Well do please now turn in your Bibles to the Old Testament scriptures to the book of Psalms, Psalm 119, to the portion that we just sang together. We’re working our way through Psalm 119 on Sunday mornings. There are twenty-two stanzas; we’re going one stanza at a time. Today we’ve come to the eighth stanza, verses 57 through 64, each line of which begins with the same Hebrew letter, the letter “heth.” The stanza begins and ends, you’ll notice if you look at it, with the name of God, typically indicated in our English Bibles by the word “LORD” printed in all caps. You see that? That’s the Hebrew proper name for God -Yahweh, the name of the LORD. It begins and ends the stanza in verse 57 and verse 64. Actually, this stanza begins and ends with ringing notes of wonderful grace. “The Lord is my portion,” verse 57. “The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love,” verse 64. God surrounds this stanza at its beginning and end and grace surrounds this stanza at its beginning and its end.
And in between, there is a string of first person singular declarations. Do you see them? Look at the passage. “I promise,” verse 57; “I entreat,” verse 58. “I think, I turn,” verse 59; “I hasten,” verse 60. “I do not forget,” verse 61. “I rise to praise you,” verse 62. “I am a companion,” verse 63. So God’s grace, God and His grace, bookend the psalmist’s resolutions and prayers and renewed commitment and his behavior. Do you see that? He lives his life for God and he does it in the context of, hemmed in by the grace of God. The very best and brightest Christians I know sometimes get that pattern wrong; I certainly often get that pattern wrong. We tend to think we are working for God instead of living in God. We think we are trying to win God over instead of responding joyfully to His freely given love. To be sure, we do all the right things for the most part, but we often forget why we are doing them – not to nudge or cajole God into showing us a little of his favor in exchange for some good behavior on our part, but because we are surrounded by grace, surrounded by God. He hems us in, behind and before. Our whole lives are framed by God and His great love. When we forget that, our duty becomes a drudgery, and when we get it straight, it changes everything.
What I want to do this morning is to show you from our passage how understanding a life framed by, surrounded by God and His grace changes everything. So here’s how we’re going to approach the passage. First of all, we’ll look at those two wonderful brackets, these two bookends that drip with grace at either end of the stanza in 57 and 64. And then I want to show you six things the psalmist does in light of those grace notes that encircle his life. Here are six things living in the grip of God’s all sufficient grace will produce in your life. Ready for them? There’s a promise in verse 57, there’s a prayer in verse 58, there is penitence in verse 59 and 60, there’s perseverance in verse 61, and there is praise in verse 62, and finally partnership in verse 63. These are all the things that begin to bubble up in the heart and life of the psalmist and of all those who learn to live in the context of the all sufficient, steadfast love of the Lord. Have you got them? Do you see the six things? Promise, prayer, penitence, perseverance, praise and partnership. That’s where we’re going. And before we do that, we need to pray and ask for the Lord’s help and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us pray.
O Lord, as we come to Your Word, we know that our hearts, our lives, our consciences are laid bare in Your sight, so would You take Your Word and in the mighty power of Your Spirit, apply it, speak its truth to us in such a way that we come to see ourselves, that we turn from our sin to new obedience by Your grace, and that we receive and rest upon Christ who is the preacher of this text to our hearts. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 119 at the fifty-seventh verse. This is God’s Word:
“The Lord is my portion; I promise to keep your words. I entreat your favor with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise. When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies; I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments. Though the cords of the wicked ensnare me, I do not forget your law. At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules. I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts. The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes!”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
Bracketed by Grace
Let’s start by thinking about how grace brackets the life of a child of God. The stanza, remember, begins, “The Lord is my portion,” verse 57, and ends, “The steadfast love of the Lord fills the earth,” in verse 64. I want you to imagine yourself gathering with your siblings in the lawyer’s office to hear the will of a billionaire relative being read. And each sibling, in turn, receives a significant portion. Someone gets a family estate, another inherits large tracts of land; still another, majority shares in the family business. And then finally it’s your turn. And actually, you’re scratching your head because you’re wondering what’s left. By the time the lawyer gets to you, it looks like the whole estate has been parceled out already. “So what do I get?” is your question. “Oh, I’m sorry sir,” the family lawyer says. “Let me look. Ah, yes, here it is. The will is quite explicit. God is your portion.” “That’s it?” “Yes, sir. God is your portion. That’s it.”
Now how would you feel in that moment, I wonder. A little short-changed perhaps? Well I wonder if you knew that actually that is precisely what happened to the Levites, one of the tribes of Israel, during the settlement of the land of promise. Each of the tribes of Israel received a portion, a parcel of the land. In Deuteronomy 18:20, however, God gave the Levites no inheritance in the land; no allocation, no portion. Instead, He told them, “I am your portion and your inheritance.” You see, the Levites were meant to serve as a constant reminder to all of God’s people that the land was not their final home nor their greatest inheritance. They were made, they had been redeemed from slavery, for fellowship with God. And now here is the psalmist in Psalm 119 verse 57, and he’s living in exile in Babylon, far from his ancestral allotment and portion in the land. And he’s reminding himself of this great fact. What was true of the Levites is actually true for every child of God. The Lord is our portion. He has made us, and by the life and death and resurrection of His Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, He has redeemed us for Himself.
Famously, you may remember the words of Psalm 73:25-26 that amplify the sentiment of the psalmist in our text beautifully. Don’t they? The psalmist said, “Whom have I in heaven but you? There is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” That’s what the psalmist is saying here too. “I don’t have an inheritance in the land. I’m an exile, but off from the inheritance of Israel, but God is enough. He is my inheritance. He is my portion. And there is nothing disappointing about that. There is nothing disappointing about that.” Think about it. If God Himself is your portion, if God Himself is your inheritance, well then in a real sense, everything that belongs to Him will belong to you one day. The whole world is His, and so is, as Jesus promised us, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” That’s why the psalmist, when he’s living in exile so very far from home, surviving fierce hostility for his faith, can still say in verse 64 at the other end of this part of the psalm, “The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love.” Have there been times when, perhaps you’ve been tempted to say, as you look at your life, as you look around, “All I see is misery. All I can see is loss. All I can see is failure. All I can see is pain.” But the psalmist knows God is his portion and so he is able to say, “You know everywhere I look, I see the work of God and the hand of God and the sovereignty of God, and I am reminded there are no corners of this world into which I might ever have cause to wander where His love will not find me and hold fast.” If God is your portion, then whatever your physical eyes may see to the contrary, the truth is, the whole earth is full of His steadfast love toward you. There is nowhere where His love will not find you and surround you and uphold you.
Gripped by Grace, the Products of Grace
- Promise
Well, so what? What difference should these great truths make in our lives? Well here are the six things, very quickly. Let’s consider thing number one – promise. Look at verse 57 again. “The Lord is my portion; I promise to keep your words.” Because God is all I need, because God Himself is precious, because in the Gospel God gives Himself to me to be my greatest treasure, my heart gladly responds with renewed commitment. “I promise to keep Your Word.”
Now we know, don’t we, that promises on their own are not nearly adequate to help us live an obedient Christian life. You can promise all you like, but your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and we often go astray. We fail to keep our own promises so often. But that does not mean that promises are useless. When God is your portion, when He is your treasure, when you see His love everywhere – how should you respond? You should bind yourself to obedience and make promises to keep His Word. We actually ask you to make those promises, promises just like this, when we receive you into communicant membership in this congregation, don’t we? And we take those promises seriously and we want you to take those promises seriously because promises are an instrument, they are useful tools in reinforcing our commitment to live for Jesus Christ depending on the grace of Jesus Christ. Promise. When you see the grace of God, when God is your portion and your very great reward, you gladly give yourself in renewed commitment to Him. Thing number one – promise.
2. Prayer
Thing number two – prayer. God is his portion. He sees His steadfast love everywhere, and that makes him bold to ask for favor and more grace. Doesn’t it? Look at verse 58. Do you see this? “I entreat your favor with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise.” I like how Charles Bridges, one of the commentators on Psalm 119 paraphrases the sentiment in verses 57 and 58. Here’s how Christians pray 57 together with 58. “O, let me have a whole Christ as my portion” – that’s 57 – “and oh, let Him have a whole heart as His possession” – that’s 58. A whole Christ is my portion, and my whole heart for His possession. When God gives Himself to us in His Son, what ought our answer to be but to give ourselves wholly to Him. Nothing held back. Like John Cavlin – do you know Calvin’s personal motto? “My heart, promptly and sincerely.” My heart given up to God, promptly and sincerely. That’s what the psalmist is saying. “With all my heart, I entreat your favor.”
Do notice, by the way, the two promises. Did you see them in 57 and 58? There’s our promise to God to live His way in 57, but then in 58, he is pleading God’s promise to Him which is far stronger, of course, and far more dependable than any promise of ours. Make your promises, but make them clinging to His promise to keep you and strengthen you. We’ve seen the psalmist doing just that over and over again, pleading God’s promise as we’ve worked through this great psalm together, haven’t we? And he does it here principally because God has already given Himself, and if He’s given Himself, how bold and confident we can be in asking HIm for so much else besides, lesser things. He has already given everything to us in giving Himself, and so we can be bold to ask Him for our daily bread and our daily needs.
Paul says something very like this in Romans 8:32. Do you remember what he says? “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?” He’s given you everything in Jesus. Do you really think that He will be reluctant to give you anything that He knows your heart really needs now? “How will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?” So when God is your portion, make your promises, but make them pleading that God would keep His greater, surer promise to you, and do it boldly with confidence knowing He has already given His Son – how will he not also with Him graciously give you all things?
3. Penitence
Thing one is promise. Thing two is prayer. Thing three – penitence. Not penance, penitence. Repentance. Look at verse 59. “When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.” Few things show up dirt like bright sunshine, and nothing exposes sin like the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We often say that God’s moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, God’s law exposes our sin and it does. But the Gospel exposes our sin too. The Gospel points us to Jesus who gave Himself, enduring the condemnation our sin deserves, going to the cross to die under the wrath of God in our room and stead. And He did so driven by no merit of mine, by nothing in me, driven only by His love for me. And when you see that, when I see that, when I look at the cross, don’t you begin to say, “Behold the Man upon the cross, my sin upon His shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has bought me life; I know that it is finished.”
Grace exposes sin. It humbles us. It makes us see how much we need Him. And that’s what’s happened here to the psalmist. Grace surrounding his life makes him reflect upon his heart, upon his ways, and it brings him to repentance. He turns. “When I think of my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.” The bright sunlight of God’s grace exposing the grime and the filth of his sin so that he can hide from himself no longer. He sees himself and he doesn’t want to keep going in the direction he has been walking. Instead, he wants to walk in God’s ways, and that’s what repentance really is. It’s the principle evidence of real repentance – a change of direction in your life. Turning – “I turn my feet to your testimonies.” We need to be on the lookout for counterfeit repentance, for half-repentance, for mere repentance. Mere regret isn’t repentance. Confessing your sin, as important as that is, isn’t repentance. Saying, “sorry” isn’t the same thing as repentance. True repentance, moved by God’s grace, turns. It changes course. It goes in a new direction.
Now it may be that the Lord has been shining some bright sunlight on the grime and filth of your sin lately and He is calling you today to repentance. I want you to hear in the example of the psalmist a reminder from the mouth of God never to rest satisfied with anything less than a change of course. Do not appease your conscience with some extra religious performance while you leave your sin intact. Do not let yourself off the hook by asking for forgiveness without making any real effort to crucify your sin and root out the habits of heart and hand that God in His Word condemns. Stop playing games with yourself. Get serious about your sin. Repent and believe the Gospel.
And as you do, keep verse 60 in mind, would you? Look at verse 60. “I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments.” Delay. It’s another tactic we often use to deceive ourselves, isn’t it? And the psalmist knows he must turn towards God’s testimonies in new obedience and he goes about it immediately, without delay. Christopher Ash, in his excellent little commentary on Psalm 119 called, Bible Delight, which I warmly commend to you if you’re looking for a helpful guide, he tells the story of the Devil briefing his junior devils. “Who is going to come up with a good strategy to stop the enemy winning people into His kingdom?” he asks. One devil piped up, “I’m going to tell them there is no God.” “That’s not a very good strategy,” replied the Devil. “Because there are masses of evidence there is a God, very few people will believe you. Anyone got any better ideas?” Someone else said, “I’m going to tell them there is no judgment.” “That’s a better strategy,” replied the Devil, “but actually men and women know there is accountability. They know that actions have consequences, and so it’s still not a very good strategy. Anyone else got any ideas?” And then one demon piped up, “I’m going to tell them there is no hurry.” “Ahh,” said the Devil, “that is exactly what you ought to do. That is the perfect strategy. There is no hurry.”
What a terrible lie we tell ourselves that allows us to agree with God that our sin is dreadful and not feel any pressure or urgency to do anything about it. Let me simply say to you, delayed repentance is disobedience. Delayed repentance is disobedience, and it is never safe to play “chicken” with God. You will always lose. “Today is God’s time,” wrote Charles Bridges, “tomorrow ruins thousands.” Today is God’s time. Right now. Today. He’s calling you to repentance. Tomorrow may be too late. You need to be like Zacchaeus. You remember Luke 19? “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” And so Zacchaeus hurried and came down and received Jesus gladly. Hurry and turn and receive Jesus gladly.
4. Perseverance
Promise. Prayer. Penitence. Thing number four – perseverance. Look at verse 61. “Though the cords of the wicked ensnare me, I do not forget your law.” He’s under pressure. It’s hard to walk with God, to be faithful, to stay the course. We’re not exactly sure what the snares of the wicked here may be. Perhaps he’s talking about opposition, open hostility, enmity. There are people out there trying to hurt him and take him down. We’ve seen that already, more than once in Psalm 119. The other possibility is temptation. The wicked ensnare him with the allurements of elicit pleasure or spiritual deception. Tell him, “You can believe whatever you like, just don’t get too serious about your ethics.”
Opposition and temptation. We can relate and sympathize with the psalmist here, can’t we? We’ve been caught in those cords and snares from time to time ourselves, truth be told. But even then, even when he is ensnared and caught and made to stumble, you notice he stumbles but he does not fall. “I’ve been ensnared by their cords, by their traps. They’ve tripped me up sometimes. I’ve been waylaid, and yet even then I do not forget Your law.” God, when God surrounds your life with His grace, He gives you the grace of perseverance. He will uphold you and keep you. You are kept by the power of God unto salvation. It’s not that we won’t sin. Sometimes you will get ensnared. But whether it’s the pressure of persecution or the pull of temptation, we will not forget God’s law. That is God’s own assurance to us in His marvelous grace
5. Praise
Promise. Prayer. Penitence. Perseverance. Thing number five – praise. When the Lord is your portion and you start seeing the steadfast love of the Lord everywhere you look, what happens in your heart? What happened in the psalmist’s heart? Look at verse 62. “At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules.” There is at least some evidence in Scripture and certainly there is a long tradition in church history of set hours of prayer at dawn, at midday, in the evening and at midnight. And this may perhaps reflect something of that tradition. What’s striking to me here is that he isn’t setting his alarm clock for midnight to get up to pray about the burdens of his heart. No doubt he does that, but that’s not what he says here. He rises at midnight to praise God.
Whether we plan it or not, I think we all probably know something of being awake at midnight, praying for our burdens and troubles. That’s just not what the psalmist is doing in this moment. He is getting up, bursting with praise, bursting with praise. “At midnight I rise to praise you because of your righteous rules.” I find that quite challenging, don’t you? How much of your turning to God, of mine, is to ask Him for things we wish that He would do, and how much is praising Him for what He has already done? Where is private praise in your fellowship with God?
And let’s not let the fact of his getting up at midnight to praise God pass without a word of comment. How many times have you found yourself saying, “Well, I would have prayed more if I just had the time”? I wonder if that’s a familiar sentiment to you. I’ve certainly said it myself. But praise and prayer are such priorities in the psalmist’s life, he’s prepared to get up at midnight to engage in it if need be. The point is, we make time for what matters, don’t we? The psalmist has God as his portion, he finds His steadfast love everywhere, and so he’s intentional, radical even, in making time to punctuate the rhythms of everyday with praise. What about you?
6. Partnership
Promise. Prayer. Penitence. Perseverance. Praise. And then finally, thing number six – partnership. Verse 63, “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.”
The wicked ensnare him with cords, but he is a companion of all who fear God and keep His precepts. He chooses his friends well. When the snares of the world and the flesh and the devil are laid all around you, you need partners who are navigating the same challenges, who will walk with you through them all, looking where you look, resting on the grace of God just as you seek to do. So listen, a private Christian, a solitary Christian, a Christian isolating themselves from the fellowship of God – “Oh, I can watch online and just stay home” – that is a contradiction in terms. We belong to one another. We need each other. Our praises are sweeter, our penitence is more earnest, our prayers are more bold, our perseverance more complete when we do it together. The psalmist wants to be with people who have the Lord as their portion and who find His steadfast love everywhere, who, like him, are bursting with praise even in the middle of the night.
It reminds me of a passage from C.S. Lewis’, Reflections on the Psalms. Talking about praise, Lewis says, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating” – this is the line that I find so helpful – “It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is, to come suddenly at the turn of the road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than a tin can in the ditch.”
Who are you with? If you are with the wicked, they care no more for the grandeur of the grace of God than a tin can in the ditch, but if you are with those who have God as their portion, you will find in sharing your praises your enjoyment of God is doubled. It is our duty to raise our enjoyment of God as high as we may this side of heaven, to make our praises reach as near to the perfection of the world to come as we can. That’s what you’re doing here this morning. That’s why we come to church Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, morning and evening – to be with, to partner together in our pursuit of God, in our trust of Him, and in our praises of His great name. “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.”
So here are the six things that this part of the psalm teaches us happens in the heart that has the Lord as its portion. We promise to keep His words. We pray for grace, pleading God’s promise to us. We are penitent. We turn under His mercy. We persevere. We keep going. There is no quit in us because grace empowers us. We praise Him for His great love and we do it together, partnering in our pursuit of God for His glory and our everlasting enjoyment. May God give us grace that these things may ripen on the vine of our lives also. Let’s pray together.Father, thank You for Your Word. Would You teach us by it and shape us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ? For we ask it in His name, amen.