Good
Morning All,
Psalm 1:2, “but his delight is in the law of
the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
We spend a lot of time with rules or
laws. We have traffic rules, school
rules, sports rules and maybe some of us still have house rules that we live
by. Most of the time, we aren’t big fans
of rules. We tend to see them as
restrictions or limitations on our lives.
Yet rules tell us so much more than what we are limited to; they also
give us the understanding of the flow of the situation. We often view this as the intent of the law
and intent is important.
I used to umpire baseball. As you study the rules of baseball, you begin
to see the reasons for the rule and how it applies to other situations. One such rule is called a “balk” by the
pitcher. There are dozens of ways a
pitcher can balk so it can be difficult to call. It becomes easier when you realize that a
“balk” is the pitcher trying to deceive a base runner. If the pitcher’s actions are to deceive; it
is a balk. You can learn this by
studying the rules of baseball and then going beyond just memorizing them but
trying to understand them. You see the
intent of the rule.
Our verse for today is similar to
this. Psalm 1 tells us about a righteous
man. His (the righteous man) delight is
in the law and he meditates on God’s law day and night. Now when some people read this, they think of
just repeating the Ten Commandments over and over. This seems rather boring. Add this to our usual thumbnail definition of
the law “showing us our sin”; it really would be. Yet we can go much farther than this. The law of God really shows us the Will of
God or what God desires or commands.
When we see what God desires or commands,
we see that we are indeed sinners. We
see that we do need a Savior to redeem us.
However, we are God’s redeemed children, forgiven of our sins. The law shows us more than what we do wrong
it also shows us how to live a God-pleasing life. As we study God’s law, we begin to see what
God desires. The law instructs us as to
what our creaturely goodness before God is to be. The commandments can really be a guide to our
relationships with God and with our fellow man.
Some of the commandments are written in the
positive as in “do this” and some are written in the negative as in “don’t do
this.” From these we must study and
meditate (read the rest of Scriptures as well) to understand what God’s Will
for us is. This can be a daunting task
sometimes. Some of us have dealt with
mistakes with companies and their computers.
Perhaps you got too many items or too much money back, when are you
breaking the 7th commandment and when aren’t you?
These and other questions can get
difficult. God’s law is perfect but we
aren’t and there are times when we are put into situations which have no
obvious answer to us. This is why we
meditate on the law; to help give us guidance and direction in living a
God-pleasing life.
Dear Father in heaven, we are often blind to your holy Will and
even look away when we know it. Turn our
hearts to love you and your law. Give us
the wisdom to apply your law to those whom we meet and to show them your love
and grace. In Jesus’ precious name we
pray, amen.
God’s
Peace,
Pastor
Bret
