Daily Update #165

Pause:  As always, we are in the presence of our loving Heavenly Father. 
             Take a moment to allow His Holy Spirit to quieten your heart and mind,
             so that through His Word He may speak to you today.

Readings:  Revelation 10: 8 – 11;    Psalm 119: 65 – 72;   Luke 19: 45 – 48

Good morning everyone.  Today I want to share some thoughts about the reading from Psalm 119.  As you may know this is the longest Psalm, 176 verses long, and takes the form of an acrostic, each portion of 8 verses beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  This Psalm was probably meant to be read rather than sung, although reading all 176 verses in one go is a bit daunting.  Rather, each one of the stanzas is well worth spending time over individually.
The key to this stanza, verses 65 to 72, is the word “good”, which appears 5 times in the NIV, or 6 times if you read the verses in Alec Motyer’s “Psalms By The Day.”
We begin with a plea to God to “Do good to your servant”, something we would all echo I’m sure.  We have a loving Heavenly Father, and He really does love to do good to those who seek to serve Him.
The prayer continues with a request to God to “Teach me knowledge and good judgment.”  Again, this is something that we would all pray; never forget that when Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit He said that he will “teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.”
Moving on to verse 68 the Psalmist affirms his belief that God is good, and that what He does is good.  Words such as these can only come from the writer’s experience, and I would echo them.  I have been a Christian for close on 60 years, and although my life has not always been plain sailing, I too would affirm that God is good, and that what He does is good. The Psalmist obviously experienced ups and downs; in verse 67 we read “before I was afflicted,” and in verse 71, “It was good for me to be afflicted.”  None of us want troubles, but they are part of life for each one of us; the Psalmist actually says that he would learn more of God’s ways as a result of his afflictions!
In closing I am going to use Alec Motyer’s translation of verse 72, “Good for me is the teaching of your mouth, more than thousands in gold or silver.”   The Psalmist was blessed by the word of the Lord; we are even more blessed, as we have the words of Jesus Himself in the New Testament.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, we don’t have to be theologians to read the Bible, to get to know the word of God.  It really is a treasure far more valuable than gold or silver, revealing to us the never-failing love of our God, who truly is good beyond measure.
God bless you all.

Pray: Thank you Heavenly Father for your word;
 may it be a light to our path and a guide to our feet.  Amen.