Psalm 119:97 O how love I thy law! it is my mediation all the day
We have probably all opened a can of Coca Cola after someone had jostled it a bit. What happened next was totally predictable. The Coca Cola shot right out of the top of the can because someone had shaken it up. People are the exact same way. You know what is going to come out because of what fills them. If you have talked to your grandpa recently, or your son, dad, or cousin, you probably knew exactly what they were going to say. Regardless of what the topic may be, you know the templates that their minds generally run to because you know what fills their minds. Maybe it is coffee, grandkids, outdoors, or the love of travel.
People are incredibly predictable in what they are going to say because it is predicated on what is in their mind. What is in their mind determines what is in their mouth, and how they see things. So, whatever fills your mind governs your affections. For that matter, whatever fills your mind, governs your phobias.
Psalm 119 is all about God’s wonderful Word and how it is God’s mind for our ears and therefore for our lives. Verse 97 says, “Oh how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” So, what should fill your mind today? Notice the object here. It is “thy law.” Who is the thy? That is God. God is the source of and therefore the same as His Word.
Verse 2 says, “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart.” If you are going to seek God, you have to seek His heart and mind and that is found in His Word. If you want to know about Barak Obama, read Dreams of My Fathers. If you want to know about Adolf Hitler, read Mein Kampf. If you want to know about the new vice-presidential candidate, read Hillbilly Elegy. God is the source of and therefore the same as His word.
His Word and His law are synonyms. In the first nine verses of this psalm, you find several different synonyms for God’s Word: law, testimonies, ways, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgment, word. They are all the same thing. It is God’s thoughts for our lives. God’s law gives instruction and direction. So, the object is the law.
The attitude is love. “O how I love thy law!” This is emphatic. It is exclamatory. God’s Word gives life repeatedly in this psalm; we find that God’s Word quickens. It makes us alive. God’s Word gives us peace. In Psalm 119:165 it says, “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them,” which means nothing shall trip them up. Are you a person with peace in your heart? Peace is in your head or nowhere at all because peace is a mind matter.
God’s Word gives us a baseline for emotions. For instance, in verse 103 it says, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste!” Verse 104 says, “Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.” I live with the positive, but that informs what I am going to avoid. I hate evil because I love God. I hate falsehood because I love truth. The attitude is love.
The action is meditation. Verse 97 says, “Oh how I love thy law! it is my meditation.” Meditation is perhaps the key word of Psalm 119. It is all about meditation. It is not just about taking in or ingesting God’s Word; it is about digesting God’s Word. It is thinking about it because how you think determines how you feel. We talk about psychosomatic, which is how your body is affected by your mind. Have you ever felt refreshed in the morning because you thought you slept in? Then you realized your alarm was set for its normal time, and all of a sudden you felt tired. That is your body responding to your mind. The action here is mediation.
The duration is that it is my mediation all the day. The things in your head become the premise of things you assume from your day. When you wake up on the morning of your birthday or Christmas or the first day of school or vacation, that beginning affects your entire day. I had a neighbor once who in the morning said, “I dreamed all night that I was working hard and I woke up just tired.” The entire day was affected by the mindset about the day. So, the duration of thinking on God’s truth is that it is all day.
What is the result of this. Verse 98 says, “Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than my enemies.” Verse 99 says, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for my testimonies are my mediation.” So, the result of thinking on God’s Word is wisdom and understanding. Life makes sense. Someone says, “Your problem is that it is all in your head.” Of course it is all in your head! Everything in your life today begins and ends with what you put in your head.
What are you putting in your head today? It matters because whatever fills your mind governs your affections.