Psalm 119 And Its Teaching

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. “Psalms 119:97.

In Holy Scriptures, there is one portion wholly devoted to teaching us the place which God’s Word ought to have in our esteem, and the way we can secure its blessing. It is the longest chapter in the Bible, and, with hardly an exception, in every one of its 176 verses, we have, under different names, mention made of the Word. Anyone who really wants to know how to study his Bible according to God's will, ought to make a careful study of this Psalm.

There ought to come a time in his life when he resolves to study its teaching and carry it out into practice. How can we wonder that our Bible study does not bring more spiritual profit and strength if we neglect the Divine Directory it offers us for that study? It is possible you have never read it once through as a whole. If you don’t have time, find time, some free Sabbath hour — or why not some free week, day, or hour? — In which you read it through and try to take in its chief thought, or at least to catch its spirit.

If you find it difficult to do this by reading it once, read it more than once. This will make you feel the need of giving it more careful thought. The following hints may help you in your study: 1st. Note all the different names under which God's Word is spoken of.

2nd. Note all the different verbs expressing what we ought to feel and do in regard to the Word. Let this lead you to consider carefully what the place is that God's word claims in your heart and life, and how every faculty of your being—desire, love, joy, trust, obedience, action is called out by it.

3rd. Count and note how many times the writer speaks in the past tense of his having kept, observed, stuck to, and delighted in God's testimonies. How many times does he express in the present tense how he rejoices in, loves, and esteems God's law? And then how, in the future tense, he promises and vows to observe God's precepts to the end. Put all these together and see how more than a hundred times he presents his soul before God as one who honors and keeps His law. Study this especially as these expressions are connected with his prayers to God until you have a clear image of the righteous man whose fervent, effectual prayer avails much.

4th. Study then the prayers themselves and note down the different requests he makes with regard to the Word, whether for the teaching to understand and the power to observe it, or for the blessing promised in the Word, and to be found in doing it.

Note especially prayers like “Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes” and "Give me understanding." Also, those where the plea is "according to your Word.''

5th. Count the verses in which there is an allusion to affliction, whether from his own state or from his enemies or the sins of the wicked or God delaying "to help him "; and learn how it is in the time of trouble that we need God's Word specially, and that this alone can bring comfort to us.

6th. Then comes one of the most important things. Mark how often the little pronoun you, and yours, occur, and how often it is understood in every petition, "Teach me," “Quicken me," and you will see how the whole psalm is a prayer spoken to God. All the Psalmist has to say about the Word of God, whether with regard to his own attachment to it, or his need for God's teaching and quickening, is spoken upwards into the face of God. He believes that it is pleasing to God and good for his own soul, to connect his meditation and thoughts on the Word, as continually and as closely as possible, by prayer, with the living God Himself. Every thought of God's Word, instead of drawing him off from God, leads him to fellowship with God.

The word of God becomes to him the rich and inexhaustible material for holding communion with the God whose it is and to whom it is meant to lead. As we gradually get an insight into these truths we shall get new meaning from the single verses.

And when, from time to time, we take a whole paragraph with its eight verses, we shall find how they help to lift us up, with and through the word, into God’s presence, and into that life of obedience and joy which says, "I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules." “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.”

Let us seek by the grace of the Holy Spirit to have the devotional life, which this Psalm reveals, wrought into our morning watch. Let God's Word every day, and before everything else, lead us To God. Let every blessing in it be a matter of prayer, very specially our need for Divine teaching. Let our intense attachment to it be our child- like plea and confidence that the Father will help us. Let our prayers be followed by the vow that as God quickens and blesses us, we shall run the way of His commandments, and let all that God's word brings ourselves to make us the more earnest in longing to carry that Word to others, whether for the awakening or the strengthening of the life of God in the soul.