I. Great Opportunities in the Word (119:17-20) Connecting To the Word God s Word A Father s Best Friend Psalm 119:17-24

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Elmer Morrison
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1 Connecting To the Word God s Word A Father s Best Friend Psalm 119:17-24 Psalm 119: Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word. 18 Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law. 19 I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me. 20 My soul breaks with longing For Your judgments at all times. 21 You rebuke the proud--the cursed, Who stray from Your commandments. 22 Remove from me reproach and contempt, For I have kept Your testimonies. 23 Princes also sit and speak against me, But Your servant meditates on Your statutes. 24 Your testimonies also are my delight And my counselors. This section of the psalm divides in two parts. In the first part, the psalmist is taken up with the great opportunities he finds in God's Word. In the second part, he is taken up with the great opposition he finds to God's Word. The Word of God divides the whole human race like that. Some find God's Word a treasure chest of wisdom, counsel, and help. Others despise it and try to undermine its influence and power. I. Great Opportunities in the Word (119:17-20) The psalmist found four essential things for his soul in the Word of God. A. It Bestows Life On the Soul (119:17) "Deal bountifully with Thy servant, that I may live, and keep Thy word." Here the psalmist seems to anticipate the great change in dispensations which took place at Pentecost. Some of these Old Testament saints did that, even though they had no real understanding of what that change would mean. David, for instance, was able to anticipate New Testament justification even though he had sinned presumptuously and with a high hand. "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity," he wrote (Psalm 32:1-2; Romans 4:7-8). David thus entered into the truth that we are not justified by the works of the law but by the righteousness of Christ. Similarly, he anticipated, by a whole millenium, the "Melchizedek priesthood" of Christ. Here the psalmist enters into the new emphasis regarding law and life which would mark the difference between the old dispensation and the new. In the Old Testament emphasis, law came before life. The Old Testament dictum was, "This do, and thou

2 shalt live." Doing aright would bring life (Luke 10:28; Romans 10:5). In the New Testament emphasis, life comes before law. The New Testament dictum is, "If you live you will do this." Romans 8:2,4 "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death... that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit The psalmist entered into the good of that: living, he would obey God's Word. The life must come first, and that life can come only from God's bountiful dealings. That life is inherent in God's Word. It is imparted to the soul in the new birth 1 Peter 1:23 "being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever" B. It Brings Light Into the Soul (119:18) Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law. The soul is a very dark place until God's Word shines in. It is a great thing to get one's eyes opened to the Word of God, and once they are opened by the Holy Spirit we need to keep them open. In our daily quiet time we need to pray the psalmist's prayer and then start to look diligently for gems of truth. 2 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God..." It takes five English words, "given-by-inspiration-of- God," to render one Greek word which literally means "God-breathed." As the breath of a man is in each word he utters, so that words become the vehicles of his thought, so the breath of God is in the words of Scripture. Some 2,600 times the Old Testament writers claim that their words are the words of God; over 500 times the New Testament writers do the same. The Bible is God-breathed. Equally remarkable is the economy of words used by the Holy Ghost in imparting God's thoughts in human language. In classical Greek there are 97,921 words; in New Testament Greek there are only 5,857 words. Of all the words available to Him the Holy Spirit deliberately left unused 92,064 Greek words as unnecessary for His purpose. He ignored 94 percent of the Greek vocabulary. Yet with that small percentage of words He wrote down for us the sublimest stories, the grandest truths, the greatest concepts ever penned. Surely that is a wondrous thing about the Book of God. Those words He has uttered bring light into the soul. Think how inadequate are the best of human philosophies, how benighted the stateliest of manmade religions, when compared with the light shed into our native darkness by the Word of God.

3 C. It Banishes Loneliness From the Soul (119:19) I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me. There is no loneliness like it to be a stranger in a foreign land, to wander the streets of a bustling city, to be surrounded by millions of people, unable to read the signs in the shop windows, unable to understand a word that is being said on every hand to be friendless and alone, to be a stranger. I will never forget my first trip overseas to Japan.. That is how it was with the Lord Jesus. In the parable of the sheep and the goats He confessed Himself to be a stranger on earth. He was homeless in the world His hands had made. He longed for someone to talk to. Nobody spoke the language of Heaven so He found companionship and comfort in the Word of God. He listened to what His Father had to say to Him in His Word; He talked to His Father in prayer. The Scripture banished loneliness from His soul; it spoke the language of the land from which He had come. It will do the same for us. We all have times when we feel lonely, when we feel that nobody understands or cares. We all have deep needs. Every man is an island. We reach across the seas of our isolation to relatives, neighbors and friends, to acquaintances and people with whom we rub shoulders every day. But at times we are spiritual Robinson Crusoes, isolated. We have all kinds of gadgets to help us banish our solitude, but lonely moments still come. Then it is that this Book can banish loneliness from our soul; it introduces us to the "friend that sticketh closer than a brother." D. It Bares Longing in the Soul (119:20) My soul breaks with longing For Your judgments at all times. The word longing means "fervent desire." The person who has discovered the worth of God's Word yearns fervently to read it. It is attractive to one's soul. A needle free to move will turn toward a nearby magnet. The nature of the magnet has affinity with the nature of the needle. As a result, put a needle on the table near a magnet and it will rush instantly to the magnet the moment it is set free to move. When we are saved, the Lord does something to our soul. He does something to our nature. He puts His own nature in us, and that new nature responds to the drawing power of the Word of God. There is something else, too. Let a needle keep company with a magnet for any length of time, and it will take on the same nature. A magnet gets its strength from many tiny magnetic dipoles, all laid down in an orderly way, lying together in the same direction. In an ordinary needle or piece of steel, the magnetic dipoles lie in a thousand directions. There is no order, just chaos. When a needle comes under the influence of a magnet for any length of time, a miracle takes place. The disoriented dipoles are rearranged, order is brought out of chaos, and the needle takes on the

4 nature of the magnet. It becomes magnetized. It has a measure of the power we associate with the magnet. It has a drawing power of its own derived from the magnet. That is what God's Word will do for us. It brings our chaotic, disorderly lives into line. We take on the characteristics of the Word of God, and the mysterious power residing in this Book is imparted to our own lives. Then we have the power to attract other people. Nor is that all. Float a magnetized needle on water, or balance it on a pivot where it is free to move, and it will align itself so that it points toward the north, to that place where the earth's own magnetic lines of force come together. God's dwelling place, in Scripture, is said to be "in the sides [recesses] of the north" (Isaiah 14:13). That is the point to which the magnetized needle points, toward God's home. That is where the redeemed heart points, the heart that has bared its longings to the Word of God. It points toward home. The psalmist had discovered longings in his soul which only God's Word could satisfy. As the needle turns toward the magnet and the magnetized needle toward the north, so his soul yearned toward God's Word and toward Heaven. II. Great Opposition to the Word (119:21-24) It is obvious that not all people love the sacred Scriptures. Many despise them, deride them, detest them. A. The Antipathy (119:21-23) Real opposition to God's Word is evident on every hand. The social issues of today Same-sex Marriage, Abortion. The real issue is is the Bible the Word of God? It s really the Bible that they are against!!!!!!! The psalmist sensed opposition to the Word from three kinds of people. 1. The Domineering Man, Cursed of God (119:21) You rebuke the proud--the cursed, Who stray from Your commandments. Here we see a threefold development of sin. Pride is the root Error is the flower The Curse of God is the fruit It is pride that makes people think they know better than God, think that their ideas are superior to what is taught in God's Word. The principle of pride-errorcurse is seen everywhere in Scripture. It is seen, for instance, in the history of Lucifer, who once held the highest place in heaven, a place next to the throne of God. He was a magnificent creature, brilliant in mind and beautiful in body. His supreme

5 task was to lead the anthems of heaven and direct the angelic choirs in their hymns of praise to God. Then pride entered. He thought he should have the worship he directed to God. Pride was followed by error. He deceived himself into thinking that he, a creature, could dethrone the Creator. Deception was followed by rebellion and the curse of God which in his case was a curse without remedy. He fell from glory and has wandered the spaces of the universe a demented, hell-bound, twisted being ever since. That principle is seen in the history of King Uzziah. He reigned for a long time in Judah and was able to restore the fortunes of his troubled land. He put all his foes beneath his feet. Then pride entered, and on the heels of pride came error. He set aside God's Word, which taught that only a son of Aaron might enter the holy place of the temple and engage in the service of the sanctuary. Why should he share power with anyone, even with God's appointed priests? One tragic day he seized a censor, pushed his way into the forbidden place, and at once came under the curse. He was smitten with leprosy and lived a leper until the day of his death. The psalmist knew such people. We, too, know such persons, those whose intellectual pride drives them to force their godless notions on all around them. Our schools and colleges are full of them. The psalmist also sensed antipathy toward the Word of God from: 2. The Disdainful Man, Contemptuous of God (119:22) Remove from me reproach and contempt, For I have kept Your testimonies. The psalmist was up against people who scorned him for his adherence to the Word of God. Reproach and contempt from those who disdain God's Word are directed against the godly, against those who adhere to the Word of God. In many a college classroom young people from godly homes are held up to scorn and ridicule because they prefer God's account of creation to the atheist's evolutionary concepts. Let them take courage. People poured scorn on Jesus too. We remember, for instance, the day Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead. When He came into the room where the little girl lay, He commented, "She is not dead, but sleepeth." They laughed Him to scorn. We remember, too, how they gathered like vultures around the cross to wag their heads and to mock Him as He died. "Remove from me reproach and contempt for I have kept Thy testimonies" might well have been His prayer. Few things are harder to take than scorn. Few things cause young persons at school or in college to hide their faith more than the fear of scorn. Let us remember, people may laugh us into hell but they will never laugh us out. Then opposition came from:

6 3. The Dangerous Man, Controlled by God (119:23) Princes also sit and speak against me, But Your servant meditates on Your statutes. The psalmist is now contemplating a man in a position of power, able to use that power to put down the humble believer. This man could harness the resources of the state to banish the Bible and to persecute believers. History tells countless tales of such, but God has His sovereign way of dealing with them and confounding their boasts and plans. The Emperor Diocletian was one such man, he and his co-emperor and son-in-law Galerius. The pair of them set out to put an end to the faith, committing countless atrocities against Christians. One of their chief goals was to eradicate the Bible from the face of the earth. The fact that we have no extant manuscripts of the New Testament older than the middle of the fourth century is proof of the widespread destruction of Christian writings during the reign of Diocletian. All the pains that iron and steel, fire and sword, rack and cross, and wild beasts could inflict were employed to ban the Bible and interdict Christianity. It was all in vain. Galerius died eaten up of a loathsome disease so vile that he was deserted by all his friends. Diocletian abandoned his empire, retired to private life, and became more interested in cabbages than Christians. His death is shrouded in obscurity. Gibbon, ever willing to cast the enemies of Christ in favorable light, says that he died a suicide but adds a reluctant footnote to the effect that Diocletian probably died a raving madman. God controlled this dangerous man and forced him off the throne he had abused. Then, when all was done, He summoned him on high to answer to Heaven for his crimes on earth. As for the Bible he banned and burned, it has long since witnessed the burial of the Roman empire just as it will see the doom of all its foes. The psalmist entered into the sense and spirit of this. In his own day he sensed antipathy toward God's Word from all kinds of people, but he was unmoved. His response was to open his Bible afresh and to meditate in the truths of God's Word. B. The Antidote (119:24) Your testimonies also are my delight And my counselors. The more the scornful sought to discredit the Bible, the more the psalmist found his delight in it. In the pages of God's Book he found a multitude of counselors able to lead him and guide him even though his path was beset with peril. It is better to seek the counsel of Solomon than of Dr. Spock and his kind when it comes to raising our children. All these people can give us is the wisdom of this world but Solomon can give us wisdom from on high.

7 It is better to seek the counsel of Moses than Darwin when it comes to the origin of life. All Darwin can give us is supposition, theory, and ever-changing guesses. Moses can tell us what really happened. It is better to seek the counsel of the Bible than The Wall Street Journal on the kinds of investments to make with your money. All Barron's can give us is advice on how to get a 15 percent increase on investments; the Bible tells us how to get 10,000 percent (a hundredfold). It is better to go to the Scriptures than to a psychiatrist with our guilt, depressions, frustrations, anxieties, and inhibitions. A psychiatrist can identify, perhaps, the source of the problem; yet if he is ignoring "the law of sin" he is often wrong even then. The Scriptures not only diagnose our problems, they can transform our personality. The psalmist learned to seek the counsel of God's Word rather than the counsel of worldly people. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, David and Daniel, Moses and Joshua have far more meaningful things to say to us than all the celebrated sages of the world. Come what may, the psalmist chose to find his answers in the Bible. He was a wise man indeed.

Psalm 119: The Point: Category: Didactic Occasion: The Christian Life Author: Unknown. Psalm 119:

Psalm 119: The Point: Category: Didactic Occasion: The Christian Life Author: Unknown. Psalm 119: Psalm 119:17-24 97 Psalm 119:17-24 Category: Didactic Occasion: The Christian Life Author: Unknown Gimel ג 17 Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word. 18 Open thou mine eyes,