Posts Tagged: Psalm 119:9-11

“PURITY: THE QUESTION OF GOD’S WORD”

On March 3, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“9 How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word.

10 I have tried hard to find you– don’t let me wander from your commands.

11 I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” (Psalm 119:9-11,     New Living Translation)

 

My wife was reading these verses aloud this morning during our devotional time, and she read the second half of verse 9 as a question: “By obeying your word?”  She immediately corrected herself.  “Oh,” she said, “that’s not a question; that’s the answer.”

Actually, it is possible to read the entire verse as a question.  So, her “mistake” may not have been a mistake at all!

However, I suspect that her correction of her reading is correct after all.  While it is possible that all of verse 9 is a question, I think it more likely that in the second half of the verse, the psalmist is answering his own question.

In any case, my wife’s creative reading of Psalm 119:9 invited me to think more deeply about the verses that follow it.  I was also invited to think not only about the verses that follow, but more importantly about how to follow these verses.

Interestingly, after asking the question in verse 9—and possibly answering it—the psalmist seems to have immediately sensed a problem: the problem of wandering.  Most of us don’t “go into a premeditated backslide,” as a friend of mine once expressed it.  Most of us just wander.  We get a little further and a little further away from God’s will for our lives, but eventually, we look up and wonder how on earth we go so far away from God.  We need not wonder: We wandered!

Verse 11 gives us to antidote to wandering: hiding (or treasuring) God’s Word in our heart.  The Hebrew word translated “hidden” is a word that often suggests hiding something (or someone) that is very special to us, so that it cannot be harmed.

C.H. Spurgeon, a preacher from the late 19th century, gave an interesting outline for vs. 11:

  1. The Best Thing (God’s Word)
  2. In the Best Place (our hearts)
  3. For the Best Purpose (so that we may not sin against God).

It is important to remember that we do not hide God’s Word in our hearts in order to impress others with how much we know.  We hide God’s Word in our hearts so that we won’t mess up our own and other people’s lives, and so displease God.  The question is not whether we read or know God’s Word.  The question is whether we are using it to live our lives in accordance with God’s will for us.

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