Psalm
119:97 (NKJV) 97Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the
day.
The
law is God’s Word in David’s time. It
was the law of Moses the first five books of the Bible. God has given us more books now in the cannon
of Scripture, 66 total.
His
love for God’s Word brought him to the
point of meditating upon it all day.
James
Swanson gives us this definition of meditation, “the act. of giving
considerable thought about a person or subject, with a focus of responding
properly to the information”[1]
How well are we familiar with God’s Word that we
can spend our day thinking about it? Do
we consider what Scripture and it’s principles that apply to what we are trying
to accomplish during this day.
In the following three verses the writer of the
psalm recognizes three benefits to this
meditation.
They say, 98You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my
enemies; For they are ever with me. 99I have more understanding than
all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation.
100I
understand more than the ancients, Because I keep Your precepts. (Psalm
119:98–100) (NKJV)
1. Wiser than his enemies - These enemies would be ones violating God’s laws
who God will judge.
2. More understanding than teachers. – His teachers did not
meditate on the testimonies enough to keep them. They were missing the blessing and facing the
consequences not obeying the testimony that God had given to Moses.
3. Understand more than the aged – They chose not to
meditate upon the precepts and thereby broke the covenant of God and would miss
out on the intended blessing.
In
this passage we are challenged to:
a. Evaluate our love for God’s law. What is of more value to us? What do we give more of our free time to?
b. Evaluate where our mind is
wondering when we are not about a focused task. Does it come back to God’s Word?
c. Evaluate our desire to live a life
by God’s principles.
Am I concerned enough with pleasing God through obedience that I want to
know His principles by which to live?
My hope for
you today is that your love for God’s word would grow to the point that your
mind automatically goes to it as you have time to think and determine God’s
plan for your life on daily moment by moment basis.
Note: The video version of this is available at www.youtube.com/churchoflitteleton
[1] James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old
Testament), electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.,
1997).
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