As David mentioned, if you’ve been with us over the last two Lord’s Days, you’ll know that we have been engaged in our church’s missions conference. Let me pause for a moment to say a quick word of thanks to our minister of missions, Jamie Peipon, our mission’s coordinator, JoLynn Mayfield, and the members of our missions conference planning committee and the many volunteers who worked so very hard to serve us well this year. In my judgment, it’s been the best mission conference in recent memory, and while no doubt a word of thanks to Jamie and his team would be very welcome from you, I think the best expression – I’m sure they would agree – the best expression of your gratitude would be your renewed engagement with the mission of First Presbyterian Church as we work with our global partners around the world to get the Gospel to the ends of the earth. So please be thinking and praying about how you and your family can pray and give and go across the street and around the world. Join us Wednesday night as we pray together for our missionaries and for the suffering church.
Of course, the end of Mission Conference means we are back today in what our fathers in the faith, old preachers, used to call their ordinary, their regular passage. We are back in Psalm 119. You remember we’ve been slowly making our way through this longest chapter of the Scriptures together, one stanza at a time on Sunday mornings. We come today to the sixteenth stanza, each of the eight lines of which begins with the Hebrew letter, “Ayin.” So let me invite you now please to take your Bibles in hand and turn there with me, Psalm 119, beginning at verse 121. You can find it on page 515 if you’re using a church Bible.
Before we read the passage together, do quickly cast your eye over the text and you’ll notice immediately that in this, as in several other stanzas before now, the author is facing hostility, opposition. He is confronted, verse 121, by “oppressors.” They are “insolent,” verse 122. They break God’s law, 127. Now how is he going to deal with that? That’s the issue. How will he endure and stay faithful and live for the Lord in a situation of such opposition and pressure and persecution? Those are questions we often face today, at least in some measure, and you probably have asked them yourself. “How can I stay the course when everyone around me in my workplace or at home or at school, how can I stay the course when everyone around me seems to reject the Christian Gospel? Even when they pay lip service to it, they live contrary to God’s holy Word. How will I stay faithful in such difficult circumstances?”
Well in the passage, we are given a clue to the answer if you notice the psalmist’s own posture and stance before God. You see how he describes himself? Look at the passage. His enemies, he says, they are insolent oppressors who break God’s law but he is God’s servant. “Give your servant a pledge of good,” verse 122. “Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love,” verse 124. “I am your servant; give me understanding,” verse 125. He is God’s servant. God doesn’t work for him. He is God’s servant. That’s a truth I think we all know at least intellectually. We ascend to it readily as Christians. We are the servants of God; of course we are. And yet haven’t we found it remarkable that having become a Christian, if you are anything like me, you so easily begin to operate as though we have somehow put God under contract to provide us with goods and services. We relate to Him as though He works for us. We talk about the Lord our God being there “when we need Him,” as if He were little more than a waiter loitering in the background of our lives, overlooked and ignored most of the time until we summon Him to bring us more desert, only to be dismissed again to the shadows until the next time we decide we could use His assistance.
But that’s not the picture here in our stanza at all, is it? The psalmist knows, and we must learn – not just in our heads but from our hearts – that to be rightly related to God means to be His servant. And although that language may sit uncomfortably with us, we don’t really want to be anyone’s servant, after all, actually it’s only when we come to embrace that fact, the fact that we are God’s servants, that we begin to find the resources in God to face whatever comes our way. And so in the text you will notice that as God’s servant the psalmist is completely dependent upon the Lord his God, his Master. He has no hope without His help, no rescue apart from His deliverance, no security without His protection. The difference between us when we treat God like He is our servant, the psalmist who comes to Him as God’s servant isn’t that we want God to act and the psalmist doesn’t. No, the psalmist, as we are going to see, desperately needs God to act on His behalf. That’s not the difference. The difference between him and us is in the posture. It’s in the attitude of the heart. Too often we come to the Lord demanding and entitled, but the psalmist comes dependent and pleading. Too often we come to God as if He owed us our due, but the psalmist comes knowing everything he has and everything he needs is his by sheer grace alone.
And when you see that in our passage this morning, you’ll begin to see how these verses really function as a kind of call to a radical, God-centeredness in the crisis, whatever the crisis might be – a God-centeredness, a Godwardness in the crisis, whatever the crisis may be. They summon us to renewed dependence upon Him for everything, especially when we face a hostile world that rejects the Lord Jesus Christ.
The stanza, you will notice, divides into three sections, each part highlighting just how dependent upon the grace of God in our lives we really are. In verses 121 through 123, we learn how God’s rescue frees us. God’s rescue frees us. One-hundred-twenty-four and 125, God’s love teaches us. God’s rescue frees us. God’s love teaches us. One-hundred-twenty-six through 128, the psalmist shows us some of the ways that God’s intervention changes us. So God’s rescue frees us, God’s love teaches us, and His intervention changes us. Before we look at each of those themes, let’s pause and pray, then we’ll read the passage and begin to explore its teaching together. Let’s pray.
O Lord, our eyes do indeed long for Your salvation and for the fulfillment of Your righteous promise. So deal with Your servants now according to Your steadfast love, we pray, and teach us Your statutes. Give us understanding that we may know Your testimonies, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Psalm 119 at verse 121. This is God’s Word:
“I have done what is just and right; do not leave me to my oppressors. Give your servant a pledge of good; let not the insolent oppress me. My eyes long for your salvation and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise. Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love, and teach me your statutes. I am your servant; give me understanding, that I may know your testimonies! It is time for the Lord to act, for your law has been broken. Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold. Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Let’s think first of all about verses 121 through 123 and the way that God’s rescue frees us. The psalmist is pleading for rescue from his persecutors, isn’t he? Verse 121, “Do not leave me to my oppressors.” One-hundred-twenty-two, “Let not the insolent oppress me.” He is oppressed and he longs for freedom. That’s the situation. We do well, I think, to learn from his example. When faced with human hostility and opposition and oppression, he does not take matters into his own hands. That’s what I sometimes want to do, don’t you? We want to take matters into our own hands. We want to strike back. We want to retaliate. But the psalmist does not seek personal revenge. Isn’t that striking? He entrusts himself to God that God might be his defender. Really he is practicing Romans 12:18-19. “If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God.” He cries to God to rescue Him. His freedom from oppression, he knows, must come from the hand of God.
And do notice in the passage what Spurgeon calls “the double appeal” by which the psalmist reinforces his request. First, says Spurgeon, there is the appeal of conscious integrity. Conscious integrity. Look at verse 121. “I have done what is just and right; do not leave me to my oppressors.” He has a clean conscience. “I have done what is just and right.” He is not claiming sinless perfection, but he really is saying to God he has been living in integrity and in faithfulness with a conscience that does not condemn him, and as such, he comes to God confident that the Lord is going to honor that and deliver him. There is a connection we should be careful not to overlook between confidence that God will hear and answer us and personal integrity and a clean conscience in the sight of God in our daily lives. There is a connection. In 2 Timothy 3:1, Paul says, “I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.” He has a thankful expectation that God will hear his prayers for Timothy and it is bolstered and strengthened by his clear conscience.
Can you come to God and say that by His grace enabling you, though not perfectly, nevertheless you really have done what is just and right? You serve God as did your ancestors with a clear conscience? God loves to hear the prayers of His faithful children who live before Him in integrity. Integrity really matters.
But alongside this first appeal, the appeal of conscious integrity, the psalmist’s request for rescue has a second component to it. Spurgeon says alongside conscious integrity the psalmist expresses a deep sense, notice, of conscious deficiency. Conscious integrity; conscious deficiency. You see that in verse 122? Here is conscious deficiency – aware of his own deficiency. He says to God, “Give your servant a pledge of good.” No matter his own attainments in godliness, no matter how mature in faith he has become or how obedient in life he has become, he is unwilling to rest his hope finally upon anything he does or could ever do, no matter how much integrity he may personally possess. There is no sense of entitlement here, is there? No hint that just because he has lived with integrity and uprightness that God somehow owes him now. No matter how just and right he has been, and he has been just and right, only God Himself can guarantee his freedom from oppression. “Give your servant a pledge of good.”
Now the word that is translated there, “a pledge of good,” is worth lingering over for a moment. Normally this is a legal term; it means to act as surety. To stand as surety for someone is to provide a personal guarantee on another person’s behalf, accepting all the liability should they be unable to pay their due. So for example, in Genesis 43 verse 9, Judah promises his father, Jacob, that he will act as surety for his brother, Benjamin, should anything happen, and take personal responsibility for his brother. That’s what the psalmist wants God to do for him. He wants God to take the heat, to pay the penalty, to endure all the cost to secure his freedom. Now that may strike you actually as an extravagant request, an audacious request. He wants God to take the heat for him. He wants God to stand as surety. It’s actually a relatively common theme in the prayers of the Old Testament. In Isaiah 38:14, King Hezekiah prays almost the same prayer the psalmist prays here. “O Lord, I am oppressed. Be my security, my surety.” And Job, amidst all his suffering, cries to God for someone to step between him and his afflictions. “Lay down a pledge for me with you. Who is there who will put up security for me? Who will stand as surety?”
The psalmist is longing for God to come and step between him and the afflictions he endures. Calvin paraphrases the prayer of the psalmist like this. He says, “Lord, since the proud cruelly rush upon me to destroy me, interpose Thyself between us as if Thou were my security. God is said,” he goes on to say, “God is said to become surety for us, just as if one finding us indebted in a large sum of money he discharged us of the obligation by paying down the money to our creditor.” Now in the context of this part of Psalm 119, the debt involved is social and interpersonal. The oppression the psalmist is talking about is the oppression of human enemies. The affliction is mostly material and physical.
But you know, at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, the image of God acting as surety, to which the psalmist points here, ceases to be a metaphor, a mere image of divine assistance in our time of need. At the cross, God really did interpose Himself between us and our debts, our eternal debts, not just our temporal debts. Paid in full the entirety of our obligation in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why Hebrews 7:22 says that Jesus is the guarantor, literally “the surety” of a better covenant. Jesus is our surety. He accepts all the liability for our sin, all of it, so that the blessings of the covenant of grace might be ours, paid for in full, not by us but by Him. We cannot pay sin’s debt. The oppression of the evil one is greater than we can ever hope to endure alone. “His wrath and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal,” Luther sings. The evil one is a terrible enemy. We must have Christ, God in the flesh, God come in person to step between us and the devil. We must have Jesus to pay the debt our sin has incurred. The glory of the Christian Gospel is that if you will take Christ by faith, He will be surety for you, surety. That is to say, a guarantee for you.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I understand when you look at your wicked heart, when I look at mine, and we see our remaining sin, aren’t there times when we wonder if we are really converted at all. “How can I still be like this? Maybe I’m misguided.” And our assurance is shaken by the reality and strength of our remaining corruption. But look up and away from yourself to your surety. Jesus is the guarantee. He is the guarantee that all who come to trust in Him are ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. His grace is more than a match for your sin. He is your surety, your safety, your security. No wonder the psalmist prays in verse 123, “My eyes long for your salvation, for the fulfillment of your righteous promise.” This is worth longing for and looking for and waiting for and searching for. Isn’t it? If you do not yet have Christ for your surety, do not rest until you get Him! “My eyes long for your salvation, for the fulfillment of Your righteous promise.” He is waiting, looking, crying, literally until His eyes give out. That’s what it means. “My eyes come to an end,” is what he says literally as he seeks God’s promised rescue. He finds no comfort anywhere else, in anyone or anywhere else. No respite in any other source. He must have God’s rescue, God’s surety. Remember Jeremiah 29:13. “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” That’s what he is doing here. He is seeking God with all his heart. His eyes come to an end, longing for God’s rescue. Seek Jesus. You will find Him. You will. Take no comfort in anyone else. Find rest nowhere else. Only Jesus will do. God’s rescue frees us.
Then look down at verses 124 and 125. God’s rescue frees us; secondly, God’s love teaches us. The theme of these two verses is divine teaching, instruction. “Teach me Your statutes,” 124. “Give me understanding that I may know Your testimonies,” 125. He wants God to teach him. And the subject of that instruction is the Word of God – Your statutes, Your testimonies. The Bible is God’s guide through all the trials of life. Don’t try to navigate it with a closed book. You need the GPS of holy Scripture if you are going to find your way safely, so cry to God as the psalmist does for grace to understand and believe and obey and trust the Word of God. He wants God to be his teacher.
This year, I’ve had the opportunity to teach both a men’s Bible study and the weekly MOMS Bible study on how to get the most out of reading the Bible for ourselves. And this past week I was telling the MOMS group about the first thing to do whenever you sit down on your own to read your Bible. Do you know what the first thing to do is when you sit down to read your Bible? You’ve got your Bible in your hand – what’s the first thing you should do? Would it surprise you to know it is not to read the Bible? When you sit down to read the Bible, the first thing to do is not to read the Bible. The first thing to do is to cry to God who speaks in the Bible that He might give you help to know what He is saying, understand and believe and obey His Word; to give you light and to give you understanding. It’s His Word. And how presumptuous of us that we read it so easily without first bowing before Him and asking that our little, finite minds, sin-darkened, so inclined to twist and distort the truth, how presumptuous of us that we turn to the Word without ever pleading with Him to help us understand it. If we linger a moment to seek God, to pray, “Take even these very words, deal with Your servant, O God. Now that I have Your Word in my hand, I want to read, but would You deal with Your servant according to Your steadfast love and teach me Your statutes? I am Your servant. Give me understanding that I may know Your testimonies.” Take these words and pray them. I dare say you will find over time that God Himself unlocks His Word to you more and more.
And notice the principle argument by which the psalmist strengthens his request for divine instruction. You see how he leverages God’s love? Verse 124, “Deal with Your servant according to Your steadfast love and teach me Your statutes.” Steadfast love translates the famous Hebrew word, “hesed.” It refers to covenant loyalty. It’s God’s oath-bound commitment to love His people forever. God can’t treat His people in any other way. He must love them. He has vowed and promised and bound Himself to love them. He has demonstrated the full-flowering of His steadfast love. Of course Romans chapter 5 verse 8 – “In that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Here is hesed, covenant love. Here is how far God will go to keep His promise. He will go all the way to Calvary and give His Son for us, so great is His love. And so the psalmist leverages God’s covenant love, His promised love.
Paul teaches us to do the same thing, doesn’t he? Romans 8:31 and 32 – “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” He has given His Son because He loves you. His steadfast love gave His Son. Now, as you come to Him in your need, as you come to Him asking Him to teach you, point back to the cross where love was demonstrated and say, “Father, Your Son died to give me grace to know You, to give me grace to hear from Your, to understand Your Word. He shed His blood that You might teach me, and will You now fail to keep Your promise? O God, teach Your servant that I may know Your testimonies. Deal with me according to Your steadfast love.” I wonder if you pray like that. Do you pray like that? Press God to be toward you who He has promised to be – a God of steadfast love.
God’s rescue frees us. His love teaches us. Finally, verses 126 through 128, God’s intervention changes us. God’s intervention changes us. In verse 126, his prayers reach really a new height of boldness. Do you see the language he uses? Isn’t it audacious? “It is time for the Lord to act. It’s high time, O God, You did something.” Let’s not confuse this audacious prayer for impatience, however. That’s often how we are, isn’t it, if we’re honest? We are impatient. We want God to do what we want God to do when we want Him to do it! Isn’t that right? Our timetable, we naturally assume, is the right timetable. I wonder if it’s ever occurred to you that maybe your impatience with God is actually part of the reason He has delayed His answer, that you might learn to submit to His lordship as His servant and learn that He is not your servant.
This isn’t impatience on the psalmist’s part, but there is a sense of holy indignation that makes him so bold. You see the reason he prays like this? Look at the text again. “It is time for the Lord to act, for” – here’s why he is praying like this – “Your law has been broken.” Here’s the same instinct, by the way, that we saw at the very beginning of this stanza, the instinct that refuses to take matters into his own hands. Even though he is really distressed by the decline and the spiritual decay and rebellion and the general disregard for what is right that he can see all around him, he nevertheless looks to God to act. He asks God to intervene in defense of God’s own holy Law.
I think there is a lesson here for us as we see the same things happening all around us in our own society and time. Isn’t it easy to get impatient, even to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and to anoint ourselves crusaders in the culture war? And to be sure, certainly there are times when we must stand up for righteousness in the public square. There are times when we will be called upon to take a stand in the public square, for sure. But before we march into battle on the blogosphere, or vent our spleens on social media, we should ask ourselves first, “Have I brought this to God and asked Him to act? Does my grief and anger at the moral decay that I see drive me to my knees or only to my keyboard?” If your moral outrage drives you more readily into political action than it does drive you to the throne of God, let me say to you that your instincts are still being shaped far more by the spirit of the age than by the truth of God’s holy Word. So the psalmist here prays for divine intervention. He wants God to act.
And notice the two “therefores” that follow. These are the consequences. This is how God’s intervention amidst all the trials and temptations and difficulties he sees around him, this is how it’s going to change him, how it will change us. “Therefore, I love Your commandments above gold, above fine gold. Therefore, I consider all Your precepts to be right; I hate every false way.” His love for the Word of God deepens, not just in reaction to the wickedness he sees around him, but as a consequence for the longed for intervention of God that is its only antidote. The Bible becomes more precious to him than gold, than fine gold. He sees more clearly than ever that the Bible is right and he resolves to live this way and not that way. Everything that contradicts it, he now sees in razor-sharp focus as something to be rejected and denied. The Word becomes everything to him.
When we think that God works for us, we become culture warriors, but we do not become evangelists. We take revenge but we do not pray. We use words as weapons by which to win an argument instead of loving the Word of God as more precious than much fine gold and crying to the Lord to intervene. This part of Psalm 119 is teaching us when we really get, when we really get that we are God’s servants and that He doesn’t work for us, His ways become our great desire, we turn from revenge to trust in His intervention, we rest on Christ who is our surety, and our very great reward. God’s rescue frees us, it frees us. He has given Jesus to be our surety. Look to Him. He can set you free. God’s love teaches us. We badly need divine instruction, don’t we? And so cry to God to give you His light. His steadfast love constrains Him to answer that prayer on your behalf. And God’s intervention changes us. When He intervenes, we begin to love His Word all the more, love His ways, love Him all the more. And so may God teach us, as the psalmist models for us, to depend wholly upon Him.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, how we adore You. For Your Word, it is indeed a light to our feet and a lamp to our path. It warns us to walk in Your way. It is more precious than gold, much fine gold, sweeter by far than honey from the comb. And in keeping it, Your servant is warned that by obedience to it there is yet much reward. Grant us grace then to trust it and live in its light, for Your glory, in Jesus’ name, amen.