The ministry of Our Daily Bread has always been to encourage the regular, disciplined reading of Scripture. There is an old children’s chorus which goes, “Read your Bible, pray every day and you’ll grow, grow, grow . . .” But in what way will we grow?

Certainly, we should grow in our knowledge of who God is, what He has done for us, and how He wants us to live. But if the end of our journey is simply to better understand the Bible, then we have not reached the destination God has planned for us. The ultimate goal of Bible study is not to gain more information, but to undergo greater transformation. The purpose of reading Scripture is more moral than intellectual.

This is an important truth the psalmist expresses in this next section of Psalm 119 (vv. 33–40). He asks God for four things. Actually, he’s asking God for one thing expressed in four different ways. He wants God to “teach me”, “give me”, “direct me”, and “turn my heart”. In each case he is asking God for the ability to keep His “decrees”, “law”, “commands”, and “statutes”. But for what purpose? Does he simply want to acquire more knowledge? No, the purpose is so that he can live a life of obedience.

The psalmist then gives a specific example of this life change. He wants to turn away from a life of selfish gain (v. 36). Elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus warns us with the story of a greedy rich fool who invested all he had in building bigger barns so he could store up more grain for himself (Luke 12:13–21). In his letters, Paul calls selfish gain or greed “idolatry” (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5).

Psalm 119 draws the same connection. In verse 37, the psalmist asks God to also turn him away from “worthless things”, a common Old Testament description for idols. Greed is an idol because we exchange love and worship of God for something which is essentially empty and cannot satisfy. So a knowledge of God’s laws should lead to a life of selfless generosity.

In the next section (vv. 41–48), the psalmist again speaks of those who taunt him. He prays for salvation (v. 41) and the power to keep on obeying (v. 44). We are not told the taunts of the mockers. The psalmist was unashamed of his love for God’s laws, so perhaps they were gloating about how they were free from such restraints and could live any way they wanted.

However, the psalmist knows true freedom. Literally translated, he writes, “I will walk about in a wide place” (v. 45). Paul also wrote to the churches about the joy, life, and peace we have in Christ. Yet, many of his letters were written from the confines of a prison cell. Paul may have been chained, but like the psalmist he lived in “a wide place”.