Psalm 119 Part 7 

Vs44-46 is filled with “I will” promises. V49 begins with God’s promises and how they comfort and revive us and give us hope. The Bible is built on promises. The Jewish nation was established on God’s promises to Abraham and underwritten by God’s promises to Moses. Throughout the OT, God promised a Messiah to redeem His people, and throughout the NT, we receive God’s promise of His presence and His guidance through the Holy Spirit. Your salvation is based on God’s promise, not on anything you can produce. You are promised eternal life if you believe and follow Jesus (John.5:24.) V49 is a plea, in a time of affliction, for God to fulfil His promises as stated in His word. 

Some find comfort in their bank accounts, their alcohol or their frivolity, but the man whose hope comes from God feels the life-giving power of the word of the Lord, and he testifies, ‘This is my comfort,’ though he is mocked by the haughty’ who want nothing to do with it (v50-52). 

There was specific comfort in remembering God’s “age-old regulations” NLT. In a similar way, we are comforted and strengthened in hope as we remember how God has dealt with men and circumstances in the past. God has put boundaries on sin, He has drawn a line in the sand so to speak. God must deal with sin, and be seen by a watching Universe (Eph3:9-10) to be doing so! Man has been told “the wages of sin is death” and this has been demonstrated throughout the OT. The grinning of the proud will not trouble us when we remember how the Lord dealt with their predecessors in bygone periods when they cross the boundary; he destroyed them in the deluge, he confounded them at Babel, he drowned them at the Red Sea, he drove them out of Canaan: he has in all ages bared his arm against the arrogant, and broken them like pottery. When we currently see no present display of divine power it is wise to fall back upon the judgments of former ages and remember the prophesied end-time judgments to come. (e.g.Rev16)