AP

Psalm 12:6  And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.

David’s life situation at the time of writing this Psalm seems to have been similar to ours today.  He felt that “the faithful have vanished from among men” (1), no one’s word could be trusted, and the ubiquity of ‘flattering lips speak[ing] with deception’ and ‘boastful tongues’ (2-3) sounds a lot like what we see happening with social media today.

So, do we share David’s high view of God’s revealed truth in his written Word?  His expression “refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times” emphasises the description given in Psalm 19:7, “The law of the LORD is perfect”, in Psalm 18:30, “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless”, and Psalm 119:96, “To all perfection I see a limit; but your commands are boundless.”  ‘Purified seven times’ means ‘purified perfectly’ and therefore containing no admixture or ‘foreign’ material other than the genuine reality of what it purports to be – God’s revealed truth.  How important it is for us to KNOW that we can trust, and have confidence in, evertything written in Scripture! If this is where we stand, we can use Scripture as the benchmark for every other theory or claim made by historians or scientists.

It is this view of Scripture that the apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), and  when he wrote, “See to it that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
– Bruce Christian