Laws, decrees, precepts, ways, and commands are not something most of us love to talk about. But this Psalmist is different. He wrote the longest book of the Bible on this very topic. Why did he love God’s written word so much, and what does it mean for our lives today? And yes, Jesus plays a major role!
Message:
For the past several weeks we’ve been focusing on “Israel’s Greatest Hits” – the songbook of the Hebrew people – the book of Psalms. So far we’ve looked at:
Psalm 1. Two paths: one of righteousness and the other of wickedness. One path that walks with God and one that walks away.
Psalm 8. The reputation of God, which David exalted, with everyone knowing His glory. Today we have the opportunity to exalt God’s reputation again with our words and our lives.
Psalm 23. The care of our Good Shepherd, Jesus, who provides for us in so many intricate ways. He guides and protects us and provides for us through all the ups and downs of life until we reach our eternal home with Him.
Psalm 72. A vision for the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of righteousness, justice and prosperity. This is what Solomon wanted for his earthly kingdom, and this is what we should strive to live out in God’s kingdom on earth today.
Today we turn to the longest song in the Israelites’ hymnal: Psalm 119.
Don McLean’s song “American Pie” was the longest song ever to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It was over eight minutes long. Reading all of Psalm 119 would take over ten minutes, which is why we’ll concentrate on a just a few verses.
This lengthy psalm is 176 verses long and is structured as an acrostic, a poetic form in which the first letters of the lines form a pattern. It has 22 sections, each of which is labeled with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each section has eight stanzas, and each line of each stanza begins with the Hebrew letter at the start of the section. An example of an acrostic in the English language could begin like this:
Apples taste yummy
Although worms make holes in them
And then kids refuse to eat.
Bananas on the other hand
Behold this tasty fruit
Better than the finest apple.
Coming up with this little example was harder than I anticipated! Imagine the effort needed to do eight lines for each letter of the alphabet. This psalmist was really excited about his topic at hand!
Today, let’s look at just the first section of the song.
1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the Lord.
2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart—
3 they do no wrong
but follow his ways.
4 You have laid down precepts
that are to be fully obeyed.
5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast
in obeying your decrees!
6 Then I would not be put to shame
when I consider all your commands.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart
as I learn your righteous laws.
8 I will obey your decrees;
do not utterly forsake me.
Psalm 119:1-8
The theme of Psalm 119
This author really loved the laws, rules, precepts, commands and ways of God! He uses eight different Hebrew words to capture the whole of God’s laws and teachings. I took a moment to count up how many times several of these words appear in the NIV.
Nouns: Law – 47; Word – 30; Statute – 23; Command – 22; Decree – 22.
Verbs: Obey – 20; Keep – 9; Follow – 7; Learn – 4.
This theme continues throughout the entire psalm.
Some of you who have amazing memories might remember that back in May I taught a message I called “Rules Don’t Work.” I said that because rules don’t work, God gave us the Holy Spirit, who leads us in our personal relationship with God. The question now becomes: How does a psalm all about rules fit with our lives that aren’t supposed to be focused exclusively on the rules? Let’s find out.
What does the Psalmist actually love?
What, exactly, is this psalmist praising and saying he loves and wants to obey?
Our first thought, probably would be the 66 books we call the Bible. We forget that the full Bible did not exist at that time in history. Others might think the psalmist is referring to all the rules, laws and regulations – all the Do and Don’t messages in the early writings. However, the psalmist is speaking of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. That was all the Bible they had at that time – only the Genesis stories, the Ten Commandments and other laws in Exodus, the laws given in Leviticus for the priests and the religious festivals, the census found in Numbers, and the law re-given in Deuteronomy.
For a people who didn’t have God speaking to them daily through the indwelling Holy Spirit, every word they had received from God was incredibly important. They didn’t want to lose or ignore any of it! By Jesus’s day, it was not uncommon for many Pharisees to have much or even all of the Old Testament committed to memory. Within the stories, rules and regulations for the tabernacle and religious festivals, the Israelites found the story of the God who set them apart, saved them from Egypt, and gave them their own nation. They learned about the character of God and His love, kindness and faithfulness to them. They could learn how to interact with God and with others in healthy life-giving relations for themselves and for the good of the community,
Why love all these regulations?
We’ve seen what the psalmist loved. But why? Why was he so passionate about all the rules, commands and regulations?
To our American sensibilities, it seems flat-out crazy to be so excited about a list of rules. As I have said before, our culture prizes individualism and living life according to our own set of rules. We follow no one – or so we think as we follow the sheep in front of us right off a cliff!
A lot of people have this same perspective of Christianity in general. They think our faith is all about rules. They can’t understand why we live our whole lives trying to follow a bunch of random rules by a guy in the sky who is just trying to make us jump through hoops to see how obedient we are.
What they miss is that the same God who made the rules is the One who created the world and all of us inside it. He knows the rules of the game because He designed the game. His rules aren’t just for His entertainment, but for our good. He knows our propensity to lust after things that will hurt us. He knows our short tempers, our desire for vengeance, our willingness to hurt others for our own gain; so He commands us to steer clear of that which destroys us. He points us to do the things that bring life – life to us and to the community around us.
Here is a perfect example:
In the Old Testament God commanded that the Israelites completely destroy everyone and everything in the towns within the land they were to take over. To our American mindset, this seems absolutely cruel and awful! We point our fingers at this inhumane God who is so filled with hate.
But as we continue to read the story, we see that they didn’t follow God’s rules. Instead, they picked up some of the idols and silver. They saved and married the beautiful women, who led them to worship the foreign gods. The Israelites turned away from the God who had saved them from Egypt and brought them through the Red Sea, and who desired to live in relationship with them. They thought it was a dumb rule, so they ignored it, and this brought them shame and destruction as they lived in exactly the same way as the pagan people around them.
The important take-away from this example is that God didn’t make the command to test them or because He was vengeful. He acted for their good. They just didn’t see it.
What to do with all these regulations?
Now that we know what the psalmist loves (the Torah and all the written words of God) and why he loves them (because they are for his good), the question now becomes: what does he do with God’s commands? It’s one thing to just read the Torah and another thing entirely to put it down into your heart.
I’ve met many people who call themselves Christians, who know the Bible well, who perhaps even read through it regularly. Yet they can be cold-hearted, judgmental, grumpy people. Knowing what’s in the Book doesn’t mean it has changed you!
That’s not the case with the psalmist. In Psalm 119:97 he says he meditates on the law all day long. He yearns to know it and grasp its truths and implications for life. Beyond knowing it deeply, he wants to live it out. He obeys and follows what it says. Remember the list of verbs repeated throughout the psalm. The most-used verbs were obey, keep, and follow. These are action verbs. This is actually living out the truths as opposed to merely having an academic knowledge of the truths.
James picks up this same theme in the New Testament when he writes in James 1:22 “Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Then James then goes on to write a letter filled with practical instruction for living out your faith and knowledge of the life God desires for you.
Following what God desires for us is more than just saying “no” to bad things. It also includes saying “yes” to good and often hard things. When we look at the Ten Commandments, it’s easy to think of all the “thou shalt not” commands. Many think of Christianity as the religion marked by all the things they CAN’T do – and what others shouldn’t be doing either.
God also wants us to do a lot of things as well. Failure to do those things is much a sin as doing the bad things. These two forms of sin are called “sins of omission” and sins of commission.” In the Ten Commandments we are instructed to keep the Sabbath holy and to honor our parents. In other places we are told to care for widows and orphans. We are told to dedicate a portion of our income to God and to treat others better than ourselves. Remember, when we talk about obeying God, it’s not just by avoiding sinful things, it’s also doing what God wants us to do.
Jesus as the Living Word
I’ve shown you how the psalmist loves every word God has ever given to him through recorded scripture because those words are for his good. They lead him down the straight path to life as shown in Psalm 1. He knows, however, that God’s words are beneficial only if he obeys them.
In typical Jesus fashion, when He showed up He changed everything! He said all the law had been fulfilled. How does Jesus fit in with this message on loving the Word of God?
John 1:1-4 – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
While the psalmist was smitten with the very words of God written in the Torah as commands and rules and laws and decrees, we now have the Word of God in flesh! We have a model to follow, a life to emulate, a person who shows us how to respond in various situations. John’s writings tell us the Torah is fulfilled in the person of Jesus because in Him, the Word, is life, and that life is the light of all humanity.
Our Response
It would be easy for me to tell you to study your Bible more. Read more. Memorize more. Take your Bible to work with you and read it on your lunch break. Unfortunately, that’s not the secret to living a life that honors God. The Pharisees did all that better than you ever will,yet they were Jesus’s main adversaries when He walked this earth because they got it WRONG! I’ve seen people who end up almost worshipping the physical Bibles in their collections. They brag online about goatskin covers, gilt-edged pages and not one, but two bookmarks. They miss the main thing!
Early in Jesus’s ministry He quoted for the crowds: It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). When Jesus said this, He was reorienting things. He spoke the very words of God. He sent the Holy Spirit, who still speaks to us moment by moment each day.
We have far more access today to the guidance of God’s words than this psalmist ever had. Will we obey and do what we know we are to do?
Most of us in this room know how we are supposed to live. We know what the Bible says. We know how God wants us to respond to our spouses, our kids, and our nosy neighbors. We know we should be more loving, more generous, more trusting, and more at peace.
While all of Psalm 119 speaks of loving God’s commands, precepts and laws, it isn’t just for the purpose of knowing them, but of doing them. Our greatest challenge today is not to put more into our heads, but to make sure we courageously live it out.
So where does that leave us with our Bibles? Am I saying we don’t need to read them? No – there is value in reading them. The value is not in being able to say you read the Bible through in a year. The value surfaces because every time we open our Bibles it gives the Holy Spirit a new opportunity to speak to us about the exact things we need to hear. He reminds us of a promise we have forgotten to believe, a sin we have been avoiding.
Memorizing scripture also has value because it keeps our minds trained on truth; but, again, it’s not for the purpose of being a legalist but of being able to better know what to do in any situation because we have God’s Word buried inside us.
The power of Scripture is not in the words printed on the page, but in the Word of God speaking to us by God’s Living Spirit.
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