Psalm 119:36

As we are moving through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Hë, we come to a verse that strikes at the root of all sin, that being the sin of covetousness.

Psalms 119:36 Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.

Having resolved that he will consistently and wholeheartedly keep the law of God, the psalmist seeks help from God to keep this resolve. He prays to the Lord, Incline my heart unto thy testimonies.

Incline – To bend (the mind, heart, will, etc.) towards some course or action; to give a mental leaning or tendency to (a person); to dispose.

Although God does not force our will to keep His commandments, He does incline our wills in that direction, if we ask Him. He brings gracious influences to bear that bend our hearts to do what He commands. When the Lord gives us assurance that our sins are forgiven, when the Lord gives us information that helps us cope with life, when He gives us peace in the midst of our tribulations, when He gives us comfort and encouragement from His word and from others, when He answers our prayers, when He opens the riches of His word to us, or when He shows us the glories of our Saviour Jesus Christ and thereby rejoices our souls, all of these things bend our hearts and wills to keep His commandments. It is like the clear shining of the sun that causes plants to bend toward its light. So God’s gracious influences incline our hearts unto His testimonies. Indeed, “we love him, because he first loved us” (1John 4:19).

According to this verse our hearts can be inclined in one of two different directions. They can be inclined unto God’s testimonies or inclined unto covetousness. Before getting into this, let’s define covetousness.

Covetousness – Inordinate and culpable desire of possessing that which belongs to another or to which one has no right.

To covet is the same as to lust or to desire, as the following two verses establish.

Romans 7:7 …I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Deuteronomy 5:21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Covetousness is lusting after or desiring something forbidden by the law of God.

Now observe that covetousness is placed in contrast to God’s testimonies, plural. Commenting on this, Richard Capel wrote:

“He saith not, this or that testimony, but (as including all the laws of God) he saith, 'testimonies'; to show us that covetousness draws us away, not from some only, but from all God’s commandments.”

This point is confirmed by the words of the apostle Paul as he speaks of the evils that arise from covetousness.

1 Timothy 6:9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Every sin has an element of covetousness or lust in it. Paul warns us against obeying sin “in the lusts thereof” (Romans 6:12). You see, every sin contains a lust. We sin because we desire, we covet something that God’s testimonies forbid.

James 1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

The extreme danger of this sin may be concluded from how much of the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ was directed against it. Charles Bridges said it well:

“There is probably no principle so opposed to the Lord’s testimonies. It casts out the principle of obedience, since the love of God cannot co-exist with the love of the world (1John 2:15); and the very desire to serve Mammon is a proof of unfaithfulness to God (Matthew 6:24).

As I have taught my congregation in the past, in order to resist sin one must deal with it at the level of the lust. Resist the desire to sin, and you will resist the sin itself. Kill the covetousness and you will have killed sin at its root. An effective way to attack covetousness is to pray for God to incline, to bend your heart in the direction of His testimonies and away from covetousness. And mean it when you pray it!!!

Psalm 119:35

We now come to the third verse of this octave of Psalm 119 entitled Hë.

Psalms 119:35 Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight.

The thought expressed in this verse follows logically upon the thought expressed in the first two verses of this octave. In the first two verses the psalmist begged the Lord to teach him and give him understanding of His law. In asking the Lord to give him this knowledge of His word, he resolved before God to conform his life to that knowledge. Now he is asking the Lord to give him the strength to keep that resolution. It is one thing to know what to do and another thing to be able to do it.

To go in the path of God’s commandments is to follow the direction of those commandments, to let them lead you wherever they will take you, just as when you follow the direction of a path in the woods. Knowing that God is perfectly good, you may be sure that the path of His commandments will always lead you to very best places you can be in your life.

When he says to the Lord make me to go in the path of thy commandments, he is asking God to enable him to obey His commandments. When God makes us to go in His way, He does not lead us like a puppet on a string. We have to do the going. We are responsible to obey. We obey the Lord actively, not passively. God makes us to go in the path of His commandments by enabling us, by giving us the strength to keep His commandments.

Psalms 68:35 …the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God.

The following passage clearly shows how this mechanism works.

Philippians 2:12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Observe that we work out our own salvation. But before we can work it out, God must first work it in. He does this by enabling us to will and to do of His good pleasure. But once He enables us to will and to do, we must ourselves will and do the good pleasure. And we can only do this if God gives us the ability to do it. This prayer for the Lord to make me to go in the path of obedience is a prayer for the Lord to strengthen us. Strength by definition is the power or ability to do something. How many times do we ask the Lord for strength and rightly so? For without His strength, we are powerless to go in the path of His commandments.

John 15:5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

But with His strength, we can pursue that path all the way, wherever it takes us.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Now the psalmist advances this reason for the Lord to make him to go in the path of His commandments: for therein do I delight. The person who finds his greatest pleasure in obeying the Lord is the person who will most earnestly pray for the Lord to strengthen him to obey. Our delights determine what we most seek after. So examine those things that you most enjoy, those things that turn your crank, as we say. And upon finding those things, you will also find what shapes your desires and prayers. Is health your greatest delight? Then that will be the foremost thing you ask God for. Is being able to come and go as you please your greatest delight? Then you will always be praying for relief from whatever is keeping you from doing that. Is money your greatest delight? Then your prayers will in some way or another mostly revolve around that. “Give me a job, Lord.” “Let this deal go through, Lord.” And on and on we could go. I am not saying these prayers are necessarily wrong. But should they be the foremost desire of your heart? If the greatest delight of your life is pleasing the Lord, then asking God to enable you to do that will be your foremost request. And, interestingly enough, a lot of other good things will come with the answer to that prayer.

Matthew 6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Psalm 119:34

Hë! Are you ready to take up the next verse in this series of meditations on Psalm 119?

Psalms 119:34 Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart.

This verse bears on the same theme as the preceding verse. In both verses the psalmist is calling upon the Lord for instruction. He rightly asks God for understanding since understanding comes from Him.

Proverbs 2:6 For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.

Now just what is understanding?

Understanding - Power or ability to understand (to comprehend; to apprehend the meaning or import of; to grasp the idea of). Signification, meaning, sense.

It is not enough to merely acquire information. Just accumulating a bunch of facts only clogs the brain. For information to benefit us, we need to understand it. We need to be able to make sense of the information we gain, to know what it means and how it fits with everything else. It is a fact that we learn things better when we understand them. This holds true when we come to the Bible, God’s law. In order to profit from the word of God, we need to be able to understand it, to see how it all fits together. Those of us who are Bible students know how rewarding it is to read something in the Bible, perhaps for years, and then one day we finally understand it. When this happens we might say, “I finally got it!” Or when something falls into place in our understanding we say, “It clicked.”

Now the ultimate answer to this prayer for understanding is found in the Lord Jesus Christ as the following verse makes clear:

1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.

The revelation of God through His Son is the linchpin that connects everything together so that it makes sense. Only those who know Jesus Christ can really make sense out of the Bible they read and out of the world in which they live. This reminds me of a story I heard. A lady was reading her Bible and another lady upon seeing this told her that she thought the Bible was hard to understand. To this the Bible reader replied, “It helps to know the Author.” How true!

As in the previous verse, the psalmist attaches a resolve to his request. If God will give him understanding, the psalmist resolves: “I will keep thy law.” When God gives us understanding of His law, that understanding brings with it a strong motivation to obey that law. Thomas Manton put it this way:

“It is such instruction as giveth strength, that exciteth the sluggish will, and breaketh the force of corrupt inclinations; it removeth the darkness which corruption and sin have brought upon the mind, and maketh us pliable and ready to obey….”

This same point can be seen in Paul’s prayer for the Colossians.

Colossians 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
11 Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness….

As result of being filled with spiritual understanding, one can walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing because he understands how to please God. One can be fruitful in every good work when he understands what is a good work actually is. And being filled with spiritual understanding he will realize greater strength to serve the Lord and endure hardship. The more we understand God and His will, the more we will want to pattern our lives according to His will. That is why it is so important to continually pray to God for understanding, and to seek understanding by studying our Bibles and attending to the teaching of God’s word. The more we understand, the more obedient we will want to be and be able to be.

On the other hand, the less we understand of God and His law, the more prone we will be to err. In every sin there is an element of ignorance, something that is not understood. This was the case regarding those who crucified the Son of God.

1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Even if a person knows that what he is doing is a sin, he does not fully understand the consequences of what he is doing, else he would not do it.

Now upon being given understanding, the psalmist will not only keep God’s law, he affirms, yea, I will observe it with my whole heart. Taken together with the preceding verse we see that the psalmist resolves to take the instruction the Lord gives him and use it to obey Him consistently and wholeheartedly. He will give his service to God his all, all the time. As we have observed before in studying this psalm, God considers it pretence or feigning if you are not serving Him with your whole heart.

Jeremiah 3:10 And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.

The Lord will tolerate no rivals with Him in our hearts. Love for anyone or anything else must never be allowed to compete with our love for God and obedience to His law. No part of your heart must be withheld. Charles Bridges said it well: “That which is now willfully withheld, will gradually draw away the rest in apostasy from him.” To which I reply, “Amen.” It’s wholehearted or nothing. It’s all the way or not at all.

Psalm 119:33

We now come to the fifth octave of Psalm 119 bearing the title of the Hebrew letter Hë. The pronunciation of this letter is close in sound to our words hay or hey. I would like to begin today’s meditation with this Hebrew letter. Hë! Are you ready to study Psalm 119:33? Okay, I know it’s not the greatest joke. But I think it’s cute. And it is original. Could you tell?

Psalms 119:33 HE. Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end.

This is the third time in this psalm that the psalmist petitions the Lord to teach him. He seasons his prayer with that interjection O, which expresses emotion. This psalmist is in earnest about this. He really wants to learn the way of God’s statutes. The following words of D. H. Mollerus give us an insight into why the psalmist repeats this prayer so often and so earnestly. Read this carefully. It is powerful!

“And the prayer is full of the most ardent longings, which is manifest from the same resolve being so frequently repeated. For the more he knows the ignorance, obscurity, doubts, and the imbecility of the human mind, and sees how men are impelled by a slight momentum, so that they fall away from the truth and embrace errors repugnant to the divine word, or fall into great sins, the more ardently and strongly does he ask in prayer that he may be divinely taught, governed, and strengthened, lest he should cast away acknowledged truth, or plunge himself into wickedness.”

The psalmist asks the Lord to teach him the way of His statutes. This petition agrees with the one we found in verse 27: “Make me to understand the way of thy precepts.” As we noted then, so we note again: all God’s precepts or statutes cohere together to form a single way. People tend to think of the many different ways one can choose to believe, the different ways one can interpret the Bible, the many different ways one can live. But all the different ways really distill down to just two ways: the right way and the wrong way. Or, as we saw in Psalm 119:29-30, the way of truth and the way of lying. Of course, the right way is the way that falls within the guidelines of God’s statutes. And remember that the way that seems right to you is not necessarily the right way.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

You need to always consult with God and not just with yourself to discover the right way. S. Bernard said, “He who is his own pupil, has a fool for his master.”

Now our Saviour described these two ways as the broad way and the narrow way.

Matthew 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

In this passage our Lord teaches us that most people choose the wrong way. This is even true with respect to the choices people make in the realm of professing Christianity, as Christ later taught in this same chapter.

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Now our psalmist desperately did not want to make the wrong choice. That is why he so earnestly asked God to teach him the way of His statutes.

As we noted in a previous meditation, God uses instruments when He teaches us. We pointed out that He uses the Scriptures themselves as we read and study them. He also uses tribulation to teach us patience (Romans 5:3) and chastening to correct us (Proverbs 3:11-12). He uses parents to teach children. He uses the pastors and teachers He has given to His churches to teach us. And He uses our fellow believers to teach us as we teach, comfort, edify, admonish, and exhort one another. And, as we learned last Sunday, God uses creation to teach us. But remember that all these are God’s instruments. It is God that is teaching you. Always look beyond the instrument to God. If you would learn the right way, pray to the right One to teach you.

Now the psalmist adds this to his petition: and I shall keep it unto the end. The psalmist tells the Lord that if He will teach him the way of his statutes, he will keep that way with a constancy that will endure to the end. That end could be the end of one’s life or the end of the world, whichever comes first. Matthew Henry said it well: “It will not avail the traveler to keep the way for a while, if he do not keep it to the end of his journey.” God is not honoured by starts and stops in His service. Our obedience must not be tied to the fickle ups and downs of our ever changing emotions. The Lord wants constancy, stedfastness, endurance to the end. Said Christ:

Matthew 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Shakespeare put it so well:

“O heaven! were man
But constant, he were perfect: that one error
Fills him with faults; makes him run through all th’ sins:
Inconstancy falls off ere it begins….”

If you would have God to teach you the way of His statutes, be sure that you are sincere in your resolve to keep that way unto the end. And be sure you do just that, even if you fail in everything else.

Psalm 119:32

We now arrive at the last verse of the fourth octave of Psalm 119 entitled Daleth.

Psalms 119:32 I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.

Charles Spurgeon observed: “What a change from verse 25 to the present, from cleaving to the dust to running in the way.” When we talk about running, we are talking about moving at a faster pace than walking, a pace that requires greater exertion, a greater expenditure of effort. Now there is a reason why someone would exert themselves to run when a slower pace is so much easier. That reason might be to win a race, to escape danger, to make an appointment on time, or to improve one’s endurance and fitness. In the verse we consider today the psalmist uses the word run in a figurative sense. Just as person exerts himself in running to achieve his objective, the psalmist resolved to exert himself, to increase his output of effort in conforming his life to the way of God’s commandments. This conformity to God’s commandments was his reason for running. There is no better reason to exert oneself than that!

The Christian life can be summed us as patterning one’s life after the commandments of God. That being the case, it is interesting to note how the Christian life is described as running a race, which agrees with the thought expressed in today’s verse.

1 Corinthians 9:24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
25 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

In this passage Paul teaches the importance of temperance, of self-control in running this race. If we would win the prize in this race, we must be temperate in all things. We must keep our bodily appetites and passions under control or we will lose the race. That is, we will fail at being the Christians we should be and end up being rejected.

Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us….

Here Paul exhorts believers to run this race with patience. Patience calls for endurance, not giving up. We must develop the ability to stay the course in the face of opposition, discouragement, and weariness.

Now the psalmist resolves to run the way of God’s commandments. But he hinges his ability to carry out his resolve on this condition: when thou shalt enlarge my heart. How the psalmist will go about keeping God’s commandments will be determined by the condition of his heart. Commenting on this verse Charles Spurgeon wrote:

“Yes, the heart is the master; the feet soon run when the heart is free and energetic. Let the affections be aroused and eagerly set on divine things, and our actions will be full of force, swiftness, and delight.”

It is a fact of life that the more the heart is involved in what we are doing, the more energetically and enthusiastically we will go about it. Have you ever quit doing something just because your heart wasn’t in it anymore? If so, then you can better understand the lesson of today’s verse. If we would exert more effort in keeping God’s commandments, we need more heart to do it. That is, we need to have our heart enlarged. Now let’s define what it means to enlarge the heart.

To enlarge the heart: to ‘expand,’ ‘swell’ the heart with gratitude or affection; now usually, to increase the capacity of the heart for affection, widen the range the affections.

Keeping God’s commandments flows out of love and affection for Him as the following verses declare:

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words….

1 John 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

When God enlarges our heart, we love Him more and we are more thankful to Him. As a result, we exert more effort to keep His commandments. When God enlarges our heart, we have an increased capacity to know Him, His will, and His ways. When God gave Solomon “wisdom and understanding exceeding much,” it was said that God gave him “largeness of heart” (1Kings 4:29). A person who knows God, loves Him, and is filled with gratitude to Him for His goodness is a person who will make a greater effort to keep His commandments.

When you step back from this verse and look at the larger picture it comes down to this: we are entirely dependent upon the power of God to enable us to obey Him to the best of our ability. Only by His strength can we practice self-control and endure the rigours of this race to keep His commandments. Increased strength from God equals increased capacity. Left to our own strength our hearts will become straitened and constricted so that we will give up and give in to the pressures and temptations to depart from the way of God’s commandments. We just won’t have the heart to stay the course. Therefore, we need to be ever praying for God to enlarge our hearts, to increase our capacity so that we may run the way of His commandments. You can hear echoes of this prayer in these prayers:

Luke 17:5 And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

Colossians 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
11 Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness….

1 Thessalonians 3:12 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you….

So if today you are feeling slow, dull, sluggish, or apathetic in serving the Lord, call upon Him to enlarge your heart. But when you ask Him to do this, be sure to tell Him that you will - no maybes about it - run the way of His commandments. Tell Him that you will do your best to serve Him. God will not increase your capacity to serve Him more if He knows you are not serious about doing it.