GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 119:147-149
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147 I rise before dawn and I call for help.
I have put my hope in your word.
148 My eyes greet the night watches,
that I may meditate on your saying.
149 Hear my voice according to your mercy;
preserve my life, O LORD, according to your judgments.
These verses describe a believer who prays, meditates and studies the word of God, but in an unusual way. He does it at night. There is a hint here of passages used throughout the Bible, but especially in the Psalms, to establish the canonical hours, times of prayer and worship established before the Middle Ages but used throughout the Medieval period and well into the Renaissance. Here we have references to the night watches which followed sunset. There were three watches, Compline, Matins, and Lauds, in the night (roughly 9pm, Midnight, and 3am), followed by Prime (at dawn). The watches described in the Bible are not religious hours at all, but times of police or military duty (Judges 7:19; 1 Samuel 11:11). Our poet is used to the idea of waking with the turn of the watches– a detail that supports David as author more than any other proposed poet.
Here, still in the dark and long before dawn, he turns to prayer and speaks to God directly from his heart. For some people, night time is a period of intense temptation, when such things as doubt, anxiety, guilt and shame can overwhelm those who cannot sleep. “Give me relief from my distress!” (Psalm 4:1). “I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).
The poet also meditates on the Word of God. “I have put my hope in your word,” he says. He teaches us to do the same. Do not simply read what the word says, but grasp it, clutch at it, squeeze it with all your strength and make it a part of you so that it is always with you. Recite it, repeat it, and trust in the word of God. If you know how to read and write, copy it down again and again for yourself. If you cannot write, make it into a poem or a song, so that the rhythm and the melody will help you to remember the text of God’s mind forever. If those skills are not gifts of yours, draw a picture, even a meagre thing of stick men and rough lines, to help reassure you of your place in God’s holy kingdom, of his love for you, and his plan to save you. The least talented of all artists can draw a cross, and it is in the cross of Jesus that the most profound message of all comes to us: God condemned in the place of man, in the place of me.
Thirdly, the poet studies the word of God. He compares one passage with another, seeing that the word says what it says and that it means what the simple words appear to say (Acts 17:11). Skeptics love to harass the simple believer by trying to trick them into doubting. They are playing a shell game with the truth, and their only desire is to drag a believer down into hell. What other benefit do they gain? This is Satan’s screech as he plummets day after day, year upon year, down, down to the furthest pit of torment. He only wants to grab companions to follow him down, out of spite.
When skeptics join the devil’s cohort of spite, they also like to quote Karl Marx, who said that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” More fully, he wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Therefore, if religion is removed (such as by an action of an atheist state, such as what happened in the Soviet Union) what will the downtrodden, the depressed, the abused, the oppressed, the poor, turn to? Will they be swayed by the atheist? Will there be an atheist there to comfort each and every one of them on their deathbed? Will there be an atheist there to visit them when they are sick, troubled, worried, or hurt? Will an atheist be there to instruct them without abusive language, without taking advantage of them, without abandoning them in times of need, or disease, or war, or tragedy, like the bad shepherd (John 10:12)? Will there be an atheist at every graveside, to console the family about their dead? Will an atheist make even one person happier, more certain about their eternal state, or (and here is the real point) will any atheist rescue any soul from eternal damnation? The atheist, the skeptic, are the devil’s wolves and thieves and claws. They are parasites on the troubles of the poor and the lowly. “Let them be put to shame and lie silent in the grave” (Psalm 31:17). We must teach our people to recognize them by the stench of their useless teaching, like the musk of a weasel, for their stench will go up; their bad smell will rise (Joel 2:20). Theirs is not the music of beauty or hope, but the dull drumpf and pang of a violin or guitar with a broken string.
Seek rather the mercy of the Lord God. Meditate on his holy word. He will preserve your life into all eternity, while the devil and his weasels writhe in torment without comfort, or friend, or soothing voice. “The hope of the wicked ends only in wrath” (Proverbs 11:23).
But you? You will have every blessing, nothing but endlessly good things forever, sitting at the table with the Son of God, singing his praises, hearing his glorious voice, and making a joyful noise forevermore (Psalm 95:1).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2024
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Psalm 119:147-149