Well do please keep your Bibles open and, in your hands, and turn to the Old Testament scriptures, page 513 if you’re using one of our church Bibles, to the one-hundred-and-nineteenth psalm as we continue our study of this the longest chapter in the Bible. It has twenty-two stanzas, each of eight verses in length, and each stanza, each line of each stanza beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means today as we come to the seventh stanza, verses 49 through 56, each, the first word of each line begins with the Hebrew letter, “zayin.” The Bible teaches us that believers in Jesus do not belong in this world. We are in the world but we are not of the world. We are aliens and strangers. Peter writes his first letter, “To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” That’s who we are. We are “elect exiles of the Dispersion,” scattered around the world. This is not home. That means, of course, that we find ourselves out of step with the values of the society surrounding us. We are not on board with the prevailing priorities of our culture.
And that, in turn of course, invites some real difficulties. It is uncomfortable, isn’t it, to stand out from the herd, to break ranks, to live life according to the norms and standards of God’s own holy Word. To do so is to embrace a set of beliefs and morals that are generally unwelcome in the public square at best, and considered regressive and abusive at worst. And the Scriptures, as they seek to prepare us for that reality, remind us if we are faithfully to follow Jesus, we must count the cost. So Hebrews 13:12-13 is a classic example. Hebrews says, “Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify His people through His own blood. Therefore, let us go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach He endured, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” This is not our home. Here we have no lasting city. Jesus was excluded and mistreated and condemned, and as outsiders and followers of Jesus Christ, the Scriptures prepare us to face the very real possibility that we will be too. Ours is the life of a sojourner, of a resident alien.
But let’s acknowledge that for many contemporary Christians, especially in the American South today, the full experience of being elect exiles, of being a resident alien just passing through, that’s actually a relatively new experience. For a very long time, the Christian worldview and the Christian ethic dominated our culture. For generations we could reliably assume it as the shared operating system for the lives of most people around us. But not anymore. Now, while here and there a veneer of cultural Christianity may remain, the dominance of orthodox Christian belief and the normalcy of Biblical Christian ethics, well that’s all a thing of the past. We are no longer the majority and we are not likely to be again any time soon. We are outsiders, strangers in a strange land, aliens living in hostile territory.
And I rather suspect that for many of us, coming to that realization has been slow and painful and facing up to its implications daunting and difficult. It has now become a common and an urgent question for this generation. What does it mean to live for Christ when living for Christ is just plain weird in most people’s eyes? And that’s where this stanza of Psalm 119, verses 49 through 56, can be so very helpful. Maybe you’ll see something of the psalmist’s situation if you’ll notice the two words, he uses to describe himself. First of all, in verse 49, he calls himself the Lord’s “servant.” Do you see that language? This is his deepest commitment, his fundamental identity. He is a believer; He is sold out for the Lord. Committed. He is all in. He is the servant of God. But then verse 54, he is also a “sojourner.” That is to say, he is a foreigner living likely in captivity in Babylon and an exile from his real home. Like us, he is a stranger in a strange land. And it’s the clash of these two realities – he is a servant of God and a sojourner in a strange land – it’s the conflict between them that causes such friction and pain that he reflects upon in these verses. In verse 50 he talks about his affliction. Verse 51, he mentions the insolent who deride him. Verse 53, the wicked who forsake God’s law. His neighbors all around him do not like his faith commitments at all. They reject his ethics. They despise the basic convictions that shape his life.
And that is the all-too-familiar world that we inhabit too, isn’t it? Babylon is alive and well and prospering all around us. And so these verses function as a vital guide to living as an alien and a stranger in a strange land. If you’ll look at it with me, you’ll see the stanza has three sections. First, 49 and 50, and then the last section, 55 and 56, they are mirrors of each other. The first line of each part repeats the word “remember.” “Remember your word,” verse 49. “I remember your name,” verse 55. And the second line of the first and last section begins with the word, “this” in an emphatic position. “This is my comfort,” verse 50. “This blessing has fallen to me,” verse 56. So the opening part of the stanza is about God’s remembering and the closing part of the stanza, our remembering. And in the middle, sandwiched between those two sections, 51 through 54, the psalmist alternates back and forth between the way the hostile world responds to him and the way he responds to the hostile world.
And so in light of all of that, here is our outline. If you are taking notes, you may want to write these down. This will be helpful to you as we work our way through the passage. First of all, to live as a resident alien, we need God to remember His promises. To live as a resident alien, we need God to remember His promises. That’s verses 49 and 50. Secondly, to live as a resident alien, we need to respond to the world in faithfulness. We need to respond to the world in faithfulness, verses 51 through 54. And then finally, to live as a resident alien, we need to remember God’s name, 55 and 56. There’s the outline. Have you got it? We need God to remember His promise, we need to respond to the world in faithfulness, and we need to remember God’s name. Before we look at those themes, let’s pray and then we’ll read the text. Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we pray now that by Your Word and Spirit You would open our hearts to receive the engrafted Word. May Your truth be indeed a lamp to our feet and a light to our path as we study it together. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Psalm 119 at verse 49. This is the Word of God:
“Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law. When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord. Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your law. Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law. This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.”
Amen.
We Need God to Remember His Promise
If we are going to live for Jesus Christ as resident aliens in a hostile world, first of all we need God to remember His promise. Verse 49, “Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope.” I came across a note this past week that I had written for myself several months ago with the word “illustration” written at the top of the note. Presumably I thought that it would make a good sermon illustration at some point. The note contains a fascinating news story about a missing person’s case that waited eleven years, finally to be solved by a dedicated and creative police officer. Now it’s a neat story, and clearly, I wanted to be sure I would not forget it, and so I’ve kept the note. The only problem is, I have absolutely no memory at all what in the world I thought this quirky little story would illustrate! But I’m using it now, so I guess I’ve fulfilled my purpose! My note was not terribly effective in jogging my memory at all.
Now when the psalmist asks in verse 49 that God would remember His Word, it’s not like he’s leaving a post-it note on the Lord’s desk in the uncertain hope that it might jog God’s unreliable memory. In the Bible, when God is said to remember, it does not mean that He is recovering from a temporary lapse in divine memory. God had not been going around all day with a nagging feeling that He has forgotten something until the psalmist came along to remind Him. That’s how we are; that is not how God is. No, in the Bible, when God is said to remember, it means He is following through on an earlier promise finally matching actions to words. The classic example is the exodus. You will remember the people of Israel languishing in Egyptian bondage. And Exodus 2:24 says, “God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” And as the story that subsequently unfolds makes clear, God’s remembering His covenant in that context means not that He had forgotten His earlier promise and the groaning of Israel sort of caused Him to recall it, but rather that He is now ready at last to deliver His people in His own perfect timing from their bondage by Moses and lead them into the land of promise.
So, when we ask God to remember His Word, we are asking Him to follow through, to act in the way He has promised, to be and to do what He has said He will be and do. If we are to live as faithful followers of Jesus Christ here, here where we have no enduring city, here in exile, here in Babylon, we need to realize as the psalmist has clearly realized we just can’t do it on our own. We can’t do it on our own. We will not make it in our own strength. We need the Lord to keep His promises, to bear His arm, to follow through, to do what He has promised to do.
Now what’s lovely, I think, about this opening prayer, is that while all the psalmist’s hopes are pinned on God’s remembering His Word, he confesses – do you see this – he confesses it was God Himself who made him hope in that Word in the first place. Do you see that in verse 49? “Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope.” God makes us want God to act. God will surely keep His promises and He moves us to long that He would keep His promises so that our hearts might thrill with gladness and gratitude when He does keep His promises.
Do notice carefully how God’s sure word helps the psalmist, helps us live as sojourners in hostile territory. Look at 49 together with verse 50. “Remember your word to your servant, in which you make me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.” God’s promise gives him life, and the prospect of new life, of revitalization, of refreshment and renewal, gives him comfort in his present afflictions while he waits. He knows the day of promises kept, that day is coming. It’s not yet. He is afflicted right now. This is the day of affliction, of promises made. But the day of promises kept is coming; it is nearer now than when he first believed. And so he’s comforted and helped to persevere. The bright prospect of life to come helps him press on and keep going and stay faithful, even through hard, sore affliction here and now.
Paul talks about the same reality, doesn’t he, in Romans 8:23-25. Do you remember it? “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Much like the psalmist, this world, Paul is saying, is not home, and we are groaning. We are afflicted; it’s heavy and hard. It’s tough going here in exile sometimes, isn’t it? And yet, he says, “in this hope, we were saved.” “Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see” – listen – “we wait for it with patience.” Hope in God’s sure, never-forgotten promises, that hope comforts us in our afflictions. It helps us wait for the day of deliverance with patience. Brothers and sisters, if we are to live as resident aliens in our contemporary Babylon, we need God to remember His Word and we need to learn to wait upon Him till He does and be comforted in the knowledge that He surely will. We need God to remember His Word.
We Need to Respond to the World in Faithfulness
Secondly, look down at verses 51 through 54 please. If we are to live as resident aliens, we need God to remember His Word, and secondly, we need to respond to the world in faithfulness. We need to respond to Babylon all around us, faithfully. In verse 51 you will see he is being mocked. “The insolent utterly deride me.” And then in verse 53, we learn “the wicked forsake God’s law.” Now it’s possible that the insolent who mock him for his faith refers to the unbelieving world around him in Babylon, or it’s possible 51 and 53 are talking about the same group of people. What is clear is that the people in verse 53 were members of the covenant community. In our terms, these folks were church members. And he says they have forgotten God’s law. They’ve turned their backs on the Word of God and on the life to which it calls them.
And both of these groups, we learn, both of them hurt him, although they do so in different ways. The mockers of verse 51, they apply the pressure of cultural scorn in an effort to divert him from faithfulness to God. They’re mocking him and deriding him, seeking to derail his faith and make him turn aside. And the apostates of verse 53, they hurt his heart simply because he loves God and he loves His Word and he can’t bear to see those who ought to know better toss the truth of God aside so casually.
And every earnest Christian knows something of both of these realities. There’s the reality of persecution. Second Timothy 3:12 says, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” It’s part of the normal Christian life – persecution. You get passed over for a promotion because you don’t participate in the shady dealings of your colleagues. You get mocked and excluded at school because you try to follow the call of Jesus Christ to purity in your words and in your actions. Your unbelieving spouse or your parents or your siblings, they smirk as they throw nasty little barbs and sling snide words and ugly jabs your way because you believe Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, that hell is real, that salvation is by grace alone, and that God commands all people everywhere to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth, including mom and dad, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbors, colleague. And so the psalmist says, “The insolent utterly deride me.” They did it to him, they did it to Jesus, and all who seek to follow Christ, they will do it to you too.
And then there’s the quite different pain of watching what you most love being trampled and treated with contempt. There are few things more terrible than to watch a covenant child turn his or her back on the Gospel of grace, to hear them speak with contempt about the truth of God. It breaks our hearts, doesn’t it? It burns us. The psalmist says, “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your law.” “Hot indignation” there translates a word used in places like Psalm 11:6 and Lamentations 5:10 for the scorching heat of the wind or the blasting fire of an oven. And in both places, in Psalm 11 and in Lamentations 5, it is used to describe God’s own righteous anger at the sin of those who reject Him. There is a righteous burning anger that we ought to feel when the truth of God gets perverted and demeaned and denied by those who once professed to believe it. When we see whole denominations who once had a bright testimony to Christian faithfulness deny the authority and reliability of the Bible and run headlong to embrace all sorts of immorality and indecency, affirming the sexual sins of the society instead of the statutes of God, when we see that we are right to feel hot indignation. In this, we are reflecting the character of God. We are mirroring, remember, the righteous anger of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who drove the money changers out of His Father’s temple.
But how ought we to deal, how should we respond to the world? What should the answer of a resident alien be when confronted with the wounding hostility or the outrageous apostasy of people around us? The psalmist here actually gives us three ways to respond in verses 51 through 54. We can sum them up in three words; three ways to deal with hostility and apostasy – fidelity, history and hymnody. That’s what he does. Fidelity, history and hymnody. That’s how to respond.
Fidelity first. He models fidelity; faithfulness. Verse 51, “Yes, the insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law.” “I’m sticking to the path of obedience no matter what. Whatever the pressure that may be brought to bear to divert me from the path, I am staying the course. Oftentimes the very best response we can make to the taunts and the pressure to turn aside and to compromise is not an argument; it’s not a clever reply. There is a place for that, but whatever else we might say or do, the best response is a renewed determination to obey, to be faithful. Set your jaw, settle your mind and press on. “The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law.” He models fidelity.
Secondly, he looks back at history. Verse 52, “When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.” The word translated there, “your rules,” is probably better, “your rulings, your judgments, your verdicts.” He’s looking back over Israel’s history and he is remembering how God, again and again, has rescued His people and judged their opponents. And it comforts him because he knows what God has done in the past He can do again in the present and has promised surely to do in the future. Probably he has in mind the exodus here where God, remember, He drowned the Egyptians from whom He had redeemed them and saved His people as they passed through on the dry land. He saved us then; He will save us now. That’s how he’s reasoning.
As Christians, of course, we can do better than the psalmist at this point, can’t we? We can look back at the cross and at the empty tomb and at a greater deliverance by far than the exodus. We remember how at Calvary, as the apostle Paul puts it in Colossians 2:15, “The Lord Jesus Christ disarmed the principalities and powers, putting them to open shame, triumphing over them in the cross.” He is the Victor, not they. He is the King. He is in charge. He reigns and rules and one day all things will be put in subjection to Him as a footstool for His feet. So when they mock you and insult you for your faith, when hot indignation fills you because they trampled the truth of God that you hold sacred underfoot, when life as a resident alien gets hard and sore like this, look back on the finished work of Christ. Be comforted and know the same Lord Jesus who purchased your redemption by His blood is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead. He will bring full and final deliverance to you and inescapable, everlasting judgment to those who reject Him and deny His Gospel.
Fidelity. History. And then finally, he practices hymnody. How honest and real verses 53 and 54 are. Don’t they echo your own heart experience? Hot indignation fills him, verse 53, but he doesn’t simply boil away, letting his vexed spirit gnaw at him all night long. That’s how it often is with me. I wonder if it’s like that with you? You’re boiling away. But for the psalmist instead, verse 54, “Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning.” “They may deny Your Word, forsake Your Word, reject Your Word, but I, I will sing Your Word.” Singing the truth of the Word of God has a way of pressing that truth down deeper, doesn’t it? It also has a way of stilling the boiling frustration of our wounded hearts. Singing God’s truth has a way of dousing the flames, even of righteous anger, lest that anger grow out of control and consume us.
Fidelity – the best answer to the mockery of the world is staying the course of obedience to which you have been called. History – do not never lose sight of the finished work of Christ. Keep the cross constantly in view. Remember what God has already done in His Son and be comforted and know that He isn’t finished yet. He is coming soon to bring His work to consummation. And hymnody – in the face of an apostate church and a hostile world, lift your voices and sing. Sing in defiance of their defection. Sing in celebration of God’s faithfulness. Sing to silence your fears. Sing to raise your affections to the heights of your convictions. Singing is not a take it or leave it practice for a few eager Christians with a good voice. It is a vital, necessary tool for survival as a resident alien in a strange land.
We Need to Remember God’s Name
If we are to live as resident aliens, we need God to remember His Word, we need to respond to the world in faithfulness, and finally look at verses 55 and 56. If we are to live as resident aliens, we need to remember God’s name. We said at the beginning when God is said to remember in the Bible it’s really a way to talk about God acting. It’s not that He had forgotten, but it’s a way to talk about God’s action, keeping His promises. Similarly, here when the psalmist says he remembers God’s name, it’s not that he had forgotten His name. Rather, it means he is taking hold of the name of God afresh. He is resting on God’s name. He is adoring and revering God’s name. He is giving God His due. That’s what he means. God’s name, of course, is shorthand for God’s being, God’s self, God’s glory. It is His honor and fame. It stands for God revealed, God made manifest, God on display in glory and greatness and grace.
When Moses was on the mountain, do you remember in Exodus 34:5, we read, “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.’” Here is the name of the Lord. Do you remember it? Isn’t it marvelous? And when Jesus stood on the mountain, Matthew 28:19, He proclaimed the name of the Lord. The name, singular – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God who is blessed forever.
And the psalmist says, “I remember your name in the night,” in the dark; literal or metaphorical. In the darkness. I fight the dark with the bright, shining light of Your name, of who You are. The God who rules, who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, the God who is Abba Father to me, who has sent His Son that I might by His death receive life and be adopted into His family and who has deployed His Spirit into my heart, the Spirit of my sonship, sanctifying me, preserving me, keeping me in the grip of His love forever. In the night, the psalmist says, remember him to whom you belong. I wonder if in the darkness your circumstances loom larger than the name of the Lord. Here’s a call to get your proportions right, to see how big and glorious and great your God is once more.
The psalmist is doing that. Notice how it helps him. It fuels continued obedience. When that obedience is clearly very costly. Verse 55, “I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law.” “I remember your name in the night and I keep your law.” The thing that keeps him keeping on as a sojourner when it’s really hard and tough-going is the greatness of God, the goodness of God, the glory of God, the grace of God. He has a big God and he fills his vision with fresh sights of that God because it’s that sight of God that makes him want to please Him and live for Him and spend and be spent in His service.
It turns duty into delight. Verse 56. “This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.” I think that comma after “me” – “This blessing has fallen to me” – comma – really should be a semicolon or even a colon. “This blessing has fallen to me” – what blessing is that? The blessing of keeping Your precepts. Obedience itself has become a blessing to him. Pleasing this great and glorious triune God revealed in Jesus Christ has become its own reward. A lover does not look for a reward from his beloved for honoring her. Her happiness is its own reward. The psalmist is saying something very much like that here. Remembering God’s name, knowing Him, loving Him, sweetens his duty so that pleasing Him becomes his own reward.
Well, how are you going to live for Jesus when the culture around you says life like that is dreary and backwards and oppressive and wrong? How will you be a resident alien living in the midst of modern Babylon? Well, here’s how. We need God to remember His Word and we need to take comfort in the knowledge that He surely will. We need to respond to the world in faithfulness, fidelity and history and hymnody. And we need to remember God’s name. Put your trials into their proper proportion, into context, against the vast, glorious supremacy of your God who works all things for His own glory and our everlasting good.
May the Lord help us to do so. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we bless You for Your holy Word. Write its truth on our hearts, we pray. Make us anew in the image of Your Son. sanctify us in the truth. Your Word is truth. For Jesus’ sake, amen.