No matter…
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Psalm 119:49-72 (Forward, p 83) CEV p. 630
I find our psalmist to be very refreshing—and challenging. In our world today, it seems that almost everyone has a very good and logical and reasonable reason or excuse for doing or not doing something. Perhaps it has to do with timing, or with circumstances, or with the people involved, but regardless, they find an easy way around doing or not doing a certain thing.
Our psalmist has no such qualms, no such excuses. ‘No matter…’ seems to be his byword:
‘No matter when…’
“I get furious when evil people turn against your Law” (verse 53);
“Even in the night, I think about you, Lord, & I obey your law” (v 55);
“As soon as you command, I do what you say” (verse 60);
“Your laws are so fair that I wake up and praise you in the middle of the night” (verse 62);
“When you corrected me, it did me good because it taught me to study your laws” (verse 71);
‘No matter where…’
“No matter where I am, your teachings fill me with songs” (verse 54);
‘No matter what…”
“When I am hurting, I find comfort in your promise that leads to life”
(verse 50);
“I would rather obey you than to have a thousand pieces of silver and gold” (verses 72).
‘No matter who…’
“Conceited people sneer at me, but I obey your Law” (verse 51);
“My reputation is being ruined by conceited liars, but with all my heart I follow your teachings” (verse 69);
“Those liars have no sense, but I find happiness in your Law” (v. 70);
I think that there is a steadfastness, a devotion, a resoluteness to God and to depending upon God and trusting Him, studying His law and obeying it, being led by God, and praising and worshipping Him, that is quite note-worthy, quite remarkable and certainly much to be desired, and yes, even imitated. May we, you and I, have a similar steadfastness and devotion. Amen.
Forward notes: ”The earth, O LORD, is full of your love; instruct me in your statutes” (verse 64).
“As I read in the psalm how God is good and brings forth good, it is jarring to read about people spitting in Jesus’s face and slapping him. Yet reading Jesus’s defiant words to Caiaphas, that even he will see the coming of the Son of Man, I hear the voice of the psalmist singing that God’s statutes have been songs and all his dealings have been gracious.
“It is not uncommon to hear folks say that Jesus had to be so terribly abused because his suffering was a payment. I just can’t see it. I don’t think God demands payment. In fact, it is by God’s grace freely given that we learn to forgive others in the first place, and we come to know that all God has given us could never be repaid.
“Jesus suffered because he loved us, loved us enough that he would go wherever humanity led him, even to death. Seeing God’s faithfulness to us, we can grow in our own faith, knowing that Jesus is our companion through anything and everything. We can pray with the psalmist that God’s promise gives us life, and life abundant.”
Moving Forward: “Read all of Psalm 119 this week.”
Some concluding notes: It would seem to me that the writer of today’s meditation is ‘buying into’ three of our society’s prominent themes or beliefs. One has to do with punishment and accountability, especially for our sins against God. Our author thinks perhaps that the suffering that Jesus experienced was a punishment inflicted upon Him as a payment for His own sin. But this is not true: it was a punishment for our sin. As Isaiah 53 puts it:
“He suffered and enduring great pain for us, but we thought his suffering was punishment from God. He was wounded and crushed because of our sins; by taking our punishment, he made us completely well” (verses 4-5).
Notice how often this refers back to us, as he mentions, ‘for us’, ‘our sins’, ‘our punishment’, ‘made us completely well.’ It all has to do with us and our failure to live up to God’s standard, God’s demands. Our society sometimes has problems with accountability—except with it suits them personally, as when someone has done something to them—but God has no such problem!
And contrary to our modern opinion that such a loving God as ours could never consciously and deliberately plan such a thing—hence our author suggesting that it was ‘humanity’ that led Him there—our passage from Isaiah clearly says (verse 6):
“All of us were like sheep that had wandered off. We had each gone our own way, but the Lord gave him the punishment we deserved”.
One other thing: our society is big on a ‘victim mentality’, but many people in times past and present have suffered horribly, even at the hands of others, and never taken it personally, never seen it as abusive, or never been scarred by it. The Scriptures say that Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered (Hebrews 5:8) and I doubt that it did Him any real harm. Indeed, many of us of an older generation enduring light corporal punishment and were never lastingly hurt by it. In fact, I would suggest that it made us better.