The text for the sermon today is from Psalm 119, verse 17 to 24, and I will read it for you. Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live and observe thy work. Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. I'm a sojourner on this earth. Hide not thy commandments from me. My soul is consumed with longing for thy ordinance at all times. Thou dost rebuke the insolent, accursed ones who wander from thy commandments. Take away from me thy scorn and contempt, for I have kept thy testimonies. Even though princes sit plotting against me, thy servant will meditate on thy statutes. Thy testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. May God add his blessing to the reading of his word. Children are dismissed at this time. Am I forgetting something? I feel like I'm forgetting something, and some of you are looking at me like I'm forgetting something. What's that? Yeah, I forgot to shave this morning. I guess that's it. I'm Filipino, so it's actually, I forgot to shave this week. Psalm 119. You know me, that if I remember what I was supposed to, I will stop in the middle of everything and tell you what I forgot. Oh, maybe it had to do with baptism. We are going to have a baptism sometime soon after the Christmas program. If you haven't been baptized and you desire to follow the Lord in credo baptism, believer's baptism, then please let me know so I can give you some homework. Our passage is Psalm 119. 17 through 24. And before we get started, let's ask the Lord to bless the reading that we just heard. Father, we do commit to you the reading of your word, and we ask that you would bless it. And we ask that your word would not return to us, would not return to you void, but it would, as you have indicated, accomplish the purpose that you have set for it. I ask that each one of us here, as we listen to the word of God being proclaimed and preached, that we would be blessed by it, that we would learn, we would grow. I pray, Father, that you would alleviate the distractions from our minds, that whatever else may happen in this service, that you would allow us to focus and learn from the Word of God. Pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit would do His work of illumination and that He would convict and convince And we pray, Father, for your glory in all of this. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. In the bulletin, I always labor over what I'm gonna call the sermon. I don't like to title the sermons because sometime at 10 o'clock at night on Saturday, I wanna change everything. But I did call it this week, Blessed in the Wilderness. And I wanted to call it that this week because, first of all, I wanted to hearken back to the theme of Psalm 119, which has to do with the blessed man and how a blessed man is one who walks in the Word. Somebody who is truly happy, truly blessed of God in the same way that the Beatitudes talk of that blessed man. Somebody who has this eschatological hope, the hope of Christ's return and how all will be set right in that. But I also wanted us, and I wanted to evoke in our minds the kind of hostility that the psalmist here faces. It's like a man surviving in a wilderness. Every little decision can have catastrophic consequences. A man in the wilderness maybe gathering wood for a fire might prick his finger. And due to the fact that he's out there far away from everything else, infection might set in and might riddle his body just in a matter of hours or days. Or that same man may get up in the afternoon and decide to go for a walk and errantly do something as small as leave his compass in the tent. And within hours, the darkness falls, and he gets caught in a light evening rain and begins to suffer from hypothermia. The wilderness is dangerous. The wilderness often treats us as if it doesn't want us there. The psalmist reveals this kind of intense hostility. Every little decision that he might make As we see in this passage, every little decision that he might make has dire consequences. A man might be tempted in such circumstances to maybe survive by his wits. The psalmist has one guide. It's not his wits, it is the word of God. What I want to do is walk through this passage verse by verse and then I want to come back just briefly and list out three principles that I think will instruct us, three themes maybe that will instruct us from this psalm. So it starts off here, Psalm 119 verse 17 starts off this section, deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. What's interesting about this as we begin is that immediately we have a translator's issue. Deal bountifully. The fact is that the word bountifully doesn't occur there. It's a word that might imply dealing in a positive way. It might simply be dealing with somebody. The context helps us to understand that the word deal here means to deal in a positive way, thus bountifully with your servant. And so bountifully is really only implied. Notice the next phrase there. It says deal bountifully and it says with your servant. Your servant recognizes, here the psalmist recognizes himself as a vassal, a slave of his sovereign. Now why is it that he wants the Lord to deal with his servant? Deal with your servant, he says. Why? That I may live, or that I will live. Here is the first indication in our passage of the serious hostility that the psalmist is facing. If God doesn't deal, then his life literally may come to an end. Deal with me that I may live. Deal with your servant that I may live. Now folks, that sounds to me pretty serious. The second benefit that we see here, though, is he doesn't say just, I will live. He says, secondly, of God's dealing with his servant, that I may keep your word. As a servant of the Lord, the servant of Jehovah, the presumption would be, we can presume, he is already keeping God's word. The fact that he's keeping God's word is really the basis for him to be able to come before the Lord at all here. As a servant then who already keeps your word by nature of my servitude, he's saying here, please deal with me so that I may live and in living I will continue to keep your word. He wants to live, but the purpose of his life isn't just to spend it on himself. The purpose of his life is that he can further keep God's word. And notice, as the passage moves on, that the keeping of God's word is not just a chore. It's not just keeping God's word as a chore. He says, open my eyes, verse 18. Make things very clear to me. What does he want to be clear? That I may see wondrous things. The phrase wondrous things there usually refers to the awesome miracles that God did for Israel, bringing them out of the land of Egypt, providing manna from heaven, wiping out the enemies that went before them. These are all things that are referred to throughout the Psalms and throughout the Old Testament as the wondrous works of God. So notice what he says here, open my eyes, make things clear that I may see these things, usually refers to these miracles, where? From your law. Now, these marvelous things that God has done, the psalmist wants them to be revealed in the law, in the Torah. Now, he may be saying here, make clear to me when I read your word all that you did for your covenant people in the past. And that would make clear sense, wouldn't it? If that's the case, if that's what he's saying here, What we can surmise from it is when in the middle of an onslaught of hostility, it's profitable, it's profitable to rehearse the fact that others have been there before, and Yahweh, the Lord, has been faithful to them all, and he has been faithful gloriously. For those of us who are married and we approach our marriages and at times we hit bumps in the road and things are difficult in the family. One of the most beautiful things we can do is go find some older folks, if it's your parents, if it's an older family in the church, and just talk to them about what their struggles were when they were at your stage of their marriage. Because you know what they'll most likely say? And you folks who've been married for a while, tell me if this isn't true. Yeah, they'll most likely say, oh, we've never had a problem before. Everything has always been so wonderful and easy. Absolutely not. You know what they're gonna tell you? They're gonna tell you that God brought them through it all. and that God raised them and matured them through everything in their life. These are glorious things that God has done for us. These are glorious things that God did for the children of Israel. And as the psalmist goes through whatever it is he's going through, It's important that he understands there have been other people who have been there before him. And you know what God had proved himself to be? Faithful. Faithful. There may be something else here in verse 27. I mean, excuse me, there may be something else here because verse 27 equates, this is not 27, I think it's 127. Now I have to look because I know 27 is not correct. That's not it either. Normally I would say we're going to stay here until I figure this out, but there are 176 verses here, folks. Oh, it is 27. I was wrong, I was right. Look at verse 27, it says, Do you remember the nature of Hebrew parallelism? that you talk about the same thing from two slightly different angles to give a bit of a three-dimensional picture of what the issue is. Here, make me to understand the way of your precepts. These are the precepts that are talking about the specific commands in the law of the Lord, in the law of God, in the Torah. Then he says, so shall I meditate, so I meditate as I understand your wonderful works. So if meditation and the understanding are parallel there, then the precepts or the direct commands and the wonderful works are also parallel. Do you see that? So what may be happening here is verse 27 equates wondrous works not just to the stories in the law, but to the actual commandments themselves. The psalmist may be then alluding to the fact that what he wants to be made clear to him is that the very precepts of God are wonderful works, they're wonders. What he is asking for here then may very well be that in the hostile wilderness as he keeps the word faithfully as a servant of the Lord, that it would always be clear that the wonder of God's commandments are even there a measure of God's grace. These commandments are a very wonder and a measure of God's grace. Now folks, We don't usually think of commandments. I mean, we don't even like the word commandments in our society because command implies obey. The psalmist here picks up on something that is a truism throughout the entirety of scripture. Turn over to Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30. You see, the psalm wants us to understand that there's no burden in following the Lord. Or that if it is a burden, it's a wonderful burden. It's a burden of wonder. Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Listen to this now. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy. And my burden is light. My yoke, while still a yoke, is easy. My burden, while still a burden, is light. What we so often fail to recognize is that Jesus' ministry was placed into contrast, not with the Old Testament law, Jesus's ministry was placed into contrast with the Pharisaic law. And so Jesus simply recognizes what the psalmist had also noted, that for the servant of the Lord, the commands of God are a wonder. And when they are a burden, they are light. Back to Psalm 119 now. Verse 19. See, this is why the next verse, verse 19, says, do not hide your commandments from me. Do not hide your commandments from me because these things are wonders. Why would you want a wonder hidden from you? And, he says, He doesn't want God's commandments hid from him because he's a stranger. He's a stranger. The idea here is of being a foreigner in the land. What a predicament. He is in a foreign country and has no recourse. Those of you who've traveled to foreign countries where you don't know the language and don't know the customs, many of you came to the United States like that, right? You didn't know the language and you didn't know the customs and it was terrifying. And it was foreboding. And it looked at times perhaps like it was too much to bear. This is the kind of predicament that it seems our psalmist finds himself in. He says, I am a stranger in the earth. He has no right in whatever country he finds himself in and he has no recourse. Verse 20 gets at the heart of the hostility now that breaks out into outright persecution. He says, my soul breaks literally shatters with longing for your judgments at all time. My soul, what it says, my soul breaks or shatters concerning the longing of your judgments all the time. His heartache is coming somehow as a result of the psalmist always longing for God's Word. If you look at your translation, your translation says, my soul breaks, and it says, with longing, for longing, and a lot of different things. Well, the fact of the matter is, the Hebrew is not real clear about what preposition or whatever should be added there. It just simply means, my soul breaks concerning, and all you can identify clearly is that there's a relationship between his soul being shattered and his longing for God's judgments all the time. And so, literally, it's my soul breaks concerning longing for your judgments all the time. His heartache is coming somehow as a result of the psalmist always longing for God's Word. Now, folks, we can understand how this can happen. Remember we talked about Daniel, and Daniel, when he was, as a possible author of this, and Daniel, when he was exiled He followed the same routine that he had learned in his childhood. He followed the same patterns and the same law that he had learned. He followed the law of God even though he was being literally bombarded with Babylonian doctrine. And yet he continued to do what he was supposed to do. He continued to follow the law of the Lord. And he followed it so closely, do you remember this? That the Babylonian princes, who wanted to find fault with him, consorted among themselves and said, the only way we're ever going to find fault with Daniel is if we somehow outlaw worship of his God. Do you remember that? Daniel 6.5 says we shall not find any charge against Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God. Folks, think about the situation that Daniel finds himself in. Think about the situation that the psalmist finds himself in. As a foreigner in a foreign land, when you go into a foreign land, you are expected to some extent to pick up the habits and the culture of that foreign land, at least within a generation, somehow to capitulate to the culture. And folks, in most settings, that's fine. But when it comes to the children of Israel under the Mosaic Law, that was not fine. Because this wasn't just man-made culture, this wasn't just man-made law, this was direct command from God Himself. Now think about how irritating it would be when Daniel is brought as a conquered Hebrew, Daniel is brought to Babylon, and all he ever wants to talk about to these Babylonians is how much better Jerusalem was. There was a teacher that taught when I was in elementary school. He was only there for a year. and I'm gonna have to change the name of his state, because states are sensitive issues, and there's somebody here from West Virginia, so. He would say, he would sit there in Hawaii, and he would say to the students now, about how horrible things were here, and he would always say, well, back in Idaho, or wherever it may be. And it wasn't just a matter of... Can you believe it that I'm moving too much? I don't move at all and I'm moving too much. I'll try to stand still. It wasn't a matter of reminiscing. Right? Reminiscing about how things were in your childhood, wherever you may come from. That's not a problem. It's when somebody says, we did it like this, and the way we did it back where I am from was better than the way you do it. Isn't that always gonna rub you the wrong way? Because you know what the students at that time, when he said back in Montana, or no, I said Idaho, back there, you know what the students' attitude toward him was? Well, go back. Go back. Don't stay here. If it's so horrible here, just go. And if you can imagine in Daniel's day that he's sitting there amongst the princes of Babylon. the finest foods that could possibly be prepared, the finest chefs that could be bought. I just moved. The finest chefs that could be bought. And Daniel says, back in Jerusalem, we were not allowed to eat this food. Could you just give me boiled vegetables? And if the salt's not kosher, don't put any salt in it. And then when they have these massive statues, these gaudy statues that are unlike anything that anybody has ever seen before, literally made of gold, And Daniel says, back in Jerusalem, we don't worship idols. I'm going to have to not worship. And yet through all of this, because of Daniel's integrity, he continues to gain favor with the king. Because of the blessing of the Lord, he continues to gain favor with the king. All of these Babylonian princes are absolutely frothing to get rid of him. The only way they can find to get rid of him is to make laws outlawing God's law. Joel, would it be okay if I turn this mic off? Will this pick it up fine? Is that what's happening? Okay. I don't move much, but I do appreciate freedom. Sometimes the obedience to the Lord will bring such calamity on you that you feel shattered, like the psalmist says here. But delighting in the law of God, which is what the psalmist is doing, what Daniel did, What's the alternative, folks? You know what the alternative is to delighting in the law of God? Not delighting in the law of God. Willful disobedience and rejection. And it seems that the psalmist is very aware of this problem. Because look at verse 21. He says, you rebuke the proud. The word proud literally carries the connotation of being willful. You rebuke those who assert their own will. You rebuke those who are willful. Now think about the fact that it means to be somehow willful. Can it be done? Will that work? Yeah, I'm going to turn it off. Oh, you already did, okay. Thank you. Freedom. Over there now, I can only stand here. Now think about the fact that the word proud or the arrogant, some translations say arrogant, means to be willful, considering what the rest of the verse says. It says, you rebuke the arrogant, the proud. the cursed who stray from your commandments. If these people are willful, what can we surmise about the nature of their straying? Because the fact of the matter is, folks, many times people will stray as they walk along a path just because they're not paying attention. But what we have here is not them not paying attention, If these people are willful, this is not an accidental wandering. Those who are willful and those who are straying are the same people. And what does the psalmist reveal about them? He says that God rebukes them. The word rebuke means that he blasts them. It's a loud roar used even of the ocean. It's an overwhelming rebuke. Some Old Testament usages equate it with pouring out God's wrath. And then it says they're cursed. They are rebuked by God. God's wrath is poured out on them and they are cursed. These willful strays have dealt contemptuously with the servant of the Lord And he says, the servant of the Lord then says, verse 22, remove, remove or roll away from me, reproach and contempt, for I have kept your testimonies. Not only are these people willful and contemptuous, but they are also powerful. Look at verse 23. Princes also sit and speak against me, but your servant meditates on your statutes. What a perfect picture Daniel is of this, because even when he knew it would cost him dearly, he continued to obey the Lord. Think about that. A stranger in a strange land, a wilderness that every decision has immediate and seemingly fatal consequences. Any decision Daniel made when he was in Babylon would have been the wrong decision. If he obeyed the Lord, He would be condemned. If he disobeyed the Lord, he would, if he obeyed the Lord, he would be condemned by man. If he obeyed the Lord, if he obeyed the Lord, he would be condemned by man. If he disobeyed the Lord, he would be condemned by God. Any decision he makes is the wrong decision, like a man in the wilderness. Any little thing he does, any little issue is going to be fatal. But notice what he doesn't choose. He doesn't choose his own appetites in chapter one, right? Daniel chapter one, Daniel would not defile himself with a portion of the king's meat. He doesn't choose comfort in chapter 5 when he gives that interpretation of mene mene tekel ufarsin. If he knew what was going to happen, then he knew that there was literally only hours before the entire city was overthrown and he would no longer have to answer to this king. He could just align himself with the next coming king. He could have said, oh, mene, mene, teku, lufarsen. That means that your balances are wonderful and the weights are just perfect. Go on as you please. And he could have aligned himself with the next king coming in with the Medes. But he didn't choose that. He chose the way of the Lord over comfort. He doesn't even choose his own life and his own safety in chapter 6. We have the story of the lion's den. Over and over and over again, Daniel chooses the way of the Lord. This is precisely the attitude that the psalmist has to the extent that even in the end of this stanza, he allows the testimonies of the Lord to be his policy makers. Did you notice that? Look at verse 24. Your testimonies are my delight and my counselors. Well, what are counselors? You could talk of counselors in the sense of people who give personal advice to you. However, counselors, if it's somebody who has any kind of authority, counselors would have been people in the ancient Near East who actually helped the king or helped the governors form policy. So what the psalmist is saying here, whether it's David as king or whether it's Daniel or Ezra as a high-ranking official, whoever it may be, your testimony are my delights and they are the things by which I make policy. Now folks, I want to give you three principles that come from this section. and close with one illustration. First principle is this, that when we find that the land we are in, the world around us is strange and it is foreign, do not capitulate. Do not sacrifice the word of God. And folks, I think it's been very plain to see that the values that are promoted in this world, whether it's in political life or in pop culture or even high culture for that matter, the values that are promoted bear no resemblance to what the Lord would have us to do. Second, While you do not sacrifice the Word of God, be willing to endure the consequences. Folks, there may come a time in our very lives where obedience to Christ will cost us dearly. And it almost seems, knowing what people in this world are suffering right now, and the relative freedom that we have, it almost seems absurd for me to be talking about this from this pulpit in this place amongst freedom. But there may come a time And maybe there already is a time in your life, not politically or legally, but personally, where you are just going to have to live with the consequences of obeying the Lord and obeying His Word. So the first principle is to not capitulate and not sacrifice the Word of God. And when you do that, the second principle then is be willing to endure the consequences. And the third principle is be aware of the vindication that comes by the faithfulness of God. The only thing that vindicates the psalmist through any of his trials that he goes through here, through any of this lament, is that God is faithful. I think a perfect illustration of this in modern times is a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian that began to come to prominence prior to World War II. Before things got too bad in Germany, he was given an open avenue of escape in 1938. Union Theological Seminary petitioned Germany to allow him to come to the United States and do a series of lectures. It was really a kind of clandestine thing because they were expecting once they got him out that he should not go back. He took the way out and he later regretted it in a letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, a professor at Union Theological Seminary. He wrote this, I've come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice from security." Unquote. Bonhoeffer then returned to Germany and was privy to and even participated in plots to overthrow the Nazis and then even to try to kill Hitler. For this, he was arrested in April of 1943 and imprisoned. Listen to what he says in his book. He wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rends cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life and for leading the nation astray. They will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near. and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end." And that, it sounded like Bonhoeffer was speaking as a prophet. He was executed by the Nazis on April 8, 1945, just two weeks later. Just two weeks later, the prison camp where he was being held was liberated by American soldiers. He found himself in a hostile wilderness, a stranger, oddly enough, in his own country. But in the midst of the wilderness, he walked in the Lord's way and remained faithful and he is even now blessed. Let's pray. Father, when we read through this lament in the Psalms and see what horrors your people have suffered, not just in our day, but in ages past, Our hearts cry out, even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come. But until then, we ask, O Lord, that as we remain faithful to You, that You would deal with Your servants so that we may live and live to keep Your Word. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.