Meditating all day on Your Law,
how I have come to love it!
By Your commandment, ever mine,
how much wiser You have made me than my enemies!
How much subtler than my teachers,
through my meditating on your decrees!
How much more perceptive than the elders,
as a result of my respecting Your precepts!
I refrain my feet from every evil path,
the better to observe Your word.
I do not turn aside from Your rulings,
since You Yourself teach me these.
Your promise, how sweet to my palate!
Sweeter than honey to my mouth!Your precepts endow me with perception;
I hate all deceptive paths. Psalm 119:97-104(TJB)
I chose the Jerusalem Bible translation for these verses because I love the wording it uses. It seems to have more impact than others. Key words come to me as perceptive, respecting, endow me, and how I have come to love it. Moses told the people in the wilderness, “Listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you and do them, that you may live,….Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of of the people.” Deut.4:1,6 (ESV). When we choose to meditate on the Law and the Word of God and learn to love them, we begin to understand God. Christ came to give us understanding that surpasses even that of Moses and David and the Faithful of old. Through the meditation of the Word with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we come to love God more and more. Because we reach into the precious teachings of the Gospels and the writings of the prophets, apostles and scribes of God’s word, the passion of God’s will for us becomes apparent. We are set aside to bring Honor to His greatness.
Just reading the Bible, or going to church and hearing the pastor preach a few words is not meditating on the Word. We are to dig into the scriptures with prayerful attention. We are to study with out hearts the importance of every word for our lives. It is my habit to read many translations of the bible to grasp the full meaning of certain words because our language, English, is in constant flux, changing meaning at every turn. Words written four centuries ago have no meaning today or have come to mean totally different things. In fact words written last year have lost meaning. Teaching I received years ago have been proven to be misinterpretations of the word of God’s understandings that had in the past have been misplaced because of poor understanding of the meanings of words. But by meditation and seeking true understanding, we become wiser. Wiser in fact than some of the teachers, more perceptive than the legalistic understanding of the elders, and more compassionate than the enemies of pure thought in the Word.
Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians 4:17-18, “…You must no longer walk as do the gentiles do, in the futility of their mind. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them…” Our understanding must come from God’s instruction, So many of us have been foolishly led to believe half truths and unsound teachings because we have not meditated on the Word ourselves but have relied on the understandings of others. We have turned away from the Wholeness of God’s Teachings because we have accepted the teachings of man, we have relied on the law of the land instead of the Law of God. We have followed deceptive men and called them honorable when they have defiled Christ’s Ways with Worldly passions. Because they have found comfort in the things of the flesh, they have led us to believe evil is good and righteousness is folly.
“I refrain my feet from every evil path…” Psalm 119:101. We must flee from every wrong doing, we must rely on God and His teaching. And the only way we can do that is by being in prayer and meditation on HIS WORD! The psalmist relies on the teaching of the law but he also strives to understand the meaning of the Law. He focuses on the godly way of live and run from the desires of lesser ideas and rulings. James 4:7 says, “Resist the Devil and he will flee.” (ESV). We are reminded by 1 Peter 5:8-9 “Be sober minded; be watchful. …Resist him (the devil), firm in your faith,…” (ESV). Paul tells Timothy that the cravings of the world will cause many to wander away from the Truth and he orders him to, “..flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” 1 Tim 6:11 (ESV). But how are we to know what is Good and Righteous if we rely on our own understanding? We must allow God to enter our inner thoughts through the prayerful meditations as we read and search the Word.
God told Joshua before he led the people into the Promised land, “Be strong and very courageous. Obey all the Laws Moses gave you.” (Joshua 1:7,NLT) When Joshua was old and ready to depart the world his advise to the Children of Israel was, “Therefore be very strong to keep and do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left…. but you shall cling to the LORD your God just as you have done to this day.” (Joshua 23:6,8 ESV). Of all the advice given to Job as he suffered his many losses, one line stands out as truth over all; “Surely it is God’s Spirit within people, the breath of the Almighty within them, that makes them intelligent.” (Job 32:8 NLT). When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon His disciples (see John 20:21-22), He gave them the power to forgive. But also in that act he confirmed that He was the Living Word of God. When we come to Christ and are empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are given an intelligence that surpasses the worldly understanding. As in the case of Jeremiah, “When Your words came, I devoured them. Your Word was my delight and the joy of my heart; for I was called by Your Name, Yahweh, God of Sabaoth!” (Jer. 15:16 TJB).
Moses told the people and the priests that when they appointed a King, “And it shall be with him [the Book of the Law], and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left.” (Deut. 17:19-20 ESV). Since we are all priest on the Kingdom of God through Christ, we are are also under the same command. We are to read the Bible daily, keeping all of its commands given to us by the Love of Christ Jesus as the fulfilment of the perfect Word of the Father. And so with regular reading of the Word, comes the meditation and praying to God Almighty for understanding as well. With prayer and meditation, come meekness and a hunger for more. It is as Jeremiah, a sweet hunger.
As Ezra and Nehemiah led the remnant back to Jerusalem after the exile, the dealt with many trials and frustrations. The people who occupied the land did not want them back. Many scholars believe that Nehemiah wrote this psalm to strengthen the remnant to return to the True Faith of God and to put aside all the things that they had gathered in their exile to return to the Word and the Righteousness of the Law. Today we still struggle with the righteousness of Christ’s Law of Love and Compassion. Nehemiah told his people, “This thing that you are doing is not good.” (Neh. 5:9). By instruction and daily worship, they came back to the goodness of God. Today, because we are lacking as a people of God, we have found ourselves lacking in godliness and have returned to the ways of man rather than the ways of God. We do not even know how to meditate on the Word of God and to grasp how relevant it is to our day to day living.
We are told by Paul in his letter to Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with sacred writings, which are able to make wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,…”(2 Tim. 3:15-16. ESV). Meditation of the Word is to give to us understanding in the power, mercy and awesomeness of God. Because the early followers of Christ relied on the fullness of the teachings of the Scriptures and the Grace of the Law rather than the condemnations of the priests, their numbers grew and their Faith increased. Understanding their value in our day to day living, drives us away from every sort of evil, even the evil that is disguised as good.
I want to close this with the agreement of David from Psalm 19;
The Law of the LORD is perfect.
reviving the soul:
the Testimony of the LORD is sure,
making wise the simple. (vs. 7)
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb. (vs. 10)
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. (vs. 14)
