This is where we discern what delights him and we see what it means to walk in his ways. This is where we learn his righteous judgments and his tenderest mercies.

The Bible as a Treasury of Wisdom and Glory

This is where all things that we need for life here and for the life which is to come are set before us. We walk into a great treasury. Perhaps you've never been into that kind of environment or you may never even have imagined it.

But think of going into some great chamber where the walls are lined with the treasures of the ages, where on fine displays at every hand there is some new marvel, some new sparkling jewel or gem, some diadem, some coronet, something which displays the wealth and the splendor.

And that's what it's like when we walk through our Bibles, when we turn the pages of this book, when we hear the word of God speaking to us, when we see God revealed, when we understand the truth, when we are guided into all righteousness, when Christ is held before us and the Holy Spirit in his great mercy, as it were, turns on the spotlights to make this glorious display shine before us in ways that we might never have imagined.

So let us rejoice because of God's word as one who finds great treasure. Let's never open the book without a sense of delight and expectation that here God speaks and makes himself known.