Psalm 119:102

We continue working our way through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Mem.  Remember?

Psalms 119:102  I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me.

The thought of this verse dovetails perfectly with the thought of the preceding verse:  “I have refrained my feet from every evil way.”  The psalmist avoided every thing evil by never departing from God’s judgments.  Constant attention to God’s word is the means for refraining from every evil way.  It all boils down to this:  Get away from the Book and your feet will wander in the wrong direction.

Let’s define what it means to depart from. 

To depart from:  to leave, abandon; to cease to follow, observe, or practice.

The psalmist was constant in his obedience to God.  He had laid the judgments of God’s word before him to be his guide and counsel (Psalm 119:30), and he had not abandoned that course.  One of our greatest struggles is to remain constant since our fallen nature is so fickle and prone to go astray.

Isaiah 53:6  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

It was Shakespeare who wrote:  “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.”  How sadly true this is.

The psalmist attributed his adherence to God’s judgments to this fact:  for thou hast taught me.  He gave the Lord the credit for his constant obedience.  If a man is truly obedient to God’s word, the cause of that obedience must be traced back to the saving grace of God.  God by His grace gives His chosen people a new heart and a new spirit thus enabling them to keep His commandments and to keep them continually.  This is an inward instruction that the Lord gives to His people.

Ezekiel 11:19  And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:

20  That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

Jeremiah 32:39  And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them:

40  And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.

Titus 2:11  ¶For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

12  Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world….

Ephesians 4:20  But ye have not so learned Christ;

21  If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:

22  That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24  And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

An unsaved sinner may keep some of the commandments of God now and then for self-serving purposes, like the scribes and Pharisees who did all their works “for to be seen of men” (Matthew 23:5).  But this is not a sincere obedience that comes from a heart renewed and taught by God’s grace.  This is not an obedience that is constant to do all that the Lord has commanded.

Now if the Lord has taught us by grace in our hearts, then we can hear, understand, and profit from the outward teaching of the word of God. Without this inward instruction of the Holy Spirit the outward teaching of the word of God will never produce genuine faith and obedience. A natural man devoid of a spiritual capacity cannot receive the spiritual things of God's word.  

1 Corinthians 2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

So the Lord must teach us first by His grace. Then we are ready to be taught by the men He sends to preach His word to us.  Being taught by God we can answer the call of the preached word to keep the judgments of the Lord always and to never depart from them.

In addition, we have pointed out in previous meditations that human teachers of God’s word are but instruments through which the Lord teaches us.  If we receive their message as a lesson being taught us by the Lord Himself, then we will be far more prone to heed it than if we receive it as a mere lecture by a man.  Thomas Manton said it well: 

“David was taught by his ordinary teachers, and he did reverence them; but that he profited by them he ascribes unto God.  Paul may plant, and Apollos water; God must give the increase.”