Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. My zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words. Your promise is well tried and your servant loves it. I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts. Your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true. Trouble and anguish have found me out, but your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding that I may live. Read that far in God's word. The stanzas matched up to letter 18 out of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter Tzadeh is the equivalent of binding together English letter T followed by S. The first word here, as you see in your English translation, ESV, is righteous. In this stanza, righteousness is uppermost in the author's mind. It's our theme. as we deduce from him referring to righteousness five times. I'll just review that for you quickly, even though we just read it twice at the beginning in verse 137, once in verse 138, once in verse 142, and once again at the end of the stanza in verse 144, righteousness. Righteousness is the thread, therefore, that binds the whole stanza together, and the psalmist was glad to be declaring that the Lord our God is himself righteous. Righteousness of God is a massive theme throughout the Bible, not just in this stanza, not just in Psalm 119. Righteousness refers to God's perfect conformity to his own actions in comparison to his own intrinsic moral character. What did I just say? He takes actions that are consistent with himself. He does as he is. Righteousness refers to both who he is and what he does. The righteousness of God, if you want a shorthand way of saying it, is the integrity of God, that God aligns with himself. So we're celebrating the righteousness of God in this stanza. In verse 138, he then combines righteousness with faithfulness. Let me read verse 138. You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. This is done again in verse 142. If you look at 142, your righteousness is righteous forever and your law is true. That word true could also be translated faithfulness or firmness, consistency. Righteousness is combined with faithfulness, in verse 138, again in verse 142. Righteousness combined with faithfulness describe our Lord. And the author is going through a time of personal difficulty, as we'll see as we unpack these verses. And at that time, he was drawn to the Lord for these two twin characteristics, righteousness and faithfulness. They really belong together, they describe different angles of God's consistency to us, and it's not just describing our God. It's describing his word, as we'll see. It brings us to our main point. Because the Bible mirrors the character of God, we get to know Jesus through the word. In what aspects? Right, reliable, and required. I don't often do the alliteration of three R's for three points, but it worked well tonight. Verse 137 with right, God is right or righteous. Once more the verse, righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. The word rules throws us off a bit in English because we think of grammar school and perhaps if you're my age, chalkboard rules in front of the classroom. But maybe a better word would be rulings, verdicts, judgments. So right are your verdicts. It's the expression of the mind of God on a case, on every case, because God always is the ultimate ruler over all. And because God is always right or righteous, every verdict he gives is always right. That's what he's celebrating here. Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules or rulings or verdicts. And since righteousness is the very character of God, it's also the character of his word. The Bible mirrors God, as we'll see from verse 137, righteous are you, O Lord, so God is righteous, but notice in verse 144, Your testimonies are righteous. Testimonies being an aspect of his word. So God is righteous and his word is righteous, thus the idea of the Bible mirroring God, expressing or displaying who God is when we study his word. So his word is thoroughly proven, guaranteed to last. God's word are as righteous as his person and his words are as trustworthy as himself. Verse 137. B, right are your rules or rulings. And in verse 138a, you have appointed your testimonies in righteousness. There are two affirmations that what God says in his rulings are consistent with God's own righteousness, therefore aligned with God's own covenant faithfulness. He is who he said he is, and he does what he said he would do, and he's consistent all the time. That's what we're learning, right? Righteousness and faithfulness together. Verse 138, then, you have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. The word of God gives expression to the fact that God himself is right. He's right or righteous in his very being, and so that righteousness is mirrored through his word. Give you a couple of quick illustrations from other places in the Bible. Deuteronomy 32.4, all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness, and without iniquity, just and upright is he. That was Deuteronomy 32.4. How about Psalm 145, 17? The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. Psalm 145, 17. One more, Genesis 18, 25. Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just? Genesis 18, 25. So one thing we could do as a takeaway from our first point before we move to our second point. Anyone interested in doing right, living right, would do well to study the Bible. Whether it's statesmen, congressmen, government officials, they could study the Bible. Judges and law enforcement officers could and should study the Bible. Parents should study the Bible. Teachers, doctors, really anyone who believes that morality matters should look to the ultimate standard of right and wrong from God himself through his word coming back to our creator and how he designed the world to be conducted. The righteous words of the righteous God are completely predictable, trustworthy, which brings us to our second point now. On top of being right, there's the aspect of his word being reliable, God himself being reliable. Verse 139, it might sound familiar to you, and I'll explain why. My zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words. Now zeal can be positive. For example, zeal for God. But zeal can also be negative. For example, sinful jealousy might cause somebody to steal a car. Zeal. So here in verse 139, we read, my zeal consumes me. The reason that the servant, the author, the psalmist, was consumed with zeal is very interesting. What is the reason that he's consumed with zeal? He gives you the reason in verse 139b. Because my foes forget your words. He's really upset that God's word is being ignored by other people. Isn't that interesting? To have passion enough for God's word that you're upset when other people are forgetting his word. In his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalled the words he had heard when he was a child when his elders sought to explain the ruinous upheavals taking place in Russia while Solzhenitsyn was just a boy. Men have forgotten God, said his elders. That's why all this had happened. It stuck with him all those years. Men had forgotten God. And then Solzhenitsyn added this. If I were called to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century, hereto I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again, men have forgotten God. Consider the experience of our Lord Jesus. He looked at the temple. And he looked at the religious leaders in the temple. And Jesus concluded the same. Men had forgotten God, or the words of our verse, my foes forget your words. And he was zealous. So zealous that the zeal overtook him. It consumed him. Jesus was zealous enough to take the tables of the greedy ones of their merchandise and upend them with his own hands. He was even zealous enough to take a whip that he must have found nearby and chase people out of the temple with a whip. Zeal was consuming him, our Lord Jesus. And I need not remind you, but I'll do it anyway, in all that Jesus felt and all that Jesus said and all that Jesus did, he did not sin. Zeal can be holy indeed and very good. Jesus was consumed with zeal for the same reason our psalmist was consumed with zeal here in verse 139. Because the people around Jesus had forgotten what God's word said the temple was for. It was to be a house of prayer, not a place to make money. And while Jesus was still stirred with zeal, he also made a statement about his coming death and resurrection. A prophetic statement indeed. And through this statement, we get to know Jesus better, which is part of the main point I've said our sermons about. We get to know Jesus through his word. Listen to this. We get to know that Jesus is just as reliable as God the Father by the words in 1 John 2.19. Jesus made this statement. Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. In John 2.22, we read, when therefore Jesus was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that he had said this, and listen, they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Scripture is the word of God, and the words of Jesus are the word of God, so we get to know Jesus better through his reliable statement that he did, in fact, rise again the third day, as he said. I told you verse 139 would sound familiar and explain why. Moving on to verse 140, your promises have been thoroughly tested. Your servant loves them. God's spoken words have been tested all throughout redemptive history. Just a few quick examples. The promises of God endured the parting of the Red Sea in order to be faithful to his people. The fiery furnace, need I say more. The exile, the raising of the dead. And in each instance, God had promised and God fulfilled. So we could say your promises have been thoroughly tested. How many impossible things has God done anyway, making them possible for God? And God's promises have proved pure and lasting and righteous and faithful. And that's why he could say at the end of verse 140, he kind of blurts out here, your servant loves them. I mean, if we weren't such a, Presbyterian Church, I might ask for an amen there. His servant loves them. We love God's promises, that what he promises does come true. We bank on that. We hope in that. This love for the Word of God and the love for the promises of God is a sustained emphasis through all of Psalm 119. We're only 140 verses in. We've heard this before, right? That love for the Word of God, love for God, especially in the focus here, though, is the love for the promises of God. And each of us Christians shares this love. Every one of us is captivated by the promises of God, the promise of forgiveness of sins, the promise to never again flood the earth. Do you not think about that every time you see a rainbow? The faithfulness, the trustworthiness, the reliability. the covenant truth of our God, the promise of everlasting life to all who place their trust in his son, the Lord Jesus, whose blood covers and whose resurrection gives victory, the promise of seeing God in heaven one day, face to face. Do we not love the promises of God? Of course we do. We echo verse 140. But again, here we get to know Jesus through the word better. Think of Jesus with this idea. Your promises have been thoroughly tested. Your servant loves them. Jesus knew the words of his father. He knew that the words of his father in heaven were reliable. He said so. Jesus said in John 8, 26, he who sent me is reliable. And what I have heard from him, I tell the world. John 8, 26, Jesus knew the promises of God the father were thoroughly tested and they always held. They're pure, they're true, they're fulfilled. And Jesus loved the promises God the Father just as much as the psalmist love promises of God. Do we not, as children of God, love our father's promises? Building on that, verse 141 says, I'm small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts. What about the situation that the psalmist is now facing? The servant is despised. He says so in our verse. What should he do now? What should he do when he's despised? Or we could use the word hated another way to translate. The same word, the servant's response is given in verse 141. I do not forget your precepts. Yet I do not forget your precepts. I do not forget your precepts. That's his response to being despised. And what that means is I do not forget how I'm expected to speak. I do not forget what attitude I'm expected to take. I do not forget how I, as a child of God, am supposed to live before my Father in heaven. When the believer is despised, the word of God preoccupies his mind of what is expected, what is granted, what is provided. And having this status of being small, he starts off saying, I'm small, a lowly status of being a little guy and being considered unimportant or even despised, didn't matter. in comparison to what he is focused on, what he should focus on, and to retain the word of God clearly in his thinking and his comportment. I do not forget your precepts. Your precepts. His focus is on God's instructions to him. Our example we have kept referring back to in our study of Psalm 118 is Daniel, young Daniel, exalted above the local Babylonians. Why do I say exalted? Well, think about Daniel when he suddenly got promoted. Imagine his other fellows around him in Babylon, local Babylonian men. They had spent their whole lives in Babylon. They knew the deal. They were the same age as Daniel, perhaps. They didn't get that position. They didn't get promoted. Instead, this foreigner, exiled for Pete's sake, he got the promotion, the Babylonian men could say. What could be the reaction from the Babylonian men? They could despise Daniel easily, easily. When Daniel began to be despised, what should young Daniel do? Yet I do not forget your precepts. He should keep living according to God's precepts. One more illustration for you, much, much later than the story of Daniel. Paul wrote the same truth as a warning to another young godly man in the New Testament era who was given a ministry position in the kingdom of Christ. And here's what Paul the mentor wrote to the young pastor named Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.12. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. So when young Timothy began to be despised, when young Timothy began to be persecuted, what should young Timothy do? Is it similar to what Daniel should do? Is it similar to what the psalmist says he should do? Yes, it's exactly the same. Timothy should not forget God's precepts. Rather, he should keep living according to them. And sure enough, Paul actually wrote that in the very next verse. Paul went on to write next two verses what Timothy should do. Evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, Paul writes to Timothy, but as for you, Timothy, pay attention, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 2 Timothy 3, 13 to 14. According to Paul, his young student Timothy should not call down thunder from heaven upon people who despise him. Oh, no, quite the opposite. Instead, Paul said that Timothy should continue living exactly how Timothy was taught to live, that is, how God's precepts lay out for believers to live, which Timothy, in his case, had learned since his infancy in his family. They had taught Timothy that he was supposed to live for God no matter what comes. The haters of Timothy may forget God's precepts, but Timothy was never to forget God's precepts. The haters of the psalmist may forget God's precepts, but he does not forget God's precepts. The haters of Jesus may forget God's precepts, but Jesus never forgot the precepts of God the Father. You see how that mirrors the character of God and we get to know Jesus through his word? Moving on to verse 142, your righteousness is righteous forever and your law is true. How did the psalmist cope with the difficulties of life when other people didn't do what they were supposed to do, the things we've just begun to uncover? He turned to God, and he was comforted by the fact that God alone is reliable. The psalmist was preaching truth to himself. The psalmist is praying truth to God. He's telling God that God's law is true. Don't you think God knows that his law is true? And yet he prays here, your law is true, that your teachings are true, I can depend on it, I rely on you. Psalmist is coping with being despised by reminding himself of a bigger perspective, of an eternal perspective, namely the fact that the righteousness of God is an everlasting righteousness. Isn't that interesting how it's put at the start of verse 142? Your righteousness is righteousness forever. Well, it's put that way because it matches verse 144, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Namely, This eternal perspective about God also provides a clarity to his view of himself, to his view of his opponents, to his view of all of his difficulties. He has the eternal perspective of the righteous God, whose righteousness is how long? His righteousness is forever, and when you put that overlay on the despised status of our psalmist, it changes everything. King David, another example, he went through his share of days being despised, having opponents, and King David also reminded himself of the bigger perspective, the eternal perspective, again and again. One quick example, Psalm 145, 13. Your kingdom, David prays to God, your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations, Psalm 145, 13. So one takeaway of our study tonight of these eight verses is this. No matter how bad our situation, we keep reminding ourselves that our righteous God and our faithful God remains committed to his own glory and he will always do right by himself, for himself, for his glory. Our God is committed to his own covenant and his covenant impacts us. And the promises that he's made to us, he will always come through on. Our God remains committed to his own people. He has everlasting purposes for his righteousness, to be on display in the lives of his children. And our God is eternally righteous and he has spoken and he has written. Whatever God has spoken and written. is the reliable truth itself, whatever consideration that we might have to offer, whatever two cents we want to throw in, whatever new evidence or different perspectives that we might think that we are bringing to the situation could not, never does outweigh the fact that the righteousness of our God is an everlasting righteousness. He writes, I just find a little humor from this, the last couple words of verse 142, your law is true. The law of God is true, as another word for reliable or faithful. So much of what we hear from other sources is unreliable or even false, often inaccurate. But even those sources that are widely considered to be reputable and reliable can, in certain instances, give out false information. Who can we trust? It's an issue in our world. Many politicians lie, many directors of large corporations lie, many employees lie. How rare to find a Jesus who never lied. Years ago, the smaller Douglas Aircraft Company was competing with the big Boeing Aircraft Company. Douglas Company wanted to sell its first big jets to one of the major airlines, Eastern Airlines. A war hero named Eddie Rickenbacker, the head of Eastern Airlines, told Mr. Douglas that the specification and claims made by Douglas' company for the airplane called the DC-8 were close to Boeing's proposal on everything except noise suppression. Too loud. So Mr. Rickenbacker then gave Mr. Douglas one last chance to outbid, out-promise Boeing on this feature of noise suppression if you can just bring it down more. So Mr. Douglas went and consulted with his engineers. Mr. Douglas came back to Mr. Rickenbacker and reported that he could not make that promise, sir, can't make it any quieter. That's the noise of the engines at this point. Mr. Rickenbacker replied to Mr. Douglas, I already knew that you can't. I just wanted to see if you were honest. How rare to have someone who won't lie. Every word that God has spoken can be trusted, every word. This is talking about our Lord Jesus, every word. We get to know Jesus through even these verses of his word. It's truly wonderful. Verse 143, trouble and anguish have found me out, Your commandments are my delight. Once again, the psalmist says, trouble has found me. Anguish has come upon him. What's trouble? It's on the outside, things we can't control, they come at us. Anguish is on the inside, it's our personal response to whatever it is that we're facing. Trouble on the outside, anguish on the inside. Doesn't sound very nice. Has anyone been there? Right, both the external and the internal. Found him, says the psalmist. They've hunted him down, they've submerged him. Paul wrote about the exact sort of situation in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 5 with these words, fighting without fear within. What should the psalmist do? What should the apostle Paul do? The answer is here in our verse, 143. Trouble and anguish have found me out, but your commandments are my delight. What should we do? We should delight in God, delight in the commandments of God. If God tells us to do something, we delight to do it. We delight to do what we're told to do. Wait, is that an American mantra? We delight to do what we're told to do. No, nobody wants to do what they're told to do. Starting at two years old, they don't want to do what they're told to do. But a believer, someone who's being transformed by God, learns this. I delight to do what God commands me to do. We're changed. We do this because God's word is reliable. because we're getting to know Jesus better through it. We have one verse left, our third point, required. The aspects of the Bible mirroring the character of God, it's right, it's reliable, now required. Verse 144, your testimonies are righteous forever, give me understanding that I may live. Notice what the psalmist prays for in our concluding verse. The key prayer is for understanding and the result would be that he could live. We need discernment from God, we need understanding. The psalmist knew the right prescription for his troubled situation, trouble and anguish. What should he do? The prescription is to look to God for the joy that the servant had in the word, and as he did so, he looked to the beauty of the word and the power of the word, and as he prayed for insight, he prayed for understanding of the word. This is the prescription for the servant to save his own life, to live, for him to live. Look at it carefully. Give me understanding that I may live. That's why I use the word required, because if we don't have God and his word, we don't live. In verse 141, he was small and despised. Verse 142, trouble and anguish had found him. Yet in verse 142, God's law is true. Verse 143, his commandments are his delight. But now in verse 144, God's testimonies are righteous. And best of all, The Bible will go on being this forever. I said I would come back to it. Psalm, verse 144 matches verse 142. 142 says your righteousness is righteous forever. Now 144 says your testimonies are righteous forever. That's the best thing, that the word of God will go on being righteous forever. And there's nothing that can change that. He rejoices in verse 142 of God's righteousness, the character of God, and he rejoices in verse 144, the word from God that's also righteous. But my point here, and the third point, is that God's word is required for us. Brothers and sisters, we can't make it without God and his word. We can't go on living without Christ and his redemption. unless we have God. Through his word, his word is Jesus. The word became flesh on one. So God and his word are required for us to make it to the end of our time on earth. We need God to show us about himself in order for us to survive our dangerous journey, our trouble, our anguish, and to live everlastingly. We need cleansing to appear before the holy God. It's the word of God that brings life. Jesus says this very thing. John 14, six, I am the way. I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. It's required. You've gotta have Jesus, who is the word. Jesus is the life. He said it, I am the life. I'm the everlasting life. He's the way to get to God the Father. The only way to have spiritual life and life beyond this world, the afterlife, as people call it, is through Jesus Christ. Without understanding Christ, we'll die. But in contrast, Glad to announce the good news to you. By true faith in Jesus, we will live. John 17, three, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. This is eternal life, to know God the Father and to know God the Son, who is Jesus. This is eternal life, says the Bible. Knowing God is eternal life. Let us know God the Father. Let us know God the Son. It's required. What have we seen tonight? Because the Bible mirrors the character of God, we get to know Jesus through his word. In what aspects? Right or righteousness? Reliable? Trustworthy? Required. Conclusion. Sometimes a Christian's like a pinball. Steel ball, you know, that's shot out by the launcher, bouncing all over, making all kinds of noise, and lighting up the whole machine, banging up against the bumpers, fast as can be, finally seeking rest as it comes down by gravity, down the decline, only to be slapped by the flippers back up into the fray and bounding this way and that. Christians like that path. Bounding around like the pinball. We bounce from the bumpers. bumpers of enemies, the harshness of people, the troubles of life, the internal anguish we feel about any given situation. We like to feel stable, but we feel thrown around as vigorously as this pinball. We get a little bit of decline, we think we're gonna rest some, and get slapped right back up again, more and more in the life of the believer in the Old Testament, the life of the believer in the New Testament. We looked at Daniel, we looked at Timothy. We're staggering around, even our Lord Jesus. Did he not have troubles? Did he not have anguish? In the middle of our faltering and wobbling, we need something solid. We need something reliable. We crave it. We literally crave reliability. We need something stable. The righteousness of the Bible reflects like a mirror the righteousness of God. God is our stability. It's our God who steadies us. It's our Lord Jesus who pulls us back to safety and rest. It's our faithful Savior who upholds us. This has actually been a sustained emphasis in Psalm 119, that despite suffering, the psalmist will hang on to God's word and love God and love his word. It's also a sustained teaching in the New Testament, such as 2 Corinthians 1.5, as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, So through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. Like the pinball going all over abundantly, we also have abundant comfort through Christ's grace. We get both, we get suffering and we get comfort. We get the trouble, distress, and suffering and what a delight to come back to God's word, understand what it says, have peace in our hearts. We delight in his commands, we do what he says. We know that the promises of God for comfort and relief already ours and they're coming in greater amounts. We hang on to God's Word because it grants endurance for now and in the end it grants relief. 2nd Peter 2.9, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly. Let's pray. Father in heaven we thank you that in the page of the Bible we find