Tuesday, June 9, 2015

THE GREAT PSALM

There are, of course, many great Psalms, but there is one, Psalm 119, that may deserve the accolade that is often used to describe it, the Great Psalm. One reason for this is that it is the longest of the 150 Psalms, albeit even the longest chapter of the entire Bible, and the most verses. It may also be deemed great because of its masterful and unique makeup, obviously planned by its gifted author, unknown to us. In his intention to exalt the law of the Lord the author skillfully weaves a reference to the law in every one of its 176 verses, except perhaps one, He does this without belabored repetition, using some seven synonyms for law — word, ordinances, testimonies, statutes, commandments, precepts, ways.

He does this without ever repeating a synonym from one verse to the next. Apparently aware that he was creating a piece of literary art, he goes on to divide the Psalm into 22 strophes of eight verses each, which makes for sixteen lines in English translation. Each of the 22 strophes is given the designation of a Hebrew letter, adding up to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with the first strophe given Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, and the last strophe given Tau, the last letter of the alphabet. This was one more way for him to exalt the law, for all the law is made up of these 22 letters. Some may not realize that they have the Hebrew alphabet in their Bibles.

Some scholars surmise that the author was an intellectual, a Palestinian Jew rather than one of the Dispersion, probably lived in Jerusalem, and perhaps a government official. It is evident that he had an uncommon devotion for the law, which meant to him not simply a code of ordinances, but a way of life. If he wrote this Psalm in about 300 B.C. as is supposed, he would have known of the Greek view of life, particularly that of Plato, who wrote a century before and raised two basic questions about life, What is the good? And How are we to live?

Plato answered that the good is knowledge of self based on reason, and he quoted Socrates, his guru, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So we are to live justly, according to reason, a pilgrimage of self-discovery. Not bad! Our author would agree, but would insist that the Greeks did not go far enough in their search for truth. They must transcend self and human reason to the source of all truth, the revealed law (teaching) of God, which is better than “thousands of coins of gold and silver” (119:72). Alongside Socrates’ call for self-examination, the psalmist would say, “Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from your law” (119:18).

As with most great thinkers his life was touched by tragedy and affliction, but even this he saw the law and will of God at work, as in, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word (119:67), and “Trouble and anguish have overtaken me, yet your commandments are my delights” (119:143). In describing what God means to him in time of trouble he uses an impressive metaphor, one borrowed by Corrie Ten Boom, “You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word” (119:114. As for metaphors he applied one to himself that Jesus applied to us all, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, for 1 do not forget Your commandments” (119:76). Notice the theology here. He asked that God seek him, not that he will seek God.

One of his laments eventually met an odd fate. In 119:161 he bemoans that “Princes persecute me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of your word.” In one publishing of the King James Bible (1704), the typesetter typed “Printers” instead of “Princes.” It became known as the “Printers Bible! If I created a list of my own woes, often as an editor and sometimes as a professor, I might say the typesetter got it right, considering the bad press I got! But our author meant princes or authorities, one more reason to think he may have worked for the government, a good place to get persecuted!

Psalm 119 has lots of goodies, and one way to get at them is to read the Psalm with a view of selecting what I call “purple” (royal) passages. Select one verse in each of the 22 strophes that especially speaks to your heart and mind, just one of the eight to start with. That will give you 22 purple passages from the entire Psalm. Make them your verses; bond with them by taking them into your heart. In doing this I dare say you will have something of a grasp of the Great Psalm. I will illustrate by sharing some of the ones I selected, and I will add a word as to their theological significance.

Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you (119:11).

This is a superlative verse of Holy Scripture. It first of all reflects the author’s awareness of the destructiveness of sin, and his determination to resist sin. Unlike our culture, he took sin seriously. Again, it is the power of God’s teaching that is the answer. He “stored up” God’s word in his heart and mind as a bulwark against temptation. This may be what Paul had in mind when he says in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that God will provide a “way of escape” for the believer when he is tempted. A mind and heart saturated with God’s teaching are resistant to the wiles of Satan. Paul writes similarly when he urges that we take the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” an offensive weapon, against the encroachments of Satan (Ephesians 6:17).

At midnight I will rise to give thanks to You, because of Your righteous judgments (119:62).

This writer teaches us that when we have to get up at night it is a good time to thank God once more for his tender loving care for us. This verse indicates that he got up for that purpose! He says in verse 97, “Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.” Gratitude is the queen of the virtues. We can believe that this writer was continually grateful for things in general, but especially that God had spoken and revealed his will and instructed us on how to live. As grateful as he was, we can be assured that he was also generous. They are twin virtues. A grateful person is also generous, a generous person is also grateful. The negative is also true. The ingrate is never generous, the greedy is never thankful.

Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path(119:105).

This is one of the most-quoted verses of the Bible, and is usually applied to the Bible. It is presumed that the writer was referring to the Bible, including this verse! By God’s word the author would certainly have had in mind such Scripture as would be available to him in the fourth century B.C., but far more than that. There was the oral law, which the Hebrews believed God gave to Moses along with written law, and was equal to the written. He would also have in mind all the wisdom of the rabbis, and what he had learned from his teachers in synagogue and his parents at home. Moreover there was the word that God had revealed to him personally. Such teaching enlightened his immediate steps — a lamp — as well as his distant steps down the road — a light.

I have become like a wineskin in smoke, yet I do not forget our statutes (119:83).

This is one more instance of the skill of this “master of metaphor.” We may speak of being “wrung out” or “put through a wringer” or Ouida’s favorite, “out of it,” but how about being a “wineskin in smoke”! We don’t witness the smoking of a wineskin so as to prepare it to be a utensil, but we have been at cook-outs where we’ve been stifled by the fumes of a fiery grill, “wieners in smoke.” Our author is saying what we all sometimes experience, that life has taken a cruel turn and that he has “had it.” But nevertheless he does not forget God’s teaching, and he knows something of how to respond when life becomes unfair.

This Psalm gives us principles as well as commands and exhortations, and by principles I mean ideas and truths that transcend time and circumstance. They apply generally and universally, so that wherever they appear in Scripture they apply to us all, irrespective of cultural or dispensational differences. In this essay on the Great Psalm I will name some of these with attending comments.

Grace and Obedience are Compatible

We correctly recognize, especially in the light of New Testament teaching, that grace and works are incompatible. The apostle makes it clear that “For by grace have you been saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9), and “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith, apart from the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). And yet Paul twice in Romans refers to “the obedience of faith.“

The author of Psalm 119 repeatedly confesses his reliance on the grace of God, and yet he extols the blessedness of obedience. But the reader never gets the idea that the writer believed he was made right with God by his own works or his own worthiness. For example, in 119:176 he readily confesses that he has “gone astray like a lost sheep,” and then asks God to “seek Your servant.” Like Frances Thompson, who in his poem. The Hound of Heaven, has the God of grace seeking sinful man like a pursuing hound, the psalmist asks God in his grace to pursue him, not that he might pursue God. Similarly in 119:132 he pleads, “Look upon me and be merciful to me, as your custom is toward those who love your name,” and again in 1119:124, “Deal with Your Servant according to Your mercy, and teach me Your statutes.”

And yet he is emphatic about the essentiality of obedience as a response to God’s grace and mercy, as in 119:2 “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart,” and 119:129, “Your testimonies are wonderful, therefore does my soul keep them.” Like our Lord who concluded the Sermon on the Mount with “Therefore whoever hears these words of Mine and does them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house on the rock,” the psalmist attests “I made haste and did not delay to keep your commandments” (119:60).

We do not have grace and works in Psalm 119, which would be incompatible, but we do have the principle of grace and obedience, which are compatible, and it finds expression throughout Scripture. The grace of God, by its very nature, is in its presence and availability unconditional, but for its enjoyment it is conditional — that is, conditional upon the appropriate response. It is true throughout nature. Rain falls on just and unjust alike, unconditional, but for its enjoyment it is conditional in that we have to contain it by building dams and lakes, by piping it into our homes, and at last making it a blessing. Likewise the psalmist writes of the blessedness of obedience. Obedience is the response to mercy and grace, making their enjoyment a reality.

This places baptism in its proper place, not a work by which we save ourselves, but a response to the gospel, an act of obedience. Or as 1 Peter 3:21 puts it baptism is “the answer of a good conscience toward God.” The gospel of the grace of God calls for a response — faith, repentance, baptism. These are not works, but “the cultivation of grace,” as Alexander Campbell put it. The author of Psalm 119 would love that phrase, for that is what those 176 verses are all about, the cultivation of (or the work of) grace.

It is the Whole Heart that Matters Most.
There are numerous references that point to the importance of the heart in our relationship to God, such as “God looks upon the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7) and “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38), but less frequently do we read of the “whole heart” or “all your heart.” One exciting instance is Jeremiah 29:13, which Laura Bush chose to go on a White House Christmas card one year: “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all your heart.” It is also included in the Greatest Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:39). It is a daring superlative! Who can claim to love or serve God withwholeness of heart? But our psalmist uses the term almost with abandon, as in “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart,” (119:2), and “With my whole heart I have sought you" (119:10), and “I entreated your favor with my whole heart” (119:58), and “I cry out with my whole heart, hear me, O Lord!” (119:145).

Whole-hearted devotion is an ideal beyond the reach of most of us. Those who see themselves as having fallen far short of such a goal are the ones most likely to have attained it. Our psalmist appears to have seen wholeness of commitment as a two-way experience, God’s as well as his own. When he says, “I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes forever to the very end,” (119:112) he indicates that his own desire and determination are part of the equation, and yet when he insists that he is “small and despised” (119:141) and “trouble and anguish have overtaken me” (119:143), and goes on to ask God to save him, and teach him, and to revive him, he makes whole-heartedness the work of God.

What this teaches us is that we must guard against a casual commitment to God, a “lukewarm” attitude as it is described in Revelation 3:16. It is a matter of what we desire most of all. We can be thankful that the fourth beatitude reads “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” rather than “Blessed are the righteous.” It is those who have a strong desire to be righteous who are blessed.

If, like the psalmist, we “incline our hearts” to righteousness or whole-heartedness, we can look to God, who is eager to show mercy, to do the rest. A black preacher may have said it best, “We have to get our “want to” fixed.”

God loves us, absolutely and unconditionally.

This is the good news that the world longs to hear — there is a God who created us and he loves us. Considering the mess that we have made of ourselves and our world, with all its terror and violence, it would be understandable that if there is a God who created us he would be angry and judgmental toward us. But God not only loves us, he is eager to show mercy and to forgive us. We don’t have to be good and worthy for him to love us. He loves us as we are, absolutely and unconditionally. In fact, his loving pursuit of us puts the ball in our court. His grace calls for a response on our part.

This too is the message of the Great Psalm. As we have seen, its author was in a bad way. He had a poor mage of himself — insignificant, unworthy, troubled, anxious, persecuted, despised, even like a “wineskin in smoke.” One might wonder if he did not have a problem with the likes of what we call porn, considering such a childlike prayer as “Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things” (119:37). Or was he talking about TV?!

But in all this he never doubts that God loves him, absolutely and unconditionally, and that God’s mercy was abundant toward him. His prayer can be our prayer:

Consider my affliction and deliver me,
For I do not forget Your law.
Plead my cause and redeem me;
Revive me according to your word.
Great are your tender mercies, O Lord.
(Psalm 119:153-6)


Written by Leroy Garrett

No comments:

Post a Comment