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.”