Make me to understand the way of Thy precepts; so shall I talk of Thy wondrous works.
The student’s prayer
I. The student’s prayer. I hope that we are all students in the school of Christ--all disciples or scholars--and I trust we shall adopt the student’s prayer as our own: “Make me to understand the way of Thy precepts.” Prayer is to study what fire is to the sacrifice.
1. The student’s prayer deals with the main subject of the conversation which is to be that student’s occupation, namely, the way of God’s precepts. It is well for us to know exactly what the law teaches, and what the law designs; why we were made subject to its prescript, and how we may be delivered from its penalties. Great need too have we to understand the way of God’s Gospel precepts--what these precepts are: “repent,” “believe,” “be converted,” and the like; to be able to see their relation, where they stand, not as means to an end, but as results of Divine grace--commands but yet promises, the duty of man but yet the gift of God. The way of God’s precepts! Does not that mean that we ought to be acquainted with the relative position which the precepts occupy, for it is very easy, unless God gives us understanding, to preach up one precept to the neglect of another. It is possible for a ministry and a teaching to be lop-sided, and those who follow it may become rather the caricatures of Christianity than Christians harmoniously proportioned.
2. Very obviously here a confession is implied. “Make me to understand the way of Thy precepts.” It means just this. “Lord, I do not understand it of myself. I am ignorant and foolish, and if I follow my own judgment--if I take to my own thinkings, I shall be sure to go wrong. Lord, make me to understand.” Who can put wisdom in the inward parts but the Lord? Or who can give understanding to the heart but God Most High?
II. The occupation of the instructed man. When the Lord has taught a man the way of His precepts, it behoves him rightly to use his sacred privileges: “So shall I talk of Thy wondrous works.” As a faithful teacher let him testify of God’s works--His wondrous works. There are two works, especially, that you Christian people must talk about to others--the work of Christ for us and the work of the Holy Ghost in us. These are themes that will never be exhausted. Some men are far more interested in stating their own crotchets than in unfolding God’s counsels. If we understand the way of God’s precepts, acquire the language of it, get into the groove of it, then we shall talk with understanding; and there will be a harmony and a wisdom about our utterances which will be blest to the edification of the hearers.
III. The intimate relation between the prayer of the student and the pursuit that he subsequently followed. “Make me to understand the way of Thy precepts: so shall I talk of Thy wondrous works.” The connection lies partly in the enchantment of this knowledge and the passion to communicate it. A man who understands Christ and His mediatorial work, and the Spirit and His sanctifying work, cannot be silent. The fire once kindled, the flames will spread. “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The teacher must first be taught
There is not really any grave duty a man can be called on to discharge, no responsible office he may be elected to fill, nor even any plan or purpose he lays it on his heart to accomplish, which does not require diligent preparation on his own part to fit himself, to train his faculties, and to discipline his mind. What you call unskilled labour may possibly be utilized by efficient officers, but unskilful labour is a sheer waste of power. How much more imperative the demand that we should be endowed with the requisite faculties and qualified by suitable instruction if we have any work to do for God, or any office, however humble, in the service of the great King! Zeal without knowledge would only betray us into reckless presumption. When called to talk of God’s wondrous works, we ought not to rush upon that exercise at once unfitted and unprepared, but we should wait upon the Lord, that the eyes of our understanding may be enlightened, that our stammering tongues may be unloosed, and that our lips may be attuned to tell the noble tale in grateful strains. We must first obtain for ourselves an understanding of the way of the Lord’s precepts before we can make it plain to others. He who tries to teach, but has never been taught himself, will make a sorry mess of it. He who has no understanding, and yet wants to make others understand, must assuredly fail. Some there are who cannot teach and will not learn, and it is because they will not learn that they cannot teach. I believe aptness for being taught is at the bottom of aptness to teach. The psalmist had both. He says, “Make me to understand the way of Thy statutes.” There he would be taught. “Then,” saith he, “I shall talk of Thy wondrous works.” There he would be teaching. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Spirit of God gives understanding of the Word
I remember once I was travelling in Germany--I was a student in one of the universities there--and was making a tour of certain caves with some companions. One day we met the village postman. He said, “Would you not like to see a cave that is not down in the guide book?” We said, “Yes”; so away we struck through the brush and came to the cave. It was dark as midnight. He said, “It is perfectly beautiful. Every formation is an altar of the Druidical times,” and so forth and so on. “Look curl there is a hole right there, and nobody has ever found the bottom of it.” We looked up; we were afraid we would be the first to find the bottom. There was nothing at all pleasant about it; everything was dark and uncanny. But our guide just took a bit of magnesium and lit it, and suddenly the dark, cold, forbidding, dangerous place became luminous, and the stalactites came down from the ceiling to meet the stalagmites as they came up from the floor. Every one was an altar, not a Druidical altar, as they supposed, but an altar built by the hand of God. It was a place of marvellous beauty. It is just so with the Word of God. How often we come to a passage which looks dark, forbidding, and dangerous. You are often afraid that you will fall into some pitfall, but just look up to God in prayer, and let that passage be illuminated with the light of the Holy Ghost, and it becomes full of beauty, transcendent and glorious. (B. A. Torrey, D. D.)