Here’s Luther’s introduction to Psalm 117, the shortest of all the Psalms. These paragraphs are very similar to his introduction to the Large Catechism, and his commentary there on the Third Commandment.
Thanks to Pastor Flamme to knows I’ve got a particular interest in acadia, and pointed this quotation out to me.
THIS is a short, easy psalm, doubtless made this way so that everyone might pay more attention to it and remember better what is said. No one can complain about the length or content, much less about the sharpness, difficulty, or profundity of the words. Here we find only short, precise, clear, and ordinary words, which everyone can understand if he will only pay attention and think about them. All God’s words demand this. We must not skim over them and imagine we have thoroughly understood them, like the frivolous, smug, and bored souls who, when they hear some word of God once, consider it old hat and cast about for something new. They think they have thoroughly mastered all they have heard. This is a dangerous disease, a clever and malicious trick of the devil. Thus he makes people bold, smug, forward, and ready for every kind of error and schism. This is really the vice known as ἀκηδία, slothfulness in God’s service, against which St. Paul exhorts us (Rom. 12:11) to be fervent in spirit. And in Rev. 3:15–16 the Spirit says of such people: “Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth.” It is true that such half-educated people are the most useless people on earth, and it would be better for them if they knew nothing; for they obey no one, can do everything better than anyone else, and can expertly judge all art and literature. In short, they can teach no one anything worthwhile, and they let no one teach them. They have devoured the whole schoolbag, which no one can master; and yet they do not have even one book that they could properly teach to others! The devil has many such vicious cases, particularly among the rabble. The meanest bungler who hears a sermon or reads a chapter in German immediately makes himself a doctor of theology, crowning his own asininity and convincing himself most marvelously that he can now do everything better than all his teachers. This is Master Smart Aleck, who can bridle a steed in its hind end.7 All this, as I see it, is the result of reading and listening to God’s Word carelessly instead of concentrating on it with fear, humility, and diligence.
I have often felt this particular devil and temptation myself, and even today I cannot guard and cross myself against it too carefully. I confess this freely as an example to anyone; for here am I, an old doctor of theology and a preacher, and certainly as competent in Scripture as such smart alecks. At least I ought to be. Yet even I must become a child; and early each day I recite aloud to myself the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and whatever lovely psalms and verses I may choose, just as we teach and train children to do. Besides, I must deal with Scripture and fight with the devil every day. I dare not say in my heart: “The Lord’s Prayer is worn out; you know the Ten Commandments; you can recite the Creed.” I study them daily and remain a pupil of the Catechism. I feel, too, that this helps me a lot, and I am convinced by experience that God’s Word can never be entirely mastered, but that Ps. 147 speaks truly: “His understanding is beyond measure” (v. 5), or Ecclesiasticus: “Who drinks of me shall thirst even more after me” (24:29). Now if I have such difficulties, what will happen to those smug, self-satisfied charlatans who neither struggle nor labor?
Therefore I certainly believe that there is not one who truly knows everything the Holy Spirit says in this short psalm. If they were forced to teach or instruct someone from it, they would not know at which end to begin. To put these vicious people to shame and to honor God’s Word, I have taken it upon myself to interpret this psalm, so that one may see how clear God’s Word is, how simple, and yet how altogether inexhaustible. And even though everything were reasonable, which is not the case, still it is inexhaustible in power and virtue. It renews and refreshes the heart, restoring, relieving, comforting, and strengthening us constantly. I see and learn daily how the dear prophets studied their Ten Commandments, and where lies the source of their sermons and prophecies. Let us, then, divide this psalm into four parts—prophecy, revelation, instruction, and exhortation.
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 14: Selected Psalms III, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 14 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 7–8.
