God’s Authority and Requirement in His Precepts (Psa 119.4)

D. Scott Meadows

Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently (Psa 119.4).

We just considered the blessedness of devout Christians, the topic of Psa 119.1-3. There we learned that devotion to God and His Word are inextricably linked, and that those so devoted to both are the most blessed of all, living in communion with God and His Word, exemplifying godliness in all their conduct. These things being so, who would not aspire to become so blessed?

Still, being blessed is not the highest reason and motive for devotion to God and His Word, because it is bound up with our own self-interest. That in itself is a thing completely legitimate. Many times in His Word God appeals to our natural self-interest as an incentive for our repentance, faith, and persevering obedience. But if self-interest is your entire motivation for obedience to God, you have not yet been freed from idolatry, and you are still in your sins.

A higher and necessary motive for obeying God’s revealed will is a reverent regard to His absolute authority. Meditating upon His authority behind His precepts is useful for promoting the kind of devotion lauded in Psa 119.1-3, and the blessedness there described. In other words,

God’s precepts bear His authority and therefore require our full obedience.

GOD’S PRECEPTS BEAR HIS AUTHORITY

“Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.” This verse states an objective truth, a reality which stands regardless of any skepticism. There really is a personal, almighty, holy Being called God, and this God has spoken to mankind, some of whom have even been favored with His revealed will in Scripture, divinely inspired, infallible, inerrant, and a sufficient guide regarding what we are to believe about God and what He requires of us.

This God is the Creator of all, and therefore He has a right to command His creatures. He is the eternal “I AM,” without beginning or end, the only uncreated, self-sufficient, and sovereign Being there is or ever shall be. He is enthroned in a glory so brilliant as to blind any creature from gazing upon Him. Even the most glorious and mighty angels veil their faces with two of their wings and cry aloud, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,” and they wait eagerly to do His bidding, obeying immediately with all haste.

This God is also the Redeemer of His chosen people, the church of Jesus Christ, chosen from eternity to the praise of His glorious mercy and grace. God the Father loved them and gave up His only begotten and infinitely beloved Son for them. God the Son came into the cursed, sinful world for their sakes, becoming a true human being as we are, without sin, and humbled Himself, obeying His Father’s precepts perfectly, without transgression or omission, and suffering all the terrible punishments His righteous law had threatened for His sinful people, and in their place. Then Christ rose from the dead and ascended to the Father’s right hand to receive the glory due Him. Further, God the Spirit did not shrink from vital contact with sinners, that He might renew and sanctify them for God’s praise.

This Creator-Redeemer has spoken, and much of His Word is in the form of “precepts,” an English word that meant, when chosen by the translators, “any commandment or order intended as an authoritative rule of action; but applied particularly to commands respecting moral conduct. The ten commandments are so many precepts for the regulation of our moral conduct” (1828 Webster’s). Today it has a weakened sense of “a general rule intended to regulate behavior or thought” (NOAD). “Precept” originated from roots meaning to warn or instruct beforehand. The Hebrew word so translated is “a general term for the responsibilities God places upon people” (TWOT 1802e).

Many would lay responsibilities upon us, but none have absolute claims to our fidelity like the precepts of God Almighty. The reason is that they are the will of the Most High God who made us. As believers, we are doubly-bound, for He has also redeemed us (Decalogue prologue, Exod 20.1; cf. 1 Cor 6.20; 1 Pet 1.16-19). Finally, this is the same God who will judge all people by the standard of His precepts. Every single person will either be found in Christ, to be justified by His perfect obedience and sacrifice for them, or still in Adam, to be punished on account of his representative fall and their actual sins against God’s precepts (Rev 20.11-15; 21.8; 22.14-15). The condemnation, sentence, and everlasting punishment of sinners in hell will preach forever to all creation the divine authority of God’s precepts.

GOD’S PRECEPTS REQUIRE OUR FULL OBEDIENCE

Since the biblical precepts possess God’s own authority, they require not just obedience, but diligent obedience. This English word chosen for translation is good, for it means “steadily applied, prosecuted with care and constant effort; careful, assiduous” (Webster). It comes from an Old French root meaning to “love, take delight in” (NOAD). The Hebrew term means, “exceedingly, much force, abundantly” (TWOT 1134), and in this context surely means “constantly, faithfully. Each one of His laws is to be observed, and to be observed always, and in all circumstances” (Barnes, in loc.). The same Hebrew word is found in Deut 6.5, “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” [lit., “muchness”], and here,

The three parts . . . heart, soul or life, and muchness, rather than signifying different spheres of Biblical psychology, seem to be semantically concentric [i.e., three different ways of referring to the same thing, for emphasis—DSM]. They were chosen to reinforce the absolute singularity of personal devotion to God. Thus heart denotes the intention or will of the whole man; soul means the whole self, a unity of flesh, will, and vitality; and might accents the superlative degree of total commitment to Yahweh (TWOT, in loc.).

This full devotion produces full obedience, and to the degree our obedience to biblical precepts is flawed, so is our devotion to God. But this statement could be misleading, because it could suggest that God is pleased with anything less than full and perfect obedience. The force of this entire verse is against this notion: “Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.” Not only the matter, but the manner of our obedience, is required by divine authority (see Jer 48.10). Of Proverbs 16.2, Puritan Thomas Manton wrote,

When God would weigh an action, He weighs the spirits; He considers not only the bulk, the matter of the action, but the spirit, with what heart it was done. A man may sin in doing good, but he cannot sin in doing well; therefore the manner should be looked to as well as the matter.

And applying these things, he wrote,

“So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Cor 9.24). It is our duty not only to run, but so to run, not as in jest, but as in good earnest. “Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” (Rom 12.11); not only serving the Lord, but seething hot in spirit, when our affections are so strong, that they boil over in our lives: and “the effectual fervent prayer” (Jas 5.16); that prayer which hath a spirit and a life in it; not only prayer is required, but fervency, not dead and drowsy devotion. So Luke 8.18, not only is it required that we “hear,” but that we “take heed how we hear,” with what reverence and seriousness. And Acts 26.7, “the twelve tribes served God instantly day and night;” with the utmost extension of their strength, so the word signifies. And for charity, it is not enough to give, but with readiness and freeness. Be ready to communicate; like life-honey it must drop of its own accord (Sermon V on Psa 119.4).

Let us heed these faithful exhortations, dear brethren, or we grieve the Spirit of God and imperil our own souls. Let us regard the authority of God behind His precepts, and let the character of our diligent, comprehensive, earnest obedience show our reverence for God and His Word. Amen.