[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our
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[00:00:38] Speaker B: Sometimes the Bible can be hard to understand.
We dust it off and we dive in and we discover that it's not a simple book.
It's not always an easy read. In fact, it's not quite like anything we've tried before. But it's actually a collection of diverse books and sent letters. There's ancient histories and prophecies and songs and laws and poetry written by a whole cast of people from different walks of life spanning over 1400 years, written in three languages and hailing from cultures that are worlds apart from ours.
Now, all those things, it turns out, are actually strengths.
And they add all this variety and time span and languages and differences. It makes the Bible even more amazing and historically reliable because we discover against all odds and due to the Holy Spirit's inspiration, this vast and diverse collection is really very obviously telling, as the Bible Project puts it, one continuous story that leads to Jesus. It's amazing, but that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park.
Whether you tiptoe in or dive straight in, we can find ourselves gripped by strong currents, surrounded by a confusing array of characters and stories and genres and assumptions and cultures that are completely foreign to us.
We can wonder what end is up.
Last week, one of our young KCBC campers discovered this in real time.
I was up there visiting, and so some of the staff told me this great story.
He was tasked with reading aloud one of the Old Testament stories, a story he had not heard before.
Turned out to be the story of David and Bathsheba.
And if you're familiar with the Old Testament story of David Mashu, it's a bit racy.
Well, this boy had never read this before.
And so as he's reading it out loud to the group of campers, he started to provide some very colorful commentary about what he was reading, expressing his shock and his dismay and his disgust at the craziness of this story he was reading. He saw a woman bathing, and he looks around, you know, and then he keeps reading. And then he slept with her this is all straight from the Bible, you understand.
And then she got pregnant and then David tried to get the husband to come in and sleep with her, so she. But he didn't and he wouldn't. And so then he murders him.
And he's expressing all of his shock. He read it with an appropriate sense of what is going on here.
And the same can happen for all of us.
We read some wild story and we can wonder, what world have we entered?
We're enjoying a lovely poem in the Psalms all about God's wonderful love for us and his care for us and his precious thoughts for us. And then we read down a few more verses and discover this psalm goes dark, moving from lovely praise to livid hate. And we can wonder, where are we?
You know, we read some obscure prophetic judgment about some nation we've never heard of, and we have a difficult time understanding how exactly this is supposed to relate to my life in any way.
Anyone with me?
Yeah.
Now, I don't mean the Bible is always confusing or always foreign because we find in these pages real people who respond in real human ways. We can see ourselves in the story.
I also don't mean that modern readers can't grasp the truth they discover immediately.
People have picked up the Bible, read one of the gospel biographies of Jesus, and realized in that moment that Jesus really was the Son of God. He really was the one he said he was. And they've decided to follow him after one reading. That happens by the grace of God, by the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit. That does happen.
But it doesn't mean the Bible is just easy to understand.
Sometimes it can be pretty tough going for newbies and old timers alike. Increasing our knowledge of what the Bible says and what the Bible means takes a solid commitment to read it lots, to study it deep and to do it together.
And thankfully, there's lots of good resources out there that help us grow in our understanding of the Bible.
You can join, for example, one of our upcoming Fall Connect groups that are just being put together now, and you can get together with another group of people to study the Bible. Really, really important.
You can follow guys like Wesley Huff from Apologetics Canada, learn more about the Bible and how it works and how trustworthy it is.
You can watch some of the great YouTube videos that the Bible Project has produced, and you'll understand more of the Bible as a result. You might even want to read the classic book, how to Read the Bible for all It's Worth.
Great book really will help you understand the Old Testament, New Testament translations, how to study it, how to read it. You can keep coming here on Sundays and receiving good, solid teaching. All of those things are helpful and they're great and they're important. The Bible is God's living word and it's worth our focused and engagement, our intentional engagement.
But today I want to offer you an ancient prayer to go along with the study, the reading, the reflection, the, the memorizing, the listening. Something that's really simple but super powerful. It's a prayer that all of us can use, newbies and old timers alike. All of us. An ancient prayer for scriptural insight found in Psalm 119:18. Just short single sentence prayer. I bet you'll have it committed to memory before we're done here today. But you can use it whenever you pick up the Bible and read, whenever you are reflecting on the scripture, whenever you're studying together or personal, you can say this prayer. Here it is. Psalm 119:18. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Let's try that together.
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Let's try it one more time. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. So simple and yet when it's prayed, sincerely prayed often, this prayer will set you up to understand the scripture in ways that will surprise you. So before we go any further, that's your core application for today. This is it. This is what you want to walk away with today. To take this prayer and use it.
Use it daily. Use it whenever you read the Bible, write it on a card, jot it in your phone notes. But like I say, I think you'll have it memorized by the time we're done today.
But whenever you open up your Bible, whenever you Open up the YouVersion Bible app on your phone, or maybe you're just walking down the road and you're thinking about a parable of Jesus or a story that you heard, or some troubling thing you're trying to figure out.
I encourage you to pause and pray this prayer. Heavenly Father, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Lord Jesus Christ, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Holy Spirit, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. And so, without any more said, let's pray just that.
Lord Jesus, we're here today, attentive to your word, and we ask that you would open our eyes so that we may be able to see wonderful things in your law.
In Your word to us.
We pray this in your name, Jesus.
Amen.
Well, let's break down this prayer into its four phrases. First, open my eyes.
What are we praying for?
We're praying that God would open our eyes, which implies that our eyes are somehow shut.
We're blind or blurry.
Some of our eyes are not functioning in the way that they need to function in order to see and perceive properly. Of course, the eyes we're talking about here, the eyes that we're asking God to open, are our internal eyes, our spiritual eyes, our heart eyes, Eyes that are somehow preventing us from seeing what we're supposed to see. When we open the Bible and we scan its pages in an important way, we start by confessing that we have a problem that only God can solve.
You know, I heard about a guy who went to buy a horse.
So he went to check out this horse, and the guy says, yeah, yeah, horse is over there. But I gotta warn you, that horse don't look so good.
The guy's like, oh, okay. But he walked over and he thought, I don't know what this guy's talking about. This horse looks great.
Beautiful lines, nice definition, nice personality. He's a great horse. I'll take him, he says. The guy says, are you sure? Because I'm telling you, the horse don't look so good.
No, he's great. I want him. So they settled on a price, took the horse home. But, you know, a couple days later, he's out riding the horse, and guess what he discovers the horse is stone blind.
He's tripping over logs and running into trees, and the guy's getting scraped on the knees, and he's a bit upset. So when he gets home, he calls the guy and he says, oh, what have you done? You sold me a horse that's blind. The guy said, I tried to warn you twice. That horse don't look so good.
Here's the reality.
My eyes don't look so good.
My heart don't look so good.
And they need to be opened by God, spiritually, even intellectually. We're like the blind man in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, when Jesus asked him, why? What do you want me to do for you? The blind man says, lord, I want to see.
Because he knows he's blind, and he knows that Jesus can heal him.
Well, that's us. We come to the written word of God, and even though our eyes can see the page in front of us, we confess that we're blind to its truth.
And so we ask the living word of God to we ask Jesus himself to help us see.
We acknowledge our natural lack of insight, our inherent blindness that we can't on our own work out things right. We can't open our blind eyes. We aren't able to perceive aright without the work of the Holy Spirit to bring us light.
Now, don't get me wrong. We can read the words on the page, we can understand some of the stories. We can do all that, but we can do that without gaining spiritual insight.
There were people that Jesus was having lots of opposition with, a certain group called the Pharisees. They knew the Scriptures inside and out, and yet Jesus said they didn't understand where it was ultimately leading them, which was to him.
They could read it, but without spiritual insight, we can understand some of the stories, we can grasp some of the truth. Even people who, who don't profess Jesus don't profess faith. If they take the Scriptures and take them seriously and begin to implement them in their lives, they'll experience benefit. That's true, but it doesn't mean they understand what it's about, because what the Bible is really about Jesus, and what it's really intended to do, which is to lead us to a full life in Christ that requires God to open.
And that's why Paul prayed for those Ephesians Christians when he prayed that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he's called you. We need the eyes of our hearts to be open. So this ancient prayer starts by asking God to do what only he can do. Heal our blindness, restore our sight, grant us light, open our eyes. And why, why are we praying that God would open our eyes? Well, so that we can see, of course.
Open my eyes that I may see. This is the central goal of this prayer, that we would be able to see and not just see, but the word here is to gaze intently, to examine something closely, to stare in wonder and in expectation, knowing that we're actually looking at something. Behold something of immense value, that we're standing in front of a priceless masterpiece worthy of all our attention, worthy of all our appreciation and all of our delight.
And this seeing business is something that we often miss in our regular Bible reading. Our eyes might be reading along, but we often look without seeing.
Have you ever had that experience of reading a book?
I mean, any book, not just the Bible, reading the book and realizing you've read the same sentence now three or four times, but nothing has penetrated anyone?
Yeah, we've all had that experience you've been looking without seeing. You've been scanning but not comprehending. You probably need a nap.
Well, this is a prayer that we would be able to actually behold what's in front of us.
To really see it for what it is. To gaze with delight and with appreciation, even if we aren't always sure what it is that we're looking at.
Because we aren't, you know, we aren't always sure.
Sometimes we read and read and look and we fail to understand. And that's okay.
We should expect that.
Sometimes we stand in front of a magnificent masterpiece and we stare without comprehension.
It's to be expected.
A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Art Institute in Chicago, where I was able for the first time to be in a room with and spend time gazing at some of the most famous original paintings of all time.
Now I'm a simple country boy from northern Alberta. Friends most of these original gems I'd never even heard of before I was in my 20s and I'd only ever seen them in books since then.
So wow.
Now I got to see Monet and his Will it water lily picture.
We all know that one, right?
That was the real deal. I was doing a selfie with there.
And then I had to stare at the old Guitarist by Picasso, another original piece. I was overwhelmed walking through that museum. There were so many original masterpieces walking around the next one really shocked me. I had seen this one in a kid's book with my boys. It's called A Sunday Afternoon La Grand Za Something.
This just. Oh yeah, Zot. That's how you pronounce it. A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Zot.
That thing is massive. If I were standing beside it, I'd be right down at the bottom. It's a huge. And it filled this massive room and it was on this huge wall. It's a massive, beautiful, striking painting and I got to enjoy that.
And of course, much to my boys delight, I probably showed you this picture before because they always loved this one. I got to pose with American Gothic.
Whew, that's a beaut.
Now even if I didn't know what exactly I was looking at, and believe me, in a museum of that size, there were definitely some things I did not know what I was looking at.
There's something powerful about being present to a great work of art, of really taking time to see it, to pause, to wait, to observe and notice.
Slowly realizing there's beauty here, but also realizing that whenever my lack of understanding or my Failure to appreciate.
It's very likely a me problem, not an art problem.
Well, when we approach the greatest work of literature in the history of the world, the Bible, we approach it with even greater deference that if I'm not seeing what the Bible was meant to say, I'm the one with the problem.
I remember I heard that for the first time at Bible school from Ian McPhee was one of my teachers that I had great respect for.
And I remember talking to him one day and he just challenged me. He said, tom, when we have a problem understanding the Bible, you know it's our problem, right? Like we want to blame the Bible. Ah, it's kind of obscure. And why couldn't they make it more clear? Oh, he said, no, no, no. If you can't understand what the Bible says, you are the problem, not the Bible.
It's either a sin problem or it's a gap in your understanding. You don't know the language, you don't know the context, you don't know the culture. But most likely it's a sin problem.
It's a you problem. We always want to offload our problems to other things, right? And it's real easy to read the Bible and assume I'm not the one with the problem. God should have been more clear to me.
And yet we stand before this great work of art and realize, oh, if I'm having trouble perceiving this, I'm the one who needs some help. And so we need to ask God to open our eyes so that we can see. And then we need to actually spend time gazing so that God can show me what he wants me to see.
We need to read the Bible but not move too quickly, because we often do. We lightly scan it. We check the box that we did, the chapter of the day or whatever, or we read it only once, or we often read it in little chunks.
We kind of assume what this must mean.
Well, this prayer invites us to slow it down, to drink it in, to read it over again and over again and sit before the Scriptures with a kind of slow and holy reverence, asking God to help us see.
So what are we praying for? Open my eyes. And why are we praying it that I may see.
And what is it we want to see? Well, we want to see wonderful things.
That's the third phrase in focus.
Wonderful things. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things.
This is interesting to me. What wonderful things might we be able to see in the Bible? I'd love you to shout them out. What wonderful things do you want to see in the Bible, shout them out to me. What's some of the wonderful things?
The character of God. What else?
Say that again.
Forgiveness. Yes.
Grace.
Creativity.
Miracles.
Mercy. Absolutely.
Patience.
Love. The path ahead.
The whole picture. Yeah.
Joy.
Well, this Wonderful things business. This gets really fascinating when you dig into it. This is one of those times where digging a bit deeper into the original language helps.
One of the ways that we grow. Just as a bit of an aside here, one of the ways we grow in our understanding of what the Bible says is when we do a little word study, which is simply taking that same original word and then seeing how it's used across Scripture. Like, how is it used here and there? And we get a context and helps us. This is how words are defined, right? We're defined by how they're used. And so we get a greater sense of, well, this Hebrew word for wonderful things. I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but it's niflaot. It's this word that's used for wonderful things. Guess how it shows up throughout the Old Testament story, this wonderful things.
It's most often used to refer to salvation wonders performed by God himself, like when he showed up and rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt, or later, when he parted the waters of the Red Sea so they could escape the Egyptian army. Two examples of this. The first one's from Exodus 3:20, which you've already heard the larger story in our scripture reading, but here it is.
So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all my wonders.
It's the same word as the 1 in Psalm 119, Strike the Egyptians with all my wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
So these wonders, these wonderful things that are referred to Here are the 12 plagues through which God his power judges Egypt and judges the Egyptian gods and then rescues his people out of slavery. That's the wonderful things that are in that context. And later in Psalm 78, we read this. We read a lament that God's rescued people forgot what he had done. The wonders he shown them. He had shown them. He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors in the land of Egypt. Again, these wonders are specifically tied to God's acts of salvation on behalf of.
And so when we open up this holy book and we ask God to open our eyes so that we can see what we're asking him to open our eyes so that we can see his salvation wonders, his miraculous rescuing interventions, so that we can understand all the ways he's acted in history, in time for people, for our good, for. For us, the whole picture, as Peter put it, and how God is bringing it all to its proper end.
So we look and we think, okay, I need my eyes opened so that I can see this, so I can grasp what this actually means.
God reveals his wondrous miracles in these stories of salvation. And they're hidden marvels, as it were, that require divine illumination. We need the Holy Spirit in order to perceive them fully.
And somehow when we really see them. This is what's. What's happening in this prayer when we really see what God has done.
These things that we're reading in the Bible are just as grand as the original physical miracles because they do precisely the same thing to us.
These wonders. As we see what God did through the Exodus, as we see what he did through Jesus, these parallel salvation events in the Bible. And one echoing the other, when we read these, these wonders, they actually rescue us from sin and they raise us to life. How? Because they reveal who God is to us and what he has done through Christ and what he is doing now by the Spirit. And as a result from seeing those wonders, we place our trust in the living God.
What does this all mean? It means when we pray this ancient prayer, we're asking God to show us his wonders.
We're asking God, as we open the Bible during our morning time or in the afternoon, we're asking him, how is it that you have acted to reconcile the world to yourself through Jesus? Help me understand that. Help me see that.
How is it that you have worked through your people, through Jesus, through the church, you've worked to remedy the human condition.
Help me to see how you've rescued us from sin and raised us from death to life. We're asking God to show us his niflaot, his wonders in Christ.
We're praying, ultimately for an encounter through the word of God with the living God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, who is the Lord and giver of life. We want to see his wonders.
And where will we see these wonders?
Well, we already know that already. This is of course, what we've been talking about. But it lands the whole prayer, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
We want to see God's salvation wonders in this written record of God's redeeming.
We want to gaze upon God's wonderful rescue in the very word of God. Because here's the thing we sometimes forget.
God's salvation wonders are contained Only in this book.
You will not find them anywhere else.
If it were not for the Bible, you couldn't see any of this at all.
If it were not for the Scriptures, you would not be able to know what God had done for the world. In Christ you can discover the wonderful salvation actions of God exactly nowhere else.
You do not find them in any other book. You will not come to hear them through any other religion. You will not discover them out in nature or within the human psyche. You will not discover them through any other philosophy, psilocybin or tradition.
Only here, only in this book, only in this story, only from the Bible.
Without this book, we'd never know that God created us in his own image.
We'd never know that he designed us for a relationship with him and rulership over creation.
Without this story, we'd never understand how we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
And yet God did not abandon us to our spiritual death, but acted in history to save us, calling first a people to himself, the Jewish people, rescuing them out of Egypt, making them a nation, giving them his good law, and then leading them into a land flowing with milk and honey with all the ites in it. You know, the Perizzites, Jebusites, Hivites, Amorites, all those guys.
A land in which they were to live in right relationship with God and right rulership over creation. Without this story, we'd never comprehend how God has always been faithful.
Even when his people were not faithful, God was always faithful. And he acted to fulfill his promise to Abraham, David through the prophets, to bring the Messiah Jesus through this family line so that all the covenant promises would be fulfilled in Christ and all the world would be reconciled to him through the cross. Without this Bible, we would never know the good news about this Jesus, this Jewish rabbi who's also the Son of God, that he became one of us in order to rescue us from our sin and restore us to this original relationship with God that He's always desired. This rulership in creat through his resurrection, historically attested to, as solid as rock here in this Bible.
We would never know it if it weren't for this.
Without this eternal word, we'd be in the dark, friends. We'd be uncomprehending. We'd be dead, not looking so good at all.
And that's why we pray this prayer, that God would open our eyes so that we may see wonderful things in your law.
Now, let me just explain the word law for a moment. It's a big word here. It Kind of means all of God's divine revelation to us. Law in this context is much bigger than the word law as we use it in English.
We think of law, we think of laws, we think of a set of rules and procedures.
And the Bible does include these kinds of laws. Think of the Ten Commandments or many of the civic laws he gave to his people. But law or Torah as it is here, it's a much more expansive word than just a set of rules. Torah or law means life giving instruction, divine guidance, holy revelation. It's God speaking to his people in order to show them who he is and how they should live in relationship with Him. And it's right here.
The word Torah stems from a word that means to shoot an arrow, to instruct, to point the way. And here in Psalm 119, we're told that these wonderful things that God has done, these acts of salvation, they come to us out of this Torah, out of this law, wrapped in this instructive text, waiting for us to draw near and listen, to open our eyes and see, to read and to gaze. And by the work of the Holy Spirit, who opens our eyes, see what God has done and how God has revealed himself in this most marvelous story.
And then as he does that, and as we read on the story, we discover the shocking truth that the very word of God, the very Torah of God, was made flesh and made his dwelling among us.
And why did he do that?
So that we could see his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. God wants us to see.
He wants us to see who he is, and through that sight to be transformed.
We hold in our hands the very wonders of God.
And through this instruction, and only through this book, and only by His Spirit, will we ever be able to see them for ourselves. And so we're invited to pray this ancient prayer.
Pray it with me. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Beautifully simple, incredibly powerful ancient prayer.
And I send that with you today and hope and pray that you'll use it, implement it when you open your Bible, whether you're brand new and you're struggling to understand even where to start, you open your Bible and you say, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. And then dive in and see what happens.
When you're gathering as a group of people to talk about this scripture, pray this prayer.
When you're thinking a little later on today about a story you've heard of Pray this prayer.
Pray this prayer when you wake in the morning. It will remind you to read the Bible, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Pray this prayer and ready yourself to receive to see God's wonders revealed as the Holy Spirit leads us to the Savior, reveals the Father to us for our good, for our salvation.
Let's pray.
God, thank you for being a God who wants to be seen by us, who reveals himself to us and has given us this most marvelous book so that we can see your wonderful things.
And so I pray for us individually and as a church that you would open our eyes so that we see wonderful things in your law. That we would be people who hunger and thirst after you, who are willing to dive in even if the water is deep and the current is strong. We're willing to dive in and know that, Lord Jesus, you want to lead us to understanding. You want to lead us to revelation. You want us to know you through your Word, by your spirit.
And so we ask, open our eyes that we may see wonderful things in your law.
Thank you, Father.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. In today we hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast.
For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant Ca.
You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.
