Daily Meditations

Psalm 119:38 Fulfil Your promise to Your servant It’s time for a little bit of speculation! What was the promise that the Lord was required to fulfil? Was this a personal matter between Him and the Psalm writer? Was it a more generalised promise that affected all of Israel at that particular time? Or did the promise embrace all of God’s Covenant stipulations for all of Israel, for all of time? It appears to be the first of these categories because the text implies that it was a specific agreement with God’s servant. The point is that when the Lord God makes a promise. Whether it is to an individual, a family or group, a nation, or to the world, He will honour His Word. “ God is not human, that He should lie, not a human being, that he should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfil?”  Numbers 23:19. When the Lord acts in accordance with His promises He gains glory for His name and recognition from those who witness His deeds. It would be very ...

Psalm 119:37 Turn my eyes away This verse provides a contrast to the one that precedes it, verse 36 is a prayer that the Lord will turn our hearts  towards  His statutes, v37 then asks that the Lord will turn our eyes  away  from worthless things. What kind of worthless things are we talking about? The list is a long one but let’s name a few! Lord, turn my eyes away from: - ·        My neighbour’s house, his car, his possessions ·        The forbidden enticements of the opposite sex ·        Pornography ·        TV programmes and films that dishonour You and Your Name ·        Video games and consoles that can become addictive and waste valuable time ·        Gambling opportunities ·        Drugs and alcohol ·        Gossip and tit...

Psalm 119:36 Selfish gain or what? Well, here is one of those crossroads that we were talking about in the previous verse. The writer has reached a junction in the road and has two choices. One of the routes has much to offer, promotion, increased responsibility and a significant rise in salary. The circle of contacts will grow in importance, and it is clearly a role for someone who is moving up the ladder of success. A better car, a better house and better holidays all beckon and only a fool would turn these down. The problem is that another way has opened up, it involves the service of others and will come with little in the way of fanfares or recognition. This future pathway involves serving others and the financial rewards are negligible, there will be no meetings with the “high and mighty” and it looks as if it might be necessary to make some cuts to domestic spending.  It’s decision time and the pros and cons need to be carefully considered, the major questions to be ask...

Psalm 119:35 Direct me in Your path One of the features of this Psalm that catches the eye, is the constant reference to ways or paths. The writer is quite clearly on a journey, before him he sees various tracks or routes and he is obviously aware that he regularly has to make choices. The verse before us is a case in point, perhaps there is a crossroads ahead and it is imperative that right choices are made, that the right direction is taken.  “Direct me in the path of Your commands”  is a prayer that all of us can and should regularly make. There are so many options in life, so many choices, we want to go God’s way, we need to follow His path. To go off-track is not only disobedient and pointless, but it also wastes an awful lot of time. The journey of the Israelites highlights this, when they arrived at the southern border of Canaan, after only a few months of travel, the path chosen by the Lord took them into the land. However, the people did not believe that it was possib...

Psalm 119:34 Understanding and obedience The emphasis in these verses is not so much on the nature and content of God’s laws but on the writer’s response to them. He has already assured us, and the Lord, that He holds His Words in very high esteem. He recognises their significance. He understands their value and purpose. He sees in them the handiwork of God and treasures their content. But he also recognises his own inadequacies and inabilities. How he longs for understanding, it’s not enough to just know these laws and commands, he wants to understand their deepest meaning and why it is that the greatest Being in the universe should offer such instructions to us humans. It is true, if we understand the thinking behind the instructions that we are given, we are more likely to obey those instructions. When dealing with God, we know that His reasoning is beyond challenge, it is always for our best, but we don’t want to be robots, we need to understand His ways so that we can see the caus...

Psalm 119:33 Engraved in our hearts The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is “He”. “He” is often used to represent the name of God as an abbreviation for Hashem, which means “The Name” and is a way of saying God without actually saying the name of God (YAHWEH). So, we begin the next section of Psalm 119 in which the psalmist prays for instruction in God’s will as he longs for His precepts. The writer is now asking the Lord to teach him the way of the engraved statutes, in other words, the commandments and laws that were engraved on the tablets of stone that were handed down to Moses, and that were now securely protected within the Ark of the Covenant. You see, it is one thing to memorize those commands and to be able to say them out loud, they may be engraved in our minds, but to know the ways of those decrees we need to have them engraved in our hearts. Once this happens, they become our guides and our protectors, they influence our decision making, they offer solutions to ...

Psalm 119:32 Running in His path Whilst reading this Psalm, we need to understand that the Law of God was far more than a set of rules and regulations for the Israelites. God had called them to be His people, He had chosen them; as a consequence, they were to be distinct and set apart from all the other nations that surrounded them. They were unique and different; the word that the Bible uses, of course, is Holy. The giving of the Law was part of this sanctification process, here was the Owner’s Manual for His inheritance and the rules covered every aspect of their lives. By keeping God’s Law, the Israelites would reveal themselves to be set apart, they would cause other nations and peoples to look at them and ponder the wisdom and faithfulness of Yahweh. For some of the faithful followers of the Lord God and His commands, the Law became their foundation stone, their rock, the basis of all that they believed, and they sought to live it out to the full. Our writer was one such devotee, ...

Psalm 119:31 Do not let me be put to shame The Hebrew word for statutes is  “edut.”  The tablets of the Law are referred to frequently in Exodus by the term,  “edut.”   In Exodus 25:16 we are told that Yahweh commanded Moses to place the  “edut ” in the ark of the covenant, a box made primarily for this purpose. The ark travelled inside the tabernacle which is why this was called the “tent of the  edut .” Many Hebrew words have more than one meaning and this one is no different, because “ edut ” can also mean witnesses. That’s why we sometimes read, in our English Bibles, of the Ark of the Testimony (or witnesses.) In other words, those stone tablets, carried so carefully by the appointed Levites, were a witness to God’s presence amongst His people and they were not only a testimony to Israel but also to the beings in the heavenly realms. Just as today, we bear witness to our Father when we carry our Bibles and are not ashamed to be seen holding them i...

Psalm 119:30 Which way are we going? Nowadays, we are all so used to hopping into our cars and heading off towards a particular destination, we rarely have to think about the route and when we do, Google Maps is there to assist us! If we ride on a bus or a train, it is with the purpose of being taken to a specific place. When we go for a ramble in the countryside, few of us just head off into the sunset hoping that we will arrive somewhere, some day! In other words, our daily activities, and especially our travels, are guided by the need to reach a specific destination, we set off with a goal in mind and nowadays try to find the quickest way to achieve this. As a young man I remember that many couples and families went for joy rides on Sunday afternoons, car journeys were still a novelty for most and it was an achievement just to explore and see places that had never been visited before!  The point is, that if we carefully choose the routes or ways that we take in our vehicles, sho...

Psalm 119:29 Keep me from deceitful ways There is a well-known quotation, found in Proverbs 14:12, that goes,  “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death .”  I wonder how many of us have embarked on a pathway that looked perfectly reasonable and correct, only to later find that we were being misled, and the promised outcome was very different to what was initially being offered? The devil certainly works that way, and because the world is under his control, it too flatters to deceive. So much of the advice we are given and so many of the carrots that are dangled before us lead to disappointment and frustration and we have to turn back and have a re-think. Let today’s verse prompt us to avoid such dilemmas, let’s constantly pray for the wisdom to discern the correct paths for our lives’ journeys.  Which brings us to the second part of this verse; God’s laws are to be trusted and are only ever written for our instruction and to implant w...

Psalm 119:28 Strengthened by the Word Verse 25 depicts a man who is close to death, who knew sorrow and suffering and who felt close to “giving up.” His ailments were not just physical, as this verse teaches us, it was his soul that was  “weary with sorrow .” Perhaps one of the objectives of this Psalm is to identify as many of the weaknesses of our humanity as possible, to describe the depths to which the human psyche can sink and then to clearly show that in every situation there is an answer; the Lord God is able to direct our thoughts towards His Word and there we will find deliverance and hope.  Nothing has changed! As we have commented before, the Bible is the only book in the whole, wide world that is written by a god, The God! When we come to an end of ourselves, when we are overwhelmed by negative emotions, when there seem to be no answers and no respite from our suffering, then we must turn to God’s Holy Book and hear what He has to say. He is the only source of eter...

Psalm 119:27 Cause me to understand When speaking of the precepts of the Lord, the psalmist is effectively seeking to understand the way God works! He understands that the Lord is over-all, is in control of the whole of creation as well as the individual lives of His people. But how does He do it? What are His guidelines? What is His methodology and His strategy for His dealings with mankind? In truth, it would be helpful for all of us to know how God works but of course, it’s not possible. As Paul clearly says,  “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counsellor? ” Romans 11:33-36. Having spent over 50 years studying the Word of God, I have to say that I am no closer to understanding the precepts of the Lord than I ever was. Yes, it is possible to build up a store of knowledge and experience that only a lifetime can deliver but,...

Psalm 119:26 An honest account This verse seems to describe a conversation. The writer claims to have spoken to the Lord and given an account of his ways, and in return he expects that he will be taught the decrees or the ways of the Lord! What are the “ways” of a man like this? It could be that he laid out before God the righteous paths and directions that his life had taken, or he might well have spelled out his sinful ways and actions. I suspect that he did both! It does us no harm to be honest with the Lord, let’s face it, He knows everything about us anyway! So, let’s take time to lay it all out before our God for in so doing we are able to let go of some of the things that trouble us, and consequently our faith is encouraged and our hope in the Lord is enhanced. Having given an honest account of the past we are now ready to prepare ourselves for the future. To ask the Lord to “ teach us Your decrees ” is to effectively ask to see His blueprint or map for what lies ahead. So many ...

Psalm 119:25 I am laid low in the dust! So we come to the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, it is “Daleth.” This is generally taken to mean “door” but also has a sense of weakness or need, and the Hebrew symbol of it seems to be like a needy person who is bent over. These two aspects therefore remind us of a tent door, pinned up at one side to allow entry. This will not be the first verse in the psalm to highlight the sorrow, suffering and afflictions of the writer. You could argue that it was his devotion to the Word of God that was the cause of his depressed state of mind. This man had made God’s law and God’s covenant promises the great hope of his life whilst his contemporaries trusted in themselves, in their wealth and in their reputations. They despised him for his simple faith and clearly, it hurt! What we may forget is that the rise and fall of Israel depended upon the giving and withdrawal of God’s favour. If the Lord was deemed to have withdrawn from His people, they ...

Psalm 119:24 Delight in the Law? Remember that “statutes” are the covenant regulations that were given through Moses to the whole nation of Israel. The writer of this Psalm expresses delight in these statutes, they are his counsellors. Even the Apostle Paul delighted in the law of God in his heart. (Romans 7:22.) Most Christians would find it very hard to get excited about the Law! We tend to think of the Law and all its 613 commands as being quite oppressive, as being a tool to produce guilt and to point out to the Israelites, and to us, that it is impossible to keep all those rules and thus to please God!  However, we need to think about the Torah more positively, many of its laws deal with a man or woman’s personal relationship with God, there are also many rules about worship and about the holy place – the Tabernacle. Other laws have to do with sex, business transactions, property ownership and relationships with others. None of these were commanded by God as a means of earning...

Psalm 119:23 Those who sit together This is an interesting verse for it throws a little light on the social status of the author, he writes,  “Though rulers sit together and slander me.”  Verse 46 says, “ I will speak of your statutes before kings,”  and verse161,  “Rulers persecute me without cause.”  In other words, this man must have held some kind of official position, maybe he was a priest? Although priests would have been expected to follow God’s law and to demonstrate a devotion to the truth. Maybe he was a lower official who mixed with the high and mighty? What is even more intriguing is that he may have been a king himself, like David, and those who spoke against him were the rulers and kings of the surrounding nations. When the Scriptures use the term “ sit together”  they speak of men and women who are comfortable in each other’s company and who are settled in their place in the world. In this instance, they conspire against the man of God and ho...

Psalm 119:22 Remove the scorn and contempt The scorn and contempt of the godless can be very hurtful. We’ve all had a dose of their disdain and their sneering comments, we’ve all known something of the ridicule that the wicked pour upon the righteous. Sometimes they just say it outright, they pour out their insults and their derision on anyone who has faith. The mockery begins in the form of cutting remarks in the school playground and continues right through to the contemptuous and condescending speeches of the intellectual elite, who publicly pour disdain on those who have a “simple” faith in God and therefore show themselves to be gullible to superstition and delusion. Whilst cutting words are hurtful, they soon pass. What can be harder to take is the growing awareness that there are people who deliberately treat you as “persona non grata”; you are not wanted, your face does not fit, you will never get that promotion, you will never be invited to join the popular gang, you will alwa...

Psalm 119:21 The arrogant are accursed! It’s well over five years ago that followers of this blog were about to dive into Psalm 10, a psalm that exposes the arrogance of the wicked! According to the author, arrogant wicked men or women hunt down the weak, boast about their passions and cravings, revile the Lord, have no room for God in their thoughts, make money, reject God’s laws, believe that no one can touch them, speak endless lies and threats, murder the innocent, and abuse, threaten and crush their victims.  I’ve met many people like this, they may not exhibit all these characteristics, but many live this way, to varying degrees. These people are a law unto themselves, they care nothing for other people and spend their whole lives building their personal wealth and reputations at the expense of others. And the public applauds these people! In the USA you have to virtually be a billionaire before you can even be considered as Presidential material! According to our verse today...

Psalm 119:20 What a picture! Walk into any public Art Gallery and you will not only find an eclectic mix of paintings, pictures and creative objects but also a very varied selection of viewers. Some just browse casually, paying no particular attention to any of the pieces, if they sit down for a moment, it is not to gaze intently at one of the displays but rather to check their phones! Other visitors move from object to object with rapt attention and, if they have a companion, with exclamations of wonder and awe. Then there is the solitary observer who just stands and stares, often at one piece. This is what they have come to see, to the casual viewer this particular display is no better nor worse than its companions, but to the expert eye there are a thousand and one things to admire; the choice of subject, the brush strokes, the emotional impact, the hidden nuances, the story-telling, the state of mind of the artist, the long-term effect of witnessing such genius!  The law of the...

Psalm 119:19 Strangers on the earth Yesterday we indulged ourselves with a little diversion into the world of hymns and songs of yesteryear. Today is no different! How many remember these words?   “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through,  My treasure’s all laid up, somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”   The Apostle Paul puts it like this in Ephesians 2:19-22 ; “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone .”  There is certainly no question that the further we progress in our walk with the Lord, the more we embrace His Word, and the closer we grow to Him, the more estranged we become from the ways of the world. I must confess that I had not associated this way of thinking with Psalm...

Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes that I may see The following words were written by Clara H. Scott in 1895. As a child and young man, growing up in a village chapel, I can remember them being sung regularly as part of a hymn that was in fashionable Hymn Books of the time.    Open my eyes that I may see Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me; Place in my hands the wonderful key That shall unclasp and set me free.   Silently now I wait for Thee, Ready, my God, Thy will to see; Open my eyes, illumine me,     Spirit Divine!   Clara, quite obviously, had been reading the verse before us today! What she had grasped is that the hidden truths of God’s Word are waiting to be revealed. The unbeliever cannot see them or understand them, in fact many Christians would argue that it is not possible to see wonderful things in God’s law. We can read of and witness the handiwork of the Lord God and be amazed by His righteous deeds but it’s quite another thing to bury our hea...

Psalm 119:17 Be good to Your servant So, now we come to the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “Gimel”. It might be a good moment to consider further the hidden meaning of these semitic letters that start each section of the Psalm.  ·        Aleph (v1-8) is derived from the word for Ox and is the father of the Aleph-Bet. It has a numerical value of one and it is symbolic of the strength and oneness of God. ·        Beth (v9-16) represents a tent or a house and its shape, in Hebrew, suggests this. So, Beth-lehem is the House of Bread. Beth-saida means House of Fishing.  ·        Gimel (v17-24) represents the number three and is believed to symbolise a person in motion, like a rich man running after a poor man to give him charity. The word is also associated with the giving of punishments as well as rewards. Our psalmist is seeking charity in today’s verse. He asks the Lord to be good to ...

Psalm 119:16 I will not neglect Your Word We suggested before that the “decrees’ of the Lord are those rules and laws that are written down or engraved either on parchment or even on stone! Maybe, our writer was contemplating here, the two stone tablets that rested within the Ark of the Covenant. It is highly unlikely that he had ever seen these tablets, it was just the knowledge of their existence that gave him so much delight. The stone tablets carried of course, the 10 Commandments, which were the mainstay of Israel’s relationship with their God. You see, once again, it was not so much the content of the Commandments that excited the psalmist, but that God had written these words and that He had entrusted them to His Chosen People and appointed them to guard them and to uphold them. The high value of the Lord’s decrees was not so much in their content as in their Author! As a consequence of the above, anyone, be he Jew or Gentile, would be foolish to ignore or neglect the commands o...

Psalm 119:15 Considering His ways Like many others, I have followed one of those “Read the Bible in a Year” courses and still own one of the Bibles that allows us to do this by mixing up the Old and New Testaments texts, just so we avoid getting bogged down in some of the more tedious books! I also once faithfully followed a 3-year course that prescribed a reading each day, followed by a series of questions. It was 50 years ago but I remember that every morning, for those 3 years, I got up early and sat and resolutely wrote down my answers. With a pen in those days!  The verse before us today suggests a different approach, it is to take some of the hardest parts of Scripture namely the precepts, or God’s rules and orders, and meditate upon them. The purpose of this approach is to try to understand God’s mind, to grasp His plans and purposes, to understand how He thinks. There are questions to be asked; Why did God write this? What does it really mean? If I obey what are the implica...

Psalm 119:14 What is the true treasure? Some things never change! It is quite evident from this Psalm, that riches and prosperity were as eagerly sought after, in the time this was written, as they are today. Mankind has always measured success and importance in financial terms, the wealthier a person, the more influence they will have. It is so easy to look at what the world has to offer and to take the view that the more we accumulate on earth, the easier and better it will be for us. The allure of money and property beckons almost everyone. In these things we believe we have a form of security, we can make decisions about our lifestyle, we can control our destiny!  The Bible’s attitude is so different, God urges us to stop looking at what we own and to look at Him! He begs us to let go of our desire for things and instead to desire Him. He is our stronghold, He is our protection, our insurance policy if you like. He knows how short our lives will be and that it is so much better...

Psalm 119:13 I recount Your laws At first sight, this verse barely seems worthy of comment, it appears to simply be saying that the author likes to recite the written laws of God. He speaks them out loud and in so doing gains a great deal of satisfaction. So, is this a recipe to be followed by us all? After all, many Jews do this, they take the sacred scrolls and read them out loud. Many of them learn the words and repeat them in their synagogues, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, in their private devotions.  In truth this is the practice of many Christians, it is one that is followed in most churches. Perhaps we should just take a moment and reflect on what this verse actually tells us. It is telling us that these words do not start with a scribe writing them on a scroll, their origins are from the mouth of God. It is He who spoke them first. All the Scriptures, including the laws and decrees, have a heavenly author. The words we read do not originate on earth, they come from...

Psalm 119:12 Teach me Your decrees It’s not easy, getting into the mindset of the writer of this Psalm. For most people the laws, statutes, precepts, rules, commands etc. of the Lord are, at best, dull! Even today, few read the Torah, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that people, who are reading the Bible from cover to cover, joke about their brain-numbing encounter with Leviticus or Deuteronomy. On face value, the rules set out in those first 5 books of our Bibles are onerous, pedantic, complicated and boring, an elaborate maze of petty instructions that few believe have any modern relevance. And yet, our writer adores them and is completely sold out to their every detail. He sees beauty and wonder and purity in every word and his whole life is dependent on learning and obeying them! Later in the Psalm (V97) we read,  “Oh, how I love Your law! I meditate on it all day long.”  Paul wrote, in Romans 7:22,  “In my inner being, I delight in God’s law.”  He goe...