Psalm 119:1-24

Discussion Questions

• What verses from Psalm 119:1-24 speak to you, feed you, or challenge you today?
• Do we feel we can go to God with our struggles? How does He communicate His guidance and love to us during these times?
• In what ways is God’s economy different from the world’s?  How can we listen to God’s Word, and how can we implement it?  What is God saying to challenge you in your personal relationship with Him?
• How can we know God better?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and we do have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you’d like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high. You’re going to want to have one in front of you today. Up on the screen you’ll see the QR code. If you would like the notes and quotes in advance, you can just take a little picture of that. It’ll lead you right to where you can grab those things. I want to also thank those who joined us online. In the last week, we’ve had folk from Singapore, from Seoul, South Korea; Imus, I believe is how you pronounce it, Cavite in the Philippines, and from Greensboro, North Carolina. I always like to have a city from somewhere here in the States as well.

Today, we’ll be looking at Psalm 119:1-24. I wonder if you’ve ever hungered for a word that could feed your mind and steady your soul, a word that could light the path in front of you when the way seems dark, a word that could stir hope and awaken joy when your heart feels heavy. Psalm 119 is just such a word. To read it, to study it, but to go beyond that, to savor it — each phrase, each promise, each truth, and to delight in all of it is our goal and intent as we begin what I think will be about 6 different studies through Psalm 119. We’ll do 3 before Advent and 3 after Advent. But this psalm leads us to delight in the Word of God and to delight in the God of the Word. When we open our Bibles here at The Village Chapel, we do so bringing all of our questions, our longings, our doubts, our fears, all of who we are, before God and His Word, and we’re eager to let the Word of God do its work in us as it renews our minds and transforms our hearts.

Would you join me for just a moment of prayer for illumination before we dig into Psalm 119? Lord, as we study Your Word today, we pray that what we know not, You will teach us; what we have not, You will give us; and what we are not, You will make us. Grant to us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power, and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

So, by way of introduction, let me say this, at 176 verses and approximately 2,500 words, depending on which English translation you have, some think of Psalm 119 as excessively tedious and uber-repetitive. I pray we will all come to see Psalm 119 as a carefully, artfully crafted, lyrical mosaic, an ancient song that compels us to delight in the Word of God and in the God of the Word. It is indeed the longest chapter, the most voluminous chapter, in your Bibles. Traditional Scottish lore has it that a few hundred years ago, Psalm 119 may have literally saved one man’s life. Back in the 16th century, a certain Scotsman named George Wishart was about to be hanged for something he did not do. He had been falsely accused, brought up on trial, declared guilty. And on the day of his execution, once positioned upon the scaffold, Wishart availed himself of a local tradition, a custom of the times, which permitted any condemned person to choose a psalm to be read aloud. And just as the last stanza of Psalm 119 was being read, along came a rider with a letter of pardon for Wishart and his life was spared. Great thing he didn’t choose Psalm 117, which has 2 verses in it. He would be listening from up above in a different kind of way on the next day, for sure.

Psalm 119 is a lyrical tapestry, it really is beautiful, woven with both passion and precision. It has praise for God’s Word, it talks about the benefits of God’s Word to those who read it, study it, meditate on it, delight in it and obey it. Psalm 119 shimmers like a many-sided diamond and we’re going to consider today just a few of the facets of that diamond. We will see beauty, clarity, certainty, trustworthiness, and divine wisdom of God’s Word as we begin this, 6-part study through Psalm 119. So, if you’ve come to TVC for any length of time, you probably have picked up on the fact that we like the Bible here. We like it so much that almost every sermon by almost every preacher that has ever been preached in this pulpit begins with, “We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel.” I’m certain that Psalm 119 will do our hearts, minds, and souls much good because, just like so many others down through human history, we are all eager to hear from God. And that goes back before the New Testament.

This quote is attributed to Socrates, although I cannot find online, maybe one of you will help me later and find it, the original source of it, but it doesn’t matter to me who said it because I like what it says: “All the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.” If only Socrates had a complete Bible. He did not. I don’t know if he’s the one that wrote that, but we long to hear from God, don’t we? The Psalms themselves, we’ve said before as we’ve studied through the Psalms, selected ones over the years, they really are sort of two different kinds of parts, aren’t they? They have two different intents. They are songs of revelation, and they are songs of response.

The early church father from the 4th century, Athanasius of Alexandria, once said that the psalms, I’m paraphrasing, that the psalms not only speak to us, (revelation) they also speak for us, (response) to God. So God, through the Psalms, inspiring people like King David, the Sons of Korah, there’s one attributed to Moses and several others who have authored these ancient songs, 150 of them, has offered us revelation about Himself, what He wants us to know about Himself, about what He wants us to know about ourselves too, which we get revelation is, is multifaceted as well. And then we also are given the words, the right kinds of words that would be proper for us to respond to God with.

In the study of the Psalms, I have this little acronym I just came up with called SIDSI, S-I-D-S-I. It’s we find in them the benefits of studying the Psalms. They stir the emotions, and for some of us, that’s really important. For some of the rest of us, they need to be tamped down a little bit, but for some of us, especially when our heart gets hard, we get a little callous toward the world we live in or maybe toward the people that we are living with. We need to have our emotions stirred. We need to have our minds informed. And raise your hand if you don’t need your will directed a little bit, and if you raise your hand, you’re in trouble at lunch. We need our wills directed. They stimulate the imagination too, the Psalms do. We see so many beautiful things through ancient Hebrew poetry, and it’s a wonderful thing as we study through the Psalms. And, of course, the last and most important thing is that they inspire us to do what we were designed and created to do, worship God. That is why you’re alive. That is why I’m alive. And the Psalms take us there in a really beautiful kind of way.

So, Psalm 119 is 176 verses, as I said. There are 22 stanzas. These stanzas, correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, so today we’ll study, uh, Alef, Beth, and Gimel, the first 3 letters. And what you find is that 8 lines in each of the stanzas, and each of the 8 lines in the original language, begin with the same Hebrew letter. So, when we study the first 8 lines here, Alef as the section is called, all of those in the ancient language would begin with the same Hebrew letter, each line. Now this, I don’t know, if you’re a songwriter you might understand this or if you’ve written any kind of poetry, you might understand this, but for the rest of us, that’s profound. That would be really hard to do without becoming silly at some point. And Psalm 176 is not silly, it’s joyful, but it’s not silly. Also, it’s an acrostic and that again makes the whole composition even more beautiful, wonderful — you just stand in awe. But it’s helpful that way when you think of the ancients who didn’t have a way to put on their tablet, iPhone, that they happened to carry around with them, or ancient version of that, they didn’t have a way to write all these things down.

Each individual like us can do that. We can open up a little Apple Notes and start to make some notes through the sermon or whatever, and they didn’t have that. So, for memorization, acrostics were really helpful. And there are other psalms that are acrostic and then some other passages outside of the psalms that are also in acrostic. There are 8 shared synonyms in the psalm. We find law and instruction mentioned 25 times. The Hebrew word is “torah.” This is used of a global term that refers to the totality of what God has said. The Scriptures are God’s authoritative word to us, for us. It is affection driven though. It’s not just a troll under the bridge wanting to make sure you do things one way and not another. No. God loves us, and a loving Heavenly Father wants us to know how life works best and how we might come to know Him more fully and express our love to Him. And so, He offers us law, torah, instruction 25 times.

The next one is testimonies, decrees, and statutes. “Eduth” is the Hebrew word. It’s seen 23 times throughout Psalm 119. It appears in the plural, which is really good. Derek Kidner says this refers to the outspokenness of Scripture in regard to high standards and frank warnings. I like that: the frank warnings of Scripture, the wise warnings of Scripture, are so good, especially as you look back on them over the period of your lifetime. And so often people will, when they mess up or do something wrong or something goes wrong in their life and then somebody offers a little profound piece of wisdom or a warning or something, their response is usually, “Well, nobody told me that.” You know? And here’s the Bible and God telling us that and giving us His wise warnings, which we need. All of us need them.

Precepts, “piqqudim,” 21 times in Psalm 119, always in the form “Your precepts.” Not my precepts, but Your precepts. Not the culture’s precepts, but Your precepts. When the psalmist, beginning in verse 4, will switch to a prayer mode and literally verses one through 3 sound like proverbs type wisdom literature. But verses 4 through 7 is all in prayer mode and he’s directing God in the second person, You, Your. And he’s talking to the Lord. He’s expressing his honest, frailty, vulnerability, his honest desire to know God’s Word and to love God’s Word. And so, it’s really good. The 4th one that I think is listed up there is probably statutes and decrees. That is “hokim.” It’s there 21 times in the Hebrew in Psalm 119, always in the form, again, Your statutes. Some of this is similar. Precepts, number 3. I’m sorry. I didn’t highlight that for you, did I? That’s piqqudim and again always Your precepts. Statutes, again, Your statutes. Number 5 is commandments. This is “mitzvah,” 22 times throughout Psalm 119. Usually appears in the plural, but not always. These are orders given by God, the rightful authority who alone has proper claim to instruct us in these matters. No one else has that.

So, when in our day and time in our culture when anyone offers up something that they think is true or some right way or right path, a lot of people’s response is, “Well, who are you to tell me?” Well, you can’t do that with God. You know, you can’t look up at God and say, “Well, who are you to tell me?” Because God’s answer is, “I made you. I hold you together every day, every moment of every day by the power of my Word. I keep gravity turned on today. I keep sunlight and oxygen. I provide you with everything. That’s who I am to tell you.” It’s a good response when you think about those kinds of things. Judgments/ordinances, number 6 is there 23 times. That’s “mishpatim” and it’s rules or rulings made by a legitimate authority or a judge. God’s all of that. And 7 is the word “dabar” in the Hebrew, seen 24 times. So, you can see almost all 8 of these synonyms are used about the same number of times and that number happens to be about the same number of stanzas. Isn’t that fascinating that somebody could do that and use all of those? Promises, number 8, “imrah” in the Hebrew, 19 times. This sometimes is translated word in some of our English Bibles, and it may refer to a more specific spoken revelation that carries within it a promise of some kind.

So, we also need to know before we read it that in each and every case as we go through Psalm 119, in the 22 times we read the covenant name of the Lord: L, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Really important for us. Why? Because, again, this is not just the wisdom of men or women from the ancient past who happened to be really smart, and there were a lot of really smart people back then, but this psalm is referring, some 22 times, to the covenant name of Yahweh. LORD, in all capitals, is generally the transliteration of Jehovah, Yehovah, Yahweh, if you prefer. This is God’s self-revealed personal name. When you read the word God in the Old Testament, it’s usually translating, and they’re translating Elohim, a normal title for God. But Yahweh is His personal name, and it’s Yahweh who is speaking to us through Psalm 119, some 22 times.

Without further ado, let’s take a look, especially at Alef, Beth, and Gimmel. I’m going to ask you to read it aloud. Are you up for that? I hope you are. And as you can see up on the screen, I’ve broken it out this way. Alef, the first 8 verses will be read by our women, I hope. Beth will be read by our men. Gimmel will be read by those who are under 40. Raise your hand if you’re under 40 here in the room. Okay. Or if you just feel young right now, you’re doing good. That’s great. And we’re going to do it this way because to be honest with you on the third reading, by those under 40, everybody, men and women in the room, all of us over 40 are going to be tired. And so, we need you under 40s to pick up the ball for just a moment, and then we’ll come back, those of us who are over 40, and read the second half of Gimmel, okay? That’ll help just get us all involved in this. Ladies, and I’ll try to get you started, but if you’ll carry the ball once I get you started.

Women, if you will. How blessed are those…Now you can see already some of the words that we highlighted, the synonyms, you see those? They’re up there. I’m giving you a little breather ladies because you’re getting ready to read the last part of that again. But you see those synonyms there, and I want you to know that as we read through Psalm 119, and we see these synonyms over and over and over again, you have to allow this to be poetry. Don’t stop and think to yourself, I need to know the distinction between each and every one of those things. No, think of them as, as facets of the diamond, as I said earlier, and the light is spinning, and it’s just beautiful, and they overlap a little bit each and every one of them. Ladies, if you’ll continue: “Oh, that my ways…” And notice too, not only is the psalmist longing for the Lord to speak to them, him or her, whichever it is.  Lots of people think this is David, though not everybody thinks that. But they’re hungry for the Lord to speak to them.

And notice this, they realize that it’s not all about whatever they discover, whatever they know, whatever they’ve figured out. No, they need the help of God to understand, to learn, to know what it means to walk with God and be with God. Men, if you will join me: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord; teach me Your statutes. With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of Your mouth; I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways; I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not forget Your word.”

It’s just so powerful, so beautiful. I love it and I’m going to put this slide back up there, the first one the men read. How can a young man keep his way pure? Hey, listen, this psalm may indeed have been the life journal of a royal. Somebody like David might have started writing this in their younger years. And this could indeed… because when you get to the end, it seems more like the voice of someone who’s been on the planet a little while. And it’s quite possible this is one of those royal diaries where he’s just journaling all through his life, about the God who speaks and what He has said, and how much David wants to hear from Him, and needs to hear from Him, and is delighted in whatever God happens to say. If you’re under 40, if you wouldn’t mind, let’s jump to this: “With my lips I have told…” I expect a little bit more out of you young’uns. All right? And I’m getting a little old and crusty and a little hard of hearing, so give me a little bit more. Let’s try it again: “With my lips…With my lips, mouth…I have rejoiced. I have rejoiced.”

Oh, yeah, all you seasoned saints now: “You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from Your commandments. Take away reproach and contempt from me, for I observe Your testimonies, even though princes sit and talk against me. Your servant meditates on Your statutes; Your testimonies also are my delight. They are my counselors.” Ah, yeah. Folks, this is God’s Word: unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, transforming in its power. That’s the first 3 stanzas of Psalm 119, Alef, Bet, as it’s sometimes pronounced, and Beth, as it’s other times pronounced, and Gimel. What’s the best way for us to get the most out of something like this? I’m going to borrow; I’m going to reach back into church history a little bit and borrow a couple sentences by Martin Luther talking about picking apart something like this.

He says, “First, I’ll take the whole apple tree, then I’ll shake the whole apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch, and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.” And I kind of think that’s what we need to do in a psalm like this if we’re going to learn from it. The old sage, pastor, Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe, from not too long ago, in his book, Preaching and Teaching with Imagination, said this: “The imagination must be captivated by the beauty of God as revealed in the Word of God. If not, it will be captivated by some lesser beauty.” It meaning the imagination. And this is the first step toward idolatry.” My imagination, your imagination, we have in us idol factories. And we can quickly, with our imagination, think that something else is beautiful, something else is lovely, something else is worthy of our centering our life on and listening to in this world.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 119 overflows, but it’s passion for God and for God’s Word. He loves the Lord and he delights in the law of the Lord. And as we see in these first 3 stanzas, there’s a bit of false starts with that blessed life description in the first 3 verses and it moves kind of quickly to, “I want to be that, want to know how to get there.” Don’t make the mistake, though, because the blessed life he’s talking about in Verses 1, 2, and 3 is not merely measured by the thickness of your wallet because of all the cash you’ve got stuffed in it. It’s not measured in cash or condos or careers at all. No, no, no. The Hebrew idea of blessed is completely different. The word is asher in the Hebrew, 45 times in the Old Testament. Grounded in God’s favor, not grounded in worldly things or any achievements or anything we’ve acquired, but it’s a blessedness of soul, a flourishing, if you will. As a matter of fact, Jesus, in The Beatitudes in Matthew, Chapter 5, uses the Greek word that this Hebrew word we’re reading right here, asher.

When the Hebrew scholars, the 70 Hebrew scholars that translated the Old Testament into Greek, they used the word “makarios” right there, if you prefer. Jesus used that same word when He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” And on and on, through all of The Beatitudes. Do you see the connection? And here we have just gone through reading through Luke and studying it, and I believe it was our last study or the second-to-last study Pastor Tommy led us in, verse 44, where Jesus said that the Old Testament, all of it, the prophets, the wisdom writing, all, everything, the law, everything points forward to and finds its fulfillment in who? Jesus. That’s right. And so, as we look at Psalm 119, what we’re reading about, of course, is the Old Testament, and we’re reading about God’s law, and we’re reading about Torah, we’re reading about all of that as described in Psalm 119 in so many ways, using so many synonyms. And I bet if they had 8 more synonyms in Hebrew, they would have used those too, because that’s how big, beautiful, majestic God’s Word is. You can’t really define it. All you can do is describe it, and so you use everything you’ve got, every tool you’ve got to say how beautiful and wonderful it is.

But all of that that we read about in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, the incarnate word of God. We have the written word of God, in both Old Testament and New Testament, but we look, it all points and finds its fulfillment in the One who is the incarnate word of God. And so, with the Old Testament especially, the path of blessing is through the Word. But in the New Testament, the arrival and the gift of blessing is through Jesus, the living word of God, and living in His kingdom as The Sermon on the Mount, The Beatitudes describes the character of those who live in the Kingdom of God. Alright, a couple of things that I just will offer to take home and out of this particular passage for us. First, that if we learn to delight in God’s word, it will reveal who the God of the Bible really is. Here’s the God who speaks. In the Old Testament, we read of and we’ve studied a lot of this before. If you go back and listen to some of our sermons in First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, you find the children of Israel straying, or The Book of Judges, they stray, and they begin to worship the gods of the nations around them that are simply idols. They are little carved wooden images, or even if they’re hammered out of metal, the point is, they might have little figurines’ eyes, but they can’t see, feet, but they can’t walk, mouths, but they can’t speak, and that’s the difference between literally every other idea of god on the planet and this God, the God of the Bible, who speaks.

He has spoken. He now speaks through His word, and He continues to speak on from Genesis 1 all the way to Revelation 22. He’s a speaking god. He begins speaking creation into existence. In the first chapter of Genesis, it says 10 different times, “And God said. And God said.” Not one, not 2, not 3. Ten times, you can go count them later, 10 different times, “And God said. It’s really powerful. This is the God who speaks, has spoken, and loves for us to listen and hear from Him. We have not, friends, been left alone in the silent darkness. And some of you may feel that way from time to time as your faith undulates a little bit. Mine does as well, and so often for me, when I get in the trough, when I get in the low part, somehow or another, the Holy Spirit just reminds me I need to hear. I’m hungering for the voice of God to speak to me. Psalm 42 and 43, the men studied on our men’s retreat, it’s about longing for God, longing to hear from Him. And you’re like that if you’re in a trough in any kind of a way. We were made for something. We were made to know God. J.I. Packer says it this way in a book called Knowing God: “If I had ten books on a desert island this would have to be one of them.”

What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we, in life, have? To know God. What’s the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of Himself. Do you see what’s happening there? When you come, when you seek to and hunger to and go in pursuit of God, to borrow from Tozer’s book title, when you go in pursuit of God you actually delight God. You parents, don’t you love it when your kids come to you and just want to talk to you? And some of you I know you find yourself puzzled, you can’t figure out what in the world they’re saying ’cause sometimes they say the weirdest, wildest kind of things, but don’t you love it that they still come to you and want to talk to you? Our heavenly Father is the same way. This is the kind of God we worship. He loves to hear from us, but He also loves to speak to us, to teach us, to offer us His wisdom, to unveil His will, His ways to us. It’s really important. And folks, our lives become blessed and flourish in an unimaginable and divine sense when we give ear and heart and mind and will over to the Word of God. It’s there we find God’s wisdom, God’s will, God’s ways — in His Word. Delighting in God’s Word works within us to transform and conform us into the image of the living word, Jesus Christ. It’s so, so very important to us.

Blessing from God is the second thing I want to talk about. It reveals the kind of people we can become. Verse one, two, and three people, okay? And I think this happened to the psalmist. I think the psalmist as he sets up this psalm, he goes, “Blessed are these people that have found a way to walk in God’s will and God’s ways and delight in God.” And then he goes from verse 4 on and says, “I want that. I want that. I want that. Lord help me, I need you to help me. I want that over and over again.” So, these are the kind of people we can become. Richard Bauckham, brilliant scholar from over in Saint Andrews: “Blessing is God’s provision for human flourishing, but it is also relational. To be blessed by God is not only to know God’s good gifts, but to know God Himself in His generous giving.” That’s so very important for us. Along with the psalmist, verse 9, we ask, “How do we begin to live this blessed life? How can a young man keep his way pure?” You can add yourself in there if you would prefer. He’s probably a young man at the time he’s writing that. Alright, so how can an old man, an older man keep his way pure? How can a young woman keep it? How can a young teenager keep their way pure?

By taking heed, by giving ear to God’s word and not just hearing it acoustically but really taking it in. God wants to do an amazing work in your life but to do that He’s offered you His Word, His will, His ways and His wisdom. And it’s all there but if your Bible sits on the shelf? And we are so blessed in our country to have the kind of relative freedom we have. I think you heard, I believe you were listening, when Kim prayed earlier, and she prayed for believers in another country that are not allowed to have a Bible, period. I’ve got 30, maybe more ’cause I’ve got a few on a shelf that I never go and look at. You probably have more than one or 2. By the way, if you don’t have one, please take one of our pew Bibles. It’s our gift to you. We want you to have one so as we study through this you can read ahead a little bit. But what’s the point of it all? What kind of people can we become?

Lewis says it so well, “The whole offer of Christianity is this: We can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. He came to this world and became man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has, by what I call good infection. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply [This is so good!] simply nothing else.” Ah, you mean I don’t have to wear a tie to church? I got news for you. Jesus never wore a tie. Now some of you folks from older traditions are like going, “Oh, my Jesus did.” Let me just tell you there’s no such thing as “my Jesus.” There’s Jesus as Jesus reveals Himself to us and as the Word of God reveals Himself to us. So, none of this let’s recreate Jesus in our own image. And some of you grew up in churches that were doing that over and over and over and over again. And I’ve got no problem with traditions. That’s fine. It’s okay to have a tradition and occasionally I do wear a tie, you know. And some of you come up and go, “Where is my pastor? What have you done with my pastor?” You know. But we wear ties occasionally out of respect for an event or something like that, but it’s a tradition thing. But the problem is that we religious folk so easily fall from tradition into traditionalism. And the “ism” is the problem see, because tradition is the living faith of dead people. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people.

You know, we have the traditions from the folks who have gone before us, again, that kind of living faith of dead people, and yet we continue to turn the ism on, don’t we? And make it dead faith because we want it to be our particular way. What kind of people can we become because we delight in the Word of God? The apostle Paul put it this way: “For this very reason, we constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God.” Now note this:”…which performs its work in you who believe.” I ask you, do you believe? Are you in His Word? Yeah, but I can’t figure out what it means over here in this chapter or over there. Yeah, um, welcome to the party. We’re finite creatures trying to understand an infinite God, trying to engage with an infinite God. Isn’t it awesome and amazing that the infinite God has chosen to reveal part of who He is to us? I’m glad He hasn’t revealed all of it because we’d explode. We’d disintegrate. We’re finite. We cannot contain the infinite.

But the infinite God has chosen to reveal part of who He is to us and we get our minds blown, our hearts blown open in a beautiful kind of way, and it’s the blessed and broken bread that Christ offers to us over and over and over again of the word, the bread of life, the, the word of His testimony to us, what He wants to communicate to us, and it performs its work in you who believe. I’ve reminded myself of this over and over again with Psalm 42, for instance, where there are 3 times, in Psalm 42 and 43, where the, the psalmist who, whomever that psalmist was says how they’re sullen and in despair and all that sort of thing, and then they talk to themselves and they say, “Hope in God,” 3 times. And on one occasion he says, “The help of my countenance.” And there have been occasions in my life when, I’m generally a very positive person, the puppy with his head out the window kind of guy, but there are times when I’m not. So, I need His help with my countenance.

And some of you religious folks, you need His help with your countenance. It’s like, do you have the joy of the Lord? Yeah, I got the joy, joy, joy, joy, joy! Notify your face. You know? I mean, some of us need to do that. Yeah. As for God’s Word, it’s His word that is at work in me, okay? And I need to know that, and so the apostle Paul makes that clear, and Psalm 119 makes that clear. And now what I need to do is remember that it’s living and active as the author of Hebrews says, and that it will actually do that kind of work in my soul. The word itself does. The weight is on the word. The weight isn’t just on me to kind of, you know, steel myself and put on a Cheshire cat smile, big teeth and all that sort of thing. No, He’s working in me. I just need to open up my heart and allow Him to do what He wants to do. Thirdly, delighting God Word. God’s Word trains us in the kinds of wisdom and life choices that will cause our life to be blessed and cause us to flourish. You read through Psalm 119, and you start with those 3 verses, and you connect it all and you just look at, yeah, that’s the blessed life. He describes it right there, but it’s blessed according to God’s economy, not just according to the economy of the world or the economy of my ambitions, or the economy of my dreams and hopes because I want to do X, Y, and Z.

I want God to rubber stamp everything I want to be. No. In God’s economy, your soul will flourish most when you delight in His Word, you give your heart over to delighting in Him. The Holy Spirit will illuminate the Word to you, open the eyes of your heart that you may see what God is saying to us. And He will transform even the desires of your heart so that they’re desires that He would have for you. Here’s John Stott: “If we come to Scripture with our minds made up, expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts, never the thunderclap of God’s, then indeed He will not speak to us. We shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency, and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.” Man, that is a quote. I just keep that around all the time and go back to it over and over and over again. The disposition of my heart to the Word of God really matters. And yours does too, and I think Stott said that really, really well.

And Keller making it really clear that if you really want to worship the God who’s there, not just a God of your own construct, not just a God of your own that you’ve created in your own image: “Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle, as in a real friendship or marriage, will you know you’ve gotten ahold of a real God, not a figment of your own imagination.” So, an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God; it’s the precondition of it. Not only does delighting in God’s Word reveal who God is, shine a light on who we are and could be, but it also will lead us to that blessed life and cause us to flourish. Because delighting in God’s Word reminds us of the beautiful redemption that God offers. And I’ll just go real quickly here for a second, but think about what we would not know if we didn’t have a Bible. If there had been no Bible, if God had not inspired those 40 writers over those 1,600 years, very diverse writers, to write. What if God had not inspired them to write that and had never spoken into this little dust ball planet we have here. We wouldn’t know about creation. We wouldn’t know about how humanity came to be. There’s so much we would not know. We wouldn’t know about whether we’re alone in the universe or not, what it means to be a human person, what it, the meaning and purpose of human life is.

How could we know right from wrong without our Bibles? “Is this life all there is?” is a question that has plagued many, and the Bible answers it. What hope would we have of an eternal life beyond this one without our Bibles? What hope would we have that history is actually going somewhere in God’s plan? We would not know that without the Bible. Through the ancient writings of Scripture, we find God declaring His covenant love for His people and His desire to redeem them. Without Scriptures, we’d have no assurance that redemption is even possible. You would literally just be sitting here feeling guilty and not knowing why, and not knowing that there’s a way for you to be redeemed. Without the Bible, there’s no knowledge of that. Really powerful. Through Psalm 119, we learn the Word of God is the secret to the blessed life, the life of the person whose soul truly flourishes even in a broken world as we live in.

The Word of God treasured and studied because it’s a divine Word, timeless as it tells us the story of redemption history; timeless in its everyday wisdom, practical stuff like how to get on with your family, how to get on with your neighbor, how to do good work, how to enjoy play and recreation. All of that’s in there, see? And it’s in virtually every area of our life that the Bible speaks to us. This is why we can’t help but sing together. You see? The Word of Christ is dwelling richly within us, as the apostle Paul said, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing us. And we admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with thankfulness in our hearts to God. That’s so important for us. And I’ll close with this Piper quote because we’re out of time: “The Word of God is not just to be studied; it’s to be savored. God wrote His Word to awaken in us a taste for Him.” How should we respond? I encourage you to read Psalm 119 over the next 6 weeks or the next month-and-a-half. Read it over and over again.

Let’s come to the Word not only through discipline but in delight, because through it we get to know God better. Open your Word, open those Scriptures daily. Treasure it. Store it up in your heart. Verse 11 is so powerful for me. You know, “Thy Word have I hid,” or treasured, “in my heart.” And I prefer the, the New American Standard because it translates that word tr- into treasured, not just hidden, not just stored up, but treasured in my heart. That’s so, so important. Let me pray: Lord Jesus, You who became the Word made flesh, teach us to delight in Your Word the way You delighted in Your Father’s as You together with the Holy Spirit made this amazing plan for our redemption. And You carried out, You lived out, Your Word here on this planet as You gave Your life for us. Give us hearts and minds that will treasure the Scriptures as You treasured them, Jesus. Give us mouths that will speak the good news of Your Word even as You spoke the Good News. And help us, Lord, to lay our lives down to display Your power in our lives as You transform us, as You change us, by the power of Your Word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“Rejoice“ by Words and Music by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, Ben Shive, Skye Peterson…
“On Christ The Solid Rock“ by William Batchelder Bradbury, Edward Mote,
“Speak O Lord“ by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend
“Be Thou My Vision“ by Mary Byrne, Eleanor Henrietta Hull
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Psalm 100

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; Come before Him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; Give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the LORD is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.

Confession of Faith:

LEADER: What are sins?

PEOPLE: Sins are intentions, acts, or failures to act that arise out of our corrupted human nature and fall short of conformity to God’s revealed will.

LEADER: How does God respond to human sin?

PEOPLE: All sin is opposed to the righteousness of God and is therefore subject to God’s holy condemnation; yet God in his mercy offers us forgiveness and salvation from sin through his Son, Jesus Christ, the only Savior.

LEADER: How does God forgive our sins?

PEOPLE: By virtue of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, in which we put our trust, God sets aside our sins, accepts us, and adopts us as his children and heirs in Jesus Christ. Loving us as his children, he forgives our sins whenever we turn to him in repentance and faith.

The Apostles’ Creed – I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins, pt. 1
Article III. “I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins”
ACNA, Q. 105, 106, 107

Classic Prayer: Thomas Ken (1637-1711)

My God. I humbly beseech thee to prepare my soul to worship Thee this day, acceptably, with reverence and Godly fear; fill me with that fear which works by love; purify my heart from all vain, and worldly, or sinful thoughts; fix my affections on things above, all the day long; and, O Lord, give me grace to receive thy Word, which I shall hear this day, into an honest and good heart, and to bring forth fruit with patience. Hear me, O God, for the sake of Jesus my Savior.

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