God’s Word for You
Psalm 119:134-136 The oppression of man
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, November 30, 2024
134 Redeem me from the oppression of man
so that I may keep your precepts.
Usually the verb “redeem” (padah) means to pay a price, or to rescue from violence and death. Here the poet asks God to spare us from the oppression of unbelievers that would drag us down to hell.
This verse combines the desire to follow Christ with such oppression of the sinful world. Every believer experiences those times when the world around us urges us and presses us not only to sin but violates our ears with bold and wicked statements of unbelief. The mud of the world becomes a cesspool, a sewer of unchristian opinions that makes a mockery of spirituality and that drags weak believers down into confusion and misunderstanding. They are in danger of forgetting their Savior because they are pummeled by the lies and the false doctrine that constantly swirls around them.
We pray that when our people are confused and oppressed in this way, that they will be turned by reading the word of God and by our preaching it, to see that God sometimes sends or permits calamities so that his people will be afflicted and be driven to Christ. “The law served as our childhood chaperone until Christ came, so that we would be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24), “so that those evils which oppress us force us to go to God” (Gerhard).
135 Make your face shine upon your servant,
and teach me your statutes.
Thinking of God’s many blessings, we are naturally led to consider the Aaronic blessing itself, Numbers 6:25. The first part of the verse matches the language of the blessing, but asking in this case that it be delivered to the prophet. It is always striking to read the passage in Numbers 6 in Hebrew, where we notice especially that all of the ways that the blessing says “you” (“The Lord bless you and keep you,” etc.) are in the singular. Aaron was commanded to lift up his hands and bless two or three million people all at once with this blessing, but the words speak to each individual hearing the blessing. When we hear it at the close of worship, we can remember that the Lord is blessing me, myself, with these words. His face shines upon me in particular today!
When we are told that God’s face shines upon us, we are brightened by God’s approval, his compassion, his love, and all his promises. God blesses us in countless ways with his good attention, just as we are blessed in so many ways when we are lit by the sun, the moon, the stars, or by the presence of good friends and Christian companions. We are blessed by God’s holy purpose, his will, which considered us, conceived of us in his mind in eternity, and brought about the whole creation so that we—so that you, personally—would not only exist, but when you would live, where, with whom, and how you would be offered the gospel so that you would be able to come to faith, nestled in the lap of the holy Christian church.
The prayer to be taught God’s statutes is the request to be led to know God’s word in its eternal quality (statutes are permanent commands, see 119:5). We are blessed to understand, for example, just how the word of God has a positive effect on our eternal souls, which is lost to so many people in the world. Living as we do as the flock of Christ, we are prone to forget just how blessed we are to be part of that flock, to be taught the word of God, the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the benefits of confession and absolution, of baptism, and of the Lord’s Supper. Oh, the glory of being constantly in the kitchen and living room of our God! How the recluse, the homeless, the wandering, and the straying yearn to be there only for a moment, and yet we are constantly there where the Living God dwells, blesses, teaches, loves and protects us. For “we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Psalm 95:7).
136 My eyes shed streams of tears,
because people do not keep your laws.
This stanza comes to a close with a sad look back at two sources of grief. First, there are so many people who do not keep God’s word. The term here is “laws,” but it is used in the broader sense of all of the word of God, for people ignore the gospel as well as the law. For the prophet, this is a spiritual crisis. What is to be done about these people?! They reject God’s word, and therefore they reject the blessings that could be theirs. Most especially, they reject the salvation and the place in heaven that could be theirs. Oh, the stubbornness of man’s heart that is deceived into turning away from Jesus and is dragged down into the pit to suffer forever with the Great Liar.
Second, the prophet weeps because the word is not kept, and this is a sin in itself. We do not worship the word of God, but it is God’s communication with us, his revealed message and will. Without it, we would not know who he is, what his name is, or that he sent his Son to rescue us from our sins. But we have his deliverance. “You, O Lord, have delivered my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling” (Psalm 116:8). We grieve on account of God’s word being broken, and on account of the many millions who will meet their final punishment because they have rejected their Savior, but we also bow before God’s holy justice, and we thank him forever that his grace has rescued us from the very same destiny. How gracious is our God that he has saved us like Noah and his family, like Lot and his daughters, from the destruction we deserve! His mercy endures forever.
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.