GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 119:73-75
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My outline of the Great Psalm takes the theme of this stanza, “Love for God’s Word,” and notes that it always follows a section describing the return to the word (as we just saw in verses 65-72) and before a section that describes the believer’s life among God’s wicked enemies (which we will see in verses 81-88). A poem about sanctified living always separates the enemies sections from the return sections. This is the third of five rounds through this spiralling outline. In these verses in particular, we see the Psalmist declare: “Your law is my delight” (119:77). Each verse begins with the letter yod.
73 Your two hands made me and they keep me safe;
give me understanding so I may learn your commandments.
God made us, and he preserves us even now. The form of the noun “hands” is dual, that is to say, it speaks of two things in a pair, and therefore there is some poetic anthropomorphism here since God the Father is a spirit and has neither hands nor any need of hands. But it helps us, his creatures, to think of him as having hands and the fingers by which he inscribed the law (Exodus 31:18) and by which he permits his Son to drive out demons (Luke 11:18). The act of creation was not necessary; God made our world and our universe as a free and voluntary deed, for “he does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3). The glory of creation is expounded in Psalm 104: “May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works” (Psalm 104:31).
Besides making all, he preserves all; “he keeps me safe.” “These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things” (Psalm 104:27-28). If he were to withdraw his hand, a creature would cease to exist, for all existence depends solely upon the power of his will: “In him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). He preserves directly, but also through means (mediately) such as the growing seasons, the water cycle, and so forth. So while man’s existence directly depends on God’s will (Acts 17:28), we are indirectly dependent upon a means of livelihood, which he also gives to us. God gives us our daily bread, but we must work for it under the curse of Adam (Genesis 3:19). It is still God’s will today that “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
In a unique form of synonymous parallelism, the acts of creating and preserving in the first line are transformed into the acts of giving understanding (creation) and preserving that understanding through learning in the second line. We might illustrate this with an “idea” followed by “meditation,” or “hypothesis” followed by “testing and proof.”
74 May those who fear you rejoice when they see me,
for I have put my hope in your word.
Here is the delight of fellowship. Those who are truly believers, “those who fear you,” rejoice when they see me, for I, too, put my faith in God our Maker and Savior. I have put my hope in God’s word. The word “hope” is one we already saw in verse 49. Our goal is to return to God in heaven. He caused our souls to be created in the flesh of our bodies when we were first formed at conception (Psalm 104:30), and we will be with him, both body and soul, forever after the resurrection. This is only possible when we put our trust entirely in Christ, and this brings us to the next verse:
75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteousness itself,
and you have afflicted me in faithfulness.
Righteousness is presented here as a noun, not an adjective. To be righteous is to be within the circle of Christ. “In Christ there is pure righteousness and no sin,” Luther writes. “Sin has no dominion over him. Whoever, therefore, possesses Christ and eats of this food [Luther is thinking of John 6, which is about faith and not about the Lord’s Supper], which is pure righteousness and undefiled by sin, is by this eating [that is, believing], also righteous. Sin can no longer accuse him, nor is God’s wrath upon him.” Because he believes in Christ, sin is taken away.
So when we are afflicted by God, it is because he has faithfully turned us back, back, and back again to trust in him. We continue to sin, or we would not be continually afflicted. But his affliction has as its goal not merely punishment but change, change for the better, change toward living under his will and with faith in Christ for all our forgiveness.
The use of God’s holy covenant name, the LORD, also illustrates the same point. It is the LORD who makes promises to man and who keeps those promises. It is the Lord who came as our Redeemer to rescue us from sin. The Lord’s holy name is a gospel name, proclaiming his grace and favor, his compassion, and reminding us that no matter what way we have fallen and no matter how terrified we become of his wrath, he is also the loving God who sent his Son “that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Psalm 119:73-75 Righteousness itself