Sermon series: A SUMMER IN THE PSALMS

Psalm 119:25-32
"My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to Your word. I have declared my ways; and You answered me; teach me Your statutes. Make me understand the way of Your precepts; so shall I meditate on Your wonderful works. My soul melts from heaviness; strengthen me according to Your word. Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me Your law graciously. I have chosen the way of truth; your judgments I have laid before me. I cling to Your testimonies; O Lord, do not put me to shame! I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart."

The longest psalm...and the longest chapter in our Bible, so we have decided to spend a number of weeks seeking to mine the spiritual truths contained in this precious portion of Scripture. We have learned that out of 176 verses in this chapter, over 170 refer directly to the Word of God. We are seeking to become better acquainted with our Bible as we study this Psalm.
THE BIBLE!
Within that awful volume lies the mystery of mysteries! Happiest they of human race, to whom our God has granted grace to read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way; and better had they ne'er been born, who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
THE BIBLE!
This collection of books has been to the world what no other book has ever been to a nation. States have been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a compact based upon it. Men hold the Bile in their hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence affecting life, death, or property; the sick man is almost afraid to die unless the Book be within reach of his hands; the battleship goes into action with one on board whose office is to expound it; its prayers, its psalms are the language which we use when we speak to God; twenty centuries have found no holier, no diviner language.
If ever there has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart of a nation, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible.
There is no new religious idea given to the world, but it is merely the development of something given in the Bible.
The very translation of it has fixed language and settled the idioms of speech. It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar with the history, customs, and geography of ancient Palestine than with of his own country. Truly, the Bible is the Book of all books, and all men and all nations owe much to it!
"BRING THE BOOK," said Sir Walter Scott, when dying. "What book?" asked his friend. "There is only one Book, sir, THE BIBLE!" replied the dying man.
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God

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may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16)
Peter writes: "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:16-21)
There was a very important reason for Peter to write these words under divine unction. False teachers, probably Gnostic enthusiasts, in propagating their theology throughout the Roman Empire, were claiming to have a new word from God that superseded the authoritative word of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, thus Peter's response to these false teachers.
He first described their "knowledge" as "sophisticated myths" (2 Peter 1:16) and "made-up stories." Then he argued that his eye-and ear-witness experience of Jesus' majestic transfiguration—itself the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture—confirmed the prophetic word", concerning which word he counseled his readers: "you will do well to pay attention to it, as a light shining in a dark place, until the Day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."
Peter also tells us in this passage from his second letter that the reason or means whereby the prophets were able to speak from God as they did was that they were being continually borne along by the Holy Spirit as they spoke or wrote. That is, they were under the Spirit's direct superintending influence the entire time they spoke or wrote as prophets. Peter's thought here can be illustrated from Acts 27:15: "When the ship was caught [in the violent wind], and could not face the wind, we gave way to it, and we were DRIVEN ALONG. Just as the ship, knowing no will of its own, was "driven" along by the "will" of the wind, so also the prophets, knowing no will of their own in any ultimate sense in the production of the prophetic Scriptures, were "driven" along (same verb root) by the will of the Holy Spirit.
Why did the Spirit of God "bear" the prophets along as they wrote? He superintended them in their writing not only in order to guarantee the books their REVELATORY character, but also to insure their entire DIVINE quality and thus their infallible trustworthiness.
If we were to systematically page through the Bible listing all of the instances in which it claims to be of divine origin, either directly or indirectly we would find some fifteen hundred statements that claim its divine source! THE BIBLE...AH! WHAT A PROFOUND BOOK! Think with me for a moment on THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE:

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(1) It evolved over a period of fifteen hundred centuries, written in three different languages. During this period empires rose and fell and cultures came and went, but this did not affect the unity of the Bible. The intricacy of its message and history simply could not have been orchestrated by a man or a group of men.
(2) It was written by forty different human authors. These came from a variety of occupations; kings, fishermen, tax collectors, shepherds, prophets, and even a physician.
In all it would be difficult to find a more diverse collection of writers. They run the gamut from Moses, who was highly educated, to Peter, who was a fisherman. Though they wrote at different periods of world history, their writings dovetail with one another, not superficially, but intricately and brilliantly.
(3) The books were penned under different circumstances and in different countries and cultures, such as were in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Paul wrote from a dungeon in Rome, James wrote from Jerusalem, Moses from Sinai, and Daniel from Babylon.
(4) The Bible discusses diverse theological matters, such as the nature of God and His purposes, the characteristics of both good and evil angels, and the nature of man and God's plan of redemption. It would be difficult enough to get ten men to agree on so much as one single theological issue, much less forty men agreeing on matters about which others can only speculate.
Consider the UNITY OF THE THEME.
The Bible is not a collection of books on many different topics; there is only one theme, and that is the topic of Christ and the redemption He provided.
The book of Genesis begins with creation, the fall of man, and God's plan to redeem at least a part of the human race from the effects of human rebellion. Thus we might say that the theme of the Bible can be stated in two words: SIN and the GRACE of the coming Redeemer.
Right after the Fall, God promised, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Genesis 3:15) The entire Old Testament grows out of this initial prophecy. In this passage, we behold the exceeding riches of God's grace! Before He acted in judgment He displayed His mercy, before He banished the guilty ones from Eden, He gave them a blessed promise and hope. Though Satan had encompassed the downfall of man, it is announced that One shall come and bruise his head. By woman had come sin, by woman should come the Saviour. By woman had come the curse, by woman should come Him who would bear and remove the curse. In this passage, reference is made to a double "bruising"—the woman's Seed shall bruise the Serpent's head, and the Serpent should bruise His heel. The last clause in this prediction has already became history.
The "bruising" of the heel of the woman's Seed is a symbolical reference to the sufferings and death of our Savior, who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities." The bruising of the Serpent’s head speaks of his final end when Christ returns to this earth and Satan is cast into the bottomless pit.

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As suggested, Genesis 3:15 sets the theme of the Old Testament. Of course, there are sub themes: the providence of God in His dealings with His people, the matter of suffering from God's viewpoint, and the origin and destination of Satan. But all of these are played out against the background of God's dealings with fallen humanity. The Bible does not have sixty-six stories to tell, but one story of God's response to man's rebellion.
Christ confirmed that the theme of the Bible was His own coming. Engaged in controversy with the Jews, He said: "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me." (John 5:39). And again, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me" (John 5:46).
He frequently referred to the Scripture as pointing to Himself. Luther was right when he said, "Christ is involved in the Scriptures as a body in its clothes."
Walking with the disciples en route to Emmaus He said, "0 foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory? And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures" (Luke 24:25-27). Later He added, "These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."
The apostles saw Christ as the center of the Scriptures.
At Pentecost, Peter used Psalm 16:8-11 and Psalm 110:1 as the basis of his proclamation of the risen Christ (Acts 2:25-26). And when Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch he "preached Jesus to him" (Acts 8:35) as He explained the prophecy from Isaiah 53.
From the earliest expression of the gospel in Genesis 3:15 until the "Even so, Lord Jesus! of Revelation 22:20, the Bible has an integrated story line.
The Reformers also saw Christ as the unifying theme of the Bible. Luther said, "All Scripture teaches nothing but the cross." Calvin affirmed, "Christ cannot be properly known in any other way than from the Scriptures."
To quote Pascal, "Jesus Christ, whom the two testaments regard, the Old as its hope, the New as its model, and both as their center."
This we declare! The Bible is either true, or it is a forgery; it is either a good book or an indescribably bad book; it is either the Word of God or the misleading and deceptive words of man...it is either eternal truth or a fraud. And we believe with all our heart that the Bible is the authoritative word of God that shall stand when all else fails...His Word will never pass away!
The Bible speaks of a God who reveals Himself propositionally through chosen vessels, and the Bible represents itself as God's word-revelation or message to needy human beings! Because the Holy Scriptures, although written by men, are more fundamentally God's Spirit-inspired, imperishable, coherent Word, they are intrinsically authoritative and man's only infallible rule for faith and life.

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We have spent much time in our introduction to our lesson, but the Psalm before us (Psalm 119) is all about the Word of God, and it is my desire that during our study in this precious portion of God's Word...that we come to know and love our Bible more than we ever have.
Now let's consider verses 25 through 32 which we have selected for our text today.
Remember, our Psalm is divided into twenty-two stanzas, each beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
This section begins with the letter—DALETH—which is equivalent to the English D. So if we were reading our verses from the Hebrew text, it might appear something as follows:
Verse 25. Depressed to the dust is my soul; quicken Thou me according to Thy word.
Verse 26. Declared have I (to Thee) my ways, and Thou heardest me; teach me Thy statutes.
Verse 27. Declare Thou to me the way of Thy precepts: so shall I talk of Thy wondrous works.
Verse 28. Dropping is my soul for heaviness; strengthen Thou me according unto Thy word.
Verse 29. Deceitful ways remove from me; and grant me Thy law graciously.
Verse 30. Determined have I upon the way of truth; Thy judgments have I laid before me.
Verse 31. Deliberately I have stuck unto Thy testimonies: O Lord, put me not to shame.
Verse 32 Day by day I will run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou shalt enlarge my heart.
In this passage, it seems that the Psalmist is lamenting his tendencies toward earthly things. He says that his soul cleaves to the dust, melts for heaviness, and cries for spiritual help.
The word rendered CLEAVETH means to be glued to; to stick fast. It has the sense of adhering firmly to anything, so that it cannot easily be separated from it.
The Psalmist is admitting that his soul, as it were, adhered to the things of earth; that it seemed so fastened to them—so glued to them—that it could not be detached from them; that his affections were low, earthly, groveling, so as to give him deep distress, and to lead him to cry to God for life and strength that he might break away from them. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9).
"What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean." (Mark 7:20-21). Paul cries out..."What a wretched man I am! Who can rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25)
Our Psalmist cries out..."Quicken Thou me..." Cause me to live; give me vigor and strength to break away from this which binds me fast, and rise above these low propensities. Our writer knows that strength and power flow from the Word of God...ACCORDING TO THY WORD.
"For the Word of God is living and active. Sharper

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than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to the dividing soul and spirit, joints and morrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." (Heb. 4:12)
The Psalmist asked God to "quicken him," that is, to put new life into him. What he needed was a stiff dose of Scripture, taken with a mixture of faith, every day.
The Bible is a book of people and principles. Sooner or later, God will confront us in the pages of His Book with the basic cause of our problem or sin and with His inspired, infallible solution to that will meet our need.
Some Bible scholars believe that when David said..."My soul cleaveth unto the dust"...he may have been speaking of an experience of deep depression. This may be so. And this may have been caused because of his proneness to sin. Spiritual depression is a very real experience in the life of a person who takes their faith seriously.
Observation: The simplest description of the five-books of Psalms is that they were the inspired prayer-and-praise book of Israel. They are revelations of truth, not abstractly, but in the terms of human experience. The truth revealed is wrought into the emotions, desires, and sufferings of the people of God by the circumstances through which they pass.
It is because that is such a true description of them that the Psalms have always proved to be a great source of solace and encouragement to God's people throughout the centuries—both the children of Israel and the members of the Christian Church.
In the Psalms, we are able to watch noble souls struggling with their problems and with themselves. They talk to themselves and to their souls, baring their hearts, analyzing their problems, chiding and encouraging themselves. Sometimes they are elated, at other times depressed, but they are always honest with themselves.
In Psalm 42, the psalmist cries out: "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God; for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me..." (Psalm 42:5-6).
Again in Psalm 44, these words: "Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse Yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do You hide Your face and forget our misery and oppression? We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground." (Psalm 44:23-25)
In the passage we are studying, verse 28 reads: "My soul melteth for heaviness." In the original the word signifies, "droppeth away." The Septuagint hath it thus: "My soul fell asleep through weariness."
Our Psalmist must have experienced seasons of deep depression and despondency, driven as a fugitive and wanderer from his home, hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, and holding, as he himself says, his life continually in his hands. Yet I think in this portion of the Psalm there is evidence of a deeper abasement and sorrow of heart than any mere worldly suffering could produce. Here, I think, is indication of sin, of grievous sin which had laid his soul low in the dust; and I think the petition in the 29th verse gives us some clue to what that sin had been: "Remove me from the way of lying."

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Verse 26: "I have declared my ways, and Thou heardest me: teach me Thy statutes." Our Psalmist opens his heart wide open in confession.
Nothing brings more ease and more life to a man than a frank acknowledgment of the evil which has caused the sorrow and the lethargy. "He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
Right from the beginning, the Bible teaches us the importance and necessity of confession. When God came into the garden of Eden to confront Adam with his sin, His first question was, "What hast thou done?" He said: "Now tell Me all about it. What has happened? No permanent solution could be found to the shame and guilt of Adam's soul until he had confessed to God. No permanent solution can be found to a personality problem that leaves out confession to God. That is one reason why so much modern counseling falls short of the mark.
Our confessions are not meant to make God know our sins, but to make us know them. And, true confession always is followed by genuine repentance. The Bible unhesitatingly and emphatically declares that repentance is the first step in the soul's return to God; that it is not arbitrary, but necessary, seeing no soul can be saved and be a peace with God without it.
The word "repent" in its various forms occurs 45 times in the Old Testament and carries the underlying thought of CONTRITION. Two words are translated "repent." The one means to sigh or groan, then to lament or groan. The other word means to TURN OR RETURN.
In the New Testament, the word occurs 61 times, with the meaning of thinking differently, that is, to change one's mind. As the word for "mind" includes the feelings, judgments, desires and purposes, repentance means a reversal of man's nature, intellectual, affectional and moral.
The general scriptural significance of repentance, then, is to turn, right about face. The Psalmist summarizes it thus: "I thought on my ways"—Halt! I turned my feet unto Thy testimonies"—Right about turn! "I made haste and delayed not to keep Thy commandments" "Quick march! (Psalm 119:59-60).
Repentance, applied to man, means "to go the opposite way and to do the opposite thing, based upon deep sorrow and remorse for and abhorrence of sin—and such remorse and abhorrence usually come from a sight of God and His holiness...and that through giving heed thereunto His Word!
There is a Greek word used for REPENTANCE which signifies a real change of mind and attitude toward sin itself, and the cause of it—not merely the consequence of it—which affects the whole of life and not merely a single act. It has been defined as "a change in our principle of action from what is, by nature, the exact opposite.
REPENTANCE is not the mere presence of tears, nor solemn vows and resolutions. True REPENTANCE involves contrition, a sincere grieving for sin because of its dishonor

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to God, as well as its defilement of the soul. If, in repentance, sin is only regarded as a failure of duty to one's self, or one's neighbors, due to natural infirmity, then repentance for wrong doing will not be accompanied by deep conviction. But if sin is seen to be against God—an infraction of His will, a challenge to His authority, a reflection on His wisdom, a doing despite to His love—then a true repentance will be wrung from the soul, and in the throes of penitence, it will be abased before God.
True confession, with repentance, results in transformation. Repentance brings a change of judgment, feelings are reversed, actions and attitude are changed, and affections are transformed. We come to hate what we once loved. Instead of rejoicing in sin, there is sorrow for it.
When our Psalmist says that he declared all his ways, he is telling us that confession was the first step in dealing with that which was dragging him down to the dust. As we have observed, it may have been depression or deep sin, he has opened his heart wide open to God and His Word for healing. And our poet tells us one of the reasons why his soul was melting in heaviness...he has not been truthful. He has been guilty of lying (v.29). "No one who practices deceit will dwell in My house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in My presence" (Psalms 101:7). "The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful" (Pro. 12:22).
"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free" (Proverbs 19:5). "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." (Revelation 21:8).
"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place? (Ephesians 6:14).
TEACH ME YOUR STATUTES, MAKE ME TO UNDERSTAND THE WAY OF THY PRECEPTS.
When God has finished listening to our confession and has exposed us to His Word, His counsel will be that henceforth we are to adjust our ways to His Word. This is what we have referred to as repentance.
When our Psalmist knew God had heard his declaration of his ways, he does not say, "Now, Lord, tell me my lot, and let me know what the event will be; but, "Now Lord, tell me my duty, let me know what Thou wouldest have me to do. Speak, for Thy servant is ready to do what You require." MAKE ME TO UNDERSTAND, MAKE ME A WISE MAN!
"Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them" (Hos. 14:9).
Our Psalmist has well analyzed the experience of the effects of sin which brings us into the dust of an ineffective life, filled with pain and depression. We must make a full confession to God and then return to the pathway of obedience and commitment to the commands and statutes of our God. Only then will we have peace!