#DailyDevotion If We’re Going To Make It, The LORD Is Going To Have To Get Us There
Psalm 119 169Let my loud cry come before You, O LORD; give me understanding as You promised (dabar). 170Let my plea come before You; rescue me as You promised (imrah). 171My lips will pour out praise because You teach me Your laws (choq). 172My tongue will sing about Your word (imrah) because all Your commandments (mitsvah) are righteous. 173May Your hand be ready to help me because I have chosen the way You want me to live (piqqud). 174I long for You to save me, O LORD, and delight in Your teaching (teaching). 175Give me a new life, and I’ll praise You, and help me by Your righteous action (mishpat). 176If I wander away like a lost sheep, search for Your servant because I never forget Your commandments (mitsvah).
We can make statements like the psalmist in verse 169 because Jesus promised us the Father knows what we need before we ask Him. When he prays, “give me understanding as You promised,” it makes me think perhaps Solomon wrote this, as the LORD promised to give him understanding when he asked for it. In verse 130 he had written, “Your word is a door that lets in light and helps the simple person understand.” James writes in ch. 1, “5If you lack wisdom, ask God, Who gives to everyone with an open hand and doesn’t scold, and He will give it to you.” That the LORD would hear his plea is repeated in the next verse. His plea is not only for understanding but also for deliverance (most likely from enemies). Again we have in parallel fashion “dabar” and “imrah.”
The next two verses are also in pararrel fashion. “My lips pour out praise,” and “My tongue will sing,” set up the teaching of the LORD’s law and commandments. It is praise-worthy the LORD would deign to teach us His ways and reveal to us His righteous commands. We are very blessed to receive His words. It is good to remind ourselves His commandments are righteous. They go against the way of the world which calls evil good and good evil.
173 and 174 are also in parallel fashion to one another. The first halves are seeking the LORD’s help and salvation. The second halves give the reason for it. He has chosen the way of the LORD’s piqqud and delights in all His teaching. Certainly, as those who have been given birth from above can now choose to live according to the way of the LORD. Why would we do anything else (we certainly fight against the flesh which strives against His ways and sometimes we do fail)? Our new circumcised hearts, circumcised not by human hands, delight in the LORD’s word and ways. It wants to keep inviolate the teaching of the LORD Jesus Christ and to do it.
If we are going to live a new life in the LORD, He’s going to have to be the One who does it. Paul writes in Gal. 2, ” 20I was crucified with Christ, and I don’t live anymore, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in my body I live by believing in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” In Phil. 2 he writes, “13…it is God Who continues to work in you, both to desire as well as to do what is pleasing to Him.” We join the psalmist in asking the LORD to help us to praise Him with our lives to help us by His righteous actions.
The last verse may seem contradictory. How can we have gone astray and have remembered His commandments? John reminds us in chapter 5 of his first epistle while all wrongdoing is sin, not all sin leads to death. As God’s holy people who struggle against sin, Paul tells us about that struggle in chapter seven of Romans. In his heart and spirit he wants to do what is right but his flesh is sold as a slave to sin so he does what he hates. We do not become apostate from our daily sins, when we confess them and turn from them to Christ. They could lead to death if we excuse rather than confess them. So Peter, who out of fear, denies he knows Jesus, while going astray, has not become an apostate like Judas, who has rejected Jesus. Good Shepherd come and get us.
LORD Jesus Christ, when we stray be our Good Shepherd and retrieve us. Live in and through us so we may live lives pleasing to You and the Father. In Your name we pray. Amen.