Why Did the Psalmist Delight in God's Law in Psalm 119?

    The poetry in the Psalms is beautiful.  I've always liked reading them, and Psalm 119 has always been a favorite because it always seems to make me love the Bible more.

   Not until I read chapter 40 in the Life-Study of Psalms  did I learn that Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem. Each of the 22 sections corresponds with each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line in that section also begins with that Hebrew letter!  That can be pretty tricky. I took a poetry class to get my language arts teaching endorsement, and I know that's not as easy as it sounds. 

     In Psalm 119 the psalmist talks about how much he loves God's law.   As you read through this psalm, it's easy to see that this psalmist saw the law as a portrait of God not as a bunch of dos and don'ts.  In this chapter Witness Lee says you can come to the law in two ways--as a law keeper or a God seeker.  And what spoke to me was how you come will determine what the Bible is to you.  He explains that on pages 454-456:

"Whether you have a killing law or a life-giving law depends on your attitude. If your attitude in coming to the law is to care only for the commandments in letters and to realize that you cannot fulfill these commandments, then you have the law in the aspect of the letter. However, if you take every part of the law--all the commandments, ordinances, statutes, precepts, and judgments--as the word breathed out by the God whom you love, then you will have the law in the aspect of the Spirit .... If this is our attitude toward the Bible today, then whenever we come to the Bible we will have the sense deep within that we are with God." (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Psalms. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, Print 1993).

     I learned when I read the Life-Studies of Exodus that we needed the law to expose the fact that we CANNOT keep it.  Have you ever heard that before?  And because of that we have to seek God because we cannot do it!  

    Thinking about this psalm and writing this post at the end of 2018 touches me a lot. No matter how muchI we read the Bible, it always fills me with a hunger for more.  So my prayer for myself and all my fellow believers is that we would come to the Bible as God's seekers and touch God every time we read His word!!

Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,/

Who seek Him with all their heart.

Psalm 119:2

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking the Life-Studies of Psalms on Life Study of the Bible  with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Study of Psalms and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

Others Posts on the Life-Study of Psalms:

What is the Focus of the Psalms?
How Does Psalm 8 Show Us God's Purpose in Creating Man?
Taking a Closer Look at Psalm 23 - Part 1 of 2
Taking a Closer Look at Psalm 23 - Part 2 of 2
Why is God's House Important in Psalms 25 -41?
Seeing the Divine Romance in Psalm 45
What Did the Psalmist Perceive in Psalm 73?
What are the Highways to Zion in Psalm 84?