Constant

DEVOTION

PSALMS

CONSTANT

Ps 119:153-160

153 Resh

Look upon my suffering and deliver me, for I have not forgotten your law. 154 Defend my cause and redeem me; preserve my life according to your promise. 155 Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek out your decrees. 156 Your compassion is great, O LORD; preserve my life according to your laws. 157 Many are the foes who persecute me, but I have not turned from your statutes. 158 I look on the faithless with loathing, for they do not obey your word. 159 See how I love your precepts; preserve my life, O LORD, according to your love. 160 All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.

NIV

Day twenty in the longest psalm. This is not just a lament, but a plea for help from the Lord. Certainly David is in a bad situation, as we have seen before. Running, hiding from Saul and what must be Saul’s personal army, or special guard. Why does David not think God has been defending his cause? Why does he keep seeking the Lord to preserve his life? He reminds the Lord again about his promise. It would seem a man who God testifies about as a man after God’s own heart is having such a rough time with life, at least at this moment. We know later he is the king of Israel and lives the good life, with a great army and has many victories. But we also know the he is still a man subject to the temptation that power and wealth bring with them, that of the lust of the flesh. His fall with Bathsheba and his ensuing actions would seem to look like a man not after the heart of God. It only proves the imperfection of man does not interfere with a devotion to God. Well it might interfere a bit, for a moment, but ultimately his is still the man after God’s own heart, as that also gives us hope for we too, like all men, fall to some temptation at times. But God preserves our life according to his promise. He has promised us eternal life if we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That promise is not based on accepting Jesus and being without sin, or doing good deeds, or looking like we are spiritual and all goody two shoes type. We are human, in the flesh, and have some kind of sin within us. This is what the Apostle Paul speaks about when he wants to do good, evil is right there with him. The war that wages within. We love the Lord, but we keep sinning. How can that be? It is life and we cannot ignore it or pretend it is not there. We cannot think more highly of ourselves then we should. This is why we need Jesus. But that is also what makes us different from our foes. Although the foes of David were Saul and his army, our foes are of a different type. Those who oppose God, the wicked, are foes of God and thus of us. Nevertheless Jesus changed how we are to think about our foes, that we are to love them, not ask God to destroy them. We are not to loath them either, we should pray for them, seek them out to share the good news with them. But there are still those who oppose God, want to remove him and his decrees, his statutes, his commands, his law from public view. They are, in fact, faithless and do not obey his word. That does not mean we perfectly obey everything he says either, but we do desire to obey his word and we have accepted Jesus, so we live in the compassion, the forgiveness, the love of God. They live in their own making in the dark. They have closed their eyes to the light and closed their minds to the truth. But God preserves our life according to his love. His words are true, his law is righteous forever. He never changes. His is constant. We may not be all true all the time. We change every so often, thus we are not constant, but he is constant.