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Psalm 119:134-136   Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts.  Make your face shine on your servant and teach me your decrees.  Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.

We can identify with, and feel for, the Psalmist as we read his words here.  He is familiar with how God has ’made us in his image and likeness’, has created the universe to display his glory, and has made our planet just right for our comfort and blessing.  He is familiar with how God has blessed us with his righteous laws for our care and mutual wellbeing.

But he also knows we have made, and are continually making, a mess of things because we have rejected him and his laws, and so are suffering the dire, unpleasant consequences of such rebellion – just as he predicted, and warned us so clearly about.  The Psalmist longs for a world that is more in line with his Creator’s original declaration of its being ‘very good’, a world more enjoying the blessing of living according to God’s rules instead of one where all the intended ‘image-bearers’ make up their own rules to suit their ‘fallen’ (and therefore self-serving, and ultimately self-destructive) whims and fancies.

It is interesting, from our perspective, that he uses the verb ‘redeem’, where he uses the same Hebrew word that describes God’s accepting the death of the Passover Lamb to ‘redeem the life of the first-born Hebrew sons in Egypt, and therefore foreshadows the coming of God’s provision of ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29).

The ‘human oppression’ we are experiencing from a God-denying, Lamb-of-God-rejecting world today does not differ greatly from the oppression of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, or from the oppression of the culture to which the Psalmist was striving to bear witness.  Likewise, our desire surely is that we will feel the ‘sunshine’ of God’s face, and the beneficial instruction of his Word as we read it daily, to help us fight back the tears that flow from our eyes when we contemplate our society’s current self-destructive course, choosing ‘death’ instead of the eternal ‘life to the full’ it is offered in Christ!

I think of the ‘Aaronic Blessing’: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace”(Numbers 5:24-26); and of the words of Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane’s hymn: “I take, O cross, your shadow for my abiding place!  I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of your face; content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss, my sinful self my only shame, my glory all – the Cross!”

– Bruce Christian