Sermon series: A SUMMER IN THE PSALMS

Psalm 119:1-24
"Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!
They also do no iniquity; they walk in His ways. You have commanded us to keep Your precepts diligently.
Oh, that my ways were directed to keep Your statutes!
Then I would not be ashamed, when I look into Your commandments. I will praise You with uprightness of heart, when I learn Your righteous judgments. I will keep Your statutes; Oh, do not forsake me utterly!
How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord!
Teach me Your statutes. With my lips I have declared all the judgments of Your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.
Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word. Open my eyes that I may see Wondrous things from Your law. I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.
My soul breaks with longing for Your judgments at all times. You rebuke the proud—the cursed, who stray from Your commandments. Remove from me reproach and contempt, for I have kept Your testimonies. Princes also sit and speak against me, but Your servant meditates on Your statutes. Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors."

We have now arrived at the longest Psalm and the longest chapter in our Bible. Just two psalms earlier, we note that Psalm 117 contains two verses and five lines. Psalm 119 contains 176 verses and 315 lines!
Psalm 117 tells us to praise God. Psalm 119 praises God for His Word, the Bible, because God has given us the Bible and it is only through the Bible that we can come to know who God is and how to praise Him.
So much has been written on Psalm 119 that it is impossible to do full justice to it. In his TREASURY OF DAVID, Charles Spurgeon devotes 349 pages to it.
Other great Bible scholars of the past and present have filled volumes with expositions of this great portion of Scripture.
There are many fascinating stories connected with this psalm. One of the most amusing concerns George Wishart who was a bishop in Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. Wishart was condemned to death along with his famous patron, the Marquis of Montrose, and he would have been executed, except for this incident. When he was on the scaffold, he made use of a custom of the times that permitted the condemned to choose a psalm

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to be sung. He chose Psalm 119. Before two-thirds of the psalm was sung a pardon arrived, and Wishart's life was spared! The story has been told as an illustration of God's intervention to save a saintly person. The truth is different. Wishart was more renowned for shrewdness than for sanctity. He was expecting a pardon, requested the psalm to gain time, and happily for him, succeeded in delaying the execution until his pardon came.
Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm, the most elaborate in the Psalter. It is divided into twenty-two stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse of each stanza begins with one of these letters in sequence.
One of the most striking features of Psalm 119—one that every commentator mentions because it is so important to the psalm's theme—is that each verse of the psalm refers to the Word of God, the Bible, with only a small handful of exceptions. The Masoretes said that the Word of God is referred to in every verse but verse 122.
Derek Kidner claims that there are three exceptions, verses 84, 121, and 122. Kidner seems to be right about verse 84, but verse 121 may not be an exception, if "righteous and just" can be understood as an oblique reference to God's Word. Whatever the case, at least 171 of the Psalm's 176 verses refer to the precepts, word, laws, commandments, or decrees of God explicitly.
We do not know who wrote this psalm. The psalm is a mosaic arranged around the central theme of God's law.
The Psalmist did not see God's law as harsh edict but as a source of joy and rejoicing! We do not have here any cold legalism of Mosaic precept but the warmth of one in love with the Lord.
We have the passion of a poet—precept rhapsodized by poetry, law transfigured by love, demand elevated to desire, edict replaced by emotion, fact matched by fervor, enforcement made easy by enjoyment. (Phillips)
The Word of God is the foundation on which this poet builds; he builds on it because he loves it. He is bound to the Word of God, not by the chains of law, but by the magnetic attraction of love!
Maclaren says of this psalm that "there is music in its monotony," and that although "there are but few pieces in the psalmist's kaleidoscope they fall into many shapes of beauty." Rotherham says, "It is a study set to the murmuring of the sea" and "The monotone...is that of a lullaby by which a troubled soul may be softly and sweetly hushed to rest." It is the Alphabet of Divine Love!
As noted, the general subject of the psalm is THE LAW OF GOD considered as a rule of life; as sanctifying the soul, as a support in trial; as imparting happiness to the mind, -in its contemplation, and in obedience to it! The psalm appears to have been intended to set forth the excellency of that law, and the happy effects of obeying it, in every variety of form, and with every variety of expression. Someone has written: "This psalm is the Paradise of all the Doctrines, the Storehouse of the Holy Spirit, the School of Truth, also the deep mystery of the Scriptures, where the whole moral discipline of all the virtues shines brightly."

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In that we are going to be discussing the Bible as our central theme for the next number of weeks, let's get acquainted with this precious book we call our Bible.
As evangelical Christians, we believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament either directly or indirectly contain His teachings; and that in substance, they are of divine authority and are to be received as such; in other words, the Bible is a divinely inspired book, and that He was a divinely sent teacher, and that the substance of what is found in the Bible is a revelation from God, and as such is to be accepted as final authority on all matters of which it makes deliverances.
When theologians say that the Bible is the Word of God, what do they mean? Many people interpret this phrase to mean that God dictated the Bible to the authors who did little more than write word for word what they were told. Like a good secretary who has learned to transcribe dictation, the authors of the Bible, it is said, were passive vehicles while God told them what to write.
This is not what I mean when I say that the Bible is the Word of God. Even the casual reader notices that the authors of Scripture wrote with different styles, literary organization, and even grammar. These differences become even more apparent to those who read the Bible in the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
The apostle Paul wrote carefully reasoned treatises, often betraying his own disappointments, encouragements, or even anger. Mark, in his account of the life of Jesus, used the vivid present tense when he described Christ's walk throughout the land. His Greek was so rough that he even appears to have used odd grammar, no doubt reflecting his own speaking habits. Sometimes New Testament authors just paraphrased the Old Testament, not quoting it word for word.
We can identify at least three different kinds of inspiration. For example, some things the authors wrote they knew by ordinary means. Luke, for example, said that he did carefully research before he wrote his account of the life of Christ, just as did others who were eyewitnesses of Jesus: "It seemed fitting for me as well," he wrote, "having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:3-4).
Second, in some instances God endowed the authors with ideas that they were allowed to write in their own words. This freedom allowed Paul, for example, to not only write with his own style, but to transition from doctrinal to personal matters. In his second letter to Timothy he could speak with authority about God's knowledge of us in eternity past (2 Timothy 1:9) and yet later say, "When you come bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments" (2 Timothy 4:13). God's ideas were written in Paul's style and in line with his interests and ability.

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Then, also, some of the Bible was DICTATED BY GOD, WORD FOR WORD. Moses did not add his own style when he wrote, "You shall have no other gods before Me."
On many occasions the prophets received revelations from God, word for word, at other times they put the message in their own words. But dictation, as such, was rare; almost always the author's style can be recognized.
A moment's reflection will tell us what has happened in the history of biblical scholarship. Naturalists who balk at the idea that God has supernaturally revealed Himself, conclude that the Bible is a purely human book. It is, they say, a history of what men have thought about God. Miracles are discounted as exaggerations, or even mythology. These scholars emphasize that the Bible was written by men, and only by men. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes boring, sometimes accurate, and sometimes riddled with error, it was simply a history of what biblical writers believed was the revelation of God. For such scholars the human authorship of the Bible overshadows its divine origin.
Older fundamentalists and a few evangelicals have frequently swung to the opposite extreme. Some at least have been at pains to shun historical and critical studies of the Bible, fearing that the very process would eclipse its divine authorship. A few have actually held to the dictation theory of inspiration, teaching that the biblical authors acted as stenographers, passively recording God's message word for word. In their zeal to defend the Bible as the Word of God, these scholars have allowed the divine origin of the Bible to overshadow the human side.
We can avoid these extremes by admitting that the Bible is a dual authorship. It is a book of God and book of man. God's part was to superintend the writing of the books, revealing His will; man's part was to write this revelation using a human language and style so that God's message was preserved for future generations.
So, the Bible has dual authorship, just as Christ has two natures. Christian theology maintains that Christ was fully God and fully human, the two natures united in one person. And just as Christ was fully human and yet sinless, just so the Bible is fully human and yet without error.
Again, we can see that liberal theologians have emphasized the humanity of Christ to the exclusion of His divinity. Just look at Him as He sits on the well, weary with His journey. See Him as He sleeps on the boat and when He cries, "I thirst." Surely, say the religious liberals, He was a remarkable man, but only a man nevertheless.
Interestingly, in the early centuries of the church some went to the opposite extreme. They denied Christ's humanity and affirmed only His deity. They thought that if God were to become man, he would have had to accept imperfection. Thus, they said Christ only seemed to be man; His divinity canceled His humanity.
Just as the humanity of Christ is a stumbling block to many who then deny His deity, even so the humanity of the Bible is a stumbling block to those who deny its divine origin.

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But the Scriptures present Christ as both fully God and fully man. Yes, even when He was weary, perplexed, and in the throes of Gethsemane, He was God. And when He said, "Before Abraham was born, I am" (John 5:58), He was man.
Just so, both the divine and the human authorship of the Scriptures must be fully appreciated.
Consider the similarities between the Christ (the Incarnate Word) and the Bible (the written Word).
(a) BOTH ARE ETERNAL
Of Christ, we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God" (John 1:1). Of the written Word we read, "Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89).
(b) BOTH ARE CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
Of Christ: "And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
Of the Scriptures: "No prophecy was ever made by an act of the human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:21).
(c) BOTH ARE HUMAN YET WITHOUT ERROR
Of Christ: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).
Of the Scriptures: "The Scriptures cannot be broken" (John 10:35).
(d) BOTH HAVE A UNIQUE AUTHORITY
Of Christ: "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22).
Of the Scriptures: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 1:2).
NO WONDER CHRIST IS CALLED THE WORD OF GOD!
And here is our declaration concerning our position on the Bible. WE BELIEVE THAT THE BIBLE, AS IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, IS THE INFALLIBLE WORD OF GOD. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Timothy 3:16). The particular word used by Paul means "God-breathed," that is, God Himself, or through His Holy Spirit, told the writers of the Bible just the very things to record.
We affirm that the Bible, not only contains but is, from beginning to end, the Word of God. It is understood some mistakes may have been made by those who copied or transcribed the Scriptures, and it is the work of reverent criticism to seek by careful examination and comparison of all existing documents, any errors of the fallible translators and restore, as far as possible, the Scriptures in their original purity.
It is agreed by most current bible scholars that the labors of competent scholars have brought our English versions to a degree of perfection so remarkable that we may confidently rest upon them as authoritative. The living God still lives, and the living Word is a living Word, and we may depend upon it; we may hang upon any word God ever spoke, or ever caused, by His Holy Spirit to be written!

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Now, we turn attention to the Psalm before us. As we have observed, the general subject of the psalm is THE LAW OF GOD considered as a rule of life; as sanctifying the soul; as a support in trial; as imparting happiness to the mind, in its contemplation, and in obedience to it.
Our psalm begins by showing us what will happen in the life of those who make the Word of God the center of their life and it sets before us the picture of a happy man. "Blessed are the undefiled in the way." The word BLESSED in the Old Testament is invariable in the plural. It means "happy," literally "Happy, Happy! or "Oh the happiness..."
God weds happiness to holiness...that is why an unsaved person can never really know true happiness. Happiness is found in the heart of a person who is walking undefiled...who is walking in the WAY. The word rendered WAY occurs thirteen times in the psalm, and some authorities include it as one of the synonyms for God's Word. The word suggests a course of conduct marked out by God's Word, a road trodden as a way of life, a course of action mapped out by God's law.
We can make our journey through life along one of two ways. There is the broad way of disobedience, a way that seems right to a man but ends in death; and there is a narrow way of obedience, a way that leads onward and upward to life everlasting. The way of happiness is the way of obedience to God and His Word.
So the opening words of Psalm 119 strike an important note. We would all like to be happy. And not just happy, but "happy, happy." But we cannot have overflowing joy without holiness, and we cannot have holiness without the Holy Spirit—and we cannot have the Holy Spirit without salvation.
The ultimate secret of happiness is to live according to the principles found in God's Word!
The psalmist sees two things that happen when we bring our wills into captivity to the Word of God. First, it gives purpose to our lives. "Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, and that seek Him with the whole heart."
The idea behind the word TESTIMONIES is that of attestation. It carries the thought that God has solemnly declared His will on matters of faith and morals. In the singular it is used to describe the Ten Commandments.
Second, the captivity to God's Word also guarantees purity in life. "They do no iniquity; they walk in His way."
Sin will keep us from the Bible, or the Bible will keep us from sin-—one or the other. "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands, and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false." (Psa. 24:3-4).
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). "Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart" (1 Pet. 1:22). PURITY OF HEART GIVES US ACCESS INTO THE PRESENCE OF GOD, A GROWING KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, AND FELLOWSHIP IN THE FAMILY OF GOD.
"Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." (2 Cor. 7:1).

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Verse 4 of our Psalm reads: "Thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently." The word PRECEPTS occurs only in the psalms. It has the idea of "taking charge." It refers to God's mandates enjoined on the human race.
The psalmist calls attention to the fact that it is God who is the author of the law. The word THOU is emphatic! We could read it, "Thou Thyself has commanded us." That relates the commandments to duty. It is not mere human prudence; it is not mere morality; it is not because it will be for our best interest...IT IS BECAUSE GOD REQUIRES! This is the foundation of all true virtue; and until a man acts from this motive it cannot be said that he is in the proper sense a righteous man. "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear Me and keep my commandments always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever" (Deut. 5:29). "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock" (Matt. 7:24).
Our Psalm continues: "O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes" (v. 5). Welling up from the soul of this psalmist is a deep desire to keep God's Word. Being mortal, he knows how easily he can wander away. But his deepest desire is to obey. It is the cry of a heart who truly, above all, wants to live a life that brings pleasure and joy to God's heart. It is the aim of the life; it is the supreme purpose of the soul; it is the ruling wish of the man, thus to keep the law of God. It is an acknowledgement of our total dependence upon God.
Verse 6 reads: "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Thy commandments." Please note that the desire of this psalmist's heart is to keep all, not just those commandments which pleases him, but ALL. It was his commitment to keep the whole law that caused Daniel to dare to stand out against the entire Babylon establishment. The command not to eat improperly prepared meat might easily have been dismissed as a trifle given the fact he was a captive in a foreign land and under the will of a despotic and dangerous king. He could have compromised, arguing that the kosher laws were secondary ritual laws, not moral laws. Daniel knew no such fine points, no such twisting of truth. "Has God said it? I obey it." That was his rule. There are 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law and the psalmist is determined to keep them all! "Then shall I not be ashamed." In Psalm 25:2-3 we read: "O my God, I trust in Thee; let me not be ashamed; let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed..." What our psalmist is saying in the verse before us in Psalm 119 is...If he kept the law and the commandments of God with a pure heart and with a sincere desire to be diligent consistently in this pursuit...then there would be no reason to bring shame either to himself or to God. It is when we decide to violate the sacred laws of God that our lives suffer in shame and pain. And when we disobey God's laws, we bring shame to Him! The honor of Christ should be our highest pursuit in life...that in nothing we blemish His name by our life! When we live close to God's Word, we live the protected life...protected by the power of His Word!

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Verse 7 reads: "I will praise Thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned Thy righteous judgments."
The word JUDGMENTS contain the thought of a legal decision, a ruling from the bench. It is a judicial decision which makes an authoritative ruling, a precedent for similar cases in the future. Sometimes the word is used to describe God's judicial acts in executing His judgment on the wicked. The psalmist realized that he did not know all the cases in which God had acted thus judicially. He did not know all the precedents nor how God would act in every instance. But he knew that when he was in possession of all the facts, he would praise Him with uprightness of heart. God's thoughts are very different than ours, and His ways far beyond our understanding...but my lack of knowledge and understanding does not change the fact...God does all things perfectly and fairly! Thus my lack of knowledge of why God makes His requirements on me, does not diminish my responsibility to be obedient.
"I will keep Thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly." (v. 8). The word for STATUTES comes from a word meaning "to hew, cut, engrave, inscribe." It stands for anything prescribed or enacted. God's law, we remember, was engraved on two tablets of stone (symbolizing its immutability) . Our psalmist is pledging himself to keep the laws of God, but he is also aware that without the help of God's Spirit, he will utterly fail. Our psalmist is fully aware of his failures to keep God's law and the thing he wanted most was God's patience and forgiveness.
David must have prayed in those dreadful weeks and months after his seduction of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah.
He had committed two capital offenses, adultery and murder. Worse still, because he had sinned presumptuously he knew of no sacrifice that would cover his sin. He was haunted by the memory of King Saul and God's refusal to speak any more to that man who had sinned once too often.
Thus we can understand his prayer...God, please do not walk away from me, even though I have sinned so deeply and transgressed your laws so openly!
In verses 9 through 16, the psalmist acknowledges that sin defiles and destroys and that everybody needs some kind of protection against its deadly virus, so he turns his attention to the young. "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word." There is protection from temptation in the power and authority of the Word. "If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. Flee the evil of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2 Tim. 2:21)
Oh! May it be that you...young in life's journey make it your pursuit to find your direction and your strength and your righteousness in the meditation and absorption of the Word of God. "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them." And Solomon concludes: "Now all has been heard: here is the conclusion of the matter; Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12).