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Originally Posted by aron
Like Goliath underestimating the young lad David standing before him, so I think that WL did with the prophetic word of God he was considering. He felt "I will obey your will" was low, and natural. But what if Jesus inhabited this word? We know that Jesus' neighbors disrespected Him when He returned home, and we know that His brothers mocked Him.
Likewise WL thought these OT words common and unimpressive. But what is the height, the depth, the breadth and length if Jesus inhabits a word?
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I may be overstretching here, and if someone has a RecV handy, or a Life-Study, please feel free to correct me. But I think there's something interesting in the way that Goliath underestimated David, and trusted his own strength, and how WL likewise trusted his "God's economy" template and dismissed scriptures as low, natural, and fallen.
On an outward sense, Goliath was huge and terrifying. Saul told David that he (David) was just a boy, and Goliath was a huge man who had been a warrior for years.
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1 Samuel 17:33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth."
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But David had a secret weapon: speed. When Saul began to move, David didn't stand his ground, or run away, but began moving toward Goliath at a rapid rate of speed. The speed which had allowed David to survive close-in fighting with a lion and a bear (see David's reply to Saul in 1 Sam 17:34-36) allowed him to come at Goliath so quickly that Goliath had to slow down to make adjustments. David was moving too fast! So Goliath had to slow down, in anticipation to meet the onrushing boy, and "boom!" by the time the stone flew he was too close, and entirely too slow. Game over.
Now, here's a possible parallel: When the psalmist wrote, "You send your command to the earth; Your word runs swiftly" in Psalm 147, did WL see the connection to Jesus, functioning there on earth, under the Father's authority? Did he see that the moment that Jesus said, "Let it be done", the centurion's servant was healed? (Matt 8:13). The centurion had told Jesus, "I also am a man under authority, and have servants under me, and when I tell one Go, he goes, or Come, he comes, or Do this, and he does it"; did WL also sense how "Thy word runs swiftly" at Jesus' command? Incredible!
Please understand that I'm not reveling in some arcane, subjective assessment of Hebrew poetry, compared to word selection in the Greek NT. Nor am I fixated on bashing WL. But it's probably fair to say that WL was mistaken, to dismiss of the word of God as inadequate to stand up to his hermeneutic. Somebody please show me a RecV cross-reference from Psalm 147 to Matthew 8 and I'll stand down.
If this appraisal has been too caustic or derisive I apologize. Unfortunately I tend to glory in my own thinking, just as WL seemingly fell prey to his. But I assert that there are treasures beyond compare here before us, which to WL were just blank spaces. It was like he was flying over the Gobi Desert at 30,000 feet, and looked down and just saw emptiness. If you don't get what I'm saying, look at the RecV Psalms: page after nearly blank page, with few footnotes or references, interspersed with derogatory comments on its lack of "divine revelation". Compare that to his RecV Ephesians, where one verse might get a page of footnotes! Talk about misaiming, or unbalance... and Paul had even encouraged the Ephesians to sing the Psalms... go figure... I certainly can't.
My time in the LC was part of my "goodly heritage", and it colors my thinking. But when one considers its teachings next to the plain words of scripture, they seem quite inadequate to guide.