Psalm 119:20
“My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times!”
In general, there is no other connection between the different verses of this Psalm, than the accidental one of their beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet; yet possibly the collocation of them may occasionally have been determined by their bearing upon some particular point. The whole Psalm is an eulogy upon the Word of God, and a declaration of the love which David bore towards it.
And, while we apprehend that every distinct sentence was put down as it occurred to the Psalmist’s mind, without any particular dependence on its context, we suppose that, in the arrangement of some parts, there may have been a design in placing some observations so as to confirm or enforce others which had preceded them. In the 18th verse, David had said, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your Law;” and in the two following verses, as they stand, he may be considered as enforcing that petition; first, by the consideration of the shortness of his continuance here; and, then, by the exceeding greatness of his wish to obtain the desired blessing, “I am a stranger in the earth; hide not your commandments from me. My soul breaks for the longing that it has unto your judgments at all times.” Now, this expression being so exceeding strong, I will take occasion from it to point out:
I. David’s intensity of desire after the Word of God.
Often does he say that he has “longed” for God’s Word verse 40, 131, 174; but here he says, “My soul breaks for the longing that it has.” To enter into the force of this expression, let us compare his desire after God’s Word with the desire felt by others in cases of extreme emergency.
1. Let us compare it with the desire of a hunted deer.
Let us conceive of a deer that has for many hours been fleeing from its pursuers, until its strength is altogether exhausted, and it is ready to faint with fatigue. Let us suppose that its fears are raised to the uttermost, by the rapid advance of its enemies, ready to seize and tear it in pieces. How intense must be its thirst! How gladly would it pause a few moments at a water-brook, to revive its parched frame, and to renovate its strength for further flight! Of this we may form some conception; and it may serve in a measure to convey to us an idea of David’s thirst after the judgments of his God.
“O God,” says he, “you are my God; early will I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land, where there is no water! Psalm 63:1.”
“My soul longs, yes, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God! Psalm 84:2.”
“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” Psalm 42:1-3″?
2. Let us compare it with the desire of an endangered mariner.
Mariners for the most part are men of great courage; but when ready to be overwhelmed in the tempestuous ocean, they sink like other men. “For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths; in their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunken men; they were at their wits’ end! Psalm 107:25-27.” Such is the description given of them by God himself.
But let us take an instance upon record. When Paul was “sailing by Crete, there arose a tempestuous wind,” and the ship becoming unmanageable, “they let her drive;” and “fearing they should fall into the quicksands, they struck sail, and so were driven.” “Being exceedingly tossed with the tempest, they lightened the ship, casting out with their own hands the very tackling” which they had stowed up for the management of the ship. In this perilous condition they continued a whole two weeks, not having taken during all that time so much as one regular meal. Paul, in the immediate prospect of having the ship dashed to pieces, and no hope remaining to any of them of safety unless on broken pieces of the ship, said to them, “This is the fourteenth day that you have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing; I beg you to take some food; for this is for your health;” he administered to them some bread, and then “cast into the sea the very wheat” with which the ship was provisioned; and soon “the ship ran aground, and was broken in pieces by the violence of the waves! Acts 27:14-41.”
How must all this crew have longed for safety! How must their “soul have broken for the longing which they had” to escape from their peril! Yet not even this exceeded the desire which David had for the Word of God.
3. Let us compare it with the desire of a deserted soul.
This will come nearer to the point. The feelings of a hunted deer or an endangered mariner are merely natural; but those of a deserted soul are spiritual, and therefore more suited to illustrate those which David speaks of in our text.
See the state of a deserted soul in Job, “If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—no wonder my words have been impetuous. The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me! Job 6:2-4.”
Or take the case recorded in the 88th Psalm, “You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you! Psalm 88:6-7; Psalm 88:9; Psalm 88:14-16.”
Here we see what is meant by the soul breaking for the longing that it has after God. And there is in this Psalm another verse, which, to one who has ever felt what it is to have an overwhelming desire after God, will convey the true import of my text, “I opened my mouth and panted; for I longed for your commandments! verse 131. The sigh of one overwhelmed with a desire after God, expresses the very thing.”
Nor was this a sudden emotion on some extraordinary occasion; no; it was the constant habit of David’s mind; it was what he felt “at all times!” “My soul breaks for the longing that it has unto your judgments at all times.”
I am aware that this may appear extravagant. But we must remember that this expression was not a poetic fiction, but an argument solemnly addressed to the heart-searching God. And that it was not stronger than the occasion called for, will appear while I show you,
II. The reason of David’s so longing for God’s blessed Word.
The reasons that might be assigned are numberless. But I will confine myself to three:
1. David so longed for God’s Word, because in it he found God himself.
In the works of creation, something of God may be discerned; but it is in his Word alone that all his perfections are displayed, and all his eternal counsels are made known. In this respect, “God has magnified his Word above all his name,” and all the means whereby he has made himself known to men, Psalm 138:2.
There he met Jehovah, as Adam met him, amidst the trees of the garden in Paradise. There “he walked with God, and conversed with him as a friend.” There he had such “fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,” and such “communion with the Holy Spirit,” as he could never find in any other field, nor ever attain but by meditation on the Word of God.
Can we, then, wonder that he so longed for that word, and that his very soul broke for the longing that he had for it? The wonder rather is, that there should be a person upon earth who could have access to that sacred volume, and not so value it.
2. David so longed for God’s Word, because from it he obtained all that his necessities required.
Did he desire the forgiveness of all his sins? There he found “a fountain opened for sin and for impurity,” a fountain capable of washing him from all the guilt he had contracted in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah! In reference to those very transactions, and to the efficacy of the sin-atoning blood of Christ, he cries, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow! Psalm 51:7.”
Did he need:
direction in difficulty,
support in trouble, and
strength for an unreserved obedience?
There he found it all, and from thence derived it in the very hour of need, to the full extent of his necessities. Such were the refreshments which David found in the Word, that corn and wine and oil, and all the delicacies of the universe, could but faintly shadow forth; and thence he derived such treasures as were absolutely unsearchable.
Can we wonder, then, that the Word of God was, in David’s estimation, sweeter than honey and the honey-comb, and infinitely more precious than the finest gold! Psalm 19:10.
3. David so longed for God’s Word, because by it he gained a foretaste of Heaven itself.
The word was to him as Jacob’s ladder, by which he held fellowship with Heaven itself. By it he ascended to Mount Pisgah, and surveyed the Promised Land in all its length and breadth. In it he beheld his Savior, as it were, transfigured before his eyes, yes, and seated on his throne of glory, surrounded by myriads of saints and angels; yes, and beheld the very throne reserved for himself, and the crown of glory prepared for him, and the golden harp already tuned for him to bear his part among the heavenly choir.
I forbear to speak more on this subject; because, if what I have already spoken does not justify the language of my text, then nothing that I can add can be of any weight. Only let any person read this Psalm, in which no less than one hundred and seventy-six times the excellency of the sacred volume is set forth in every variety of expression that David could invent; and he will see, that the language of my text was no other than what every man should both feel and utter.
But from all this, who does not see:
01. That religion is not a mere form, but a reality!
Religion, if it is genuine, occupies, not the head, but the heart and soul, every faculty of which it controls and regulates. O that we all felt it so! But indeed, brethren, so it is; and so it must be, if ever we would enjoy the benefits it is intended to convey.
2. That we all have very abundant occasion for shame in a review both of our past and present state!
We are not, like the unhappy papists, debarred from God’s blessed Word. The very least and lowest among us has free access to it, and may read it for himself; yes, and derive still greater advantage from it than ever David himself reaped; by reason of the rich additions which have been made to it since his day, and the fuller discovery it gives us of God’s mind and will.
Yet how many of us read it not at all, or only in a formal cursory manner, without any such feeling as that which is expressed in my text! My dear brethren, we suffer loss, exceeding great loss—by our negligence in this respect. Did we but read the Word, and meditate on it day and night, and pray over it, and converse with God by it—what blessings might we not obtain and not enjoy?
Well, I leave it, with “commending you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified! Acts 20:32.” I am certain that “it is profitable for all that your souls can desire;” and that if you improve it aright, it shall render you perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, 2 Timothy 3:17,” and shall “make you wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus, 2 Timothy 3:15.”
Charles Simeon