Psalms of Praise 102 , 105, 113-119, 124-125

The following material is adopted from James’s Montgomery Boice’s 3 volume commentary on Psalms. Additional material from MacArthur Bible Studies, Psalms: Hymns for God’s People. Introductory material from Psalms of Grace, Philip Webb, editor. Additional material taken from sources listed at the end

Psalms 102

In this psalm, an afflicted sufferer cries out to God for help and receives comfort when he sets his gaze on God’s sovereignty and perfect purposes. The sufferer describes his desperate circumstances and acknowledges his frail and temporary life. Despite his troubling situation, he exalts the glory and graciousness of God as he acknowledges God’s eternality. Ultimately, the afflicted sufferer demonstrates confidence that God will grant security to His own, declaring the supremacy of God over human life, over all creation, and over all eternity.

Frailty Anchored in Eternity

— One of the splendid delusions of the young is that they think that they are immortal

— No matter how recklessly they drive, no matter how many physical dangers they expose themselves to, they do not believe anything bad can happen to them

— But that changes as we grow older

— We realize that a time is coming when we will die too

— This is what the author of Psalm 102 experienced

— Sickness forced him to realize that life is extremely short but in his weakness he turned to God, who is not weak, and found refuge

A Messianic Psalm

— Many commentators view this psalm differently

— Some view this as a penitential psalm because of the mention of God’s “great wrath” (v. 10)

— Arno C. Gaebelein considers it as a prophecy of Christ’s earthly humiliation and redemptive work

— William J. Pettingill views it as a conversation between God the Father and God the Son

— The psalm is considered messianic because verses 25-27 are quoted in Hebrews (Heb 1:10-12)

— Charles Spurgeon saw it as a patriotic psalm because the writer, although sick in bed, links his own restoration to health with that of Zion

The Prologue: “Hear My Prayer”

— The first eleven verses are a lament

— The writer describes his weakened condition

— He appeals to God with great passion (vv. 1-2)

— This is not a passive or halfhearted petition but rather an impassioned desperate prayer

An Afflicted Man’s Lament

— The psalmist is sick but that is not all that is bothering him

— He is concerned about Jerusalem as well, and is being taunted by his enemies

— Nevertheless, it is chiefly his sickness, frailty and brevity of life that troubles him

— He describes his condition like this:

1. My life is like smoke

— The writer may have been thinking of Job (Job 5:6-7)

— Job was saying that each generation of human beings is born to suffer, that they are merely logs thrown upon the blazing fire of life to be consumed and fly upward as sparks and be blown into oblivion

— The psalmist feels like he has been thrown unto the fire and is vanishing like smoke (v. 3)

— Or is like withering grass (v. 4)

2. I am sick

— Like the other psalms we do not know the particular affliction

— But whatever it was, it affected his appearance

— It has taken away his appetite (v. 4) and he was “reduced to skin and bones” (v. 5)

3. I am lonely and isolated

— This seems to be the meaning of the references to various birds (vv. 6-7)

— Older translations (including the NASB) referred to a pelican and an owl

— This is because the translators did not know the birds the Hebrew words referred to

— The NIV is not certain either, which is why it translates: “a desert owl” (whatever that is) and an “owl” (v. 6) and a “bird alone on a roof” (v. 7)

4. My enemies are mocking

— Suffering is difficult enough to bear but virtually intolerable when your enemies mock you

— These cowards would have been afraid to mock a strong man

— Instead they attack the author of the psalm when he is down and unable to fight back

5. My sufferings are unexplained

— The psalmist knows that because of his sin God has thrown him aside “because of your great wrath” (v. 10)

— But nowhere does he mention sin or confess it

— His experience is identical to Job

— Job was not sinless, nonetheless, he could not understand why he was singled out for such great suffering

The Turning Point of the Psalm

— In verse 12 the author focuses on God

— He has reminded himself that God is sovereign

— Therefore, what happens in life is no accident

— It has been given to him by God; so, regardless of what happens to him, he will anchor himself in God’s eternity and go from there

A Transformed Outlook

— The psalmist has turned from the damaging preoccupation with self to focusing on God and his eternal purposes

— Now he finds himself thinking of other situations and people and praying for them

1. The rebuilding of Jerusalem

— God’s servants are moved to pity by the city’s sad state (v. 14)

— He reasons that God will show compassion for Zion (v. 13)

— And he thinks of those who are living in the city because they are the “destitute” (v. 17)

2. The conversion of the Gentile Nations

— His prayers are also for the world’s nations, whom he sees one day coming to God to worship (vv. 15, 21-22)

— This is a worldwide missionary outlook

3. The church of the future

— This is a fascinating perspective

— His outlook extends not only outward geographically but forward in time

— The psalmist is thinking about the future church (v. 18)

— Do you think about the future?

— Do you think about what we do now can be used by God as a blessing for the future church?

4. The deliverance of the prisoners

— The psalmist anticipates a deliverance for prisoners

— The “release” of “those condemned to death” (v. 20)

— Hard to know what this is a reference to - perhaps Jews in Babylon who were unable to return to Zion

“Thou Who Changest Not”

— There is very little intimation of the Trinity or the person of the Son of God in the OT

— Yet we have verse 27 which is spoken by God the Father to the Son

“But You are the same, And Your years will not come to an end.” (v. 27)

— This is the way that the author of Hebrews interprets this verse (Heb 13:8)

Jesus is also the one through whom Zion is restored, the Gentile nations converted, future generations of the church raised up and preserved, and those who have been enslaved by sin delivered from their spiritual bondage. Anchored in eternity means anchored in Jesus Christ

Psalm 105

In this psalm, the psalmist calls upon Isreal to remember God because God had remembered His people. The psalmist calls the Israelites to thank God for His wondrous deeds toward Israel from the time of Abraham until the time of Joseph, when the Israelites came to Egypt. The psalmist remembers God’s wondrous deeds toward Israel from the time of Moses until the time of Joshua — reciting the miracles in Egypt and in the wilderness — when the Israelites entered the Promised Land. And the ultimate call is summed up in the final line of the psalm — “Praise Yahweh!”

God Remembered by Abraham’s Descendants

— We are coming to the end of the fourth book of the Psalter (Pss 90-106)

— Here are two psalms that are a pair

— The first deals with the faithfulness of God to Israel from the time of his initial covenant with them through Abraham to their entering the promised land

— The second deals with their unfaithfulness to him during the same time period

— We actually have two sets of paired psalms

— Pss 103 and 104 form a pair; the first praises God as Savior, the second as Creator

— Pss 105 and 106 form a pair; These praise God for his faithfulness over against the continuing sin of his people

Praise to Abraham’s God

— The first stanza (vv. 1-6) begins with a verse that tells us

(1) to give God thanks

(2) to call on his name

(3) proclaim him to others

— Verse 1 gives us three imperatives

— “give thanks,” “call on his name,” and “make [his deeds] known”

— Verse 2 tells us to

— ”sing,” “sing praise,” and “tell of all his wonderful acts”

— Verse 3 advises us

— “glory in his holy name,” and “rejoice”

— Verse 4 says

— “Look to the LORD,” and “seek his face always”

— Verse 5 says

— “remember”

God’s Covenant

— The psalm is identified as a thanksgiving psalm

— But it is not until stanza two (vv. 7-11) that we learn what the theme of the psalm is to be

— It is God’s covenant with Abraham, which is confirmed with his son Isaac and grandson Jacob

— The word covenant appears three times (vv. 8,9, 10)

— God’s covenant was to give Abraham’s descendants a land of their own (Gen 15:13-14, 16; 26:24; 28:10-15; 35:9-12; 46:1-4)

The covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants is called a unilateral covenant, meaning that God alone sets the terms and that he promises fulfilment apart from the faithfulness or lack of faithfulness of his people. Yet we are not to suppose that the people were absolved from any response at all. They had to own God as their God and promise him their allegiance, just as we do when we come to Jesus Christ as Savior: The psalm indicates this by having the people say in verse 7, “He is the LORD our God.” This is their response, as well as a reference to the declaration of God himself at the start of the Ten Commandments: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Ex 20:2)

The Early Stages

— The middle section is a selective review of Israel’s history (vv. 12-44)

— Unlike Psalms 78 or 106, which also review Israel’s history, the emphasis is on God’s utter sovereignty in choosing and preserving Israel

— The third stanza (vv. 12-15) seems to be saying that God’s choice was entirely apart from Israel’s impressive numbers (v. 12)

— Apart from their moral integrity

— Abraham lied to Abimelech about his wife

— The patriarch deceived Abimelech and he was about to take her as his wife

— God intervened to warn him that she was married to Abraham

— It was then that God referred to Abraham as “a prophet” (Gen 20:7)

— Yet a “lying” prophet! Obviously the emphasis here is upon God’s faithfulness, not man’s

Israel in Egypt: Joseph

— The fourth stanza tells about Israel’s time in Egypt (vv. 16-36)

— We learn that Joseph was put into Potiphar’s prison chained by his feet and neck (v. 18)

— This is a detail that is not recorded in Genesis

Israel out of Egypt: The Exodus

— One striking characteristic of this psalm is its repeated use of the pronoun he (vv 7,8, 10, 14, 16, 17, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35)

— For some reason — we do not know why — the psalm changes the order of the plagues and omits two

— It begins with the ninth plague (the great darkness)

— Then it begins in the original sequence but reverts the third and fourth plagues (gnats and flies, here flies and gnats)

— It omits the fifth and sixth plagues entirely (the death of the livestock and the boils)

1. The great darkness (v. 28; Exod 10:21-29)

— This is actually the ninth plague in Exodus

— The importance of this plague in showing the superiority of Jehovah over Ra may be why this ninth plague is handled first in the psalm

2. The Nile turned to blood (v. 29; Exod 7:14-24)

— The second judgment was actually the first in Exodus

— Osiris was one of the chief Egyptian gods, and he was the god of the Nile

3. The land overrun with frogs (v. 30; Exod 8:1-15)

— The Egyptians worshiped frogs and they were sacred

— The goddess Hekt was pictured with the body of a frog

— They were sacred and could not be killed

— They were forced to loathe the slimy symbol of their depraved worship, and when the frogs died their corpses must have turned the land into a stinking horror

4. The plague of flies (v. 31; Exod 8:20-32)

— Insects have always been a problem in Egypt

— Many insects were identified with gods and goddesses and worshiped including flies

— The ichneuman fly was viewed as the god Uatchit

5. Dust turned to gnats (v. 31; Exod 8:20-32)

— The soil in Egypt is some of the most fertile in the world, thanks to the rich earth carried downriver from the highlands of central Africa

— As part of God’s judgment upon the god of the earth (Geb), the land produced even more insects to plague the people and defile their bodies

6. Thunder, hail, and lightening (v. 32-33; Exod 9:13-35)

— It does not hail in Egypt and there is almost no rain

— Hail struck everything, both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields

— The only place that it did not hail was in the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived (Ex 9:23-26)

— Shu, the god of the atmosphere, Horus and Month, the bird gods; and Nut, the sky goddess, were ineffective

7. The plague of locusts (vv. 34-35; Exod 10:1-20)

— The locusts ate everything that was left

— Where was Nepri, the goodness of grain or Anubis, the guardian of the fields?

— Min, the deity of the harvests?

8. The death of the firstborn (v. 36; Exod 11:1-12:30)

— The tenth and last plague was the worst of all

— It was a terrible judgment but a fitting one in view of Pharaoh’s earlier slaughter of Israel’s male children and the many years of Jewish slavery

Never was God’s word to man more plain, pointed, personal, or powerful, yet it took ten plagues to win Israel’s freedom, and even then Pharaoh was unconverted. Do not be discouraged if people reject your witness. It will accomplish what God intends, for the word of God is never spoken without accomplishing its intended effect.

Through the Wilderness to Canaan

— The last stanza follows Israel through the years of her desert wandering (vv. 37-45)

— God eventually brings them to the land of Canaan, thereby fulfilling his promise made to Abraham

— The psalmist mentions three great miracles during the desert years

— The cloud that protected them from the fierce desert sun

— The quail and manna give to them as food

— The provision of water from the rock

— The point is that nothing was lacking and the people should “give thanks,” “call on his name,” “make known among the nations what he has done” (v. 1)

And there is one more thought — a very important one. It occurs at the very end of the psalm, where it is said that God gave Israel the lands of the nations “that they might keep his precepts and observe his laws” (v. 45)

Derek Kidner has a wonderfully sharp comment on this closing verse in which he relates it to exactly the same point in the New Testament. He writes, “The final verse shows why grace abounded; not that sin might also abound, but (to quote a New Testament equivalent of verse 45), ‘that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’ (Rom 8:4, AV).” This is the ultimate point of God’s covenant with us after all, not that those whom God sets his covenant love might be merely a select or unusual people, but that they might be holy, as he is

Peter understood it. He wrote, “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Pet 1:15-16). Ar you? Are any of us?

Psalm 113

Psalm 113, the first of the “Egyptian Hallel” psalms celebrating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, calls the readers to worship God, beginning and ending with the same imperative — praise Yah in the first part, the psalm reiterates the call to praise Yahweh, using the verb “praise” three times and pronouncing the name “Yahweh” five times. The psalmist simply cannot contain himself and is exuberant for the eternal praise of Yahweh. In the second part, the psalm provides the reason for this praise — that there is no one like God! He begins the second part of the psalm with the rhetorical question: “Who is like Yahweh our God?” The answer is: No one! God is both on high and comes down to see the people; He is in heaven and on earth; he lifts the needy to the status of the nobles; and He makes the barren woman a mother of children. Therefore, there is only one appropriate response — to praise Yah.

is Like God?

— There is nothing God can be compared to

— Psalm 113 both describes God by analogy and tells what he has done, yet all the while it knows that God can never be adequately described

— This is a praise psalm

— This is the first of six psalms commonly sung by Jews at the time of the Passover

— These psalms were sung at the three great feasts

—The feast of dedication

— The feasts of the new moons

—The Passover

A Summons to Praise God

— This psalm begins and ends with “Praise the LORD”

— There is important emphasis on the name of the Lord in the first stanza

— In biblical times names carried great significance

— In the case of God “the name of the Lord” is all important, for it has to do with the revelation of who God is

— We are to praise the one true “Lord

— He revealed himself in creation, on Sinai, and more recently in the person of his only Son, Jesus of Nazareth

Q: How is YHWH to be understood?

The only place in the Bible where YHWH is explained is Exodus 3:14, and this verse, reinforced by several New Testament passages (Matt. 22:32; Mark 12:26; John 8:58; and the important “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel), seems to show that the simple meaning is preferable: “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be.” Though derived from the most basic of all verbs and expressed in the simplest verbal form, YHWH expresses a wealth of God’s attributes

1. God is a person

— God spoke to Moses

— God has communicated with persons made in his image

2. God is self-existent

— God has no origins; nothing caused him or explains him

— Hence, we cannot know God except as he reveals himself to us

3. God is self-sufficient

— God has no needs

— He did not need to create us, and having created us, he does not need us for anything we can do for him (Matt 3:9)

4. God is eternal

— It is a comfort because God has set eternity in our hearts—we long to be immortal—and because we know that we shall enter into eternity if we are in him

— Moses himself was aware of this comfort and wrote about it in (Psalm 90)

5. God is unchangeable

— What he is today he will be tomorrow

— God can be trusted to remain as he reveals himself to be

— God will always be sovereign, holy, wise, gracious, just, compassionate, and everything else he has revealed himself to be

God Looking Down

—Verses 3 and 4 are almost identical to Malachi (Mal 1:11)

What amazes the psalmist is that God is exalted so high that he has to stoop low to see not only the earth but also the heavens, and yet at the same time he cares for the lowly

— The New Testament goes beyond even the psalm when it describes how Jesus not only looked down on us to see us in our misery, sin, and sorrows but also actually came down to us to lift us up (Phil 2:5-8)

The Downtrodden Looking Up

— The last stanza tells us that God stoops down to help the downtrodden (vv 7-8)

— These two verses are picked up from the story of Hannah (1 Sam 2:8)

— And they are echoed by Mary (Luke 1:46-55)

— The psalm ends by saying that God is concerned about us individually

1. He saves us from our sin one by one

— Not everyone has the experience of being raised from the dust to sit on a throne

— But all who are saved by Christ are lifted from the pigsty of this decadent world to sit with Jesus in his glory and rule with him

2. He rescues us when we are cast down

— God knows us individually

— Even the very hairs of our head are numbered (Lk 12:7)

— God clearly cares for you and knows exactly what you are suffering

— Moreover, he is able to do something about it

— He is able to lift you up and seat you with princes

Charles Spurgeon said, “Such verses as these should give great encouragement to those who are lowest in their own esteem.” Has life cast you down? Turn to God who is able to lift you up, and trust him to do it. Then do as the psalm finally does: Praise the Lord!

Psalm 114

Psalm 114, the second of the “Egyptian Hallel” psalms celebrating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, extols the fearsome power of God by reciting God’s miraculous wonders in bringing Israel out of Egypt. After God delivered His people, He established the nation of Judah where the temple was, indeed, in Israel where the entire nation dwelt. During the exodus, God led the Israelites to the Promised Land and demonstrated His power over every element of creation — the sea, the Jordan, the mountains, and the hills, all of which cowered before the mighty works of God. Therefore, the psalmist charges the earth to tremble before the God of such power.

Make Way Before God

—Psalm 114 is the second of the six praise songs known as the Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113–18)

Hallel means “praise.” These psalms were sung at the three great feasts—the feast of dedication and the feasts of the new moons—and by families at the yearly observance of the Passover. At the Passover two were sung before the meal and four afterward. Since this custom goes back a long way, we can assume that these were the psalms sung by Jesus and his disciples in the upper room before our Lord’s arrest and crucifixion (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26).

A Kingdom of Priests

—The names Judah and Israel are not being used to reference the Northern and Southern kingdoms

— The kingdoms split at the time of Rehoboam (1 Ki 12; 2 Chronicles 10)

— They are two names for one people that came out of Egypt at the exodus

— Isreal is the only nation that was

— A theocracy

— God’s sanctuary

— A nation of priests (Ex 19:6)

— God’s people are all three (1 Pet 2:9) by His Holy Spirit

1. A royal priesthood

—We can pray for others and be heard

— We can offer ourselves as a living sacrifice (Ro 12:1-2)

2. A holy nation

—We are also a nation of those in whom Jesus Christ rules (Rev 5:10)

Out of Egypt

— In just four lines the psalms captures the desert experience after the exodus (vv. 3-4)

— The first line refers to the parting of the Red Sea

— The second line of the stanza refers to driving back the waters of the Jordan River so the people could pass into Canaan at the end of their desert years

— The last two lines (v. 4) refer to the trembling of the earth when God came down on Mount Sinai to give the people his law (Exod 19:18-19; Heb 12:21)

What Possible Cause?

—The psalmist asks four questions (vv. 4-5)

— Up until this point God’s name is never mentioned

— What could have caused the sea to part, the river to turn back, and the hills to tremble? he asks

God, the God of Jacob

—In the last stanza he provides us the answer (v. 7)

Tremble, O Earth, Before God

Here is one last thought for those who have not yet believed in Christ. Notice how the last stanza speaks of the earth trembling before the approach of God. The startling and utterly inexplicable thing is that human beings, who are in far greater danger than the earth, which is actually in no danger at all, fail to do what the earth does. Human beings face judgment apart from Jesus Christ. Yet they go on as if all is well with them and as if they do not need a Savior. If that has been true of you, I encourage you to learn from nature even if you will learn nowhere else. An earlier psalm says, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Ps. 2:12).

Psalm 115

Psalm 115, the third of the “Egyptian Hallel” psalms celebrating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, exclaims that all the glory belongs to Yahweh. In light of this truth, the psalm begins with the proclamation, “Not to us, O Yahweh, not to us, but to Your Name give glory.” The psalm then celebrates God’s absolute superiority in that God is in heaven and he does what He wishes, unlike the manmade gods, which are not able to do anything. The psalmist’s response to this reality is to call everyone to trust in God and to bless God. Finally, the psalmist declares that he and those who are with him will bless Yahweh forever. And the psalmist concludes the psalm with a final charge — Praise Yah!

The Victors’ Psalm at Agincourt

— King Henry V of England was a remarkable king who might have become emperor of Europe if he hadn’t died at age 35

— He dedicated himself to uniting Christendom against the Turks and conquered France on his way to conquering the Turks

— His father, Prince Hal, had given Henry Psalm 115: 1 as his guide

— At the battle of Agincourt October 25, 1415 he killed 10,000 Frenchman compared to 1,600 Englishman

— After the victor, the king commanded the victorious English armies to kneel in the mud of Agincourt and sing Psalm 115 together

— In Shakespeare’s version (Henry V) the king declares, “O God, thy arm was here; and not to us, but to thy arm alone, ascribe we all.”

— This is a victory psalm (vv. 9-11) although most commentators might disagree because of verse 2

The Gods of the Heathen

—The first section (vv. 2-8) is a polemic, verbal attack, against idols

— This is the first polemic against idols in the Psalter, although there was a brief reference earlier (Ps 96:5)

— This is surprising, but this psalm may have been written after the Babylonian captivity where they would have witnessed idol worship firsthand

— Saint Augustine wrote a massive commentary on the Psalms and he saw every psalm as pointing to Christ

— But he did point out that even beasts surpass idols because they can see and hear and talk

— Augustine wrote,

“A man then moves himself that he may frighten away a living beast from his own god; and yet worships that god who cannot move himself, as if he were powerful, from whom he drove away one better than the object of his worship.”

— The second commandment condemns them (Ex 20:4-6)

Trust in the Lord

—The third stanza (vv. 9-11) says that we should not only worship but trust God

— He is our true “help and shield”

— These three verses are almost entirely repetition

Q: What should we do if God repeats something three times?

I sometimes say that if God tells us something once we should listen very carefully, because he is God. If he says something twice we should pay the most strict attention. How then if he repeats something three times? In that case we should drop everything else we are doing, give our full attention to, study, ponder, memorize, meditate on, and joyfully obey what God has said. In this case, we should “trust in the Lord” and not the other things that so easily take God’s proper place in our lives.

The Lord’s Blessing

—Those who trust in idols will be disappointed

— Those who trust in the LORD will be be disappointed

— In stanza three the “house of Israel,” the “house of Aaron,” and “all who fear him” were challenged to trust God

— In stanza four ( vv 12-13) these same people are addressed and are declared to be recipients of God’s blessing

— He will bless the small and the great (v. 13)

— In fact, it is often the disfavored and disadvantaged who grow most and deepest, because they are not trusting their own wisdom or strength but in the Lord

Praise the Lord

Q: What should our response be to his goodness to us — small and great alike?

— The last stanza suggests two additional answers

1. Be faithful stewards

—God has given us the earth as stewards

— We are responsible to Him for what we do with it

— We can use it to enrich ourselves or use it the world’s goods to honor God

2. Praise God constantly

—We must praise God as the wonderful, reliable, and benevolent God he is, letting others know about it

— The last verse does not argue against afterlife

— It merely states the obvious

— No praises are given to God on earth by dead people

Spurgeon wrote,

“Though the dead cannot, the wicked will not and the careless do not praise God, yet we will shout ‘Hallelujah’ for ever and ever.”

Psalm 116

In this psalm, the psalmist exalts God for delivering him out of distress. First, the psalmist reflects on the attentiveness of God to his cry. Second, the psalmist reflects on the graciousness of God to the needs of the psalmist in distress. Finally, the psalmist reflects on his personal response to God’s care — he will lift up the horn of salvation in praise, he will pay his vows to God, he will offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, and he will do all this before all people, that is, in the courts of the temple in the midst of Jerusalem.

Help of the Helpless

—Psalm 116 is a hymn by an individual celebrating God’s deliverance from a sickness so severe he thought he was going to die (v. 3)

— More than that, it is a poem about prayer and thanksgiving

— The two statements “I called” and “I will call” are repeated throughout the psalm, in verses 2, 4, 13, and 17

— They teach that God cares for those who are helpless, that he hears their prayers and saves them when they cannot save themselves

The fact that this individualistic psalm is part of the Egyptian Hallel (Pss. 113–18) is a bit puzzling at first, but the deliverance of the nation has parallels in God’s deliverance of individuals, and therefore individuals as well as the people as a whole should praise God.

Part One: What God Did for the Psalmist

—The first eleven verses tell what God did for the psalmist (vv. 1-11)

— The psalmist was sick to the point of death, and God delivered him

— The last two verses (vv. 10-11) are hard to understand

— The problem is that the connecting Hebrew particle translated “therefore” in the New International Version (“I believed; therefore, I said …”) can mean different things

— Roy Clements spells out four possible translations before settling finally on the New International Version rendering

1. “I believed even when I said …”

—Even when” would mean that the writer had said some wrong things when he was sick but had been trusting God even then

— This translation should be set aside

— However, the NASB uses “I believed when I said” (v. 10)

— Faith in God an His ability to deliver preceded the psalmist’s prayer for deliverance

— This verse is quoted by the apostle Paul (2 Co 4:13)

— It rehearses the principle of walking by faith, not by sight

2. “I believed even though I said …”

—This would mean the psalmist was trying to set the record straight

— Some commentators take this view but their reasoning is too elaborate to be convincing

3. “I believed because I said …”

—“Because” would mean that faith was something the writer came to simply because he had nowhere to turn but to God.

— J. J. Stewart Perowne explains, “He stays himself upon God (‘I believe’), for he had looked to himself, and there had been nothing but weakness; he had looked to other men and found them all deceitful.”

4. “I believed; therefore I said …”

—The final view is the one reflected in the New International Version, and it is probably the best in many ways

Clements thinks the psalmist is saying, “In my moment of crisis, I discovered I was a believer, a real believer, not just a nominal churchgoer and that faith I discovered enabled me to verbalize my distraught emotions, not just to myself, but to God.

The Conclusions

— The experience of having been sick, having prayed, and having God answer him so clearly and powerfully left such an impression on the psalmist

1. “The Lord is gracious and righteou.… full of compassion” (v. 5).

—Some commentators work very hard to explain why the word “righteous” is found in this verse (v. 5)

— He is thinking of God’s righteousness in remembering his covenant

— God is being gracious even to such an insignificant person as himself

— As Christians we should feel God’s compassion and grace towards us

2. “The Lord protects the simplehearted” (v. 6)

—God is gracious to the little people, to the plain, to the commoners, the every day people

— That is one of the great glories of our God

— When Jesus called his disciples, he called fishermen and tax collectors.

— When the angels announced the birth of Jesus, they appeared

3. “Be at rest once more, O my soul” (v. 7)

— The psalmist concluded that he could rest in God once more, more securely and with greater trust than he had possessed before

—As a believer he turned to God,

— God answered him in a marvelous way,

— Now he is able to settle down and rest in him again

4. “Yo.… have delivered my soul from deat.… that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living” (vv. 8–9)

—God delivers his people not only so they appreciate his grace and rest in him

— but also so they live for him

— walk with him

— follow after him

— Jesus taught us what it means to be a follower (Lk 9:23; Jn 15:15; 1 Co 6:19-20)

5. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (v. 15)

—God is particularly close to his people when they stand at death’s door

— God watches over his people when they are sick or dying, coming close to them and making his presence known so that they have comfort in death’s hour

— He also frequently intervenes and does not allow them to perish

— God always does what is best

Part Two: What the Writer Will Do

—The last part of the psalm asks “How can I repay the LORD for all his goodness to me?” (vv. 12-19)

— In Romans Paul asks the same question rhetorically (Ro 11:35-36)

— The Psalmist suggests two ways to respond to God’s mercy towards us

— First, tell others about God’s mercy towards you (vv. 18-19)

— Second, we need to “lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (v. 13) (cf. Ps 16:5; 23:5)

— Jesus and the Twelve must have sung Psalm 116 at the Last Supper after Jesus had instituted the communion service with its “cup of salvation.”

Psalm 117

This psalm pronounces a universal command for all the people to praise Yahweh. The psalmist first issues the imperative that includes all political and ethnic groups. He then indicates that the reason for this praise is God’s lovingkindness and truth. The universal call of this psalm reveals that God is Sovereign not only over a local region, but in fact over the entire universe., therefore, every soul in the universe owes God worship. The appeal to God’s lovingkindness and truth hearkens back to God’s revelation of His glory to Moses; it indicates that this is the same God who formed the covenant relationship with the people of Israel. Indeed, the psalmist makes clear that all people are to worship the God of Israel as he invokes God’s complete personal name at the beginning of the psalm in the command, “Praise Yahweh,” and His shorter personal name at the end of the psalm in the command, “Praise Yah!”

The Shortest Psalm of All

— it is amazing how much teaching the Holy Spirit can pack into so few words

— James Boice tells the story of teaching on Jn 11:35 over a period of four Sundays

— “Jesus wept.” (Jn 11:35)

— Although this is the shortest Psalm (and shortest chapter), it contains a profound amount of teaching

— Charles Spurgeon cites a writer who found five profound doctrines in this chapter: the calling of the Gentiles, a summary of the gospel, the end and goal of such blessing, the duties of God’s people, and their privileges

Martin Luther devoted thirty-six pages to this psalm, expounding it in four important categories: (1) prophecy (the Gentiles will participate in gospel blessings), (2) revelation (the kingdom of Christ is not earthly and temporal but rather heavenly and eternal), (3) instruction (we are saved by faith alone and not by works, wisdom, or holiness), and (4) admonition (we should praise God for such a great salvation). Luther’s treatment of Psalm 117 is a masterpiece of exposition and well worth a very careful reading.

— It is the fifth psalm of the Egyptian Hallel (Pss. 113–18)

All the Nations

— The first striking feature of this psalm is that it calls upon all nations and all peoples to praise God

— “Nations” is the Hebrew word goyim, often translated “Gentiles,” though it does mean Gentiles strictly speaking

— At the very beginning of the Bible God taught that the gospel was to be for all people, since he told Abraham, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:3)

— The Jews forgot that, just as we do

Jews and Gentiles

— Paul cites this in Romans (Rom 15:11)

— The surprising thing is that the texts he cites do not deal with the relationship between weaker and stronger people specifically but rather are prophecies that the gospel would one day be extended to the Gentiles (Ps 18:49 [Rom 15:9]; Deut 32:43 [Rom 15:10]; Ps 117:1 [Rom 15:11]; Isa 11:10 [Rom 15:12])

— It is amazing (and wonderful) that the gospel should be extended to Gentiles

— The Old Testament taught the exclusive privileges of the Jews as God’s unique people and no hope for the Gentiles apart from their becoming Jews

— Paul said that one advantage of being Jewish was that they had the Bible and Gentiles did not (Rom 3:2)

— He added that Jews had received the law, temple worship, the patriarchs, the covenant and more... (Rom 9)

— Gentiles had none of these advantages (Eph 2:12)

— For many centuries God was working with Israel specifically and there was literally no hope of salvation for the masses of the world who were not Jewish (Jn 4:22)

— Gentile salvation is the great insight of this psalm

— When we notice how many verses Paul cites to hammer home his point, we get a glimpse of how carefully and persistently he must have had to argue the truth about Gentile salvation when teaching Jews

The Greatness of God’s Love

— The reason the Gentiles (along with Jews) are called upon to praise God is God’s love, for it is a love that “endures forever” (v. 2)

— Verse 2 is based on a favorite text of the postexilic Jewish community (Ex 34:6) which we have looked at before

—If the “love of God” was the focus of the Egyptian Hallel, how much more are we aware of it on this side of the cross

I think here of John 3:16, undoubtedly the best loved and most memorized and quoted verse in the entire Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God’s gift to us of Jesus is alone the full measure of the magnitude of God’s love.

John 3:16 was the verse by which D. L. Moody, the famous evangelist, learned the greatness of God’s love. Moody traveled to England early in his ministry and met a young English preacher named Henry Moorhouse, who later pioneered Christian social service work in London’s poorer areas. One day Moorhouse told Moody, “I’m thinking of going to America.”

Moody said, “Well, if you should ever get to Chicago, come to my church and I’ll give you a chance to preach.”

Moody was only being polite when he said this, because he had not heard Moorhouse and didn’t know what he might say. He put the matter out of his mind, thinking that Moorhouse would probably never get as far west as Chicago. Sometime after Moody had gone back to America, he received a telegram that said, “Have arrived in New York. Will be in Chicago Sunday.” Moody didn’t know what to do, especially since he was scheduled to be away that weekend. Finally he told the leaders of the church, “I think we should let him preach once. Put him on; then, if the people enjoy him, let him preach again.”

Moody was gone for a week following that Sunday, and when he got back he asked his wife, “How did the young preacher do?”

“He’s a better preacher than you are,” she said. “He’s telling sinners that God loves them.”

“That’s not right,” Moody replied. “God doesn’t love sinners.” He had not yet learned very much about the love of God.

“Well, if you don’t think so, go and hear him.”

“What?” said Moody. “Do you mean to tell me he is still here, that he is still preaching?”

“Yes, he has been preaching all week, and he has only had one verse for a text. It is John 3:16.

” Moody went to the meeting. Moorhouse began by saying, “I have been hunting for a text all day, and I have not been able to find a better one than John 3:16. So I think I will just talk about it once more.” He began to preach, and afterward Moody testified that on that night he received his first clear understanding of the gospel of grace and the greatness of God’s love.

The Prevailing Power of God’s Love

— The word “great” in Hebrew carries the meaning of prevailing over something or someone

— The point is that when this word is used of the love of God for his people, it also has the thought of God’s love prevailing over any obstacles or enemies.

— Martin Luther applied this to not only earthly enemies but to sin and temptation

— The Enduring Power of God’s Truth

— The words “faithfulness” (v. 2) is actually the word amen, or

— “Truth”

— Steadfastness”

— Readability”

— Truly, Truly as used by Jesus

— In Hebrew the verb means “that which is supported”

— This is an “intransitive verb” and does not need an object, like “she sits”

— Thus, it became to mean “firm” or “unshakable”

— The word occurs in this original sense in Isaiah 22:23 in reference to a firm place in a wall, where a nail can be driven:

“I will drive him like a peg into a firm place.”

— Isaiah is speaking about the unshakable character of Christ’s kingdom

—First, It came to be used of one of God’s attributes — He is unshakable and will never pass away

— Therefore we find God spoken of as the Amen or, as some versions have it, as the God of truth (Is 65:16)

— Second, it became a word that means to express agreement with what God says

Psalm 118

Psalm 118 — an immensely messianic psalm and one of the most quoted psalms in the New Testament — praises God for God’s deliverance. The psalmist calls the audience to praise God with thanksgiving for His lovingkindness that endures forever. He exclaims that God is his salvation because when the enemies attacked him, God delivered him. The psalmist then invites his audience to rejoice in Yahweh, declaring that the one who comes in the name of Yahweh is blessed, that Yahweh is God, and that Yahweh is the psalmist's personal God. In light of all this, the psalmist ends the psalm with an imperative to give thanks to Yahweh, for the lovingkindness of Yahweh endures forever. 0

Thanks to Our Good God: Part 1

“His Love Endures Forever”

— The first verse of this psalm repeats Exodus 34:6 exactly

— This theme is echoed in verses 2–4 and then is repeated at the psalm’s close, in verse 29.

Processions from the Past

— This psalm likely was used for praise by Israel on festive processional occasions

— Jeremiah describe such as scene and quotes this psalm (Jer 33:10-11)

— The repetitive language suggests this as well

— Progression of ideas from anguish (v.5)

— to worship at God’s altar (v. 27)

— the inclusion of “festal procession” (v. 27)

From Egypt to Mount Zion

— It begins with a summons to Israel to praise God (v. 2-4)

— Next, it describes someone who was enslaved and the dangers of he faced (v. 5, 10)

— “I was pushed back and about to fall” ( v. 13)

— He then remembers past victories given to Israel (v. 15)

— Then a call to open the gates for the righteous to enter because he has been heard and delivered (v. 19)

— Then the final procession (v. 27)

— This is the last and climatic psalm of the Egyptian Hallel

— Its parts suggest the passage of Israel from slavery in Egypt to the security and joy of Mount Zion

— Parts of the psalm echo the Exodus narrative

— Verse 14 is from Moses’s victory song after the deliverance of the people from Pharaoh (Ex 15:2)

A Christian Psalm

— We can use this psalm to remember God’s grace in our lives through Jesus Christ

— In fact, what strikes us most about this psalm are the verses quoted in the Gospel accounts of Palm Sunday and Passion Week referring to Jesus Christ

1. “O Lord, save us” (v. 25) and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (v. 26)

— This was quoted by the crowd as Jesus entered the city (vv. 25-26)

— All four gospels quote one or both of these verses in their account of the triumphal entry (see Matt. 21:9; Mark 11:9–10; Luke 19:39; John 12:13)

When we remember that Psalm 118 is part of the Egyptian Hallel, that the Hallel was sung by Jews at the time of the Passover, and that it was Passover when Jesus entered Jerusalem and later died on Calvary, it is understandable that these words would have been in the minds of the people who greeted him as he entered the city. Jesus entered Jerusalem on the day the lambs were being taken into the Jewish homes in preparation for the sacrifice.

2. “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone” (v. 22) and “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (v. 24)

— These verses refer to Israel primarily

— Isreal was rejected by the empire builder of that day as something insignificant

— But God was going to make her the focal point of building a new people of God

— These words have also rightly been applied to Jesus himself

—Rejected by the Jews and their leaders, yet God made him both the Savior of his people and the focus of their devotion

— Jesus used this psalm to picture his death and resurrection (v. 22)

— Jesus told the parable of a farmer who had a leased field and killed the owner’s son (Matt 21:41)

— He then applied vv 22-23 to himself (Matt 21:42)

— Peter quotes this psalm when he heals a crippled beggar and is arrested (Acts 4:7-12)

— Peter loved this psalm

— He quoted it before the Sanhedrin and also used it in his first letter, combined with Isaiah 8:14 and 28:16 (see 1 Peter 2:4–8)

— You must not stumble at God’s grace but build your life on Jesus Christ, our sure foundation

Thanks to Our Good God: Part 2

Ours to Live and Testify

— This psalm was also a favorite of Martin Luther who wrote a sixty-page exposition of it

Strength for the Martyrs

— This was also a favorite of the Protestant Huguenots who were martyred during the 16th and 17th centuries

— Many of them as they stood on the scaffolding quoted from this psalm (Louis Rank, Jacque Roger, Francois Rochette, and others)

“What Can Man Do to Me?”

— The psalms’s theme is found in verse 6 and is quoted in the New Testament (Heb 13:6)

“The Lord is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me?” (Ps 118:6)

— David expressed this same confidence in Psalm 56 (vv. 4, 11)

— David wrote Psalm 56 during a time when he was nearly a prisoner of the Philistines in Gath

— He was fleeing from King Saul, who sought to kill him

— Events leading to Gath

— David escaped to Nob, where Ahimelech, the head priest, provided him with food and Goliath’s sword as a weapon

— Finding Nob unsafe, David fled to Gath, the hometown of Goliath

— Significance of Goliath’s Sword

— Goliath’s sword, likely large and recognizable, symbolized David’s victory over Goliath, a painful reminder for the people of Gath

— David’s arrival with the sword would have evoked hostility, indicating his desperation rather than arrogance

— David’s Fear in Gath

— His presence in Gath was reported to Achish, the king, by the locals who recalled the songs praising David:

“Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Sam. 21:11)

— The “tens of thousands” included Philistines, making David a feared and hated figure

— David was “very much afraid” but simultaneously trusted in God.

— David’s Trust in God

— In Psalm 56, David expresses confidence in God, saying:

— “In God I trust; I will not be afraid” (Ps. 56:4, 11)

— “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid” (Ps. 118:6)

— Lessons from David’s Experience

— Despite fear or danger, trust in God brings strength and courage

— Paul reflects a similar faith in Romans 8:

— “We face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Rom. 8:36)

— Nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39)

The Middle Verses of the Bible

— It is reported by people who count such things that there are 31,174 verses in the Bible

— If that is so, then these verses, the 15,587th and the 15,588th, are the middle verses (vv. 8-9)

— These verses are about putting our trust in God and not in men

It is the Living Who Praise the Lord

— Do we praise God? Or are we as silent as those who have died and been buried? (cf. Ps 115:17-18)

— If we have been saved from our sin and kept alive by God, rather than being taken to heaven, it is in order to praise him

— We live to be God’s witnesses

Light for the Gentiles

— The last three verses are a powerful summary and application of the psalm

1. “The Lord is God” (v. 27)

— In verse 27 the word “LORD” is used

— The verse is saying that it is Jehovah, or Yahweh, the true God of the universe

— He is to be worshipped

2. “You are my God” (v. 28)

— He is not merely the God of Israel but the psalmist’s personal God

3. “The Lord.… is good” (v. 29)

— And the true God “is good”

— The psalmist begins and ends with these words

The writer found that God is good because God had been good to him. He had been oppressed, but God had freed him from his oppression. He had been attacked, but God had delivered him from his enemies. He had been about to fall, but God had raised him up and given him important work to do, testifying to God’s goodness. Is it any different for those who have been saved by Jesus Christ? We too have been freed from sin, delivered, and given work to do. If that is your case, thank God and get to work.

Psalm 119.

Psalm 119 expresses the psalmist’s love for the law of God. The psalm is organized according to the complete Hebrew alphabet, with twenty-two stanzas, and this complete state of the alphabet in the psalm expresses the idea that what must fully consume the mind of man is the law of God. The psalmist asserts that God’s law brings blessings, joy, wisdom, peace, and comfort to the righteous, and because of all this, he affirms in the end that the chief end of the life of man is to praise God.

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 1

First Things First

— This psalm tells us to praise God because He has given us the Bible

—So much has been written about this psalm

— Spurgeon dedicated 349 pages to it

— Most impressive of all is the three-volume work 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

— The work has 190 long chapters, more than one for each verse

— Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm

— It is divided into twenty-two stanzas

— 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, with only a small handful of exceptions

There are at least eight synonyms for Scripture that dominate this psalm: “law” (torah), which occurs twenty-five times; “word” (dabar), twenty-four times; “rulings” or “ordinances” (mispatim), twenty-three times; “testimonies” (hedot), twenty-three times; “commandments” (miswoth), twenty-two times; “decrees” or “statutes” (huqqim), twenty-one times; “precepts” or “charges” (piqqudim), twenty-one times; and “sayings,” “promise,” or “word” (ʿimra), nineteen times. However, there are other terms that are close to being synonyms, such as “way” (derek) three times, and “path” (natiyb) three times, and I have already mentioned the possibility that “righteous and just” and “name” mean the Bible. The rabbis said that there are ten synonyms for the Scriptures in this psalm, one for each of the Ten Commandments

How to Be Blessed

— Many writers acknowledge that happiness is a universal goal of men and women

— But apart from God we don’t know how to attain happiness

Q: What are some ways that people think that they can attain happiness?

— Some people think money or power will bring happiness

— The Bible tells us that conforming to the law of God brings happiness (v. 2)

— This law is the whole of God’s revelation, which we call the Bible

— But in order to live by the Bible we must know it

— It must be our “meditation day and night” (v. 2)

— This is why Bible memorization is important

Knowing and Obeying God’s Word

— We must be determined to know and live by the Bible

— To keep it and obey it (vv. 3-4)

— The reason we are unhappy is because we sin

— The reason for knowing the Bible is to “walk,” “keep,” “obey” and “learn”

An Honest Wish

— Sometimes when we read the Bible we think of these people as somehow being unlike us, exceptional

— 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.

— Therefore, he cries

“Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!” (v. 5)

— He is saying the same thing as Paul said in Romans (Rom 7:15-23)

— Although we want to keep the Law of God, we do not keep it and, in fact, cannot keep it, at least not in our own power

— It is a case of what J. I. Packer calls “spiritual realism.”

A Strong Resolution

— How determined was he?

— The final verse of the stanza is determined resolution.

“I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me” (v. 8)

— This verse is a strong resolution, a sincere confession, and an urgent plea

— If the psalm is to be helpful to us, it must become personal in our lives too

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 2

Starting Young

— The psalm is an acrostic poem in which the first words of each eight-verse stanza begin with one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each stanza in succession

— The second stanza’s verses, verses 9–16, start with beth

— The interesting thing about beth is that the word also means “a house,” and as Herbert Lockyer notes, the underlying thought of the stanza is “making our heart a home for the Word of God.”

Q: What is the condition of your heart, your home?

— Apart from the grace of God in your life it will always be occupied by such filthy evil spirits as:

— Lust

— Greed

— Pride

— Self-Love.

— If you try to drive these demons out by yourself, they will only return in greater numbers and your latter state will be worse than at the first ( Luke 11:24–26)

— God alone can cleanse the heart, and he does so through the agency of his Word, the Bible

When Should We Begin?

Q: When should we start living for God?

— The world says when you are young “sow your seed,” have fun and live it up

— Settle down to religion and family when you get old

— God’s answer is quite different

— God says, If you are going to live for me, you must begin at the earliest possible moment

— You should start without delay, preferably when you are very young (v. 9)

— If you do not live for me when you are young, you will probably not live for me when you are older either

— The best possible way to live for God and establish and maintain a pure life is by starting young

What Should We Do?

— We should hide His Word in our heart (v. 11)

— Scripture memorization is not stressed in the contemporary church

Why Should We Do It?

— The answer is to know God

— So that we will live holy lives and we “might not sin against [God]” (v. 11)

— Jesus told his disciples, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you” (John 15:3, italics added)

— He also prayed to the Father on their behalf, saying, “Sanctify them by the truth,” and adding, “your word is truth” (John 17:17, italics added)

— Here is an outline for verse 11 that may help you to remember what we have noticed in the psalm so far:

The best thing—“thy Word”

Hidden in the best place—“my heart”

For the best purpose—“that I might not sin against thee”

— Remember that the Bible is God’s cleansing agent for sin and that without it we will never live a holy life

How Can We Do It?

— We need a teacher and can’t understand the Word by ourselves (v. 12)

— We need the Holy Spirit to teach us (1 Cor 2:12-14)

Four Helpful Exercises

— The psalmist gives us some practical advice

— We might call them four exercises designed to help us master Scripture

1. “With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth” (v. 13)

— One of the best ways to learn is to verbalize it

— Teach others

— Martin Luther said, “It is not enough to believe with the heart unto righteousness, unless confession unto salvation is also made with the mouth (Rom. 10:10)”

2. “I rejoice in following your statutes” (v. 14)

— Rejoicing in God’s word can be done privately or in corporate worship

— Singing the great hymns of faith with other Christians is one way

3. “I meditate on your precepts” (v. 15)

— Committing verses to memory and deeply thinking about it

— The Virgin Mary meditated after the birth of her son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for we are told in Luke 2:19:

“Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

4. “I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word” (v. 16)

— “Delight” in this last verse is not the same word as in verse 14 (“rejoice”)

— Delight is festive joyful, exuberant

— Rejoice is a settled pleasure

— Here we are speaking of a determination

— We must determine not to allow other pressing matters to crowd out the study of God’s Word

— In the last verse he says he will “not neglect” the Bible

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 3

Trials on the Way

—The Bible scholar E.M. Blaiklock make this observation about this section of the psalm:

He had known persecution, that most hideous of man’s sins (22, 23); he had suffered under the heavy or the ruthless hand of authority, as Christians (and Jews) still do in the lands where the blanket of the dark has fallen (61, 69). His faith had staggered under the load of it all (6, 22, 31). He had known pressure to give in and conform.… The third section [which we are to study now, along with the fourth] seems to be particularly autobiographical. The writer had known deprivation and fear for his life (17), the dryness of soul of which Cowper wrote (“where is the blessedness I knew …”) when the word itself seems to lose its savor (18) under the stress of life. He had known loneliness and rejection (19) [and] the agony of seeming abandonment (20).

— The psalmist's experiences are not too different from our own

— He has experienced multiple trials

For Righteousness’ Sake

—We will see many trials in these two stanzas marked gimel and daleth

— We will also see additional trails later (vv. 65-88)

— What is unique about these specific trials is that they seem to have come to the psalmist because of his determination to adhere to God’s Word

— There are not just trials and tribulations but rather persecutions for righteousness’ sake (see Matt. 5:10)

— The psalmist writes, in the first stanza, of the blessedness that comes to the person who determines to live according to the Law of God (vv. 1-8)

— In the second stanza he suggests that the time to start living by God’s law is when a person is young (vv. 9-16)

— Now, in stanzas three and four, he speaks of four trials that will come to one who is walking in that way (vv. 17-32)

1. Alienation (v. 19)

—The idea of being out of place in the world

— He speaks of the “arrogant, who are cursed and who stray from your commands” (v. 21)

— The “princes” who “sit together and slander [him]” (v. 23)

— If you are trying to follow God, the world is going to treat you as an alien, for that is what you will be

— You cannot expect to be at home in it

— and if you are, well, it is an indication that you really do not belong to Christ or at least are living far from him

— Jesus expressed it in even stronger terms. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also (John 15:19–20)

2. Slander (vv. 22–23)

—Slander was directed to him by the rulers

— Slander, however, deals with accusations that are untrue

— Alexander Maclaren wrote how slander follows the writer’s determination to live by God’s Law

In verse 22 he prays that reproach and shame, which wrapped him like a covering, may be lifted from him; and his plea in verse 22b declares that he lay under these because he was true to God’s statutes. In verse 23 we see the source of the reproach and shame, in the conclave of men in authority, whether foreign princes or Jewish rulers, who were busy slandering him, and plotting his ruin; while, with wonderful beauty, the contrasted picture in [verse 23]b shows the object of that busy talk, sitting silently absorbed in meditation on the higher things of God’s statutes.

3. Abasement, or humiliation (v. 25)

—The writer says that he is “laid low in the dust” (v. 25)

— This is because he had determined to live according to God’s Word

4. Sorrow (v. 28)

—He feels sorrow because he has been rejected, slandered and humiliated

— Instead of looking inward, the writer renews his determination to hold fast to the promises of God

Living by God’s Word

—He wants to live, not just physically but a full spiritual life (vv. 17, 25)

— Hence, his concern is to live by the Word of God

— He says that he is “consumed with longing” for it (v. 20)

— that it is his “delight” (v. 24)

— that he has “chosen the way of truth” (v. 30)

— and that he wants to “hold fast to [God’s] statutes” (v. 31)

Wonderful Things in God’s Law

— If he is to live by God’s Word, he will need God’s help (cf. vv. 8, 12)

1. “Open my eyes” (vv. 18–19)

—We need God to remove the veil over our eyes to see what is clear in the bible

— The Bible is not hidden (the perspicuity of Scripture), it is our dullness in not seeing them

2. “Teach me your decrees” (v. 26)

—The written word and the work of the Holy Spirit always go together

— The Spirit speaks through the Word

— So if we desire to grow in grace, we need both to study the Bible and also ask God through his Holy Spirit to be our teacher

3. “Let me understand the teaching” (v. 27)

—We are to meditate on God’s Word

— It is concerned with a deep understanding of God’s Word

4. “Keep me from deceitful ways” (v. 29)

—The last of the psalmist’s four requests is to be kept from sin

— It is by the Grace of God exercising itself through the written Word

Running the Race

— Here, in the last three verses, the psalmist indicates by three powerful verbs what else is required if we are to live a godly life

1. We must choose the right way (v. 30)

—Nobody ever just stumbles onto the right path

— We must choose to do so

2. We must hold God’s statutes fast (v. 31)

—We must hold or “cleave” to God’s Word

3. We must run the course set before us (v. 32)

—The Christian life is a race to be run

— Don’t treat it as a casual stroll and follow the Lord from a distance (Heb 12:1; 2 Tim 4:7-8)

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 4

In God’s School

—Wherever the Gospel has gone into the world, learning (grammar schools, colleges, etc) have followed

— The kind of learning the psalmist has in mind is learning God’s Word

— He wants to learn God’s Word so he might walk in it, or obey it

— In order to make progress in this school he asks God to be his teacher, as he did in verses 12

— This stanza is filled with prayers (nine in all)

— There is a linguistic reason for all the prayers

As Leslie Allen points out, this is the fifth, or he, stanza of the psalm, he being the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and in Hebrew he is used at the beginning of verbs to make them causative. In English we would translate such verbs as “Cause me to learn,” “Cause me to have understanding,” “Cause me to walk,” and so on, which sound awkward. The verbs are better rendered as petitions, which is what the Hebrew sentences actually are. As a result, we have: “Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees” (v. 33), “Give me understanding” (v. 34), “Direct me in the path of your commands” (v. 35), “Turn my heart toward your statutes” (v. 36), and so on throughout the stanza. The fifth stanza of Psalm 119 is a series of prayers for acceptance, progress, assistance, and perseverance in God’s school of spiritual learning.

Matriculating in God’s School

—Matriculating means is the process of enrolling, or being formally admitted to college

— Often it involves and interview process, “Tell me young many, why should you be accepted to Harvard...”

— The psalmist is asking God to give him what he needs to live a holy life

Advancing in God’s School

—What is the best way to achieve a well-rounded education in God’s school?

— Verses 34–37 teach that it is by keeping God’s Word before one’s mind, feet, heart, and eyes—four important parts of the body

1. The mind: “Give me understanding” (v. 34)

—The wisdom the writer seeks is practical

— It is walking according to God’s law as well as knowing it

— Start with the renewal of the mind (Rom 12:1-2)

2. The feet: “Direct me in the path of your commands” (v. 35)

—We need God’s Word to guide our steps (cf. Jer 6:16)

— The psalm reminds us that the Lord’s way is not a new or novel way

— In terms of the Christian life we are not innovators; we are imitators

— We want to be like Abraham and Moses and David and the apostle Paul and the Reformers and the Puritans and the giants of our own time

— But we also remember that this is a narrow path and there are only a few who walk it (Matt. 7:13–14)

3. The heart: “Turn my heart toward your statutes” (v. 36)

—He is asking God to turn his heart toward the Bible rather than allowing him to pursue selfish gain

— For the first time he is confessing to a potentially divided mind

— Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matt. 6:24)

4. The eyes: “Turn my eyes away from worthless things” (v. 37)

—He wants to be delivered from “worthless things,” or “vanities”

— He realizes that he is tempted by more than mere riches

—We must fix our eyes on the things of God, which are lasting, rather than the things of this world, which are passing away

Verse 37 occurs in Pilgrim’s Progress at a familiar point in the narrative, when Christian and Faithful come to Vanity Fair on their way to the Celestial City. Here all the merchandise of the world is for sale, but those who are on their way to the Celestial City do not fit in with these people, and when they are asked to stop and buy, they put their hands to their ears and run away, crying, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding Vanity,” and look toward heaven to show where the business of their lives is. That sentence—“Turn away mine eyes from beholding Vanity”—is Psalm 119:37 in the version available to Bunyan. It is the Christian’s only wise response to the allurements of this world.

Encouragement in God’s School

—The psalmist knows the he needs help

— Where is that help to be found?

— Only by God (v. 38)

“Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you maybe feared” (NIV)

— In a sense, God’s Word is a promise

— The noun translated “promise” in the NV is actually one of the Hebrew terms for “word” (ʿmra)

— The NASB and NKJV translate it as “word” throughout

Not Dropping Out of God’s School

—The problem the psalmist says might cause him to drop out of God’s school is “disgrace” (“reproach,” as some of the versions have it)

— Disgrace that could be brought upon himself by disobedience

— Or, disgrace by denying God before men

Are you tempted to drop out because of your own failures or because of other people’s scorn? Do not do it. Keep on! Remember Jesus’ words: “All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22).

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 5

Finding God in His Word

—The reason for Bible study is not to know the Bible in an academic sense

— But to know God

— “You are my portion, O LORD” (v. 57)

Finding God’s Love

—The first of these three stanzas concentrates on God’s love (v. 41)

— It may seem surprising that this is the first time the writer has mentioned God’s love

— He mentions love in conjunction to salvation

— The proof of God’s love is his provision of salvation to undeserving sinners

— OT readers only had a rudimentary idea of salvation but Paul links the two ideas together (Rom 5:7-8, cf. Jn 3:16)

1. Obedience

—Does it seem surprising that one of the first results of coming to know God as a God of love is obedience? (v. 44)

— In the Bible, love is a relationship resulting in moral actions

— Not about sentiments

— “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15)

2. Speaking about God’s love to others

—We will have a compulsion to speak about God’s love to others (vv. 42, 43, 46)

This last verse has often been used by historians to describe Martin Luther’s heroic stand before the Diet of Worms. Luther had been summoned to Worms to appear before the newly elected emperor Charles V and the assembled champions of the church to answer for heresies that were believed to be in his writings. It was a moment ominous with danger, because others who had been similarly summoned had been arrested and then cruelly executed for their supposed offenses against both church and state. Everyone remembered Jan Hus, who had been burnt at Constance on the Rhine about a hundred years before. Like Hus, Luther could have been martyred.

When Luther arrived on that fateful day, after a night of prayer and serious self-examination, the moderator of the assembly pointed to a table containing Luther’s books. “Will you retract these writings?” he asked.

Earlier, Luther had attempted to draw the council into a discussion of the teachings themselves, but nobody wanted to debate with Luther. Instead he was confronted with a yes or no decision. The demand was insistent.

Luther replied:

Since your most serene majesty and your high mightiness require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the councils, because it is clear to me as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by the clearest reasoning—unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted—and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me. Amen.

In this way Martin Luther did exactly what Psalm 119:46 is describing. He spoke of God’s statutes before kings, and he was not put to shame.

Finding God’s Comfort

— In the seventh stanza (zayin) the emphasis is on finding God to be a comfort in life’s sufferings

— The stanza deals with suffering

— There is only one direct prayer to God for help (v. 49)

— All the other verses tell us that He trusts what God has written in His law and will continue to love the law and its teachings

— What is important is not escaping the suffering, even with God’s help, but continuing to trust God and prove him a genuine source of comfort even while we are going through the trial

—He will use his times of suffering to meditate (“remember, v. 49, 52, 55) on God’s Word and character

— One purpose of his suffering must be to give him time to get to know God better

— Verse 54 speaks of singing in the midst of suffering

— No wonder the Philippian Jailer and his family believed on the Jesus that Paul and Silas proclaimed (Acts 16:25)

— And established a strong church in Philippi

— It was this church that helped Paul’s missionary work financially over and over (Phil 4:15-16)

Finding God Himself

—The key verse of the eight stanza (heth) is verse 57

“You are my portion, O LORD”

Spurgeon wrote:

“In this section the psalmist seems to take firm hold upon God himself: appropriating him (v. 57), crying out for him (v. 58), returning to him (v. 59), solacing himself in him (vv. 61, 62), associating with his people (v. 63), and sighing for personal experience of his goodness (v. 64).”

— The word “portion” has a rich meaning

— Every tribe received a portion of the land of Canaan except the tribe of Levi

— Instead they were given forty-eight priestly cities scattered throughout the land and were to live there so that their priestly service would always be widely available

— They had no land, but they were given something better

— It was said of them that they had “no inheritance [portion]” in the land because “their inheritance [portion] was the Lord” (Josh. 13:33)

— The psalmist is saying that, like the Levites, he wants his portion of divine blessing to be God himself

— It take effort on our part to acquire this treasure

1. He sought God’s face (v. 58)

— If we seek Him, we will find him

—Jesus said, Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7)

2. He followed God’s statutes (v. 59)

—The psalmist followed after, or lived by, God’s Word as a way of life

— Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher.

— He memorized Psalm 119 and called called verse 59 “the turning point of man’s character and destiny”

3. He obeyed God’s commands (v. 60)

—Jesus asked pointedly, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46)

4. He remembered God’s Law (v. 61)

—The psalmist determined not to forget

— He wanted to remember God’s Law whatever the circumstances, so he might be encouraged by it and do it

5. He thanked God for his laws (v. 62)

—He recognized that God’s Law is good, the greatest of all treasures

— He made God’s decrees the theme of his midnight melodies (vv. 54–55)

6. He identified with others who also follow God’s precepts (v. 63)

—He realized that he was not alone and that other believers were on the same path

H. C. Leupold wrote that the last words of this stanza put the writer into “that select company of men who both fear the Lord and keep his precepts,” adding that “in the last analysis this is the procedure followed by all true children of God.” It is a great blessing to belong to the company of such saints.

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 6

Affliction

—We are all familiar with the atheistic objection to the existence of God

— If God is all powerful, all good and all knowing, why does suffering exist

— It is also the problem raised by the Boston rabbi Harold S. Kushner in When Bad Things Happen to Good People

— He solves the problem by denying God’s omnipotence

— He advises us to love God and “forgive him despite his limitations” (p. 148)

— This psalm teaches us about the purpose, source and result of suffering for the Christian

Affliction: Its Purpose

—The Bible gives us many reasons for suffering

— This is not surprising since this is not a simple problem

— First, some suffering is part of life

— We get hurt; we get sick; we die

— “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7)

— Second, there is suffering that is corrective

— The psalmist says that God used suffering to get him back on track

— “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word” (v. 67)

— Third, some suffering is constructive

— God uses some suffering to develop character

— “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom. 5:3–4)

— Fourth, some suffering is used to Glorify God

— The man born blind was used by God to Glorify God

— Jesus explained that he had been suffering neither for his own sin nor that of his parents, but only“that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3).

— Fifth, we have Job and his suffering

— The reason was cosmic

— It demonstrated that a person can love God for who he is in himself and not for what he gets out of it

— This psalm addresses the second reason, suffering is corrective

1. To obey God’s Word (v. 67)

—The psalmist had “gone astray” out of ignorance

— He turned to God’s Word and discovered the right way to live

2. To understand God’s Word (v. 71)

—The psalmist says, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn from your decrees.”

— Luther already understood God’s Word; he had been teaching it

— But he came to understand it more deeply when God led him through the deep waters of affliction

— This is what Martin Luther meant when he confessed, “I never knew the meaning of God’s word, until I came into affliction. I have always found it one of my best schoolmasters.”

“What You Do is Good”

— This psalm begins with the Hebrew letter teth

—Teth is the first letter of the Hebrew word “good” (tov)

— It should not surprise us that “good” is used in so many of these verses (vv 65, 66, 68, 71, 72)

— The psalmist discovered that suffering is good when it flows from God’s unvarying goodness toward us

Affliction: Its Source

—The tenth stanza is the yodh stanza

— The smallest letter (Matt 5:18)

— This stanza states explicitly what was only assumed earlier, namely, that God is the ultimate source of the affliction (v. 75)

1. God is faithful even in the affliction (v. 75)

—This is God’s faithfulness a proof that God continues to love love him

— God is working to have him grow and mature by means of the affliction

2. God’s unfailing love is a comfort (v. 76)

—God’s unfailing love caused God to send afflictions to the psalmist

— He asked God for understanding concerning his afflictions, and God gave it to him

3. God is compassionate (v. 77)

—The word signifies “mercy,” and mercy is grace shown to those who are undeserving, those who deserve the opposite

— His very name is mercy (see Exod. 34:6–7)

4. One’s handling of suffering can be an encouragement to other believers (v. 79; also v. 74)

—He wants to be an encouragement to others

— The writer voices three prayers: for the arrogant

— That they will be put to shame (v. 78)

— For other believers, that they will be encouraged by his example (v. 79)

— And for himself, that he will be enabled to live blamelessly (v. 80)

Affliction: Its Result

—This is the low point of the psalm

— Verse 84 is the first verse to fail to mention the Word of God (not even a synonym)

— This stanza( vv. 81-88) has a lot to stay about his enemies (vv. 84, 85, 87)

— But at the end he turns his attention back to God’s Word (vv. 88)

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 7

The Eternal Word

—Stanzas nine through eleven described the psalmist’s afflictions

— In stanza eleven he says his soul had fainted with longing for God’s salvation (v. 81)

— His eyes had failed (v. 82)

— He was “like a wineskin in the smoke” (v. 83)

— And he had almost perished (v. 87)

— Now we come to stanza twelve (vv. 89-96) and find that God had indeed preserved his life and there is an entirely different tone as a result

God’s Everlasting Word

— The everlasting nature of the Bible is the theme of this stanza, particularly of verses 89–91

— Jesus clearly taught the everlasting nature of God’s Word (Matt 5:17-18)

— Jesus was teaching that not even the smallest mark of the sacred text will be lost from Scripture until every single portion of it is fulfilled

The older versions spoke of “a jot or a tittle,” which was accurate but unclear to most people, which is why the New International Version expands the phrase to read “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen.” The “jot” or “smallest letter” is the yodh, the tiny mark of a letter that begins each verse of the tenth stanza of Psalm 119. You may have it in the heading to that section. It is like an apostrophe. The “tittle” is not a letter. It is part of a letter, a small protrusion called a serif. You can see what a “tittle” is by comparing the letter found before verse 9 of Psalm 119 (a beth) with the letter before verse 81 (a kaph). The letters are similar, but the first has a small protrusion (a “tittle”) at the bottom. The same “stroke of a pen” distinguishes daleth from resh and waw from zayin.

God’s Liberating Word

— His theme is the eternal or enduring character of God’s Word

— Starting with that truth, he then reflects on three things this eternal, or indestructible, Word has done for him

1. God’s Word rescued him (v. 92)

—What got him through those hard times?

— God, of course (vv. 81, 83, 87, 88)

— The psalmist prayed for help

— He also did what he was able and obliged to do: He studied and meditated on the Bible.

— He knew that although it is God who must work, God nevertheless works through means

— The only indispensable means of deliverance and growth is Bible study

— He knew, as the apostle Paul also knew, that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, italics added)

2. God’s Word renewed him (v. 93)

—The psalmist found renewal as he studied the Bible in his afflictions

— The psalmist prayed for renewal throughout the psalm (vv. 25, 37, 40, 50, 107, 149, 154, 156)

— The renewal came about as he remembered God’s Word (v. 93)

— The Spirit and the Word work together

— God speaks to us through the Word,

— and only through the Word does the Spirit renew us inwardly

3. God’s Word saved him (vv. 94–95)

—The writer notes that his enemies are still with him (v. 95)

— The writer needed God’s salvation constantly

— We need God’s continued, sustaining help every day

Standing on the Rock

—The last verse of this section stands alone as a summary statement linking the truth that God’s Law is eternal (vv. 89–91) with the salvation that is ours through believing and acting on God’s commands (vv. 92–95)

— Derek Kidner wrote:

“This verse could well be a summary of Ecclesiastes, where every earthly enterprise has its day and comes to nothing, and where only in God and his commandments do we get beyond these frustrating limits.”

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 8

Loving God’s Word

—What an uplifting stanza this is, the mem stanza!

— There is not a single petition in it

Love for God’s Law

— The writer gives five reasons why he has learned to love God’s Law and thus why we should love it too:

It is the source of true wisdom;

it keeps us on the right path and off wrong ones;

when we study it we have God himself as our teacher;

it is sweet to our spiritual taste, like honey;

and it not only keeps us from evil, but it also causes us to hate every wrong path

Wisdom from on High

—God’s Word is the source of true wisdom

— This idea is repeated so often that many scholars regard wisdom, rather than love of God’s Law, as the stanza’s actual theme

— He is comparing those who appear wise but lack a deeper understanding that only comes from the Law of God

— He also compares wordly wisdom with wisdom and the wisdom of God

— Worldly wisdom will pass away (1 Cor 13:8) but knowledge gained from the Bible is eternal

The Paths of Righteousness

—The second reason why the psalmist loves God’s Law is that it keeps him in the path of righteousness, on the right path and off the wrong one

— Earlier in the psalm the writer asked pointedly, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” (v. 9).

— He answered, “By living according to your word.”

— He is saying the same thing now (v. 101), only the other way around: “I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.”

— When I got my first bible, my friend wrote these words: “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.”

— The only way to keep one’s way pure is to study God’s Word and keep it in your heart

God is My Teacher

—The third reason why the psalmist says he has learned to love God’s Law is that when he studies it, he finds God to be his teacher:

“I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me” (v. 102)

— It is God who spoke to him

— Genesis suggests that it was a regular pattern of God to walk in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8)

— Adam and Eve would converse with God and be taught by Him

— The reason they hid from him in Genesis 3 is not that God’s coming was unusual but that they had sinned were now afraid of him

— God speaks to us in Scripture making the Bible unlike any merely human book

Sweeter Than Honey and the Honeycomb

—The fourth thing the psalmist says about God’s Law and why he loves it so much is that it is sweet to his taste (v. 103)

— Try memorizing some particularly delightful parts of Scripture. You will find that it will make you a bit more delightful too

— John 3:16; Rom 8:28; Rom 11:32-36; Rev 22:20 for instance

Hating Every Wrong Path

—The final reason is that it keeps us from evil, and also causes us to hate every wrong path (v. 104)

— We never learn that anything is really good unless we also learn that its opposite is not good and turn from it

— Do you find the Bible boring, unattractive?

— If so, you will not be kept from sin or from what is ugly and offensive in this world

— You will make your home in it

— Don’t do that!

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 9

The Clarity of God’s Word

Alexander Maclaren comments on the fact that God’s Word is pictured both as a lamp and a light. “A lamp is for night; light shines in the day,” he says. “The Word is both to the psalmist.” His antithesis may mean that the Law gives “light of every sort” or in all “the varying phases of experience.” It is a light for our darkness and for our brighter times as well.

— This stanza emphasizes the clarity of Scripture, the attribute of the Bible that meant so much to the Protestant Reformers, who also called it perspicuity

— That means that the Bible is understandable to any open-minded person who reads it

Light on Our Dark Path

—The Bible is not only clear itself, but it is also clarifying

— The which means that we see other things clearly by its light

— The writer lists seven things clarified by the light of the Word

1. The way we should go (v. 105)

—The way we should live our lives

— It doesn’t tell us who we should marry

— Or what job we should take

— It tells us the type of character a Christian should have

— It shows the priorities that should govern our thinking

— This is true light on our path, and it is only the Bible that provides it

2. Righteous behavior (v. 106)

—It speaks of right and wrong which is why it speaks of following God’s “righteous laws”

— The choices we have to make usually are not black and white - but gray

— Only by studying, meditating upon, and seeking to apply the Bible can we find our way through the gray landscape of life

3. Suffering (v. 107)

—“I have suffered much,” says the psalmist

— The Bible can help by explaining the various reasons for suffering, which we studied earlier when looking at verses 65–88

4. Right worship (v. 108)

—Praise and teaching ought to go on in church

— There is nothing more important than sound Bible teaching

5. The dangers of this life (v. 109)

—The Hebrew of verse 109 says literally, “My soul in my hands constantly.”

— It means that the writer is in constant danger

— David’s enemies were always out to get him

— But the psalms also speak of spiritual dangers like falling into sin or forgetting God

— Verse 109 combines these two ideas

— When he adds, nevertheless, “I will not forget your law,” he is confessing that the far greater danger would be for him to abandon God’s Word and begin to live a purely secular life

— We need to pray to pray to be kept from sin and know God better through his Word

6. Enemies (v. 110)

—Ungodly people will set snares for us, because they hate us and the Lord we are serving

— If we are going to see our way through a problem and remain on the right path spiritually, we are going to have to study God’s Word to get our priorities straight and be reminded that it is far more important to be approved by God than by other people

— And our greatest struggles will be against a spiritual enemy (Eph 6:12)

— And we need to be familiar with his tactics (Gen 3:1; Jn 8:44; 1 Pet 5:8)

7. The believer’s true heritage (v. 111)

—What is the psalmist looking toward and working for?

— His heritage is God’s Word itself (v. 111)

— First, of all the important things we know on this earth, the only thing that will last forever is God’s Word (Matt 24:35)

— Second, God’s Word is part of God and it is what we possess of God here (v 57)

— Third, the psalmist said God’s word was the “joy of [his] heart”

Persevering to the Very End

—He wants to keep God’s decrees because

— He will be able to live a God-pleasing life

— He will understand the nature of true righteousness

— He will possess a divine perspective on suffering and triumph in it

— He will be able to worship God rightly

— He will not be turned aside from obedience to God’s Law by any physical danger

— He will not be distracted by the snares of evil men

— He will have a heritage that will last forever

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 10

Walking by God’s Word

—How should a Christian walk?

— “walk worthy” of our calling (Eph 4:1)

— “uprightly” (Is 57:2)

— “in the light” (1 Jn 1:7)

— “walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8)

— In this section the psalmist is concerned about his walk

Seeing the Right Path Clearly

—We will never be able to see the right path clearly without God’s help

— This stanza has two ideas in regard to walking, one positive and the other negative

— Positively, the psalmist says he has taken an oath to “follow [God’s] righteous laws” (v. 106)

— He has determined to obey the Bible’s teaching

— Negatively, the psalmist says he has “not strayed from [God’s] precepts” (v. 110)

— How can we avoid falling into snares set by other people?

— By continuing in what we have learned from God’s Word (2 Tim 3:14)

— With it we will be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16-17)

Choosing Right and Rejecting Wrong

—This section is the psalmist’s firm resolve to obey God’s Word

1. Determination to obey God’s Law (vv. 113–15)

—The starting point is that we must resolve to obey it

— The biggest problem is being double-minded (v. 113, cf. 1 Ki 18:21)

— These are those who want both God and the world

— They want the benefits of religion but they want their sin too

— The psalmist hates these types of people

2. Prayer for God’s grace (vv. 116–17)

—We must ask God for help

— This is what the psalmist asks for here

3. Standing in awe of God (vv. 118–20)

— Having been with God he now sees the vanity of the world and the greatness of God

—It is only as we tremble before the exalted and holy God that we will ever see the world and its distorted values to be the empty things they are

— If we do not tremble before God, the world’s system will seem wonderful to us and consume us pleasantly

Looking for God’s Deliverance

—In the last of these three stanzas (vv. 121-128) we have a familiar contrast

— Clear direction

— versus a sin-dark world

1. Because God is a loving God (v. 124)

—God is not indifferent

— He is a loving God and that is why He gave us His Word

— Since he is a loving God, should he not care for those he loves and deliver them?

2. Because the writer is God’s servant (v. 125)

—Can God be any less caring than a good master on earth?

3. Because it is time for God to act (v. 126)

—The psalmist calls on God to act because God’s “law is being broken”

— The last two verses of this section repeat a contrast we saw in verse 113, namely, hatred of what is wrong and love of what is good

“Therefore I love Your commandments Above gold, yes, above fine gold.

Therefore I esteem right all Your precepts concerning everything, I hate every false way.” (vv 127-128)

We live in days when it is hard for people, even alleged Christians, to accept such a statement. Our age is being described as postmodernity, a time in history when truth is regarded in the Hegelian sense, that is, that something may be true for you or me or for now, but it does not have any binding validity for others or for all times. Since there are no absolutes, there is nothing we can call false. To call something false is an inexcusable power play. All ways of life must be equally valid and the only thing that is absolutely wrong is to say that the path taken by someone else is wrong. It is inexcusable to hate it. The time is probably coming when Christians holding to absolute standards will be considered criminals.

— But Christians do hold to absolutes, and must hold them

— We cannot love the right path without hating the wrong ones (Matt 6:24)

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 11

God’s Wonderful Words

—Nothing seems wonderful anymore.

— There is no mystery in anything

— Everything seems commonplace, predictable, dull

— Technology is one reason, which gives the impression that anything we can image can be done

— Television is another reason where everything possible can be analyzed and discussed 24/7

— But the real reason is a loss of awareness of God

“Your Statutes are Wonderful”

—The author of Psalm 119 had not lost his sense of wonder, because he had found the Bible to be wonderful (vv 18, 27)

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon spoke about how wonderful God’s Word is

God’s Word is full of wonderful revelations, commands and promises. Wonderful in their nature, as being free from all error, and bearing within themselves overwhelming self-evidence of their truth; wonderful in their effects as instructing, elevating, strengthening, and comforting the soul. Jesus the eternal Word is called Wonderful, and all the uttered words of God are wonderful in their degree. Those who know them best wonder at them most. It is wonderful that God should have borne testimony at all to sinful men, and more wonderful still that his testimony should be of such a character, so clear, so full, so gracious, so mighty.

Because They Give Understanding

—These stanzas offer 7 reasons why God’s Word is wonderful

— First, they give “understanding to the simple” (v. 130)

— Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-27)

— First there is the opening of God’s Word

— Then, the opening of the eyes to see Jesus

— Finally, the opening of the mind, or understanding

Because We Find Mercy in These Pages

—The second reason why God’s words are wonderful is that we find the mercy of God in them, and mercy is what we need

— Not justice

— Not pity

— But a mercy that reaches out to save those who are truly wretched and helpless because of sin (v. 132)

— Have you found mercy in the Word of God? (i.e. “your name”, v. 132)

Because They Give Direction for Life

—Third, because God’s Word gives us guidance for life

— His Word directs our footsteps

— Gives us victory over sin

— Salvation from those who have been trying to destroy him (vv. 133–34)

Because God is in Them

—The fourth reason is because God himself is in them and because he reveals himself to the one who studies them (v. 135)

— “Make your face shine upon your servant,” he says (v. 135)

— This verse is a conscious echo of the Old Testament benediction known as the Aaronic blessing (Num 6:24-26)

— The psalmist was concerned because God’s Law was “not obeyed”

— Do we weep for those those who flaunt God’s Word? (cf. Lk 19:41; Rom 9:1-4)

Because They are Altogether Righteous

—Another reason why the psalmist knew that God’s words are wonderful is because they are altogether righteous

— “Righteous are you, O Lord” (v. 137)

— “Your righteousness is everlasting” (v. 142)

— “Your laws are right” (v. 137)

— “The statutes you have laid down are righteous” (v. 138)

— “Your statutes are forever right” (v. 144)

Because They Have Been Tested and Proved

—The sixth reason is because God’s words have been tested and proved to be reliable (vv. 140–41)

— They reveal God

— They teach what true righteousness is

— They show that God can be trusted

— Have you found God’s Word to be fully trustworthy?

Because They are True

—The seventh reason is because God’s words are true

— “Your law is true,” he says (v. 142)

— Is there anyone who does not lie?

— God does not lie

— Every word he has spoken can be trusted

— Every word!

— That is something truly wonderful!

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 12

Using God’s Word in Prayer

——The danger to the psalmist is mentioned again, though not for the final time

— These enemies are relentless

— “I call out to you; save me” (v. 146)

— “I rise before dawn and cry for help” (v. 147)

— “Those who devise wicked schemes are near” (v. 150)

— Yet these verses are not really about the psalmist’s enemies, as bad as they were

— They are about the writer’s prayer life and how he had learned to use God’s Word when praying

Spurgeon suggested an eight-part outline for this section, one point for each of its eight verses: (1) How David prayed (v. 145); (2) What he prayed for (v. 146); (3) When he prayed (v. 147); (4) How long he prayed (v. 148); (5) What he pleaded (v. 149); (6) What happened (v. 150); (7) How he was rescued (v. 151); and (8) What was his witness to the whole matter (v. 152). See Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, vol. 3a, 401.

Praying Earnestly

—The first thing we can learn from this stanza is that prayer should be earnest

— When one is in trouble one prays earnestly, seriously, desperately

— We think of Peter as he steps out of the boat and starts to sink, and his prayer for help (Matt 14:29-30)

— When we cry to Jesus to save us, we find that he is not far away and that he is ready to answer us and save us immediately

Praying Always

—When Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians he ended with some practical advice

— “pray continually” (1 Thess 5:17)

— The author of Psalm 119 seems to have learned this lesson too, since the next pair of verses speak of his daily prayer pattern (vv. 147-148)

Praying Biblically

— The third thing the psalmist teaches about prayer in these verses is that prayer is best when it is biblical

— Flows from serious bible study

— In a sense, it repeats God’s Word, teachings, decrees and promises

In his homiletical commentary on Ephesians, Harry Ironside tells about meeting an older, very godly man early in his ministry. The man was dying of tuberculosis, and Ironside went to visit him. His name was Andrew Fraser. He could barely speak above a whisper because his lungs were almost consumed by the disease, but he said, “Young man, you are trying to preach Christ, are you not?”

“Yes, I am,” replied Ironside.

“Well,” he said, “sit down a little, and let us talk together about the Word of God.” He opened his Bible, and until his strength was gone he unfolded one passage after another, teaching truths that Ironside at that time had not appreciated or even perceived. Before long, tears were running down Ironside’s cheeks, and he asked, “Where did you get these things? Can you tell me where I can find a book that will open them up to me? Did you get them in a seminary or college?”

Fraser replied, “My dear young man, I learned these things on my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland. There with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul and to open the Word to my heart. He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I ever could have learned in all the seminaries or colleges in the world.”

Praying in Faith

— The fourth truth to be learned about prayer in these verses is that prayer must be in faith, believing (James 1:6-8)

— But suppose we do doubt—and we do—what then?

— Clearly we must ask God even for the faith we need to pray in faith (Mark 9:24)

— Moreover, we do not need an overwhelming amount of faith for God to hear us, since the believer’s strength is not in his faith but in God, who is faith’s object (Matt 17:20)

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 13

Obedience While Waiting

— The enemies of the psalmist are still present

— He is still praying for deliverance

— The prior stanza (qoph, vv. 145-152) was almost entirely a prayer

— The sin/shin stanza (vv. 161-168) has no explicit prayer at all

— The psalmist knows that obedience is not optional (vv. 167, 168)

— It is essential for genuine discipleship

Profession Without Practice

— How little obedience there is, even in strong Christian circles!

— Perhaps this is why Jesus spoke about obedience so directly toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Lk 6:46)

— He was teaching that he is not our Lord if we do not obey him; and if he is not our Lord, then we do not even belong to him

—Disobedience—profession without practice—has been a problem throughout history

— It was true of Israel

— On the day before Ezekiel learned of the fall of the city of Jerusalem to the Babylonians the Lord appeared to him to explain why this was happening (Ezek 33:30-32)

— Jerusalem was destroyed because the people were wanting only to be entertained by God’s words and not obey the instructions

— Isaiah said the same (Is 29:13)

— The problem of profession without practice was true in the early Christian community as well ( James 1:22-25)

— John Charles Ryle said it well

“Faith” without obedience is worthless, even contemptible, yet it is common. One writer says, “Open sin, and avowed unbelief, no doubt slay their thousands. But profession without practice slays its tens of thousands.”

What the Psalmist Knew

— The psalmist knew he would have to immerse himself in the Bible and obey it

— He looked forward it as a joyous thing

— The psalmist learned four things

1. God is merciful (v. 156)

—This is what God revealed to Moses when he placed him in a cleft of mountain rock (Ex 34:6-7)

— Mercy is what we all need

— No wonder these are the most frequently cited in the OT (cf. Num 14:18; Deut 5:9-10; Ps 86:15; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:1; Jer 34:18, Neh 9:17)

2. God’s Word is true (v. 160)

—The truth of God’s Word is a vital lesson

— “your law is true” ( v. 142)

— “all your commands are true” (v. 151)

— “all your words are true” (v. 160)

3. Personal peace comes from personal obedience (v. 165)

—The Hebrew word for “peace” is the word shalom

— Like “salvation” to which it is closely linked, shalom is a large, embracing word for the good that comes to one God favors

“Peace” is linked to “salvation” even here, since verse 166 (“I wait for your salvation, O Lord”) follows immediately on verse 165 (“Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble”).

— The verse does not promise peace to those who perfectly keep God’s Law, for who can keep it?

— It promises peace to those who “love” God’s Law, which means, I suppose, those who love it because they have found God to be merciful by reading it

4. The obedient are secure (v. 165)

—Our only true security is in God

Obedience and the Word of God

—There can be no real discipleship apart from Bible study

— Indeed, study of the Bible cannot even be an occasional, minor, or “vacation time” pursuit

— It must be the consuming passion of a believer’s life

— Only by the study of the Word of God that we learn what it is to obey God and follow Jesus

1. Study the Bible daily

—What is important is that we discipline our lives to include regular periods of Bible study, just as we discipline ourselves to have regular periods for sleep, eating our meals, and so on

— What happens if we neglect regular Bible reading?

— We grow indifferent to God and lax in spiritual things

2. Study the Bible systematically

—It is best to have a disciplined approach to the Bible

— The psalmist did this

3. Study the Bible comprehensively

— We should become acquainted with the Bible as a whole

— All of Scripture is profitable (2 Tim 3:16)

4. Study the Bible devotionally

—Nothing is clearer in this psalm than the close, indissoluble link between knowledge of God and study of the Word of God

— Between loving God and loving the Bible

— In reading the Bible, we study to know God, hear his voice, and be changed by him as we grow in holiness

— We should memorize Scripture so that it becomes a part of us

5. Study the Bible prayerfully

—The best way to study the Bible is to encompass the study in prayer

— When we find something that resonates with us, stop and acknowledge it prayerfully

Delight in God’s Decrees: Part 14

This Poor Sheep

—This stanza is all petition, and there is little confidence

— Instead, there is humble recognition of the writer’s lost condition and his constant need of God’s grace

Derek Kidner writes, “The note of urgent need on which the psalm end.… is proof enough that the love of Scriptur.… need not harden into academic pride. This man would have taken his stance not with the self-congratulating Pharisee of the parable, but with the publican who stood afar off, but went home justified.”

Simul Justus Et Peccator

—The writer is comparing himself with a poor, lost sheep apart from the grace of God

— Martin Luther spoke of believers in Christ being simul justus et peccator, that is, at once “both justified and a sinner

Luther wrote of verse 176, “This verse is extremely emotional and full of tears, for truly we are all thus going astray, so that we must pray to be visited, sought, and carried over by the most godly Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God blessed forever. Amen.”

The Psalmist’s Sad Condition

— In these last verses of this psalm, in helpful contrast, the writer lists what he does lack, unless God is his shepherd. He is lacking in five areas.

1. Understanding (v. 169)

—You would think that the writer would be conscious of how much he knew having been inspired by the Holy Spirit

— But he says that God must open his eyes if he is to understand anything at all (v. 169)

— The Christians in Corinth were wise in their own eyes (1 Cor 1:20-25)

2. Salvation, or deliverance (v. 170)

—”Deliver” here could be in the sense of deliverance from his enemies

— Or it could mean “salvation”

— Deliverance from sin — from its penalty power and presence

— We can do nothing to deliver ourselves

— We need to ask God for salvation, which is what the psalmist does

3. The ability to worship God rightly (vv. 171–72)

—How do we know how to worship?

— How do we develop a sincere, devout, and worshipful heart in ourselves?

— The psalmist realizes we cannot do either by ourselves

— We lack what we need to worship God

-- Therefore, we need to ask God how to worship him and for the ability to worship him, which is what the psalmist does

4. Power to live an upright life (vv. 173–74)

—We cannot live an upright life by our own power or determination (Rom 7:14-15, 18, 24)

— Thankfully, Paul knew the answer to his own question: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25)

5. Strength to persevere (v. 175)

—If we want to live an upright life not just for the present moment but to our life’s end, we will keep on praying

— We will pray as the psalmist, “Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me” (v. 175)

Salvation is of the Lord

—When Jonah was praying from inside the great fish he summarized what he had learned of God by saying, “Salvation comes from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9)

— This is the last important teaching of this psalm

— What does the shepherd do with such weak, sinful, and helpless people as ourselves?

— Jesus said that when the sheep are lost the shepherd hunts until he finds them (see Luke 15:3–7)

— He said of his own mission, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10)

Psalm 124

Psalm 124 is described as “A Song of Ascents,” and it emphatically exclaims that Yahweh is the ultimate source of protection from the enemies. The psalm first states that were it not for Yahweh, the Israelites would have been destroyed by the enemies who rose up against them. The psalm then affirms this by saying that the Israelites escaped the enemies as a bird escapes the snare of the trapper. The psalm concludes by indicating that Yahweh, their help, is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth.

“If”

— One of the poems I have tried to memorize but have not succeeded in memorizing completely is “If” by Rudyard Kipling

— That beautiful poem speaks about what it means to be a man

— Like that poem, this psalm starts off with the word “if” (vv. 1, 2)

— The psalmist is thinking of God and his people and the enormous difference it has made for them that God is on their side

When Did This Happen?

— When did this deliverance take place?

— One possibility is that the psalm is referring to Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian captivity

— The next psalm (the 125th) describes the safety of the new colony, restored to its native land and girt round by the protection of Jehovah

— There are two problems with this view

— First, The psalm’s expressions (“when men attacked us,” “swept us away,” “escaped like a bird”) suggest military deliverance rather than captivity

— Second, The Songs of Ascents may not relate to the return from Babylon but rather to pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for annual feasts, as I have argued

— If the psalm is by David, it reflects the Philistine threat, who nearly overwhelmed and destroyed the young Jewish state, as described in the psalm

What If?

— There are six images that occur one upon another

1. An animal swallowing its prey (v. 3)

— The enemy was fierce

— If God had not intervened, we would have been devoured by that fierce foe, the psalmist says

— We cannot read this psalm and not think about our enemy the devil (1 Pet 5:8)

2. A flood submerging its victims (v. 4)

— The flood is a frequent figure in the Old Testament for sudden life-threatening dangers and with good reason

— (see Pss. 32:6; 66:12; 69:1–2; 144:7; Isa. 8:7–8; 28:17; 43:2; Lam. 3:54)

— Like our arid Southern California desert, rains can quickly turn into flash flooding

3. A torrent rushing over everything (v. 4)

— Here the idea is of a torrent sweeping over helpless people, leaving them destitute and devastated, and then rushing on

— The Greek word for “trouble” or “tribulation” (used by Paul in Rom. 8:35) is thlipsis

— It has to do with pressure and being pressed down by something

— The Latin word, which is used to translate thlipsis in the Vulgate version, is tribulum,

— We get our word “tribulation”

4. Waters sweeping everything before them (v. 5)

— The next line intensifies the image, depicting a flood that not only destroys but sweeps away everything

— Some people suddenly lose everything they relied on for their well-being

— The only reason we have survived is that the Lord has set our feet on a rock and established our goings out and our goings in forever

5. An animal grinding its prey (v. 6)

— The poem's second half shifts to thanking God for deliverance

— One image recalls an animal devouring its prey, like King Darius expecting to find Daniel torn apart in the lion's den

— Instead, Daniel proclaimed, “My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions” (Dan. 6:22)

— Similarly, many of us can say, if the Lord had not been on our side, we would have been destroyed by our enemies

6. A bird entangled in a trap (v. 7)

— Rowland E. Prothero notes an old Huguenot refugee’s seal depicting a net below and a bird soaring above, inscribed with Psalm 124:7: “My soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler.”

— This refugee, delivered by God alone, eventually found refuge in America

— Should we not also acknowledge that, without the Lord, we would never have escaped our enemies’ snares?

What If, Indeed?

— These images reflect external troubles, but what about sin and its punishment?

— Without Jesus taking our place, we would face God’s wrath and eternal judgment

— Instead, we can rejoice: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1)

Praise the Lord

— Those cries of deliverance lead to the second half of Psalm 124, which is a declaration of thanks to God for his deliverance

— We praise God because we are thankful to him for his many spiritual and material deliverances

— Many Christians rarely express genuine thanksgiving to God, both in daily life and worship

— This is often because we take His protection for granted, unaware of what would happen without it

— If we realized that without God we would perish, we would praise Him wholeheartedly

— We must adopt this biblical mindset: If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have perished, but He is with me, and I will praise Him. As verse 6 says, “Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth.”

The People’s Testimony

— This final verse directs our thoughts to God, who is the only sure help of his people and the only rightful object of our true devotion

— There are three important emphases in this verse

1. “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

— Others may offer help, but only the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, is truly sufficient in our weakness

— He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and loving, always acting in our best interest

— With such a God, why trust other gods or rely too heavily on people?

2. “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

— Everything we need is found in God, especially as our help in helplessness

— Spurgeon noted that God helps us as:

— Troubled sinners, delivering us from sin's guilt and punishment

— Dull scholars, teaching us His Word

— Trembling witnesses, giving us words to share His gospel

— Inexperienced travelers, guiding us through life’s journey

— Feeble workers, blessing our efforts and making them fruitful

3. “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

— God’s help is personal—our very own. We have experienced His faithfulness:

— In the past: “The Lord has helped me.”

— In the present: “The Lord is my help today.”

— In the future: “The Lord will be my help forever.”

Psalm 125

This psalm, “A Song of Ascents,” features the psalmist declaring that those who trust in Yahweh are as strong as Mount Zion which will not be shaken. Indeed, Yahweh surrounds His people just as mountains surround Jerusalem. The psalmist, in the end, calls upon Yahweh to do good to the righteous, and promises that Yahweh will deal with the crooked as He deals with the workers of iniquity.

Like Mount Zion

— Life has always been uncertain

— Still ours seem like particularly insecure times

Unshaken Like Mount Zion

— Psalm 125, the sixth Song of Ascents, highlights the security believers have in God, even in difficult times

— Like Mount Zion—firm, high, and surrounded by mountains—God is both the foundation beneath His people and their defense

— However, the psalm warns against false trust in the city itself or presuming on God’s protection

— True security lies not in ourselves or circumstances but in the Lord, who alone endures forever

Founded on the Rock

— Peter illustrates the lesson of building a secure life on Jesus Christ as the true foundation

— Early in his life, Peter faltered when he looked away from Jesus and sank

— Later, he confessed Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16–18)

— While some interpret Jesus’ response to mean the church would be built on Peter, Peter himself clarified in 1 Peter 2:4–8 that Christ is the cornerstone, the only sure foundation

— Peter grounded this understanding in three Old Testament passages:

— Isaiah 28:16: God lays a chosen cornerstone, and those who trust in Him will not be put to shame

— Psalm 118:22: Jesus is the rejected stone who became the cornerstone, a truth Peter learned from Jesus and cited in Acts 4:11

— Isaiah 8:14: Rejecting Christ leads to stumbling and spiritual ruin

— Peter learned that Jesus alone provides a stable foundation for the church and every believer's life

As the Mountains

— Psalm 125 reminds us that God is both our foundation and our defense, like the mountains surrounding Jerusalem

— This truth is illustrated in Elisha's story (2 Kings 6), when God revealed to Elisha’s servant the heavenly armies—“horses and chariots of fire”—surrounding them

— Despite visible enemies, Elisha assured him: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

— Christians face enemies and insecurities, but God remains our sure foundation and surrounds us with His protection, delivering us from fear and danger

The Presence of the Wicked

— The psalmist acknowledges that trusting God is necessary in an evil world where the wicked pose a threat to the righteous

— The situation likely reflects the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the Jews lived under foreign rule—Persia or nearby hostile kingdoms—referred to as “the scepter of the wicked” (v. 3)

— This mirrors the condition of God’s people throughout history: we live in a secular world under secular governments, as ordained by God (Rom. 13:1–7).

— While we are to submit and pray for our rulers, the psalmist warns of two dangers:

— secular power being used for evil

— and the risk of God’s people being corrupted by it

— He responds with four significant insights to address these concerns

1. A promise (v. 3)

— The wicked will not rule over God’s people forever; deliverance will come

— This promise reassures us that our current problems are temporary, and God will intervene

—whether in personal struggles, relationships, or work

— Ultimately, it points to Christ’s return, when the wicked will be judged, their works destroyed, and God’s people will dwell forever in His heavenly city

2. A prayer (v. 4)

— The psalmist prays for God’s blessing on the righteous, saying, “Do good, Lord, to those who are good.”

— He contrasts this with God’s certain judgment of the wicked, which requires no prayer because it is inevitable

— While none are truly righteous, any goodness comes from God’s grace

— We can boldly ask for His blessings, knowing He works all things for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28)

3. A warning (v. 5)

— The psalmist warns that those who appear righteous but turn to “crooked ways” are not truly God’s people and will be banished with evildoers

— Mere association with God’s people is meaningless; true faith requires trusting, obeying, and belonging to Jesus Christ

4 A blessing (v. 5)

— The psalmist concludes with “Peace be upon Israel,” a blessing echoed by Paul in Galatians 6:16, referring to Christians as the “Israel of God.”

— Here, “Israel” signifies God’s true people, not just ethnic Israel

— Since Jerusalem means “peace” (shalom), this promise assures that God’s people will experience both peace and security

Trusting God in Uncertain Times

— Thomas Cahill highlights St. Patrick, a young Roman who brought Christianity to Ireland despite immense challenges

— Captured by Irish pirates at sixteen and enslaved for six years, Patrick later returned as a missionary, transforming Ireland from chaos to peace

— While the Roman world collapsed, Patrick saw this as an opportunity to spread the gospel

— Patrick’s strength came from his faith, as expressed in “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” a prayer affirming God’s presence and protection:

— “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me…”

— This is the same unshakable security God gives His people, enabling them to endure like “Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever” (v. 1).

Additional Resources

Boice, J. M. (n.d.). Psalms. Vol 3: Psalms 107-150, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998)

MacArthur, J. (2023). Psalms. Hymns for God’s People. Harper Christian Resources.

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, vol. 3a, Psalms 88–119 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966)

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1951).

Webb, P. (Ed.). (2022). Psalms of grace. The Master's Seminary Press.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Book of Psalms: A Devotional and Prophetic Commentary (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux, 1939)

William J. Pettingill, Christ in the Psalms (Findlay, Ohio: Fundamental Truth Publishers, 1937)

Derek Kidner, Psalms 73-150: A Commentary on Books III-V of the Psalms (Downers Grove Ill: InterVarsity, 1975)

Will Durant, The Reformation: A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300–1564, vol. 6 in The Story of Civilization (Norwalk, Conn.: The Easton Press, 1992)

Saint Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974)

Roy Clements, Songs of Experience: Midnight and Dawn through the Eyes of the Psalmists (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1993)

Martin Luther, Selected Psalms III, vol. 14 in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Daniel E. Poellot (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958)

Martin Luther, First Lectures on the Psalms, II,

J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Old Tappan, N. J.: Revell, 1984)

Lockyer, Psalms: A Devotional Commentary, 542. It would be far-fetched to argue that each letter gives a theme to its particular stanza. However, aleph, the theme letter of verses 1–8, means “ox” in Hebrew, a useful beast of burden and hence a blessing to those who possess one, and blessing is the theme of that stanza: “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless” (v. 1)

E. M. Blaiklock, The Bible & I (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1983)

Harold S. Kushner in When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Avon, 1981)

H. A. Ironside, In the Heavenlies: Practical Expository Addresses on the Epistle to the Ephesians (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux Brothers, 1937)

John Charles Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Luke, vol. 1 (Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 1976)

Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1980)