GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 119:129-130
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This, the pe stanza, initiates what I believe to be the final round of the repeating parts of the Great Psalm (the tav stanza will serve as a final prayer for deliverance, salvation and forgiveness). Here we will hear about the poet’s love for the word of God, especially his holy name (119:132). The poet will ask for God’s blessing again and again, even quoting part of the Aaronic blessing (119:135; cp. Numbers 6:25).
129 Your testimonies are wonderful.
That is why my soul guards them.
Testimonies in Hebrew are those things God communicates that can be either commands or simply messages for God’s people to bring light and understanding. God’s testimonies enable his people to walk in his ways because they teach us about his forgiveness and about the promise of rising from the dead and having life with him in heaven. Testimonies (‘edut) can certainly be warnings as well: “They… did not believe in the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers and the warnings (“testimonies”) that he gave them” (2 Kings 17:15). But when faith grasps the Lord’s testimonies and all of his holy word, the person’s life is changed, and he or she desires to walk in God’s ways, like Josiah did, the last of Judah’s good kings: “The king renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD, to follow the LORD and keep his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul” (2 Kings 23:3). And Isaiah says: “To the law and to the testimony! If people do not speak according to this word, there will be no dawn for them” (Isaiah 8:20).
“Therefore,” the poet continues. “Therefore” is ‘al-ken, “upon the ground of such conditions.” Because of the wonderful testimonies, messages and light-giving declarations from God, the soul of the believer guards them. The verb here is “guard, keep,” and it pictures the Christian standing guard and watching over the word of God as if on duty at a fortress, or a tent (see the following verse). Our world is changed forever by what it is that we guard, which is the holy word of God. We want to be certain that no one adds to it, for anyone who adds to the word of God will be proved to be a liar (Proverbs 30:6). We guard it so that no one will subtract from it, so that we are certain that we know his whole will (Deuteronomy 12:32) and so that our share in the tree of life and the holy city will not be taken away from us (Revelation 22:19). But our duty is not only to inspect this charge of ours to be sure that it is not changed by anyone else, but to closely study it in order to make it our own.
In this sense, I find myself drawn again and again to the passage in Deuteronomy (25:4) that Paul quotes from more than once: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” For although Paul proves through this verse that a worker deserves to be paid his wages for working in the church, that is not the only meaning of the verse. The verse also has a physical and direct meaning for the ox: he should actually get to eat while he works. But there is another meaning, a spiritual one with a daily application. The servant of God should also be able to study the word of God for himself, for his own benefit and deeper understanding. Alas that there are some who do not do this! But for the many, the very many I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with, this verse shows that we are right to seize the opportunity to pursue deep study into the word of God for our own benefit. We learn to expose sin, to be frightened by sin, and to grasp the hem of Christ’s garment for our own forgiveness. Then, in that joy of knowing the peace of God, are we not better able to share the word with our people, and so answer their questions? And so if, like the dumb oaf of an ox that I am, I tug and pull at the strip of grain that somehow won’t come up into my mouth until I realize by accident that I was standing on it all along. But be patient with me, oaf and numbskull that I am, Heavenly Father! I find the joy of knowing Christ and how wonderful he is, and my soul is happy to stand guard.
130 The unfolding of your words gives light;
it gives understanding to the simple.
The first word here (which starts with pe, פ) is petah, “unfolding.” More often it’s a word for door or entrance, as in Genesis 4:7, “sin is crouching at your door,” since the “door” of a tent is the unfolding of a flap. I wonder whether in this case is means the unrolling of a scroll, so that the physical words that are the revealed word of God are brought out in the open. But at the same time, the opening of the word of God is like the flap of God’s tent being opened to us. Everything inside the tent is then revealed, just as everything God tells us about himself is revealed within his holy word. This is what gives us illumination and light (“a light for my path,” verse 105).
The verse is bookended with another pe-word, peti, “the simple.” This is not a negative term; the simple are not to be looked down upon here. While the simple can sometimes believe anything they hear and cause great trouble in the world, for this is how mobs are formed (Matthew 27:23; Acts 17:5 21:35), God has compassion on them and gives them instruction. Because he causes them to hear his word and be instructed (this is the meaning of “gives understanding”), they believe the word of God, they become worried about the devil and his ways, they are crushed about their sins, and they are comforted by the gospel of God’s forgiveness.
What an honor to serve at the flap and to guard the threshold of the tent of the Holy One of Israel. We live on the outside, in the world, among all of the people of the world and all of God’s creation, but our life comes from within, from Christ himself who set faith in our hearts, and the tent of his holy word sustains us and lights our way.
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 119:129-130 The flap of the tent