Well do please keep your copies of God’s Word in your hands and turn now please to page 519 if you’re using one of our church Bibles and to the one-hundred-and-nineteenth psalm. We are studying Psalm 119 which, remember, is an intimate record of the psalmist’s personal engagement with God through the Scriptures. We’re studying it because it helps us see the ways that the Word of God works in the life of a believer. And we’ve come today to the sixth of its twenty-two stanzas, which you will find in verses 41 through 48, each line of which begins, as you will likely see from your English translations, the Hebrew letter, each begins with the Hebrew letter, “waw.” This is, I think, an especially helpful stanza for us in our increasingly post-Christian context. I read this morning a statistic that said we are living in an unprecedented departure and defection of people in the United States from the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s never happened on this scale and with the extent that we are currently seeing it. We are living in an increasingly post-Christian context and this is a stanza about speaking the Word of the Lord in a place and at a time where people don’t want to hear it. Speaking the Word of the Lord at a place and in a time where people don’t want to hear it. It is about bearing truthful witness in a taunting world. Bearing truthful witness in a taunting world.
Three times over, if you will look at it, three times over, the psalmist reflects on the duty and the difficulty of speaking the Word of the Lord. In verse 42 – do you see this – he talks about giving an answer to those who taunt him. In verse 43, he asks that God’s Word not be taken utterly out of his mouth. And in verse 46, he declares that he will speak of God’s testimonies before kings. So the sixth stanza about bearing witness in a hostile world; a world, let’s recognize, that is not all that unlike our own. Aren’t we finding that increasingly, to be a Christian in the public square, to affirm openly the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ – that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved but the name of Jesus alone – to say so is to invite disdain and contempt; it is to risk being canceled. And so here, here is vital equipment for Christians as we obey the command to bear witness to Gospel truth in a world that no longer really believes that there is any such thing as truth.
As we unpack all of that, I want you to look for four themes. Really the stanza is shaped around four couplets of verses, so there are four themes. Look at the passage please. Verses 41 and 42 first of all, the psalmist teaches us about trusting God’s Word. Trusting the Word. Then 43 and 44, we learn about keeping God’s Word. Trusting. Keeping. Then 45 and 46, speaking God’s Word. Trusting. Keeping. Speaking. And then 47 and 48, loving God’s Word. So four disciplines for bearing truthful witness in a taunting world. Do you see them? We need to learn to trust, keep, speak and love the Word of God.
Before we look at those four themes, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us pray.
O Lord, take not the Word of truth utterly out of our mouths. Our hope indeed is in Your rules. We would keep Your law continually, forever and ever. So please let your steadfast love now come to us and Your salvation according to Your promise. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Psalm 119 at the forty-first verse. This is the Word of God:
“Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise; then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. I will keep your law continually, forever and ever, and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy Word.
Trusting God’s Word
If we are to bear truthful witness in a taunting world, we need help, first of all the psalmist says, we need help trusting God’s Word. Trusting God’s Word. Psalm 119, you will remember, is an acrostic. That means every line in the same stanza begins with the same Hebrew letter, moving consecutively stanza by stanza through all twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And there have been times – I wonder if you’ve found this – there have been times as I have studied the text that I have marveled at the skill and the ingenuity frankly, the creativity of the psalmist, weaving together rich theology and beautiful artistry, all under the constraint of this acrostic form. He’s got to make it all fit, and he’s done it with such ingenuity. It’s been astonishing. But unlike the complexity of the others, the stanza before us this morning has to have been the easiest of the bunch to compose. You see, in the Hebrew language, the letter “waw,” with which every line of this stanza begins, in the Hebrew language, that is a prefix used at the beginning of words to indicate a conjunction. In other words, “waw” means “and.” And so while our English text doesn’t reflect it – and we’re going to have to come back to that in a few moments – every line of this stanza begins with the word “and,” which, let’s face it, has to be the simplest way to make all the lines alliterate and fit this acrostic scheme.
So you can just picture the psalmist, can’t you, agonizing over the first five stanzas, racking his brain, plundering his thesaurus for yet another word that can somehow fit the scheme that he’s working to. And then when he arrives at the sixth stanza, there’s a smile on his face and he breathes a sigh of relief and he says, “I know what I’m going to do here. Just stick ‘and’ onto each sentence and pile one on top of the next and ‘and, and, and.’ Easy!” But actually, lest we think him lazy, I want you to notice how he finds a way to make even this feature of the psalm serve his message.
You will see that especially clearly, I think, if you look at verse 41. Look at verse 41. “Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise.” What he really says is, “And let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord.” Now isn’t that an odd way to begin the stanza? Conjunctions, like the word “and,” they join things together, don’t they; they link them. They are connecting words. But what is the “and” dangling here at the start of verse 41 connecting to exactly? It just begins, “And let your steadfast love come to me.” Well let me suggest this as a way to think about what is going on. In whatever circumstance you find yourself, however hostile the world around you may be, and the psalmist was facing a particularly hostile environment as he wrote this, remember, whatever is going on with you, the sentence of your life remains incomplete if you do not end it with, “And the steadfast love of the Lord.” The world is hostile, Satan is real, suffering is inescapable, sin is universal and unrelenting, yes, and “Let your steadfast love come to me, your salvation according to your promise.” That is the answer of faith to the trials and temptations of life. As you rhyme off your litany of complaints, learn to fight cynicism and unbelief, undercut your doubts, put your negativity in its place with the sacred conjunction of verse 41. Don’t ever forget there is always an “and.” “And the steadfast love of the Lord.” Have you forgotten that your trials, your sorrows, your sins do not have the last word? The last word always belongs, in the life of a child of God, to the steadfast love of the Lord, which is new every morning.
It’s important to notice in this connection the word that’s translated “steadfast love” is closely linked with God’s covenant promise. This is God’s love by which He binds Himself with oaths of loyalty to His covenant people who He has promised to save and never to forsake. That’s what the steadfast love of the Lord brings us, as the second half of verse 41 makes very plain. Would you look there please? Do you see it? God’s steadfast love is expressed in salvation according to your promise. So maybe we could put it like this. If you’re a Christian, God has put Himself under contract to you, binding Himself to supply His steadfast love and to save you. When a child of God calls to Abba Father for His love, her cry to Him is not the roll of a dice. It is not a shot in the dark. It is not an audacious request for an uncertain favor from a miserly, reluctant God. No, you are suing Him for the fulfillment of His covenant obligations. He cannot but keep His promise. He must keep His promise!
Do you pray like that? It’s bold, isn’t it? But don’t mistake it for anything other than faith in action. That’s what it really is. The psalmist is trusting the promise of God, taking Him at His Word, pressing Him to keep His promise. If we were to make our stand and press our case on the basis of some sense of personal worth or entitlement and come to God ever and say, “I deserve Your love. Who I am and what I have done put You under obligation to me. You owe me!” if we said that, well then of course we could have no hope of a favorable answer. In fact, if we are really determined only to get what we think we are owed, if it’s receiving what we deserve that we want, all we’d ever get would be the divine wrath and curse. Isn’t that so? We have nothing in ourselves of which to boast. All our righteousness is filthy rags. We have nothing, nothing by which to compel God’s consideration of our needs.
But there is another ground on which to take our stand. Not your own merits. Our own merits are sinking sand. God’s covenant is a solid rock, however. Stand there and say to Him, “You promised!” God has never yet reneged on His Word. “His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.” His Word, His oath, His covenant – that’s the psalmist’s attitude. He’s trusting the covenant word and promise of God and it helps him pray with remarkable boldness.
Actually it’s worth asking why he is so very bold in this prayer. He tells us why in verse 42. Do you see it? Verse 42. Here’s why he is so bold. “Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to Your promise; then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word.” He’s praying as boldly as he does because he wants to be able to speak the truth of God in the face, even of open hostility. He wants to speak to those who taunt him in a faithful manner.
I find myself here thinking about the Lord Jesus, dragged before the Sanhedrin and before Herod and before Pontius Pilate and before the demanding screams of a bloodthirsty mob. And how fitting these words would have been as the prayer of the suffering Christ. Can you hear Jesus praying them as He endures false accusations and mockery in His trial as He hangs on the cross, unjustly condemned while the crowds scorn Him and hurl their insults at Him. Listen again to these words and hear them as the heart cry of the suffering Savior. In those moments of dreadful accusation and condemnation and derision, “Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise; and then I shall have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your Word.” During His trial, throughout the whole ordeal of His sufferings, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, He opened not His mouth. He never responded to the accusations leveled against Him. He trusted, however, the promise of God. And when His Father answered that prayer and sent to Him His steadfast love and saved His Son from death, raising Him on the third day, according to the Scriptures, as He promised, there He gave His great unanswerable reply to the mockery and the taunts of the world there at the empty tomb. He silenced them all. And now today, today when they snicker still behind their hands and mock us for our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, like the psalmist, like our Savior, we too must trust God’s Word, trust His promise, rest in His steadfast love, but we can do it now knowing that that very love promised to us has been bought and paid for in the Lord Jesus Christ – in the cross and in the empty tomb. There God – Romans 5:8 – “God has demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” There, Ephesians 5:2, “Christ loved us and gave Himself for us.”
So the steadfast love of God toward us is in no doubt, is it? Look at the cross. Look at the empty tomb. Look at the one sitting on the throne of heaven. Look there and know for sure “nothing can separate us from the Lord of God in Jesus Christ our Lord,” Romans 8:39. Get a firm grip of the Gospel. Trust the Word and promise of God and face down the disdain of those who think they know better. You have an answer for those who taunt you. Your answer is Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and reigning, in whom the steadfast love of God has come to you and holds you and will never let you go. Trust in God’s Word.
Keeping God’s Word
Then secondly, look at verses 43 and 44. The psalmist addresses the discipline of keeping God’s Word. We must trust it and we must keep it if we are to be truthful witnesses in a taunting world, we need to do more than simply trust the Word; we need to keep it too. Now, before we get to the text, we need to pause for a moment and descend into the nerdy depths of translation philosophy. Are you ready? This is going to be riveting! Alright, so punctuation, in our English translations, reflects the stylistic choices of the translators as they try to find a way to render the Hebrew into faithful, idiomatic English prose. If you’ve ever tried to translate any other language into your mother tongue, you will know it’s not an easy task. And translators, even faithful, accomplished, Bible translators don’t always get it right. In this case, the translators of the English Standard Version that we use here at First Presbyterian Church, they really don’t like the psalmist’s repetitive use of “and.” It’s just not good English style. It doesn’t read well. And so they decided to drop the conjunctions and to link verses together with commas and semicolons, making longer sentences of them. But as you read through this section, this is actually one place where I think it’s quite important to remember that in this stanza, each verse begins a whole new line, starting with the same Hebrew letter, “waw,” which means “and.”
And if you’ll look at verses 44 and 45 for a moment, just as an example, I want to show you why that matters. The translators drop the “and” from verse 44 completely. Do you see that? Then they link together 44 and 45 with a comma. And that obscures the fact that 44 and 45 are really two entirely new lines, each beginning with the Hebrew letter “waw,” so that in my judgment, the text ought to read, verse 44, “And I will keep your law continually, forever and ever.” Period. Verse 45, “And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.”
Alright, now as nerdy as that little excursus was, here is why it matters. This whole section of the psalm is built, as I said at the beginning, around four couplets of verses. That’s the structure. And in that structure, verses 43 and 44 belong together. But the way that our translation has it, verses 44 and 45 have been joined together and made to read as one single sentence, which really changes the meaning. Doesn’t it? Everybody still with me? Your eyes have glazed over just a little bit, but now that we’ve cleared up that issue we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming!
Look at verses 43 and 44, which ought to read, let me give it to you again – “And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. And I will keep your law continually, forever and ever.” And here’s the message of 43 and 44. If we are going to be truthful witnesses in a taunting world, we need these two things. These two almost always must go together. We need the Word to be heard from our mouths and we need the Word to be seen, lived out in our lives. These two must go together. And that’s what he’s praying for here in 43 and 44, isn’t it? He’s under pressure. He’s being taunted, attacked, undermined, sidelined, dismissed. If you’ve ever faced the contempt of your peers because of your faith in Jesus, you’ll know when that happens just how easy it is to clam up and back off and duck and cover and stay silent. “This valuable prayer,” writes Charles Bridges, “may preserve us from denying Christ.” “Take not the word utterly out of my mouth.” This valuable prayer may save us from denying Christ.
So as you go to work tomorrow, or return to the classroom, or you’re sitting at the family dinner table with an unbelieving spouse or parents or siblings, would you pray verse 43? “O Lord, take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth. Don’t let me be cowed by the rejection of the world when I’m called to be a witness for You.” And as you pray that, don’t forget that little word “utterly.” There’s a world of encouragement in it. Do you see it? “Take not the word of truth utterly from my mouth.” There’s a world of encouragement there. It tells us the psalmist is not praying to be given the eloquence of Spurgeon or the theologian depth of a seminary professor. He’s just asking for grace to say something for Jesus. “Take not the word utterly out of my mouth. Don’t leave me bereft of all vocabulary. Give me something, just something to say for my Savior.” Listen to Bridges again. I find this to be so helpful. “A stammering confession is better than silence. If we cannot say all we want for or of our Savior, let us say what we can and a word spoken in weakness may be a word of almighty power and a present help to some faint in spirit.” Isn’t that good? “A stammering confession is better than silence.” If you can’t say what you want, say what you can. “A word spoken in weakness may be a word of almighty power and a present help to some fainting spirit.” “Take not the word utterly out of my mouth.”
And so clearly Christian witness requires words. You can’t be a faithful witness if you don’t speak up for Jesus, but it requires more. Words need to be backed by a life that reflects increasingly the realities that that life professes to be true. You are to be, you yourself are to be the walking, breathing demonstration of the truth of the Gospel as you share it with others. They are meant to listen to us and then look at how we live and see the Gospel changing us, humbling us, renewing us, making us servant-hearted and gracious and tender; making us more like Jesus. Which means of course we must face the possibility that one reason we are so reluctant to speak up and share our faith is because we know deep down we’ve been living lives that undermine what we say we believe. And if we own Jesus with our mouth, people are going to look at our lives and say, “You’re a hypocrite and a fraud and I want nothing to do with your Jesus.” This is a call to repentance, to running back to Christ, and asking for grace that what you say and how you live might more and more match and fit together. We need the Word in our mouths and we need to live the Word with our lives.
And as you take that in, I want you to see, I hope you noticed that between the speaking in verse 43 and the living in verse 44, there is the psalmist’s hope in the Word of God. That is vital. Do you see there at the end of verse 43? Look at verse 43. “And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. I will keep your law continually.” The same spring produces both streams, the clarity and the courage to speak and the strength to obey. They both come in hoping not in yourself but in the Word of the Lord. Here’s what keeping the Word entails. Have you got it? We must speak it, we must live it, and we must rest all our hope upon it. That’s the psalmist’s resolution and prayer, and if we are to bear truthful witness in a taunting world, we need to make it our own as well.
Speaking God’s Word
Trusting the Word. Keeping the Word. Look at the third couplet in verses 45 and 46. The third discipline if we are to bear truthful witness in a taunting world has to do with speaking God’s Word. “And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.” Now in many ways the same emphasis on speaking and living we’ve just noticed in 43 and 44 are repeated here again in the reverse order. He will walk, he says, “in a wide place.” That has to do with the way he lives. And “I will speak your testimonies” – that’s about what he says. The expression, “I will walk in your ways,” means something like, “I will live free and unconstrained.” And his confidence that he will live a life like that is rooted, he says, in his having sought God’s precepts. In other words, the way to live in a wide place, the way of freedom and blessing, is not by avoiding the possibility of opposition. It isn’t by fitting in, going with the flow, and looking as much like the world as possible. It is, rather, by seeking the precepts of God. In our terms, the psalmist gives himself to the study of the Bible.
And isn’t it so very helpful to see that in correcting the sneaking suspicion that we all sometimes have that life, really that life lived on God’s terms according to God’s Book will be a life of drudgery. What a dreary, joyless life it must be to be obedient to the commands of God. That’s what we fear deep down. Sin looks like fun. Obedience, not so much. What was it H. L. Mencken said about Puritanism? “It is the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy.” That’s what we think a life of obedience will turn us into – sour, bitter, cold, dark, repressed, angry, joyless people. But the psalmist, the psalmist says otherwise. The path, the high road to the wide place, to freedom, is paved with the precepts of God. It’s not narrow. It is broad and bright and joyous. Jesus said exactly the same thing, didn’t He? Do you remember? John 8:32, “If you abide in My Word you are truly My disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will” – what – “set you free.” Freedom found in obedience to the precepts of God. When God’s Word begins to shape your life like this, it is going to come out your mouth.
And so verse 46, “I will speak your testimonies before kings and not be put to shame.” Where do you get boldness to speak up for Jesus no matter who you are speaking to? He’s going to speak before kings and not be ashamed. Where do you get boldness to speak up like that? The psalmist is saying it comes as God works His Word down deeper and deeper into your heart. You remember Jesus said, “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” He was rebuking His opponents for wicked speech coming from a wicked heart, but the same principle applies for Gospel speech. It comes from a heart gripped by the Gospel. “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” If you want bold witness coming out of your mouth, the Word must go deep and grip your heart. Think about how you are when you learn a juicy bit of news. You can’t wait to tell people. “Have you heard about so and so and such and such? Let me tell you about this thing that I’ve heard that I know you are going to love.” And we can’t keep it to ourselves; it’s sort of boiling away in our hearts until it comes out of our mouths. When the Gospel of grace gets a grip of you, you will find yourself dying to tell people about it.
Loving God’s Word
Trusting God’s Word. Keeping God’s Word. Speaking God’s Word. And finally, verses 47 and 48, loving God’s Word. “I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.” Notice the repeat phrase, “your commandments, which I love.” He delights in the Word, he prays over the Word – that’s what this business of lifting up his hands is about – he meditates on the Word. He is all about the Word. Why? Because he loves the Word. He loves it.
A large part of the design of Psalm 119 is actually to show us why the Bible is worthy of our love. In this one stanza we’ve been studying together, the psalmist makes a pretty robust case, don’t you think, for Bible love? The Bible promises us the steadfast love of the Lord, verse 41. The Bible gives us answers to those who taunt us, verse 42. The Bible is a sure anchor for our hope in a hopeless world, verse 43. The Bible leads us into the wide place of real spiritual freedom, verse 45. No wonder every time he mentions the Word he feels compelled to add, “which I love. I love it! It has my heart.” You share what you love, don’t you? You sing about what you love. You change your life to accommodate what you love. Maybe we need to do some personal inventory and take a closer look at what we share and what we sing about and what we accommodate. What does it reveal about what you really love? A man or a woman who loves the Word has a life increasingly shaped by it and they find they just can’t keep it to themselves. They just can’t.
So we are called to bear truthful witness in a taunting world. That’s our mission. But to do it faithfully we must trust the Word, we must keep the Word, we must speak the Word, and we never will do those things unless we love the Word. Do you love the Word? Let’s pray.
Our Father, we bow before You. We confess that we are often daunted by the opposition and the hostility of our peers to things we hold most precious – the Gospel of Your grace. And so we do not open our mouths and speak up for You. We are afraid of being mocked and rejected. Help us, O Lord, to see the wonder of Your steadfast love anew, to see the price born for us by our Savior at the cross, to know that You are with us and for us, and do not take Your Word utterly from our mouths. Help us to speak Your Word before kings and not be ashamed. Do it, we pray, that the ends of the earth may hear the good news about Jesus and many more men and women, boys and girls, will be brought out of darkness into Your marvelous light through the witness of the men and women in this church. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.