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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 06. The Mosaic of Truth
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The Mosaic of Truth
The way in which the Bible is written is a good deal like a mosaic of which the pieces are not yet fitted together. The gathering of the different pieces of the mosaic, finding their relation, and fitting them in place until all are accurately together, each piece next to its fellow, is a fascinating task, yet requiring much patience. The more homely, more familiar thing of the same sort is the geography game of blocks by which young children are taught first lessons in geography. It is the fascination of the old mosaic turned into practical use in child-training.
So it is with the Bible. A full statement of its teaching on any one subject is never found all together in one place. The revelation of truth is gradual. The book is a growth. It is a school book with its parts carefully thought out and adjusted so as to be best suited to us. It is as if the Holy Spirit had a clearly defined purpose in so doing. He is a rare teacher. He wants us to become thoughtful, prayerful students of this Book, gathering out and then gathering up from its various parts the bits of truth, and then fitting them carefully and accurately together.
But He is thinking in yet deeper than this. He is thinking chiefly not of the truth itself, but of us, who will be purified and trained and made "free," free from prejudice and ignorance and immatured beliefs and lives, through the truth. He would draw us to the Book that He Himself may come more into our lives. Quiet brooding over its pages is an opening of the life to Him. He inspired these pages. He is in them. He broods over them. He reaches out of them to mould and refine and deepen those who come brooding prayerfully over them.
The beauty and meaning of each piece of the mosaic comes out fully only as it is in its place in the whole design. This is peculiarly so in the Bible. The full meaning and beauty of any passage comes out only as it is gotten into its place in the whole mosaic of truth to which it belongs. The verse beginning "In nothing be anxious" [Note: Php_4:6.] is a wonderfully strengthening message taken by itself. But when you find it is a bit of Paul's prison Psalm, that he is a prisoner with chain at wrist and ankle, awaiting trial and likely as not the executioner's axe, yet he is singing this bit of message in joyous major key out of his prison house,—that gives a new, rich significance to his earnest word not to be anxious. He knew from sweet experience what he was talking about.
Herein is the great value and fascination of broad reading of the Bible. I mean reading it as a whole, by the page, as a story. We still have the individual beauty or sweetness of any one passage, and then find it yet richer when looked at in its setting. And only in this way can the full meaning be gotten. The meaning of any one verse or statement is modified and coloured by the other statements on the same subject. We ought to try to get something of a broad grasp of this Book of God. Then we will come to have a simple common-sense understanding of the general sense of Scripture, which in turn helps so much in understanding particular verses.