I Chronicles 16:11: “Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.”
Whose doesn’t love hidden secrets from satires, allegories to metaphors. Who doesn’t love to search for hidden meanings. Hidden meanings has been a staple in literature from Jonathan Swift’s satire on human nature in Gulliver’s Travels, John Bunyan’s allegory of Pilgrims Progress, to Chaim Bentorah’s stories on Uncle Otto’s Farm and Beyond the Daleth. All have a surface story but with a deeper meaning hidden within the stories. Some of the meanings are very obvious like in the Rocky and Bullwinkle episode when they were in a jet plane that had run out of fuel. Thinking fast they realize a jet plane runs on hot air, so they began reading the Congressional Record into the engine. Some hidden meanings are not so obvious and it is even debated if such hidden meanings exist, like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz being a reference to the American gold standard back in the early 20th century.
We love to search for hidden meanings but stop short when we reach the Bible. Then we are accused of reading into Scripture, and making it say something that it really does not intend to say. We face a fine line when trying to find hidden messages in Scripture because we can end up doing that very thing, reading our own agendas into a passage. Yet Jesus taught in mysteries, we could fill a stadium with books written on interpretations of the parables of Jesus. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew which is a poetic language and by its very nature lends itself to metaphors and allegories. Was there a hidden meaning in the story of Jonah? Well, Jesus taught that it spoke prophetically of Himself spending three days and three nights in the grave.
Because there is a tendency to go off halfcocked (an old expression derived from a flint lock rifle firing before you pull the trigger) in seeking hidden meanings, I tend to shy away from talking about hidden messages and hidden meanings in Scripture and instead I take the safe road and cloud it with such expressions like “It is tropically a reference to…” or perhaps I will say, “It is a metaphorical expression of…” or my favorite that I use with the Hebrew letters is, “It is a representation of…” Still it all boils down to the fact that I am searching for a deeper meaning or a hidden message.
The average Christian only reads 10% of Scripture, if they read it at all. Many who do read it opt for the read through the Bible in one year guide and have a big celebration that they made it through the whole Bible in one year, as if it were some big chore and accomplishment. Then they will turn right around and read Fifty Shades of Grey, which has more pages than the Bible, in just a couple evenings. Yet, the Bible is the Word of God. The Creator of the Universe wrote the number one Best Seller that has not gone out of print. The very God who loves us, saved us, given us eternal life left His personal message to us in a book half the size of Gone With the Wind and many of us cannot even read through it in one year. The number gets even smaller when we talk about studying the Bible and hoo boy if we actually try to read it in its original language, well we will have to save that for the scholars.
Being God’s Word in itself should suggest that every word, every letter contains a message from God. He is infinite, so why should His Word be relegated to just a few pages on a book. There must be hidden and deeper messages in that book, there must be something to all the Numbers in the Book of Numbers, and some message in each begat.
Well, I for one, am convinced there is a message from God in each verse, word and letter and I have become obsessed with it. I stayed up until 11:30 last night studying I Chronicles 16:11 and got up at 5:00 AM to continue my study because I was convinced there was something in this verse that God was trying to tell me. So I spent all these hours that I should have been working on something else or even sleeping trying to search it out like there was some hidden treasure buried in this verse. Finally, like turning on a light, it came to me.
I Chronicles 16:11 instructs us to , “Seek the Lord, and his strength, seek his face continually.” In English we use the same word for seek but Hebrew uses two different words in this verse. The first seek in Seek the Lord and his strength is dresh. This is a searching, a deep searching, and a searching for a hidden treasure. It is a searching through physical records, it is a study which, well, like I have been doing these many hours. The second word for seek in seek his face (presence) continually.” This word for seek is baqash which also means to seek, however this is a seeking with the Beth, your heart, and the Quf, a filling of your heart, with the Resh, the Holy Spirit. In other words we are to seek the Lord and his strength through our study of His word and a researching of His Word. But we are also to seek His face or presence continually with our hearts, with the Holy Spirit as our guide and teacher. We are to do this study prayerfully.
When I coupled my research with prayer from my heart, a hidden message in this passage started to materialize. I looked at the words baqesh panayu tamid (seek his face continually) both with a dresh (deep search as if for a treasure) and a baqash (seek with heartfelt prayer) and suddenly I realized that the Piel imperative state of the word baqesh (seek with heartfelt prayer) merged with the word tamid (continually) put it in an adverbial form which could be rendered in one English word which we would call Press. If I were to use the word panayu (face, presence) in its Semitic root form PN, I would then have the idea of moving forward and/or onward. In short there is a double message here or if you prefer a hidden message in I Chronicles 16:11 which is to not only to seek the presence of the Lord but to PRESS ON with His presence once you have found it. As I continued my baqesh (searching with my heart) I was moved to my I Pad where I typed in the words, press on in my ITunes Ap and found this song that I downloaded which broadened my understanding of this hidden message of Press On, which also happens to be the title of this song by Dan Burgess:
When the Valley is deep,
When the mountain is steep,
When the body is weary
When we stumble and fall.
In Jesus’ name, we press on,
In Jesus’ name, we press on
Dear Lord , with the prize
Clear before our eyes
We find the strength to press on.
As I searched out I Chronicles 16:11 with a dresh (seek as if seeking a treasure) with a baqesh (seeking, a heartfelt prayerfully seeking) I found my treasure. A deeper, hidden message, if you prefer, teaching me that when we have reached the end of our rope, we have done everything we could, we are to seek (dresh – study, research) the Lord and his strength and seek (baqesh – with all our hearts) his presence continually and in Jesus name we will find the strength to press on.
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