The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: Sweeter than honey, more precious than gold. Last week in the first half of Psalm 19, we heard about God's general revelation to us through his creation. Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boyce, we'll learn about God's special revelation to us through scripture, as we study the second half of Psalm 19.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and Internet broadcast with Dr. James Boyce, preparing you to think and act biblically.

David describes the word of God as being perfect, trustworthy, sufficient, enduring, and pure. God's word is sweeter than honey and more precious than gold. In the second half of Psalm 19, David shows us how we can know God by special revelation through the gift of his Holy Word.

We're studying the 19th Psalm and we're particularly studying the second half of that Psalm, beginning with verse seven. And as I begin, I'm reminded of something that's found in the first chapter of Second Peter in the New Testament. The Apostle Peter is an old man at this time. He mentions that he's about to put off the ten of his body. He's expecting to die, but he's reflecting on something that happened to him when he was much younger during the days of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ.

He's recalling that special privilege he and two other disciples had to be with the Lord on the mountain when he was transfigured before them, his appearance becoming like that of an angel, shining with light and hearing a voice from heaven, and he refers to that.

He says, "We were with him on the holy mountain, eyewitnesses of his majesty." And he said, "We heard that voice that came to him from the majestic glory, that is, the voice of God saying, 'This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.'" That was a great privilege for Peter to see Jesus transfigured and to hear the actual voice of God from heaven. But no sooner has he said that, that he makes a very important contrast.

He says, "As important and as significant and meaningful as these things were, we nevertheless have an even more certain word of prophecy." He's talking about the scripture, and what he says in our translation is this, "We have the word of the prophets, which is more certain."

Now, as I say, that has bearing upon the transition that we find in the middle of Psalm 19, because the first half of that Psalm is dealing with the revelation of God in nature. We studied that the last time. And the second half of the Psalm that we're looking at now has to do with the revelation of God in scripture.

And to use the kind of contrast that Peter develops, this second revelation is more certain, or much more highly to be valued. We look into the heavens and we see there the glory of the stars, the planets, the constellations, and by day the glory of the sun and say, "It must be a glorious God who stands behind that." We're absolutely on solid ground.

And yet, glorious as those things are, the revelation of God in scripture is more glorious still. And that's what this second half of the Psalm is describing. Now, the transition from the first half to the second half is so abrupt that you find many scholars, the liberal scholars, saying that what we must have here actually is a combination of two separate Psalms.

It's interesting to study the liberal mind in that respect. Liberals find that the poet has done things differently than they would have done it, and therefore it can't be the same poet. They would have had a transition. So, he had to have had a transition. They would have had both kinds and both halves of the poem alike. Therefore, the poet in Israel had to do it. And if he didn't do it, well, the only explanation is that it must have been two Psalms originally.

Of course, they have a hidden motive for that. If they can separate the first half from the second, then they can compare the first half with the various hymns to the planets and the sun that existed in antiquity, and they can say, "Well, this is where the Jews got it." There are lots of poems like that in the Babylonian corpus and the Egyptian collection as well. There's a very well-known hymn to Aton, which is a hymn to the sun. "Ah," they say, "you see, the Jews are simply people of their time, reflecting the same kind of culture that existed around them to the east and to the west."

But of course, that's not what the first half of the Psalm is about at all. The first half of the Psalm is not a Psalm worshiping nature. It's anything but. It's worshiping the God of nature. And it's acknowledging that God has made nature, and certain aspects of his being and power are revealed in it. That's quite a different thing than finding the sun to be a god, or the stars to be gods, or whatever.

And the transitions that we find in the Psalm, abrupt ones, to be sure, are merely reflective of the change in David's thinking as he passes from the reality of the one to the reality of the other. There are a couple of significant changes. One has to do with the name of God. This is something the scholars also make a great deal of, but what happens here is most significant in terms of the content. In other words, David is far more wise than they are.

The first half of the Psalm uses the name El for God, not even Elohim. Elohim is the plural form. David simply uses the word El. It is the simplest, most generic name you can have for God. And it occurs once in the first half of the Psalm in verse one. "The heavens declare the glory of God." Now, that's most appropriate for that half of the Psalm. You don't learn about God's saving qualities in nature. Therefore, the God you learn about in nature is El, God.

In fact, that there is a God, he's a powerful God, he has to be if he is a God, but that's all you learn in nature. On the other hand, when you turn to the second half of the Psalm, beginning with verse seven, here you find that the name of the Lord is Jehovah, not El now, or even Elohim, but Jehovah, the covenant name for God. The name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush, "I am that I am," when he was entering into this covenant relationship with his people.

And it occurs not only once, but seven times. It's there in verses 7, 8, 9, and finally at the very end as well. So you have that kind of a change, and for very good reasons. There's also a change in the length of the lines. That is evident even in the English, though it's more evident in the Hebrew. And again, that is not any proof of this being two separate hymns or Psalms put together. It simply reflects the content. The long lines of the first half flow naturally from the revelation of God in the revolving spheres of the heavens. You read it and it seems appropriate even as the words flow off your tongue.

And then you come to the second half that's talking about the law, and here you find the words literally falling over one another quickly as David adds epithet to epithet and description to description in order to show how valuable the law does and all it is and all it accomplishes. You recognize the difference immediately. "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple," and so on.

So what we have here is significant changes that highlight what we come to when we come to the Psalm's second half. Now, in all of the Psalms, there's probably no clearer example, no better example of Hebrew parallelism than we find here. You may recall that when we were studying some of the earlier Psalms, I reflected on some of the qualities of Hebrew parallelism. This is very straightforward.

There are six parallel statements, two in verse 7, two in verse 8, two in verse 9, and in each case there are three elements that are parallel. There's a noun. In each case, it is a synonym for the law of God. There's an adjective, which describes what the law of God is like, and finally there's a result, something accomplished by the law because of what it is. So you have a parallel between the nouns, you have a parallel between the adjectives, and you have a parallel between the descriptive statements.

The place to start, of course, is with the nouns, because David is talking about the law, and the nouns he talks about describes what he thinks about it. The nouns are these: a law and statutes, verse seven; precepts and commands, verse eight; fear and ordinances, verse nine. Six of them, and each with a slightly different connotation. The word law, literally the word Torah in Hebrew, is the most embracing term.

Torah is not as limited in the Hebrew language as the word law is in ours. The word law for us generally means laws, the kind of things that are enacted in human courts. Actually, the word law means instruction. And so it embraces everything you find in the scriptures. Our nearest equivalent, if you wanted to equate meanings and not literal translations of the word, would probably be something like the Word of God. The Torah is the Word of God. And so when you study the law of God, what you're really emphasizing is God's words to us in all their forms. Not just the first five books, which are law per se, but the Psalms and the writings as well. That's the first term.

The second term is statutes. Now, that literally means testimony. In other words, it's an aspect of truth which is testified to by God himself. So what you have described in this word is reference to God's own assertion that what you find in scripture is true. It's the same sort of thing the Lord Jesus Christ did when he would say something and preface it by the word, "Verily, verily," or "Amen, amen," or, "I say this to you." It means, "This is true. I attest to it and you should pay attention." The word statutes means that.

Precepts, together with the word commands, which come next, mean orders, indicating the precision and authority with which God addresses us. These are not just vague comments that have sort of dropped onto the page somehow. These are specific things that God has to say to us for our instruction and admonition. Fear, the next term, is not strictly a synonym for the law. It's actually describing the effects the scriptures produce on us. The scriptures cause us to fear or reverence God. But it's used that way. The fear of God is used as if that is the word of God. And then finally, the last term is ordinances, which actually means judgments or verdicts. It is the divine evaluation on human thoughts and actions.

So, God's ordinances describe some of our thoughts and actions as being bad, and they describe some of our thoughts and actions as being right. And this is the sixth of these six terms that David uses. Now, what strikes me as I think about these is how different they are from the way you and I describe the various parts of scripture. What do we do when we talk about the Bible? Well, we have different ways of doing it. We may, for example, distinguish between narrative and didactic material. Narrative material are the stories, and didactic material is the teachings.

And so we say, "Well, some of it is story and some of it is teaching." Or, we may distinguish it this way. We look at the New Testament and we say, "Well, some of it are gospels." We have those up front. And then there's an historical book, that's the book of Acts. And then you have the letters, all the letters of Paul and some of the other writers. And finally, at the very end, the book of Revelation, you have apocalyptic type literature. And that's a useful way of handling it.

Or sometimes we do it in big blocks. We say, "Well, we've got the Old Testament and we've got the New Testament." We divide it up that way. Or even if we're looking at the Psalms, you do what some of the scholars do, you divide it up by the various types of Psalms. You have hymns and laments and thanksgiving Psalms and Psalms of confidence and Psalms of remembrance and wisdom Psalms and kingship Psalms and all kinds of Psalms. You see, we do it that way. But David doesn't do that.

David isn't thinking about the scriptures in terms of their style, whether they're gospels or letters or apocalyptic or wisdom or whatever. He's describing them as laws and precepts and commands and fears and ordinances. And you ask yourself the question, "What do all those terms have in common in spite of the different slight variations of meaning which I've just explained?" And the answer is obvious. All of those things describe the Bible as the Word of God to be obeyed.

Isn't that significant? The law of God is the law to be obeyed. The statutes of God are the law of God to be obeyed. The precepts of God are the precepts of God to be obeyed and so on on down the list. I'm not suggesting, I'm sure you understand that our way of dividing things up is not useful, but I would suggest that David is closer to the heart of God when he describes it as he does.

What we sometimes find ourselves doing in our academic sophistication is shifting the focus from the Word of God being the Word of God to us, telling us how to live, instead of thinking of it in terms of stylistic distinctions because, of course, we can handle those without any personal involvement. We could go through a Psalm like this and study it academically and walk away from it and say, "Isn't that a nice study?" But when David does it, having talked about it in terms of the law and the statutes and the precepts and the commands, he concludes by saying, "Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins." And he concludes by saying, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer." You see the difference?

I'd suggest that that's the way we should always study the Word of God. Now, let's look at the adjectives and the results that flow from it. We have these six parallels. Let's take them one at a time. First of all, the word of God is perfect, reviving the soul. When we first look at that, that doesn't seem to mean a whole lot to us, because we don't quite get the connection between the adjective perfect and the effect, reviving the soul. And it's probably because we don't think of the adjective quite rightly.

When we think of perfection, we think in some kind of abstract way. The Hebrew idea in the word perfection actually means complete, in the sense that it covers everything. Our best way of talking about that would be to talk about sufficiency. The Bible, the Word of God, is sufficient for all things. There is no aspect of our life, no problem that we may face, no decision that we may have to wrestle with that is not in some way or another covered by the Word of God.

And when you begin to understand it that way, you understand what David is saying. He's saying, "The law of God is so complete, so comprehensive, so perfect, not deficient in any way whatsoever, that regardless of your problem, if you will study it, you will find that it is the means of God to help you in the problem and actually revive your soul." The word of God gives life. And you will find that to be true if you apply it.

Here's the second one: "The law of God is trustworthy, making wise the simple." What does that mean, trustworthy? Well, it means it's reliable. And the reason it's reliable is that it's based upon reality. You see, the Bible corresponds to truth. That, of course, is the exact opposite of what the world is telling us. The world is telling us that you can't pay any attention to this old book, these collections of thoughts that came from people in a bygone age that nobody understands anymore. Why, if you want to live a happy and prosperous life, above all, if you want to become wise, you have to put all of those mythologies behind you and really you have to get with it in terms of the wisdom and the culture of the day.

And you know Paul's evaluation of that. He came many hundreds of years after David, and he was talking about his culture, the Roman culture, but he was saying when people think they're too wise for God, too wise to heed the revelation he gives, all they really do is become fools. Oh, they don't call themselves fools, says Paul, "They profess themselves to be wise, but professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. And because they won't have God and yet can't do without him entirely, they substitute false gods to take the true God's place. And they enter into that downhill progression that you find described so clearly in the first chapter of Romans."

I would maintain that there is no chapter in the Bible that describes our own culture better or gives a better rationale for it. It is the fact that we will not have God. We don't trust his word. We do not find the statutes of the Lord trustworthy. And therefore, instead of becoming wise, though we are simple, we find ourselves claiming to be wise and actually behaving in a very foolish manner. David did the other. He learned that the word of God could be trusted.

Here's the third one: "The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart." What does right mean? Doesn't mean righteous exactly, though that's what it suggests to us. The idea of righteous is probably better covered by the preceding word trustworthy. What it really means is straight, straight, like in Proverbs 3:5 and 6, "You trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. He will make your paths straight." That's what David is talking about here. And what he's saying is that if we are walking in straight paths, then we will find joy.

You see, we live in a culture that says the way you are happy is by going off on all kinds of devious paths. You know, everybody ought to do his or her own thing. And whatever you find to do, if you think you'd want to do it, well, you ought to do it because, well, why not enjoy? That's what we're here for, to enjoy ourselves and to be entertained. But the people that go on that path soon find that it's anything but joyous. They find it's misery. They don't know why they're here, what they're doing, or anything. And they sometimes by the grace of God are turned back from it.

Now, David says, "If you study the scriptures and walk in that way, you'll find that your paths are straight. And because they're straight, you'll find that they're also joyous. You will certainly be content."

Here's the fourth one: "The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." That, of course, is easy to understand. Radiant refers to something that's giving off light. The obvious example in the context of this Psalm would be the sun. David has described in verses 4B through 6 as that magnificent creation of God that moves across the heavens in the daytime. The sun gives light, and by its light we are able to walk without stumbling. Gives light to the eyes so we don't walk in darkness.

The same thing would be true of a lantern or a candle, or in our times, a light bulb or a chandelier, anything like that, a flashlight. It gives light to the eyes, so you don't fall. The 119th Psalm speaks of that as well. Verse 105, "Thy word is a lamp unto my path and a light unto my way." Now, that's what the Word of God does. If you say to yourself, "Why am I stumbling along so much in my life?" it's because you're not walking according to the Word of God.

The Word of God is sufficient. If you walk by that, you will not stumble in the darkness. And if you're stumbling, it's because you're not walking according to the Word of God. It is as simple as that. Here's the fifth of these parallel statements: "The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever." It endures because it's pure. Things that are not pure, things that are corrupt, decay. The produce that we see in the market will quickly decay. Bacteria will get to it, and it will rot before our eyes. Life is like that.

But the Word of God is not. The Word of God is pure, and because it's pure, it endures. The Lord himself spoke about that on a number of occasions. He said, "Even though heaven and earth pass away, my word will never pass away." And he said when he was talking about the jots and tittles of the law, the little parts of the written revelation, he said, "I tell you that not a single jot or tittle of the law is going to pass away until every single part of it is fulfilled."

So, Jesus was very conscious of the enduring quality of the Word of God, and it has endured, you know. Over the many centuries of human history, I suppose billions of books have been written, and most of them have passed away. But the Bible does not pass away. It is preserved, and it will be preserved as the Word of God, even when heaven and earth have passed away. All the things that we think are permanent, all the things, unfortunately, many of us pour our lives into, are going to be gone. But the Bible is not like that.

The Bible endures, and therefore the one who builds his or her life upon the Bible is going to endure as well. It's simple teaching and simple logic. Here's the sixth of the parallels. It's a little harder to find. "The ordinance of the Lord are sure." Now, notice, at the very point where you would expect the parallel, following on each of the other statements, you find instead, "and altogether righteous." That's another adjective.

You say to yourself, "Well, David's forgotten himself at this point. He has left out the parallel." No, he hasn't done it. He's just delayed it and inserted something else, which is the kind of thing that makes the poem interesting. I suppose if the scholars were writing it, it would be dull. But David doesn't do that. He is so carried away with what he's saying about the law of God, and rightly so, that he interjects there, "more precious than gold, than much pure gold, they're sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb." That's the best things he can think of. Gold, he's a king. Kings love gold, and honey, sweet to the taste.

You know, I I don't know what we would say that would be the equivalent. We would say, I suppose, they are more precious even than a large IRA account or a Keogh fund. They're more precious even than a thousand shares of IBM, which isn't doing very well right now. Um, as far as honey from the honeycomb, you just have to substitute whatever you most like, chocolate sundaes and that kind of thing. They're more precious than all of those things. The things that matter most to you, the Word of God is more precious than all of that.

And Jesus said it as well, you know, when he was tempted by the devil, he said, "Man shall not live by bread alone," even Strowman bread. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." And that's what David is saying. He said, "That's the way I love your law." And then having put in that little parenthesis, just to respond to it, he can't wait to the end, you see. You find the parallel. And the parallel is there in verse 11, "The ordinance of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. And by them is your servant warned, and in keeping of them, there is great reward." There's the result.

You see, they are so sure and so righteous that if you read them, you're warned about sin. They warn that if you go in that way, you're going to get into trouble. That way doesn't work. If you think you're smarter than God, well, go ahead and do it, and you'll find out that God is right. And you'll get into trouble. But if you're wise enough to listen, pay attention, be warned, then you turn aside and you avoid many of the problems that other people fall into.

And not only that, not only are they warnings, they are that, but they are also a reward themselves. You know, I like the way David says it, "In keeping of them, there is great reward." He does not put it in the future, you see. He does not say, "If you keep them, there will be a great reward," though I suppose that is true as well. But that isn't what he says. He says, "In the keeping of them, that there's reward."

You know, Saint Augustine, when he was talking about sin, said on an occasion, "Sin is its own punishment." A very astute comment. He meant God doesn't even have to intervene to punish sin, because if you sin, the sin itself is the punishment. You find that that which you think you're going to enjoy actually turns bitter in your mouth. He could have said, with equal justice, "Virtue is its own reward," which, of course, is what David is saying here. If you are following in God's way, keeping his ordinances, you will find reward even in doing so.

Because there really is joy and righteousness. Those that don't know anything about righteousness don't know that. They say, "Oh, those uptight, straight people, why, who would ever want to be like that?" And then they go off miserably to try and have a good time. But David said, "You see, if you walk in an upright way, it might not be defined in the same way the world is talking about joy and happiness, but you'll find that that is really where the reward lies, and you'll be glad you did."

Now, we come to the end of this, and we come to the part that I described in our last study as the concluding section or coda. Yet actually, it's much more than a coda. It's actually the climax of the Psalm, because having talked about the revelation of God in nature and the far greater, more blessed revelation of God in scripture, David now responds to it on the personal level. He's already begun to do that. When he began to say, "It's more precious than gold, it's sweeter than honey from the comb." He's beginning to get into the thing, you see, but now he gets to the end and he's got to respond on a deep personal level. And he does it in two ways.

It's the way you and I have to respond as well. First of all, he responds in a prayer that God will forgive his sin and keep him from further transgressions. You see, the law of God will always do that. If you are studying the scripture and really coming to know it, you'll become aware of your sin, and so you want to ask God to forgive it, which he promises to do in Jesus Christ. You find about Christ in the scriptures, too. And furthermore, because you realize the mind and character of God, and that sin is an offense to him, you'll ask that he'll keep you from further transgressions. It's not just that I want forgiveness. "I don't want to do that anymore," is what you'll say.

And that's what David says. We know that this isn't merely a formal kind of flip thing he throws off here, because he spells out the different kinds of sins. It's as if he's analyzing his own heart. He knows that there are errors, that is, sin, but sin in which he is just making a mistake, not consciously. He knows that some of his sins are hidden faults, not hidden to God, of course, but hidden to him, probably because they're so buried in his personality, he doesn't know what he's doing.

He also knows that there are sins that are willful. That is, he knows exactly what he's doing and he does it anyway. Probably that's what he has in mind when he goes on to say at the end that he wants to be blameless of great transgression. That kind of transgression. You see, he says, "When I study the scriptures, I realize that I'm a far greater sinner than I ever imagined beforehand. That I sin in thought, word, and deed, I commit sin by error, hidden sins, and also willful sins. And what I need is forgiveness and the power of God to keep me from them."

When I get to that, you see, I know that this is a real prayer, and I know that it's a real hymn, and I know that it's a man of God. You recall the prayer of the publican that was praised by Jesus when he said that man went home justified. We know that was a real prayer because that man said, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." The Pharisee didn't acknowledge his sin. He prayed about himself. He said, "I thank you that I'm not like other men, like sinners." He didn't think he was a sinner at all, and therefore we know it wasn't a true prayer, even though he began by saying, "God, I thank you." He wasn't really praying. But the publican and the tax collector was. And David is as well. "Who can discern his errors?" The answer is, nobody can discern his errors by himself.

That's why you need the Word of God. But if you have the Word of God, God will disclose them to you so you can confess them and find forgiveness and also cleansing and power not to sin again. And then finally, he comes to the end, and having prayed and asked for forgiveness, we find him appealing to God as his rock and his redeemer. "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight." That is, in accordance with your law. "Oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer." What a great place to end. "My redeemer," because we need to be redeemed from sin. It's what is disclosed in the Psalm that we are sinners and we need redemption, and our rock as well.

Because we need a firm foundation on which to stand and live if we really are to be successful and please God. David discovered that, and those who hear God speaking to them in the scriptures and live by it, discover it as well. May it be true for all of us. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the teaching that we have in this great Psalm. We thank you that it's so practical, that it covers so many parts of our lives and strikes to the very core of what it is to stand before you and learn from you and try to walk in your ways.

Father, we can't read a passage like this without realizing how sinful we are, and asking for forgiveness. We can't read it without realizing how weak we are, and that we need you to keep us from further transgression. And at the same time, we can't read it without realizing that you are the redeemer from sin and the rock on which we can build. Our Father, help us to do that and to grow in that understanding to the praise of the glory of Jesus Christ, in whom we have it all. Amen. And Amen.

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