Psalm 119:1-8 - Laws that Lead to Life
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
We are wrapping up our series and Psalms today. Not forever. As we've said before, this Psalm, we have so many Psalms to cover, and so we're going to return summer after summer to cover more Psalms. But it's been an encouraging series. We hope it's been an encouraging series for you. Pastor Chris and I, we love, and Lauren, love teaching this series and Psalms because it addresses very relatable human tensions, very real emotions. It helps redirect us to God throughout our day-to-day lives. And so on that thought of emotions and tensions, I just want to ask you guys, by a show of hands, how many of you in this past week had a moment where you were just, you were struggling? Anybody had a, yeah, any moments? Somebody had some really good, okay, yeah, most hands. Good for you, if you had a great week and nothing ever went wrong, I'm so happy for you, praise God.
More specifically, let me refine this question. How many of you in this past week, when trying to live like Jesus, struggled to do that? Anyone raise their hands? Yeah, mine would be like both of them up here. Just the life of frustration and trying to love people who are difficult to love at times. All of us just struggle to perfectly live like Jesus. Being like Jesus, living the way that God wants us to is hard, it's impossibly hard. We cannot do it apart from the grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God within us. The amazing thing is that, as you know, God has given us more than just the Holy Spirit to guide us in our lives, He's also given us His holy word, the Bible. And we all know and experience being a Christian doesn't mean that life is any easier, still means that we go through challenges, go through difficulties and struggles, but it does mean that we have Jesus to walk with us through all those things, and it also means that we have God's word to guide us, and His word tells us how to walk in the best way possible.
I think sometimes we take, and I speak for myself first and foremost, we take for granted the Bible and the power that it has. We have it at the ready. Most of us probably have more than one Bible. We have different versions. We have it on our phone at the tip of our fingers. We can have different translations and we have large print, small print. You have Jesus' words in red. You get any Bible that you want with any different option, calfskin, pleather, all the many different kinds of Bibles out there. And sometimes we just need to be reminded of the power of God's word, and the necessity for us to be in his word often and regularly. And so today is gonna be just that, a reminder of the power of God's word and encouragement in the spiritual practice of reading it, reading scripture. Why do we need to do this? Well, because we have a life problem of sin, every one of us in this room, whether you raise your hand or not, we all deal with sin, and the best and only successful way to live a life that honors God and doesn't give in to sin is to follow God's word, His law. Somewhere along the way in life, law developed a negative connotation in the world. Probably because we're human, we don't like being told that we can't do something. Most of us are prone to go do something. Someone says, "Don't do it." You're like, "Well, I'm gonna go do that because you just told me not to, and I want to, and I can." But God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's also about what we should do. It guides and instructs us in how to live a life that doesn't lead to death as sin does. But it tells us how to live a life that leads to eternal life with God. God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's what we should do, and it guides and instructs us. And I'm not saying that we, the Bible tells us how to earn our way to heaven. That's not what we're saying, and that's what the Pharisees thought, and Jesus scolded them and made sure that all the disciples knew. That's not what I'm saying, that's not what Jesus came to teach. But we're reminded that God has given us an amazing playbook here of how to live life and with his help, of course, through his spirit and by his grace.
And so the psalm that we're gonna cover today that teaches and shares in that truth is Psalm 119. It is the longest psalm. Don't worry, we're not going through all of it. We would be here all day if I would just sit and read all of that chapter. We are only gonna cover a bit of it. I am, you may know this already by many of my references in my preaching, but I'm a bit of a nerd. And if you would allow me, yeah, Pastor Chris reminds me kindly often that I'm a little bit of a nerd. And I would like to nerd out just a little bit on this Psalm 119 and share with you some of the very cool things. Okay, so if you're there in your Bible, you can turn there, you don't have to, but it might help to see the visual. There are 22 sections in this chapter, just in this chapter, and each section is one of the Hebrew letters. And so it starts with, it's going through the Hebrew alphabet. So it starts with "alef," which is our version of "a." And so you have every 22 sections, 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And within those sections, this is where it gets really cool, each verse starts with that letter. So in our "a" section, our "alef" section, every verse would start in the Hebrew with "alef." And now it doesn't translate that way into English. So you're looking at your Bible and you say, "Andre, it doesn't do that at all." It does not work in the English. And that's a bummer for us because that's part of the beauty of this Psalm is someone in the Hebrew culture would see this and read this and it would just start to click. It would be like us having a song in our ABCs in English and everything in the, you just follow and describe who God is and what God, what he does and it would be an easy way for us to remember and just be like, oh, the ABCs of theology and of who God is and let's go through that.
So that's what Psalm 119 is and it's beautiful. I don't know if there's a song that exists like that in English, any songwriters out there. If you're watching online, please, this is your invitation, please write a cool theology song that takes every letter and describes God. We have a book that we read, our daughter, I'm excited to read it to our latest addition to our family, that it's not the whole alphabet, but it goes through and highlights different characteristics of God. All to say that this psalm, okay, is one of the most carefully constructed psalms. The intentionality is not just in the message, but how that message is packaged. And each line of Psalm 119 offers a deeper and different perspective of God's law. I don't know if you've ever had the chance to look at a diamond. Anything that I recall right now about diamonds is from years ago when I bought my wife an engagement ring. But I vaguely remember, you're looking for cut and clarity, and the jeweler, you know, you either get that little cool monocle eyepiece to look really closely, or there's a big magnifying glass and they hold the jewel under it so you can see it, and they start to just show you this diamond, and you get to see it from the top, and you say, "Hey," and you look at it from this angle, you can see the beauty of it, and then they'll start to rotate it, and you're like from the side, and you see the light hit it, and just as they rotate that diamond or that jewel, you're just like, "This is beautiful," and the more they rotate it, the more you appreciate its beauty.
Well, Psalm 119 rotates God's law so we can see God's law from various angles and better understand the beauty of God's truth. And today we're gonna cover just one of those angles, this first section, Aleph, the first eight verses. So if you guys would read along with me. Verse one, it says, "Blessed are those "whose ways are blameless, "who walk according to the law of the Lord. "Blessed are those who keep his statutes "and seek him with all their heart. "They do no wrong but follow his ways. "You have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed. "Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees. "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands. "I will praise you with an upright heart "as I learn your righteous laws. "I will obey your decrees. "Do not utterly forsake me." Again, the goal of this psalm is to enable God's people to admire His word so strongly that they will work and pray hard to have it shape their character and their conduct. And already in the first eight verses, we see God's law held to such high esteem and a profound desire to follow that law because the people understand that it leads to life and it's a blessing to have this law available to them. The ESV commentary says, "The written word of God "stands as one of the greatest, most precious "of all of God's gifts to his people.
Psalm 119 celebrates the wisdom, truthfulness, clarity, grace, direction, and power of this written revelation of God. Folks, what you have available to you, what you have in the seat in front of you or in your hands is a gift. And it's not to be taken for granted. And this gift has power to transform who we are and what we do. And that's the interaction with this Psalm. is the more that we learn about who God is and what he does, it would change who we are and what we do. And so we see in verse one that people are blessed for walking according to the law of the Lord. This is Psalm 119, draws from a lot of other Psalms. And so if you are familiar with Psalm one, the very first line of the book of Psalms, this is reiterating that. Blessed are those who walk according to the way of God. "The people are blessed whose ways are blameless." This isn't, we read this and we may think, so God wants us to be perfect? Well, no, he doesn't have that expectation 'cause he knows we can't be. This isn't emphasizing perfection as much as it is focusing on a person who has the highest integrity and lives with complete honesty. And the psalmist is saying, that's who we should wanna be. People in this world with the utmost integrity and who live the most honest lives. In verses two and three, we see God's blessing on those again who follow his statutes and seek him with all their hearts. God's desire is that he be the biggest priority in his people's lives. He's saying that in his infinite wisdom, he knows what it will take for a person to walk in the way of life, not in sin and in death. He knows that He must be the priority in our hearts. And if God isn't the priority, if we are giving all of ourselves to anything else other than God, then it's a recipe for disaster. It means that sin will be guiding us away eventually. It may not seem that drastic at the beginning. Think of the, I've never been, I've sailed once in my life, but I've heard for long distance sales that just one degree off on that compass which means miles and miles far away, you're gonna be hundreds of miles from your destination. And that's that way with sin.
Even just for a moment, if we let anything other than God guide us through life, if that sustains, if that's kept up, sooner or later, we are gonna be so far away from God. So God wants to be the priority in our lives. And he says this throughout scripture. I mean, the first commandment, "shall have no other gods before me." And so in this first section we see, again, the psalmist just rotating God's word and saying, "Look at this. "Look how amazing this is. "Look how beautiful God's law is." And now the psalmist changes who the psalmist directed to. In the first three verses, it was being said to an audience, it's a song to be sung, stating who God is. But now in the last four verses, or the five, yeah, change their attention to be directed to God. Verse four says, "You, God, have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed." I like this line a lot. I feel I'm gonna integrate this in my life. We don't use precepts a lot. I don't know if I've ever heard someone in their common speech say precepts, but I'm thinking as the youth pastor, when the youth get a little rowdy, I might just quote this and be like, "Look, youth, I have precepts that need to be fully obeyed. Better get in line. They're gonna be like, "What are precepts? "I don't know what you're talking about." The point is that we see that there is a desire as well as an expectation from God for his people to be completely obedient to him. It's not just a suggestion. It's not saying, "Hey, if you feel like it, "my people, you should try to maybe follow me." It's one of the options that you have. No, he's saying this is, this is it. This is the best way, this is the law, and I expect you to obey it.
In verse five, this verse speaks to the loyalty in obeying God. We have to be consistent. We have to be devoted to God and his law. The word that is used is steadfast. Whenever you see steadfast in the Bible, Think of it as a hyperlink to Exodus when God is speaking to Moses and describing himself to Moses, saying this is who I am. And we talked about this in an earlier Psalm, this hesed, steadfast. God is perfectly steadfast to us. He wants us to be steadfast to him. But the Psalmist here is recognizing that we, despite our best efforts, humanity cannot be perfectly steadfast to God. We will fail in our commitment at some point. Just ask Israel time and time again, falling away from God. Even David, you know, the renowned psalmist, the renowned best king in Israel's history, he had moments of terrible sin, falling away from God. But the goal here is that each follower of Yahweh would share in their eager yearning to be like God and obey his commandments. And then together, as a people, as a community, there's accountability and there's more opportunity for course correction. The Hebrew word in this verse at the very end, obeying your decrees, evokes images of boundaries, healthy boundaries. The Hebrew word brings to mind like someone taking a rock and etching something in, or like taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand. And so you can think of it as God drawing the boundary and saying, this is, be on this side, people. this is where I want you, don't go over there.
And that is a theme that is all throughout scripture. I mean, that's all the way back in Genesis, in the garden. God's saying, hey, I want you here, I have great life set up for you here, just don't do this. I had a professor once describe boundaries, because we often think of boundaries as restricting. Again, going back to that negative connotation of the law. And we don't like boundaries sometimes. But I had a professor describe boundaries, or the views of the law, and some people think of God's law and following it like a tightrope. And you just have to do your best. It's very hard, there's a single straight line, and if you fall, you're done. Or to maybe like a two-lane road. And this analogy kinda doesn't work. When I heard it, I was like, I get what you're saying, so I'm gonna convey what he said. If you don't like it, I'll pass that along. But like a two-lane road, and there's the yellow divider line, and he's saying the safest place to be would be straddling that line. If you got the metal guards on either side, the safest place, theoretically if there's no traffic, is right on the middle. But really, God's law is more like, instead of that yellow line saying you can only be here, it's more like the metal rails on the side, just keeping you in the safe place, in the place that is living wisely. Or maybe also, like he mentions a river. And you don't have to be exactly in the middle of the river. Just the banks are the things that keep you in the water where you're supposed to be. And so whichever one you like, and if you don't like any of them, that's okay. But those analogies of God's law, there's wide berth to follow him, and we should view it not so much as restricting as life-giving. God's law is not restricting, but it gives life and it leads to life.
Verse six says, "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands." And this verse alludes to the vastness of God's law. It covers so much. It covers all we need for life. I think sometimes we start to put the Bible in compartments of our life. We just say, well, the Bible addresses this area, and so this area, I'm gonna go to the Bible, and I'm gonna look for wisdom, but for this area over here, I don't need to talk about the Bible. I don't need to reference it, I don't need to go to it. I know this much over here. But God is saying, no, my law covers every part of life, everything that you will do, I have wisdom and I have insight for you. There's a recognition that God's ways are best and we must come to that same conclusion.
In verse seven, the psalmist conveys the anticipation of learning. I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. The psalmist is instructing us to learn. Learning is so important. In our household, with my parents and with our daughter and my extended, like my sister, my brother-in-law, and their kids, we've gotten to this habit at family meals of doing trivia after dinner. And so I'll just pull up a trivia website. And even the kids are getting into it. I have to look up kids trivia because they don't know random stuff of history. But what are all the colors of the rainbow? And what's the largest mammal? And it's really fun. And we are trying to-- not only is it fun, but we're trying to instill this desire to learn. We don't know everything. We do know some really random stuff, and that's really fun. But we don't know everything. And this can be a fun way to learn. And it's good because those little ones, there's age differences, and some of them are in school already. And so they're getting questions like that. And then the little ones are like, I haven't answered any questions. And it's like, it's OK. Just learn. Just listen. Pick up on that. And the next time around when we ask, you might know that one. But learning is so important. OK, before we get away from learning and trivia, do you guys want a quick trivia fact? Okay. In the last ... I'm like 99% that this is true, by the way, so if you fact-check me ... (Laughter) If I'm off, you'll see where I might be off. In the last 100 years - this has to do with the Olympics, so we're still on theme, with the Olympics ending today - in the last 100 years, in the 100-meter race, typically known as the fastest human on Earth, whoever can win the 100-meter race, in the Olympics, with all the increase of technology, of training, of health, diet, the better track that they run on, the better shoes that they have, how much faster do you think we are than 100 years ago? I say we, I did not run this race, not we. How much faster do you think humans have run than 100 years ago? Any guesses? Any thoughts? Ten seconds? Okay, ten seconds faster than 100 years ago. Any other guesses? I can't hear, but maybe you guys are thinking yourselves. You guys ready for this? A hundred years ago, so today, the world record, not today, because I think it's Usain Bolt, 0.81 seconds faster than a hundred years ago. It's crazy. That blew my mind when I learned that, which I'm pretty sure I learned, and I'm pretty sure that's true. If it's not, it's less than a second, though. If I'm off, it's still less than a second. That's crazy. OK, so you learn something new every day. We'll get away from the Olympics.
The more we learn, back to God, who God is, the more we learn about who we are meant to be. The more we learn about who, what God does, the more we learn about what we should be doing. The Psalmist is saying, continue to learn. It's a lifelong process. And then the chapter ends with an acknowledgement that there is a wide gap between the wicked and Yahweh, and we should have this desire to remain as close to God as possible. So we've just went through the first section of Psalm 119, the olive section, and it's a beautiful section of Psalms that is praising God in his word, his law, and I wanna take some time to just end our sermon by reflecting on our relationship to God's law and to him. So I have a couple questions, and the first question is this. What are you learning about God? Getting back to that verse seven, we should be lifelong learners of God. There are rabbis who dedicate their whole life to memorizing and studying the Torah. And some of them have dedicated their whole lives to just a section of the Torah. And after 50 years of studying day after day, they are still learning something new about God.
We need to be curious about the God that we serve and worship. People who are naturally curious love learning. That's not all of us. Some of us just like trivia. Be like, "Oh, I just want to learn more random facts." I was reading a book by author Vander Bloeman recently, and he pointed out that you can always ask a curious person, "Hey, what are you learning?" And it'll always be something new. Just because they are just going to keep learning random things. And the next time you see them, you can say, "Hey, what are you learning?" And they're going to give you a random thing, and they're going to give you a lot of it. Because they got into it, and they went down that rabbit hole or YouTube video or whatever it is, they can't help it, they want to know more, and we need to be like that with God. We should be eager to learn more about God. And I think on top of that, we should maybe be open, we might start off awkward, but I think it'd be okay to just ask each other, hey, what are you learning about God recently? What have you learned about him? And we don't have to be worried about any shame of, well, it's not some great theological new breakthrough that I've learned about God. No, we're not gonna learn that. I could just be, man, I've just been learning more about his grace. I've been learning more about his love through what I've been going through, my situation in life and reflecting on how God's loving me. I'm learning more about that. But we should be encouraged to learn more about our king and our savior. So what are you learning about God?
Secondly, what or who is guiding you? As you think about your life and how you're living your life and you reflect back on this last week or this last month, something is guiding you in life. It could be yourself. It could be traditions, family traditions, work culture. It could be the latest book or podcast on leadership or family life. It could be another religion. Whatever it is, something is guiding you through life. You are giving your attention, you are giving your thought, your heart, "What do I do?" And you're going to something to say, "What is it? "I'm going to follow that." You know this. I'm going to say it again. It should be God. God not only should be the one that guides you, but He wants to guide you. He is there saying, "Let me do this for you." And He's given us His word as the biggest gift to say, "Look, here's this for you. "Let me help you in life." The NIV commentary says that the Lord's instruction, His law permeates Psalm 119. Almost every verse of this massive psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible, mentions the law or one of its synonyms. So that should tell us that, look, this is how much I value what I have to say. This is God saying, this is how much I value what I have to say. Oh, I'm drawing from my daughter. It's in every verse of this psalm. That's how important it is. God wants to be your guide. He knows what you need. But again, the problem is our human tendency, our sin nature. We think we know how to live this life all by ourselves. We don't think we need the instruction manual. As a kid, I love LEGOs. I think I've mentioned this before. And it was easy. There is no-- it's for kids. There's not even words in those instruction manuals. It's pictures. And just as you continue to follow the pictures, your LEGOs look more like the box. And you're like, this is awesome. I love it. And then, so I love LEGOs, I love building it, and I follow the instructions to a T. Because if you were off, your end product wouldn't look like the box. Well, somewhere in my 20s, not with LEGOs anymore, unfortunately, but more with IKEA furniture and things like that, I just got this confidence. I don't know where, but I was like, I don't need the instruction manual. Forget that. There's legs, there's a top, and there's a couple other things. And I'm just going to put it together. And that worked out 50% of the time. And then other times, I was left with a copy table that didn't stand up or shelves that didn't stay on. Didn't go well. And then now in my 30s, I've come back to following the instructions. I don't have energy to rebuild things three times anymore. And so I've come back to following page by page, following the instructions. Usually I will read the instructions because now there's words. But sometimes I don't and I get in trouble. But I think this is true of some of us in life, that maybe we're born or along the way We get this confidence that we can do this life on our own. I get that there's instructions, but I think I got it now. I got the gist, and I'm just going to go forward, and I'm going to do my thing.
But we can't do it all by ourselves. We just really can't. And if we think we can, then that's the enemy lying to us, giving us this false confidence, just like he did to Adam, and he was saying, "Do you really need God? Do you really need God to live this life?" But by the grace of God and because of the sacrifice of Christ made on the cross, we can have salvation, we can experience the transforming work of the Spirit within us, and by the grace of His Word, we can better understand the way in which God is leading us and guiding us. So what, who or what is guiding you? And if it's anything other than God, have some course correction in your life. Turn to Him, open up this Word, get to know what you you should be doing. And lastly, the last question, do you believe and live by the power of God's word? I wanna share some statistics with you. A recent study in America was done, actually just this last year, so this is 2023, and it says the following. 159 people agree that the Bible has an impact on how they interact with others. That's good. 159 million people think that the Bible It has an impact and influences how they treat other people. 146 million agree that the Bible has influence on how they treat people who are of a different race. Another good thing, Bible addresses that. 130 million, we're getting smaller, I don't know if you noticed this, 130 million agree that the Bible has influence for their support for refugees and people displaced by wars and conflicts. Again, something else addressed in the Bible, but we see that trend now, the number getting smaller of what the Bible has influence over. The last one I wanna share is this. Only 47 million are regularly engaged with scripture. Regularly, they define regularly, they have the series of questions for this survey and had to do with frequency, impact, and the centrality of God's word in their lives. But the study commented, it says, "Apparently people are using the Bible "as a guidebook for life as about the same level "as they did in previous years, Yet, for millions of people, the Bible is not leading to greater connection with God or more loving behavior towards others. So here's the point. Somewhere along the way, and this is backed up by studies, there's a disconnect in people's minds. That the Bible has some place in life, but not in a place that it should affect all of my life. It might offer some good advice, It might be something to reference when I'm in a really tough situation, but the rest of it, people are feeling pretty confident that they can do by themselves. They don't think of the Bible. They don't understand that the Bible is the ultimate truth. It's God's divine word, and it can change us from the inside out. When we read Psalm 119, just that first section, It was overflowing with the belief and the conviction that the law of God truly transforms the heart and life of a person.
So the question is, do you believe that? And do you live like that every day? And I say this with myself feeling convicted. If we did, we would read our Bible with that hunger and that thirst to say, how can I change more? How can I be more like God? Let me open this up and see what God has to say. and trust that through his spirit and his word, I will be transformed to be more like him. So, in closing, Psalm 119, we'll probably return to Psalm 119 in years to come in the summers, and as the worship team makes their way back up, I wanna say this, so be curious, be a lifelong learner of the God that you serve. Just continue to learn. That may mean opening your Bible and reading something randomly, but however it is, ask questions to people, Chris, myself, others around you. Be a lifelong learner of God. And then let God guide you, seek His guidance. Don't do this life on your own or by any other standard, but follow Him with everything that you have. And do so because you have the conviction and the belief that his word is necessary to live a life that is God-honoring. Because you believe that scripture is a part of that transforming work. Oftentimes, when Pastor Chris and I meet with people who ask, you know, I wanna know God more. The very first, have you read your Bible? When was the last time you opened up your Bible? This is gonna be the best way to get to know God. Same when they ask, what should I be doing in life? I wanna know what the Christian life is about. First thing, open this up, read this. And for those of us who have been walking with God for years, it doesn't change. It doesn't mean that we come to the end, like I read it, I read it through a couple times, so I think I'm good. And the rest I'll just hope that I remember what, no. Daily, often, open this up and enjoy and read the law, the word of God.
Let's go ahead and pray. God, we thank you so much for the gift of your word, a word that has power to change, to transform us to be more like you. God, I pray that you would cultivate in us a spirit of learning, just for us to accept that we don't know everything. For some of us, that's very hard. But I pray that you would grow in us this desire to wanna know more about you, know how to live this life in a way that honors you. And God, I pray that it would be fun, it would be enjoyable to learn and to be more like you. And God, we also just pray that we would live with conviction day by day that we need this. We need you, we need your word. And we pray for your guidance. We seek your guidance and direction, God, all of us, whether now, today, and this week, or in a different season of life, We face challenges, we face difficulties, and we don't know what to do, but we can take comfort and rest assured that you do. So please make your voice loud. May we be attuned to your spirit as you guide us step by step through life. God, we trust you, we need you, and we praise you. We pray this in your name, Amen.