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Oh, how I love Your law! … Therefore I hate every wrong path (Psalm 119:97, 104).
These bookend verses of the section called Mem form the conclusion of a logical argument, and in between are each step of the progression. Notice the word “for” (in vv. 98, 99, 100, and 102) and the words “so that” in v. 101.
This progression forms a circle from love to hate, and back to love again. Check this out—
I love Your law so I meditate on it all day.
Meditating on Your law makes me wiser than my enemies and my teachers.
This wisdom helps me obey Your laws.
Obedience keeps me on the right path.
I stay on the right path because You Yourself teach me while I’m on that path.
Because You are my Teacher, Your laws are sweet to me.
Because Your laws are sweet, I hate anything contrary to Your laws.
Hating everything that is not found in Your law helps me love Your law even more.
[Back to the top] Since I love Your law, I keep on meditating on it all day.
The Bible uses two phrases that we don’t typically use today: “the horn of the wicked” and “the horn of the righteous.”
A horn in Hebrew literature is a symbol of strength. The wicked blow their own horn—trumpeting how they are self-made people. Obviously, this God-ignoring arrogance isn’t something God can bless!
What about “the horn of the righteous”? Is there a way to blow our horn so that God is glorified? In a word: Yes!
Check out this short 2-minute video to hear how I describe the right and wrong ways to honor your uniqueness by blowing a righteous, God-honoring horn…
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Who doesn’t love Regis Philbin? Even if a morning talk show wasn’t your thing, the personality and professionalism that Regis demonstrated for over 50 years put him in a category all by himself. How did he get this way? He tells us in his entertaining memoir How I Got This Way.
I purchased the audiobook for this one because I love hearing Regis speaking so passionately about those things that fire him up. Although he was mostly subdued in his recording, there were moments that his Irish was up!
This book is presented in a very interesting format, with each chapter being named after a person who had a huge impact on fashioning Regis into the television icon that he became. Some names are readily recognizable, while others would be names known to only a handful of people. Since Regis would stick with this person through all of the years that he knew them, as the book progresses you will begin to see these strands intersecting with other people and forming a comprehensive picture.
This was a delightful book! If you want a behind-the-scenes look at the television industry almost from its very beginning stages, this memoir will more than fit that bill.
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I had just finished playing three games of full-court basketball and it was time to leave for work. A young kid challenged me to stay for another game by making some comment about my old(er) age, which give me a fresh motivation to play another game. I told him I would play one more game on one condition: he had to guard me. I scored all 15 of our team’s points. One of my teammates said to that kid after the game, “You shouldn’t have made Craig angry.”
I know the Israelites had strayed from God, but the Assyrians made no pretense whatsoever to honor Yahweh, so why was God allowing them to get away with this? Doesn’t it seem sometimes like God is waiting too long to deal with these wicked insulters?
Many scholars feel that Psalm 76 was written after Sennacherib’s defeat. And make no mistake about this: it was a decisive defeat—God struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers while they slept! Asaph’s song of victory contains two Selah pauses, both of them intended for us to consider the greatness of Yahweh:
one Selah is after verse 3—pause and remember that God is Sovereign and Resplendent in glorious victory
the second Selah is after verse 9—pause and reflect that God’s wrath defeats His enemies and brings forth praise from His people
Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. (Luke 16:13-14)
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up His clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at Him. They said, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” (Luke 23:34-35)
These are the only two times in the New Testament that this Greek word for “sneer” is used. It means to deride, scoff, or mock. But in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) the same word that Luke used for sneer is used when God Himself says to Sennacherib, “The Virgin Daughter Zion despises you and mocks you” (see 2 Kings 19:20-28).
Sennacherib thought he was insulting God’s people, but God said, “You are really insulting Me!” Yikes—you shouldn’t make God angry!
Psalm 76 gives us the same reminder that we read in Revelation 12:10-11—“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”
We defeat the enemy of our soul not by facing him but by facing our King!
When we are confronted by the ungodly insults from snarling, scoffing, wicked people, we must Selah to remind ourselves that Yahweh is—
Alpha
Known and Renown
Invincible
Majestic
Awesome
Holy
The Final Judge
Irrefutable
Glorious
Omniscient
Omnipotent
Unrivaled
Undefeated
King of kings
Lord of lords
Sovereign Ruler
Omega
THE Decisive Word
Let me say it again: We defeat the enemy of our soul not by facing him but by facing THIS King of kings!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
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Showers Of Blessing
I will make them and the places all around My hill a blessing; and I will cause showers to come down in their season; there shall be showers of blessing. (Ezekiel 34:26)
‘I will send them showers.’ It does not say, ‘I will send them drops,’ but ‘I will send them showers.’ Remember the saying, ‘It seldom rains but it pours.’ So it is with grace. If God gives a blessing, He usually gives it in such a measure that there is not room enough to receive it. …
Ah, we want plenteous grace, my friends. Plenteous grace to keep us humble, plenteous grace to make us prayerful, plenteous grace to make us holy, plenteous grace to make us zealous, plenteous grace to make us truthful, plenteous grace to preserve us through this life and at last to land us in heaven. We cannot do without showers of grace. …
But how is it that it does not fall to some of the people? It is because they put up the umbrella of their prejudice. And though they sit here, even as God’s people sit, even when it rains they have such a prejudice against God’s Word that they do not want to hear it. They do not want to love it and it runs off their prejudices.
From The Church Of Christ
God wants to bless you! Sadly, there are far too many people who put up their umbrellas of excuses like, “I’m nothing special,” or “Do you realize how many times I’ve blown it,” or “God has more important matters to attend to than little ol’ me.”
These are lies that keep saints of God in a dry place. God’s grace is pursuing you. In one of the most well-received and most downloaded series of messages I shared on God’s favor, I said this about God showering His blessings on you: “Why would God do this? Because if you feel distant from Him, how can you glorify Him? If you feel disconnected from His love, how will you draw others to Him? If you feel like your relationship with Him is hanging by a thread, how can you happily abide in His presence?”
God gave the promise of these abundant showers of blessings through Ezekiel of the Old Testament, and then Jesus made it a reality. The apostle Paul tells us, “Since God did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t He also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32).
My friend, please put away those umbrellas of excuses—of satanic lies—and bask in the refreshing showers of God’s grace. It’s time to talk back to those excuses and tell them, “These are lies. God Himself says that He will bless His children and I am most assuredly His child!”
I have frequently made the assertion that God is sovereign over all history, or as I like to say it… All History is His Story!
When we are reading the Bible, it is important to keep in mind that these are not “once upon a time” stories, nor are they set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but we are reading the accounts of actual people in actual moments of history.
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Psalm 119 is divided into twenty-two 8-verse segments, with each verse of the segments beginning with its own Hebrew letter. Lamedh is found in verses 89-96, and lamedh is the tallest of all the Hebrew letters, so that means it stands out.
Lamedh shows us big proportions. Words like eternal, boundless, established, enduring, and forever are prominent in these eight verses. The psalmist is inviting us to climb up into God’s Word and get a bigger view, a higher vantage point of who God is.
Consider the opening verse of this section: Your Word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.Eternal—think of the implications! If what God says—His Word—is eternal, then…
it continues through all generations (v. 90)
it endures even when everything else fades away (vv. 90-91)
it has no limits or frontiers (v. 96)
At every single moment in my life, my eternal, enduring, limitless God knows the outcome or consequence of each option I could choose. His Word can so transform my mind that I can always choose the most Christ-glorifying option. The Spirit of Truth—my eternal Counselor—can guide me with God’s Word.
I never have to be at a loss. I am never stumped. I always have access to eternal Truth.
The psalmist got this: If Your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction (v. 92).
Through God’s firmly-established Word I have—
Eternal Counsel
Enduring Help
Limitless Strength
And you have all of this, too, through God’s Word!
Psalm 119 is a great place to start to make Bible reading a daily habit. Scientists tell us that you only need 21 days to make a new habit, and in Psalm 119 you have 22 days of daily reading that will transform your heart and mind.
the difference between patriotism and nationalism both in our country and in your organization [1:35]
Greg explains how leaders need to lead inside out [2:42]
I share one sure-fire way for leaders to evaluate potential new leaders, and how this relates to citizenship [3:27]
leaders can change the culture without having an office or a title [4:25]
the value of team building and how it relates to patriotism [5:10]
Chuck Colson said politics are downstream from culture, so what happens in your backyard will ultimately affect Washington, D.C. [5:45]
how my grandfather changed his business culture [6:43]
Greg explains how gratefulness and patriotism are directly related [8:13]
wherever you are, you can make a difference—your daily actions have a cumulative effect [12:43]
Check out this episode and subscribe on YouTube so you can watch all of the upcoming episodes. You can also listen to our podcast on Spotify and Apple.
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That Hideous Strength is the conclusion of C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy. Although this was written almost 70 years ago, it sounds ominously like our culture today.
I mentioned in a previous book review that the first two books of this trilogy—Out Of The Silent Planet and Perelandra—should be read together. Those who have read these first two books will definitely have a greater appreciation of the themes which come to their conclusion in this capstone book. But That Hideous Strength is such a well-told story and culture commentary that it may be read by itself and still be highly enjoyable.
It’s amazing to me how much foresight Lewis had into the hideous ways the spirit of the antichrist can insinuate itself into our day-to-day culture and ultimately into our politics. This book is really a behind-the-scenes look at both how evil people propagate their evil plans, and how godly people stand in God’s strength to combat those plans. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t read the last chapters of the Bible yet: Evil always loses because Jesus Christ is the undefeated Champion even over the darkest of evil forces.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous C.S. Lewis book review, this space trilogy is probably not the best place for first-time Lewis readers to jump in. This trilogy is more of a graduate-level course in seeing biblical themes portrayed in ways only a mastermind like Lewis could imagine. But for those who are already well steeped in Lewis’ writings, all three books of this trilogy are must-reads!
Oh, how I love Your law! … Therefore I hate every wrong path (Psalm 119:97, 104). 
Craig T. Owens 