Learning to Love God’s Law
The Church of Our Saviour at Oatlands – July 24, A.D.2011 – Elijah White
first please read Psalm 119:121-136 and Matthew 5:14-20
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
We just read 16 verses from one of my favorite Psalms, 119, th longest chapter in
the Bible with no fewer than 176 verses, a wisdom hymn rejoicing in the worshiperpoet’s ecstatically fervent love of and delight in God’s Law. This may seem odd to us
‘moderns’ because as ego-centric and therefore incipiently antinomian creatures we have
ambivalent feelings about The Law [capital T, capital L] – certainly other people should
obey at least the civil law, but we ourselves fear that the Law of the Lord might restrict
our freedom to do as we wish. We respect those of the Ten Commandments we have no
trouble obeying – at age 73 I’m not likely to be tempted by adultery – but we wink the
eye at those we find inconvenient,* and we don’t want to be even reminded of many of
Jesus’ own very specific commandments in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.
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*not guilty? Ever told a little white lie? Ever ogled a spectacular body? And
who’s for tithing, Numbers 18:25 et passim, and Malachi 3:6-20?
So how can you and I best relate to this Psalm’s 176 verses rejoicing in God’s
Law? Why is the Psalmist so delighted with it? Well, 119 is a deliberately instructional
hymn, so I offer an instructional sermon on it, starting with its very unusual poetic
structure. 119 is one of the acrostic Psalms: in Psalm 25, for an instance, each verse
begins with a Hebrew letter in alphabetical order as if in English the first word of verse 1
began with an A, of verse 2 with a B, and so on to Z -- but 119 expands that method to
clusters of eight verses each beginning with the same letter before going on to the next
eight beginning with the next letter. That’s why it’s so long: because biblical Hebrew has
22 letters we have 22 sets of 8-verse stanzas for a total of 176, a technical tour de force
made even more complex because all but 3 of the 176 contain one of eight synonyms for
the God’s truth revealed to man, terms usually translated as Law, Testimonies, Precepts,
Statutes, Commandments, Judgments, Word as revelation, and Word as promise.
This complex structure makes a very demanding self-imposed structural challenge
– perhaps the poet was showing off, but I think that perhaps he set himself a difficult task
simply to show his love of the Lord the way a knight would go look for a really fearsome
dragon to demonstrate his love for a lady: talk is cheap, actions count – like the bumper
sticker I’ve never dared to put on my car, “If you love Jesus, Tithe! anyone can honk.”
You notice I said ‘love of the Lord,’ but the Psalm proclaims love of the Law –
we today may not think of these as equivalent… nor did the poet: for him love of the
Lord is absolutely primary, love of the Law secondary, derivative, literally con-sequent.
Think of it this way: in your own experience, if you love someone you want to do
your very best to please him or her, right? You ask yourself, you may even ask the one
you love, ‘what can I do that would please you?’… so you’re very glad when your
beloved one lets you know what would be pleasing. Letting you know is a great kindness
to you, so you don’t have to guess. You rejoice to learn how to please the one you love,
not to ‘make’ him love you, not to ‘earn’ or ‘win’ love, but because you love – and if you
already know that you’re already loved by the other, you’ll be all the more grateful to
know how to please and you’ll try all the more to do so.
Does this relate to your own experience? We want to please those we love, and
we’re glad for any hints on how to do so – right? Which is precisely why the psalmist
rejoices in the Law, the Teachings, the self-Revelation that the Lord has graciously
vouchsafed to give to those who love Him: because God whom the poet loves has kindly
told His people what delights Him (and, conversely and necessarily, what does not).
Now, through the Law, those who love God know how best to put their love into action.
We self-loving sinners think of the Law as limiting our freedom of choice – the poet who
loves the Lord experiences the Law as freeing, instructing, helping him to put his love of
the Lord into pleasing concrete action, moving up from feeling love into doing love.
This delight in God’s teachings is why rabbis and others in the old days, and
ecstatic Lubeivichers in Brooklyn today, in schul and in the streets dance with the scroll
of the Torah as with a beautiful bride at a joyous festive wedding feast, delighting in the
Law of the Lord, grateful for the Law, rejoicing that the God of all creation has kindly
made known His ways to men so that they can follow Him and please, delight Him.
Properly understood, God’s Law is not about His seeking to control us but about His love
for us and our loving response to His love so freely given to us and for us.
As the late Rev’d John Stott wrote, “God never ceases to be our Father and we
never cease to be His children, but He wants us to be His grown-up children. Dependent
and obedient we must always be, yet the obedience we muct give Him must not be
slavish, mechanical or grudging, but intelligent, glad and free. God treats His children as
adults, and give us the responsibility to discern and decide for ourselves. In this way our
obedience becomes creative. It fosters and does not inhibit our growth.”
We misunderstand both the Old and the New Testaments if we think of God’s
Law as a draconian set of hurdles we have to clear in order to earn His love or to ‘make’
Him love us. He already does: why else create us in the first place? Why send and
sacrifice His only-begotten Son to redeem us from our addiction to self-seeking selfdestructive sins and Sin? God loves us, (John 3:16) He “so loved the world…” The
question isn’t about God’s intentions, but ours – God loves us enough to reveal His
innermost self to us, His most heartfelt feelings, hopes, desires, giving us His love up
front {First John 4:19, “we love, because He first loved us”} – the question is not
‘whether’ God loves us: the question is, How do we respond to His love?
Amongst other things, by delighting in His Law, understanding His purpose in its
gift to be an opportunity for us, not a burden: remember the poster for Father Flanagan’s
Boys’ Town that was made into a postage stamp in the 1930’s? A little boy carrying
another little boy on his back through a snowstorm and saying, “He ain’t heavy, Father –
he’s my brother.” When we love, it’s not a burden. Go home and read Psalm 119,
slowly, one verse at a time, even one verse a day – and study to rejoice in God’s Law and
His laws as an opportunity to properly, appropriately, lovingly respond to His love,
in the
Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.