Psalm 119: 81-128 (He Has Given Us His Word, part 3, Jeff Kliewer)

Let's pray. Father, You spoke ten commands, let there be, let there be, and everything that You spoke came into existence by Your Word. You did not just spin this world into existence and then leave it.

You did not leave us to grope about in the dark. Instead, You have given us Your Word. What a treasure Your Word is to us. To direct our path, to be light unto our path. Lord, we pray that this morning You would incline our hearts to Your Word.

We pray that You would open our eyes to see wondrous things in Your law. We ask that in the preaching of the Word, You would not just allow words to pass through brain matter, but instead, Lord, that You would cause Your Word to go forth to heal us spiritually, to change us and sanctify us by Your truth.

Your Word is truth. We pray that You would send forth Your Word with power to accomplish the work for which it is sent. Lord, we turn our eyes and our attention to Your Word. You are the God who speaks.

You are not silent. So speak to us, Lord. Your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, Amen. He has given us His Word. He has given us blessing. Psalm 119, verse 1,. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.

We are like trees planted by streams of water. We yield our fruit in season, and whatever we do prospers. He has given us His Word. He has given us protection. Psalm 119, verse 8,. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word.

So we're like swordsmiths. Temptation comes to us, through the devil, through the evil one, and because of our own fallen flesh, the world in which we live, temptation comes, and just like Jesus, we wield the sword to fight off temptation.

It is written. It is written. It is written. One of the gifts of the Word of God is that we're protected from temptation. Third, Gimel. He has given us His Word. He has given us wonder. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law.

We're like children at a water park. We're like young people in the wonder years. Only our delight, our awe, is in the law of the Lord as we mature. Fourth, He has given us His Word, so He has given us courage.

My soul melts away for sorrow. Strengthen me according to Your Word. We're like King David who says he can bend bronze, who can leap over a wall. When our strength melts away, when we're called to do something beyond what we can do in our own strength, His Word rises up inside of us.

He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. His Word is our courage. He has given us His Word, so He has given us attention. It says in Psalm 119 verse 36,. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain.

Before the Word grows in us, we're like Eutychus. With the preaching of the Word, our minds get distracted. We lose attention, but the Word of God is able to arrest our attention and grab us to pay attention to His Word.

He has given us His Word, so He has given us an apologetic. Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in Your Word. If you read Romans 1, we're told that God's eternal power and His divine nature are clearly seen through the things that are made so that men are without an excuse.

There's no excuse.

All people see the created world and know that there's a God. That word in the Greek for excuse is anapologetu. No excuse, no answer. They have no answer to give before God, unless they come humbly. But we, on the other hand, we have an answer to those who taunt us, to those who attack the Bible.

We have an answer, and that answer is Jesus and His Word. He is our perfect plea. We have an apologetic. 1 Peter 3 .15. Next, Zion. If you can't tell, we're following through Psalm 119. Each stanza begins with a Hebrew letter.

And in your notes, I've given you one verse from each of those letters. Zion, Psalm 119, verse 50. This is my comfort in affliction that your promise gives me life. So He's given us His Word, which means we have comfort.

We will be afflicted in this world. We will be attacked by the evil one. Picture Martin Luther under attack while he's translating the Bible and he throws the inkwell against the wall. Fighting with the Word of God as he claims the truth of Scripture against the evil one who is accusing him.

Hasatan, the great accuser. That Satan, that devil who brings his lies against us. We fight that affliction with the Word of God. And God is our comfort. Next, Psalm 119, verse 57. He has given us His Word, so He has given us satisfaction.

The Lord is my portion. I promise to keep your words. One of the great gifts of the Bible is that we can be truly satisfied in a world where nothing is ever finally satisfying. Thirst always returns. Hunger always returns.

Our desires always return except that the Word of God can finally satisfy our soul. We can feel complete and whole, delighted in God, finally satisfied. Ninth, Psalm 119, verse 67. Tet. He has given us His Word, so that means He's given us discipline.

Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I keep Your Word. And finally, bringing us up to speed for this week, He has given us His Word, so He has given us teaching.

He makes us.

To be teachers. He gives us teachers of the Word, and then as we grow and mature, we become teachers of others. Teachers of children, teachers of adults. Verse 79, let those who fear you turn to Me, that they may know your testimonies.

We're teachers with our lives as well as with our words. So these ten gifts He's given to us. And I stop and think about it. Does the world have anything like that? Does the world offer any gift to you and I that compares to the gift of the Bible?

The world cannot match one of those ten, let alone all ten. And now we proceed to six more. So turn with me to Psalm 119, verse 81 and following.

Desperation and the Word as Lifeline

Cough.

There will come a moment in your life where you'll be desperate. And in those desperate moments, when you're at the end of your rope, the Word of God is your lifeline. The letter cough is like a sideways U.

And the Hebrews looked at that as a picture of an open hand. An open hand reaching up to God. There comes a point when you have nothing left to hold on to. Your hand is open. You have nothing but the God of the Word.

And some people live through a life and never experience that kind of desperation. But most people, at least once, at some point in your life, you'll experience a moment of desperation. Let's read it.

Psalm 81, Psalm 119, verse 81 through 88. My soul longs for your salvation. I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? Do you see the raw desperation there? The time has been dragging on and there seems to be no answer.

Look at this picture in verse 83. For I have become like a wineskin.

In the smoke. Yet.

I have not forgotten your statues. The picture of a wineskin under the soot and the heat and the ash of the fire, drying you up, wearing you down, wearing you out. And you feel like you're going to break or burn.

Verse 84 is the first time in Psalm 119 where we do not have the direct use of a word for the Bible. You don't have precept or testimony or law or word. He says, how long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me?

Many commentators have looked at that and asked the question, why now does the author of this Psalm not mention the word? I mean, he was 83 out of 83. That's a good percentage, right? And now all of a sudden he doesn't.

I think a clue for us is in the very preceding verse. I have not forgotten your statutes. I have not forgotten. And then the very next verse, it seems as if he's forgetting. The commentator, David Guzik, puts it this way.

The sense of personal weakness and injustice has led the psalmist to such distraction.

And despair.

That he has lost focus on God's word. The author in fact is being held by the word of God. He has the word of God but the desperation here is so thick. The desperation is so intense that he's forgetting.

To look to.

The word of God. He uses this as a rhetorical device. Boyce agrees. He says, this stanza has a great deal to say about the psalmist's enemies, as if at this point his thoughts were nearly monopolized by them.

Sometimes.

The word is in us but the intensity of a situation we're not remembering until the very next verse. Look at verse 85. The insolent have dug pitfalls.

For me. He's almost.

Done in. They do not live according to your.

Law. He's.

Remembering again. All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. And now, he simply cries.

Help me.

Help me. Have you ever been to that point in your walk when all you can do is cry to the God of the word.

Help me.

They have almost made an end of me on earth but I have not forsaken your precepts. See, he's not forgetting. He's returning to the source of his strength. In your steadfast love, give me life that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth.

There comes a time in most of our lives where we will hit a point of desperation. In the 1600's there was a man named George Wishart in England. A preacher of the gospel and in opposition to the gospel he was condemned to death because he refused to be silent about the protestant gospel.

He was condemned to be burned at the stake. They brought George Wishart to be killed but there was a custom at that time. The custom was the one to be killed was allowed a psalm.

To be read.

And sure enough, George Wishart chose Psalm 119. A much better choice than Psalm 117. If you flip back he bought himself a little bit of time. And as the reader of Psalm 119 progressed, imagine Wishart standing there waiting for his final moment just probably three minutes away.

Two thirds of the way through the psalm. He hears before that verse 81, my soul longs. Verse 82, my eyes long. Verse 83, I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. They're ready to light the fire beneath him.

He's a wineskin in the smoke. And with two thirds of the psalm.

Gone,.

The pardon from the king arrived. True history. And he survived the ordeal. He was released because he chose such a long psalm. Amazing story.

There.

Will come a point in your life and mine where we're desperate. The death of a child, I was reading on Facebook, a woman who was riding with her husband and young family and got in a terrible car accident.

One of their.

Children of the four was killed. The other paralyzed from the waist down. They were flown to separate hospitals even in different states. And a week later, she in a hospital, separated from her children and her husband, wrote a Facebook post calling for prayer and saying, yet I'll trust in the God of the word.

When you hit that moment, when you have nothing left, when you're desperate, you'll find that you're not holding on to him. You may forget for a moment, but it's the God of the word that's holding on to you.

The desperate times will come at some point in life. Could be your deathbed when you're old and gray.

But in those.

Moments, he's holding you. And the lifetime of digging into the word, building that treasure in your heart, is your security for those moments. That's what cough is about. Being a wineskin in the smoke.

Let's move on.

Oh, by the way, Christ knew what this was like, didn't he? Christ knew in the garden of Gethsemane, what it was like to be desperate. When he cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He wasn't forgetting the word, he was quoting Psalm 22. Christ knew what it was to be desperate. And yet he held on to the word. Next, Lamed, verse 89 and following. Here in Lamed, we see.

The Enduring Word and the Resurrection Life

Endurance.

We see endurance. In this life, everything is passing away quickly. As I thought about that, I was reminded of fidget spinners. Remember how quickly that fad came and went? And then there were the pop sockets.

Even VeggieTales seems to have gone the way of all the earth. In this life, fashions come and go. People come into our lives that we loved and we were so close to. And we look back 5, 10, 20 years later and we've lost touch with our high school friends.

How many of our college friends do we still keep in touch with?

This.

Life is transient. Everything changes. But the word of God is this constant in your life no matter what befalls. So let's read this. Forever, oh Lord. I love that word forever. Forever, oh Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.

Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth and it stands fast. Now in verse 90, there's no direct reference to the word again. But I think there's a parallelism with verse 89.

The word by which God spoke everything into existence, God is faithful to that word. So his faithfulness here means his constancy to what he said. And the world he created is a picture of that. Think of this.

Mount Everest still stands where it has for thousands of years. A picture of God's steadfastness. He spoke it and there it is. By the way, I have no desire to climb Mount Everest. And if you do, I question your sanity.

Why would you want to go climb that when so many people die? The shorelines of Florida, they've been fixed for many, many years. And some people say within 12 years, it'll be overflown with water.

I doubt that.

In fact, all the banks doubt that because they're still giving 30-year mortgages to people buying houses right on the water. Many people are concerned,.

But God has set.

The world by his word. And this world will come to an end. Remember Isaiah 40? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord lasts forever. What I love about. Lamed, we're reminded what is truly sure and steadfast in this life.

There's one thing that outlasts this world. His word and the God of the word. And those who trust in God become eternal ones in that he forever sustains us. The word of God in us brings us through death and to everlasting life.

What did Jesus say? I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will not die.

Will not die, he.

Said. Yes, they'll live and be resurrected, but there's a sense in we won't die. Death is only a transition from this life into the next one. His word is eternal, and he keeps us eternally by his word.

Forever, oh Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth and it stands fast by your appointment. They stand this day for all things are your servants.

The appointment there is his spoken word of what would be verse 92. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts for by them you have.

Given me life.

I am yours. Save me for I sought your precepts. The wicked lie and wait to destroy me, but I consider your testimonies. I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly.

Broad. Haven't you seen it?

There's a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad. There's no limit. That's a transition there with the word but. There is no limit to the perfection of God's word. It endures forever.

It continues on. It can't be broken. Generation after generation assault the word of God. We're seeing it in our day, but we're not the first generation to see this attack on the word of God. But it's always the word that outlasts the attacker, isn't it?

Remember Voltaire? A couple hundred years ago, when was it? 1800s? He came along and said, within 50 years, I'll see this book in the morgue. And he was a profound philosopher, and he had a wide following, and he attacked it mightily.

And 50 years after he said that, he was in the grave, and Voltaire's house was being used by the Geneva Bible Society to store their Bibles. True history. The word under assault, but the word is the steadfast, rock-solid, immovable, unchangeable, perfect standard.

It goes nowhere. It remains. It outlives every human that comes and goes. And so we move on. And again, Christ, the living word,.

Is forever.

Believe in Him and never die. So verse 97 to 104, we're moving on to Mem.

Wisdom from the Word and Christ the Wisdom of God

Mem.

The word of God matures us. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation.

All the day.

Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies. By the way, even if they have a PhD by their name, you're wiser if you believe. In fact, some of these PhD scientists who attack the word of God.

And disbelieve the word,.

They still have to come up with a theory for where the world came from. And where life came from on this earth. Many of the PhD scientists who are so smart, they literally believe that this world was seeded by aliens.

Or piggybacking diamonds, if you watch the movie Expelled by Ben Stein. They have all the learning in the world and yet they've descended to absolute.

Foolishness.

We're wiser than PhDs. And by the way, I think many people who get degrees and letters next to their name, assume that by that, they have wisdom. It's not the case. It can be the case, but it doesn't translate exactly.

I would say probably the most intellectually smart human who ever lived was Adam and his wife Eve. Equally probably so. And ever since Adam and Eve, human intelligence has been devolving. There's been a devolution, not evolution.

You say, well wait a minute, how come it's only modern generations that fly to the moon? That is the accumulation of knowledge and the sharing of information, the building up of information to build on that.

It doesn't mean that human capacity is increasing.

And anybody.

Can go sit in a university and learn what those university professors tell them to believe. They can listen and learn and read and write papers. But wisdom is not assessed by letters next to your name.

Wisdom is determined by the word of God. Do you see this with me? Verse 98, I'm just struck by it. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies. Maybe not smarter. They might have a better mastery of the English language, better.

Writers, more information.

But we're talking about wisdom in verse 98. Verse 99, I have more understanding than all.

My teachers,.

For your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way. Do you see the practical aspect of wisdom? It's not just head knowledge, it's to live in the word of God.

That the word of God becomes what you walk in. Blessed are those who walk in the way of the Lord. Not just head knowledge, it's the implementation of that by the Spirit of God. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.

Man's word versus God's word. You choose God's word over man's word and you keep your feet in that path. That's wisdom. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have.

Taught me. Blessed are those.

Who are taught by the Lord.

Timothy,.

According to, was it 2 Timothy 3 .15, from infancy was taught the scriptures that are able to make you wise unto salvation. So Paul could write to him as a young pastor and say, don't let anybody look down on you because you are young, but instead set the example.

Age is not the metric here. It's obedience to the word, being taught. Aren't we blessed when our children are taught by.

The Lord? Blessed.

I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. Verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every.

False way.

A .W. Tozer.

Said,.

The word of God, well understood and religiously obeyed, is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And saying that, he didn't advocate that we could be perfected in this life, but we're on a sanctification journey trying to be made like Christ.

As we follow in His word, we're being conformed more and more into the image of Christ. And he goes on to say this, and we must not select.

A few favorite.

Passages to the exclusion of all the others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

Nothing.

Less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian. The wisdom and understanding of God's word, we need all of it.

The one who.

Spends time in the word being transformed by everything He said is wiser than His teachers. And that's what we get. Christ, He was a carpenter. He wasn't trained in the.

Schools of the rabbis.

Yet, He knew the word. In His humanity, He had to grow in wisdom and knowledge. Of course, in His deity, that the deity and humanity of Christ were united in one person. And yet, there's ways we look at Him through His humanness and other ways through His deity.

In His humanness, He had to learn the word. Being taught.

In the schools,.

In His local synagogue, but primarily by His parents. Teaching Him the word. And mysteriously, He is the author of that word in His deity. He lived that example for us.

Perfectly.

And then, He laid down His life. And this is wisdom, brothers and sisters. You want to know what wisdom is? Christ and Him crucified. That is the wisdom and power of God revealed to us in the Scripture.

So, we move on to none. We're travelers passing through and what we need is guidance. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep Your righteous rules.

I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to Your word. Accept my free will offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me Your rules. I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget Your law.

The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from Your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. I incline my heart to perform Your statutes forever.

To the end.

The word of God is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. Does that make you want to sing that old song? I know that's coming back into your mind right now. Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

If you were given a lamp to go through.

A forest, it.

Would not light up the entirety of the forest. It would give you just enough light to travel through. And if you notice in verse 110, the wicked have laid a snare for me. The lamp would enable you to see the coming snare,.

The pit that was.

Dug for you. It gives you just enough light to see what's coming next, not necessarily the course of your life. To be a mature Christian, to grow in faith, we must learn to look to the word of God to make the decisions of this life.

I remember my first big decision was when I was 18 years old and my parents said that they were not going to choose for me where I went to college. That one was mine. And I still remember going back into the back bedroom and I spent days reading the scripture and praying and then suddenly one day in reading something and in prayer it clicked in my mind that I knew where God was calling me to go.

It was to Eckerd College. In my mind part of it was to play basketball. But I knew from being in His word that that's where He was directing me. Then later in life when I felt called to go to seminary by reading the scriptures again, I knew I was to leave everything behind, everybody I knew and move to Dallas.

And then from Dallas and there I looked out in a chapel service. I had only been there for a couple months and I saw a woman a couple rows ahead of me raising her hand and worshipping the Lord. And I recognized her though we had never met.

My wife, Jen. The first time I ever saw her was her worshipping Jesus. And then we found that we believed everything the same in the scriptures. God had made us for one another.

And each step.

That I took as we went to Philadelphia to be missionaries together we never saw that coming. I never pictured going to inner city Philadelphia and then one day I'm running past this church on Mount Laurel Road and I slap the sign and I pray for this church.

And next thing I know I got a text message that said, would you ever be interested in preaching at the E-Free Church? And I said, I better say yes because I'm praying for that church right now. I never would have dreamed in a thousand years that God would have sent me to an evangelical free church in New Jersey.

I never saw any of the steps of my life coming. And guys, we don't know what's coming next in our future but I'll tell you this. Take the Word of God as the lamp to your feet. Be in it every day and the path that He illumines for you will be glorious.

He'll reveal the snares to keep you from falling. He'll keep you along that.

Straight and narrow. He gives.

You just enough to see where you go next. He doesn't tell you the big picture. I know it can be scary in this life because we don't see what's coming. But His testimonies are my.

Heritage forever.

The Spirit leads us by the Word. I want to direct your attention to verse 108. It says, accept my free will offerings of praise, O Lord and teach me your rules. In Leviticus 23 -38 there is commanded that the Israelites are to bring free will offerings.

But it's not specified when or how.

The free.

Will offering in Israel was not demanded. There was not a certain thing that was brought like the wave offering and the grain offering, the sin offering, all the different offerings that were prescribed for times and seasons and for occasions.

No. The free will offering was an offering that came from the heart as the worshiper felt led. You see the free will offering a few times in the scripture. In Exodus, I believe it's the 35th chapter, verse 29.

A free will offering is taken to build the tabernacle. And then you see in the building of the temple, a free will offering is taken. And finally again at the rebuilding of the temple, in the book of Ezra, there's a free will offering.

Brothers and sisters, this corresponds to the New Testament form of giving. Not only financially, but of your life. We're told in verse 108, accept my free will offerings of praise. It's not commanded that we bring a tithe of our income in the New Testament.

Whether we take that as a guideline to help us as the Israelites under that theocracy always brought a tithe, in the New Testament we are to give cheerfully as the Lord leads us by his spirit. The free will offering is to come completely voluntary without compulsion.

Why? You're not fulfilling a religious ritual.

You are giving.

Out of the gladness of your heart as worship unto him.

And so we're.

Told, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. We need the word of God in our hand. And we need the spirit of the living God in our heart leading us. And if you have the word and the spirit, God will lead you in a path that will bring you joy and satisfaction and ultimately the straight and narrow road.

To heaven.

We need the Bible to be guiding us on a daily basis. We need the spirit of God because the sword of the spirit is not the sword of Jeff or the sword of Bob or the sword of Eric sword of Kathy. It's the sword of the spirit.

We need to come humbly with the sword of the spirit praying that God would direct us through his word. And that's how we're led. That's how we make decisions in this life. Alright guys, we have four stanzas down and two more to go.

Can we endure that?

Absolutely.

Verse 113 strong language.

Single-Minded Devotion and the Problem of Double-Mindedness

I hate.

The double minded but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your word. Depart from me you evil doers that I may keep the commandments of my God. Uphold me according to your promise that I may live and let me not be put to shame in my hope.

Hold me up that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually. You spurn all who go astray from your statutes for their cunning is in vain. All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross.

Therefore, I love your testimonies. My flesh trembles for fear of you and I am afraid of your judgments. Psalmic is the letter. And the issue is consistency. Consistency. We're told here.

In the 113th.

Verse that the Lord hates the double minded.

Why.

Such strong language?

Why does he hate.

The double minded? I think it's the same reason that when Elijah went up on the mountain with all the prophets of Baal and he said that Yahweh is God and the hundreds of prophets of Baal said no, Baal is God.

Finally, Elijah came to the point where he said if Yahweh is God worship Him. If Baal is God worship Him. Make a choice. And the people even in that refused. Until finally the fire of God fell and revealed the power of God.

The true God was Jehovah Yahweh, the God of Israel. And it was time at that point in the story to put away the idols. The prophets of Baal died that day. God desires singularity of heart. Not double mindedness.

James chapter one. The language is particularly strong. When you ask of God. Seeking His wisdom. Seeking the word. Don't be like a wave of the sea tossed back and forth. He goes on to say that person should not expect to receive anything from.

God.

Don't be like the man who looks in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like. God is calling us to consistency. You see, consistency is the hallmark of truth. You know that in logic, right? If you can reveal the inconsistency of an argument you've demonstrated that the point is not true.

Truth is always consistent with itself.

And to.

Walk in the truth means to become a consistent and whole person. As a pastor one of the things that breaks my heart.

The most is.

Double mindedness. And I've seen it many times. Where on Sunday morning the word of God is preached and someone is clapping and believing.

And agreeing.

But then takes a sharp left turn somewhere later.

In the week and is falling.

Off the rails.

Into sin.

Brothers and sisters, this word of God integrates our minds. Do you realize that we as people who have fallen into sin in Adam, we are prone to disintegrate. To become double minded. To live one way at one point in time and another at a different point in time.