#DailyDevotion It Is Important To Keep God’s Word In Front Of Us
Psalm 119 49Remember Your promise (dabar) to Your servant for by it You have given me hope. 50This is my comfort in my misery: that Your word (imrah) gives me life. 51Proud men bitterly scorn me, but I don’t turn away from Your teaching (torah). 52O LORD, I remember Your righteous acts (misphat) of long ago and am comforted. 53The wicked, who forsake Your teaching (torah), make me hot with anger. 54Your laws (choq) have been my songs here where I’m a stranger. 55At night I think of Your name, O LORD, and I carefully do what you teach (torah). 56It is good for me to follow the way (piqqud) you want me to live.
Verses 49 and 50 run parallel to one another using as synonymns dabar and imrah. Dabar is heavy on the emphasis of the written word while imrah is emphasis on the spoken word. The promises of the LORD either written or spoken are the hope of all His people. In that word we have divine promises. The LORD never reneges on His promises. They always come to pass. Asking God to remember His promises is not for His sake but for ours. He doesn’t forget. By asking Him to remember, we ourselves are strengthened by them and they give us hope in God. His promises are our comfort when we are in our misery. Heb. 13 gives us the comfort of the LORD when he reminds us, “I will never leave you or desert you.” We have John 6 which says, “37All the Father gives Me will come to Me, and anyone who comes to Me I will never turn away…” The word that gives life, Jesus says in John 3, “everyone who believes in Him has everlasting life. 16God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.”
Verses 51-53 have a theme, opposition from the wicked. We can see these words particularly in the mouth of Jesus as he deals with those who oppose Him, His teaching, His works and His reign and rule. Despite this opposition, Jesus does not turn away from His Father’s teaching/torah. He teaches exactly what the Father has given Him to teach. The Holy Spirit then, in the life of the Church, handed and preserved that teaching in the writings of the holy apostles which we now have in the Bible. Despite whatever outside forces try to get us to turn from the teachings of Jesus, by man or demon, we must continually turn to His teachings and not to safety apart from His word. We join Jesus in remembering all of the LORD’s righteous acts of old. We as Christians are not ambivalent to evil. When we see it, it does make us angry. The difference is how we deal with it individally. Many times we do not have the vocation to oppose it with force. Paul tells us to conquer evil with good. We are called to show love to those who hate us. We leave them in the hand of God who is all wise, just, wise, powerful and mighty. He can deal with them best. But we never love evil acts. We hate them right along with Jesus.
Verses 54-56 also are a unit of this section of the psalm. The statutes of the LORD are our song. As the psalmist confesses, we are but strangers here in this world. The way of the LORD is our way as we pass through this age as aliens in it. We think on the name of the LORD. That is the name revealed in Ex. 34:6, “the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to get angry, rich in love and faithfulness, 7continuing to show mercy to thousands, forgiving wrong, rebellion, and sin, without treating it as innocent, but disciplining children and children’s children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers.” This Gospel name of the LORD is what moves us to carefully do all that He has taught us, as Jesus notes in Matt. 28, “…observe everything as I have commanded you…” Verse 56 is translated in a number of ways. Some of them have me scratching my head trying to figure out how they got there. Literally it says, “This becomes to me for your precepts I observe.” In light of the translation, I hear this as Jesus says, “Anyone who hears my word and does them is like a man who builds his house upon a rock,” or “If you love me, you will guard/keep/treasure my teachings/commandments.” May His word so move us and conform us to guard, keep, treasure and do all Jesus teaches us.
Heavenly Father, grant us Your Holy Spirit so we may treasure in our hearts all that You have taught us so we may do You will. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.