In order to learn anything, we need both the capacity to learn and the proper instruction to help us learn. Students in a university may study the same book, but how much they learn will differ according to their capacity and according to the kind of teaching they receive from their professors. Those with a lesser capacity will learn less than those with a greater capacity. Hebrews 5 shows us that our capacity to learn spiritual things increases with exercise. Through exercise, our capacity to understand the Bible will grow and develop. In particular, we will become more able to understand the Bible according to its controlling lines and governing principles. I believe that if we have the heart to stay with the Lord's ministry in His recovery today, we will eventually become different in our view, in our capacity, in our understanding of the Word, and in our discernment of spiritual things.

In order to have the proper appreciation of Psalms 63—67, we need to see the revelation of God's economy. God's eternal economy is to impart Himself into man and dispense His riches into man's inner being (Eph. 3:8-9) that He may be man's life and life supply. By His life and the bountiful supply of His life-giving Spirit (Phil. 1:19b), man can live Him and magnify Him (Phil. 1:20-21a) for His manifestation (1 Tim. 3:16a). In this way, all His chosen people can corporately be His expression as His fullness, His organism, the church (Eph. 3:19-21).

However, in the five psalms covered in this message, we cannot see anything of such a kind of spirituality. Instead, these psalms only cover the psalmist's praises to God for God's goodness to him, his concern for the safety of his person and for prosperity in his affairs, God's care for the psalmist, and the psalmist's trust in God. All these are good things. But good things often become the replacement of the best, the opposition against the best, and even the enemy to the best. Many seekers of the Lord are held back by these kinds of good things and would not seek the Lord further for His best that they might participate in the life-giving Spirit's bountiful supply for them to live and magnify Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12, 16) and for the accomplishing of God's eternal purpose.

Hence, in studying the Psalms, on the one hand, we should receive all the marvelous revelations concerning Christ as the centrality and universality of God's economy, but, on the other hand, we should discern that the Psalms are pious expressions of the psalmists uttered out of their natural concepts, and some are based on the principle of good and evil, not on the principle of the divine life. All of these expressions are far below the standard of the requirements of God's new creation (Gal. 6:15).

As a result of studying the Psalms, we should have an increased appreciation of the Epistles of Paul. The standard of the divine revelation in Paul's Epistles is high compared not only to the Psalms but also to the four Gospels and Acts. For example, the expression the Body of Christ, used by Paul, is not found in the Gospels or in Acts. The Body of Christ is not simply a composition of His believers, but is actually an organism produced by the Triune God's dispensing of Himself into the believers to make them His counterpart. As a result of this dispensing, Christ is not only the Head of the Body but even all the Body (1 Cor. 12:12), the new man. Concerning the church as the new man, Colossians 3:10 and 11 reveal that "Christ is all and in all." In the new man there is room only for Christ. He is all the members of the new man and in all the members. He is everything in the new man and actually is the new man. If we do not believe that Christ is us and is in us, then we have not yet seen the revelation concerning the new man in the New Testament. We need to know Christ to such an extent that we realize that He is us and that He is in us. He is within us to make us one with Him.

We praise the Lord that we have both the Old Testament and the New Testament. We have the Psalms, and we have the other sixty-five books of the Bible with which we may compare the Psalms. The more we make a comparison, the more we will realize that the divine revelation in the Bible is progressive, and the more we will appreciate the standard of spirituality revealed in the New Testament.