20260809 Psalm 119, Part 1: God’s Word For Life
For one man, knowing Psalm 119 was a life saver! George Wishart, a bishop in the 1600’s, was sentenced to death by hanging. Following the custom of the time, he was allowed to choose one psalm to be read aloud before dying. He chose Psalm 119, with its 176 verses, and before the reading was over, his pardon arrived, and his life was spared. It can really pay off to know your Bible!
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. It is a prayer.
It is also an acrostic poem that goes through the Hebrew alphabet. Each stanza
covers a letter of the alphabet. Each stanza contains 8 verses, and all 8 verses
of each stanza begin with the same letter.
The theme of Psalm 119 is the word of God. The length of
this Psalm on the Word of God speaks to the value of the Word of God. The
acrostic poem going from the first letter Aleph to the last, Tav shows that the
Word of God is comprehensive and relates to every aspect of the human experience.
The careful structure of this Psalm reflects its message that a life ordered according
to God’s Word will experience divine stability.
The Psalm uses nine different words to refer to the Word of
God. It speaks of God’s words, promises, judgments, testimonies, statutes, Law,
commandments, precepts, and way. One of these nine words appears in 171 of the
176 verses. This rich vocabulary reveals the diamond-like, multi-faceted value
of God's Word. It is dynamic. It gives life. It comforts. It instructs. It commands.
It inspires awe.
This message is the first of a four-part series in a topical
study of Psalm 119. The goal is to celebrate God and his word. In this series I
want to answer: What is God’s Word For? In four messages, I want to give four
answers. According to Psalm 119, God through Word gives life, comfort,
instruction, and delight.
In 1535, Philip Melanchthon was the first to speak of the
three uses of the law for Christians which Calvin reorder to mirror, muzzle,
and map. As a mirror, the law reveals our imperfections and shows us our need
for a savior. As a muzzle, the law restrains sin in the world. As a map the law
guides us to walk in God's ways. In this series there will be a lot of overlap
with these three uses of the Law but they will not match perfectly. This first
message does match Calvin’s first use, as a mirror.
A mirror reveals our imperfections so that we would act upon
what we see. If we see in the mirror that we have something stuck between our
teeth, and do nothing, the mirror was useless.
This mirror analogy for the Word of God comes from James
1:23. James writes, that pne who uses a mirror correctly is like one who looks into
the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who
forgets but a doer who acts. The law reveals our faults so that we can act.
Gal 3:24 tells us what it is we must do and who the law should lead us to. According to Gal 3:24, the law was given ultimately to lead us to faith in Christ to be justified.[i] God’s law is a mirror that reveals our sins so that we would repent and turn to Christ in faith to be justified. In a way we will see how Psalm 119 explains Gal 3:24.
We will see that Psalm 119 teaches us how God's Word points
us to Christ for us to find life. We will see that God’s Word leads to life by
revealing God’s Goodness, our Human need, and God’s Rescue. This first topical
message from Psalm 119 is a basic Gospel Presentation, with these three
movements: God’s Goodness, Our Human’s Need, God’s Rescue.
We begin with Psalm 119 and God’s Goodness
In this first point, we see the goodness of God, the goodness
of God’s Word, and the goodness of God’s good design for humanity. Psalm 119
includes these themes that echo Genesis 1 and how the message of the Bible
begins. We have a Good Creator God who delights in giving us life that we would
walk with him.
Teaching
Psalm 119 has a lot to say about God.
Psalm 119 is saturated with statements on the goodness of
God. According to Psalm 119, God is the creator, he is righteous, he is good,
he is love, merciful, he is sovereign, and faithful. If we want to worship God,
we can meditate on Psalm 119. Let’s worship a bit together with Psalm 119.
First, according to Psalm 119, God is not just a creator, he
is our personal maker. The Psalmist writes in Ps 119:73, “Your hands have made
and fashioned me.” God is righteous. The Psalmist writes in Ps 119:137, “Righteous
are you, O Lord” (c.f. Ps 119:142). God is also good. The Psalmist says in Ps
119:68, “You are good and do good.” Ps 119:41, 64, 159 speak of God’s steadfast
love. Ps 119:64 declares, “The earth, O LORD, is full of your steadfast love.” God
is merciful as Ps 119:156 testifies, “Great is your mercy, O Lord.” God is
sovereign, which is great news, his marvelous attribute will win the day. Ps
119:91 in reference to all creation, the Psalmist declares, “all things are you
servants.” A final attribute is God’s faithfulness (Ps 119:86, 90, 138). Ps
119:90 reads, “Your faithfulness endures to all generations.”
Psalm 119 repeats these attributes and many more. As we
begin the Gospel presentation according to Psalm 119, we see that God is good,
righteous creator, he is loving, merciful, sovereign, and faithful. Psalm 119
should inspire us to worship God for who he is.
Psalm 119 has a lot to say about God’s Word
The same way Psalm
119 helps us to marvel at God, it also helps us to marvel at his word. According
to Psalm 119, the word is precious, has authority, is powerful, is true, clear,
and reliable.
The Psalmist speaks to God’s Word’s preciousness when he
writes in Ps 119:72, it is “better than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” God’s
Word also possesses authority, which is the right to rule and command. In Ps
119:4, the Psalmist writes, “You have commanded your precepts to be kept
diligently.” Ps 119:142 declares the truthfulness of God’s Law – “Your law is
true.” According to Ps 119:130, the word of God is clear – “The unfolding of
your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” It is also stable,
reliable and unchanging. The Psalmist declares, in Ps 119:89, “Forever,
O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.” And in Ps 119:160, “every
one of your righteous rules endures forever.”
Psalm 119 and God’s Good Purposes for humans.
We’ve seen that
God is Good and his Word is Good, now we also turn to God’s good plans for
human being. Ps 119 declares how we are supposed to live according to God’s
good purpose.
Palm 119 begins with Ps 119:1, calling “Blessed,” those who worship
God and live according to his word. According to Ps 119:18, the Blessed marvel
and delight. According to Ps 119:165, the blessed know peace even when things
get hard. According to Ps 119:11, the blessed have guarded God’s word in their
heart to avoid sinning. According to Psalm 119:24, these blessed people turn to
God’s word for counsel and wisdom.
Application
We are studying God’s Law as a mirror to point to Christ. Like
the Bible itself, we begin our study of Psalm 119 with the Goodness of God, the
preciousness of God’s Word, and God’s Good intentions for Humanity. Psalm 119
invites us to a life called blessed if we meditate on God’s Word and live
according to it.
Philip Henry, a prominent Puritan, instructed his children
to take one verse of Psalm 119 every morning for meditation allowing them to complete
Psalm 119 twice per year. He believed this would lead them to be in love with
all the rest of the Scriptures. This practice clearly influenced his son
Matthew Henry who later wrote a wonderful commentary on the whole Bible that is
now freely available to all on many online Bible websites.
God’s Word is a perfect mirror. Before pointing out our sin,
it reveals God’s glory, his goodness, his beauty, his power, his righteousness,
his mercy, his compassion. God reveals himself through his word which is precious,
has authority, is true, clear, and reliable. It is food to grow us spiritually
to know God’s blessing, delight, peace, and walk wisely with God in this
complicated world.
The Word of God is a perfect mirror. When a mirror is dusty
or cracked, it is hard to see what is real in a mirror's reflection. When the
mirror is clean and flawless, it reflects the world as it truly is. While Ps
119 leads us to worship God, and inspires to live up to the standards, but the
last verse offers a reality check. Something is not right.
Second, we turn to Psalm 119 and Our Human Need.
The second use of the Law is a mirror that teaches us our need
for a savior. We saw the mirror is perfect, it is not dusty, it has no cracks,
it reveals who God is and who we are truly. God’s Word is God’s word for a
sinful people.
Teaching
Beyond what we can know by just looking at our own lives and
being aware of our sin, God’s word serves as a mirror to reveal our need for a
savior. Psalm 119:176, the last verse puts the whole Psalm in perspective as a
cry for help because we humans are needy. We are helpless in our sin. We are
without hope if we have to get ourselves out of our mess.
Throughout the Psalm, the Psalmist makes pleas for help from
God. He is aware of his sin that separates him from God and makes him liable to
judgment.
The Psalmist
pleads in Ps 119:18, “Open my eyes” that I may behold wondrous things. We are spiritually
blind. We need God’s intervention to help us see his goodness. We need a miracle
worker to help us see.
In Ps 119:36,
the Psalmist says, “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish
gain!” In Ps 119:25, the Psalmist says, “My soul clings to the dust, give me
life according to your word!” The dust refers to death while the Psalmist wants
life.
In Ps 119:81, the Psalmist writes, “My soul longs for your
salvation.” Most clearly, Ps 119:176 ends the Psalm with the sinfulness and
frailty of our humanity and our need for a Savior – "I have gone astray
like a lost sheep; seek your servant."
The Psalmist depends on the Lord to act and find him. Because
of our sins, we need a savior to love us, pursue us, and find us.
Application
We turn to a mirror to see what we cannot see. So, it is with
God’s Law, it makes us aware of our sin and its seriousness. Being sinful is
not just a human trait, it separates us from God and we are in need of saving
from judgment.
I knew I was a sinner but the Bible taught me I was worse
than I thought. The Bible taught me that even when I do good, my motives aren’t
ever pure, so God’s Word taught me I even have to repent of my good deeds! I
learned this from Rom 3:23, “All fall short of the Glory of God.” It is sin to
do good and not give God the glory. I needed to be saved even from the way I did
good.
The Law of God is a mirror and it highlights our human need.
We must echo the Psalmist’s words: “Open my eyes,” “Incline my heart,” “Give me
life,” “Seek me,” “Find me.” The mirror is perfect, and it accurately reflects
our flaws, our frailty, and our need for a savior.
Third, we turn to Psalm 119 and God’s Rescue
The perfect mirror reveals our flaws. The reason is not for
the sake of revealing our flaws, the goal is that we would enjoy God. God’s
perfect Law also offers the solution to our problem. The longings for help, in
Psalm 119, are not just cries for help in despair, they fit what God promises
us in his Word. The Psalmist writes in Ps 119:41 "Let your steadfast
love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise."
Text
Psalm 119 uses different pictures of God’s salvation of the
human soul. The Psalmist pleads for God’s salvation. These cries for help can
be confident because they align with a faithful God’s promises.
In Psalm 119:36, the Psalmist writes, “Incline my heart to
your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!” This request aligns with God’s
promise in Ezek 36:26-27, to give us a new heart, and a new spirit so that we
would walk in God’s statutes and carefully obey God’s rules.”
In Psalm 119:18, the Psalmist requests that his eyes would
be open also aligns with God’s promise of salvation. According to Isa 42:6-7,
God sends his servant to be “a light to the nations to open eyes that are blind.”
In Psalm 119:39, the Psalmist says, "Take away the
reproach that I dread, for your rules are good" (v.39). The Psalmist knows
he deserves shame, but he asks God to "take it away." This
anticipates Jesus taking our reproach on himself to save us.
In Psalm 119:25, the request, “Give me life,” also matches
God’s promise to save us. The consequence of sin is death (Gen 2:17), but God
promises to restore all things, and he offers eternal life in Christ.
The final request of the Psalm in Psalm 119:176 is “Seek
me.” From the very first question in the Bible, “Where are you?” to the man and
woman who had just sinned in Gen 3:9, to God’s promise in Deut 30:3-4 to gather
his people from where he scatters them, to the promise in Ezek 34:11-12, “For
thus says the LORD God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will
seek them out,” we see our God is a God who seeks sinners. Jesus fulfills this imagery
with the parables of Luke 15. He is the Shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the
one lost sheep.
Psalm 119 reveals our human need for salvation but it also
reveals a God’s rescue.
Application
Ps 119 reveals God’s Goodness, our need for salvation and
God’s promise to save us. Psalm 119 reveals God’s plan of Redemption so that we
would find life in Him.
John Sailhamer highlights the following. There are three
psalms that focus directly on the Scriptures as the means of living a righteous
life before God: Pss 1; 19; and 119. Each of them is followed within the book
of Psalms by a unit that focuses on the coming Messiah: Pss 2; 20; 120-134 (the
Psalms of Ascents). It is as if the composer of the book of Psalms were telling
the readers that if they search the Scriptures, they will find the Christ.[ii]
Another way
Psalm 119 reveals Christ relates to the activity of the King. Psalm 119 speaks
of a blessed person who meditates on God’s Word. The Bible teaches us that this
person who should be meditating on God’s Word is first and foremost, Israel’s
King.
Deut 17:19 says
of Israel’s future King regarding the Law, “And it shall be with him, and he
shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD
his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing
them,” when we read Psalm 119, the Psalmist confesses his failure which leads
us to look for another king who fulfills the role of the King perfectly.
It is only Jesus Christ who fulfills this Psalm perfectly. He
is not only the Blessed Man who meditates and delights in God’s word, he is
also the God worthy of Praise whose Words give life. Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15). God shows his love for us in that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).
Conclusion
In this series we are seeing that according to Psalm 119, God
through Word gives life, comfort, instruction, and delight. In this first
message we see that Psalm 119 teaches the way to life. First, Psalm 119 stirs
up our affections and awe towards our great God. Psalm 119 inspires us to live
for God but it also reminds us we fall short and need a savior and God provides
the salvation we need. This is the first use of the Law as a mirror.
Psalm 119 saved
George Wishart’s life. He knew which Psalm to choose to delay is execution to
get enough time to be pardoned. For us, even more than our physical lives, God’s
Word is a means by which God communicates to us our salvation in Christ.
Now, every part of Psalm 119 can be true for us. Now, in
Christ, we can be the Blessed People of Psalm 119:1. While we will continue to
sin, we can Hide God’s Word in our hearts to avoid sinning (Ps 119:11). We can
meditate on God’s precepts and fix our eyes on his ways (Ps 119:15).
Our lips can proclaim God’s laws (Ps 119:13).
We can rejoice in following God’s statues as people who
rejoice in great riches (Ps 119:14). Psalm 119 reveals our Good God beyond
Measure, Our Great Need beyond our Fixing, but also God’s Rescue that satisfies
our souls.
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