God’s Word for You

Psalm 119:94-96 The sanctified life

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, October 5, 2024

94 I am yours. Save me!
  I have sought your precepts.

Here the writer pleads for God’s help from the wicked who lie in wait, with every intention of killing him. When he says, “Save me! I have sought your precepts,” he does mean that only seeking makes him worthy of salvation, since he knows full well that it is faith in the Savior that brings rescue, forgiveness, resurrection, and eternal life: “I trust in your word” (Psalm 119:42). And while he also says, “I have sought your face with all my heart,” he adds without pausing: “Be gracious to me according to your promise” (119:58). Trust in the promises of God, that is, the Gospel, is what faith is. And the grace of God is what holds out such promises to all who love him. “Save me!” is something our poet says near the beginning, middle, and end of the Psalm: 119:4, 94, and 146. While help in this life is on his mind, his heart desires the salvation that means eternity at God’s side.

95 The wicked are waiting for me to kill me,
  but I will ponder your testimonies.

Verse 95 is the very core of sanctified living. Even though the wicked are waiting, planning, plotting to kill the righteous man, the righteous man is busy pondering God’s word. How much better it is to study the way of salvation from sin than worry about those who terrorize, bully, and plot murder. Remember Ezra: “The gracious hand of his God was on him, for Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel” (Ezra 7:9-10). And Solomon says, “I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 1:13).

To truly ponder God’s word, one must first of all read what the word says in its context. Luther gives two basic rules for understanding a passage of Scripture: “First, if some passage is obscure I consider whether it treats of grace or of law, whether wrath or the forgiveness of sin [is contained in it], and with which of these it agrees better. By this procedure I have often understood the most obscure passages. Either the law or the gospel has made them meaningful, for God divides his teaching into law and gospel.”

To rightly divide law from gospel is a labor that must not be done lightly. Does this verse show me my sins, or my Savior? Is it a guide for Christian living? Such a passage is still the law in its third use. But does it display God’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life? This is the gospel.

Luther goes on: “The second rule is that if the meaning is ambiguous I ask those who have a better knowledge of the language than I have whether the Hebrew words can bear this or that sense which seems to me to be especially fitting. And that is most fitting which is closest to the argument of the book. [Many men] go astray so often in the Scriptures because they do not know the true contents of the books. But if one knows the contents, that sense ought to be chosen which is nearest to them.” Therefore knowing the content or context of a book will help to show me whether this is about the life of Abraham, or Joshua, or David, or Paul. Or is it the poetry of Solomon that we are reading? One must be especially careful with the prattling words of the friends of Job, which record their sinful and useless arguments but do not directly point the way of salvation, although one may carefully put them to good use, such as with the earthy wisdom of Eliphaz: “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7), or the appeal to tradition that Bildad makes: “Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned” (Job 8:8).

When I read from a long passage in the wisdom books like Job and Proverbs I find myself needing to be refreshed and reminded of the gospel, and a little reading of the New Testament is always welcome. Even though I know deep down in my heart that I am the least of all God’s people, “grace was given to me” in Jesus (Ephesians 3:8). All of this is what it means to ponder God’s word and testimonies.

96 I see a limit to all perfection;
  but your commandment has no limits.

Verse 96 is a little like something from Ecclesiastes, that even perfection has a limit. Of course he does not mean God’s perfection. But the most perfect and righteous of men has his faults. “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Even though my wife and I raised four fine sons who love their Savior and who live lives of faith, I still pray about their faith every night and ask God to forgive their sins and mine and to look at our faith as righteousness, because this, I believe, is the first duty of a father. “Fathers,” John says, “you have known him who is from the beginning” (1 John 2:14). And Paul also writes: “Fathers, bring your children up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). And under the Fourth Commandment, the Almighty God commands children to honor their parents, and what is a more honorable thing for a parent to do than to agonize over the spiritual welfare of his children? If I am faithful to the word of God, and if I make that my life’s work (whatever my career might be), then I might be honorable in their eyes, and I will have helped them to keep such a strict and hard command. I will have helped them, in some way, to carry their crosses of being the sons of such a sinful man. The commandment (of God, our verse says), has no limits. Therefore I will not set any boundary on how far I will consider or carry out any verse or passage of the Holy Scriptures.

For even though, as Othello says, my “judgment maim’d and more imperfect… could err,” I will nevertheless look to the Savior who forgives my countless imperfections, my sin, and my error. And I will learn to be more gentle even with myself, and rely on Christ. For Solomon also says that blowing the nose too hard produces blood (Proverbs 30:33), and grinding a conscience too severely when that conscience is ready to repent and to love Christ will only grind that conscience into despair. Love one another; love your children, and do not forget to love your own soul, and to pray for the Lord to keep and preserve you always. For this, too, is part of the sanctified Christian life.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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