WWUTT 1204 Teach Me Your Statutes? (Psalm 119:33-48)

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The Law of God is not a burden to us. In fact, if we love God, we love

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His Law, and we desire to keep it, because it is through the Word of God that we understand what it means to be godly when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing, and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of Psalm 119.

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It's like a bunch of little psalms in one great big psalm. As we opened up this study last week,

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I mentioned that this psalm is divided up into 22 sections, each one of these sections titled after a letter of the

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Hebrew alphabet. That's how they applied it to memory. And each section is also only eight verses long.

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So we looked last week at Aleph, Bet, Gimel, and Dalet, and today we're up to He, the fifth letter of the

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Hebrew alphabet, starting in verse 33. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end.

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Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.

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Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.

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Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.

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Confirm to your servant your promise that you may be feared. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good.

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Behold, I long for your precepts. In your righteousness, give me life.

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Once again, we come to understand Psalm 119 as a love song to God for his law, for his testimonies given to his people.

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The holiday of Pentecost was a celebration of the giving of God's law to his people, and it was at Pentecost, we read about in Acts 2, where the apostles went into Jerusalem and shared the gospel for the first time, and shared the gospel in tongues, different languages that everybody could hear it and know it in their native language.

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There were Jews that were scattered all throughout the Roman Empire. They came back to Jerusalem for the feast, for the festivals, and here for Pentecost, there were people that represented 12 different languages.

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And so the apostles went out speaking those languages that they may hear the gospel and turn from their sin and believe.

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But all of this was at a celebration of the giving of God's law. God spoke to his people from Mount Sinai when he gave them the

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Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. And now God spoke through his Holy Spirit in his apostles to declare to them the gospel there at Pentecost.

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Christ, who fulfilled the law, and by faith in him, we receive salvation, not by our keeping of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

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Jesus said in Matthew 11, he said, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We come to find a joy in the law and a desire to keep it when we understand the grace of God that's been given to us in Jesus Christ, who forgives us our sin, our transgressing the law, and fills us with his spirit that we may love his law and desire to keep it.

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And now we can do so in a holy way, in a way that is pleasing unto the Lord. In 1

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John 5, 3, it says this, For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

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So when we read in Matthew 11, Jesus saying, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

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And we read in 1 John 5, 3, his commandments are not burdensome, and yet we are to keep his commandments.

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What Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 11 is that we would receive the grace of God by faith in him, and now we may keep his law and not keep it in such a way that we think we have to do it perfectly in order to attain salvation because we can't.

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Jesus did that for us. So now we take his yoke upon us, and that's a light burden.

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Now it's like, wow, I'm not striving to attain salvation because I couldn't do that anyway.

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Christ has purchased that for me, and he gives it to me. And so now I can keep the law of God without fear of feeling like if at any point

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I fail, I'm done. I've undone this entire thing. There isn't anything that I can do now to attain salvation because I just failed.

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We are not saved by our works. We're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.

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And so when we come here, that's important to keep in mind. We come to this particular section of Psalm 119 because we have in verse 33, teach me,

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O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end.

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This is as though the psalmist would be asking, Lord, let me take your yoke upon me.

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Teach me the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. My own way, my own striving.

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I'm not getting there. And especially as Jesus was talking to a people that had been so burdened by the

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Pharisees who were adding to the law, twisting the law, there were things that people just simply could not keep.

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It was not going to earn them the righteousness of God because it wasn't even God's law anymore since the

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Pharisees and the scribes had twisted it so much. So this person here, the psalmist praying unto the

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Lord and saying, teach me your ways. I want to keep your laws and keep them to the end.

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Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.

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Remember what the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

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How can we even do that? I mean, surely you have to know when you meditate on that commandment, there's just no way for us to do that.

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You can't love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Somewhere in there, you're going to mess up.

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And if at any point you desire something else, maybe I can just have this thing.

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And can I still say that I'm a worshiper of God if I go after this? Somewhere your attention is being taken off of God and you're focusing on this other thing.

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Now you're not loving the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength anymore. So this ability to even do this, this also comes from God.

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Give me understanding that I may keep your law and keep it with my whole heart because of the understanding that God has given to us, because of the desire that he has poured into our hearts through his

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Holy Spirit. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.

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We should not ever look at the law of God as thinking of it as something like, oh man, this is so terrible.

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It's horrible. Who can keep up with this? And then someone comes along with a gospel and then we're like, oh, okay, great.

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So now I don't have to pay attention to the law. I've got Jesus and now I'm good. This is one of the most reprehensible things of the way that Andy Stanley does his ministry.

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And when he tells people that they can unhitch from the Old Testament, he will say, hey, you were burdened down by the

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Old Testament. You had difficulty in believing what it said. You couldn't keep any of these laws. It doesn't make sense to you.

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Well, you don't need to believe any of that. You just need to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That is awful. It's downright,

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I want to call it heretical, but if it's not, it's borderline for Andy Stanley to just be dismissing the law of God that way.

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We should love God's law. And yet he thinks he's telling people who have walked away from the church, people who've doubted because they couldn't believe in a global flood or the

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Tower of Babel or any of those other things. He thinks that he's helping them out, but he's actually helping them believe in something that isn't the

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Bible anymore. If he can say to them, look, you didn't even have to love the law in the first place.

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You just have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Well, Jesus directly confronted this in Luke chapter 16.

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He said, if they cannot believe the law and the prophets, then neither will they believe if someone should rise from the dead.

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So if you can't believe the Old Testament, you're not going to believe in the Jesus of the New Testament either. It should be our desire to love

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God's law. And if you were truly trying to lead somebody was walking away from the faith back to the truth of what

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God has proclaimed in his word, then you should tell them you should love God's law. The reason why you're walking away from the faith is because you hate

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God's law. That's why you're walking away from it. You hate God's word and the things that he has said.

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Jesus said in Mark 8 38, whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels?

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There's a part of the Bible you're ashamed of. You don't want to follow it. You just want to pretend part of it isn't there.

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Boy, search your heart. Repent of that. Come before the Lord and pray.

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Lead me in the path of your commandments. Give me understanding that I may observe your law with my whole heart, that I may delight in it, incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain.

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This isn't about me. It's about worshipping God and wanting to do so with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength.

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We find meaning and purpose when we read God's law and when our attention is called to it to keep it and walk in it.

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Confirm to yourself. I'm sorry. I've skipped over verse 37. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things.

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Boy, do we need that in this generation, right? Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things.

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How long have you been sitting there in front of your computer, clicking through stupid YouTube videos or scrolling through however many tweets or Facebook posts or Instagram pictures or things like that on your smartphone or whatever meaningless stuff you might be looking at?

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You go even deeper into that, into some of the sinful things that you might be dwelling upon or looking at on television, movies, your smartphone, your computer screen.

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Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.

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Help me to look to the things of God. Confirm to your servant your promise that you may be feared.

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That's an interesting statement. Confirm to your servant your promise that you may be feared.

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The promise of God is a promise of deliverance in the Lord Jesus Christ, most certainly.

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But the promise of God is also a promise of judgment for those who do wickedly. So knowing that God is holy and we are not, knowing that God has promised to deliver the righteous and punish the unrighteous, may that stir in us a reverent fear of the

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Lord that we may turn from our wicked ways and seek the righteousness that is demonstrated to us through his word and want to walk in his precepts, keep his testimonies, love his law.

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Turn away the reproach that I dread, it says in verse 39, for your rules are good.

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Behold, I long for your precepts in your righteousness. Give me life.

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And we have a righteousness that comes not from ourselves, but it is given to us by God. As we've been talking about this past week in Romans chapter 3, the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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Let's continue on this next letter. The Hebrew alphabet might say in your Bible, Wah, right?

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W -A -W. It's pronounced Vav. Let your steadfast love come to me,

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O Lord. Your salvation according to your promise. Then shall

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I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word.

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And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules.

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I will keep your law continually forever and ever. And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.

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I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, for I find my delight in your commandments, which

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I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which

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I love. And I will meditate on your statutes. Keep in mind, this is also a song here that we're reading.

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So this was set to music. If you see some repetitious things going on here, well, that's because that's the musical rhythm that we're reading this in.

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Something that I meant to mention on that previous section, and I forgot. There's a part where it says, lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.

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That was verse 35. Remember reading in Psalm 23, lead me in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.

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Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Same statement. You can see those two statements synonymously.

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So here we have in verse 41, let your steadfast love come to me.

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Oh, Lord, your salvation, according to your promise. So the psalmist recognizes here that salvation comes not from ourselves, doesn't even come from our ability to keep the law.

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Salvation is given to us from God. We are saved from our circumstances. We're saved from sin.

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We are saved from the wages of our sin, which is death.

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We're saved from the judgment of God because of our sin. Salvation comes from God. Verse 42, then shall

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I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. And you probably think of a person who taunts me as someone who's making fun of me because I desire the righteous way.

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That's exactly what that would mean. Jesus, remember, he said in Matthew 5, 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are you when people revile you because of me, Jesus said.

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For your reward is great. They persecuted the prophets who were before you. The apostle Paul told his servant

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Timothy, 2 Timothy 3, 12, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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Peter said that when you don't join the pagans in their debauchery, they'll malign you just for that.

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You don't even have to preach the gospel to them just because you won't partner with them in their sinful, wicked ways.

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They'll make fun of you for it. That's what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. The Sodomites hated

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Lot because he was not as sinful as they were. That's talked about there in that story, if you go back and read it.

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We have those who are going to taunt us and make fun of us simply because we desire the righteous way.

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But the psalmist here says, then I shall have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word.

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The person who's taunting me, what does he have to give me? He doesn't have anything. You would throw away the word of God just so you don't have to deal with a little bit of taunting every once in a while.

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But we respond to that taunting with the right way of God that is given to us in his word.

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And we even do this with gentleness and respect. Remember the word that is given to us in 1 Peter 3 15.

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Be ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you, but do this with gentleness and respect.

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That's even to the one who taunts us. Verse 43, and take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules.

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I talked a moment ago about those who walk away from the faith. That happens because God has judged that person for loving their sin more than they love

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God. And so God would take away from them the desire for God's word and to keep his word.

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People who walk away from the faith are being judged because they loved worldliness more than they loved godliness.

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When a person loses their love for God's word, it has been taken away from them. And the psalmist here is saying, let that not happen to me.

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Let me love your ways and your righteousness shown to me in your word that your word may not be taken from my mouth.

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I will keep your law continually forever and ever. And that's by the grace of God.

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And I shall walk in a wide place for I have sought your precepts.

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Now that that can be kind of curious because we're used to hearing Jesus saying in Matthew chapter 7, enter through the narrow gate, right?

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Wide is the way that leads to destruction. Many find that because that's the easy way.

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Narrow is the way that leads to life. And few will find it because that's the difficult path. So what does the psalmist mean here when he says,

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I shall walk in a wide place for I have sought your precepts? Well, Jesus in Matthew chapter 7 is talking about taking a road less traveled.

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Walk the way that is different than the way the rest of the world is going. That way is broad because there's a lot of people on it.

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But this right here, what this is referring to is a different picture. So don't see these two illustrations and try to mash them together and think that one is contradicting the other.

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The picture here in Psalm 119 is that God's law makes the way evident to us.

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The people who are walking by their own way don't know which way they're going. And so they're looking for the path.

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They're stumbling off somewhere in the wilderness and they're looking for a road to follow, but can't find it.

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But when you know the way according to God's rules, then it's so evident to you.

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It's a wide path. It's like I'm not I'm not pushing through briars and brush and trying to hack my way through the trees to find a path for myself.

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There it is. It's just wide open space. And I can see the direction that I'm going.

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I can see the end is in sight. It's over there. My destination is in that direction.

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So so that's the picture that you have there. I shall walk in a wide place for I have sought your precepts in Proverbs chapter four, beginning in verse 10.

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It says, hear my son and accept my words that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom and led you in the paths of uprightness.

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When you walk, your step will not be hampered. And if you run, you will not stumble.

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There's no obstacles in your way. It's wide open. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let go.

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Guard her for she is your life. Still in Proverbs four, this is 14. Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil.

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Avoid it. Do not go on it. Turn away from it and pass on for they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong.

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They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble for they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.

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But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. It's clear.

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It's evident, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness.

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You can't see it. It's difficult to make out. They do not know over what they stumble.

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So the path of righteousness clear to us because God has shown us that way.

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According to his word in that way, it is a wide place. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.

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So think of this in terms of, I mean, politics. Just observe politics. The wickedness of our political leaders don't follow in their way.

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Follow God's word. And even when our politicians come down on us, our rulers, governors, kings, presidents,

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I mean, whoever is senators, representatives, whoever it might happen to be, whatever system of government you live under when these people lay laws down on top of us that are unjust and unrighteous, we're not following in their way.

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We're following in God's way. We find delight in his commandments.

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Which I love. That's verse 47, verse 48. Now, I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which

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I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. Have you ever heard anybody say we worship

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God? We do not worship his word, right? I worship Jesus. I don't worship the Bible. OK, yeah,

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I'm not advocating worshiping the Bible. You don't hold the Bible up. Bow down to the Bible. OK, but we do love

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God's word just as much as we love God. Never let anybody say to you that you need to just love

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Jesus more than his words or more than you love the Bible. They try to separate the two. You separate the two.

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You don't have God anymore because we know God according to his word. So you love his word as much as you love

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God. Are you going to say about your spouse, well, you know, I love my wife. I can't stand it when she talks to me, though.

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Then you don't actually love your wife. So here where the psalmist says, I lift up my hands toward your commandments, which

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I love, you almost have a worshipful posture toward the commandments of God. It's because it's through the commandments of God.

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We see who God is. His word is God, as we had have said plainly to us in John chapter one.

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In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. That, of course, is a reference to Jesus Christ.

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But Jesus is the word of God who put on flesh and dwelt among us all the fullness of God, pleased to dwell in him.

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When we look into God's word, we see God. So there's no difference between him and his word.

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Love God's word and you love God. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for showing us who you are according to your word.

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What a great gift this is that we may have a Bible sitting open in front of us that we may study these things together and behold the wonders of who you are leading us in paths of righteousness for your namesake.

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Turn us away from every wicked thing. Let us not dwell so much and so long on worthless things, but give us life according to your word that we may walk in this delight to keep this give honor and glory to God in all that we say and do.

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Cleanse us from unrighteousness. Lead us in righteousness. We ask this in Jesus name.