Psalm 119:145

We arrive at the beginning of the next octave of Psalm 119 bearing the title of the Hebrew letter Koph.  The pronunciation guide of my Bible shows the letter o being pronounced like the o in loaf or coat.  I like to invent witticisms with the sound of these Hebrew letters, but I confess I am at a loss to think of one for koph.  Maybe something will come along that requires a name and we can name it koph.  Then I can make a koph joke.  Until then, I will just have to leave the koph in the closet.  Now let’s move on to today’s meditation.

Psalms 119:145  ¶KOPH. I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep thy statutes.

If you look out over this entire octave, the psalmist’s prayer life emerges as a theme.  In fact, he makes specific reference to it in four of the eight verses.  In today’s verse and the two that follow, the psalmist describes his prayers as crying to God. 

Cry – To entreat, beg, beseech, implore, in a loud and emoved voice.

In reading that the psalmist cried to God, one picks up on a sense of fervency and urgency in the psalmist’s prayers.  He is earnestly pleading with His God.  This can also be seen in the expression O LORD since the word O conveys emotion. If you ever feel like your prayers aren’t being heard, you might try crying to God.  Perhaps the Lord is waiting to see just how serious you are about what you are asking for.  And God does hear the cries of His children.

Psalms 6:8  …the LORD hath heard the voice of my weeping.

Psalms 106:44  Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry….

The psalmist’s prayers were not rote utterances reeled off without thought or emotion.  His whole heart accompanied his prayers.  He did not approach God with a divided heart.  He was not uttering words of prayer whilst his mind was thinking of something else.  His entire mind and affections were fixed upon His God as he called upon His name.  Heartless prayers are worthless.  Thomas Brooks said:  “God hears no more than the heart speaks.”

Charles Spurgeon wrote:  “It is to be feared that many never cried to God with their whole heart in all their lives.”  That right there would explain why so many do not take their religion as seriously as they should.  It does not matter to them whether the church they go to is preaching and practicing the truth or not.  Truth be told, their whole religious profession is like their prayer life:  it is halfhearted. 

The only request the psalmist makes in this verse is the request to be heard:  hear me, O LORD.  That the Lord would even hear us when we pray is itself an inestimable blessing.  For apart from His pardon of us through Jesus Christ our Lord, God will not even hear our prayers, much less answer them.

Isaiah 59:1  Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

2  But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

But if we gain God’s ear to hear us, then we can be assured He will answer us.

1 John 5:14  And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:

15  And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

So to simply ask God to hear you is itself an important prayer.  It keeps the lines of communication open for whatever you might need to ask.

And then the psalmist adds this to his prayer:  I will keep thy statutes.  Prayer for this psalmist was not simply asking the Lord to give him things or do things for him.  He also used prayer to express to God what he intended to do.  Whatever else he might do, one thing he was determined to do:  he would keep God’s statutes.  He would keep to the right Bible, the Bible with God’s statutes.  He would not trade God’s statutes off for an imitation.  He would also obey those statutes.  He was willing to let everything else go to keep them.  He wanted the Lord to hear him.  Therefore, he made sure he also heard the Lord.  If we don’t hear the Lord speaking to us in His statutes, then neither will the Lord hear us speaking to Him in our prayers.

Proverbs 28:9  He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.

At the end of the day, if you have had the ear of Almighty God to hear you when you call upon Him and if you have lived by His statutes, you have had a good day.  It is with this precise thought in mind that I bid to you my readers a “good day.”    

Psalm 119:144

Today we come to the last verse of the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Tzaddai.  In my Bible this verse stands at the head of the right column of the left page.  From here I can see that I have two more columns to work through to arrive at the end of this psalm.  So here we go!

Psalms 119:144  The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.

Recall that we pointed out in the beginning of this octave that it stresses the righteousness of God’s word, describing it as upright, righteous, very faithful, pure, and true.  In this last verse the emphasis of this octave is summed up in this statement:  the righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting.  Righteousness is the quality of being right.  Since God’s word is everlastingly righteous, that means it is always right and never wrong.  The reason for this can be deduced from this octave in which we are told that God is righteous (verse 137) and that His righteousness is everlasting (verse 142).  Therefore, it follows that the word of the everlastingly righteous God must itself be everlastingly righteous.  God’s word is like Himself in that it never changes with the times.  Whatever testimony God has given in His word is righteous and will remain so.  You can always rely on what God says.  He will not change His story.

And being convinced that the testimonies of his Bible were always right, the psalmist prayed:  give me understanding.  It stands to reason that the greatest understanding anyone can ever have is the understanding of God’s everlastingly righteous word.  Whatever thing you understand that is always right ─ and God’s word is always right ─ that is one thing about which you will never be wrong.

Now should God answer the prayer of the psalmist for understanding, this would be the result:  and I shall live.  To understand God’s righteous testimonies is to live in the fullest sense of the word.  This is so much the case that understanding is referred to as life itself.

Proverbs 3:13  Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding….

16  Length of days is in her right hand….

18  She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

Proverbs 4:13  Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life.

But understanding God’s testimonies involves more than just comprehending them intellectually.  It also involves obeying them!  You do not truly understand God’s testimonies if you do not believe and obey them.  Note the words that I have italicized in the following passage, which prove this point:

Deuteronomy 4:5  Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.

6  Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

To lack this understanding of God’s word is court death and destruction.

Proverbs 21:16  The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.

Isaiah 5:13  Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

Isaiah 27:11  …for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.

Hosea 4:6  My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

As we look about us in our time we see so much ignorance of even the most basic facts of God’s testimonies.  And along with this lack of understanding we see widespread moral decadence, the destruction of the family, the increase of violent crime, the erosion of the economy, and the collapse of our culture.  Here is all the more reason to seek understanding for ourselves that we might live in the midst of the destruction that surrounds us.  This is precisely the message of Psalm 91 which I urge you now to read.  The psalm describes one who has the understanding of God’s testimonies and who lives in spite of the fact that all around him is collapsing thus demonstrating the answer to the prayer:  give me understanding, and I shall live.

So in closing our meditations on this octave of Psalm 119, I urge you to pick up your Bible, beg God for understanding of its pages, read it, study it, submit to its teaching, and you shall live.  There is no more profitable exercise than what I have just recommended.  It is the single best thing you can do for your life and health.

1 Timothy 4:8  For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

9  This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.