WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 7/30/06

Psalm 119 “A Light for My Path”

“Christian faith makes a handful of fundamental claims that to a skeptic or unbeliever are incredible: That beyond space and time is a God who created all that is; he is the moral judge of all people; he has spoken through chosen people; he has become human in the person of Jesus; he has redeemed the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection; he will one day renew all creation in obedience to himself.

Of these, the idea that God has spoken is greeted with skepticism by many people – even among those who claim in some sense to be believers in God and disciples of Jesus Christ. Tell anyone that you have heard God speak to you and you will be eyed with suspicion! Claim that he has revealed himself to certain people; that he has revealed “truth” through the Bible, and many modern people will dispute what you say. Claim that the Scriptures show us who God is, and what he requires of us, and many will dismiss this as “fundamentalism” and tell you that “true spirituality” comprises many other things. Nonetheless, this assertion about God’s self-revelation stands at the very root of our faith, and we need to understand it and respond to it.

Psalm 119 stands as one of the great Biblical affirmations about God’s self-revelation. It declares that we have been given “the Word of God” to show us God and his ways. Psalm 119 is structured as an acrostic poem, with 22 stanzas of 8 verses, each of which starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Every verse (but three) contains a reference to the “Word of God.” It tells us that there is “blessing” for those who “delight in the Law of the LORD” (Psalm 1).

The Psalmist is so immersed in the Word that it is possible to misconstrue him as worshipping the Scripture and not the LORD. That is a trap that believers of many generations have fallen into – but Psalm 1119 makes it clear that it is the LORD who is addressed, and who is the object of the Psalmist’s devotion. He may “love the Law of the LORD,” but his heart is devoted to the LORD himself.

1) The Word Of The LORD

Psalm 119 rewards a complete reading, allowing the many facets of God’s Word to shine on us, but several verses have become standards for believers, Jew and Christian alike. “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path” (v. 105); “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law” (v. 18); “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (v. 11).

Eight main words are used to describe God’s self-revelation: his word, his law, his statutes, his ways, his precepts, his decrees, his commands, his promise. Each carries a slightly different flavor, together showing us what Scripture is. There are four main functions of God’s word that we might think about.

First, God’s word gives us instruction. Without his words we would know little or nothing of God – Creation may reveal his presence and power and something of his character, but its signs are insufficient and often misread. To be sure, the “word” of God stands behind creation: when God speaks, things happen; and he spoke the world into being – he spoke to nothing and it became something! He also “speaks” through his mighty acts in history, but they are at best ambiguous without the words he speaks to interpret his acts.

So he has not left us to decipher the world and history, looking for clues to God’s existence and character. He has spoken in human language through people he has selected for that purpose. To be sure, we might wish that at times he had spoken more plainly! What sort of revelation comes mostly in narrative and story and poetry? Many, even among believers, find this uncomfortable, and try to turn every Biblical passage into a set of points or principles. All preachers fall into this trap to some degree! But God has chosen to reveal himself through the lives, the characters, the actions, the prayers, the stories, the poems, the visions, of highly diverse people in several languages over two millennia.

But believers have always called all this diverse writing “the Word of God,” recognizing a unity and coherence in the Scriptures that reveals the Author behind all the very human authors. In the time of the Psalmist, the Scriptures were usually called simply Torah - “the law of God” – although that could mean the 5 books of Moses, or any one command from the law, or the whole of Scripture taken together. So the Psalmist tells us first that torah instructs us about God and his ways. Our call is to learn, to meditate, to understand, to remember the instruction that is revealed to us.

2) A Lamp To Our Feet

Secondly, God’s Word is our guide. It shows us what God requires of us, and how to live rightly in God’s world. It is, in the metaphor of v. 105, “a lamp to our feet and a light for our paths.” It shows us what is ethical, what is righteous in God’s eyes; it shows us “God’s will for our lives.” His plan for us is mostly revealed already. We do not have to hunt for it, beg him to reveal it, pray that we will not miss it. It is mostly revealed already – his Word guides us and directs us. To be sure, Scripture may not tell us whether to move house or apply for a certain job, but it tells us clearly to work to support ourselves, our families and those in need; to be content and not to covet; to be generous and thankful... If we absorbed more of the guidance that is clear in Scripture, we would walk with greater confidence that we were “in the will of God.” Our call most often is simply to obey what has been revealed to us.

Thirdly, Scripture can purify us. Some of us want guidance, but very few want purity. But that is what we must have if we are to see God, and Scripture is the means he most often uses to search our hearts, to probe our hidden lives, to reveal our persistent sins. “Your word have I hidden in my heart, so that I might not sin against you” (v. 11). “How can a young man” – or a young woman, or those in their middle years, or retired – “keep his way pure?... by living according to your word” (v. 9).

Few of us like to be reminded of how we fall short of God’s commands and God’s ways. We don’t like to be reminded even of small failings by our families or our employers! We constantly shift blame to other people, and take any correction offered us an attack on our persons. But the Word of God constantly calls on us to be honest and to confess our sins to God, to make restitution to one another, and in this era to embrace God’s atoning work for us in Jesus Christ. The Word of God is there to remind us, and convict us, and call us to confession, and then to offer us forgiveness and restoration.

Fourthly, and closely related to all the other attributes of God’s Word, it offers us the reassurance of God’s protection. “Defend my cause and redeem me; preserve my life according to your promise” (v. 154). God’s Word delivers his promise to be our shield and protection, our guide to salvation, and to redeem and deliver a people for himself.

3) I Delight In Your Law

The Psalmist knows that the Scripture is the medium through which God has chosen to send us instruction, guidance, purity, protection. So he calls it “wonderful,” “a delight,” “sweet to the taste;” he says he “loves the law of God.” Has Scripture ever had that grip on you? Have you ever found delight in it? Do you read it in sufficient amounts, with enough frequency, to have discovered what it offers? Have you discovered the pleasure and the instruction of sitting with other people, wrestling with the Word and trying to understand how it applies to your life this week? Has it worked its way into your mind and heart so that it shapes your thinking and your responses and your choices day by day?

I recall being in my 30s, beginning to get serious about faith, and realizing there were whole stretches of the Bible I had never read! So over the period of a year, I settled down to read it all. I was astonished at what I found! My “Sunday School knowledge” of the Scriptures was “blown away” by my adult mind and spirit coming into contact with God through his Word. It has shaped my life ever since – beware, the Bible is a dangerous book!

The Psalmist says the Word of God is right and true, trustworthy, wonderful, good, eternal, established and boundless. He calls it part of his heritage, ancient and enduring. So it is rational, it is right, to learn it, to obey it, to love it, to put our hope in its promises. He prays that the LORD will teach him, give him understanding, have mercy on him, guide him, protect him – all through the Word. Should we do less?

4) The Word Came From Heaven

This is a man of deep faith, who has learned that he can approach God most closely through his Word. Here he comes to know God, and is known of God; here he finds direction, forgiveness, peace. Here he discovers that the Word of God is – you might say – an extension of God himself. It is how God has “reached down into this world” through human language to communicate and to reveal himself. God’s words, the Psalmist knows, are never just “words” in the way human words are; they are powerful and effective actions; they make things happen, they change people, they make people aware of the presence of God himself.

Anyone who believes in the power of human words to change things will understand intuitively how this is so. Speech changes people and situations; speech is often the only way we know what we are thinking and who this person is who lives inside us. If it is really true that God has spoken, then nothing can be as important than to find out what he has said, and what he is like. Scripture is our way into the presence of God; it is his chosen means of self-revelation.

It is always a means, and not an end. We do not worship the Bible, we worship the God who reveals himself in the Bible. But because he chooses to reveal himself this way, we take his Word with the utmost seriousness. We study it, we learn from it, we memorize it, we teach it to our children, we preach it. It stands at the center of the life of our church and of our faith. In it we see God revealed – most fully in the person and the work of Jesus, the Son of God and the Word Made Flesh.

Without the Scripture, we would be nature-worshippers, plotting the course of the sun, fearing the spirits of the rocks and woods and waters, embracing the moon-goddess in the twilight. We would hold flesh to be holy, and spirits to be appeased. But we have been given the Word of God! The LORD has spoken, and we do well to listen, because he has blown away all that enchantment and occult mystery by speaking of himself.

Are you daily reading his words? Are you studying the Word with others, seeking its meaning? Are you absorbing it deep within you so that you know the character and the will of God? Have you read it enough that it has become to you sweetness, a delight and a joy? Do you know how enduring and how boundless it is? Have you discovered how little you know compared to its depths? Has the Word of God become for you “A lamp to your feet and a light for your path”? Let it be so.

Let us pray...