I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for thy commandments.
The verse belongs to a psalm that exalts God's law as the rule of life, where God's Word lays out the principles of righteousness and draws the line between right and wrong and between truth and error.
The picture of opening the mouth and panting portrays a deep, urgent, intense longing for God's commandments, like a person gasping for what is needed and like a thirsty person panting for water. God's words give light and understanding, and it is they that awaken this desire to learn His commandments and to keep them.
This longing is the willing, cheerful spirit of those who are in harmony with Christ and whose lives are guided by His principles. Keeping His commandments is then not an oppressive burden or galling yoke, but a happy walk in the way of happiness in harmony with the great standard of righteousness. It lifts the hands to the commandments in love, meditates on His statutes, and makes melody to God in the heart while moving forward.
The longing expresses love for God's law and desire to keep it, especially when the law is scorned and set aside. Fidelity and loyalty grow as the emergency grows, so that contempt placed upon the law only makes love for that law more decidedly revealed.
In the last days, when open and universal contempt is placed upon God's law, His commandment-keeping people take up this longing as their happy song, sung with heart and voice. Their singing embraces loving the commandments above gold and esteeming all His precepts as right. It embraces praying for mercy and for ordered steps and for teaching, praying for deliverance from human oppression, and grieving because others do not keep the law. So sung, it proclaims the third angel's message.
The verse belongs to a psalm that exalts God's law as the rule of life, where God's Word lays out the principles of righteousness and draws the line between right and wrong and between truth and error.
The picture of opening the mouth and panting portrays a deep, urgent, intense longing for God's commandments, like a person gasping for what is needed and like a thirsty person panting for water. God's words give light and understanding, and it is they that awaken this desire to learn His commandments and to keep them.
This longing is the willing, cheerful spirit of those who are in harmony with Christ and whose lives are guided by His principles. Keeping His commandments is then not an oppressive burden or galling yoke, but a happy walk in the way of happiness in harmony with the great standard of righteousness. It lifts the hands to the commandments in love, meditates on His statutes, and makes melody to God in the heart while moving forward.
The longing expresses love for God's law and desire to keep it, especially when the law is scorned and set aside. Fidelity and loyalty grow as the emergency grows, so that contempt placed upon the law only makes love for that law more decidedly revealed.
In the last days, when open and universal contempt is placed upon God's law, His commandment-keeping people take up this longing as their happy song, sung with heart and voice. Their singing embraces loving the commandments above gold and esteeming all His precepts as right. It embraces praying for mercy and for ordered steps and for teaching, praying for deliverance from human oppression, and grieving because others do not keep the law. So sung, it proclaims the third angel's message.