"Satisfaction through Sanctification" Psalm 119:9-16 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Psalm one hundred and nineteen, verse nine.

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commandments.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O Yahweh, teach me your statutes.

With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

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

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

I will delight in your statutes.

I will not forget your word.

Buddy Wood was an elder at Emmanuel Bible Church for a long period of time.

I never got to meet him.

Seventeen years ago, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and sixteen years ago he fell asleep in Jesus.

Throughout the last year of his earthly life, he kept a blog that turned into a book.

That blog, uh series of blogs posts, described his journey to the last year of his life and his own approach to devotions, his own approach to spirituality.

The version of it that was given to me as a gift was titled The Toolkit.

That's a good and appropriate title for it because it's essentially a series of verses to memorize and meditate on and to teach your children to the last stage of one's life.

As he was filling out his toolkit, he wrote in his blog about goal setting, about looking over the course of whatever time you have left and setting goals for it.

Now let me describe briefly his treatment that he underwent.

As I'm drawing it from, as I mentioned, I never met him, but I'm drawing this from his writing.

His treatment required him to have his head bolted down.

He would go for cancer treatments, they would turn his head at a particular angle, they would bolt in it, bolt it, fasten it so that it couldn't move.

It was extremely painful so that they could attack the uh part of the brain that had this cancer in it with lasers that were penetrating the skull.

Extremely painful.

And he writes in his blog, my real objective for this year, looking forward to the last year of his life, he writes, it has little to do with treatments, little to do with test results, and some to do with suffering.

The real objective is to bring honor and glory to our God.

How did he do that?

Well, he said, based upon that goal, he dedicated the last year of his life to reading the Bible through with his son.

And they did, talking frequently about what they were reading.

He died not long after they finished reading it together.

I just want you to marvel at the kind of goal setting that is for somebody with an aggressive form of cancer who is estimating has about a year left in his life.

He's looking forward to it and he's saying, What should I do this year?

What do I actually want to accomplish in this year of my life?

I mean, how often do we frame our goals in terms of health, you know, to defeat this cancer, or in terms of treatment, to push through all the protocol?

Even in your own personal life, if you absent cancer, how often do we make our own goals about career advancement or about family accomplishments or finances or athletics and those categories of things, which are all good and noble, of course.

It is appropriate to make goals about finances, it is appropriate to make goals about athletics, it is appropriate to make goals about work and about parenting and about your own education and about your physical well-being.

Of course, it's good to make goals about those kinds of things, otherwise you won't move anywhere, you won't accomplish anything.

And yet it's so easy through this goal setting to be on the hamster wheel that just spins, spin, spins that you don't get a second to step off of it and say, okay, what am I actually shooting for here?

What's the big picture?

What do I really want to accomplish in this year or in this life?

That's the conundrum that plagues us all.

It's so easy to waste our life with those secondary and tertiary goals without stepping back and asking, what am I really trying to do with myself?

What is the real objective in life?

I love the answer.

To bring honor and glory to God.

That's the question that you should be asking about your life.

On this New Year's Eve, the question you should be asking is, how have you set your trajectory?

If your life is a boat, what direction are you facing?

Where are you sailing to?

Or are you just trying to get through every presenting cycle?

Now, obviously, the million-dollar question is you think about what the point of your life is, is going to be your relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

How does one respond to the fact that God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ and lived a sinless life?

How does one respond to the fact that Jesus at the end of his life was betrayed by his friends?

God imputed to him our sin.

He suffered and died for our sin in our place.

He was buried in a grave, he resurrected three days later and ascended into heaven.

And the only way you can be in a right relationship with God is through presenting your faith in Jesus Christ, through coming to God, through faith in Jesus Christ, repenting from your sins, submitting yourself to the gospel, really, presenting your life to God through Christ.

Apart from that, everything else is just meaningless.

Now, that's the entry gate.

That's the narrow gate to get on with your Christian life.

I'm not preaching this sermon at Springfield Mall.

It's at Emmanuel Bible Church on New Year's Eve.

You guys are the kind of people that come to New Year's Eve service.

Amen.

So I'm gonna hazard the guess that most of you have gone through that narrow gate, that you have given your life to Christ, you've believed the gospel through faith, you've turned your life to him, and you are desirous of following Jesus Christ.

That's the narrow gate, and you're through that gate.

But I look around and I'm seeing some of you have been Christians for 20, 30, 40, even some of you for 60 years or longer.

So if you say my goal in life is to be in a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, well you accomplished that 60 plus years ago.

And yet God left you here with day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year ticking by, certainly your goal has to be more forward-looking than something that happened decades in the past.

So granted you're in a saving relationship with Christ, granting that, how then do you set the goals for your life?

What is your objective in life now that you've been reconciled to God through faith in Christ?

Now what?

Now how are you living your life?

Now what is the goal of your life?

Now what are you working for?

Now what end are you laboring for?

And that's the way this psalmist opens the second stanza by framing it in the form of a question.

How can a young man keep his way pure?

In other words, the goal of his life is to bring honor and glory to God through sanctification.

He's phrasing it this way: How holy can I be?

How can I grow, to make it a New Testament language, let's sprinkle some New Testament language on this, how can I grow more like Jesus Christ?

That's the question.

He says in verse 9, how can a young man keep his way pure?

But the driving thrust of that question is, how can I be more like Christ?

It's interesting that he phrases it in terms of a young man.

If you're familiar with Psalm 119, you know that the author was not a young man.

Why does he phrase it this way?

I can only think of the book of Proverbs, which I've been preaching through on Sunday night.

Proverbs is pretty clearly written to somebody between like 12 and 15 or so.

That's kind of the target audience of Proverbs there.

It's aimed at that demographic.

And of course, you know, if you encounter Proverbs for the first time when you're older than that, Proverbs can still be helpful to you, but in many senses the horses left the barn.

So why is the book of wisdom in the Bible, Proverbs, targeted so narrowly towards that kind of demographic?

And the answer is because that is the age, Proverbs 2 says, where the person is looking out over their life and they see the path of wisdom and the path of folly, and they're saying, Which way do I want to go down?

That's that era of life where you're saying, Am I going to live this way or am I going to live that way?

Which is the path of wisdom?

Now you can encounter Proverbs at any age, and the wisdom of God is useful to you.

Proverbs has wisdom for the elderly, it has wisdom for the middle-aged, it has wisdom for the for the widow, and it has wisdom for every category of life.

Proverbs has wisdom for.

So why then is it structured towards the young?

And the answer is because if the wisdom is there for the young and he charges life by it, it will be applicable at every age.

That's the same thing that's happening here in Psalm 119, verse 8.

Psalms 119:8

How can a young man keep his way pure?

I mean, it's a particularly important question for a young man, I suppose, but it is also a particularly important question for a middle-aged man or an elderly man or for any human being.

It is the question: once you've come to faith in God, how then can you keep your way pure?

It is described like this by targeting a young man because it's supposed to get you to ask yourself, what are you doing with your life?

This is a young man's question.

You're looking at the horizon.

You don't know where you're gonna go to college or if you're gonna go to college, you don't know what kind of job you're gonna have, you don't know who you're gonna marry, you don't know where you're gonna live, what are you doing with yourself?

What is your goal?

And the way the goal is framed is around to keep my way pure.

College is secondary, marriage is secondary, parenting is secondary.

The larger looming issue is how can I be more like Jesus Christ?

That's why it's phrased this way.

What are you doing with your life?

You want to be more like Christ.

I would capture it this way: it's a commitment to sanctification.

That's the psalmist goal.

He's charting out a commitment to sanctification in his goal setting and his looking at the horizon, which direction I'm going.

He's got his boat out in the harbor and now he's gonna attack it in one direction or another.

Which direction is he tacking it?

He's tacking it towards sanctification.

Personal sanctification is the psalmist's burden throughout the stanza, really throughout Psalm 119.

But it is crystal clear in verse 1.

I want to keep my way pure.

How?

By living according to God's word, it says in verse 9.

Sorry, verse 9.

I want to keep my way pure by living according to God's words.

That's the goal.

It's not only a good idea to obey God, it happens to be commanded, and it happens to be the pathway towards satisfaction, towards contentment, towards joy in life.

It is the purpose of life for you to become more like Jesus Christ.

There's an immense importance to adorning the doctrine of God our Savior.

That's the language of Titus 2, verse 10.

Titus 2:10

Somebody who has doctrinal knowledge or who knows about God but doesn't adorn their life with good works.

It actually brings harm to the gospel.

Somebody who has knowledge of the Bible, but it's not living it out, brings harm and shame upon Jesus Christ and his good news.

It's for this reason many people mock the gospel because those that reclaim it lack the lives to show it.

That's why there's importance in adorning the doctrine of God, our Savior, with a life of good works, with living, guarding your path, guarding your life, guarding your ways, is the language of verse 9, according to your word.

This is personal exertion.

I hope you understand that your sanctification is not really even in the same category as your faith.

You come to faith in Christ as a gift of grace by God, entirely based upon faith.

It is not on works.

There's nothing you contribute to your conversion except the sin that makes it necessary.

Everything in your conversion is a gift of God that He gives you through faith.

That's justification, where your sins are atoned for.

When you come to faith in Christ, you present your faith to God through Jesus Christ.

The record of your sins is ripped up and thrown away.

The debt is canceled, and you are made forensically or judicially or legally, whatever term you want to use, righteous before God at that moment.

Your sin is canceled.

However, justification is different than sanctification.

Sanctification is now the rest of your Christian life.

You're living out being conformed more and more to the image of Jesus Christ, becoming more like Him, shedding sin.

Your sin was canceled at the cross, but you still are wearing it.

And so you shed it over your life.

You put off sin and you put on righteousness.

That is fueled by faith, of course, but it is energized by works.

If your justification was monergistic, one person working, your sanctification is synergistic, you working with God together.

This is the language the New Testament uses for sanctification.

It's active, striving kind of language.

Think of the idioms in the New Testament or the analogies in the New Testament for the sanctified life.

The sanctified life is compared to an athlete who is straining, to a soldier at war, to a farmer in the field, to a runner at the end of the marathon.

Those are all active languages.

That's sanctification.

I'm going to be sanctified by ceasing my effort.

How would those idioms play out if those people had that attitude?

What would the athlete season be like if he said, you know what, I'm not going to practice this year, I'm going to let go and let God.

What metal would he have around his neck?

You have a millstone around his neck, not a metal.

What would the farmer be like?

The farmer said, you know what, this year?

For my crops, I'm going to let go and let God.

That'd be a hungry farmer.

Or a soldier who said, I'm not going to fight.

I'm just going to let go and let God.

He'd be a conquered soldier.

That's the idioms for sanctification.

That's the analogies for sanctification.

You're supposed to strive to be yourself, Paul says, to discipline yourself, lest having run the race, you find yourself disqualified.

You're supposed to labor for godliness.

Faith justifies you and brings you into right relationship with God.

Now your faith has given you a new capacity.

Your faith brought you from death to life, blindness to sight.

It's opened your eyes.

You used to play in the playground of the prince of the power of this world, the devil.

Now through conversion, you recognize that playground is the pit of hell.

That playground is dangerous for my soul.

And now you have a new capacity and a new energy, a new delight into playing for the Lord, into serving the Lord.

Part of what it means to be converted is to be consecrated to God, set aside for holy use, to devote your life to serving the Lord.

J.C.

Ryle wrote this.

He said, quote, if a person is not consecrated to God in the very day they are converted and born again, I don't even know what conversion means.

That captures it, the goal of the psalm exactly.

Now that you are converted, what is the goal of your life?

You want to be pure.

You want to go towards godliness.

And of course, sanctification is a process.

It comes in degrees.

You put off this sin and then you put off that sin.

You don't shed all your sins immediately.

No, it's a it's an ongoing process the rest of your life.

And it is, while generally a linear process, you're growing in godliness, in other words, it's one-directional.

You know, in reality, there's it's more like the stock market chart.

You know, in reality, it's up and down, it's three steps forward, two steps back.

You know that you put off this sin and you start fighting this other sin and then you put on the old sin again.

You you have victory over this sin, over this sin, and then boom, suddenly you fall down.

You're walking forward in this way, and then you're drugged back.

You're going to war against greed in your life, and you're having success against greed and materialism, and you're growing in that area, and so then you turn your attention to fighting pride in your life, and you're growing in that, and then greed comes back in and bites you like a snake.

And then pride wraps you around like an anaconda, and it's like, what is happening?

And it's up and down, up and down.

It's the image often your sanctification is the person going up the escalator who trips and falls and keeps falling backwards, but eventually they get to the top.

That's your sanctification.

That's why it's helpful to have this kind of goal in Psalm 119.

To look at your life and say, Am I growing in godliness?

If you were to take a snapshot of the person who's falling down the escalator, at any moment they would say, I feel like I'm falling.

Because you are falling.

But take a snapshot in five minutes, and you're like, oh, I actually have gained a couple stairs.

At any moment in your life, you feel like, oh, I'm not being sanctified.

But in New Year's Eve, ask yourself, am I sanctified today more than I was a year ago?

Probably.

At this moment you feel stumbling.

Zoom out a little bit.

It's certainly a process.

It's a process because by the power of God, He has vanquished the power of sin over our life, but the presence of sin is still there.

And so we're changed in one degree of glory to another.

Now, how are we changed?

You have a commitment to sanctification.

My point this morning is your goal is to have a commitment to sanctification by saying, you know what, this year I want to grow in godliness.

How?

Well, first, there's a means given.

The means is the scripture.

The Bible doesn't leave you guessing about how to be sanctified, it spells out pretty clearly, in order to be sanctified, embrace the word of God.

How can a young man keep his way pure?

Well, it's answered by guarding it according to your word.

The means that God gives is scripture.

Now, there's a category in the scripture of the means of grace.

Means of grace is just listening to sermons, singing songs, communion, baptism, giving, prayering, corporate things.

Those are the means, the normal means of grace of the Christian life happen in the context of the church.

That's not really what the psalmist is describing.

He's not talking about with the congregation here.

The psalmist here is talking about individually the means for you to grow as an individual Christian in your own personal sanctification is the scripture.

You devoting yourself to the study of God's word, seeking God in verse 10, in his word.

Understanding that happiness is found in holiness, and holiness is found in conforming your life to God's word.

The scriptures provide the purpose of God in your life, which is to be sanctified, the provision God gives you, which is the Father gives his son, the Father and Son, send the Spirit, and the power of sanctification, which is the Spirit dwelling in you, convicting you of sin and provoking you to love and good deeds.

The Bible is the tool the Holy Spirit uses to convict you of sin and conform you to godliness.

I mean, it's this is how it works.

It's not super complicated.

There's the word of God that's in front of you, and you try to read the word of God and you're trying to study it, and the person apart from the Spirit of God has a difficulty with that.

It's not personal to them.

Certainly they can, you know, diagram Psalm 119.

Oh, it's an acrostic and it goes through all the letters, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's not sanctifying, though.

The person with the Holy Spirit is now engaged with the words of Psalm 119, and the Spirit is convicting them of sin and showing them where in the Psalm their life lacks conformity to what the Word says.

So the Spirit convicts you of sin.

As you read the Word, the Spirit convicts you of sin.

You don't even know that greed is a sin until the Word of God tells you that greed is a sin.

The Spirit convicts you of greed in particular areas of your life.

You're now fighting against the sin.

You fight against it by memorizing scripture about it that combats it.

The Spirit convicts you, the word confronts you, and then the word is your rescue by showing you how to live.

That's why verse 11 says, I've treasured or stored up your word in my heart.

So I don't sin against you.

It's the scripture that propels you to godliness.

It's the scripture that tells you how to live, how to love, what to learn, what sins to put off.

It's the Holy Spirit that ministers to you through the Word of God by opening your eyes to the Word.

So you want to hear what God says about your life?

You read the Bible.

There's so many people that say they go out into nature to hear from the Lord, and they go into pursue silence to hear from the Lord.

And certainly silence helps you think better and meditate better, of course.

But the word of God is how you hear from the Lord.

Nature gives you enough to tell you you're a sinner and to condemn you for it, but not enough to sanctify you.

Silence gives you enough to look internally, which is often the source of temptation more than rescue.

I mean, Jesus went into the wilderness not to learn more about the Lord, but to be tempted by the devil.

You have the word of God.

You want to hear from the Lord?

Seek the Word.

Seek God through his word.

And store the Word of God in your heart.

There are chipmunks and squirrels in our house, in our yard, not in our house, that I know of.

There's chipmunks and squirrels that squirrel their little acorns away under our porch.

And it's like a buffet all winter long.

You'll see them check in and come out.

They stored it away for the winter.

This is what the Christian should be like with the Word of God.

It is stored, is the language in verse 11.

Stored up in the heart.

The word of God is treasured there.

You store it there.

You memorize Scripture so that when you're tempted, when winter comes, you have it there to draw on.

It's the word of God treasured in the heart that produces maturity.

There's no spiritual elites here.

There's no spiritual easy passes here.

The only way to pursue godliness is through the word.

And the ministry of the word to your heart prepares you to be conformed to Jesus Christ.

The images of or the attributes of God, the attributes of Jesus Christ are on display in the Word.

They're on display in the commands.

You know Jesus is content because he warns against greed.

You know he is pure because he warns against lust.

You know he is humble because he warns against pride.

The attributes of God are on display through the very things that God's word prohibits you.

And then God's word is squirreled away in your heart so that when you're tempted, you draw on it to fight sin.

So for example, I mentioned earlier you don't even know greed is a sin until you come across the Bible telling you don't be greedy.

And you're like, oh, okay.

And the Holy Spirit presents areas of materialism in your life.

Okay, I'm recognizing that as a sin.

So now what?

Well, you memorize Scripture.

1 Timothy 6.10.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

By it, many people have pierced their soul with great pangs of grief.

So you memorize that.

So you're tempted in a particular moment of time to be greedy or materialistic.

You draw that verse to mind, and that's how you fight that sin.

You struggle with lust.

And so you memorize Ephesians 5, verse 3.

Ephesians 5:3

Do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among the saints.

And so the word of God is in your heart.

You're tempted to lust.

You draw on Ephesians 5, verse 3, you recite it in your mind.

Ephesians 5:3

That does battle with your temptation.

You're tempted for pride.

You recognize that pride is a sin.

You're tempted to think highly of yourself.

James 4, verse 6.

James 4:6

God is opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble.

So you're living your life.

You're tempted to boast or be arrogant.

You draw on James 4, verse 6 at the moment.

James 4:6

That's how you fight sin.

So the Spirit convicts you of sin based upon the Word.

You draw the Word to mind to fight sin.

That doesn't mean you always defeat sin.

You have the spiritual armor given to you by the Word of God, but it's not bulletproof rest.

You know, it's shields, of course, helmet.

But this thing isn't bulletproof.

You'll sometimes lose to sin.

You'll sometimes fight and win and win.

You'll sometimes fight and say no to sin.

You'll sometimes fight and give in to sin.

But the point is that the more scripture you treasure, the more actively you fight, the more you gain in godliness.

That's the battle that's described here.

That's what the psalmist is trying to do.

Verse 9, I don't want to wander away.

I'm guarding my path according to your word.

Guarding is very defensive language, isn't it?

I'm guarding my path according to your word.

Verse 10, I don't want to wander.

Look at the second part of verse 10.

I don't want to wander from your commandments.

Look at verse 11.

I don't want to sin against you.

He's treasuring the word of God to fight this fight.

And of course, don't forget verse 16.

I will not forget your word.

Another very defensive kind of language.

I'm guarding my path, I'm guarding my mind.

I don't want to forget what I've squirreled away there.

You want to fight sin this year?

Memorize the Bible.

Read the Bible.

Throw yourself into Bible study.

That will fuel your fight against sin.

Secondly, submission.

The means of scripture.

Secondly, the manner is submission.

When you do all this, you read the word and treasure the word, it affects your life by causing your life to be submissive to God's Word.

I mentioned earlier, not everybody who reads the Bible is submissive to it.

There's whole books written on the literature of the Bible and on Bible chronologies and commentaries of the Gospels.

There's so much written about the Bible that's not written by Christians.

You think, how can that person know all the Word of God like that and not be saved?

Because their life's not submitting to what is found in the Word.

So the Bible itself doesn't sanctify you, it's the Bible plus submission.

The Psalm shows that the best thing is hidden in the best place for the best purposes.

The best thing is your sanctification, the best place is the word of God, the best purpose is your becoming like Christ, having your life changed.

So you read the Bible to be brought under authority of the Bible.

I remember the old comedian W.

C.

Fields was once asked why he was reading the Bible, and his response was that he was looking for a loophole.

And often that is the way people approach scripture reading, is looking for an excuse, a way to justify their previously determined course of action.

This is what I want to do.

Now let me find a verse that justifies it.

That's the wrong way of reading the Bible.

The right way of reading the Bible is to say, I have this choice in life.

My overarching goal is to be sanctified, to be more like Christ.

This book tells me how to do it, so now I'm going to read the word to see what Jesus wants me to do in this situation.

That's biblical wisdom, and it comes from submission to the word of God.

You subdue your own desires to the joy that is found in God's Word.

That produces the practice of godliness.

Godliness is the external expression of your inner submission to the Lord.

And what fuels your inner submission here, by the way, is joyful obedience, recognizing that the word of God presents joy, presents blessing to those who follow it.

This submission is seen, we so easily, by the way, think of submission to the word of God as external works.

And some of it's external, of course.

You are doing good deeds to your neighbors and whatnot.

But notice that in all of Psalm 119, not just this stanza, but the whole Psalm 119, your obedience to God is way more internal than that.

Like the battle's in the mind and the heart before it gets to the hands.

In this Psalm, it's not less about the hands, it's more about the head, the heart, and the voice, is where this psalm goes.

There's a battle in the mind to know the word, to memorize it.

That battle is fueled by the love in the heart for the word.

Notice in verse 10, it's with my whole heart I seek you.

This is a heart-driven endeavor.

That's why he doesn't want his feet to wander, because his heart is seeking him.

He stored up the word, verse 11, in the heart.

He keeps going.

Verse 14, in the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I mean, sin is selling out satisfaction in God.

That's why people sin, is they think that the sin will give them more satisfaction than obedience to God.

But it doesn't matter the category of sin: greed, materialism, lust, anger, pride, whatever, there's a desire in your flesh that says, I want to do this, and there's this conviction that this action will bring me more happiness than obedience would.

So when you start to peel back and get to the root of the heart, you realize a great way to fight sin is to increase your heart's desire for the Lord, to magnify the beauties of the Lord in your heart so you desire him more.

That's why he says, I desire obedience more than all riches.

In verse 14.

If you were guaranteed not to get caught, no criminal or legal or personal or practical consequences whatsoever, the Lord would know your actions, but nobody else would.

What kind of sins would you do?

What kind of thing would you steal?

Would you steal something for$10?

It's worth$10.

You would you steal that because you really want it?

Or$100 or$1,000 or a million dollars?

Would you steal a million dollars?

Think of how that would improve your life.

You could pay off half of your mortgage.

Think of how that would improve your life if you just got your hands on a million dollars.

Would you do that if it would involve sin?

And so that's it's every sin is like that.

That's that's greed, but pride is like that.

I mean, would you boast in front of one person, or would you boast in front of a hundred people, or if it got everybody in the world to think of you in a certain way, would you boast?

I mean, that's you're seeing how your satisfaction in your action is what determines whether or not you you do that versus being obedient to the Lord.

And so this is why the psalmist is fighting here, and he's fighting to love his have his heart love God more, and it says in verse 14, more than all riches.

Once you arrive at that category, you're this is the path of sanctification.

Like it doesn't matter how much money I would get, it's not worth it because I love Jesus more than all the riches of the world.

The first time you read verse 14, you think that's hyperbolic language.

He's just exaggerating to make the point.

But as you start to think about it, you realize, no, this conviction in your heart is what drives sanctification.

All the treasure in the world are the pleasure of God.

I choose the pleasure of God every time.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise.

What I want to live my life for is the delight I have in the Lord.

Treasuring the Lord pays dividends more than sin.

And so verse 16 says, I will delight in your statutes.

This is the satisfaction that's connected to sanctification.

I'm satisfied in the Lord.

So I'm going to follow him.

Now I said it negatively, like what?

Would you sin for all the money in the world?

That's a negative thing.

I'm not going to do that so that I have the pleasure of the Lord.

But now make it positive.

Think of the kind of sacrifices people make for worldly goals.

Think of the athlete who gets up at five in the morning every morning, who goes to the gym every day.

Think of the father who moves his family across the country for a better opportunity at work.

And the sacrifices they'll make.

And I know the Washington, D.C.

area is filled with these people.

People will come here for two years, you know, or three years or whatever.

They'll take a transfer to the Pentagon or headquarters or whatever, and they'll work so hard for two or three years.

They'll take their kids out of school, they'll move their family across the country, and they'll put in, you know, what the Navy calls half day, 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

They'll just work the lights out of the place.

They'll make a huge sacrifice in their life for two or three years.

So at the end of it, they can get some kind of promotion and a better paycheck and go back and buy a better house somewhere and provide this or that for their family.

Parents will make huge sacrifices to give their kids better education.

I'm not saying any of those sacrifices are bad or wrong.

In fact, I hope you esteem them.

I hope you esteem the kind of father that would make those sacrifices in his family to provide a better future for them.

It's very normal in our part of the world for people to make extreme sacrifices for work or for sports or for family.

But then those same people will often turn around and say, A devotional time with my family?

I mean, that's that's crazy.

It's too hard to have regular Bible reading.

Think of the kind of discipline and sacrifice I'd have to have in my life in order to read the Bible regularly.

That's nuts.

To bring my family before the Lord.

There's, I mean, soccer practice and this practice and that sport and the other sport and this school and that school and this meeting and that meeting.

We don't have time to do some kind of devotional together.

That's just the normal way we think.

The sacrifices for a 10% pay raise, huge moving van.

Let's go, let's head out.

Read the Bible, whoa.

It comes down to what you delight in.

What you're willing to make the sacrifice for.

What sacrifices would you make for all the riches of the world?

Verse 14 asks.

Well, it's the heart.

You love the word of God.

The mind, you're treasuring the word of God.

It goes to the voice, verse 13.

With my lips I'll declare all the rules of your mouth.

Notice the progression.

He's meditating on the word of God, which causes him to love the word of God, which is now causing him to speak the word of God.

He's not using his voice to brag.

He's not using his voice to tear down.

He's not using his voice to gossip or to slander.

He says, I'm going to use my voice to tell other people what the word of God says.

That's what I want to do with my voice.

God, thank you for the voice.

I'm going to use it to tell people about you.

This is exactly what Jesus meant.

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

He treasures the word of God in his heart.

So when he opens his mouth, what comes out?

Surprise, it's the word of God, the very thing he loves the most.

So there's the progression.

Studying the Word of God in verse 10 leads to treasuring it in verse 11, leads to declaring it in verse 13.

That's what the psalmist has done.

He's going to speak it.

Now I mentioned earlier this psalm isn't acrostic, Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible.

Every stanza goes through a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

So every verse in the first stanza goes through Aleph, the Hebrew A.

So every verse, verses 1 through 8, begins with the same letter.

9 through 16, the second stanza goes through Bet, the B, the Hebrew B, second letter.

So every verse goes to the second letter.

Next stanza, 17 to 24, the third letter, gimel, the fourth, D, Dalet, 25 to 30 32, and so forth, the whole psalm.

It's not in English, of course, because it's in Hebrew, translated in English.

If you're looking, you're not going to see it there, but it believe me, it's in the Hebrew.

Why would you write a psalm like that?

That is a lot of work.

Why would you write a psalm like that?

And there really is only one answer.

You write a psalm like that because it's a mnemonic.

It helps you memorize it.

It's de the medium becomes the message here.

It's demonstrating that you will take, you will corral every letter of the alphabet and order them so that you can better understand the word of God.

You will use the whole expanse of human language and you will give it structure so that you can hang your mind on the word of God.

You can speak it with your mouth and think about it in your head.

It's entirely a mnemonic.

He's saying, I will use every creative way at my disposal to learn the word so that I can live the word.

That's submission.

And that leads, thirdly, to the mind savoring the word.

The mind savoring the word.

This psalmist is his delight is connected to not forgetting God's word.

I mentioned verse 9 is defensive.

I want to guard my feet according to your word.

Verse 16, I do not want to forget your word.

His mind is the one that is doing the delighting and the savoring.

Verse 15, I'm going to fix my eyes in your way.

This is the mind telling the eyes where to look.

That's his commitment.

I'm not going to speak things that are sinful.

I'm not going to look at things that are sinful.

I'm not going to delight in my heart with sinful things.

That's my commitment.

Why?

Because I savor the word of God.

His personal contemplation in verse 15, meditation, is complemented by his personal commitment in verse 16 to delight that is going to live itself out in obedience with his head, his heart, his voice, his feet, his eyes.

That's the psalmist commitment.

So what does it look like to look at the earhead and say, I want to commit myself to sanctification?

It looks like devoting yourself to scripture reading, submitting your life to what you find there, and by savoring and delighting in Jesus Christ through his word.

That's the right effort, through the right means, the word of God, with the right outcome, conformity to Jesus Christ.

That's what the author says he wants to do.

That covers every verse in the Psalm except one.

We did skip one.

Verse 12 Blessed are you, O Yahweh, teach me your statutes.

This verse stands out.

This verse is a prayer.

He snuck a prayer in there.

He's got eight verses of meditation about his own personal obedience, and in the middle of it, he drops a prayer in there.

And there are so many examples of that throughout Psalm 119, it's not just here.

He will often put a prayer in the middle of his stanza.

Why?

Because even though he's saying, I'm the athlete, I'm the farmer, I'm the soldier, I'm committed to treasuring God's word in my heart and living it out, he recognizes he's still dependent upon grace.

Your salvation is entirely based on faith.

Your sanctification is not entirely based on works.

I never said that.

Your sanctification is synergistic.

Two people: your effort and the grace and kindness of the Lord.

And so the athlete says, I'm going to discipline myself, but God, I need your help.

That's what the psalmist says.

I'm going to be devoted to sanctification, but Lord, you gotta help me.

I can't just pull myself up by my bootstraps here.

This is not just a do gooder, try harder, be better kind of sermon.

It's a do good or try harder and be better by the grace of the Lord kind of sermon.

And there's a huge difference between those two.

And so in the middle, the psalmist says, I just want the Lord's help.

God, you're so blessed.

You're so happy, Yahweh.

So teach me.

Teach me how I can be happy like you.

The student slash psalmist invites the divine author to be his instructor.

He says, I want to sit at your feet.

God, you teach me this year.

You be my gracious teacher, I'll be your dependent disciple.

The textbook is the sufficient word.

I'm enrolled in your class, God.

You're my teacher.

I submit myself to you.

This prayer shows you that even the psalmist, as much as he delights in God's word in his heart, does not trust himself to be sanctified by himself.

Unless the king will be his keeper, he labors in vain.

It doesn't mean literally that every house is built in the world, the builder has to be a Christian, or the house will fall down.

No.

It means if you're trying to build the sanctified life and you're spinning your wheels and the Lord isn't blessing it, it will fall down.

Your life will be for naught unless the Lord is the one building the house.

And so he prays, God, I got the tools, I got the word of God, I got the workers, my head and my heart and my feet and my voice.

So I got the workers here, I got the tools and the supplies here.

We submit ourselves to you, Lord.

Build the house.

That is a prayer that shows boldness, but also an absolute dependence.

It's an urgent prayer.

He desires holiness in his walk, a heart that is cultivated, religion, a heart that is jealous for the fear of God, watchful for the danger of sin, regarding the honor of Jesus Christ.

I mean, that's the psalmist's heart here.

And yet he still needs an intercessor.

He still needs the Lord to be merciful to him.

God's giving you time.

TikTok, TikTok.

He's giving you a year, another year in front of you.

Perhaps not all of you will live through this year, perhaps the Lord will return before this year is over.

But nevertheless, God gives you times and seasons to mark your life well.

So mark out the year ahead and commit in your heart to next New Year's Eve, looking back on the year of 2024, if the Lord tarries, and seeing your growth and godliness.

Lord, we know that there is more holiness to be attained in this world than we can imagine.

There's more happiness to be found in holiness in this life than we can imagine.

Lord, keep our minds in your word, keep our hearts away from thinking that all of the satisfaction we found in you is in the next life.

We know that's not true.

You've left us here in this world to be sanctified.

But God, we know ultimately that it is you that sanctifies us.

You are the agent of sanctification.

It's your word, it's the means, but it's your spirit that is doing the sanctifying.

So we can genuinely say with Solomon, unless the Lord builds the house, the one who labors labors in vain.

We don't want to spin our wheels this year, Lord.

We don't want better grades and better scores and better paychecks and better families, better houses and tools and toys.

More than all that, Lord, we want a better relationship with you.

So we pray that you would build the house of our sanctification this year.

That's our request in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

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 with boldness.