Your word, Lord, is eternal,
  You have set it firm in the heavens.
Your faithfulness continues to all generations,
  You established the earth and it endures.
Your laws endure to this day,
  For all things serve you.

Meditation and Memorization
The psalmist prefaced this octrain with intentional worship. These three verses, alone, are worthy of memorization. In fact, I am starting every morning by reciting these verses. My whole perspective changes as I meditate on them! In fact, I just typed those three verses out by memory as a test of my intentional desire to “hide” them in my heart.¹ What a great way to start the day!

In the last post, I mused on the fact that daily encounters with this world’s brokenness, and our own tendancy to “wander,” can stumble our confidence in God’s Word. Doubt is “natural”. It pertains to our creatureliness, our sin-affected nature. God has given us the opportunity and power, however, to look to Him and let His Word be our Refuge. 

The remaining section of this psalm establishes this truth as the foundation for this beautiful worship:

If your law had not been my delight,
  I would have perished in my affliction.
I will never forget your precepts,
  for by them you have reserved my life.
Save me, for I am yours,
  I have sought out your precepts.
The wicked are waiting to destroy me,
  But I will ponder your statutes.
     Psalm 119:92-95

The psalmist here is giving his history, his present and his future. 

His history is affliction. Our psalmist has been through it! What really is affliction anyway? The dictionary defines it as anythng that causes pain or suffering. The word used here in the original Hebrew is oniy (oh-NEE’) and it means misery or poverty (deprivation). But to understand that a bit more visually, the root of this word comes from anah (ah-NAW’), meaning “bowed down” or humbled, abased, or “brought low”. It is linked with the idea of being preoccupied. Now, that speaks to me. This is the habit of depression—to ruminate upon one’s low position to the point that nothing good gets in. Thus the poverty of hope. Is that as familiar a picture for you as it is for me? 

How can such a glorious psalm keep hitting at such devastating, depressing themes? It is because this psalm glorifies how God interevenes in all our misery. He lifts our faces toward Him so we can see Who loves us and offers us the hope we lack.  

In this same verse, the psalmist gives us God’s method of intervention: God’s Word. God’s Word is not MY thoughts for me to ruminate over, but His Truth. My thoughts are broken records, false litanies of despair. His thoughts are love and compassion and conviction of sin for the cleansing of our wounds. The psalmist looked to God by opening His Word and reading what God has to say about him and his situation. God’s word tells what God has done in the past to seal my confidence in the present, and what God promises to do for us from here on out. I can do this! I can open God’s Word and read that history and those promises, too!

Further, the psalmist didn’t just open the Word to challenge it, or to “test” it as if he were giving God “one last chance” to come through. No, the psalmist opened God’s word and delighted in it (v.93). The attitude we bring to God’s Word matters to the joy we receive from it. Do we come in faith, even the smallest, weakest of faith and hope? God will honor that. God refreshes our soul with Truth and mercy and vision. 

Verses 93 and 94 goes even farther, to claim that God did not only lift his spirits, but God literally saved his soul and his physical life. We all know what prolonged depression can do to the mind and the spirit and the body. We don’t think straight and, if unrelieved, our thoughts dig our holes deeper and deeper into untruth. Our emotions become dysregulated and unreliable and embarrassing. Our bodies absorb the stress. Though God’s design in our physical creation is for self-correction, something happens to the body’s ability to self-correct and the slide into physical, mental and emotional illness gains momentum. Yes, it is no small truth that God’s Word halts the downward slide and begins to reverses it toward healing and wholeness. God’s Word quite literally preserves life because God’s Word gives hope. 

Verse 94 brings us up to the present life of the psalmist. Because of all of God’s goodness, he cries out to God for salvation. Why is this here? He has just said that God’s Word has already saved his life! But here, we see the transparency of scripture: we need continual saving. That is because we are continually brought low by the circumstances and reality of this earthly life. 

Okay, I was saved by Christ at an early age and there have been many epochs of my life where I could recite verses 92 and 93 as my own. I have seen them to be true. I also know, however, that today is a new day. We may lose a loved one, lose a job, encounter betrayal or slander, be stricken with a devastating or terminal illness, or a resurgence of physical disability, or we may be violated in mind, body or soul by evil, or wracked by anxiety and concern over personal or global concerns. In fact, it is a given that we will, again, be afflicted in some way. We live in the midst of continual concern. 

We need to cry out with the psalmist to “do it again, Lord!” And He does! This is Who God is. This is What Jesus did on the cross and sealed in His Resurrection. And it is what Christ will do in the future when He comes again to break this earthbound cycle of sin and corruption. God has promised that He IS making all things new—not just “one Day”, but now, in you and I. But the Psalmist is teaching us to cry out to God for His continual life-preserving salvation, not just in the midst of our weakness and doubt, but even in the midst of our confidence and strong faith! We ALL need God all the time. 

Again, the ground of the psalmist’s cry is that he has intentionally sought out (learned) and lived (obeyed) God’s precepts. A “precept” is another word for a founding truth that organizes all other notions in truth. If we learn and live by God’s commandments for us, and not try to dilute the strength of God’s Word by our rationalizing and trying to find our way around the difficult bits, then the precepts themselves will save us from so much! We say “forewarned is forearmed”, but that is just what God’s word does! It forewarns us so that we are forearmed against false ideas that confuse us and get us into deeper and deeper trouble. Have you, too, felt a downward slide in some area of your life? We can look to God’s commands and find recalibration. 

Finally, God is there for us in the future. What is happening now? Evil is stalking us, prowling around looking for whom he might devour; yes, evil is personified! The desire of evil is to take you away from God, to destroy you, but God’s desire is to preserve your life and to restore you to wholeness and health. God designed you to reign with Him forever in a love relationship that is unequaled here on earth. Yet, there is a battle for your soul every day that you live—no matter how long you have lived as a Christian—no matter how long you have lived in mistaken belief systems or the false idealogy of self-realization with nihilism as its ultimate end. 

There is a way through this world, and our psalmist has nailed it: I will remember. I will remember what? I will remember your statutes. This word “statutes” sounds a lot like “statues” or “states” (as in “statement”). It has the idea of being FIRM and immoveable. Remember our first three verses? God’s Word is eternal. God’s Word, His commands, are so true, so grounding, that they are the only immovable truths. Even the earth and all the heavens are under His Sovereign care, they are established by Him and they, and God’s Word, stand firm in the heavens. 

God’s Word is not going to change out from under you. People, even those who don the cloak of the religious, are going to disappoint you and, rarely, but quite possibly, may in some circumstances even do you harm. There is only One on Whom you can confidently rest your faith—One Who will never let you down. And He has given you His Word on that. Jesus Christ IS the Word-made-flesh, that dwelt among us full of mercy and truth (John 1). What He said He would do, He did. He accomplished our salvation in the heavens, and one day all the earth will bow down and proclaim that He is, indeed, Lord of all. Hallelujah!

Putting it Together So Far. “Lamedh” (LAH-med, or, for some, LAME-ed) sounds like the word “lament,” but aside from it being the 12th letter of the Hebrew alef-bet, the phonetic letter “l”, and having the numeric value of 30, the letter’s original Phoenician pictographic representation and meaning was that of a shepherd’s staff with a hook. This tool is used by shepherds to incite, prod, prick or goad the shepherds into safe keeping. 

Hebrew scholars note that it is the tallest of the Hebrew letters and so ascribe the letter as the King of Kings (Messiah), the “Highest” of all. Maybe this can help us to remember this psalm—to worship the King in the morning with the first three verses and to receive our Good Shepherd’s “incitement” to turn to Him at every moment of the day thereafter. He intends our good, because He loves us that much. Yes, you are included. You belong here. 

MEMORIZATION:

There is one further verse that closes this psalm, but we will consider it in the next post. For now, let’s see if we can remember this verse so far: 

⁸⁹Your ____, Lord, is _______,

  it stands ________ in the ______.

⁹⁰Your faithfulness __________ through ____ generations,

  You ___________ the earth and it _______.

⁹¹Your law _________ to _____ day,

  For ___ things _____ _______. 

⁹²If your word had not been my _________,

  I would have ___________ in my ________.

⁹³I will ________ for get your precepts,

  for by them, You have ____________ my life.

⁹⁴Save me, for ___ am _______,

  for I have ________ ____ your precepts.

⁹⁵The wicked are __________ to __________ me,

  But I will __________ your __________.

© by ReadPsalm119.com. PHOTO: ”Lamedh v89-95 Rainbow on Kauai” by ReadPsalm119.com

FOOTNOTE: 

1. I want to encourage you to memorize scripture with me! What better goal to have in the new year, even if, like me, you have failed in the past to do more than a few verses or only “famous” passages for your whole life. A great tool I have downloaded and am actively using to help me is the free, downloadable VerseLocker app from Scripture Memory Fellowship (available from the links given here or from the App Store). This app gives multiple ways of memorizing (“Blur” the word out, “Words” – Fill In the Missing Blank, “Initials” – the method of using only the first letter of each word to code your way through the verse, and “Type” – giving you a field to type and receive feedback and hints as you go along) in addition to audio clips for listening and reciting. I have this app on my phone and I sign in to use it on my computer as well. I used to play solitaire and daily word search and crossword puzzle apps in the morning to wake up my mind before getting out of bed or before sleeping, since my brain needs help to wake up and wind down. Now, I am happily redeeming the time for the Lord with this app and achieving the goals I had for this website as well (memorizing Psalm 119). Give it a try and leave a comment and tell me what you think!   ↩︎