Would you bow your hearts with me in prayer and let's pray together. Great God and Almighty Father, we would open our mouths like little birds and we ask that you'd feed us. Lord, give us what we need, we pray. Open our eyes that we may see wonderful things from your law, we pray. Show us Christ, we pray, for we ask in his name for our good, for his glory, amen. Please turn with me in the word of God to Psalm 119. It may seem like a fool's errand, but I would like to expound the whole of Psalm 119 this morning. We'll focus on reading three sections, beginning with that third section, Gimel, on verse 17. It's my delight to be with you this morning. On the one hand, this is a sad occasion for me because I think of the many saints that have gone on and passed on into glory and are not with us anymore. A number of the elders and others that were with us back in the 90s are no longer with us. And yet it's a happy day to be back here once again after so many years. It's my honor and joy to be with you all again. Let's then hear God's word through the psalmist's words, beginning to read Psalm 119, section Gemel, which is in 17, the word of the Lord. Deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I am a sojourner on the earth. Hide not your commandments from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones who wander far from your commandments. Take away from me scorn and contempt, for I have kept your testimonies. Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. Skipping over to section Kav, which is verse 81 and following. Verse 81, my soul longs for your salvation. I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? For I've become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I've not forgotten your statutes. How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me? The insolent have dug pitfalls for me. They do not live according to your law. All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. Help me. They have almost made an end of me on earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. In your steadfast love, give me life that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth. Turning over to section Sheen, that's verse 161. 161. Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words. I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day, I praise you for your righteous rules. Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble. I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments. My soul keeps your testimonies. I love them exceedingly. I keep your precepts and testimonies, for all my ways are before you. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. May his blessing be on each of us to embrace it, believe it, and rejoice in it. Amen. Dear congregation, well loved by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Psalms are a gift to you from your loving Lord because they show us the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus himself, after his resurrection, said to his followers, in Luke 24, verse 44, he said, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Jesus is using that ancient threefold division of what we call the Old Testament, the Torah, the Law of Moses, the Nevi'im, or the Prophets, and the Ketuvim, or the Writings, which are identified often by their most prominent book, which is the Psalms. Jews often call this book the Tanach, Torah, Ketuvim, Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. We call the Old Testament. The Old Testament, and the Psalms in particular, point us to the Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes by specific prophecy, but more frequently by setting up expectations and patterns that ultimately our Lord Jesus can only and fully fulfill. And so it's through these psalms that you can find a meaningful life. It's through these psalms that you can find a place of stability in the midst of the craziness. It's through these psalms that you can find comfort in the face of the troubles that you're going through at this point in your pilgrimage. This Psalm 119 is an invitation to you to enter into the experience of the psalmist and to experience some of the delights and the comforts that he knew in his life. There's an invitation for you, if you'll pay close attention, if you'll listen, if you'll believe, there's an invitation for you to enter into the joy into the delights that the psalmist experienced and to find a deeper experience of life yourself. This Psalm 90 is obviously a highly structured psalm. It's poetry, and I dare say that poetry with us Americans has fallen on hard times. I won't ask for a show of hands of how many of you have read poetry outside of the Bible in the last three weeks. But in poetry, it's a tough time. I'm really glad to hear of our brother Scott Pierce's class here on biblical poetry that he taught us recently. And I wish I could have been a fly on the wall and listened to that class. But though we may look down on poetry, virtually all ancient societies have valued poetry. Our own English tradition, we think of some of the first books in English, Think of something like Beowulf, that is poetry. If we go back to the Roman tradition, the Aeneid is poetry. We go back to the Greek tradition, the Iliad, the Odyssey, that's poetry. We want to go back further to the Mesopotamian tradition, think of the Gilgamesh epic, thousands of years earlier, that's poetry as well. Ancient peoples considered if it was worth writing, if it was worth remembering, it was worth putting into poetry. And so half or at least a third of the Old Testament, not only all the Psalms, but virtually all the prophets are poetry. And we may say, oh, poetry sounds so restrictive. Doesn't that make it overly tight? And this Psalm of all the Psalms is certainly is one of the most restricted. And how is it restricted? It's restricted by the alphabet, obviously. This is an acrostic. The first sections all begin with the A, and then B, and then gimel, dalet, he, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a very structured piece of poetry. And that also explains why it jumps around somewhat. You may read through Psalm 119. He's popping around from topic to topic. It's not like the epistles of Paul, who starts with an idea and just carefully develops that idea. It's jumping around. For example, in the section Tzadeh, verses 137 to 144, the poet is, you'll notice there's a lot of emphasis there on righteousness, because the word righteousness is tzedakah, and the word righteous is tzadik, or tzedak means to justify. So he's playing with those ideas in that section, and that's kind of how it's structured. But even as you may have read a love sonnet or a haiku, structure can actually strengthen the power of a piece of writing. It's like a garden hose. The more you crank down on it, the farther it shoots. There's a lot of emotion here in this psalm, even though it's very structured. And if you'll feel it and get in touch with it, you'll see that there's a lot of feeling, a lot of passion here, a lot of experience here. The psalmist, as he takes us through the whole alphabet, it's almost as he comes to the end, he's left no stone unturned. The topic, his topic, has been fully considered, and his conclusion is that the word of God is ravishing. It's beautiful, it's attractive. And this is his main point. He's inviting us to enter into the delights of the scripture. Now, he uses a lot of different words here. He uses eight terms in particular. He talks about the laws, the commandments, the testimonies, the precepts, the statutes, the rules, the judgments, and the words. What's he talking about? Is he talking about eight different things here? Really, he's talking about one subject. synonyms to talk about the Word of God, what we would call the Old Testament. And if you were here for the Sunday school, we were talking about how a billion and a half people in the world don't have the Old Testament. Many of them are brothers and sisters in Christ. They want the Old Testament. And if this is the delight of the psalmist in the Old Testament, That's exactly what our brothers and sisters are looking for, the Old Testament. And also, if this is the delight of the psalmist in the Old Testament, then how much more reasons do we have as Christians to rejoice in the full Bible, which has the greater clarity of the New Testament? Psalm 119 is obviously very big and we don't have time to develop it fully by any means, but I'd like for us to follow four threads that are in this beautiful tapestry. Or to change the image, I'd like to pluck four chords on this beautiful harp, both the major chord and the minor chord. The minor chord is the negative experience of the psalmist. He's the troubles, the afflictions that he's going through. If you just read it very superficially, you'll feel he has been and sometimes is in great trouble. But on the other hand, the major chord is the appreciation that the psalmist has for the benefits of the word of Yahweh and all that he's gained from the word of God. So join with me, please, in considering the four themes here in this psalm. I encourage you to keep your Bible open. I won't be quoting necessarily whole verses, and I'll be jumping around, but it's worth keeping your Bible open. The first thing we learn from Psalm 119 about the scripture is that it gives us light in the face of our darkness. It gives us light in the face of our darkness. Verse 105 is probably the most famous of the lines of this psalm. Your word, or let me put it in the old King James, which has been turned into a wonderful song. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Psalm 160, excuse me, verse 160 says something very similar. The sum of your word is truth. Yahweh's Word is a guide for us when we're confused, when we're mistaken, when we've lost our way. So much so that the Word defines what is true for us. The idea that God's Word is, the sum of His Word is truth is very close to what we would call the doctrine of sola scriptura. that the Bible is the norm for all other norms. If you wanna know if a philosophy is right or wrong, if you wanna know whether a value system is correct or not, whether that's Hollywood movies, whether that's postmodernism, or whether that's James Jordan, or whoever the talking head is that's on the internet that you're listening to, or reading, or watching, whatever it is, if you wanna know if something is true, You have a lodestone, you have a standard against which to measure it, and that is the word of God itself. It's not difficult for you to have more understanding than your secular university professors, as verse 99 suggests. He says, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. How can you have more understanding than someone with an advanced degree? It's because you have the perspective on reality and the God who's behind reality here in the word. This understanding is for you children. You don't have to have a college degree to understand about God. Children, the knowledge of God, to know who God is, is for you. It's for you. Because we read here in 130, the unfolding of your word gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple, that is to all of us, to the youngest of us, to the oldest of us. We need this understanding. And we read in 98, your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. 104, through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Do you want to be enlightened? Then you need this word. This is the book for illumination. Now the negative chord, the minor chord here is, and you may not want to hear this, but it is that you and I, by nature we are ignorant. We lack knowledge about God. We are not in a good relationship with God by nature. That's the negative news. We are unenlightened and our lives are twisted. We love the wrong things and we love the right things too much. We need a reorientation in our minds and in our affections. And that's why verse 18, as I prayed it at the beginning, is so appropriate for you every time you open this book, every time you come to worship on Sunday. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. Now, I'm not fully content with that word wondrous here. What does that mean to you? Maybe something cool, something nice. All right, the Bible is nice, but There's a lot more in this idea here. It's easy to remember the Hebrew word that's used here because it's the word pele. And if you know anything about soccer, the greatest soccer player that there ever was is Pele, right? The Brazilian wondrous soccer player who died not too long ago. He was an amazing player and this is an amazing book. We see the same word used in 129. Your testimonies are Pele, they are wonderful, therefore my soul keeps them. Now why ultimately is this book Pele? It is jaw dropping because of the person who is described as Pele. Isaiah says about him, his name shall be called Pele. wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, because it points us to this miracle baby that we celebrate at Christmas, this miracle man who said things like no one else said, as we read in John, that I am the light. I am, you are the light? He's jaw-dropping when we see him. He says, whoever sees me, sees the one who sent me, sees God. How can you make a claim like that? That's jaw-dropping. That's Pele, if it's true. And it is true. If you want to be amazed, then this book is for you. But we find not only light in the face of our darkness here, we also find rescue in the face of our weakness. We are weak, though we may not want to admit it. The dust of death is over us and everything that we touch. It's easy for me to think about that as I see the faces that are not in the audience today, beloved faces. Our parents die, our grandparents die. We paint a house and that house needs to be painted again in seven, eight years. We give our lives to projects that seem to fall apart. Businesses don't succeed. We invest in relationships, even marriages. Our spouses leave us. There seems to be this death on us, even in our very bodies. It's notable today how many physical afflictions that we've had, that were prayed for, that were mentioned at the beginning of the service. There's this weakness on us, on our very persons, And so it's no surprise in 25, and many, many times throughout this psalm, there's this prayer for life. The psalmist says, my soul clings to the dust, give me life according to your word. For the psalmist, the word is like a means of grace, it's a channel of blessing to him. He says in 93, I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. The psalmist has discovered that God is a God of chesed, if I can use another Hebrew word here. You probably have heard that word before. This word chesed refers to that loving kindness, that mercy, the faithful commitment, that covenant faithfulness of God. Our psalmist has experienced this in 149. In 149, he says, hear my voice according to your chesed, your steadfast love. Oh Lord, according to your justice, give me life. He says in 159, consider how I love your precepts. Give me life according to your chesed, your steadfast love. And then in 88, he says, in your chesed, give me life. that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth. Our Lord Jesus said that he came that you might have life and that you might have it in abundance. And our psalmist speaks in similar terms. He says in 17, he says, deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. He's looking for this fullness of life that he finds from God. Let me ask, if I had to ask you, could you give me a Bible term or an idea that expresses, in the broadest terms, rescue, deliverance, freedom, from all the things that press in on us and that impoverish our lives and that oppress us as human beings. What's the broadest term that you could think of to describe that? That our need for deliverance, our need for rescue? I would argue that it's salvation. Exactly, it's salvation. We reduce salvation to often thinking of it in terms of the forgiveness of our sins, as wonderful as that is. But this is a broader concept. Salvation is deliverance, being freed from whatever it is that's pressing you down. And that is God's intention ultimately for us. Now what is the word, this is a rhetorical question, What is the word for salvation in Hebrew? I'll give you a hint. It's the name of a person. And it is the word for Jesus in Hebrew, right? Which is Yeshua, right? Think about that for a second. His name is his mission. He came to set free. He came to liberate the captives. He came to bring sight to the blind, right? Freedom to the oppressed. This is his intention. To set you free. To put you in a wide place. The psalmist says that in 45. He says, I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. Brothers and sisters, this means deliverance from not only the guilt of your sin, but from the presence and the practice of sins itself, whatever it may be that's holding you down. Is this not a great year to be freed from the pills? This is a great year to be set free. Is this not a great year to be freed from the porn? This is a great year to be set free. What kind of sin inside or outside is holding you down? Is this not a great time to seek and to find freedom? I so appreciate in our pastoral prayer that the prayer is not just for justification. We have a profound appreciation for justification. We should sing the joys that we have in our justification for the rest of our lives. But the psalmist can never be satisfied with justification by itself. The psalmist here, you feel it in every section. He's praying for sanctification. for a transformation for the inside of his life to be consistent with God himself, to have the image of God in himself renewed to be like his maker. And that is ultimately through Christ, right? You can feel it. He says in 29, he says, put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law. Do this work in me, make me new. Work in me, transform me, right? The psalmist says in 32, he says, I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart. It's that same idea of breath. Please, let me convince you, the Bible and its laws and its commandments is not intended to limit your life. It's not intended to press you into a narrow, joyless way of living. That's a lie. It's intended quite the opposite, to give you a broad, fuller, more expansive experience, a more joyous experience. That's the intention. If you'll hang with me, I'd like to read a couple of quotes from a certain scholar. It's a little heavy, but it's worth listening to. He's arguing that it's because the commandments lead to freedom, that we don't find them restrictive or burdensome. He says, we are persons who have decided some basic life commitments. We know to whom we belong and to whom we will answer. Therefore, we know who we are, and we have settled in large part the moral posture we will assume toward life. There is a focus to life, an absence of frantic moral dilemma, a sense of priorities matched by an absence of anxiety. In a well-ordered world, such a decision can save us from an exhausting, endless reinventing of moral decision. Because the world holds together, the shape of obedience is reliable, and the result is not dullness or bitterness, but freedom. Let me continue. Again, it's thick but worth listening to. Commandments liberate and give people space in which to be human. This psalm instructs people in the need, possibility, and delight of giving settlement to the foundational issues of identity and vocation. Torah living does not require keeping options open about who we shall be. We know who we are, we are beloved children of God, that's who we are. We know that we have a purpose and that is to glorify God and to enjoy him, right? We're new creatures in Christ because we have a rescuer who has helped us in the face of our weakness and is transforming us inwardly as well as setting us right with God externally and objectively. So let me draw your attention then thirdly, not only to the fact that we have light in the face of our darkness, the fact that we have rescue in the face of our weakness, but thirdly, that we have hope in the face of our fears. Anxiety is such a huge deal today, especially post-COVID, but I think perhaps we're just more aware of it now. The psalmist had lots of things to be worried about. Look at 23. He says, even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statues. Powerful people were against him. Have you had that experience? The psalmist says in 87, he says, they have almost made an end of me on earth. Have you had people tempt your life? That's serious business, right? Serious business. People in this world will abuse us. People in this world will threaten us. People in this world may, seek to end our lives, certainly to impoverish or to oppress our lives, right? The psalmist says in 110, the wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. He says in 109, I hold my life in my hand continually. Maybe there's something, maybe it's a sickness that has you close to death. All of us will face that at one time or another. His life is in his hand. That means my life is about ready to slip away from me. That's how close he is to death. And yet even then, the psalmist has found help and rescue in the face of his fear. Listen to some of the other things that people are doing to him here. If you're concerned about what people have done to you or what they may be doing to you now, you have a friend in the psalmist here. He says he's been taunted. He's being taunted, 42. He's been derided, 51. 69 says he's been smeared with lies. Has that happened to you? That hurts. Persecuted falsely, 86. And again and again and again, he says he's been afflicted, 50, 67, 71. The psalmist has realized that people will fail him, but he's learned to redirect his attention Not horizontally, but vertically, right? He's learned that the Lord is faithful. Everybody else will fail us in some way or another. But he says in 90, he says, your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth. It stands fast. He's found by experience that Christ is worthy of being trusted. He says in 160, again, the sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. Can you feel that same idea? It's the idea of something that's stable. God doesn't make a promise and then fail, as people do. He says in 138, you have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. Again, you can trust what God says. You can believe it when he promises he will fulfill. And when you're being threatened, remember 114. He says, you are my hiding place and my shield, right? We have a defender. We have someone to help us in the midst of the things that threaten us and the pressures and the people that are against us, right? Children, have you had the experience of being really afraid about something, and then maybe your parent comes to you and says, hey, it's okay, it's gonna be all right. Or maybe you adults, the same kind of thing. You're worried about something, and someone in authority, who knows the situation, says to you, it's gonna be okay. And then you can almost see with the kid, what does the kid do? The kid goes, you can just feel the child relax, right? That's the promises of God for you in the Word. Do you have anxiety? You need the promises of the Word. Will you believe them? Now, if you don't believe them, you will not experience the relief and the peace, right? If you will believe them, you can experience that resting, that resting, right? That resting and hoping in the Word of God. the faithful master. He says in 49, remember your word to your servant in which you have made me hope. Hope is the antidote to the fear. He says in 147, I rise before dawn and I cry for help. I hope in your words. 43, my hope is in your rules. That's not, it's not saying in, in the demands of the law, he means in the promises and the assurances of the word of God. The promise, the basic promise of the word is at root level is the gospel itself. It's Christ for you, that is the basic promise, which we celebrate month by month at the Lord's table, right? Christ for you, to give you what you lack, to give you what you need, to be for you who you are not. It's Christ for you. 148, he says, my eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promise. And it's the promises of God that give us the comfort. The Heidelberg Catechism, obviously, is all focused on the idea of comfort. You want comfort? Don't we all want comfort? Isn't that what we're looking for? Not just kids, we all need to be comforted, right? He says in 50, this is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. Can you see the connection? Or in 52, when I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort. I take comfort. We find comfort in the promises of God as they point us to the all-sufficient Savior, our Lord Jesus, whose life was given for our life, and who was alienated so that we might be reconciled, that we might be received and never let go of. Fourthly, finally, we find, the psalmist teaches us, we find happiness in the face of our troubles here. Look to the very first line of this psalm, please. Psalm 119, verse one. And this has been brought out earlier in the service as well. Now I realize that blessedness focuses maybe more on the objective and happiness focuses more on the subjective, the experiential part of that. But I think this theme of happiness is exactly where our psalmist is starting us and focusing us from the very beginning. are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Second introduction, blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart. Keith mentioned earlier, that's where the psalm, the Psalter as a whole starts out, right? Psalm one, blessed is the one who does not walk in the way, this way, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, right? And our Lord Jesus in his most famous preaching, the beginning of the first, the first thing he says on the Sermon on the Mount is what? It's this same topic, right? The topic is, where are you looking for your happiness? Where is true happiness? That's the topic. All human beings, you and me, all of us, we're all looking to be happy. That's no doubt about that. The question is, where are we looking for our happiness? That's the question. Jesus says, blessed, blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn for a righteousness that they don't have, right? This is the great topic. So the question is, how do you find this happiness? How do you find this rich life, this good life? And the psalmist is telling us that it's by looking to the word of God. It's finding Christ through the word and responding to him. He says in 56, This blessing has fallen to me that I have kept your precepts. He's embracing and having a whole life response to the word of God. That's where he found his happiness. Remember the story of King Croesus, richest of kings, king of Sardis over there and kingdom of Lydia, written about it by the Greeks over there in modern day Turkey. He was, you've heard that expression, as rich as Croesus, maybe. So rich, huge army, huge riches. The Athenian statesman and philosopher, Solon, came to visit him. And he couldn't resist asking Solon, Solon, who is the happiest man alive? And who do you think he expected Salon to say was the happiest man alive? But he himself, of course, he had it all. But Salon scratched his beard and mentioned a certain Greek man who lived a life of Greek virtues and had a life of Greek blessings and died a death in battle, a glorious death in battle, et cetera. Croesus thought he'd try again, and he asked for a second, who is the second happiest man? And Solon scratched his beard again and came up with another name who had a similar life and death. And the point was, it wasn't Croesus. No matter how much money he had, he was not the most blessed. As a matter of fact, Croesus found it out himself. Because what happened to Croesus in the end? He lost it all. If your happiness is in your 401k, what a year it's been for you. Where are you looking for your happiness? Anything sub-lunar will not do. Will not do. Let me push, if I may, you parents. If your happiness is tied up with your children, you're in trouble. I'm not saying you shouldn't pray for your children or shouldn't care for them. Of course you will. You'll pray for them to your last breath. But if you can't be happy in the Lord, unless your child turns out just a certain way, has to have this kind of success, financially, educationally, spiritually, whatever it is, I cannot be happy in the Lord, that's a problem. That's an idolatry. That's an idolatry. I know that sounds strong, perhaps, but that's the case. There's only one way to find happiness that the psalmist has found, and that is vertically. He's found his happiness in the word because he's found the Lord who is the source of all happiness. Maybe you've heard that expression, mazel tov. Mazal Tov, or however you want to pronounce it. It literally means star good. Tov means good. So the section on, the Tetz section is gonna have a lot about good, right? And he says in 68, you are good. And then he uses the same verb, tov, and he says, you do good. He says the same thing in 65. You have done good, you have dealt well.