Sermon Tone Analysis

*Praying Desperately for Divine Enablement and Deeper Enjoyment in God’s Word *

*(Psalm 119:17-24)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on October 5, 2008/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

* *

*17 **Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word.** **18 **Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.** *

*19 **I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me.** **20 **My soul is crushed with longing After Your ordinances at all times.**

*

*21 **You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, Who wander from Your commandments.**

*

*22 **Take away reproach and contempt from me, For I observe Your testimonies.**

*

*23 **Even though princes sit /and /talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes.**

*

*24 **Your testimonies also are my delight; /They are /my counselors.*

!! October in church history

- Oct. 4th, 1535, 1st full English Bible published under William Tyndale – 90% of the KJV (and most of your Bible) from his labor

- October 6th of following year he was burned at the stake for that work

- October 31, 1517 (Reformation Day), a German Catholic monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenburg door

 

Martin Luther   loved God’s Word passionately, and as I read Psalm 119 and I read of Luther’s life, there is much I think he had in common with the original writer of the passage before us today.

The context of our passage today reveals a writer who ‘had known persecution … he had suffered under the heavy or the ruthless hand of authority ... His faith had staggered under the load of it all (22).

He had known pressure to give in and conform … The third section [119:17-24; our text today] seems to be particularly auto-biographical.

The writer had known deprivation and fear for his life (17) the dryness of soul [25]… when the world itself seems to lose its savor (18) under the stress of life.

He had known loneliness and rejection (19) [and] the agony of seeming abandonment (20).’[1]

Martin Luther is probably best known on his teaching in Romans, but Luther began his ministry teaching through the Psalms.

It was while he was giving his lectures on the Psalms in 1518 that he would later point to as when he discovered the gospel.[2] Romans  gave him the Reformation theology but the Psalms gave him the audacious boldness and courage to take on the world.

Psalm 119 in particular impacted him toward what would later be called the Reformation principle /sola scriptura /– Scripture alone, Scripture is sufficient for salvation and sanctification, as Psalm 119 teaches.

Luther loved the Psalms greatly, and Psalm 119 in particular.

He called this chapter a miniature Bible within the Bible.

Luther once said ‘he prized this psalm so highly, that he would not take the whole world in exchange for one leaf of it.’[3]

In the Preface to his 1539 works, he wrote of Psalm 119 what sums up our passage, that the psalmist ‘always says that he will speak, think, talk, hear, read, day and night and constantly—but about nothing else than God’s Word and Commandments.’[4]

When God opened his eyes to the wondrous things in God’s Word and to the gospel he wrote of that time: ‘I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great… ’[5]

 

He said elsewhere: “The Bible is a remarkable fountain: the more one draws and drinks of it, the more it stimulates thirst.”[6]

As we look at Psalm 119 again today, I hope we will find this as well, that as we draw and drink, our thirst will increase as we pray:

* *

*17 **Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word.** *

*18 **Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.** *

 

Our outline will basically follow those words of our title today.

1.

The Desperate Humility He Prays From

2.      The Deeper Enjoyment He Prays For

3.      The Divine Enablement He Prays By

 

Each of these themes we’ll see interwoven in vs. 17-24.

/ /

/First, notice the Desperate Humility He Prays From/

/ /

There is a desperation in v. 17 “Deal bountifully with Your servant *that I may live”* – I need your bountiful dealings to even live!

“The verb used here means to do, or show, or cause good … here it seems to be used in a general sense of doing good, or showing favor” [even bountifully or abundantly].

In its present contextual setting it therefore becomes an obvious plea for deliverance.’[7]

Charles Spurgeon paraphrased the prayer in v. 17: ‘Let my wages be according to Your goodness and not according to my merit.

Reward me according to Your liberality and not according to my service … If the Lord will only treat us as He treats the least of His servants, we will be deeply content … he throws himself on God’s grace and looks to the Lord and His great goodness for the great things he needs.

He begs for heavy grace … Without abundant mercy, David could not live … Even life is a gift of divine bounty to such undeserving ones as we.

Only the Lord can keep us alive, and it is mighty grace that preserves the life we have forfeited by sin … Spiritual life, without which natural life is mere existence, is also to be sought from the Lord’s bounty.

It is the highest work of divine grace, and in it God’s bounty is gloriously displayed.

The Lord’s servants cannot serve Him in their own strength.

They cannot even live unless His grace abounds toward them.’[8]

There’s not only a desperation or dependence in v. 17, there’s also a humility in this verse where he refers to himself as “Your servant” (also v. 23, again instead of “me” he says “Your servant”).

This word in Hebrew has a wide range of meanings that can include “servant,” bond-servant~/slave,” “slave,” “workman,” “worshipper.”

Context determines the meaning.

When the psalmist here identifies himself as the Lord’s “servant,” he indicates that he is submitting himself to the Lord’s sovereign lordship.

It’s noteworthy that the Septuagint (Greek translation of OT) uses the word /doulos/.

In the Psalms, the phrase “Your servant” involves the following:

 - Dependence upon God and His Word to preserve him from sin (Psalm 19:11–13).

- Redeemed by the Lord (Psalm 19:14).

- Dependence upon God to deliver him from danger, disaster, and death (Psalms 27:9; 31:16; 69:17; 86:2; 119:84, 122, 176; 143:12).

- Trust in the Lord (Psalm 86:2).

- Dependence upon the Lord for grace, gladness, good, and forgiveness, strength,         mercy, hope, and loyal love (119:49, 124).

- Freed from bondage by the Lord (Psalm 116:16).

- Being taught by the Lord through His Word (119:124, 125, 135)[9]

 

When I pray, do I use language like “Lord, please be good or gracious to Your servant”?

Do our prayers often refer to ourselves as “Your servant ~/ Your slave?”

If not, why don’t we?

The Scriptural prayers, especially from the OT, have it all over the place.

The NT writers called themselves slaves.

But when I look at my own prayer life patterns, I have to confess I haven’t really prayed much like this psalm in my life.

I want that to change for me, and for you.

That would be a great habit for us to get into, to speak of ourselves as “servant ~/ slave” in prayer.

And as we open His Word to study, we should say like young Samuel, “speak Lord, for your servant hears.”

Is it maybe pride that prevents us from referring to ourselves with such lowly language?

If so, look at verse 21, we need to be ready for the rebuke of God, because v. 21 says God rebukes the arrogant.

*/ /*

*You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from Your commandments*

 

We can all think of people we know who are arrogant, and how distasteful their pride is to us, but our pride is even more offensive to God.

In this context, one of the ways our pride manifests itself is when we don’t see our great need for the Bible like this man did.

Do we think we are so much more spiritual than this man, that we don’t need to pray and plead with God like he does in vv.

17-18?

When we go through our days without the Bible and without prayer, we are communicating our prideful self-sufficiency to God.

This is very convicting to me, because anytime I go through my day without relying on God, even doing things for God without depending on His power through prayer and His Word, I am being proud.

Verse 21 says God rebukes the proud.

Other verses say he is opposed to the proud.

It’s an abomination to God, Proverbs says.

We are utterly dependent undeserving unworthy lowly servants of the Most High God, in great need of His great bountiful dealings with us if we will even live, much less keep His Word.

If we don’t pray this way, maybe we need to pray first of all that God would help us to see ourselves as we really are, as verse 17 pleads with God

* *

*17 **Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word.*

God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble who pray like this.

J.

C. Philpot, 19th century Particular Baptist minister: ‘Can the Lord deal any way but /bountifully/ with his servants?

Why has he made you his servants?

Why did he strike the chains of former servitude off your hands?

Why did he bring you out of the service of sin, the world, Satan, and self?

Why did he ever make himself precious to your heart, win your affections, and enable you to give yourselves wholly unto him?

That he might cast you off? … Oh, can our heart ever indulge thoughts so derogatory to sovereign grace?

Was it not because the Lord had bounty in his heart towards you, that he first turned your heart towards himself?

Was it not because the Lord had purposes of love towards you, that he first led your feet into his paths?

Was it not because God first loved you, that he gave his Son to die for you?

Now if he has taught you, led you, upheld you, kept you, all this time, is it to cast you off /now/—to let you sink at last?

He cannot do so, will not do so.

Those whom he loves, he loves to the end; the good work which he has begun, he will accomplish, and bring to final perfection; and therefore all the Lord's acts are acts of bounty.’[10]

This posture of humility and dependence upon the bounty of God marked Luther till the day he died.

His last recorded words: “/Wir sein Bettler.

//Hoc est verum/.”