Themes from the Psalm of Psalms
(Loving the God of Psalm 119)
Stanza Seven
Zayin: My hope is secure in Him who remembers His word to His servant.
49. Remember the word to Your servant / Upon which You have caused me to hope.
50. This is my comfort in my affliction, / For Your word has given me life.
51. The proud have me in great derision, / Yet I do not turn aside from Your law.
52. I remembered Your judgments of old, O Lord, / and have comforted myself.
53. Indignation has taken hold of me / Because of the wicked, who forsake Your law.
54. Your statutes have been my songs / In the house of my pilgrimage.
55. I remember Your name in the night, O Lord, / And I keep Your law.
56. This has become mine / Because I kept Your precepts.
Today I want to teach on a special theme that we find in King David’s “Psalm of Psalms” ---Psalm 119. As we’ve learned in previous lessons, every stanza of this Hebrew poem contains eight verses, each one of which begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. We’ve come to the seventh stanza, beginning with the seventh letter: called Zayin, which sounds like our letter “Z.”
The letter Zayin and the number 7 are both important in Hebrew thought, and I believe they have an importance to believers in our day as well. When God created the universe, He finished His work of creation on the sixth day. That was the day the Lord God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let him have dominion over” all the earth. Last time we read and learned about the letter Waw, the sixth letter, which represents man.
In my study, I discovered that the letter Zayin is formed by taking the letter Waw and adding a stroke to the top of that letter, giving it a kind of crown. So the seventh Hebrew letter represents a kind of CROWNED MAN, or KING. And in the story of creation, what happened on the seventh DAY? That was the day God rested and called that day HOLY in a special way. The Sabbath day became the day of the week to rest from normal labor in order to worship the King of Creation. Of course, after Jesus rose from the dead, the Christian day of worship became the first day of the week. Jesus is the “crowned Man” who became the King of kings when He ascended into heaven!
Hebrew teachers have also taught that seven is important because it stands for the coming Kingdom of the Messiah: The seventh thousand years of human history. And what are Christians now waiting for? The return of King Jesus to judge mankind and create a new heaven and new earth where his people will reign with Him forever and ever! So, the seventh letter in Hebrew can make us think not only of our Lord and King, the crowned “Son of Man,” but also of his second coming to the earth.
Also, the name Zayin has two meanings in Hebrew: SWORD and SUSTENANCE. Actually the letter resembles a sword, with a blade going up and down, and a handle at the top. These two meanings go together in a unique way, for the sword has often been used throughout history to make people feel secure, able to feed and protect their families and their crops. When Jesus comes back to earth, he will not be coming as the suffering Servant, like before. He will come as a righteous, avenging Judge, with the sharp sword that will bring the godless nations to an end!
We find great comfort and hope in the word that comes from our Savior’s mouth, both in the knowledge of who He is, and in the promises He has made to those who willingly serve Him. In this seventh stanza, we find our hope is secure in the one who remembers His word to his servants.
The author of the psalm, almost certainly David, begins the stanza by asking the Lord Himself to “remember the word to Your servant upon which You have caused me to hope” (v.49) Psalm 119 explores every aspect of God’s word, calling it His “law,” His “judgments,” His “statutes,” His “testimonies,” His “precepts,” and many other names. God’s word is precious to the psalmist, as it ought to be for you and me. We look at the vast beauty of the world and the universe, and might marvel at the supreme Being who could bring all these things into existence…
But we would have no cause for HOPE unless this supreme Creator chose to speak to us in words we could understand. In Psalm 19, David also praises Yahweh both for His revelation to us through the things He has made…and through His “perfect” law—His word by which He gives life to the soul. God’s word, David says, “revives the soul…makes wise the simple…gives joy to the heart…gives light to the eyes…endures forever…is altogether righteous…more precious than much pure gold…sweeter than honey…and a pathway to a great reward.”
Our Bible is a gift from God that is full of HOPE. God cared enough for sinful people to share His word with us. And from the very beginning after Adam and Eve sinned, God’s sentence against them included words of hope: “I will put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent’s seed and her Seed. He will crush the serpent’s head, and his heel will only be bruised.” This was the first prophetic “good news” that one day, our Savior-King would come. This gracious promise would have been enough to give Adam’s offspring hope for the future.
But God’s word continued to be spoken over the centuries leading up to the advent of Jesus Christ. Because of our sin natures, most of the time we denied or rejected His word, disobeyed His laws, resisted His commandments, rebelled against His leadership. But David gives his sovereign God the credit for CAUSING him to find his hope in God’s word.
On our own, we reach out and grasp at other things to hope in: our money, our relationships, our good name, our good works, our political party, our nation, our social status, and many others. Many of those things look stable enough to hope in, but, unlike the word of God, all these temporal things will one day fail us. They will all pass away. It is up to God to change our hearts and minds so that we “wake up” from the false hopes of this world.
So, why does David tell the Lord to “remember the word to Your servant”? Is he fearful that His all-knowing God will somehow FORGET what He has said, what He has promised? No. Rather, he is simply praying back to the Lord what He has promised to do. Again and again in the years prior to David’s reign, God promised His people that He would “remember His covenant” with them and would not utterly destroy them, even when they failed to remain faithful. God not only remembers what He has promised. He actually brings it to mind and faithfully ACTS upon it.
Notice that in the other verses of the stanza, David speaks of himself as being in “affliction,” “in great derision” by the proud, needing to be “comforted,” feeling “indignation” at the wicked, and so on. In times like those, we are often tempted to feel the OPPOSITE of hope, which is DESPAIR—the desire to just “give up” and succumb to total helplessness. Become a victim of others, or of circumstances.
David’s message to us at such moments would be: “Don’t give up!” “Don’t see yourself as a helpless victim!” “You DO have hope!” “You have the true, faithful word of your faithful Father in heaven!”
In affliction, first of all (v. 50), God’s word comforts us because it is a source of LIFE. Affliction would include anything that happens that seems to oppose, attack, or threaten us with harm. Job was one who was afflicted by Satan himself. Job’s wealth, health and family were all taken away from him, and all this happened with the permission of his loving Father! But again and again, in the story of Job, we find him reminding himself of God’s righteous character and his hope of being blessed in the end. Satan would gladly have killed this righteous man, but God had commanded the devil to take away many things from Job, but to “spare his life.” And in the end, God commended Job to the world for his steadfast faith. This should comfort us with the lesson that as long as God gives us LIFE, He is our hope.
After affliction, David mentions DERISION. To deride something is to say it is stupid or without any value. Proud people in King David’s life accused him of being worthless and foolish because he kept trusting in Yahweh—a God he could not see. Christians today are ridiculed as well, and because of that they are tempted to compromise the truth of God’s word. For example, the world says that creating the world in six days cannot be true, that it is a foolish notion! But that is what the Bible, God’s word, tells us. Who are we to believe? The theories of scientists…or the testimony of the true God? David refused to “turn aside” from God’s law, even when proud and wicked men held him in “great derision.”
Next, in verse 52, he tells his audience that he has found COMFORT by remembering the judgments of his God. Here again is David’s hope. He has a positive outlook for the future by gazing into the past and realizing that God has not only spoken His word, but has also openly acted upon it! Think of the way God sent a world-wide flood upon the earth in the days of Noah. And the confusion of languages He performed at the tower of Babel to judge the rebellious city builders. And the fire and brimstone poured forth on Sodom and Gomorrah. And the ten plagues God sent to judge Pharaoh and the Egyptians. He is a loving God, true. But He is not a God to trifle with. He will judge all who oppose Him. He will act in His wrath against those who hold his people in derision. In this, we can have hope.
Is it ever right to be ANGRY? David felt an indignation taking hold of him because of the wicked who forsake the law of Yahweh. There is indeed a proper, righteous, necessary kind of anger. A holy anger. Anger against sin. Against injustice. Against those who injure and slander and kill other people. We are justified in having anger at the things that oppose and ignore and break the laws of our good God. The New Testament tells us to “be angry and sin not.” Jesus felt and expressed great anger at the sellers and money changers in the temple: He drove them out with a whip made of cords! He called them robbers and accused them of turning His Father’s house into a common market. Anger must exist for those who believe in true, godly LOVE. If we long for God’s love to prevail, it must displease us when anyone displays a lack of love, by turning away from the commands of the Creator.
In verse 54, the psalmist speaks of his “pilgrimage.” A pilgrim is one who is traveling far from his real home. Along the way, the pilgrim may find many houses in which to stay for a night or two. But his longing is always to one day return home where he truly belongs. And the hope for that return may be a cause for him to sing familiar songs that make him remember his home. To David, his love for God and his hope to meet Him face to face in an ETERNAL home…that love and hope bring him a joy that must express itself in SONG. Music has always been a characteristic of God’s people. A way of giving thanks, of expressing praise, of adoring the awesome One who created and provides for all our needs! Putting God’s word to MUSIC is a beautiful way to learn, meditate on, and rejoice in God’s truth.
Now, at the end of this stanza, night has fallen. Perhaps David is recalling a night when he was in a temporary dwelling far from his home, singing his songs softly to the Lord as he drifted off to sleep. His final waking thought was the NAME of his God: YAHWEH. The great I AM. The God who ever keeps His covenant promises to His people, and the special promises to King David himself. He says that his thoughts are of God’s name because “I keep Your law.” In verse 56: “This has become mine because I kept your precepts.” God’s rules and his teachings are so precious to him that he KEEPS them, he holds them close. He treasures them like gold and silver. They give him a secure hope that money can never buy. His good, loving God has spoken good, loving WORDS.
My prayer, friends, is that you and I will cherish, love, trust, and hope in “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” even as our Lord Jesus did when facing His enemy Satan. Remember how kind and gracious God was to send his only Son from heaven to die on the cross for poor, wretched, hopeless sinners like you and me. He has been, is, and always will be, true to His word, remember and act upon all His promises. We can place our hope and trust in Christ, the Crowned Man who now rules in glory, and will soon come back to make all things new!
Amen
