Please take out your Bibles and turn to Psalm 119. Psalm 119, and this morning what I'd like to do is just approach a passage of Scripture and study it with you.
And in studying the Bible, what we do is we observe the text, we then go into the interpretation of the text, and then we go into the application of the text. And that's what I'd want to do with Psalm 119 this morning with the understanding that every time we open the Bible, what we're wanting to do is get to know Jesus more. And to know Him more, to love Him more, to worship Him, and grow together as a family as we do that together as a family of God. And so that's my purpose and my desire this morning is to go to Psalm 119 and fall more in love with Jesus than we were when we first got here. And before we do anything, we start with prayer.
So let me do that. Heavenly Father, we are now opening the Word of God that is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. Nothing is hidden from you. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before you as we go to your Word, and we see ourselves as we really are, and we see you as you really are. Show us your glory today and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. Pour your Spirit upon us.
Give us understanding, for apart from your Spirit, we cannot understand spiritual things. And I pray for this for myself and for this family gathered here today, the body of Christ. And I pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Psalm 119, it's an acrostic psalm. It's a poetic technique in Hebrew to begin every verse or every series of verses with a particular letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And in this poem, in Psalm 119, each successive line of eight lines in the poem begins with the following letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So when you look at your Psalm 119, you might have the word aleph above the first eight verses. What that means is that every verse in that eight verses begins with the letter aleph. When you look at the next section, you'll see beit. That means that the next eight verses begin each word with the letter beit, and so on. This is a poetic technique in Hebrew, and it represents the fact that we're looking at poetry. And what this does is it shows that there's a completeness.
If one sentence is missing, it makes everything incomplete. So you know that you've got a complete poem when you see that every letter of the Hebrew alphabet is involved here in the first word of every consecutive verses of eight verses. And so this is the way the psalmist is saying this is a poem. The central theme of the poem, as we observe, we're just observing now, is the law. When you read Psalm 119, you're going to read the word law or its synonyms, decrees, ordinances, word, precepts, statutes, commandments, promises.
Almost every line contains one of the synonyms for law. Let's just look at verses one through eight as a representative text of Psalm 119, who walk in the law of the Lord, verse one. Verse two, who keep his testimonies, verse three, who walk in his ways, verse four, your precepts, verse five, your statutes, verse six, your commandments, verse seven, your righteous rules, verse eight, your statutes. This pattern continues throughout the whole psalm.
And each synonym linked with the word your or his. So it's not just in verse one the law, it's the law of the Lord. In verse two, it's not just testimonies, it's his testimonies. Verse three, his ways, verse four, your precepts, verse five, your statutes, verse six, your commandments, verse seven, your righteous rules, verse eight, your statutes. So what this is saying is that the law belongs to the Lord and obedience to the law then is obedience to the Lord. Love for the law is a love for the Lord. Therefore, obedience to the law is not a legalistic thing, it's a personal thing. It's an intimate thing because you love the Lord so much that you're obeying his law.
It's a personal relationship and God interacts with his people through his law. The law cannot be detached from the psalmist's relationship with the Lord and thus your obedience to the law cannot be detached from your relationship with the Lord. The psalmist expresses a biblical response to the hardships of life by coming to the Lord through his law.
What do we do when we face hardships and trials? The first thing we do is go to the Lord. We read his word, his law, his precepts, his testimonies, for they are sure. The vocabulary of the psalmist is the vocabulary of a Christian. Look again at verse one. He walks in the law of the Lord. He keeps his testimony. He seeks them with his whole heart.
He walks in his ways. Verse four, he keeps them diligently. Verse five, he keeps the statutes. Verse six, his eyes are fixed on his commandments. Verse seven, he learns your righteous rules. Verse eight, he keeps your statutes. Throughout the whole psalm, the relationship between the psalmist and the Lord and the law of the Lord is a relationship of action words. Walk, keep, seek, do, learn, store, teach, declare, delight, meditate, fix, not forget, long for, observe, turn, confirm, fear, trust, hope, speak, comfort, indignation. All these are his reaction and his interaction with the law of the Lord.
And it's an interaction of action. He is moving forward pursuing holiness as he pursues the Lord in his obedience to the law. And his response of worship involves his whole being. In verse two, you see his whole heart involved. In verse six, you see his eyes fixed on all his commandments. Verse seven, you see him with an upright heart. Verse 131, he's using his mouth. Verse 171, he's using his lips. Verse 105, your word is a lamp to my feet. Verse 149, he uses his voice. Verse 172, he uses his tongue.
Throughout the whole psalm, the psalmist will involve his heart, his soul, his eyes, his mouth, his feet, his voice, his lips, his tongue in praising the Lord in his relationship with the Lord in his obedience to the law of the Lord. He describes the law in terms such as delight. In verse 14, he says, in the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. In verse 16, I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Verse 24, your testimonies are my delight.
They are my counselors. And he keeps repeating this over and over, the delight that he has in the law of the Lord. He describes the law as a light and a lamp unto his feet. In verse 105 and verse 130, he talks about the peace that comes in his obedience to the law because of his relationship with the Lord in verse 165. He talks about the law teaching him about salvation in verse 41 and verse 81. So in this stage of observation, what do we learn? Well, I learned that this man loves the Lord. He loves to walk in obedience to the law of the Lord, not in order to earn the Lord's favor but because of the grace of God's favor upon him.
And now in that relationship with the Lord, he loves the Lord and wants to express that love through his obedience to his word, the law. So this is what the observation stage is like. We're just looking at the passage. We're taking in things and going through it again and saying, oh, I didn't notice that the first time. And we're just in the observation stage.
The next stage that you move to is now the interpretation stage. So let's take verses 1 through 8 as a representative text. And let me read verses 1 through 3. Blessed, I look up the word blessed, it has the meaning of happy. Happy, blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed, happy are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. The happy way is the straight and narrow way because that way leads to Jesus.
One of my favorite songs is Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season.
His leaf will not wither and whatever he does shall not perish. That man, that woman is very happy as they keep their eyes on Christ and on his word. God's people walk in holiness because God is holy. His word is holy. Jesus said in John 17, 17 by his disciples when he prayed to his father, Father, sanctify them by your truth.
Your word is truth. Make them holy as they read your word, as they observe it, as they interpret it, and as they apply it. Spurgeon said this book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book.
We must be people of the book. Those who seek God do not seek their own sinful desires and pleasures. As I read the word of God, my desires are changed to be more like the desires of God because I'm inserting in my vocabulary the words of God. And now I'm beginning not only to speak what God has spoken to me, but to believe it and to live it.
And that is why the believer continues to seek holiness as he seeks God. And I've heard the phrase where it says God loves you just the way you are. Well, as I read the Bible, I realize God loves me just the way he is because his love doesn't leave me the way I am. In fact, God loves me so much he's not going to leave me the way I am.
He's going to change me to make me more like Christ because God loves me just the way he is. In Luke 11, 9 it says, I tell you, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. These are the action words that Jesus commands us to have in our lives. To knock, to ask, to seek, to be seekers of his kingdom.
For everyone who asks receives and one who seeks finds and to those who knock it will be opened. Then we go to verses 4 through 6. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
God's commands are a delight, not a burden to the godly. We are commanded to look to God for wisdom with eagerness and joy. To look for his grace, to obey his law so that we might not in our relationship with him transgress his holy character, but do whatever it is that pleases him. That's my desire as a child of God, as our desire as the family of God. Our reliance for salvation and righteousness is not on the law, but on the one who fulfilled the law.
Christ Jesus, so that we might live according to the law by his spirit that dwells within us. And then verses 7 and 8. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules.
I will keep your statutes. Do not utterly forsake me. John 14, 26, Jesus says, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you, so that we can do what the psalmist desires to do. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. I will be a man. I will be a woman who will keep your statutes as the godly man and the godly woman goes to his word.
That person is changed and made holy as God is holy. I was reminded of the hymn, I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord, no tender voice like thine can peace afford. I need thee, oh I need thee, every hour I need thee. Oh bless me now my Savior, I come to thee. That's what's happening with the psalmist in Psalm 119.
And that's what happens when we go to the passages of scripture and read them with the purpose of getting to know Jesus and love him more. And we continue to say, I need thee every hour, stay thou nearby, temptations lose their power when thou art nigh. I need thee every hour in joy or pain, come quickly and abide or life is vain. I need thee every hour, teach me thy will and thy rich promises in me fulfill. This is the expression of love of one who has been changed by the grace of God to be like Christ and to love him with all of his heart, mind and soul and strength.
And to realize I need thee Lord God every moment of every day. So this is the interpretation. We've observed the text, we've noted things about the text that we didn't know before. We interpret it as to how it applied to the psalmist and now we want to apply it to our own lives. And so we move to the third part of the phases of studying the scripture and that is the phase of interpretation, of application. The question in this phase of application is how do I get this love that the psalmist has for the Lord in me? How do I become like that, like the psalmist who loves and worships the Lord so that I might be a living poem and a reflection of my love for Jesus Christ and Christ in me?
Well, the first thing we do is we meditate on the psalm. We recognize the love that God has given me for the law. I recognize that my love for the law is not from myself. There's nothing in me that would draw me to a law that condemns me because of my sin and convicts me of my inability to please God by my good deeds.
There is nothing inside me that finds anything about that pleasing and acceptable. And so I recognize that there is an external power, the Holy Spirit, causing me to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead who has given me life, causing me to be born again to that living hope. And because of the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit working in me to renew me, I now have a love for something that I would have despised apart from the Holy Spirit. So now I recognize that any application is going to be completely dependent on God. Any application of my life and my obedience to the law has to start with God, his work in me. And that's why I love Philippians 1-6. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.
He begins it, he ends it, and everything in the middle is all about him. Ephesians 2 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So we meditate on this, and as we meditate on this, our eyes are lifted up to the one who's doing all the work in our lives to be holy as he is holy.
And that is God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The next thing I do as I apply the passage is to memorize it. It takes an average of 15 minutes to read Psalm 119. It has 176 verses, but at 15 minutes you can read the whole thing. And then what you can do is memorize verses.
So let's look at some of them. Psalm 119 verse 11, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Repeat after me. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Good.
No, repeat what I say. Then I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Let's say it together. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Let's go to verse 105. I'm going to say the first part and you repeat. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Let's say it together. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
See how easy that is? You can have these verses written on a piece of paper, put it in front of your mirror or in your car, whatever you can to remind yourself of it. You can go to Dan's class next week and start the memorization of Scripture and learn how to develop the habit of memorizing Scripture. This is all part of applying the text that you've just read. Luke 2 verse 18 says, All who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them, considering them, drawing conclusions about them in her heart. And that's what we're to do. Thirdly, we're to share. As we apply the text, the best way for me to learn is to teach someone else. I learn so much better when I have to articulate what I know and get it out in a way that you can understand it.
And I learn more than you do. And so sharing is a way of applying the text. The Psalms are an expression of the love of God, of God's people for God. And so we learn to speak this way in our prayers, in our conversation with God. I used to wonder, I just don't know how to pray. I don't know how to pray like this guy.
It's just the words just flow out of his mouth. When I realized, well, wait a minute. I need to pray what God's spoken to me. So I started memorizing Scripture and I started using that Scripture in my prayer to reinforce my memorization of it and also to express my love for the Lord using his own words. And so you can share it by praying it and you can share it by confessing it, sharing with others what you've learned about God. Bring your love for God and his law into your conversation with others and into worship with the church and seek to build others up in love. Writing a poem is another way to not only get Psalm 119 in me but also to express my love to God in the same way the psalmist does in his poem.
So I invite you to take out the blue insert in your bulletin. It is a poem and it's a poem that I wrote in response to what I read, observed and interpreted and applied from Psalm 119. Now, each line of my poem begins with a consecutive letter, not in the Hebrew but in English because I don't speak Hebrew but I do speak English.
And so every line begins with the next letter, A, B, C, D, E and so forth. Also, my poem rhymes because in English, rhyming is a way of telling you, hey, what we're looking at right now is poetry. Hebrew doesn't rhyme. That's not part of the things that tell whether it's a poem in Hebrew but it is in English.
And so my poem has a rhyming scheme. All those who walk in the law of the Lord from God, they will never depart. Blessed are those who delight in his word and seek him with all of their heart. Comfort your servant and teach me, O Lord, instruct me in all of your law. Do not forsake me.
I keep your decrees that you may be feared above all. And so now we know we're reading a poem and I'm using a meter, metrical pattern, 10-8, 10-8 in accordance with the rules of English poetry. Each line begins with a word from Psalm 119. The first word of every line is from Psalm 119 except for the letter X. I could not find anywhere, any word in Psalm 119 that began with an X. So I just used the word xylophone in conjunction with other instruments that were mentioned in Psalm 119. Also, the word cue did not come out in the ESV but it did in the King James Version and that word is quicken. And so in, for instance, Psalm 119 verse 37, 119 verse 37, it says, Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. The King James Version says quicken. And I said, oh, thank you.
Now I've got a cue word that I can use. And that word quicken is used several times in Psalm 119 in the King James Version. So, again, this was hard work but I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for the psalmist as he developed this psalm in a structural way to represent poetry in the Hebrew language and then to use that as an expression of his love for the Lord.
It's okay to work hard to express your love for the Lord. Also, each verse except for one has the word law or a synonym of that word. So in every verse, the word law, word, decrees, precepts, statutes, commandments, promises, testimonies, it's going to be in one of those verses.
And I begin with a general instruction. I noticed as I read Psalm 119 that the first four verses says blessed are those, third person, whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
Then he goes into first person from that point on. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. So I try to keep the same structure in my poem and let the first couple of verses talk about the third person and then immediately go into first person. I try to maintain the spirit of the psalmist by including my whole being, my soul, my mind, my body. So as you read the psalm, you'll see me talking about my heart and my eyes, my mouth, my feet, my voice, my lips, my tongue, because this in the observation stage was what I observed that he was doing. And so I wanted to include that in my poem. I also include the righteous response to wickedness in himself and in others because that's what he did. I want to include that in my poem and in my life. I want to respond to wickedness the same way he did.
I want to hate sin in myself and in others. And I want to pursue holiness in myself and in others. And I pray that God will sanctify me by his word and spirit to be a living poem, a reflection of his work in me and enable me to walk in obedience by faith in Jesus. So I commend to you my psalm.
I will read it to you now. This is my reflection of Psalm 119. All those who walk in the law of the Lord, from God they will never depart. Blessed are those who delight in his word and seek him with all of their heart. Comfort your servant and teach me, O Lord.
Instruct me in all of your law. Do not forsake me. I keep your decrees that you may be feared above all. Even though princes will plot against me, your word is my strength and my might.
Falsehood belongs to the insolent man. Your precepts will be my delight. Graciously teach me your statutes, O Lord. To you I will lift up my hands. How can a young person keep his way pure?
By walking in all your commands. I will delight in your statutes and law. Salvation my soul will pursue.
Judgment and knowledge you teach me, O Lord. Your promise is faithful and true. Keep my steps steady to walk in your ways.
Your word is a lamp to my feet. Lead me in all your commandments to stand and keep me from sin and deceit. Make your face shine on your servant, O Lord. Uphold me in your tender care. Near is the Lord to the upright in heart. Your promise, the theme of my prayer.
Open my eyes to see wonderful things. Your statutes my lips will proclaim. Praise I will offer at day and at night, declaring your truth in your name. Quicken me in my affliction, O Lord, according to your holy word. Righteous are all of your laws to my ears, the sweetest that ever was heard.
Sweeter than honey are all your commands, desired more than silver and gold. Teach me your statutes that steady my soul, for in them your face I behold. Unfold your word and impart to my ears the glorious sound of your voice. Vainly the wicked reject your decrees, but in them my heart will rejoice. With great delight in your righteous commands, with tambourine trumpets and strings, xylophones, cymbals, the lute and the harp, your law with my tongue I will sing.
Your testimonies are faithful and true, my counselors all through the day. Zeal for your law will establish my path and keep me from going astray. May we all be a living poem to the Lord, reflecting the love that we have for him because of that love that he put in our hearts for him and the love for one another, to encourage one another and build up one another in that love as the family of God. Let's pray. Oh Lord, thank you so much for presenting this poem to us in Psalm 119 and showing us a godly saint who was in love with you. And so being in that love he wants to obey your commandments because it's pleasing to him, because it pleases you. Let that be our testimony. Let us be a living poem reflecting the love that we have for you, that we might truly be a walking expression of the love for God because of what Jesus has done. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
