A, Post-Pentecost 7 Proper 10 - Psalm 119:105–112 "God's Word Walking"

Psalm 119:105–112 (ESV) Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.  I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules.  I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!  Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your rules.  I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.  The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.  Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.  I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

God’s Word was a lamp to Isaac and Rebekah.  Through them God was to give what he promised to Abraham. 

Last week we heard Isaac was comforted by his marriage to Rebekah after the death of his mother, Sarah.  Rebekah is of the same family as Isaac.  Her grandfather is Nahor, making Abraham her great uncle.  Isaac and her father Bethuel were first cousins.

God had led the servant of Abraham to Rebekah, and the family knew God was at the centre of this event.  Laban, her brother, and Bethuel, her father, agree, saying, “The thing has come from the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good.  Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the LORD has spoken.”  (Genesis 24:50–51 ESV)

Rebekah, against the will of her mother and brother, agrees to go immediately to her husband-to-be and not wait the ten days her family requested, since she also knew God was at the centre of the marital union.

However, the immediacy of the union, did not result in the immediacy of conception after the marriage.  So, Isaac petitions God on behalf of his wife and is granted his request.  One might query why God would allow this to occur because he was the orchestrator of the marriage, and since he also had promised Abraham, he was to be the father of many nations.

Nevertheless, just as his mother and father before him struggled with barrenness.   Just as they were granted Isaac through God’s Word of promise.  And as Isaac lived in remembrance of God testing his father, Abraham, with the near sacrifice of his life.  Isaac was embedded with similar faith, which was only made deeper by the patience, suffering, and the calling on of God in prayer. 

The barrenness was no accident, but rather was a test to continually rely upon God.  In Psalm one hundred and nineteen we hear, “I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!”  (Psalm 119:107 ESV)  Like the Psalmist, Isaac trusted God enough to cry out to him, to fulfil the promise made to his father Abraham. 

Here God gives us a clear example that we glorify him when we trust him and seek his blessing in our hardship.  When we’re tempted not to bother God with our daily needs, we hear in this Psalm the opposite, as God actually gives us his Word to cry out to him.  Isaac glorifies God when he prays to him and so too does Rebekah.

Rebekah besieged with pain, struggling to understand, prays,  “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” (Genesis 25:22 ESV)  She feared for her life, thinking the war within her womb was going to kill her, she asks God if this is just and right that she is experiencing such turmoil within.

Have you ever lamented and prayed, “What on earth is going on?”  Especially when things are tough!

Such are times of testing when patience is put under pressure, and pleasure is replaced by pain and suffering.  Isn’t it extraordinary how time seems to stand still when one suffers?  What is it that God is seeking us to learn about ourselves, and him, at times like these?

“And the LORD said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.’” (Genesis 25:23 ESV)

She gets her answer from God.  Sometimes it seems to us God does not answer our prayers.  In an age of instant gratification, perhaps our expectation is too immediate, or we are looking in the wrong place for the answer.  Not every answer can be found on Google!  Nor is our time always the right time for us to understand God’s answer with appropriate learning.  God answers every query of him, in his time, which is always the right time!

The Psalmist says, “I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.”  (Psalm 119:109 ESV)  The Psalmist knows his life, but he also knows God’s Word.  Throughout Psalm one hundred and nineteen there is a repetition of words with which the Psalmist glorifies God.  Not just any words, but words that are synonymous with God’s Word!

Laws, precepts, commandments, rules, testimonies, steadfast love, salvation, statutes, and promise are all alternative expressions for God’s Word.  When we have ears to hear his Word, this is the place God answers prayer. 

The two boys are born with difficulty, both pushing to get into the limelight, so it seems.  One is a heel grabber, and he grows into a quiet sneaky heel of a man, and the other, the older, is boisterous and brash.  He has little respect for his heritage, treats it with contempt, and sells it for a bowl of stew.

What has become of God’s promise to Abraham.  It seems Abraham’s grandsons are far from the ideal through whom God would work his will.  The Psalmist says, “The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.  Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”  (Psalm 119:110–111 ESV)

Yet these two seem as if they would not have much joy in God’s Word, or for the heritage they had in it.  Jacob would live his life as a deceiver and fraudster and Esau having been deceived would not receive Isaac’s blessing.  It seems Jacob was the wicked one and the one to lay a snare for his father and brother, and Esau would become a nation that strayed far from the precepts of God.

Yet these are the generations of Isaac through whom God worked.  It might surprise us that God would work his will through people who seemed to be less interested in God and his Word, and more interested in their own schemes and desires.

We’ve all seen people like this and thought, “I’m glad I’m not like them!”  Yet, a serious look at Psalm one hundred and nineteen and we soon realise, in God’s eyes, we’re not all that different to Jacob and Esau.  Even in our lucid moments when we seek the Lord as did Isaac and Rebekah, they are just that, “moments”! 

We seek to use many other lamps for our feet other than the Word of God.  If we swore an oath of promise to God, we would eventually break it!  After we are afflicted, rarely will we return to make a freewill offering, and once the pain is gone, we forget to praise God! 

We stray from God’s Word and set snares for others.  How many of us look to God’s Old and New Testimonies as their heritage and seek to pass this inheritance onto their families.  Our hearts seem far from hearing and abiding with God’s Word for a moment, let alone till the end!

Despite this reality, we have a greater reality.  The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ!  He is the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, fulfilled!

Jesus is the “I” in the Psalms, fulfilling all God’s commandments, precepts, laws, rules, testimonies, and  statutes.  Jesus takes all these words of God and lives them with love for God the Father in his flesh, without spot or blemish.  Jesus is God’s Word, going out from his mouth and returning to him.  It does what he intends it to do, through his Son, Jesus Christ.

At the cross two paths meet.  These are the paths of failure and forgiveness.   In Jesus Christ, the victim and the perpetrator are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the law breaker and the law keeper are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the innocent and the guilty are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the righteous and the self-righteous are crossed. r And in Jesus Christ, the right and the wrong are crossed! r

At the cross, knowledge of good and evil is exchanged for a knowledge of Jesus Christ, the only goodness good enough to be holy in every moment of time!

The Holy Spirit lit up the path for Jesus to walk the way of the cross; to walk in all holiness, but to walk carrying the full curse of humanity.

Jesus now walks with you; you do not walk alone as he walked!  You walk in the Holy Spirit who illuminates the filth of your feet; but shows you the feet of Jesus who carries you.  You hear the failures of your promises, but you hear the eternal faithfulness and forgiveness of his Word.  You feel the severity of your afflictions, but you see your condition washed in the flow of his blood from his side.  From the cross into the eternal font of baptismal faith.  You learn his rules, and he delights in your freewill offerings of sins confessed. 

Jesus holds your life in his hand, and he does not forget to give you life by the Holy Spirit.  He breaks the snares you set and frees you from those in which you are caught.  He carries you his eternal way, and he does not stray. 

Jesus’ heritage is forever!  It’s the only true way!  He has fulfilled the testimonies of the Law.  With joy in the Holy Spirit, you know the Ten Commandments are good and perfect in Jesus Christ.  You can allow the Holy Spirit to incline your heart to live in God’s presence!   You can perform the works, with which God’s forgiveness wills you to confess, to the end.    

Jesus is the steadfast love, salvation, and promise of God the Father to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he is the promise of God the Father to you and me too!  Amen!