❖ Video
❖ Audio (Message)
י (Yodh) The History of The Kingdom of God
Series: Finding the Gospel in Psalm 119ーA Hymn to the Law 10/22
Psalm 119:73-80
Andy Nagahara
The tenth in the series of Psalm 119, called Hymn to the Law, is the tenth paragraph in the entire series. It is verses 73 through 80, where the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Yodh, is placed at the beginning of each line. This character is thought to derive from a hieroglyphic script that depicted a hand (Hebrew: יד yad).
As we read today’s section two verses at a time, we can see the history of God’s relationship with us, who are His creatures.
Starting next Sunday, we will take a break from the Psalm series and the Gospel of John series in order to begin a series of four messages that will look forward to Advent and Christmas, which commemorates God’s coming to the world as Jesus.
And I believe we were given a good text today to understand the whole history of our relationship with God, which is centered on the events of Christmas just prior to that time.
There are four things that are important to us in our relationship with God and ourselves. Now let’s look at the first matter in the first two verses, 73 and 74.
1. The Creation (73-74)
73 Your hands made me and formed me;
give me understanding to learn your commands.
74 May those who fear you rejoice when they see me,
for I have put my hope in your word.
The first thing we must have in our relationship with God and ourselves is creation. God created the world from nothing. At the end of the creation process, God created human beings in His own image and likeness. It is important to know that we are one of those human beings.
To believe in God means to have a view of ourselves that we are God’s creatures, rather than just accidental beings generated by no one’s will. The idea that there is no God who created the world can only bring confusion to the world in the end. Because it is nothing more than a clash of self-centered ideas. To acknowledge God’s creation is to acknowledge His sovereignty. And the psalmist teaches that the only way to follow that sovereignty is to learn God’s will.
Verse 74 tells us that there are those who rejoice to see the psalmist. It is people who fear God. The reason for this is that the psalmist is “waiting for God’s word.It is important to acknowledge “creation.” However, it is clear from these words that it is only a starting point. God’s word is something we wait for, hope for, and continue to receive. It can be received through the Bible, and through people’s words. One of the reasons for the existence of the church is to continue to introduce God’s word to society.
2. Our disobedience (75-76)
The second matter is the problem that arose immediately after creation between God and us human beings, due to the nature of humans who were created as the last creatures. Let’s read verse 75 and 76.
75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous,
and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
76 May your unfailing love be my comfort,
according to your promise to your servant.
The psalmist’s absolute trust in God actually seems to have been gained through his painful experiences. He never forgets the bitterness he felt when he walked away from God’s righteousness and truth.
It was the personal feeling of the psalmist as well as the way the nation has walked. Furthermore, it comes from the nature of all people, regardless of ethnicity. The Bible calls it sin. Today, sin is usually referred to as breaking a promise between human beings, or violating the law, but that is not the essence of the word. Sin is turning our backs on God and going our own way. It has nothing to do with whether or not we are breaking the law.
God’s will is compassionate and comforting, just as the psalmist says here. But from the beginning, mankind has had a nature to follow its own desires rather than follow the will of God who created them.
You may be familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. This is well illustrated by the fact that they could not resist the serpent’s suggestion that they could become “wise like God” by eating the fruit of the tree in the center of the Garden of Eden, which God had forbidden them to eat. If we become too eager to get rich and gain, we will eventually be willing to steal and rob to do so. Criminal acts by individuals are a manifestation of this, but even between countries, this society still has those in power who justify the taking of another country’s land and resources. In this world, people who act like God are even depriving many of those same creatures of their right to live. This is also rebellion against God.
3. Jesus Christ (77-78)
The third matter is that God Himself intervened in a remarkable way to save us from this situation. The psalmist sings about it as a wish, because it had not yet happened in his time. Let’s read verses 77 and 78.
77 Let your compassion come to me that I may live,
for your law is my delight.
78 May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause;
but I will meditate on your precepts.
The society we see is not something that began recently, but is essentially the same human society that has remained unchanged since the beginning. In order to save us from that suffering, God himself entered the world as the one person, Jesus. That is the event of Christmas. When Jesus saw the world so harsh for the weak and the little, he took a very different approach from previous spiritual leaders in order to give such people hope for life and the power to change the world.
Jesus is a revolutionary in the sense that he seeks to fundamentally change that society. However, Jesus was not the revolutionary messiah that the Israelites of his day had hoped for. One of the reasons the masses in Jerusalem were so enthusiastic in favor of the crucifixion of Jesus was also their disappointment with it.
But what Jesus was trying to revolutionize was not society but the heart of each individual. It was Jesus’ mission to reunite the hearts of each person who had turned their backs on God and selfishly lived their lives to God. Brutal authorities and criminals are not the only ones who live with their backs against God’s will. As I told you earlier, everyone, without exception, has lived their lives with their backs against God. It is clear from how Israel walked that being zealous in religious matters does not mean that they were walking with God. Jesus speaks to each soul, heals, comforts, and shows them the direction to walk as He walks with them.
4. The future of the Kingdom of God (79-80)
It has been about 2000 years since Jesus came to this world. This period of time seems like a very long time from the perspective of human beings whose life span is less than 100 years.
Yet, what in the world has changed since Jesus came? It doesn’t seem as if relationships between people, between races, or between nations have improved as much as we would expect them to have. How should we think about it?
79 May those who fear you turn to me,
those who understand your statutes.
80 May my heart be blameless toward your decrees,
that I may not be put to shame.
This 2000 years, which seems like a very long passage of time to us, is actually a very short period of time if we look at the entirety of human history. It took much longer than that even from the beginning of God’s creation of the world to the birth of human beings. Perhaps from God’s perspective, the era begun by Jesus has only just started.
Even to this day, there are many people in this world who do not know how to walk by following Jesus. Also, churches that were started by disciples who were directly taught by Jesus have experienced major changes every few hundred years. People who were walking with God, but who had somehow strayed from God’s path, but who realized it, have been changing the direction of the church. Indeed, we are still far from completion.
The Biblical worldview teaches that there is a beginning and an end. The created world will one day come to an end, or the end of days. Science also assumes the end of the world as a material entity. It may be hard for us to imagine it, but no one would deny that if we consider one planet, the earth, it will come to the end of its life. No one knows when such a day will come.
However, Jesus says that we are to live forever with God, regardless of the death of our bodies. Although it is difficult to imagine existence without our bodies, let us trust in Jesus’ words that for us, neither the end of life nor the end of the world is the end. So all we have to do is keep going toward completion. It does not matter when the end day comes. We spend our days listening carefully to God’s commandments in order to live our best lives. By seeing our lives in such a way, people will turn to God.
(Prayer)
(Prayer) Dear God, we cannot know everything about You, but we believe that You came as Jesus and can teach us everything we need to know if we want to know.
You created us. You forgave us for turning our backs on you so that we could walk with you again.
We are told by you how we should spend our days.
Please let us be able to walk according to your law, even though our own selfish thoughts often cause you grief.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ.
Summary
We cannot know everything about God. But all that we need to know is made clear to us by speaking through the prophets and by revealing Himself as Jesus. Jesus is Jesus “Christ” in the sense that He is the only one who unites us with God. Through Jesus, the Word of God was made universal to all peoples from the nations. Jesus also points us in the direction we should go.
For Discussion
1. Where are you heading as a follower of Jesus?
2. What is the Kingdom of God like?