❖ Video
❖ Audio (Message)
ז (Zayin) Your promise preserves my life
Series: Finding the Gospel in Psalm 119ーA Hymn to the Law 7/22
Psalm 119:49-56
Andy Nagahara
The seventh in the series of Psalm 119, called Hymn to the Law, is the seventh paragraph in the entire series. It is verses 49 through 56, where the seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Zayin, is placed at the beginning of each line. The name of the letter is the same as the Hebrew word for weapon (זין zayin).
1. My comfort in my suffering (49, 50, 52)
49 Remember your word to your servant,
for you have given me hope.
50 My comfort in my suffering is this:
Your promise preserves my life.
52 I remember your ancient laws, O LORD,
and I find comfort in them.
Can you imagine what Jesus would say to you if He were right in front of you and saw your current situation? We cannot see Jesus speaking to us, nor can we hear him, but we know that he speaks to our hearts.
But we are prone to be closed-minded in the midst of great suffering. The Psalmist also seems to feel that God has forgotten the words that he speaks to him. So the psalmist calls out desperately to God, ” Why do you not speak to me after you told me to listen to your words?” Psalmist knew that God’s word makes people alive. He was hungry for God’s word.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil, he repelled the devil’s temptation by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Of course, bread is needed to sustain life. However, just because the body is well nourished does not mean that a person is fully alive. Especially in the midst of suffering, even if food, clothing, and shelter are sufficient, our souls will be weakened.
Since the Israelites have always been surrounded by powerful nations, they have experienced many hardships as an ethnic group. However, because they have encountered God’s guidance and mercy through those experiences, they have maintained their faith that God will never forsake His people but will continue to guide them.
In my own life of nearly 70 years, I often think that I could not have come this far without God’s help. I believe that the reason it has become easier for me to move forward when a new trial stands before me, is because I have accumulated experiences of grace, by remembering how I was able to get up and move forward from such a place before. You, too, can receive from God the comfort that the psalmist, and many Christians, have received. And it depends on your willingness to listen and hear and obey.
Verses 51 and 53 describe a way of life that is the opposite of that. Let us read.
2. Two contrasting ways of life (51, 53)
51 The arrogant mock me without restraint,
but I do not turn from your law.
53 Indignation grips me because of the wicked,
who have forsaken your law.
There are many different kinds of evil that people described here as the arrogant or wicked would do. The visible actions of such people are the visible result of the thoughts and will of their hearts. But that is not the essence of the problem. As I have told you several times, God’s interest is not in human acts, although many Christians misunderstand this. Instead, God’s interest is in the direction of the person’s heart.
At the time when God came as one person, “Jesus,” the society of Israel misunderstood this and focused on actions rather than on heart, and judged people’s behavior as sinful, not sinful, or not considered sinful if they acted in a certain way. Jesus criticized such attitudes of religious leaders and denounced them as legalism.
When I made the decision to follow Jesus, many churches taught that drinking and smoking were sins to be avoided as a Christian. I thought to myself, ” But Jesus is the one who turned water into wine. When it comes to cigarettes, they did not exist in Jesus’ time, so there is no reason for those habits to be sins. Today, there are far fewer churches that teach such things, but instead, there is a growing voice in some churches that says that homosexuality, transgenderism (the sexuality of the body and mind not matching), etc., are sins, which again is a concept that did not exist in the time when the Bible was written. I mentioned that sin is an orientation of the heart, but gender identity and sexual orientation are “innate feelings,” not a will or orientation of the heart to turn away from God, and therefore they cannot be sins.
The judgment of right and wrong of a deed or a person’s way of being is cannot be universal because it is always influenced by the culture of the time and region. What the Bible calls sin is not such a thing, but the universal “nature that all of us have in common in our desire to turn our backs on God.
We can choose whether to allow our inner self-centered, self-righteous nature to manifest itself in our actions and threaten people and society, or to have such a nature and still show God’s glory in our relationships. In other words, it is the way of listening to and obeying God’s word or the way of living according to our own desires without taking God’s word to heart.
Now let me conclude by reading the rest of the section and telling you how you can keep that direction of your heart right.
3. “Your decrees are my song” (54-56)
54 Your decrees are the theme of my song
wherever I lodge.
55 In the night I remember your name, O LORD,
and I will keep your law.
56 This has been my practice:
I obey your precepts.
I know I am always mentioning the importance of worship these days, but please understand that it is not my intention, but God’s intention that we should hear it, because this psalm is repeating itself.
After all, the key to maintaining the correct direction of our hearts is to ” make worship more important than all other things.
The Bible often describes our life on earth as a “journey. In other words, it is a “temporary lodging. Even if you own a fine residence, it is a temporary lodging. Those of you who have experienced temporary housing for whatever reason may well know how uncomfortable and uneasy it can be.
The fact that our life here on earth is like that. And that was something that Jesus himself also felt. These words of Jesus are recorded. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” The frustration and emptiness we feel in our earthly walk is not an illusion. It is a reasonable sense toward the situation in which we find ourselves. The important thing is not to deceive ourselves by thinking or doing something else about it. Working, learning, and devoting ourselves to our hobbies will not eliminate that frustration and emptiness. Despite this, however, God has made it possible for us to move forward.
Have you ever walked along a lonely night road with singing? God’s laws and admonitions touch our hearts and become a song that overflows from our mouths. Please be sure to set your hearts firmly in the right direction this morning through the worship and praise that we are about to offer.
(Prayer) Lord, please speak to each of our hearts this morning. Also, please speak to us in our walk during this week. Prepare our hearts that we may recognize your call to us. Give us the strength so that we may remember that our walk on earth is a journey that we are going on with You, and that we may walk through it without letting our hearts be lost in the fleeting and the vain.
Give healing to those who seek it and comfort to those who need it. Please fill our hearts with your love and make it a song we will sing to you. We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Summary
It is because Jesus is constantly speaking to our hearts that we are able to endure even in the midst of hardships and carry on in life without losing hope. Whether we listen to his voice or ignore it, our life will go in the opposite direction. If we keep on listening to God’s voice and approaching in that direction, God’s voice dwells in our hearts and becomes a song that comes out of our mouths. That is our worship.
For Discussion
- Share your experience of receiving comfort from God in the midst of hardships.
- Which worship song is closest to the feelings you want to convey to God now?