In yesterday’s study, we talked about the need to study the Bible daily, systematically, and comprehensively. Today we will look at two other necessary elements if you want to know God as he speaks to you through the Bible.
If trusting God involves obeying God's Word, as it certainly does, then there can be no real discipleship apart from Bible study. Indeed, study of the Bible cannot even be an occasional, minor or “vacation time" pursuit. It must be the consuming passion of a believer's life. This is because it is only by the study of the Word of God that we learn what it is to obey God and follow Jesus.
The psalmist learned various things about God as he studied his Word. In yesterday's study we looked at two things the psalmist learned, including that (1) God is merciful, and that (2) God's Word is true. In today's study we continue with two more points.
There is nothing so obvious as the truth that "faith” without obedience is worthless, even contemptible. Yet few things are so common. One writer says, “Open sin, and avowed unbelief, no doubt slay their thousands. But profession without practice slays its tens of thousands.” He means that those who disobey God will be carried away by life's torrents.
There is a link between the last stanza (vv. 145-152) and these two stanzas (vv. 153-168). The enemies of the psalmist are still present, as they have been throughout the psalm, and he is still praying: “Deliver me” (v. 153), “defend my cause and redeem me” (v. 154), “renew my life” (vv. 154, 156), and “preserve my life" (v. 159). Derek Kidner says that there even seems to be “a mounting urgency” in these repeated pleas for salvation. At the same time, there is also a significant change as we move from the former stanza to these two. The last set of verses was almost entirely a prayer. In these stanzas the petitions tend to drop away—stanza twenty-one (the sin/shin stanza) has no explicit prayers at all—and in their place comes a quiet, obedient waiting upon God.
