The Word's Supreme Song
Psalm 119 – 98 You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me. 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.
"The activity of interpreting," discerns Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus, "might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.'"
The psalmist in Psalm 119:98-99 delights in this subtle continuity provided by Scripture. If in a particular verse in his life song enemies seem to predominate, he sings on. He is wiser than his enemies, he says, because in place of ruminating over confrontation his continual habit is to keep God's Word with him. The Bible is his disciplined reset in grace.
Lest we only come to God's Word when we need healing from a warning or in bettering encounter, the next verse quickly follows. When God uses particular teachers mightily in our lives, when we are, in a sense, fashioned in their image, for the healthy believer Scripture STILL predominates. He has more understanding than his teachers because, more than their methods or their virtues, the Bible's continuity is his meditation. Other people may phrase the Bible's teachings in ways that, by grace, lodge them in our minds and our hearts, but the Bible itself is what God exults above His own Name. It is what will remain when Heaven and Earth, Christ says, have passed away.
"Scripture, rejoices Joe Rigney in, "The Things of Earth, "is the grammar textbook for the language of God, instructing us clearly in patterns of meaning and the rules by which we are enabled to read everything." Rather than turning away from more pleasing idioms and consuming Scripture as our required vitamins, Spurgeon extols in Morning and Evening that the Lord's people, "delight to contemplate the antiquity of that covenant, remembering that before the day-star knew its place, or planets ran their round, the interests of the saints were made secure in Christ Jesus. "
He outlasts every enemy and their residual wounds. His Word has a sweetness and staying power greater than the mentor's whose soul for a season seems knit to our own. Through the expanse of His Word, He shows Himself the Friend that sticks closer than a brother, and also our Atonement Who has taken enemy lashes on our behalf.
"The activity of interpreting," discerns Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus, "might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.'"
The psalmist in Psalm 119:98-99 delights in this subtle continuity provided by Scripture. If in a particular verse in his life song enemies seem to predominate, he sings on. He is wiser than his enemies, he says, because in place of ruminating over confrontation his continual habit is to keep God's Word with him. The Bible is his disciplined reset in grace.
Lest we only come to God's Word when we need healing from a warning or in bettering encounter, the next verse quickly follows. When God uses particular teachers mightily in our lives, when we are, in a sense, fashioned in their image, for the healthy believer Scripture STILL predominates. He has more understanding than his teachers because, more than their methods or their virtues, the Bible's continuity is his meditation. Other people may phrase the Bible's teachings in ways that, by grace, lodge them in our minds and our hearts, but the Bible itself is what God exults above His own Name. It is what will remain when Heaven and Earth, Christ says, have passed away.
"Scripture, rejoices Joe Rigney in, "The Things of Earth, "is the grammar textbook for the language of God, instructing us clearly in patterns of meaning and the rules by which we are enabled to read everything." Rather than turning away from more pleasing idioms and consuming Scripture as our required vitamins, Spurgeon extols in Morning and Evening that the Lord's people, "delight to contemplate the antiquity of that covenant, remembering that before the day-star knew its place, or planets ran their round, the interests of the saints were made secure in Christ Jesus. "
He outlasts every enemy and their residual wounds. His Word has a sweetness and staying power greater than the mentor's whose soul for a season seems knit to our own. Through the expanse of His Word, He shows Himself the Friend that sticks closer than a brother, and also our Atonement Who has taken enemy lashes on our behalf.
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