Waw - Psalm 119:41-48 Series

WAW

November 16, 2011

Oak Park Baptist Church – Wednesday Bible Study Series

Psalm 119:41-88 (ESV) – 6 of 22

41Let Your steadfast love come to me O Lord, Your salvation according to Your promise;

Here we find the psalmist seeking God in an intimate manner. He is crying out for the love of God… that steadfast, faithful, kind and good love of God to wash over him… quite literally he is saying for the love of God to ‘enter into him’ OR to ‘go into him’ as a river flowing into the ocean… a never ending supply of love flowing from God INTO his life, his heart, his attitudes…

This also reveals the psalmists confession of his LACK of love for those around him, he lacks that love so he cries out to God to provide it for him, so that he can “THRU HIS LAW” love those around him…

When the psalmist cries out here to “O Lord”– it is the Hebrew word - Yehovah (Jehovah) which can also be translated as Adonai… both mean “the existing One” the one who has always been and will be forever. This was a proper name used for God by the Hebrews.

This brings in focus the picture that is painted of Jesus in the book of Revelation… as He is presented there as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the One who was, and is and is to come… This passage allows us to see a clearer picture of Jesus as God!

Here in the context of this verse the psalmist makes a statement about God’s salvation (for him) and when he says this he is speaking of his own spiritual deliverance in light of God’s promise through His law… The psalmist realizes that it is thru His word… thru the commandment of God that he can be saved, and so he is claiming the promise of salvation from God’s word!

Salvation – Hebrew word teshu’-‘ahh which can represent salvation by God through human means OR it can represent salvation from a strictly spiritual perspective

42then I shall have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in Your word.

This verse leads us to remember the man (JOB) who suffered greatly and was taunted by his friends and family that there was sin in his life and he needed to repent… do you remember that story?

Job’s wife tells him to simply curse God and wait for ultimate death, and her implication was that there was NO hope for Job because there must be a tremendously egregious sin that God was punishing him severely for…

However, Job trusted greatly in the Word of God and the promise of salvation God has given him in His law… Job hung to that promise and eventually we find Job being delivered in the physical realm, but the implication here in this passage is also spiritual as well…as the psalmist desires to be able to give an answer those who doubt his faith in God and trust in the Word or Law of God… Job had an answer and it was that he trusted in God, the psalmist is seeking an answer and he seeks it from the Word of God…

The Hebrew word here for answer is hahn-ahh which means to have a specific answer for the question being asked… it means that one is to be prepared to witness to or for a specific thing when asked or challenged about it… the psalmist was obviously facing critics in his allegiance to God’s law, and he was seeking confirmation from God in the form of answers to his critics…

Here the psalmist reveals that those who oppose him not only disagree with him but they also Taunt (Hebrew Word, kah-raff’) which means to defy someone or something… to taunt it or them mercilessly. The implication from the psalmist here is that he is being ridiculed and belittled for his faith and trust in the law of God.

But his faith in God is unwavering and he expresses that with his mention of Trust here in this verse. The word here is the Hebrew word: bawh-tak’ which means to have full confidence in a thing, to be secure about a thing, to be bold in proclaiming a thing because of your faith in that thing… in other words the psalmist FULLY TRUSTED God’s plan and law to lead him and guide him in life.

Here the psalmist is proclaiming that this ‘law’ he trusted so much was not a law of man, but was a Word from God. The Hebrew word he uses here is dawh-bahh which means in this saying is in context with God’s literal words or utterances… in full agreement with the law of God!