There was a man who found himself lost in an unknown place along the way to his destination. He had a map, but he felt that the way to where he was going should be simple enough. He should be able to find his way. The important thing is to get started on the journey. So he didn't need the map. It would be a waste of time and better just to get along on his way. The important thing was that he was going, after all. So he left the map behind, he didn't bring it with him. And he left it behind, untouched, unexamined, tucked away in some dusty drawer. When he lost his way, then, he searched and he stumbled his way back to the place where he started. And he still knew that he needed to get on his way, so he said to himself, this time I will find my way. This time I will follow the right path. And so he left with renewed zeal, and he set off again, leaving the map behind, still unopened in the drawer. Our text today is Psalm 119, verse nine through 16. How do you find the right path in life? How do you keep your way pure? The word of God is our map and our guide. It's simple enough, isn't it? The first eight verses of Psalm 119, as you recall, are a prayer of delight in the word of God. His word is good. It is a trustworthy and true word. And it is a delight and it's a comfort to God's people. Verses nine through 16 then draw the necessary implication from that truth. to answer a question. How do I keep myself to the right path? How do I live the right way? How do I do the right thing? That's the question. Now we can say that God's word is good. We can say that. And we can say that not only is it good, but that it defines goodness for us. We can say that. We can say that it should be a treasure. and a delight and a comfort. But if we say those things, if we hold it as true, then it will shape our lives. It will guide how we live. So how do you keep your way pure? The answer is God's word. It's God's word. Psalm 119, nine through 16, offers us at least three ways that we are given for the word of God to work in our lives and to guard our path. We must learn it, we must declare it, and we must meditate upon it day in and day out. Verse nine opens the passage with a summary and the ultimate conclusion of this part of Psalm 119. And it says, how can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. The Bible, according to verses one through eight, the Bible shows us the way that is right. So of course the Bible, according to verse nine, is the answer to how we can keep our way pure. It is not only young men who need the word of God to guard their way. Young men do need the word of God to guard their way. If you are a young man, then you need the word of God to guard your way. But if you're not a young man, you still need it. Verse nine is addressed to young men for a reason. And it's because the needfulness for God's word as a guard is especially evident in a young man. Not many young people today tend to appreciate how limited their own knowledge and wisdom and experience are. As a matter of fact, I think there's actually reason for this. I don't know that it's an excuse, but the reality is that modern philosophy, our media, the stories we hear in books and on TV and in film, and our culture associate youth with purity. If you watch, you'll see this. Youth is pure, age brings corruption. That's the modern mentality. And youth is associated with purity, but that's a false association. Youth is fertile ground for foolishness. And it flourishes, by the way, folly. It flourishes all the more in the fool who thinks he's wise. And doesn't that describe the young man? Young people are full of all kinds of passion and very little experience. Their ambition is great and their restraint is small. There is a reason that crime, as it turns out, is in every place and every time, even when you control for all other kinds of circumstances and situations, it's committed overwhelmingly by the young. And it peaks early. There's no other way to explain it. It's just young people do bad things. Young people go the wrong way. It's true. It's undeniable. A young man is a man who is most clearly in need of guidance to follow the right path. So the need is particularly evident in that young man. So we have this young man standing as a picture of the needfulness for guidance to the right path. But not only is the need for guidance evident in a young man, so is the benefit. If you can, think back to your adolescence or your early adulthood. It is profoundly easy to see just how much better off you would have been if you had a greater measure of wisdom from the word of God. If you're a parent, and I'm sure you pray for your children And your prayer is not that they will be saved late in life, is it? No. And we've got children here, kids, your parents, and we pray that you will be saved when you are young. that God will guard your hearts and guide your paths from the time when you are young. Now it's true, God can save people when they're very late in life. But it is so much better for you that you follow him when you are small and continue to follow him all the days of your life. So the young man is the clearest illustration that you can have of this need and this benefit that is not just for young men but is for all men and all women, all boys and all girls. The word of God must be your guide. So the word of God is said to guard our way, to keep us from wandering from the right path. Now this implies that if we didn't have a guard See, it's not just a guide, but it's actually a guard. This implies that if you were left to yourself, you would go the wrong way. You have to be guarded from wandering off on your own way. It's one thing, you see, to know the right way. It's quite another to follow the right way. We need not only a map to show us the right path, but we need a guard to stop us from leaving the right path. The word of God then is our map and it's our guardian. Now, the psalmist is one who desires to follow God. This is not an unbeliever. This is someone who desires to follow God. In verse 10 he says, with my whole heart I seek you. The necessity of God's word doesn't end when a person becomes a Christian and begins to seek after God. The Bible, rather, is how a Christian seeks and follows God. So the psalmist prays in verse 10, let me not wander from your commandments. He recognizes, even as one who loves the Lord, that left to himself he would wander. Let me not wander. He's a believer. The Holy Spirit has taken out his heart of stone and given him a heart of flesh that loves God. But the power to obey God's commandments does not come from him. If it was up to him even now, he would wander from the right path. So in faith, he must rest in the power of God to keep him from wandering. And the means that God has ordained to keep him and guard him from wandering is the word. Verses 10 and 11. Rather, 11 and 12 show us the first of three ways the psalmist relies on the word of God to guard him against sin. The psalmist says, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. It's simple enough, but it means that you are to know God's word. If God's word is to guard your way, the first thing you need is to know it. You store it up in your heart. That means that not only do you know it, not only are you familiar with it, but you have built up a store of it in the deepest part of you, in your heart, so that you know it fully and completely. And next in verse 10, now in verse 10 you see that the psalmist seeks the Lord with his whole heart, and now in verse 11 he says, He has stored up the word of the Lord in his heart. You see the connection there. With his heart, he loves the Lord, and with his heart, he has stored up his word. The heart that loves the Lord must be a heart that is full of his word. Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. Those two things are inseparable. A heart that loves Christ is a heart that is filled with the word of Christ. That means reading the word, but it means more than that. It means knowing it, understanding it, committing it to memory. The one who loves the Lord will keep his word in the place where it is safest and most ready at hand, in the heart. All of the instruction, encouragement, and correction of scripture is of no benefit to you if it is not ready at hand when you need it. You're like the man who started his journey and left his map in a drawer. You must know the Bible well enough that you can turn to the word and rely on it in every circumstance when you need it. You ought to know it well enough too that you understand it rightly. You might know a verse or two, but it's no good to you if you don't understand what it means. To know the words but to deny their meaning is to know nothing. A false understanding of true words is no truth at all. It's simply falsehood. And scripture is rightly interpreted in light of scripture. So you need to know not only an isolated verse, but you need to understand the context. You need to understand how the verse fits with the rest of scripture, which means you cannot be selective and only grasp onto a verse here or verse there that somebody shares in a meme on Facebook. You must know his word in the light of his word. and to know more of God's word than is a protection against not only false understanding, but against sin and temptation of all kinds. After all, sin is deceitful. One of the ways in which sin works most powerfully is to deceive, to fool you to believe what's not true. That's why Hebrews 3.13 tells us to exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We are to exhort one another, not with encouraging words that we picked up from a TED Talk, but with God's word, and according to God's word, so that we will not be deceived by sin. We give one another the truth as it's revealed in God's word so that deceitfulness of sin can't lead us on the wrong path. Sin makes the false appear true. It makes the destructive seem desirable. It makes the ugly appear beautiful. Sin deceives. In 2 Corinthians 11.3, Paul was concerned for the Corinthians that just as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Lies may come from false teachers or external temptations, but they don't have to. Lies aren't always from the outside. Lies aren't always something that someone else tells you or convinces you. As Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. If you love God, if you seek to follow the path of righteousness, then you must fill your heart with the truth of his word. It is a shield to protect against the lies that come from without, and it is a medicine to counteract the deceitfulness of the sin that remains within. That sin that remains in you, the way you counteract it is to not let that sin sit by itself in your heart, but to fill your heart with the truth to counteract the lie. When you learn and you know his word, it is God himself who gives you understanding. The psalmist knows that it is not some private intellectual exercise to understand scripture. This is not. some kind of academic exercise. In verse 12, he prays, blessed are you, oh Lord, teach me your statutes. It must be, now, the academic can read a textbook and understand facts, but if you are to truly understand God's word, it must be God who teaches you. Even every time you open your Bible, you are praying, and you ought to be praying that God opens your eyes that you might understand. That is a work of the Spirit. Blessed are you, Lord, teach me your statutes. It is through the Bible that God teaches his people, and it is by the work of his Spirit that we're taught. And as you grow in that understanding, as you seek his word, as you build up that store in your heart, you do not keep your understanding private, do you? The second way the psalmist guards his way against sin is by proclaiming the word. The psalmist writes, with my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth, the motivation for Proclaiming the word in that way is verse 14. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. You don't keep silent about things that you love. You share them. And when you have filled your heart with the word, its truth should spill out of your mouth because when your heart is full of something, it spills out from your lips. That works in good ways and in bad. When your heart is full of anger, what spills out of your lips? When you have filled the heart with the word, it is the word and the truth it contains that spills out of your mouth. You should be filled to overflowing with the truth of the Bible so that you cannot keep it in. That's the motivation. 2 Timothy, 3.17 tells us that scripture is sufficient, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. If the Bible is sufficient for every circumstance, then its truth applies to every occasion. So that every circumstance that you encounter, your heart should be so full of God's word that it comes to mind. It's what comes to mind and it's what comes out. You ought to not only know the truth, but to speak it. Have you known the sort of person who has a movie quote for everything? Or maybe a song lyric, or maybe even very specifically a quote from a Star Wars movie? It should be the word of God that comes to mind. It's triggered, your memory, by every circumstance. It just makes you think. the truth of God's word, and it should fall from your lips. Verse 13 says the psalmist declares with his lips the rules of God's mouth. That's a wonderful parallel. They're coming from his lips, but what comes from his lips is what's given by God's mouth. Our words should be echoes of his as a means of guarding our way and the way of our brothers and sisters. It protects both us and our brothers and sisters. It serves that purpose. It's one way as we strive to walk according to the word that our walk is not a solitary one. We're not alone in our walk. I noted earlier from Hebrews 3.13 that God's people are called to exhort one another in the word. That this is a means that God uses to guard his people against sin. There is a mutuality in this. That means it goes both ways, as God has given us the church for the mutual building one another up. Ephesians 4.29 says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. At the same time, scripture also affirms the power of the tongue itself and the profound influence that the tongue has on the soul. The influence of the tongue works in both directions. It's, of course, the mouth speaks what's in the heart, but at the same time, what comes out of your mouth reaches back inside and influences your soul. James 3.6 says the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire by hell. And yet, on the other hand, Proverbs 15.4 calls a gentle tongue a tree of life. Your tongue influences all of you, not only other people. It influences you. What you choose to speak either reinforces the truth or it corrupts both others and yourself. So by training your tongue to speak the truth of God's word, you train your heart and your whole body. Not only the knowing the truth, but speaking it out loud holds a real power. to shape your heart and your mind. James 3 compares the tongue to the rudder that drives the direction of the entire ship. Your tongue, the things you say, will drive you either along the right path or away from it. Let that speech be the word of God and the truth that is taught in the word of God and your own words as they are echoes of The truth from God's mouth will guard your way. That's why as a Christian, you cannot allow ugly and corrupting speech to come out of your mouth. You can't. Maybe you do that and you lower your standards when you're around other people because you're just saying what's normal. You cannot allow corrupting speech to come out of your mouth. It will corrupt your soul. It will destroy your witness and it will corrupt your own soul. Let it be the word of God and its truth that is ever on your lips. Your mouth should be a mirror of God's. When you speak, your speech should be so closely aligned with the truth and the holiness of the Bible that it's as if God is speaking the truth of his word through you. When you speak, it should be God they hear. His holiness, his truth. Lastly, lastly in verses 15 and 16, the psalmist offers a third means by which the word of God will guard his way. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. The psalmist treasures the scriptures. You ought to treasure scripture so that you think on it and ponder it in your mind and delight to think on it and meditate upon it, constantly returning to it in your thoughts. It should be where your mind goes, even in idle times. This is only possible if you truly delight in the Lord. So it is a work of the Holy Spirit. It's only possible if you learn and you know and you commit biblical truth to your heart. You can't think on what you don't know. You can't meditate on what you haven't learned. It's also only possible if it's such a part of your life that it is overflowing in your speech and conversation. If it's not, a part of your life and your thoughts to the degree that it's spilling out of your mouth, and you're not meditating on it either. This then is the picture of truly seeking after God with your whole heart. It means not only learning it and committing it to memory, but proclaiming it. And not only proclaiming it, but centering all of your private thoughts upon it. So that God's word is richly dwelling in you and it is permeating and reaching to every part of every thought and word and deed in your life. When your mind is fixed on Christ, there's no room for sin to crowd its way in. That is how full of God's word you should be, that there's simply no room for anything else. That's why when we talk about meditation, on God's word. It's meditation that has a content. You understand, it is not simply quieting your mind and thinking of nothing. It's meditation with content. It is filled with godliness, not filled with nothingness. You fill your mind with emptiness and all kinds of things creep in. You fill your mind with God's word and it is a bulwark against corruption. And we're not talking here about that mental exercise of mindfulness that you hear about these days in pop psychology. This is meditation with a purpose. It is centered on truth and it is purposeful. The psalmist not only meditates on God's word, but he fixes his eyes on his ways. The very opening of this passage in verse nine, the question the psalmist asks is, how do you keep your way pure? And in this final part of the answer in verse 15 is to fix your eyes on his ways. So to keep your way pure, You must look at all times to his ways. To fix our eyes on the ways of God has always meant, and surely meant for the psalmist, a focus on heaven and on the God of heaven. It means lifting your eyes to the hills and looking upon God. It means that you live not for the things of this world, live for God our Savior and entrusting your steps to him. It means and always has meant that our way must be conformed to his way as it's revealed in his word. But in the light of the New Testament this becomes more beautiful because there is one man who has satisfied to perfection what it means to walk in the way of God. It is the man Jesus Christ. If you want to see the way of God, Jesus is that way, and he lived that way. So the way before us is to follow him. One man, Jesus Christ, is to follow him, a person. His person and His work. And the path that we follow as we follow Him, it leads to Him. He is our destination. He is our heavenly focus. When we fix our eyes on the ways of God to keep our way pure, it means that we fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, our Savior. Hebrews 12 describes our life rather than a path we walk, as a race we run. And it says, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus. fixing our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. It is to Jesus to whom we lift our eyes and fix our gaze. The race set before us is a race that he has run and won. and he endured the cross and the shame and took hold of the joy that was set before him and now he is seated. He is no longer running that race in which we follow him because he has run it and he has finished it and he has crossed the finish line and now he is seated in the victor's repose. The joy that was set before him It's His. The glory that was set before Him has been won. It belongs to Him. And that joy in Jesus that was set before Him, that joy is your destination, people of God. That's your destination. And Jesus endured everything for it. What we endure is nothing. because he bore it all. He bore far more than we can ever suffer or experience in life. All of the shame and suffering that should have been ours for our sin, if we had borne anything approaching that suffering, it would have been less than what we deserved. But he bore it all and deserved none of it. Now the path that we walk, we can not only walk, but we can run. And we can run with endurance and not grow weary because we know that we are running to him. And if that joy set before him was worth his laying down his life, boring suffering that was not his to bear, and bearing all of the weight of the sin and the shame of the world, if that joy set before him was worth all that he endured, then what's it worth to you? So you can fix your eyes on him and you can run with endurance. However difficult the road ahead, you can run it. You can not only walk, but you can run because you're running to him. You're running to him who bore it all. You're running to him knowing that he will bring you to the finish line. you're following him, and you know that the joy that was set before him that made all of this worth it, it's worth it to you, and it's yours. He's promised it to you freely. Do you understand that to follow this Jesus towards that joy that he's promised, do you understand that to follow him means to treasure and to follow his word? Do you understand that to know him means to know his word? To seek him means to seek his word. You have to make the Bible a delight. That's why it's a delight to your heart. That's why you seek it with your whole heart. Because it reveals him. And in knowing it, you know him. Because it leads to him. It points to him. It will bring you closer to him who has saved you. I will delight in your statutes, says the psalmist. Why? Because they lead to God. They lead to your Savior. To say that you delight in Christ means nothing if you don't follow Him. It's empty words. You follow Him. And He has given you a way to follow Him in the Word. That's why the Word is such a delight to us. And we follow it in thankfulness. for our salvation. We follow it in love for our Savior. Don't say that you follow God and then try to make your own way. Follow his word. The only way to the Father is through Christ, and the only way to Christ is through the word. If you delight in him, if you want to follow in his way, don't leave the map in a drawer. Open the Bible, learn it, memorize it, bind it to your heart so that you carry it with you wherever you go. Proclaim it with your lips and let it shape your speech and by your speech let it shape your life and meditate upon it. Let it be the treasure of your mind. "'I will not forget your word,' says the psalmist. "'How can I forget what I have committed to my heart, "'spoken daily with my lips, "'and pondered without ceasing with my mind?' "'By the Holy Spirit, the word that you commit to your heart "'and speak with your mouth and ponder in your mind, "'it will guard your way and it will keep your way pure. "'Not by your own strength, And this is so important. It's not by your own strength. The way you trust in God and rely on him is to lean not on your own understanding, but on the truth of his word that he's given to you. So it's not by your own power that you follow the right path. It is by leaning on the word of God and his power to make it real in your life, to transform you, That transformation is a miracle. The means for that miracle of a changed life is none other than the holy word of God. If you would keep your way pure, then know that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. He is the way. Hear his word. and follow him.