Nation’s Notes on the Bible

THE WORD AND THE WAY

psalm 119 (introduction)

part i: the blessed way

part ii, storing up the word

Psalm 119:9-16

Overview

If Aleph (verses 1-8) is about the blessedness of walking in the Word, Beth (9-16) is about commitment to the Word.

It is tempting and easy—too easy—to give this stanza the title “Purity by the Word.” Verse 9 is compelling.  It is sharp and clear, a high contrast statement, a succinct, straightforward prescription.

1. How can a young man keep his way pure?
   

2. By guarding it according to your word.
   

It is, however, only a set up for the true heart of the stanza, which is verse 11:

1. I have stored up your word in my heart,
   

2. that I might not sin against you.
   

This stanza, like the entire psalm, is not an objective essay about the importance and benefits of God’s Word and obedience to it.  It is rather a personal response to the Word.

First, there is statement of motive, the commitments of the heart.

1. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander…. v. 10
   

2. Teach me your statutes. v. 12b
   

3. With my lips I declare all the judgments of your mouth. v. 13
   

4. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. v. 14
   

Second, there is a statement of purpose, the commitments of the will.

1. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. v. 15
   

2. I will delight in your statutes. v. 16a
   

3. I will not forget your word. v. 16b
   

In short, Beth is about the renewal of the mind, the tuning of the thoughts and intents of the heart according to the perfect pitch of God’s law, his word.  The safety of his way, his outward life, and the direction of all his choices and behavior, is insured by the word of God as its guardian standard.

This guardianship is not an automatic or mechanical function.  The word does not guard the young man’s way by itself, simply by existing in his life or being an inert presence in his mind.  The word is not itself the guard, it is the manual for the guard.  It is the responsibility of the “young man” to guard his own way—by the word.

How the Word Keeps Us from Sin

We cannot take verse 11 to mean that if we memorize enough scriptures we will never sin.  Knowing the Scripture is no guarantee that we will not transgress it.

Someone may protest that v. 11 doesn’t say, “I have stored up your word in my head,” but in my heart.”  Quite so, but it is not the mere knowledge, nor even the agreement with the word that makes it effective, but the obedience to the word.  And obedience requires an applied choice, and a choice is always made on the basis of desire.

Our psalmist has the desire.  “With my whole heart I seek you” (10a).  This is the expression of a fervent quest.  Note, however, that he stops short of declaring, “With my whole heart I love you.”  Yet that is what God’s law requires.  Someone might say that “seek” and “love” are virtual synonyms, but that is not so—except by the grace of God, who takes our imperfect as the perfect, and then perfects it.

But no, the psalmist cannot say, “With my whole heart I love you,” otherwise he would not have to say in the next breath, “let me not wander from your commandments.”  The delight and desires of his heart are a work in progress, and much is still unknown, uncertain, and even in jeopardy.

How is it, then, that the mind and heart are renewed and trained by the word? 

The believer can, and should:

1.    Store up the Word in the hearts warehouse (11). This is a matter of both learning what the Scripture has to say, and also purposing to do what it says.  But it is a forward looking activity.

1. •Storing up is an activity that is not done at the immediate point of need, but in anticipation of a future need.
   

2. •Storing up involves a measure of planning and deliberation.  It is not haphazard.
   

3. •Storing up involves effort.
   

4. •Storing up sometimes involves changing the shape and form of the thing stored in order to make it fit or in order to preserve it from spoilage.
   

5. •Storing up is an orderly process, and requires some cataloging if one is to find and use what one has stored.
   

6. •At the same time, storing up is a hopeful activity, engaged in faith and without specific knowledge necessarily of what the future will require.
   

7. All our learning, all our education is committed in hope that it will prepare us for the exigencies of tomorrow.  Our training in God’s word is no exception.  We lay up God’s word in our hearts in the hope that it will be, as we are told, sufficient to meet the needs, temptations, fears, and snares with which we may be confronted later.  The question arises: Are we storing up enough of God’s word? Are we storing up the best choices, and doing it the right way?
   

8. Which brings up the point that...
   

9. •Storing up can be done either with more or less diligence.
   

10. There is no absolute for it, nor is there any terminal point other than none. Even if one were to memorize every word of the Bible, it would not be end of “storing up.” That is an activity that goes beyond mere memorization, and the Scriptures have an unfathomable depth. 
    

11. •Storing up is therefore completely open-ended— alarming those whose response to the Word is slavish, but liberating those who have entered into the sphere of God’s grace.
    

Hence the psalmist calls upon his blessed Lord to teach him His statutes.  Let him become a disciple of his Master.

2.    Pray for instruction and direction in the Word (12).  There is only one Teacher sufficient to guide him into understanding and application.  The disciple knows that learning the words is not the same as learning the Word.  Up against his limitations, he turns in adoration and faith to the One who overfills all his inadequacies.

3.    Speak the Word (13).  Note the parallelism between “my lips” and “your mouth.”  The God who communicated His will did no, first of all, verbally—before it was ever inscripturated. (“Rules” or “judgments” is a metonymy, a figure of speech that takes a part for the whole—“all the judgments.” It cannot refer to a specified list of God’s decrees because the weight of the whole Word is behind each one that proceeds from it.) So, “with my lips I declare….”

1. •How: Recitation, discourse, discussion, dialogue, proclamation, testimony….
   

2. •To Whom: Myself (in rehearsal, meditation), God (in prayer and praise), fellow believers (in the fellowship of mutual edification), non-believers (in witness and toward evangelism), the community (for the promotion of social righteousness), and the world (in mission).
   

4.    Delight in the Word (14).

1. •This is not about delighting in the Word for its own sake, however.  We are not to use the Bible as a substitute for an idol, as an object of devotion in itself.  Neither are we supposed to revere the world as if the words themselves have some mystical power, as if they were magic, or as if they were worth exaltation simply because they were the words God used.  Such is the nature of “bibliolatry.”
   

2. •No, rather it is “in the way of your testimonies” that he delights.  It is in what the Word says, what it teaches!  He “delights” in the content of the Word, the direction it points him, and the happy consequences of taking that direction.
   

3. •When he says he “delights” in it, he is saying that:
   

4. -He sees the goodness inherent in the Word.
   

5. -He perceives the beneficial effects of obedience.
   

6. -He has enjoyed the benefits (because delight does not come from mere exposure, but by experience).
   

7. -He wants to keep on enjoying those benefits and to expand his enjoyment of them.
   

8. •“Testimonies,” again a metonymy for the whole revelation of God’s Word, but with a focus on God’s will—i.e., not merely God’s commandments, but the promises and warnings concomitant with them; the things that make in clear what the way we are to take should be, how our lives should be lived.
   

9. •Another (less adequate) way of saying this is, “It pleases me, Lord, to be pleasing to you.”
   

10. •How great the delight: “as much as in all riches.”
    

11. -Everyone wants to be rich—that’s right, no matter what they say.  For some it is an idle wish, for others it is a life goal, but it is a universal human desire.
    

12. -Is the psalmist admitting that riches are a pursuit of his life? Not necessarily, though possibly.  That’s not his point, however.
    

13. -His point is based on the truth that riches are desirable.  They have inherent goodness, provide beneficial affects, and the enjoyment of those benefits has been gained.  The point, in other words, is the universal desirability of wealth.
    

14. -But we would expect the pious person to say, “I delight in your word more than all riches.”  Why does he temper his statement?  Why say “as much as,” not “more than”? It would seem that the devotion he is summoning up calls for superlative expression.
    

15. -The key is the phrase “all riches.”  ALL riches.  It is comprehensive, and in effect comprises the superlative.
    

16. ✴The word “riches,” qualified by the word “all,” encompasses far more than money and the things money can buy.  The noun “riches” includes everything worth having.
    

17. ✴“All” clearly has a quantitative (if hyperbolic), as well as qualitative, point of reference.  It represents a virtually infinite number and variety of things that are worth desiring in this world.
    

18. ✴Are we to include things beyond this world in the equation? Probably not.  Such things are beyond reach except by the faith and hope nurtured by the Word and all wrapped up in the Word.  Since the comparison is between riches and the Word, the focus of the former is surely on worldly riches.
    

19. ✴The declaration is profound, but not overreaching.  The psalmist acknowledges that there is much in this world to desire, and does not deny that he desires it—virtually by axiom.  But he so values the Word that he could trade everything for it and not lose.  This is the root of the “Pearl of Great Price” parable.
    

5.    Focus on the Word (v. 15).  This is a two-way issue involving meditation and attention.

1. •“I will meditate on your precepts.”  This is a focus that is directed toward internalizing the applied principles of the word.  It involves a conscious, deliberate, methodical thought—the mental posing of questions and pursuing answers, and otherwise engaging in a on-on-one dialog of thought with the Word of God.
   

2. •“I will…fix my eyes on your ways.”  This is a focus that is outer-directed, toward applying and putting into effect the principles that have been embraced.
   

3. -“Your ways” does not mean God’s own ways of doing things and working out His will—not that God’s way of doing things is irrelevant.
   

4. -“Your ways” instead refers to “the ways you want me to go, the behaviors and attitudes you want me to adopt.”
   

5. -Why? Because to fix one’s eyes on something implies not merely seeking to understand something—which is about all we can do with God’s ways—but rather targeting what we have put our focus on.
   

6. -The objective, then, is not just to understand what God is doing or how He does things, but to determine what God expects from me.
   

6.    Pledge to the Word (v. 16). The psalmist has already declared and professed his delight in the Lord’s “testimonies” (v. 14).  What then is the point and need of this statement, “I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word”?  Verse 14 is a statement of the present state of the heart.  Verse 16 is a declaration of intent, a pledge of allegiance, an assertion of the present will for future claims.  That is, it is an acceptance of the full claim of God’s word and promise upon his past, present, and future.  It is an open-ended affirmation of purpose, a commitment that is the down-payment on the rest of his life.

1. •“I will delight in your statutes.” This is not a prediction that the present enjoyment he has in the Word shall endure (“will delight” as future tense), but a deliberate choice to make God’s Word, specifically His commandments, the guiding value of his life from this day forward.
   

2. •“I will not forget your word.” Again, not a prediction—let alone a statement of fact, as in ‘Your word has made such a profound mark on my life that I cannot forget it.’ Indeed, the entire history of the Israelite people is  one of forgetting God and His commandments.
   

3. -Forgetting is not something that just happens, nor is it a benign fading of memories and feelings with and through the passage of time—though that is certainly part of the problem.
   

4. -Forgetting is malignant.  It is a deliberate turning away from the Lord and His commandments.  It is positive rebellion.  We forget God’s word because it is inconvenient to our desires.  We forget God’s word because we have fallen away from delighting in Him—for we never forget what we delight in.  Forgetting does not only lead to sin, it is sin in its own right.
   

5. -Therefore the psalmist pledges, not that he will remember, but that he will not forget.  We are always being drawn away, being tempted with every other delight, so as to have our attention drawn away from the divine standard.  We are diverted from the blessings of the covenant by the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  That is how we forget.
   

6. -So the psalmist draws a line in the sand of his heart: “It will not happen to me—not this time, not any more.  I will  not forget.”
   

7. •The parallelism of the statements in v. 16 shows that they are two sides of the same commitment, not two separate ones.  “I will delight.  I will not forget.”