More Valuable than Gold

Psalm 119:65-72 You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word. 66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge, For I believe Your commandments. 67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word. 68 You are good, and do good; Teach me Your statutes. 69 The proud have forged a lie against me, But I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart. 70 Their heart is as fat as grease, But I delight in Your law. 71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes. 72 The law of Your mouth is better to me Than thousands of coins of gold and silver.

I love how God works. I heard a partial sermon yesterday on Psalm 119 and how the writer compared the Word of God to be better than gold to him (Psalm 119:127). Pastor Begg was preaching on another topic, but I could not escape how just that scripture had spoken to me. I rose up even earlier this morning to study. I stopped reading at the passage above, feeling that same stirring of the Holy Spirit. As the study deepened, I was moved by a commentary of my favorite pastor, CH Spurgeon. “However God has dealt with us, he has dealt with us better than we deserve; and all in love, and for our good. Many have knowledge, but little judgment; those who have both, are fortified against the snares of Satan, and furnished for the service of God. We are most apt to wander from God, when we are easy in the world. We should leave our concerns to the disposal of God, seeing we know not what is good for us. Lord, thou art our bountiful Benefactor; incline our hearts to faith and obedience. The psalmist will go on in his duty with constancy and resolution. The proud are full of the world, and its wealth and pleasures; these make them senseless, secure, and stupid. God visits his people with affliction, that they may learn his statutes. Not only God’s promises, but even his law, his percepts, though hard to ungodly men, are desirable, and profitable, because they lead us with safety and delight unto eternal life.”

I have an immense load of “life” upon me now as I am sure you do also. Even when we crack under the pressures of it, the sovereign hand of God is in control of it. All things pass through God’s control, and our limited minds cannot comprehend that. But the question that the unknown writer, (most scholars think David), asks here is, where is your faith in your Bible and your God? Where is your faith, where is your heart in the pursuit of God found in your Bible? Are you pursuing the truths found there, or are you led by this temporal world you are just passing through? Your heart for God is measured my it’s pursuit of him through the Spiritual Disciplines of prayer, meditation on scriptures, fasting, and living your life in accordance to them. A heart for God does not measure itself by it’s Sunday church attendance record and list of good works.

Listen how Spurgeon described just Psalm 119, which in itself describes the whole Bible which had not been written yet. “It spread itself out before me like a vast, rolling prairie, to which I could see no bound, and this alone created a feeling of dismay. Its expanse was unbroken by a bluff or headland, and hence it threatened a monotonous task, although the fear has not been realized. This marvellous poem seemed to me a great sea of holy teaching, moving, in its many verses, wave upon wave; altogether without an island of special and remarkable statement to break it up.”

Is your Bible more valuable that gold to you?