A Word in Season: Loving God’s Law (Psalm 119:73)

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I think it's probably fair to assume that unless you've made a terrible error of judgment, you're here because you have some sort of regard for the word of God.

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But do you have the kind of regard that David had in Psalm 119 and verse 97 when he said,

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Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. You notice the strength of feeling that there is in that language.

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It's not just a declaration. It's an exclamation with affection and admiration and even adoration.

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God has spoken and David can barely speak in expressing his appreciation for what

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God has made known as the rule of David's conduct, the guide, his thinking and his feeling and his acting.

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A simple statement is not enough here for David. I love your law. It's this expression of deep feeling, the kind of delight that we'd often keep just for those people or things with which we have this abounding affection.

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Oh, how I love your law. David delights in the law of God.

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According to the inward man, David is a man with a new heart.

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David is a man who wants to know how God would have him live. He delights to understand

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God's revelation as the guide for every step along the way. He's not afraid of it.

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He's not resentful of it. He's not just obliged to keep it. David's relationship to the commandments and the statutes of the

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Lord is not dry, but it's rich and full. I love your law.

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It's very much that spirit that Christ requires of his disciples.

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And if you love him, you keep his commandments. If you love the king, then you love the king's law.

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You love it not just in principle, but in practice. Now, how does David demonstrate his love for the law of God?

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One of the ways is that it becomes his meditation all the day. He cannot stop thinking about it.

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He cannot get it out of his head. And again, we recognize that kind of language when people talk perhaps about romantic attachment to someone.

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And yet here David is saying that the law of God, the word that God has spoken is so delightful to him, so precious, so rich, so attractive, so necessary that he thinks about it.

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He dwells upon it. He rolls it around on his tongue and in his mind. It's almost the instinctive inclination of his heart to go back to the law of God and not just once or twice, but all the day.

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It's a delightful expression of David's delight in the word of God.

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How do we have anything of that? You might say that this is too high for me and I cannot attain to that.

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But friends, if David could speak this way of the revelation of God that he had with its limited scope and extent, how much more should a new covenant believer be able to say, oh, how

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I love your law. It is my meditation all the day, not because there's anything in it that is different to but because of the clarity and the fullness of God's revelation to us.

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We have the word of God incarnate. We have the completed revelation, what we call the canon of scripture.

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We have all that God intends for us to know in order that we might know and trust and love and obey him.

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We have the depth and the fullness. We know the glory of God shining in the face of Christ.

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We have the law of God written upon our hearts and that distinctive privilege ought to leave us saying with and perhaps even in some senses beyond David.

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Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. And what then could be more instinctive for the delighted and adoring heart than to consider how

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God has made himself known and what the Lord requires of us. And so we come back to our

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Lord Jesus Christ. If you love me, keep my commandments.

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How can we not love him who loved us and gave himself for us?

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How can we not love the king and not love the king's law? How can we, if we love him, not love every word that proceeds from his mouth, meditate upon it all the day and therefore seek always to do what he commands?