Psalm 119:14-16 - In the way of Your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your Word.
In these verses, the psalmist delights—as he does in every verse of this long psalm—in the Word of God, in His commands and His teachings. The testimonies of the Lord tell us what God has done for His people. The Word testifies to God's mighty acts of power as He set Israel free from slavery in Egypt. The psalmist no doubt delighted in the prophecies that pointed ahead to the coming of the Messiah, as we delight in the fulfillment of those prophecies in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The psalmist meditates, as we must, on God's precepts, His commands. On Mount Sinai, God gave His Law to Moses to be handed down to His people. Israel did not always obey those Laws, and we do not obey them as we should. As we meditate on God's commandments, we see that His Law is a bright mirror that clearly reveals our sins so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are led to repentance. Meditation on the Word also reveals what God has done to save us from our slavery to sin, as He long ago saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt: "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).
Through His Son, our Savior, God revealed His grace and truth. Jesus, the Word made flesh, was born among us. Throughout His earthly life and ministry, He perfectly obeyed every precept of His Heavenly Father. Then, according to God's plan, the innocent Son of God took our sins onto Himself and on the cross suffered the penalty of death that we deserved for our sins. Then, on the first Easter morning, Jesus shattered the power of death and rose from the dead. By God's grace through faith in Jesus, we are now dressed in His righteousness, standing before God clothed in the perfect obedience of His Son.
The psalmist leads us to respond to all that God has done for us. We delight in the Word that testifies to our Savior. We rejoice in its saving purpose, in the eyewitness testimony "written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name" (John 20:31b). With the psalmist we meditate on the Word of God and, through the study of the inspired Scriptures, we fix our eyes on God's ways. We take delight in the precepts that God gives in His Word, the commands that guide us in the footsteps of our Savior to "walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us" (Ephesians 5:2a). "I will not forget Your Word," says the psalmist, and we will not forget the Savior in whom we delight, the Word made flesh, Jesus our Lord.
THE PRAYER: Lord God, I delight in Your Word. Help me to walk in Your ways. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler.
Reflection Questions:
1. What does meditating on God's Word mean to you? Do you have to be reading the Bible to do this?
2. Is God's Word really more valuable than all the riches in the world? How could this be true?
3. How do you make God's Word a part of your day-to-day life?
Today's Bible Readings: Micah 1-3 Acts 21:1-17
To Download Devotion MP3 to your computer, right click here and select "Save Link As" or "Save Target As" or "Download Linked File As"