All right, brethren, Psalm 119.
Psalm 119, now this section, verse 129 through 136, could be said to be the heart
of this psalm because it is dealing with the heart and how that the
Lord works all of this in his people. We saw, he said in verse
129, thy testimonies are wonderful, therefore doth my soul keep them.
We saw the whole word of God is made up of the testimonies,
the witnesses of God concerning his son. They're wonderful because
they bear witness of Him whose name is wonderful. He makes this
statement here. This is like the proposition
of this section. He makes the statement, Thy testimonies
are wonderful, therefore doth my soul keep them. And the rest
of this section, he gonna show us why that's true and how it's
true. Verse 130, the entrance of thy
words giveth light. It giveth understanding to the
simple. How do we come to have this revelation? How do we come to know the testimonies
of God are wonderful and begin to keep them in our soul? How
does that happen? The entrance of thy words giveth
light. It giveth understanding unto
the simple. The first creation and the new
creation are similar. You know, God created the world.
Everything God makes is good. He created the world, but the
world fell into chaos. It became without form and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. A mass of chaos,
a mass of confusion. Well, spiritually, God made Adam
upright, but by the fall, by Adam's transgression, He and
all born of him fell and became void. We died in sin and we become
a mass of confusion, a land of darkness. But the good news is,
and this is what the testimonies of God teach us, before God,
before Adam ever sinned, God had chosen people in Christ and
Christ had entered covenant to save us and bring us to God in
his perfect obedience. And for that reason, God preserved
His elect. That's what Jude was talking
about when he wrote to the saints and he said, to them that are
sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Christ Jesus
and called. That's why God didn't destroy
the world. He had a people and Christ had entered covenant to
save us. But in natural creation, the way that things were restored
was the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, the
Word of God said, let there be light, and there was light. Well, Paul told us in the new
creation, for God's vessels of mercy, He used that as the illustration. He said in 2 Corinthians 4, 6,
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Christ Jesus. This is what the entrance
of his words do. They give you light. They give
you understanding. God's word made us simple. This
is who it gives understanding to, the simple. The word means
the foolish, and we were foolish by nature. And we're considered
foolish now by the world because we love Christ and just want
to hear of Christ and follow Christ. But it also means to
untwist and to untangle. The Lord untwisted us by his
word. We were just a mass of confusion
And the rest of our days from that first hour of spiritual
conviction when the word enters and he begins teaching you, the
rest of our days, this is how it's done. When you have light,
it's by the entrance of his words, giving you light, giving you
understanding. This is how he's going to keep
you simple. Set on Christ only. Keep you simple. By the entrance
of his word he gives light and what he first does is he begins
to reveal the character of God. Everything starts with God and
he begins to reveal the character of God. God's mocked by men in
religion because they make him out to be the beggar and the
sinner out to be more powerful than God. They're doing God a
favor to let God save them. Do you know what the scriptures
say Antichrist is? The scriptures say Antichrist
stand in the temple of God, they stand in the church, and they make their boast as
if they're God. They attribute to the sinner
things that only God can do. That's what you hear preached.
That's Antichrist is what that is. That's where we were. That's where we were. thinking
it was by us, we contributed, calling ourselves God. But the
entrance of God's word give light. It made us understand something
of God's character, God's pure. You and I have no idea what pure
is. We've never experienced anything
that's pure. Everything's marred by sin. God's
holy. We really don't have a clue what
that is. We have some, you know, we have the scriptures and we
have some idea of what it is, but really and truly to really
enter into what it is to be for to God's holiness. He's righteous. I mean, everything
he just is righteous. So everything he does and thinks
and works is nothing but righteous. And he's just. He abhors evil
and he will by no means clear the guilty. By no means. If you somehow could obey God
in everything he writes in his word and you just came down to
one little dotting of the eye that you didn't dot, you'd die
forever. We're talking about righteous,
we're talking about just. In his light, holding something
by the character of God, that's when we begin to realize we're
the guilty sinner. The purity of God, him giving
you light to know something of the purity of God makes you know
you're impurity. The giving of this light to make
you enter into just something of his holiness makes you see
you're unholy. Beholding His righteousness makes
you see you're unrighteous. It's all in light of God's character. You see, the knowledge of sin,
it's not a doctrine that men understand by going to Romans
3 and reading that there's an unrighteous, no, not one. You
don't go to Jeremiah 17 and read, well, the heart's deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked and really know what that is. It's not a box you just check
off and put in a creed and pull out now and again and say, oh
yeah, that's what we believe. It's not like a doctor who goes
in and he's studying and learning about a disease so he studies
the patient who's laying there with the disease and trying to
learn about what the disease is about. God makes you to be
the patient in the bed groaning under the disease. God's holy character makes you
see your own utter ruin before God. It makes you see that you're
altogether lost, you're without hope, you're without help, you're
without strength, you're without wisdom, you're without righteousness,
you're without holiness, that you are nothing and you can do
nothing to fix it. We've got to be lost before we're
going to be found. We gotta be the dire ruined sinner
before we'll be made whole. But the entrance of God's word
gives light. He not only shows you his holy
character, makes you know that you're the sinner, he shows you
what the remedy for this disease is. He shows you his son, the
Lord Jesus. God gives his testimony in the
new heart that Christ is his glory. Christ is his glory. He's the one he's well pleased
with. God sent him forth to be a propitiation. We just sang the mercy seat.
That's what he is through faith in his blood. God makes his child
look upon Christ, bearing the sins of his elect and his body
on the tree. This is where you see the character
of God. This is where you see God's holy.
This is where you see he's just. This is where you see he will
by no means clear the guilty. But thank our God for revealing
it to us. This is where you also see he's
merciful and he's gracious. He keeps mercy for thousands.
But when you see Christ bearing the sin of his people in his
body on the tree and God makes you know that you pierced him,
that you're one for whom he was dying, that he was dying for
your sins, that's when you begin to mourn for your sin and mourn
for Christ and beg God for mercy. It's only Christ's obedience
that the law is fulfilled, it's only by his obedience that we
fulfill the law. It's only in his righteousness
that we're made righteous. That's what justification is.
It's being justified by the obedience of Christ. The testimonies of
God in the heart reveal Christ is the righteousness God provided
for his people. The only righteousness God will
receive is his son. Only his son. He atoned for the
sin of His people and it's by His precious blood that He's
sending these words into your heart and these words have this
entrance by the Spirit of God so that you're given light to
behold Christ. This is how we're made simple.
You see, when this happens, God makes us to know that He sees
us as we are. There's not a word in our tongue,
but the Lord knows it all together. He makes you know, just like
the woman at the well, that's the point there. She went away
realizing he knows everything about me. Nathanael was an Israelite indeed
in whom there was no God. You know what that means? It
means that God made Nathanael see himself as a sinner. And
God made Nathanael know he knew he was a sinner. The work of
grace in his soul made him honest so that his humility was not
an act. He wasn't pretending like he
kept the law. He was honest that he never had.
He was honest that he couldn't. He was honest that he couldn't
make himself walk upright. He was honest that he couldn't
put on the new man and put off the old man. He was honest that
he could do nothing to save himself. He was honest because God had
made him honest. That's a lot different from the
self-righteous and self-sanctifying who are not honest. They're boasting
in the strength and ability that God's people know you don't have.
Why? Because God's made you honest.
You know you don't have it. This is when God has given you
light. Now secondly, When this light
comes, this is what makes you hunger and thirst for Christ
only. For Christ only. He said in verse
131, I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for thy commandments. The entrance of God's word, it
brings down our fleshly wisdom. It blinds our fleshly eyes and
our natural reason. That's not faith. That has nothing
to do with faith whatsoever. Natural reason and fleshly sight
and fleshly wisdom. It has nothing to do with spiritual
discernment. God gives you spiritual discernment
and when he does, he makes you hungry and thirsty for Christ
only. David said in Psalm 38.10, my heart, my heart, this is a
new heart God's made. My heart panteth. My strength
faileth me. As for the light of mine eyes,
it's also gone from me. None of this that we're talking
about done here is in your flesh. He takes your fleshly strength
away. He makes a natural sight to be blind. That's what he had
to do to Saul of Tarsus, to make Saul of Tarsus quit seeing himself
as something. He put him in the dust, blinded
him, really physically blinded him, and then gave him spiritual
sight to see who the king and righteousness is. David said,
as the heart panteth, as the deer panteth after the water
brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth
for God. My soul thirsts for the living
God. When shall I come and appear
before God? My tears have been my meat day
and night while they continually say to me, where's thy God? When
I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me. David said,
these testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul keepeth them.
That's how David did it. He said, when you show me your
words in her, and I hear your testimonies against me in the
law, your testimonies for me in Christ, your covenant mercies
in Christ, my soul panteth after thee. He said, I'm panting after your
commandments. What commandments? When you're
in that place, I'll tell you what you're not panting after.
You're not panting after the Ten Commandments and trying to
come to God by them. I can guarantee you that, because
that's the whole point. It's made you see you can't come
to God in all. What's these commands you start
panting for? This is a command of God, open
your mouth wide and I'll fill it. That's what he's panting
for. Lord, feed me. Feed me the bread. Feed me life. And God commands
you, open your mouth and I'll fill it. It's the only time we
will. God commands his child, believe
on Christ. You know, that was pictured when
God gave the Sabbath day. He said, I will provide you bread. On the sixth day, the bread from
heaven pitched to Christ, he said, I'm going to provide you
enough manna on the sixth day so you don't have to do a thing
on the seventh day but rest. That's the same as God commanding
his child through this word, giving us light and commanding
you, believe on my son, rest in my son. And here's what God
commands when you do that. God told them in Leviticus 25,
21, when they rested in that day, now that's a picture of
resting in Christ, but here's what he does spiritually for
you when he brings you to rest in Christ. God said, then I will
command my blessing upon you. That's the command he's thirsting
and banning after. God said in Deuteronomy 28.8,
The Lord shall command blessing upon thee in thy storehouses,
and all that thou sendest thy hand unto, and he'll bless thee
in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. This is the
unity of God's people. This is what David said in Psalm
133. Like the dew of Hermon, The dew that ascended upon the
mountains of Zion, the Lord said, My word comes like dew. My doctrine
distills like dew. And here's the result. There
the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore. And when
He brings His light, He commands the blessing. He commands life. Now, that doesn't happen one
time. The rest of our days, the rest
of our salvations are of the Lord. Salvation's of the Lord. He don't wind you up and turn
you loose and you start doing it on your own. Salvation's of
the Lord. The rest of our days, the entrance
of His word is what gives us life. The entrance of His words
that make you hungry and thirsty after Christ. It's God's effectual
command that makes us rest in Him alone. He said, Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. They shall
be filled. They shall be filled. It made
David say, Thy testimonies are wonderful. Therefore does my
soul keep them. Now thirdly, this light of God's Word This
is why these testimonies are wonderful. This is all what he
does when he brings light, brings the entrance of his words into
your heart. The entrance of these words make you start begging
God for mercy, and they keep you doing so all your days. They
make you beg God for mercy. Verse 132. He said, look thou
upon me and be merciful unto me as thou used to do unto those
that love thy name. This is so in the beginning and
it continues throughout our lives. God. makes you desire the light
of his countenance. That's what it is to look upon
me. You go through some time and study how many times David's
praying for the light of God's face, the light of his countenance
to shine upon him. That's what he's asking for here.
Look thou upon me, Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
one God's looking to. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
one who intercedes for his people and says to the Father, look
thou upon me. And for his sake, God looks upon
his people as righteous and holy and perfect in his son. He doesn't look at you as if
you're like his son. He looks at you as being bone
of his bone and flesh of his flesh, having done everything
his son did. And that's why he's merciful
to you. But he brings you yourself. He does this in the beginning
and he keeps doing it throughout your life. Sometimes we become
so lukewarm We get tired of hearing the gospel. You just preach the
same message. Isn't that a sinful, dreaded
thing when you feel that way? And you can't read the word and
get any life out of it. You can't fan this flame up.
You can't just flip on a light switch and there's light. We're
dependent upon God, and God's gonna keep us knowing we're dependent
upon him. But boy, His Word, if you've ever tasted the Lord
is gracious, and He's ever given you light, He makes you want
the light of His countenance. That's His favor. That's making
you know you have His grace upon you. And you want that. You want
to know His presence. Well, there's a lot of times
in the life where we have some dark seasons, and everything
seems to be against you. This is going to happen. It must
happen. His word is gonna make you cry
to God to be merciful to me. His word's gonna make you cry
out to God and beg God, please be merciful to me. This is what
he does the first hour he calls you, because you know there's
no other way I could be saved but mercy. But he's gonna do
this over and over and over, and you start saying, Lord, be
merciful to me like you used to do to those that love your
name. I picture the word entering in
and giving some light, and making David think about Abraham, and
how God called Abraham, and how God led him through all his days,
and how God spoke to him and said, I'm your shield and your
reward, Abraham. And David says, Lord, I'm your
child. Love me, show me mercy like you did your children of
old. We hear Christ talk about the
man that was robbed and he was left in the ditch for dead, The
law passed him by, the priests on one side, and we have nothing
to do with him, but this Samaritan that everybody in Israel hated
the Samaritan. The Samaritan came to where he
was and healed up his wounds and took him to an inn and provided
for him. And God works this in you and
he makes you see Christ as the good Samaritan. Everybody hates
him. But He comes to where you are
and pulls you out of the ditch and He puts oil in and He soothes
your wounds and He takes you to His end and pays the whole
way and provides for you. And you say, Lord, do that for
me. When you're in that dark place,
you're like David, like Job. This is what Job said, and he
makes you think this of yourself. You want to experience the love
you experience from him like you used to. Job, he's in that
terrible place. This tells us something about
how long Job suffered. It goes, Job said this, oh that
I were as in months past. That tells you he at least suffered
for months. Oh, as I was in months past,
as in the days when God preserved me, when his candle shined upon
my head, when by his light I walked through darkness, as I was in
the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle. That's what David's praying for. And then Job compared how it
was then to how it was while he was in that darkness. He said,
oh, that I knew where I might find him. Then I'd come, and
I'd come to his seat. Behold, I go forward, and he's
not there. I go backward, and I can't perceive him. On the
left hand, where he does work, but I can't behold him. He hides
himself on the right hand. I can't see him. You've been there, haven't you,
believer? I see. I see it. Me too. But here's what he makes you
know while you're there. This is what Job said, but he knoweth
the way that I take. And when he's tried me, I shall
come forth as gold. Fire is just consuming the dross. You know what the dross is? Boy, I've been, I obeyed God. I've been obeying God. I've been
doing a good job at obeying God. That's the dross that's got to
be consumed. But when you're in that place,
this is what Job meant. If I knew where I could find
him, I'd come to his seat. You can't be satisfied with the
doctrine of Christ's blood. You can't be satisfied with the
doctrine that he made full atonement. You can't be satisfied with the
doctrine that his word is light. You need him to come in person
and give you the words and draw you into the holiest of holies
right to his bosom. That's what you need. This is
a difference between false and true. We need Christ himself to give
us light and renew our heart. And then God's testimonies enter,
and Christ speaks into the heart, and he says what he said to you
at the beginning. Come unto me, you that are laboring
and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. That's when
the light comes out. That's when the light comes on. That's when the clouds roll back.
His words entering in give light. The Holy Spirit sheds the love
of God abroad in the heart and He strengthens your faith again.
Pharisees didn't know a thing about this. They did not know
a thing about this. But God's disciples did. When
He walked this earth, He made His disciples know this. That's when He makes you see
you've got complete propitiation for your sin in Christ, your
mercy seat. He's cleansed you again. He's
washed your feet again. And from the beginning to the
end, God's going to keep His child knowing it was only the
entrance of His Word that did this. It was only Him speaking
into your heart that did this. This is what Paul meant when
he said, by the renewing of your mind, put off the old and put
on the new. You can't renew your mind. trial
you want to, you can't do it. I know that's offensive to self-made
men, but there's no way you can do it. It's the entrance of his
words. That's the only way. He's going
to keep you begging God to shine his face, begging for his mercy,
begging for God to make you know his love for you in Christ. He
gonna save beggars. That's who he saved, beggars. And he has to make us simple,
so we beg. All right? Fourthly, the entrance
of his word makes us depend entirely on Christ to lead us and to deliver
us. Verse 133, order my steps in
thy word and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Deliver
me from the oppression of man, so will I keep thy precepts. Now you hear Christ speak here.
Christ depended upon the Father to order His steps when He walked
this earth. And by His Spirit, He's going to make His children,
Christ is going to make His redeemed do the same. He's going to make
us depend on Christ. This is the Lord's testimonies
to his children. Don't like these testimonies
that make your heart glad? Here's his testimony to it. This
is witness to it. He keepeth the feet of his saints.
He does. And our prayer is, especially
when he first called you, this was your prayer. Lord, don't
let sin have dominion over me. But then when you go through
that season of darkness and you've fallen or whatever it is that
you, he had to, it's all sin because you just, you couldn't
deliver yourself out of it. But when he brings you out again,
you pray unto him, Lord, lead me and please don't let iniquity
have dominion over me. You know, you need him to keep
that from happening. You know it a little better than
you did before. Our substitute willingly submitted
to bear the iniquity of his people. He willingly did that. But he
prayed to the Father, let not iniquity have dominion over me.
For a little while, he submitted to the iniquity of his people,
took it upon himself, bored his body on the tree, and he actually
submitted to the dominion of death. There's no other way death
could have dominion over him, but it did. But he conquered
sin, and he conquered death, and he conquered hell. Knowing
Christ being raised from the dead, doth no more death, hath
no more dominion over him. And you know what that means
for you, child of God? He will not let iniquity have dominion
over you. But we know by this light that
our sin nature is only sin. And you know when you can't believe
him and you can't get this joy in your heart, you've experienced
this, haven't you? And you can't do anything about
it. You know iniquity can have dominion over you. It can take
you captive. But he won't let it dominate
you. He won't let it let you fall
away. He's going to keep you begging
him, let not iniquity have dominion over me. And because you're looking
to him to do it by his light and his word being in you, he's
not going to let it happen. But this is also connected with
the next verse, and especially as it applies to our Lord Jesus.
Order my steps in thy word, and let not iniquity have dominion
over thee. Deliver me from the oppression
of man, so will I keep thy precepts. The Lord Jesus of himself had
no iniquity to have dominion over him. Now he did submit to
it when he bore our sin, but he didn't have it in himself
as he walked this earth. But this also applies to the
iniquity of the oppression of man who oppressed him. The Pharisees
oppressed him the whole time. They oppressed him. And that
was iniquity. To try to pressure Christ into
doing what they would have him do was iniquity. That's all it
was, was iniquity. That's what it is in us, too.
But Christ trusted the Father to deliver him from that oppression.
And the Father did. That's the faithfulness by which
we're saved. by Christ's perfect faith, he kept the precepts of
God. Even when it was dealing with
his oppressors, he didn't, he could have summoned 12 legions
of angels, but he didn't. He even told Peter, put your
sword up, Peter. The cup my father's given me,
I must drink it. And he did. So the Spirit of
God's gonna keep his child dependent upon Christ to do that for us.
They're going to keep you dependent on Christ to deliver you from
the oppression of man. First of all, our fleshly nature
is the oppressive man. That's the first man we need
him to deliver us from, is our own selves. So we're asking our
sovereign savior not to let iniquity have dominion over us. Save me
from this oppressive old man of sin. And we're going to ask
to be delivered from the oppression of other men. Oppression, whether
it's coming from your old man of sin, you know, if you feel
like you're being pressed in your heart that you've got to
do this or you've got to do that, you can't serve God. That's a legal spirit. You can't
serve him like that. And if anybody else is trying
to pressure you to do something, you can't obey God. Virtue is
by Christ giving his children liberty by what he did for you
and by this word in your heart making you know you're free.
You're his and it'll never be undone. That's what the Pharisees
were afraid of. That's what they were afraid
of. The Lord taking his people from them. You know the apostles were oppressed
by, remember that? When they arrested them and they
brought them in and they, we command you don't ever preach
in Christ's name again and all this, you know. What happened
when they were let go? They went straight to their own
company and went to preach in Christ. When you're freed, that's what
you'll do. But you can't do it till you're
freed. Lastly, the entrance of his word
keeps us from boasting because we see all of this is due to
his grace. And he keeps us from boasting
due to our sin. Read this last verse with me.
Verse 135, 136. Make thy face to shine upon thy
servant and teach me thy statutes. Rivers of waters run down mine
eyes because they keep not thy law. By God's word in our heart, we
see we need him to teach us his statutes. When he gives you light, the
result is you want more light. When he teaches you the realist
is you say, I'm ignorant. I know so little. I need you
to teach me more. And you want him to teach you
more. And the reason we ask this is right here, verse 136, rivers
of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law.
Now our Lord Jesus wept over Jerusalem, those that rejected
Christ. He said, I would have gathered
you and you wouldn't. A sinner, the Lord has no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, and if you sit here and say, I'm
just not going to believe on him, that's not, he's not desiring
to destroy the wicked, but he's the only sacrifice for sin. Believe on him and be saved.
There's no other way. There's no other way. And by
His grace, He brings you to really and truly mourn for perishing
sinners who are rejecting God's command to believe His Son. That
makes you mourn. And when you preach, it really
makes you mourn when people depart from the gospel and don't hear
a word you've said. But I hope this is going to reveal
something about you. Is that the only one you see
in this verse? It's those other people. Rivers of water run down mine
eyes because they, mine own eyes, keep not your law. Rivers of water run down my eyes
because my own eyes don't keep your law, God. If all I think about when I read
that verse is other people, I'm in trouble. Because this right
here is what keeps you crying out to God. Lord, teach me your
statutes. In your heart, in a new man,
you keep his testimonies. You delight in his law. You delight
in every word of God. And you believe on his son. And
in his son, you've established a law. But you see that in yourself,
Lord, I don't keep your law. But the entrance of his word
makes us know we have perfect righteousness in his son. This
is the thing. Blessed are them that mourn.
They shall be comforted. Read that article in the Bulletin.
The same site does both. You see Christ crucified in your
place and it makes you mourn your sin that you don't love
more, that you're not more merciful, that you're not more forbearing,
that you don't forgive more, that you sin less. It just makes
you mourn your sin. But that same sight also comforts
you to know He's all your righteousness. Lord, let me weep for nothing
but sin, and after none but Thee, then I would, O that I might,
a constant weeper be." Isn't that so? If we wept for nothing but sin,
and after none but Christ, we'd be constantly weeping with me.
But this keeps us from boasting, it keeps us humble, it keeps
us depending on Christ to shine His face and teach us His statutes.
Now let me recap this. Brethren, the testimonies of
God are wonderful. His Word entering our new man,
His Word continuing to give us the light of Christ, this is
why they're wonderful to us. He keeps showing us our election.
of God by His grace in Christ. He showed us our Redeemer is
Christ, that He has perfected us and made us perfection in
Him, complete in Him, pure in Him, holy in Him, the righteousness
of God in Him. And for this reason, He keeps
giving you the Spirit, and keeps giving you light, and keeps drawing
you to Christ, and keeps making you beg for mercy, and keeps
making you want to walk after Him and be more honoring to Him
in everything you do. And this won't ever stop. This
won't ever stop. This work He's doing won't ever
stop. As you stop doing sin outwardly more, He's going to make you
see it inwardly more. But he's going to make you see
Christ more. That's where you're going to stay in this place right
here the rest of your days. But he will fulfill all his testimonies
and bring you to Christ, bring you to God perfect. This is his
testimony. Yay, I've spoken it. I will also
bring it to pass. I've purposed it. I will also
do it. That's why his testimonies are
wonderful. Amen. All right, brother.