I wonder how much you have read of God’s Old Testament laws? If you attend a Bible study, do you study books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy? Or perhaps you think that since the Lord Jesus has fulfilled all these laws, there’s not much spiritual value in reading them. But they are still part of Christian Scripture, and so God still wants us to meditate on them.

What, then, is the purpose of the Law? We know that it convicts of sin, leading us to Jesus (Romans 3:20). But is that all? No. While that’s an important function of the Law, we’ll see in the rest of Psalm 119 some of the many wonderful benefits and blessings that come when we reflect on God’s Law.

The psalmist is in love with God’s Law. We may express our relationship with the Law differently, but we too want to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16) by this important part of God’s inspired Word.

Psalm 119, by far the longest psalm, is perfectly constructed. It’s an alphabetic acrostic. This means that it consists of 22 sections, each beginning with one of the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. These sections contain eight verses each, and all the sections praise the beauty of God’s laws and the blessings found in obedience.

The first section (vv. 1–8) describes a life of blessing. There are three deeply connected ways to enjoy God’s blessings. We are to be blameless, follow God’s laws, and wholeheartedly seek the Lord. This is a three-legged stool. Remove one leg and the stool is useless. Each activity explains and interprets the other two.

The consequence of a life of obedience is that we won’t be put to shame. Sin can not only bring us shame in the eyes of others but also—worse still—we would be ashamed before the face of God. The apostle Paul hoped that he would always courageously testify to Christ and would in “no way be ashamed” (Philippians 1:20). Like him, I want to live each day with a clean conscience, and I can do that as I walk in obedience. Again, the psalmist reminds us that the pathway towards honour and away from shame is to “obey [God’s] decrees” (Psalm 119:8).

The next section (vv. 9–16) begins with a question addressed particularly to the young (v. 9). They can maintain a life of purity by keeping God’s Word deep in their hearts (v. 11). Staying pure in thought, word, and deed is extremely difficult in our sex-saturated world. Temptation and sin are just a click away. But if the online world is awash with words and images that can lead us away from God, we’re also richly blessed with many helpful online resources, like Our Daily Bread, which can be a strong protection against sin.

This section concludes with a confession of faith and a resolution. The psalmist delights in God’s Law and resolves to keep reading and obeying. These are wonderful commitments for us as we journey through Psalm 119. First, to rejoice in God’s Word “as one rejoices in great riches” (v. 14). Second, to remain disciplined in regularly listening to God speak to us through the Scriptures.