Tag: God’s word

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Verses 65-72

Do good to your servant

According to your word, O Lord.

He will only do good, since for God to do is to do good.  We can have no other expectation: he only does good and he only does it well.  Scripture is our witness to this, that he has done good since the very beginning and will continue to do good endlessly.  Scripture is to be trusted since scripture tells us of our Saviour – which no-one else and nothing else does.  So we should seek those books and points of view that reinforce our understanding and show us God being good.  And when we make ourselves his servant, this inevitable good is promised to us and his breathed Spirit confirms it.

Teach me knowledge and good judgement

for  believe in your commands. 

Faith is the key here: believing God’s word to be good makes us teachable.  Without an attitude of wonder and gratitude, we won’t ever gain understanding. Here knowledge and good judgement are inescapably paired – for without one another, each is senseless.  We are called not simply to know what is right but to exercise judgement and to use our knowledge to live differently, and so prove our faith, as James encourages.  This is God’s teaching style: first he gives us faith to believe him, then he gives us better and truer information and the opportunity to embed it by using it.  The more we follow this pattern, the more drastic the change in our life.

Before I was afflicted I went astray

But now I obey your word.

Yes indeed – conviction, shame and reshaping are God’s tools.  He does not want us astray – better afflicted with grief or suffering and on the correct path than ignorant and in bliss- stupid bliss.  Better the daily challenge to our self!  Lord, how I thank you for this time – this rest. Remain in me, O Lord, so that I may continue to find rest.

You are good and what you do is good;

Teach me your decrees.

Here is the proof!  We know God is good and free from imperfection, because we see his goodness in the things he does.  His actions are essential to him – unsurprising (once you know him well) – suited – fitting – proper – and he must act to be true to himself.  He is, after all, the Living God.  And he wants us to mirror this integrity. O God, that my deeds befitted what you have made me!  Teach me!

Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies

I keep your precepts with all my heart.

Lies are sticky, but only touch the outside.  Lying is an act of arrogance – to believe that you are bigger than the truth.  But a whole heart will survive that – and a whole heart is needed to follow God’s law, since it is not an outwardly thing but an inwardly, spiritual law of the heart.

Their hearts are callous and unfeeling

But I delight in your law.  

A heart of flesh loves instruction from God – loves being changed, being directed, being contradicted, because  it means relationship with one who is good and does only good.  A fleshly heart is keen for its own changed life, for the effects on the people around.  It is not only callous, unfeeling and insensitive to reject God’s purpose in sanctifying and changing us – it is stupid and selfish!  Stupid because we cannot pretend that faith has any other purpose, selfish because it prevents others from receiving God’s truth.  Every believer must whole-heartedly give themselves to God’s process of change.

It was good for me to be afflicted

So that I might learn your decrees.

Amen – even at a considerable price, to say this brings us determination and helps us to value what is valuable.  Because even if I knew many things previously, then I had not learnt from them because I had done little  It was good, Lord, that I should suffer and be prompted into action.  Recalled to life!

The law from your mouth is more precious to me

Than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Now I can say this for real.  Our true riches are the words of God spoken to us in Scripture, made living and real by his spirit.  With them comes such wisdom that we can solve problems in the world, we can change our relationships for more beautiful and worthwhile ways.  With these words come challenges to our selfishness, our egocentricity, our remaining sins.  May it ever be so, Lord God!  Not dead words recalling a past, as some think, but your living law that teaches me and explains everything I observe in the world around – your law that brings me now to an attitude of worship – shows your great love for me, Father, as so good! So good!  Amen.

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A Spiritual Diet

I was talking with the Lord last year over a meal and heard him clearly tell me to eat up my dinner.  Three times.  After that sort of amusing word, I’m always intrigued.  This is how the Lord likes to hook me, I think!

Protein builds muscles, he reminded me.  So I began to think about this with some new insight, for everything that is true for our physical body is reflected in our spirit, I’m learning.  When we do things – when we exercise – our muscles are torn and worn and it is in the repairing of them, using protein we’ve eaten, that they are strengthened.  So what is it that makes us stronger in the spirit?

It is the Word – scripture – God’s speaking to us – that builds us up.  We know this!  But our diet must be coupled with exercise – with obedience to the word.  Without the tearing and the wearing out of our human abilities the muscles of a human spirit cannot be rebuilt as muscles of Jesus’ spirit in us.  God works in these organic ways, growing and replacing from within – we see it all the time.

To continue the analogy, rice gives us energy.  Carbohydrate is the fuel of our continuing life, allowing us to move.  What is it that energises us in the spiritual realm?  Surely it is praise and worship!  You can go a day without carbs, but your body will need to re-wire and re-plumb and improvise to find some energy somewhere – yet you are designed to burn that carbohydrate in every cell of your body!  Now sometimes we think we can get on without worship, yet worship is the thing that gives us energy – spiritual energy – to do the work that God has for us.  As we burn the fuel – make the offering – give the sacrifice – we ourselves are cleansed and changed and made ready to act.

I think the analogy could go even further – I love to shove a metaphor – and I wonder whether prophecy might not fill some of the place that minerals and vitamins do in our earthly diet…  But there are so many things to be explored here!  Suffice to say, I’m convinced that getting the two big blocks sorted for growth is a good place to start – the protein of the Word, exercised through obedience, and the carbohydrate fuel of worship, burnt to give us life!

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Verses 17-24

Do good to your servant,

and I will live.

The agency and the initiative in our relationship with God all belongs to him.  All life is dependent upon God doing good to us.  To live in reality is to obey God.  His continued decision to support us, to remain true to his promises, to continue sustaining the created world, lays down the physical and spiritual laws of the universe.  We all obey these words whether we acknowledge it or not!  His goodness in doing this causes us to live – but to live a deep and real life – a living life, not a death-in-life, we choose to acknowledge his truth: that he does good to his servant and this itself is the best life we can enjoy.

Open my eyes that I may see

wonderful things in your law!

Again, this is dependent upon God’s action – he must open our eyes before we see with understanding.  The wonderful things are already there in God’s law – he does not put them there new for us, or create fancy ideas for our benefit!  Can you imagine how Jesus must have prayed this scripture?  How hungry he was to receive his Father’s wonderful revelation when reading and studying scripture?  This is the attitude we should have!

I am a stranger on earth;

do not hide your commands from me.

 Like walker, travelling through a strange part of the country, remaining on one path, we can feel this at times.  Certainly Jesus must have.  To feel separate from the ways of other people, looking for direction when we speak a different language to so many of the inhabitants!  Nor are we owners in our own land – even as stewards the world can be so strange to us.  We are not in possession of the earth but visitors, here and then gone, requiring direction and help.  What better help than God’s commands and his revelation of their purposes, meanings and effects?

My soul is consumed with longing

for your laws at all times.

We may feel this in our body or even our mind or even our emotions – but know this: once we have decided to follow Jesus, a longing for God will possess your soul and nothing else will ever satisfy you in your spirit!  This hunger to know God’s ‘laws’ is exactly what the psalmist is struggling to understand as he worships and expresses himself.  The different phrases he uses – law, precept, word, command, decree, statues – are his attempts to lasso whatever it is that God speaks that we long for so much – his activity in our lives, whether we read it in scripture, see it in Jesus’ example, notice it in the world, hear it from a brother or sister, whether it is his instruction, his warning, his promise, his description, his comfort, his chiding, his correction or his blessing.

You rebuke the arrogant,

who are cursed and stray from your commands.

Yes, this is the nature of God’s character: he himself, in his gentleness and his merciful exercise of his power, is a rebuke to anyone and any part of ourselves characterised by arrogance: he alone acts with propriety and an appropriate sense of self-importance!  To stray from his commands – well, that is a curse upon oneself!  To be disobedient is to invite all manner of suffering.  So the curse and the rebuke of the arrogant is that they cannot remain in obedience to God.

Remove from me scorn and contempt,

for I keep your statutes. 

We do not have to move from where God has set us – rather, the scorn and contempt of the world is removed from us.  Once again, this is God’s action rather than our own.  Also the inner scorn and self-criticism will be removed if we confess to ourselves that our will is made subject to God.  If, as we say this, we feel our conscience convict us, then we act upon it until we can speak with a clear conscience.  What a gift the conscience is, to keep us in purity and joy.

Though rulers sit together and slander me,

your servant will meditate on your decrees.

So this meditation now, reading these words of God and allowing them to renew you mind and to soften your heart, this is the appropriate reaction and the right response to pressure from the slanderous authorities of the world.  When things get tough and people look badly at you, consider the things that God has said and done and what it means for you.

Your statutes are my delight;

they are my counsellors.

We can go to God’s Word for advice, since it is much older and wiser than us, also fresher and more alive.  Good advice comes from the law, and the law lives in Jesus and Jesus dwells in us by the Holy Spirit.  Was ever a King or Director privileged to have such good advice as we are given, from the very voice of God?  Hallelujah indeed!

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Verses 9-16

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By living according to your word.

 This questions is worthy of a considerable prayer before God.  It is relevant to an individual, but also to the church – it is vital that young people find the way of purity and holiness!  With it, their spiritual growth and the prospering of the kingdom is sure.  Without it… stagnation, confusion and loss.  What is the one thing that allows a person to remain separate and holy and unlike the world?  It really is this simple – a life that is aligned to the Word of God.  And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…  If we want to align ourselves with the Word of God, we welcome Jesus into our lives, by his Holy Spirit, whom he promised will teach us all things and remind us of his Word – the words that we hear which are not from Jesus but from the Father and of the Father.  And the Gospels and the law and the prophets and the letters and every part of scripture, in pointing to the Word, Jesus Christ, is the way we are to live.

I seek you with all of my heart;

do not let me stray from your commands.

 The great truth that God will allow us to live as Jesus does – in unity with him – should motivate us to search whole-heartedly for the one who loves us.  Forgive us, Lord, when these words are not true and we give other things place in our hearts – but also, Lord, cut away that hard and selfish and stupid heart and give us the heart of flesh and tenderness that longs for you!  For God to ‘not let’ us to stray, he must have a firm grip on us – we must allow him to grasp us tightly with his hand – we must be given over to him and willing to feel the uncomfortable proximity of his clutch.  Only if we change ourselves to allow this vast and direct invasion of our privacy will God be able to be God in us.

I have hidden your word in my heart

that I might not sin against you.

Sin and evil comes out of the heart, as Jesus taught us – but replace an earthly heart with an eternal, heavenly one, and sin will have no place to be rooted.  It cannot survive in the soil of the new kingdom – temptation might attract us, but it will wither, if our heart is given over.  How to keep giving over the heart to God?  The soil must be tilled regularly, and fertilised.  The Word of God – his voice to us – his plan, his intention, as revealed in Scripture and as lived in Jesus – that is harrow that breaks the soil and the fertiliser that makes the heart ready to produce good crops of heavenly abundance.

Praise be to you, O Lord,

teach me your decrees.

These two statements are always intertwined.  Worship and praise always implicates a desire to know more of God – to experience and understand more – which is exactly his method of teaching: exposure to himself.  If we pray this, then we are asking for God’s presence in our lives, because this is how he gives us eyes to see and a ready heart.  His decrees – his eternal judgements and laws – are recorded in Scripture – and if we are ready to see them, we will see the results of them all around us in the world.  Praise to God as the Creator will allow our eyes to see his law in nature.  Praise to God the Saviour will allow our eyes to see his law in people, whom he saves and recreates.

With my lips I recount

all the laws that come from your mouth.

In the Bible we can count and learn all the laws God has given – to individuals, to nations, to peoples and to all of us.  We can also recount his instructions to people, one by one, which are the impression of his law of love and justice in that circumstance.  What better thing to dwell upon and learn?

I rejoice in following your statutes

as one rejoices in great riches.

And yes, this is great wealth, isn’t it?  We do not possess God’s statutes – his principles – in the manner of ownership; we follow them.  This leaves us free and responsible to choose our actions and express ourselves.  Truly, we have cause to rejoice when we realise the privilege it is to serve a good and kind God.   This following allows us to grow – for what we see one day of God’s instruction will be deepened the next day, and the next, and the next.  It also allows us to be surprised!

I meditate on your precepts

and consider your ways.

God’s principles and his actions are well worth our meditation – our deepest degree of reflection and thought.  If we simply had God’s law and no record of his miraculous intervention in our world, we could too easily believe that it was in our power to fulfil the law and justify ourselves.  If we simply had record of God’s actions in time, to the Jewish people or to anyone else, and no revelation of his law, we would have no responsibility to join his way.  But as it is, the Word gives us both, in Scripture and in the person of Jesus, so it is our duty to consider both, and to consider them together.

I delight in your decrees,

I will not neglect your word.

All of God’s utterances bring us joy, because he is both good and just, and we are right to delight in them like people delighting in their leisure and their wealth and their family and their freedom.  God’s decrees – his words to all the world – are for us to delight in.  How then can we desire anything else?  We can honestly say that we will not neglect his word because Jesus has promised to be always with us, and if at times we find it hard to motivate ourselves to study and learn Scripture, or hard to pray and feel his presence, or hard to hear the prophetic guiding voice of the Spirit, or hard to follow through on what we mean to do, we will not neglect the word as long as we praise God and desire to live in him.  Why?  Because this does not depend on us – it depends on his desire to be with us.