Now please if you would take a copy of God’s holy Word in your hands and turn with me to page 516 in the church Bibles, if you’re using one of our church Bibles. Next Lord’s Day, God willing, we will turn our attention to the teaching of the apostle Paul as we begin to work our way through the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians. Today, we turn one more time – I’m actually rather sad about leaving Psalm 119; it’s been so profitable, at least for me; I hope it has been for you – one more time to the final stanza of this longest chapter in the Scriptures, Psalm 119, verses 169 to 176. The stanza you will see is composed of four couplets, four groups of two verses each. They fall into two larger groups so that couplets one and two are about prayer and praise, that’s verses 169 to 172, and couplets three and four are about devotion and deliverance. So 173 through 176, devotion and deliverance. Those are our headings. I hope you’ve got them. Prayer and praise; devotion and deliverance.
What’s interesting about this stanza is the way it alternates between joy and sorrow, between anxious prayer and exultant praise, urgent dependence upon God and unshakable confidence in God’s Word. It’s such a helpful way, actually, to conclude the psalm, don’t you think, because like us, the psalmist is not only one or the other. The Christian life is not one of those or the other. It’s both. We can be full of faith that the Word of God is true while at the same time struggling and going astray in this or that area. We can plead for grace through tears of sorrow only to turn around and praise God with tears of gratitude and joy. This stanza reminds us actually that we live in an in between time. Jesus has come, He has obeyed and bled and died for us, risen and reigns for us. He is Lord of all, praise God. And yet, the world is a dark place still, isn’t it? Sin festers still, even in our redeemed hearts. The devil is hard at work, still prowling around seeking whom he may devour. Unwelcomed suffering forces its way into our lives still. Yes, Jesus reigns. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And yet all things are not yet made new. The kingdom of God has been inaugurated but not yet consummated. We live now in the realm of grace, but not yet in the realm of glory. And so we sing praises even while we limp along. We lament even in the midst of our successes. The chart of the Christian life, the graph, it’s not a straight line of constant upward growth, is it? Mine isn’t. I’m willing, if I were a betting man, I’m willing to bet yours isn’t either. It’s a jagged zigzag of up and down, forward momentum and some backwards steps. Progress, though real, is incremental and slow, painfully slow sometimes with many setbacks along the way.
Now what can you sing that will match such an up and down life? How should you think about yourself, how should you understand your experience when it’s such a confusion of good and bad, growth and decline, success and failure, progress and regress? This stanza, the last of Psalm 119, is a model of prayer and praise, deliverance and devotion for Christians living in between the already of Christ’s grace right now and the not-yet of Christ’s glory still to come. Now before we unpack its teaching together, let me invite you to bow your heads with me as we pray and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read the passage. Let us pray.
O Lord, grant that our cry might come before You and give us understanding according to Your Word. We confess that we have gone astray like lost sheep. Would You now, by Your Word and Spirit, seek Your servants that we do not forget Your commandments? For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 119 at verse 169. This is the Word of Almighty God:
“Let my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding according to your word! Let my plea come before you; deliver me according to your word. My lips will pour forth praise, for you teach me your statutes. My tongue will sing of your word, for all your commandments are right. Let your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.”
Amen.
Let’s look together at the first couplet, verses 169 and 170, focused on prayer. Don’t you love that the twenty-two stanzas, that after twenty-two stanzas, here in the twenty-second stanza, the psalmist feels the best way to end his meditation isn’t with a fanfare of personal accomplishment but with an urgent cry to God for grace. Listen to how he speaks again. “Let my cry come before You, O Lord; give me understanding according to Your Word! Let my plea come before You; deliver me according to Your Word.” Now these two verses, they are clearly parallel aren’t they? They both begin with a prayer to be herald, expressed almost in identical language. “Let my cry come before You.” “Let my plea come before You.” Alec Motyer says, “Biblical praying often begins as here with a prayer to be heard. Knowing as they did the deeply intimate relationship between Yahweh and His people, nevertheless there is no cocky bursting into His presence.” There’s no cocky bursting into His presence. There’s no presumption, no sense of entitlement. The psalmist doesn’t come standing on His rights, demanding an audience. No, he comes like a beggar before the great King, humbly asking that His requests might find an undeserved hearing in the heavenly courts.
And notice what it is he is asking for in these opening two verses. In 169, do you see it? “It is understanding according to Your Word.” And in 170 it is deliverance according to God’s Word. He wants understanding; that is, discernment for his inner life. And he wants deliverance for his outward circumstances. And what we mustn’t miss is that he expects both to come, discernment and deliverance, inner turmoil, clarity in his inner life, and deliverance for his outer circumstances in all their difficulties and pains, he expects both to come “according to Your Word.” Discernment and deliverance, inner light and outer liberty, the way we think and the circumstances of our lives, they all must come to heel at the say-so of the sovereign God speaking in holy Scripture. The Scriptures, they promise comprehensive grace. That’s the point. That’s why he prays this way with such directness. The Scriptures, he knows, offer grace for minds and hearts and grace for hard days and difficult situations. They give grace for the inner self and grace for outer trials. God gives it all, the psalmist says, according to His Word.
We have no warrant to expect God to do what He has not promised to do, but when we can come to Him with boldness, with a promise in our hands from the Word of God, we may be sure, as sure as the psalmist is here, that God will provide both discernment and deliverance; grace for your inner thought life, the turmoil of your heart, and grace to guide your steps through whatever circumstances may bring. And so he begins here, do you notice, with desperate prayer for understanding and deliverance. We get the sense in these opening two verses of a man under pressure, a man suffering, a man in great need.
But then look at the next couplet that goes right along with it in verses 171 and 172. Suddenly now the tone changes. Gone is the urgent desperation and in its place there is joyful celebration. Notice what he says. “My lips will pour forth praise, for You teach me Your statutes.” My tongue will sing of Your Word, for all Your commandments are light.” Same word of promise that he was just pleading before God in prayer now ignites within him glad hearted praise. And here again these two verses are clearly parallel to one another – 171 and 172. “My lips will pour forth praise,” 171. “My tongue will sing of Your Word,” 172. The expression, “My lips will pour forth praise,” that’s evocative language, isn’t it? We are meant to picture an artesian spring, you know, it never runs dry because it bubbles up, it’s fed by streams deep underground. “My lips will pour forth praise,” as if he can’t help it. He has to sing. He has to praise.
And what is it that makes him worship? What does the text say? “My lips will pour forth praise, for You teach me Your statutes. All Your commandments are right.” No sooner has he prayed for understanding according to the Word than he remembers how God has already taught him so very much by that Word and he is enabled, despite his desperation and his urgency, he is unable to pause and adore the Lord who teaches him the Scriptures. If you know your Bible, no matter how hard things may get, no matter how dire your situation, you will always find here in the Scriptures fuel for worship and reasons for praise. The truth of God has the power under the blessing of the Spirit of God to lift our hearts beyond our circumstances, beyond the difficulties of the now and to remind us of the promised glories of the not yet that is soon approaching. The Bible says to us, “The day is nearer now than when we first believed.” It’s coming. You’re closer. Keep going. The end is in sight. Jesus is coming. Hold on. Press on. Lift your eyes to the hills for your help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. It reminds us that it is a light and momentary affliction that we are dealing with, not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. And it says, and by the way, “He who began a good work in you, He will carry it on to completion.” He’s not done with you. He will not cease His work within you until the day of Christ Jesus. The Scriptures tell you the truth so that you will be enabled to say, as we often sing here with Spafford, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”
That’s what’s happening here in the psalmist’s heart as he prays and praises according to the Word. The Bible puts rebar into our faith by giving us promises to cling to and to plead so that we can go to God for understanding and for deliverance according to the Word. And the Bible itself becomes an artesian spring from which streams of praise and adoration to God may flow even when outward circumstances, our situation, it’s arid and dry. Your Christian life is like a beautiful flower garden, growing in Jackson, Mississippi in the middle of August. All the other gardens around are brown and crunchy and desiccated and dead, but not this garden. The reason this garden stays green and beautiful in the August drought, the reason the flowers bloom under the blazing summer sun is because the spigot is always turned on and lifegiving water constantly flows. The only way to keep heartfelt praise blossoming in your life is to open the taps of holy Scripture and let the Word of God flow. Without it, the once lush garden of your Christian life will wither and dry out under the heat of life’s daily trials. So prayer and praise first of all.
Now let’s look at the second half of the stanza – deliverance and devotion. The next two verses, 173 and 174, they fit together not this time by way of what’s called synonymous parallel like the first two couplets where the first line and the second line are saying the same thing in different words. These two verses now fit together by means of contrast. So 173, notice, is about the hand of God. His mighty arm beared to be our deliverance and salvation. “Let your hand be ready to help me,” he prays. While 174 isn’t about the hand of God; it’s about the heart of the psalmist. “I long for your salvation.” As we listen to his cries here, we are back down in the dark valley once more, aren’t we, after soaring in the heights of praise in the previous two verses. He needs help here. He wants salvation here.
But did you see the reason that he offers for God’s intervention, for His saving hand to come and help him? “Let Your hand be ready to help me, for” – here’s the reason – “I have chosen Your precepts. I long for Your salvation, O Lord, and Your law is my delight.” He has chosen the precepts of God; he delights in God’s law. Here is a test, actually, of the authenticity of our Christian profession. Do you choose the precepts of God when things get hard? Things are hard, he needs the hand of God to help him, and still he chooses the Lord’s precepts. Choosing God’s Word, His ways, His law when things are easy, that’s all well and good. But when you are desperate for the hand of the Lord to help you, what then? Are you a fair weather Christian? Are you a fair weather Christian?
Remember the disciples in the boat, in the middle of the storm in Mark chapter 4? The boat was being swamped by the waves, Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat, exhausted, worn out from giving of Himself constantly to others, and the disciples are absolutely terrified and so they shake Jesus awake. “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” Jesus stands and with a calm, effortless word, silences the storm. And then He turns to His disciples and asks, “Why are you so afraid? Have you no faith?” Their faith crumbled in the face of the storm. They looked at the wind and the waves, the driving rain and the flashes of lightning, and they reasoned from their experience as fishermen, “This storm will be the end of us. It’s curtains for us. We’re going down.” They did not reason from their experience as Christians that, “Whatever the storm is doing, we have Jesus in the boat with us! And there is no storm that could ever sink that boat with Jesus on board! Jesus is the Lord of the wind and the waves!”
The psalmist needs the prompt help of the hand of God. he longs for God’s salvation from the predicament, the unnamed predicament in which he now finds himself. He’s in this storm, but unlike the disciples, here in the storm the psalmist’s anchor holds. “I have chosen Your precepts. I couldn’t go any other way. ‘Time to quit,’ my friends tell me. ‘Pack it all in. Where’s your God now?’ they say. ‘If He was real, if He was good, if you could really trust Him, you wouldn’t be in this mess. So look, stop being such a stickler for your religion, why don’t you? Come along with us and have a little fun. Live a little. You’re suffering; you deserve it!’ No, no,” the psalmist says, “I have chosen God’s precepts. His law is my delight. I sink my anchor here and that rock will hold me safe. I want to please Him with my life, whether in fair weather or foul.” Are you a fair weather Christian only? The psalmist is calling us to trust God and take Him at His Word in the storm as well as when the sun shines.
And this same combination of devotion to God and longing for deliverance comes out again in the last couplet in verses 175 and 176. Would you look there with me please, verses 175 and 176? “Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.” If he’s going to praise God as he is determined to do, we’ve seen already in 171 and 172, he knows God must give him life, sustain his life, preserve his life. Now the way that Hebrew poetry works in texts like this, very often, the second half of the verse is meant to explain and illuminate the first half. So look at 175 again. “Let my soul live and praise you” – how does he expect God to answer that? “Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me.”
Now there is a school of thought – maybe you’ve bumped into it – that says God’s rules are a problem. In fact, all they can ever do is kill. The perfect holiness they embody exposes how far short of God’s standards we fall and so the rules of God, the judgments of God, the law of God can only condemn us. And that is all perfectly true, of course, as far as it goes, but it’s not the whole story. When you come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, Jesus takes all the condemnation. He endures the penalty. He dies under the sanction of God’s righteous rules that I have broken, that you have broken. And so as a result, Romans 8:1, do you remember? “There is therefore now” – what? “There is therefore now no condemnation.” No condemnation. Say it like you believe it! “No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” When you are in Christ Jesus by faith alone, the law, the rules of God, they will never condemn you. They show you, in fact, not the way to life – you could never find life by your obedience to them – but they show you the way of life for those who trust in Christ. All condemnation gone; the Spirit of Christ now indwelling your heart. You are enabled now by obedience to the law of God, to live more and more for His glory and good pleasure. The suffering psalmist believes that living God’s way according to God’s rules is the best way to live. It will help him. He is looking there for help that he might live and praise God.
Sometimes we are looking for God to step in and help us with some, you know, some supernatural pyrotechnics. That’s what we want. Something dramatic. Some sudden flare of divine heavenly intervention to secure our deliverance. And listen, God can do that. Sometimes He does. But ordinarily, the way in which the Lord lets our souls live and praise Him is by helping us by His rules. His Word shows us the way. His law directs our steps in the path of grateful obedience. He helps us by His rules. The law of God is not your enemy if you are a believer in Jesus. It is your friend saying, “This is the way. Walk in it.” The Word of God, the law of God, the rules of God, it is the hand of divine help guiding your life in the way that will bring Him glory.
And then look at the very last verse of the psalm, verse 176. Isn’t this striking that it should be the last verse? If you were writing this, would you have ended it like this? It’s not how I would have ended it. There are no fist pumps of self congratulation of the monumental achievement of accomplishing this extraordinary composition. Twenty-two stanzas, eight verses each, with each stanza with its own intricate, internal structure, the first letter of each line from the same Hebrew letter and so on in sequence, all the way through all twenty-two letters. It’s pretty impressive. I love alliteration, as you know, but this guy takes the biscuit! And if it was me and I’d come to the very last verse of this extraordinary composition, there would be a humble brag somewhere in here. “Look what I have done, with God’s help of course, but look what I have done!”
That’s not the psalmist’s instinct as he finishes this work, is it? There’s no patting himself on the back, no boasting, no pride. No, no, the psalmist ends confessing his sin. Here at last we now discover why he’s praying so urgently for deliverance and salvation and the intervention of the divine hand. Here’s what’s going on. “ I have gone astray like a lost sheep.” He’s backsliding. He’s been drifting. Maybe you can relate. You made a profession of faith years ago, and then you went to college and you drifted. It wasn’t a radical rejection of the Christian message; it was a gradual thing. You partied some, you played, you met someone, you fell in love, you got married, you started your career, children came along, life got busy. And now years have gone by, maybe decades have gone by until today, and here you are, a lost sheep, wondering, “How did I ever stray so far?” By the way, did you know that the Hebrew word translated as “lost” here, “I’ve gone astray like a lost sheep,” also means “perishing,” a pershing sheep?
The point is, being a lost sheep is dangerous. We need to realize that, I think. Our sin is deadly if it is left unchecked. Stray sheep die if they are not found and brought home. That’s what happens to them. And listen, I pray as you listen to this today that you will come to the same realization that strikes the psalmist here in this final verse – the realization not of his own cleverness and skill, but just how much danger your backsliding and sin have exposed you to.
Now you’ll notice if you look down at the text that the last phrase of the psalm is, “I do not forget your commandments.” He has been straying like a lost sheep, and even so, despite himself as he wanders off in pursuit of illicit pleasure and wickedness, even so, he can’t seem to quite shake the truth of God lodged in his mind and in his heart. When God’s people slide back and wander away, they never completely lose their awareness of the Lord or His truth. In fact, you might be learning from painful, personal experience today that actually the further you stray the more uncomfortable it is to remember His commandments. And yet try as you might to drown out His voice, you’re never able to completely efface His Word from your memory. The explanation of that is simple – you belong to Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, and He will never let you stray forever. He wants you back and He is at work, by His Word and Spirit in your conscience, calling you home. He’s pursuing you to bring you home. That’s what’s going on. And so the psalmist confesses his sin.
Did you notice that along with the confession there is a request? “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant.” Seek your servant – he knows that is his only hope. And listen, it is your only hope too. If you are a lost sheep, you cannot find your way back on your own. That’s the definition of being lost, isn’t it? You can’t find your way back on your own. Your only hope, your only hope is for the Good Shepherd to come to you and seek you and find you and bring you back. And that is the work Jesus loves to do. He loves to do it. He is the Good Shepherd, John chapter 10, who lays down His life for His sheep. He calls them all by name and they know His voice and they follow Him.
In the parable in Luke 15, you may remember, Jesus describes Himself again as a shepherd. He has a hundred sheep in His flock and He leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep. And when He finds the sheep, Jesus always finds His wandering sheep, and when He finds him, He bears him on His shoulders and brings him home, rejoicing. “He came,” Luke 19:10, “to seek and save the lost.” That is His great work. He seeks and saves the lost. He is seeking you, backsliding believer. You’ve gone astray like a lost sheep and you may be tempted, actually, to think that you have strayed too far, let Him down too badly, one time too many. “He’d never want me back. He’d never want me back.” But He is seeking you today. He wants you to come home. You might know the lovely hymn by Jean Ingelow that reflects on the mysterious reality of Christ’s pursuit of us. Do you remember how she describes her own experience of coming to Christ? “I sought the Lord and afterwards I knew, He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found O Savior true; no, I was found of Thee.” That’s the experience, actually, of every Christian here. It seems at first like you to call the initiative, didn’t it? You sought the Lord; you decided to come home from the far country; you turned from your sin to trust in Christ. You did. You did! You really did all these things if you are a believer in Jesus. And yet, having come to Christ, don’t we realize awfully soon that our seeking, our turning back, our repenting, even our believing, all of it, all of it was the gift of God. It was the Good Shepherd bearing us on His shoulders and carrying us home. It was the fruit and evidence of His pursuit of us. “He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I who found O Savior true; no, I was found of Thee.”
Jesus is the real Seeker and He is seeking you. That means that it is no coincidence that you are here today. It’s not a fluke if you are listening to this at home. What’s going on in the preaching of the Word of God? The Good Shepherd is pursuing you. He is in pursuit of you, seeking you, lost sheep that you are, and He wants to carry you home with joy. The first step on the road home is to say with the psalmist in verse 176, “I have gone astray, like a lost sheep.” You have to own it. Own your backsliding before the Lord. Come and confess it to Him and then do what the psalmist does here. Would you call to Jesus, “Seek me, O Lord. Seek me. Pursue me. Bring me home.” If you will do that, He will seek you and He will find you and He will carry you on His shoulders rejoicing. May God make it so.
Let’s pray together.Our Father, we all have the experience of the psalmist, all of us who trust in Jesus, of joy and sorrow, of longing for urgent and immediate deliverance from the pain and trials of life and the gladness and gratitude of knowing Your love and faithfulness and Your promises that are so sweet to us. Thank You for the way the Bible describes our experience so vividly. Would You teach us Your precepts and write Your law on our hearts? And we do pray now, O God, for the lost sheep, straying in our midst, wandering away, unaware of their danger. O Lord, seek them. Lord Jesus, find them and bear them back again on Your shoulders with joy. Restore the backslider for the honor of Your name. Amen.