Psalm 19:1-14 God’s Law
David sings of the glory of God’s Law. First though David sings of the glory of God and how His creation praises Him and speaks of His message to man.
If you want to see the majesty of God, just consider the works of His hands! Who but God could have conceived of our solar system and galaxy and universe? He sets the sun at just the right distance from our home to warm it without burning it. He put the planets in between to keep ours in its perfect position. The night sky speaks of His wonder in the stars. The stars were the first to herald Jesus’ birth for wise men to see from afar. He even included visible signs for us to be able to navigate and know the seasons. Some have even postulated that the constellations actually tell of God’s plan of salvation. I would like to think this is true.
God created all that there is with His word; “Let there be…” The only part of creation that He actually ‘got His hands dirty’ with is when He made man. Genesis 2:7 tells us that God took the “dust of the ground”, formed man, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life. Man traded that special Life that God gave us in exchange for a lie. At that point God used His words again to bind Himself in a promise to bring back access to that Life to man through a Savior. We know that Savior is Jesus but when that promise was made man had no idea how long it was going to take for His promise to be fulfilled and what would need to happen for that promise to be completed.
In the meantime, man NEEDED guidance. At one point man had become so perverse that God wiped out all but eight people. Afterwards He promised to never again wipe man from the face of the earth through flood. He chose for Himself another single man who would follow Him and bring his family along. I will call this ‘God’s third beginning’. He once again started with a promise. That promise had not changed since the beginning; it just got a little more focused.
After a time, God wanted to focus His chosen family a bit more. It was time to set down some rules and regulations. It was time for them to hear the Father’s words. These He gave to the nation He had created out of the one family. He gave them to Moses; the man He chose to be His voice to the people.
I find it interesting that there are only a few places in the Bible where we actually see or hear of God using His hands. Making man was one and writing His words on tablets of stone is another. There are a couple more but these two are our focus today.
What God wanted to say to man was SO important that HE wrote it down for us. What He wrote was perfect. It was meant to instruct man and keep him close to the Lord until the promise He made was fulfilled. IF men could have FULLY followed it there would have been no need for a Savior.
David sings of the wonders of God’s words; His Law. Those words are life to his soul. They are the promise of God to dwell with man IF man dwells with Him. They are David’s hope. David lives his life by these words, as much as he can. And when he fails he turns again to God’s words to wash him clean again.
Those words are where our hope comes from too. Our hope has been fulfilled in Jesus. He was the ONLY one who could fulfill God’s words perfectly. He has that special Life that we lost. He was God come in the flesh for us. He was God’s Son, born of woman and therefor able to do what no man could. His works fulfilled the words of God. His work also freed us from the bonds of legal requirements and opened the way for personal relationship. The Law of the Lord doesn’t carry the same meaning for me today that it did for David but it is still just as perfect and wonderful! ALL of God’s words are worthy of praise and important to truly know.
Father God, my mind hasn’t stopped singing the song of these verses since I read the heading title. The Law of the Lord IS perfect! YOUR words are food for my soul. They are the markers that teach me of the safe places. I wouldn’t know where to walk without them. The boundaries are just as relevant today as the day You wrote them down for Moses. The ritual and specific regulations have been removed but not the love that is required. Help me live by that love; the love Jesus commanded when He summed up the Law.
Teach me of You more and more Father. Let me hear Your words in a fresh and new way. Let them be life to my bones and meat to my body. Thank You for EVERY promise in Your word!
