Craig Blaising, Senior Professor of Theology at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Psalm 119 in SWBTS Chapel on November 7, 2024.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Good morning, Southwesterners. I’m so glad to be with you all today. I look around this room, there are a number of faces that I remember and recognize, and there are a number of you that are new to me, and I’m just so glad to see you here this morning, here in the chapel, worshiping together. I want to express my appreciation to Dr Dougherty for the invitation to participate in this psalm series that has characterized this fall semester. For you all, in this chapel series, the Psalms as Dr Grace mentioned a little while ago are the church’s hymnal. They are they give us the language of worship. They are the devotional guide for the soul, the formative expressions of lament and hope, testimony, Thanksgiving. They are the church’s prayer book, and they are the most quoted, quoted portion of the Old Testament in the New Testament.
So, they are foundational, then, for linking our faith that we know in Christ taught in the new testament to the story of the Old Testament, the Old Testament saints and their walk with God to create one story line of the Bible. So, this is a a wonderful part of Scripture to be in. And you, as I understand it, have been going through a number of Psalms, and today we have come to what is known as the giant Psalm. This is Psalm 119, 176 verses long. If we were to do a typical 30 minute sermonic exposition of this Psalm, verse by verse, I calculated that it would take us approximately we’d have to go through approximately six verses per minute. That works out to about 10 seconds the verse. Now you know you’ve watched videos on your cell phone and so on, and sometimes there’s a little speed button where you can hit two times, three times, we’d have to crank up the speed quite a bit, and I don’t think that any of us, not even myself, would understand all this being said at that kind of speed.
I remember when I was in seminary, I once had a professor who covered so much material and spoke so fast that at the end of the semester, we took up an offering and bought him a pair of racing goggles, and we presented it to him with a plaque that said for excellence in speed teaching. However, I think that not even he, at his well-known rate of speed, could get through this psalm in the amount of time that we would normally set aside for a sermon. Now, if you had a narrative, if this was a narrative of Scripture, so we were, let’s say, the book of Judges, and we were looking at one of the heroes of the faith, and it’s a long section of several chapters, we could trace out the plot, and we could comment on that and leave aside a lot of details for unpacking later.
But this psalm is not a narrative. If you had a psalm like many of them are which present a kind of thematic sequence, then you could do that. You could talk about the structure of the Psalm. But this psalm is not like that. This Psalm, every verse is most often it’s a bi cola. That means there’s two lines in it. That’s why, in your English text, you’ll see approximately two lines for every verse, and each of these, cola and bi cola here function can function pretty much stand alone. In other words, they form couplets that are sort of like the Proverbs. And when you work through Proverbs, you don’t normally look for some kind of sequence or some kind of thematic sequence. So there, there is a collection. In fact, I think that when it comes to the Proverbs, a key to understanding them is at the beginning of the book, where you’re told that if you really search out wisdom, if you really seek it out like gold, then it’ll be a blessing to you.
And so consequently, I think the proverbs are in there, in that kind of what looks to us a jumble way, so that you can seek for it. You can search it out when you’re searching certain things. Well, this psalm here. Sort of like that. You don’t have a continuous narrative or a continuous thematic approach, but you do have a stylistic feature in this psalm that is rather unusual most of your English translations, if you’re looking at one this morning, and you look at it, you’re going to see some subheads that are Hebrew letters. And these Hebrew letters appear all throughout the Psalm, and that’s because this psalm is what’s known as a Hebrew alphabetic acrostic Psalm, and there are a number of these psalms in the Old Testament, Psalm 25 Psalm 34 Psalm, 111, 112, 145, in which case, every line of the psalm begins with a letter and that that initial letter follows in sequence through the Hebrew Alphabet. This is a this is a literary art, like our poetry.
When we write poetry, we write to rhyme, and that that takes some skill, does it not? Here? In this case, the poetic feature is not only the parallelisms of the lines, but also this, this alphabetic acrostic, which takes some skill to do that, but in this case, it’s not just every line as begins with a letter, a sequential letter in the alphabet, But you have 22 sections of this psalm, in which case, each section, which are eight lines, or eight verses per section, begins with the same letter, and then you go to the next section, and that begins with the next letter in the alphabet. So, you have eight lines beginning with the Hebrew Aleph, which corresponds to our “A”, you have, then another eight lines, verses nine to 16. The court begins with the Hebrew letter bate, which corresponds to our “B”, and then you have another section beginning with Gimel and all the way down to tov. And so, this is a unique Psalm. In this sense, there’s nothing else like this. You also have another feature to this Psalm, and that is that appearing in each section are a group of terms referring to God’s Word. Now, when you survey all the sections together, there’s primarily a group of eight terms.
They’re not all in every section. There’s six to eight of them in every section, but these are terms for the Word of God, and they’re words like Torah, which means law or instruction that appears most often through this psalm. There’s also the word we speak of the word of God, Word, or Debar. And there’s a there’s a synonym, emra, which is also translated word, and that has a broad covering, from instructions to promises, all those things are contained in God’s word. And then you have a set of five terms that are pretty similar. They’re slightly different, but there’s a word, testimonies, statutes, commandments, judgments, precepts, as these terms are translated into English, and then sometimes there’s even a yet other terms, like the way of the Lord, that’s inserted in there.
So, every section in this psalm, you get a series or a group of terms that refer to God’s word and the purpose what it’s doing to you, what it’s presenting to you as the reader, is it’s presenting you this variety of reference to God’s word. So, you look at it section by section, letter by letter of the alphabet. And you’ve got this, this, this variant pattern that’s all God’s word every time, over and over again. You also have throughout the Psalm and in each of the sections, a set of relationships to God’s word. So, he talks about loving it, treasuring it, delighting in it, meditating on it, obeying it, fixing your eyes on it, guarding it, desiring it, longing for it, remembering it, not forgetting it, trusting in it. And so, this variety of relational words is hitting you every section, every section, so we’re not tracing a narrative. Not tracing a structural outline from the beginning of the end, we’re being hit with this pattern of the Scripture and our relationship to it over and over again.
Now the one. And also, in addition to that, you have this background. While all this is going on, the scriptures presented to you in this variant way. And you’re, you’re told to love it, desire it, and study it, and so on, this background appears, and it’s over and over. There’s a little variance between the sections, but the background is a background of trouble. There are troubles, there are afflictions, there are sufferings, there is slander, there are plottings and strategies. There is a number of ways of maltreatment that is coming directed at the psalmist. The point that you’re getting through this psalm is that in spite of all this friction, the friction is coming in your daily life, your daily walk with God, that all of this in spite of all this friction that doesn’t deter the psalmist adherence to God’s word, it doesn’t shake loose that steadfast cleavage to God’s word, but that connection endures now.
Looking at this, what I want to do in the time that we have this morning, which is not a lot of time, is I want to focus at the beginning of the Psalm, because, along with the repetitive patterns that I’ve talked about, God’s word, our relationship to the word this background that’s happening of friction. In addition to that, the first two sections, Aleph and bate here, verses one through 16, form kind of an introduction to this whole experience. And in that introduction is a feature which offers a advice to the readers of the Psalm. The psalmist himself is offering this advice, and he’s using his own as life, as a model and an example, and it’s this feature that’s the takeaway point for us this morning. It’s not a difficult it’s not incredibly profound, necessarily, but it’s profound in its significance and its impact on one’s life. Just looking at this psalm in Psalm 119 verse one, verses one to three, pronounce a blessing. We read it this morning.
Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. Those three verses pronounce a blessing. The next verses are a commitment, where the psalmist says you, you commanded Your precepts to be kept, oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping them, and I will not be put to shame having my eyes fixed on your commandment. I pray you, praise you with an upright heart. When I learn your rules, I will keep them and don’t forsake me. So, we have a blessing, and we have a commitment. Now this is necessary to set up where we want to go this morning, and that is in Section Eight, where we have a very well-known verse that you’ve probably memorized. How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? How can a young man keep his way pure?
The pure here picks up the point of blameless in verse, One, Blessed are those whose way is blameless. This is a different word here, where it says, how can a young man keep his way pure? He speaks of the young man here; the young man is like the Son in Proverbs. Proverbs begins with a exhortation to my son, my son, listen to my commandments and treasure them on your heart, bind them around your neck, let them be with you. So, there’s this in the Proverbs. There’s this teaching to his son, you need to learn God’s word here the young. Man is addressed. How can the young man keep his way pure? Now, the young man here is one who is not mature yet completely in wisdom. In other words, the young man is not one you would go to ask advice, because he’s still learning. In other words, wisdom has not so set into him and into his mind and into his heart that you would think of going to him as an exemplar and saying, how would you counsel me in this situation?
However, there was a situation where young men were sought for counsel. If you remember, at the beginning of Second Chronicles, there was a king, the son of Solomon. Solomon, Proverbs, my son, keep my words. Well. Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was faced with a problem, and the people wanted relief from all the taxation and everything that he placed on them, and so he sought the advice and counsel of his counselors. And the older men gave him counsel to go light on them, but the young men gave him different counsel, which is actually disastrous counsel, and he decided to follow them, because they were his peers. Now the young probably is about in the 30s or 40s at this point, so it’s not, we’re not talking about a child. You see, it takes time to develop wisdom in God’s word. How can a young man keep his way pure? In other words, how do you get this blessing in verse one, Blessed are the one whose way is blameless.
Well, how can you do that? How can you keep your way pure? Now look, we know the answer in the New Testament. We know that the problem here of keeping one’s way pure is a problem of sin. Paul said it so very well, all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so, when you consider it from that standpoint, the answer to that is you can’t. How can a young man keep his way pure? The answer is, he can’t do that. We’ve all we’re all sinners. And so, we know from our teaching in the New Testament, what we need is a cleansing that we can’t do. And that comes from Christ. His death on the cross cleanses us from all sin, and He gives to us a standing with God of righteousness. So, we’re put in a place of blessing. And so, when you consider it from that standpoint, then the answer to this is that, no, you really can’t. You just need to depend upon the Lord to give you that cleansing and that way there’s, there’s nothing that you can do.
The Old Testament, in fact, knew this problem in Job 33 he says, to be pure is to be without transgression, to be without iniquity. But in job four, the friends of Job asked the question, how is it possible to do that. Nobody can do that. And in Proverbs, 20, verse nine, he says, who can say that I have made my heart pure? I am clean for my sin. So, we have to go to Christ. We have to be cleansed. And there’s nothing more to be done. However, it seems that there really is more to be done, and there is actually a point here to be, to receive as a blessing from the Lord. In the scripture in Titus two, Paul wrote that he came to purify for Himself a people of his own as a pure possession, so that they could walk in obedience to Him.
He gave his life to redeem us from all sin and purify for Himself, a people of His own, His own possession, and so he purifies us, He cleanses but that’s so that we can walk with Him. Jesus said in John or in Matthew chapter five, that the pure in heart. See God. Hebrews, 1214, says, strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. This is the New Testament. Second Corinthians, 71 let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit and bringing holiness to completion and the fear of the Lord. Second, Timothy 222 Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, hope, love and peace, along with all who call upon the Lord from a pure heart, you’re to pursue it. First, Timothy 115 the aim of our instruction is love that issues from a pure heart.
The key is the word instruction. Paul is writing to Timothy, who is a believer who has been cleansed in Jesus Christ, who has been justified by His faith in Christ. And he says, you are to you are to pursue a love from a pure heart. And we’re instructing you to do that in James. One, James writes, he brought us forth by the word of truth. And then he says, that’s in James 118, and verse 19, we are to now meekly receive the implanted word and then be doers of the word. See the progress there. So, he we received the word, he brought us forth. That’s the new birth. And now in this new birth situation, we receive the implanted word and be doers of it. So, in first Peter 122, and 23 he says that we have been born again by the word of God, and we have been born again by the Word of God to love one another from a pure heart, a sincere heart.
And then he goes on and say, and says you are taught long now as those who’ve been born again for the pure milk of the word, so you’re feeding on it. And of course, this is the point in Hebrews five, where he talks about receiving the milk of the word, but you gotta go on from there. You can’t stay there. You’ve gotta go on to the solid food of the word, because the whole point of the Christian life is to grow to maturity. Paul writes in Colossians, one that this is the whole point of his ministry. His ministry, of course, is to declare the gospel that people put their faith in Christ, they receive justification in Christ, and they’re born again. And But Paul says the whole work of my ministry, for which I strive, with every effort that’s given to me, is that people may, in fact, the church may be mature. I was once preaching, once preaching on that passage, and I had a person come up afterwards, he was actually speaking after me and says, well, I don’t think anybody can be perfect, so we don’t need to do that. But see, that’s a confusion.
We’re not talking about sinless perfection. We’re talking about maturity. Hebrews says, the mature one is the one who has their power of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. So, let’s go back to Psalm 119, nine. How can a young man keep his way pure. You see, we’re actually in a situation, although we’ve been cleansed in Christ and we have a standing with God, we’re called to long for the milk of the word to feed on the Word to be trained by the word, so that we call upon the Lord from a pure heart. In other words, purity is part of maturity and growing by practice with the Word of God. So, we actually can identify very well with the psalmist right here, there is a blessing. You see, that’s the other thing. It’s a blessing. It’s the all the blessing was not just the blessing that came at salvation, the initial salvation, it’s the blessing to the one who grows in the Lord, there is a blessing for the one whose way is blameless.
So how can a young man keep his way pure? It is by guarding it according to your word. That’s the key point. That’s what we want to talk about. What does it mean? Mean to guard your way according to the word. Well, let’s look quickly here. Verse 10, he says with my whole heart, I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. So, guarding the way by the word this fits right along with the New Testament verses that we read about receiving the implanted word and growing by the milk of the Word and the solid food of the word. In other words, ingesting the word. It begins. He says, with my whole heart, I seek you in the Chronicles, seeking the Lord is a key theme. Those who seek the Lord will find him. Seeking the Lord is seeking his way, the way of the Lord, which is set out in the Scripture. It’s a whole heart. It’s not like James one, the double minded man, is not going to receive anything from the Lord. It’s an all in commitment.
My whole heart, I’m seeking you. Let me not wander from your commandments, which is a prayer, a request, because the power for doing this has to come from God. So he prays at the beginning, and this is guarding his way that the Lord empower him and not let him wander from the commandments as he wholeheartedly is seeking the Lord. But now we’re getting into it here in verse 11, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. You, many of you, have memorized that you may have memorized verses nine and 11 together, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. What is that? What is that? Storing it up. You are so familiar with it that it’s in your heart. It’s not just in the Scripture, in the digital text. It’s in my heart, and I’ve stored it up in there.
I’ve treasured it up in there. To store it up, of course, is to put it in there. Now, how does it get in there? Well, you have to come through your eyes and through your ears. So, you have to read it, you study it, you hear it. But you not only do that, but more intentionally, you memorize it. One of the problems that we have in education today is, I’d like to talk about this, but I don’t have time. Is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Many of you are familiar with that at the very lowest level is memorization. And you want to get past that, because people who are just at that level don’t know anything. So, you got to get up to where you’re doing critical thinking. You need to do critical thinking. That’s true. Well, correct critical thinking, but you have to think about something, and the memorization which the Scripture is talking about is absolutely key to keeping one’s way pure.
I had a I have a friend who has a missionary. He’s been on the field now It’s been 40 years since he graduated from seminary, and he’s been on the field practically that entire time, and we keep in touch from time to time. And he paid me a wonderful compliment, and it’s not me, it’s really the scripture here, which I shared with him when we were students together in seminary. Because I asked him, I said, do you have a practice of memorizing Scripture? And he said, no, I don’t. I said, you need to do that. Psalm, 119, 10, I’ve stored up my Word in your heart that I might not sin against you. And I introduced him to a very simple system of memorizing scripture, and he’s been doing that for 40 years now. And he said, you know, of all the things I learned in seminary, that’s the number one.
That’s the number one, memorizing the Scripture, putting it in your heart, storing it up in your heart, because that’s, that’s where you that’s your go to see when you’re in that moment like this psalmist, where everybody is slandering him and you know, and his all kinds of troubles are coming his way. Yeah, you gotta go to the store. Well, you gotta, gotta go to the well. You gotta go to the storehouse for help, for supply. And if there’s nothing there, then you don’t have the supply. Do you what you need in that situation? It. I’ve stored it up so that I might not sin against you. But that’s not all. We’re still not at the good part. Yet Blessed are you Lord? Verse 12, teach me Your statutes that sitting right there in the middle of that section is very important. It’s a hinge. Blessed are you Lord? The Lord is blessed. There’s only two times in the scripture that a blessing is pronounced on God. In the second person, blessed are you? The other is in first Chronicles, 29 and that’s David. Blessed are you Lord? And if you read that prayer, the blessing of the Lord is the all the all the wealth of the Lord, everything that belongs to him and to his life. He is praised for that. He is truly blessed. God is blessed. So, when he says, here, blessed are you? Your thought is going to him how he is blessed he is. And then when he says, teach me Your statutes, what he’s asking is that I want to be blessed like you. I want to be blessed by you. Teach me, that I might be blessed by you, but they’re still something better here.
Verses 13 to 16, he says, with my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. That’s the hint, right there. We’re getting into it. And then verses 14 through 16, you’ll see at the verse 14, there’s that I delight in that first line and in the way of your testimonies I delight and then verses 16, I will delight in your statutes. Those two delights there are sandwiching something, and the thing that’s sandwiched is in verse 15, I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways that 15 goes with verse 13 with my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. The key word is the word meditate in verse 15, I used to tell students when we talk about memorizing Scripture, actually, I’m not interested in your memorizing Scripture in the sense that many people have experienced that they go through, you know, Awana program, and they memorize a verse and this sort of thing, and they memorize a lot of verses, and they say that and so on, And that’s fine, but we’re not there yet.
The whole point of memorizing it is so that you can meditate on it. And this is where the power comes from. See meditating here is turning it over and over in your mind. Now this is like Psalm one the blessed Man is the one who meditates on the law of the Lord, day and night. And the word meditate, there is an onomatopoeic word, word haga, which, when you say it, it sounds kind of like muttering if you say it over and over, because what he’s talking about is you’re actually saying it to yourself, you know, like Moses said in Deuteronomy six, you are to talk about the law in your house, and when you’re on your way and so on, you’re to speak it with one another. So here you’re talking it, but you’re talking it to yourself. I’m the one who needs to hear it, and so I’m speaking God’s word to myself.
Well, that’s part of meditating on it. I just keep bringing it up. I just keep bringing it up. This one here in Psalm 119 this word for meditate is to is to roll it over in your mind. Roll it over in your mind over and over and over again. So, the reason why you memorize it is so that you can, well, it’s kind of like the cow chewing the cud. So, you can bring it back up and you can roll it around in your mind, okay, you can chew on it. Now, as you’re doing that, you’re saying, as the psalmist says, here, teach me all through this Psalm, he says that over and over, teach me Give me understanding, give me insight. Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light on my path. Give me understanding, give me wisdom. Show me things in your word Lord, you’re looking for that significance. You’re looking for that deep understanding. You’re looking for how does that apply right now? Because this guy is being hit all sides here, people slandering him and all kinds of trouble, and you’re in that situation. And what do you think?
You think about yourself. You think about them, what I’d like to do to them, what I need to do for myself. But I’m not thinking about God’s word, am I? But the word of the Lord says, this is the way walk here. And so, the practice of bringing it up and meditating it over and over is the key to the Psalm, and that’s why the psalm is written the way it is. It presents you in every section the word of the Lord, it’s the statutes of the Lord, it’s the testimony of the Lord, it’s the promises of the Lord, it’s the instruction of the Lord, and let’s do it again. It’s the word of the Lord. It’s the statutes of the Lord, it’s the testimony of the Lord, it’s the guidance of the Lord, it’s the instruction of the Lord. And yeah, the friction is always there in the background. It’s always there in the background. But I want to be taught from God’s word. I want to be taught from God. And I want my way, my way that I’m walking here, I want it to be conformed to God’s way, because he is blessed, and he pronounces a blessing for the one whose way is pure and blameless. That’s the key to the psalm. There’s a whole lot to unpack here, and we don’t have any more time to work on it, but that’s the key to it. As you work on it and work through it, let’s pray together.
Father, thank You for Your word. Thank you for the wonderful work of Your Holy Spirit. Please illumine our minds and our hearts by your word, give us the strength and the wisdom to always walk in accordance with your word. And please bless us Lord as Your servants, storing up your word in our heart and meditating on that word, and Lord, as we do that show us the things in your word that direct us into a way that’s pure, blameless and blessed by you and we pray in Jesus, name Amen.
