Psalm 119:97-104
Mem
97 Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
99 I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
100 I understand more than the aged,
for I keep your precepts.
101 I hold back my feet from every evil way,
in order to keep your word.
102 I do not turn aside from your rules,
for you have taught me.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way. (ESV)
We are called to meditate and gain understanding from God’s word which leads to a hatred of anyting but the narrow way, God’s commended way. This is a great linkage: saturation with the perfect word conditions us to naturally live the right way for Christ. Without that conditioning we won’t be able to live in a way pleasing to God. Lord, please inspire and guide me today to do what I can’t without You! Thank You for Your Word, Jesus, and the bible who informs us of Him and You!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Meditation is a key spiritual discipline. When we meditate on God’s Word is shows that we are trying to apply what we have read. We must be doers of God’s Word and not just hearers or else our faith is dead. One way that I meditate on God’s Word several times throughout my day is by writing Scripture on post-it notes and putting them up in the most prominent places in my house: my bathroom mirror, my closet door, next to the kitchen sink, and even on the dashboard and sun visor in my car. Throughout the day I am reminded of God’s Truth and how I must obey it. It is my prayer that I would continue to love God’s Word so much and that meditation would be something I do more and more each day.
102 I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me.
It is so incredible that God Himself teaches us how to live! Hopefully this will encourage us to have a deeper apreciation for God’s wisdom and commands. He is the creator of life and He knows all the ways of our hearts and because of this His wisdom is supreme! Praise be to His name!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
When I first thought of this verse it drew my mind to think, how many high schoolers would say this today? I think the answer would be very narrow if someone actually ment when they said this. I also wonder how many high schoolers in our ministry can say this and actually mean it and show it too! This love and heart from this Psalmist is just amazing! I want and praying for to have a filled with this same type of passion for God’s commands, because if I can get this heart, when I appear before God when I am judge I will have less shame then I could of have, I will even be walking more blameless then I am right now. I was thinking what do I do to get this heart, I need to be meditating on the Word, if I’m going to meditate on the Word then I also need to get in the Word.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.
Meditation on God’s Word is going to give us more insight on what God is saying to us from the Bible, wow this Psalmist is saying he has more insight then his pastor/teacher that’s a lot to say!
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.
This is an awesome verse! Reminds me of staying close to the line in God Call’s it Love series, how we are not suppose to stay close to the line to avoid that path of sin and avoid rebellion against God! The psalmist understands how important it is to be close near God and obey His commands (psalm 73) when we sin, we choose to sin, we can’t blame it anything because we want too, unfortunatley. The psalmist here had a choice to either stay on the path of righteousness and obey God, or to follow the evil path of sin. The psalmist stayed on the righteous path because he wants to obey God! When I am tempted and when God gives me the way out, I want to say to myself obey God because it’s the right thing to do and it wont leave me in hurt.
104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
Psalmist is basically saying, I know what you want from me O God. I know that sin is bad, it is detestable to you. I know what your law says, I know what you want me to do. Since I love You and Your commands therefore I hate every type of evil there is. I am getting really jealous of this Psalmist right now haha because he has what i want. I want to have this same type of heart.
Ditto Kyle!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
I LOVE THE LORD’S LAW but I get stuck behind the whole “I meditate on it all day long.” This is were I am like Kyle and am jealous of the psalmist. I try so hard to remember and meditate on His word all day long, but I am a sinner(which is the worst excuse) and fall short but still try REALLY hard to be in His word 24/7. :]
***LOVE THE LORD”S LAW!!!(it’s good for you)***
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.
we all need to stay away from evil so that we may obey God’s law.
98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.
I liked the idea of the psalmist saying God’s commands are always with him. In the other verses he explains how much he loves God’s law, how they provide him with more wisdom than any earthly knowledge, and how they have taught him to hate every evil path. Because of this, the psalmist mediates on God’s law so that they are always with him. When we have God constantly on our mind, it is harder to sin because we are always thinking about how to glorify Him. I want to make sure that I am meditating on God all day long by reading my Bible, thinking about what I read throughout the day, and constantly praying so that God’s commands would always be with me. That way I will be ready to resist temptation and truly be living how God wants.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I love the symbolism in the Bible. It makes things so much easier to understand and to picture. Its beautiful.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
I agree with what Beth was saying! We need to be meditating on Gods word everyday and all day! We shouldn’t just read our one verse a day then leave it at that. Think about that verse, memorize it, something that helps you remember it throughout the day. And if we keep meditating on it, you would be surprised at how many more opportunities you can get to witness to someone else
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.
COol. Knowing what the BIble says is way more important that any teacher could ever teach us during school. We should work hard in everything we do, but first, let us prioritize and put God and his Word first always.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
I agree with Beth we need to be meditating on the Lords Law! Not only should we be reading his work but thinking about it and meditating on it daily (something I need to work on). We will learn to love His law by meditating on it!
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
What an awesome verse! I want God’s holy word to taste like this in my walk with him so that I may bear fruit in obediance and loving him back!
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I love this verse. I want God’s words to be so sweet to me that I constantly want to be thinking about them and speaking them. The best way to keep them on your mind is to constantly be in the word and memorizing Scripture. I pray today that we’d have the discipline and desire to be in God’s word whenever we can and that we choose to hide what He says in our hearts so that they can be with us always.
These are awesome comments!
I agree with Beth, in that meditation on scripture is the devotion, not only to read the word of the Lord, but also to put it into strict practice. I remember when Ben Blakey did a sermon on taking God’s word to heart. He mentioned sticking scripture on the back of your phone and memorizing it throughout the week. I took the liberty of actually doing this and found out it is an awesome idea. My phone is always with me, therefore scripture is always with me. That would be one way to meditate on scripture all day long.
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
It is interesting how we can be born into sin; loving the world and then experiencing God’s word completely transform our lives. I remember the things I used to find pleasure in; I never imagined that the word of God would be the best thing that ever happened to me.
Do we view Gods word like the psalmist? Is it sweeter than honey in our mouths? Too often, we race through our bible reading, just to spend the rest of the day focusing on our own interests and desires. The psalmist knows he has found a good thing and he is enjoying every moment spent in the word!
As Americans, we love our treats; we take every opportunity to enjoy something sweet. I hope we can come to the realization that there is nothing sweeter than Gods word. It is full of promise, it has revealed our salvation and it assures us of an eternity with Christ. I pray that we would savor the word of God and let its sweetness continually linger in our hearts and mind.
God’s laws lead to understanding and His words are like candy to my lips. mmmmmmmmmmm it is so good! Praise God that He has set the right path before us and that He’s chosen us to take this path!
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.
This verse just proves that His Word, is ONLY on the righteous path. :)
98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.
With God’s word we are always one step ahead of everyone else!! When we read and meditate on the Bible we have true wisdom, wisdom that can only come from Christ!! When we read and memorize scripture we will always know what jesus would do in our situation:)
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I also loved the symbolism in this verse!! Sweeter than honey to my mouth… if only all high schoolers thought this way!! Unfortunately, many reject the law, not embrace it. We got to show them how beautiful and glorious his statutes are!! God makes us beautiful from the inside out through our obedience to his word. I pray that we would shine for Christ tomorrow as we go back to school! :D
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
MMmmm, Sweeter than honey. Is that what the word is to us? It’s our spiritual food, so let’s get to eatin’!
104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
Do we HATE every wrong path? Is sin really that abhorrent to us, or is it something we tend to blow off and view as just ‘normal’ in the world today? The more we are in the Word, the more insight we will gain from it, and the more we will come to view sin in this way. That is one of many dangers of ‘slacking off’: it becomes so much easier to fall into sin if we do not have a clear view of how bad sin is! So we need to make sure that we are in the Word daily, and not unplugging our Life Support, as Dan put it this weekend!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
I think it’s not only important to read our Bible’s daily but to meditate on it too. Sometimes when I read my Bible I can find myself rushing to finish to go to sleep or go somewhere. That is something I’ve been fixing lately. It seems so easy to take a break from homework or go make time to hang out with friends or go on the computer. We need to make sure that as we always find a way to take time out of each day for ourselves that we also find that set-aside time to really focus on God and His Word.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
It is so important to read your Bible everyday!! But not just read it and then forget about the message but read it meditate on it and apply it to our lives.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
God Word should be so sweet and tasty that we are always wanting it and more.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Meditation is a key spiritual life line. We not only need to read the word each day, we should rethink, ponder, and review what we learned in our quiet time. It helps us to keep connected to God all day long which is essential if we are going to stay alive spiritually. How can we expect to stay alive spiritually if we disconnect from our spiritual life support?
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
The second verse can sometimes be hard to follow. Sin always looks appealing at first but it always is bad in the end. We need to ask God for help daily for help in fighting sin because we cannot do it on our own.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Kind of piggy backing on what daniel said, we see sin at first as something appealing something grand, but in the end it’s worthless it has no meaning. To say it simply it’s not what we’re looking for. GOD’s commands, however, completely satisfy and last forever. How amazing is that?
All of your comments are very encouraging!
97 Oh! how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
A lot of times i wonder how can I make sure that I am living for the Lord each day? And a lot of times It’s just easy to go along with what you want to do. But Like what Kyle mentioned, living for God is a choice you make over being tempted with sin. Meditating on God’s word can be the first step to living for God.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
YEAH BETH!! I agree with you. There are those times when I’m thinking about an awesome verse I read for a few minutes.. in and out of the day. Just meditating on it and realizing how awesome God is. But, ALL day long EVERYday! I want to do that… To have God’s word in my mind and heart while I’m taking a chemistry test or practicing dance.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
This is great imagery to show what should fulfill us and give us satisfaction: The Word of God! With God being the center of our life and the essence of our motivation in life, the Word should be what fulfills us. Think of Dan’s message today: The Word is a vital part of fueling the relationship with God and keeping us on that life support to Him. Thus God’s word is the sweetest thing of all and without it we don’t have that life support.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes
I find this verse cool. As Christian high school students, who are acctually serious about gaining spiritual knowledge, we acctually know more that alot of teachers! Think about it. There are teachers at our school who can care less about the Bible. We are wiser and more knowledgable than them. We need to continue to stay in God’s Word. Not only reading it, but studying it, meditating on it, and applying it to our everyday lives.
Yeah me too Kyle!!
104.) I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
Wow, what an awesome mind set and state of heart to have, to be able to say that you hate every wrong path should definitely be a goal for all of us!
98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.
I found this verse very comforting. Our enemies definitely can “get us down” at times, right? They try to make us fall, or are out there to hurt us in any way they can. BUT. God’s commands make us wiser than them. By knowing God’s Word and the commands He asks us to obey, we have true wisdom! We are smarter than our enemies! We’ve got God on our side. Paul was surrounded by enemies during his lifetime as a Christian. But he reacted wisely and boldly in every situation because of what he knew through God’s word. We need to have this wisdom and boldness!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
This verse remind me of Dan’s sermon today. One who meditates on Scripture all day long is dependent on God’s Word for his life support. This person understands that the Christian life is not about being self-sufficient, but totally depends on the Lord for growth. To be producing fruit in our lives, we must be constantly receiving our life support from God’s Word! I pray that God’s Word would be our critical need everyday and we would meditate on it all day long.
These verses were just totally fool of legit knowledge!!!!
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
This verse really stood out to me. How often do we get into Gods word and not only get into it how often do we meditate on it? Here he says that he Loves Gods laws and how he meditates on it all day long!!!! This is so awsome to see. This reminds me of Dans sermon how we if we are going to fully live spiritually need to be in the word all the time. It is like our life support without it we are dead!!!
104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
This is a good verse! We need to see that reading the bible and meditating on Gods word is the pivotal way to stay away from evil! Here it shows us that from Gods word we gain understanding and from that we hate every wrong path. I definately want that in my life where i hate every wrong path, and i can get that from seeking it from Gods word!!!!!
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.
As high school students, we’re supposed to listen to our teachers. But when it comes to science, a lot of us have to listen to hours of teachers talking about evolution. As Christians, we know that evolution is a lie. Its our job to tell people about the truth, because sometimes our authority figures won’t.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
I think it is so encouraging to see how the Psalmist is always thinking about the Lord’s Word!!
Let this be our role-model in this!
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I agree with Austin that if this is what our food is, God’s word, then let’s get eating!
Also, God’s word is sweet and this verse is really encouraging it myself to definitely read the Bible more often!
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.
This verse really reminded me of how different worldly wisdom is from God’s wisdom. I thought of Dr. Corbet while reading this…Men can be extremely smart and know a lot of stuff but if they don’t know God and follow him they are foolish. I pray that I would be given the wisdom that comes from God.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Wow. this is powerful. Do we have this mindset? Are we meditating on the Lord’s Word all day long? This goes along with Dan’s message today. We are to trust and rely on him for any and everything. There is to be no time where we are “unhooked” from that life support. We are to focus on him day in and day out.
04 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
We are to hate every wrong path, hate the things of the world. We are to live a life above reproach.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Just like Dan said today in the sermon, if we are taking of God’s “life support” we wont be sprititually living. We need to be meditating on God’s word all day, constantly praying, reading our bibles and worshiping.
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.
It’s so easy to fall into sin but if we stay focused on the Lord and meditate on his word and his commands, we will live a life that is pleasing to Him. If we want to fight off temptation we need to put on the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) every day.
Great to see 40 comments on here and to read what you all had to say! I am praying for more in the days to come! Not just for more comments but that we will all continue to dig deeper into the psalm and apply it personally to our lives!
104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
This verse shows us clearly it is one way or the other. If we are really going to do what God says then we hate the wrong way. Otherwise we will end up like the world who hates those who try to stand up for doing what is right. We have to choose sides.
This reminds me to be bold in standing up for God’s Word. Even though I know others won’t like it. I need to speak the truth and make sure I do it in love.