PSALMS 119
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January 28, 2006
Psa 119:33-34 KJV Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end. (34) Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart.
Paul said that the natural man does not receive the Law of God; that our carnal mind is in enmity with the mind of God.
It takes work to learn the Law of God; it doesn’t come naturally because we do not rationally understand it. But we are not meant to obey the commandments of the LORD in a robotic ritualistic fashion. That defeats its main purpose: to train and teach our hearts and spirits into His ways.
Without properly understanding the way of His statutes, we miss the point. This is what the prophets and Jesus were constantly telling the religionists of their days, that they followed the letter of the Law and not the Spirit of it (John 6:63; 2 Cor 3:6), and that was because they did not understand His statutes with their hearts, they only knew the “letter”!
Those who are satisfied with only following in a ritualistic fashion are not only cheating God of His due from our hearts, but also themselves, deceiving their own selves with the spirit of “religion”. Their type of adherence to the Word resembles the ways of paganism. Do they do that because they are afraid of the cost of truly understanding what God expects of them, and thereby would be responsible for it (John 9:41)?
May God help us to give Him more credit for giving us not just a religion, but also a “living faith” leading us into the wonderful knowledge of His person in an intimate and real fashion.
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
(Joh 6:63 KJV)
January 29, 2006
(Psa 119:35 KJV) Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight.
I heard someone pray one time a similar prayer. That person was so discouraged with her own efforts to overcome a certain weakness in her life, that she was ready for God to do anything, and I mean anything, to help her. So she prayed something to this effect, “Lord, please, do anything, absolutely anything, you have to do in my life in order that I’d be delivered from this temptation. It hinders my walk with you, my walk with my brothers and sisters, as well as my testimony of being Your child. I give you leave Lord to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to deliver me!”
That is the ”Whatever-it-takes” prayer.
How much we want to go in the path of His commandments has a lot to do with how much we “want” to walk in the path of His commandments. And how much we “want” to walk in the path of His commandments has a lot to do with how much we delight in them. I was giving someone a picture of the peace, beauty and cleanliness of spirit that will be in the millennium the other day and they didn’t even seem excited about it. They looked disappointed as if it might be dull without all the “circus” of modern life. The problem was that like this life, this world and the way it is; they don’t even see very much wrong with it, and they do not delight in a world run by the LORD in His commandments.
May God help us to delight in the LORD, in His ways, in His commandments, and in His Spirit, so that we can pray with a whole and sincere heart, “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments”!
Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.
(Isa 45:11 KJV)
January 30, 2006
Psa 119:36-KJV Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.
The tenth commandment of the Instructions given to Moses on Mt Sinai tells us, “Thou shalt not covet” Exo 20:17. (The Hebrew word “Torah” literally means “Instruction”). On the other hand, Paul the Apostle tells us to “covet earnestly the best gifts”1 Cor 12:31. Is there a contradiction here on the attitude towards coveting?
--The first is relevant of the physical realm, the second of the spiritual.
--The first cautions, the second instructs.
--The first says don’t”; the second says “do”.
--The fist tells us of the dangers of coveting the wealth from the world, the second of the blessings of coveting the gifts from the Spirit.
God must have known that as human beings made out of the elements of the earth, earthly things would become a pull and exercise power over us. We can see it in the case of our lust for wealth, sex, and of the character corrupting influences brought by power and fame. To not “covet”, our hearts need to be “inclined” to desire the spiritual blessings that only God can give.
The inclination to desire spiritual blessings is not natural to us, and the devil knows it. He uses us every trick of his evil trade to side-track us using the carnal elements he knows we fall for. Even Paul says that carnal always fights against the spiritual, and that the two are in constant enmity. (Rom 8:7).
In order to keep our loyalty to his material and carnal realm, the devil constantly bombards us with his concepts though the sights and sounds uttered by the “media-sirens” of the world. The only way to be “rehabilitated”, and “reformed” from the infatuations and addictions to his “virtual-world”, is to constantly bathe ourselves in the very real Spirit of the LORD, having spiritual communication with Him through “praying without ceasing” (1 Thes 5:17), and “study to show thyself approved unto God” (2Tim 2:15)
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Mat 6:21
January 31, 2006
(Psa 119:37) Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.
It seems factual that the continual watching of ungodly sights and sounds numbs our senses to their evil. Its almost like we train ourselves to be comfortable with these things, fighting against the God-given Holy Spirit in us, Who through our conscience, would normally reject them.
How sad, how pitiful, how pathetic it is when we vex, defile, abuse and torture the Spirit of God in us through the deliberate subjection to sights and sounds of worldly vanities. It must add to the LORD’s sorrow when He sees our senses eventually so numb that not only we cannot recognized good from bad and right from wrong anymore, but our conscience is so seared (1 Tim 4:2), so numb, that we cannot recognize the voice of His Spirit anymore. Ultimately, we do not even feel Him when he is grieved within us.
Let us, like King David in this Word, honestly, sincerely and without reservations, ask the LORD to “turn away” our eyes (as it seems we cannot do it ourselves) from beholding and loathing at the prideful and vain sights and sounds of the world, so He can “quicken” us (Quicken: to make alive.) O how those worldly vanities sap the strength and spirit out of us so we become soul-less, spirit-less humanoids, living-dead zombies, easily reachable to be used by Satan”!
Psa 25:15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.
Psa 101:3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
February 2, 2006
(Psa 119:38 KJV) Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear.
Some of us are prone to doubt God’s Word. Some of us have a tendency to doubt His precious Promises. It is true that in this present time, we are constantly bombarded with alternative concepts. If we are not on-guard against them, they erode at our faith and trust in the Lord. Sad to say, the most likely scenario is that we don’t even realize it. We live in a hum-drum fashion until something wrong happens in our lives or those close to us that serves as a catalyst to expose our waning spiritual condition, and renew in us the fear of the Lord.
The good news is that if we have an inner devotion to the fear of the Lord, we will be able to see it, unlike the one whose soul is “seared” by a self-justifying spirit of rebellion and is not able to even notice that something is wrong.
May God help establish His Word, His Promises and all of His spiritual principles in our hearts, so anchored and unmovable against the influences that would try to make us doubt the fulfilling of His Promises obtained through our faith and obedience. May His Word be the “fact” and the “amen” to each and every situation that comes our way so that the peace that passes all understanding reigns in us as a testimony of the “hope that is in us” to all around us.
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
(2Pe 1:4 KJV)
February 3, 2006
(Psa 119:39 KJV) Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good.
Oh, the sin that tries to stick to you like a burr. Oh, how the transgression of the past likes to but in at any time to buffet and vex our soul, to try the grace of God in us. You know that God’s judgments are good and that this guilty feeling is right, you do deserve to be chastised for your sin.
How long has it been, and how far deep are these “old files” buried? Would you really listen to him who dares to bring up these things to your soul to confront the forgiving grace that God has already given you through His Son? Would you pay any attention to the devil, the accuser of the Saints who tries to apply to your heart his own unrepentant and therefore unforgiven state? Nay; do not give him any place (Eph 4:27), but face him lifting the blood of Christ who died and resurrected for you and live (Num 21:8). Look unto the brazen snake as unto the Son of God made sin for us (John 3:14). Look him straight in the face and say, “JESUS TOOK MY SIN FOR ME!” Say it again, “JESUS TOOK MY SIN FOR ME!” and again, “JESUS TOOK MY SIN FOR ME!” shout it now, “JESUS TOOK MY SIN FOR ME!” There now, can you feel the weight lifted? Can you feel your reproach taken away from you?
Let not your heart be heavy. Your every stripe, your every lash, and your every burn from the fiery lake, He has taken upon Himself so that when you come to Him in His appointed time, He will not sternly look at you and say, “What have you done”, but seeing the imprint of His blood on the side posts of your heart (Ex 12:7) He will say, “Enter thou into the joy of Thy Lord” (Mat 25:23).
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
(2Co 5:21 KJV)
February 4, 2006
(Psa 119:40 KJV) Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness.
We will be quickened in His righteousness, as long as we desire His precepts. When we stop longing after His precepts, we are not quickened anymore after HIS righteousness. There is cause and effect.
We seem to be “quickened” or “made alive”, “strengthened” by the things we “long for”. If we long for the vanity and glitter of the elements of the world, this is what will “quicken us”, but sad to say, the glories and vanities of the world are ephemeral, short-lived, and we will rust and mold with them (Mat 6:19-21), or even burn with them when on the Lord’s day, our works are tried by fire (1 Cor 3:13-15).
As Christians, if we are not quickened in HIS righteousness, in whose righteousness are we made alive then, our own? No righteousness is able to stand before the throne of God but that of the Son of God.
Let us therefore pray daily that our affections would be set on the things above, (Col 3:2) and not on things on the earth. Only by longing after his precepts we will be quickened in His righteousness.
Jer 29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
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