Sermon: Psalm 119 served three ways (Psalm 119:1 8) Dan Mueller, 12th Feb 2017, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany Text Psalm 119:1 8 LEB they seek him with a whole heart. 3 They also do no wrong; they walk in his ways. 4 You have commanded your precepts, that we should keep them diligently. 5 Oh that my ways were steadfast, to keep your statutes! 6 Then I would not be ashamed when I look to all your commands. 7 I will give you thanks with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous laws. 8 I will heed your statutes; do not utterly forsake me. Sermon Introduction To help you all get to know me, I thought it might be helpful to share something about myself. So I ll let the cat out of the bag: I can t cook! (Well, that s not quite true, I do know how to cook cereal: add cereal to bowl, pour milk, stop before milk reaches top of bowl). While I can t cook, I do enjoy watching others cook. So one of my favourite TV shows is the reality show Masterchef. Hands up anyone who s seen Masterchef? Something that fascinates me on the show are the dishes served three ways, like duck served three ways, chocolate three ways, pork served three ways. The slide here shows pork served three ways from the most recent season: (1) spiced pork, (2) roast pork, and (3) pork floss (dried, woolly pork). Now this got me thinking: if I can t cook and serve up a meal three ways, maybe I could serve Scripture three ways. So here we go: Psalm 119 served three ways. Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 1 of 6
The first way the way of the lost The first time I read this psalm earlier in the week, I was dismayed. The psalm opens with two statements blessed are those who These describe the ideal life walking the Way of Yahweh or God: The picture here is of someone walking according to the instruction of God: as if God is calling out directions, describing the path to follow; and the disciple is carefully following these instructions (or law ), walking the right path, blameless. If we were to modernize the word picture, perhaps we could imagine a driver in a cross-country pursuit like the Dakar Rally. The navigator sits in the passenger seat calling out instructions to the driver as they steer to avoid obstacles like dry river beds & bull-dust. The blessed and blameless driver heeds the instructions, navigating safely around the obstacles. The careless driver ignores the instruction at their own peril, becoming lost, possibly stranded in the scorching heat of the desert. Or perhaps we could picture a cooking team: one person calls out the steps of the recipe, and the other follows. If the one cooking ignores a step, or is careless, the cake ends up sinking and is ruined. These word pictures are an approximation, but they paint the picture: the blessed ones follow the way of God. But as I read, I began to have questions: Am I blameless? always travelling the right way? Am I blessed? With so many moments of sadness and pain and hurt, my walk doesn t seem very blessed. The psalm goes on: 2 [The blessed ones] seek him with a whole heart. 3 They do no wrong; they walk in his ways. And this got me thinking further: What way do I walk? What do I seek after with my whole heart? So often it seems I find myself not walking God s way, but my own way a shortcut that seems quick and easy. Or I want a more glamorous path, that path up there (pointing), on top of the hill where everyone can see me, receiving accolades and having a good reputation, or being successful. Yet this thinking always leads to trouble: the short-cuts take longer, the higher, more glamorous path is actually a dead-end. Do you also find yourself walking these lost paths? The psalm continues: Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 2 of 6
5 Oh that my ways were steadfast, to keep your statutes! 6 Then I would not be ashamed when I look to all your commands. So often when I look at the commands of God, I am ashamed. I fail to do what I should, and I do what I shouldn t do (Romans 7:15). I fall short of what God demands (Romans 3:23). This failure results in individual shame, felt by me. Yet shame and honour in the ancient Jewish culture was much larger than just an individual. Honour and shame affected your whole family, clan, and community. If you acted shamefully, you disgraced your entire family, you were cut-off from your clan, and ostracised from the community. Forsaken. Verse 8 reads: 8 I will heed your statutes; do not utterly forsake me. When we don t heed God s instruction, we rightly deserve to be forsaken cut-off from relationship with God. We deserve to be deserted under the scorching sun of the desert, bogged in the pit of bull-dust we drove head-on into. We deserve to be abandoned in the flour-covered kitchen, to eat the disastrous and horrible tasting cake by ourselves. The second way: the Way, the Truth, and the Life Luckily there is a second way to read this psalm: it is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. See God knows that the corrupt way we walk is lost, leading to pain and death. Despite this God does not abandon us. He can t. It is against his loving nature. For Yahweh is gracious to you according to the promises in his Word (Psalm 119:58). His mercies come to [you] that [you] might live (Psalm 119:77). The Word of God revives [you]! (Psalm 119:93,107). So the Father sends the Word robed in flesh, in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. And as Jesus walked this dusty earth with us humans, he entered into our world of failure and pain and death, proclaiming that he alone is the Way, Truth, and Life (John 14:6). So let s read the Psalm a second time in this light. they seek him with a whole heart. Jesus is God s blessed and blameless Son, the unblemished lamb. 1 Peter chapter 1 says this: 18 [Y]ou know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from [your] empty way of life 19 Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 3 of 6
but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Pet 1:18 19 NIV) Or in other words: Jesus redeemed you, a lost and condemned person. He has purchased and freed you from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. Not with silver or gold; but with his holy, precious blood, and with his innocent suffering and death (Small Catechism, second article of the Creed). Jesus accomplished all this for you on the cross. The cross was one of the most disgraceful punishments imaginable, used only for criminals considered subhuman. To hang naked on a tree was shameful and accursed (Galations 3:13; Deuteronomy 21:23). To die by crucifixion was to plumb the lowest depths of disgrace (Bruce 1990, 338). Instead of us who should be ashamed and forsaken, Jesus the blessed and blameless one became shamed and forsaken, gasping with his dying breath: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me [your beloved Son]? (Matthew 27:46) Thankfully Jesus body does not stay hanging on the cross. He is buried and three days later raised to life. The author of the book of Hebrews tells us in chapter 12: [Jesus] endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2 NRSV). Jesus has been reinstated to the family. He is no longer ashamed and cut-off, but restored to his proper place at the right hand of the Father. The third way: the way of the kept This leads to our third way of reading the psalm: the way of the kept. See a joyful exchange (Luther 1520, 62) takes place: as we are joined together with Christ and trust in him, we are declared blameless. We are rescued and made right with God. And isn t that the biggest blessing of all!? So let s read the Psalm a third time: they seek him with a whole heart. You are now blameless in God s sight. You are now blessed. But wait, there s more! For the sake of Jesus we can now cry out to Our Father in Heaven: 5 Oh that my ways were steadfast, to keep your statutes! 6 Then I would not be ashamed when I look to all your commands. Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 4 of 6
And on behalf of his Son, the Father hears our cry. Jesus takes the shame of the cross, so that we have no shame. And the Father makes our way steadfast. He helps us keep his statues. He keeps us in his Word. He keeps us on the right path. This is not something we do. The prayer Oh that my ways were steadfast is a plea to God for him to make us steadfast and keep us. This is a daily, hourly, momentby-moment confession we have no strength of our own to walk the way of Yahweh. Our ways are by nature opposed to the way of God. We must be turned by the Lord s direction, in a new direction away from the path of destruction (Spurgeon 1993, 179). So how does God turn us? How are we kept on his way? Verse seven provides a clue: 7 I will give you thanks with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous laws. (1) Firstly: when we give thanks to God we learn his righteous laws. You may know that another name for the Lord s Supper or Holy Communion, is the Greek word Eucharist. And Eucharist literally means thanksgiving or to give thanks. So as we commune together and give thanks to God in the Eucharist, we are fed the body and blood of the perfect, blameless lamb and turned toward God. The body and blood of Christ strengthens and preserves us. Our ways are made steadfast God secures our footing as we walk in the law of the Lord. (2) Secondly: being kept on the way is not a quick job. We only need look at the whole of Psalm 119 to see that. It s the longest psalm, weighing in at 176 verses. The psalm is actually an acrostic poem, stretching inclusively from A to Z, marshalling the entire alphabet to praise God and his Word. It takes about 20 minutes to read the whole psalm aloud. Now the construction of this poem teaches us that meditating on God s Word needs to be done in a deliberate and ordered way, over a period of time. It s not like two minute noodles or heating up a frozen microwave meal; but more like stewing a piece of meat in the slow cooker all day, everyday. God s Word is not a map to be pulled out after we get stuck in the bull-dust, but rather directions to be consulted each moment we travel. God s Word goes with us in the daily plod of our life-long journey with Jesus. Conclusion So this week, I encourage you to think about your daily plod of your life-long journey with Jesus. How are you being directed and turned by the Word of God? Perhaps you might consider sitting down for 20 minutes and reading the whole of Psalm 119, and allow the law of Yahweh to guide and bless you. And as you meditate on God s law and instruction: (1) May you realize that without God s Word you are lost: stuck in the bull-dust, left in the kitchen with a sinking cake. (2) May you know that Jesus Christ is the Way; he is the blessed one, without blame, who took your shame on the cross. (3) And may you be blessed as Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 5 of 6
you are kept on the right path by God s Word, and the body and blood of his Son. Amen. Walla Walla Lutheran Parish Page 6 of 6