Alright, brethren, Psalm 119.
Now this is a very long psalm. The
Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. And each section of this psalm
is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each part begins with a letter
of the alphabet. Aleph, that word Aleph there,
that's the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. And then each
part has eight verses. And if we could read Hebrew,
we would see that each verse begins with the letter Aleph. They each begin. The next one
is Beth. Each verse begins with Beth.
That's a letter in the Hebrew word. Now, the theme of this
psalm is the Word of God. It's the Word of God. And there's
a lot of different words used in this psalm that speak of God's
Word. This whole psalm here uses a
lot of different words. It uses the word law, Torah,
it means to teach or direct. Every word that God speaks is
his law. It's his word. Every word. Now
the psalmist only had probably the first five books of the Bible,
maybe a few more, but that was what he would have regarded as
the law, the teaching and direction of God. Now we have the completed
word of God and it includes the whole word of God. The Law. There's
the use of this Debar, which is translated word, and it means
the spoken word, from God's mouth to the penman who wrote it. And
then there's another word, it's translated word, and its meaning
is the whole word of God, the written word of God. The word
judgments is used. This is God's declaration of
what's right and wrong. He tells us that all through
the Scriptures. Testimonies, that's witnesses. God speaking
and bearing witness to us. We have the Old Testament, that's
the Old Testimony. And you have the New Testament,
the New Testimony. The old is law, the new is gospel. Then you have commandments. This
emphasizes God's authority, His rule over His people. You have
statutes, that's the authority of God's written word. His statutes,
His authority. Precepts, particular detailed
instructions the Lord gives us. So when we read the word law,
my point is when we read the word law, we don't just think
only of the Ten Commandments. We think of the whole Word of
God. We're talking about the whole Word of God. God's scriptures
all have one message. Whether any of these words we're
talking about, they all have one end. Christ. Everything in this book has Christ
for its end. Christ for its end. Christ is
the Word. He's the end of every commandment,
every statute, every judgment. Everything Christ is the end
of. It's the purpose of it. To bring his people to Christ.
Now this psalm, as we're going to go through it, it's not telling
us that God's people are able to keep the law so as to be able
to come to God by our works, by our obedience. The only way
we have kept God's law and perfect righteousness is by the obedience
of Christ. Through faith, God imputes to
us the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we do desire
to obey every word of God. If he's given us a new heart,
we don't want to disobey God at all. We want to obey God in
everything. And the shame for a believer
of sin is that we have displeased our Father. That's the shame
of it. And we don't want to do that. We want to obey God in
everything. That doesn't mean we do obey
Him in all, but that's the desire of our heart. That's the desire
of our heart. Now today we're gonna just take
the first section, the first eight verses, and let's just
go a verse at a time here. Verse one, blessed, happy are
the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord.
Blessed means happy. Everybody wants to be happy,
but the way the world wants to be happy is opposite and totally
foreign to what God says here is happiness. And this happiness
is not what most people in religion understand. If you want to see
what God says it is to be blessed, go read the Beatitudes. That's
not anything like what the world would say is being happy, to
be happy. Let me read this to you. Listen, blessed, happy are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed,
happy are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall
be filled. Blessed are the merciful, they shall obtain mercy. Blessed
are the pure in heart, they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers,
they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which
are persecuted, happy are they which are persecuted. for righteousness
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when
men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil
against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, he said, be exceeding
glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you. That's not how the
world would see happiness. That's totally foreign. But that's
what God says is happiness. It's to be blessed. God declares
true happiness is believing and walking in the word of the Lord. Believe in the word of the Lord
and walking in the word of the Lord. That's happiness for the
believer. Now let's begin here. The undefiled
in the way are sinners saved by grace who walk by faith in
Christ. The undefiled in the way are
sinners saved by grace who walk by faith in Christ. The way is
the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed, happy are the undefiled
in the way. Christ said, I am the way, I
am the truth, I am the life, no man cometh unto the Father
but by me. Christ is the way. He is the
way. He is the straight gate. He is
the narrow way to eternal life. And believers walk by faith in
the way. We are walking by faith in Christ.
The undefiled are those who walk by faith in Christ. It's not
what we did that made us to be undefiled. It's what our Lord
did. What He did for His people and
in His people. All God's elect have been washed
from our sins in the blood of the Lamb. Our Lord Jesus Christ
came and purged our sins and He clothed us in Christ's righteousness. In Christ, God's saints are perfect.
That's what you see the margin there, blessed are the undefiled,
the perfect. And before God, in Christ, God's
people are perfect, absolutely perfect, complete in Him, seated
with Christ at God's right hand. We're every whit clean, without
spot, without blemish. Unreprovable, without fault,
before the judgment seat of God, in His all-knowing sight. That's
what Christ is for us. That's what He accomplished for
His people. And by the Spirit giving us a new heart, we believe
on Christ, and we certainly desire to walk after the Lord in obedience
to Him. There's a lot of precepts in
the Gospel, and we want to obey them. We want to do what those
precepts say, because when we don't, we will be defiled. We
want to walk after Him. That's the heart of God's child.
Even the Ten Commandments, the Apostle Paul said, I delight
in the law of God after the inward man. There's nothing but good
about God's holy law. It's holy, it's just, it's good. Everything about it is. But now
you have to remember this. Remember Christ washed the disciples'
feet. We're clean as a wet." He said,
whoever I've washed, whoever he laid down his life for and
purged and brought to faith in him, they're absolutely totally
clean, he said. But then he washed their feet.
Why? Because we defile our feet as we walk through this world
every day. We have to continually come to
Christ the way. We have to come to Christ for
washing. We have to come to Christ confessing
our sin, trusting him to cleanse us and keep us walking after
him. And every time you go through
this, every time you do this, he teaches you a little more
to walk after Him. It teaches you a little more.
He did this by putting the love of Christ in our hearts so that
not only do we come to Him to be watched, we try to help our
brethren get to Him to be watched. That's washing the feet of your
brethren, forgiving them of their sin, loving them, and helping
them to look to Christ. Our joy, though, in everything
is this. Here's our assurance. Here's
our motivation. This is our constraint in everything.
You know what Christ, you know how He describes His bride, His
church, who He died for? In Song of Solomon chapter 6
verse 9, He called His bride, you who He has redeemed and called
to faith in Him, He calls her My dove, My undefiled. You know why? Because we are
washed in Him, complete in Him. That will never be undone. That
will never be undone. Now this good news, this gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ is the law we walk in. He said there,
blessed, happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.
We're walking in the gospel, the doctrine of Christ our Redeemer,
the law of Christ. How do we walk? He taught us
to walk by faith, which works by love. That's the rule we're
under. The just shall live by faith. And the law's not of faith, Paul
said. The just shall live by faith.
We walk by the law of love, constrained by the love of Christ. 1 John
3.23, this is His commandment, that we should believe on the
name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave
us commandment. 1 John 4.21, And this commandment
have we from him, that he who loveth God loveth his brother
also. What's that going to involve?
Turn with me to Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4. Verse 31, Let all bitterness
and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away
from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you. You know what that tells us?
That tells us when we read our psalm, it's not saying you're
going to keep the law perfectly. Because there's going to be some
things that we're going to have to forgive. There's going to
be some sin we're going to have to forgive, some offenses we're
going to have to forgive. But he says, forgiving one another,
be ye therefore followers of God as dear children and walk
in love. Everything he's saying here is
walking in love. As Christ also has loved us and
has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a
sweet smelling savor. What is this law of the Lord
we walk in? It's to walk in the law of righteousness.
The Law of Righteousness. This is what God writes on our
heart in the new birth. He writes the Law of Faith, the
Law of Love, He writes the Law of Righteousness. The Law of
Righteousness... Now, we want to live righteously
as much as the Spirit of God will enable us. But when God
teaches you the Law of Righteousness, it is to agree with God's righteous
law. It's to agree with what the Law
of God says about you. If you want to walk in righteousness,
the law of righteousness, first it begins by agreeing with what
the law says. And the law says we're sinners.
The law was given the Ten Commandments to shut our mouth and to declare
us guilty. And if we're going to honor that
law, we're going to agree with it. That's what I am, guilty. is to agree with God that Christ
is our only righteousness. He's the one who fulfilled the
law. He's the righteousness to whom
it points to. That law is a schoolmaster to
drive you to Christ. And He is the righteousness,
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it.
The law of righteousness that God's written on our heart. It
not only makes you know that you're righteous in Christ, and
gives you that peace of heart to know you are righteous in
Christ. It makes you know your brethren are righteous in Christ.
And that governs us, that governs everything we do, how we treat
one another, when they walk righteously or when they fall. You see, if
they walk righteously, We speak the same word. We remind one
another Christ is our only righteousness. Why do you do that to somebody
who is walking righteously? So they don't get too puffed
up. And then if they fall, what do we speak? We remind each other
Christ is our only righteousness. So they won't be overly sorrowful
and entirely fall away. The answer is Christ our righteousness. Christ our righteousness. We
walk by the law of liberty. That's what's written on our
hearts. Scripture calls it the law of liberty. The Spirit of
our Lord has written the law of liberty on our hearts. Listen
to Romans 8.2. Romans 8.2, as Ranaphry said,
there's no condemnation to them that believe. He says, for the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the law of the
Spirit God, the Holy Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has made
me free from the law of sin and death. He's delivered me from
the curse and He's made me free. He's taught us this. The Kingdom
of God is not meat and drink. The Kingdom of God is not outward. He said the Kingdom of God is
in you. The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink. It's joy
and it's peace. It's righteousness in the Holy
Ghost. in Christ our joy, in Christ
our righteousness, in Christ our peace. And so when we're
exercising our liberty, if a brother is offended by something, and
if something will offend him, then we stop. We don't do it.
We don't do it. We have liberty to eat whatever,
drink whatever, but if it's going to offend somebody, we don't
do it. And if a weak brother who is not eating and not drinking,
or he's observing a day, as long as he don't make that a necessity
to salvation, then we know he's doing it as unto the Lord, just
like I'm walking in liberty as unto the Lord. Happy is that
man who has faith in that which he alloweth. whether he's walking
in liberty or he's weak in the understanding of liberty. This
is the law of the Lord we walk in. We're believers walking in
this law of our Lord. Now the key to this is found
in verse 2 and 3. Look here with me at verse 2
and 3. Happy, blessed are they that keep His testimonies and
that seek Him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity. They walk in His ways. God's
testimonies are His witnesses. That's what His testimonies are.
They're His witnesses. Him witnessing. Testifying. And every word in this book,
you know what it's testifying? God's testifying that you and
me are sinners, all flesh is grave. And He's testifying that
His Son is the one in whom he is well pleased. Everything in
this book. Our Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees,
search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal
life, and they are they which testify of me. and you will not
come to me that you might not have life." The whole law of
God, from Genesis 1-1 to the very last verse in Revelation,
this whole Word of God is testifying of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
God's testimony of Him. Let me show you that. Go to 1
John 5. Revelation 19-10 says the testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. This whole, if God teaches you
in heart, in spirit, it's going to be Christ He teaches you.
1 John 5, 6. Now look, this is exactly what
He tells us here. This is He that came by water
and blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water
and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth
witness. That's to testify. That's to
testify. That's a testimony. He bearing
witness, the Spirit of God is. Because the Spirit is truth.
For there are three that bear record, there it is again, this
is a testimony. There are three that testify
in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these
three are one. And there are three that bear
witness, that testify in the earth, the Spirit, and the water,
and the blood, and these three agree in one. Now watch this,
if we receive the witness of men, I am trying to testify you
today of Christ. If we receive the witness of
men, the witness of God is greater, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of
God which He has testified of His Son. He that believeth on
the Son of God hath the witness in himself. This is what we are
going to have to have to believe God. The witness, the testimony
has got to be in us. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar. If you believe Him because God
has testified in your heart, you have the witness, you have
the Spirit in you. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar because he believeth not the record. There is another
word that means testimony. He did not believe the record
that God gave of His Son, and this is the record. Here is the
testimony. This is what all the testimonies
of God declare. Right here. This is the record
that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His
Son. He that hath the Son hath life,
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have
I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God,
that you may know that you have eternal life, and you may believe
on the name of the Son of God." Now I know what somebody will
say. Somebody will say, well, when
I read the scriptures, I see that God's law that He gave at
Sinai is called God's testimonies. Sure is. Sure is. Every commandment
He gave at Sinai is called God's testimonies. And our text says
here, blessed are they that keep His testimonies. That keep His
testimonies. What does the law testify? I
just said it. What does it testify? It testifies
to us that every son of Adam is guilty. It testifies to us
that the law is broad and wide and we can't keep the law of
ourselves. It testifies we need a Savior.
We need the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it brings us to cry out,
God be merciful, be propitious to me the sinner, because it
shows you we're the sinner. And the gospel is God's testimonies
of His Son at Sinai. You remember what happened? God
even bore testimony to Christ at Sinai. Whenever they saw that
mountain on fire and saw it quaking, they cried out to Moses and asked
Moses to be the mediator between them and God. Because they said,
we can't approach unto this mountain, we'll die. That's a picture of
Christ. That's God bearing testimony
of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The law and the prophets bear
witness. They testify of the Lord. And
Romans 3 tells us they declare that the righteousness, true
righteousness, is by the faith of Christ. It's unto and upon
all that believe. All that believe. That's God's
testimony that His Son is the righteousness of His people.
And we walk in these testimonies. We walk by faith in Christ. God
creates in us a whole heart and the Spirit of God testifies of
His Son in that whole heart. And verse 2 says, this is what
we do, we seek Him with the whole heart. We seek Him with the whole
heart. You notice how many times the
heart is spoken of here. Verse 7, I'll praise thee with
uprightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.
Verse 10, with my whole heart have I sought thee. Oh, let me
not wander from thy commandments. Verse 11, thy word have I hid
in mine heart that I might not sin against thee. We don't have
a whole heart by nature. God creates a whole heart. The
first thing this means is it's whole. It's holy. It's without
sin. It's born of the incorruptible
seed. This whole heart. And it's with
that whole heart that we worship God. We worship God with the
whole heart. With the whole heart. He said,
I'll give them a heart to know Me that I'm the Lord and they
shall be My people and I will be their God for they shall return
to Me with their whole heart. And that's the heart God looks
on. It's holy, it's without sin, it's without guile. That's how
come the Lord Jesus looked at Nathanael and said, Behold, an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile. In whom is no guile. We don't worship God with our
fleshly nature, the flesh profits nothing. But we worship God with
the whole heart that God has made. And it's in that heart
where Paul said, I delight in the law of God after the inward
man. And God looks on the heart He's
made. Now, God's people are not trying to disobey God. We're
not trying to just disregard God's precept. We want to obey
every word that God has spoken to us, every command He's given
us. You think about this. Everything God speaks to us is
for our good. Every bit of it. It's for our
happiness. Happy. If you want to be happy,
obey God. Obey God. Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Love your brethren. And whatever
God says in His Word, do it. That's happiness. That's happiness.
But remember this. God looks on the heart. He looks
on the heart. Now you take a father, he's got
two children. He's got one child who can walk
already. He's got another child that's
just beginning to take their first steps. And they're both
standing there. And the father says, come to
me. And they both start coming to him. And the one that can
walk just runs right up to him. And the one that can't stumbles
and falls. But he knows the heart in both
of them was to come to him. He's not going to treat one of
them any differently because he fell. If it's the older one that
falls, He's going to treat him just like the one that didn't
fall. If it's the younger one, He's
going to treat him just like He did the one that didn't fall.
God's looking on the heart. By faith in our hearts, God beholds
us in Christ's righteousness. And that's how He sees us. That's
how He sees us. Let me give you some examples.
You know, David fell many times, and some were great falls, like
the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba. And yet, because God looks on
the whole heart that He's made, and because it's in that heart
that He makes you to look out of yourself to Christ your righteousness,
trusting Christ your righteousness, trusting the Son of God, this
is what God said of David. This is what God said of David.
my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all
his heart, and did that only which was right in my eyes."
That's how he described David. Why? He saw him in Christ. He knew his heart was for Christ,
and he trusted Christ. sinned in His flesh. He even
refused the warning of the Lord and went out in league with the
wicked king and died in battle. He died disobeying God. That's
how He died. King Josiah. But God looks on
his whole heart. And God looks upon him in Christ
only. And this is how the Lord described
Josiah. And this is a description of
Christ. He described David just like the description of Christ.
He kept the law. He did only that which was pleasing
in my sight. That's how come he said that
of David. This is what he said of Josiah. like to him, there
was no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his
heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according
to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like
him." This is the man who died because he disobeyed God and
went out to battle with a heathen enemy king. That's what God said
of him. How can God say that? only in
Christ. Only in Christ. And as we are
going through this life and we want to obey our Lord, we're
walking by faith and we're trying to do what God says to do in
His Word. I'm just saying this to you to
know this. God's looking on the heart He's
made. You take a Pharisee who isn't born of God, and I don't
doubt that the Pharisees in our Lord's day, you would have been
hard pressed to find some outward sin in them. Anywhere you followed
them around, they were men who tried to at least appear righteous
outwardly. But they had no righteousness
inwardly. They were not born of God. But you take somebody
who God's given a whole heart, a holy heart, a new heart, and
they're keeping God's law, they're keeping his precepts, they're
doing the judgments of God, but they're like that little child.
They're stumbling, they fail, they fall. And yet God looks on the whole
heart He's made, and He beholds His child in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone, and He says, He's kept my law perfectly. Isn't that
much better news than to be under that old covenant where God says,
you've got to do this perfectly to live? In Christ we've already
fulfilled all the righteousness of the law. Look at this in verse
3. They also do no iniquity. They
walk in His ways. Now, God's people are just in
their dealings with men. They are not trying to be unjust
in their dealings with men. They want to walk in Christ's
ways just as much as the Spirit will enable us. But iniquity
is any attempt or any notion that we have a righteousness
that God is going to be pleased with, that God will accept. And
the reason it's iniquity is it falls short. It comes short of
the glory of God. It's inequitable. It's not the
righteousness God will receive. So anytime we start thinking
good of ourselves that we've done righteously, in the truest
sense of it, we've never done righteously because evil is mixed
with everything we do. Our sin nature is mixed with
everything we do. Comparatively, it might be more righteous than
another. Like Judah said to Tamar, you're
more righteous than me. But before God, no. Before God,
no. But here's the thing, when God
makes you upright in heart, when He makes you to have no guile
in your heart, when that incorruptible seeds created this new spirit
in you, we're no longer attempting to deceive God. That's what we
were doing before. Trying to come to God in some
obedience of ours and thinking God would be deceived that we
really had worked righteousness. We're not trying to deceive God
anymore. That's what a heart is that has no God and we're
not trying to deceive men anymore either. We're not trying to Pretend
we've worked out a righteousness or pretend we don't have sin
and that we don't sin. We confess that all our righteousnesses
are iniquity. They all fall short of the glory
of God. We confess we are the sinner.
It's what our nature is. Every single thing that comes
out of us has sin mixed with it. But Christ is our only righteousness. Now, to say that we have no iniquity,
we have to say this too. That doesn't mean we don't have
self-righteousness. We got plenty of that. But before
God, because Christ had no iniquity, we do no iniquity. Before God,
we do no iniquity. Every believer desires, we absolutely
desire, to walk in the ways of our Lord Jesus. He taught us
how to walk through this world. We want to walk in His ways,
as verse 3 says. But as we saw with David and
as we saw with Josiah, when Christ walked this earth, all God's
elect were in Christ and we walked in His ways in Him. And when
you believe God by His grace, you walk in His ways. His ways
are your ways. His righteousness is your righteousness.
When we walk by faith in Christ. Now lastly, since we are sinners,
and due to our sin, here is our constant cry before God. Here
is our constant cry before God. Now He states a fact here first.
He had stated a fact there in those first three verses of what
happiness is. And now He's going to state another
fact in verse 4. Thou hast commanded us to keep
thy precepts diligently. That's what God's commanded.
To keep His precepts diligently. You know, we should always read
the Word of God, read the commandments of God, read the precepts Christ
gave us. And He commands here, He says,
Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. Now that doesn't mean you have
the ability to do it in perfection. All of these things are fact.
That doesn't mean you have the ability to do it in perfection. And God's child, in fact, never
does see ourselves as obeying God as we ought. You just don't. Because you see your sin. You
know something of your sin. And so seeing our sin, we're
crying constantly. Verse 5, now he's praying to
God. Listen. He having stated all
this about where happiness is and what God's commanded, this
is his immediate prayer to God. Oh, that my ways were directed
to keep thy statutes. Oh, that they were. It's not
in man to direct his steps, it's God that's going to direct our
steps. And we see our sin, and we pray, God, Lord, direct my
steps to keep thy statutes. His answer wasn't, oh, I do keep
all your statutes. We're going to see that later,
but you know who alone can say that? Christ. But here he says, O that my ways
were directed to keep thy statutes, then I shall not be ashamed.
Aren't you ashamed of your sin? Don't your sins make you ashamed? I'll not be ashamed when I have
respect unto all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness
of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. I will
keep thy statutes. You know, we're never going to
arrive at this in this life. We're never going to arrive at
perfection in this life. But this is our prayer. Oh Lord,
would you direct my steps. Did you direct my step? I want
to learn more of His righteous judgments. I want to learn more
of His commandments and His statutes. But as you're learning of those
commandments and those statutes, what have you found so far, believer?
What have you found so far as you hear His statutes and His
commandments and His judgments? What have you learned? That we
need to be found in Christ only. That's what you learn. That's
what you learn. And the more He directs your
steps, He's making you see that you need Christ, you need Him,
and He's directing your steps to Him, to Him. And all along,
He is growing us in grace to be more obedient toward Him,
to be more diligent about our walk before Him. But we're never
going to arrive at this in this life. There comes a day, there
is going to come a day though, when it says this. Then, in that
day, when we arise, we will not be ashamed. Christ said, Whoever
believeth on me shall not be ashamed. You're not going to
be ashamed for trusting Him. You're not going to be ashamed
of Him now or then. When I have respect to all Thy
commandments, In that day, we're going to praise Him with uprightness
of heart perfectly, perfectly. But as the Puritan Thomas Manton
said, agreeing with the law that we are the sinner, mourning our
sins, being poor in spirit due to what you hear the law say,
confessing to God our need of Christ, That's honoring God's
law for a believer. We're justifying God in the law's
judgment that we are the sinner. That we are the sinner. And we're
seeking remission of sin in Christ. We're walking by faith and love,
and though our sin nature causes us to go aside sometimes, We
keep the testimony of the Lord, the testimony of the Gospel,
in sincerity and uprightness of heart, believing on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Happiness is looking to Christ. Happiness is following Christ. When our thoughts are filled
with the cares of this life, we don't have any happiness. But when God enables you to set
your affection on Christ at His right hand and tells you, makes
you to know in your heart that your life is right there, that's
when you have happiness. That's when you're strengthened
by the Spirit of God to mortify your flesh. When we sin, when
we find ourselves in bondage, that's not happiness. But when
the Lord enables you to look to Christ and believe every promise
God has made to you to make you see you're complete in Him, so
that you walk after Him and walk by faith, that's happiness. I
don't see anybody who's trying to live under the law in legal
religion, they don't come across as being very happy to me. They
come across as being very fearful. Fearful of men. and fearful that they haven't
done enough. That's not God's way. The law of faith, walking
by faith, is happiness, joy. It's joy. We have peace in Christ. We have righteousness in Christ.
It's joy in Christ. It's joy. That's true happiness,
following Him, walking after Him. But when we look to our
own works, when you start looking to your own works, where do you
end up when you start looking to your own works? Burdened.
You end up burdened. You end up in bondage. But you
look to Christ and you look to His works. And you see all your hope. You
see all your righteousness. You see all your acceptance with
God. And you're happy. You're happy. Walk by faith. Walk by faith. Walk through this world trusting
the Lord. Walk through this world trusting
Christ has redeemed us, and that Christ is providing for us, and
that the Spirit of God is directing us. When you turn to the left
or the right, He says, this is the way, walk in it. And look
into His Word, and whatever God says, do it. And if you've fallen
and you've failed, which I know you have, and I have too, Don't put a burden on one another.
Don't put a heavier yoke on one another. When you sin, aren't
you ashamed of it? When God makes you sin, aren't you ashamed of
it? Don't it just break your heart? When you're in that state,
do you need somebody else to come along and try to add to
that and shame you more? You need somebody to help you
look to Christ, which you need. Do that. do that. That's what
it is to walk in God's. His law is the law of love. That's
what it is. You can't love anybody anymore
than pointing them to Christ and helping them and forgiving
them and being merciful and gracious to them. That's how He loved
us. That's how He loved us. you