Sermon
Sing a Song of Scripture
August 3, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

Let's take our Bibles. We have come to a very, very interesting psalm. During the summer we selected 13 messages on the psalms. And I've stayed away the last couple of years from Psalm 119 because I thought to myself, how do you give an exposition on 176 verses? We'd be here till suppertime. I decided that what we would do is during the month of August we'll take this massive amount of scriptures and take them in five sections, and at least pick out some of the great truths in each of the sections and so we've arrived at Psalm 119. You'll notice that I entitled the message 'Sing a Song of Scripture.' Because remember these psalms were used for the great hymns in the synagogue, and many of them are written in songs, in Hebrew songs, and this is a song.

It has 22 stanzas, 22 verses. And you say, why 22 verses Pastor? Because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and this is known as an acrostic psalm. Each stanzas starts with the Hebrew letter, and you'll notice in your Bible notice up at the top of the beginning of the text it says Alpha. Do you see that in yours? Is it written there? And then you go down to verse 9 and then it says Beth. Do you see that there? And then you go down a few more verses and then you'll see Gimel. These are the letters to the Hebrew alphabet and so you'll find when you go through the psalm it has the 22 divisions, 22 stanzas to the song.

Now we sing great hymns and some of our hymns have 5 and 6 stanzas and we cut out a couple and only sing 3 or 4 of them. Well that's not so with this one; when you start singing you have 22 stanzas and it's a long, long song and it's beautiful. Its theme, of course, is the word of God. So let me just read the first 24 verses of our psalm and then we'll just make some observations. Now we do not know who the writer of the psalm is, but most Bible scholars believe that it was David. So we'll assume that David was the writer, and this is what he says:

"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 all 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."

Now let me make a couple of observations. You'll notice that just within those 24 verses the word of God is referenced in various ways; they're called statuettes, they're called laws, precepts, commandments, called the way, and all of these are defined -- they have a definition in themselves -- but they define something the psalmist really wants to tell us about the word. So as we study this psalm we'll learn what he's referring to. He takes those seven or eight words and just keep flowing them back and forth throughout the song in a very beautiful way, but his heartthrob is his love for the word of God.

There are some very interesting stories that surround this great passage of Scripture. Down at the bottom of page 1 in your notes, I suggest one story. It's an amusing story, and it concerns a man by the name of the George Wishart who was the bishop of Edinburgh during the seventeenth century. For his religious beliefs he was sentenced to death, and he was to die on the scaffold. When he was on the scaffold he made use of a custom of the times that permitted the condemned to choose a psalm to sing. He chose Psalm 119. Now he had a reason.

I'm at the top of page 2. Before two-thirds of the psalm was sung his pardon had arrived. You see, he knew that the king had issued a pardon, but the way of getting that pardon to where he was delayed and he had to find a way to delay time so he could save his neck. And of course this long psalm needs to be sung, and before it's finished, the person arrives with the pardon and he is released from the scaffold and set free. Now I note here that this story has often been told as an illustration of God's intervention to save a saintly person. The truth is different. Wishart was renowned for shrewdness but not for his sanctity. He was expecting this pardon and he requested this psalm to gain time, and happily for him, succeeded in delaying the execution until his pardon came.

Now as we noted Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm, written as a song with 22 stanzas. One of the most striking features, of course, is the fact in Psalm 119 that out of these 176 verses at least 171 have a direct reference to the Word of God. It's amazing that God would so inspire the writer to take a subject, the Word of God, and just flow back and forth through thoughts and various approaches to the Scriptures, and yet keep this theme the same in 171 verses. It's an amazing thing.

Maclaren, I'm down two-thirds in the page, was a great pastor England and he wrote 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, another great theologian, 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's called 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 its obedience. 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 Doctrines. It is the Storehouse of the Holy Spirit. It is the School of Truth, also the deep mystery of the Scriptures, where the whole moral discipline of all the virtues shines brightly.

Top of page 3. Now in that we are going to be discussing the Bible as our central theme for the next number of weeks, I'd like to take just a little more time to kind of get acquainted with the Scriptures, and you can read the text when you get home.

But I ran across an interesting story of history this last week. The pony express was a thrilling part of the early American history. It ran from St. Joseph Missouri to Sacramento, which was a distance of 1900 miles. Now the trip was made in 10 days; 40 men. Now this trip was made in 10 days and 40 men each riding 50 miles a day dashed along the trail on 500 of the best horses that were available in the West in those days. Now to conserve weight clothing was very light, saddles were extremely small and thin, and no weapons were carried. The horses themselves wore small shoes or none at all, and the mail pouches were flat and very conservative in size. The letters had to be written on thin paper and the postage for one ounce in those days was 5 dollars an ounce. Now that was a tremendous sum of money in those days. So you can see they conserved in every way possible to lighten the burden for the pony express rider. Yet each rider carried a full-sized Bible. It was presented to him when he joined the pony express and he took it with him despite the all requirements of weight precautions. He always had his Bible.

It's interesting to know what great men have said about the Bible. George Washington said it's impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. John Quincy Adams: So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, to read the Bible is to take a trip into a fair land where the spirit is strengthened and the faith is renewed.

I found this interesting story and that is that the fact that the Standard Oil Company discovered oil and is operating wells in Egypt. That's generally known in the business world, but the reason for going to that ancient land and to look for oil is probably unknown. Here's the rest of the story. It is asserted that one of the directors of the oil company appeared to have read the second chapter of Exodus one day while he was reading the Bible and the third verse caught his attention. It states that the arc of bulrushes which the mother of Moses made for her child was daubed with slime and pitch. Now this gentleman reasoned that where there was pitch there must be oil, and if there's oil in Moses' day it's probably still there today.

So the oil company sent out Charles Whitshott it's geologist and oil expert to make investigations. Sure enough, they found oil and the oil wells are still pumping there today where Moses' mother fixed the little arc for her child.

Speaking of oil; some years ago an Israeli gentleman by the name of Federman began to brood over the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he read his Bible and this is what it says: and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. He guessed that such conflagrations might indicate underground gas, and underground gas meant underground oil. He was right. In 1953 Israel sank its first oil well on the exact locations of Sodom and Gomorrah, and to this day they are pumping oil out of that part of the world. But, the hint came from the reading of the Bible.

Now I've underlined in my Bible just some words in these first few verses because they are the prominent...this is what he's trying to say to us. Notice the first one; I've underlined blessed. Blessed are the undefiled in the way. Now if we were reading this in the Hebrew text the word blessed is written in pleural. It always is. And what it means in the Hebrew is happy, and in that it's written in pleural, it's happy-happy. So if we were reading this in the original text he would be saying happy-happy, or, oh the happiness of. And with the emphasis of happy-happy what he's saying is that joy that is so deep, deeper than anything else in life, not a passing joy but something really deep; happy-happy, Oh the happiness of.

Happy-happy is the man who is undefiled who walks in the way. What he is saying is this, and again the word 'the way' is often used as a defined word for the Bible or the Scriptures, so happy-happy is the man who walks according to the Scripture and his life is undefiled with sin. Now that's interesting because the implication is that only true happiness is found in living according to the Scriptures. Because what you'll find throughout the text is happiness is always wedded to holiness. That's interesting to me. In other words, the man who seeks or the person who seeks genuinely to follow God's word, he'll fail, we all do, but deep down in the heart there is that burning desire; God, I really want to live according to Your Scriptures. The Bible says that's the only man in town that's going to be really happy-happy, because you can't find happiness apart from holiness, and you can only enjoy holiness when God rules supreme in your life. It's true.

Now look at verse 2. I underlined another word. Look at the word whole. Do you see it there? Who seek Me with their whole heart. Now he's making this very defined. He's saying happy-happy is the man who's made the decision to love God with all of his heart, with all of the soul, with all of his mind, with all of his strength! Everything about him is committed to God. And he is right -- the person who goes at religion halfheartedly is never a happy person. He may want to come to church on Sunday and he hears the religious message and he feels the sense of God's presence, but he's going to go out and live during the week anyway he wants to live. I mean, you live a divided life and you're miserable folks. The implied truth here is the only really happy person is the person who makes the decision, God is going to be everything in my life, and even though I'll fail a thousand times, with all my heart I'm going to try to follow this book with God's help, the man who makes that commitment.

The next one: look down at verse 6, Then I would not be ashamed. Isn't it true that it's when we violate the Scriptures that shame comes into our lives? It's when we go against what the God has said and sin comes into our way. I talked with a man yesterday. I had walked out of my office just to get away from my office for a few moments and in from the door walked a gentleman -- you could tell he was distraught. In his life, he said I once used to follow God, I once was a man of faith, and then I slipped away from God and I started going my own way. The result pastor, he said, I've lost everything. I've lost my family. I have two boys; I've lost them. I've lost my personal dignity. I've lost control of my life because drugs now have me. I've lost everything and I live a life of shame.

And I was thinking of that verse. Boy, the psalmist knows; when you violate God's word, even the world knows the requirements of God's word, strange to me that they'll judge us, and in that violation of God's word shame is associated. Sin always brings shame. So he's saying, if I follow Your word, if I do as best I can to make this (the Bible) the controlling factor of my life, I'll save my life from shame. And I'll save bringing shame to my family, to my God, and to myself. There's something about this book. Its laws are universal, they come from God, and they were written for our good. And you violate them and immediately you pay the price. It's amazing.

That's why he said in verse 4: You have commanded. You see that word commanded? David knew this wasn't just a suggestion on how to live. This is not just a hint. He's saying, God, everything You put in here is a command. And it came from Your heart. And in that Your commands You have only good intended for me, therefore what You have said is for my best, not just suggestions, they are commands. But in obeying the commands happy-happy is the man and his way is without shame, and his life is without defilement -- happy-happy.

Now there's one other. Look at the verse 18. Look at what he says: Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law because I'm a stranger so don't hide Your commandments from me. Do know what he's saying? God, I'm just a stranger down here. I've got a finite mind. Your words and Your thoughts are infinite, Your ways are so much different than my ways. God, please, please don't hide Your truth from me. Open my eyes, my spiritual eyes, so I can understand what You're saying. I need that because with all of my humanness I can't decipher some of these glorious truths, and I need Your Holy Spirit to open my heart. And I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, we all do that.

I suggested to a boy yesterday, when you go home I know that it's going to be hard to pick up your Bible. Just make that prayer, Jesus, I don't understand, but I really do want to understand so just open my spiritual eyes. Just help me to comprehend what You want me to know. That's what he's praying.

You know, as I pray and prepared to meet with you folks Sunday after Sunday that's my prayer. I can read books, and I've got them by the thousands, I can pick up what other people say, but the most precious moment to me is when I just bow my head and say, God I know what all these theologians say but I want You to tell me; open up Your Scriptures to me in a way that I can't find it in somebody else's writings. And I'll tell you the most precious moments are when God just takes a Scripture verse and all of a sudden it starts opening up just like a flower. I sit there and cry and say, God, that's beautiful. Why didn't those guys think of it? They wrote all those books.

But here's what he's saying, God, I'm just a stranger; I just live down here; I'm just a human being and Your word is divine, and it's Your thoughts and You're eternal and Your mind is infinite, and mine is finite. Just help me to understand what You want me to understand. It's a great prayer, isn't it? With that we'll close.

Jesus, we're going to pray the same prayer that David prayed. We're strangers. We're just pilgrims down here making our journey too, and we've got little tiny minds. Your mind is infinite and Your words are truth, and they do affect our lives when we follow them. They bring us great joy. So this week open our hearts and our eyes to behold the wondrous things in Your word. We pray that sincerely in Jesus' name. God bless you all, amen.