20260823 Psalm 119, Part 3: God’s Word For Instruction

Why do we obey law instead of breaking it? Some reasons can be negative, and others positive. We may obey out of fear of punishment or what it could do to our reputation if we were caught. Or we may obey some rules to get something out of it, to be safe, to promote order, or simply because it is the right thing to do.

In this message, will look at God’s Law for our instruction. God gives us Law so that we would obey it. In this topical sermon series in Psalm 119, we are celebrating the Word of God. We are answering the question, “What is God’s Word For?” In four messages in Psalm 119, we are seeing that Through His Word, God gives Life, Comfort, Instruction, and Delight.

We saw that the Word of God is a mirror that reveals our sins, our need for forgiveness and points us to Jesus for salvation. We saw that through his Word, God gives comfort by his love, power, and truth. In this third message, we see that God's Word is for Instruction.

For the believer, the Law is a lamp that shows the path of a life that pleases God. A key verse is Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." In Psalm 119, the law as a map or guide is a prominent way the author views God's law. The Law is a counselor, a map, and a light, or a guide to walk on the right path.

In Psalm 119:133, the Psalmist writes, "Direct my footsteps according to your word." According to Psalm 119:11, the Psalmist treasures the word in his heart specifically so that he might not sin against God. According to Psalm 119, God's Word and God's Law among other things are a practical manual for holiness.

In one sentence, we’ll see: God’s Word of Instruction is a gift to believers to know and obey God’s will.

First, we see that God’s Word for Instruction is a Gift

In this first point, we see that given our need for instruction, God’s revelation of himself in God’s Law is an amazing gift!

Teaching

Psalm 119 highlights both the need for God's Law and the gift of God's Law. In Ps 119:105, the Psalmist highlights our need for instruction. He writes "God’s word is a lamp for our feet, a light on our path." Ps 119:98-99 highlights our need for wisdom. It says, "Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies... I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes"

We have a need for wisdom and Ps 119:9 highlights our need for purity. It reads, “How can a young person keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word." The Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:176, "I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands." We need instruction because we tend to go astray.

We struggle through life. We are in need of instruction for wisdom and purity. We need to be taught and God teaches us but both our experience and Psalm 119, teach that instruction is not enough. God gives us instructions, but the Psalmist still appeals to God’s Work in helping us keep God’s law when he says in Psalm 119:29, "Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me through your law." And then in Ps 119:133, “Direct my footsteps according to your word." God gives his law, but not so that we can then depend on our own strength to keep it, but so that we would rely on God’s work in our lives to keep it. In this way, this word is a double gift. God teaches us in our ignorance and also empowers us in our weakness to benefit from his word for wisdom and purity.

Application

We still need God’s word and Law and it is still a gift for us today. We need a lamp to guide us where we should go. 2 Pet 1:3 teaches us that God gives us everything we need for life and godliness. The Bible offers wisdom for life, for work, for marriage, for parenting, for grace-based human relationships.

We also need to be careful not to treat the Bible as a source of secret mystical knowledge. We need God’s revelation but the Bible teaches us there are many things the Bible does not reveal. This is Deut 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” We often want to know God’s will for our lives – we want to know where to live, what job to accept, who to marry. Some people have stories where they are sure God gave them specific instructions on where to live, what job to take and who to marry. I have heard these stories go well and others end in disaster. I find Deut 29:29 to be so helpful to understand how the Bible reveals God's will for our lives. Deut 29:29 speaks of the secret things that belong to the LORD that he does not reveal to us. Generally, these secret things include the specifics of how things will work out like what job to take, what spouse to marry, and where to live. The second half of the Deut 29:29 state that God reveals everything we need to obey his word.

This means that the more people know God's Word, the more they tend to marry someone who will encourage them in keeping God's Word, the more they will choose the job that will align with God's Kingdom's values, and they will live somewhere where they can be confident of living God's will in their lives. We need instruction. Rather than specifics, God's word shapes our character to walk in his ways. When we cannot decide between two options according to God’s word, God's word teaches us how to walk in God's ways with either option.

We need God’s Word for direction. As we learn to rely on God and cherish his Words, we become the kind of people that walk in his ways. This is the gift of God’s instruction.

Second, we see that God’s Word for Instruction is a Gift for Believers

All people need God’s instruction, but now we see that God’s Law is a gift particularly to believers.

Teaching

Psalm 119 contrasts believers and unbelievers. We all have the need for the law. Both believers and unbelievers can benefit from God’s Law, but only believers can place the law in its proper context.

Only a believe can say and mean Ps 119:50, “Your word has given me life.” Of the non-believer, Ps 119:155 says, “Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek Your statutes.” Those who believe find that the word illuminates their path in a dark world (Ps 119:105), while the unbeliever is “deceived” by their own falsehood (Ps 119:118). Unbelievers can read the law and try to practice it, but they lack “the opening of the eyes” of Ps 119:18 that allows a believer to see “wondrous things.” According to Ps 119:165 “those who love the law” enjoy great peace and nothing causes them to stumble. But according to Ps 119:21, “the proud who are cursed wander and face God’s rebuke.”

On one hand, God’s instruction and law is a gift for everyone and is available to all. According to Melanchthon’s first use of the Law, Governments enact God’s law to protect all the citizens under their jurisdiction, so God’s law is a gift to all. There is also a sense in which we have a very different perspective on the law, when we look at it from the perspective of a forgiven sinner rather than one who knows no forgiveness.

To those who know no forgiveness, the law can serve as a guide to live their lives. Some will enjoy God’s common grace by obeying God’s words that are for our good. However, without faith, this law-keeping cannot please God. Inevitably, if it is just law, it will remind us that we fail to keep its standards. In this way, the law remains a curse for unbelievers. According to Deut 27:26, “Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” In Gal 3:10, Paul argues that because no one can keep every single commandment, the Law places everyone under a sentence of condemnation. To the unbeliever, the Law reveals sin but offers no power to overcome it.

While Gal 3:10 states that those who do not keep the law are cursed, in Gal 3:13, Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’” Now, that the curse of the Law is done away with, Christians can truly enjoy God’s law! While both believers and unbelievers can look to the law for instruction, believers do not look to the law as a path to be made right. As a people freed from sin, God's law serves as the freedom path, where we learn to enjoy a relationship with God.

Application

Still today believers benefit particularly from God’s Law. This analogy is not going to be perfect but think of the difference between the obedience of a child and the obedience of a slave. In the master’s eye, the slave exists to serve him. In the father’s eye, his child is the apple of his eye.

The slave relates with his master in terms of fulfilling tasks with no reward, no affection. The child who knows their father’s love, delights in doing the will of their father and pleasing their father, because the father cares for the child and there is nothing a child could ever do to lose the father’s love.

God’s Word, his law, his instruction are a gift. They are given to God's people in the context of the Father's love and delight to a people who delights in hearing their Father’s word. We’ve seen that humanity needs God’s Law, we need to know God’s Salvation to understand the proper place of the law. The Law is particularly a gift to believers.

Now, third, God’s Word for Instruction is a gift for believers to know and Obey God

God’s Word of instruction is a gift, it is a gift to believers. It is a gift to believers in order that we would know and obey God’s will.

Teaching

Legalism vs Antinomianism

As soon as we talk about obeying God’s law in the church, some people get nervous. We know stories where Religion is used to control people and guilt people. We’ve been told that the true message of Christianity is not “do” but “done.” It is not about what we do but what Jesus has done.

Because of this, we can have a very negative view of the OT. We can forget that first, God delivered Israel from Egypt and then he gave them the law to live as his freed people. The law was never a system of salvation. Salvation was always by faith, by trusting in God and his work to have a relationship with him and walk with him.

When we understand God’s Law in the context Biblical context, we see that there are two problems we must avoid in the church, legalism and antinomianism.

Legalism is doing one of two things. Legalism is either telling people they have to do something other than repenting and trusting in the work of Christ for the forgiveness of sins to be saved. The second version of legalism is to insist on specific things the Bible does not command to show that you are a true Christian. We reject both of these versions of legalism. We affirm that sinners are made right with God by faith alone without works.

The other problem is called antinomianism. This is when we deny Christians need to obey God’s commandments because we are saved by faith and not by works. This is also called the license to sin false gospel.

The Christian message is that we are in the right with God, we are God’s children because we trust in Jesus and what he has done, but now as God’s children we want our actions to show who our father is, we want to obey God’s word.

Devotion to God’s Law

Ps 119 highlights just this. The following verses highlight the Psalmist’s commitment to obey God’s law: (119:17) "Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word." Here, the Psalmist makes it sound like he wants to live for the sole purpose of being able to enjoy obeying God's Law a bit more. This same desire and devotion to keep God's law is expressed in Ps 119:34, 60, 106.

Instruction

Ps 119 uses 9 words to refer to God’s Word. One recurring word is “Law.” In Hebrew, this word is “Torah.” The most basic definition of “Torah” is not that of a Law Code, but “instruction.” When instruction comes from God, it absolutely has the weight of God’s authority behind it so I am not arguing to change the English rendering from “Law” to “Instruction,” but I do point this out, because there is something that we miss out on when we forget that Torah means Instruction. When I think of the Law, I think of the Government. When I think of instruction, I think of a counselor, or a teacher who instructs me on the way I should go. Instruction is more relational than laws. Instructions are given to grow in wisdom and to live well. God’s Law or Instruction is different that Belgium’s Law. Belgium’s Laws limits bad behavior rather than encouraging me to pursue wisdom and live a good life. We read in Ps 119:9, "How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word." Then again in Ps 119:11 “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” This is how God’s Law, his Word, his instruction serves us in the Christian life. It does not just tell us what to avoid, it teaches us our to live.

Application

Ps 119:9 and 11 promise that living according to God’s word is how we live a pure life. And the way we do not sin against God is by storing up his word in our heart. We probably spend the most time speaking of how the God's Word reveals the good news to teach us we must trust God to have a relationship with him and be declared in the right with him. But Psalm 119 also teaches that the word of God helps us grow in holiness so that we would sin less.

NT Wright wrote a book called, "After You Believe" and addresses this topic, how do you grow after you believe. He does not address anything more than what we have in this text, his main argument is that we need to store God's Word in our heart. What this means is that the Word of God is not just an answer book we turn to when we are in trouble, and is even more that a map we look at before a trip, it is like an internalized GPS system. The study of the Word and the meditation of the Word transforms our minds and shapes our character in a way that it changes our reflexes to become more and more, the character of Christ.

Another analogy for how we can view the role of Scripture in our lives is like an immune system. Our immune system reacts based on the "memory" of previous exposures and builds up antibodies. As we hide the Word in our heart, it is like we are building spiritual antibodies. When bitterness, pride, lust, and greed try to take hold of a heart saturated in Scripture, we respond differently. We will continue to fail and never conquer sin in this life, but with time, as we believe and dwell more and more in God’s Love demonstrated on the cross for us, we do respond in more godly ways.

I find that we can often be discouraged by the lack of progress in our lives. I find that we need to ask people who have known us for a long time and we'll be surprised to hear that they are encouraged by our growth even if we are not.

In Matthew 4, Jesus exemplifies what it looks like to be tempted by the devil when you have hidden God's Word in your heart. With each temptation, Jesus responds with a Bible verse. We too can use the Scriptures, verses, paragraphs, stories, theological doctrine to speak truth when we are tempted to sin.

Conclusion

We began today by asking why we obey. Is it out of fear of punishment or are we motivated by a reward? While obedience does help us avoid punishment and does lead to a reward, Psalm 119 motives us differently. We obey the Law because God's law is a gift. In a way the Law is the reward. It reveals a way to live in relationship with God. It allows us to live most in line with God's created order.

God’s Law grants us the gift of walking with God for the glory of God. We have studied God's Word for our instruction. In this use, the law is not a judge to point out our sin, but a counselor showing us how to truly live. The Law is like a mirror it shows us our sin and our need for a savior it also reveals the Savior Jesus Christ. Once we are saved by Faith, the Law is a gift to guide our path. Because Christ took the "curse of the law" upon Himself, we are free to love God's Law. We don't obey to become God's Children. We obey because we are God's Children delighting in our Father's voice. As we store up God's Word in our hearts more and more by God's grace, we will find ourselves to be a transformed people that walks in God’s ways.