Psalm 119:121-128
GOOD MORNING! There is no title to Psalm 119, neither is any writer's name mentioned. Psalm 119 is a miniature Bible. The more it is read and meditated upon, the fresher and richer it becomes. There is a length and a breadth to this great Psalm that holds the serious student enraptured. The sincere reader soon recognizes that the subject of Psalm 119 is the matchless, incomparable, living word of the living God.
Today we begin reading with verse 121: "I have done judgment and justice: leave me not to mine oppressors. Be surety for thy servant for good: let not the proud oppress me. Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness. Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy, and teach me thy statutes. I am thy servant; give me understanding, that I may know thy testimonies. It is time for thee, LORD, to work: for they have made void thy law. Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold. Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way."[1]
Many of God's children have been led to pray, "It is time for thee, LORD, to work:" because the earthly situation through which they are passing has deeply grieved them.
When the LORD begins to do His "strange work," [2] we cannot know the form or fashion it will take, for our God is "a consuming fire."[3]
Our God works according to the counsel of His own will. The Psalmist, in harmony with the will of God, writes: "Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time has come to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof."[4]
When the LORD God arises, His work may not be confined in its results to the quickening of the spiritual life of His church, rather it may be associated with providential upheavals and convulsions that will fill the hearts of the unbelieving with astonishment and dismay.
There have been times when God's work and the signs of His holy presence have been seen in the terrible shaking of the nations, in the very plowing up of the foundations of the social order.
Time after time the divine wrath has been visited upon injustice and unrighteousness and tyranny; and for the emancipation of peoples whose lives had a long and hopeless mean.
The kingdom of God does not stand in isolation; there are relations which closely involve it with the material universe, and with the whole of human society.
Often the LORD God has worked through the elements of nature, through blasting and mildew, through floods and famine, through locust and blight; through flagging commerce, with its machinery rusting in the mill and its ships rotting in the harbor.
Indeed, the Bible teaches that all of the elements of nature are the LORD'S servants. "Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:" [5] Neither is the LORD "slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." [6]
The petition of the Psalmist is: "Be surety for thy servant for good. … Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy." The Psalmist is praying that the LORD God will be for him, all that the LORD God is for all of His children.
At all times and in all circumstances our Eternal Security; since the world was brought into being by the creative word of God, the LORD JESUS is the surety of all of His own.
Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan!
Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!
Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary!
Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me,
There my burdened soul found liberty,
At Calvary.[7]
AMEN.
[1] Psalm 119:121-128
[2] Isaiah 28:21
[3] Hebrews 12:29
[4] Psalm 102:13-14
[5] Isaiah 59:1
[6] 2 Peter 3:9
[7] From "At Calvary" by William R. Newell