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.

Psalm 119:143

We continue working our way through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Tzaddai.

Psalms 119:143  Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights.

I don't think I need to define the word trouble.  Our lives are full of experiences that define that word for us.  But let’s define the noun anguish and the verb phrase take hold.

Anguish – Excruciating or oppressive bodily pain or suffering, such as the sufferer writhes under.  Severe mental suffering, excruciating or oppressive grief or distress.

Take hold – fig. To get a person or thing into its (or one’s) ‘hold’ or power; usually with of; of a feeling, a disease, etc.:  to seize and affect forcibly and more or less permanently.

In this case the trouble that took hold of the psalmist was also characterized as anguish, which means that it was a particularly severe and oppressive trouble.  I am sure you can all attest to the fact that there are troubles and then there are troubles!  There are those troubles we encounter that make other troubles look like a cake walk in comparison.  And it was this anguishing kind of trouble that had taken hold of the psalmist.

Now observe that the psalmist did not go looking for trouble and anguish.  They came after him and seized him.  And seizing him, they oppressed him.  This was not a trouble that the psalmist could free himself from.  It was forced upon him. 

Nevertheless, as oppressive as the trouble was, he could still say:  yet thy commandments are my delights.  This phrase echoes what was written in verse 92 of this psalm:

Psalms 119:92  Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction.

When commenting on this psalm we saw that delight is defined as pleasure, joy, or gratification felt in a high degree.  Therefore, the psalmist did not allow his trouble and anguish to sap him of all joy.  He kept to his Bible notwithstanding, and found something there to offset his grief and make it more supportable so that it did not destroy him.  And as we noted when commenting on verse 92, he found delights, plural, in God’s word.  There are numerous things in God’s commandments to cheer the soul if they be received in faith.  I know this from personal experience.  Just this week I am dealing with some troubles that are causing me grief, which is not anything unusual for a pastor.  But in the midst of this I studied Hebrews 2:5-13 in preparation to conduct an evening Bible study.  Just studying about the Lord Jesus Christ, His incarnation to suffer and die for our sins, and His subsequent glorification delighted my soul and gave me relief from my grief.  The trouble is still there, but so is the delight.  Therefore, I can relate to the apostle Paul who described himself “as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing” (2Corinthians 6:10).

And not the least of these delights we find in God’s word is the fact that the trouble and anguish God’s children experience in this world are the only hell they shall ever know, because Christ has made eternal satisfaction for their sins.  On the other hand, trouble and anguish will be the lot of the wicked for all eternity since this is precisely what God will render to them in the Day of Judgment.

Romans 2:5  But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;

6  Who will render to every man according to his deeds:

7  To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

8  But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,

9  Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile….

Furthermore, today’s verse reveals to us the character of the psalmist.  You can tell a lot about a person by noticing what his delights are.  Thomas Manton said it well:  “Men are good and bad, as the objects of their delights are:  they are good who delight in good things, and they are evil who delight in evil things.”

Psalm 119:142

We continue working our way through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Tzaddai.

Psalms 119:142  Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.

Since God’s righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, that means that God is always right and will never be wrong about anything either in His Being, His word, or His works. 

This everlasting righteousness of God is the righteousness that was brought in by Jesus Christ and that is given to God’s people, whom He has chosen to save from their sins.

Daniel 9:24  Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

Romans 3:21  But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22  Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference….

1 Corinthians 1:30  But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

2 Corinthians 5:21  For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

God’s salvation consists of making sinners righteous with His everlasting righteousness.  God’s children, who were so very wrong, are made right and that forever.  Since this righteousness is everlasting, their salvation is everlasting.  And so it is written:

Isaiah 51:6  Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

This is such a comfort to believers who live in dying bodies in a dying universe.  Through God’s everlasting righteousness they are given everlasting salvation or, in other words, eternal life.

Romans 5:21  That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now since God’s righteousness is everlasting, it follows that His law that He has issued is also righteousness.  If there is anything wrong with God’s law, then it has ceased to be righteous at that point.  But since God is everlastingly righteous and can never be wrong, His law is righteous as was stated in verse 138 of this octave:  “Thy testimonies that thou hast commanded are righteous.”  And if God’s law is righteous it follows that His law is true.  How can it be true if it is wrong?  In fact, not only is God’s law true, it is truth itself:  thy law is the truth.  Commenting on these words Charles Spurgeon wrote:  “Those who are obedient thereto shall find that they are walking in a way consistent with fact, while those who act contrary thereto are walking in a vain show.”

Any truth that you find anywhere else in this universe is incorporated in God’s law.  There is no truth apart from it.  In his commentary on Psalm 119 Charles Bridges wrote: 

“There may be fragments of truth elsewhere found―the scattered remnants of the fall.  There may be systems imbued with large portions of truth deduced from this law.  But here alone is it found perfect─unsullied.”

And since the Lord Jesus Christ is the truth, it follows that this law testifies of Him.

John 5:39  Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

John 5:46  For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.

And notice in the passage quoted above from Romans 3, that “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ” was “witnessed by the law and the prophets.”  Indeed, that law which is the truth testifies of Jesus Christ Who is the truth.

And so today’s verse points directly to the Lord Jesus Christ Who is the very embodiment of both the everlasting righteousness of God in which we are saved and His truth by which we are led.  One could say of Christ that He is The Living Bible. 

In conclusion, let us take note of the fact that this world will be judged by God’s everlasting righteousness and truth at the coming of the Lord. 

Psalms 96:13  Before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.

We who have been saved by Jesus Christ Who is God’s righteousness and truth have nothing to fear in that day and much to look forward to.

Psalm 119:141

Today’s verse taken from the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Tzaddai, tells us something about the condition of the believer in this world.

Psalms 119:141  I am small and despised: yet do not I forget thy precepts.

It should come as no surprise that this world that “lieth in wickedness” (1John 5:19) would reckon the godly as small and insignificant, and would despise them.  Nevertheless God has chosen His people from among the small and despised of this world.

1 Corinthians 1:26  For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

27  But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28  And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29  That no flesh should glory in his presence.

Observe that this passage says “not many” rather than “not any” wise, mighty, or noble are called.  God has had a few of His chosen among the great and noble of this world.  Consider how great and esteemed among men Solomon was whose “fame was in all nations round about” (1Kings 4:31). 

2 Chronicles 9:22  And king Solomon passed all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.

23  And all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart. 

Yet even those who attain a measure of fame from the world should, like the psalmist, remain small in their own estimation.  The great king Solomon himself commended humility and lowliness in his proverbs. 

Proverbs 11:2  When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.

Proverbs 16:19  Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

Solomon recognized that it would be foolish to let his greatness go to his head.

The apostle Paul, who is the pattern for believers (1Timothy 1:16), was small in his own eyes.  Even though he was “in nothing…behind the very chiefest apostles,” he considered himself nothing (2Corinthians 12:11).  He described himself as “the least of the apostles” and “less than the least of all saints” (1Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8).  And as for being despised, Paul was that too.

1 Corinthians 4:9  For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

10  We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.

11  Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace;

12  And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:

13  Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.

From this foregoing passage we can clearly see that Paul and his fellow apostles were small and despised by this world.  And yet these apostles, small and despised though they were, turned the world upside down and left an indelible mark on civilization (Acts 17:6). 

If you are small and despised in the eyes of the world, this places no limitation on Almighty God as to what He might do with you “for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few” (1Samuel 14:6).  The church of Philadelphia was small in that it had but “a little strength.”  And yet the Lord Jesus Christ set before them “an open door” that no man could shut (Revelation 3:8).  No man, no matter how great or powerful, could close the door of evangelistic opportunity that Christ gave to that church.

Even though the psalmist was small and despised, he did not let that discourage his faith and adherence to the word of God:  yet do not I forget thy precepts.  He did not place a great premium on what the world thought of him.  He was too occupied with what God thought of him to be worried about that.  And as he had complained in verse 139 that his enemies had forgotten God’s words, he was careful not to do the same.  I am quite taken with William Cowper’s comments on these words:

“We see by experience that our affection leaves anything from the time it goes out of our remembrance.  We cease to love when we cease to remember; but earnest love ever renews remembrance of that which is beloved.”      

If we would continue to love God’s word, we must keep it ever fixed in our memory.

Before I close, let me connect today’s verse with our Lord Jesus Christ.  Was He small and despised in this world?  These verses that speak of Him should answer that question:

Philippians 2:7  But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men….

Psalms 22:6  But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Isaiah 53:2  For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

3  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Yet small and despised though He was, He never forgot a single precept of His God.  He kept all those precepts down to the smallest of them and so fulfilled the law of God, brought in everlasting righteousness, saved His people from their sins, and is now exalted as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Let us never shun His cross though it means being small and despised in the estimation of this world.  And let us never forget His word which this world has discarded as insignificant and despicable.