Psalm 118
My oldest daughter is almost nine years old, and these days, you really can’t have “the talk” too soon. Our culture has become so sexualized that, in some ways, it seems like we’ve been having bits of “the talk” for a long time already, but her father and I are going to have to start doing some more formal educating very soon. So all the related issues are weighing on my mind—sex, birth control, abstinence, abortion, etc. There are so many warped ideas advanced by society that it’s hard to know where to begin. I mean, to even talk about abstinence until marriage nowadays makes you seem backward and ridiculous. Sometimes, it seems a lot of people would rather find ways to mitigate consequences so our young people can just do “what feels good.”
More and more, I wonder how God must look backward and ridiculous when people encounter His law in the Bible. I’m sure, to some people, He seems like a downright prude. After all, if I’m not hurting anyone else by my actions, why can’t I do what I want?
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All of those thoughts made this verse jump out at me today: “When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place.” (vs 5) Often, it’s our thinking about God that is so backward. He is not out to restrict our freedom; He’s out to preserve it.
Notice in this verse that it’s God who has the spacious place. Without the Lord, the psalmist is “hard pressed.” He’s in a tight spot, in a theoretical prison. It’s only when he calls on God that he finds his way out into freedom.
It’s likely the psalmist was talking about physical danger, here. But just as God provides physical freedom with His presence, He also seeks to provide spiritual and emotional freedom through His law. That’s right. The freedom comes through His law, not by the rejection of it.
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As Paul said in Romans, “You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits.” (Rom 6:15-18)
It’s God who has all the wide-open spaces, and everything He does is geared toward helping you find them. His plan for you is not bondage; it’s freedom.