Psalm 119:49-80

Discussion Questions

• Do we need a stirring up of our faith? What areas would we like to improve or see changed?
• When and how have you felt God’s presence during a trial or suffering in life? Did God take you to an unexpected place as a result?
• What areas in your life does God need to invade? What anxieties of life are we trusting God to be a part of?
• Where do we see God’s goodness reign in our lives and in the lives of others?
• How has God’s word affected your wisdom in life?

Transcript

We are studying through Books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one and you would like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high, and our excellent and wonderful, joyful servants will bring a paper copy to you to enjoy. Psalm 119 is what we are studying and up on the screen if you’re here in the house, or even if you’re online, I believe you’ll see that QR code. You can get the notes and quotes in advance if you would like to do that. I want to thank those who have joined us online over the last week or so. We had folks from London, England; from Quezon City Metro Manila, Philippines; and from Silcoorie Grant, Assam, India; from Jacksonville, Florida, and here in the room with us from Los Angeles, California. You guys wave, Bob and Shawn, there you go. They’re usually online with us, so make them feel real comfortable. Welcome. They decided to detour on their way from California to Florida and make sure they could be with us for worship today.

Psalm 119, which is what we’ll look at today, verses 49 through 80. We have 4 stanzas of this 22-stanza hymn. It’s the longest chapter in the Bible, as you know. The 4 stanzas will be Zayin, Heth, Teth, and Yodh. We meet an ancient songwriter there who is no stranger to affliction, to conflict, to oppression or confusion, yet instead of turning inward or outward for comfort or hope, he turns upward and he rises at midnight to give thanks. He looks back on affliction and says astonishingly, “It was good for me.” Beneath every cry is a deeper reality that the Word of God was not merely information or instruction to him, it was comfort, it was hope, it was oxygen to his soul. And God’s Word anchors the psalmist just as it can anchor us. Even in a world that seems lost in the fearful dark and tossed in chaotic turmoil, the Word of the God who speaks, comforts, corrects, convicts us, redirects us, renews us, and restores us. Who doesn’t need more of that? I need more. Join me as we explore these 4 sections of Psalm 119, and we’ll trace through those 4 sections these 4 basic points: the ache we all feel, the comfort we all need, the hope that can sustain us, and the final word that can save us. These verses remind us that studying and remembering the Word of God is not just an academic exercise, it’s not just a way to get a little gold star on your Sunday school pin or something like that, but remembering God’s Word is the way we pilgrims begin to walk with courage, with faith, and with joy that is unshakeable.

Let me pray for us before we start reading here together. This is our Stir Up Sunday prayer, goes like this: Our Father in Heaven, as we approach the season of Advent next week, we come before You this week asking that You would stir up our hearts and minds to receive Your Word. Open our eyes to see the truth that sets us free, open our ears to hear Your voice as You lead, guide, and instruct us; but open our hearts, Lord, that we may receive the comfort and the compelling reassurance that the Holy Spirit can bring to us. Illuminate Your scriptures for us today. May we marvel at the depths of Your love, wonder at the call of Your grace, and anticipate the hope of Christ’s return. Stir up our wills, O Lord, that we would not merely listen to, but also respond to Your call. Awaken us from spiritual slumber, break through our distractions and lead us into the light of Your presence. As we anticipate the return of our Savior Jesus in Advent season, may Your Word come alive within us, changing us, guiding us, preparing us for that great day when we will meet Him face to face. We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen and amen.

So, Psalm 119, turn there in your Bibles, swipe there in your devices if you need to. I’ll remind you it’s about 2500 words, 176 verses, the longest chapter in the Bible for sure. Each of the 22 stanzas correspond to one of the Hebrew letters of the alphabet. We’ve studied already several of them, we’re going to begin in verse 49 today and as I said, we’ll have 4 of those stanzas. But within each stanza in Hebrew, each line or verse of the stanza begins with the same Hebrew alphabet letter. And he uses 8 different synonyms for the Word of God; he calls it the word “Dabar” in Hebrew, he calls it law, ordinances, statutes, precepts, testimonies, commandments, judgments. As we read, watch for those synonyms, each and every one of them. We’re going to read aloud, and I just love it that I’m getting old enough now to where I can ask you to help me with the sermon, just like I did couple weeks ago when we did that first opening section of Psalm 119. I’m going to ask the men to step up here first and read Zayin for us. If you will, gentlemen, please get us started with gusto.

Ready guys? “Remember the word to Your servant, in which You have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your word has revived me. The arrogant utterly deride me, yet I do not turn aside from Your law. I have remembered Your ordinances from of old, O Lord, and comfort myself. Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, who forsake Your law. Your statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. O Lord, I remember Your name in the night and keep Your law. This has become mine, that I observe Your precepts.” All right, so before we move on to the next section, I’m going to hope that the women will be a little more awake, show the men the way to read with a little bit of gusto. But while, ladies, you’re preparing to do just that, I want to throw up on the screen just one slide that sort of takes Zayin and picks it apart a little bit. I’m not going to do it for all 4 of these, but I’m going to do it for this first one. We just read it, so I think now’s the time to post this so that you can think about it. When you look at the verses of Zayin, don’t just let it go in and out one ear, because it sounds like these synonyms, they all mean the same thing. No, no, no.

Here we find, the psalmist reminds us, that the Word of God is our hope, verse 49, our comfort, verse 50a, our revival or it gives us life, the last half of verse 50. It’s our true north, verse 51 and 52 remind us. It’s our moral center, verse 53, our heart’s song, verse 54, our source of identity, our true home. Tell me what world you live in. The world I live in needs a lot more of all of that, and this guy right here needs a lot more of all of that. So, mine each and every one of these stanzas for that kind of help, comfort, instruction, correction, perfection. It’s perfecting our faith. It’s maturing us, if you will, but those are the kinds of things you can find if you just stop and ponder a little bit what’s being said there. Think it through, and in your home groups, if you’re in a home group that takes the sermon and sort of reflects upon it, that sort of thing, take each one of these stanzas and do that same thing. I think you’ll really appreciate it.

Now, Heth is the second of the 4 stanzas we’re going to look at today, and I want the ladies to read this, if you don’t mind. I’ll sort of serve as a pacing leader, if you would permit me to do that, but ladies, with gusto, if you will: “The Lord is my portion, I have promised to keep Your words. I sought Your favor with all my heart; Be gracious to me according to Your word. I considered my ways and turned my feet to Your testimonies. I hastened and did not delay To keep Your commandments. The cords of the wicked have encircled me, But I have not forgotten Your law. At midnight I shall rise to give thanks to You because of Your righteous ordinances. I am a companion of all those who fear You, And of those who keep Your precepts. The earth is full of Your lovingkindness, O Lord; Teach me Your statutes.” Now, look in your Bible and let’s look at that. I’m not going to put a slide up on the screen this time, but just look in your Bible. Let’s take a peek and see what we see here, okay? First of all, when I looked this over, I noticed how many times he did something that led me to believe he intended to act on the Word of God, right?

So, you look for those kind of big, what’s happening at 30,000, 60,000 feet in this passage. Verse 57, “I’ve promised.” Verse 58, “I sought.” Verse 59, “I considered.” 60, “I hastened.” Verse 61, “I have not forgotten.” Verse 62, “I shall rise.” 63, “I am.” “The earth is full of Your loving-kindness. Teach me.” He’s open. He wants to be taught. See how much is there when you just think about his intentionality, what he intends to do with the passage itself. All right, so next section, it’s called “Teth.” And, I think what we’ll do is take this side over here. You guys, we’re going to leave you for last because I feel like you are really going to bring us home strong. Over here, I think we got a few more of you. There’s a few more than over here, but these guys are eager, so we’re going to start over here, okay? Let’s read aloud together. “You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word. Teach me good discernment and knowledge, For I believe in Your commandments. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, But now I keep Your Word. You are good and do good; Teach me Your statutes. The arrogant have forged a lie against me; With all my heart, I will observe Your precepts. Their heart is covered with fat, but I delight in Your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes. The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.”

Once again, I just want to take just a moment with Teth here to analyze it, and if you’d like to make notes in your margin, you can do that, that’s fine. The word “good” is used 5 or 6 times here in this one little stanza. It made me want to know, what does he mean by good? “Tov” in Hebrew, and it’s spoken of God and God’s value system, and I love this, the word in verse 65, in my translation it says, “You have dealt well.” That word is actually good as well. So, did you see that little pun there? Nobody caught that, okay. It’s good as well, okay? Yeah. “With Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word.” But here it shows up there once in verse 66. “Teach me.” What? “Good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments.” The 4th time in verse 68, “You are good and do good.” Remember, he’s addressing God in the second person personal pronoun ever since verse 4 all the way to the end, verse 176, this song is an elongated prayer, and he’s addressing God, he’s reminding himself of things that are beautiful and beneficial about God’s word, but he keeps addressing God, “You. You are this, this way. You are that way.” We learn a lot about the nature of God, don’t we? In Teth here: “Teach me good. You are good. You do good. Teach me Your statutes.”

The arrogant, which are also mentioned 3 times in this particular passage that we’re studying of 4 stanzas, they forged a lie against him. They’re maligning him. He’s experiencing conflict with people. How many of you know somebody whose spiritual gift seems to be annoying you? And I talked to some of them today. And it wasn’t in this room though. Wasn’t in this room, so I just want you to know that. But yeah, I have lots of those. We all do, but I think that if this is David, Spurgeon thinks this is David, whoever the psalmist is, they experience the same thing we experience in life. Some people are annoying, and worse, some people are arrogant, and that combination is deadly. I mean, arrogance doesn’t look attractive on anybody, but arrogant and annoying? Man, that is like wearing pieces of clothing that really do not go together at all, and that’s your character, that’s what describes you. And the arrogance, so often, we all know this, don’t we? ‘Cause we probably can think of someone who’s arrogant, and fact is, they might be thinking of us. But we can think of somebody who is arrogant, and we think how ugly that is on them. It’s just never attractive, is it? “They forged a lie against me.” He’s actually been maligned, he’s been slandered, and his response is not to slander back.

Look at verse 69. “With all my heart, I observe Your precepts.” So, in other words, when people come at you, the best thing for you to do is turn to the Lord, and especially if somebody just annoys you, it can be as banal as just outside. You don’t even have to be on 65. It can happen on Hillsboro Road. It can happen right there on the way to church, even today. It can happen anywhere. And yet, the psalmist says, don’t respond in like kind and cut them off, blow the horn at them. No, turn to the Lord. Turn to His precepts. I like verse 70. Look at verse 70 again, “Their heart is covered with fat.” This may be the first mention of cholesterol in the Bible. I’m not sure. I think he means that’s a bad thing. I’m pretty sure he means that’s a bad thing, that their heart is covered with fat. But the, the contrast is, not I, don’t cover my heart with fat. I delight in your law. Again, the problems of the world are met with a turn to the Lord, remembering God’s Word in the moment. When you feel somebody’s getting your ire up somehow or another, annoying you or making you mad, or you feel like you’re suffering some injustice, don’t wallow in that, don’t strike back at them, turn to the Word, turn to the God who has spoken. I love all of that.

So, we find in Teth that good is spelled out for us and it’s defined really by God, isn’t it? And “it’s good for me [verse 71] that I was afflicted.” What an odd verse that is. It’s good for me that I was afflicted. I don’t know very many people that think that way. It’s very contrary, isn’t it? To the way we think. We want to anesthetize ourselves against all kinds of annoyances and evils and anything that’s bad or negative or unwanted or undesirable. And yet this person’s view, this psalmist is singing, “It’s good for me that I’ve been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.” That’s the purpose of it. He sees it differently. It transforms his view of suffering and affliction and oppression. It completely transforms it. This person is not at all buying into the way our culture leads us to think about suffering, where culture leads us to bristle, to strike back, to see ourselves as victims and never leave that place of victimhood. The psalmist doesn’t do that. The psalmist doesn’t get stuck. His identity is not rooted in his pain, his evil. And it’s not denying it, by the way. So, we’re not in any way trivializing anybody’s affliction or, or trauma. We’re simply saying the Bible’s teaching us here is that doesn’t have to define you. So why would you let it? Instead turn to the Lord, learn his statutes. They become your gain.

Verse 72, “The law of your mouth, Lord, is better to me than thousands of gold and silver piece.” In other words, way more important to me than material gain of any kind, money that I might make, things I might achieve or accomplish, things that I might acquire and pile up and all that sort of thing, the way I might secure myself, all those things, more important than any of that, Lord, is your word, your wisdom, your ways, your will, all spelled out. All right. We have to read our last stanza. This is called Yodh. We’ll get the side here that now you’ve been a few minutes in the tanning salon there. And so maybe you’re a little sleepy. So, sit up straight. Let’s ask that. Let’s sit up straight, okay? Everybody scooch up a little bit. We’re going to read Yodh, okay? It goes exactly like this. Show us how it really should be read aloud. You never want to forget to have public reading of Scripture from time to time. It’s really good for us, right? Here we go. “Your hands made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments. May those who fear You see me and be glad, because I wait for Your word. I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me. O may Your lovingkindness comfort me, according to Your word to Your servant. May Your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. May the arrogant be ashamed, for they subvert me with a lie; but I shall meditate on your precepts. May those who fear you turn to me, even those who know Your testimonies. May my heart be blameless in Your statutes, so that I will not be ashamed.”

This is God’s word. Unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, transforming in its power. Psalm 119 focuses our attention on both the God of the word and the word of God. If you begin to think it’s overly repetitious, please look deeper as we have just done together, through the various passages that you might find yourself studying or reading. You will find the word of God is not a cramping of one’s style. It is a delightful expansion of one’s vision. Memorizing, remembering, calling to mind God and God’s Word can literally retrain your brain. We all need some retraining once in a while, right? I’ve heard people say that about the Christian faith, “Oh, it’s just brainwashing.” And I think it goes all the way back to Barry McGuire who used to say, “Well, my brain could use a little scrub once in a while.” You know, and I think he’s right, or he was right. I think that’s true. We need daily to return to the Word of God, to hear from God, to heed His wise warnings, receive His reassurances, and to be comforted by the inexhaustible hope and unshakable joy we find there in the Word of God. As we treasure it more and more, we will find we begin to keep it, or “observe it” is the way it says in the ESV, I believe, and obey it.

After we develop that habit, we discover that all along God’s Word has actually been at work in us, 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says. It’s doing work inside of me as I spend time in God’s Word. And Psalm 119, as we’ve said before, it reads a little bit, when you think about the whole corpus of the, of the, uh, text here, it reads a little bit like a lifelong journal, doesn’t it? He begins as kind of a young man. “How can a young man,” Verse 9, “keep his way pure? By taking heed according to your word.” And so, toward the end, he seems to be expounding a little. It’s more about wisdom, the kinds of things that older people, older men, who have steeped themselves in the Word of God for years and years tend to understand and know a little bit better. This 3,000-year-old honest poet speaking the truth to us is giving rise to comfort and hope for us. As we go across the entire Psalm 119, I see these 4 things happening. The tension of living in a rebellious, broken, and disordered world is revealed. That’s one of the themes. These are the big themes of Psalm 119. Secondly, the comfort, hope, wisdom, power, and redemption found in God’s word is there.

And in a world that does not regard God as God, or does not obey God’s Word and is not interested in doing that, in a world like that, in many cases, it even works at odds with God because it doesn’t believe in a God, or it doesn’t believe in a God that speaks. Might believe in a battery of a universe, but not in a God that speaks. Might believe in a God that exists but doesn’t have an agenda or a will for you or your life. There’s lots of different views. That’s why the most important thing about you is what you think about God, how you believe God has revealed Himself. Believers in God who seek to walk in God’s wisdom and ways should expect to feel a tension from time to time, like number one up there, the tension of living in a rebellious, broken, and disordered world. However, you can also expect the comfort, hope, wisdom, power, and redemption found in God’s Word bringing healing to your soul, to your mind, to your heart as it does its work inside of you. And thirdly, the psalmist’s persistent resolve, we see this throughout, to turn toward, to trust in, to obey God’s Word. It’s there throughout Psalm 119. And then his utter dependence on the God of the Word for strength to remain faithful. Again, we see that, it’s almost back and forth, resolution, resolve if you will, and then the response is total dependence on God. “I need You, God. Help me, God.” And crying out for that kind of help. Those general 4 themes recur throughout the psalm.

Here in the 4 stanzas that we’ve looked at, I see 4 things: the ache we all feel, the comfort we all need, the hope that can sustain us, and the final word that can save us. Mentioned those a little bit earlier as we started. I want to just for a moment, and we only have a little bit of time left, I want to look at each of those 4 things in the text from today, beginning with the ache we all feel. Much like we read last week when Pastor Matt walked us through verses 25 through 48 and talked about growing in the Word, here today, we’re talking about remembering the Word. At this point, the psalmist, in both last week and here, is not sort of talking or singing or writing poetry from some kind of mountaintop where everything is just peachy keen. No, here and last week, verse 25 I think it was, clinging to the dust was the image that was that, that psalmist used. Today, we read that he was afflicted in verse 50, taunted, mocked, and lied about by the arrogant in verse 51, verse 69 and verse 78. Seized with a burning indignation, verse 53. Look at that. Your English Bible may have it some other way, but that’s very visual, descriptive. And it’s as if your soul had the worst bit of some kind of stomach disease or something that you could possibly have given it. You know, really bad food that has been left out and its due date was in the 20s, 22 era, you know, and you ate it and got sick. Burning indignation.

The ropes or the cords of the wicked had encircled him, verse 61. Verse 67, he was afflicted and drifting, verse 71, verse 75. He was slandered, maligned and defamed, verse 69 and verse 78. This world can be pretty hard. Somebody ought to say amen. It’s not always just a cruise; it’s not always easy to get through it. Why is that? I like it that the Bible answers the question, What is wrong with the world? Clearly, unequivocally, it does. Bible-believing Christians can speak with clarity about what is wrong with the world because Scripture gives a coherent account of humanity’s fail, fall and the reality of sin. By contrast, naturalistic atheists, people that don’t believe in God, if they remain consistent with the worldview in which everything is the product of blind impersonal forces, cannot ultimately appeal to any objective standard by which to call the world truly good or truly bad. From a philosophical standpoint that simply means that while Christians can’t explain why every pain, every bit of evil that happens, that we have to go through and endure; while we can’t explain each and every one of those, we at least know what is wrong. Naturalistic atheists can’t even say that something is wrong, because for them the only thing that exists is the physical universe. There’s no such thing as a basis for right and wrong, an independent basis, maybe I should say transcendent basis.

Because human beings, if it’s left to us to determine what’s right and wrong, we are incredibly fickle. We change our minds at least every hour on what’s good and what’s evil. And we’ll quickly build a list of moral goods that happen to align with our desires and wants, and we’ll also build another list that happens to align with the things we disdain and think are wrong, and then next month we’ll change the list. So, we’re fickle. We need an absolute, a transcendent source of truth and right and wrong and all this, right? But if you don’t have a God, you think that it’s just the random collocation of atoms and chemicals, random motion in a universe that’s just made up of its constituent parts. You have no idea where those constituent parts came from, but you just know they exist and so the loss of a million dollars and stubbing your toe are of equal value, because you really can’t say, you don’t have a claim there. The death of a child, and domestic abuse, and sex trafficking, none of these can be said to be wrong if there’s no moral law, no moral law giver, you see? So, the Bible is amazing in the way that it addresses the ache we all feel.

I love Psalm 119:49 because it says, “Remember.” And this is the ESV I’m putting up on the screen here. We read it together, verse 49 from the NASB 1995 version. But I’m going to put it up on the screen in the ESV because I think changing it as it does, “Remember your word to your servant in which you have made me hope.” And I read dozens of commentaries on this particular verse, and I think this is more accurate. It’s the psalmist crying out to the Lord to say, “Lord, remember,” shachar, “remember Your Word to me, Your servant.” Notice his positioning as he prays. He’s the servant. God is the source of wisdom. God is the speaking god and so he trusts and hopes in God. The songwriter believes in a God who speaks, who has spoken, who has communicated to His creatures, humanity. And notice the psalmist did not ask God to remember, “Lord, remember what a good little boy I’ve been. Remember, I go to The Village Chapel.” That’s not what he said. “Remember all the times I resisted becoming angry on I-65. Remember, Lord, the great number of people I’ve helped, the massive amount of money I gave to the temple building program. And Lord, all those times I called 1-800- 877-CARS4KIDS and gave my used chariot away to somebody who needed it.” He’s not doing that. “Remember your word.” The psalmist knows that would be his highest good, for God to remain faithful and consistent in His promises to His servant and to him.

So, this passage is amazing that way. It uses the word remember when he speaks of his own intentionality. He is intending to remember. Verse 55, “I remember your name.” Verse 51 or 52 before that, “I’ve remembered your ordinances of old.” And so that’s really, really important. Now statistics have been done, and some of you have heard some of these because one of the main studies a lot of people lean on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve goes back to the 19th century, 1885, but some of that stuff is still really true and helpful for us. Without any review, people forget 50% of newly learned information within one hour. So, before you get to lunch, you’re going to forget half of what we’ve done here today. But helping you will be the fact that you read it out loud, and that you might talk about it on the way to lunch, and maybe even at lunch, not about me, but about what we have read today. So important.

Professor Timothy Jerome is an American neuroscientist, associate professor in the School of Animal Sciences at Virginia Tech, where I used to go in my first year at college. Using CRISPR to edit molecular tags, he has discovered in some research they did on rats that they could reverse age-related forgetting in rats. Oh, this is amazing. Older rats regained 40 to 60% more memory in hippocampal tasks by reactivating genes like IGF-2 with decline in age. However, 100% of the rats did remember that they were rats. And they behaved like rats. Lily Tomlin says that “This world is a rat race, and even if you win, you’re still a rat.” And that’s really true. Raise your hand if you know somebody, though, who has sort of a tendency to forget. Don’t. You better not do that. Raise your hand if you know somebody who selectively remembers things. Yeah, I know all the married couples would be raising their hands. Or worse, they rewrite what they remember. Well, that’s been cause for not just a few arguments among married couples, and perhaps roommates and coworkers as well.

As we get older, “I forgot my homework” turns into “I forgot where I left my keys.” Anybody lose your keys, ever? Raise your hand. Confession’s good for the soul. That’s good, yeah. And “I forgot where I left my keys,” turns then into, “I forgot to pick up the kids at school. “That could be dangerous. And then that turns into, “I forgot that I’m married.” Or worse, “I forgot that I’m a Christian believer.” Ugh, we slide into that one, don’t we? The facts are that the human brain is capable of both an astonishing ability to remember and an astonishing ability to forget. It depends almost entirely on how the information is learned and whether or not the information is reviewed, and that’s why we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, sometimes books that we’ve studied twice, three times. We go back to them over and over and over again. And from a Christian perspective, I have to say, the remarkable research emerging in the field of neuroplasticity beautifully echoes the Biblical invitation to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. God not only commands renewal, He designed our brains with the very mechanisms that make it possible, forming new connections, adapting after injuries, changing through learning, experience, and habit. The brain is continually rewiring, reshaping its pathways in response to what we return to rehearse and remember.

So today, remember the Word of God. Refresh your soul, renew your mind. The ancient century writer of the song “Amazing Grace,” John Newton, some of you will know of him, said this toward the end of his life, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior.” Ah, man, we could use to remind ourselves as that over and over and over again. The psalmist of Psalm 119 was awake to the ache we all feel in a broken world, as people living in a broken world and as broken people living in a broken world. While the proud mock and treat God’s word as quaint at best, and some of them think it’s evil in their view; the suffering and struggling believer treats God’s promises as His Word. It’s oxygen to his soul, God’s promises and God’s Word, along with the psalm in Teth, when we are afflicted. I just like love this way Keller put this, “Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deeper and deeper into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can possibly imagine.”

I think he’s right. This man’s home in glory now, he knew this firsthand you see, and he held onto it the whole way through. We gotta hurry. The comfort we all need, I love this, the God of the Word provides comfort in times of great suffering, pain. And those of us here who have lost a loved one in the last year, myself included, or perhaps you’re here and you have suffered some kind of trauma, or the weight of the world has just been too heavy for you and you just need a word of comfort, along with this psalmist, I know for a fact that the nearness of God and His word have been my good. And some of you know this really poignantly this year, just like I do. Verse 57 says, “The Lord is my portion.” Such an interesting word. What does that mean? The Hebrew word for portion is “cheleq” which is used in the Old Testament Book of Joshua in reference to the division or apportionment of the promised land to each of the tribes of Israel, their portion, their, their allotment, their homeland now, if you will. The images of coming home, and we’re all longing for God, aren’t we? He, this psalmist, has planted that, is telling us that the Lord has planted that longing deep within us. The Lord is my portion. Not just what He gives. He Himself, the Lord is my portion.

So, if you’re struggling because you haven’t been able to get to the place where you think you’re in your home, your portion, whatever it is, it might be that you’re just looking to His hand and what He could give you. It might be that you’re just trying to tell Him how to fix it and what timing to fix it, instead of completely surrendering yourself to the sovereign God who knows way more than you do about what’s good for you and what might be good for others in that moment that it might cost you something. But because you love them and you’ve been formed and shaped by His Word, you’re willing to pay that cost, you’re willing to sacrifice some bit of your convenient life for them. And God might be using your affliction for His good and for His glory in some way. It’s so important that we get that right and that we take on that perspective in a world that’s so full of pain and suffering. Henri Nouwen spoke of it this way, “God says, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ This is a fundamental truth of your identity.” No matter who you are here today, no matter who you are watching, no matter how disappointed you are in your body or in the way things have gone in your life, you belong not to yourself, you belong to Him. First and foremost, you belong to Him.

Lean into the fact that He’s set a claim on you. “This is a fundamental truth of your identity. This is who you are, whether you feel it or not. [I love this.] This is who you are, whether you feel it or not. You belong to God from eternity to eternity.” Sit in that for a moment. Even right now, you belong to Him. “Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, ‘I love you, too’” Dad, I love you, too. Papa, I love you. I belong to you. Verse 50, the Lord brings comfort to him, not just with a change in circumstances but with a promise. “This,” it says, verse 50, look at it, “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.” See? Turn away from whatever you look at, and you think, “Ah, that’s negative, I don’t want that. That’s unwanted. That’s undeserved.” No, turn to Him instead, right? And watch Him rewire your brain and the way you think about things. “The arrogant smear me with lies,” verse 69. We smear ourselves with lesser hopes all the time, false comforters like the affirmation of others, taking control thinking we can run it all, or withdrawing to escape. But God’s Word is a comfort that tells us the truth about our real needs and then offers God’s word of rescue and redemption as our comfort and as our hope.

Let me get to this Paul Tripp real quick: “God regularly takes His children places they never would have planned to go in order to produce in and through them things they never could have produced on their own. It’s important to recognize that the workings of God’s grace aren’t always predictable or comfortable. Often when we think grace has passed us by, God’s grace is at work, just not in the way we’d expect.” We keep thinking it’s all about Him rearranging the circumstances that are undesirable. Instead, He may be wanting to do a work in my heart or in my mind or helping to redirect my affections in some way. I may have put way too much emphasis in loving this thing or that thing, and God knows that so much better than I do. And so, He may be perfecting me by redirecting my affections in a given area of life. This is so important. We need to remain open to the work of the sovereign Lord in our lives. I hope that sustains us.

Real quickly, I love Warren Wiersbe. He says this, “We don’t live on explanations, we live on promises, and the promises of God are based on the character of God.” You know why I have hope today? Not because I have some savings, not because I currently have a job, not because I currently have relationships that I’m really enjoying, especially with my wife. That’s not my ultimate hope. I love those things. They’re all wonderful things. My ultimate hope though, is God. It’s the only hope that can sustain me. It’s a living hope, isn’t it? Why? Well, because He’s alive. He’s not a machine that runs the universe. He’s real. He’s an entity. He’s someone I can appeal to. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis, his character, Orual, some of you have read it. Orual spends most of the story demanding answers. Why has she suffered? Why love seemed to wound her? Why God seems so silent? When she finally encounters God, she discovers something profound. When God gives Himself, listen, when God gives Himself, the need for explanations dissolves. Not because He dismisses or ignores her questions, but because His presence is so very much larger than any answer He might give. His presence, His nearness is what she really, really needed. And so, we have this beautiful quote, don’t we, from there: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face, questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

Remember the Word of God and remember the God of the Word. He’s your greatest longing, even if you don’t know it. That’s what you’re ultimately longing for. This harmonizes so beautifully with the meaning of verses 67, verse 71 and 75 where the psalmist recognizes that returning to God’s presence and remembering the power of God’s Word far outweigh all of their afflictions. I mean, take those 3 verses and just paste them over top of our afflictions. They testify to a mystery that sits at the heart of the biblical faith. In spite of all God’s goodness toward us, when afflictions arise, paradoxically, a lot of us do run back to God, but we tend to run back to God questioning God, not believing God, not trusting God, not surrendering to God, sometimes angry at God after a while, instead of laying yourself before Him. All my boast is in Jesus. All my hope is His love. I will glory forever in what the cross has done. God does not promise to answer every “Why?” with an explanation, but He does answer with His presence. Only God can transform our suffering into glory. Explanations are not what will sustain us; only divine nearness and faithfulness can do that.

And if you don’t believe me there, just think about the number of people that have achieved much, acquired much, made all kinds of money, got all the celebrity, all the fame and fortune, all that stuff, and yet their lives are a mess. Why? Because they keep hoping and trying to find comfort in things that can’t provide ultimate hope and comfort. Some of those things are fine, they’re not evil in and of themselves, some of those things, but they’re not meant to be the center of our lives, and the Lord has told us exactly what it is that can save us, the final word. I love this little section toward the end that we call Yodh. Look with me, if you will, at verse 73, “Your hands made me and fashioned me.” There is Francis Schaeffer’s big line between the Creator and creation, that big line right here. Creator over here, creation over here. Everything in creation, everything that is not God is on this side of the line, and God is the only thing on that side. Schaeffer was so brilliant, and I love that this verse is so clear about that. “Your hands made me.” Oh, they didn’t just create you, by the way. Fashioned me. Oh, look deeper, He didn’t just create you, He fashioned you. He took care in His design of you. Yeah. “I don’t like my nose.” Hey, that’s the nose God fashioned. “I don’t like my feet, my second toe on my right foot is longer than my big toe. I don’t like that. “Yeah. Some of you are chuckling ’cause you have that same problem, don’t you? Yeah. But God fashioned me that way. And maybe I lean a little bit, and I need that toe with its longer sort of extension so that I don’t fall flat on my face so many times.

“Give me understanding that I may learn Your commandments.” Notice how many times the word “may” shows up in Yodh, verses 73 through 80. You could circle them, right? Verse 73, “That I may learn Your commandments.” And then verse 74 begins with it, “May those who fear You see me and be glad. I wait on Your Word.” And you drop down to 76, “O may Your lovingkindness comfort me.” Verse 77, “May Your compassion come to me that I may live.” I like that. Verse 78, “May the arrogant be ashamed, for they subvert Me with a lie.” Verse 79, “May those who fear You turn to me.” In other words, “May those who fear You,” the believers out there, “may they look at me and see an example of somebody who trusts in You, so that they too,” these believers in this room and watching online, “will trust You as well.” See? This is beautiful. I want to be a witness to you. I hope you want to be a witness to me. I want to see the Lord at work in your life. I want you to see the Lord at work in my life. If there’s anything good in me, may it give glory to God. Verse 80, “May my heart be blameless in Your statutes so that I may not be ashamed.” There’s so much there.

The “may” prayers look polite in English, but they’re actually thunderous, Gospel-soaked pleas for God to do the kinds of things that only God’s Messiah and the New Covenant Gospel can ultimately accomplish within us. It’s as if the word that he’s using there, it’s as if he’s going back to the creation account almost. It’s almost as if he’s saying, “Lord, create comfort in me the way You once created light itself.” You know? That’s the awesome thing. That’s just so amazing to me. “Lord, Your mercy may invade me the way Your presence once filled the temple, Your glory was there.” Some of you have read about that in the Old Testament. “Lord, let my heart become a new creation, whole and blameless. May You do that in me, Lord.” Ah, this is really something. “The healthy Christian,” Packer says, “is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Chrisitan who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on  his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.” Take that quote home. Take that one. That is brilliant. Remember the Word of God. Be mindful of it constantly. It’s so important. I’ve got to close here.

The Lord is making all things right. We sang that earlier. We have the opportunity to surrender to Him and to join Him in His making all things right, the mission that He has in this world. We can draw near to Him. We can turn to Him and turn away from all those things that annoy us, all those things we’re ashamed of, embarrassed of, all that stuff. Turn to Him, realizing His grace is rich and abundant, and He’s waiting to lavish His grace all over you. He’s eager for you to do that. And just like the psalmist, only on a more severe level, Jesus was mocked by the arrogant. His heart melted like wax in the Garden of Gethsemane. His soul clung to the dust of death, and then on the cross, Jesus cried out, “Into your hand I commit my spirit,” to the Father, right? Trusting the steadfast love of the Father, just like we read about in Yodh here at the end of the section we’re studying today. So, when you feel like you’re face down, afflicted on every side, remember the final Word of God. He can bring salvation. Why? Because He’s the God who is faithful. He’s the everlasting God. He’s sovereign Lord over all of human history and there is no power that sets itself against Him that will ever be victorious. Why would you turn anywhere else if you’re interested in salvation or in restoration or in forgiveness? He is the one that can do it.

The story of Jesus, the story of His redeeming grace, reminds us that in the political maelstrom of the present, we too are taught to fear not in a world of uncertainty. Danny Webster says this: “In a world of uncertainty, Advent reminds us to trust in God’s authority, [So important] not in our own. As we trust in God — His goodness and His faithfulness — we offer a witness to our world that peace is possible, whatever anxieties today or tomorrow may hold.” Remember your word to your servant, Lord. To your servants, Lord. Remember your word to us, that we might hope in you. The same God who spoke the universe into being has not forgotten one sentence of His Word. Let us remember His Word. Let us resolve to learn from, to observe His Word, reminding ourselves that God is good all the time. All the time God is good. And may God’s plans and purposes be fulfilled in our lives because of the Lord Jesus, the living Word of God, the final Word from God to us.

Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for this passage and all that it holds for us. And I pray, Lord, that in some way You indeed have stirred us up, not just for a season, but for Your approach to our hearts, that we might turn to You, realizing that You really are what we are longing for. You Yourself are the answer. And Lord, may Your nearness be our good now. And as we go from this place, I pray that we would walk in the light of these truths and indeed be a witness to the watching world. May the good seed of God’s Word take root and bear fruit in our lives. May the Holy Spirit plant it deep within our hearts, transform us into the image of Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“He Is Making All Things Right“ by by Ben Shive, Bryan Fowler, Skye Peterson
“The Lord Almighty Reigns“ by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, Matt Boswell, and Matt Papa
“There Is A Hope“ by Mark Edwards and Stuart Townend
“Goodness of God” by Ed Cash and Jenn Johnson
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Stir Up Sunday

Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
When He humbled Himself to come among us as a man, He fulfilled the plan You formed long ago and opened for us the way to salvation.
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of Your faithful people, that we may bring forth the fruit of good works and so manifest your glory among all peoples.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen!

Classic Prayer: Martin Micronius

16th century Dutch reformer, a prayer today for enlightenment.

O Heavenly Father, whose law is perfect, converting the soul; a sure testimony, giving wisdom to the unlearned, and enlightening the eyes —we humbly implore you, through your boundless goodness, to enlighten our blind intellect by your Holy Spirit, so that we may truly understand and profess your law and live according to it. Since it has pleased you, most merciful Father, to reveal the mysteries of your will only to the little ones; and since you look to him alone who is of a humble and contrite spirit, who has reverence for your Word, grant us a humble spirit and keep us from all fleshly wisdom, which is enmity against you. Bring to the right way those who stray from the truth, so that we all may unanimously serve you in holiness and righteousness, all the days of our life. We ask this from you, most merciful Father, in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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