Daily Bites Of God's Word - Part 35 - Psalm 119:35

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

Today we're looking at Psalm 119, verse 35. It says, "'Cause me to walk in the path of your commandments.'"

Let's stop right there. If you remember from verse 34, it said, "'Cause me to understand.'" And we talked about how it's so important to have the knowledge and the heart to know what to do, know the

Word of God, but then apply it. Well, we see this repeated word here. We're going to see it again in verse 36, 37, 38, and 39.

So whenever Scripture repeats something, usually a point's trying to be made.

So He says here in verse 35, well, "'Cause me to walk in the path of your commandments.'"

First He said, "'Cause me to understand,' now He says, "'Cause me to walk.'" Now, hmm, the free will crowd and the provisionist crowd's heads are exploding right now.

God, causing me to do something, but my free will! My friends, whole sermon for another day, but we do not have free will.

There's only one being in the universe that has a truly free will, and that is God. We have a creaturely will, which means our will, it's free, but it's free to act in concert with the fact that we are creaturely.

We are a created being. So by the virtue of the fact that we are a created being, relying on a

Creator, our will is going to be limited to the range of things that the Creator would put in us.

And then on top of that, you've got you either slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness. So the big difference is instead of sin in a slavery sort of way, causing us to live sinfully as a child of God, we have the indwelling presence of the

Spirit. We have a righteous new heart, and we have God working in and through us, causing us to walk in the path of His commandments.

Not as people want to say, you know, oh, you stay for a robot, and God pulls the strings.

It's not what we're saying. It's a mystery there where God is sovereign.

God, everything that happens in this world happens exactly because that's the way God wanted it to happen. But at the same time,

I have a will. I make choices, and those choices are used in God's sovereignty to bring about His will.

So when it says, cause me to walk in the path of your commandments, that's both God causing it within us, but also us learning to willfully obey and walk.

So there's both of those things working there. Cause me to walk in the path of your commandments.

Notice this, it doesn't say, for God delights to force me to do things. It says, for I delight in it.

That's the thing. God takes out the heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh. He takes us from being slaves of sin, makes us slaves of righteousness to where we have new desires.

We're a new creature. There's new things we want to do. Now we delight in the Word of God. We can delight because our

Spirit's been raised to life. And so He causes us by writing

His law in our hearts, giving us a new nature. We're born from above. And in that sense, He causes us to want to pursue

Him. He causes us to want to walk in the path of His commandments. And He also gives us a true desire and a true love for His Word.

So it's the reformed understanding of soteriology, which we commonly call

Calvinism, which I'm not afraid of that word. It's just people abuse it in so many different ways.

But the reformed understanding of these things are actually, it's a very beautiful thing to understand the sovereignty of God and how

He works in His creation and understanding how our will is a will that can be changed.

And we are made glorious and righteous in Christ. And we are given a new heart to seek

God and to want to obey Him. So a lot wrapped up in there, but just a beautiful language there.

I pray that this is your prayer, that you would want to see God working you to cause you to walk in His commandments.