Psalm 119:76 Love & Slavery

May your unfailing love be my comfort,
according to your promise to your servant.

Psalm 119:76

David intermingles here two paradoxical word pictures that are repeated often throughout scriptures: God as the one who loves and comforts us, versus God as the one who deals with us as servants.

Many believers take this mixture for granted. For many unbelievers, it's an irreconcilable contradiction.

Most preachers have explained the differences between slaves and indentured servants in biblical times, and explained how servants often became like cherished family members.

But to the modern skeptical mind, any talk of bond-servants and slavery triggers all sorts of alarms. American progressive culture cannot abide the concept of servant-like submission, whether to a god, to an owner or boss, or to -- especially to -- other people. It's seen as totally demeaning, regressive rather than progressive.

This isn't a new problem. Paul's reference in Romans l to the ones who, "though they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him," is a description of people who balk at submitting to God. Behind their philosophy and politics is a more elemental reason for their disdain:
they want to be their own masters. They don't want to adapt their behavior to the wishes of anyone else, not society, not moralists, and certainly not God.

They're either unaware or stubbornly ignoring the universal truth that everyone serves someone or something.

You may be an ambassador to England or France
  You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
  You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
  Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
  But you're gonna have to serve somebody

      Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody

I've met numerous women in the prison chapel who will admit they were servants to their impulses and addictions. They'll also tell you their master did not love them. And their masters failed to fulfill their promises eventually.

For people who have been abused by their masters, it's hard to believe their could be a different sort of master, one whose love never fails, one who keeps every promise.

It's not about legitimizing the many faces of slavery and servitude that humankind has known throughout history. Those are merely a fact of life, the way of the fallen world.

People who embrace their identities as servants of God will - or perhaps I should say they should - be actively engaged in not only opposing all other forms of slavery but rescuing the enslaved.

Rescuing is, after all, the Master's primary mission.

Psalm 119:75 Big Picture

I know, LORD, that your laws are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

Psalm 119:75

The simple lesson from this verse is that knowing and trusting God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering is easier if you understand and trust God's purpose for you.

It's seldom that simple, though.

This verse, like many others in God's Word, requires a bigger concept of God and His purposes than many Christians possess. In 21st century America we like to have everything outlined neatly, with an abundance of comforting and inspiring catch phrases and memes.

But the God we encounter in His scriptures is not bound by outlines or catch phrases. Life on the 1 road is seldom neat and orderly. The scriptures meant to be our guide are often unsettling and even disturbing.

We're so accustomed to packaging things in pleasant wrapping, we tend to over-sentimentalize a verse like this. We gloss right over the startling paradigm shift of the second half of the verse.

in faithfulness you have afflicted me

That may actually be too much of the verse still for some people, who will fixate on God's faithfulness and blur out the blunt truth that follows.

you have afflicted me.

Don't rearrange the words in your mind. It doesn't say you have allowed me to be afflicted. God doesn't want to be let off the hook that easily. He's the one who inspired David to write these words. He wants it said clear and to the point.

you have afflicted me.

Is David simply personifying the affliction, tagging God as the source even though he knows very well God doesn't actually afflict anyone? You might convince yourself of that, if it weren't for the dozens of other scriptures that declare with similar blunt plainness that God is the author and cause of much affliction.

There's not room here to list them all. I recommend you check out the appendixes in Joni Eareckson Tada's fantastic book, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty. In the back of the book she includes a long list of verses that clearly say God causes suffering.

If you're going to trust, as David does, that His laws - as represented by His scriptures - are righteous, then you're going to have work on stretching your mind to encompass an understanding of God as one who actually causes suffering.

Joni's book also includes a lengthy list of scriptures that explain God's many and varied purposes for suffering.

• Suffering is used to increase our awareness of the sustaining power of God to whom we owe our sustenance (Psalm 68:19).
• God uses suffering to refine, perfect, strengthen, and keep us from falling (Psalm 66:8-9; Hebrews 2:10).
• Suffering allows the life of Christ to be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:7-11).

The list in her book goes on and on. That's a good thing.

The only way you're ever going to fully incorporate a God who afflicts into your mental framework of faith is to also embrace Him as the God who is always faithful to His greater purpose for you and for all the world and all of history.

Which means you've also got to come around to a grand vision of your own place in His plan. He did not send His Son to die for you just so you could settle into a comfortable life of church-going and passive piety. He's got plans for you and to prepare you for what's coming He may put you through some tough times.

It's the big picture of a big God with a big purpose that will enable you to persevere through the dangerous adventure of saying Yes to the part He's assigned you.

Psalm 119:74 I See You!

May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:74

God made you who you are and He has a plan and a purpose for you.

Part of that plan includes all the other people who He made, all the others  for whom He has a plan and a purpose.

You are not alone!

I know it sometimes feels like you're alone. I've certainly fallen prey to the Elijah syndrome (I Kings 19:9-18), thinking I'm the only faithful one left.

Actually, my sense of self-importance tries to convince me that I'm the only one who actually gets it. Unlike Elijah, I'll acknowledge that many others have faith. But to me they're like sheep, just wandering along, stuck in their tired old churchy habits. They don't really get it. Not like I do.

But I'm not alone, and neither are you. God is at work in the lives of many people, some of whom might surprise you.

So how do the people who fear God recognize one another on the 1 road of life?

They're the people who do things that make you rejoice! Just in the past few weeks I've rejoiced to see . . .

• Church members showing up early and staying late through two Sunday morning services, eager and willing to do whatever it takes to make un-church and de-churched newcomers feel welcome and comfortable.
• Career ministers saying Yes to God's leading to leave a comfortable and productive ministry to take on a new job in a new place, outside their comfort zone.
• Young couples who have returned to faith and to the church, but haven't been content to just passively sink into the comfort of a family-focused congregation. Instead they are actively and eagerly looking for ways to stretch themselves to serve God as a family, to be willing to step outside that comfort zone together.
• Women in a prison chapel who want more than a jailhouse faith and are willing to learn spiritual disciplines that will sustain them in following God when they return to life outside.
• College students who are willing to let God lead them where they should go, rather than letting the American Dream determine their path

They're the ones who put their hope in God's Word.  I rejoice to see people with their hope in the right place . . .

• Believers who resist the pressure to trust in the post-modern philosophies and morals of 21st century culture as opposed to the timeless truths of God.
• But also, I rejoice in believers who can rise above simply finding their sense of self-importance in the Word and instead go deeper into the Word to train their hearts toward love, kindness, patience, peacemaking, and meekness.
• I rejoice in those who see the many problems in a world gone mad and yet put their trust and hope in God and His Word, not in politicians and their platforms.
• My soul leaps with joy when prisoners learn to stop trusting the old habits that landed them in prison and replace them by diligently practicing new routines grounded in God's Word.
• My heart is warmed by Christians who go beyond collecting favorite verses to prop up their personal preferences and choose instead to use the scriptures as a guide to the heart of God. 

You are not alone! Look around you and take notice of the ones whose fear of the Lord is radically changing their lives. And tell them.

I see you! I see you following God and it gives me joy!

Psalm 119:73 Reprogrammed

Your hands made me and formed me;
give me understanding to learn your commands.

Psalm 119:73 

People who have learned to think of themselves as worthless need more than a pep talk. They need to be reprogrammed.

Jan's mother didn't just treat her like she was worthless. She said so, in no uncertain terms.

If only you were prettier, you'd be able to get a better boyfriend. It's too bad you inherited your father's bad hair and not mine.

When Jan tried to use makeup and a new hairstyle to look more beautiful, her mother ramped up her insults, using words like slut and whore.

When she began acting out her desperate need to prove her self worth, she fell into patterns of behavior that degraded her even more. We met her in prison. For women especially, there's often a direct line connecting a life of constant debasement and a life behind bars.

There's a temptation for groups who lead chapel services in the prison to focus on one of two things. They want the women to know, without a doubt, that they are sinners in desperate need of salvation. Or they want the women to get all excited: singing, jumping, shouting, and high on Jesus. Both of those are based in scriptural principles, but they don't fully address what these ladies need.

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,
or like vinegar poured on a wound,
is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.
Proverbs 25:20

People who have been trained to believe they're worthless need to be retrained to understand their true identity in the eyes of God. They don't need pep talks. They need to be educated, taught to understand the height and depth and breadth of God's plans and expectations for them.

Jan enjoyed the exciting worship and it was good for her to be aware that her chief failure lay in falling short of the glory of God. But what she grew to desire most was to know the heart of God. Only by knowing the Word would she know what God intended her life to look like.

For you created my inmost being;
 you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
 your works are wonderful,
 I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
 when I was made in the secret place,
 when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
 all the days ordained for me were written in your book
 before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
 How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
 they would outnumber the grains of sand—
 when I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

Psalm 119: 73-80 Yodh

yodh

Your hands made me and formed me;
 give me understanding to learn your commands.
May those who fear you rejoice when they see me,
 for I have put my hope in your word.
I know, LORD, that your laws are righteous,
 and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
May your unfailing love be my comfort,
 according to your promise to your servant.
Let your compassion come to me that I may live,
 for your law is my delight.
May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause;
 but I will meditate on your precepts.
May those who fear you turn to me,
 those who understand your statutes.
May I wholeheartedly follow your decrees,
 that I may not be put to shame.

Psalm 119:73-80

That graphic of the letter yodh is deceptively large. It's actually the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew reads from right to left, so yodh is at the right end of the first word in this stanza: יָדֶ֣יךָ

It's smallness led Jesus to use the letter yodh as an illustration in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:18) when He said "till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Yodh is most often used as a palatal approximant. That's a linguistic term meaning its sound is less distinct, less noticeable than most other consonants or vowels. Generally the letter yodh is pronounced similar to the English Y.

Yodh also has an effect on the tense of a word, depending on whether it's found at the beginning or end. In this stanza of Psalm 119 it's at the beginning of the first word of every verse, thus making all of them third person singular. Except for the words that start with yodh and end in vav: those are third person plural.

Got that?

It doesn't matter whether you do or not. Yodh will be itself regardless of our thoughts about it.

On the 1 road of life I've encountered many fellow travelers who have learned to see themselves as a yodh. Their voice among the crowd is indistinct. Perhaps they add a little flavor to their surroundings but even that blends in and gets lost.

I say they've learned to be a yodh because no one is born with an approximant identity. It's a nurtured nature, often acquired through a lifetime of being overlooked and underappreciated. Born into a social, racial, or economic status on the fringes of society, every interaction has pressed them down until they accept their role as an insignificant jot in the world's narrative.

They fall into the habit of walking through life aimlessly, believing they don't matter. Life is a third person narrative for these yodh people. It's all about what others are doing. Their role is to find their way amid the lives of more important people.

Nearly fifteen years in the prison chapel taught me what happens when people see themselves as small and inconsequential. Most of the women in state prisons are there because their lives have become dominated by drugs and alcohol. Their travel through life turned into a never-ending struggle, continuously beaten down and tripped up by the rest of the world. So they drink and they take drugs. And they commit crimes, either under the influence of their drug of choice, or in order to obtain more of it.

Their miserable journey eventually leads to prison, where many of them learn to give up on any shred of self-worth or hope they ever had.

David, the king, begins each of the eight verses of this stanza with yodh. Each of these eight jotted verses reminds us no one is small and insignificant.

The Kings of Kings didn't design anyone to be a jot. Every person on the road of life was created and molded to be a child of the King. He invested each one with a royal status, but also a royal purpose. Every newborn begins life as a Soldier-Prince or Soldier-Princess.

But then they're told they're just a jot.

Look around you. How many of your fellow wayfarers don't even know who they are? How many have never been told they can walk the 1 road with the purpose and confidence that comes from knowing who they were intended to be?

I constantly remind the ladies in the prison chapel they can be more than what the Department of Corrections wants them to be. The state of Missouri is trying to rebuild them so they can be normal, productive citizens when they get out. But God wants so much more for them.

After their term is complete, some of those women will return to society with a higher goal, one we've tried to instill in them. They want to be soldier princesses, to live a life of adventure, pursuing the purposes of the King.

Sadly, when they go looking for a church home they're likely to find many of the Christians there have allowed themselves to settle into the false normalcy of a religious lifestyle. They're the normal, productive citizens the Department of Corrections has been talking about. But there's no adventure, no zeal to do battle for the Kingdom.

Dare to be who you are. Live a big life for the King.