This series is framed around having a favourite Psalm, but I should confess that I don’t really have one. I like in Psalms how 22 and 23 are right next to each other. The juxtaposition of “my god my god why have you forsaken me” and all the Jesus overtones, right next to the good shepherd who leads us through he valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for your rod and staff comfort me. I like how the last 5 Psalms end in triumphant praise.
But really, I don’t have a favourite. What I did for this series really was to look in the prayer book for the Sunday I was on and this was the Psalm for today. And I thought sure, I don’t mind
Psalm 119. It’s about God’s word, and I’m like the Life Group Bible guy, I’m all for reading God’s word for yourself.
Context
And Psalm 119 I think is pretty clever. It is the longest Psalm because it is a very long acrostic poem. This doesn’t really come through with our English translations but the poem has 22 stanzas, one for each of the 22 Hebrew letters. Each stanza has 8 lines, and each of these lines starts with that stanza’s letter. And the content of this Psalm is about God’s word, and the building block for words is letters. So both thematically and structurally words and letters are the focus.
Most commentators think that this Psalm was written after Israel had been sent into exile. There is no mention of the monarchy or the sacrificial system or the temple leading people to think that during this time in Israel’s history, when they had been conquered and taken out of the Promised Land the Torah became the main symbol of God’s presence with his people.
The law here serves as a kind of shim between the people and God. The righteous love God, and so by extension they love God’s law. Those who are unrighteous are condemned by the law and it is used as a just means of punishment and judgement on those who do not follow it.
Out little stanza we are looking at if for the letter Nun, it's like our N, it's their 14th letter out of 22.
So for a bit of fun, I got ChatGPT, to do some fancy computer AI, to help me write what this stanza may look like in English if each line started with the letter N
Nurturing my path, Your word is a lamp for my feet, Nourishing my journey, a radiant light that guides.
Never will I waver from the oath I have sworn, No compromise, I shall keep Your righteous judgments.
Narrow is the road, trials befall me heavily, Nevertheless, revive me according to Your word.
Noble Lord, accept the offerings of my mouth, Nurture me in Your ways, teach me Your divine decrees.
Never will I neglect Your law, my life's compass, Noble devotion, I meditate on Your righteous statutes.
Never will I yield, ensnared by the wicked's snares, No straying from Your precepts, my heart remains steadfast.
Nurturing my soul, Your testimonies I embrace, Nurturing joy, my heart delights in Your eternal inheritance.
Nearer each day, my heart leans to Your commandments, Noble commitment, forever I will follow Your ways.
That is not quite the Bible, it’s not an accurate translation but it is kinda the flavor of what this whole Psalm is about.
God’s Word: A Good Guide
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. (Psalm 119:105)In this little stanza, we can see that God’s word is a good guide for us. God’s word is a lamp, not for our minds, but for our legs so that we can know where to go. In our stanza, the Psalmists also say that they have vowed to follow God’s righteous laws and that they will not stray from God’s precepts.
This idea of following and not straying gives us the sense that God’s word is more than just information, it is a guide for us to live, for us to not sit and think about, but to use for action. God’s word is linked with how we view God. It is the main way we get to know who He is, what He has done for us and how He wants us to live.
As Christians, to know all the facts and figures contained in the Bible is not the end for which God has given us this Book. The purpose is that we might see God and know him. (1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Bible, Study Of)
And God’s word is good. It is after all God’s. The Psalmist says in verse 107 that God’s word gives life. I like the Holman here, for it says:
I am severely afflicted; LORD, give me life through Your word. (Psalm 119:107)It is God’s word that gives life and in verse 111 it also gives joy. It says
Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart. (Psalm 119:111)So in all this, we see that God’s word is a good guide, it gives us a way to follow, a way to know God and His will, and it is good. It gives life and joy.
Determined Disciple: Learning and following God’s word
And so in response to this, the Psalmist is determined to learn and follow God’s word. He makes an oath to follow, asking God to teach him in verse 106I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. (Psalm 119:106)and the last verse
My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end. (Psalm 119:112)They are determined to follow God’s decrees, till the end. And this is not a comfortable situation. Just in this section, it mentions how they have suffered much. How there are the wicked who want to trap them. But regardless of what they are facing, they vow and make up their mind that they will follow God’s word till the very end.
The Psalmist see the great value in God’s word, for it is a good guide, and while things may be hard, God's word is something they cling to for it is a source of life and joy.
We Need God’s guide
It is interesting that God’s word is talked about as a light. We sort of have this connection with wisdom and light in our own language. We talk about having insight, or illumination. Someone has clear vision or is brilliant.
There was a movement 20 years ago pushed by the New Atheists at the time who tried to coin a new term for their movement. Everyone who would adhere to a naturalist worldview could be called a “bright”. And everyone who did that and registered on their website could be called a capital B bright. Nearly 80,000 people signed up to be a capital b Bright.
This short-lived moment (although they still have a very dated website and a comments board) is reminiscent of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was a rebellion against the religious teachings of society and they sought to free the people from the dark ages. In the Enlightenment, reason and science would win and those old ideas of the past would be swept away.
The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rouges teach and young children are made to learn by heart.Voltaire proclaimed that within twenty-five years the Bible would be forgotten and Christianity would be a thing of the past. About fifty years after his death an Evangelical society in Geneva bought his house and his printing press, and used his own printing press it to print the Bible and other Christian pamphlets in his very own home!
Our own human reason didn’t and can’t lift the world into some enlightenment or new utopia. Today, despite all our progress we still need God’s word to direct us. Our world thinks it doesn’t need a higher authority telling it what to do, that we can be free to do our own thing, but that simply doesn’t work. We need the creator of the word, the creator of us to tell us the right way to live. We have always needed that, because other guides will not penetrate the darkness of this world, this darkness that we are a part of. Other guides do not give life and joy, but death and disconnection.
The law through Jesus
And the good news is, we have God’s word today where we can read about the good news of Jesus. We need to remember that for us, there is a little disconnect between what the Psalmist is saying for himself and for us today. Yes I am going to land on the application of encouraging us to read our Bibles, I think that is essential and life-changing, but to look at this Psalm about the law, we need to remember that our relationship with God’s law is different to the Psalmist.
If the series of covenants that we had just done has taught us anything, it is that we are the New Covenant people, God’s law is to be written on our hearts. We have the Spirit to help us be empowered to live out God’s law - we have the full, and complete word about Jesus and how He saves us.
We may not meditate on Leviticus and come away with great joy. We are not Israelites moving into the Promised Land or living under a repeated sacrificial system. We can and should still read God’s law in the Mosaic covenant, for it tells us much about God and us and how He wants His people to live. It talks about how there is sin and sacrifice and restoration, but we now read the law knowing how sin and sacrifice and restoration is fully completed in Jesus, and we have instructions on how we are to live, not in the Promised Land under our own monarch, but under different governments, in love and submission to others.
Just this week for our SOAP readings, I didn’t plan this, but we were reading from the sermon on the mount. Jesus says in Matthew 5
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)Jesus fulfilled the Law. It didn’t pass away, nothing disappeared from it, but Jesus accomplished it. So we have a new relationship with obeying God. We have Jesus’ teaching. Near the end of the sermon on the Mount Jesus says:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)And how will we know what His Father’s will is? 3 verses after that he says
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. (Matthew 7:24)As followers of Jesus, we are to hear from Jesus, looking to Him for our instruction. And I hope we see these are good, and worth studying and obeying, for Jesus tells us how to live. And we have the Holy Spirit to help us to remember and to understand. We have easy access to God’s word and are literate, and so are skilled enough to read God’s word for ourselves.
The main points of Biblical instruction hasn’t changed, we are still to love God and love others. In Term 1 from John we saw that Jesus tells His followers,
Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. (John 14:23–24)If you love Jesus, you will obey his commands and do the will of His Father. For love and obedience are connected.
So we now still read God’s word and obey Jesus’ instructions, not to earn salvation, but as a way of showing love to God and others. To know what pleases Him, and how best it is for us to live with Him and with each other.
Do you read Gods word?
We have God's word today, and so the penetration question for us is, do you read it? What is your approach to the Bible, for how we view God is linked with how we view His word.
Sometimes we may find it hard to read and some feel guilty in this moment. Don’t get me wrong, there are passages that are tricky to understand. Peter even says that some of Paul’s writings is hard to understand. Which I think is crazy as I think 1 Peter 3 has the hardest passage in the New Testament, so good luck to us when we look at that this term.
We may have times when we read the Bible and then get up and think, what was that all about, I don’t know what I just read.
But on that note, I can’t remember every meal I have eaten, yet I know I have eaten them for it has gotten me this far in life. The food has done its work over time, even if I can’t remember it all. I think it is the same with reading God’s word.
But can I encourage you to see that God’s word is good? It gives life, it tells us who we are under God. That we have been shown mercy, that we have been rescued. That on our own, we can’t think our way up to heaven, or escape death. That while we were still sinners Christ died for us, and adopted us. This produces joy, and hope and confidence.
I don’t know if you think church and Life Group is all about growing in knowledge. That it sort of makes up your own personal Biblical education. But it is more than that.
I don’t know if you found yourself in a long-distance relationship and were sending letters back and forth.
When I was in uni I would write to some people who used to attend this church when I was living in Sydney. We did beach missions together and about once a fortnight or so we would write emails about uni and what we are up to and church.
In a long-distance relationship, those letters or emails contain information that would be passed on between two people, but the main point would be to maintain a connection with that other person. The Bible is more like that, about maintaining a connection rather than an information textbook.
And as we know more about God and what he wants for our life, I think we will be more satisfied in Him. In who He is and what He has done for us.
Someone said
the benefits of the Word of God act more like vitamins. People who regularly take vitamins do so because of their long-term benefits, not because every time they swallow one of the pills, they feel new strength surging through their bodies. They have developed a habit of consistently taking vitamins because they have been told that, in the long haul, vitamin supplements are going to have a beneficial effect on their physical health (1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Bible, Effect of Reading)So can I encourage you to read your Bible over the long haul? If you don’t have a regular time, people suggest you should add to an already existing habit to get yourself started. If you make a coffee or tea in the morning, add reading the Bible to that. If you shower before bed, after that read His word.
In COVID I started a new routine of getting up at 6:30 in the morning, 30 minutes before the kids are allowed out of their rooms. I get up, make a coffee and then read my Bible and pray for the day. I’ve kept that up since we have come out of lockdown. Sometimes it is only 10 minutes, sometimes on the weekend it doesn’t happen, but it has become a regular habit. I don’t tell you about my habit to show how good I am, but to let you know that without that habit I would be really bad at reading God’s word.
And Please have confidence that you too can read the Bible for yourself.
We aren’t trying to be legalistic about Bible reading, but trying to encourage a habit of reading the Bible, because God’s word is good, it gives joy and life. The problem with the pressure of daily Bible reading isn’t necessarily the task itself, it is our heart. We can turn it into a legalistic task when the original intention is actually a relationship. So give yourself grace if you fall behind, and don’t feel guilty if you haven’t had a quiet time in 3 weeks. Just start something now. It doesn’t have to be good, it just can be better than what it is.
There are also countless tools available to help. Last year I raised the issue of Bible reading in some Life Groups before we introduced SOAP. One guy at this church told me felt challenged when I asked if he read the Bible daily. He ended up downloading the Our Daily Bread app and has been reading it ever since.
I can’t stand listening to conversational podcasts. They are like meandering unstructured chatter. But I used to listen to heaps of sermons when I would drive to and from ANU. One time I thought to listen to the whole Bible. It’s about 75 hours. 30 minutes in either direction is 75 work days, or sometime by mid-October if you start early this term.
We also have Life Groups that meet throughout the week for people to come together to read the Bible and talk about in a group. Attending a small group helps in your reading of God’s word. This term we are about to start a series on 1 Peter, the booklets are in the foyer, and everyone is welcome to take one. We currently have around 40 life groups, which sounds large, but maybe half of everyone who comes to a service once a month is in a Life Group. This term we hope to start three more Life Groups. One will be aimed at women and will meet on Wednesday evenings, one will be around the Gordon area and another will be for retired folk on a Tuesday afternoon. If you are not in a Life Group, please think about joining one, and consider how a group like this may help in your relationship with God and His word. Feel free to see me afterwards or send me an email, so I can grab your details and hook you up.
Consider the difference between a strong and a weak cup of tea. The same ingredients—water and tea—are used for both. The difference is that the strong cup of tea results from the tea leaves’ immersion in the water longer, allowing the water more time to get into the tea and the tea into the water. The longer the steeping process, the stronger the cup of tea. In the same way, the more time we spend in God’s Word helps adjust our pallet for the tastes of God’s word. It determines how deeply we get into God’s word and how it gets into us. Just like the tea, the longer we are in the Word, the “stronger” we become. (1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Bible, Study Of)God’s word a lamp to our feat, it gives life and joy. Will you, like the Psalmist make a commitment to not forget what it says and to follow it till the very end?
I'll pray
Lord, thank you for your word. May it be a lamp to our feet and bring us life and joy. Through your Spirit, help us to seek your words and be determined to follow it till the very end. Amen.
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