The law had humbled David.  It had exposed his sin and brought him low.  He had repented and God had heard.  Now, he wanted the law to keep him in the right way.  The law would cause him to wonder at the greatness, the goodness and the majesty of God.  It would keep his mind stayed on God.  A mind stayed on God will walk according to the ways of God.  The false way had caused David much grief, so now there was resolve to walk in the truth of God's law.  

David acknowledged the need for an enlarged heart in order to accomplish this.  A supernatural operation of God in his life to walk in the way of truth.  He understood that works of righteousness do not come naturally or without the supernatural power of God, but also that the works would be a natural result of his heart being enlarged.  

What David understood, and much of the church today does not, is that there is a positional AND a practical righteousness.  Positional righteousness is that place where we have been brought into right standing with God through the death  of Jesus Christ.  He has washed and cleansed us by the blood of His Son.  We are clean.  This positions us directly in the flow of the gift of His grace, the same grace that Christ had while he walked on earth, the same grace that we now have through adoption into the family of God.  

The fruit or evidence of that position is practical righteousness.  Just as the law defined sin for David, the remedy for that sin changed his behavior.  Because of the law working in his heart supernaturally, his works naturally changed as a result.  Sin was no longer his master.  I have to ask myself why, since we have not just an occasional anointing but an indwelling Holy Spirit do we struggle so with sin?  Not only do we struggle with sin, we justify it.  We, in effect, say that the blood Jesus did not provide us the same grace that it provided Christ, that Christ gave us less than what He promised, that over the years, grace has become less strong or somewhere along the way, God changed His mind about sin.  We expect our lives to be stricken with daily sin and unconquerable vices.  But that is not what God's grace does in us when we, like David, experience the supernatural change that David talked about.  We receive grace to live above sin and to live holy lives.  

Positional AND practical righteousness.  Charles Spurgeon  describes it this way:

“Have I a man here who declares that he is pardoned, and yet indulges in the sins which he pretends are forgiven? Sir, you have either deceived yourself, or else you are uttering what you know is untrue. He who is forgiven hates sin. We cannot be washed clean if we still persist in living up to our neck in filth. It cannot be possible that a man is pardoned while he still continues to wallow in abominable sin.

‘O yes,’ but he says, ‘I am no legalist; I believe the grace of God has made me clean, though I do go on in sin.’ Sir, it is clear you are no legalist, but I will tell you what else you are: you are no child of God, you are no Christian; for the Christian is a man who uniformly hates sin. There never was a believer who loved iniquity, such a strange thing as a pardoned sinner who still loved to be in rebellion against his God.” — Charles Spurgeon

David knew that the Word was full of wonderful things.  He did not find it burdensome.  Even though he knew that it was impossible for man to keep all the law, he delighted in pleasing God by walking according to it.  And the more that he knew of it, the more he longed to know more of it.  Isn't this how we should feel about Christ?

"I am a stranger on this earth."  At first I thought this an odd line.  It seemed out of place, but then it seemed that David was seeing the great contrast between the principles of the World and the principles of the Word.  He desired to live as part of God's Kingdom instead of as a citizen of the world, filled with it's arrogance and pride.  He sought wisdom from the Word and not the counselors of the world.  He looked to God for approval, not to men.  He knew that God only approves of His Word, not the opinions of men.

Much of the modern church lives with as much of the world in it as it thinks it can justify.  Unfortunately the source of worldliness is evil.  Evil is deceptive and subtle and before we realize it has us sucked into its deceptions, which only increase and spread until it has sucked the life of God right out of us.  David delighted in living separated from the world systems and the opinions of others.

Today, many professing Christians disdain any type of separation for the sake of holiness, in fact, holiness is treated as a dirty word, an irrelevant and antiquated thought.  The focus is only on positional righteousness and denies practical righteousness except what makes us more comfortable.  Our justification was bought at the cross, but our sanctification is accomplished through our Spirit empowered works.  We have dirtied the holiness of God and denied the power of grace to produce a life that is different from the world's way of living all in an effort to incorporate as much of the world into our lives as possible because our deceived way of thinking says that we have to be like the world to win it.  The result?  The world has won us.  Like a man who sets his gaze on a seductive woman, we have looked on it, desired it and finally we have embraced it.  Now we are just like it and the distinction of being Christlike (with the power that it provides) is missing and renders us irrelevant and powerless to meet the greatest need of mankind.  We are an impotent church.  In our fleshly efforts to be relevant to the world, we have become irrelevant to the world because we have nothing to offer them that they don't already have and nothing to give them that they need.  The world does not need our Christianized worldliness!  It needs an answer!

Christ called us to separate ourselves from the world.  Then He empowered us to do it through the forgiveness of sin and the infilling of the Holy Spirit.  He created a suitable habitation for the power to separate ourselves to reside in.   The same power that enabled him to remain sinless in this world now lives in us.  His power has not changed, therefore we live without excuse for our pathetic lives, still imprisoned by the bonds of sin.  Our sin is the norm instead of the exception as we continue to cheapen and dilute the power of His blood to save, deliver, heal, and keep us. 

God called us to be holy.  He gave us all we need to be holy.  He will judge us according to what we did with his commandments.  Our justification is only the beginning for it is what opens the door for us to step into the power of God and live holy, set-apart, world changing lives.

After reading only the first two letters, I am impressed at how closely related purity, blamelessness, and the law are.  If you don't love purity you will not love the Word.  If you do not love the Word, it is impossible to be pure in life.  The Word is a boundary or guardrail for our life to keep us on the path of life.  The guardrails are not guarding a wide road, but a narrow one.  With all the hyper-righteous and self-righteous teaching today that deletes, devalues, and de-emphasizes the law, is it any wonder that professing Christians struggle so much with worldliness and sin?  

When David spoike of the Word, he was speaking of the law.  That's about all the Word that was written in his day.  We say, in modern Christianity, that we pray for a heart like David's yet we disregard the very thing that created that heart within him.  The whole law has not been abolished, only the sacrificial part.  There is no more need for sacrifice because Christ was sacrificed, once for all, but the moral law remains.  The 10 commandments still apply!!  The prophecies in the law that are yet unfulfilled were not done away with, they WILL come to pass to fulfill the law.  The principles that the law established remain for God has not and never will change, nor has His view of sin softened.  If anything, it has become more severe because it cost Him His only begotten son.  In the OT acts of lust (adultery, fornication) were sin.  In the NT, just the thoughts of such things are sin.  In the OT murder was a sin.  In the NT, thoughts of murder are the same as committing them.  The difference?  The indwelling of the source of power to not sin!  When the Holy Spirit came upon people in the OT, they did miraculous things.  How much more miraculous should our lives be now that He abides?  We are without excuse!

Psalm 119 was written as an alphabetic acrostic.  In essence it is a prayer based in and upon the promises, statutes, laws and commandment of God.  I've decided to read it letter by letter, letting the Holy Spirit speak to me about each section.  So little by little I will be adding my thoughts one letter at time, one blog at a time.  

What immediately stuck out to me was that the law of Moses was ll that David had of scripture.  The new testament, psalms, and most of the prophetic writings had not even been composed yet!  In a church culture that, for the most part, ignores, devalues, and even rejects "the law", as works, in it David found the revelation of God, His love, His perfection and His Messiah.  While we all glorify David's heart and relationship with God, wishing to model and experience what he had with God, we poo-poo the very words that too him to that spiritual level.  How stupid we are.  Until the New Testament was written, the Apostles preached Christ from the Old Testament.  Did not Jesus Himself, after the resurrection reveal Himself to the disciples walking on the road using the law?  

As a saint of God I believe and accept that ALL the Word is GOOD.  Jesus and His word are one.  To love Christ is to love His Word-ALL OF IT!  May the Spirit of God speak to my heart through this Psalm!