I have a hard time following the directions of someone who has lived in the same area forever. They go something like this.
“Well, you go down to the old Baylor place, but don’t turn there. After the spot where the lighting took out the old tree on Wally’s place, turn down that lane. Well, it isn’t a lane, really. It got taken over after the flood of ’62 and the new bridge was built. It’s down there a piece on the right.”
There is too much information missing to make these types of direction really useful. They point in the existence of your destination, but they lack enough usable current information to get you there.
If you have ever tried to use a GPS in a city with very tall buildings your device has a hard time getting a lock on the satellite signals. You keep traveling, but device doesn’t catch up with you. The directions it renders are not correct because your current location is different than your GPS’s. They need the information from the satellite to update and pinpoint your current location before it can give accurate directions. And now we don’t even carry maps in our cars to help us in an emergency.
The creation orients us to the existence of the Creator God, but that isn’t sufficient to bring us into relationship with Him. This second half of this psalm takes us to the second element needed for us to reconnect to the Creator. We need more than the stars and sun. They can point us in the right direction, but they don’t tell us enough.
God’s Word, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, give us the specifics needed to bring us restoration and life. These verses give us a series of attributes of God’s Word. It is not an exhaustive list, but a compliment to the beginning part of the psalm. The first part of the psalm is about general revelation, what God tells everyone about Himself in creation. There is much more than what is written here, but even what is written is enough to get us oriented in the right direction. Our portion today is about special revelation, the specifics of the LORD’s intervention in creation as revealed in the written record. Again, much more could have been written, but what was written is sufficient to bring us to salvation.
There are five different words used to describe God’s Word: law, statutes, precepts, command, and decrees. Each word speaks of the same body of literature. There are slight differences in meaning, but because of the structure of Hebrew poetry, those differences aren’t really important. These all have their origin in the LORD. They are all His law, statutes, precepts, commands and decrees. Just as He endures, so what He says endures. They have an infinite value.
The Word refreshes the soul, and brings wisdom, joy and light. If ever we needed these things in our world, it is now. But so many don’t heed the warning. Even we ourselves need the Word to show us our own faults. The Scriptures bring light into our dark souls. They keep us from diving off the deep end. They provide reward and warning. They point their finger at our willful choices to disobey. In other words, they mess with us.
May we pray the prayer of verse fourteen, may our words and meditation be pleasing to Him.
The Arnold Journey 