SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/21/2012 8:37:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Blessed Are the Balanced
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Psalm 119:161-168
Message of the verses: “161 Shin. Princes persecute me without
cause, But my heart stands in awe of Your words. 162 I rejoice at Your word, As
one who finds great spoil. 163 I hate and despise falsehood, But I love Your
law. 164 Seven times a day I praise You, Because of Your righteous ordinances. 165
Those who love Your law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble. 166
I hope for Your salvation, O LORD, And do Your commandments. 167 My soul keeps
Your testimonies, And I love them exceedingly. 168 I keep Your precepts and
Your testimonies, For all my ways are before You.”
I have
always said that the entire Bible is a balanced book, and as we have studied
the 119th Psalm we can see that it is also balanced, and we will see
that this quality is especially true in this stanza.
Respect and Rejoicing (vv. 161-162): “Princes persecute me without cause, But my
heart stands in awe of Your words. 162 I rejoice at Your word, As one who finds
great spoil.”
Let us go back to verse 23 for
some insight on verse 161. “Even though
princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes.” We see that the princes began to talk against
the psalmist in verse 23, but now they are persecuting against him in verse
160. The psalmist does not change as he
continues to be strengthened by the Word of God. The psalmist has learned as we should learn that
when we fear the Lord we need to fear no one else. We can see that the psalmist both respected
and rejoiced in the Word of God as the same time. We must learn that the joy of the Lord and
the greatness of the Lord are friends and not enemies. As the princes were trying to rob the
psalmist of perhaps even his life he was growing wealthier in the Word of
God. In this world today we hear a lot
about money as we have TV networks dedicated 24/7 speaking about money. When I began my job at Ford in 1965 I was
making $2.68 per hour and a nice house cost no more that $12-15 thousand
dollars. Today you can’t buy a good used
car for that much money. God’s Word is
full of promises and they never lose their value, and we cannot be robbed of
them.
Love and Hate (v. 163): “163 I hate and despise falsehood, But I love
Your law.”
When people think about God they
mostly think that God is love, and He surely is love, but God also hates sin,
and the Bible teaches us that God hates divorce. The Bible states that “Jacob I loved, but
Esau I hated. God hated sin so much that
He had to use love to satisfy His hatred of sin, and this was accomplished by
sending His Son to planet earth to become sin for us in order to give us His
righteousness. We see love and justice
on the cross and for that I will be eternally thankful. We have seen the psalmist speaking about love
and hate throughout this psalm for he states that He loves God’s Law but hated
every false way (vv. 97, 104, 127-128).
The psalmist states He love God’s law but hated double-minded people (v.
113).
Praise and poise (vv. 164-165): “164 Seven times a day I praise You, Because
of Your righteous ordinances. 165 Those who love Your law have great peace, And
nothing causes them to stumble.”
We can see praise and poise in
these two verses as praise is found in verse 164 and poise is found in verse
165. We see the psalmist praising the
Lord seven times a day, but you realize that this is not a matter of pride that
he writes these words, and he is not a legalist in doing this. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The legalist would set a
goal and be proud that he reached it; the Spirit-filled believer sets no goal
but goes beyond any goal he might have set.
Just as prayer can bring peace to our hearts (Phil. 4:4-7), so praise
can bring peace as well. Focusing on the
Lord, asking for nothing, and totally lost in our praise of Him, has a way of
making the problems look much smaller and the future much brighter. But praise also helps us to have poise in our
Christian walk and to not stumble (Jude 24) or cause others to stumble (1Cor.
8:13; Romans 14:13). The singing saint
is a stable saint, walking o a level path even when the enemy digs pits and
sets up obstacles.”
Walking and Waiting (vv. 166-168): “166 I hope for Your salvation, O LORD, And
do Your commandments. 167 My soul keeps Your testimonies, And I love them
exceedingly. 168 I keep Your precepts and Your testimonies, For all my ways are
before You.”
Titus 2:13
is a wonderful promise that all true believers are looking forward to: “looking for the blessed hope and the
appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.” This is what all true believers are truly
looking forward for we know that this is going to happen someday, as it begins
with the rapture of God’s church, the bride of Christ will be taken to heaven
to be rewarded for the work that they have done for the Lord while in the
body. This will happen in heaven while
the world will be in the tribulation period, the last seven years of earth as we
know it. Revelations 19 shows us that we
will return to the earth with our Lord at the very end of the tribulation
period and then the Lord will end the war before it destroys the entire earth. He will then separate the sheep from the
goats sending the goats into hell along with the antichrist, the false prophet
and the devil. After this He will
recreate the earth into something like it was at the first creation and He will
reign from Jerusalem for 1000 years fulfilling His promises to the nation of Israel
that are scattered throughout the OT.
The new heavens, new earth, and new Jerusalem await after the end of the
1000 year kingdom as the entire universe is uncreated (2Peter 3:10) and
eternity with the Lord begins for all those who have trusted Him for their
forgiveness of sins.
Now we have
to keep this in balance with what we are to be doing now while on planet
earth. The reason that Peter told his
readers that the earth would be completely destroyed was to encourage them to
keep working. “9 ¶ The Lord is not slow about His promise, as
some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish
but for all to come to repentance. 10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens
will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense
heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
“11 ¶ Since all these things are to be destroyed in
this way, what sort of
people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the
day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with
intense heat! 13 But according to
His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which
righteousness dwells. 14 Therefore, beloved, since you look for these
things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless,
15 and regard the patience of our Lord
as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom
given him, wrote to you, 16 as
also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some
things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do
also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this
beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of
unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of
eternity. Amen.” A couple of comments on
this passage and the first is that these were the last words of Peter that were
written in the NT, for not long after he wrote these words he was crucified
upside down, which followed the crucifixion of his wife as tradition tells us. The other comment is about the word “element”
and this word in the Greek means “basic building block.” The basic building block of all the universe
is the atom and we know from Scripture that the Lord holds the world together,
but one day He will let loose of the world and it will all burn up in a very,
very large atomic explosion. I have been
watching a 26 part series on the last days of the Second World War and at the
end of that war two bombs were set off over Japan having the power of twenty
thousand tons of TNT and the heat from that blast was in the millions of
degrees. These are just small bombs
compared to what are now available, but all of the bombs will not produce the
power or heat of when the Lord un-creates the world, and as Peter says, knowing
this ought to spurn us on to good works.
Dr. Wiersbe states “But as we wait and hope, we must walk and work, for
we want to be found faithful when Jesus comes (Matt. 24:45-51). When we love His Word, we will also love His
appearing (2Tim. 4:6-8) and live like those who are ready to meet their Lord
(1John 2:28).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I have always been goal oriented, and I
suppose that this is a good thing up unto a point as long as it is not in a legalist
way when it comes to spiritual things. I
am glade and at the same time sad (good balance) when it comes to having my
toes stepped on from God’s Word.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: I want to sincerely praise
the Lord in times of troubles and temptations.
Memory verses for the week:
1Cor. 13:1-7
1 If I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have
become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all
knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have
love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all
my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but
do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is
patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag, and is not arrogant,
5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does
not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth, 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.
9/21/2012 9:54:19 AM
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