Day 867: The comfort of God - Psalm 119 vs 49 – 56

49-50 Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. 51-52 The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law. When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.

53 Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law. 54-55 Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law. 56 This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts. Psalm 119:49-56 English Standard Version

To love all the words which God has spoken, and to live by the rules He has given, will surely bring strong opposition from those who despise God's truth. This is what the Psalm writer described in these verses. The Hebrew word for 'insolent' (used in vs 51) implies people who are proud and arrogant. Such people have no time for God's word and the writer was experiencing their scorn and derision. It's what we today would call a 'cancel culture'. So how did he respond to the opposition he was facing? (vs 49-50)

He asked God to be faithful to the promises He has made in His word, because it is those promises that made him spiritually alive, and gave him so much hope. That was where he found comfort in times of affliction. He mentions this comfort again in vs 51-52. No wonder then that the apostle Paul uses this description of God in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 when he says: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

How did the Psalm writer make God's comfort real in his life? (54-55)

Apart from praying that God would be faithful to His promises, he also sang of those promises, and thought about them even at night time. Hard situations we face can often keep us awake at night. Singing hymns and reading God's word may seem difficult to do, but it is a way by which we can experience the comfort God can bring to us in our trials.

The writer also speaks of the “hot indignation” he felt because of things done by those who reject God's rules. Just recently in the UK a theology lecturer at a Methodist college, Dr Aaron Edwards, was fired after a comment on social media in which he said “homosexuality is a sin that is 'invading the Church'”. He was also threatened with being reported to a government “counter-extremism program”, and, with his family, evicted from where he was living. Speaking of all he has gone through, Dr Aaron Edwards said: “It’s very stressful, but at the same time, I’ve been telling many people how blessed I’ve felt by God throughout it, genuinely. I know people tend to say that a lot, but it’s unbelievable how much, when you go through the mire, God is right there with you.”

Dr Edwards was seeing that God does indeed remember the promises He has made which have given His people such hope in this dark world. He is experiencing the comfort that the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort, is able to give in all our troubles. But is it worth all the trouble of facing the hostility of those who hate God's words? Is it worth standing on God's truth if it could mean losing your job and your home, and being vilified in the press? What does the Psalm writer say of this in vs 56?

He says that being enabled to love and keep God's rules is 'a blessing'! The fact that it fell to him to take a stand for the Lord was evidence of God's favour. Listen to how Jesus put it. He said: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12) Yes Lord, remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.