The entrance of thy words giveth light;
it giveth understanding unto the simple (Psa 119.130).
The Middle Ages are not known for widespread biblical scholarship and preaching. Dominant Christendom in the West, the Roman Catholic Church conducted public worship services only in Latin. Even the priesthood, not to mention the laity, was largely ignorant of the Bible.
One slogan of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was “post tenebras lux,” after darkness, light. The Holy Scriptures had come to prominence in society like no time since the apostolic days, thanks to the sovereign Spirit of genuine revival, an exalted theology of the Word, and a dramatic increase in the human activities of Bible translation, exposition, and publication.
But the eighteenth century in some measure might be described as “post lux tenebras,” for with the sunset of Bible-based faith except in a remnant of believers, man’s limited and carnal reasoning led “free thinkers” into the midnight of rationalism. As representative of their warped perspective, Immanuel Kant wrote in 1793, “The Enlightenment represents man’s emergence from a self-inflicted state of minority [i.e., being a minor, immaturity] . . . Have the courage to make use of your own understanding is the watchword of the Enlightenment.”1
At bottom, Enlightenment thinkers were critical of everything. One French philosopher said, “all things must be examined, debated, investigated, without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.” With confidence in human reason and science, the Enlightenment championed the destruction of all barriers to human freedom and autonomy.2
When curiosity and objectivity lead people to entertain a temporary skepticism for the purpose of subjecting to careful analysis all merely human thought and beliefs, whether scientific, societal, legal, medical, philosophical, or any other body of consensus thinking, it is a necessary and useful posture either for validating that which is sound or overturning the incorrect conventional wisdom. No doubt such a mindset has contributed much to the benefits of life as we know it in the twenty-first century.
But our generation is fatally poisoned by the Enlightenment, because toward the Bible it was fundamentally skeptical. To this day many people pity Bible-believing Christians as intellectually and philosophically naïve simply because of our confidence in the words of Scripture. It is never, ever, ever warranted to doubt God’s Word in Scripture, since it is the only absolute verbal truth we have, and it forms a foundation for our existential significance and our evaluation of all other things. When the Enlightenment puts more faith in human thought than in the divine Word, it has fallen into gross idolatry which cannot end in anything but confusion, frustration, and ultimate ruin. God will mock all attempts to substitute anything for him.
The straightforward words of our Scripture text for this study set forth a spiritually-healthy perspective which all the righteous see, and which, if heartily embraced by anyone, leads to salvation and accurate, intimate knowledge of God and his ways. That is because all God’s words are enlightening words.
OUR NEED AS THOSE IN DARKNESS
David has in view one who begins as “simple” [the original also means naïve, foolish—even open minded!3] coming into “understanding” [esp. moral and spiritual discernment], one without light, that is, in darkness, being turned into a man of spiritual and moral enlightenment. The humbling implication is that all of us naturally begin as fools in great spiritual and moral darkness. Paul makes a statement about Christians generally when he says, “Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord” (Eph 5.8). That is, when we were still unbelievers, we were among those “Gentiles [who] walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph 4.17-18).
Of course we did not realize that at the time, but the realization came to us through God’s verbal truth.
GOD’S WORDS AS LIGHT
The original text in consists of five Hebrew words which could be translated as follows: “Entrance / your words / give light / give understanding / simple person.” The verb for the first line, “give light,” means in this context to illumine, enlighten.
That God’s words give light makes perfect sense because they reveal the glory of God, being an outward expression of his inherent holy truthfulness, justice, love, and every other divine attribute, all blazingly glorious (1 John 1.5). “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; . . . for [out] of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6.45). This principle holds true with respect to God also.
Earlier in Psalm 119, David had praised Scripture similarly: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (v. 105). With this agrees Proverbs 6.23, “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light.” The words of Scripture are so many rays of light streaming from the door of heaven, God’s special dwelling place, helping us to walk wisely in the darkness of this present evil age without stumbling.
SCRIPTURE AS THE WAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Moving from metaphor to literal explanation, the psalmist declares that God’s Word “gives understanding” to the spiritually naïve person, so that he becomes wise, and increasingly so as he benefits from the wisdom of God’s Word.
Most interesting is the first word of this Hebrew verse. The King James Version translates it, “The entrance of thy words,” with the resulting sense that as they enter the heart of the simple, he gains understanding. Surely this is a biblical truth. The 1599 Geneva Bible translators saw it the other way around: “The entrance into thy wordes sheweth light,” that is, as we come to Scripture and “get into it,” we experience spiritual enlightenment.
However, the original word may have a very different sense. Other translations convey the first word as “opening” (ASV), “unfolding” (ESV), and even “explanation” (GNT). One paraphrase says very simply, “When your words are made clear, they bring light. They bring understanding to childish people” (NIrV). This group of renderings highlights the importance of Bible exposition as a means of spiritual enlightenment. Through the ages, God has given pastor-teachers of his Word (Eph 4.11) as his human instruments to illumine the mind of unbelievers in total darkness and Christians needing further light.
While God is free to work without, above, and against means at his pleasure, yet in his ordinary providence he makes use of them (1689 LBCF V.3). Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch with a scroll of Isaiah before him, “Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me?” (Acts 8.30-31). That was wisdom on his part, as the rest of the account illustrates.
Typically when God intends to save sinners and edify a church, he sends a preacher-teacher of his Word to beget faith in the hearers and greater spiritual understanding in his beloved ones.
Therefore, it is critically important for everyone who would be a true Christian and grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord to avail himself regularly of the ministry of a pastor-teacher, one who is known to be godly by accountability to fellow elders and a local congregation, and who can know personally the individual seeking true spiritual enlightenment. Surely if you are a part of a congregation with faithful pastoral teaching, you can testify to countless times God has illumined your mind and heart by the public ministry of his Word.
In these days of proud free-thinkers, we desperately need to receive the teaching that Scripture is absolutely central to our deliverance from sin unto eternal life and God’s service, and also that God uses other people, especially pastor-teachers, to heal the blindness of our sinful, darkened hearts. Let us humbly own our need as those in darkness if God leaves us to ourselves, and the Bible as words of glorious light. Let us also heartily believe that God’s words must enter into us, and us into them, and that he uses the pulpit and lectern in the church as the principal means of spiritual blessing to his people. Amen.
Notes:
1. Cited in Exploring Church History by J. P. Eckman, p. 72.
2. In loc.
3. ESL #6612.