God’s Word for You
Psalm 119:126-128 reverent respect
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, November 17, 2024
126 It is time for you to act, O LORD;
for they are breaking your law.
Here “law” is Torah, which can have a broad sense of the whole word of God (as we saw in verse 1), but here it is probably used in the narrow sense of the moral, ceremonial and civil laws of the Lord, or the Law of Moses. As a devoted student of the Law of God, the poet sees that there is so much being done against the Law that one man can hardly make any impact. The prophets howled about times like this (Hosea 8:5; Habakkuk 1:2). This calls to mind the fifth year of King Rehoboam, as one example among many, when the king abandoned the Law of God and all the people did the same (2 Chronicles 12:1). But rebellions like this against the word of God were sadly not uncommon; not in the days of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:15) and not in our time, either. “How long will the wicked be jubilant?” (Psalm 94:3). We become as indignant as the prophets and as our poet, and wonder how long before the end will come, and Christ will judge the righteous and the wicked. He is “the one who is able to save and to destroy” (James 4:12).
127 Because I love your commands more than gold,
more than pure gold,
128 and because I value all your precepts,
I hate every wrong path.
These two verses end the Ayin stanza and should be taken together. Verse 128 is similar to verse 104; the final phrase is different only in the word-order. But there is a remarkable word in the middle of the first line of verse 128; I have translated it “I value.” It comes from the root word yashar, “to be straight; right.” It is the antonym of “be crooked” (Isaiah 40:3, “make straight a highway for our God”). Here, the stem (piel) might show a forensic or declarative judgment of the Law, except that man is no judge of the divine Law. Therefore it would be better to say that the force of the piel stem shows respect, that is the admiration, reverence, and approval of man for God’s holy and perfect Law. This form of the piel verb usually occurs when a subordinate or an inferior asks a superior to do something, such as when Abraham’s servant asks Laban to let him go back to his master (Genesis 24:54). Here the reverence is approval, like a pupil admiring the genius work of his master.
This reverent respect is the reason behind hating every wrong path. There is no wrong path that leads to Christ; every wrong path leads away from Christ. If you imagine the face of a compass, with its 360 degrees, as the directions of paths that people take to what happens after the resurrection, only one path leads to heaven. Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Any other path and all other paths do not, therefore, lead to eternal life, but to hell. The devil doesn’t care which false path anyone takes; the 359-degree path is just as good (or bad) as the 180-degree path. Both lead to the pits of burning sulfur (Revelation 21:8; Ezekiel 32:30). How many people does the devil lead to hell by bringing them along the 2-degree roadway, or the 359-degree boulevard, where everyone seems to be heading for heaven, but not through Jesus—and therefore not to heaven at all. Those misled people will cry out, “When did we see you sick or in prison?” (Matthew 25:39), and the King will reply, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
Set aside the somber note of the poet’s hatred for those who do wrong. Go back a verse, even just a half-verse, and you find his love for God’s holy word. We do not worship the Word of God. It is not omnipotent. But the gospel of Christ is truly the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). The Word of God is not omnipresent. But Christ commands us to take it everywhere. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). Therefore we love it. We admire it. We learn from God through it. And with reverent respect, we trust the holy word of God that tells us precisely who our God is, who our Savior is, and what he has done to give us the gift of everlasting life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.