Psalm 119

Mar 2, 2022: ​Michelle Lesley:  Psalm 119" The Glory of God’s Word ~ Lesson 5
​Have you ever tried praying the psalms? I want to encourage you to try praying part of Psalm 119 back to God each week of this study. (If you’re familiar with my other studies, this will take the place of the weekly “Homework” section.)

​Psalm 119:11-12 “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord! Teach me Your statutes”

Nov 25, 2022: Open The Bible: ​Learn to Hate Evil with Your Memory and Imagination
​ I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11 (NIV)
There is a subtle power in which past sins can hold their own attraction in the memory. When memory looks back and feels that, given the same situation, you would make the same choice, it is a sure sign that repentance is not complete.

​The key to not sinning.

Psalm 119:14:
"I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches."

​ Having never had that experience, I can only assume, that a person who would rejoice in great financial riches would probably rejoice in the idea that suddenly all his cares and needs would be taken care of.  But, it could also be relative to some degree and what a persons riches are could simply mean a real friend or security. Becuz it uses the word translated to "riches" instead of "gold" or some form of monetary exchange, it leaves the possibility as to encompass anyone who reads it and what they believe makes them "rich."  The psalmnist compares our object of "rejoicing" to His statutes. And not just "His statutes" but "following" them. You want to rejoice in something that is like your greatest "riches?" Follow His statutes. You will not be disappointed.

​Psalm 119:15
“I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” (

“Hearing, reading, marking, and learning all require inwardly digesting to complete their usefulness, and the inward digesting of the truth lies for the most part in meditating upon it.” Meditating on truths about God acts as a digestive enzyme, breaking them down to nourish our souls.  -Brittany Lee Allen​

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“When we meditate on the Scriptures, we talk to ourselves about them, turning over in our minds the meanings, the implications, and the applications to our own lives.” -The Practice of Godliness; Jerry Bridges

Psalm 119:20:
​ My soul is crushed with longing, for your rules at all times 

​Christian liberty is the freedom to long for God at all times--to be crushed with a longing for God. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic forces of this present darkness. The temptation for a comfortable, materially blessed life, is forceful. Capitalism exerts a spiritual energy; the quest and hope for the American Dream is nothing short of a religion. For millions of Americans it is a constant pilgrimage. Christians, however, must strive to enter the narrow gate. Our Christian fight of faith is fueled by the Holy Spirit. He makes us free in Christ, and in Christ we may long for God with a devastating urge that crushes our soul at all times.

Psalm 119:30:
have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me.” 

​In a way the two parts of the sentence are redundant. One cannot choose the way of truth without a heart towards the law, and if one sets his heart toward the law then he is pursuing the way of truth. They just go together like birds of a feather, peanut butter with jelly, rolling stones and moss, and Simon & Garfunkel. Separating those would mean naked birds, just jelly, a bunch of moss, and Garfunkel reallly needed Simon…..:-)
Separating the two parts of the Psalm might be done verbally, but for all practical purposes just does not make sense. They help define each other: The law in our heart and the way of truth. Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life. So now there’s a quartet: truth, law in heart, the way, and life. Mix those together and voila: Jesus! And Jesus does the Fathers will & establishes within us that law which will remain long after all those rolling stones leave all that moss behind! And that leaves me “Feeling Groovy.”

Arthur W Pink

​​“You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul“. (Deuteronomy 13:3).
From those words it is clear that God allows teachers of error for the same reason as He does persecutors of His people: to test their love, to try their fidelity, to show that their loyalty to him is such that they will not give ear unto His enemies.
     Error has always been more popular than the Truth, for it lets down the bars and fosters fleshly indulgence, but for that very reason it is obnoxious to the godly. The one who by grace can say “I have chosen the way of Truth” will be able to add “I have stuck unto Thy testimonies” (Psalm 119:30, 31), none being able to move him therefrom.
“For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.” (1 Corinthians 11:19).
Error serves as a flail, separating the chaff from the wheat. Let some plausible and popular preacher come forward with an old error decked out in new clothes and empty professors will at once flock to his standard; but not so with those who are established in the Faith. Thus, by means of the false prophets,
    God makes it appear who are the ones who hold the Truth in sincerity: they are faithful to Him despite all temptations to turn away unto a “broader-minded” way. The genuine gold endures every test to which it is subjected. Thus too are the unregenerate “converts” revealed: the counterfeit gold will not withstand the fire.
    Those who are attracted by a novelty do not endure but are soon carried away by some newer innovation
---AW Pink: The Sermon on the Mount

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Psalm 119:37:
Turn my eyes away from gazing at worthless things, and revive me by your ways.

Prof. Postman points out that not everything is “televisible”, for instance religion. Religion does not translate into television without severe loss of meaning (pages 118ff).  Christian religion cannot be taught in sound bites, it takes time to be taught, and so to worship. Postman points out at least four ways television is not conducive to actual religion of any sort:

1. “Sacrality of space”: not that a space, such as a room, is sacred itself, but it becomes sacred, that is, set apart for the purpose of the divine Word, with the introduction of say a cross or crucifix, praying in silence, wearing vestments and  kneeling, reading Scripture.   Even, “…a gymnasium or dining hall or hotel room can be transformed into a place of worship”.  In our little mission here in Lexington, Virginia, we, and many other missions, have done so in funeral homes and other odd spaces and here in the main library’s community room.  One visitor from a neighboring congregation e-mailed me following worshiping with us on Holy Trinity Sunday:

“That was a wonderful worship service yesterday, truly the Church gathered around the Word. Meaningful in every sense, studying the Word together, Law and Gospel properly divided and preached in their purity, the sacrament rightly administered. The wonderful hymns were uplifting; for a moment you could imagine the Church in heaven and on earth worshiping together the Three-in-One and One-in-Three. What a wonderful day.” (emphasis my own)

Again, this is in a library’s community room with a dozen worshipers. This simply cannot happen on TV. As the Holy Spirit works through the Word alone, it must be remembered that the Word is not disincarnate.  The Holy Spirit can work wherever the Lord wants to so work but we know from the Bible it is only in the real time and real space of His people that the Lord, the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth” in the Word made flesh.   I have discovered that watching liturgy on TV is not good TV.  The Church and liturgy is not two dimensional like a flat screen. The Church and her head, Jesus Christ is multi-dimensional:   “…may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.” (Ephesians 3: 18).  Even when TV will probably become a kind of 3-D “holodeck”, it can never be the same as actual body of Christ in Liturgy.


2.  “Psychology of secularism”:  What we watch on a TV screen is not neutral and so the screen is not neutral:  “The screen is so saturated with our memories of profane events, so deeply associated with the commercial   and entertainment worlds that it is difficult for it be recreated as a frame for sacred events” (page  119).  We can switch from someone talking about Jesus to a commercial whose hook is lust  then to a report on a suicide bombing, and nothing registers.

3.  Marketing of religion: Television is for selling and religion can sell itself and only by doing so can religion have an audience.  One time watching the Hour of Power from the Crystal Cathedral, Robert Schuller was hawking that day, “The Positive Thinker’s Bible”  in which all the positive passages were highlighted in blue, kind of like an enthusiast’s version of the Jefferson Bible.  Most of those offers are ‘free’…for a donation, but the real danger is selling the faith, actually, selling out the faith.  Postman:

“The executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters Association sums up what he calls the unwritten law of all television preachers: “You can get your share of the audience only by offering people something they want.”
 You will note, I am sure, that this is an unusual religious credo. There is no great religious leader—from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther—who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is “user friendly.” It is too easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities. Though their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings, or rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings.” (page 121)

Joel Osteen is not unusual among televangelists.  He and his team have simply fine-tuned his program and it’s message on television to a greater degree.

4. The Danger of Idolatry:
“…I think it is both fair and obvious to say that on television, God is a vague and subordinate character.  Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concretenenss and persistent of the image of the preacher carries the clear that is he, not He, who must be worshiped.  I do not mean to imply that the preacher wishes it be so;  only that the power of a close-up televised face, in color, makes idolatry a continual hazard.  Television is, after all, a form of graven imagery far more alluring than a gold calf.” (pages 122-123)

What has changed for the Church since Postman’s book?  Simply:  the television/computer screen has now been brought  into the sanctuary and in order to sell faith,  the Christian message has been dumbed  down into entertaining sound-bites, preaching to “real life” and  desacralized sanctuaries and the congregations therein turned into studio audiences.  Pastors want to be personalities.  As Prof. Postman cites when Father O’Connor when became Archbishop (later cardinal) of the New York Diocese hammed it up.  Prior to this  quote he cites a television Roman priest at the time, Fr. Sacowicz, “”You don’t have to be boring in order to be holy”:

“Meanwhile in New York City at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Father John J. O’Connor put on a New York Yankee baseball cap as he mugged his way through his installation as Archbishop of the New York Archdiocese. He got off some excellent gags, at least one of which was specifically directed at Mayor Edward Koch, who was a member of his audience; that is to say, he was a congregant. At his next public performance, the new archbishop donned a New York Mets baseball cap. These events were, of course, televised, and were vastly entertaining, largely because Archbishop (now Cardinal) O’Connor has gone Father Sakowicz one better: Whereas the latter believes that you don’t have to be boring to be holy, the former apparently believes you don’t have to be holy at all.” (page 93)

We have grown familiar and even accustomed to pastors, bishops, district presidents and popes mugging it up during a liturgy. It works because it is like TV.

Conclusion:
Dear reader in Christ, please understand I like TV and television per se has been one of my major interests over the years.  Television showed us in the ‘60s, the civil rights movement, the assassination of a president, and the Vietnam War.  We watched live on TV as man stepped foot on the moon.  It is a source of entertainment but Prof. Postman’s critique demonstrates the danger regarding television:  all the major aspects of life are now to be  entertainment and this has had consequences for the Church.  The church is also amusing itself to death. I think that the “worship wars” is really between TV style worship and actual worship.

My conclusion has been over the years we need education about television and the internet itself.

Prof. Postman:
“Twenty years ago, the question, Does television shape culture or merely reflect it? held considerable interest for many scholars and social critics. The question has largely disappeared as television has gradually become our culture. This means, among other things, that we rarely talk about television, only about what is on television—that is, about its content. Its ecology, which includes not only its physical characteristics and symbolic code but the conditions in which we normally attend to it, is taken for granted, accepted as natural.” (page 79;  bold-face emphasis my own)

Prof. Postman wrote about the idolatry of television.  In confirmation classes, when I teach the 9th and 10th Commandments, I have taught about TV commercials whose hook is original sin shown in covetousness.

The television commercial is the most peculiar and pervasive form of communication to issue forth from the electric plug. An American who has reached the age of forty will have seen well over one million television commercials in his or her lifetime, and has close to another million to go before the first Social Security check arrives. We may safely assume, therefore, that the television commercial has profoundly influenced American habits of thought. (page 126)

We all have an ache for something: I WANT it!  We have been educated, catechized again and again, by commercials alone. Remember:  Covetousness is idolatry (Colossians 3: 5).  Once I want something so bad I can taste it then I have an idol and I am back to the 1st commandment. 2 million commercials work to draw out covetousness.   Prof. Postman also demonstrates that the message of TV commercials forms the notion that our problems  can be solved in 30 seconds, or should be.

 Think of how many families we know in which the television has become a third parent, a very powerful parent. In the latest Imprimis from Hillsdale College, the article is by Dr. Anthony Daniels about his work as a physician among the poor in London:

I should mention a rather startling fact: By the time they are 15 or 16, twice as many children in Britain have a television as have a biological father living at home. The child may be father to the man, but the television is father to the child. Few homes were without televisions with screens as large as a cinema—sometimes more than one—and they were never turned off, so that I often felt I was examining someone in a cinema rather than in a house. But what was curious was that these homes often had no means of cooking a meal, or any evidence of a meal ever having been cooked beyond the use of a microwave, and no place at which a meal could have been eaten in a family fashion. The pattern of eating in such households was a kind of foraging in the refrigerator, as and when the mood took, with the food to be consumed sitting in front of one of the giant television screens. Not surprisingly, the members of such households were often enormously fat.

“Honor your father and  mother. Television and  computer deserve no honor whatsoever.  We must learn about television and about the internet, to use it and not abuse it  There is whole body of literature on the effects of television on culture and society,  as Prof. Postman’s book. Here your input towards a catechesis of television  and internet is needed.

Psalm 119:59:
"I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies" 

​Self-examination has a goal, and that goal is increased conformity to the image of God as revealed in Christ, his word, and his law.

Psalm 119:71:
It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. 

​The Hebrew word for affliction here means “borbeaten, troubled, abased, chastened, defiled, hurt, humbled, weakened, depressed.” The words “statutes” in this verse means “engraved law.” So, it is good that I went through all these afflictions, that the Lord would engrave His law in my heart.

Suffering itself is not the thing that produces faith or maturity. It is only a tool that God uses to bring us to Himself so we will respond to Him and His Word. It forces us to turn from trust in our own resources to living by faith in God’s resources. It causes us to put first things first. Ultimately, it is the Word and the Spirit of God that produces faith and mature Christlike character

Psalm 119:104:
Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.

Through thy precepts I get understanding,.... Of the will of God; of his worship, the nature and manner of it; of his ordinances, their use and importance; and of his doctrines, and the excellency of them;
therefore I hate every false way; of worship; all superstition and will worship, the commandments and inventions of men, and every false doctrine; all lies in hypocrisy, for no lie is of the truth; every thing that is contrary to the word of God, and is not according to truth and godliness. The Targum is, "I hate every lying man.''   --Gill's Exposition

​Through thy precepts I get understanding - A true understanding; a correct view of things; a knowledge of thee, of myself, of the human character, of the destiny of man, of the way of salvation - the best, and the only essential knowledge for man. This knowledge the psalmist obtained from the "precepts" of God; that is, all that God had communicated by revelation. This passage expresses in few words what had been said more at length in Psalm 119:98-100.

Therefore I hate every false way - I see that which is right and true, and I pursue it. In proportion as I have a just knowledge of truth and duty, I hate that which is false and evil.  --Barnes Notes

Psalm 119:105:
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path

​First thing I always note on this verse is that the lamp shines at our feet. So, though we may not see the whole end of the path or even where it goes...we are able to see where we should step.  The Bible does not fall completely open at any single moment. The most seasoned student of the Word must live with its many unsolved mysteries. But the Bible sheds the light on our next step. Faithful use of the Bible will yield the daily light of truth and the daily measure of power that we need.

​The Bible is truly illuminating in that it helps us make sense of the physical and spiritual world around us, instructs us on how to live in a way that is faithful and pleasing to God, encourages us to trust in the Lord, shows us how He has kept His promises through the ages, and so much more. After all, Romans 15:4 says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”

Psalm 119:114:
"You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word."

​Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Above all, take the shield of faith, wherewith you will be able to quench ALL the fiery darts of the wicked. The shield to which we take refuge in is faith. The just shall live by it. The word is the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit. The unjust will die for lack of it. Despair and presumption are the fruits of no hope. Hope maintains the balance.
Without sleep I have no dreams;
Without a tune I have no music.
Without eyes, I have no sight;
Without light I am also blind
Without the word I am also lost
Without hope, I................

Psalm 119: 160:
“All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.”

​Etymologically, the word “true” and “tree” are similar. Both words ultimately go back to an Indo-European root deru– or dreu–, appearing in derivatives referring to wood and, by extension, firmness. Truth may be thought of as something firm, or a foundation. It is for that reason that Jesus was able to say “I am truth.” His coming was prophesied from God’s word, and “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” His purpose on planet earth was born from this firm foundation (truth). The good news is that “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” We are by no means “Jesus” but we can partake of that life established in truth and destined eternal.