START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 119:97-104
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OBSERVE:
Psalm 119 is unique. It is one of about a dozen acrostic Psalms in the Hebrew hymnal, each stanza based on a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It begins with Aleph and ends with Tav.
What sets Psalm 119 apart is that it is the longest Psalm in the Psaltery, with 176 verses; and also the longest single book in the Bible! In fact, by itself Psalm 119 is longer than 17 Old Testament books, and 14 New Testament books!
Psalm 119 is devoted almost exclusively to the celebration of Yahweh and his holy law.
Our lectionary reading is only a small part of the total — focusing on the Hebrew letter Mem. But this section lifts up the central theme of Psalm 119:
How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.
This is the “first principle” of Hebrew faith — that God has revealed himself through the law. Hence, meditation on the law makes one wise, righteous.
In fact, the Psalmist’s focus on the commandments gives him a leg up on his enemies, his teachers and the aged!
Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
for your commandments are always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
because I have kept your precepts.
In other words, it would seem that simply studying the laws, statutes and commandments of God has given the Psalmist an unsurpassed advantage in life.
A common Biblical metaphor for the righteous way of life is walking with God (Enoch in Genesis 5:24; Noah in Genesis 6:9; Abram in Genesis 17:1; Israel walking in obedience to God’s law in Exodus 18:20, etc.), and this Psalm alludes to this Godly walk:
I have kept my feet from every evil way,
that I might observe your word.
And yet another frequent metaphor in Scripture is the imagery of the Word of God as honey that is eaten by the reader (cf Psalm 19:10; Ezekiel 3:2-4):
How sweet are your promises to my taste,
more than honey to my mouth!
As the Psalmist ingests these words, they give him wisdom to discern good and evil. And to avoid the evil:
Through your precepts, I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
APPLY:
For the Hebrew believer, the laws and commandments of God were paramount. The law, delivered to Moses on Mount Horeb, forms the foundation of the covenant between God and Israel. The law provides a way of life, of worship, and of righteousness to the Israelites.
For the Christian, the law is more complicated. Paul strongly affirms that the law:
indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good (Romans 7:12).
So, the Christian is never at liberty to denigrate or deny the law of God. However, Paul’s insight is that the law can’t deliver the righteousness that it demands. The perfect standards of the law cannot be attained by sinful men and women, no matter how good we are.
Thus, Jesus has fulfilled the law on our behalf through his sinless life and his atoning, sacrificial death:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:2-4).
Are we to meditate on the law, as the Psalmist did? Yes. But we also realize that Jesus fulfills the demands of the law on our behalf; and through the Spirit fulfills the moral and spiritual law through the law of love written on our hearts.
RESPOND:
When I was in seminary I wrote a paper that had a rather pretentious title — “The Dialectic of Law and Grace in John Wesley’s Theology.” Actually, despite its high-falutin’ title, the premise was relatively simple.
John Wesley’s study of the Bible led him to conclude that God’s law is holy and just and good, like Paul said. Wesley believed that the ritual and ceremonial law of sacrifices and diet were types that symbolically pointed to the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus. In his life, death and resurrection, all of those ritual and dietary laws were fulfilled and were no longer required. Jesus is our sacrifice. Therefore, the sacrifice of animals is no longer required.
However, Wesley said that Jesus never contradicted the moral law that had been revealed in the Old Testament — in fact, Jesus doubled down on the moral law! For example, murder is bad, but anger is the beginning of the murder of a brother; adultery is wrong, but lust is the objectification of a woman and the root of adultery. In other words, the moral law isn’t merely external — it is internal.
Wesley summed it up like this — the law drives us to Christ by showing us, as though in a mirror, that we are loathsome sinners; Christ’s grace forgives us as he fulfills the law on our behalf through his life, death and resurrection; and then Christ drives us back to the law as a helpful guide to growing in grace. What is behind the law is always the law of love which leads us to love God, neighbor, and even our enemy!
So, along with the Psalmist, we can also say:
How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.
Our Lord, how I love your law! Your law reveals to me what holiness looks like, revealed in your consuming love. It also reveals to me how far short I fall when I try to fulfill the law in my own strength. Thank you for your grace in Christ Jesus that fulfills the law on my behalf, and for your Spirit that writes your law of love on my heart. Only through you am I able to live the life to which your law calls me. Amen.
PHOTOS:
"How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. (Psalm 119:103) #godsword #honeybee #bee #honey #red #redflower" by Jeanette's Ozpix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.
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