I am a stranger in the earth: Hide not thy commandments from me (Psalm 119:19).

For good or ill, your self-image affects your prayers—whether you pray, and for what you pray. The self-confident (that is, idolaters) never ask God for anything sincerely or earnestly. A covetous man worries about the future and prays to avoid poverty. A hypochondriac predominantly prays for health. One who views himself as a great sinner by nature constantly asks for forgiveness and cleansing. The self-righteous person offers thanks that he is not evil like other people.

For this reason, your prayer life is a good indicator of what you really think about yourself, and what you value the most. Honest self-examination by a Scripture standard in this area can be disturbing. When we look into the mirror of God’s Word, we may see a humiliating ugliness of soul, and then we face many temptations. If we discover virtual prayerlessness or defective prayers, one reaction may be to find some good, spiritual prayers in a book and begin studying and offering those instead of our own heart’s desires. Far be it from me to discourage the discerning use of such books, but this would be to treat symptoms rather than finding a cure. The utterly prayerless are practical atheists and must be born again, along with those who only pray for earthly, temporal things, but even the saved need reformation of our defective prayers. One great help in this is to grasp more clearly a biblical self-image. Knowing who we really are before God will go a long way toward inspiring worthy prayers. Then we will be asking God for the right things from the heart.

In this verse, the Psalmist confesses what he is by grace, and from that, what he needs.

A Christian’s True Identity

The Hebrew word (ger) translated “stranger” has the sense of a sojourner (one living somewhere only temporarily), a resident alien, or a foreigner. It is often used literally in Scripture (e.g., of Abraham in Canaan before his seed inherited it, Gen 23.4; of Moses in Midian, who named his son Ger-shom with this in mind, Exod 2.22; of Jews in Egypt, and later, of Gentiles in Israel, Exod 23.9). By definition, a stranger sojourns while he is away from his homeland (Lev 19.33).

Therefore one might expect that when God finally made the Jews into a nation, distinct from all others, and gave them their own territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, they would be strangers no more, and their sojourning would finally come to an end, but the godly among them knew better. The discerning Israelite who wrote Psalm 119 confessed in this prayer that he was a “stranger in the earth,” that is, that he did not regard this world as his true homeland, even though he was settled peacefully in the land of Israel. A careful student of Scripture notices that OT believers always aspired to something much higher than any earthly inheritance.

Abraham, for example, began his life as an idolater in Ur of the Chaldees when God called him to leave his father’s house and his homeland, and go to a place to be shown him, a “promised land.” So he set out on his journey by faith and found himself in Canaan while it belonged to others. The NT explains Abraham’s perspective in these words:

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11.8-10).

Of course this city is heaven, not earthly Jerusalem. In other words, Abraham had some appreciation of the fact that the earthly promised land was only a figure for the heavenly, the ultimate object of his spiritually-minded hope. His heart was set upon God and Christ, promised to him in the evangelical prophecies he had already received.

This has always been the perspective of all God’s people, as Heb 11 so clearly explains.

These [OT saints] all [a sweeping statement!] died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city (Heb 11.13-16).

The NT here is not “spiritualizing” the OT, but recognizing the reality in those days, as King David openly admitted at the zenith of his monarchy:

For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding (1 Chron 29.15).

The NT then merely deepens and emphasizes this mindset for the Christian in passages like Phil 3.20 and 1 Pet 2.11, the latter of which uses the same Greek word as found in Psa 119.19 LXX.

At the risk of sounding corny, I offer a few lines from an old-time gospel song that capture this spirit:

This world is not my home, I’m just passing through. / My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. / The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door / And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

I am deadly serious about this. If our prayers are defective, it is largely due to the loss of this spiritual pilgrim mindset. We have driven our tent-stakes too deep in the soil of this present age, and we are not nearly heavenly-minded enough!

This worldliness is dangerous to the soul of every professing Christian. Jesus warned against it in the parable of the sower by the example of the thorny ground hearer who bore no spiritual fruit because of “cares and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8.14; in Mark 4.19, “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of [desires for] other things”). This condemns perhaps the majority of modern American “Christians” with no deep relish for spiritual things, distracted by the same pursuits that occupy moralists with no Christian profession whatsoever. Their conduct makes it plain that they view this world and this life as their home, their beloved dwelling-place.

Do we really possess the same self-image as the Psalmist, “I am a stranger in the earth?” If so and to the degree that we do, his petition is ours also.

A Christian’s Earnest Plea

“Hide not thy commandments from me.” One commentary says,

The request to Yahweh that he not hide his commandments from the psalmist seems strange (UBS Handbook).

This fails to appreciate that God does actually hide His commandments and their true sense from countless people in this world. Indeed, that very possibility is what greatly concerns the reverent psalmist.

Divine revelation of God’s objective verbal truth and the divine illumination of one’s mind and heart to understand and appreciate it in a saving way are both astounding mercies God gives to those He chooses, and to none others.

Amos 3.7 suggests that the true prophetic word is a divine revelation, unknowable to men in any other way, and the reasonable object of implicit faith. Those who lack such a divine revelation, or the spiritual wisdom to perceive it, are subject to the Lord’s hiding it from them.

This dynamic pertains to saving knowledge, as illustrated in the benediction upon Peter when he confessed that Jesus is the Christ, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt 16.17). Jesus affirmed this same thing is generally true of all who know gospel truth in a saving way (Matt 11.25-27).

Now the psalmist was surely a saved man, a real Christian, and yet, he pleads that God would not hide His commandments from him. This is a saint’s acknowledgement of utter dependence upon God’s sovereign grace not only for conversion, but for sanctification or growth in godliness, that is, abiding fellowship with God and a heavenly hope, which comes through the word of the Lord and the Lord’s helping us to understand and apply that Word (John 17.17).

See, then, how one who knew himself a spiritual sojourner makes his supplication for the gift of a continuing and greater knowledge of God’s commandments. As Matthew Henry put it,

I am a stranger, and therefore stand in need of a guide, a guard, a companion, a comforter; let me have thy commandments always in view, for they will be all this to me, all that a poor stranger can desire. I am a stranger here, and must be gone shortly; by thy commandments let me be prepared for my removal hence.

Let us, brethren, make sure we have a right to the same testimony, and as we deeply feel it, we will more easily and faithfully make this earnest plea. Amen.