Streams of Tears
My eyes shed streams of tears,
because people do not keep your law. (Psalm 119:136)
I look at the faithless with disgust,
because they do not keep your commands. (Psalm 119:158)
How do you feel about the lostness around you?
We certainly know about lostness. Thanks to the barrage of media, there’s never a shortage of stories that put it on display. Many of the headlines I see could be boiled down to simply another way that a person doesn’t keep God’s word. Whether a criminal or celebrity, much of what gets our attention is the stuff that’s broken, and behind all of it is sin. Lostness. So how does that make you feel?
I’m asking about emotions because that’s what the psalmist describes in Psalm 119, verses 136 and 158. Since the psalmist is meant to be a model for the redeemed, these verses suggest, at least, that we should have some reaction to the reality of another person defying God (whether published or not), and that reaction in its most wholesome form should be both sorrow and sickness.
Sickness
For sickness, consider verse 158, where the keyword is rendered “disgust” by the ESV; “loathing” by the NIV. The Hebrew has a range of meanings, but they’re all in the ballpark of abhorrence and repugnance. The sight, the awareness, hearing about transgression, should make the redeemed recoil. It’s the kind of thing you turn away from as involuntarily as that grimace on your face when you encounter a pungent odor.
As a kid, I remember going to the landfill with my dad, where the smell was almost unbearable. We’d hold our breaths as long as we could and pull our t-shirts up over our noses. That’s what you do in the presence of the disgusting, and the psalmist shows us a similar reaction to the sight of those who break God’s moral law.
Sorrow
For sorrow, consider verse 136, which gives us a word-picture: eyes shedding streams of tears. It’s not uncommon to find this image in the Old Testament. Jeremiah talked this way more than anyone else, such as in Jeremiah 9:18, and in Lamentations 1:16 and 3:48, respectively —
In response to God’s judgment, “Let them make haste and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water.”
Again, “For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.”
“My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
Both Jeremiah and the psalmist of Psalm 119 are experiencing sorrow — that’s what the tear-shedding means. And that part is not hard for us to imagine. We understand what it means to feel sad, and perhaps even to weep. It’s the cause of the sorrow in Psalm 119, though, that stops us in our tracks. The psalmist weeps because of others’ sins.
But Why?
Sorrow and sickness are both evidenced in the example of the psalmist, but the reason for this response is left to our meditation on Psalm 119 as a whole. Given the psalmist’s devotion to God — his hunger for God and his word — I think we’re supposed to understand his response to sin to be driven by that. As a model for the redeemed, the psalmist shows us how it looks when you obey the greatest commandment (to love God with your everything more than anything), and the second which is like it (to love your neighbor as yourself).
When God is supreme in our affections, we are not indifferent to the reality that he is dishonored. It’s not okay. It’s not simply how things are. But it’s a gross affront to his will and glory, and it should sicken us with holy disgust.
And next to our love for God, in our love for others, it should sadden us when people rebel against the only One who can make them truly happy. They are committing two evils, forsaking God which is repulsive, and hewing out worthless cisterns which is heartbreaking (see Jeremiah 2:13). In their sins, the lost are earning the wages of death — eternal death and destruction away from the presence of the Lord (Romans 6:23; 2 Thessalonians 1:9).
Lost people go to hell.
Back to the Heart
Our neighbors we’re called to love, the peoples of these cities who go about their days in rebellion to God, whether high-handed defiance or busied indifference, are on their way to hell. Apart from hearing the gospel and believing, their destiny is eternal condemnation. Do we have any tears for that? If not, why not? Is it because we don’t really love them or because we don’t really believe the Bible is true?
If we are never sickened and saddened like the psalmist, it means something is off. Just leave it there. Something is off. And God would call us back to the heart we see on display in Psalm 119.
It seems to me that a renewed resolve for sharing the gospel would start here.
Father, give us that heart!
