Who has kept Himself pure and undefiled but the Lord Himself? I can almost see Jesus as a young man, or perhaps even a boy, sifting through the Scriptures, meditating on them so that He might discover His identity there and find God’s purpose for His life. According to our view, the Scriptures are written about Jesus and by Him, through Moses and the Prophets. The Gospels clarify that Jesus IS, in fact, the Word made flesh. Would it be a stretch to add that the Scriptures were also in place FOR Him, so that He might have a witness in the earth to the Spirit of the Father in Him?

“Blessed are they”… In many of the Psalms you will run into phrases like, “Blessed is the one who fears the Lord,” or “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly.” When I encounter that kind of speech, I immediately think of that one with a capital “O” and that man a capital “M” – Blessed is the One…” and “Blessed is the Man…” for in another Psalm it is said, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” So that righteous man must in fact BE the Lord.

But here in Psalm 119, it starts out immediately with a declaration of a company of the righteous. “Blessed are THEY, whose ways are BLAMELESS…”

How can both of these statements be true:

How is it that the Psalmist can praise something that testifies against him? Without making God out to be a liar, I can find only one solution, and that would be the Gospel (“Almost too good to be true news”) found in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who could read this Psalm with a straight face. He is the one and only Law KEEPER. In fact, when Moses put the Law into words, it was in obedience to the heavenly pattern. Moses was actually verbalizing and describing the character and attributes of God. Therefore Jesus (who claimed Divinity) embodies every aspect of it, down to the last jot and tittle. “I did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.”

It was recently brought to my remembrance, perhaps by the Lord Himself, that several years ago, I asked the Lord for prayers that He could answer YES to. I am a firm believer that all prayer is answered. But “No” and “Not Yet” are answers just as legitimately as “Yes” is. As appropriate as the first two responses might be, they become discouraging if those are the only responses you get. I speculate that it is just as wearying for God to continually receive requests that cannot be answered affirmatively…