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¹⁷ Deal bountifully with your servant,
    that I may live and keep your word.
¹⁸ Open my eyes, that I may behold
    wondrous things out of your law.
¹⁹ I am a sojourner on the earth;
    hide not your commandments from me!
²⁰ My soul is consumed with longing
    for your rules at all times.
²¹ You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones,
    who wander from your commandments.
²² Take away from me scorn and contempt,
    for I have kept your testimonies.
²³ Even though princes sit plotting against me,
    your servant will meditate on your statutes.
²⁴ Your testimonies are my delight;
    they are my counselors.

What kind of book is the Bible? In one way, it is like any other book. We use the same skills to read it that we would use for any other book. We read, we understand, we comprehend. We read sentences and paragraphs in their context, we fit everything into the flow of the whole. We get a sense of what the Bible means.

However, it is also vital to remember that the Bible is not like any other book. It is “living and active”. God himself is speaking through the words he spoke so many years ago. Because of that, the stakes are very high when we come to read it. God himself is speaking. If we hear and respond rightly there will be blessing. If we don’t there will be judgement.

Added to that there is the problem of our our hearts. As sinful human beings we have a bias towards not wanting to hear what God says to us. We may be able to understand what the Bible says, but because of our sin we will want to explain it away, or not live according to what it says. 

This is why the Psalmist begins this section with a prayer. As he comes to God’s word he wants the Lord to “deal bountifully with him”. He asks that the Lord will “open his eyes”. This is not a prayer that he will see things in God’s word hidden to anyone else, but it is a prayer that he will see the “wondrous things” that are already there.We miss this  because of the covering we have put over our own eyes due to sin. 

This is a prayer we should all pray whenever we come to God’s word, individually or as a church. The Christian has the covering removed from their hearts and eyes so they can see the glory of God in Christ in the gospel. But we must continually pray that we will see this in God’s word. 

Not everyone has this desire. The second half of this section introduces the context in which the Psalmist is reading God’s word. There are those around who wander from God’s commandments, and even plot against those like the Psalmist who hunger for God’s word. The shock of these verses comes when we remember that it is highly likely that the Psalmist is an Israelite - and so are these opponents. These are people who should delight in God’s word but have wandered away. Over time that wandering has turned into outright hostility. It is the equivalent of churches who move from God’s word - slowly at first - until they don’t just become ambivalent about what God says, but actively hostile to it. This leads them to becoming aggressive to Christians and churches who delight in the word of God. 

There is warning and encouragement in these verses. The application here isn’t simply to read the Bible. It begins before we get to church or pick up the book. It is a call to pray. 

Do we see the reality of sin in our own hearts? 

Do we recognise that everyone we come to God’s word we are encountering the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ? 

Let’s pray that the Lord will open our eyes and deal bountifully with us a we do this. And let’s prioritise times when we get together as God’s people to pray for this (such as the church prayer meeting).