Well do now please take a copy of God’s holy Word in your hands and turn with me in the Scriptures to the one hundred and nineteenth psalm; Psalm 119. If you’re using a church Bible, that’s on page 513. It is, you will remember, the intimate record of the psalmist’s own engagement with God through the Scriptures so that we learn a great deal here not only about the doctrine of Scripture in the abstract, but about the practical power of the Word of God in the life of a believer. Today we have come in our ongoing study of Psalm 119 to the fifth of its twenty-two stanzas. The first word, or the first letter of the first word in each line of this stanza, each beginning with the Hebrew letter, “he.” So far, the main divisions of the other stanzas, you will remember, the main divisions have been indicated by linguistic clues, or by repeating phrases, but in this stanza this morning, the divisions are more thematic than they are grammatical.
If you look at it with me for a moment, Psalm 119:33-40, let me try and show you the flow of the psalmist’s thought. In verses 33 through 35, the psalmist prays for the clarity that the Word of God brings. The clarity the Word brings. You see him asking to be “taught,” verse 33, to be “given understanding,” verse 34, to be “led in the way of God’s commandments,” verse 35. He wants to grasp and learn and know and especially to live out the truth of God. He’s praying for clarity. And then in the very center of the stanza there are two verses – do you see them – verses 36 and 37. And they focus on what we might call the principal organs of temptation – the heart and the eyes. If we are to know and live out the Word of God, we need to face the reality that our hearts deceive us and our eyes entice us. And so, he prays here not only for clarity but for consecration or holiness from the inside out. Clarity. Consecration. And then finally, verses 38 through 40, he asks the Lord to confirm His promises because he is dealing with his own fearful heart. So, clarity, consecration and confirmation. He’s looking for assurance. And so those are the three points. Have you got them? Clarity, consecration and confirmation.
The unifying theme, the big idea of the stanza as a whole, bringing all of those points together, has to do with the way that the Word of God operates in shaping our Christian lives at the very deepest level, at the roots of our inner selves. You’ll notice he mentions the heart twice over in this part of the psalm in verse 34 and again in verse 37. The heart in the Hebrew scriptures, remember, is not a reference to our emotions. That’s how we speak about our feelings, isn’t it? We talk about people being “all heart,” meaning they are mostly feelers rather than thinkers. They’re “all heart.” That’s not how the Hebrew scriptures use the word “the heart.” Rather, in the Hebrew scriptures, “the heart” stands for the center of your whole inner self. It’s the real you, we might say, and it includes mind and will and affections; the totality of who you are deep down – our thinking and our feeling, our affect, our intellect, all of it wrapped up together. That is the psalmist’s target in this psalm.
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time you will have discovered, to your frustration I’m sure, that growing as a follower of the Lord Jesus is never as simple as merely turning over a new leaf or deciding to behave differently. Haven’t you found yourself often confessing with the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 7 that, “The obedience I so want to do, time and again, despite all my best intentions, I do not do. But rather the evil I do not want to do, that I do!” Hasn’t that been your experience? That was the experience, actually, of the psalmist. The problem, he has discovered – maybe you have discovered this too – the problem has to do with our hearts, our hearts that derail our best resolutions and distort our best intentions. And so the solution, the psalmist realizes, has to work from the inside out. The Word of God has to go deep and change the heart, the very center and core of who I am deep down.
And so this part of the psalm is about the way the Word brings change and growth and new obedience into the lives of God’s people from the inside out. And that is something, I dare say, we all badly need to learn. And so with that in mind, let’s bow our heads as we pray together and ask for the Lord to help us with His Word and then we’ll read the passage and consider its teaching. Let us pray.
O Lord, teach us the way of Your statutes, we pray, and we will keep them to the end. Give us understanding that we may keep Your law and observe it with our whole hearts. Lead us in the path of Your commandments, for we delight in them. Incline our hearts to Your testimonies and not to selfish gain, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Psalm 119 at verse thirty-three. This is the Word of God:
“Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.
Clarity
Let’s begin by thinking about the psalmist’s prayer for clarity. Clarity. Look at verse 33 first of all. “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end.” Now I know this time on a Sunday morning that a grammar lesson is not likely to set your souls ablaze with zeal for the glory of God, but can I ask you just to hang in there with me for a moment and give some attention to the grammar of verse 33. Notice in particular the singulars and the plurals. Do you see them? Listen to verse 33 again. “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes” – plural – “and I will keep it” – singular – “to the end.” So what is the “it” the psalmist will keep to the end? It can’t be the many statutes of God’s Word generally; it has to be “the way,” singular, of God’s statutes more precisely. That is the necessary, simple demand of the grammar. Right?
Okay, now you can wake up again as I get to my point. Here it is. We mustn’t think that what the psalmist is praying for as he seeks clarity from God is help to know facts off by heart or to get the wording of God’s many statutes down by rote. It’s not mere head knowledge that he’s after here. Now head knowledge is not to be despised. Memorizing Scripture, as we’re trying to do with Psalm 1 as a congregation together, memorizing Scripture is of enormous benefit, especially if we come to it with the attitude that we find in the psalmist here. But really he isn’t praying simply in this case, “Teach me your statutes.” That would certainly be a marvelous prayer to pray, it’s just not the prayer he’s offering here. Here the psalmist is praying, “Lord, teach me the way of your statutes.” And that’s an even better prayer to pray because you see, his goal, our goal, must always be to walk in the way of God’s statutes. Not just to know what those statutes say but to live them out practically in our lives. Put a little differently, he’s praying what he knows might show up in the way that he lives.
And so the clarity he is seeking, the teaching he wants isn’t merely better comprehension; it’s not simply deeper cognition. It is fuller application. He wants God so to press His Word home to his consciousness that he really starts to get it now, at last. Here’s the path to take. Here’s the life to live. Here is the way that I should walk. I see it now, so that I want to walk in the way of Your statutes. Not just know what they are, know what they say, but to live them. And isn’t that the kind of clarity you could use more of day to day? I certainly could. Verse 36, if you’d look down there with me for a moment, it essentially repeats the same request, this time in slightly different language. Look at verse 36. “Give me understanding that I may keep your law.” Alec Motyer, in his helpful devotional translation of the psalm, proposes that word translated here as “understanding” would be better rendered as “discernment.” “Give me discernment that I may keep your law.” That’s the same practical note that we’ve seen already in verse 35, isn’t it? The clarity the psalmist wants is not merely informational, it’s not more data; it is discernment. It is sound judgment. It is wisdom for life.
And that is what God has provided for us in His holy Word, in the Bible. That’s what makes this book so precious. It is full of wisdom for life, straight from the mind of God. What a treasure, what a treasure we hold in our hands and what a great incentive to get to know our Bibles better. We have here a repository of divine guidance to live for His glory right here in God’s holy book. That’s actually helpful, I think, in clarifying our expectations of the way that God will teach and guide us and how His guidance really works. God does not reveal to us detailed directions about which job to take or which house to buy or which purchase to make. That’s something we sometimes wish He would reveal to us, isn’t it? That’s what we want from Him. We want Him to take responsible decision making out of our hands and just tell us in exhaustive detail what we should do at every turn. But that is actually not the path to godly maturity. Instead, our loving heavenly Father has given us the Scriptures to show us not which job or which house or which purchase to make so much as to how to please Him in whichever job, whichever house, or whatever purchase we do make. The focus, remember, of the Word of God is the glory of God in the life of the people of God. And that is what the psalmist is really praying for when He asks to be taught, to be given understanding, and to be led. He wants God to work by the Word to make him holy and give him the grace of new obedience.
And do notice in the text the character of the obedience that he wants. Look again at verses 33 through 35. The obedience is both extensive and intensive, isn’t it? It’s extensive. “I will keep the way of your statutes,” verse 33, “to the end.” “If You’ll teach me and give me understanding and lead me in the way, I’m never going to stop, I’ll never back down. This will be my life from here on out. I’m in this all the way. I’m in it all the way.” It’s extensive. It’s not almost obedience. It’s not half-time, partial obedience; it is extensive, all the way. It’s also intensive. Look at what he says. “I will observe your law with my whole heart,” verse 34. “Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it,” verse 35. Wholehearted obedience, driven by delight in the path of God’s commandments. That’s what he wants. “Your Word is lovely to me, and living Your way, O Lord, makes my heart happy.” And so, he’s saying, “I’m all in, all the way. I’m all in, all the way. No holds barred. No letting up. No backing off.”
That’s the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ, isn’t it? In Matthew 12:30, Jesus said, “Whoever is not with Me, is against Me.” In other words, there is no middle ground. There are no half-measures. And there is no such thing as an “almost” Christian. I wonder if you’ve been trying to live betwixt and between lately, half in and half out. You can’t do it, you know. Either you belong to Jesus Christ or you don’t. Either you are His disciple or you’re not. It’s time to climb down off the fence and commit. I wonder if you’ll join the psalmist today and say, as he does, to the Lord Jesus, “I am all in. All the way. Today I’m all in. All the way.”
There’s a good chance that it’s an apocryphal story, but there is a lovely story told of William Borden. He was the heir of a very wealthy family who, nevertheless, dedicated his life to go and reach the Uyghur Muslims in northwestern China. And so, after theological training, he moved first to Egypt to study Arabic and get some basic experience in Muslim evangelism. And while there, only in his twenty-fifth year of life, he contracted cerebral meningitis and died. On his tombstone in the American cemetery in Cairo are written the words, “Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.” After his death – and this is where the story may be apocryphal – no one’s really been able to confirm it, but after his death, it’s said that his mother found Borden’s Bible and inside the cover were written the words, “No reserve” and a date, suggesting it had been penned shortly after he had renounced his fortune in order to devote his life to global missions. “No reserve.” Nothing held back. Everything surrendered in the service of Jesus Christ. Then later he was said to have written, “No retreat,” after his father supposedly told him that should he go on with this plan he never would hold a position in the family business. “No reserve,” no going back. “No retreat,” no turning back. And finally, not long before he died in Egypt, he added a phrase, “No regrets,” no looking back.
Apocryphal or not, don’t you think that it expresses perfectly the perspective of the psalmist in verses 33 through 35? “I will keep your ways to the end. I will observe your law with my whole heart. I delight in the path of your commandments. No reserve. No retreat. No regrets. I’m all in, all the way.” That is the heart cry of every true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder if it’s yours. We must not be lukewarm in Jesus’ service.
Well, you say, “That all sounds grand, but if I’m honest, I rarely feel so pious. The psalmist may be all in, all the way, but my heart at least is a tricky thing. You see, I blow hot and cold. I want to be all in, all the way, of course. But the truth is, I keep slipping back into temptation.” Do you feel a bit like that this morning? Well, if so, do keep reading and be encouraged because that is also the psalmist’s experience and he is very well acquainted with your struggle. You see that in verses 36 and 37? “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.”
As we said at the beginning, he’s dealing here with the two principal organs of temptation in our lives, isn’t he – the heart and the eyes. He knows that controlling the moral direction of his heart and his eyes, that’s something altogether outside of his own power. He knows what every earnest Christian here today discovered in the moment they first began to follow Jesus. He knows, in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2, that “our hearts are locked in a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh and the spirit, vying for mastery in our lives.” He knows what the cartoonist, Walter Kelly, in the comic strip, “Pogo,” said about human beings – “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” Right? We are our own worst enemy. The problem isn’t out there. We are not mere victims. The problem is our wicked hearts. Isn’t that so?
Consecration
Well, so what can be done about it? Notice the psalmist looks away from himself to God and cries to him, “Incline my heart. Turn my eyes.” He’s praying here urgently for consecration from the inside out. That’s our second point, by the way, if you’re still tracking with me. First clarity, now consecration. Specifically notice in the text he wants a heart that God will steer away from greed, from covetousness, from acquisitiveness. “Selfish gain” is his phrase, and it is a great enemy of godliness. It was in the psalmist’s day; it still is in our day. We’re all so apt to forget Matthew 6:24 aren’t we? Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” You cannot serve God and money. So, the stakes here are high. The psalmist knows it. We either serve God or we serve our pursuit of the accumulation of stuff. But we can’t do both. And so, he prays with real urgency, “Incline my heart from selfish gain.”
Similarly, he prays not only for a changed heart, verse 37, but for eyes turned by the hand of the Lord away from “worthless things.” Do you see that phrase in verse 37, “worthless things”? It’s actually a common expression in the Old Testament scriptures used especially for idols. Jeremiah 18:15 is a good example. God says, “My people have forgotten Me. They make offerings to false gods.” That’s how it’s translated in the ESV, but actually what he says was literally, “They have made offerings to worthless things.” It’s the same phrase the psalmist uses here. So, his heart longs, he says, for selfish gain, and he needs God to step in and incline his heart and his eyes. His eyes are always making idols. That is, he is always assigning ultimate worth to things that are ultimately worthless. How very like us he is. How very like us he is. Don’t you agree? He has a heart inclined to selfish gain and he is always assigning ultimate worth to worthless things. He is an idolater.
And as we think about his inner struggle here, it’s important to remember that these two things often go together in the Scriptures – a covetous heart and idolatrous eyes. Listen for example to the apostle Paul in Colossians 3 verse 5. “Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you – sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and” – listen – “covetousness, which is idolatry.” “Covetousness, which is idolatry.” You didn’t know you were an idolater, did you? I’m confident that if I were to show up unannounced at your front door this coming week there is very little chance that I would find you burning incense on an altar in your living room. Secular, Western people don’t really think that we are idolaters. But the Bible teaches us that idolatry often comes to us in disguise. Think about it for a moment. Think about your life. Don’t we devote our hearts and our lives, and don’t we wake up in the middle of the night thinking about, and don’t we sacrifice for and spend our days in the service of the accumulation of selfish gain? Don’t we? We need to be honest now before God. It really doesn’t take much to make an idol of our affluence, of our ease, of our comforts. The psalmist knew the lure and the power of those very same temptations. He links selfish gain and idolatry together much as the apostle Paul does and he shows us here what to do with them.
Maybe you’re here this morning and you know your heart is enslaved to selfish gain. Maybe you never thought about it like this before now you see just how full of worthless idols your life has become. Well, you need to learn the prayer of the psalmist here, don’t you? Go to God and cry, “Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.” It’s the only remedy available to you. But I do want to say to you, that if you will pray like that, earnestly and from your heart, God will answer, not simply by taking away what troubles you, but by setting before your eyes and capturing your heart with something far better. He will show you His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the image of the invisible God. He will lead you to make the same discovery the poor tenant farmer made in Matthew 44 when he was out working the fields one day, plowing up the soil. His plow struck something hard and he stopped to dig it up, only to discover he had found buried treasure, a vast hoard of incomparable worth. And so he liquidates everything he owns. He sells every possession, scrapes together every penny, goes and buys the field. He lets everything go that he might have the treasure.
What is it the psalmist is really asking God to do? He’s not simply asking him to take away the counterfeit treasures of the world. He’s asking God to show him what real treasure is, and this he has done in giving us His Son. He is the buried treasure. He is the pearl of great price. He inclines our hearts from selfish gain and turns our eyes from empty idols by filling them with Jesus. And when you see Him, who loved you and gave Himself for you, who bore your reproach and paid your debt that you might be reconciled to God, when you see what He has done in your room and stead, you will let all else go that you might get ahold of Him. Clarity. Consecration. A consecrated life is a life gripped by and gripping tightly to the greatest treasure of all – the Lord Jesus Christ.
Confirmation
Clarity. Consecration. Then finally and briefly, confirmation. Look at verses 38 and 39. There are two fears in these verses. Do you see the two fears? He wants to fear the Lord, but he already dreads the reproach of men. And there are two words in the text. He wants God to confirm His holy Word to him and he wants God to deflect the world’s reproachful words from him. And as we see that, let me just highlight three things very quickly.
Thing number one – words really matter. Words really matter. That’s very clear here, isn’t it? Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words, boy, words will really hurt you. The words of a hostile world, they sting and they bite and they fill the psalmist with dread. He’s being accused and mocked and shamed for his faith. Some of you know a bit about that experience for yourself – in your classroom, in your family, in your workplace. And it hurts, and you can come to dread the reproach of the world as we try to live for Jesus. It can make us duck and cover and hide that we are a follower of our Savior. The fear of men is a terrible thing to live in the grip of. So, thing number one – words really matter.
Thing number two – the way to fight the fear of men is with the higher, deeper, purer, better fear of the Lord. The way to fight the fear of men is with the fear of the Lord. He wants to fear the Lord more, that’s verse 38, and he wants to dread the world less, that’s verse 39. These are two mutually incompatible fears. The former, the fear of the Lord, drives out the latter, the fear of men. And so, here’s the critical question. How do we get more of the fear of the Lord and less of the fear of men?
That’s thing number three – we need God’s Word of promise confirmed. Confirm to your servant God’s Word of promise. Confirm. “Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared.” The word “confirm” there means “fulfill.” This is promises kept. But it also has the connotation of a word of promise publicly vindicated and shown to be trustworthy before the eyes of the watching world. So, the psalmist is praying for God to vindicate His promises in his life and he’s praying that God would make him a walking demonstration that the Word of the Lord is sure and solid and true, as God keeps His promises to preserve him and guide him and sanctify him. “Silence their reproachful words by demonstrating Your reliable word, so that instead of the dread of others paralyzing my heart when I see Your promises confirmed, my heart will fear You alone, O Lord.” When the words of our peers weigh more heavily with us, when we care more about what other people think of us than the Word of God and His promise to keep and sustain us, well then there really is no wonder when our assurance is shaken and dread begins to grip our hearts. But when we take God at His Word and begin to see Him keep His promises, as He always will, the fear of men begins to lose its power. Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you live now today in the grip of omnipotent grace and the Word of the Lord is enough to still the storm of dread that we feel before the words of the world.
So, let’s ask ourselves, shall we, “Whose words have I lately been listening to most, giving most credence to, most airplay to?” There is a direct relationship between how you answer that question and the strength of your assurance or the depths of your dread. Listen to the Word of the Lord. Cry to Him to keep His promises. He always has. He always will.
One last thing. In verse 40, the psalmist echoes the prayer of verse 37, that God would give him life. Do you see that phrase? “Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!” He wants God to revive and renew his spiritual vitality. That’s his prayer. And it’s really a summary of everything else he’s been asking for. Clarity and consecration and the confirmation of God’s Word – it’s all in service of revived and renewed spiritual life. So, as you assess your own spiritual temperature, if you find it at a low ebb, if you feel that you’ve been wallowing in spiritual mediocrity lately and you are in need of renewal, take this fifth stanza of Psalm 119 and make it your prayer. Would you? It is a cry for life from the inside out and it is a cry you can be sure God will graciously answer. He will confirm His holy Word.
Let’s pray together.
Father, we praise You that You are faithful and true and none of Your words fail or fall. They are solid and sure. We need no greater proof of their dependability than the life, death, resurrection and reign of Your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, promised before all ages, who has kept Your Word and who keeps it still. Grant, O Lord, grace that we may be more concerned for the Word of the Lord than we are about the approach of the world. Keep Your Word to us and revive and renew us and give us life according to Your Word, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.