Psalm 119:41

We now approach the fifth octave of Psalm 119 under the heading of the Hebrew letter Vau. This particular octave is different from all the others in that the thought in every verse is connected to the thought of the previous verse. The first verse of the octave, verse 41, connects back to the last verse of the previous octave by means of the word also. Verse 42 connects to verse 41 by means of the word so. The conjunction and links verse 43 to verse 42. The word so appears again in verse 44 tying it back to verse 43. Verse 45 is joined to verse 44 by the conjunction and. The word also joins the thought of verse 46 to that in verse 45. The conjunction and appears again in verse 47 linking it to verse 46. Then the word also appears again in verse 48 adding its thought to that in verse 47. Thus, all the thoughts in the octave proceed logically from one to the other forming a connected whole.

With that introduction we launch into the first verse of the octave.

Psalms 119:41 VAU. Let thy mercies come also unto me, O LORD, even thy salvation, according to thy word.

To begin, let’s define the word mercy.

Mercy - Forbearance and compassion shown by one person to another who is in his power and who has no claim to receive kindness; kind and compassionate treatment in a case where severity is merited or expected.

The psalmist judges his condition to be such that he needs multiple displays of forbearance, compassion, and kindness from his God. Hence, he prays for mercies, plural. We have innumberable sins on our account (Psalm 40:12). Each sin needs mercy. Our soul is full of troubles (Psalm 88:3). Each trouble cries for mercy. Take all this together and you find that we need mercies, untold numbers of mercies. Oh, how we need the Lord to bear with us!

Then he further defines those mercies by the expression even thy salvation.

Even - Prefixed to a subject, object, or predicate, or to the expression of a qualifying circumstance, to emphasize its identity.

That word even prefixed to the word salvation emphasizes that God’s salvation equals God’s mercies. From this verse we could define God’s salvation as His forbearance, compassion, and kindness shown toward those who deserve His severity. When God delivers us, from whatever we might need deliverance be it a sin or a trouble, He is treating us with a kindness and compassion we do not deserve. God’s salvation entails many times and circumstances when He shows us His kindness and compassion. The whole of God’s dealings with us for time and eternity is a work of salvation. There is never a moment when we do not stand in need of deliverance from something. As God’s children, whom He is willing to save, our lives are constantly supplied with “streams of mercy never ceasing,” as Robert Robinson so beautifully expressed it in that hymn Come, Thou Fount. And those streams of mercy are God’s salvation.

Now the psalmist prays for God’s mercies, even His salvation, to come unto him. You sometimes hear people in the religious world speak of our coming to salvation. But instead of us coming to salvation, it is rather a matter of salvation coming to us. You see, if God does not let His salvation come to me, I will never be able to arrive at it no matter how hard I may try. It shows respect for God’s sovereignty in the matter of salvation when I pray to Him to let His salvation come unto me. I want the deliverance that He commands, when and how He is pleased to send it, because that is the deliverance that will work best for me. Any deliverance that I get that the Lord does not send may bring me relief, but it will not be His salvation. In the long run it will do me more harm than good.

The psalmist prays for God’s mercies, even His salvation, to come unto him according to thy word. He would have no deliverance that does not agree with the word of God. He wants that salvation which God has promised in His word, a salvation that is not merely deliverance from the consequences of sin, but from sin itself. He does not want to just be delivered from the pain and inconvenience of troubles, he wants to be delivered from any sin that may have brought on those troubles or that has made those troubles worse. For when we react to troubles sinfully, we only make them worse. You should want the salvation that is according to God’s word, the salvation that makes your life as closely conformed to the holy Lord Jesus Christ as possible.

As we have already noted, by means of the word also the thought of this verse is added to the thought of the preceding verse 40. In that verse the psalmist expressed his longing after God’s precepts with a prayer for God to quicken him. If you look at everything in Psalm 119 up to verse 40, you could say that all the expressions of the psalmist flow out of his longing after God’s precepts. Therefore, the prayer of verse 41 is really attached to everything the psalmist has expressed thus far. When we consider how prone we are to let the desire for other things weaken our desire for God’s word so much so that we need continual reviving, we can appreciate that the psalmist follows up that thought with a prayer for God’s mercies! Without God’s mercies, any longing we have for God’s precepts will wither and die.

Of course, this prayer found its ultimate answer when God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world “to save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). At this time God’s mercies, even His salvation, came unto us. Speaking of the first coming of Christ, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, said:

Luke 1:68 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,
69 And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David…
72 To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant….

And this prayer will be fully and finally answered when our Lord Jesus Christ shall “appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28). At that time God’s mercies will come unto us, even His salvation. Until then, we are “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 1:21).

Psalm 119:40

We are now come to the last verse of the octave entitled Hë.

Psalms 119:40 Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness.

The psalmist calls upon the Lord to behold.

Behold – To hold by, keep, observe, regard, look.

There is something about his life that the psalmist would have God to observe, to direct His attention to. The thing that he wants the Lord to observe in him is that he has longed after His precepts.

Long - To think long, desire. To have a yearning desire; to wish earnestly. Const. for (after, occas. at, to) or to with inf.

Your life will generally tend to move along the line of your strongest desires. Charles Spurgeon wrote: “Where our longings are, there are we in the sight of God.” In the verse we consider today we find the psalmist had a yearning desire for God’s precepts. As believers, we certainly long after God’s promises, promises such as the promise of eternal life, the promise of goodness, the promise of strength, and the promise to supply all our need. But it tells something about the level of our spiritual growth when we long after God’s precepts as well as after His promises. Consider what a precept is.

Precept – An authoritative command to do some particular act; an order, mandate. A general command or injunction; an instruction, direction, or rule for action or conduct; esp. an injunction as to moral conduct.

If you long after God’s precepts, you long to do the will of God. You want Him to direct you by His commandments, to instruct you from His word. You have a yearning desire to be obedient to your Lord. Whatever else you may achieve or not achieve in your life, you want above all to serve your God by doing His will. The person who longs after God’s promises longs after the good God can do for him. But the person who longs after God’s precepts longs after the good he can do for God. And can you really lay claim to God’s promises if you refuse His precepts?

Now the psalmist had such a longing after God’s precepts that he asked the Lord to quicken him. For even though we may have a desire after God’s precepts, we have a host of other desires in us that conflict with those precepts. These other desires too often weaken our longing after God’s precepts. Therefore, we are in constant need of being quickened, that is, of being revived, stimulated, roused, and stirred up. And for such revival we ought constantly to pray. It is interesting to note in this psalm how many times the psalmist asks the Lord to quicken him.

But observe that he asks the Lord to quicken him in thy righteousness. We all want to be stirred up and energized. But in what do you want to be stirred up? The psalmist prayed to be energized in God’s righteousness, in those things that are right in the sight of God. Too many want to be stirred up and stimulated in those things that will please themselves or other men rather than in those things that please the Lord. Have you ever lamented a lack of desire to work your job, to exercise your body, or to study a school lesson? Of course you have. But a far more important question is: have you ever lamented a lack of desire to serve the Lord?

Can you honestly say that this verse describes the yearning desire of your heart to such an extent that you would have God to behold it and to be a witness to it? You might fool somebody else with regard to your longings, but you cannot fool the living God. Now if you truly have such a longing to do what God commands of you in His word, your longing will not go unfulfilled. We have the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ for this.

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Well, it is time now to say goodbye to Hë. It has been good for us to hang around his octave for awhile. But Vau is just around the corner and he has some great things to tell us. So we will part with Hë until sometime in the future when he calls to us again with his characteristic Hë!

Psalm 119:39

The verse of today’s meditation addresses a great fear that I have.

Psalms 119:39 Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good.

Let us begin with defining the word reproach.

Reproach – A source or cause of disgrace or shame (to a person, etc.); a fact, matter, feature or quality bringing disgrace or discredit upon one.

Zero in on that personal possessive pronoun my. Like the psalmist, I fear my reproach. I fear those things about me, those things that I might do that could bring disgrace and shame. This is a healthy fear for any Christian to have and especially for a Christian minister, who is to be an example to others of how Christians should live.

The enemies of our holy religion are always on the lookout for believers to make some slip that they can use against them to tarnish their profession of faith.

Psalms 41:5 Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish?
6 And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity: his heart gathereth iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad, he telleth it.

Nehemiah’s enemies hired a man to entice him to hide in the temple to save his life. In doing so Nehemiah would have sinned and given his enemies something with which to reproach him.

Nehemiah 6:10 Afterward I came unto the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut up; and he said, Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple: for they will come to slay thee; yea, in the night will they come to slay thee.
11 And I said, Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in.
12 And, lo, I perceived that God had not sent him; but that he pronounced this prophecy against me: for Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.
13 Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me.

Now it is one thing to be reproached because we are following Christ. That kind of reproach is an honour.

1 Peter 4:14 If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.
15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters.
16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

When the apostles departed from the presence of the Jewish council after having been beaten for preaching the gospel, we read:

Acts 5:41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

We also read in Hebrews 11:26 that Moses esteemed “the reproach of Christ.” But it is another thing entirely to be reproached for evil we have done. This is not the reproach of Christ. Instead it is our reproach and we should be afraid of it! Therefore, we should seek the help of God to deliver us from our sins so that we “give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully” (1Timothy 5:14). That is what David was doing in this prayer:

Psalms 39:8 Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish.

If God delivers us from sinning, He will turn away our reproach.

Now the psalmist feared his reproach for this reason: for thy judgments are good. The commandments, precepts, and statutes of God’s word are also called His judgments. We should fear our reproach because God’s word is good and as Christians we profess to be followers of it. So whenever we sin, we not only bring reproach upon ourselves for being inconsistent with our profession, but worse, we bring reproach upon the word of God and its doctrine.

1 Timothy 6:1 Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.

Romans 2:23 Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
24 For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

Let me speak my heart! I believe the Bible, preach the Bible, and try to live my life by the Bible. That Book has been very good to me. I would rather be dead than to be allowed to live in such a way that I bring reproach upon it and upon its good judgments. I had much rather be put away in a grave than to be put away in disgrace. I am so afraid of being a reproach to the cause of my Lord. I plead to God against it. Oh, God, turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good. Amen.