Psalm 119 (6)

Musings on Psalm 119

He: Verses 33 – 40

Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes;

    and I will keep it to the end.

The Way of God’s statutes is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Word, the Logos, of God; as we follow Jesus we guard and keep God’s Word. We may know the Bible without knowing Jesus Christ (John 5:39 – 40). We may know the Bible as a member of any number of religious traditions, but until we encounter Jesus Christ in the Scriptures we are numbered with the religious leaders of John 5:39 – 40, or we are like those in 2 Timothy 3:7 who are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

As Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians Chapter Two, only God can teach us His Word. Our Father teaches us horizontally and vertically; we hear from Him both ways as He communicates to us directly and as He communicates to us through other members of the Body of Christ – we ought to seek harmony and confirmation in our understanding of God Word.

We can trust our Lord Jesus to keep us so that we may keep His Word to the end of life in this world and into the age to come. We cannot keep God’s Word by ourselves, but only as we abide in the Vine (John 15). All that we do must be done as we abide in Christ – He must be our Way of Life; without Him, outside of Him, we can do nothing that is of any worth.

Give me understanding, that I may keep your law

    and observe it with my whole heart.

We ask God to teach us, and we ask Him to give us understanding in what He teaches us. It is one thing to recite a verse or a paragraph or even an entire chapter of the Bible. It is another thing to understand it. We often sing hymns we do not understand. We read Scriptures that we do not understand. When we view the Scriptures we do not “see” their interconnectedness, we view many small pieces without “seeing” that they all combine to present a comprehensive portrait of God and His purposes. We are often like children playing with bricks at a construction site, not knowing that those bricks are to be joined together to produce a home in which people will live. We stack a few bricks together and think we have produced an award-winning structure, when all the time God’s wants us to build His Temple. We mistake our stack of bricks for a palace – God has so much more for us in His Son.

Lead me in the path of your commandments,

    for I delight in it.

Teach us, give us understanding, and now “lead” us in the Path of your commandments – again, Jesus is the Path, the Way. Jesus promises us that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:12 – 15). Jesus greatly desires to reveal Himself and His ways to us through the Holy Spirit, are we coming to Him expectantly? Are we anticipating the revelation of Jesus Christ through His Word and the Holy Spirit? “All things that the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he [the Holy Spirit] takes of mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:15). Is this our experience? Our Father wants to give to us, do we want to receive?

Incline my heart to your testimonies,

    and not to selfish gain!

We need to be taught by God, we need the Holy Spirit to give us understanding in what we are taught, we need to be led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14) into Christ, and we desperately need the grace and mercy of God to incline our hearts to His testimonies and away from self-centered lives. Our hearts and souls are bent inward, they are made crooked by sin and self-deceit, what we consider gain is loss, and what we consider loss is gain. The way of self-denial and of Christ-confession is the Way of the Cross; the Cross is the Way of Life.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;

    and give me life in your ways.

Not only do we need our hearts inclined toward God, we need our eyes turned away from worthless things. Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear (or healthy), your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness…” (Matthew 6:22 – 23). Then Jesus says in the next verse, “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and wealth.” We are be “Looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2), our eyes are to be on Christ and His Word as we are transformed into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:18; 1 John 3:1-3). The ways of this age can bring nothing but death, the ways of our Father give us life in His Son.

Confirm to your servant your promise,

    that you may be feared.

Hebrews 11:33 tells us that our fathers and mothers of faith “obtained promises”. This speaks to us of our intimate relationship with God; an intimacy that includes the Parent making promises to the child.

In 2 Corinthians 1:20 – 22 Paul writes, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [Christ Jesus]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”

In Christ not only does God say “Yes” to His promises, all His promises point to Christ, reveal Christ, and have their substance in Christ. God’s promises are to establish us in Jesus Christ, to root us deeply in Him. The seal of the Spirit of God is the Promise of the Father given to us by the ascended Christ Jesus (Acts 2:33).

How does God confirm His promise? He does so through His Son, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and His Word (Hebrews 6:17 – 20; Romans 8:15 – 16; 1 John 3:23 – 24; 4:13). As the writer of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 6:17), we are “heirs of the promise”. This promise is eternal life in Jesus Christ, this is the Promise above all promises – koinonia with God, living in the Trinity, by the Trinity, through the Trinity.

God is “other” than we are, and the more intimate we are with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the greater our awareness of His “otherness” will be. The otherness and awesomeness of God leads to a holy fear and recognition that our God is indeed the Almighty One; we fall on our faces, we bow before Him, we worship Him – and in the midst of our holy fear we hear Him say, “Fear not.” Only those who fear God and stand in awe in His Presence hear Him say, “Fear not.”

Turn away the reproach that I dread,

    for your rules [ordinances] are good.

What does this mean? What is this reproach? It is linked to the ordinances of God. As Paul makes clear in Romans Chapter Three, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, not one of us is righteous, not a single person on earth. Can there be any greater reproach than the reproach of sin? Of our unrighteousness? Of our rebellion against the holy One?

“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:19 – 20).

There is only One who can take away our reproach, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21 – 26). As we believe in Jesus, as we trust in Him, as we come into a relationship with Him, acknowledging our sin and rebellion and turning from our evil ways by His grace and following Him, a twofold miracle occurs; on the biological side we receive the very life of God in Christ Jesus, on the forensic (legal) side we are justified in Christ and by Christ and through Jesus Christ.  God’s Law convicts us of sin and drives us to Christ and delivers us into the hands of grace and mercy, which are the hands of Jesus Christ – the wounded hands.

Behold, I long for your precepts;

    in your righteousness give me life!

Here is a second cry, a second plea, of “give me life!” Is this not the cry of the dead man who knows he is dead? Isn’t this the plea of the man who knows that he is on a trajectory of death? Might not this be the request of the woman who realizes that she lives in an atmosphere of death? In a society that is dead and dying? God does not desire to resuscitate that which is dying – the Cross is here that we might die to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that we might die to ourselves and live unto God (Romans Chapter 6). We will only find life in the righteousness of God, and that Righteousness is Jesus Christ.

As Paul writes (1 Corinthians 1:27 – 31), “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.””

Jesus' Strange Choice

Matthew the Tax Collector and Simon the Zealot

Matthew and Simon – what a strange choice Jesus made.

Matthew, not only aligned with the occupying Roman “establishment”, but also a tax collector – a job known (at the time) for its dishonesty; the idea was to “Give Rome what it requires but make sure you keep plenty for yourself” (Luke 19:1 – 10).

And what of Simon? Zealots were intent on the overthrow of not only the Roman occupying force, but they were also keen in exacting retribution on corrupt Jewish civil and religious leaders. A tax collector was fair game for a Zealot.

Before Jesus called Matthew and Simon, all that separated them was the edge of an assassin’s knife. These two religious, political, cultural, and economic enemies would learn to be united as brothers in Jesus Christ; they would bury the knife of separation and be united in the Cross.

Perhaps Peter and James and John thought Jesus was nuts to call both Simon and Matthew. Perhaps they thought Jesus was inviting division into His small group of followers. Perhaps they thought Jesus lacked common sense.

Perhaps Satan thought that Jesus just made a huge mistake and that he, Satan, would be able to use the prejudices and biases of Simon and Matthew against each other to create division and confusion with the disciples.

Well…the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ united Matthew and Simon. They exchanged their political, cultural, economic, and religious identities for Jesus Christ and His Cross.

What is our identity? Who is our identity? How do our words and decisions provide the answer to these questions? If we were placed on trial accused as men and women whose identity is rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ would there be overwhelming evidence to convict us?

The Oxygen of the Word of God

What do a deep-sea diver, an astronaut on a spacewalk, and a mountain climber on top of Mount Everest have in common?

They all need oxygen to survive and they are all in a hostile environment that will kill them.

In mountain climbing, once you ascend to 25,000 feet you are in a special zone – it’s the death zone – your body starts to die, your systems start to shut down. Using oxygen in the death zone does not stop your body from dying, from shutting down – it only slows the process. You can only stay in the death zone for so long.

Now let’s go back to our astronaut, mountain climber, and deep-sea diver – what do they have in common with a Christian? A Christian is also in a death zone – the world.

But now I’ll ask, what is it that they do not have in common with a Christian? They know they need help, they know they need oxygen to survive – the average Christian doesn’t know that he or she needs the oxygen of the Word of God to survive in this world; we may say we do, but our actions deny it.

Consider Paul’s words to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:12 – 4:5)

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Note that the immediate context of 3:14 – 17 is false teaching and what our response ought to be to it; how we should engage false teaching, how we should live and suffer, and how we should be grounded in God’s Word. Christ in His Word is our center of gravity.

We are called to live in a mansion with 66 rooms. We are called to breathe the Word of God, to speak the Word of God, to allow the Word of God to form us into the image of Jesus Christ – individually and collectively.

If the Bible is not forming our thoughts then the world and sin are forming our thoughts. If the Bible is not directing our decisions, then the world and sin are directing our decisions. It’s really that simple (Romans 12:1-2).

As Craig A. Carter has written, “Nothing is more fundamental to the Christian life than reading the text of Scripture and submitting one’s life to the One who speaks His Word through the human words of the inspired text.”

Carter also writes, “If reading in faith is how we become Christians, reading without faith is how we become [functional] atheists. So the stakes are high.”

Are we living as people of the Living Word? Or are we counted among those who “will not endure sound doctrine”? What does the evidence of our lives demonstrate? The life of our church?

Is the Word of God our oxygen?