Daniel Hyde

Notice also at the end of that Psalm 119, verse 164.

Psalm 119, 164.

The psalmist says, seven times a day I praise you.

Again, notice why.

Why seven times a day, which is a way of saying all the day.

His whole life is devoted to serving, to worshiping, praising God.

Notice why.

For your righteous rules.

Because of the word.

Because of what the Lord teaches us in his law throughout all the New Testaments.

We cannot read this and we can say because of your wonderful word, your righteous rules.

I praise you seven times a day.

And so we need to read the word devotionally.

Martin Luther, no doubt a familiar figure in church history to many of us, he wrote in one of his comments on Psalm 119, he wrote about this very thing.

As we read Psalm 119, he says, we learn three things about reading the word, that we are to read the word with prayer,

So we are to pray for the Lord to open our eyes to understand it.

And as we read it in a spirit of prayer, a spirit of devotion, we are to read it also, he said, with meditation.

That is to think about it, to ponder it, to let it sink in to our hearts and to our minds.

And then finally, he said that that leads to what he described as a spiritual conflict or an attack.

As we pray, as we read the word, as we meditate upon it, as it begins to change our hearts and our minds and our lives,