Sunday, November 19, 2017

Psalm 119, Verse 146



You have warned us, Adonai, that the devil is like a roaring lion who is always seeking to devour. Yet You have also taught us saying, "Call unto Me and I will answer You." And again in another place You said, "Call unto me in your time of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honour Me." Recognizing how vulnerable I can be if I am not alert to stay true to the path of Your word, I call unto Thee to save me and deliver me from all evil. I want to observe Your instructions alone, My Saviour, for in it is my safety. "Submit under the mighty hand of God," is one these instructions; and You reveal what will happen when we obey—"he (the devil) will flee from You." It is one thing to call unto You, Adonai, but I pray that I will call unto You while also hearkening to Thy voice and obeying it.


Lately, I have found myself drawn to Psalm 119. Charles Spurgeon beautifully describes it thus:

There is no title to this Psalm, neither is any author's name mentioned. It is not just long only; but equally excels in breadth of thought, depth of meaning, and height of fervour. It is like the celestial city which lieth four square, and the height and the breadth of it are equal. Many superficial readers have imagined that it harps upon one string, and abounds in pious repetitions and redundancies; but this arises from the shallowness of the reader's own mind: those who have studied this divine hymn, and carefully noted each line of it, are amazed at the variety and profundity of the thought.

It contains no idle word; the grapes of this cluster are almost to bursting full with the new wine of the kingdom. The more you look into this mirror of a gracious heart the more you will see in it. Placid on the surface as the sea of glass before the eternal throne, it yet contains within its depths an ocean of fire, and those who devoutly gaze into it shall not only see the brightness, but feel the glow of the sacred flame. It is loaded with holy sense, and is as weighty as it is bulky.

The Psalm is alphabetical. Eight stanzas commence with one letter, and then another eight with the next letter, and so the whole Psalm proceeds by octonaries quite through the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, from Aleph to Tau.

I thought I should post a verse each day in the hope that we all, including myself, may get an opportunity to reflect on them.

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