This morning I read Psalm 31 and came upon the words “into your hand I commit my spirit” (v3), the dying words of our Lord (Luke 23:46). I knew that “why have you forsaken me” was a quote from Psalm 22, but I didn't remember that these words were also a quote. Like Psalm 22, Psalm 31 goes on to express confidence in God's deliverance, ending with the words “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!” What a sermon from a dying man!
Someone has said that Jesus was so full of Scripture that when He was pressed, it came out. He must have prayed the Psalms and Prophets regularly. How did he know them so well in an age when books were too expensive for a manual laborer to own?
In his divinity Jesus was omniscient, but I think he must have learned the scriptures in his humanity like anyone else: with great labor at home with his parents and with teachers in the synagogue. Josephus said:
Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well: and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to observe the laws that have been given us; and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us.
The obedience of Joseph and Mary to Deut 6:7, “You shall teach them diligently to your children”, was key to how Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40). Maybe some of his “Sabbath school teachers” were among those astonished when Jesus said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).
May I know and love the Scriptures enough that they are squeezed out of me in distress, and teach my kids to do the same.