Meditate

In Psalm 119:52, we find we must meditate on God’s Word. “When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O LORD.” In verse 49 he asked God to remember, and now he is promising to remember. It is the same word, but the ESV tries to bring out the meaning of how to remember, “When I think of your rules.” This is meditation…it is what we find in verse 55, “I remember your name in the night, O LORD,” and verse 62, “At midnight I rise to praise you.”

When he was in the midst of affliction, when he couldn’t sleep, when he was awake in the day…he thought of God’s Word. He meditated on it. The reflection brought comfort to him even in the suffering.

It is amazing what will happen when we will simply take the time to memorize the Word, and then allow the Holy Spirit to bring those verses to our mind and as they come to the mind we just think, chew on it, and find comfort.

Then, in verse 53, we govern our life by the Word of God. “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.” We are tempted to get angry with other people’s sin and to treat our own with grace. We must deal severely with our own sin, but the Word of God must also dictate how we view the world.

Every action must be judged within the context of God’s Word. Here it would seem the psalmist is reacting to flagrant, wanton, or brazen rejection of God’s law. You don’t have to look hard to find it in our own culture, but we have to be consistent.

The Word is our guide and we must see everything through its lens. It is amazing how we will ignore sin if the one doing it brings a profit to our account. It is amazing how we will ignore sin if the person doing it represents our team, our political party, or our family. Do you know what I mean?

I’ve mentioned this before, but the same church that was ready to hang one president over his marital infidelities will excuse another’s. One fan base will get worked up over the opposing coach’s actions on the sidelines and then excuse their coach when he did and said the same things. One person will be horrified at a young ladies’ actions and then excuse his own daughter who does the same thing. Jesus loved the sinner, but He hated sin and He especially hated the religious leader’s hypocrisy. The psalmist reacted to wicked’s forsaking of the law with hot indignation.

Henry Martyn was a missionary to India. When he saw the perversion of idolatry he said, “I could not bear to go on living if I thought my God’s law would always be so dishonored.” That’s the idea here. Surely, it was this attitude that drove Wilberforce as he fought against slavery and that should drive the church as we fight injustice.