21 Days of Prayer in Psalm 119 (Day #8)

"My Portion"
Read Psalm 119:57-64

As our service was canceled this morning due to freezing rain and the resulting travel woes, I am continuing to post these daily readings and comments with prayer on Facebook and on my Honest 2 God blog on the Psalms.

Each day we are reading a successive passage of eight verses from Psalm 119. Almost every verse mentions the Word of God by one of several synonyms. So, in this psalm, we don’t look for the differences between these different terms (Word, Way, Law, Testimonies, Precepts, Commandments, Statutes, Rules, etc.) but look for the similarities. One other note, Psalm 119 is what is called an acrostic psalm. It is made up of 22 separate sections (of eight verses each) starting with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This means that all eight verses in the first section start with the Hebrew letter aleph, the next eight verses all start with beth, and so on. Today is the letter heth.

There is much in this section that I was going to teach today, but for this post, I will focus on the first two verses, 57-58.

The Lord is my portion;
    I promise to keep your words.

I entreat your favor with all my heart;
    be gracious to me according to your promise.

In verse 57, the psalmist’s concept of “portion” has a deep history in Israel. The Hebrew word is commonly used for “portion, share, part, territory,” but in meaning “portion” points to their inheritance, that which has been given to them by the Lord. And what is it that has been given? It is nothing less than the Lord himself. Nothing could be greater, or more undeserved, than the relational presence of the Lord in our lives.

(See Psalm 16:5; 73:26; Lam.3:24)

This acknowledgment of the Lord as his “portion” leads the psalmist to vow to keep the word of God—why? First, such obedience is the response of love to the given love of God; second, it is the Word itself that declares the Lord to be his portion. Hence, he would want to guard and cherish the word that itself is the guarantee of his inheritance.

Verse 58 testifies that the psalmist seeks God’s favor/grace with all his heart. God wants what is best for us but do we seek his grace with all our hearts? Do we ask this like we mean it? Do we ask it like we mean it? Too often we don’t feel our needs as intensely as we should for we minimize our own sin and exaggerate our own goodness. The truth is that we need God’s grace more than we know. It is as we come to the conviction of our own need that we will begin to seek his favor wholeheartedly. The sooner the better, since he longs to bestow it upon us. 

It is his promise, should we confess our need!

O Lord, I thank you that you didn’t choose to satisfy me with riches and other things, popularity and position, worldly power, hosts of angels, or libraries of knowledge. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are my portion! You are my only hope which is a very good thing for in Christ all your promises are “Yes” and Amen! (2 Cor. 2:20-22)

Psalm 32:5,8-9 "Confession & Counsel"

Psalm 32:5

"I acknowledged my sin to you,

and I did not cover my iniquity;

I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,"

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin."

Comments:

The first five times (out of the six) that I commented on this psalm (back in the pre-blog Facebook days), I focused on v. 5 and the importance of confession in the process of forgiveness. Here are those brief comments, rescued from the digital dust heap of news feed oblivion.

1. Forgiveness always begins with confession. We can't be saved until we admit that we need to be! (2/2010)
2. Our forgiveness starts with our confession to the Lord Jesus that He is right and that we have been wrong, and then as a matter of integrity we extend the forgiveness we have received from him to others who have sinned against us. It is the path to freedom and joy! (8/2010)
3. Confession is always the path to take with God...since covering, concealing, and complaining are completely ineffective, not to mention stupid, considering who we are trying to convince. What a blessing it is to be forgiven! (3/2011)
4. I am so glad that I don't have to confess all my faults and failures to another person but can go directly to the Lord. I am also glad that when I do confess the Lord doesn't reject me but cleanses me, hides me from danger, preserves me from trouble, and surrounds me with deliverance! (9/2011)
5. The more we know Jesus, the more we know that we are not Him. Yet he loves us. Remember "a bruised reed he will not break" (Isa 42:3) but those who are stiff-necked in refusing to confess will be broken. (3/2012)

Then in May of 2013, I changed it up and commented on v. 6-7 instead…

Therefore let everyone who is godly
    offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
    they shall not reach him.

You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

Comment: The tsunami of circumstances and of crisis will not overwhelm the one who prays in the days of peace (preparing for a crisis before it happens). I wonder if we listen really close if we can hear a bit of God’s "shouts of deliverance" surrounding us? (5/2013)

Now, three years have passed since I last commented on this psalm but for today I will pick up where I left off and briefly consider Psalm 32:8-9.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
    I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
    which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
    or it will not stay near you.

Comments: In verse 8 there is a change of voice. It is no longer the psalmist proclaiming blessing (v.1) or giving his testimony (v.3-5) or declaring his faith in God for deliverance (v.6-7). These two verses record the offering exhortation to the congregation to seek the Lord. This is the Lord speaking to the psalmist and the people alike with the instruction of wisdom. We would do well to be teachable to the instruction of the Lord. He is not the cosmic killjoy many have made him out to be. He is the one who restores joy, protects us, and surrounds us with” shouts of deliverance” (v.7).

While he may deliver us with a shout he desires to counsel us with his eye. While we are not an overly quiet family, we live near a family that seems to shout all the time. God’s family is not that way. He doesn’t constantly shout at us out of anger and frustration. Instead, he wants us to know him so well that we will respond to a simple look. For this to be the case we must know God well enough to understand and respond. This comes only by spending consistent time reading through the whole of the Scriptures, meditating on them, and listening in our times of prayer as well as speaking.

I remember hearing a message in Beaverton about 15 years ago, by Brooklyn Tabernacle’s Jim Cymbala, where he spoke about two ideas in v. 8. The first idea being that the Lord says “with my eye upon you” in the sense that there is never a moment when he will take his eye off of us. We are never out of his loving sight. The second idea he shared was that the Lord says, “I will counsel you with my eye” meaning that by the very movement of his eye we will know his leading. However, if we are like the metaphorical horse in this passage then we need a bit and bridle to control us. 

Do we have that kind of eye-to-eye intimacy with our Father that we can clearly understand his counsel? Is it our great desire to please him because he has loved us so well? Or does God have to use the “bit and bridle” of emergencies and crises to bring us close? 

Our honest confession to the Lord, and obeying the Lord's gentle counsel to us brings both forgiveness and freedom!