An Exposition of Psalm 19 (Part 4 of 4)

Here's a difference between acquaintances and good friends.

You might hit it off with someone when you first meet them, but it takes time and effort to become friends. In the same way, it's not enough for us to simply open the Bible once and know it intimately. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg describes the power of God's Word and explains why we need to continually return to it. Alistair is concluding our study of Psalm 19. We're going to read verses 7 through 14. If these adjectives describe these nouns, what in actual fact are these verbs making clear to us in terms of the effect of the law of God or the impact of the Word of God?

Well, they're written for us here, aren't they? That not only do they revive the soul, but they also make the simple wise. Now, in Proverbs chapter 9, you have that sort of personification of wisdom, and Solomon is speaking to his son, and he says, Leave your simple ways and live, and walk on the path of insight. It's not that the person is a simpleton intellectually here, but rather it is that they are morally susceptible to the by-path meadow and so on, so that God teaches from his Word lessons that are appropriate to our weakness so that he might reach down to where we are. Not only do they make wise the simple, but they also create deep-seated joy in the heart. People say, Well, what about the Bible? What does it actually do? Why would I ever read the Bible?

I don't do it very much at all. And some of the people who find themselves in all kinds of predicaments, and I say to them, You know, would you ever just take your Bible and read it? Do you believe that God may actually speak to you and open your eyes? And do you realize that the precepts of the Lord provide a deep-seated joy, not only creating rejoicing in the heart but bringing enlightenment to the eyes? Our eyes are by nature darkened and dim and foggy, and suddenly, as in this story of a man who was blind, and Jesus touched him and touched him again—first of all, he began to see, I see men, they look like trees walking—and then he said, No, I think I got it entirely now. And again, Plummer, he says, the doctrines then show us what we must believe, the precepts what we must do, the warnings what we must shun, and the promises what we must hope for. But it is as we turn to God's Word that we then are made aware of each of these things. At the same time, the Word of God creates an enduring purity.

The fear of the Lord is clean, and that endures forever. In other words, the Word of God doesn't lead us into bad and corrupt thoughts. The Word of God does not enable us to engage in emotional journeys that take us away from the purity and clarity of his instruction.

The Word of God does not grant us freedom to use our tongues and our words in ways that run counter to his purposes and certainly not in relationship to our deeds. And then you say, Well, there should be a sixth one to balance this out. But it then ends, The rules of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

So, well, but wait a minute, the parallelism demands a sixth one, and we don't have a sixth one. No, we've got that it revives the soul, makes wise the simple, it rejoices the heart, it enlightens the eyes, it endures forever, and then he just says, And it's righteous. That annoyed me for a little while, and then I realized, No, it just… He just pauses for a moment. This is poetry, after all, right?

He pauses. Here's the final one, verse 11. What does it do? It warns your servant. By them is your servant warned. So, here he says, In the majesty of creation, in the clarity of the Bible, we discover all of this and more.

And verse 10, which is the sort of little bridge verse there, is his own personal evaluation. These things, he says, are more to be desired than gold, much fine gold, sweeter also than honey in the drippings of the honeycomb. I don't know how that strikes you. It doesn't actually appeal to me at all. It just makes me recoil. I don't like stickiness. I do not like that.

I've never been able to get my head around the metaphor about the blessing of God running down the beard of so-and-so dripping all over the place. I'm not doing that one. It's not part of my deal. So, well, what am I supposed to do with this?

Here's my thing. These are more to be desired than honey and money. They're more to be desired than honey and money. In other words, to the extent that honey represents the good life and the provision and the overflow and the magnificence of, you know, your favorite food magazine, and money represents the security that we are told is to be found in the amassing of these things, then, says the psalmist, in actual fact, when God impresses upon the heart of the believer the extent and the wonder and the clarity of his Word and all that it means in him, to him, through him, and for him, then in actual fact, you will find that you come to believe that the benefits exceed anything else.

Calvin says, the sense is that we do not esteem God's Word as it deserves if we do not prefer it to all the riches of the world. Well, what are these great benefits, then? What are the benefits of this? Well, here you have them in verse 11. The greatest benefit is that they provide warnings that need to be heeded, and they provide promises that are to be trusted. They provide both warnings and rewards. Again, that is the appeal of all the way through the book of Proverbs. To my son, listen, heed the warnings, trust the promises. Heed the warnings, trust the promises. It's the story of Hebrews, isn't it?

Heed the warnings and take God at his Word. So there's the revelation in the glory and eloquence of creation, in the clarity of Scripture itself. So what does the psalmist do by way of response?

Does he award himself a PhD? He said to himself, Well, I can tick it off. I've learned a tremendous amount. Now I'm able to speak concerning these things.

No. Quite striking, isn't it? Because we move from the majesty of God's works to the clarity of God's Word to the humility of God's worshiper or God's servant. Isn't it interesting he goes immediately to his errors, his faults, his sins, his transgressions?

Why is that? One old commentator puts it like this. No good person with any tolerable degree of knowledge of themselves can be ignorant of the fact that they come far short of the absolute perfection required by God's Word. This is somewhat akin to Isaiah in chapter 6, isn't it? And Isaiah says, I saw the Lord. And then I went on television, and I told everybody I saw the Lord. And I explained to them what an amazing thing it was.

No. He says, I saw the Lord, and then I fell flat on my face, and I said, Woe is me, because I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. You have the same thing on the disciples, don't you, on the boat, and the manifestation of the glory of Christ, and the disciple falls on his face. Depart from me, because I'm a sinful man, O Lord. Now, you see, I think the temptation for us—especially in the study of the Bible, because we're so into gratification, we're so into affirmation, we're so into making sure that we're feeling good and better as a result of having taken the time to go out and do something—that the idea that the impact of the Word of God might be to us to put us on our knees is not something necessarily that appeals. But that's exactly what happens here.

That's why sometimes we pray before we turn to the Bible in the old song from home, Make the Book Live to Me, O Lord. Show me yourself within your Word. Show me myself. Do you really want to see yourself? Painful, isn't it?

Why? Well, because God's Word exposes our errors. Who can discern his errors? I can't even discern my own errors.

I know some of them, but I don't know all of them. What about my hidden faults? What about your hidden faults? What about the things that your wife doesn't know, your husband doesn't know, your mom and dad don't know, your neighbor doesn't know, but God knows? How are they to be dealt with in the clarity of God's Word? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

In other words, equip me. And help me, verse 13, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Presumptuous sins.

Now, this is not things that we've done inadvertently or mistakenly or unwittingly. This is now, he says, where I'm just flat-out gonna sin. Where I'm gonna take something that the Bible says don't do, and I'm gonna do it. And then I'm gonna say to myself, well, I did it, but nothing happened. Or I'm gonna say, well, I did it, and nobody knew.

And on both counts, we're wrong. And the psalmist says, as I come to the end of this poem that I've written, my great concern is that you won't allow my presumptuous sins to have dominion over me. What does that mean? Don't let them control me. Control me. You see, if we are controlled by sin, then we are the servants of sin, not the servants of God. And God, in his mercy and in his grace, will allow us to be brought under the dominion of our presumptuous sins, as a measure of judgment on our lives, until we reach the point where we're prepared to acknowledge them and ask and cry to God for forgiveness.

And he says, in light of that, if you will keep me in this way, if you will help me in this way, then I shall be blameless and innocent of this great transgression. You can get a PhD on the great transgression. Or the great sin.

I'm not gonna delay on it. It's bad, that's for sure. Exodus 32, you have the great sin, the great sin, the great sin, three times. What was the great sin? Well, they made a golden calf. Well, you say, Well, I'm good on that one, because I never… I don't even fancy a golden calf.

I never even give it any thought at all. No, no, no, the golden calf represented what? Willful rebellion against the divine authority of God. Willful rebellion against the divine authority of God. Now, you think about it. Let's just think in terms of, this is King David, remember.

He's the poet. And if you've lived at all in the circles in which I have lived, you know—and some of these are so up-to-date it is painful to even mention them—but we have all had occasion to mourn the loss of those whose impact on our lives for the gospel and for good was so singular, so striking, so powerful that we would have been very happy to carry this person's suitcase for the rest of our lives and carry it on our backs, if we could only be in his company, if we could only have his advice, if we could only have the instruction from the Bible that this individual was so powerfully able to give. And yet, somewhere along the line, in a moment—in a moment, it would seem—there's a tremendous collapse, a disintegration, a moral or a financial failure, and into the abyss goes the individual. And as of right now, tonight, they have never arisen. And everybody says, I don't see how that could happen. Well, I'm gonna tell you how it can happen.

And I'll tell you how it did happen, even though I don't know the details myself. It starts with hidden faults. It starts with an unwillingness to discern our errors. It starts by being unprepared to keep short accounts in the realm of our lives that is known only to God in the secret place there. That unchecked leads to presumptuous sins. That boldness may lead us then to a great transgression and a dreadful collapse. And so, if you read something where you say, Never happens to me, then take heed, in case you actually come crashing down.

Alan Stibbs, who was a wonderful teacher of the Bible in his day, wrote a number of little books teaching God's Word, believing God's Word, understanding God's Word, and so on. And I turn to this. It just happened.

It caught my eye, as sometimes happens, when I'm sitting in the cave. And so I want just to read this, and then I'm going to stop. Some of you youngsters have done very, very well sitting through this, and I should take you all out and buy you ice cream.

But I don't have any money, and so I'm a very stingy Scotsman. He, in this little book on understanding God's Word, has a number of chapters—how to get at the true text, how to understand the text, how to interpret the text in relationship to figurative language and prophecy and so on. And then he says, Well, let's get to the heart of it. Let's get down to the Bible and Christian living. And this is what he says about dealing with the Bible. He says, Listen, aim to discover spiritual truth which is capable of immediate personal application. Do not read the Bible as a detached spectator or inquiring student whose only concern is to know what it contains. Rather, regard it as a looking-glass in which you can by God's help see both the man you are and the man you are meant to become as a child of God. Look first in it for the things which directly bear on your own needs and problems, failures and temptations, responsibilities and duties. Be prepared seriously and sincerely to ask, and to face the answer to such questions as, What does God say to me in this passage now? What may I learn here concerning my daily life? How may I discover how to live it in pleasing God? That's number three of his application.

Number ten. Recognize the need for continual return to and fresh reformation according to the Word of God. The pursuit first of the discovery and then of the doing of God's will as revealed through his Word never ends. In this life, we never reach the place of final perfection. Each fresh day brings its fresh challenge.

The road is uphill all the way. It is all too easy to degenerate, to slip back from the observance of standards once accepted. No one reformation can put an individual or a church permanently right. There is constant need for a continual return to God, to examine oneself afresh in the light of his Word, to be convicted of the beginnings of sinful decline, to be made aware of fresh ways in which advance in holiness and love is now possible. Only so can we follow on to know the Lord and hope to share in coming to a perfect man. We must be willing ever and again to submit ourselves to the searching light and compelling imperatives of the Word of God. And recognize that the person whom every man is responsible to judge in this light is himself. Such practical moral application of Scripture to life and conduct is something which each believer is called and qualified in Christ to do for himself. And this is our Christian calling to grow up from infancy to fulfill the responsibilities that are now ours. And so, no surprise that the psalm ends with the cry in verse 14, which is usually used by the minister before he teaches from the Bible.

But it's an applicable word for all of us, isn't it? Let the words of my mouth and the manifestation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. In other words, I'm in need of your divine grace to pardon me, to prevent me, to restrain me, to sanctify me.

But where is the acquittal to be found? How are we to be forgiven of these things? And of course, the answer takes us from the King of Israel to the Lord himself—Jesus who is the end of the law, Jesus who by his perfect life met its demands, satisfied its claims, and brings everlasting righteousness. So that what it does is it doesn't send us to ourselves to try and engineer this, but it sends us again to him. Because all depends on him, for he is our rock and our redeemer. As all our prayers and all our holy endeavors and abilities to serve God must be fashioned to us by the Lord Jesus, so also every other grace and the acceptance of our person and all of our service must always come through him.

In other words, all the Bible sends us all the time to the Lord Jesus so that we're enabled to say in the end, in Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my strength. He's my song.

He's my rock. He's my redeemer. If the message was, now, you'd better just get your act together here and clean it all up and fix it, and hopefully God will accept you, no, the answer is that it turns us again and again back to the finished work of Christ and to the work of the Spirit in and through the agency of the Bible to say, Hey, don't dance around these warnings, and don't stand back from these promises, preventing us on the one hand and assuring us on the other hand so that together we might make progress to know the Lord. God's Word is full of both blessings and warnings, but we won't benefit from any of them unless we read the Bible and apply the lessons learned.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. Reading Psalm 19 makes it clear just how important it is for us to understand and apply God's Word every day. As we just heard from Alistair, all of the Bible points us to Jesus.

He is our hope, our strength, and our redeemer. That's why our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. We do this trusting that God will use the teaching of His Word to convert unbelievers, to build up believers in their faith, and to encourage local churches to remain loyal to Christ to the very end. In line with this mission, we want to recommend to you biblically sound books, and there are just a couple more days that we'll be talking about a particular book called Mere Evangelism, Ten Insights from C.S. Lewis to help you share your faith. You can request your copy of the book Mere Evangelism when you give a donation to support the ministry. Click the image you see in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate.

Or you can call us at 888-588-7884. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father, we thank you that when we meditate on your Word, it sinks into our hearts and begins to turn us again and again to your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that he who knew no sin became sin for us, in order that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And we affirm tonight that it's just as we are in our starts and in our stopings, in our hidden faults and in our presumptuous hearts, that we have to throw ourselves again and again on the amazing mercy and grace that is ours in Christ alone. And so in his name we pray. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us. Tomorrow we begin a new series on marriage. For many of us growing up, marriage was something we expected would happen.

But it's not for everyone. The Apostle Paul identifies some clear benefits that come with singleness. Tomorrow we'll find out what those are as we begin our series titled We Too Are One, a study on God's plan for marriage. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.