Musings on Psalm 119
Gimel: Verses 17 - 24 (NASB)
Deal bountifully with Your servant,
That I may live and keep Your word.
We do not draw even a breath on our own, there is not a beat of our heart that is not enabled by God’s mercy. What might it mean for God to deal bountifully with us? Certainly it must include that we learn to think His thoughts, to see as He sees, to discern between the good and the evil, to judge justly, to be kept from the evil one. Certainly it must include that we learn to love Him with all that we have and all that we are, and to love others as ourselves. Is it not God’s bounty that we learn to live lives of laying down our lies for our brethren?
God’s bounty is not primarily found in what we receive, but in what we give; in what we give to God and in what we give to others. Of course we have nothing to give that we have not received first from God; as we give we receive more, and we receive more that we might give me. The bountiful life is the giving life.
Open my eyes, that I may behold
Wonderful things from Your law.
Travelling the world to see wonders is good, seeing the Word of God is better. What good is it if we have seen the great sights of this world but have not beheld the wonders of God’s Law? To be sure we behold God’s glory in His creation, and in His creation we may discern many facets of His Person, and as we see in Psalm 19 there is a complementariness with the Word and Creation. And yet, in the depths of God’s Word we enter into His Being, we hear the beat of His heart, we behold His self-disclosure to man in a fashion that both shatters us and heals us and restores us to Him image in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Word, what wonders do we behold in Him?
I am a stranger in the earth;
Do not hide Your commandments from me.
Which message do we believe? Do we believe that we are accidents looking for a place to happen; or do we believe that we are created in the image of God, that this image was marred and debased through our sin and rebellion, and that now in Jesus Christ a portal has been opened for us to have the image of God restored within us? Do we, as followers of Jesus Christ, believe that our citizenship is in heaven and that this age is passing away? Or, are we investing ourselves in this age as if we are permanent residents and as if the values of this present time are what matter? Where are our treasures, on earth or in heaven? Where are our hearts?
God’s commandments are indeed hidden from those who reject Him, who reject the light that He has given to them. Those who confess they are strangers are those constantly looking for treasure hidden in a field, constantly looking for pearls of great price; they are those seeking clearer vision, deeper insight, more finely-tuned perspective. Those who confess they are strangers desperately need the illuminated buoys of God’s Word to guide them through the treacherous waters of this life.
We can live in the assurance that the trail we are on has been blazed by God’s Word; let us seek God for the eyesight to recognize the blazes - to know the difference between God’s markers which lead to life eternal, and the markers of the evil one that lead to sorrow and death. There will be more than one time that the blazes that lead to the difficult trail will be God’s, and the ones that promise an easy hike will be the enemy’s; but what promises to be easy often descends to death, and what requires all that we have, every ounce of ourselves...leads to eternal life. Is not this exactly what Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34).
My soul is crushed with longing
After Your ordinances at all times.
Echos of Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God…”
As we read the Psalms we see that God is the center of these songs and prayers, God is the focal point, the beginning and the end of the lives of the people who wrote these words. When we read the panorama of faith in Hebrews 11 we see men and women confessing that they are strangers and pilgrims, looking for a city that has eternal foundations, whose builder and maker is God. The Scriptures are a treasure house for the people of God, the Word of God is precious to the men and women following God in the Bible. “We must have God, we must have His Word,” are the cries of those who follow Christ in the Scriptures. These are also the cries of Christ’s followers in all generations...but are they our cries?
It is not unusual for people attending churches that purport to hold a high view of Scripture to come to church naked - not carrying their Bibles. It is not unusual for professing Christians not to know where the book of Obadiah is or the book of Philemon - not to mention Isaiah or Colossians. It is not unusual for professed believers not to read their Bibles on a weekly, not to mention daily, basis.
I think we can be assured that these same people know where their money is kept. They know which bank they use. They know where their savings and investments are. In other words, they know where their earthly treasures are and they access them as needed.
We are not only called to know where our heavenly treasures are, we are called to continually access them, to appropriate them, and to share them with others. Everyday God desires that we commune with Him in His Word, that we allow His Word to grow within us, to speak to us, and that His Word animate our thoughts and meditations and actions, that His Word guide us to our True North, Jesus Christ.
Are we longing for the living Word of God?
You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed,
Who wander from Your commandments.
As Psalm Two illustrates, the peoples of the earth and their leaders are in rebellion against the LORD and His Messiah. This rebellion can take many forms, but all forms have this in common; they are a transgression of the Law and Word and Way of God. This can be a difficult idea for us because we may think that God does not hold anyone accountable, when in fact God holds everyone accountable.
One portion of earth’s population has realized their sin and rebellion and repented of it, confessed it, asked for forgiveness, and now follows the Lord Jesus Christ. The other portion of the population continues in sin, in spiritual death, and in rebellion. One portion of the population is no longer cursed, for Jesus has become their curse on the Cross. The other portion of the population remains under the curse of sin and death.
In this sense the two thieves crucified with Jesus represent the spiritually living and the spiritually dead people of earth. When the crucifixion began there was Jesus the Righteous One and two guilty men, one on each side of Him. At some point one of the thieves recognized the righteousness of Jesus Christ and acknowledged Him and repented, asking that He might follow Jesus into His Kingdom - at that moment there were no longer two unrighteous men on crosses, but .rather two righteous men and one unrighteous man - for the repentant thief had come into the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But then, as darkness enveloped the land and Jesus bore the judgment and wrath of God, becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sins and taking humanity into Himself, then there were once again two unrighteous men and one righteous man - except that Jesus Christ was an unrighteousness one, in fact, He was The Unrighteous One - for He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:20 - 21).
When the darkness was lifted and Jesus cried out, “It is finished,” and “Father into Your hands I commend My spirit”, surely the Sacrifice was accomplished and Jesus was restored to communion with His Father. And so at the conclusion of that terrible and awesome crucifixion there were two righteous men, one truly The Righteous Man, the other trusting in the Righteous Man; and there was the other man, who had the same opportunity as the other thief but not only did not take it, but died “hurling abuse” (Luke 23:39) at Jesus Christ - rejecting the Righteous One.
Which thief am I? Which one are you? The question is not whether we are worthy of eternal death, the question is whether we will accept God’s Son and His righteousness and commit our lives to Him.
Take away reproach and contempt from me,
For I observe Your testimonies.
Even though princes sit and talk against me,
Your servant meditates on Your statutes.
I suppose the first plea, taken by itself, might be seen as self-reproach, or as a sense of guilt at having transgressed God’s commandments, but I think there are two reasons why this is not so. The first reason is its context; the couplet that precedes it and the one that follows it both speak of this world’s rebellion - this is the first reason. The second is that the reproach of guilt when we sin cannot be removed by our obedience - this is an impossibility - for no man or woman has ever been justified before God by works. Yes, we can see faith manifested in action, but we are only justified by God’s rich grace in Jesus Christ. Therefore we have three couplets (verses 21, 22, 23) linked tightly together.
There is a reproach associated with following Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 13:13) exhorts us to bear the reproach of Christ. Paul writes to Timothy that all who desire to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). Jesus says that when everyone speaks well of us that there is a problem (Luke 6:26).
How can there not be difficulty and opposition when we are living according to the Way and not according to the “course of this world” which is “according to the prince of the power of the air...the spirit that is working in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:1 - 2)?
Certainly the powers of this age and the peoples of this age will oppose us until the end of this age. If the rebellion of the world’s peoples and its leaders is focused on the LORD and on His Messiah (Psalm 2), then as we live in the Trinity and as the Trinity lives in us we can expect to also experience opposition and hatred. After all, Jesus says to us that:
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also.” (John 15:18 - 23).
In the midst of opposition we are to meditate on, and keep, the Word of God. The Word of God is to be our center of gravity in Christ, our compass, our gyroscope. There are times when we cannot navigate by sight, and in those times we must especially navitage by instrumentation, and that instrumentation is the Word of God implanted into our souls by the Holy Spirit.
Your testimonies also are my delight;
They are my counselors.
Let’s listen to these words from Proverbs 6:20 - 23a:
“My son, observe the commandment of your father
And do not forsake the teaching of your mother;
Bind them continually on your heart;
Tie them around your neck.
When you walk about, they will guide you;
When you sleep, they will watch over you;
And when you awake, they will talk to you.
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light…”
Are we taking counsel of the world? Its popular opinion? Its leaders? Its talking-heads? Are we taking counsel of religious leaders, including “Christian” leaders, who would spare us the Cross, spare us the Way of self-denial, spare us persecution and reproach?
Or, are we following Jesus Christ; in His Word, in witness to Him, in devotion, in love?
Do we belong to this present age that is passing away, or do we belong to Jesus?
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