Daily Meditations

Psalm 119:69 Smeared with lies We’re back again to the author’s battle with the smear campaigns of the arrogant. The truth is, the more keenly we observe the laws of the Lord and walk in His ways, the more we will upset the attitudes and opinions of the wicked. If our faith is half-hearted and hidden, no one will trouble us.  If, on the other hand, we constantly display and declare our faith to everyone who knows us, we will soon stir up the opposition! There are any number of categories of opposition to our God and His ways. For instance, there are those who just want a quiet life and will have nothing to do with anything that challenges their status quo. Then there are those who, and they could never admit this, secretly think there might be something in what we say but cannot lower themselves to agree. There are others who consider that everything we believe is a direct confrontation with their own beliefs and values and they get angry when they are challenged. There are some wh...

Psalm 119:68 God is good! Once again we need to establish the relationship between good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, righteousness and wickedness. As we saw, in verse 65, this part of the Psalm is headed by the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet – Teth. Teth means good but good means nothing unless it can be measured against its opposite quality. For instance, if it was always light and there was no dark, we would have no way of understanding the beneficial qualities of light and how oppressive and restricting darkness is. Light brings freedom, perspective, understanding, revelation and meaning, it drives out our darkness and sets our senses alight! Goodness does all of those things too, but goodness and light and righteousness could not exist without God. He is the source of all of these and more, He is, in essence, good, and without Him everything would be pointless and empty and perpetually dark. Because God is good in His moral character, everything He does is goo...

Psalm 119:67 Now I obey Your Word We have already discovered that the writer of the Psalm had suffered on several fronts. In verse 25, he talks about being laid low in the dust. In verse 28, his soul is weary with sorrow, and he asks for strength. There are also hints that the arrogant have troubled him (see v69) and that he has had to endure the taunts of the wicked.  To go astray, in Biblical terms, is to walk away from the Lord, to follow temptation, to have our eyes turned and to look away from the Lord our God. Israel “went astray” when the people listened to the pagan gods of their neighbours and entered into idolatrous relationships with them. The lure of other gods is a pandemic around us at this time, there are so many to choose from that many make the mistake of putting all gods in the same basket and picking and choosing whatever appeals the most. Even many Christians pick and choose their beliefs according to their own world view and whatever suits their lifestyle and i...

Psalm 119:66 Knowledge and good judgement God’s commands include the terms and conditions of His covenants. As you will recall, the Lord does not sit on His heavenly throne barking out orders, He establishes His laws and rules but with conditions attached. He explains, in great detail, what is good for us as human beings and why. He also sets out what is wrong for us and the consequences of doing wrong, what the Bible calls sin! History has shown mankind that God is absolutely correct in His pronouncements and that if we obey Him, things will go well for us; if we rebel, then sin carries its own consequences as well as judgement from above. Can we therefore agree with the author here, that we trust God’s commands? Having established the core foundation of his beliefs, the writer then asks that the Lord teaches him knowledge and good judgement. There are a thousand and one scenarios in life, where things do not appear black and white, where there are questionable motives and shades of g...

Psalm 119:65 Do good to Your servant We’re already at the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it is Teth. It’s a mysterious letter because it reveals both good and evil. For instance, when God created all things, Genesis tells us that everything that He did was Teth (good) however, Teth allows for the perversion of good to evil, it recognises that God uses evil in the universe for His good purposes. It’s complicated! The above theme is continued in the verse before us, if the psalmist pleads for the Lord to do good to him, there is some allowance for the possibility that He could permit bad! This was a reflection of the widely held belief that all things were in God’s hands, that He had the ability to make good happen but then evil could not take place unless He allowed it! I guess this is all about what we view as good. Looking back over my own life, there have been some very tough times, some dark valleys and some moments when nothing seems to have gone right. It could be argued ...

Psalm 119:64 The earth is filled with God's love What a beautiful phrase begins this verse.  “The earth is filled with Your love, Lord.”  Who would believe that after hearing the daily news, or reading the headlines about all the crises facing humankind at this time? In order to make sense of what goes on we have to make an important distinction between the activities of the wicked, the destructive ambitions of the devil and the loving provision of a holy God. Let’s start with the basics, this world belongs to the Lord, He made it, His trademark is stamped all over it. All created things are the work of His hands and despite appearances, He is calmly in control of all that happens on this planet. Attempts have been made, since the beginning of time, to overthrow His sovereignty and to wrest control away from Him, but these challenges are doomed to failure. That the majority of mankind chooses to either ignore the Lord or to usurp Him is shameful and beyond belief, especially w...

Psalm 119:63 The friends who fear Him It’s a Sunday morning as I write this and soon, many of us will be getting in our cars or stepping out to journey to the church or fellowship of our choice, where others will greet us and be willing to share in fellowship and God’s Word. These are our friends; these are men and women of like mind who fear the Lord and follow His precepts. Precepts are the rules and rituals that apply to us all, that bind us together and that are corporately obeyed. Some are unwritten patterns of behaviour, but the important ones are the laws that the Lord has given, for instance, the sharing of bread and wine, the teaching of God’s Word, the discipline of praying for one another, the command to not stop meeting together whenever we can. Modern church congregations are a reflection of age-old practices and habits that have always characterised God’s people. We meet because we love Him and therefore love all who serve Him, but also because it is a matter of respect a...