My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law.
– Psalm 119:136
What a picture of the psalmist looking around and seeing people not keeping the law of God. It drives the psalmist to weep, “My eyes shed streams of tears”. Not just get a little teary-eyed, streams of tears flowing because God’s law is not being kept.
Psalm 119:136 Is a Lament over Lawlessness
Is this not convicting? Do your eyes, do my eyes shed streams of tears when we see God’s law not being kept around us? It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think we are prone, at least in the church, in my country, in my culture, to have an opposite reaction when we see God’s law not being obeyed. We get mad, like angry. And I think there’s a place for that, a holy and righteous place. And at Mark 11, Jesus is turning over tables in the temple in holy anger. But don’t miss the picture here in God’s Word.
We also see this in Jesus. Luke 19, when he looked out over the city of Jerusalem that was about to crucify him, what did he do? He wept. The psalmist here is saying, “I have such compassion for the people around me and such love for the Word of my God that it causes me to weep streams of tears when God’s law is not being obeyed“. So what’s it going to take for us to have that kind of reaction? I think it takes a higher view of God’s Word than we have, a love for God’s Word. It just weeps when it’s not followed and obeyed, and compassion for people around us. Compassion that causes us to weep for them because we know the life they’re missing out on by disobeying, by not keep God’s law.
Psalm 119:136 Teaches Us to Mourn for Disregarded Commands
God, we pray for that. We pray for a right high, exalted, higher view of your Word that longs to see it obeyed in our lives and in the world around us, in our families, in our churches, in our culture, in our city, the countries where we live, and among the nations of the world. God, we pray for our hearts that shed streams of tears because we love your Word so much and we love people so much that we long to see them experience life in your Word.
Lord, we pray that you would deliver us from wielding your Word like it’s a weapon and a culture war, and instead to weep with your Word and to share your Word with compassion for people around us, with longing for them to experience life in your Word. God, please develop a Psalm 119:136 heart in us for the people around us, for peoples around the world.
Praying for the Dolgan People of Russia
Lord, as we pray today for the Dolgan people of Russia, for the small people group that has hardly any followers of Jesus. They’re not keeping your law. They don’t know your Word. They’ve not been reached with your Word. God, we pray, cause our eyes to shed streams of tears for the Dolgan people of Russia and for thousands of other people groups in the world like them who are not obeying, keeping your law because, in many cases, they’ve never heard it. They don’t have it.
Oh God, please give us the heart of Jesus that we see in Psalm 119:136. That our eyes would shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law. God, even in our own lives, God, we pray they would weep over sin whenever we don’t keep your law. I pray all of this according to your Word, in Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
