This is the second in a four-part series on the value and beauty of the Bible. The longest chapter in Scripture is a love poem, but its theme isn’t romance or sex or adventure or nature…it’s the Bible itself. The writer of Psalm 119 understood that the greatest beauty in the world is God’s Word. (Be sure to read Part 1: “The Bible Is Revelation from God, Not Enlightened Thoughts About God,” Part 3: “The Bible Is A Story of God’s Deeds, Not Ours,” and Part 4: “The Bible Has More Value Than Life Itself.”)
Not many people get excited about laws. Even lawyers, whose entire profession is contingent upon and focused on laws, aren’t usually giddy when studying legal minutiae. So when we come to Psalm 119 and find the author repeatedly calling Scripture the “law,” our hearts aren’t strangely warmed. We’re more likely to be intimidated.
But the author of Psalm 119 knew something about law that we often miss—that God’s law brings life. The word for “law” literally means “straight edge.” It’s the sort of object, like a ruler or a plumb line, that you would use to make sure you had the right length piece of cloth or appropriately aligned building.
Without a consistent measurement, a straight edge of some sort, even the simplest tasks would become chaos. Imagine if everyone could redefine “mile” or “pound” however they wanted. That might come in handy when bragging about your current “weight” (why yes, I do weigh 150 “pounds” … but only on my scale) or arguing over your highway “speed” (but officer, I was only going 40 “miles” per hour … my miles are just twice as long as yours). But for the most part, redefining basic measurements would be disastrous.
God’s law is the straight edge by which we measure all things in life. It is the standard against which we can determine good and bad, right and wrong. Of course, many of us hate the idea of someone else dictating to us what is best for us. We’d rather follow the conventional wisdom of our age and “follow our hearts.”
The problem with following our hearts, though, is that we can’t ever discern the good parts from the bad. Everyone admits that our hearts aren’t 100% pure. We know that certain desires should be encouraged, and others should be resisted. Without a straight edge to tell us which is which, we’re lost.
Let me prove it. Imagine two men in their late 20s. One is a Viking in the 9thcentury, and the other is a professional in downtown Durham in the 21st century. These men have two impulses: one is to go back and kill the man who just insulted their honor; the other is to have sex with another man. The Viking culture would call the first impulse a good one, but would shun the second. Contemporary Durham culture would do the opposite: shun the first, and follow the second.
My point in this illustration isn’t to say that those two impulses are moral equivalents. It’s simply to point out that we, as a human race, have never been able to come to consensus about which parts of our heart to resist. We need something external to part the clouds of our heart, to sift right from wrong; and that something is the Word of God.
The Bible ought to contradict us and make us mad sometimes. If it doesn’t, we’re probably not reading a real word from God. We’re just projecting our preconceived ideas upward, imagining that God agrees with us. We don’t want God. We want a deified version of ourselves to serve as a divine butler.
Even as the Word of God contradicts us, though, it guides us to the way of life. As Psalm 119:105 says, God’s Word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” C. S. Lewis said that the law of God is like being lost in the wilderness when your feet suddenly find the path again. If you’ve ever been lost in the woods (like I have on far too many occasions), you know that finding the path after you’ve been lost is actually liberating. You don’t complain about the path being too narrow or constraining or exclusive; you rejoice that you’re not stumbling along through brambles and thorns anymore.
That’s why the author of Psalm 119 expresses such delight in the law. He knows that any part of his life that isn’t anchored in God’s word is going to be shaky (cf. Psalm 119:133, where the Word keeps him “steady”). “Following your heart” might sound good … until you find out your contractor is just “following his heart” regarding your house’s foundations. You want your contractor to use a “straight edge” with your home’s foundation. You should want a spiritual “straight edge,” too.
Trust me, our Enemy knows how important this is, much more than we do: the devil wants us to have pockets of our lives where we ignore God’s Word—little cracks in the foundation of our lives. He wants college and high school students to put the Bible to the side when deciding their careers. He wants men and women to pursue romantic relationships that aren’t biblically informed. He wants us to ignore what the Bible says about our money.
Far too many of us are willing to let it happen. I’m often asked by young people in our church who are sleeping with their boyfriend/girlfriend, “Will God punish us for this?” And I want to say, “Why are you afraid of going sideways of the wrath of God, but not the wisdom of God?” The wisdom of God isn’t an arbitrary and optional part of life. The wisdom of God is life itself.
