Psalm 119:176

At long last we now come to the last verse of Psalm 119 and the end of the octave entitled Tau.

Psalms 119:176  I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.

We begin by focusing on the expression thy servant. This is the thirteenth time in this psalm that the psalmist designated himself as God’s servant (see verses 17, 23, 38, 49, 65, 76, 84, 122, 124, 125, 135, 140, 176). If one is a servant of God, his chief aim and purpose is to do the will of his Master, God. Every time he addresses God as Lord, he is using a word which means master. And God, the Master, expresses His will for His servants in His word. So God’s servants serve Him by keeping His word. Therefore, being a servant of God, the psalmist prayed this prayer in verse 125 of this psalm:

Psalms 119:125  I am thy servant; give me understanding, that I may know thy testimonies.

Commenting on this verse I wrote:

“As a servant of God, the psalmist wanted to know God’s testimonies. He wanted to know His Master and His will so that he might serve Him. What servant is worth his salt that cares nothing for what his master says?”

As a servant of God the psalmist was living his life in subjection to his Master rather than in rebellion against Him. And he kept His Master’s commandments ever before him as he testifies in today’s verse:  for I do not forget thy commandments.

And yet even though he served the Lord and did not forget His commandments, he still had to confess:  I have gone astray like a lost sheep. The Lord’s people are sheep.

Psalms 100:3  Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

And as sheep they are 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.

Therefore, even when we are serving the Lord and keeping His commandments in mind, we will still find ourselves going astray from time to time. If you think about it, you will find this to be true. Have you ever found yourself thinking some abominable thought for a period of time before you caught yourself thinking it? Weren’t you amazed that you could let your mind wander to something like that without realizing it right away? Does your mind ever wander during a sermon you should be listening to? Have you ever been caught up and carried away in a relationship only to realize later on that it was not one that was healthy for you; and, therefore, you had to back out of it at the cost of pain to yourself and perhaps the other? Have you ever been so enthralled with a pleasure or a sport, or have you ever been so consumed with a care or worry, that it was choking the word of God in your life before you realized it? Have you ever involved yourself in a business that seemed so good at the start only to later regret you ever signed on? Have you ever pursued an idea that seemed so grand at the time only then to have it blow up in your face leaving you to ask yourself how you could ever have been so stupid? Have you ever in an unguarded moment been seized by an emotion that carried you where you shouldn’t go? Of course, such things have happened to you. You see, what happened is that you went astray like a lost sheep. And it can happen even with the best of intentions because we are sheep prone to wander from the right way. Being finite there are just so many things we cannot see, we cannot know. Therefore, there are things that may look very good that in reality are very bad, but we just don’t see it.

This is why we must ever pray: seek thy servant. We should ever be asking the Lord to watch over us and reel us back in when He sees us going astray. In essence, this is what we are asking for when we pray: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This prayer of the psalmist was also expressed in these words in verse 10 of this psalm: “O let me not wander from thy commandments.” If the Lord does not seek us, we will wander hopelessly lost. I think it is good to say to the Lord something to this effect: “Lord, do whatever He it takes to keep me in the strait and narrow way, even if it means slamming me upside the head with an iron frying pan; but just don’t give up on me.” And sometimes, being slammed with an iron frying pan is about what it takes for some of the Lord’s sheep to be brought back from their errant ways.

But if you would have the Lord to seek you, be sure you can add this plea to your prayer: for I do not forget thy commandments. Keep the Bible in your life and in your thoughts. Do not cast it aside. It is your rallying point. If you discard the Book, then you will go astray like a lost sheep. And the Lord, as a judgment, may just let you spend the rest of your days in this world wandering about from one error to another with no return as the following two passages declare.

Psalms 81:8  ¶Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;

9  There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god.

10  I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

11  But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.

12  So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

Psalms 95:7  ¶For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

8  Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

9  When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

10  Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:

11  Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

And whilst I am on the subject of not forgetting God’s commandments, let me point out that it is not only for your good that you remember them, but also for the good of your children!

Hosea 4:6  My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

Commenting on verse 168 of Psalm 119 and comparing it with today’s verse, Charles Spurgeon had this to say:

“We are struck with the contrast between this verse, which is the last of its octave, and verse 176, which is similarly placed in the next octave. This (verse 168) is a protest of innocence, ‘I have kept thy precepts,’ and that (verse 176) a confession of sin, ‘I have gone astray like a lost sheep.’ Both were sincere, both accurate. Experience makes many a paradox plain, and this is one. Before God we may be clear of open fault and yet at the same time mourn over a thousand heart-wanderings which need his restoring hand.”

My experience certainly confirms what Mr. Spurgeon wrote. Then I would also like to pass on to you the comments first of Matthew Henry and then of Charles Bridges on today’s verse.

“Thus he concludes the psalm with a penitent sense of his own sin and a believing dependence on God’s grace. With these a devout Christian will conclude his duties, will conclude his life; he will live and die repenting and praying.”

“And thus will our Christian progress be chequered, until we reach the regions of unmixed praise, where we shall no longer mourn over our wanderings, no longer feel any inclination to err from him, or the difficulty of returning to him – where we shall be eternally safe in the heavenly fold, to ‘go no more out.’ (Rev. iii.12).”

As we have now come to the end of this psalm let me remind you of something that I said at the outset that I would do. I said that as I pored over the verses of Psalm 119 I would “keep an eye out to behold the Lord Jesus Christ as He is certain to show Himself here as in all the other Scriptures.” As we consider today’s verse we see the Lord Jesus Christ showing Himself, for the psalmist speaks of himself as a lost sheep needing to be sought. And who seeks the sheep but the shepherd? And Who is the Shepherd of God’s sheep but the Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking of Himself He said, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 14). And being the good Shepherd, it is He that seeks the sheep when they are lost.

Ezekiel 34:11  For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.

12  As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.

Who of us that profess to be the Lord’s sheep have not from time to time experienced “the cloudy and dark day” when we lost our way? And yet the Lord Jesus brings us back into the way so that we can say with David as he wrote of his Shepherd: “He restoreth my soul” (Psalms 23:3).

This concludes the verses of Psalm 119. God willing, I shall write a conclusion to this series of meditations in the next installment.