Psalm 119 A

Good evening. I am glad that we can be here together. Tonight we are going to be reading the largest chapter in the bible. it is only 176 verses long. Well we better get reading.

Psalm 119:1–8 NIV

1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord. 2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart— 3 they do no wrong but follow his ways. 4 You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed. 5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! 6 Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands. 7 I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. 8 I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me.

Okay let’s stop for a second. We aren’t reading all 176 verses. That is not what is intended with this Psalm. This Psalm is an alphabetical composition of the Hebrew alphabet. It makes up 22 stanzas each containning eight two line stanzas. Example

Psalm 119:1 NIV

1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.

This is the first of the 8 two lines which you can see that the sections after this are made up of 8 verses. It is a very interesting passage of scripture that really gets to the heart of the relationship of Yahweh.

Walking with Yahweh

The opening stanza speaks a lot about the blessedness of those who choose to walk in the ways of the Lord. This involves following the Law of the Lord and all the Statutes and seeking him with all your heart.

Typically when we speak of the Law of the Lord we are speaking of what is known as the Pentatuch which is the first five books of the Bible. It is here that we get the instructions for following the covenant realtionship that Israel shared with God.

Yet, the Psalmist is not just saying we have to follow a particular set of rules it is more than that. Simply following the Laws is not enough.

When i was thinking about that I realized that was a lot of what Jesus was trying to emphasize to everyone when he summed the law up into two ideas.

Love God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor.

The whole of the law. All the rules can be summed up that easy. It really makes it more than just following rules but seeing that the law is centered on loving others and God.

As i was reading this though a particular phase stuck out to me.

All their Heart

Have you ever taken a moment to think about what that means. Your whole heart.

Let me ask you a question.

What or who do you love with your whole heart?

Now many of you will think of a spouse or a child or something else but the important aspect of that is there is something that you love and are passionate about.

Now let me ask you another question.

What do you love with half a heart?

Half-heartedness

What does half-heartedness look like. I thought of no better example in my life is watching people work. I have shared stories about working in retail before and i am going to again.

One of the joys of being a manager is that you face a lot of pressures from a lot of different places. You have the pressures from corporate offices who sit up in their “ivory” tower and look down on what you are doing from a spreadsheet or sales report and tell you how you can improve. Than you have the employees who work under you who look to you to be the answer for all things. Not only are you supposed to have all the answers but you better work just as hard as them or you will lose their respect.

One of the teams that I over saw was the freight team. The freight team was in charge of unloading the trucks and putting away all the freight that arrived. The product either had to get on the shelf or it had to be properly stored until it was needed.

One of the joys of that oversight was I once a quarter had to go in when they worked the trucks at 4am. This was an unannounced visit and was always loved by my team. They always loved seeing my bright smiley face that early in the morning. Now of course as soon as i showed up their approach to the truck would change. They would work harder because the manager was there.

One time though there was a team member that let’s just say didn’t care that I was there and continued to work at their pace. I decided to take this time to provide an example for them. I went to their department and told them i would help them put away freight. They had 3 pallets to put away I said i would take one and they could work the other two. I proceeded to work slower than they were on the two. I might ad this was very challenging for me because they were moving really slow. After a couple hours they managed to finish their two pallets and i somehow only finished half of mine.

I secretly couldn’t stand how slow we were moving so i was using the time to do some other tasks in the aisle while i worked the pallet because i couldn’t stand how slow we were moving.

When they got done with theirs i told them they could go ahead and finish mine too. Let’s just say they got really frustrated.

Why should i have to finish your work?

This of course led to the conversation that i wanted to have. It led to the fact that they were working halfheartedly and it was affecting the whole team. The rest of the team was regularly coming over and helping work their freight because this one team member wasn’t meeting the standards expected of the team.

It was a hard lesson. It helped though. It helped them see that they were not doing as well as they could. They didn’t want to work as hard as they could because they had slipped into an attitude that no one cared because the work was finished at the end of the day and no one said anything.

One of the challenges that i think we face in our culture and society and to be honest this isn’t a new idea is half-heartedness. We aren’t really passionate about things as much as we should be.

Many lack the drive to care deeply. This includes our faith. Think about that as we read this Psalm again.

Psalm 119:1–8 NIV

1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord. 2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart— 3 they do no wrong but follow his ways. 4 You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed. 5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! 6 Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands. 7 I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. 8 I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me.

We are called to seek him with all our heart. With our actions and our minds and so much more. IT is more than jsut following some rules its about giving our whole self to him.

We can not slip into the danger or the traps of being complacent or growing stagnate as we so often do.

It won’t be a big deal if i don’t read my Bible today.

It won’t be a big deal if i miss my prayer time.

Or maybe its

I will pray later i am too busy

Or

I am really tired i need to get some sleep i don’t feel like going to church this morning.

oh there is someone in the community that needs my help. I am sure someone will show up they will be fine without me.

The reasons and excuses grow and grow but the truth is that we have to figure out we are called to obey his commands to love God and to love him with our whole heart. Not partially but the whole thing. It is here that we see the change that we see the marked difference in the lives of people. It is in this attitude that we can be transformed.

Let’s Pray