SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119, verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: I promise to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: I entreat your favor with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Be gracious to me according to your promise.
SPEAKER_00: When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.
SPEAKER_00: I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Though the cords of the wicked ensnare me, I do not forget your law.
SPEAKER_00: At midnight I rise to praise you because of your righteous rules.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.
SPEAKER_00: The earth, O Yahweh, is full of your steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: Teach me your statutes.
SPEAKER_00: A few months ago I was preaching through 2 Corinthians 7, and I talked at an evening service about Jonathan Edwards and the impact his writing from the 1700s has had on my own life and understanding of God and his word.
SPEAKER_00: And I was cornered afterwards by some of the college students who asked me a very insightful question.
SPEAKER_00: They asked me what it is about Jonathan Edwards' life that made him so impactful.
SPEAKER_00: What was it about him that made him, that gave him such an oversized impact on our worlds?
SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with Jonathan Edwards, he was a pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts in the mid-1700s.
SPEAKER_00: Northampton, Massachusetts, now and then is not a very significant town.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dot on the map.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a college town now.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the 1700s, there was no college there.
SPEAKER_00: It was in the middle of essentially nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: Edwards grew up there.
SPEAKER_00: He went to Yale, down in New Haven, Connecticut, where he graduated as valedictorian from Yale when he was 16 years old, gave the valedictorian address in Latin, fell in love with a 13-year-old from New York City, when pastored in New York City until, you know, for several years, until she was old enough to marry, married her, took her back from New York City back to Northampton, where he spent the next few decades pastoring.
SPEAKER_00: The Great Awakening broke out while he was in Northampton largely through his ministry, through his own preaching, he would travel around and preach at other churches.
SPEAKER_00: He preached gospel messages that led to the Great Awakening.
SPEAKER_00: 1730s, there were not a lot of Christians in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Church attendance had been on the decline for a generation or two.
SPEAKER_00: But by 1743, in that little three-year period, 1740 to 1743, some historians estimate that at least 10% of Americans had made professions of faith in Christ just in those little three-year periods.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Great Awakening.
SPEAKER_00: It had a profound impact in our own country, giving the principles that would ultimately, I think, lead to our own independence, the notion that all men were created equal.
SPEAKER_00: You need to firmly believe in a creator for you to fit have the sentence all men were created in any way.
SPEAKER_00: That's largely owing to the influence of the Great Awakening.
SPEAKER_00: Edwards was fired from his congregation towards the end of the Great Awakening for reasons that I've talked about before.
SPEAKER_00: But when he was fired, he had all kinds of opportunities.
SPEAKER_00: He could have gone to pastor in London or to teach at Oxford.
SPEAKER_00: He could have gone back to New York City.
SPEAKER_00: There was even a church in Virginia that offered him a job.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: London, New York City, Virginia.
SPEAKER_00: And he said no to all of those places and went instead to an Indian tribe that's on the border of what's now the border between Massachusetts and New York and spent seven years with the Indians, learning their language, translating the scriptures into their Indian language.
SPEAKER_00: From there, he finally went down to Princeton to be the president of Princeton, where he was instrumental in the invention of the smallpox vaccine.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, it was a dose of the smallpox vaccine that ended up killing him when he was 55 years old.
SPEAKER_00: He was a remarkable man and preached easily the most famous sermon ever, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
SPEAKER_00: He's been used in our country's history in so many different ways, widely regarded as the most influential theologian and pastor our country has ever had.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is: what was it about him that made him so influential?
SPEAKER_00: Did he just happen to be at the right place at the right time?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: He was so influential from Northampton and Stockbridge, yeah, with the Indians.
SPEAKER_00: His children went on, many of them to ministry, eight daughters who ended up in the mission field, many of them did, a son that went to be a professor at Princeton, another that went to be a leader in the abolitionist movement.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had an oversized impact.
SPEAKER_00: And it was not because just God's providence, it was not merely because he was in the right place at the right time.
SPEAKER_00: You can't attribute it to circumstantial reasons.
SPEAKER_00: I think the best way to understand the influence and the impact that he was able to wield is to think about him in terms of a devotion to godliness.
SPEAKER_00: He had a single devotion to growing in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: He took his giftedness, he took his intellectual genius and channeled it towards growing in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: He continually examined his ways and asked himself, how could he better use his time, his mind, and his physical strength to grow in godliness?
SPEAKER_00: When he was a teenager, and this is the best way to illustrate this about Edward's life, when he was a teenager, he wrote 70 resolutions to himself, 70 resolutions that would motivate how he would lead his life.
SPEAKER_00: Not one, not two, seventy.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of his life he would try to read through them.
SPEAKER_00: He'd read 10 of them or so every Saturday evening in preparation for the Lord's Day.
SPEAKER_00: He would try to read all of them every month.
SPEAKER_00: These resolutions captured how he was designing to live his life for God.
SPEAKER_00: G.A.
SPEAKER_00: Packer described these resolutions as, quote, God-centered, God-focused, God-intoxicated, and God-entranced.
SPEAKER_00: You can find these 70 resolutions.
SPEAKER_00: You can Google them.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't do that now.
SPEAKER_00: Let me share a few of my favorites with you.
SPEAKER_00: The first one, and they almost all of them start with the word resolved.
SPEAKER_00: There's a few that don't.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at one of them in a second, but they almost all start with resolved.
SPEAKER_00: Resolved.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, that I will do whatever I think to be the most to God's glory and my own good profit and pleasure in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now or never so many myriads of ages hence, resolve to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, and how many and how great soever.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot that's in this, but I just want to draw your attention to something in the first phrase here.
SPEAKER_00: He's resolving to live his life in a way that glorifies God.
SPEAKER_00: But what I want you to note particularly about this is Edwards does not see a distinction between what glorifies God and what is for his own good, profit, and pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: He's not listing different things at the beginning of this.
SPEAKER_00: When he says, I want to do whatever is most to God's glory and to my own good, that's not number two on the list.
SPEAKER_00: In his mind, that's the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever is most for God's glory is for his own good and his own pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: They're not distinct in his thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And that's critical for understanding the way he lived his life.
SPEAKER_00: Number four, resolved never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Nor be, nor suffer it if I can avoid it.
SPEAKER_00: We might use the word tolerate instead of the word suffer.
SPEAKER_00: But notice what's behind this resolution.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want to not do anything unless I understand how it glorifies God.
SPEAKER_00: And he's not even just active here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I resolved not to passively just entertain, not to be in the presence of things that don't glorify the Lord if I can help it.
SPEAKER_00: Number five, resolved never to lose one moment of time, but improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand why I'm reading these to you at the new year?
SPEAKER_00: Number seven, resolved never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it was the last hour of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Understand he wrote this as a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to read you all 70 of them, although I would have made my studying easier this week.
SPEAKER_00: Number 52.
SPEAKER_00: I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live if they were to live their lives over again.
SPEAKER_00: Resolved.
SPEAKER_00: That I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.
SPEAKER_00: He died in his mid-50s, but wrote this when he was much younger.
SPEAKER_00: These are staggering resolutions for a teenager to write.
SPEAKER_00: Again, notice that he wrote them about his own personal conduct.
SPEAKER_00: Today, you might get somebody who writes 70 resolutions about how other people should live.
SPEAKER_00: 70 resolutions about things our country needs to do differently.
SPEAKER_00: Not Edwards.
SPEAKER_00: Seventy ways he was resolved to live his life to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: I do want to draw one main point out of this passage that Edward or out of this these resolutions.
SPEAKER_00: That Edwards was monumentally used by the Lord because he devoted intentionally his own energy and efforts to growing in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119 captures this very well, the entirety of Psalm 119.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's an acrostic.
SPEAKER_00: An acrostic is something that goes sequentially through the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, all the way through the Hebrew alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: It is, most acrostics are one line at a time.
SPEAKER_00: 22 lines.
SPEAKER_00: Not this acrostic.
SPEAKER_00: This acrostic is 22 stanzas.
SPEAKER_00: Each stanza has its own form, where each stanza goes through a letter of the alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, the psalm begins with the letter A, as the alphabet does, Aleph in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: So verses 1 through 8, each of the first eight verses of the psalm begins with the Hebrew letter A.
SPEAKER_00: The second stanza, bet, each of the eight verses there begins with the Hebrew letter B, bet, and then so forth throughout the entirety of the alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: Why would anybody write a psalm like that or anything like that?
SPEAKER_00: What's the point of an acrostic?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is using an acrostic like this shows you the breadth of what you're writing about.
SPEAKER_00: It's like Proverbs 31.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at this a few weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 31 is an acrostic showing you that you can harness all of the language and you still don't exhaust the ability to describe the wisdom personified as a woman.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much to say about her, you can go from A to Z and still have more to say.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why somebody uses an acrostic to make the point about an abundance.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119 is an acrostic on steroids.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just the 22 letters, it's the 22 letters, eight times each.
SPEAKER_00: This is not subtle.
SPEAKER_00: This is not some obscure point.
SPEAKER_00: This is driving home the point that the word of God is the most important thing that God has given the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's the longest chapter in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: An acrostic, and every verse of this, with like two exceptions, every verse of the entire chapter has some synonym for the word of God in it.
SPEAKER_00: We saw this in the passage we just read.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: Draw your eyes down to verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: I promise to keep your words, verse 58, promise, verse 59, testimonies, verse 60, commandments, verse 61, law, verse 62, righteous rules, verse 63, your precepts, verse 64, your statutes.
SPEAKER_00: The whole psalm is like that.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over again, drawing your attention to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So this is not some subtle point that you have to learn Hebrew to figure out.
SPEAKER_00: It's the longest chapter in the Bible, right in the middle of the Bible, using synonyms for the Word of God over and over and over again, and in an acrostic format to show you you can stretch the Hebrew language, the English language, Swahili, Spanish, whatever, stretch your language to the uttermost ends of it, and you still can't get your arms around how important the Word of God is.
SPEAKER_00: So much of this psalm is a pledge or a resolution or a vow from the psalmist to study the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is why when I think about Edwards, my mind goes to the psalm and specifically to this paragraph.
SPEAKER_00: I promise, verse 57 says, to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: This is a psalm that is about resolved.
SPEAKER_00: You could say it this way, resolved to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says, I am vowing, I am making a resolution, I am promising, I'm committing to keep God's word.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the whole psalm, all of Psalm 119, basically has this overarching point.
SPEAKER_00: The word to desire God.
SPEAKER_00: This paragraph, verse 57 to 64, makes that point.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: I promise to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like an obvious point, but it's an important one.
SPEAKER_00: You have to believe that God is good to have a desire to keep his word.
SPEAKER_00: I pointed out earlier how Edward's first resolution does not distinguish between what's God's glory and what's your own personal good.
SPEAKER_00: When you see God's glory as your good, it motivates you to act.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even a child understands this.
SPEAKER_00: You try to give vitamins to your child, your child does not think vitamins are good for them.
SPEAKER_00: So they reject vitamins.
SPEAKER_00: They want ice cream, for example.
SPEAKER_00: If the child was persuaded that vitamins were actually good for them, then they would desire them.
SPEAKER_00: But they're skeptical about that, whereas ice cream tastes good.
SPEAKER_00: As you grow, you start to understand differently what foods are good for you and which aren't, and that affects your desires and your tastes and your aptitude.
SPEAKER_00: And this is true of all areas of life.
SPEAKER_00: If you believe that something is good for you and to be desired, you will pursue it.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119 is an appeal for you to understand that the word of God is good for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so you should pursue it.
SPEAKER_00: You should desire the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you believe that God is good, then you desire Him.
SPEAKER_00: This is foundational.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
SPEAKER_00: Because for you to have faith, you have to believe two things.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, that God exists, and secondly, that he rewards those who diligently search for him.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the two components of biblical saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: It is not faith just to say that God exists.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even the demons believe that.
SPEAKER_00: At least they're a little nervous about it.
SPEAKER_00: But you have to believe that God exists and that he rewards you and that he's good for you.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you would pursue him.
SPEAKER_00: You would want to grow in godliness, you'd want to grow in your knowledge of God's word if you believe that he's actually good for you.
SPEAKER_00: This allows you to make decisions of faith in your life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think of Hebrews 11, it goes on to describe Moses, who had the riches of Pharaoh's household, considered them worth losing, to suffer with God's people as a nomad, as a shepherd out in the middle of the desert.
SPEAKER_00: He'd rather be a shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: He'd rather have sand and sheep and God's favor than to have the riches of the world and be opposed to God and God's people.
SPEAKER_00: That's foundational for understanding faith.
SPEAKER_00: To believe that it is better to have God and loss than gain without God.
SPEAKER_00: To desire God.
SPEAKER_00: This is where verse 57 is coming from.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: The word portion here, it's kind of a technical word in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: It's a word that's all over Numbers and Joshua, every tribe, every family when they entered the promised lands, got a portion of land.
SPEAKER_00: A land that was an allotment is sometimes how it's translated.
SPEAKER_00: It's a piece of land that's given to people.
SPEAKER_00: The one exception to that was the Levites.
SPEAKER_00: The Levites did not get a portion of land.
SPEAKER_00: They did not have an allotment of actual, you know, real estate.
SPEAKER_00: For the Levites, their portion was God himself.
SPEAKER_00: So that's an expression that's used in Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: It's repeated here where the psalmist writes that Yahweh is his portion.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm was written by somebody who's in exile.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it was likely Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know that, but somebody who was in exile, he was a pilgrim.
SPEAKER_00: The psalm takes you, Psalm 119 is taking you on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: He's going through the desert, he's facing persecution, he has the opportunity to be opposed by kings and to stand in the presence of kings.
SPEAKER_00: He's out of his land, he's out of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: He's a stranger, a pilgrim, an exile.
SPEAKER_00: All that is true about him.
SPEAKER_00: He's a prisoner.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying that in this condition, being in exile, wandering through the wilderness, lost out in the exile, he's happier there because God is his portion than he would have been in the promised lands where he didn't have persecution.
SPEAKER_00: That's his framework here.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is his portion.
SPEAKER_00: He desires God over any kind of spatial real estate that others might have.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is all his heart wants.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be content with the knowledge of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: He's satisfied with what God's word gives him.
SPEAKER_00: He has satisfaction and joy from his relationship to God through God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is his portion.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to begin our study in Psalm 119, this little paragraph here, by asking you, could you say the same thing?
SPEAKER_00: Could you say, God is my portion?
SPEAKER_00: I delight in my relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: I desire to know God more.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have God's word stored up in my heart than any treasures of the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a foundational question.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love the Lord more than the world?
SPEAKER_00: Because if the answer is no, the rest of the psalm is not going to go anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: You're stuck in the sand right here.
SPEAKER_00: The psalm begins with an appeal for you to desire the Lord, to look at the psalmist who treasures the Lord, sees the Lord as his portion.
SPEAKER_00: And when you do desire the Lord, then you will grow in obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the connection in verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: I promise to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: Because he delights in the Lord, that's going to motivate obedience in his life.
SPEAKER_00: If he did not see the Lord as gain, he would not see the Lord as someone to pursue in obedience.
SPEAKER_00: If he saw God's word as a burden that was anathetical to his happiness, he wouldn't make a resolution to grow in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: But because he understands that God is his portion, then he wants to grow in obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I promise to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you could write this like Jonathan Edwards and say, Yahweh is my portion, resolved to keep your words.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to lead a life where holiness is his own happiness, where happiness is seen in holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 58 essentially rephrases the same truth.
SPEAKER_00: I entreat your favor with all of my heart.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, What I want from God is God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing I want most in the world.
SPEAKER_00: His heart is filled with the joy of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want God's favor with all of my heart.
SPEAKER_00: One commentator says this phrase, I entreat your favor, is kind of an idiom for tickling someone's face to get them to smile, like you might do with a child.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist is using that language towards God.
SPEAKER_00: I want to touch the face of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I want to cause the Lord to smile.
SPEAKER_00: I'm intruding the favor of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He wants God to be gracious to him according to God's promise, verse 58.
SPEAKER_00: He has sincere, undivided affections.
SPEAKER_00: He wants the joy of the Lord brought out in his own life.
SPEAKER_00: And God has promised that he will be gracious to us if we seek him.
SPEAKER_00: Through his word.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, be gracious to me, verse 58, according to your promise.
SPEAKER_00: If you have uh New American Standard, or some translations might render the word promise, there is word as well.
SPEAKER_00: It is a different Hebrew word than verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: The one in verse 58 is rendered almost like, you might say it in English, I give you my word.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's rendered promise here.
SPEAKER_00: He's committing.
SPEAKER_00: God is committed through his covenant love to his people to be gracious to them.
SPEAKER_00: And so the psalmist is availing himself of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the psalm begins, by the way, with God's covenant name, Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: It ends this stanza, verse 64, with God's covenant name, Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the stanzas begin by claiming God's covenant name.
SPEAKER_00: For example, verse 65, O Yahweh, according to your word, deal with me.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 89, the Lamid stanza, forever, O Yahweh, your word.
SPEAKER_00: It's repeated throughout the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the paragraphs begin by claiming God's covenant name, which is noticeable when he's in exile.
SPEAKER_00: He's out in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So he wants to grow in God's kindness.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to experience the graciousness of God according to God's covenant promises.
SPEAKER_00: He desires God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 59 goes in a different direction.
SPEAKER_00: He says, When I think on my ways.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 59, he's examining his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the change between verse 58 and verse 59.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 57 and verse 58, he's looking at God and God's word and desiring to receive joy from them.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 59, he pauses, takes his eyes off of God, and now instead of looking at God, is looking at his own ways or his own paths.
SPEAKER_00: Think about what makes a path.
SPEAKER_00: It's repeated motion.
SPEAKER_00: Repeated motion.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a, you know, your front door opens up to maybe a sidewalk that walks out to your driveway.
SPEAKER_00: If your mailbox is down at the bottom of the driveway, you can cut across your grass to get to your mailbox.
SPEAKER_00: If you do that repeatedly, you'll wear a path through your grass.
SPEAKER_00: There's a restaurant that I go to sometimes where the parking lot is in front of it, and there's kind of this grass island or median that, you know, there's the sidewalk goes around the grass, but nobody walks around the grass.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody cuts the grass, and there's a path that's entirely worn from the parking lot to the door of the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: One time they even put like stepping stones along that path, but nobody walks.
SPEAKER_00: It just looks like a brown highway right through the middle.
SPEAKER_00: So the psalmist is there, kind of up on his front porch, and he's looking at the path down to the mailbox or the path down to the door of the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: He's examining it.
SPEAKER_00: So you understand when you're looking at your own path, you're looking at your past.
SPEAKER_00: So you might be looking forward at the path.
SPEAKER_00: The path is in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking forward to it, but you're really looking into the past because it was your previous motion.
SPEAKER_00: It was your previous footsteps that wore that path there.
SPEAKER_00: So the the word picture here is the psalmist is at the top of his driveway, looking down the path, and he's considering the path.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking at it, going, it looks like I wore my path there.
SPEAKER_00: Is that where I wanted it to make a path?
SPEAKER_00: Granted, I should have thought of that four years ago before I started walking there.
SPEAKER_00: But now I'm looking at it.
SPEAKER_00: Is that where I want the path to be?
SPEAKER_00: He's considering his own path.
SPEAKER_00: I think on my ways, is how it's translated in the ESV, but he's considering his path.
SPEAKER_00: When he does that, he says, I turn my feet to your testimonies.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna make a turn in his feet.
SPEAKER_00: So this right away, notice this is unusual.
SPEAKER_00: People do not like to examine their ways.
SPEAKER_00: People are creatures of habit.
SPEAKER_00: They like to do the same thing over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: It takes self-reflection and courage to examine your own ways.
SPEAKER_00: People are generally optimistic about their own conduct.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you do something at the moment, you think it's the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody does something like, well, this is going to be dumb, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Ha ha ha ha.
SPEAKER_00: And generally you do something because you think it's the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: So it requires a little bit of humility and courage and self-reflection to look back at your path and say, was this actually pleasing to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: It's unusual.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says this in Jeremiah chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: No one regrets his evil.
SPEAKER_00: Asking, What have I done?
SPEAKER_00: Everyone has stayed his course like a horse rushing into battle, Jeremiah says.
SPEAKER_00: It's very unusual to find somebody that looks at his life and goes, Well, that was sinful.
SPEAKER_00: Generally, people might even say that was sinful, but I'm doing it again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm charging ahead, full steam ahead, like a horse running off to get slaughtered.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah contrasts that with birds.
SPEAKER_00: Even the stork in the sky knows her seasons.
SPEAKER_00: The turtle dove, swallow crane, they're aware of their migration.
SPEAKER_00: They know where they're flying.
SPEAKER_00: But people generally don't.
SPEAKER_00: My people don't know Yahweh's requirements.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah marvels that people don't take a step back and wonder, am I living a life in a way that's actually pleasing the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: What does the Lord really require of me?
SPEAKER_00: So at a time of New Year's resolutions, let me make an appeal to you to actually examine your life.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your life.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your path.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the year behind you.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the path, and ask yourself, is this path where I, a year ago, is this the path I wanted to make?
SPEAKER_00: How does it look?
SPEAKER_00: Does it conform to God and God's words?
SPEAKER_00: Search out your ways.
SPEAKER_00: Look in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your own ways.
SPEAKER_00: Like a person might look for a lost piece of jewelry in their house.
SPEAKER_00: They would scour everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: They would really think, where was the last place I was?
SPEAKER_00: Where was the last place I put it?
SPEAKER_00: I'm on the hunt for it in my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I'm searching it out.
SPEAKER_00: You should have that attitude towards the last year of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the last year of your life and ask yourself, is this what I wanted?
SPEAKER_00: Is this where I wanted to go?
SPEAKER_00: Is this what I wanted to do?
SPEAKER_00: Does it conform to God's word?
SPEAKER_00: And where you see deviation from your path and God's word, correct your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you examine your ways in this light, then you will actually grow in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: And that's verse 59.
SPEAKER_00: I want to turn my feet to your testimonies.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, I'm looking at the path.
SPEAKER_00: I see where the I want to go, I see where I went, so I'm going to take my feet and turn them.
SPEAKER_00: Get pointed in the right direction.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to look at his ways and they want to grow in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 60.
SPEAKER_00: I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the path imagery is going on.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to turn my feet and I want to hurry to make a new path.
SPEAKER_00: I want to hurry to make a new way that's according to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: This is, in other words, a very practical exercise in his mind.
SPEAKER_00: This is not an intellectual exercise.
SPEAKER_00: This is not polite dinner conversation.
SPEAKER_00: This is him making his mind think about how he's going to lead his life and do it differently.
SPEAKER_00: This is not an academic exercise for him.
SPEAKER_00: This is life and death.
SPEAKER_00: Does my life correspond to God's word?
SPEAKER_00: Notice it's cognitive thinking that leads to a volitional action, which leads to a life change.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, I'm going to look at my path, compare it to God's word, say I want to go this way and then walk that way.
SPEAKER_00: Head, heart, hands, or head, heart, feet.
SPEAKER_00: What does he know about his life compared to God?
SPEAKER_00: He loves God and treasures God.
SPEAKER_00: How's that going to play out in his life?
SPEAKER_00: I hasten and do not delay to keep your commands.
SPEAKER_00: Delay is the same word used back in Genesis for Lot who didn't want to leave Sodom.
SPEAKER_00: It's contrasted with Lot.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to quickly go after God in God's way.
SPEAKER_00: People are such procrastinators, even at the new year.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be different this year.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be more aggressive in my Bible reading and my prayer this year, but man, not today.
SPEAKER_00: It's raining.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lion outside.
SPEAKER_00: I can't go out there.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the king who told Paul, ah, Paul, it's so interesting what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: Let me call you back when it's a more convenient time.
SPEAKER_00: Paul never got that return call.
SPEAKER_00: It was never a more convenient time.
SPEAKER_00: Not the psalmist.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says, I'm looking at my path, considering my ways, and I'm going to go a different direction, and I'm not going to be slow about it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to grow in my love for the Lord right now.
SPEAKER_00: So the rest of this psalm, the next four verses, are practical ways, practical categories where you can examine your ways and grow in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: The first, I think half of the psalm, the first four verses are pretty abstract.
SPEAKER_00: Delighting in the Lord, wanting to go on a better path.
SPEAKER_00: The next four verses give you some concrete, more specific areas in which you can examine your life.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the real outline.
SPEAKER_00: The first part was the fake outline.
SPEAKER_00: This is the real outline.
SPEAKER_00: Ways to examine your ways.
SPEAKER_00: See what I did there?
SPEAKER_00: Ways to examine your ways.
SPEAKER_00: First, examine your contentment.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 61.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean by contentment.
SPEAKER_00: That he's content in his relationship with God and his word, regardless of his circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: He describes as the cords of the wicked entangling him, ensnaring him, but that won't distract him from God's word.
SPEAKER_00: If your foot gets wrapped up in something, it occupies your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed?
SPEAKER_00: You get like you're hiking and you get a long piece of grass in your shoe, and he's even like dragging along, that distracts you.
SPEAKER_00: You stop and you fix it.
SPEAKER_00: Your foot gets wrapped up in a power cord.
SPEAKER_00: You don't, an extension cord in your house, you don't keep going about your day.
SPEAKER_00: You stop immediately and get untangled.
SPEAKER_00: So the psalmist here is describing the cords of the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the opposition from the ungodly people is around him and it's actually affecting him.
SPEAKER_00: It's not abstract.
SPEAKER_00: It's ungodly people are opposing him in a way that is really interfering with his ability to walk.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're using the path metaphor here.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to walk in a way that's pleasing to the Lord, but the cords of the ungodly are slowing that down.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting all tangled up in the ungodly on the path he's trying to walk on, and they're pulling him away or distracting him at the very least.
SPEAKER_00: But he will not be distracted by them.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of being fixated on what the ungodly are doing, he says, I will not forget your law.
SPEAKER_00: The immediate pressures of his circumstances, he will not allow them to drive out his contentment on God's word, which is so hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: Often we measure our joy and our happiness based on circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: How are things going around me?
SPEAKER_00: How do my circumstances relate to me that determines my happiness?
SPEAKER_00: But here his circumstances are not good.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's a pilgrim in exile, perhaps even a prisoner at one point in the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: He's entangled with the cords of the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_00: But he will not allow that to drive out his contentment in the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: His joy is internal, not based on external circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: So you can ask yourself this in the year behind you.
SPEAKER_00: Were there trials?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: 2021, there were trials.
SPEAKER_00: Did those trials dilute your joy in the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Those trials take your eyes off of God's word, off of God's word, onto your trials.
SPEAKER_00: How did you do?
SPEAKER_00: How are your path was your path last year worn out in God's word, or did the cords of the unrighteous drag you away from contentment in God's word?
SPEAKER_00: This is a very practical way to examine the year behind you.
SPEAKER_00: Did you walk in contentment in God's word, or did you get drug away from contentment?
SPEAKER_00: So first, ask yourself, am I content in the Lord's word or in my circumstances?
SPEAKER_00: Second, examine your devotions.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your devotions.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 62.
SPEAKER_00: At midnight, I rise to praise you because of your righteous rules.
SPEAKER_00: The guy's getting up in the middle of the night to praise God.
SPEAKER_00: He'll make time in the night.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't done out of duty, obviously.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a sleep disorder.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, you know, had a hard time sleeping.
SPEAKER_00: So I guess I'll pray.
SPEAKER_00: He's it's actually joy that is drawing him out of the bed.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't reluctant.
SPEAKER_00: It's joy in the Lord that's bringing him out of the bed so that he can go and praise God and read God's word and study God's word and grow in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: That's his desire.
SPEAKER_00: He's being intentional about going after God and God's word.
SPEAKER_00: People might get up to go see a midnight release of a movie on opening day.
SPEAKER_00: Go to bed at noon, get up at 10, go get in line, it shows at 12.01.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Spider-Man, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Because they derive joy from it.
SPEAKER_00: Here the psalmist is having that approach to his relationship with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's structuring his time around the ability to praise God.
SPEAKER_00: He's praising God, by the way, through the reading and the study of the Word.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the rest of verse 62.
SPEAKER_00: Because of your righteous rules.
SPEAKER_00: Again, a synonym for the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's pouring his heart into the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's rising up early, even in the middle of the night, so that he can devote time to studying God and God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: You can ask yourself that same practical question.
SPEAKER_00: As you look at the year behind you, did you have a path worn in God's Word?
SPEAKER_00: Were you drawn towards God's Word?
SPEAKER_00: Was it easy for you to read the Word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Were you, did you gravitate towards it?
SPEAKER_00: Could you say this, that you would get up to read the Word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Did you make time in your life to read the Word of God?
SPEAKER_00: If not, He's not saying, if not, close your Bible, go home.
SPEAKER_00: If not, consider your ways.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the language of verse 59?
SPEAKER_00: Consider your ways and turn your feet towards that in the year to come.
SPEAKER_00: I know there are those that don't like New Year's resolutions and think they're works oriented, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: I love them.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's good to strategize about your time, about the time that God has given you in your life and the capacity God's given in your life, and chart out what you're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, have I been reading the word this year?
SPEAKER_00: If not, what am I gonna do differently in the year to come?
SPEAKER_00: Examine your devotions, thirdly.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your friendships.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 63.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.
SPEAKER_00: Examine who you spend your time with.
SPEAKER_00: Look at those that are your friends with.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have friends, first of all?
SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to say, I don't have friends, busy, busy, busy.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much to do.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have anything in common with people.
SPEAKER_00: Hard to have friends.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have anything in common with people.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're a Christian, you have you should have other people that have commonalities with you, namely that you love the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So what marks your friendships?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have are you friendships with people that love God?
SPEAKER_00: Is your friendship built around common experiences with God and his word and prayer and things you're learning about the Lord and ministry?
SPEAKER_00: Are you building your life in friendships around those who keep God's precepts?
SPEAKER_00: Is the language of verse 63?
SPEAKER_00: Are you companions of those who fear God?
SPEAKER_00: The opposite of this is true.
SPEAKER_00: If your friends, if your companions are not godly, that's going to have a harmful effect on your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33.
SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good morals.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist is take tackling this from the positive side.
SPEAKER_00: What makes someone a good friend in the psalmist's eyes?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who fears God, who keeps his precepts.
SPEAKER_00: This is getting back to joy.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the psalmist is saying that he has joy from his companions that also have joy in obedience to God.
SPEAKER_00: Their like-minded obedience, it gives them a mutual joy, which gives them fellowship and friendship.
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself: do you have friends that delight in God and God's word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have friends that motivate you to godliness?
SPEAKER_00: Can you say that you're a companion with those who fear the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: If not, then spend some time this year cultivating those kind of relationships with people that love the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not friends with those who love the Lord, it's a warning sign.
SPEAKER_00: I remember the college student who said, Oh yeah, that girl has everything I want in a wife.
SPEAKER_00: She just doesn't love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I remember thinking, man, that says more about what you want in a wife than it does about her, even.
SPEAKER_00: You can apply that same image to friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, I'm such a good friend with that person.
SPEAKER_00: They, you know, they have their life together and everything, and they're, you know, fun to be with.
SPEAKER_00: They just don't love the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You can be friends with non-Christians, of course, especially for evangelistic reasons, but at some point you have to start to question if the kind of people I'm around don't have a shared commitment to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What does it say about the kind of person I'm attracted to?
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, do you have friendships with those that love the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And then fourthly, examine your learning.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your learning.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 64 The earth, O Yahweh, is full of your steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: Teach me your statutes.
SPEAKER_00: So he's looking around, exile, pilgrim, stranger in a strange land, outside of the land that was given to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of seeing hostility, which he sees plenty of, by the way, in the Psalm, but right now he's looking at it and he says, I actually see God's kindness and goodness out here.
SPEAKER_00: Steadfast love, Hestead, God's covenant love.
SPEAKER_00: He even sees God's covenant love all around the world.
SPEAKER_00: We began our service today by reading Psalm 65, which makes that point repeatedly, that the earth is filled with God's abundance.
SPEAKER_00: God is so kind and so creative and so benevolent in giving us nature and beauty in the world and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't just fall in love with nature and marvel at the beauty of the world and be like, oh, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: No, you got to go a step beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: How does the beauty of the world connect back to God's word?
SPEAKER_00: What does it actually reveal in concrete terms about God?
SPEAKER_00: When you desire something or you delight in it and you see how it connects to God, that fuels your joy in that thing.
SPEAKER_00: I love being a pastor because I get to study the Bible and I see how it connects to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty easy as a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: It's harder, it's like, you know, a different field.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was in college, I hated, hated calculus.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand it.
SPEAKER_00: I had a great professor.
SPEAKER_00: He would meet with me and some of my friends.
SPEAKER_00: He knew we were struggling.
SPEAKER_00: He'd meet with me and some of my friends in the morning at a coffee shop to help us.
SPEAKER_00: But it just, you know, it didn't help.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you don't understand, Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: You use calculus all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You use calculus when you drive, when you kick a soccer ball.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I don't.
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's a lie.
SPEAKER_00: I do not use it at all, ever, for any reason, nor will I.
SPEAKER_00: I just couldn't connect it.
SPEAKER_00: So psalmist here is looking at the world.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's filled with God's love.
SPEAKER_00: So now he's got to learn how to connect what he sees in the world back to God's word and God's character.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a cop-out to say, oh, look at the beautiful sunset.
SPEAKER_00: God is creative.
SPEAKER_00: True.
SPEAKER_00: Press through that the next step or two after that.
SPEAKER_00: What do you actually learn about God from that?
SPEAKER_00: What part of God's word connects to that?
SPEAKER_00: The earth is filled with God's goodness, filled with it.
SPEAKER_00: So devote your mind to learn about God through it.
SPEAKER_00: Devote your mind to learn about God through his word, and you will see God's goodness and kindness more in the world when you're more familiar with the Word.
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself those questions.
SPEAKER_00: Are you content with your relationship with the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Or do the circumstances of life distract you from that?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a devotional pattern of going to the word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have friendships that cultivate godliness in your life?
SPEAKER_00: And do you have the habit of learning and studying God's Word so that you see God's character and kindness everywhere?
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards, you know, made these 70 resolutions, so I want to just draw your attention to one facet of these resolutions.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't make these resolutions to God or to others.
SPEAKER_00: He made them to himself.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Lord is not impressed with vows.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't hear a value make and go, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: Summon the angels.
SPEAKER_00: Check out that guy's vow.
SPEAKER_00: Edwards made these resolutions to himself.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't put them on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: If you make a New Year's resolution and you don't put it on Facebook, does it still count?
SPEAKER_00: Resolved to devote his life to redeeming the time for godliness.
SPEAKER_00: You could sum it up in verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: I promise to keep your word.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the year behind you, I'm sure you see times where you have failed to keep God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
SPEAKER_00: You maybe made resolutions a year ago that you failed to keep.
SPEAKER_00: In light of failed resolutions, you confess your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You confess where you have fallen short of what God has called you to do.
SPEAKER_00: You confess that to the Lord, and you're confident the Lord forgives you of your sin because Christ died in your place.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself is the only one who never failed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did all that God commanded him to do.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was resolved.
SPEAKER_00: He set his face towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody could hinder him from going to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Mark's gospel says.
SPEAKER_00: He set his face towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He went there.
SPEAKER_00: Peter tried to forbid it.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds tried to stop it.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of craziness happened, but he was resolute and resolved in going to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody could deter him.
SPEAKER_00: Through his obedience, his perfect obedience, he bore the punishment that our sins demand, that our sins deserved.
SPEAKER_00: He bore that in his own body.
SPEAKER_00: So that when you sin and you fail through your faith in Christ, your punishment is removed from you and placed on Christ who already paid for it.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here this morning as a Christian, I would challenge you to look at your life, consider your ways, and contemplate ways you can live for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, I pray that this morning you would right now in your own heart see your own sins, see the ways that you've rebelled against God, see the life of joy that can come from following Christ and see how that's missing from your own life.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, I pray that you would see Jesus, the one who kept all of God's commands, that you would put your faith in him, and that you would have your sins forgiven so that you can have this kind of joy in how you lead your life.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're thankful for your word and how you've given it to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for courage and boldness to live this year for you and for your glory.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here this morning that's never put their trust in you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray this morning that you would open their hearts to the truth of your word, that you'd work in their hearts and cause them to see you as glorious, to see you as beautiful, the Savior on the tree and then resurrected, crucified for our sin, resurrected for eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for him.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Christ we pray, amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.