Direct My Steps According to Your Word
Summer in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Three years ago when we were going through our Summer in the Psalms series—this is now our fifth year— because the psalms we preach are based on the Revised Common Lectionary readings, we also looked at Psalm 119. Like last time, we are only going to look at one section of this lengthy psalm. I wondered if perhaps we should select a different psalm to focus on this morning since we preached on this just three short years ago. Knowing how well this congregation listens to sermons I’m quite sure many of you will be saying, “This sounds just like what Andrew preached three years ago!”
Well, at the risk of repeating myself—though much of this sermon is quite different than the one three years ago, though not all of it—I felt that a sermon on the importance of the Word of God to be a message that we regularly need to hear.
Psalm 119 has a unique structure that is good for us to be aware of. Longest psalm. 176 verses. 22*8 - 176.
Made up of 22 sections, one section for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Our section is denoted by the 17th letter in the alphabet “Pe” פ
All the lines in each section begin with that same letter of the alphabet
Each section consists of eight lines or stanzas.
Throughout the psalm there is a repetition of eight words that make up the thematic vocabulary of the psalm. In English the Hebrew words are most often translated to English in this way (though there are variations):
“law,” “decrees,” “statutes,” “commandments,” “ordinance(s),” “word,” “precepts,” and “promise.”
Total of 176 lines....
Psalmist uses the whole alphabet to signal completeness and the whole vocabulary concerning the word for “law” Torah, to signal comprehensiveness (Mays)
129 Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them.
130 The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.
131 I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.
132 Turn to me and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name.
133 Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me.
134 Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts.
135 Make your face shine on your servant and teach me your decrees.
136 Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.
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I think a good number of us are familiar with the famous Hollywood actor Anthony Hopkins.
In an interview with the Telegraph newspaper a number of years ago he said that when he gets a movie script, he reads through it between one hundred and two hundred times before production. He makes notes in the margins. He scribbles and doodles and imagines how it would look on stage or screen. By the time Hopkins is finished, that script is internalized. He knows his character. He knows his (and everyone else's) lines. He's able to improvise, and he's a personification of the script.
There’s something about this practice of Anthony Hopkins that illustrates what Psalm 119 is trying to move us towards. A love for God’s Word because to love God himself is to love his Word. An internalizing or the Word that enables us to “personify” its message.
“Your statues are wonderful” begins our section.
In another verse, Psalm 119:97, we read:
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Psalm 119 is intended for meditation and memorization. In all 176 lines the psalmist is praying some variation of the opening verse:
1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.
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In the same way that Anthony Hopkins has the goal of personifying the script he’s reading, the psalmist prays that his life might become a living witness of the Word of God.
And that’s the aspect of Psalm 119 that I want to reflect on with us this morning.
Over and over again the psalmist prays that his life might become a living witness of the Word of God.
133 Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me.
129 Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them.
134 Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts.
136 Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.
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Again and again and again, not just in our one section but throughout all 22 sections of this psalm that psalmist prays that not only would he love God’s Word, but that he would obey it, that he’d live it, that he’d stand up for it.
The Word of God is not intended for us to adore it like a piece of art hanging on a wall or displayed in a showcase....no, it’s something that we are called to obey and live out.
This need to have God’s Word as a secure foundation in our lives struck me in a particular way while I was listening to a podcast this week on the way to the airport when I was picking up my wife Kim.
Podcast “Honestly” Bari Weiss with Walter Russel Mead… Professor of Foreign Affairs, Columnist on Global affairs for the Wall Street Journal..highly published and .... “Are we in a Pre-War Era?”....
at one point they are talking about the blessings of progress....by all kinds of measures things have gotten better in our world and advancing technology has made much of that possible. And Mead agrees with that but then says, we also face increasing risk....this is what he says,
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“…as I look at the world I don’t see an absence of risk, of people getting better. You know after WWII which ends with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and you have the tyranny of Nazism and the horrors of Stalinism and Maoism as well, we wanted to draw a line between us and them and say, ‘ok those are the old days, the bad old days, but we have learned that we are in a different place. And in some ways the health of this international world system that was preventing the great power war that Germany and Japan was integrating into this affluent world trading system, and we were going to try to expand that when the Soviet Union collapsed.”
“The health of that system is sort of our psychological barrier. We don’t want to say actually with all the weapons we’ve got with all the tensions we’ve got we are no different than the people of 1935 or 1810 and whatever kinds of things they did we could do. And I happen to think that’s true. I don’t think human nature has been revolutionized by technology. It’s been empowered. So we still have the opportunity to do wonderful things that no one has ever done but we also have absolutely the ability and the risk to plunge the world into an abyss that it has never seen.”
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There are a couple of things in this part of the conversation that caught my attention and I want to connect them with the deep thrust of Psalm 119.
Mead says “we are no different than the people of 1935 or 1810” rise of Third Reich, or the Napoleanic wars.
[elaborate.... human nature doesn’t change.....all those 30 and above who were active members of society have died.....but here we are almost 100 years later and we are not much different..... we need the enduring foundation of the Word of God..... it is truth, good, right, virtuous and it uncovers lie, falsehood, deceit, evil and wickedness]
The sinfulness of human nature continues to corrupt and oppress society. We need the enduring foundation of God’s good Word to heal us and set us free.
This is why the psalmist says, “your statutes are wonderful!”
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”
The psalmist knows about how our human nature is continuously prone towards corruption, selfishness, and oppression. And that is why he prays to the Lord...
134 Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts.
…that I may obey your precepts...
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[Connect the podcast with two books that I’ve read, one sometime ago, one more recently
Live Not By Lies, by Rod Dreher
A Letter to the American Church, by Eric Metaxas ]
As I talk for the next number of minutes about what I read in these books and how they are describing a very troubling trend in our current culture, I hope we will be able to appreciate the significance of why the psalmist calls us to pray, “Lord direct my steps according to your Word.”
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Rod Dreher’s book, Live Not By Lies shares the same title as an essay that was written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in which he challenged the claim the the totalitarian system of his day was so powerful that the ordinary man and woman cannot change it. Nonsense, he said. The entire foundation of the totalitarian state is an ideology made up of lies. And so he wrote, “Our way must be: never knowingly support lies.”
And so he asks the question:
“What does it mean for us today to live not by lies? That is the question this book explores through interviews with and testaments left by Christians (and others) from throughout the Soviet Bloc who lived through totalitarianism, and who share the wisdom they gained through hard experience.” Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies
Or consider the opening words of this recent book by Eric Metaxas:
“I have written this book because I am convinced the American Church is at an impossibly—and almost unbearably—important inflection point. The parallels to where the German Church was in the 1930’s are unavoidable and grim. So the only question—and what concerns us in this slim volume—is whether we might understand those parallels, and thereby avoid the fatal mistakes the German Church made during that time, and their superlatively catastrophic results. If we do not, I am convinced we will reap a whirlwind greater even than the one they did.” Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church.
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Both books are a call to the church to stand firmly on the truth of God’s Word and embody that in the public square.
The word of God has something to say about the inherent dignity and value of the unborn....and the way in which our culture continues to discard the unborn in the name of women’s rights remains an issue that Christians need to stand up for.
[Remember the summer jobs scandal....
The word of God has something to say about the need to uphold life and care for the elderly.... insisting that assisted suicide is a basic human right is evil and those who wish to be directed by the Word of God need to stand up for....
The word of God has something to say about the definition of marriage, and about God creating human beings male and female in his image....
DEI offices are increasingly have a kind of totalitarian kind of influence on a variety of aspects of society
Cancel culture experiences.....especially due to ways people are being mobbed on social media, but also because of how big tech, like FB, Youtube and Twitter
Rob Hoogland case in BC
Many saw the overreach of government, main stream media, and big tech before the pandemic, extend even more widely and far reaching during the pandemic.
[BLM protests permitted during height of pandemic.....on one had prohibiting any kind of public gathering, but allowing massive protest gatherings across the country.....
Doctor in BC who based on his own medically informed research had some significant concerns about the COVID vacination....decided that he was not going to get his second vaccine.
Pressure that Christian schools may feel from the Ministry of Education, or even from local parents to implement sexual orientation and gender identity guidelines that directly conflict with not only the Word of God but also a preponderance of human science.
The psalmist calls us to long for God’s word as a kind of spiritual food that nourishs and strengthens us for whatever tasks we face in our current cultural climate.
131 I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.
Let’s look at two more verses in our text and we’ll take them together.
132 Turn to me and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name.
134 Redeem me from human oppression, that I may obey your precepts.
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Throughout Psalm 119 we find that even the ability to love the Word of the Lord and keep his commands and his precepts depends on the mercy and redemption of God. Have mercy on me and redeem me.
The psalmist prays that God would redeem him from human oppression. Human oppression throughout history has been widespread. Humans have always been looking for ways to exalt the powerful and hold down the weak. Conquering nations have thought nothing of wiping out enemies and enslaving them in the most barbaric ways.
And yet along came a man who hung on a cross. Here was the epitome of weakness and suffering, and ever since that time Christians have lifted up this very picture of weakness, so that human suffering is ennobled and human frailty is sanctified.
Christians are not afraid of suffering.....Christians are not afraid of being perceived as weak. It is through suffering and weakness that God broke the power of sin and death.
Jesus came to redeem us from human oppression so that we could obey his precepts.
Increasingly today, as our culture tries to move beyond the permanent precepts and statutes of God’s Word, it is becoming harder and harder for some people to name sin and evil. Because people are so reluctant to acknowledge absolute good and evil, it is becoming harder for some to recognize genuine human oppression and eradicate it.
In his book Visions of Vocation, Christian author and thinker Stephen Garber tells the story of meeting a woman who directed the Protection Project, an initiative under Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government that addresses human trafficking. Garber asked her, "So why do you care about the issue of human trafficking?"
She told the story of her heart opening to the cries of women and girls who were sold into slavery, often involving sexual bondage. After writing on the issue, the Kennedy School hired her to work at their Protection Project initiative in Washington D.C. Then Garber describes what happened next:
As we talked in her office, I watched her staff walking by in the hallway outside her door, and their serious and eager faces impressed me. She eventually said, "I get the most interesting applications here. Just imagine. Harvard University, Washington, D.C., human rights. It's a powerful combination, and it draws unusually gifted young women and men from the best universities in America."
But then she surprised me with these words, "After a few weeks they almost always find their way down the hall, knock on my door and ask to talk. Now, I know what they are going to say. After thanking me for the position and the opportunity, a bit awkwardly they ask, 'But who are we to say that trafficking is wrong in Pakistan? Isn't it a bit parochial for us to think that we know what is best for other people? Why is what is wrong for us wrong for them?' To be honest, I just don't have time for that question anymore. The issues we address are too real, they matter too much. I need more students like the one you sent me, because I need people who believe that there is basic right and wrong in the universe!"
Stephen Garber, Visions of Vocation (IVP Books, 2014), pp. 70-71
Have mercy on me O God, says the psalmist, because apart from your Word I am unable to see and believe that there is a basic right and wrong in the universe...
Friends, in the person of Jesus Christ, we have seen the Living Word of God. Jesus himself has personified the Word of God, because he is God enfleshed. I and the Father are One, he said. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.
This week I want to invite each of us to allow this psalm to draw us more deeply into relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. I encourage you to read the whole Psalm. You can probably read the whole thing in 10 minutes or so. Perhaps read it once each day and allow it to be a source of spiritual food and nourishes and strengthens your relationship with Jesus Christ.
You won’t be disappointed.