Proverbs 30:5, “Every word of God proves true; He is a shield for those who take refuge in Him.”
How does one take refuge in the Lord? What does that look like? He is not a physical fortress to whom we can literally run….He is not a charm or magic stone which we can invoke…He is not, like possessions, a tangible commodity that we can sell or barter with in order to get power and so protection…..How, then, does one “take refuge in Him”?
The parallelism here implies that the way we take refuge in GOD is by clinging to, trusting in, depending on His unchanging and certain WORDS. The words of the Lord are something like grammatical crystallizations of Himself into history….What He has said, flows from—and is therefore an expression of—who He is, and if an expression of His own unchanging and eternal self, then they too are unchanging and eternal…….The words of the Lord are a grace-given place where the creature can “lay hold of” the Creator. We take refuge in Him by trusting in His Word.
But, of course, we have to take this a step further and confess that God’s supreme word is not only an expression of His unchanging character, but IS Himself “over again,” as it were. Ultimately, the incarnate Jesus Christ is the Word of God who proves true—the Word of God who IS the truth…..the Word of God who IS God. Jesus is the enfleshment of the eternal word at the heart of God, the eternal word who has always been spoken by God to God through God and whose content is God Himself. Every word God has ever spoken is an expression of this Word, since this Word is Himself.
And this Word, this Word who is God truly disclosed, is fully and finally articulated only in the crucifixion of the Son who lives forevermore. Here, in the risen Crucified One, the unchanging, ever-faithful, self-revealing Word of God in whom all words of God are culminated and consummated is finally, fully, and perfectly declared to all people…..This—HE—is the word of God who never changes, and we take refuge in GOD, by believing, receiving, and feasting upon THIS WORD—the Incarnate Word, the Crucified Jesus Christ who is Risen.
