Princes Plot
Over the last few weeks the Ward family has read various sections of Psalm 119 during breakfast. (Sometimes, you just take what you can get. In fact, we read the same section two days in a row because I forgot where we were!)
Anyway, we recently read v23, which says, “Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes.” Think about this. Princes are plotting against the psalmist. People with power, resources, knowledge, cache, etc., are actively taking steps to undermine his well-being. It doesn’t take much to put this in modern perspective. Can you imagine your boss or professor or neighbor spending even a few seconds thinking of ways to take you down? And yet here, the psalmist’s enemies seem more committed to the task!
Chances are, you don’t have enemies that radically and openly committed to your destruction, but a) there are certainly spiritually destructive forces at work in the world and b) everyone experiences the conspiracies of “fate” from time to time. Maybe right now you are facing circumstances beyond your control that appear to be against you. Whatever the case, how do you (or will you) respond to such plotting?
We tend to react to such circumstances in a few ways. First, there’s defensiveness: “This isn’t right. I don’t deserve this. Why is the world against me? Why is the Lord not on my side?” Second, despair: “Woe is me! Everything is falling apart. I can see the end is at hand! I’ve been abandoned.” Finally, we can go on the offensive: “Two can play at that game. I’m going to get what’s mine whatever the cost.”
But what does the psalmist do? “Your servant will meditate on your statutes.” There are a few things that stand out to me about this:
First and foremost, the psalmist sees himself as a servant of the Lord. In Matthew 10:24, Jesus says, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.” How often is my outrage/anxiety/fear rooted in forgetting my place? Servants don’t expect glamour or prestige, and yet…
Servants of the Lord have a unique privilege—God’s statutes. It’s easy to read into this passage a sort of resignation: “Well, my life might be on the brink of destruction, but at least I have…God’s law.” But for the psalmist, these statues, God’s word, his law, aren’t empty but bring life. In the face of plotting princes, he meditates on God’s statutes not to wave a white flag but to reorient himself to what is truest and best: God’s law. The Lord himself says in John 4:34, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” What contentment comes to souls that aren’t satisfied by anything less than God’s own word and work. (And by extension, what earthly fear can ever shake a soul grounded in eternal truth?)
Meditation nestles God’s word in his servants’ hearts. I’m as guilty as anybody of reading Scripture without letting it take root. Reading alone is becoming a lost art, forget meditation and prolonged thought! For those who chew on God’s law, savoring every bite, there are pathways forged in the heart that bring them new perspectives on their prospects. Does it silence the princes or unravel their threats? No, of course not, but it bolsters the servant, and ultimately that’s what servants need, fortification.
It’s counterintuitive to our modern ears that we should respond to threats with meditation. Facing tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword (Rom 8:35)? Fear not! Simply…meditate on the Lord’s statutes. The thought seems counterproductive until we discover what God’s people have known through the ages: It’s in God’s word and ways that we find his love for us hidden with Christ (Rom 8:35, 39).
Meditating on God’s law orients God’s people toward God’s King who always loves and never fails. What can mere princes do?