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(as many of you know) is the longest chapter in Scripture.
The psalmist celebrate the beauty and all the benefits of scripture in an acrostic of 22 stanzas
where each verse of a given stanza begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Our passage today goes from vv33-40.
Let’s walk through it a bit, "Teach me, Lord, the meaning of your statutes, and I will always keep them.
"Help me understand your instruction, and I will obey it and follow it with all my heart.”
()
The prayer of the psalmist here is that God Himself would be his teacher.
He says, “Teach me, Lord, the meaning of Your statutes”.
He had prophets, and wise men all around him, priests too and he was himself, well instructed in the law of God
yet his desire is for God to teach him.
For those that God teaches His way and grants understanding the response in vv33-34 is,
"Teach me...and I will always keep them.
"Help me understand ...and I will obey it and follow it with all my heart.”
We see the steadiness in their obedience, “I will always keep them.”
I will keep them to the end of my life, which will be the surest proof of sincerity!
If you’re travelling, it will not avail you to only stay on the road for a while.
You cannot complete your journey that way!
You see the tenderness in his obedience, “I will obey it and follow it with all my heart.”
Which ever way the whole heart goes the whole man goes!
And that way ought to be the way of God’s commands!
"Help me stay on the path of your commands, for I take pleasure in it.
"Turn my heart to your decrees and not to dishonest profit.”
()
Pleasure (in v35) This is the joy derived from what is valuable.
v35 is a proper response when faced with obedience to God! “I take pleasure in it.”
Then in v36 he says, “Turn my heart”.
In addition to illumination, we need God’s Spirit to give spiritual life!
God must bend one’s heart toward obedience and away from disobedience.
Salvation is a work that affects the heart, transforming it and redirecting it.
The prophet prophesied that in the New Covenant that God would, “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts.
...” ()
So we have this plea for God to turn our hearts and then the plea in v37 to
turn our eyes and then we come to the words I’d like for us to focus upon this morning.
“give me life in Your ways.”
We’re going to consider this simple PLEA under three simple headings.
A Clarification, Consequence, and Confidence.
FIRST, let’s have
A CLARIFICATION of the Plea.
The Psalmist asks for “life”.
“Give me life”, he says.
Biblically this is understood several ways.
It could be the literal raising up of a dead body and is given life!
It could be as David, in , of restoring a body, that declined and decayed with sickness or sorrow, to cheer and vigorous new life!
Then there are the biblical metaphors we use of,
Taking a soul that is dead in transgressions and sins and that person being made alive by God,
quickened to life with Christ, by grace!
That’s the giving of life.
It also means the giving of life to the soul that’s become dull and drowsy.
Life and activity given to spiritually lazy and to those that are sluggish!
Think of the clarification under two sub headings of laziness and activity.
You have the lazy person who’s resolved.
When a person gets settled upon the garbage dump of sin and resolves to lie still in it.
Solomon wisely states, "A door turns on its hinges, and a slacker, on his bed.”
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Just like a door turns on its hinges and never goes anywhere, so to, does the slacker!
You have the lazy person who’s delaying.
You have the lazy person who’s delaying.
When a person intends to look into the matters that pertain to their souls, but not yet.
They just want to borrow another day!
Much like the slacker in Prov.
6: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest,” ()
When the slacker is called to arise in the morning, he resolves to do it,
He only wants a little more sleep and slumber.
Another short nap first and then they’ll do it.
As soon as we do this, I’ll commit to God.
As soon as we do that, I’ll commit to God.
Those foolish virgins (in ) who deferred oil for their lamps for later,
found themselves denied by Christ at His coming.
"“When they had gone to buy some, the groom arrived, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet, and the door was shut.”
()
You have the lazy person who’s hindering.
Or the fool in who had so much he didn’t know what to do with it all.
He says, "I will do this,’ he said.
‘I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there.
"Then I’ll say to myself, “You have many goods stored up for many years.
Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”
’” ()
“Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”
that Hebrew phrase is to imply that
he has all that is necessary for gratifying all his senses and all his desires.
"“But God said to him, ‘You fool!
This very night your life is demanded of you.
And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’’” ()
Alexander the great was asked how he came about to conquer the known world.
His response was this: “Never wilfully to postpone to a future time any thing which ought now to be done.”
If we’re to conquer more than the world, meaning satan and your own flesh (the worst and strongest enemy of all)
“Never wilfully to postpone to a future time any thing which ought now to be done.”
we must never postpone to a future time, anything which ought to be done now!
Activity in our duties is a victorious conquest over the great Goliath, laziness.
The Plea is asking for life in the ways of God.
What a shame it would be, dear believer, for a unsaved man, in his ways, to out do us, in God’s way!
Activity is a shield against becoming tepid and lukewarm laziness.
"Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord.”
()
Let’s fly upon the wings of the wind beloved!
Our hearts must be as the central or
most important source of motion or action.
The text says, “fervent in spirit,” boiling or burning hot, all on fire and flame; “serving the Lord:”
“fervent in spirit,” boiling or burning hot, all on fire and flame; “serving the Lord:”
Then the next verse says, “be persistent in prayer.”
which is strenuously and steadfastly wrestling with God, like Jacob did.
As last week, when we heard from Isaiah, "No one calls on your name, striving to take hold of you.” ()
You have the lazy person who’s hindering.
"Now we desire each of you to demonstrate the same diligence for [for what?]the full assurance of your hope until the end, "so that” [what?
so that what?] “so that you won’t become lazy but will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.”
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So in terms of Clarifying this plea, it’s a plea to stir up our lazy souls to diligence in the work of God
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