Psalm 119

The First sermon in our series: "Summer of Psalms

Scripture: Psalm 119

Dr. Jeff Crawford

Teaching Pastor, President Cross Theological Seminary

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thank you for joining us today. At Crosschurch, we believe people need Jesus. People need each other. People change the world. And people leave legacies. Our desire is for you to understand, accept, and grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening. If you would like to know more about Crosschurch, please visit CrossChurch.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

The rest of the summer, six more weeks, we're going to study the Psalms. We're going to look at six of them in particular, okay? But, you know, just by way of setting up our study of the Psalms, and I hinted at this two weeks ago when I preached here. Hinted at it. And I want to put this phrase on the screen that I kind of rolled past quickly a couple weeks ago. Let me tell you what the Psalms really are. The Psalms are the prayer book of the church. That's what they are. They have a unique position in the Bible, like very literally, I'll get to that in a minute. But you know, the Bible, this Bible, this Word of God that we have, it's got all these books, two testaments, and there it's it's not all the same, though. There's different kinds of literature in the Bible. You've got the beginning of the Bible, the law, then you have historical books, you've got prophetic books. Those are three different kinds of literature. Jump over to the New Testament. You've got four Gospels. A gospel is a it's a biographical telling of the life of Jesus. We have four of those. You've got Acts, which is sort of like the sequel to the Gospels, like what happened next. Then you've got a bunch of letters of Paul and others writing to the churches and different people, all these different kinds of literature. Then you have Psalms, which is completely and wholly unique. It is literally the prayer book of the church and has been that way for thousands of years. I adopted this language from an old pastor, Eugene Peterson, who's now in heaven, an old Presbyterian pastor. He said, Psalms are the prayer book of the church. The Psalms are the prayers of those who have gone before, and they give us words when we have no words. Let me say it this way. Have you ever been stuck in your prayer life? Like you sit down to pray, prayer's a good thing, and then you're just kind of stuck, and you're stuck in the following way. You just don't have any new words. Like, like it seems like every time you sit down to pray, you say kind of in your mind or out loud the same things. And there's nothing wrong with that. But after, you know, it does maybe get in your head a little bit. Like, I just, it's always just the same kind of thing. And so you feel a little bit stuck. Then you have the prayer, you have the prayer book of the church. What words that can get you unstuck. Um, anybody in here ever been through a season of grief in your life? Maybe even today you've walked in and you're in a season of grief in your life and you're struggling with words on how to pray. There are words in the Psalms for those who are stuck in grief. Anyone in here walked through a season of pain or suffering? Or maybe you're there today, he's watching online even. There are words in Psalms for your pain and your suffering. Anybody in here ever been at a season in your life where there's just like this, you can't even define it, but like a sense of longing, like you just, there's something more that you're supposed to be looking for, seeking for, and you're just stuck in how to like get that out. There are words and psalms for those who are longing for the next but don't know what that is. Here's one. Anybody in here ever had questions? Questions for God, like the why and the where are you? And there are words and psalms for that. Anybody in here ever like been frustrated and you've crossed over and you're on the edge? And let's just say it, you're mad. You're angry, maybe even angry at God. And there are words in the Psalms for that. People who've prayed that. Listen, not all of life is that. I mean, anybody in here walking through or been through a season of victory in your life, a season of joy, the birth of a child, a marriage, you know, some celebration in your life, a graduation moment, a new job, like something wonderful is happening in your life, and you're overcome like with just gratitude towards. There are words in the Psalms for that. You name it, there are those who've prayed the prayers before you. And so today, we're going to begin a study of this prayer book, this prayer book of the early church. So if you're if you're with me, um, let's pray one more time and ask God just to prepare us, get us ready for what we're about to do. Let's pray. Lord, I come before you. And I thank you for this moment to be with my church family here at Pinnacle Hills. And I pray for all those joining us through technology today. Lord God, rest on us in this room as we begin something new. I pray for ears to be open so that we can hear what you want to say to us. I pray that you would open our eyes to see what you want to show us, open our minds to understand. To understand. But most importantly, God, would you open our hearts to receive what you want to give us? I pray for the preacher today. I pray for myself. I'm just a man, I'm fallible, so I want to be sure that I say all that you want me to say. So guide me, steer me. I don't want to say anything you don't want me to say, so just prevent me from going in any direction I don't need to go. I pray that you would cover this message now with the blood of Christ. And I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. And everyone said, Amen. Amen. All right. If you are a note taker, you're gonna love today. I'm gonna give you a lot of things that you can jot down along the way. If you uh if you take notes or underline or do things in your Bible, I'm gonna give you some stuff to do even in that. All right. Let me start off by just talking in general about the book of Psalms. Did you know that the book of Psalms, there's 150 of them, did you know that the book of Psalms is actually divided into five books? Did you know that? Uh if you if you if you're scrolling through or you're turning through the pages of Psalms, you're gonna find some divisions that are noted for you. I'm gonna put them on the screen so you can just kind of see. If you wanted to just jump there and just kind of look and verify, these are the divisions of the book of Psalms on the screen. Um you know, the verses, the verses in our Bibles, you know, the verses were man, man inserted. Uh that was done by man, not by Holy Spirit. Uh that's so that we can navigate the the Bible a little more easily. But there are some other notations that carried over from inspiration and this division of five books of Psalms. So five books of five ways in which God's people pray to God. Uh you so you have to you have to ask the question. I mean, it kind of leaves you wondering why five? Is there anything significant about five, Chris? Chris is one of our one of our professors here in our seminary. He's also our campus pastor, and uh he knows he's tracking with me. Is there is there something with five? Let me point this out to you. It's just interesting to me, and I don't think by coincidence, that the Bible in general begins in the Old Testament with a collection of five books. They stand alone, these five books, as a separate collection. We we call them the Pentateuch, Penta meaning five. Uh they might be referred to as the books of Moses. You know them by their names: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. You know the fifth one? Deuteronomy, the first. These are what we call the law. This is when God speaks. It's when he gives his guidance. This is when he says to his people, This is this is what who I am, and this is what it means to follow me. This is the law. Jews refer to the first five books of the of the Old Testament as the Torah, which means the law. And then you have, you just happen to have a prayer book with five books. And I would put it on the screen this way to us. The law is where God speaks, and the Psalms are where the people respond. There's a lot, what I'm saying is there's a lot more going on here that you can miss if you're not paying attention. Today we're going to choose to pay attention. Let me give you a just kind of a neat way, a neat way that you can read the Psalms, okay? I call it the add five method if you're into that kind of thing. So here's the way you would kind of give yourself an overview of all five books in one month. Okay, there's 150 of them, but they're divided into five books. Here's how this would work. On the first day of a given month, August 1st, you could do it. You could start today, but for simplicity's sake, August 1st, you would read Psalm 1. Then on the second day of August, you would add five. So one plus, I know it's summertime. I know we're not in school right now. I know some of us are math challenged, but one plus five is what? Six. So on the second day of August, you would read chapter six of Psalms. And then on the third day, you would add five. You see, you see where I'm going? So six plus five, this is getting a little high math now. Eleven, right? I'm not going to keep going. You the whole point is, and you don't even have to memorize anything. Just bookmark it on your phone, stick a bookmark in, and when you get up in the morning, add five, jump ahead five, read, and in 30 days you will have read selections from all 150 Psalms, all five books of the Psalms. If you really are ambitious, then the first day of the next month, like September 1st, you would start in Psalm chapter 2. And then on the second day, you would add five and read Psalm 7. If you just kind of like did that little pattern over the course of five months, you would read every single Psalm. But you'd be doing it by getting a full collection, a sampling collection of all five, a taste of all five books. Today, today we're going to look at one of these psalms. Today we're going to look at Psalm 119. So hopefully you've got your Bible open to Psalm 119. And uh and boy, wouldn't it just be like us to just, in addition to introducing all of this, to pick the longest psalm in the book of Psalms today to talk about, all right? Um and and and and it's it gets even better than that. It's not just the longest psalm in the book of Psalms. What we're looking at today, Psalm 119, it's the longest chapter in the entire Bible. It's 176 verses. We will not read all of them, and the people said, but what if we did? Interestingly, Psalm 119, it sits literally right in the middle of your Bible. So, you know, I'm I'm uh I know a lot of us have have phones and we scroll the word of God. And I'm in no way like negative or anti-having a Bible on your phone. I think it's fantastic, it's a great tool. You can do things that you can't do in other ways. Like like years ago, Julie and I we led a uh a trip to Israel uh with my church. I was pastoring in Fort Smith. And when you go up on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, well, the Temple Mount is controlled by Muslims. And they do not allow you to bring a Bible onto the Temple Mount. But I can bring a phone. And so, you know, I'm on the Temple Mount with my phone, and I'm like, you know, I'm being rebellious, right? And I'm reading the Word of God. So I can do that. You know, that's so it's I love that. But I will say this there is, I believe, an advantage, and I think every Christian, I think you should own a print copy of the Bible because there's a way that you can understand the Bible, experience the Bible, and feel the Bible that you cannot feel while you're scrolling. And this is one of the ways. If you take your Bible and open it up to the middle, you are going to land on Psalm 119, the longest psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible, like an anchor for the whole Bible. Right there, Psalm 119. It gets even more interesting. If you start looking at Psalm 119, you're gonna notice there's some little divisions there that don't appear in any other psalm in the entire book of Psalms. And those little notations have funny words to start off. And I'm just gonna jump ahead and spoil it for you. There's 22 sections, 22 sections of the Psalm 119 with a little funny notation to begin each section. Each section has eight verses, they're exactly the same length. Uh and let me tell you what those little notations are. Those are Hebrew letters. Hang with me. I'm gonna go seminary president on you for a minute, okay? Are y'all hanging with me? You good? All right. So in in the English language, we have 26 letters in our alphabet. Everybody got that? This is once again kindergarten, kindergarten class. 26 letters in our A, B, C, D, E, F, G, right? H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P, good. Q R S T U V X Y N Z. You got it, right? The Bible doesn't come to us in English. The Bible comes to us, the Old Testament comes to us in Hebrew. And guess what? In the Hebrew language, there are not 26 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Guess how many letters there are in the Hebrew alphabet? 22. Aleph, Bayth, Gimel, Daleth, Hey, Waz, Zayan, Heyth, Taith, Yod. You know it. If it sounds like I'm speaking a foreign language, it's because I am. Speaking Hebrew. And if you look at the 22 divisions of Psalm 119, you will notice that in order, the Hebrew alphabet is listed to highlight the beginning of each section of the 22 sections of Psalm. This is not by accident. The Bible is inspired, the content is inspired. But let me also say that the organization of it is inspired by God on purpose. This is the kind of this is God's way of like putting a magnifying glass on things for us. Like, hey, there's a lot going on here. Pay attention. Look at how it's been crafted and put together. And it gets even better than this. Can you go one layer deeper with me? Can you? Can you, Brad? I'm not sure. Can you? All right, Brad says he can. One layer deeper. So the beginning of each section has a title and it's a Hebrew letter. The first word of each section is a word that begins with that particular Hebrew letter. All right, let me show you. If your mind just went and it's Sunday morning and you did not sleep good because your neighbors were shooting off fireworks way too late into the night, hang with me. I'm going to show you how this works. Let me show you the first few verses from section one of Psalm 119. Put it on the screen. Here we go. Here's what it looks like. If you have a print version of the Bible, it's going to look something like this. Here's verse one. This first section is Aleph. That's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, not A. That's English. Aleph in Hebrew. Now, the first word of this section is the word, everybody say it. What is it? Blessed. And you're going, but Jeff, that doesn't have anything. You're thinking English. The English word is blessed. The Hebrew word, listen to me, is the Hebrew word Asre. And the Hebrew word Asrey begins with Olive. Okay, anybody like, oh, okay. I'll follow you now. Look what it says. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. Already out of the gate, here's what Psalm 119 is saying to us. Do you want to be blessed in your life? Who in here wants to be blessed in their life? Can I see your hands? Absolutely. We want to be no one wants to be cursed. We want to be blessed. You want to be blessed in your life? Verse 1, live your life with the Bible as your guide. The Word of God. Want to be blessed? Verse 2, seek God with every fiber of your being. If you seek God with every fiber of your being, you will be Asre blessed. Want to be blessed? Find the way of God, verse 3, and walk in that way. And you will be Asre blessed. Let's move to section two. I'm not going to do this for all 22 sections. But I am going to do something different. Hang with me. Section two, look at how this section begins. It begins in verse 9. And the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet after Aleph is the Hebrew letter Baith. Baith. There it is. Everybody say baith. And the first word of that section is how or how can. That's the English. But in Hebrew, it's the Hebrew word beh. B-E with a little curly Q on top of it, which begins with the Hebrew letter faith. Y'all see how this is working? See how this is? And it's this way all the way through. Look at verse 9 through 11. 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. And with that, look at that. One of the verse 11, one of the most famous verses in the entire Bible. Like in the whole Bible. If you've been alive for a certain number of decades, you may have learned this verse in a little bit different way, a different, a different uh version. Something that sounds like this Thy word I have hidden my heart that I might not sin against thee. Y'all know that verse, don't you? Y'all know that verse, don't you? If you're paying attention, you're starting to see a theme with Psalm 119. God is trying to say something in a very specific, pointed, magnifying glass, powerful kind of way. But to really get the thrust of it, we gotta go one layer deeper. Can you go one layer deeper? Do you have any choice? No, you don't. Alright? Please don't walk out. Or tune off. Here's what I'm gonna do. Just and I'm gonna do this quick. I've really debated about doing this, but there's just no other way to like show you than to show you. I'm gonna read 20 more verses. And I'm gonna do it fairly quickly. I'm gonna read just the first verse of each of the next 20 sections of this psalm. And I want you to look for the theme. Like it's a it's it's like it's it's clear, and I've I've tried to help you out, so I've underlined some things. All right. So I'm gonna go quick so you can just watch on the screen. But if you're if you've got a Bible or you're scrolling, you're gonna see it. You're gonna see it exactly like I'm giving it to you. So here we go. The next section begins in verse 17. The Hebrew letter is gimel, and look at this. Verse 17 says, Deal bountifully with your servant that I might live and keep your word, right? The next section is in verse 25. The Hebrew letter is Daleth, and it says, My soul clings to the dust. Give me life according to what? Your word. All right. Verse 33 is the next section. The Hebrew letter is hey. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep them to the end. The next section is verse 41. The Hebrew letter is wa. And it says, Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. The next section starts in verse 49. The Hebrew letter Is Zion. Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. Verse 57. 57 is the next section. The Hebrew letter is Haif. The Lord is my portion. I promise to keep your words. Verse 65 is the next section. The Hebrew letter is haif. You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to everybody say it. Your word. Verse 73, the next section, Yod, the Hebrew letter Yod. Your hands have made and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Verse 81 is the Hebrew letter calf. My soul longs for you. I hope in your word. Verse 89, the next section, the Hebrew letter Lamed. Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Verse 97 is the next section. The letter is MEM. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your word is my meditation all the day. Look at that. Verse 105 is the Hebrew letter noon. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Anybody ever heard that one before? Somebody ought to make a song out of that. All right. Verse 113 is the next section. The Hebrew letter is Somic. I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. Verse 121 is the Hebrew letter Agon. I have done what is just and right. How do you know what's just and right? You know what's just and right from your word. Do not leave me to my oppressors. Verse 129 is the next section. The Hebrew letter is the letter Pei. Your testimonies, they are wonderful. Therefore, my soul keeps them. Verse 137 is the Hebrew letter, Sade, Sade. Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. Verse 145 is the next section. We're getting close to the end. Goph is the letter. It's the Hebrew letter. With my whole heart I cry. Answer me, O Lord, and I will keep your statutes. Verse 153 is the next section. Raish is the Hebrew letter. Look on my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget your law. Two more. Verse 161 is the Hebrew letter seen sheen. It's interchangeable. Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words. And then finally, verse 169 is the last section of Psalm 119. It's the Hebrew letter ta. Let my cry come before you, O Lord, and give me understanding according to. Everybody say it? Your word. There you have it, folks. Do you see the theme? I mean, it's God screaming at us. If you look, you gotta look. You gotta take the time. Listen, if you've ever wondered why we're so big on the Bible at Cross Church, it's because of this. It's because of how the Bible anchors itself in the Word of God. If you've ever wondered, you know, why we preach God's word, like we read it, we preach it, we read it every single Sunday from this pulpit. These are not about man's words, these are about God's word. If you've ever wondered, like what's the deal? It's because of all of this. It's because the Bible itself runs to the centrality of God's word as the central focal point of all of our lives. So, what is the central focal point of your life? I want to begin to bring the plane down a little bit by going back to that second section of Psalm 199. I'm just gonna revisit it very, very quickly because I want to show you how this all gets applied. And you can do this all the way through. I'm just gonna show you one section and we'll be finished today. Verse 9. Roll back verse 9. The beginning of that second section. And a question is asked. How can a young man keep his wife pure? I think you could just say a young woman keep his wife. I'm thinking about the seven hundred and nine teenagers that we sent off to camp. Young men, young women. They've got they've got a different journey than most of us have. We live in a very, very polluted world. The next generation, they're gonna have more mud to muck through than my generation. Or your generation. And Psalm 119 gives us hope. It gives us hope, though. How? How can a young man or a young woman keep their way pure? By guarding it according to everybody say it. Your word. Your word. You gotta be in the word, man. You gotta be in the word. Um let me tell you just just real quickly about I'm gonna I'm gonna make a quick jump to the New Testament. I'm gonna just tie some things together for you. Jump over to the New Testament. Let me talk about a guy named a Hebrew, a Jewish boy named John from the New Testament. Anybody ever heard of John from the New Testament? So he wrote he wrote a gospel, the gospel of John. And this Hebrew Jewish boy, he begins his gospel this way. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. Jump down to verse 14, and John says, the word became flesh, dwelt among us. John knew something about the word, like the word indwelling us. John also wrote three little letters. First second, third, John. That's just creative first second third. They're small. In that first little letter in chapter two, we see something that John writes that tells me that John was a really good student when he went to school. He knew his Old Testament, and he knew the prayer book of the church, and he knew the book of Psalms, and he knew Psalm 119. Look at this on the screen. These are the words of John. We just went from Psalm 119 to 1 John. Look on the screen. John says, I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. How do you overcome the evil one? Listen, we just got done with a whole series on satanic attacks in the life of every believer. How do you overcome the evil one? You overcome the evil one by being strong. And how are you strong? You're strong when the word of God abides in you. Like let me say it this way: it's really hard to be reading your Bible and watching porn at the same time. Thy word I've hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Have you hidden the word of God in your heart? Are you digesting this word every day? Listen, I'm glad you're here on Sunday. I'm glad you're watching online. I'm glad that I get to be preaching today. Not about me, but I'm glad I get to do it. And here's the deal. I don't think I'm the greatest preacher in the world. I don't think I'm the worst preacher in the world. You can have your opinion, and that's okay too. But here's what I would say. If you're relying upon whoever preaches the word on Sundays, if you're relying on that to be the sum total of your digestion of God's word, you're gonna starve to death and be in pitiful shape. We're not that good. Once 30 minutes on Sunday is not enough. You gotta have the word of God consuming your life. Verse 10 says this, and I'm done. With my whole heart I seek you. With my whole heart, I seek you. On Monday, with my whole heart I seek you. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, with my whole heart I'm seeking you. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, with my whole heart I'm seeking you. So the question here is this do you? Do you seek him with your whole heart? I'd ask you to bow your heads, close your eyes just for a few minutes. We're about done, we're gonna sing and worship. But I do wonder what the word of God has done on your heart today. I've given you one little tool you can use to make the Psalms a living part of your life. Ongoing. And it doesn't have to be complicated at all. Just have a copy of God's word, be investing in God's word, put yourself under God's word at church, study God's word with people like you. Plant it deep in your life, and that is how you overcome the evil one. It doesn't mean the evil one's not gonna come after you, but it doesn't mean you live in defeat when he does. You live in victory. Thy word I've hidden in my heart, so that I may not sin against you. So if you're here today, the altar's open. Maybe you just want to come and just bow before the Lord by way of commitment, recommitment to his word. Maybe some of you are going to walk out of here today, and you know what? The rest of the summer, going into the fall, I'm gonna take this whole Bible thing to a whole new level. If you need help, you let us know. If you're here today and you're not saved, Jesus is the word in flesh. And he does want to indwell you and come into your heart and live inside of you and forgive you of your sins. He wants to give you the free gift of eternal life. The ultimate expression of Psalm 119 is Jesus. So our team is going to be here at the front. You want to be saved today, you come as soon as we stand and sing, you come, don't wait. You make the move, make a move. First step will be your hardest. After that, it's easy. And you just walk up to any of our staff and say, I'm ready, be saved. And they'll pray with you. Show you how to ask Jesus into your heart, the word into your heart today. Father, would you move in this room? May we be a people of the word, in love with the word, committed to the word, absorbed in the word. May the word protect us, shield us, cover us. Thank you for the book of Psalms, a book that we can lean on when we have no words. Can let these words be our words. And I pray right now for lost people to be saved, and I pray for hurting people to be healed. In Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

If you have questions about what you have heard or would like more information about your relationship with Jesus, please email us at info at crosschurch.com or visit our website at crosschurch.com. At Crosschurch, our mission is to reach Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world for Jesus Christ.