MEDITATIONS FROM THE PSALMS

 

March 23, 2005

Reading: Psalm 119:136

“Rivers of water run down from my eyes, because men do not keep Your law” Psalm 119:136

Is there anyone else of whom these words can be said than of Jesus? Did He not weep over Jerusalem, the city He loved? He was a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. He carried a burden the like of which no other has known. He came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him. His love and commitment to those He came to redeem induced a bloody sweat through all the pores of His sacred body. It was His own people who charged Him with blasphemy and in their misguided fervor cried out, “Crucify Him, crucify Him. We will not have this man rule over us!”

My soul, as much as you enjoy seeing your Jesus laughing and rejoicing as He carries the lost sheep back to the fold, never fail to remember His broken heart as men refused and continue to refuse to keep God’s laws. He perfectly kept the laws of God, yet of all others it is said, “All seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus.” How unlike your Savior you are—when was the last time tears ran down your cheeks because of the sad condition mankind is apart from Christ? Even among those who confess Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord we witness the antics and blasphemies of false teachers who seek to deceive even the elect of God. Preachers manipulate the masses with their Broadway style of evangelism as they feed their own ego rather than seek to bring glory to your Heavenly Father.

 

“Think, my soul, what a mass of sin ascends as a cloud before the view of the Lord every day from a single heart of the desperately wicked transgressor? Think what an accumulation in a town, a province, an empire, the world! Might not rivers of waters run down at the contemplation? And worse, if possible! Think of that higher source of sorrow, in that the only possible remedy for this evil is slighted, and Christ, which is God’s one gracious ordinance for the recovery of our ruined nature, is so little esteemed among men. Oh how might the people of God be supposed to have their very souls melted in the contemplation! This, this is indeed the condemnation; this is the soul-destroying sin; “that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” Oh for grace to mourn over a Christ-despising generation! Oh for the ‘Deliverer to arise out of Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob.’” Robert Hawker.

 

Lord of my life, forgive, I pray You, the lack of concern I have for the condition of mankind without You. Above everything else, forgive the influence I permit sin still to have in my life. I want to hate sin as much as You do. Thank You for conquering sin and for bringing me into this relationship where sin shall no longer have dominion over me.