The Bible is a book of many metaphors. Almost all of its most precious truths are taught through vivid word pictures. Even a brief look through its pages will turn up hundreds of them\u2014God as shepherd, his people as sheep; Jesus as head, the church as his body; the Bible as nourishment, its words as honey and water. On and on it goes.<\/p>\n
One metaphor that has always intrigued me is at the center of one of the shortest psalms\u2014Psalm 133. The purpose of the psalm is made obvious in its opening line: \u201cBehold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!\u201d This is a poetic celebration of brotherhood, of harmony. It is good\u2014objectively right\u2014when there is unity between brothers, between those who are children of a common Father. And it is more than objectively good, it is also experientially pleasant, pleasing to the hearts of both God and man. It is good in every way when God\u2019s people experience unity.<\/p>\n
It is not enough for the psalmist to simply state this as fact. He is a poet who knows he can emphasize the facts with an illustration, and, as is so common in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bible is a book of many metaphors. Almost all of its most precious truths are taught through vivid word pictures. Even a brief look through its pages will turn up hundreds of them\u2014God as shepherd, his people as sheep; Jesus as head, the church as his body; the Bible as nourishment, its words as honey and water. On and on it goes. One metaphor that has always intrigued me is at the center of one of the shortest psalms\u2014Psalm \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":30269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303,702],"class_list":["post-30266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","tag-unity","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/shahin-khalaji-i1_n8jVMRZU-unsplash-1-1.jpg?fit=910%2C320&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30271,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30266\/revisions\/30271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}