Now let me invite you to keep your Bibles in hand. We come to the thirteenth stanza of Psalm 119. Next week, we are going to take a break from our study in Psalm 119 to turn our attention to the Advent season. Then in January, as part of our ongoing focus of knowing and loving the Word of God – that’s our teaching theme this year – we’re going to do a kind of month-long, intensive, I’ll be preaching Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night, right through the whole book of Romans. We’ll go right through the book in twelve messages and try and see the major themes and Paul’s argument and how it all fits together in something of an overview. And then if that doesn’t kill me, God willing, beginning in February, we’ll come back and finish out our studies in Psalm 119.
So take your Bibles in hand and turn to Psalm 119, verses 97 through 104, the portion we sang together a moment ago. If you’re using a church Bible, that’s on page 514. Now this stanza is about the benefit to us of meditating on the Word of God. Here is what marinating in Scripture does to you. While this stanza is addressed to God, like all the stanzas of the psalm, it contains, interestingly, it contains no requests. The psalmist here isn’t asking for anything. This is entirely a celebration of and an expression of gratitude for the effects that holy Scripture has in the psalmist’s life. And that in itself, I think, is a real challenge to us. Isn’t it? We have to fight hard, if we are honest, we have to fight hard just to be sure we read our Bibles every day. And when we do sit down to read our Bibles, we often don’t understand what we’re reading and so we give up or we get bored and we zone out. Or we get distracted and we blunt whatever impact the Scriptures might otherwise have had. But the psalmist, in this stanza, he is bursting with enthusiasm for the Bible. He can’t get enough.
And as we listen to him tell us why, this stanza is meant to awaken our own appetite for more of the Bible in our own lives also. So would you look at it with me for a moment? As we’ve seen the psalmist do again and again in the psalm so far, the paragraph before us has a simple, two-part structure. The first half, verses 97 through 100, deals with the wisdom the Word imparts. The wisdom the Word imparts. If you let the Word have its way with your life, the Word will make you wise. The wisdom the Word imparts. The second half, 101 through 104, the life the Word produces. It will give you wisdom, and so you will begin to live in a new way, in a way that is obedient to God and pleasing in His sight. And so those are the two themes we’re considering today – the wisdom the Word imparts and the life the Word produces.
As always, before we read the passage, let’s bow our heads once more and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us pray.
Our God and Father, how we need the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Would You send Him to us that we may behold the light of the glory of God, the light of the knowledge of Your saving mercy, shining to us from this portion of Scripture in the face of Jesus Christ. Do it for Your own praise we pray, amen.
Psalm 119 at verse 97. This is the Word of God:
“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.
Can I confess something to you? I have never drunk a cup of coffee in my whole life. Isn’t that shocking? You’re horrified! I just don’t like the taste of it. I’ve never developed a taste for it. But I have to tell you, I’ve often felt like I ought to be drinking coffee. You know, serious people drink coffee. Grownups drink coffee, so maybe I should get over my distaste and give it a shot. I’m nervous enough about it, I really don’t like the taste of coffee, so I did what anyone would do in my position. I googled “how to develop a taste for coffee.” Turns out, the main advice for developing a taste for coffee is to drink lots of coffee! You know, look for the different flavor profiles, the subtleties in the bean and the brewing technique. The way to develop a taste for coffee is to drink lots of coffee. I’m almost certainly not going to give it a shot!
But I can tell you, that is excellent spiritual counsel when it comes to developing a taste for the Word of God. You’ll notice the stanza before us begins with a long song. You see that in verse 97? “Oh how I love your law!” Now if you’ve never developed a taste for the Word of God, the psalmist’s rhapsodizing over the Scriptures might seem like a bit of a mystery to you; like me listening to people rambling on about their favorite, you know, Ugandan coffee bean. It’s just a mystery to me. If you’ve never developed a taste for the Word of God, the psalmist’s rhapsodizing about the Scriptures might be a mystery to you. It’s an ancient book, millenia old, written at a time and a place so very distant, so very foreign to us. What’s the love, really? But the psalmist can’t get enough, can he? “Oh how I love your law!”
And what he says next is both the evidence of the depth of his love and the reason that his love has grown so deep in the first place. Do you see what he says next? “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” He’s trained his spiritual tastebuds to love the Word of God by meditating on it all day long so that the more he gets, the more he wants. How do you get to love the Bible? Well, the psalmist would say drink it in. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Train your spiritual taste buds to love the Bible by being often in the Bible.
And what will happen to you if you do? That’s what the rest of the stanza is about. What will happen to you if you begin to awaken those spiritual taste buds and develop an appetite for the Word of God? Well, the first thing that will happen, he says, is you will become wise. The wisdom the Word imparts first of all. Look at verses 98 through verse 100. There are three comparisons the psalmist makes in these verses. Do you see them? Each begins with a Hebrew preposition we could translate “more than.” You see his comparisons? First of all, he says he has more wisdom than his enemies in verse 98. And then he says he has more understanding than his teachers in verse 99. And finally, look at verse 100. He has more understanding than his elders. His enemies, of course, they reject the wisdom of God in Scripture outright. They embrace the apparent wisdom of the world. But his teachers, on the other hand, they are not his adversaries, and yet his understanding, he says, surpasses theirs. Likewise the aged, his elders, his seniors in life experience, and yet he says his understanding is even more than theirs.
Now what should you make of that? Frankly it sounds a little arrogant, doesn’t it? Is that what’s going on here? Is he boasting in his own superior intellect? You know, “Look how much smarter I am than everybody else because I read the Bible.” If that was what he was saying, wouldn’t it just confirm the opinion of our unbelieving friends who refuse to listen to the Christian Gospel or to come to church with us because they say, “You Christians think you are better than everybody else. And look here now, here is the psalmist proving the point.” But that’s not at all what the psalmist is saying. He is boasting, to be sure, but he’s not boasting about himself or his own superior mental powers. He is boasting in the Scriptures. He is boasting in the Bible. The Bible, he’s saying, can take us further than any human abilities ever could.
It was a saying that I first heard when I was training for the ministry in Scotland that, “A minister can only take his people, his congregation, as far spiritually as he has gone himself.” It’s meant to remind a minister to be sure he himself is growing in his own walk with God before he starts to help his congregation do the same. And there’s a good deal of wisdom in that. But a mentor of mine once pushed back. The problem with the expression, “A minister can only take his people as far as he has gone himself,” my friend said, “is that we have a whole Bible to take people further than we have gone ourselves.” And that’s the point the psalmist is making here too, isn’t it? We are not the measure of wisdom. The psalmist’s own mental powers are not the measure of wisdom. The Word of God is the measure of wisdom, whether it’s the so-called wisdom of the world – thinking about his enemies in verse 98 or the learning of his teachers in verse 99 or the life lessons of his elders in verse 100. Whatever it is, the psalmist says, the Bible surpasses them all in describing accurately the way things really are in the world and in navigating for us the only safe path through life. His enemies, they chart their course based on their rebellious rejection of God thinking to make up their own path as they go along. His teachers, they try to chart a course based presumably on scholarship and learning. The elders chart a course drawn from years of personal experience. But the psalmist says to God, with wonder in his voice, “Apart from Your Word, which is ever with me,” verse 98, “Apart from Your Word, which is my meditation,” verse 99, “Apart from Your Word, which is my rule for life,” verse 100, “Apart from Your Word, I know every other attempt at wisdom must certainly fall short, but by Your Word I find my way. Even if everyone else takes a wrong turn, by Your Word I find my way.”
So now as you think about your own life, let me ask you, to which voices have you really been listening? On whose wisdom have you been building? The wisdom of the world is bankrupt. The understanding of scholarship or of life experience is limited. You need more. You need the wisdom of God that surpasses all other wisdom. It’s time to start listening to the Scriptures. It’s time to start listening to God’s Word.
By the way, doesn’t the psalmist here remind you of the Lord Jesus? Doesn’t he remind you of Christ? You remember the incident in Luke chapter 2 when Jesus visited the temple. He was twelve years old and he was found sitting in the middle of the circle of the teachers in the temple and He’s asking them penetrating questions. And Luke says, “All who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. And then he adds, “and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” Now what is this wisdom of Christ’s that exceeds the wisdom of the scholars and the elders and all the wisdom of the world? This wisdom that grew and deepened as He matured and grew? I think Jesus might have answered that question the same way the psalmist does in the verses before us. Jesus would say, “God’s commandment makes Me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with Me. I have more understanding than all My teachers for God’s testimonies are My meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep God’s precepts.” Jesus was a Bible man. That’s where His wisdom came from. And if we are going to find true wisdom, we must be Bible men and women too. The wisdom the Word imparts. That’s the first thing.
Now let’s look at the second half of the stanza and the life the Word produces. The wisdom the Word imparts, now the life the Word produces. The psalmist uses two metaphors in this second half of the stanza. You see the first of them in verses 101 and 102. Look there with me please. Verses 101 and 102. You’ll see the first in 101 and 102. “ I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.” What’s the metaphor? What’s the image? Well he’s on a road, he’s walking along a path, and he holds back his feet, he says, from some of the side trails and the byways that lead off the main road. He does not turn aside, he says. What’s interesting about these two verses is that while the first part of each says virtually the same thing – “I hold back my feet from every evil way. I do not turn aside from your rules” – the first part says virtually the same thing, the second halves of each verse say almost the opposite things. Do you see that? Look at them again. “I hold back my feet from evil evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have already taught me.” In 101, he’s looking forward to a life that learns how to live God’s way. “I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.” But in 102, he’s looking back at his own obedience thus far and he sees it all as a result of God having already taught him how to walk in His way. “I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.”
Here is the practical wisdom that lies at the heart of the Christian life. Holiness is both our active pursuit of conformity to the teaching of the Bible in our lives day by day, and the product of God’s gracious prior work in us, teaching us His will revealed in the Scriptures. Verse 101 emphasizes our responsibility. We must hold back our feet from every evil path in order to keep God’s word. So we have no excuse for passivity or indifference. We can never just coast along, you know. A casual, lazy, effortless Christianity is a counterfeit. But some of us, that’s not our problem. We’re not really tempted to passivity or to spiritual indifference. No, our temptation lies in the other direction. We are prone to think that our spiritual security rests entirely on our own hard work and we’re always wondering, therefore, if we have done enough, prayed enough, studied enough, been good enough. But alongside the call to responsibility in verse 101, there is a reminder in verse 102 of God’s prior, gracious activity. He will teach us so that in the end, whatever progress we might make in the Christian life, we must lay all the glory, all the credit at God’s feet and not take it for ourselves. God Himself has taught us.
That also means, of course, that we ought never to despair because God has taught us. Our salvation is not the product of our own learning or our own efforts. It is His work in us. If it were ours alone, well then we would be right to fear, so fickle and inconsistent and prone to wander our hearts continue to be. But it’s not our work; it is His great work in us enabling us to will and to work for His good pleasure. And in that, isn’t there great security? Isn’t there great security? “You have taught me,” the psalmist says.
Jesus makes the same point in John 6:44. He says, “It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone, Jesus says, who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” Taught by God. That’s why you are a Christian. That’s why you have come to Jesus and trusted in Him – you were taught by God. Your being taught by God, of course, doesn’t mean you remain passive. You don’t become a mere consumer. No, you act. You come to Christ. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” The Father has taught you, by His Word and Spirit through the Gospel, gotten hold of your heart, enlightened your mind, inclined your will, and you come running to Jesus. God has dealt with you, now you must act. Now you must respond. You answer His call and you come to Christ. That’s true of everyone in whose heart God is at work by His Word and Spirit, teaching them, drawing them, enlightening them and bringing them to Himself. So the first great metaphor here is being on a path, on a road. The wisdom of God’s Word changes your heart and life so that you begin to walk in His way and follow His steps. You come to Christ and you continue to come as God, by His Word, works in your heart.
The second metaphor in this latter half of the stanza having to do with the life that God’s Word produces, you will see if you look at verse 103. Would you look there please? Verse 103. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” We made lemon meringue pie at Thanksgiving. Actually I made it; it’s the first time I’ve ever made it. The meringue turned out okay, but the lemon custard mixture inside wasn’t really thick enough and so when we cut into the pie it ended up being more lemon meringue pudding than anything else. That didn’t stop us eating it all, however; it tasted really good, and the pie didn’t last very long. It’s hard to just have one piece of pie. Right? We want more! That’s the psalmist’s point about the Bible. If you can train your palate so that you develop a taste for the Word of God, you will discover its sweetness and you won’t be able to get enough. You will want more.
Now without this verse, without verse 103, the stanza might give you the impression that the Christian life is really just about knowing things and doing things. It’s about belief and about obedience. Conviction and conduct. Theology and ethics. But that would be really to miss something vital. That’s why verse 103 is so very precious. A Christianity, you know, conceived of only as thinking and doing, as theology and ethics, is a powerless, defective thing, because between thinking and doing, between believing and living, there is tasting and enjoying. Tasting and enjoying – they are the rudders that will steer the ship of your life. You go where your appetites take you, don’t you? The psalmist says he loves the taste of the Bible. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” “There is a difference,” writes Jonathan Edwards, “between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes, but a man can’t have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind.”
The vital point verse 103 makes has to do with having what Edwards calls a sense, a taste; not just a conviction, not just a belief. An experience. The Christian life consists in tasting for one’s self the sweetness of God in the Gospel of His Son. The sweetest of God, His goodness, His loveliness, His beauty. As you listen to God’s Word preached, does it just wash over you? Is it white noise? Is that all it is? Or have you come to taste something of the sweetness of it so that you want more? That’s actually one of the crucial differences between true spiritual life, authentic Christianity, and merely going through the religious motions.
Now as I was thinking about the wisdom the Word gives in the first half of the stanza and the sweetness, the taste of the Word here at the end of the stanza, my mind went back to our first parents in the Garden of Eden. Do you remember what Eve thought when Satan tempted her to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Do you remember what she thought? Genesis 3:6 – She saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and desirable for making one wise. And so she took and ate. But instead of sweetness and wisdom, what came in the wake of her disobedience, her rejection of God’s Word and life God’s way and her assumption of life on her own terms, what came in the wake of her disobedience, the disobedience of Adam, was sin and misery for all the world. You know when Jesus came, He came to undo what Adam’s sin, Eve’s sin did for us. He came as a second Adam to be obedient where the first was disobedient. So He came and said to His disciples, “I have food to eat that you know nothing of. My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” He could sing all the words of this stanza as His own, as the perfectly obedient last Adam. He found sweetness and wisdom in not going His own way, “Not My will, but Yours be done,” in obeying and submitting to the Word and will of His Father, “becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross.”
And now as you read back over this stanza, in light of the Genesis account of our first parents’ sin, doesn’t it read like the testimony of someone who has already begun to live a life no longer dominated by sin and misery, the consequence of our first parents’ fall, but now characterized by the wisdom of God and the sweetness of His Word? It reads in many ways like the reversal of Adam and Eve’s sin, doesn’t it? Because it is! The sin of our first parents, undone for us by the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ, in His obedience and blood. And more and more undone in us when we come to know and trust in Christ. We begin a whole new life – a life of wisdom at last, a life that tastes the sweetness of God in His Word by trusting Jesus Christ. So that when you do, when you trust yourself wholly to Him, the song of this stanza that Jesus can sing so fully, becomes a song you can sing too – that God’s Word gives you wisdom and it is so sweet that you can’t get enough. That’s how you get this life described here. You get it by trusting in Jesus Christ. You are taught by God and you begin to live this way. You taste the sweeter than honey Word of the Lord and you want more.
One last thing before we close. The love song of verse 97, remember the head of the stanza a bit like a heading setting out the psalmist’s great theme – “How I love Your Law, it is my meditation all the day” – and now in much the same way in verse 104 we have a sort of final summary at the end of the stanza. Look at 104. “Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.” The stanza opens with love and it ends with hate, which makes the point yet again that the psalmist is not a mere walking, talking brain – stoic, heady, a thinker of pious thoughts and nothing else. True Christianity does not consist only in ideas. He feels deeply, but his affections, notice this, they are all turned toward the glory of God and the obedient life that will honor Him. He loves God’s law. He hates every false way.
That’s what happens when Jesus Christ takes hold of our hearts by His Word and Spirit. These are the marks of authentic Christianity. We are taught by God so that we begin to love what He loves and hate what He hates. Are those the marks of your life? You love what He loves and you hate what He hates. Do you know the wisdom the Word alone imparts? Do you live the life the Word alone produces? You can, but only by entrusting yourself wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord help us all to do it. Let us pray.Our God and Father, we praise You that Your Word is sweet to our taste, sweeter than honey in our mouth. How we love Your Law! Teach us to love it more. Give us a true taste and sense of its sweetness, of Your beauty, Your glory, Your kindness and love and grace shining to us in the Gospel of Your Son from the pages of Your book. And as You do, would You give us that wisdom that shapes life in a way that brings You praise and glory. Enable us to walk in Your way and not turn aside to every evil path, to restrain our feet because You have taught us. Would You do it for Your glory, in Jesus’ name, amen.