Daily Meditations

Psalm 119:11 I have hidden Your word in my heart Well, whole books could be written about these few powerful words. Let’s repeat them, “ I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.”  I first learned this text, in Sunday School, over 60 years ago. Thank goodness I did! How many of us have learned Scriptural truths and hidden them in our hearts and then found, maybe years down the line, that they come popping up at just the right moment? Times of temptation when we are right on the brink of succumbing and then up it comes, the word pings into our minds and we find that we have to back away from the tempter’s snare. Or those dark moments, in the middle on the night maybe, when the whole world seems to be against us, and then a voice speaks, a voice from deep within, the word that we learned without realising we learned it. Suddenly, the scenario changes, we realise that “ Greater is He who is in us than he that is in the world.”  1 John 4:4. The temptati...

Psalm 119:10 I seek You with all my heart ““Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.”  So says Jeremiah 29:12-14a. This “seeking after God” is a feature of the Scriptures and was the life goal of many of the great saints of old. However, these are not words to be spoken glibly, to promise to seek God with all our hearts is a daunting undertaking. Over the years there have been many songs and hymns that have encouraged wholehearted devotion to the quest, but few actually achieve it. Do you remember singing “I surrender all?” Is it possible to surrender all? Is it possible to seek God with all of my heart? The author of this Psalm obviously saw his commitment to the quest as being realised in his commitment to the laws and promises of God. If he could embrace these and obey them then he would embrace and obey the Lord God Himself. God’s law...

Psalm 119:9 Young people and the Word And so we come to the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet -  “Beth ”. This is a verse for those who are younger in age, suggesting that the writer was speaking of himself. In ancient times it was a major responsibility of the older, wiser men in the community to pass on their wisdom to the next generation. It was equally important that the young looked up to their elders and took instruction from them. And, of course, even if you were old, you could only be described as wise if you were prepared to keep learning and add to the wisdom accumulated throughout your life. Yes, the culture in Israel was very much about this exchange of information but it was all grounded in God’s Word, these people were not majoring on scientific exploration, they had a higher goal, they purposed to know and understand the heart and mind of God! It begs the question as to how much time have we spent teaching our own children the truths of God’s Word, and how much th...

Psalm 119:8 I will obey Your decrees And so we come to the end of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the Aleph section of Psalm 119. The section ends with another good intention although its motivation is not so good! The writer intends to obey God’s decrees, the same word that is used in verse 5. God’s decrees are His rules and commands that are engraved in writing so that all may see them, and they cannot be forgotten or overlooked. His decrees are there for all to see, and the breaking of them leaves the perpetrators without excuse. If something is engraved or written down and a part of your national culture, it’s hard to argue “I didn’t know.”  What follows is a plea from the heart, written by an honest man. He is clearly aware that there will be times when he breaks the decrees of the Lord despite his very best intentions. This is what causes him to cry out,  “do not utterly forsake me .” This is a repeated cry in the Psalms, written by men who obviously considered ...

Psalm 119:7 I will praise You This verse and its successor are a statement of intent!  “I will praise You with an upright heart ….. I will obey Your decrees.”  Intentions are great, in truth we would get nowhere without them, we’ve probably all been having them, good and bad, every day of our lives. However, we are weak and vulnerable human beings, like the proverbial New Year resolutions our good intentions can quickly be broken, and we end up ashamed and feeling very sorry for ourselves! Let’s thank God that He does not give up on us but rather, He bends down, takes our hand and helps us to stand up and press on with the journey. It is right therefore to have good intentions, and on this day,  “I will praise You, Lord, with an upright heart. ” The first part of the verse is an easy one for me, It’s Sunday and 2 hours from now I will be gathering with brothers and sisters to do just that, to praise the Lord! The thing is, the psalmist goes on to suggest one of the reason...

Psalm 119:6 Shameful or shameless The writer of this Psalm clearly describes the dilemma that we all face from time to time. We love to call ourselves believers in the Living God, we align ourselves with His Word and His people. We take some pride in our spiritual walk and the importance of our faith. That is, until we have a moment of honesty, and we truthfully measure ourselves against the standards of the Lord. It is when we look at the true self in the moral mirror that we see the warts and the deformities that have hindered our journey and have made us fall so far short of God’s standards. The moral mirror is, of course, the commands of the Lord, these are, in Hebrew, the “miswot”, the terms and conditions of God’s contract or covenant, and when we honestly appraise ourselves against His standards, we have to be ashamed!  In the verses of the Psalm being “put to shame” suggests public humiliation, there is nothing worse than when others become aware of our sin and our failings...

Psalm 119: Obey His decrees The Hebrew word for “decrees” is  huqqim  and it is often used in tandem with “commands”. In Deuteronomy 30:16 we read of Moses saying to the Israelites,  “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.”  “Huqqim” literally refers to covenant laws that have been written down; earlier in Deuteronomy 30:9-10 Moses says, “ The Lord will delight in you ….. if you obey the Lord your God and keep His commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul .”  As they were taught the Torah (first 5 books of our Bibles), the Israelites were to take special notice, for these were not just empty words, repeated in conversation, these were sacred commands and decrees that were engrav...