open my eyes that i may see

Psalm 119:17–24 NKJV
17 Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word.
18 Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law.
19 I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me.
20 My soul breaks with longing For Your judgments at all times.
21 You rebuke the proud—the cursed, Who stray from Your commandments.
22 Remove from me reproach and contempt, For I have kept Your testimonies.
23 Princes also sit and speak against me, But Your servant meditates on Your statutes.
24 Your testimonies also are my delight And my counselors.

Today I want to focus on just one of the themes found in this stanza.  These words are a prayer lifted directly to the Lord.  David opens with …

Psalm 119:17   Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word.

David here asks for a plentiful portion of God´s help.  Why?  So that David could live and keep God´s Word!  To most this seems a narrow focus on life.  Was not David to be much more than “one who kept (practiced) the Word of God”?

• Was he not to be a shepherd?
• Wasn´t he supposed to be a soldier for a season?
• What about being a husband and a father?
• Was he not chosen by God to be a king?

Indeed he was – all of those things.

But David could not be the caring shepherd, noble soldier, godly husband and father, nor a wise and righteous king unless in each of those roles he “kept God´s Word.”

And neither can we, no matter the roles to which God calls and leads us or the paths on which He causes us to walk.  We only do things correctly and in a way that pleases the Lord by doing them according to His Word.

This is why Jesus prayed for us (yes, specifically for us who trust and follow Him after the age of the apostles). Jesus prayed,

John 17:17 NKJV   Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

Sanctify means to make holy, to make in the likeness of God.  Jesus wanted His followers of every historical age to do all God set them to do as He Himself would if He were there!

And then Jesus spilled the beans on the secret.  He prayed, “Father make them holy as I am through Your truth.  Your Word, God, is truth.”

So David goes on to pray …

Psalm 119:18   Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law.

He asks God to illumine the Scriptures God has already inspired, so that David might see the wondrous things in the Word of the Lord.

​My, what wonderful things are to be found in God´s Word.

• The truth about cosmology, how the universe began.  Is it really reasonable to believe that an infinitesimally tiny dot of matter (a singularity) just happened to be and then suddenly exploded forming the universe in which we live?  In every field except cosmology, we abandoned the magical notion of spontaneous generation centuries ago.  The Bible speaks this wondrous truth.
• The truth of geology, that what we see when canyons cut a pathway through the ground so that we can examine some of the things that are normally unseen beneath our feet, is in reality a testimony of the worldwide flood, producing the sedimentary layers of rock and the fossils.  The Word of God explains this truth to us.
• The truth of biology, that every living thing is created and not a random assemblage of parts put together by chance and continued by natural selection. The more we discover through enhanced imaging devices, the more we see the evidence of supernatural design in every living thing.  The Scriptures tell us this is true.
• The truth of theology, that there is One God who exists as three Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.  Mankind would have never figured this one out without the clear revelation of the Bible.
• The truth of salvation, that because we are all sinners, we stand in need of the Son of God paying the penalty for our sin upon a cross.  None of us deserve salvation, so God offers it as a gift, to be received in faith by trusting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  We learn this nowhere except the Scriptures.
• The truth about purpose, that God has saved us that we might be witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ where we live and around the world.  This is taught to us in the Word of God!

Lord, please, open my eyes that I may see far more clearly than I ever have the wondrous things of Your Word and keep them!
 

EMAIL BRO. MIKE