We began our Women’s Bible Study again after a break during the summer. I am personally so thankful for a group of women who are able to meet each week and look at God’s word together. We started up right where we left off in Psalm 119. I pray you are encouraged, challenged and motivated in your love for God!
We finished our study last Spring with Psalm 119:138. In that scripture, David once again acknowledged God’s righteousness and faithfulness. He states God commanded His testimonies in righteousness and exceeding faithfulness. David is fully engaged in loving his Lord. This is what drives him, there is nothing as important as serving God and trusting in Him for all things. Now, the Psalmist shows us insight how others’ rejection of God hurts his very soul. The tone of David’s words has changed.
Ps 119:139 My zeal has consumed me, because my adversaries have forgotten Thy words.
Consider. What happens when you are reminded of who God is and what He has done? Excitement for God’s truths is great, almost seeming to burst from your heart and soul. To be zealous for something is to have a great enthusiasm and interest for it. When you have a great desire and interest for something, it’s almost unthinkable that others would not see the same importance for what you regard so highly. Many of us have felt this way when sharing the Gospel. What we know is certain and good and right, we automatically want for others. When others turn aside from the Truths we trust in, it is difficult to accept their rejection of God. There is grief when what you believe is mistreated or pushed aside as unimportant.
This same reaction towards those who reject God’s commands, is found in Psalm 69:9 – For zeal for Thy house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach Thee have fallen on me.
When someone rejects the Gospel our heart aches for them and for God. When we are known for the Gospel, those who reject it often become hostile towards us because of what we believe. We certainly see this in David’s life.
Remember the story recorded for us in the Gospels when Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover and entered into the temple. He saw merchants making a profit, basically capitalizing on the Jewish remembrance of the Passover. This was a solemn and holy time where the people worshipped God’s sparing of them and it had become a mockery for those wanting to gain from it. Jesus entered the temple, saw what was happening and began overturning the tables and driving the moneychangers and all the goods out of the temple. Why?
Mt 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Joh 2:14-17 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove [them] all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers, and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He said, "Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a house of merchandise." 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, "ZEAL FOR THY HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME."
The worship we have of God cannot be mocked without us taking a personal affront. It should be pure and holy. Can you begin to imagine Jesus, upon seeing His Father’s house turned into an arena of buying and selling, how it must have made His heart ache for the Truths that had become so cheaply transformed by men with no understanding?
So here we have David sharing his own intense feelings. His enemies are those against God. David literally feels as if he will be consumed by his strong love for God and the rejection of God he sees in others. David recorded a similar scripture for us in Ps 119:53 – Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, who forsake Thy law.
Read what Ezra records upon hearing that after having been freed from captivity, the Israelites had formed bonds of marriage with the idolatrous nations around them. Ezra 9:3 And when I heard about this matter, I tore my garment and my robe, and pulled some of the hair from my head and my beard, and sat down appalled. The tearing of his garment and pulling of his hair was a practiced custom at that time when you were grieved.
David, in Psalm 119, had just proclaimed over and over the righteousness of God and His laws. We would expect him to react strongly to those who were enemies against the God he loved and followed. The Psalmist promoted God’s glory, his enemies plundered it. This caused David pain and grief.
How do we react to those who oppose God? Does it make our heart ache? It’s interesting to note that at least in the case of Ps 119:139, it says ‘my adversaries have forgotten Thy words’. In order to have forgotten something, the implication is you once had it. How easy is it to forget something we rarely use or to lose interest in something that has little value to us? Is there a warning we can take from this?
Matthew Poole’s Commentary explains David’s thoughts: ‘I am tormented and cut to the heart with grief and anger at it’. Think about the opposite of forgetting God’s words – remembering them by following and loving them. Grief and anger is then replaced with joy and peace.
Consider. We have an amazing, incomprehensible God who, in His love for us, gave all. How undeserving are we of His gift of salvation and blessings poured out on us freely, even in our sinfulness and rejection of Him. And yet, man still rejects God. And we were among those who refused Him, except for His grace. I pray no matter our life circumstances, we are able to be fully consumed with zeal for our Great God and what He has done. A zeal who’s object is God, a zeal that gets stronger as we see ungodliness around us. A zeal that consumes us to march forward as a soldier and live a life honorable for God’s glory.
Zeal: strong eagerness – excessive fervor – prompt willingness. All for God.
“There is a zeal of the world, there is a zeal of the flesh, there is a zeal of religion, there is a zeal of heresy, and there is a zeal of the true God. First, we see the zeal of the world maketh men to labour day and night to get a transitory thing. The zeal of the flesh torments men’s minds early and late for a momentary pleasure. The zeal of heresy maketh travel and compassing sea and land, for the maintaining and increasing of opinion. Thus we see every man is eaten up with some kind of zeal. The drunkard is consumed with drunkenness, the whoremonger is spent with his whoredom, the heretic is eaten with heresies. Oh, how ought this to ashamed, who are so little eaten, spent, and consumed with the zeal of word! And so much the rather, because godly zeal leaveth in us advantage and a recompense, which the worldly and carnally zealous have not. For when they have spent all the strength of their bodies, powers of their mind, they have no gain or comfort left, but torment conscience; and when they are outwardly spent, they are inwardly never better: whereas the godly being concerned for a good thing, and eaten with the zeal of God's glory, have this notable privilege and profit, howsoever their outward man perisheth and decayeth, yet their inward is still refreshed and nourished to everlasting life. Oh, what a benefit to be eaten up with the love and zeal of a good thing!”—Richard Greenham. (Emphasis added)
Jos 22:5 "Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul."
