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Nanosermon Script:
It’s the longest psalm in the Bible, and it’s going to empower you to live a victorious and blessed life. And here is the very first verse of Psalm one hundred and nineteen:
Psalm 119:1 ALEPH. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. (KJV)
Well, that sets the stall out, doesn’t it? Here we have the first verse of a Psalm extolling the virtues of the law of God. Let’s read it again: ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.’
This is saying you need more than the saving grace of God to live a fulfilled Christian life. Don’t get me wrong. That’s where you start, with his grace and his salvation. But if you want to know the blessing of God in every area of your life, there’s now some doing to be done.
Psalm structure
The word ‘Aleph’ which came up on the screen is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. To aid memorisation in the Hebrew, each of the first eight verses of Psalm one hundred and nineteen begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
The second eight begin with the second letter, ‘Beth’, and the psalm marches on in the same way right through all twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Eight twenty-twos are one hundred and seventy-six, and that’s the number of verses in this towering work of literature and theology. Theology is the study of God and the law of God expresses the very character of God. If you want to know the mind of God, study the law of God. Study it, meditate in it, pray through it and walk in it.
To help you do that, every single verse of this psalm praises the law of God, his commandments, his statutes, his precepts, his word, and shows how following God’s ways brings you a benefit. That’s every verse, for one hundred and seventy-six wonderful verses.
Torah of Yehovah
The expression ‘the law of the Lord’, or more literally the ‘Torah’ of ‘Yehovah’ (there is no hard ‘J’ in Hebrew) appears eighteen times in the Old Testament and 3 times in the New where Mary and Joseph made offerings for Jesus according to ‘the law of the Lord.’
Of the eighteen times the expression occurs in the Old Testament, three of them are in the Psalms, in Psalm one, in Psalm nineteen and here in Psalm one hundred and nineteen, where in verse one we read ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD’. Actually, that Hebrew word ‘Torah’ is bigger than ‘law’ as we normally understand it. It includes the meaning of ‘instruction’.
To walk in the Torah of Yehovah will make you undefiled, without blemish, complete, upright in your course of life, in your way of living, because ‘the way’ here is the way of righteousness.
Righteousness begins with Jesus
It isn’t easy, because sin gets in the way, but repentance, humility and a holy determination to do it God’s way will put you back amongst the ‘undefiled in the way.’ By the grace of God it’s do-able.
Righteousness begins with Jesus Christ, the lawgiver and Saviour. Having had your sins washed clean by faith in his death and resurrection, you can be filled with the Holy Spirit and be empowered to walk within the boundaries and limits of the law of the Lord with delight.
John Gill in his commentary says ‘cheerfully obey its precepts, as influenced by the love of God, and assisted by the Spirit and grace of Christ’.
Keep his law, by his grace
So don’t think Christ has done this law-keeping stuff for you, on your behalf, so you don’t have to do it. Scripture after scripture shows it doesn’t work like that. You have to want to be undefiled, to be holy, which means ‘set apart’ for the Lord. If you love God you’ll put in the effort, determined to keep his law, by his grace, helped by his Holy Spirit.
Because, to remain undefiled in the way, and to walk in the law of the LORD, the psalmist says perfectly clearly, will bring upon you the blessing of Almighty God.
SCRIPT ENDS
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