DELIGHT in READING & MEDITATING God’s WORD
June 23
Bible Reading: Psalms Chapters 111-118
DELIGHT in READING & MEDITATING God’s WORD
"Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who delights greatly in His commandments." (Psalms 112:1)
Psalms 111
and 112 begin each phrase with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet and
is referred to as an acrostic. Psalm
112 is a ‘wisdom’ psalm and generally
regarded as an exposition of Psalms 111:10, presenting the happiness of those
who fear and obey God, and contrasting the fate of the ungodly. The psalmist
connects blessing to covenant obedience through reading and meditating on God’s
word (v. 1), which involved not only worship of the Lord but also attention to
the needs of those around him who were suffering deprivation and persecution (vv.
8–9).
Psalms 112
starts with declaring a person blessed (divine favored) who does two things:
(a) Fears God (has a holy reverence of
God); and (b) Delights in reading and
meditating God’s word. We need to understand that belief determines behavior, and that is why it is so important to have a true view of God which is
obtained only from His word. When we have a true
view of God, our lives will prioritize
in doing the things that please God. When
we please God, He will reward us with seven
great blessings that are listed in Psalm 112:
- Our children will be blessed (v. 2)
- We will enjoy abundance of wealth and prosperity (v. 3)
- We will bless others with what we have (v. 5)
- We will not be distressed when calamities happen in our lives (vv. 7-8)
- We will help the poor and the downtrodden (v. 9a)
- We will be honored among people, and this honor will last beyond our lifetime (v. 9)
- Our enemies will envy us but will not be able to bring us down (v. 10)
A good
example in the Bible who experienced all these blessings is Job, whose life reflected all the above
blessings even though he went through tragic situations in his life. Let us delight in reading and meditating on
God’s word every day. If we do that, we can also be assured of stability and strength (“like a tree
planted by the rivers of water”), fruitfulness
(“that brings forth its fruit in its
season”) and endurance (“whose leaf also shall not wither”). To
summarize, there will be prosperity in
our lives (“whatever he does shall
prosper”).
"Blessed is the man ... (whose) delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper." (Psalms 1:1-3)