God’s Word for You

Psalm 119:150-152 God’s word is sufficient

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 30, 2024

150 Those who pursue wicked plans are near,
  but they are far from your law.
151 Yet you are near, O LORD,
  and all your commandments are true.

There is a neat contrast in verse 150: the wicked are near to me but far from your law. Then in verse 151, the one who is also near is the Lord; the poet hadn’t forgotten that, even when the wicked schemers seemed to be gaining the upper hand.

There are so many scenes that illustrate these verses; it is a practical and useful exercise to list a few so that we see that others have gone through the same troubles we go through, and to notice the ways that the Lord helped them, and in many cases how the Lord used their troubles to further the work of his kingdom.

First, Cain with his wicked scheme drew near to Abel. Those boys were undoubtedly told about the paradise of Eden by their parents many times. Cain learned nothing from those sermons and had nothing but jealousy for his brother’s sacrifices. But when he murdered his brother, Abel became the first human soul to step through the gates of heaven and to live there in the bliss of the eternal Paradise forever (Genesis 4:1-8). Cain was far from the law, but the Lord was near to Abel.

When Pharaoh Shishak attacked Judah, Solomon’s son Rehoboam humbled himself in repentance, and the Lord’s anger stopped burning against him, and “there was some good in Judah” (2 Chronicles 12:12). Rehoboam had wandered far from the law, but the Lord used his fear of Shishak to draw him close once again.

When the prophet Elijah was opposed by eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mount Carmel, he prayed to the Lord and his sacrifice was accepted by God while none of theirs were accepted by anyone. “There was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:29). But when Elijah’s sacrifice was consumed by holy fire from heaven, the people responded, “The LORD—he is God! The LORD—he is God!” and they put the false prophets to death (1 Kings 18:39-40). The false prophets were far from the law and far from the Lord, but the Lord was never far from Elijah.

When the prophet Jeremiah was preaching the word of God in the days of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, he was arrested by wicked men and lowered into a huge empty cistern that they used as a prison. But one faithful man (a Cushite) appealed to the king and was given permission to save the prophet, who was pulled up to safety (Jeremiah 38:1-13). Jeremiah was constantly surrounded by men plotting wicked schemes who were far from the Lord and his law, but the Lord was always near to Jeremiah.

When Jesus was surrounded by Roman soldiers and the guards of the high priest in Gethsemane, he allowed himself to be arrested to stand trial for preaching the gospel and performing miracles as the Son of God. The Jews and the Romans sentenced him to death and crucified him (Luke 24:20), but the Lord God used this act, surely the wickedest crime in history, to atone for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2). Wicked men were near, but the Lord was never far except for that one moment, the only moment, when Christ called out, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), which he endured for our sakes.

We shouldn’t move on until we’ve pondered what the poet means when he says, “All your commandments are true.” The Latin Vulgate translation has “All your ways (viae tuae) are true,” and Luther’s comments about the Psalm follow along with those words. But mitsvoth are “commandments,” and these are the commands and commandments of God. Knowing the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer are the very basics of Christianity, along with understanding Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. “It is the duty of every head of a household to examine his children and servants at least once a week and ascertain what they have learned of it, and if they do not know it, to keep them faithful at it” (Large Catechism).

Paul explained: “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). The truth of the commandments, and indeed, the truth of the whole word of God, cannot be disputed. Therefore we trust in the word of God and love it. Through it, our Lord God crushes us with the law when we sin, and calls us back to faith with the gospel.

152 Long ago I learned from your testimonies
  that you established them to last forever.

Here the last of the qoph-words in our stanza is qedem, used here as an adverb, “anciently.” Since we don’t talk that way, we have to translate with a phrase like “long ago,” but it relates to what happened in the distant past. The poet is not new to the idea of God’s word and testimonies lasting forever. He has known this a long time; his whole life.

Just as God founded the earth and everything in it (Psalm 89:11), so also he has established his holy word. Of course, our poet is writing from the curious temporal point of view of being in the middle of the composition of the Scriptures. Assuming (and this is a perfectly safe assumption) that he lived sometime around the lifetime of King David (who died in about 970 BC) or perhaps as late as some of the writing prophets like Isaiah or Micah (who may have died in the 690s BC), this gives a span of about three hundred years for the writing of this Psalm, five or six centuries after Moses, and seven or eight centuries before the New Testament. But everything our poet knew of the word of God was as firm and solid as the four Gospels, and carried the same saving message.

The perfection of Scripture is a necessity based on God’s desire to instruct us about faith and behavior, and also about eternal salvation. Some of these things are concluded from Scripture and some of these things are expressly written in it. And, to continue the point made above, the perfection of Scripture is determined not by the number of books but by the sufficiency of teachings (dogmas) that one must know for salvation. Professor Gerhard explains: “At any time of the Church, that which was written presented a perfect canon because divine revelation was set forth in those books perfectly with respect to that time. Thus when only the books of Moses were extant, Scripture was perfect, namely, with respect to the time of the Church when further revelations did not yet exist, revelations that God would later want to be put into writing. Concerning this, we can quote the apostolic statement of Philippians 3:15: ‘If in anything you are otherwise-minded, God will reveal that also to you’” (On Holy Scripture §367).

The Bible has “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), and it is sufficient to “make us wise for salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15). The Bible educates us, trains us, chastises us, and teaches us everything about God’s plan of salvation that we need to know. There are no deficiencies in the Bible that need to be filled in by things such as oral traditions, pronouncements of spiritual leaders, new revelations, developments of doctrines, or apocryphal additions. The Bible is every bit as sufficient today as it was for Moses, for David, for Isaiah, and for Paul. The perfect and perfectly true Scriptures are sufficient to proclaim to us our Savior, his saving work, and eternal life in heaven.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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