Settled Sentence

 “Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven. Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction.” Psalms 119:89, 92 NKJV

By reference to the experience of the psalmist, David’s affliction in the hands of his enemies can be regarded as the collection and conflagration of scattered sentences. Starting with the sentences of Goliath like “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field! (I Samuel 17:44)”, the counsel of Ahithophel to Absaloam “Now let me choose twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue David tonight. I will come upon him while he is weary and weak, and make him afraid. And all the people who are with him will flee, and I will strike only the king (II Samuel 17:1-2)”, and many other sentences that accompany his wilderness experiences, it is evident that life is a compendium of scattered sentences. These sentences primarily promote unsettled dispositions, like fear and anxieties. Unfortunately, without a focussed reference to the inspiration of the Lord for guidance, correction, instruction, and rebuke, it is always easy for the heart of man to exalt scattered sentences above the settled sentence from the Lord. For example, at some point in the psalmist’s frustration with scattered sentences and failure to keep the settled sentence as his delight, he joined forces with the enemies by the declaration “Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me anymore in any part of Israel. So I shall escape out of his hand (I Samuel 27:1)”. Whereas, the settled sentence from the Lord on every believer’s personal life and project engagement is his best delight; failure to keep this delight and inspiration in the words of the Lord is the only recipe for defeat by scattered sentences.