Title: The Revelation of God (part 2)
Scripture: Psalm 19:7-14
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
One of my favorite stories from church history is the legend of Count von Tischendorf and the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus. I promise you're going to love this story, okay? There's a man named Konstantin Tischendorf who was a professor of theology at the University of Leipzig in Germany, but he had another passion beyond theology. He was on a quest in the middle of the 19th century to reconstruct the whole Bible entirely from ancient manuscripts.
He was kind of like a 19th century Indiana Jones. That's really what he was. Tischendorf set out to find all these manuscripts.
He went to the remotest parts of the world looking for manuscripts and fragments and codexes and anything he could find from the early church years. He visited museums. He went to private collections in Paris and Holland, London, Cambridge, Oxford, even Italy.
Tischendorf was even granted access, a special visit to Rome where he could view the Vatican's manuscript collection in which he was able to view a codex known as Codex Vaticanus, one of the two earliest manuscripts in church history. But it was his trip to St. Catherine Monastery at the base of Mount Sinai in 1844 that would change the world forever. He got to the monastery and he began to tour, and at the beginning of it he was pretty unimpressed at first.
But then he stumbled across this basket sitting by a furnace, a fire, full of old parchments. And when he began to leaf through the old parchments, and he was watching the monks feeding some of these parchments into the fire, he realized that these were different than the other papers that they had at the monastery. And he recognized after looking at them that these are very, very old Greek manuscripts of the Bible.
And so he began to collect them and pull them out of this basket before they would be fed to the fire. He grabbed 43 pages at first, and then in subsequent years he went back and got more. But when it was all said and done, Tischendorf had reassembled the entire New Testament and most of the Old Testament.
And once he analyzed what he found, he was able to date it back to the mid-4th century, which is right around the time of Constantine, Emperor Constantine. And then in 1862 he published this complete manuscript under the name of Codex Sinaiticus after the location was discovered. And even to this day, it was the oldest complete biblical manuscript in history.
And he found it sitting in a trash pile. And I think the stark contrast between rescuing treasure out of this pile that would otherwise be regarded as loss illustrates to us the value of finding the words of God in places that maybe we wouldn't otherwise know to look. I think it's easy for us to take for granted everything that we have that's been given to us in terms of the Scriptures.
And even today, I mean, it's nothing for us. I mean, there's 150 Bibles in this room. I know all of you have Bibles at home.
You have iPhones. There's Bibles everywhere. We have such access to the Word of God that is unprecedented in history.
And yet it's very easy for us to take it for granted how easily and accessibly we're able to get to the Word of God, and we forget what it actually is. The Word of God, the Scriptures, are God's very revelation of Himself to us. And there's no better place I can think of to wrap up at least where we are right now than to go back to Psalm 19 and explore again the revelation of God.
And so if you want to go back with me to Psalm 19, we began last week looking at this psalm. Psalm 19 we know is a psalm of David, and it's a psalm that is extolling the magnificence of God's revelation. Both the what's called general revelation, which is God's glory displayed in the creation, but also special revelation, which is God's revealed will through His written Word.
First, we have the revelation of God in creation, and we saw this last week. And so just glance back at this with me, Psalm 19 verses 1 through 6. This is the Word of God. The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, nor their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterance is to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. It rejoices as a strong man to run his course. Its rising is from one end of the heavens, its circuit is to the other end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
And so we saw last week that God displays His glory through the work of His hands, through the creation. The world is evidence that there is a God and that He is glorious. But then at this point in David's psalm here, the tone and the focus change, and they shift to a different kind of revelation entirely, particularly the revelation of the Word of God.
And what follows in the next eight verses is a poetic masterpiece that showcases the power, the preciousness, and the perfection of God's holy Word. And so we're going to pick it back up again, Psalm 19, starting in verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
The judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them your servant is warned. In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Equip me of my hidden faults.
Also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me. Then I will be blameless and shall be acquitted of a great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. As we look at this the second half of this psalm today, I want to explore really three main features of the psalm. I have a very simple outline for you, three main points here, but we're going to start with number one, the perfection of God's Word, the perfection of God's Word.
Verses 7, 8, and 9, David offers six brief statements about the nature of God's Word, and each of them follows a very similar formula. You could stack them all up in a line, and you see the formula is identical for all of them. First, each statement begins with a title that is applied to Scripture, a title for the Scriptures, and then secondly, there's a descriptor of what it's like, and then thirdly, there's the effect, there's what it produces.
But I want to note just a couple of things before we look at these three verses here. We need to remember that this is a poetical psalm, it's poetical language, it's not a theological textbook. Well, what do I mean by that? Well, this psalm doesn't say, well, the Word of God is inspired, authoritative, sufficient, and errant.
It doesn't give those theological terms, but rather it gives different kinds of terms in biblical language to color and sort of paint the picture of what God's Word is like. Some aspects of God's Word are emphasized here, while other aspects are excluded, but the whole point is to paint this sort of comprehensive picture of the Word of God. Another thing to note here as we look at these verses is the interchangeability of the terms.
Well, what do I mean by that? Well, here we see the Scriptures referred to as the law, the testimony, the precepts, the commandment, and then we also see it referred to by the fear and the judgments. Now, some of these are not normal terms for the Bible, but they're, again, the overall picture, and it's very clear from the context, the overall picture is very clear when we examine everything together, and so I want to look at this with you to see Scripture's perfection. Look at verse 7. We read, the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.
Here, David refers to God's Word as the law of the Lord. This word for a law in the Hebrew is Torah, which literally means instruction. Certainly, it refers also to the first five books of the Bible, which are called the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
That's called the Torah, the law. But here, it's very clear that David is referring to more than just those first five books, the Torah or the Pentateuch. It's more than that.
It's comprehensively the entire revelation of God's Word. The law is oftentimes in the Old Testament shorthand for the whole Scripture. It's essentially shorthand for God's Word, God's instruction, again, the law of the Lord.
And here, we see the word Lord not as the word, the Hebrew name El, which is from verse 1, referring generally to God. It's not that word for God. Rather, it's a different name for God.
It's actually the covenant name for God, Yahweh. It's the name that's given to Moses in Exodus 3.14, when Moses sees, encounters the Lord, and he says, you know, what is your name? Who are you that I might go tell others? And the Lord responds by saying, I am who I am. And the shorthand version of that statement is, I am Yahweh, or sometimes referenced as Jehovah.
It's the name, the covenant name for God. And this name for God, Yahweh or Jehovah, is used seven times in the rest of this psalm. It's the personal name of God, the intimate name of God.
It's how we know Him as our Lord and our Savior. Again, it's not just a name for some random deity barking orders at people. That's not how we understand God.
But rather, this is the title for the sovereign Lord, the God of Israel, who is speaking to His covenant people. But what does He say about God's Word, the law of the Lord, the Scripture? Well, David here, he says that the Scriptures, the Bible, and the law of the Lord is perfect. It's perfect.
This opens up a whole world of theology here. When we consider the doctrine of Scripture, we're reminded of several things, and I've already alluded to some of them already this morning, but we know that from 2 Timothy 3.16, and it's inspired by God, literally breathed out by God. The Word of God is also authoritative.
It's bound with God's own authority, Deuteronomy 4.2. We know that it's also sufficient, Hebrews 4.12, it has power. It's sufficient and efficient to convict us and examine us and test us. But Psalm 19 here affirms the truthfulness and the purity and the infallibility and the power of God's Word.
Again, in a very simple way, David is claiming that Scripture is perfect. The word in the Hebrew refers to that which is unblemished or complete, sound, healthful, flawless. This affirms what theologians refer to as the doctrine of inerrancy, inerrancy.
Now, this doctrine of inerrancy, the wording itself is a relatively recent usage, the last couple hundred years that we're using the term coined as inerrancy, but the doctrine itself stretches back all the way into the Scriptures. We've always believed that the Bible is without error, and it's infallible, perfect in its truth. It is without error in the manuscripts that we have received from the Lord and the originals, and so we can affirm the truthfulness, the veracity of the Word of God.
Now, we could cite so many verses here to proof-text that, but the simple assertion that Scripture here is perfect, it's hard to refute. How do you go to another verse and say, well, it's somehow not inerrant, infallible, authoritative, when David clearly says it is perfect? How do you further qualify that, the perfection of the Word of God? And we recognize that it's a perfect God that inspires the perfect Word. It makes perfect sense that God in His character would give us a Scripture that is in line with His own character.
And then we ask the question, well, what is this perfect Word from a perfect God? What does it do? And David here says that it restores the soul. Restoration is healing and refreshing. Some translations say reviving.
God's Word has the power, the ability to awaken us, to enliven us. Well, how does it do that? Well, we understand just theologically here that the Holy Spirit who takes up residence within us at regeneration, when we receive a new heart and new spiritual eyesight, the Holy Spirit uses God's Word, and He convicts us of our sin, and He applies the promises of God to us, and He assures our forgiveness promised to us, and He ministers comfort and hope. All of these blessings that we receive in God, our souls gravitate toward this.
They intake this, these promises, this blessing. Because again, our souls, we tend to wander from God, don't we? I mean, sometimes it's even on a day-to-day basis. We feel like we're wandering, waiting in and out.
We can feel like we're timid in our faith and in our walk. And as our soul begins to wander, the Scriptures assure us that if we return to God, if we come back to Him in repentance, in faith, in devotion, that we'll easily be restored to Him because of His grace. It's not that we're restorable.
It's that God loves to restore that which has been lost. And so, it's through the ministry of the Word of God that the Spirit of God draws us to Him and restores our souls. Secondly, in verse 7 it says, the testimony, different word now, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
Here, this word for Scripture is now testimony. It's the notion that God's Word is a witness to the faithfulness of God. Because David says this testimony of the Lord is, it's sure, it's confirmed, it's supported.
Some translations render this, for example, the NIV renders this as trustworthy. That's a good way to see it. In its perfection, in its infallibility, in its inerrancy, the Bible proves itself to be both trustworthy and sure.
It becomes like the bedrock on which you can build your life. There's nothing flimsy, nothing faulty, nothing worrisome. In fact, the surety of the Word of God serves as a perfect tool to make wise the simple.
And this word here in the Hebrew, the simple, it refers to foolishness or even gullibility. Literally, in the sense of it, it's emptiness. It's almost as if a person has a mind, not empty-minded, but empty and open in the sense that they will just receive anything that comes in without discernment.
It's foolishness. It's the essence of foolishness. Proverbs 21 11 says, when the scoffer is punished, the naive becomes wise.
But when the wise is instructed, he receives knowledge. So even when a person who is simple or naive or foolish or untrained, when they submit themselves to the Word of God, they are able to become wise. There's something to be said, and we see this phenomenon all the time, where you have highly educated scholars and academics who have more degrees than a thermometer, who read the Word of God and they cannot understand the most basic precepts of what it teaches, and yet you have an untrained, unschooled farm boy who grabs the Bible, reads it, learns it, and can give you the wisdom of God.
There's something about that that is spiritual. But it's no mystery to us, we understand, because 1 Corinthians 2 14 says that the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they're spiritually appraised. This is what happens in John 3 when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, and He's explaining the most simple things about new birth in the new covenant, and Nicodemus is scratching his head.
And Jesus turns to him and says, Nicodemus, you're the teacher of Israel, you don't understand these things. We know that He would later come to understand these things, but this is not something we attain just through study alone. There's something spiritual that happens whereby the Word of God is able to make wise the simple.
Even a fool who is born again and receives a new heart in Christ is able to be made wise through the humble training in the Word of God. Third, verse 8, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. Here we see another term for the Word of God, the precepts of God's revealed Word.
He says these precepts, these commands, these logical truths are right. They're upright, they're straight, they're not crooked. The truth of God's Word is not just factually true, but it's also morally right.
And when you're able to ascertain and wrap your arms around the righteousness of God as revealed in Scripture, it has an effect on you. You know what it does? It rejoices your heart. Well, how does it do that? How does that work? Well, think about it with me.
When you know that you're walking in righteousness, when you know that you're doing the right thing, you can experience joy and even peace. But when you know that you're living an unrighteous life, what does it produce? It produces anxiety. It produces sadness, misery, fear.
I've studied out and I've published a lot on this concept of spiritual depression. So much of this is rooted, the anxiety, the depression, the worry, the fear, the stress is rooted in a disobedience to the Word of God. Not all of it, but there's a large portion of it that is.
But remember what Jesus' words in John 15, 10, and 11, He tells the disciples, if you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. Listen to this, these things I have spoken to you, revelation, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full. There's a connection here that He draws.
He says, I want My love to be in you, which you experience through obedience of following My commandments, My precepts, in the same way that I've obeyed My Father. But as you do so, as you walk in righteousness, Jesus wants His joy to be in you. Did you ever consider that fact that God doesn't set you on this course as Christians to just grind you under the dust to make you miserable? He actually wants you to experience His joy, and that comes through walking in obedience.
Disobedient Christians are miserable. Those who profess faith and don't obey are miserable, and yet we know that there is joy, joy in righteous obedience. The righteous precepts of the Lord, when followed, what do they do? They rejoice the heart.
Fourth, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. This word for commandment is mitzvah in the Hebrew, and the context refers to all the commandments, all the provisions of God's Word. And He says that all of these commandments, all these provisions, God's Word is pure.
The word here is used for radiant or without pollution. Some translations even render this word as bright. The idea is illumination.
And I know you know this because Psalm 119, one of the most famous verses in all Psalm 119, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. They have whole songs written about that verse, right? But that's the truth here, that the Word of God is a lamp, it's a light. And what does this lamp, what does this light do? Well, it enlightens your path.
But what does that actually mean? It enlightens your eyes so you can see. It's another way to refer to this spiritual illumination, spiritual understanding. There's something, and people describe this all the time.
I know you've experienced it. If you've been walking with the Lord, you have experienced this. When before you don't understand something, you're reading the Word of God, you're confessing your sin, you're walking with the Lord, you're learning from Him, and then there are moments when it's like the light turns on and something makes sense.
I never saw that before. I never understood that before, but now I do. And it begins to enliven you.
Whereas walking in darkness, 1 John 1, 6 refers to living in debauchery or sin or wickedness, the Bible tells us that to walk in light, Ephesians 5, 8, that's what God desires. He desires to have the eyes of our heart enlightened. Well, how do you do that? Well, He says, you follow the commandment of the Lord, which will enlighten your spiritual eyes.
And then He notes in verse 9, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. Now, at this point, we recognize that this word fear, we don't usually associate this with being Scripture. It's not a synonym for the Bible, and yet in this case here, this is more of an effect of the Word of God.
Because when you stand face to face with God's truth, it oftentimes will inspire a healthy level of fear and reverence in your heart. Have you ever read the Scriptures or read a verse and have the weight of it hit you to a point where you actually become a little bit afraid of God's truth? That's a healthy thing. It's a clean thing.
After all, Proverbs 1, 7 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The problem when we try to access God's Word without any kind of reverential fear, we come to it sort of willy-nilly. We just come to it with sort of a lackadaisical attitude.
We don't encounter the nature, the power, the perfection of God. But there are aspects of God's Word that do invoke fear. We think about the holiness of God, the justice of God, the wrath of God, His power, the omniscience.
Ever stop and really ponder the omniscience, the all-knowing ability of God? The knowledge of God is staggering. And if you sit there long enough and try to conceptualize, and we think AI is impressive, that's nothing compared to the magnanimity of the power of God's intellect. You stand there and you think about it long enough and it actually starts to scare you how much really God sees and how much He knows.
And yet in keeping with the poetical nature of the psalm here, we could say that the Word of God is clean. It's incorruptible. It's not perverted.
It's not spoiled. And as the pure, clean, incorruptible Word of God, it is enduring forever. Remember Jesus' words in Matthew 5.18 where He says, heaven and earth will pass away, but not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law.
Translation, it will endure forever. Lastly, verse 9, the judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether.
Here this word judgments has been also translated as rules. If you're using an ESV, it's rules, decrees in the NIV. It could also be the ordinances of God.
Again, these are all of God's decisions and prescriptions that are contained in His Word. He says they are all true and righteous altogether. What is the picture that we see painted here in verses 7 through 9 about the nature of God's Word, the Bible? We can't get away from the fact that the Word of God, the Scriptures, they're inspired, authoritative, inerrant, truthful, powerful, enlightening, terrifying, sanctifying, righteous, and life-giving.
In other words, they're perfect. But David's not done here. He's going to keep on moving.
After extolling the perfection of God's Word, he moves next to this second concept here, number two, the preciousness of God's Word. The preciousness of God's Word here in a world that mocks and derides and attacks the Bible. And we're living in such a world now.
You hold up a Bible and people just deride you for it. You go online and they just lambast the Scriptures left and right. But yet the true believer holds on to the Scriptures.
They hold on to it in a different light here. Look at verse 10. What does David say? Talking about the Scriptures, he says, they are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
He offers two pictures here. Just like in verses 1 through 6, he has two pictures of the general revelation here, he has two pictures of special revelation. And the first picture he offers here is that of gold, gold.
And even today, gold is considered one of the most valuable commodities. Prospectors will give up anything and everything to dig it out of the ground. One of my favorite guilty pleasures is this show called Gold Rush.
It's the dumbest thing in the world, honestly. It's all these guys up in Alaska just spending their fortunes to just dig gold out of the ground. And they go through hundreds and thousands of yards of material just to get little specks out of the ground.
And I don't know why it's so interesting maybe to see a big pile at the end, but I look at the stories of these people who've just given up their lives and lost their fortunes, lost their families, lost their marriages because they get gold fever. And that's just metal in the ground. And yet, what do we see here? The Scriptures, David says, are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold.
Psalm 119.72, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. David saw it. David had gold.
His kid had a lot of gold. Verse 127, therefore, I love your commandments above gold, yes, above fine gold. David says, you could take all the gold that I have, all the treasure, all the silver, everything.
Let me tell you could possess a vault of gold, bars stacked to the ceiling worth millions or even billions of dollars, and it will never satisfy you. No amount of gold, treasure, money, possessions, it will never satisfy. Because you know what the constant refrain of those who have much of it is? Just a little bit more.
It never satisfies. But God's Word, on the other hand, it does satisfy. It's precious.
David says it's like fine gold. And what's amazing to me is that we don't have to, in our day and age, we don't have to look very far to have gold. And I'll tell you, it sits on our bookshelves collecting dust, and all we have to do is open, pray, study, meditate, and breathe deeply of the treasure of God's Word.
It's like fine gold. But David's not done. He says it's like something else too, not just gold.
He says it's also like honey. Now I'm getting hungry. He says it's sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
There is not much that is more satisfying than the taste of pure, natural, sweet honey. And I don't mean the high fructose corn syrup honey you buy at the store. I'm talking about the good stuff, right? When you find honey, it is desirable.
But there's something even more desirable than honey. Go over to Psalm 119, Psalm 119, verse 97. It's a long psalm.
It's the longest psalm in the Bible. Psalm 119, verse 97. These themes are picked up here in Psalm 119, which is, I think, placed in the center of the Bible.
You open up the Bible to the middle, you get Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is a love letter to the Word of God. That's what it is.
And in this section, verses 97 to 103 or 104, this is particularly striking. But I want you to look at verse 97 with me. The psalmist says this, Oh how I love your law.
It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged, because I have observed your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. I have not turned aside from your ordinances, for you yourself have taught me.
Look at this. How sweet are your words to my taste. Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
From your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Then we have the famous verse 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Same imagery from this Psalm 119 here. And the question for us to consider is, do we love God's Word this way? When you read Psalm 119, does that resonate with you? Do you experience something of that? Do you value the Word of God as precious? Is it important to you? And if it's not, it's likely because you haven't spent much time devoted to it. Furthermore, it's also possible that you haven't spent much time letting the Word of God examine you and let it read you.
And yet we know how did Jesus see the Word of God? Again, He wrote it, but living here on earth as the God-man, He still read the Word of God. How does He see the Word of God? Well, you remember when He was struggling in the desert, famished from hunger, He declared, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Jesus, in His hunger and His desperation, longing for food and drink, something to satiate Himself, said, no, the Word of God is more precious to Me than even the most basic necessity for life.
We don't live off of earthly pleasures and even earthly necessities. No, we are sustained, we live by every word that proceeds from the beloved, divine mouth of God. And so, we see that God's Word is perfect.
We see that God's Word is precious, but we also see that it's powerful. And so, number three, the power of God's Word, the power of God's Word. Verse 11 here, David is shifting from a very specific application of the ministry of the Word of God, and he says, in addition to the Word of God being desirable, he adds in verse 11 here, moreover, by them, the Scriptures, by them your servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward.
And so, verse 11 offers two things here. It offers a caution, and it offers an encouragement here. First, the caution, pertaining again to the Holy Scriptures, he says, by them your servant is warned.
This word for warned means admonished or even encouraged to take heed. God's Word is very plain and very clear about sin and the consequences of sin. It's clear about the consequences of error and folly.
I mean, the Word of God, it kind of hits you between the eyes in a lot of places. See, unbelievers, they see God as being sort of a cosmic killjoy. They see God as being judgmental or bossy.
They look at the Old Testament especially, and they read His commandments, they read His precepts, and they just turn their nose. Oh, what a terrible God that is. They don't understand what He's doing, because we look at the commands of Scripture, and we don't see that false God that they see.
We see the kindness of a loving Father warning us and keeping us from danger. We see the perfection, the righteousness of God's Word, and we see Him guarding us and taking His hand of providence and His hand of guidance and hemming us in. He doesn't want us to fall off the deep end and plunge ourselves into sin and ruin.
So, He gives the guardrails of these commands, and He warns, and He disciplines, and He trains. Paul in Romans 7-12 says, because the attack is coming against the nature of God's Word, the law, is the law somehow unrighteous or unholy or not good? Paul says, no, the law is actually holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Again, he's speaking against the accusation, but then he says in verse 13, therefore, did that which was good become a cause of death for me? In other words, when I read the Word of God and I see the commandments and they talk about sin, and then I'm convicted of sin by the Word of God, does that mean that the Bible is somehow killing me by condemning me? And he says, may it never be.
But wait a second here. Paul says, rather, it was sin. It was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by affecting my death through that which is good, that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful.
What is he saying? In other words, the Bible gives commands, warns of judgment, yet it's our sin that kills us, and yet it is through the Word of God, through the lens, the eyeglasses of the Word of God, that we see our sin for what it actually is. It's utterly sinful. And God is using the Word as a magnifying glass now, and He's saying, all right, my young one, all right, my child, look at what your sin is doing to you.
And so, we don't see our sin and then turn and say, what's the Bible's fault? Rather, we grab the Word and we say, Lord, thank You for revealing my sin to me. Now, where is the Savior? The Word of God says the Savior is Jesus. And now, that which is holy and righteous and good, the law has become a tutor to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
And so, by the Scriptures, David says, we are warned. We're warned. But we also have an encouragement here.
Not only does the Bible warn us, He says, in keeping them, the commandments, the precepts of God, there is great reward. Reward now. Now, the Bible is not commending law-keeping for the sake of law-keeping.
That's why the Pharisees went awry. I'm just going to keep commandments, and if I do enough commandments, God will be happy, I'll go to heaven. That's not it.
It's not ritual obedience. It's not legalism. Rather, here, we see it's the desire to obey the God that you love.
Jesus said it in John 14, 15. If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And we understand that, don't we? A lot of parents in the room here, and when your children disobey, it feels like they hate you on some level, right? And you reason, you say, listen, you can say you're sorry, you can say you love me, but obey.
Do what I say. That's essentially, on a grander scale, there's something about that with the Lord where He's saying, listen, if you love me, if you really acknowledge that I'm God and I'm your Lord, then do what I say. David tells, in keeping them, in keeping those commandments, those precepts, there's great reward.
God rewards those who follow and obey Him. And we might ask, well, how do I know what to do? How do I know when I'm sinning, when I'm off track, when I'm not doing that? Because I'm scared. There's 613 commandments in the Old Testament.
What do I do? How do I know? Well, guess what? Verses 12 and 13 answer that. David poses the question in verse 12, look at this, who can discern his errors? That's a legitimate question. How do I know I'm off track? How do I know how wretched my own heart is? And I've got to tell you, the longer you're walking as a Christian, the more wretched you see your heart actually is.
When you're young in the faith and you confess all your big sins, there's a moment in time where you're like, I think I'm doing okay. And then you walk with the Lord and He reveals more sin and you get to a point where you're like, I am really messed up. I'm pretty sinful.
I'm more sinful than I first realized. And then you look to the mercy of God, the grace of God, and you say, oh, it's by grace alone that I'm standing. So who can discern his errors? Now, there's a distinction I think we have to make here.
It's important that we see the difference here in the text between errors and sins. Errors and sins. See, the errors here in verse 12 are sins of ignorance because he says in the next line, these are hidden faults.
Hidden faults. These are things that when you think them, say them, do them, they're wrong, but you don't always necessarily know that they are wrong. It ever happened to you before where you do something that's wrong, you're totally ignorant to it, and then someone tells you or you're made aware of it and you're like, I had no idea.
And you think back and you're like, I've been breaking that law for a long time, where we don't know. We're ignorant of those sins, and yet we understand that ignorance does not mean innocence. Law-breaking is still law-breaking.
But verse 12 expresses the earnest desire to be forgiven. I don't use the New Living Translation often. It's more of a free paraphrase, but there's a line in the New Living Translation, the NLT, that renders this as, how can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? That's a fair way to translate that.
That's the sense of it. How do I know what's going on deep down inside my heart, hidden? What are my hidden faults? The answer is to throw yourself on the mercy of the Lord, because what does David say? His answer, when he says who can discern his errors, he follows up by saying, Lord, acquit me of my hidden faults. Forgive me.
Declare me innocent. Thankfully, the Lord is able to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart, right? That's what Hebrews 4.12 says. He does it through his Word.
God knows how to find the stuff that's hidden inside your heart, grab onto it, and draw it out, and put it in front of you so you can confess it. He's very good at doing that. In fact, if you pray an earnest prayer and you say, Lord, would you please reveal hidden sins in me? Buckle up, because He'll do it.
But you want Him to do it. It's important that He does it. It's important that you don't have secret hidden faults or sins buried inside your heart that you don't see.
You don't want spiritual blind spots. And that's what David says. I don't want that.
I want you to acquit me. I want you to forgive me of all my hidden faults. I don't want to have those things anymore.
But guess what? He's not done. He doesn't just say, forgive me of the stuff that's hidden, my secret sins, my faults. We like to camp out on those.
He goes after, verse 13, also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. What are those? Those are deliberate sins, willful sins. And then he adds, let them not rule over me.
See, there are these hidden, unknown sins inside my heart that are buried deep down. But then there's also the willful, rebellious, deliberate, presumptuous sins that are right there. Sins that you know are wrong, you know they're offensive to God, and yet you do them anyway.
We all have those. We might not want to face them, but we all have them. Those are the kinds of sins that can enslave you.
Jesus actually warns about engaging in enslaving sin in John 8, 34. Paul warns about it in Romans 6, verses 15 to 23. He says, these kinds of sins, these enslaving sins, they lead you to lawlessness and eventually to death.
If you let these kinds of ruling, indwelling, presumptuous, willful, rebellious sins, if you let these things fester, they'll kill you. They'll destroy you. They'll destroy everything you love, and they will take your life.
But David begs the Lord. He begs the Lord, keep back your servant. Lord, grab me and pull me away from these.
Protect me, Lord, from presumptuous sins. Then listen to the plea here, let them not rule over me. Lord, I don't want to be mastered by my sins.
I don't want them to take over my life and dominate me. Well, how do you navigate that? Well, we see over and over again, what is the solution here? He says throughout the whole Psalm to stay in God's Word. If you're in God's Word regularly, you're going to be made aware of your hidden faults, but you're also going to be confronted with your willful, presumptuous sins as well.
The more that you not just read your Bible, but meditate, pray through it, and pray God's Word back into your life as well. In other words, you read a verse, and you read what's on the page, and you say, Lord, where does this apply to me? Lord, where are the points in my life where I'm convicted of these things? John Bunyan is quoted with saying, this book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book. And so we need God's Word, which can restore the soul, make wise the simple, rejoice the heart, and enlighten the eyes.
But David knows that Psalm 119 verse 9, if he keeps his way pure, he'll do it according to the Word of God. And he says, if he does this, he says, then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Again, this is not personal works righteousness.
This is the plea of an earnest Old Testament saint, trusting in the Lord and desiring to obey God according to His Word. And how do we know that that's what's going on? Well, because we see the evidence of it in the final verse. Look at verse 14.
This is his final plea here. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. He focuses on two very practical things here.
He focuses on the words of his mouth, what he says, but he also focuses on the meditation of his heart, what he thinks and what he feels. And the prayer that he has here is that these things would be acceptable or pleasing in God's sight. And it's interesting because in Luke 6 45, Jesus connects these two things.
He says, it's out of the heart. In other words, the meditation of the heart, it's out of the heart that the mouth speaks. Ultimately, what matters the most is what you're allowing to fill your heart.
Do you fill your heart with wickedness and vain pursuits and immorality and selfishness and pride and bitterness and anger? And entitlement and godlessness, or are you filling your heart and your mind with that which is pleasing to the Lord? What does Psalm 1 2 say? Blessed is the man if his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night, day and night, constantly. Where the truth of Scripture is your constant meditation. Where the things of God become your infatuation.
When you have those moments where your mind wanders off, what do you wander off to? We see this embodied God's Word when He says this to Joshua in Joshua 1 8. He tells Joshua, now Joshua's facing a pretty big task. He's got to lead the people of Israel. Moses is gone.
He's passed away. The mantle's passed to Joshua. Joshua's standing there looking at a million people.
He's got to lead them. He's got to go fight 40 wars. How is he going to do it? God tells him, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.
And He says, for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. We can lay that verse on top of the second half of Psalm 19. Joshua's going to be restored.
Joshua's going to have the simple thoughts in his mind, the scared thoughts. He's going to be made wise. He's going to be seen as righteous.
He's going to do what's righteous, but he has to meditate on the Word of God. It has to be what's on his heart and it has to be what's coming out of his mouth. See, David here in Psalm 19, he's not leaning on his own strength.
It's not all about how well he can obey. How great David is. Because in the final clause of Psalm 19, David's going to show us the source of all restoration, all salvation, all blessing.
Where does David lean? For everything we've seen in Psalm 19 so far, the last line, I'll show you where. Look at it. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
This is where it lands. This is where the crux of the matter is. And yes, I'm using that word crux intentionally.
David is appealing to the covenant name of God, Yahweh, Lord, and he calls Him my rock. He says, You're the embodiment of my strength and my stability. Jesus talked about this very thing, right? If you're building your house on the sand versus if you're building your house on the rock.
He has to be our rock, our strength, our stability. We're reminded of Psalm 18, the Psalm just before this one, where David says, I love you, oh Lord, my strength. Then he says, The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge.
Listen to this, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. You get the picture? How does he see him? You're my strength, you're my stability, you're my rock and my redeemer. Redeemer is one who buys back and rescues you from danger, from loss, from destruction, from slavery.
In the same way that Boaz was the kinsman redeemer, Jesus is the kinsman redeemer to us. He buys us back off the slave block. All of us have been enslaved and killed in sins.
He buys us back. He redeems us and saves us for his own possession. And so who is David ultimately putting his trust in? He doesn't realize it yet, but who he's actually trusting in is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because Jesus is the Lord God, Yahweh. Jesus is the rock, he's the cornerstone. Jesus is the redeemer, the one who rescues us from judgment.
He's our Lord, he's our rock, he's our redeemer, he's David's Lord, he's David's rock, he's David's redeemer. And even though through the course of time David could not see quite yet what we readily see in the scriptures, the truth is still there. That Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
Perfect, true God, and true man. He came to earth and he lived here and walked this earth and lived a perfect righteous life. And then he gave up that life on the cross, his blood, the atonement, payment for sins.
And he died to pay the penalty for our sins and wash them away. He was buried in the ground and then he rose the third day, redeeming us and buying us back and giving us new life. Restoration of our souls comes at the resurrection.
And what must we do to be saved? We must turn away from our sins and trust in Jesus Christ alone and we'll have eternal life. How do we know this information? How do we see the magnificence of who Christ is? Well, just like David's talking about in the first half of Psalm 19, that information doesn't come to us written in the clouds or on the trees or in the ground or in the sand. That truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ comes to us through the revelation, the Scriptures, the Word of God.
And David says, this Word is more precious than gold and sweeter than honey. And so let me ask you, are you devoting yourself to the Word of God? We don't worship the book, but we worship the God who wrote it. These are His love letters to us.
These are His promises to us. It's by these precepts, by these Scriptures that we're warned and it's by these Scriptures that we are redeemed and kept and encouraged and strengthened. Why? Because these Scriptures tell of the God who redeems us.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. God, I can't preach the brilliance, the magnanimity, the power, the perfection of Your Word enough.
Lord, nothing I could say could do justice to all that it is. Lord, it is sweeter than anything I could taste. It is more precious than what I could esteem.
And yet it's by Your Word that we come to see who You are, the brilliance of Your mind, the holiness of Your character, the seriousness of our sins, the severity of Your judgment, the wonder of Your love, the preciousness of Your kindness, the sacrifice of Your Son, the power of the victory, the promise of the future, the hope of Your return. Lord, all of this is found through Your Word, by Your Spirit, pointing our hearts and our eyes back to You. So, Lord, let us be a people of the book.
Let us be those who are focused on Your revelation to us, because by the revelation You've given, we see Your true glory. Thank You for the blessing of Your Word, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.