Daily Bites Of God's Word - Part 36 - Psalm 119:36

Hello there, and welcome back to Daily Bites of God's Word. This is Andy Cain. It's a joy to be back with you once again.

Today we're looking at Psalm 119, verse 36. And once again, we've got it starting out with the word

CAUSE. This is very difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, the sovereignty of God and how

God is the origin of everything. He is the cause. He is the driving force. He is the one that determines what happens in time.

Now, despite some of the misinterpretations and misrepresentations, we're not saying that God pulls strings like robots.

But it's very true that with our creaturely will, our will is limited in a sense.

We don't have the free will God does to act with absolutely no regard for anything else.

All of our decisions, while we freely make them, have so many factors in play. There's our will, whether we're unsaved and slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness.

We've got certain other things we take into account and all these things. So there's a difference in the creature's will and the

Creator's will. And so the creature can be caused by the Creator to act in a certain way.

So we saw in verse 34, we want God... These are prayers. These are things we should be praying to God to do in and through us and for us.

CAUSE ME TO UNDERSTAND. Verse 35, CAUSE ME TO WALK. Verse 36, CAUSE MY HEART TO INCLINE TO OR TOWARD YOUR TESTIMONIES AND NOT TO DISHONEST GAIN.

Being inclined towards dishonest gain and sin is a natural consequence of being human.

And in our unregenerate and unsafe state, it's all that we are. We're totally depraved. Our spirit is dead in sin.

Our body and flesh is completely wrapped up in the stain of sinful humanness.

And when we are saved, our spirit is raised to life. So our soul and our spirit is saved and holy and righteous.

But we remain in sinful humanness and sinful flesh. And so that war is going on.

And so we need to be actively seeking God to continually and increasingly so cause us to walk and to live and to have our hearts inclined towards His testimonies and away from dishonest gain, away from those things that we used to seek.

And we see this all throughout the New Testament. The talk of the old man versus the new man, the new creation in Christ, the new creature.

Galatians 2 20, how we're crucified and united with Christ. And now it's no longer we who live, but God living in and through us.

This is all consistent with Old Testament Scripture right here in Psalm 119.

And my friends, one of the most beautiful things that I love to see beyond the consistency and beautiful context in Scripture, it's the consistency and the harmony of Scripture, divinely inspired, inerrant

Scripture. There is no divide between Old and New Testament. There is no divide between Psalms and Colossians.

It's all in harmony together telling one story of redemption of a sovereign

God who created for His purposes and for His glory. And we as His creatures need to be

God -centered in everything that we do. And specifically in having our hearts inclined towards God and toward His Word.