A Word in Season: Weeping Over Disobedience (Psalm 119:136)

Most of us can probably quite quickly come up with some examples of lawlessness.

Now, we naturally excuse ourselves for what we consider minor violations, perhaps the speed limit that we went over recently, or the stop sign that we ignored, or whatever else it might be.

But we can see it quite clearly in others, on a variety of scales. Perhaps a neighbour, the boundary of whose land is a few inches in the wrong direction, or whose car is not insured, or perhaps it's on a national scale.

We see governments or rulers that we believe are clearly corrupt, and rather than upholding the rule of law, they are trampling upon it and denying their own citizens what we consider to be the rights which are theirs.

Or perhaps it's the citizens themselves who are taking matters into their own hands and are flagrantly disobeying the law of the land, doing what they please, living as they will.

Across the world, and on any number of scales, we see lawlessness.

And perhaps we become angry and we tell ourselves it's righteous indignation.

We see governments or nations behaving sometimes in abominable and unjust ways, and it causes our juices to stir.

Or we see disorder and violence on our streets. Perhaps there's a complete disregard for the local police, or whatever it may be, and people are just living as they please and doing what they will.

But what about God's law? How do we respond to that?

In Psalm 119 and verse 136, David said, Now we might say, well that's why

I get so angry when I see this happening or that happening. That's not what David did. That wasn't

David's response. And we need to take into account the fact that there are many things in our societies which are considered lawful in the eyes of men, but are considered abominable in the eyes of God.

And still the reaction is not even one first and foremost of righteous indignation, but of deep grief and sorrow of soul.

David was a man whose soul was attuned to the will of God when he was at his best.

He's a man who knows himself what it is to be a sinner. But when he is seeing things clearly and walking before God as he should, when he looks out into the world and sees

God's law trampled upon, God's words neglected and rejected, rivers of water run down from his eyes.

It's not just an occasional spasm of disappointment. It's not just a tear because it cuts across something that he finds particularly precious.

When he thinks about particularly, I think, those two great tables of the law, love to God and love to one's neighbor, esteeming and honoring and worshiping

God, giving him the honor and the worthiness which is his due, esteeming his name, esteeming his person, esteeming his day, turning our back upon all kinds of idolatry, and then loving our neighbor as ourselves.

The outworking of that esteem for man made in the image of God out of honor for God himself.

When David thinks about how that law is treated, he weeps profusely.

If you're a Christian, do you weep profusely? Do rivers of water run down from your eyes because men do not keep

God's law? If not, it is in part because we do not see

God as we should and esteem him as highly as we ought, and it's because we do not love his law as we ought to do.

But when we understand that God has spoken, and when we understand that it is

God's honor that is being flouted, and when we understand that men are heaping up for themselves a great weight of judgment, then our first response, a

David -like response, a Christ -like response, will be for rivers of water to run down from our eyes because men do not keep