Studies in the Psalms - Psalm 119

How To Find Happiness

The world seeks happiness. It turns to sex, drugs, alcohol, and a wealth of other things, in an attempt to find that missing element that will finally bring them true happiness. Even religion is man’s attempt at finding a happy state through his own efforts. So, man makes up his own standards for life and for eternity. Psalm 119 provides the answer to this quest. The answer is God and the way to real happiness is through knowing Him. The way to know God is through His Holy Word. Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in the Bible. If we read it, if we pray through it, and if we apply it to our lives, we will be blessed. We will know happiness.

Psalm 119:1-5

How blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the law of the LORD.  How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, Who seek Him with all their heart.  They also do no unrighteousness; They walk in His ways.  You have ordained Your precepts, That we should keep them diligently.  Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!

Think about this; the early church did not have the New Testament writings, they only had the Old Testament. They led people to Christ through the Old Testament. They used the law. You see God hasn’t changed, that’s not even possible. His precepts did not become obsolete. They are still the right way to live. They are still the mirror by we can see how little we resemble the Holiness of Christ. If we cannot preach the Gospel using only the Old Testament, then we have not studied it in the right way.

No, we are not saved by the law. But we are saved unto it. Jesus did not abolish the law. He actually raised it up to a new level, the level of it now being a spiritual law. Jesus told us that even if we don’t stoop to a place of literal debauchery, if we even entertain sin in our hearts, then we have committed that sin. God’s Word is God’s law. Psalm 119 finds the psalmist in love with God’s Word, with His precepts, and His commandments. Psalm 119 is for each and every Christian.

Psalm 119:6-8
Then I shall not be ashamed When I look upon all Your commandments.  I shall give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, When I learn Your righteous judgments.  I shall keep Your statutes; Do not forsake me utterly!

We should be thankful God loves us so much that He wants us to be safe. The only safe way to live is by following God’s statutes.

How can we live a pure life in the midst of this evil and perverted world?

Psalm 119:9

 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word.

Listen to how we must live.

Psalm 119:10-11
 With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments.  Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.

Can we say this? With ALL our heart do we treasure His Word? Or do we just like those nice Psalms and the other scriptures that comfort us? We are supposed to treasure His Word and that is so we will not wander from His commandments and so we will not sin against Him. How can we know what is sin and what’s not, unless we read His law that tells us?

Psalm 119 is long. But so is eternity. Is God not worth the time to read, study, and pray through this psalm? Read the whole psalm. It is full of treasure. It explains what the Word of God is to us. If you struggle to read your Bible, you need this reminder. If you are faithful to God’s Word, you will be encouraged in seeing the blessings you are receiving and it will make you more thankful.

God’s Word is the most important thing we have in our lives and we need to give it more attention than we give our TVs, our phones, our books, and anything else that we give our time to.

I leave you with the final eight verses. I hope they wake up a desire in you to read the rest of this psalm today. I pray they awaken in your very soul, a desire and a love for God’s Word that changes your life.

Psalm 119:169-176

 Let my cry come before You, O LORD; Give me understanding according to Your word.  Let my supplication come before You; Deliver me according to Your word.  Let my lips utter praise, For You teach me Your statutes.  Let my tongue sing of Your word, For all Your commandments are righteousness.  Let Your hand be ready to help me, For I have chosen Your precepts.  I long for Your salvation, O LORD, And Your law is my delight.  Let my soul live that it may praise You, And let Your ordinances help me.  I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, For I do not forget Your commandments.

I’m with the psalmist on this one. How about you?

Studies in the Psalms - Psalm 112

Well, I spent a lifetime lookin' for you
Single bars and good time lovers were never true
Playin' a fools game, hopin' to win
Tellin' those sweet lies and losin' again

Those are the lyrics of a good, ole country song sung by Johnny Lee back in 1980. They still ring true today. We live in a society where people just cannot find the love they need and happiness escapes them. Alcohol, drugs, and sex are just three of the vices that we seek in the quest for happiness. But as Johnny Lee sang, we are looking for love in all the wrong places. Psalm 112 is a wonderful reminder of how to find happiness.

Psalm 112:1
Praise the LORD! How blessed is the man who fears the LORD, Who greatly delights in His commandments.

The word blessed means happy. Though this psalm is written in view of the physical promises God made to Israel through the Old Covenant, they apply in spiritual basis to the New Covenant believer. Listen to what life is like for the one who fears God and delights in His commandments.

Psalm 112:2-6
His descendants will be mighty on earth; The generation of the upright will be blessed.  Wealth and riches are in his house, And his righteousness endures forever.  Light arises in the darkness for the upright; He is gracious and compassionate and righteous.  It is well with the man who is gracious and lends; He will maintain his cause in judgment.  For he will never be shaken; The righteous will be remembered forever.

The righteous will be remembered forever. The false prosperity teachers who fill our televisions at night and tell us God will give us anything we want because we deserve them, misuse scriptures such as these. They leave out the story of Job in their preaching. There will be plenty of suffering in the life of a believer. Some believers will not be wealthy in terms of money. But because of this promise, the righteous will be remembered forever, God has guaranteed to those who fear Him and turn to Christ for salvation, an eternal blessedness. Though you may live in a shack on earth, listen to this promise from Jesus in John 14:2
 

“In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

Psalm 112:7-8
He will not fear evil tidings; His heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.  His heart is upheld, he will not fear, Until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries.

Believers need not fear anything. We can trust the Lord, even in the midst of the scariest storm.

Psalm 112:9
He has given freely to the poor, His righteousness endures forever; His horn will be exalted in honor.

We can trust in God to provide all we truly need and are free to give in His name. Psalm 112 ends by explain what happens when the wicked see a Christian living his faith out.

Psalm 112:10
The wicked will see it and be vexed, He will gnash his teeth and melt away; The desire of the wicked will perish.

Christians, we must stand in awe of God and worship Him with all our being. That worship must be cloaked in reverence of God and in delight of His Word and the commandments within It.

Looking for love and happiness?

Psalm 112:1
Praise the LORD! How blessed is the man who fears the LORD, Who greatly delights in His commandments.

Amen

The 4 H’s of the Christian Life

As I was studying in the Book of John this morning and reading in Warren Weisbe’s Bible Commentary he spoke about for four things that started with an h that we see in John chapter 13. As I pondered this I realized that 3 of them are positive and one is negative. But the last two are actually dependent on the first two being either present or absent in our lives. The H’s are humility, holiness, happiness, and hypocrisy. I think it is interesting to take a quick glance at these and to see where we are as Christians in our personal 4-H club.

Wiesrbe spoke on the importance of the order of the first three in our lives and humility is the very first one. Humility is probably the greatest virtue one could pursue because if anything defines Christ humility does. From the very beginning of the shift from the OT law to the NT Gospel is an act of humility as seen in Christ leaving His place of glory in Heaven and humbling Himself to come here as a man.

Philippians 2:5-8 explains as it instructs us to be like Jesus saying this, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Jesus emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death. And that death was accomplished by the most shameful way possible in that day, death on a cross.  There are at least 22 scriptures in God’s Word that instruct is to die to ourselves. Maybe the most well-known is Luke 9:23-25 which a direct command from Jesus spoken Himself saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.  For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”

Yet we rarely see humility in in the church. Just recently I observed a situation where a certain ministry which is ripe for expansion and growth be stunted because someone doesn’t want “his ministry” to be risked by moving forward with what it would take to grow and reach more in that ministry. You see the problem is that it isn’t “his” ministry; it is “His” ministry. We are just like the disciples, who even up to the night before Christ died on the cross, were arguing over who of them was the greatest in the kingdom. Oh, how that lack of humility hinders God’s work. Breaks my heart.

The second H is holiness. In order to become like Christ we must be humble. When we die to self we allow God to do the work in us He so much wants to do. When Jesus left to return after the resurrection He gave us all who are truly Christians the power to become like Him. He gave us the Holy Spirit. Here is this promise as Jesus Himself spoke it in John 14:15-17, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Romans 8:9-11 reminds us that we have the same power that raised Christ from the dead living in us as we read, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

Yet somehow we don’t seem to be living this out do we? As individuals we really don’t and thus as the Church we don’teither, do we? I offer that it is because we have forgotten to put in effect the first H before we try to move to H number two. We must seek humility.

The third H is happiness. I believe when we are speaking of this type of happiness we are really speaking of joy. When we humble ourselves and then begin to become more and more holy everyday in our quest to be like Jesus we will be happy and our joy will be complete in spite of all circumstances we live in and under. Paul speaks about this very thing in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, “And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The final H is hypocrisy and is actually only prevalent when we fail to put the first two H’s in effect in our lives. Instead of being happy and filled with joy through the humility and holiness of our lives, the world then sees us as hypocrites and we lose our witness for Christ. We dim the light He shines.

So the question we all must ask of is what H’s will we let define us? All of us, whether we want to believe it or not, have these H’s sewed onto the jackets we wear in life. Being a witness for Jesus isn’t really that difficult. Put on humility and holiness and the happiness the world sees in you will be all the witness you need to be faithful in serving God. But leave off those three H’s and all that is left is hypocrisy.

God has not left us powerless. My prayer is that His church becomes what it has been empowered to be. We need revival. As my pastor often reminds us, revival starts right in our own personal heart.

God bless each of you in your journey to become humble, holy, and happy.