All right, well, we have started an exposition on Psalm 119. If you go ahead and turn over there. Last week, we started with our introductory material, and we talked about the type of psalm that it is. And it is a collection of all different types of psalms. So we talked about the kind of psalm that it is. Need to remember that in the Psalter, there are a number of different psalms, number of different types of psalms. There are lament psalms, there are wisdom psalms, there are psalms of praise, there are enthronement psalms. All of these psalms have certain elements that put them in those categories. The amazing thing about Psalm 119 is that it has just about every type of psalm in this Psalm, which of course shouldn't surprise us since it is 176 verses long. The reason I wanted Gary to bring this to me is because I read a quote from Jonathan Edwards on Psalm 119 and it was so good. He said, I know of no part of the Holy Scriptures where the nature and evidences of true and sincere godliness are so fully and largely insisted on and delineated as in the 119th psalm. The psalmist declares his design in the first verses of the psalm keeps his eyes on it all along and pursues it to the end. The excellency of holiness is represented as the immediate object of a spiritual taste and delight. God's law, that grand expression and emanation of the holiness of God's nature and prescription to holiness to the creature, is all along represented as the great object of the love and rejoicing of the gracious nature which prizes God's commandments even above gold. And so, Psalm 119 has been used by God in the lives of His people throughout church history. It's one of those psalms that really does thrill the soul. And I mentioned last week that it's one of those psalms that you can read when you feel spiritually dry and the Lord just takes that celebration, that feast of His Word in Psalm 119 and uses it to revive and to refresh our souls. Now, the psalm itself, as we mentioned, is made up of 22 stanzas, each stanza corresponding to the Hebrew letters of the alphabet. There are 22 Hebrew letters in the Hebrew alphabet. There are eight lines in each stanza. Very possible, we don't know for sure, but it's very possible that the psalmist uses eight lines because he has eight words for the word in Psalm 119. That's about the best guess we can come up with. But here we have this alphabetic acrostic and the purpose of it, of course, is to express love and devotion and obedience to the Word of God, which is, of course, love and obedience and devotion to God Himself. And the psalm, as I mentioned last week, with the exception of only three verses, is a direct prayer to God Himself. Right? Last week, we also looked at all of the synonyms for the word in this psalm. We're not going to repeat that here. There are synonyms that all have nuances to them. The writer is going to use those. He's going to use those terms liberally throughout the psalm. And he's going to use them to denote really the glories of God's word. Then the most tedious part of last week was me trying to defend the idea that Daniel actually wrote this psalm. We're not going to go over all of that again because I just could tell you were all tired by the time we were done. But all of those verses that I used are actually in your notes and so you can compare those. That brings us really to the themes of Psalm 119. Over the years, I've been so attracted to this psalm that I've done a number of things with it devotionally over the years. At one point, I believe I was in seminary. I took a stanza and I read that stanza every day for the whole week. So I did olive seven days in a row, and then did bait seven days in a row, and then gimel seven days in a row, and worked my way through in 22 weeks reading Psalm 119. Very, very enriching experience. Other times I've sat down and just in one sitting with a pencil in hand, just looking for certain things. What are the attributes of the Word in Psalm 119? And just read it through in one sitting and just mark every place where the psalmist says that the Word of God is like something or is something or find all the places where it says the Word of God does something or I remember not too long ago actually before going to the Dominican Republic and preaching on man and his emotional state, took Psalm 119 and went through all of the responses that the psalmist has to the word and all of the responses he says he is supposed to have. to the word. Those are two different things and it was just very enriching and the funny thing about that is I preached the first session and went through the psalm and did that Pastor Suhail Michelin was preaching the second session and the first words out of his mouth is where you won't believe what I was going to do I was going to go through Psalm 119 and find all and show you all the places and he actually had done exactly the same thing that that I had done but it was a It's just an enriching psalm, and so you can read through the psalm like that, and you can find some of these themes. And so, one thing that we'll keep our eye on as we go through this psalm is we're going to see the attributes or the characteristics of Torah or of the word throughout. And we're not going to go through these in detail right now, but the psalmist sees Torah really as the way that God ministers to his people. Now remember, if this is Daniel, or at least some exile, okay? I mean, it could have been Shadrach that wrote it, really, but some exile, let's say. That exile is removed from the holy land of Jerusalem, sacred space. He's also removed from the temple, which either has been destroyed or is about to be destroyed. And so here, this person is removed from the very center of Israel's religious activity. And what does he do? He looks to the word. It is actually the Word where God is going to minister to him, and it's going to be through the Word that he meets God and encounters God. And in fact, in our study on the prophets on Sunday afternoons, when we get to the exilic prophets and post-exilic prophets, we're going to see that the Word actually takes a more preeminent place once the people are removed from their place of worship. And so no longer is God going to be encountered in the temple. He's encountered primarily in Torah or in his word. And so for the psalmist in Psalm 119, he looks at the word as really an encounter with God. And we too should think of our Bibles that way because the Bible has obviously certain attributes. Those attributes, by the way, are the attributes of God and vice versa. In other words, the word functions as a mirror that reflects the image and characteristics of God himself. Uh, the word, and I'm not going to give you all the verses, but in Psalm 119, the word is a counselor. That's because God is a counselor. The word is infinitely valuable because God is infinitely valuable. The word is three places in Psalm 119. The word is eternal because of course, God is eternal. The word is perfect. Of course, because God is perfect. The Word is light, because God is light. The Word is upright. The Word is truth. And so, the psalmist looks at the characteristics or attributes of the Word as being a reflection of God Himself. And so, to encounter the Word in the power of the Spirit is to do nothing less than to encounter God. Years ago when I was in seminary, there's probably only three classes that I look back on that were a terrible waste of time and money. And one of those classes was worship and ministry. It was a pastoral theology course. Now, the title of the class sounds great. And I don't know if Charlie ever had this class but you know you're in trouble when the when the professor's name is Borer. Now, and it was totally true. Anyway, he had a little agenda and that was to get us all excited about early patristic church worship and to get back to more ancient forms of worship. and to start to use more art and drama and things like that. And so, you can obviously tell it was a huge influence on me. And so, at one point in a lecture, this is what he said. He said, I think that in our evangelical Baptist churches, we put too much emphasis on the word. It's almost as if we've become, and this was his word, bibliolators. So, of course, I timidly raised my hand and with a fist and said, Explain to me, please, the term bibliolatry. He said, well, you know what it is. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's making an idol of the Bible. I said, well, can we clarify this? Because I really don't know anybody that actually worships the cover and the binding and the pages and the ink. I've never met anybody. like that. There's a lot of weird people in the world, and I'm sure there are probably some that do that, but I've never been in one of our churches and actually seen the Bible itself as a book, as the object of worship. But shouldn't scripture be central to our worship? Doesn't the psalmist say Oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation day and night. And his response was that I sounded an awful lot like J. Vernon McGee, which, you know, I took that as a compliment. But here, here, here, here's the fundamental mistake. It's to separate God from his word. It's to think that somehow we can encounter God apart from his revelation. The fact is, is that we encounter God through his word. And so to meditate on God's word day and night is ultimately not to meditate on the ink spots on a page, but it's ultimately to meditate on God himself. to have our worship shaped and governed and driven by the Word is to actually be focusing not ultimately just on pages and binding and a leather cover, it is ultimately to be focusing on the person of God. And so for the psalmist, especially we see this in Psalm 119, there is no separation between God and his word. You come to know God through his word. You worship God through his word. You encounter God through his word. Why? Because the word is the mirror image of the characteristics and attributes of God. So, what are the benefits of studying the Word and what are the benefits of the Word? And of course, this is what we're going to be looking at as we go through as well. But for the psalmist, the Word not only is the way that God is revealed to him and he encounters God, but there are actually benefits that the Word brings, that the Word produces things in him. And so the New Testament version of what the psalmist says in 1.19 all over the place is 1 Thessalonians 2.13 that when you heard the word from us, when you believed, you did not hear it or receive it as the word of man, but for what it really is, the word of God. which performs, produces its work in those who believe. And so for the psalmist, the word actually produces things in us. There is a sense in which As the exile is separated from, by and large, people and place, he is depending upon the Word to sustain him as a pilgrim and an alien and a stranger. He's looking to the Word to renew him as he's bombarded by worldliness and ungodliness. and he's looking to the word to console him so that in the midst of grief and affliction, he knows where he finds his comfort. I found an interesting book on Psalm 119, and the title of it is The Diary of a Captive. And he argues that an exile wrote Psalm 119. And this is what this pastor says. He says, each verse started with the same letter. Each line was constructed in light of the symbol. Each lesson confirmed the message that Jeremiah had hammered over and over and over before Judah's fall. Remember, Daniel is meditating and reading Jeremiah in Daniel chapter 9. The only thing, this guy says, that can sustain any nation or any individual is the word of God. That was Jeremiah's message. And this young man had lost everything except what was in his soul. But he made the decision to use what he had. But that was an amazing sentence. This young man had lost everything except that which was in his soul. If we're right about authorship, he lost everything because he was deported, would have endured a 500-mile death march at the tip of a Babylonian spear. would have been immersed in godless Babylonian culture, would have been removed from family and from friends and from heritage and religion and culture and society, all those things, everything taken away from him. And the only thing that he had was what was in his own soul. We never know. when God's going to strip away all the stuff. And he can do it in thousands of different ways. He can do it through sickness. He can do it through old age. He can do it through losing your job. He can do it through your family falling apart. He can do it through exile. He can do it through enslavement. God can do it in so many ways that we can't even enumerate all of them. And so, then the big question is what happens to us when all of the externals are stripped away and the only thing that we actually have left is what has been put into our souls? So, I was thinking about Monty today. And when he knew that he was going to die, he was trying to get files organized and trying to get certain investigations wrapped up and get everything nice and neat. But he declined so quickly that there came a point where nothing else mattered to him from morning till night, except the word of God. And that's what actually sustained them. And so just witnessing to everybody like like crazy. But what sustained him was the word of God. He became a man who had many talents and he was a man of many things. But in the end, he was a man of one thing, the word of God. And so here's this exile and everything's taken away. He's reduced to nothing. And all that he has is that which has been put into his soul. And here's the thing that we need to remember. And we're going to point this out as we go through this psalm. is that we too are exiles and strangers. We just don't know it as acutely as Daniel and his friends knew it. I mean, that's the biblical picture of the church. I find it absolutely fascinating that in the book of Hebrews, the church is the wilderness community that's wandering in the desert on the way to its eternal rest. And in Peter, Peter takes all of those, right in the opening verses, takes all of those dispersion, exile, alien, stranger images and tells the church, that's what you are. And so we don't have a lasting city here and all of the stuff that we surround ourselves with here is just temporary. And you never know when it's all going to be taken away. You never know when the bottom is going to drop out. And so as exiles and strangers and aliens, we have to make sure that we're actually putting the Word of God into our souls so that when everything is taken away that can be taken away, there's something that remains steadfast that can't be touched. The Word of God. I've written to you young men, says the apostle John, because you're strong, you've overcome the evil one, because the word of God abides in you. And so what does the word do for us? What does it produce in us? Again, we're not gonna look up all these verses, but let me just, some of these will just sound very familiar. It produces happiness. The first two verses, blessed is the man, blessed is the man. Right out of the gate, Psalm 119. And again, you put this in the situation of an exile who's been removed from sacred space and the sacred house and from God's people and ripped out of everything that had meaning and significance and comfort to him. And now he's separated from that. And you would think, How in the world could you be happy if everything was taken away? Understand the only way to really be happy is what's in your soul. So the psalmist could extol the Word of God is that which produces happiness in those who abide by it. Some of the happiest people in the world are the people that the world wouldn't think should be the happiest. Right. People who are dying, people who are sick, people who are poor, people who live in third world countries, people who wear the same clothes every day, every day, every day, because they don't have anything else. And they eat one time a day. And it's the same thing every day. And they're the happiest people in the world. Because what's in the soul. That's what ultimately matters. It produces holiness, keeps us pure. It renews us and revives us. Now, don't think for a minute that the psalmist who writes Psalm 119 is this near perfect saint who doesn't know what it is to struggle. He knows what it is to struggle, and we'll see that a number of times. And in fact, he will pray prayers especially towards the end, that will beg God to keep him from wandering. So we're not talking about a perfect person here, but we're talking about somebody who knows what it is to live under the bombardment of ungodliness and the bombardment of carnality and worldliness, to live in the midst of people who hate your guts, It's one of the common themes through the book of through Psalm 119. I got lots of enemies and some of them are pretty high powered and they all hate me and they all lie about me. So you're talking about the the worst possible circumstances. And what is it that the word does? We put it this way. What does he ask God to do through the word? And what does the word do? It revives him and renews him. God takes his word and renews us when we think that the well's gone dry. When you are spiritually on E, and that little annoying lights been on longer than you can remember which is really bad because you know that it means you only got like two gallons left or something and it's been on and you've made three trips to church and back and you're, I mean spiritually you're just on E. What is it that fills your tank? What is it that renews you, revives you, reinvigorates you? It's God's word. It's God's word. And so God can do this in so many different ways. And I think I've only told this story once. And so I'm just gonna tell you again. After I had back surgery, you might remember I had a really slow recovery. Well, I had two breakdowns, OK? And one resulted in the destruction of a cell phone. But that's a different story. I wasn't getting better. I was still restricted. I'd only been able to, I think I'd only preached once or twice. I was so dejected and felt just depressed. And I've, you know, God's wired me in a way that I don't get depressed. I can get irritated, but I don't get depressed. And so, thankfully, irritability and depression are not the same. And so I'm just hard to live with, but not depressed. Anyway, I was depressed. I am on the couch and I just start to start crying. And Ariel came over, sat next to me, didn't say anything, just hugged me. It was great. See, if she'd have been there, I'd be like, what's wrong? What can I do? Do you need an ice pack or, you know, Tylenol? I mean, what? She just sat down and just hugged me. And I got up and I was still, I just felt this, just enshrouded in darkness and so spiritually dry that I was about to just snap like a twig. And I walked into the bedroom and we almost always have Pilgrim radio on in the bedroom. And unbeknownst to me, Pilgrim was playing the first sermon that I preached after coming back, which was only like two weeks before. Completely unbeknownst to me. And I sat there. And I didn't say, I mean, I was in absolutely no frame of mind to say, oh, hey, look at that, I'm on the radio. I could have cared less. I mean, it was just, in fact, I almost went over and turned it off. I went and laid down on the bed and I just listened to the word. And God used his word spoken through some donkey somewhere to revive my heart. And, I mean, it was as real and experiential as it gets. It just felt like God was just speaking right to me, right through His Word. That Word was designed in God's sovereign plan from all eternity to bring me out of the pit of despair. And so is it any wonder that the psalmist in his situation says, Revive me according to your word. Revive me according to your word. Renew me according to your word. That's what the word does for us. It produces holiness. It revives and renews. It gives us strength during grief. Do you not know that one by experience? gives strength during grief, it produces awe and reverence for God, it brings salvation, it brings grace, it brings comfort in affliction. And it does that in so many different ways. I mean, it can bring comfort in affliction, and we'll see this in the psalm, by reorienting us to the reality of who God is and that he's sovereign over our circumstances. And so it could just simply be through a reorientation to reality that God comforts us in our affliction. Or it could be some promise that comes to us about who God is, or what God has done, or what God has promised to do. Just something. And it doesn't even have to be this big profound thing. It could be just the simplest truth that God uses to bring us comfort in the midst of our affliction. If nothing more than just to remind us it's going to be okay because God loves you and he's in control. That's what the word does for us. You know, and so we run over, we run hither and yon looking for comfort and consolation. And, you know, we want to have our spirits lifted. And so, you know, we look here and we look there and we need to remember that there is actually a profound simplicity in the word that brings comfort to us in the midst of our afflictions. Just think of Daniel's life and how many times God comforted that young man into his old age through the word. So much so that the Psalmist could say something like this. It was good for me. that I was afflicted, so that I may learn your statutes." That's actually how you know. That's the barometer that is the indicator of how well you've embraced the sovereignty of God over your life. To be able to say, it's good for me that I was afflicted. You guys know, most of you know, my mom has a brain tumor. God, it's not growing, but it certainly has messed her life up. But she would not trade that brain tumor. She would not get rid of it. To save her life, literally. Because she looks at it as the biggest blessing that's ever happened to her. She says, this thing has brought me closer to God than I ever could have been brought being healthy. It's good for me that I was afflicted so that I could be teachable. By the way, that is a lesson, isn't it? God is more interested in having us teachable than healthy. God is more interested in having us teachable than blissed out happy. God wants us teachable. And unfortunately, most of the time, we're a little more teachable when we're in pain. So it brings comfort in affliction. It gives wisdom. I mean, the Psalm 119 is going to celebrate the wisdom that comes from God through his word. And as we saw last week, if this is Daniel, then you have this really amazing statement. Your word makes me wiser than my teachers. There's a wisdom. There is a perspective. There's a worldview. There is an applied knowledge that comes from your word. Psalm 119 is going to tell us that the word gives you wisdom. I don't think the Bible actually just raises your IQ. It might. I don't know. I don't think so. I think you're probably pretty much stuck with the one that God gave you, right? Is that how it works? You're stuck with the one that God gave you. You know, so if it's, you know, the temperature of the pool, you're just, that's what you got. But even the person with the IQ of, you know, the pool temperature can still actually have wisdom. And wisdom is actually skill for living. Biblically, that's what wisdom is, is actually to have knowledge that comes from God's truth and then the skill to put that knowledge to work in life to produce a godly outcome. That's the idea of wisdom. The word provides sustenance and hope in the midst of despair. I would imagine that the Bible has actually prevented quite a few people from jumping off quite a few bridges. It produces a sensitivity to the dishonoring of God. If you are immersed in the word, you will become more and more sensitized to not only the evil within, but the evil around you. The Word of God produces an increased sense of righteous indignation over wickedness. So that you no longer look at evil as indifferently. If you're immersed in God's Word, it provides for you a sense of justice and righteousness. So you hear about this heinously wicked man in Philadelphia who had an abortion clinic just arrested yesterday, delivering live babies and then killing them after birth. Two of the women had gone in, died because of his malpractice. The Word of God, anybody can be repulsed by that. Even in our pro-abortion culture, the Philadelphia DA is repulsed by what he just called a slaughterhouse, literally baby parts all over the place. That should repulse anybody. But it's only the word of God that actually gives you the insight so that you know why that is really wicked and how really wicked it is. In fact, the psalmist would say, my eyes pour out streams of water because they don't keep your law. Sat there and read that story today and just wept. thinking about this wicked, heinous man. Produces the sensitivity to dishonoring God and brings conviction of our own sin. That's what the word produces in us. I mean, you honestly can't read the Bible very long without actually realizing that for every finger that gets pointed outward, there's quite a few more pointing back. The Word of God brings a conviction for sin, points out to us, and the psalmist in Psalm 119 is not going to be exempt from that. He will, in fact, experience it himself. And again, if it's Daniel, you have to understand that there are actually only a couple of people, few people, apart from the Lord Jesus in Scripture, of whom nothing negative is ever said. All our other biblical heroes, their sins and faults are seen quite clearly, right? Well, Daniel actually is one of those characters in scripture that, not perfect, but blameless. And it is Daniel in the midst of exiled Jews who'd compromised. They weren't faithful. They were faced with the same cultural forces and pressure that Daniel was faced with, and many of them just gave in and then bought into the culture. And the reason that we actually know that this is true is because when the opportunity for return happens, so few Jews actually return to Jerusalem because they are actually quite comfortable in the empires. And so Daniel's surrounded not just by the nasty Babylonians, he's surrounded by people who should be upright and faithful to the Lord and devoted and loyal to the word, and instead they're making all kinds of compromises, and that just kills him. How many of those deported with Daniel would have bowed at Nebuchadnezzar's statue when they heard the music, right? Had to have been quite a few because as far as I can read the book of Daniel, there were only Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that got caught and then paid the consequences. And so, if anybody would have had the tendency towards self-righteousness, it would have been Daniel living in a Babylonian culture and even the good guys really weren't that good. It'd been really easy for him to say, rotten pagans, compromising fellow countrymen, I thank you, O God, that I am not like them. But the psalmist in Psalm 119 never prays such a prayer. His heart is broken for what he sees outside and what he sees inside. That's what the word produces. That sense of conviction Have you ever realized that conviction is actually one of the sweetest graces of the Holy Spirit? Where actually would we be if it were not for the conviction of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God? What kind of self-deceived, self-destructive people would we be? if it were not for the grace of conviction. Of course, conviction's never fun. I know there's a few weirdos in our church who are like, just convict me, Lord, convict me, make me miserable. I mean, God bless you, that's great. I've never really prayed, just God make me utterly miserable. convict me so bad that I can't see straight. You know, I just I just I figure that he is just going to be faithful to give me what I need when I need it, and I don't need to ask for any more because it's painful when it comes right. It's painful. But it's the kind of pain that produces. Good God, glorifying fruit. and woe to the man or the woman who professes godliness but knows nothing of the sting or the convicting power of God's Word. The person who professes godliness but knows nothing of conviction is a person who's professing something that he doesn't really know anything about. the things that the word of God produces in us. This is what the word does for us. And so is it any wonder that the psalmist will say that it is more valuable than gold and silver? What else could do that for you? Out of all of those things that we've just looked at, what else in this entire universe could actually do those things for us? If people actually came and looked and saw and thought, oh, look at that, happiness, strength during grief, they're not interested in reverence or salvation or grace, but, oh, comfort and affliction, wisdom, sustenance and hope. Yes, all of those things. What do you think people would be willing to give for those? You can't buy it. comes to those who believe and trust in His Word. What about the response to the Word? The response to the Word actually is going to be twofold, and Psalm 119 is absolutely filled with it. There is going to be on the one hand, and this is going to be the prevalent part, there is an emotional response to the Word. And don't take that to mean some superficial emotional response. There is a deep-seated authentic affection that is a response to the Word. So, for instance, the psalmist loves the Word. The psalmist delights in the Word. The psalmist looks at the Word with joy. The psalmist has fear, reverence for the Word. And so, there is this whole spectrum of emotional response to the Word. And of course, that's how the Word is designed. Remember, God has not given us His Word just simply to inform us, but also to move us. And the psalmist takes full advantage of the affectionate or the affection moving power of God's Word. Now, I can't get started on this because this is one of my favorite themes to talk about. It's the way that the Word affects our emotions. We stop and think about the way that God communicates to us. It's not just these dry, propositional statements that are numbered like in the Quran. It comes to us in story. It comes to us in poetry. It comes to us in wisdom literature. It comes to us in ways that are designed to grip and to move the heart. And the psalmist was fully engaged with that. Joy, delight, love, reverence. All those things were legitimate responses to the Word. But there's also this volitional response to the Word. Meditate, study, run, obey, keep. The Word doesn't just make you emote and feel certain things. The Word moves the affections in order to kick the will into gear. So the psalmist not only takes delight in the Word, he keeps the Word. The psalmist not only loves the word, he meditates on the word. The psalmist not only rejoices and values the word. But he obeys its precepts. Emotions, the volition. interrelated responses. Derek Kidner, terrific Old Testament scholar who's in heaven now, says, this giant among the Psalms shows the full flowering of that delight in the law of the Lord, which is described for us in Psalm 1. In fact, Kidner does something a little interesting. He says, you take Psalm 1, which celebrates delighting in the law of the Lord, And then you take Psalm 19, which celebrates God speaking in His law. And then you take Psalm 119, which is really a combination of both of those celebrations together. So here's the last question for tonight. Next week, we'll do Aleph, verses 1 to 8. So read it in advance, meditate on it. But here's the final question. As we saw last week, the psalmist uses this term Torah, God's law, uses term commandments, right? And so when I read my Bible, this is the way that my brain works. Is the psalmist's attitude towards God's law the same as Paul's? Think about it for a second. Let me set up the tension for you in case you don't feel it yet. Psalm 19, 7, the law of the Lord is perfect. Converting. The soul, right? The testimonies of the Lord are sure enduring forever. Oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation day and night. And in fact, throughout Psalm 119, and I have, let's see, about 10 verses here, talks about how God's law, God's word, God's commandments give life and sustain life. And yet Paul says, the commandment came and I died. Romans 7, 9, and 10. Paul would say things like describing the old covenant and describing the law of Moses. He contrasted to the new in 2 Corinthians 3. And what are some of the descriptions of the old covenant that he gives in 2 Corinthians 3? The letter kills, right? in administration of death. That's how he describes the Old Covenant law, right? What about Galatians 3? For if the law could have given life, implied argument, it can't. More explicitly, by the works of the law, No flesh will be justified in my sight. So, you understand why I would ask the question? Because there are times where Paul says things about the law that are not really flattering to the law, right? It kills. It's the letter. It's the administration of death. You can't be justified by it. It doesn't give life. In fact, when you come to when you encounter the commandment, it stirs up sin within you and it kills you. And the psalmist says, oh, how I love your law. So is the psalmist perspective on God's law the same as Paul's? Well, of course, you know the answer. Yes. Three things. First, the psalmist has a broader view of law than Paul does. Paul, especially in the negative passages, is talking about the law as a means of righteousness or justification. You can read Psalm 119 119 times and what you will find is that the psalmist has, he has God's commands in view but he also has God's promises and he never looks at Torah or commandments as a means of justification but rather instead as God's gracious instruction that has a renewing and reviving power. So he's not, the psalmist is not trying to be justified by the law. Secondly, the psalmist actually rejoices in the law's power to convict him of sin and in turn, turn him to God's mercy. And doesn't Paul actually rejoice in that same reality that the law is holy, just and good? And what does it do? I rejoice in the law of God in the inner man. Why? Because it shows me my sin and turns me to Christ. So we're not law. You don't take those negative passages from Paul and then become a law hater. You understand what the law is doing. And the psalmist sees the law doing the very same thing that Paul sees the law doing. The third thing is that the psalmist rejoices in God's law as a regenerate person. Paul bemoans God's law in Romans 7. as an unregenerate person who's being shown as sin, the psalmist sees that grace comes before and empowers our obedience, and there is absolutely no legalism in the psalmist's approach to God's law. And so everything that the psalmist says about God's law, his commandments, his promises, his statutes, his precepts, his judgments, everything that he says about God's Word, we too should be able to say. He says it as a regenerated person, empowered by the grace of God, living a life of gratitude and confidence in God, and a life of utter self-distrust. Which, by the way, is completely Pauline. A life of absolute confidence in God and utter self-distrust is completely Pauline. The psalmist looks to God's word, his commandments, his precepts as his daily bread. and the very air that he breathes, and I think that he would give a hearty amen with Paul's declaration in Romans 7, I rejoice in the law of God in the inner man. So, any contradiction, any conflict? No. Actually, they share the exact same perspective on God's Word. So, next week we'll start digging in And so anybody wants to start memorizing it, and then when we get to the end, you want to recite it, we'll do that for the lesson that night. All right? Okay, let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this psalm, and we do pray that all of the things that we looked at tonight, that your word would do those things for us over the course of the next number of weeks. And we also pray, Father, that our response to your word would be like the psalmist's response. And so, Father, we commit ourselves to you and to this study. We commit ourselves to the word, and we pray, Father, that through it, we would grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and that you would sanctify us in the truth, because your word is truth. In Jesus' name, amen.