As preached by Timothy O'Day.
1) Build your life on God's good Word (49-51).
2) Interpret life according to God's Word (52-53).
3) Rehearse God's Word in your daily life (54-56).
Hope Built On God’s Good Word
Psalm 119:49-56
January 5, 2025
Let me introduce you to two fictional individuals, Joe and Jane. Any similarities between you and either of these characters are unintentional. Joe and Jane are both Christians, meaning that they have set their hope on the promise of Jesus Christ. They believe the Bible and what it says about them—that they are sinners and cannot save themselves. They believe what the Bible says about the penalty of sin—the wages of sin is eternal death and separation from God in hell. They also believe what the Bible says about the hope of eternal life, namely that God the Son took on flesh, lived a life of perfect obedience, and then went to the cross as a substitute for sinners. They also believe the promise of the gospel, that if they place their faith in Jesus Christ, their sin will be counted toward him and his righteousness will be counted toward them. As such, by faith in Christ, they are no longer destined for hell but are children of God and destined for eternal life. Upon faith, they both received the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the eternal life to come. As Christ commands, they have both been baptized as a public proclamation of their faith in Christ, uniting with him.
They can both sing together with perfect honesty,
“My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name”
While that is true for both of them, only one of them feels it. The work of Christ guarantees that each one is saved, but only one of them feels confident in this guarantee. The other often feels hopeless, beaten down, living with shattered dreams and harried by constant trouble. In truth, each of them has experienced great hardships, but only one lives as if hardship defines life.
What’s the key difference between the two? Let me start by telling you what it isn’t. It isn’t the work of Christ. Christ is the guarantee of your hope. Because of Christ, your hope is secure, no matter how you feel about it. Your salvation doesn’t depend on you but wholly and graciously rests on him.
If you are in Christ, your security in Christ does not fluctuate between being safe and being in danger. He holds you firm. So what is the difference?
While the grounds of your hope cannot fluctuate, your confidence in your sure hope can. One of the key determining factors about how you feel in regard to your hope is your exposure and interaction with the promises of God found in his Word. What I mean is this: if your exposure to God’s Word is small and your exposure to other sources great, then you will be tossed around by the waves of change in your life and feel adrift much of the time. But if you are anchored by God’s Word, even when storms come you feel secure even if you are still afraid.
Psalm 119 tells us how we are to have this sure hope, this confident expectation, as we expose ourselves to God’s Word.
But before we jump into our passage, let me just give you a little background on Psalm 119. If you do not recall, Psalm 119 is the longest of the Psalms. The main message of this Psalm is that God’s commands—his words, precepts, testimony, statutes, commandments, law, judgment, and all that he says—display his goodness and love; they provide what is needed for man. Psalm 119, like the other Psalms, is a poem. It contains 22 eight-stanza verses, which move through the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first line in each stanza begins with it’s respective letter, meaning that verses 49-56 all begin with the letter zayin in Hebrew. Writing the psalm this way is meant to show that God’s Word provides all that you need, and verses 49-56 do not deviate from this plan of showing us that our needs are provided by God’s good word.
This is why Psalm 119 is the perfect place for us to look in order to see how God’s Word gives us hope and how we should take it up to live in that hope. Let me point out three ways our passage addresses this topic.
How can you use God’s Word to be assured of your hope in Christ?
Build your life on God’s Word (49-51).
This section of Psalm 119 begins with a call for God to remember his word to his servant in verse 49. The reason he wants God to remember is because the psalmist has built his hope on this word, which is called a promise in verse 50.
So let’s begin with two questions: who is this servant and what is this promise? The identity of the servant depends on who you think wrote this psalm. If you think David wrote it, then the servant is David. I you think someone else wrote it, then that is who you think the servant is. But no matter who you think the servant is, the promise to the covenant that God made with David in 2 Samuel 7. In that chapter, David tells Nathan the prophet that he will build a temple for the Lord. Nathan affirms this plan, but then the Lord visits him in the night and gives him a message for David. Simply put, God tells David that David will not build him a house. Rather, God would build David a house. Not a literal home for him to use as a residence, but a dynasty. God promised David that one of his sons would sit on his throne forever. Now, as time went on, there are only two possible ways for this promise to be fulfilled. Either David would have to have a son who sat on the throne, who then would have a son to sit on the throne, who would then have a son sit on the throne, and on and on. As you read the Bible, you see that this isn’t what happens. But there is another possible way for this promise to be fulfilled: David has a descendent who lives forever and in that way stays on the throne. While David believed that he would have a series of sons who sat on the throne, he also believed that one day he would have a son that would never die and who would hold the throne forever. This is why David prophesies that there will be a king who does not see corruption in Psalm 16 and that he would one day have a Lord over him who would sit on a throne in Psalm 110.
This is who Jesus Christ is. He is the fulfillment of the Covenant made with David, he is the King who, though he died, did not stay dead and is now raised to live forever. He will never die again, death no longer has dominion over him.
Whether or not the writer of Psalm 119 is David, this is the promise that is in view. How can I say that? Because even though it was a promise to David, it was a promise for all mankind. This is exactly what David says after he hears the promise in 2 Samuel 7:19,
“You have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord GOD!”
David recognizes that this promise is not just for him and his family. It isn’t even just for Israel. The coming King will reign over all, so it is a promise and instruction for all mankind to bow before this King. He will come and make all things right.
This is why the psalmist places his home in this promise and why we celebrate and believe this promise as well. Jesus is our King and the foundation for our hope.
All of God’s servants, including David, place their hope in the promise of the Messiah—that he would redeem us from sin and rid the world of sin. In the Old Testament, God’s servants looked forward to the first coming of Christ. Today, we celebrate his first coming and look forward to his second. But in both cases, Christ is our hope.
Hope Built On Christ Withstands Hardship
The result of building your hope on the promise of the Messiah is that you can stand firm in the midst of hardship. This is what we see in verses 50-51. In those verses, the psalmist says that this promise of the Messiah gives him comfort when he is afflicted. When insolent men utterly deride him, he does not turn away from God’s Word in which he finds this promise of eternal life.
Are you mocked for staying pure in a culture that celebrates sexual licentiousness? Have you been called a fool because you trust in Christ? Believe the Bible? Aim to live in accord with what Christ says? Do you feel pressure to get along with immoral living, accepting it as normal?
These are afflictions in the present age that can destroy your peace and make you feel flung around and in danger. But when you build your life on the promise of Christ, you are secure even if people denounce you, slander you, and fire you.
The Danger of Elevating Good Things to “God Things”
One of the great dangers that can undermine the security of our hope is to place our hope in good things instead of God. You can elevate good things to be “God things,” meaning that they hold the place of God in your affections, hopes, and pursuits. What are some of these good things? Marriage. Having a good reputation. Money. If these are elevated to the top, then you will compromise when they are risked. If your hope is built on marriage, then you will crumble when your spouse fails you. If your hope is built on your reputation, you will slowly but surely become a dishonest man, hiding his sin. If your hope is built on money, then the moment your finances are threatened you will not care about what God has to say about your life. You will only care about what will keep your finances stable.
Marriage, reputation, and money are all good things, but they are foundations of sand upon which you should not build your hope. They will not last. But Christ will.
Interpret life according to God’s Word (52-53)
As the psalmist is confronted with wickedness, his thinking is not controlled by his situation and the discomfort that insolent men pour on him. Rather, his thinking is controlled by what God has said. Look at verse 52,
“When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O LORD.”
That is to say, when he is afflicted, his thoughts don’t center on the difficulty he is facing. They center on what he knows God will do to him and to others according to his word. The word for “rules” in this verse has the meaning of “judgment.” He is stopping and considering what Scripture records about God’s dealings with those who trust him and those who reject him.
He is reflecting on the fact that while all of humanity turned against the Lord, Noah was found as righteous in his generation. God brought him through the flood while everyone else was judged in its waters.
He is considering the reality of the Passover, when God directed his people to sacrifice a lamb and spread its blood on their doorposts. In doing this, the angel of death that God was sending over Egypt would pass by their homes and take the first born son of all who did not heed his warning.
He is thinking about the fact that when the 12 spies went into the Promised Land to scout it out, 10 spies said it was impossible to take the land but 2, Caleb and Joshua, believed God’s promise that he would give them the land. Only Caleb and Joshua were granted entrance into the Promised Land after the 40 years of wilderness wandering.
Do you see what he is doing? He isn’t just interpreting his situation by how he feels. He is interpreting it by what God says will happen to those who trust him and those who don’t. And he could contemplate many other such events to remember that God delivers those who trust him and judges those who forsake him.
This is what makes continuing to trust God in difficulty possible. As you live as the odd man out in society, perhaps even being maligned for your faith, you can remember that God will be just. In fact, this frees you to see sin for what it is, as an offense against God and not merely something against you. That’s what we see in verse 53.
Seeing Sin As Sin
Look at verse 53,
“Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.”
Considering God’s rules from of old not only brings him comfort by the fact that God will be just, but it teaches him to feel rightly about the sin of others. As the psalmist considers God’s Word and then considers those who forsake God’s instruction, he is filled with “hot indignation,” which is righteous anger.
As we see others sin, we can view it merely as a disinterested spectator watching events unfold between parties that we do not know. It’s like watching a prank video online. It seems funny, but only because you don’t know anyone involved. If you switched out the person being pranked with someone you love, suddenly you feel very differently about what has taken place.
This is what happens when you consider sin from God’s perspective. Sexual immorality isn’t just a choice that two people make, it is an act of desecrating his image and telling lies about who he is. Every single person is an image bearer of God, which means that every single person has the power of trying to display to the rest of creation what God is like. Every act of selfishness is a billboard to creation declaring, “God is selfish.” Every lie cries out to the world, “God cannot be trusted.” Every time someone takes advantage of another, it is a pronouncement, “God will swindle you.”
When someone rejects God’s law, he is desecrating the image of God and actively seeking to malign God and turn people away from God.
But that is not typically how we will think of sin, until we think about sin according to God’s Word. Then, as we love the Lord, we will grow to hate sin—not only sin out in the world, but the sin that remains in our own lives and hearts as well.
Thinking Directs Your Feeling
How do you feel about the common sins of our age? Your feelings are directed by your thinking. What are you using to think about sin and how to respond to it?
If sin is acceptable to you, then your view of God is too small. Sin is acceptable when God is not worthy of your worship, reverence, and attention. As you read the Bible, God never waves his hand at sin as if it is nothing. He always deals with it according to what it is—treason against him, pollution of his good creation, and violence against those he loves.
Instead of letting the culture define how you think about God and sin, take up God’s Word and ask, “Why is God worthy of worship?” Ask, “Why is sin so horrible?”
As you comprehend the beauty of God, the heinous nature of sin will get clearer. And as the heinous nature of sin gets clearer, God’s beauty and goodness will become sharper. As I said, God never dismisses sin as nothing. He deals with it justly. Sin is so heinous that it deserves hell, but God is so rich in mercy that he sent his Son to bear the penalty we deserve for sin. The cross is the ultimate picture of how horrible sin is, because that is what we deserve for it. But it is also the ultimate picture of how good God is, because that is what he is willing to bear for us to redeem us from the penalty of sin that we deserve.
Rehearse God’s Word in your daily life (54-56)
The psalmist rehearses the truth of God’s word by singing it and meditating on it, look again at verses 54-55,
“Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. I remember your name in the night, O LORD, and keep your law.”
He sings God’s statutes, meaning he puts God’s Word to music and sings. He also sings about the things of God in order to dwell on them. Why does he have to do this? Because he isn’t home yet. We aren’t either. We are sojourners and strangers, waiting for the new creation, waiting for the second coming of Christ.
While we sojourn, we will have hardships and disappointments. Singing is a way of rehearsing truth in a time of pain. After I became a Christian, I had joy in Christ, but my life was difficult and filled with a lot of disappointments. But I can remember in times of sorrow, singing the song, “It Is Well.” At the time I didn’t understand why singing that song helped calm the state of my heart. I was in a time of transition and uncertainty, but singing that song grounded me in what was certain.
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come.
Let this blessed assurance control
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
And hath shed his own blood for my soul”
Meditate on God’s Word
He also meditates on God’s name in the night, considering who God is and what he has promised. As a result, he keeps God’s law when he wakes up. Meditation is not merely knowing something, but chewing on something. If Scripture is medicine to you, then you might ingest it but you will swallow it fast and try not to taste it. If it is food, you will not only eat it but savor it.
Don’t miss the connection in verse 55 that says meditating on God’s Word leads him to keep it. Why does meditating on Scripture lead you to keep it? Let me lay out two ways of understanding how this could work, one wrong and the other right. First, you could think that meditating on Scripture will help you obey the Lord in the same way that studying for a test will help you pass the test. If you remember your school days, perhaps you recall a time that you crammed for a test. You even quizzed yourself as you were lying in bed. But the answers themselves weren’t sweet. The test was not something you wanted, merely something you had to endure. That’s not what meditating on Scripture should be like. If it is, I submit to you that you have a wrong understanding of what Scripture is and what role it has to play in your life.
Second, and rightly, meditating on Scripture will help you obey the Lord’s instructions in the same way that thinking of a dear friend will help you love and serve that person the next day. Look back at verse 55. The psalmist says that he remembers “your name in the night, O LORD.” He isn’t just considering data. He is considering God and using God’s Word to consider God. This is like thinking of someone you love and appreciate. Have you ever done that? You stop to consider how kind someone is or how thoughtful someone has been to you. As you consider this person, you overflow and think, “I want them to know it” and you either tell them or show them in some special way.
This is what meditating on Scripture should be like. You use God’s Word to think about him and his ways and consider what he has done for you. A natural result of this is to plan how you will respond to what you are meditating on.
One of my favorite passages to meditate on at night is Psalm 34:8-9, “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.”
As I meditate on these verses, I have to stop and ask myself, “Why is the Lord good?” And then I must consider how the Lord has proved himself to be good and a delight to me in my present circumstances. Or, if I have something weighing on my heart, I ask and meditate on this question, “In what ways can I take refuge in the Lord tomorrow instead of giving into fear of others and anxiety?”
This is the spiritual equivalent of advice I once heard from a great runner. In order to consistently run, he advised making your next day training as easy as possible by laying everything out the night before. If you are running in the morning, lay out your clothes. Have whatever food or drink you will need all set. Get to bed on time. Know what you will need for the next day so that you can simply walk into a hard training session. This not only makes the training session easier, it also makes decisions for you ahead of time. When you wake up and you are groggy, you’ve already planned to go. You simply have to do what you have planned out.
Meditation on the name of God and his ways can do something similar for us. As we meditate on God’s Word, we are able to plan out what we should do next. His word is a light unto our feet.
The Blessing of Obedience
And this results in blessing, as verse 56 lays out,
“This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.”
A certain happiness has fallen in the psalmist’s lap—he has obeyed the Lord. Now, let’s catch ourselves from making a mistake. He is not saying that he has learned how to perfectly obey the Lord in all of his life, never sinning. What he means is that as he rehearses God’s statutes and dwells on who God is, he is finding his life in conformity with God’s word.
The lie of sin is that if we obey the Lord, we will miss out. The truth of obedience is that if we sin, we will actually miss out.
Obedience is its own reward. The psalmist is confessing in this verse the reality that Jesus explains in John 15:4-5,
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
The psalmist has heard God’s promise of the Messiah, built his hope on that Messiah, trains his thinking to be in accord with the same Word that promises the Messiah, and rehearse the truth of that same Word. As a result, he bears much fruit.
And he rightly sees this as God’s work. Notice his wording, “This blessing has fallen to me…” It is God working through him, providing for him through is Word.
And it can be this way with you, too. If you come to Jesus in faith, take up his word to understand life, and rehearse his word in your daily life, he will hold you securely and you can experience his security as you apply his Word.
And this begins with trusting in Christ. If you have not trusted in Jesus, then you should still pick up his Word, but until you give your life to him in faith, his Word will only condemn you as it exposes your sin and pronounces you guilty. So here is what you need to do: believe that Jesus Christ is the God-man, the second person of the Trinity, who for us and for our salvation took on flesh, lived a life of perfect obedience, and death the death you deserve for sin. Then, to conquer death and show that he has fully paid for the sins of his people, Jesus rose from the grave. He has now ascended to the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead. If you want eternal hope and security, you must repent of your sin, turning from living how you see fight and aligning yourself with Christ. You can do that today, even from where you sit. But then you can express the inward reality of your faith by being baptized and uniting with Christ by joining with his people.
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