Psalm 119:97-104 “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path." This episode talks about how important it is to know the Lord's law and how we need a renewal of minds. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Oh, How I Love Your Law!
Psalm 119:97-104 “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
I am not sure if you are familiar with Psalm 119. I wasn’t before my prayer group last Thursday. Psalm 119 is a long psalm and the New International Version has a footnote that says “This psalm is an acrostic poem, the stanzas of which begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet; moreover, the verses of each stanza begin with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet.” My Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition has a footnote that says, “This great hymn of praise for the Torah, the Law of God, is typical of the best Jewish piety after the Exile. In this psalm several verses make up the different stanzas. Each of these stanzas is praising God and talking about how wonderful his laws are. They are talking about how great we are when we follow these laws. While I was reading them I felt they all have a similar message, and they use various words to convey this message. I chose this stanza because it stood out to me when I was reading thought the Psalm.
I am not sure why it stood out to me other than I really love the first line. “Oh, how I love your law!” I do love the Lord’s law. The Lord’s law provides us comfort because it instructs us and gives us limits. God’s law is like the guard rails on the highway. You can drive along on the highway at faster speeds and you don’t have to worry about driving off the road if there are guardrails to keep you safe. God’s laws are like these guard rails. They also remind me of the bumpers I used to use with my kids when we went bowling. Ok, I used them for myself sometimes too. Did you know when you go bowling their is a setting where you can put bumpers up? What this means is that these metal rails cover the gutters so that you can’t get a gutter ball. This is great when going with young kids because it can be really frustrating to go bowling and have your ball always end up in the gutter before it makes it down the lane. These bumpers protect that from happening.
Life is like this sometimes. We can go through times in our lives where it can be really hard to stay in our lane. Times when it seems no matter how hard we try we keep ending up in the gutter. These are the times when we can rely on God to be our bumper. We can turn to God and ask Him for help. We can remember His laws and rely on them to keep us on the straight and narrow. God will always answer when we ask. If you are struggling right now, ask God for help!
The next few lines says, “I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.” I wish this were true. I wish I meditated on God’s laws all day long, or even just on His word all day long. Unfortunately I get sidetracked often. I get caught up in the things for this world and forget about these things. Sometimes I don’t forget about God’s laws, and yet I don’t follow them because they contradict what the world is saying. It can be really hard to live in this world and to live by God’s laws at times. This world is in such contrast with God wants us to do. They seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum and if we do as God is calling us to do then we don’t always fit into this world. We seem weird and different. This doesn’t always feel good, but this is how it was meant to be. God called us and set us apart. This means when we look at the world we should be able to look around and see who is Christian and who in not. We should look different. Do we?
I like when this verse says, “Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. i have more insight than all my teachers for I meditate on your statutes.” There are many places in the Bible where it talks about how much wiser those that know God’s commands are. If we want to be wise we need to change our minds. I have been hearing a lot lately that we need a renewal of the mind. I can see that now. The reason we may feel weird when we are following the Lord’s ways are because are minds are thinking like everyone else in this world. Our minds have conformed to those around us, to the world that we live in. What if we could have a renewal of our mind? What if we could start thinking more like Jesus did? How is this even possible? If we turn to scripture we can see how this would be possible. We start reading the Lord’s word every day. We start meditating not only on his Word, but also on His laws and how God is wanting us to live.
In case you do not listen to Father Mike’s Bible in a Year Podcast I want to tell you, next year, starting in January, Father Mike is doing a new podcast called Catechism of the Catholic Church in a year. If you are not Catholic this may not appeal to you. However, if you are Catholic, this is going to be awesome. Father Mike will take the whole Catechism, which is all the laws of our faith and he will break it down to small chunks and will help us figure out what it means. This next year through the help of Father Mike, we will be able to do just what this verse is saying. We will be able to meditate on God’s law every single day in a way most of us have not done before. I urge you to listen to this podcast next year. It is only 20 minutes or so a day and yet the impact on your life could be life changing.
Today’s verse ends with, “ I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.” This is similar to the beginning of the verse. This verse is saying the same thing in several different ways so we understand how important it is. I really like in this verse when it says, “I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. Can you say this? I know I can’t. I wish I could. I wish I could say I have kept my feet from every evil path and yet I know I haven’t. I know there are things I have done that God would not approve of. It then says, “I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.” We need to understand God’s precepts if we expect to be able to avoid the wrong path. I don’t know if we can even say we hate ever wrong path right now. If we do not have a renewal of our mind yet then some of the wrong paths may appeal to us because the world is telling us it is right and it is good to do those things.
If we want the words in this verse to be true for us then we need to work at it. Holiness is not easy. If we want a renewal of our minds we need to fill our minds with all things God. If you spend a lot of time around something or someone you will start to act like that person. If we want to act more like God we need to immerse ourselves in Him. Read His word, spend time talking with Him, spend time listening to Him. The things of this world are so loud and they surround us all the time. If we want to surround ourselves with God we need to be very intentional. What can you do today to spend a little more time with God and a little less time with the things of this world? For me, I am going to try to change one of my habits. Currently whenever I have a few minutes of down time, I look at my phone and check my emails, check Facebook, or play a game. Instead of picking up my phone, I am going to try to take that few minutes and pray, or sit quietly with the Lord. How about you, what can you do?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to love your laws, we want your word to be sweeter than honey to us. Help us Lord, give us a renewal of our mind so we can follow your precepts and gain wisdom. Help us be smarter than those we meet because we know your laws and we follow them. Lord, help us to be ok with being different because we follow your laws. Help us to strive for this because you created us to be set apart. Help us to feel loved and accepted by you all the time. Help us to not crave that love and acceptance from others, but to always turn to you for it. Lord, you are amazing! You are our joy, you are our life, you are Emmanuel, God with us. We are so grateful for all you do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!