The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): As missionaries cross the globe, schools sprung up in their wake because the gospel opens the mind not only to spiritual matters, but it opens the mind itself.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. When the soul finds Christ, it desires to know more of the nature of things in God's universe, but it especially desires to know more about God. Join Dr. Boice as he continues to examine Psalm 119 and the psalmist's sincere desire for learning in order to know more of the heart and mind of God.

Dr. James Boice: It's an interesting thing about Christianity that it's always gone hand-in-hand with education. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone into the world, grammar schools, literacy classes, universities, colleges, high schools, schools and institutions of higher learning have always followed its advance.

That's because the gospel opens the mind not only to spiritual matters, but to the mind itself and its proper function and to all of the things that the mind can properly think about. Not only to God, but to the world, to science, to the humanities, history, all of those things upon which God has His hands and which we receive because He has created for us such a marvelous world.

Now, the fifth stanza of Psalm 119 is talking about this combination, learning and religion. That is, it's talking about education, only the kind of learning that the psalmist has in mind is learning God's word. Moreover, he wants to learn it so he can obey it.

And because he knows that he can't either learn it or obey it all by himself, he's asking God to be his teacher. And that's not the first time in the Psalm that he's done this. He already asked God to be his teacher in verse 12, as early as that, the second stanza. And then he did it again in verses 26 and 27. He'll do it again before we're done. But here is a whole stanza that's given over to this theme.

One interesting feature of the stanza is that it consists almost entirely of prayers. There's a linguistic reason for this. Let me just explain it. This is the fifth or the He stanza. That is, it's based upon the Hebrew letter He, the fifth in the Hebrew alphabet.

It's an interesting feature of this word, this letter, that there are not many Hebrew words that begin with He. That would create a problem for anybody that's trying to write a stanza where the first word of each of the eight verses begins with that letter. But it's also the case in Hebrew that that letter He is used at the beginning of Hebrew verbs to make them causative.

Now what that means is that it puts them into a mode that we would translate something like this: we would say, "Cause me to know Your decrees. Cause me to have understanding. Cause me to walk in Your paths," and so on.

Now that's a bit awkward to translate it that way in English, and so we generally put them into petitions, which is what the New International Version has done. Those very phrases I just gave you are translated this way: "Teach me, O Lord, to follow Your decrees. Give me understanding. Direct me in Your paths," and so on.

That's the reason why we have all these petitions. And if you put that fact together with the theme of the stanza, this idea of learning, what I would suggest is that we have a series of prayers for acceptance, progress, assistance, and perseverance in God's school of spiritual learning.

So with that kind of an introduction, let's look at that theme, look at that idea as it's developed in these eight verses. Sometimes when a person is applying to a school in this country, college or university, he'll get an application form and it will have on it a question like this: "Why do you want to come to our university? What do you think you're going to gain from studying with us?"

A clever student will answer that, at the same time complimenting both the school and also explaining why he or she is an exceptional student. The answer will go something like this: "I hope to become the well-rounded, intelligent, contributing person I know I can be and that only your school is able to make me," or something like that.

Or sometimes you'll have something that goes like this: "I think your institution is the best one for helping me develop and employ my considerable talents. Let me tell you about them." Well, in the first couple verses of this stanza, the writer is doing something like that. He's applying for matriculation in God's school.

But there's a very significant difference. Instead of telling God what his talents are and how he might not only benefit from being taught by God, but even benefit God, what the psalmist pleads instead is his own ignorance and helplessness where spiritual things are concerned. These verses ask God to teach him to follow God's decrees and to give him understanding to keep God's law.

Now both of those things are virtually the same, which is why I take those two verses together. Now why is he doing this? It's so he might be able to keep God's decrees to the end and be able to obey God's law with all his heart.

So when he says "to the end," he means without limit as to time. And when he says "with all my heart," he means without any reservation at all. Now he needs God to be his teacher. He doesn't have anything in himself that's going to make him able to do that. But he's coming to God for the help that he needs.

And what he asks for is twofold. First of all, he asks for understanding because he lacks it. He has the Bible, he can read it, but he can't understand it spiritually at a deep level. So he's asking for understanding.

And then secondly, he's asking for the ability to do what he's brought to understand. You see, it's hard enough to understand it, but when you understand it, you've got a problem. It's hard to do it. And so the psalmist is asking for that as well.

Charles Bridges is one who's written this great commentary on this particular Psalm, and he has observed this. What he writes is this: "We are equally ignorant of the path of God's commandments and impotent to go in it. We therefore need double assistance. Our minds must be enlightened and our hearts must be constrained."

Well, that's true of us as well as the psalmist. We need God to enlighten our minds. It's called illumination, that we might understand the Bible when we read it. That's why we pray before we begin. But then we also need His help, His empowerment, His strength actually to go in that way.

Now so much for matriculation. One of the things a good student will be looking for in a university as he attends it is a well-rounded education. We have far less concern with that in universities today because we've had a sad decline in the area of education in this country in recent years.

And what happens often now, even in schools of higher learning, is that they become essentially trade schools. They're giving the student skills so he can go out and earn a good living. But it used to be the case, and in some places it still is the case, that what is desired in the educational system is a well-rounded education.

And good schools will require a breadth of exposure to the various academic disciplines. So schools will require core courses in the humanities, in the social studies, in the physical sciences, and so on.

They'll offer opportunities in the arts. There'll be drama programs, and there'll be education in the fine arts. They're even concerned with physical education, and so good schools will have a well-rounded sports program and such things.

Now there's something like that in the next section of the Psalm, and it's helpful to think along those lines when we look at these verses. What is the best way to attain a well-rounded education in God's school? Well, verses 34 to 37 teach that it's by keeping God's word before one's mind, before one's feet, before one's heart, and before one's eyes—four very important parts of the body.

Now look, let's just take them one at a time. First of all, the mind. Verse 34: "Give me understanding." The wisdom the writer is seeking here is practical. We've already seen that in the first two verses. He wants to understand in order that he might do.

He knows that he's called to obey God, but in order to do that, you have to understand it first. How can you obey God unless you know what it is that He is asking you to do? And so when he begins to think in terms of a well-rounded spiritual education, the first thing he thinks about is the understanding or the exercise of his mind.

It brings to my mind that that's exactly the way the apostle Paul begins the application section of that great letter to the Romans, chapters 12 through 16. He starts off in chapter 12 at the very beginning saying that what we need is the renewal of our minds, so we might begin to think as God thinks, thinking His thoughts after Him, and then begin to perform that way as well.

So let me ask the question: does your mind really matter? John Stott, the retired rector now, rector emeritus of All Souls Church in London, England, wrote a little book some years ago called *Your Mind Matters*.

And in it, he explores the various areas of the Christian life where the mind has to be exercised if we're to go in the right way. He talks about Christian worship, Christian faith, Christian holiness, Christian guidance, Christian evangelism, and Christian ministry.

And he says that a proper exercise of the mind is necessary in each one. Let's just take them one at a time. First of all, Christian worship. What is worship? Is it just coming to church and having a good time, making a lot of noise, going away on an emotional high? Worship isn't that.

Those things might come along sometimes, but worship by definition is praising God for who He is. It's acknowledging His worth. That's what the word means. Now you can't do that without your mind.

If you're really going to worship God and not merely indulge in an emotional binge, you have to be reflecting on His character. You have to think about God's sovereignty and God's holiness and God's omniscience and God's compassion, God's mercy, God's grace—all those things, you see.

If you don't do that, you're not really worshiping, whatever else you may be doing. You have to worship with the mind, first of all. You also need the exercise of the mind in matters of faith because faith isn't simply an emotional response. It's not positive thinking.

Faith is believing what God says and acting upon it. And if faith is believing what God says, you have to understand what He says in order to believe it. And one reason why we have so much shallow Christianity in our day, and I would say in many churches filled with people who think they're Christians but who really are not, is that we've never taught them what it really is to be a Christian.

You have to understand these doctrines first, and then as the Holy Spirit blesses the teaching, come actually to believe them and respond in trust in Jesus Christ. How about holiness? Your mind is needed there as well.

We have generally two approaches to holiness in the church today, both of which are inadequate. One says that the way to grow in the Christian life, sanctification, is by means of a formula—certain things you ought to do.

You ought to read the Bible, you ought to pray, you ought to go to church, you ought to get involved doing something for the Lord. All those things are good, but they're not the secret of actual growth itself.

On the other hand, you have people who say, "No, it's not that at all, that's all too mechanical. What you need is an experience. You need a second work of grace. You need to speak in tongues," or something like that.

The problem with that, of course, is not that experiences aren't valuable, but that they come and go. And you don't have steady growth if that's what you're depending upon. So how do you grow?

Well, when I was studying Romans carefully, I suppose the greatest lesson I learned in that study, which took a period of eight years, was the way the apostle Paul deals with sanctification.

He does it in the sixth and seventh chapters, and at the very start of the sixth chapter, he says that the way in which you grow in sanctification is by understanding what God has done for you when He saved you in Jesus Christ.

What God has done is taken you out of Adam and joined you to Jesus Christ. You were dead in your sins, He's made you alive. You were an old creature, now you're a new creature. You're not what you were before. That's God's work.

And so the way to make progress in the Christian life is to understand that and get on with it. Not to be seeking experiences, but to realize that if God has begun a work in you, He is going to carry it forward to the end, that you can't go back to being what you were before.

And if you can't go back to being what you were before, the only direction you can go is forward, so get on with it. That's the way he talks about it in the sixth chapter. It's based on an understanding of the doctrines. You need your mind for holiness.

How about a matter of guidance? How does God guide us today? We have no right to expect special, individual, mystical revelations. We can't even count on God's providential ordering of events entirely, though God does indeed order all events.

The only way God guides us is through the Bible. We're supposed to study it and find out how the mind of God works, if I may put it that way, the principles that ought to be acted out in every Christian life.

There is plenty in the Bible to keep us busy in this matter of guidance. And so that's what we have to do. We have to understand God's word and apply its principles, and it can't be done without thinking.

How about evangelism? Well, if a person has to have faith to be saved, and if faith involves understanding the doctrine in order that we might respond to it intelligently as well as spiritually, then obviously to do sound evangelism, we have to teach the Bible.

It's not a question of getting people into a meeting where we work them up emotionally and get them to make some kind of commitment on the basis of a feeling. That's not true evangelism.

And in our day, when people understand virtually nothing about the gospel, evangelism is going to have to slow down and take some time while we actually teach it. Otherwise, we're going to have spurious conversions, and of course that's exactly what we have in many of our churches today—people who think they're Christians but who really are not.

Finally, the ministry or service. You need your mind there as well, because again it's not magical. It's asking questions like this: "What am I good at? What is my spiritual gift? What is God leading me to do for Him?"

You have to think about those things. And then when you find a sphere of service, you have to say, "How should I go about the work that I've been given?" Well, John Stott talks about all of that, and toward the end, he says something about anti-intellectualism.

It's very prevalent in the church, but he says it's actually part of the fashion of this world and is therefore a form of worldliness. Has God created us rational beings, and shall we deny our humanity which He has given to us?

Has God spoken to us, and shall we not listen to His words? Has God revealed and renewed our minds through Christ, and shall we not think with it? Is God going to judge us by His word, and shall we not be wise and build our house upon this rock?

You want a well-rounded spiritual education, that's the place to begin: with following after God with your mind. But that's not the only thing the psalmist says. The second thing he talks about is the feet. Notice verse 35: "Direct me in the path of your commands."

Now that teaches that if we're going to make progress in God's school, simply because this is a matter of a lifestyle and a way of life and following in a path, we have to use our feet as well. We have to get on with it, not merely understand what we want to do.

Thomas Manton is another one of these great commentators on the Psalm, and he said, "David in the former verses had begged for light; now he's asking for strength to walk according to this light." Now it's interesting to pause just a little bit and think about the word that is used here.

The Hebrew word that is translated path is from a root verb which means to tread. And therefore, it actually means the trodden way or an accustomed trail, not a new direction. In other words, it's a path because it's been trodden down by the steps of people who have walked along that way before us.

Herbert Lockyer here calls it "an accustomed trail, plain with the track of all the pious pilgrims' feet of past times." Now when I get thinking about that, what comes to mind is that well-known verse in Jeremiah, in the sixth chapter, verse 16.

It's a verse that meant a great deal to the Puritans and to the Reformers because they were trying, as they put it, to recover the old paths. Here's what Jeremiah said: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it."

Now that's what we need today. We live in a day of innovation, and we sort of have a cultural mental set that tells us that anything new is better than anything old. You see it in our advertising.

You want to advertise a car, it's got to be the new Ford Taurus. Or you want New Efferdent or some other product of that nature. It's just the way we function culturally, and because we do, we tend to think that way as Christians.

And so every time a little fad comes along, the Christian church in the West, in America particularly, wants to jump on board and do the thing that's new because, well, it's new and if it's new it must be better. Now that is not what the psalmist is saying here. He's saying something quite the opposite. In terms of the Christian life, we are not to be innovators; we are to be imitators.

And so down through the ages, what the true people of God have always tried to do is follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before. We want to be like Abraham, who's praised for his faith.

We want to be like Moses, who led the people in humble trust and dependence upon God for a period of 40 years. We want to be like David, the great king who gave us such deep spiritual thinking in the Psalms.

We want to be like the Reformers. We want to be like the Puritans. We want to be like the giants of our own time. We want to walk in the path that God has set out for us. We do remember, however, because Jesus taught it, that it's a narrow path and that there aren't a lot of people who are walking in it. We want to seek them out and use those people for our models.

Well, we've talked about the mind and the feet. How about the heart? That's what verse 34 is saying: "Turn my heart toward your statutes." You see, in order to make progress in the school, we don't only have to understand what the way of God is and have the strength to walk in it, we also have to have the desire to walk in it, which is what the heart is talking about.

We have to want to do it. That's what the author prays for next when he says, "Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain." Now that's the first time in this stanza that we've had a negative. It's all been positive up until now.

He's talking about God turning his heart toward His law. That we understand; he's been saying that in one way or another all along. But now he gives an alternative. He says toward Your law rather than toward selfish gain.

In other words, for the first time, he's admitting the possibility of a divided heart. He looks into his own heart, and he says, "I understand that there is something there that could very well easily work against my pursuit of the law of God, and that is a desire to prosper, to get wealthy, to have a comfortable life."

Understand, of course, that God is not against those things; those are blessings. But the problem is the desire of our heart. Do we have our heart set upon those things? Is that our priority?

When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, where the rubber meets the road, do we always make the choice of that which is going to give us more money or greater security? Or will we make a choice on the other hand actually to learn the word of God and grow by it?

The psalmist understands that he has that problem, and so he's asking God to incline his heart away from riches and toward God and His law instead.

There's another matter. I mentioned four parts of the body. The fourth are the eyes. Verse 37: "Turn my eyes away from worthless things." Now I think that follows very closely upon what he's just said.

I mentioned he just introduced a negative. He wants to pursue God's statutes rather than selfish gain. And that sort of opens the door to his thinking along those lines, and he says, "Yes, and it's not just wealth that's the problem. There are lots of things in the world that could draw me away from the pursuit of God and God's law."

And so he talks about them. He calls them worthless things or vanities, which is what some of the older versions said. This verse occurs at a fascinating point in John Bunyan's little classic, *Pilgrim's Progress*.

You may remember that section about a third of the way through when Christian and Faithful are on their way to the celestial city, and they come to the town of Vanity Fair.

It's a fair, says Bunyan, that goes way back to the very beginning of the human race. And there in the fair, all of the worthless vanities of this world are marketed and marketed with great skill.

And the people in the fair, buying and selling, that's what they give their entire lives to. And Christian and Faithful don't fit in very well. They talk a strange language, they're dressed in a peculiar way—a way of talking about the pilgrim spirit.

And so they're not fitting in. The people are pressuring them to buy and to adopt to the culture. And what he says is that they put their hands to their ears and they run away crying, "Turn mine eyes from beholding vanity," and they look toward heaven to show that their true merchandise is there.

Well, that verse, of course, "Turn mine eyes from beholding vanity," is this verse, Psalm 119, verse 37, in the version that was available to Bunyan. And what he's saying is that that is the Christian's only legitimate response to the worthless things of this world.

Well, we've talked about matriculation in God's school, and we've talked about a well-rounded education. The psalmist is also aware that he needs help and encouragement if he's going to complete his degree.

And so that's the thing that we come to next. He talks about his help being from God, and the only reason he can find hope in God is that God has promised to help him. That's what verse 38 is saying: "Fulfill your promise to your servant so that you may be feared."

Now what promise is that? Are we thinking of some particular promise somewhere else in the Bible or a special word that God has given to him and to him alone? Now there's no reason to think any of that.

The noun that's translated promise is actually one of the Hebrew words for the word "word." It's the word *imrah*, and it's used for the whole of God's revelation. Sometimes it's translated a saying because it comes from the verb to say.

The King James Bible translates it as word throughout. The Jerusalem, the New English Bibles translate it promise. The Revised Standard Version mixes up the two because sometimes it seems to have one sense and sometimes it seems to have another sense.

But the point is that it's simply the sayings of God, the words of God, the things that we find in scripture. Now you say, then why is it translated promise? Why is that idea brought into it? And it's because in a certain sense the entire Bible is the promises of God.

That in two senses: on the one hand, there's the promise of life and blessing to those who go in God's way. On the other hand, if you can put it this way, there is the promise, we would say the warnings, of death and judgment for those who reject God's way.

But the promise that the psalmist wants to seize upon here is the promise of blessing. And so he's saying, "I'm encouraged to go on in this school. I want to keep on learning, I want to keep on walking, I want to keep on obeying because I know that You've promised to bless the ones that walk along that path."

If we're going to profit from his example, we have to do the same. We have to seize upon that promise and walk in that way. And the question we have to ask ourselves as we read this stanza is simply this: do we do it? Do we fear God? Do we trust His promises? Do we claim them? Do we obey the teaching we find in the Bible?

We have to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Well, there's one last thing I want to point out, and it's what you have in the last two verses. They bring in a new idea. And since I'm developing all of this in terms of attending God's school, let me put it this way: they relate to the mistake of dropping out of the academic program.

That's a problem we have today in our educational system, especially at the high school level. Scores of young people drop out. Even if they're there in school, they've dropped out mentally, but many actually drop out physically as well.

And when that happens, there's not much of an opportunity for them. They have no education. It's needed especially in an industrial society like ours. And so all the young people can do is end up at menial, low-paying jobs or they end up on the streets selling drugs.

One of the reasons why, years ago, Tenth Presbyterian Church established City Center Academy was to begin to help some of those young people who, apart from that kind of a directed, personal education, would surely drop out.

Now the psalmist recognizes that danger himself—dropping out, as we would say it, in the Christian life, sort of just fading along the way. He talks about it in terms of disgrace or reproach, as some of the versions have it: "Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good."

Now that disgrace can be thought of in two ways. On the one hand, it can be disgrace that he brings upon himself by his sin. So it's something that God would send; he brings discredit on God and God disgraces him.

Or on the other hand, it could be the unjust disgrace that's heaped upon him by his enemies because he's obeying God's commands and being faithful. The commentators take it both ways.

Franz Delitzsch, the great old German commentator, and Alexander McLaren think it's because he's living for God. And H.C. Leupold and Thomas Manton think exactly the opposite.

I suppose it's not possible really to resolve that variation of interpretation at this stage of our understanding or scholarship. But in either case, you see, the problem is the same. It's the problem of dropping out of God's school, either because we disobey and fall into disgrace along the way or because we're living for God and people are making fun of us because we do.

And so I end with a question: are you tempted to drop out because of your own failures or because of the scorn that you're experiencing for living for Jesus Christ? If that's the case, the bottom line of it is this: don't do it. Keep on.

When do you get to stop studying in God's school? The answer is never, not till death and not even then. We're going to go on learning about God and His ways for all eternity.

When do you get to stop serving Jesus Christ? The answer is never, not till death and not even then. We're going to serve Him throughout eternity.

When do you get to stop loving God? The answer is never, not till death and not even then. We're going to love and serve and learn throughout eternity. And that's why Jesus said, "All men will hate you because of Me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." Amen. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank You for the teaching that we have here from these verses of the Psalm. We thank You for the practical nature of such teaching.

We acknowledge, even as we think about perseverance, that we do tend to fade by the wayside because the going is hard and it's demanding, and we have opposition and people ridicule us for our stand.

But Father, You're adequate to all those weaknesses, failures, and sins that are found in the human heart, hearts like ours. And so we look to You as the great teacher, and we pray that by Your grace You will keep us in Your way until we stand before You in the day of glory and praise You for it all. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

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