Devotionals

Seeing God: it's Greek to me!

by Henry Jaegers
07/23/20
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• Seeing God: it's Greek to me!

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8)

You may be saying to yourself by now, what a strange way to begin a devotional. Let me explain with a personal illustration. Back in 1978, I saw an e lack in my ministry in not knowing anything about the Greek language. Greek was not a course that was introduced at my Bible school (but later both Greek and Hebrew were added). At 41 years old, I decided to take a course in New Testament Greek and although it took me a few years to finish, I will never regret having done so. Studying Greek at a slow pace helped me to enjoy and understand every part of the course. I wound up with 98% in my final exam and a final grade for the whole course of 94%. I never did that well in any other course. But what is the point I'm making?

 I have met many who went to seminary and took Greek in a very high pressured situation because it was required. I'm not sure how well that course took root. And then recently, I met graduates from seminary who said that Greek is not required if you're over 30 years old because you were unable to understand it at that age. Ridiculous I thought. Who are the men that are teaching these future preachers this kind of thing? And it makes me wonder if when men study the word of God If it is not something like studying Greek. They rush through their study of the word of God because they must meet certain deadlines to preach a sermon for their church (sometimes two or three). Their study in the Scripture is done hurriedly and they never have time to meditate.

When I study Greek, I remember something very practical to our message today. We learned that  It has a perfect and imperfect tense. The perfect tense is like a straight line and the imperfect tense is like a dotted line and continues. By now you are asking, What’s the point?

now let's come back to our verse ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”. There are two ways of looking at seeing God. In the perfect tense, we shall see him finally when we get to heaven. But as we grow in our spiritual life and the word of God becomes a sheer delight to us, it is like seeing God right now, the imperfect tense not that I shall see God but I am seeing God as a journey each day of my life. That's the way God wants it to be.

How are you reading the word of God? Are you reading it to see and know God? The word of God is somewhat like the Holy of Holies where God dwells. Only the high priest could go there once a year but unlike those times, we have access to the Holy of Holies every day as we approach his word and hear him speak to us. We can treat our approach to the word of God like the person who studies Greek because he has to or the person who studies Greek because he loves to.

So, I close with this simple statement: Is your approach to the word of God like entering into the Holy of Holies and hearing him speak, or is it done out of duty and obligation. Perhaps, now, my title would make sense. Is studying and coming to the word of God a sheer delight, or is it all “Greek to me”?