It is time for thee, LORD, to work:
For they have made void thy law (Psa 119.126).
The 176 verses of Psalm 119 weave together a beautiful tapestry of spiritual teaching and experience constantly referring to Holy Scripture. With a relatively limited list of words, the psalmist evokes many moods, concerns, hopes, and prayers, all without being repetitious.
Let our meditation on this verse follow several lines of thought it suggests.
GOD IS THE SOVEREIGN LORD
The psalmist calls upon God in prayer using the name “LORD” (Heb. Jehovah or Yahweh, the tetragrammaton, the unique name of God). Like the English word “Lord,” it has connotations of royal supremacy. It is a “euphemism for Adonai,”1 a title for God which signifies “honor, majesty, and sovereignty.”2
All godly, correct thinking begins with God as first reality and recognizes his absolute sovereignty over the entire creation. The world and all it contains is God’s realm; he rules over all. Creation is his kingdom by right, since he, the Eternal One, created all others for his own glory. “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psa 24.1). By his divine fiat, the original creation burst into existence reflecting his brilliant glory, and when this temporal apparent spiritual and moral disorder has finally run its course, the glory of God shall be even more blazingly on display throughout all ages, world without end.
SIN IS A CRIME AGAINST GOD
Sin is a chief concern in Psalm 119, described throughout in various ways. Here, “they have made void thy law.” The translators chose a phrase with the meaning to violate or transgress.3 The Hebrew verb so translated means “they broke” (used figuratively). The “law” refers again to Scripture, particularly as a written code of righteousness for both heart and conduct.
God is our moral Governor, and he has published his will of precept for mankind. Its unwritten revelation is in every man’s conscience; biblical precepts and prohibitions constitute the written form of God’s law. Sin is essentially breaking the law of our Creator-King, and therefore is cosmic treason, high-handed rebellion against heaven, worthy of death. Yes, murder, adultery, and stealing involves human victims and takes a human toll, but this is not the main reason sin is objectionable—not by a long shot! Sin is bad because sin is against God. After murdering Uriah and stealing his wife Bathsheba, David prayed with great contrition to the Lord, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psa 51.4). To think and feel aright, we need to consider sin primarily in its essence as going against the will of God, and as the violation of God’s good and righteous law. Sin is the greatest possible criminality.
A holy man knows that all sin strikes at the holiness of God, the glory of God, the nature of God, the being of God, and the law of God: and therefore his heart rises against all; he looks upon every sin as the Scribes and Pharisees that accused Christ; and as that Judas that betrayed Christ; and as that Pilate that condemned Christ; and as those soldiers that scourged Christ; and as those spears that pierced Christ (Thomas Brooks).4
SAINTS LAMENT THE CRIMINAL WORLD
The psalmist wrote of others and their relationship to God, that “they have made void thy law.” There is not a shred of self-righteousness in this observation. The writer is not unaware or unconcerned about his own sin. He candidly prays, “O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments” (119.5-6). But at the same time, he insists that his heart is sincere in his desire to become intensely and comprehensively obedient to God’s law (vv. 10, 14, 20, 27, etc.), and that he has gained a measure of consistency in this that distinguishes him from “the wicked” who disregard it completely (vv. 22, 30-31; vv. 21, 69-70, etc.). There is a true and legitimate sense in which a sincere Christian realizes that divine grace really has effected a change in him, and that it continues to expand the gains of holiness in his heart and life, and this is not the case with unbelievers, who go from bad to worse as transgressors of God’s law, heaping up more and more guilt upon themselves as they are hurtling toward Judgment Day.
Further, the prevalence of sinners in the world, with their countless violations of God’s Word, is a matter of sincere and heartfelt grief to a godly soul. “Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law” (Psa 119.53). That is the spirit behind the psalmist’s prayer in line two of verse 126, “they have made void thy law.” He is lamenting the cosmic criminality of the world of unbelievers.
So totally absent is this spiritual attitude toward sin in unbelievers, and so reliably present in those who are saved, that it was seen in a vision to Ezekiel as the mark by which God instructed an angel to recognize those who were truly righteous in Jerusalem. “And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof” (Ezek 9.4). This is all the more impressive when you realize that afterward, God ordered other angels to go through Jerusalem and slay each and every person who did not have this mark, both old and young, maids, little children, and women, and to start with the old men who were at the Temple (Ezek 9.5-6).
Do you have anything of this godly grief on account of others’ sins, and not because you personally suffer as a victim, but rather because you are jealous for the glory of God in the world? If you are completely devoid of these righteous concerns, you may fairly conclude that you are not a real Christian. And who among the saints will claim that such sensitivity is as great within us as it should be? This revulsion to prevalent sin helps protect us from the contagion and movitate us toward applying the remedy.
PRAYER IS OUR FOREMOST SPIRITUAL WEAPON
Among other things, what did the psalmist’s lament prompt him to do? He prayed earnestly to his King and Lord to put an end to it. “It is time for thee, LORD, to work: for they have made void thy law.” This almost sounds presumptuous, as if the psalmist is rowsing his slumbering and careless Sovereign from inactivity. We have probably all had the experience of a beloved family member, aware of our pressing responsibilities and noticing our distraction with other things, saying to us, “it is time for you to give your attention to such and such.” But when the psalmist prays this way, what a bold petition it is!
Still, as the complaint is devoid of self-righteousness, so the desperate plea carries no presumption, as the prophet was prompted by the Holy Spirit to write these things. It is rather an expression of confidence in the Lord who can accomplish spiritual victory impossible for mortals.
“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”5 Moralists in our culture beat the drums for all kinds of activism in their vain attempt to suppress prevalent immorality and societal breakdown. Very many professing Christians are among them. Their empty hopes lie in protests, political parties, and public service announcements. All of these are worse than useless if they are completely detached from the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is nearly always the case. Further, without prayer we cannot expect to see any pushback against the kingdom of darkness.
Our text suggests that prayer is our foremost weapon in spiritual warfare. Only when we realize that this is a time crying out for God’s intervention, and this realization motivates us to make our constant petitions to the heavenly throne, will we be able to nurture a realistic hope that things will change for the better.
THE SOVEREIGN LORD WILL RESTORE THE WORLD
As the Spirit prompted this plea, so he will be pleased to grant it. He is the sovereign Lord, and the apparent moral chaos only continues by his merciful patience toward sinners. One by one, the saving Lord IS working in the hearts of law-breakers to implant genuine repentance in renewed hearts which burn with all saints in an ardent desire to live according to his commandments from now on. This happy redemption is one effect of the church’s faithful prayers. The other effect, when God has called the last of his elect unto himself, will be severe judgment upon the reprobate. While instances of such judgment continue to occur in human history, the climax of this will be accomplished in connection with the second coming of the King of kings, our Lord Jesus Christ. He will completely restore the world to the eschatalogical glory anticipated in all the biblical prophetic literature. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22.20).
PATIENTLY AWAIT THE DIVINE VISITATION
Until then, we must resist the temptation to depend on merely human and physical means, and realize that only a divine visitation will suffice, and give ourselves to importunate prayer. Prayer is not passivity, but actively taking up the most effective means of spiritual progress in the world today, along with gospel preaching. Their sin must provoke our prayer more than anything else. Amen.
Notes:
1. DBLSD #3378.
2. Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, in loc.
3. 1828 Webster’s Dictionary.
4. The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, “sin.”
5. Alfred Lord Tennyson puts this wonderful statement in King Arthur’s mouth in the poem, The Idylls of the King.