169 Let my cry come near before thee, O Lord: give me understanding according to thy word.
170 Let my supplication come before thee: deliver me according to thy word.
171 My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy statutes.
172 My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness.
173 Let thine hand help me; for I have chosen thy precepts.
174 I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord; and thy law is my delight.
175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy judgments help me.
176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.
The Word of God must frame the content of our thoughts and the words that we speak.
Even as those who profess the Christian faith, we are still somewhat aware of our “lostness” and our “deadness,” much as one who wakes up and discovers half of his face is eaten away by leprosy. It is impossible to ignore or to avoid the physical signs of death in our bodies. Spiritual lethargy (occasional spiritual slumps), are part and parcel of the Christian life. These things can bring about depression in the Christian, unless he turns to God and cries out for His help. The vision of our “lostness” and “deadness” is not a pleasant one. But it does press us to rely on God in these desperate cries, such as contained in this last section of Psalm 119.
Verses 169-172.
These four verses address the sanctified tongue, the verbal life of the believer. Everybody talks about something, and the words they speak reveal their perspectives and priorities. Listen to people over a period of a day, and you will find out what is important to them. According to these verses, the Christian life is made up of prayer, praise, and sharing the Word. First we pray to God that He would save us according to His promises. Without an understanding of God’s Word (which lays out the truth concerning God, ourselves, and our reality), our perspectives become all muddled. We must order our thoughts by the Word of God, or we will look at the world strangely. The Western world destroyed its families, introduced homosexual marriages, killed hundreds of millions of babies, and imploded its birth rates because they believed Charles Darwin’s theory of naturalistic evolution. They also refused to obey the dominion mandate to be “fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 9:7), and they could not believe that God could provide sufficient resources to care for “all those people.” This was largely because of the teaching of men like the Rev. Thomas Malthus. Sadly, the understanding of these men was not “according to the Word.”
Throughout the day, the believer will praise God and speak of His Word to those around him (verses 171, 172). If his thoughts are tying in God’s Word to every situation, then certainly he will speak of these things as well. When he notices the storms rolling in, he cannot help but make mention of the power of God, and when he sees the billboard of the harlot beckoning, he instinctively mentions Proverbs 7:13-21 to his son. When he reads the story of the lottery winner on the internet news board, he teaches his family a lesson from Proverbs 13:11 and Exodus 20:15. As he drives to church on a Sunday morning and notices hundreds of bicyclists competing in some race, he cannot help but think of Hebrews 4:9, 10:25, Isaiah 58:13, and 1 Corinthians 16:1- 2. “My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness.”
Verses 173-175.
The rest of the Psalm associates God’s help and God’s salvation with our keeping the commandments of God. The Bible is careful not to base our salvation in the keeping of the commandments. Nor does it set up a system of merit whereby we earn God’s favor. But it does associate the life of keeping God’s commandments with God’s salvation and life-giving power. Every day we must choose to keep the commandments of God over our own agenda and the world’s agenda. We long for God’s salvation, delight in the law of God, and choose to obey God’s statutes only because God has opened our eyes to these things. Verse 173 sounds like the common aphorism, “God helps those who help themselves.” However, that is not exactly what it says. We cannot expect God’s help as long as we have no interest in His precepts. We can expect God’s help when we do take His Word seriously and seek His forgiveness and His Spirit’s sanctifying grace in reference to His law. It is only because the law of God condemns the sinner and points out the corruption and death in his life that he longs for the salvation of God! (Verse 174). As God restores spiritual life in the man, he uses that spiritual life to praise God (verse 175).
Verses 176.
This is an interesting closing verse. On the one hand, he confesses his penchant for straying, and then he says that he cannot forget God’s commandments. The lost sheep motif is found in both Old and New Testaments. We are lost in that we are confused and directionless in life, lost in that we are incapable of finding the way home ourselves. We are lost in that we are easily taken into a “bypath meadow” on the pilgrim pathway. Unbelievers or unbelieving Pharisees would never confess to verse 176. They are not aware of their “lostness.” Jesus Christ came to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). They have come to the end of themselves, and they are more than happy to have God find them: “Seek thy servant!” As he returns to the fold, he takes better notice of the fences that make up the commandments of God.
Have you seen your need to “be found” of God? Do you realize the futility of going your own way? Have you seen the bankruptcy of all other ways? It is the the point when a man listens to the voice of Christ and cries out to the Shepherd for salvation that he realizes his problem of “deadness” and “lostness”. It is an awareness of our “helplessness” that presses us to cry for help. May God grant us this deep sense of need every day.
Sanctified thinking produces sanctified speech, and sanctified speech in the home will be laced with praise and prayer and preaching. These words should come easily for us, not because we are “supposed” to speak this way. When we speak of God’s truths to others, it should not feel to us like we are putting on an act, taking on a different personality, or posturing for acceptance with others. It should be a natural part of our daily conversation.
Verse 171 clearly states that we will praise God after we have been taught his statutes; there is something about the teaching of the law of God that opens up our vision concerning everything. We learn about God’s holiness, our sinfulness, God’s gracious salvation, and God’s way of life. All of these things should drive us to praise and glorify the marvelous name of God in the worship of the saints.
1. What are those negative things about ourselves that we become aware of as God opens our eyes?
2. What are the signs of spiritual “deadness?”
3. What are the three things that should constitute our spoken words throughout the day?
4. Why did Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin think wrongly about the world?
5. What did Jesus come to do according to Luke 19:10? Reference some of the parables that Jesus shared with His disciples concerning things that are “lost”.
1. If you recorded yourself for 24 hours or 48 hours, what would you hear? What are the things you talk about throughout the day?
2. How does one tie God’s law into the various aspects of life? Give several examples where we might do this