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Nanosermon Script:
Come with me to Psalm one hundred and nineteen, and verse five:
Psalm 119:5 O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
So far in this great psalm we have seen what Charles Spurgeon described as a ‘double blessing’ in the first two verses. Firstly a blessing from being undefiled by sin, walking day by day in his law. Secondly a blessing from when God is such a living reality to you that you keep his commands and seek him wholeheartedly.
Then we saw in verse three that those who are doing that, as well as being blessed and blessed again have their heart so changed that they just will not do iniquity and instinctively walk in his ways. Then in verse four we saw that God commands us to keep his precepts diligently, not carelessly. In case you were worried about getting ‘legalistic’, I assured you that no-one was ever excluded from heaven by keeping God’s commandments too ‘diligently’.
Look at yourself
Now watch this. The first three verses are in the third person plural – ‘they’. These statements of eternal truths are somewhat at ‘arm’s length’. The object of the fourth verse is indeterminate. It actually goes ‘Thou hast commanded to keep thy precepts diligently’. The eminent translators of the King James Version put ‘us’ in to help it make better sense. But now, in verse five, the psalmist looks straight at himself:
Psalm 119:5 O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
He has written down statements of blessing and of a complete change of attitude which come to those who keep God’s instruction, his ‘Torah’ in the Hebrew. He has recorded a command to do that diligently.
And now, suddenly, the psalmist is gripped by the realisation that he has fallen short. You may be in the same place, and if you are, it’s not a bad place to be. Someone has said the closer you get to God the more you realise how far away you are.
Keep God’s Statutes!
But look, what now? Well, the psalmist isn’t throwing his hands up in surrender, saying, ‘I just can’t do it’. He’s not thinking that somehow his Messiah or ‘that Prophet’ will sort of do God’s laws on his behalf so he won’t have to observe them himself. He is not content with his sin and being defeatist, he’s humble and determined to keep God’s statutes from now on.
He knows that God has commanded obedience and will be content with nothing less. He sees the benefit of doing things God’s way. He knows the double blessing that will be his and the change of heart. And he wants all of that with every fibre of his being. So do I. And so must you.
Charles Spurgeon said about this verse: ‘Our ways are by nature opposed to the way of God, and must be turned by the Lord’s direction … or they will lead us down to destruction. It were well if all who hear and read the word would copy this example and turn all that they hear into prayer. We should have more keepers of the statutes if we had more who sighed and cried after the grace to do so.’
That double blessing from God Almighty will be your portion, you’ll be free from iniquity, you’ll have the psalmist’s diligence, so long as you are praying, crying out in anguish, as he did, for your ways to be directed to keep God’s statutes.
SCRIPT ENDS
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