The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: We see God in the world he's created. The evidence of his design is all around us, but his creation alone doesn't give us the whole picture. Creation turns us toward God, but it doesn't reveal his true nature.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

When we really come to know God, we come to know his love for us through his gift of salvation, and we come to know his comfort in times of need. In short, we come to know God as our portion. But to really know him requires some effort on our part. Join Dr. Boice as he continues his study of Psalm 119 and directs us to the source of the knowledge of the nature of our God and the key to finding it.

Dr. James Boice: Several years ago, when he was still teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary, Dr. Bruce Waltke preached here for us. I was very impressed at the time with his preaching, his knowledge particularly of the Old Testament, and his ability to expound it well. He's one of the great Old Testament scholars, and I counted it a privilege to get to know him.

He's recently written a book on how Christians can know the will of God. In that book, he gives a very interesting testimony to the way he came to learn what Bible study was all about, not simply academic study of what would be regarded as ancient documents, but a book in which we actually get to know God himself.

He describes that there was a period early in his academic career when he studied the Bible simply abstractly, and he didn't get much out of it. But then one day, he heard a preacher say that it's necessary to ask God for enlightenment. And so that's what he began to do. He prayed, "God, speak to me as I read your word."

Here's his testimony. At first, nothing happened. But soon, within three weeks of praying that prayer, as I read, my heart began to burn within me. I started to see new things in Scripture. God began revealing to me how his Word should change my life. I developed a love for his teaching. God heard my prayer and began to speak to me through his Word.

Now that's what Psalm 119 is about. The whole Psalm is about it, really. But we have come now to three stanzas in which this is the particular emphasis. That is, the stanzas that begin with verse 41 and end with verse 64. They're identified in some Bibles as the Waw, the Zayin, and the Heth stanzas.

What they're telling us here is that the purpose of Bible study is not just to get to know the content of the Bible in some kind of mechanical way, though that's very important that we do that, but rather that through that kind of study, getting to know the Word of God, we actually come to know God himself. And what they're saying is that the key to getting to know God is prayerful Bible study. Now that's worth repeating. The key to getting to know God is prayerful Bible study.

Now, the Psalmist has been saying that all along, of course. As a matter of fact, it's really the tone of the Psalm because this Psalm, more than other Psalms, is very direct in its intimate reaction and interrelation with God. The pronouns "I" and "you" occur throughout the Psalm. But in these stanzas, this particular emphasis rises to new heights. And the climax comes in verse 57 where the Psalmist says, "You are my portion, O Lord."

Now we want to look at them and go carefully through what these verses are actually saying. The first of these three stanzas concentrates on God's love. And that's quite understandable because love is certainly the most wonderful of the attributes of God where we're concerned. It's a constant amazement to us that God can love us, rebellious sinners that we are, but he does.

And so the Psalmist begins to talk about that in these verses. This is the first time in the Psalm that he has talked about God's love. That's surprising. We might say to ourselves, well, we would have thought he would have done it earlier. This is also the first time in the Psalm that he mentions God's salvation.

Now, while it is surprising that it's the first time he mentions God's love, it's not the least bit surprising that when he mentions God's love, he mentions God's salvation too. Look at verse 41. "May your unfailing love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise." Why do the two go together? Well, obviously, because the love of God is made known to us through the salvation that he provides.

You look at nature and you can be amazed at the power and the wisdom and the greatness and the sovereignty of God, all those very important attributes, but you don't automatically conclude from nature that God is a loving God. But when God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place, taking the burden of our sin upon himself, we know that God is love.

Now that's the way the themes are handled, especially in the New Testament. I think, for example, of Romans 5:7 and 8. The Apostle Paul is writing there. He puts it this way: "Very rarely for a righteous man will anyone die, though for a good man some might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Or if that verse is a little hard to follow, how about John 3:16, the best-known verse in the entire Bible? "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life."

Now, we've already discovered as we have looked at the earlier stanzas that the man who is writing this is a very practical man, practical in his religion. And so at this point, instead of finding him going on to eulogize the love of God, which of course he could very well have done, we find him instead talking about two practical consequences of coming to know God as the God of love.

The first of these is obedience. Notice verse 44. "I will always obey your law for ever and ever." Does it seem strange to you that the first consequence of coming to know God as a God of love might be obedience? We think of love as being something sentimental, something in which we can indulge ourselves. We would say the first consequence of coming to know that God is a God of love is a sentimental feeling for God.

But that's not what the Psalmist says. He says the first consequence is that I obey God. This is because in the Bible, love is a relationship that issues in moral actions. That's why Jesus said to his disciples, "If you love me, you will obey what I command," John 14:15.

Something else interesting to note about this verse before we go on, and that is that the idea of this being forever is emphasized three times. If you look at the text, you'll find the words "always, for ever and ever." Those are three different words in the Hebrew text, and they come at the very end of the sentence. So it's a way of emphasizing it.

It's a way of saying that this obedience to God that the Psalmist is talking about is something that's never going to end. It is something that is going to go on and forever, always without ending, for ever and ever. Isn't that interesting?

When I was talking last week, I believe, I ended by saying when does our love for Jesus Christ end? And I said never, not until the grave and not even then. And when does our service to Jesus Christ end? Not ever, not until the grave and not even then. We can say exactly the same thing for obedience. The devout person is never going to come to a moment in his or her life when he or she ceases to obey God.

That's the first consequence. Now here's the second. In this same stanza, the Psalmist also talks about speaking about God's love to others. This is emphasized strongly in the stanza because it's an idea repeated three times. Verse 42: "Then I will answer the one who taunts me." He's going to speak up on behalf of his God, even though he's being ridiculed for his faith.

Verse 43: "Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth." He wants to be able to answer truthfully according to the revelation of God. And then finally verse 46: "I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame."

That last verse has been used by a number of historians to refer to Martin Luther and the way he was able to stand firm before the political powers of his day at the time of the Reformation. You know the story, of course. Luther was under attack for his teaching of the Word, and he was summoned to the city of Worms to appear before the newly elected Emperor Charles V and the great dignitaries of the Roman church.

When they called him in, there was a table there. They had all his publications, his books spread out on it, and they asked him if those were his books. And he identified them and said they were. And so they demanded that he retract what he had written in them. And Luther tried to draw them into debate.

He made a distinction between different things that were said. Some things were political; he was willing to discuss those. Some things were simply articulation of the great faith of the church; he could hardly retract that. Some things were controversial; he'd be glad to discuss them. He wanted actually to have a chance to preach the gospel.

Now, they didn't want to get drawn into a debate with Luther, so they demanded that he retract. "Will you retract, yes or no?" is what they said. Luther said it was a weighty matter. He asked for 24 hours to pray. It gave weight to what he would say the next day. And so he retired. The next day he returned, and they repeated the demand. "Will you or will you not retract?" They didn't allow him any opportunity for discussion.

And so Luther did respond. And according to those who took notes, this is what he said: "Since your most serene majesty and most high mightiness require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one. It is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the councils because it is clear to me as is the day that they frequently erred and contradicted each other.

Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."

And thus it was that Martin Luther did exactly what Psalm 119 is describing when it says that we will speak before kings and not be put to shame. Let me summarize the stanza before we go on. It speaks of God's love and our love for God and his commandments.

There are three kinds of love that are mentioned. Number one, God's love for us, disclosed in his provision of salvation. It's what the writer speaks of finding. As he gets to know God, he finds that God is love. Second, our love for God, which implies the matter of obedience. I talked about that briefly. And then third, love of God's commandments, which results in our wanting to tell others about him.

So I apply it this way. Do you want to tell others about the great love of God displayed for us in the death of Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners? How can you say that you love God and not want to tell others about his love? To do that seems to me as evidence of the fact that we really aren't regenerate.

Now, the theme of this small group of stanzas, three of them together, is finding God. But each of them has a different emphasis. The first that we've just looked at talks about finding God to be a God of love. The second of these three talks about finding God to be a God of comfort in life's sufferings. It's mentioned twice in verses 50 and 52. "My comfort in my suffering is this: your promise renews my life." And then this: "I remember your ancient laws, O Lord, and I find comfort in them."

Now, it's an interesting thing about this stanza that there's only one direct prayer to God for help in these eight verses. Verse 49: "Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope." And even it isn't explicitly asking for deliverance from the suffering. What the Psalmist does say in the stanza, and he says it over and over again, is that he trusts what God has written in his law and that he's going to continue to love it and obey its teachings, no matter what happens to him.

It's a way of saying, I think, that suffering is common to being a human being and we do not always have the right or even the desire to be delivered from it. He's not praying that God will take away his suffering; rather, he's acknowledging that his duty if God sends the suffering is to live in a way that proves the grace of God and proves that he trusts God even as he's going through it.

There's an interesting word here. It's the word "remember." It occurs three times. You have it in verses 49, 52, 55. In the first case, it's an appeal to God to remember his words of promise. And the author's very sure he's going to do that. God never forgets his own word.

And then in the second and third instances, he uses the word to encourage remembrance on his part. He's praying that he won't forget the commands of God or forget to obey them, but rather he'll remember them and that he'll remember them all his days. He talks about remembering God's ancient laws, verse 52, and remembering God's name, verse 55. He wants to meditate on these things in order that he might be God's man in the suffering situation.

And not just meditate, either. He also talks about singing. Look at it. He talks about singing in the midst of his suffering. You say can a Christian really do that? Can you actually sing in the middle of hard times? The answer of course is yes. Not only can, Christians do it, and they have done it all down through human history.

You can't read that passage without thinking of Paul and Silas when they were beaten up in Philippi, beaten with rods. So they were bleeding and in great pain, thrown into prison, sitting there in the stocks in the middle of the night, singing praises to God. And what it tells us in the Book of Acts, where we have the story, is about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them, Acts 16:25.

Well, after a demonstration of a faith like that, it's no wonder that the other prisoners joined in and became interested and the Philippian jailer was converted. Probably some of those that made up that early church in Philippi were those that had been in the jail on that occasion. At any rate, God built a strong church there on that kind of foundation. It's a church that endured faithfully for a long, long time and even sent to Paul many times in his missionary journeys to provide money to help him on his way. He thanks them for it in Philippians 4.

You know, it's always been natural for Christians to sing because they sing out of the joy that God has planted in their hearts. And they do it even in their suffering. Isn't that interesting? We come on a morning like this and we have hymns as part of our worship service, a very important part of our worship service, and we are singing praises to God.

Who is it that's singing praises to God? Well, some people have had a good week and things are wonderful. But many people have not had a good week. We have people who come with all kinds of hurts and disappointments, all kinds of terrible things that have happened, in many cases not only sickness and suffering but death. And yet Christians come together and they sing.

One of the most wonderful things I've ever witnessed is Christians singing beside a grave where somebody who has been very close to them has been laid to rest. "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." Songs like that.

You see, that's natural to Christians. Have you noticed that the world isn't singing anymore? That our culture is not a singing culture? It used to be in the past. During the war years, people sang patriotic songs. Often the popular songs were the kind of songs that people would sing. They'd sit around a piano and play them and sing them and they just... that was a happier, nicer time. Not anymore.

People don't sing today. They listen to songs that other people sing for them, and most of those songs are not nice; they're ugly because it's an expression of the ugly times in which we live. In a time like that, isn't it a beautiful thing that Christians sing praises to God as the Psalmist did?

Some years ago, in the 19th century, one of the greatest and best-known poets in America was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He is the poet who wrote of "Evangeline" and "The Song of Hiawatha" and other things. He was often memorized by people, not just Christians, just Americans in general because he wrote poetry that was easy to memorize. People don't know much of it anymore, but there is one particular verse in which he writes about musical renderings of God's word, the Psalms that we sing, the hymns.

And this is what he said: "Such songs have power to quiet the restless pulse of care, and come like the benediction that follows after prayer. And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares that infest the day shall fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away."

Maybe you remember those two lines. You see, that's what the Psalmist is saying. He's not saying that the sorrows themselves, the cause of the suffering, steal away, though God sometimes does lift those burdens, but he's saying the cares that weigh upon us lift when we sing our hymns to God and we praise him too.

Well, we come to the last of these three stanzas. We've looked at the first two. We come to the climax, the high point, which I said earlier was verse 57. "You are my portion, O Lord." Because that's what's really involved in a study of God's word, coming to know God so he becomes ours, so he becomes our inheritance.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote about the stanza, "In this section, the Psalmist seems to take firm hold upon God himself, appropriating him, verse 57, crying out for him, verse 58, returning to him, verse 59, solacing himself in him, verses 61 and 62, associating with his people, verse 63, and sighing for personal experience of his goodness, verse 64."

That word "portion" is a very interesting word because it has an important Old Testament background and setting. We read it, and it doesn't seem to mean a great deal to us. But the background is this: when the Jewish tribes entered the land, the land was apportioned among the tribes. God had told Moses when they were still in the desert how it was to be done, and then it was all repeated in the days of Joshua, and each tribe got its allotted portion of the land.

Except for one tribe. That tribe was Levi, the tribe of the priests. The priests were given special cities, the 48 priestly cities that were scattered throughout the land, because God wanted the priests, the ones who knew the Word and ministered the Word of God to the people, to be readily available. It was a great work of God's grace for the people in those years of the settlement. But the Levites didn't receive any portion of the land.

And there was a good reason for that. It was said of them that they had no portion in the land because their portion was the Lord, Joshua 13:33. Now that's what the Psalmist is saying. He says I want to be like the Levites. I want to have a portion of the Lord. It may be that the Lord will give other things, and that's good, and if he does, I thank him for that. But none of those things mean anything if I don't have God himself. I want God. That is the desire of my heart.

Well now, let me just conclude this way. To possess God is to possess everything. But it takes some effort. Why? Well, it's because of what we said earlier. The way we get to know God is through his Word. And it takes effort to get to know the Word of God. Should it be otherwise? Why should it be otherwise than that?

God has given us the Bible, he's given us the ability to study it, appropriate it, obey it. That is how we get to know him. As you look at this last stanza, you've got a summing up of what it is that we should do, the kind of effort we should make, and it's expressed to us in the words of the Psalmist who reminds us of what he himself did.

Just look at these things very briefly. Number one, he sought God's face, verse 58. To seek God's face means to seek God himself, to work at getting to know him on a personal basis. He's seeking God's face. Is he going to find God's face? Of course. Remember how Jesus talked about prayer. He said ask and it'll be given to you, seek and you'll find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. If that applies to things like a job and clothing and a place to live, it's certainly going to apply to God himself. You seek God, you'll find God. Our problem is that we don't do it. We seek all the other things instead.

Number two, he followed God's statutes, verse 59. That means living by God's word as a way of life. Blaise Pascal, the brilliant French philosopher and a devout Christian, said that that verse, verse 59, is the turning point of man's character and destiny. It says, "I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to your statutes." What he meant is that it's necessary for every person to consider his or her ways, understand that our ways are destructive, and then turn from them in order that we might embrace God and his ways. It's very well put, the turning point of man's destiny. Maybe the turning point of your destiny.

Number three, he obeyed God's commands, verse 60. You see, to find God is to find the one who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the ruler of the universe, our Lord. And so if we find him, we find him as Lord. If we find him as Lord, we must be obeying him. That's why Jesus said to those who were professing to follow him in his day, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don't do what I say?" If you really find me, you'll obey me.

Number four, the Psalmist remembered God's law, verse 61. One of the great problems with us trying to live the Christian life is that we forget God's law. We even forget his many mercies to us. The Psalmist here says he's determined not to forget. He wants to remember God's law whatever the circumstances and live by them.

Number five, he thanked God for his laws. You see, the Psalmist, verse 62, is no grim pedant, just sort of somberly, grimly following after God, determined in a very dull way to do what he says. He's thankful that God has given us his law. That's the greatest of all treasures that God could give us. So he says I'm going to thank God for it, and I'm going to do it too.

And then finally, verse 63, he identified with others who also followed God's precepts. That's the last point, but it's an important one because what he's saying here is that he realizes that in this matter of following after God and coming to know God, he's not alone.

There are others who are following in the same path. We talked about that last time. Others have gone before, and he's following in their footsteps, but others are walking along beside him even now. He wants to be the friend of these people. He wants to encourage them and be encouraged by them.

H. C. Leupold, the Lutheran scholar, writes of the last words of this stanza that they put the writer into that select company of men and women who both fear the Lord and keep his precepts, adding that in the last analysis, this is the procedure followed by all the true children of God.

Do you think of the Christian life that way, as walking along in obedience to God, accompanied by all of those whom God has also called to salvation and set out along that same pilgrim path? When I was thinking about this just this morning, I was thinking of a story that Harry Ironside tells. I won't tell it at great length, but it has to do with a challenge he received from an agnostic one Sunday out in San Francisco.

A man challenged him to debate agnosticism versus Christianity. And Ironside for his part challenged the agnostic to produce two people whose lives had been changed as a result of agnosticism. And he said, if you'll come with two, I'm going to go around all the mission halls here in this poor area of San Francisco and find people who have been drunkards and perverts and thieves and all of that that have been converted by the gospel. And I'm going to bring them with me, and they'll be a testimony to the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change lives.

And he said, I don't have any problem at all thinking that it would be easy to get a hundred such people. And all of this was happening outdoors at a Salvation Army meeting. And the Salvation Army captain, a woman who was in charge there, said that's just wonderful, and we'll have a brass band to lead you into the place of the debate. And Ironside said that's what I'll do, I'll come with my band.

Well, have you ever thought of the Christian life like that? We sometimes think of it in such isolation because we're such individualists, or we sometimes think of it so grimly because we're thinking about ourselves and not the glory of God. And it's true, there are grim moments to the Christian life. But we are not walking that path of obedience alone. We're walking together with the saints of our time, preceded by the saints of past ages, and we will be followed by the saints of ages yet to come. And I don't know about you, but as I walk along that path, I'm going to have my brass band. I call them the Westminster band.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you've been so good to us and above all that you've given us your Word and that through the Word we come to know you. Do bless our study. Grant that these times we spend in your Word might not be fruitless for us, but rather times in which we get to know you better. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

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