Ps 119: How to be blessed
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First Things First
1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the Law of the Lord.
2 Blessed are those who comply with His testimonies, And seek Him with all their heart.
3 They also do no injustice; They walk in His ways.
4 You have ordained Your precepts, That we are to keep them diligently.
5 Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!
6 Then I will not be ashamed When I look at all Your commandments.
7 I will give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, When I learn Your righteous judgments.
8 I will keep Your statutes; Do not utterly abandon me!
Quotes about Psalm 119:
Quotes about Psalm 119:
The German commentator Franz Delitzsch wrote,
“Here we have set forth in inexhaustible fullness what the word of God is to a man and how a man is to behave himself in relation to it.”
Derek Kidner, a more modern writer, says,
“This giant among the psalms shows the full flowering of that ‘deligh.… in the law of the Lord’ which is described in Psalm 1, and gives its personal witness to the many-sided qualities of Scripture praised in Psalm 19:7ff.”
So much has been written on Psalm 119 that it is impossible to do full justice to it.
In his Treasury of David Charles Spurgeon devotes 349 pages to it, which is virtually a book in itself.
Charles Bridges, a Church of England evangelical of the last century, wrote 481 pages about it.
Bridges was only thirty-three years old.
Most impressive of all is the three-volume work on Psalm 119 by Thomas Manton, one of the most prolific of the Puritans.
Each volume is from 500 to 600 pages in length, for a total of 1,677 pages.
There are many fascinating stories connected with this psalm.
One of the most amusing concerns George Wishart, a Bishop of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. Wishart was condemned to death along with his famous patron, the Marquis of Montrose, and he would have been executed, except for this incident.
When he was on the scaffold, he made use of a custom of the times that permitted the condemned to choose a psalm to be sung.
He chose Psalm 119.
Before two-thirds of the psalm was sung a pardon arrived, and Wishart’s life was spared.
Features of Psalm 119:
Features of Psalm 119:
Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm, the most elaborate in the Psalter.
It is divided into twenty-two stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse of each stanza begins with one of these letters in sequence.
Thus each of the first eight verses begins with the letter aleph, each of the next eight verses begins with the letter beth, and so on.
The most striking feature of Psalm 119—one that every commentator mentions because it is so important to the psalm’s theme—is that each verse of the psalm refers to the Word of God, the Bible
How to Be Blessed
How to Be Blessed
Psalm 119 begins like Psalm 1 by pronouncing a blessing on the one who forms his or her life according to the Word of God.
Psalm 1 begins with a beatitude.
1 Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, And on His Law he meditates day and night.
In a sense, Psalm 119 is the Bible’s most thorough exposition of the beatitude of Psalm 1, which it indicates from the start by its opening lines:
1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the Law of the Lord.
2 Blessed are those who comply with His testimonies, And seek Him with all their heart.
The overwhelming worldview today is that to be happy is a universal goal of men and women.
This may sound like a good idea, but more than a few seconds of thought will reveal why this is not only not possible, but also i road to utter misery.
If every person has the right to be happy, then what if what makes me happy, makes you sad?
Happiness is not a goal, happiness is that which when circumstances permit, we are able to feel happy, but as is plain: Happiness is circumstantial ie happiness depends on whats happening to you.
Happiness is dependant on outside, uncontrollable forces.
The bible offers us a much better and healthy option: Blessedness.
How is Blessedness is different from happiness?
Happiness depends on outside forces that you cannot control.
Blessedness is dependant on only one thing: YOUR obedience.
How can a person be blessed?
How can a person be blessed?
The Bible tells us that the path to “blessedness”—is conforming to the law of God.
Law?
Are we not free from the Law? Must we go back under it?
When we hear the word “law” we think of the kind of rules.
Now, yes the bible does have rules, like the 10 commandments.
But the Hebrew word for Law, the word Torah, has a much, much broader banner.
The word Torah actually comes from the Hebrew “To flow, as in water flowing in a river”.
And it literally means “Direction”.
And it refers NOT to any particular section of scripture, but the scripture as a whole.
That is why there are so many synonyms for Law in this Psalm:” including “words,” “testimonies,” “charges,” “promises,” and “ways.”
Blessed = Obedience
Blessed = Obedience
The blessedness they speak of is for those who “walk” according to God’s Law and “keep” his statutes.
In other words, from the beginning we are to understand that this keeping of the law is a practical matter, a way of life and not merely a course of academic study.
BLESSEDNESS IS A MATTER OF OBEDIENCE NOT JUST KNOWLEDGE
On the other hand, it is also clear that we cannot live by the Bible unless we know it well.
As the first psalm says,
2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, And on His Law he meditates day and night.
May I suggest that if we are to meditate on the Bible day and night, we must have at least some if it committed to memory, which is what Christians in past ages of the church did.
What if I told you that in past days it was not uncommon for people to memorize Psalm 119?
John Ruskin was not a minister or even a theologian.
He lived in the nineteenth century and was a British writer who specialized in works of art criticism.
He memorized Psalms 23, 32, 90, 91, 103, 112, 119, and 139, to give just some examples.
Later in his life Ruskin wrote of Psalm 119,
“It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my childish mind, chiefly repulsive—the 119th Psalm—has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God.”
William Wilberforce, the British statesman who was largely responsible for the abolition of the slave trade throughout the empire, wrote in his diary in the year 1819,
“Walked today from Hyde Park Corner, repeating the 119th Psalm in great comfort.”
Does it seem strange that busy Wilberforce should know this psalm by heart?
Henry Martyn, pioneer missionary to India, memorized Psalm 119 as an adult in 1804.
David Livingstone, pioneer missionary to Africa, won a Bible from his Sunday school teacher by repeating Psalm 119 by heart—when he was only nine years old.
Each of these persons achieved a great deal for God.
Who is to say that it was not their personal, word-for-word knowledge of the Bible that enabled them not only to live a godly life but also to accomplish what they did?
Knowing and Obeying God’s Word
Knowing and Obeying God’s Word
Maybe I have said too much about knowing the Bible.
That is where we must start, but the point of the opening verses of Psalm 119 is not merely that we must know the Bible but that we must determine to live by it—to keep, or obey, it.
Verses 3 and 4 reiterate the point.
3 They also do no injustice; They walk in His ways.
4 You have ordained Your precepts, That we are to keep them diligently.
The reason we are not happy is that we sin, and the main reason we sin as much as we do is that we do not know the Bible well enough.
How do i know that? Because that is exactly what the bible says in this very Psalm:
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word.
These verses tell us that the blessed people are those who “do nothing wrong.”
However, if we ask how they have learned not to do wrong, the answer surely is that they have learned to “walk in [God’s] ways” and “obey” his precepts.
H. C. Leupold asks us to
“note throughout [the psalm] how the law is sought for the very purpose of being kept, not for the sake of attaining a theoretical knowledge of it.”
An Honest Wish
An Honest Wish
Sometimes when we read the Bible we get the idea that its characters were special people very unlike ourselves, and we are likely to do that here unless we are careful.
We are reading about those happy people who are so because they live blamelessly according to the Law of the Lord, keep his statutes, and seek him with their whole heart.
The psalmist must be one of these very blessed people, we think, otherwise he would not be writing as he does.
However, we do not get very far into the psalm before we discover that he is very much like ourselves, at least in the respect that he has not yet gotten to be like the happy, blessed ones he is describing.
He wants to be, but he is not yet.
Therefore, he cries,
5 Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!
We also tend to think of biblical writers of living near constant holy lives and never messing up, never needing to disciplined by God.
But again this Psalm shows that this idea is false.
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word.
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, So that I may learn Your statutes.
There is something that rings true and is commendably honest about this heartfelt cry of the psalmist.
He is a very godly man, but he is acutely aware of how ungodly he still is.
I think he is saying in this verse almost exactly what the apostle Paul wrote at much greater length in Romans 7:
15 For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 However, if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, that the Law is good.
17 But now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.
18 For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
20 But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22 For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person,
23 but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts.
The psalmist is like us in that he has not yet attained the obedience for which he yearns.
He admits this openly.
What is his response to God in light of his short comings?
What is his response to God in light of his short comings?
7 I will give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, When I learn Your righteous judgments.
8 I will keep Your statutes; Do not utterly abandon me!
This verse is a strong resolution, a sincere confession, and an urgent plea.
The resolution: “I am resolved to obey God’s decrees.”
The confession: “I need to learn what Your righteous Judgments are.”
The plea: “Therefore, do not forsake me, O my God.”