The
first verse seems to give sense to the entire stanza.
Consider
first the last half of v49. God caused
him to hope in His word. To hope in
God’s word involves a no-holds-barred kind of trust in God. Consider, from the rest of the stanza, the
extent to which the saint commits his way to God and both the commands and
promises of Scripture.
·
v50: the
life-giving Word is his comfort in affliction.
·
v51: the law of
God is his path in the face of derision.
·
v52: he affirms
his comfort is based in God’s ancient Word.
·
v53: he is
indignant against those who forsake God’s law.
·
v54: he has built
his home-life around God’s statutes.
·
v55: his night
meditations center on God’s law.
In
the end (v56) he can say he is so immersed in the Word in which God has caused
him to hope that “it is mine”. His life
is becoming more and more the life of the Word.
As Spurgeon would say of John Bunyan, “Prick him anywhere; his blood is
Bibline; the very essence of the Bible flows from him.”
This
is the hope the Psalmist has. He does
not question the Word when doubts arise.
He has an absolute trust in the path laid out for him in Scripture.
But
what happens when he rounds the next corner and his trial throws something else
at him? How does he respond? Since God has caused him to hope in the Word
he simply prays, “Lord, remember the word to your servant!”
It
is not as if he were concerned that God would forget. He is, in a sense, praying God’s word back to
Him. This is the surest way to pray in
the will of God. The Psalmist himself
remembers God’s word for his present situation and then prays, “God, do as You
said You would.”
He
does what the Lord Jesus Himself did when tempted by Satan. He simply quotes Scripture for which Satan
has no answer (Matt. 4:1-11). He is
using the believer’s prime offensive weapon, the “sword of the Spirit which is
the word of God” (Eph. 6:17).
This
kind of praying is the privilege of the one who truly hopes in God’s word, who
can say of Scripture, “This has become mine!”
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