And we'll be reading the 18th stanza, the Tzadi stanza, verses 137 through 144 of Psalm 119. Please hear the word of God. Righteous are you, O Lord, and upright are your judgments. Your testimonies, which you have commanded, are righteous and very faithful. My zeal has consumed me because my enemies have forgotten your words. Your word is pure, very pure, therefore your servant loves it. I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is truth. Trouble and anguish have overtaken me, yet your commandments are my delights. The righteousness of your testimonies is everlasting. Give me understanding and I shall live. This is the word of the Lord. May he, by his spirit, teach us and convict us through his word this morning. You may be seated. We have been meandering through Psalm 119 over the last two years. If you look at the length of it, you can maybe see why it's taking us a while. We're treating each stanza, I think, as it's meant to be, as its own unit, its own sermon, so to speak. And last time we were in the 17th stanza, the Pei stanza, where the writer of Psalm 119, which I think is David, focused on the wonder of God's word, that overall category of the wonderful word of God. In verse 129, he opens Stanza 17 by saying, your testimonies are wonderful. That means amazing. Therefore, my soul keeps them. And then he went on to describe in the next seven verses, how the believer that takes the wonderful word of God is filled by the word of God and fruit is produced by the wonderful word of God. The believer is filled when his mind, his mouth, and God's well of mercy is opened wide for him. and the fruit that is produced is sanctification, separation from the world, having the sweet fellowship with God himself, and a sorrow over the sin even of the wicked. That was a few weeks ago. It's always nice to at least remember where we've been at least recently. But now we're in the 18th stanza, that Sadi stanza. And David here narrows his focus from the wonderful word of God to an aspect of God's wonderful word, and that being the righteousness of God's word, the righteousness of God's word. The Hebrew letter Saadi is very similar to the word for righteousness, but it's also the first letter of the word righteousness in Hebrew. So it's no surprise if you look at what we've just read, there's five or six references to God's righteousness and the righteousness of God's word. because that's the word that begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet that is signified by this very stanza. And so to focus on the righteousness of God's word is one aspect of the wonderful word of God here in stanza 18. And every pastor should enjoy this 18th stanza, because it's really written like a sermon. You have an introduction, you have a body of descriptions and applications, and you have a closing. I think that's the best way to see it. If you look inside your bulletin, there is a brief outline of how we'll look at this stanza. It might be helpful for you to see where we're going. It might be helpful for you to see where we've been when we start going through. But I think we can look at these eight verses, 137 through 144, as a small sermon where the first verse, verse 137, is really a declaration of the righteousness of God and His word. That's the theme statement. And once you get that then, verses 138 through 143, I think we have three pairs of verses or three pairs of lines and verses then that describe God's righteousness and it applies it to the believer's life, how we should respond. That's the bulk of this stanza. But then the conclusion in verse 144 is in a closing admonition of righteousness. So you have a declaration of righteousness in the beginning, then a description of that righteousness in the middle, but then an admonition of righteousness at the end to exhort the hearer to pursue God's righteousness. So with that brief introduction, Let us look at verse 137 and the introduction to the stanza, the theme to the stanza, the declaration of righteousness. And the psalmist says in verse 137, righteous are you, O Lord, and upright or righteous are your judgments. Righteous are you, O Lord, and upright are your judgments. I think you could restate that by saying God is righteous. And therefore, so is his word. God is righteous, and therefore, so is his word. And as we've been going through Psalm 119, hopefully you've caught it that we try to repeat ourselves that we love the word of God. We delight in the word of God, not because the word of God sakes it itself, but because we love and delight in the God of the word. We do not worship the word of God. But we worship the God of the Word, and the God of the Word is the God who is found and represented and revealed by His Word. Hopefully you've heard this before, because it's very easy for us to almost look at the Word of God as an idol and something we worship, but it's what the Word of God presents. We love and cherish the wonderful Word of God because it represents and reveals the heart and the nature of our God. And we search God's Word because it is there that He is found. We also find what he desires and what he commands for us to serve and to love him in response as well. And so we see that principle we've been trying to look at all the way through Psalm 119, but here the principle is, because God is righteous, his word displays and declares his righteousness. Scripture says that out of the overflow of the heart, what? The mouth speaks, that's for us. But in a similar way, the word of God shows forth the heart of God. And since God is righteous by nature, his word displays his righteousness. And that's the theme for this stanza. And so first of all, we see that God is righteous. What does that mean, the righteousness of God? How is God righteous? Well, the righteousness of God means that he always acts in accordance with what is right. That's easy to remember, isn't it? That God is righteous means that he always acts in accordance with what is right. But how do we know what is right? Well, God himself is the final standard of what is right. It might seem like a tautology or something, or a circle, but God always does what is right, but it's his nature, it's his very nature to always be righteous. He is the standard of righteousness and he always does right. So all of his ways are righteous and just. Our God is perfectly righteous in what He declares, what He does, what He decrees, what He decides, what He desires, what He ordains. And since God is sovereign over all things, and if everything He does, says or desires or decrees is righteous, that gives us great comfort. One hymn that we often sing in our church begins with, whatever my God ordains is right. His holy will abideth. That's a song written in time of great trial but whatever my God ordains is right. God's own holiness is the standard and whatever conforms to his holy character is right because God is righteous and everything about him is righteous and therefore God's word is righteous. It follows then that what God has said, what he has recorded in his word is perfectly reflective of and revealing of his righteousness to us. As we've seen already in our worship service, and it wasn't pre-planned really, God's righteousness is something we desperately need, but we do not have outside of Christ. And as believers, if we were to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, which I think we're told to do, We need to be serious about seeking God and his righteousness and his righteous word. And liberally throw out all sin and all the hindrances that would keep us from pursuing the righteousness of God now that we are in Christ Jesus. I think that that last thought as we're pursuing the righteousness of God, we need to be reminded and to be humble that we need to be purposely proactive and sensitive to the incessant and the tireless creeping in of the world into our lives and the influence that the world has on us to keep us from the righteousness of God that helps us to rationalize our own lack of righteousness and lack of obedience. We need to continually come before God seeking his righteousness and being aware of the world's influence, both its immorality, but also its triviality that keeps us from pursuing the righteousness that God desires us to pursue. So that very first verse, righteous are you, O Lord, and upright or righteous are your judgments. There's a declaration of God's righteousness and therefore the righteousness of his word. I think what we see then in the next six verses is we see three pairs of verses, each describing a truth or declaring a truth of God's righteousness, and then a personal application by David, by the psalmist. And remember, as we're looking at the righteousness of God's word, The righteousness of God's word also describes the righteousness of what? The righteousness of the God of the word. And so, first of all, in verses 138 through 139, seeing the description and application of God's righteousness in his word, we see God and his word are righteous and trustworthy. God and his word are righteous and trustworthy. That's point one in the body of this sermon. Verses 138 and 139, says, your testimonies, which you have commanded are righteous and very faithful. Another way of understanding very faithful is very trustworthy. My zeal has consumed me because my enemies have forgotten your words. So we see a description of his righteousness, but then an application or reaction to it. And the description is that God's testimonies are righteous and very faithful or very trustworthy. God's righteous word is faithful and faithfully given. Some of your translations make the faithfulest not so much be the faithfulest of the testimonies, but the faithfulest of the God of the testimonies to give them to us. And both are true. God's word is faithful and faithfully given. God himself, because he is righteous and does right, can be trusted as faithful. to be unfaithful or to be untrustworthy would not be righteous. It would be against his nature. So he's faithful and trustworthy. And therefore his righteous word is faithful and trustworthy as well. So God's testimonies, because they are righteous, can be trusted or faithfully given. And we can faithfully trust in God's righteous word that is faithfully given. But there's an interesting application to this here. In verse 139, the psalmist says in response to that, my zeal has consumed me because my enemies have forgotten your words. What should result when we see God's trustworthy, His faithful righteousness in His word is there should be a zealousness that forms in us for God's faithful righteousness to be received and be reflected in the world. When we see the righteousness of God in His word, We will greatly desire to see this righteousness received and reflected in all men and women in the world. But we do not see God's righteousness reflected and received by the world. In fact, when we see others who forget, notice it says, said, my enemies have forgotten your words, that's That's not just say, oh yeah, it's not one of those passive forgettings. It means they purposely forgotten. They don't care. They've turned their back on God's righteousness. They've turned their back on God's word. When we see others forgetting purposely God's righteous word, then it should consume the believer. It should destroy and disturb him because we love our God. We want to see his righteousness proclaimed and seen and honored and not defamed. And we've seen this before in Psalm 119. that the reaction of the righteous one in Christ, because of the righteousness of Christ, to the forgetting of the righteousness of God in our society, it leads us to have a hatred over wickedness and a sorrow over sin of others. We've seen that many times in Psalm 119. In verse 53, David writes, indignation has taken hold of me because of the wicked. Hatred because they've forsaken your law. In verse 136, at the end of the last stanza, we read, rivers of water run down from my eyes because men do not keep your law. The righteous long to see God's righteousness displayed in others and everywhere. And it consumes them when unrighteousness is displayed instead. And sometimes we look at the imprecatory Psalms where David is calling down curses on those who are attacking God It's usually not because they're attacking him. It's because they're attacking God and His righteousness. That's where that flows from. A love of God and His righteousness and a hatred when it's being defamed, dishonored. So it consumes the Christian when unrighteousness is displayed instead. And it concerns the Christian for the souls of the unrighteous. And so God's word is righteous and trustworthy. And there should be responsive zealousness for God's righteousness. The second thing in verses 140 through 141, the second pair, your word is very pure. And that word for pure means refined, tested, and tried as in gold or metal that's being refined and made pure. Your word is very refined or tested. Therefore your servant loves it. But look at the reaction. I am small and despised. Yet I do not forget your precepts. The description here is that God's Word is pure and that word, word means promises. It's emphasizing the promises of God's Word. And the word for pure emphasizes the testedness, the triedness, the purifiedness of God's Word. It has the idea then of being tested, that God's Word and God's promises are not just trustworthy, they're tested and tried and proven that we can trust in them. God's Word And God's promises are not just ideals or platitudes that we can just spout out and they mean nothing. They're tried and tested and proven. We think of the promises that God gives us in his word, that the soul who would come in repentance and faith, the one who calls upon the name of the Lord will not be cast out, but he will be saved. That's a promise. God himself says, I will not cast you out. I will never forsake you. I will guard you as the apple of my eye. I'll keep you underneath the shadow of my wings. We've read that already. There are multiple promises of God. And they're proven, they're tested. They don't fail. I will build my church, Christ says. That's a promise. And the gates of hell will not prevail against them. Christ promises to return for his people. The resurrection is promised. The final judgment and the consummation of all things is promised. The complete eradication of sin and all of its effects is promised. It's tried and true. And because God's word is a tested ground of promises that we know in our own lives, the promises are true. We can trust for all the rest of them to be true as well. And so what's the reaction then to that aspect of God's righteousness and his righteous word? Well, there should be a humble trust in God's proven righteous promises. He says, it seems kind of surprising. I am small. I'm insignificant and despised. Yet I do not forget your precepts. The one who follows and promotes God's righteousness will be put down and persecuted in this life. And you'll seem insignificant. You even seem despised and put down. but he will surely also experience unjust actions and attitudes from the world. Yet, unlike the world in verse 139 that forgets the righteousness of God, the one who's in Christ will not forget or neglect the word of God. Instead, he will cling and trust to it and continue to try it. That word that's refined, he will be refined by it as he humbly clings to it and does not forget it. So already you've seen maybe two characteristics of the righteous in Christ. They have a zeal for God's righteousness, for it to be displayed and for it to be defended, but they have a humility in light of God's righteousness and before others. Does this show forth in your life as one who's been saved by the righteousness of Christ? Well, the other pair of verses that show a description and an application of God's righteousness and verses 142 and 143. And here we see God and his word are righteous and trustworthy. Yes. And tested. Yes. But now they're also timeless and true. I think this may be, is the most important verse of this section of Psalm 119 verse 142 and 143. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. It's timeless. It's everlasting. And your law is truth. It's timeless and true. It's everlasting. And he says in response, trouble and anguish have overtaken me. Yet your commandments are my delights. The description of God's righteousness in his word is it's an everlasting. It's a timeless and true righteousness. God is infinite and eternal. And so is His righteousness. His righteousness has no limit. There's no expiration date on His righteousness. There's no boundaries. It's that phrase, your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. It's repeated in the last verse of this stanza, shows the weightiness of God's righteousness, the permanence and the limitless of God's righteousness. It explains why James in James chapter 2 says that if you break even one of God's righteous laws, you've broken them all. God is eternal and he's entirely righteous. And you cannot just transgress part of God. It's an all or nothing thing. When God is eternally and perfectly righteous, sin is sin. And one sin destroys the whole thing. It's a sin against the entire righteousness of God. In 1st John, John says that sin is lawlessness, sin is breaking God's law. The law, just like his word represents him, his character, his heart, it represents him personally. This also explains why hell is real. To sit against God's everlasting, infinite righteousness requires everlasting judgments. And for God to be righteous and just, and really justice and righteousness are synonyms in scripture. For God to be righteous and just, this must be. There's no other way that to sin against God's everlasting righteousness, it requires everlasting judgment. If it were not true, then God himself would not be righteous and just. It also explains why Christ and Christ crucified is necessary. To stand justly before God, an everlasting righteousness is required. And to satisfy the injustice against God's everlasting righteousness that our sin commits, there must be an infinite righteous sacrifice required. Christ in his active obedience in his life on earth as the God-man could only provide such righteousness. And Christ in his passive obedience as the God-man suffering for our sins could only satisfy the justice of God. So it is only through Christ and his perfect righteous life and death that reconciliation to our perfectly righteous God can be made so that God can rightly be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ Jesus, as Romans chapter three tells us. So God and his word are righteous, but it's an everlasting, it's a timeless and true righteousness. The application here by the psalmist, he says, trouble and anguish have overtaken me, yet your commandments are my delights. Within the trouble and the anguish of an unrighteous world, the Christian is to delight in the timeless righteousness of God. There will be trouble and anguish of soul in a world that opposes God and his righteousness. If you're in Christ, you know this. There will be trouble and anguish of the soul in such a world of unrighteousness. But understanding and delighting in God's righteousness and his righteous word is enough. That's what the psalmist is saying. God's word is truth. And it's a truth that does not change, but it lasts forever. And so we can delight in its everlasting righteous character as an oasis in the midst of a dark world. And we can delight in God's everlasting righteous character in the midst of a, of a persecuting and troublesome world, because we know that God's righteousness and his people will be vindicated in the end. God's righteousness will prevail and be glorified and justice will be served. And so we can have great comfort and even delight in God's righteous word. Now, even the midst of trouble and anguish. Not many moments ago, we sang from a hymn that expressed both these delights in God's righteousness now and everlasting as well. And we sang, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name. That now I can delight in God's righteous word and his righteousness, because what Christ has done. But that last verse, as most good hymns do, they look to the future. And we also see we can delight in God's everlasting righteousness. When I shall launch in worlds unseen, oh man, I then be found in him, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. And so we see as well the characteristics of the righteous man. Yes, he's to be zealous for God's righteousness. He's to be humble before God's righteousness. But he also will delight in and love God's righteousness and his word. So that's the theme, the introduction that God is righteous and so is his word. Then there's some descriptions, applications that God's righteousness is trustworthy. It's tested and it's timeless and true. And you see the applications of that and the characteristics of the righteous one. And then we get to the closing in verse 144, the closing admonition of righteousness. And David says, the righteousness of your testimonies is everlasting. He repeats that. I think that's the centerpiece of this stanza that God's righteousness is everlasting. And his response is his exhortation at the end of the sermon is give me understanding and I shall live. And the exhortation to those of you here today, brothers and sisters, is give us understanding that we might live. God's word is righteous. And there's this emphasis on the depth, the weightiness of his righteousness. God's word represents the infinite, eternal righteousness of God. And so the exhortation is to plead for understanding and conviction of this righteousness, and then the ability to live accordingly. with the righteousness of God on display in our lives. The psalmist is basically saying this, let me understand your righteousness and give me the ability to live it out. Or if he is more wordy, he might say, this righteousness from your word that reflects your glory, oh God, it's trustworthy, it's tested and it's timeless and it's true. So by it, sanctify me by conforming me to it. so that it will be shown forth from me and that I might be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O righteous God. But we must first recognize that we cannot, I repeat, we cannot pursue and reflect the righteousness of God on our own. We cannot. We can never possess this perfect righteousness that God demands from us on our own power, on our own ability. Romans chapter three rightly declares that no one is righteous. What's the rest of it? Not even one. Isaiah 64 tells us that all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. Even the best thing we can do. They're like filthy rags before God because of our sin. This is why Martin Luther hated the righteousness of God. Read about his conversion. He had the point before he was converted that he hated the righteousness of God because he knew of its perfection. He knew of its everlastingness and he knew he did not have it. And he only understood God's righteousness in the sense of what he called his active righteousness. The just punishment on the unrighteous sinner. That's how he's understanding it. So he read in Romans chapter 1 verse 16 and 17, he read about the righteousness of God being revealed from the gospel. It brought him terror because he only saw it as being the justice that our sins deserve being revealed to us. He's saying, what hope is there? And so he hated the righteousness of God. But then God, by his grace and his mercy, as Martin Luther meditated upon Romans chapter one, verse 17, that the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel for those who had placed faith in Christ. His eyes were then unblinded, his heart was opened up and it was revealed to him that the righteousness that was being spoken of in Romans was the righteousness of God that's passive. That was his words, not mine, but it was a passive righteousness, but passive in the sense that I can't conjure it up. It's the righteousness of Christ that's imputed to me at salvation. So when the believer repents and places his faith in Christ, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer, covering him like the shadow of the wings of God, so he could stand before God, not with his righteousness, but with the righteousness of Christ given to him. In saving the unrighteous sinner, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to him. And this justly declares righteous, the one who repents and puts his faith in Christ. At that point, then Luther was born again and he experienced a greater love by far for God's righteousness than he had previously hated that same righteousness. And so as we prepare for the Lord's table, if you're not a Christian, please hear me. You're not to participate in the Lord's table, but it should be a blessing to you and a great conviction to you to see the gospel of Christ symbolized and spoken in your midst. And so if you're a Christian, if you're not a Christian, as we prepare for the Lord's table, I implore you to be reconciled to God by the righteousness of Christ. Christ's righteous life and death are your only hope. Come to the one in repentance and faith who knew no sin, but became sin for sinners like you, that you might become the righteousness of God. Come like Luther to understand what Romans 3 continued to teach, that now, now the righteousness of God apart from the laws revealed, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. And I implore you to see the gospel of Christ spoken and symbolized for you in the Lord's Supper that you'll be seeing in just a few moments. And our prayer is that you would feel the weight upon your shoulders that you cannot participate in the Lord's Supper because you're not under the blood of Christ. You have no righteousness imputed to you, and you have no hope. But if you're a Christian, as we prepare for the Lord's table, rejoice in the love of God, which has provided the righteousness of God in Christ. Come zealously and humbly before the table with delight and love for the righteous one. and be nourished by Christ to be able to live righteously by faith in and for him. Let us pray. Dear Holy Father, Lord, we thank you that even in the Old Testament, we can see the righteousness of our perfect God and Father in heaven. And we can see that the utter need that we have for such righteousness and that we have none in and of ourselves. We thank you, Lord, that we live on this side of the cross, so to speak, that we know the full story. There's no more shadows to be dispelled. We see the full light of Christ and his life and his death and his sacrifice and his righteousness, and we have no excuse whatsoever. So rejoice, Lord, that you provided a perfect righteousness, the righteousness of God and Christ that could be imputed to us, those who repent and believe and lay down their lives for Christ, who has laid down his life for sinners. I pray, Lord, you'd apply this righteousness to those who are outside of Christ today, that by your spirit, you'd bring them to repentance and faith, and this would be the day of salvation for them. And I pray, Lord, as we now turn to the Lord's Supper, you would prepare our hearts and our minds to see the solemnity of the Lord's Supper, but also to be able to celebrate in the great joy of the Lord's Supper, Lord, that symbolizes and reminds us of what Christ has done. And we pray, Lord, that His grace would be given to us at this time to encourage us and to nourish us and to build us up in Him and as His body. And may you be honored and may Christ be proclaimed as well. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.