I have not turned aside from Your ordinances,Psalm 119:102 (NASB1)The first "precept" strives to instill in the timid student a confidence, built on a promise, in reading and understanding sacred Scripture.
For You Yourself have taught me.
On page 11, we encounter this encouragement: How we pray Psalm 119:102 will become your verse. "You Yourself" - God Himself is your Teacher!
I don't work from the assumption that Scripture is clear, i.e., perspicuous. I am emphatic about it. Yet, I get insights. Beginners mistake these insights for inspiration.
The first couple chapters of Isaiah lend themselves to this self-confidence of diminishing returns: clear enough on the charge that God's people turn his blessing of gold and silver into idols for worship! (Isaiah 2:7-8)
Can the pace be sustained? Will the insights keep coming? Will my study show me as one approved by God? (2 Tim. 2:152).
Getting back to the lesson learned to date, it isn't difficult to see oneself in that same place, with that same tendency to worship the blessings instead of the One who blesses.
1 "From your edicts I do not turn, for you have taught them to me." (NAB)
cf. Ps. 118:102 (DR)
2 Oh, good heavens, how they misappropriate that verse! God bless the King James Bible!
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