Psalm 119:12

In today’s meditation we find a prayer mingled with praise and petition.

Psalms 119:12 Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.

The Psalmist gives praise to God when he states: “Blessed art thou, O LORD.”

Consider the definition of bless as it pertains to our blessing God.

Bless - To hold or call holy; to extol as holy, divine, gracious. To extol, praise, or adore (God) as holy, worthy of reverence, esp. with an added notion of thanksgiving or acknowledgement of gracious beneficence or goodness.

When the Psalmist acknowledges God as blessed, he is telling God that He is holy, gracious, and worthy to be praised. God is so holy, gracious, and great, that it is an act of worship just to admit He is thus. We worship God when we acknowledge His glorious attributes. Our brother Greg Ohly did this in our service last Sunday as he began the opening prayer by listing off to the Lord several of His divine attributes. In so many words he was saying, “Blessed art thou, O Lord.” On the other hand, to ascribe to a creature the attributes that pertain only to God is to worship the creature, which is idolatry. God alone is blessed in the way that we are considering the word bless. Only God is holy in the sense of being essentially and necessarily holy. God is holy of Himself. Hence we read:

Revelation 15:4 Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy:….

Any holiness that we have is a holiness that God imparts to us. It is not a holiness we have of ourselves. And since God is essentially, supremely, and perfectly holy, He is the most happy of all beings. God is indeed blessed!

Now our psalmist desires a blessing from this blessed One and that is the blessing of being taught by Him His statutes. What better teacher could there be than the blessed God? And what better instruction could be given than the statutes of the blessed God? It stands to reason that the most supremely happy Being is the one that can best teach us how to be happy, and this He does in His statutes. Indeed, the blessed God is a great teacher. When He became incarnate in flesh in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, He was known among men as Master or Rabbi, which are titles for a teacher.

John 3:1 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:
2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

John 1:38 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou?

Now God utilizes instruments when He teaches us. He does not sit across from us and carry on a discussion, as He did when He was among us on earth. Neither does He Himself audibly speak His lessons into our ear. God teaches us through the Scriptures, which Paul tells us are “profitable for doctrine” (2Timothy 3:16). Doctrine is defined as the action of teaching or instructing. When you are reading and studying your Bible, God is teaching you and you can learn a great deal by that means. But God also uses other means to teach us. God uses tribulation to teach us patience (Romans 5:3), and He uses chastening to correct us (Proverbs 3:11-12). Fathers are commanded to bring up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Christ has given His church pastors and teachers to teach us (Ephesians 4:11). As we sing in our service to God we are “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). Older women are commanded to teach certain things to the younger women as it respects their character and their duties to their husbands and children (Titus 2:3-5). And then all believers are to be teachers of one another in that they are to comfort, edify, admonish, and exhort one another.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

Romans 15:14 And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.

Hebrews 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

All of these are so many instruments used by God to teach us His statutes. So when you come to church this Sunday, come with a prayer to the blessed God to teach you His statutes. And when you have been taught in the service, look beyond the pastor or whoever else may have taught you and bless God for His goodness in teaching you. If your parents taught you well, then thank God for using them to teach you. If a brother admonishes you and saves you from doing something foolish, thank God for using that brother to teach you. And continue to pray to God to teach you His statutes. He is the ultimate Teacher and nobody can teach like Him, as saith the Scripture!

Job 36:22 Behold, God exalteth by his power: who teacheth like him?

Psalm 119:11

In today's meditation we come to a verse that gives us a prescription for avoiding sin in our lives. If we truly fear God, sin is something we hate and, therefore, very much want to avoid.

Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.

Here is our verse for today:

Psalms 119:11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

The psalmist hid God’s word. He did not hide God’s word for the purpose of concealing it from the view or discovery of others. He rather hid it for the purpose of safekeeping so as not to lose it. He treated God’s word like a precious treasure that he wanted to keep. Now the place where the psalmist hid the word was in his heart. The purpose for his hiding it there was that he might not sin against God.

The psalmist hid God’s word in his heart. By hiding it in his heart, he put it in the place where it would have the greatest influence upon the course of his life.

Proverbs 4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

It is with our heart that we think, intend, know, understand, purpose, believe, and experience emotions such as joy and sorrow (Hebrews 4:12; Ecclesiastes 1:17; Daniel 10:12; 2 Corinthians 9:7; Romans 10:9; Isaiah 65:14). Indeed, all the issues of our life can be reduced down to those things we think, know, understand, believe, decide, and feel. If God’s word is hid in our heart, the issues of our life are going to be affected by it. And since God’s word steers us away from sin, the issues of our life will also be steered away from sin.

God’s word needs to be hid in the heart. It is not enough to store it in a notebook or in a computer program. It needs to be inside of you!

Proverbs 4:20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.
21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.

Proverbs 7:1 My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.
2 Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.
3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.

When you love the Scriptures, read them frequently, and meditate upon them, they will become stored up in your heart. And when you are tempted to sin, you will be able to draw upon them to resist sin just as our Lord did when Satan tempted Him to sin in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). Each temptation was met with “It is written,” a citation from the Holy Scriptures. It was by this means our Lord avoided sin and it is by that means you will avoid it as well.

Psalms 17:4 Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.

1 John 2:14 ....I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.

But if the word is not hidden in your heart, if you don’t know what the Bible teaches regarding certain sins, then you are more apt to fall into those sins when tempted. Have you ever committed a sin only to recall too late the Bible verse that forbad that sin? If you simply take a moment to think and pray before you act, that is, if you take heed to your way as verse 9 of our Psalm teaches us; and if you have the word hidden in your heart for immediate access; you greatly reduce the chances of stumbling into sin unexpectedly.

Then consider that the psalmist is telling God that he hid His word in his heart. If we would ask God to deliver us from sinning, we should be able to acknowledge to God that we have followed His prescription for avoiding sin. To ask God to deliver us from sin without taking His prescription is like expecting a doctor to heal us without taking his remedy. So if you would not sin, then get out your Bible, read it, meditate on it, and hide it in your heart.

In conclusion, notice something very interesting about the first three verses of this second section Beth as they compare with the first three verses of the first section Aleph. The first verse of Aleph speaks of “the undefiled in the way.” The first verse of Beth asks “wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way.” Both verses speak of a way, the objective being that a young man’s way corresponds to God’s way. The second verse of Aleph pronounces them blessed who seek the Lord “with the whole heart,” while in the second verse of Beth the psalmist said that he had sought God with his “whole heart.” Then the third verse of Aleph speaks of those who “do no iniquity” and the third verse of Beth teaches us how to “not sin.” Every theme mentioned in the statements of the first three verses of Aleph become prayers in the first three verses of Beth. Now is this just a coincidence or is this inspiration?

Psalm 119:10

We now come to the second verse in the second section of Psalm 119 entitled Beth.

Psalms 119:10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.

This is a prayer to God that He would not permit the psalmist to wander from His commandments. That the psalmist was in earnest with this petition is seen again in the usage of the interjection O at the beginning of the prayer. The psalmist was emotional about this; he was not indifferent.

Now just exactly what it is to wander from God’s commandments? Let’s define that word wander.

Wander – Of persons or animals: To move hither and thither without fixed course or certain aim; to be (in motion) without control or direction; to roam, ramble, go idly or restlessly about; to have no fixed abode or station. fig. or in fig. context: Of persons (also of the mind, thoughts, desires, etc. personified): To turn aside from a purpose, from a determined course of conduct, or train of thought; to digress; to pass out of the control of reason or conscience; to fall into error (moral or intellectual), etc.

The person who wanders from God’s commandments loses focus on keeping them. Something else or perhaps several things are distracting him from God’s commandments. Making sure that his entire life is in conformity to God’s commandments is no longer his chief priority. He has lost that direction.

Notice that this petition is made by someone who could say of himself: “With my whole heart have I sought thee.” This is a true believer. We discovered when we considered Psalm 119:2 that seeking God with the whole heart involves a willingness to do anything and everything that God commands the way He commands us to do it. King Hezekiah is a good example of one who sought God with His whole heart. The following verse describes Hezekiah:

2 Chronicles 31:21 And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered.

Observe from this verse that seeking God with the whole heart involves the house of God (the church), the law (the Bible), and the commandments (obedience). Don’t think you are seeking God with your whole heart if these three things are not given paramount consideration in your life. Seeking God with your whole heart means that every other desire or ambition you might have takes a backseat to pleasing the Lord. Now anyone who has ever sought God with his whole heart has discovered the richest and best life that a human being can have on this earth. Wholehearted service to God brings a joy that nothing else in this world can offer. If you have had that joy, then you have a dread of ever losing it. Therefore, you should earnestly pray to God to never let you wander from His commandments. If you have never had that joy, then you have never yet sought God with your whole heart.

The believer who seeks God with his whole heart is the one who is most keenly aware of a propensity within himself to be drawn away from that purpose and course of life. He is the one Satan will try hardest to lead astray. Therefore, for him to stay the course is a constant battle. Let me recall a previous quote I gave you by C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity: “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all…you find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.” That soul who seeks God with his whole heart will not be self-confident in his obedience. He will rather acknowledge his proneness to wander from it and will constantly strive and pray against that proneness.

On the other hand, if you do not have a struggle with a tendency to wander from God’s commandments, you have likely wandered already. You probably do not seek the Lord with your whole heart and, therefore, you perceive no danger.

Now here is a frightening thought: if we ever become lackadaisical and careless in seeking the Lord, if we do not give Him His due place in our hearts and lives, then He will withdraw His hand and let us wander from His commandments.

Psalms 81:11 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.
13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!

And when we wander from God’s commandments, we will inevitably find ourselves in a way that is not good, even though we may think it is.

Isaiah 65:2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.

May this meditation on today’s verse give you a deeper appreciation of these words taken from the song Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandr’ing heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Psalm 119:9

We now come to the second section of Psalm 119 under the title of Beth, which is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Psalms 119:9 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.

Owing to the fall of man into sin, man’s nature is corrupted from his youth.

Genesis 8:21 …for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

These words were God’s assessment of mankind after the cataclysmic judgment of a worldwide flood. Even a judgment of that magnitude did not change the bent of youth toward evil.

Youth is a time when the desires of the flesh are at their peak of intensity. Because youth are young in years, there is much of life they have not experienced and yet they intensely long to experience it. Couple this youthful passion with a sin nature and you have an explanation of why youth is often scarred with painful memories of follies and sins as these two verses show:

Job 13:26 For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.

Psalms 25:7 Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O LORD.

Youth should be a time to perfect one’s potential and to grow upward spiritually, intellectually, and morally. Yet sadly, the trend in youth if too often downward and much of that time must be written off as wasted. The word unclean is an altogether too apt description of much of the way of youth.

The verse we are considering in today’s meditation shows how a young man can make the best of his youth, how he can maximize upon the potential of his youthful mind and vigour. Our verse shows how a young man can “clean up his act” and redirect his youth. The way to do this is to take heed to his way. Let’s define that word heed.

Heed – Careful attention, care, observation, regard. Especially in the phrase to take heed.

If a young man would clean up the way he lives, he must begin by caring! He must stop being careless and reckless. He needs to pay attention to what he doing, why he is doing it, and what will be the consequences of his choices for himself and for others. How sad it is to see a young man throw away his life in alcohol and drug abuse, pornography, premarital sex (or whoremongering, as the Bible calls it), and crime while he seems to not give a care about the consequences of his evil choices. Again, cleansing one’s way begins with caring.

Now many a young man has reformed his behaviour by beginning to care about his grades, his place on the team, his career, or maybe even his family. While this will win him approval with men, it is not enough to please God. There are a lot of “good” young people whose ways are clean in the eyes of men. We often hear them spoken of as “nice kids.” Yet their way is unclean in the eyes of God. Our verse is talking about cleansing one’s way before the Lord! In order to do that, the young man must take heed unto his way “according to thy (God’s) word.” He must see to it that the way he chooses to go in life is in agreement with what God’s requires of him in His written word.

A young man’s way is the whole course or direction of his life that he chooses to pursue. It includes his thoughts, motives, and attitude; the choices he makes for friends, for a spouse, for a profession, for a location, for recreation, for a faith, for a church; and whatever else goes to make up the way he lives. If a young man (or woman) would live a clean life in the eyes of God – and that’s where it counts most! - he (she) must pay careful attention to what God says in His word and follow it. A young man needs two things to cleanse his way: (1) God’s word to guide his way and (2) careful attentiveness to that word. Matthew Henry said it well:

“God’s word will not do without our watchfulness, and a constant regard both to it and to our way, that we may compare them together.”

Of course, it stands that the only way any young man can cleanse his way is through the satisfaction that the Lord Jesus Christ made for God’s chosen people on the cross of Calvary. Without the blood of Christ, all our ways are unclean and can never be anything but unclean.

Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

But thanks be to God, Christ has redeemed us by His blood from all of our sins so that we can now truly do good works, that is, we can cleanse our way according to God’s word.

Titus 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

I close this mediation by issuing this call to young men:

Ecclesiastes 12:1 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

2 Timothy 2:22 Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

Psalm 119:8

We now come to the last verse of the first section of Psalm 119 entitled Aleph.

Psalms 119:8 I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.

Zero in on those first two words: “I will.” In order to truly keep God’s statutes, you must exercise your will. If obedience to God is something you do on a wave of emotion, you will not stick with it. As soon as the emotion dies down, and it will, you will be on to something else. Rather, obedience to God must arise from an act of will, a determination to do it, a determination that will transcend all the ups and downs of your emotions through all the changing circumstances of life. It behooves each of us to adopt this resolve as the driving impulse of our life, the single most important goal we seek to attain. Whatever else we may do or not do, whatever of life we may experience or not experience, this one thing we will do, we will keep God’s statutes. And firmly resolving to do this will provide a grid for sorting out everything that comes into our lives demanding our time and attention.

But having made this firm resolution, the psalmist immediately follows up with the request that God not forsake him utterly. Commenting on this prayer, Charles Bridges wrote: “Firm in his purpose, but distrustful of his strength, instantly upon forming his resolution, he recollects that the performance is beyond his power.” How true! We cannot keep God’s statutes without Him. Hence, we beg God to not forsake us utterly. Now guess what comes next. You got it! To fully grasp what the psalmist is requesting, we must define our terms.

Forsake – To abandon, leave entirely, withdraw from; esp. to withdraw one’s presence and help or companionship from; to desert.

Utterly – In a complete or utter manner; to an absolute or extreme degree; altogether, entirely, absolutely; fully, thoroughly, out and out.

The psalmist is asking God not to withdraw His presence and help, at least not completely and entirely. That the prayer begins with the interjection O indicates that the psalmist was in earnest in his request. He realized how desperately he needed God’s presence and help.

Now God does indeed forsake His people at times for various reasons. The Lord may forsake us because we have forsaken Him.

2 Chronicles 15:1 And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded:
2 And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.

God might forsake us if we become overconfident in our prosperity. David experienced this.

Psalms 30:6 And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.
7 LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

Or the Lord might forsake us to try us, to bring to light some corruption lurking in our hearts. This happened to Hezekiah after God healed him of a life-threatening sickness.

2 Chronicles 32:24 In those days Hezekiah was sick to the death, and prayed unto the LORD: and he spake unto him, and he gave him a sign.
25 But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Hezekiah’s heart was lifted up and he behaved unwisely in showing off the riches of his kingdom to the ambassadors of Babylon. Babylon later proved to be a formidable enemy. The Lord forsook Hezekiah for a time; He left him so as to expose this pride in his heart.

2 Chronicles 32:31 Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart.

In such cases God forsakes us to correct us, to get us back on the track of keeping His statutes. But if God should forsake us utterly, we would fail utterly. We would never be able to find our way back. Hence we pray: “O forsake me not utterly.” In dealing with my own personal weaknesses I have sometimes said to the Lord in my prayer: “Keep working with me, Lord. Do what You need to, but don’t give up on me.” In essence I was saying to the Lord, “O forsake me not utterly.”

Now the wonderful thing about it is that we have a promise from God that He will not forsake His children utterly even though they disobey Him.

Psalms 89:30 If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments;
31 If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments;
32 Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.
33 Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.

We are actually pleading this promise when we pray to God to not forsake us utterly. Thanks be to God that though He may at times forsake His children, He only forsakes them for a little while rather than completely and forever.

Isaiah 54:7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.