The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
– Psalm 119:72
So a couple of episodes ago, we prayed according to verse 11, “I’ve stored your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” And I encouraged you to make a plan for intentionally memorizing Scripture. And one of the things I most often hear people say in response to that is, “Well, I just don’t memorize very well.”
And the illustration I always use in that kind of conversation is, imagine that over the next 24 hours, I were to give you $1000 for every verse you could memorize. I’m guessing you would learn to memorize with rare exceptions. And I realize there are some exceptions, but most people, if they were offered $1000 for every verse they could memorize, could memorize some, like Jesus wept in John 11:35, just like that a thousand, and then keep moving on like you would memorize.
Psalm 119:72 challenges us to value God’s Word above everything else.
So I guess the question is not whether or not you can memorize. The question is, what’s more important to you? What’s more valuable to you? God’s Word or money. This is where Psalm 119:72 comes in, “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” If we believe that, then of course we’ll treasure God’s Word in our hearts, we’ll hide it there because it’s more valuable than money.
So when you hear encouragement to memorize God’s Word, think, “Okay, I can memorize a verse over the next day, that would be so much better than $1000 in my pocket to have God’s Word stored in my heart.” And just think, what if we actually lived like we believed that? We’d be filling our hearts with God’s Word. And yes, different people may have different capacities to memorize, but with again rare exceptions, we’re all able to hide God’s Word in our hearts.
Psalm 119:72 encourages us to prioritize memorizing God’s Word.
So let’s do this. Let’s encourage the next generation to do this from earliest ages and all the way up to older brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s faithfully hide God’s Word in our hearts, knowing we’re doing something better than putting thousands and millions of dollars in our pockets. Oh God, we praise you for the worth of your Word. It’s worth more than thousands of gold and silver pieces and not just worth it. It’s better for us.
Oh God, we pray that you would deliver us from love of money and love of anything in this world that is greater than love for you and your Word, that we would see it is indeed better. God reorient our values, our hearts, our affections, our desires around your Word we pray. And help us to memorize it today and tomorrow like it’s more valuable than anything else in the world.
And as we memorize it, God help us to live according to it as Psalm 119 is talking about over and over and over again to keep your Word, to obey it, to walk in it, to believe it, to share it with others.
Prayer for the Shihuh People
Oh God, we pray for the Shihuh people of Oman, God, we pray that this Muslim people group would be reached with the good news of your Word. 0.0% followers of Jesus, God, please change that. Please cause your Word to reach them, that they might be saved from their sin through the love of Jesus for them, and their hearts might be filled with the good news in your Word. Please, may it be so. We pray all of this according to your Word, that is better to us than thousands of gold and silver pieces. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
