God’s Word for You

Psalm 119:58-59 Seek, consider and turn

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, June 20, 2024

58 I have sought your face with all my heart;
  be gracious to me according to your promise.
59 I have considered my ways
  and have turned my steps to your testimonies.

To seek God’s face is to look to him for every good blessing he gives. “Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always” (1 Chronicles 16:11). And David says: “He will receive blessing from the Lord… such is the generation of those who seek him; who seek your face, O God of Jacob” (Psalm 24:5-6).

In ancient times, heathen people put their trust in the power and rule of Jupiter as their supreme god. Certain people who desired riches, happiness, pleasure and an easy life also worshiped lesser gods like Hercules, Mercury, or Venus; pregnant women made offerings to Diana to pray for a successful birth, and so on. Everyone made or shaped his god according to what his heart desired. “Even in the mind of the heathen, therefore,” Luther says in the Large Catechism, “to have a god means to trust and believe.” The problem for the heathen is that they or their ancestors had turned away from and forgotten about the true God, and apart from him there is no god at all in heaven, on earth, or under the earth (Revelation 5:3-5). Those who have rejected him “are without excuse,” Paul says to the Romans, who knew the worship of Jupiter and Venus because they had grown up in it. “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen” (Romans 1:19-20). And the Scripture also says: “Every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything” (Hebrews 3:4).

Verse 58 ends with a prayer: “Be gracious to me.” God’s grace is his undeserved love, which is to say, the love God has which we don’t deserve, but which he gives, anyway. We need God’s grace because “all men have sinned” (Romans 3:23) and we are all guilty and “held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). We are under the curse of the law (Galatians 3:10) and we each deserve death (Romans 6:23). It was God’s idea, God’s resolution, and God’s plan to save mankind through the death of his own son (John 3:16). For “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This grace is not a secret, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). In the most ancient past, Adam, Seth, Enoch and Noah preached salvation through the coming Messiah when the population of the world was still small enough that no one was left untouched by their preaching, although many had turned to wickedness and violence. “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). At that time, God made an example of their unbelief and did not spare the ancient world (2 Peter 2:5). He protected Noah and Noah’s seven, and by his grace he promises to do the same for us when he comes again for judgment, not with water, but with fire at the end of the world (Genesis 9:15; Isaiah 66:16).

Knowing this, the writer immediately turns inward to consider his own life. This is a word that in its plainest form means to add up or reckon; such as when a priest considers whether a sacrifice has been properly made or should be disqualified. Therefore, on account of his faith alone (“Abraham believed God”), Abraham’s faith was counted by God as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Here the word means to consider or calculate; to keep everything in mind. But rather than just adding up sins, one considers that our guilt before God is not a matter of coming up with the sum total of today’s sins and adding them to yesterday’s total, but that we are totally sinful, thoroughly corrupt, and that original sin stains us for life. There is no payment a mere man can make for his sins: “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him—the ransom for a life is costly; no payment is ever enough” (Psalm 49:7-8).

But the writer has already said, “You are my portion” (verse 57), and so he knows that Christ has covered his sins. “The Son truly suffered for us (and according to both natures, human and divine) he could suffer and be our high priest for our reconciliation with God, as it is written in 1 Corinthians 2:8, ‘They have crucified the Lord of Glory,’ and in Acts 20:28, ‘We are purchased with God’s own blood’” (Epitome of the Formula of Concord). This is what makes us turn our steps toward his testimonies, since God’s testimonies are not only a declaration of the law which convicts and condemns, but also the gospel that rescues, soothes, comforts, and saves. This is what quiets the restless spirit of mankind.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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