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Psalm 119 verse 129. Each of these lines begin with
the Hebrew letter Peh. Your testimonies are wonderful,
therefore my soul observes them. The unfolding of your words gives
light. It gives understanding to the
simple. I opened my mouth wide and panted. for I longed for
your commandments. Turn to me and be gracious to
me after your manner with those who love your name. Establish
my footsteps in your word and do not let any iniquity have
dominion over me. Redeem me from the oppression
of men that I may keep your precepts. Make your face shine upon your
servant and teach me your statutes. My eyes shed streams of water
because they do not keep your law. Well, as we come to this
particular stanza in Psalm 119, we come to a stanza that, at
least in my estimation, is the first one to lack a unifying,
cohesive theme. And in fact, what you have in
this stanza is basically the pulling together of a number
of threads that have already been brought up in Psalm 119,
and they're kind of pulled together And the first three verses deal
with the word, the next four verses deal with prayer, and
then the last verse deals with grief. And so there's no cohesive
theme, but all of them kind of come together in a way that reminds
us of the importance of the word of God and prayer. In fact, George Zemeck notes,
he says, the Pei stanza is a mosaic of thematic and stylistic parts. And so as I was thinking about
that and getting ready for tonight in the midst of other things
going on, I thought, OK, we're going to talk about the word,
which we've been talking about a lot through Psalm 119, because
it's celebration. of God's Word, and we're going
to talk about prayer, which, of course, the vast majority
of this psalm, 99% of it, is a prayer. And so we're going
to look at things that, in essence, we've already looked at before. We're going to talk about things
that we've talked about before, not just in Psalm 119, but actually
throughout our life together. There's not going to be anything
that's new. tonight or exciting in the sense of, wow, I never
thought of that before. And that brings up an interesting
observation on the ministry of the Word. The ministry of the
Word of God is not about coming up with new things. The ministry
of the Word of God is actually reminding us of things that we
already know. The ministry of the Word of God
is, I think about it in different ways. In some sense, the ministry
of the Word is like getting realigned week by week. Because we're fallen,
because we're finite, because we live in a fallen world, because
we're bombarded with the world and the flesh and the devil and
the cares and the concerns of this world, it's really easy
for us to get out of balance. And as we get out of balance,
the longer we drive in that condition, the more astray we go. And so
the ministry of the word is just like a realignment. It's like
going to a spiritual Les Schwab three times a week, all right?
But it's also just like eating. And I've used this illustration
before, but I think that it makes the point. Throughout the years,
it's not like you can think of 50 meals that just stood out
in the course of a year that were just absolutely incredible
and spectacular, and you look back upon them with incredible
fondness, longing once again to eat such succulent delights. But the fact that you eat regularly,
it sustains you. You may not remember the particular
meals, but it does get you through life week by week. The ministry
of the word does the same thing. There are times where you think
back, I can think back, there are certain sermons that I've
heard that have made a major impact on my life, and I look
back, but let's face it, we've heard a vast amount more than
what we actually remember, okay? God's given me a strange memory.
I can tell you where I was and who preached what and all of
that kind of stuff. And Ariel looks at me and says, you've
got to be kidding. But my brain kind of just works
like that. But for the most part, we don't remember. In fact, I
forget my own preaching more than I forget the preaching of
other people. And so I don't hold out much hope for you guys.
But what you do is you just eat week by week. And in eating week
by week, you are sustained and strengthened and nourished. And
you go and sometimes, sometimes your wives actually cook the
same thing. And nobody sits there and goes,
you already made this. Now, when I was a kid, I absolutely
despised Swiss steak and tamale pie. And I would say to my mom,
mama, you just made this last week. But we had the same thing
every Monday night, every Tuesday night, every Wednesday night.
So it was like this calendar. And, you know, so thankfully,
it's not like you're going to come on Wednesday and just hear about
the same thing every single time. But it's that food that sustains
you. Some are memorable, some are not. And so as we come to
a text that is a mosaic of themes, We need to remember. We need
to be realigned. We need to eat. We have short
memories. I need to be reminded, just like
we saw Sunday morning, we need to be reminded of those basic
things, like God's love for us. We need to have those things
preached to us. We need to have those things
preached to ourselves by ourselves. And so as we Launch into the
pay stanza. We're just going to hear some
of the same stuff, but it's for our spiritual nourishment, our
spiritual realignment, our spiritual good. So we begin in verses 129
to 131. The psalmist says, surprise,
your testimonies are wonderful. Testimonies here is the word
Adote, and it is a general word for, you can look it up in Brown,
Driver, and Briggs, the Hebrew lexicon, and you can see it's
used throughout the Old Testament for the law, it's used for the
Ten Commandments, it's used for the content of the covenant,
And so the idea is decrees, instructions, statutes, rules. That is God's
direction of our lives. And notice what the psalmist
says. He says, your instructions, your rules, your regulations
that you've given to me are wonderful. Now, if you think back, he's
already used this word a couple of times. Verse 18, he says, open my eyes that I may behold
what wonderful things from your law verse 27 make me understand
the way of your precepts so I will meditate on your wonders. It's a wonderful thing actually
to think about this word wonderful because it's used it's used only
for two things in the Old Testament. God's written word, and the living
word, Jesus Christ. In fact, it's used for the written
word, these three examples that I just gave, verse 18, 27, and
then our verse. But it is also used, for instance,
in Judges 16, where the angel of the Lord appears to Manoah
and his wife, and Manoah, Samson's parents, and Manoah says, what
is your name? By what shall I call you? And
the angel of the Lord says, why should I tell you? seeing that
my name is wonderful. In the promise of Isaiah 9, 6,
remember a child will be born to us, a son will be given. and
his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace." And so, the psalmist here is rejoicing
the written word is wonderful. In other words, it's just another
way to say the Bible is wonderful. There's no other book like it. There's no other book that does
what it does. There's no other book that is
what it is. And so, when the psalmist says,
your testimonies are wonderful, he is celebrating the revelation
of his father's will to him in the word of God. Matthew, Henry,
says it like this, he says, the Word of God gives us admirable
discoveries of God and Christ and another world, admirable
proofs of divine love and grace, the majesty of the style, the
purity of the matter, the harmony of the parts are all wonderful. Its effects upon the consciences
of men, both for conviction and comfort, are wonderful. and it
is a sign that we are not acquainted with God's testimony or do not
understand them if we do not admire them. Just think of the
way that Henry's description goes down. What makes God's Word
wonderful? It's the content that makes it
wonderful. It is a revelation of God. It
is a revelation of Christ. It is a revelation of the Spirit.
It is a revelation of the world to come. It is a revelation of
what you need to do to be made right with your Creator. You
don't get that in Reader's Digest. The content is wonderful. but it's also as literature wonderful. Sometimes Some Christians kind
of shrink back a little bit when they start hearing about the
Bible spoken of as literature, as if what we're saying is that
it is just literature. We're not saying that it's just
literature. It's obviously more than literature. It is God-breathed, holy Scripture. But it does come to us as literature. And it is wonderful. The contours
of redemptive history, the different shades of color. When you read
the Bible, it doesn't come to us all in the same shape and
form. It comes to us with variety and
creativity. And the literary features of
God's Word are absolutely, utterly, completely remarkable. You cannot, for instance, study
the book of Hebrews without being overwhelmed by the polished style,
the grand expressions of grammar and vocabulary and the way things
are put together. And so God's Word is wonderful
in terms of its literary beauty. It is also wonderful in its effects
upon us. What other book can bring us
under such conviction? What other book can give us such
comfort? It is the source of life. In
it, we have the words of life. And so in every conceivable way,
from every possible angle, the Word of God is wonderful. And then the psalmist says, in
a sense, because of that, therefore my soul observes them. And notice he uses the word soul
as a reference for the whole man, and he's saying that because
God's Testimonies, his precepts, his decrees, his laws, his regulations
are so wonderful. Therefore, I have a whole-souled,
whole-person commitment to observe them. Now, what's interesting
is in this stanza, there's two words for obedience. And the one that's used here,
observe, is used six times in this psalm, in Psalm 119. A little
later we get to even a more common one, but that's been a theme
that we've seen repeatedly over and over and over again, and
that is that there is this whole-souled commitment to obey the Word of
God. Now, again, it's not just his
own determination to do so. He's going to rely upon God and
his grace to do so. But that determination is actually
there. And if there is anything that
I need to be reminded of day by day and week by week, it is,
Brian, you need to be determined to obey God's word. God's word actually impinges
on every aspect of life. There's not one single solitary
aspect of life where the Word of God is irrelevant. And so
if the Word of God is so absolutely wonderful in its regulations,
in its decrees, in its directives and instruction, then there needs
to be, in a sense, the commensurate response to such a wonderful
Word should be obedience. Thus, Matthew Henry's point,
I think, is well taken at the end. That is, you know, those
that don't admire it, those that don't follow it, are
simply those that don't understand it. And so here is this, therefore,
it's because God's word is so wonderful that I obey. And notice, He looks at obedience in the
same way that the Apostle John looks at obedience. 1 John 5,
verse 3, and his commandments are not
burdensome. It is not a drag to obey the
Word of God if you're a child of God. It is a delight to obey
the Word of God if you're a child of God. Frankly, the only people
that it's a real drag to obey the Word of God for is for those
that actually are doing it out of a sense of self-righteousness,
or they're trying to earn their own salvation, or they're trying
to please somebody or something. But when the Spirit of God actually
dwells inside of us, there is an impulse to obey. That's what we get with the psalmist. It's natural. It is natural for
the child of God who has the Spirit of God in him to want
to obey his father's word. Then he says, verse 130, he says,
the unfolding of your words gives light. Now, notice, this is fascinating. commentators are divided over
the significance of the word unfolding because it literally
means the opening of your word and it's the word that would
be used frequently for the opening of a door. So for instance, the
Jewish commentator Cohen translates this, the opening of the door
of your word lets in the light. In ancient Palestinian homes,
you didn't generally have windows, but you had a door. And so when
the door was opened, that's where the light came in. And so the
psalmist may well be saying, your word is like a door. And when it's opened, that's
when the light comes in. Or the idea could be the opening
of your word in the sense of the unfolding of your word, the
opening up of your word in instruction in your word. These things are
not mutually exclusive, but what is the psalmist ultimately talking
about? He's ultimately talking about
the illumination that comes to us by the Holy Spirit as we're
in the word. There is a sense in which There
are actually very good biblical scholars who understand the history,
the grammar, the culture of the text and are no more saved than
this chair. It's not as if the Bible is of
such a nature that you have to be completely regenerated to
understand it. It's not true. In fact, some
of the most brilliant biblical scholars in terms of linguistics
and exegesis and grammar and culture and background and all
of that have been unbelievers. But there's one thing that they
cannot do. They cannot have the Spirit of
God apply the truth to God to their lives in a way that they
have light. That kind of light is something
that is communicated by the Word of God through the Holy Spirit,
and that's what the psalmist is saying. The opening up of
your word, the unfolding of your word, it gives light. And what's
the idea of light? The idea is guidance and direction
and blessing. Remember, in the Old Testament,
oftentimes, God himself is called light. The Lord is my light and
my salvation. And so the unfolding of God's
word brings light in the sense of it's a light to our path,
it gives us direction in life, but it also, in a sense, communicates
it to us, the very blessing of God himself. There is a way to
read the Bible where you miss absolutely everything, and there
is a way to read the Bible in which you get God. Now, I think all of us would
at least confess that we have been guilty more times than we'd
like to admit of reading the Bible and not getting anything
out of it. Right? In fact, sometimes new believers
can get kind of discouraged. You have two phenomenon among
new believers. You have those that can't get
enough of the word and those that are scratching their head
saying, and why is Chronicles in the Bible, right? But the fact is, is that when
we depend upon God and God's spirit opens the word to us,
there's light. And in that light, we receive
the blessing of God himself. Because there are other times
where you read and you stop right in your tracks, and you can't
go any farther. And you just, as it were, just
like Joshua, Moses has to leave the tent of meeting to do the
business of Israel, and Joshua is so enamored with God, he just
stays there in the tent. And notice, not all of God's
Word is equally like that. It's just like the ministry of
the Word. You know, sometimes you have
a Chronicles sermon, sometimes you have an Ephesians sermon,
okay? But the fact is, is it's all there to give us light. And so the then turns around
and says it gives understanding to the simple. That's good, of
course, because if there's anything that you that you want to acknowledge,
you don't want to say, God, I am among the wise and the proud. Because God talks about people
like that, and Jesus says stuff like this. I thank you, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that you did not reveal yourself to
the wise and the proud, but to babes. Right? That's the idea
here. Simple can have two connotations.
Sometimes, in fact, many times in the Proverbs, simple is the
idea of the inexperienced. They're at a crux in life. And they either will become a
fool or, yeah, become a fool, or they will become wise. But
they're not either one yet. They're at that fork in the road.
And so the idea of simple is inexperienced, untrained. And
so here, though, the connotation is probably a little different,
and the idea probably means the one that's humble and dependent. It's like the picture that the
psalmist gives us, I think it's 121 or so, or 122, right in there,
one of the ascent psalms where the psalmist says, I'm just like
a weaned child reposed against the Lord's breast. I'm not out
there trying to figure out all the stuff of the world. I'm just
actually content just to be right here next to the Lord. That just
simplicity, that humility, and so the Word of God gives understanding,
that is, perception and discernment to the simple. It helps to learn as much of
the Bible as you possibly can, right? And I would say that Bob Edwards
has probably studied the Bible longer than anybody in this room.
Anybody think they've studied the Bible longer than Bob? I
think Bob probably has got the record for the longest, the longest
career of studying God's word. And I can tell you that Bob would
tell us what we all know. And that is even if he had 10
lifetimes, he would never plumb the depths of God's word. It
is absolutely profound. You will never get to the bottom
of it. You can learn Greek. You can learn Hebrew. You can
learn Aramaic. You can learn all of the history.
You can learn literary genre. You can learn hermeneutics. You
can learn the whole nine yards. And the fact is that you could
have 10 lifetimes and never plumb the depths. The marvelous thing,
though, is that you don't need all of that to gain understanding
from the word. because it is the unfolding of
God's Word that gives light and gives understanding to those
that will just simply humble themselves and depend upon God. And so, actually, understanding
God's Word is not ultimately a matter of an IQ, is it? It's
a matter of hunger. It's a matter of humility. It's
a matter of thirst. It's a matter of dependence.
And so that's what the psalmist gets to. And so verse 131 verse
131 kind of seems to me like the the natural outcome of what
he said in the first two verses. Notice these three three verbs
opened, panted and longed. Now, this language, by the way,
this imagery of opening your mouth wide, God actually tells
the Israelites in Psalm 81, open your mouth wide and I will fill
it. In other words, I will satisfy
you. I will give you your heart's desire. And so when the psalmist
says here, I open my mouth wide, I pan it after your word, what
he's saying is, My heart's desire, the craving of my soul is for
your word. I have actually an eager, devoted
yearning for the word. Considering what it is, it is
wonderful, it gives light, it gives understanding. Considering
what it does, I want it. Now, he's already told us it's
more valuable to him than gold and much fine gold, that he desires
it more. Remember the Psalm 19, more than
the honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. There's a craving
for the word of God. And that actually, I think, is
the natural response of the child of God as he looks at what the
word of God is and what it does. He wants it. And so like newborn
babes, what long for the pure milk of the word that by it you
may grow in respect to salvation. I think if we had to make any
criticism of ourselves, it would be this. That our desires for
the word are not too strong. They're too weak. We need to
remember that there is always a a competition going on in our
own hearts, isn't there? a competition of desires. And frankly, there are times
where we desire to watch the news more than we desire to read
the Word of God. But the heart beats there, and
so you cultivate it, you fan the flame. And how do you do
that? By focusing on the glory of the
Word. And so the psalmist uses this
wonderful imagery. I opened my mouth wide. I panted. We have an old dog. Geneva, she's
almost 15 years old and she's golden retriever. She's been
the best dog that, uh, that anybody could have ever had. She's just
so sweet. And when I think about her, you
know, dying, I just, I, I, I cry actually. But, uh, you know,
she's so old now she doesn't see too good. She doesn't hear
too good. And, uh, and I noticed, you know
what she does a lot of. Which has a real downside because,
you know, she's not just old, her insides are old too. And
so when she does that, you know, it's kind of smelly, but, um,
you know, and you love her and you're like, Geneva, go lay down,
please. And she's, and, uh, you got this picture
of just trying to get oxygen. That's all I'm trying to do,
you know, or I'm trying to cool down, give me a break. And, uh,
and, and here's what the Psalmist says, you know what, when it
comes to your word, I'm like, I'm panting after your word. I want
it so much. Would to God that we wake up
tomorrow morning, panting after the word of God. So yearning
for the word because of what it is and what it does leads
to, Increased desire to obey the word, but it also leads to
prayer. Remember in the Bible, word and
prayer always go hand in hand. And so in 132 to 135, we have
a series of petitions. Verse 132, he says, turn to me
and be gracious. Turn and be gracious is the idea. He's pleading to God for attention
and affection. Now, there's something there's
something that's incredibly audacious. Sometimes people will come by
the church and they'll they'll they'll poke their head in my
door and say, hi, how are you doing? And I'm like, hey, fine.
And how are you? I don't want to bother you. I
know you're really busy. I don't want to you know, I don't want
to distract you. And and and then they'll they'll politely
kind of leave. And the psalmist actually says
to the God of the universe, Look at me. Turn your attention to
me. Be gracious to me. That is have
really warm affections towards me. The great thing about God
is that he's never too busy. To turn to us. And be gracious
to us. And so the psalmist is making
a plea, turn to me, that is, focus on me. I need you right
now. Be gracious to me. There is this
wonderful sense where this particular word, be gracious, has the idea
of I have certain genuine needs and you can meet those needs
and so show me the kind of favor that takes care of me. By the
way, there's nothing that's disrespectful. There's nothing that is not God-centered
about praying like that very thing. God, I am a needy, weak
person. Everything that I need, you are. So turn to me and grant to me
yourself and fill everything that I need. Actually, that is
a very God-glorifying prayer. That's not a me-glorifying prayer.
That's a God-glorifying prayer. If I were to say, well, God,
I'm reporting in for service, and I'm here to meet your needs
and take care of your business today, and so just give me the
list and I will get it done. That would be a me-centered prayer.
But when I come to God and I say, turn to me, be gracious to me,
fill me up, give me your fullness, meet my needs, meet what I need
today, and you're the only one that can do it, what I'm actually
doing is I am exalting God as the only one who can satisfy
my deepest longings. And so the psalmist said, here's
his first petition. After all of this extolling the
word of God, be gracious to me, turn to me. And then he says
this, this is really neat. He says, after the manner with
those who love your name, or the idea after the habit or the
custom that you have with those who love your name. The ESV puts
it like this, as is your way. New English translation, as you
typically do with those who follow you. As is your practice. Turn to me, be gracious to me,
as you do with all the other people who love your name. Turn
to me, be gracious to me, as is your custom, your habit, your
practice. Those who love your name, by
the way, this is a phrase that you see in the Psalms a handful
of times, and the idea is those who are devoted to you. Those
who are your followers, those who worship you. Now, you can't really demand
grace, can you? You can't say, God, give me grace,
turn to me and be gracious to me because I said so. You can't do that. You actually
really can't even say, God, give me grace because I need it. But you can say something like
this, God, give me grace because that's the kind of God you are. Give me grace because that's
the consistent pattern of how you deal with people who love
you. Um, in other words, you can,
you can appeal to God's consistency. You can appeal to the faithfulness
of his character. God turned to me and be gracious
to me as is your habit. Lord. And if you do it with these
people, I mean, I, I, I pretty much consider myself among these
people. And so I'm just asking you to do it for me, your proven
ways. God, I'm calling upon you to
act in ways that are consistent with the way that you've always
treated your people. Every once in a while, I'll talk
to somebody that will think that they cannot receive God's grace
and mercy. They'll think, years and years
ago, when they used to play my sermons on family radio before
Harold Campion went nuts, I get a call at a quarter to
six in the morning from someone in New Jersey and don't even
know how they got my phone number. And I still remember his name
to this day. Dolwyn Welcome. Now, obviously, I remember his
name for good reason. Never met anybody named Dolwyn.
And as I talked to Dolwyn, Dolwyn said, I was listening to your
sermon and I thought maybe you could help me. And I said, well,
what do you need help with? And he said, I want to repent
and receive God's mercy, but I can't. And I said, oh, so after talking
to him for a while, I realized that just like the man in the
iron cage in interpreter's house, he couldn't receive mercy because
he didn't think he could receive mercy. Do you know the only thing
that would get a person past that idea, I've sinned so bad,
I can't get God's grace anymore, is to realize that the dispensing
of his grace does not depend upon you and your character,
it depends upon him and his character. We can be people that talk ourselves
out of receiving mercy, but the psalmist is not one of them.
God, be gracious to me just like you always are. Be gracious to
me because that's who you are. Again, we appeal to God and our
security doesn't come by our performance. Our security comes
simply in the fact of who he is. He says then in the next petition,
first part of 133, he says, establish my footsteps in your word. And
so, again, he views himself as what? As one who's kind of tottering. And he needs to be stabilized
and he needs to be stabilized in the reliability of God's word.
And so he asks him, he says, you know what? I realize that
I need your grace. I need you to minister to me. I need you to meet my needs.
And here's one of my needs. My footsteps, my feet are not all
that stable. I am not nearly as stable as
I ought to be. I'm kind of shaky. One of the things that I can't
say that I really, really thoroughly enjoy is hunting with Matt Berilage. And the reason is, is because
somewhere in Matt's gene pool, there's a mountain goat. And there's this thing that happens
when you're eight, 9,000 feet up and you're walking on on rocks
that are just on top of other rocks. And then you start kind
of going down. I, I kind of start getting this,
this jiggly feeling in my knees. Anybody else experienced this?
You get this jiggly feeling in your knees and the more you go,
the more you're absolutely convinced you're going to die. because
you feel so unstable. Well, that's us spiritually.
Left to ourselves, we look like, you know, some little fawn that
just came out of its mama's womb and doesn't have its legs under
them. That's us spiritually, and so
the psalmist very naturally prays, you need to establish my footsteps,
make me secure in your word. Your word is reliable, your word
is firm, and that's where my feet need to be planted, and
so I'm asking you to plant my feet there. The second part of
133 says, don't let iniquity have dominion over me. The question,
of course, is the iniquity of his oppressors or his own iniquity. And I would suggest that he's
probably praying both. Don't let the iniquity of my
oppressors have dominion over me, but certainly don't let my
own iniquity have dominion over me. In other words, free me from
the terrible tyranny of the sin of others and my own sin. The psalmist David in Psalm 19. Praise acquit me of hidden faults. And keep your servant back. From presumptuous sin. Acquit
me of hidden faults and keep me back from presumptuous sin. The psalmist here is Lord. Don't
let sin tyrannize me. The sin of others, for sure,
but you know what? My biggest problem at the end
of the day is not the sin of others. My biggest problem is
my own sin. By the way, that's true in marriage.
At the end of the day, my biggest problem is not the sin of my
spouse. My biggest problem is my own sin. God, don't let that
sin tyrannize me. Don't let it reign over me. He's
praying for God's restraining grace. How often do we need that? Well, we need it like every nanosecond. How often do we realize that
we need it? Well, unfortunately, we don't
realize we need it nearly as much as we actually need it.
But for the psalmist here, he just simply says, don't let iniquity
have dominion over me. Don't don't let me screw up. Notice it's not, I'm not gonna
screw up, it's please save me from screwing up. You know, when you start to realize
actually how weak you are, delusions of strength will sink your ship
every time. You start to realize how weak
you are, you start to realize how unstable you are, you start
to realize, you know, like Pogo, we've met the enemy, it's us.
You start to realize that, then you start praying differently.
God saved me from me. That's what the psalmist does
now. He also make no mistake. He wants
to be saved from the rotten people around him. Do verse 134. Redeem
me from my oppressors. Once again, we see this connection.
Notice that in 134, redeem me from the oppression of man that
I may keep your precepts. And so remember, again, he sees
those that are oppressing him and trying to trip him up as
actually being an impediment for him to run freely in obedience
to God. And so he's praying God, in a
sense, kind of take them out of the way. Verse 135 a and make
your face shine on me, your servant. Where do you think you heard
that? Make your face shine upon your servant. You think you'd ever heard anything
like that before? Every time he went to church
growing up as a kid. The Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face to shine
upon you. May he lift up his countenance
and give you peace. To have God's face shine upon
us, that is the place of comfort and favor and blessing and happiness. In fact, the idea of God's face
shining upon us, if you think of, it's more than just God not
frowning at us. for God's face to shine upon
us is actually for us to be in that place where we are consciously
experiencing his comfort, his assurance, his nearness. And
that's what he prays for. And so, you know what Kalper
said behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. So sometimes
the smile is hidden. But the psalmist is praying,
let me soak in the full rays of your smile. Let it just shine on your servant. And then teach me your statues.
What's interesting, I looked up the word that's used, teach,
because he uses it so much. It's all throughout the book
of Deuteronomy, just dozens and dozens of times, frequently found
in the Psalms, dozens of times. But in Psalm 119, it's used one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times in Psalm
119, where he actually tells God in the imperative, teach
me. Isn't it interesting that that's
where he constantly goes back to? Teach me your statutes. And then he concludes the stanza
with a note of grief. He says, my eyes shed streams
of water. Some of the translations capture
it probably a little better. Rivers of tears gush from my
eyes. This probably comes right from
Jeremiah in Lamentations 3.48, my eyes run down with streams
of water because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
The picture is extreme grief. So here you have a person who
knows his own weakness. He knows that his feet are tottering.
He knows that he needs God to actually turn to him, be gracious
to him, give him what he needs. He is totally dependent, but
he's also totally determined. And then as he looks around,
he sees people who are doing what who are actually not keeping
God's law. That is, they're living in flagrant
covenant disobedience. And he is grieved over that. You know, the more you love God
and the more you are committed to keep his word, the more breaking
his law grieves our hearts. Because at the end of the day,
God's law is not an abstraction. When people break God's law,
they're not breaking some ethereal principle out in the netherworld. They are actually doing something
that's very personal, and the psalmist feels that. Just as
he feels the pull and the compulsion to obey God as a person, not
just precepts, but to obey a person, he sees disobedience to the law
of God as something incredibly personal. It is not just simply
they're breaking some abstract law out there. For the psalmist,
people that are walking in covenant infidelity are actually robbing
God of His glory that's due His name. They're robbing God of
the faithfulness that's due his name. And then on top of that,
those who are doing such a thing are accruing to themselves an
awful, awful penalty. And as he looks at that, he's
broken hearted over it. Sometimes what we do is we see
people who, and I think the psalmist is talking about people that
should know better. I don't think he's just talking about the run-of-the-mill
Babylonian. I think he's talking about people
that should know better. You know what we do is we see
people who should know better, and we pray for them for a while,
and then there's no change, and then we kind of get to the point
where we kind of just write them off. I'm done. And what we do is we we lose
that sense of a God were broken heartedness. As elders, we have to be on guard
against this all the time. Because weeks turn into months
and months turn into more months, and. You're you almost feel just
relieved when somebody just goes away. Just go away. And the psalmist says, I am so
brokenhearted when they break your law. As we look at people
that are living in disobedience to God who should know better,
we should first of all think, you know what? There's God who's
given them so much, so many resources, so many blessings, so much kindness,
and His name's being trampled. That unfaithfulness to Him, is
robbing him of the glory that's due his name. And the one doing
it, they're compounding, building up, storing up for themselves
more and more of a penalty. For the sake of that person and
for the sake of God's name, our hearts ought to break. Matthew Henry commonly, where
there is a gracious heart, there's a weeping eye in conformity to
Christ, who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. So as we finish pay, the staple
diet of God's people is what? The word and prayer. The word
and prayer. Guess what? You'll never outgrow
that. You'll never get to a place where
you go, wow, I'm so mature, I don't even need to need the Bible anymore. You'll never come to a place
where you say, I, I have such incredible communion with God,
I don't even need to pray anymore. It's just not true. Word and
prayer will be our staple diet until God calls us home and faith
is turned to sight. Right. And so thanks be to God
for his wonderful word. May we long for it, and may it
drive us to the throne of grace, making petitions like this. God,
save me from me. Break my heart from what breaks
yours. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this
stanza. We thank you for the truth of
it. And Father, we ask that you would open your word to each
one of us and shine the light of your word and your face right
into our hearts. We pray that you would transform
us by your word. We pray that you would realign
us by your word, that you would feed us on your word. Father, we thank you that you
are the one who was able to keep us from stumbling and to present
us in the presence of your glory, blameless on that day. We pray
that not only would you keep us safe until that day, but we
pray that we would grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.
A Word & Prayer Mosaic - Pe Stanza
Series An Exposition of Psalm 119
| Sermon ID | 627111327287 |
| Duration | 52:19 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Psalm 119:129-136 |
| Language | English |
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