Psalm 119: 105-112
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
106 I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws.
107 I have suffered much; preserve my life, LORD, according to your word.
108 Accept, LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws.
109 Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law.
110 The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts.
111 Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.
112 My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.
During my first semester of seminary, I took Ellen Davis’ class on Hebrew prose. It was one of the most difficult classes I would take there. It had been two and a half years since my Hebrew classes at Westmont, and I was pretty rusty in a language which had never really felt comfortable. It was Dr. Davis who first taught me to love Psalm 119. At the beginning of each Hebrew prose class, she would read a couple of verses in Hebrew for us to translate together and meditate on briefly. Several times she had us read from Psalm 119.
Psalm 119 is filled with images of the person who has committed their whole life to the Word of God and has found life in the commands of the Lord. The psalmist is a shining example of what it looks like to follow God faithfully. As I read his words, I too long to know God’s Word in such an intimate way.
This section of the Psalm begins with a beautiful image: “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” I grew up camping with my family. At night, it quickly grows too dark to see what is around you. We would gather around the campfire to talk and light the lantern on the table, but outside the sphere of the light, it was dark, and the path was impossible to see and our footing was hard to find. A trip to the water spigot required a lantern or flashlight. So did a trip to the tent. We quite literally needed a light for our path in the dark of night.
We live in a world that is often dark from sin and confusion. Which choice is the correct one? How do we hear God’s voice? When we go to work, how do we live out God’s commands in a secular marketplace? What will our friends say if we live the commands of God? We swim in an ocean of uncertainty and the way before us often seems dark. We need a light to see our path.
The Psalmist knows what we often forget. God’s Word is a light to our path. Only by knowing God’s decrees can we see clearly the path he has set beneath our feet. Without his light, we often wander from the path. We get caught in briers, unable to untangle ourselves from the mess in our lives. We find ourselves looking at the edge of a cliff, with one more step leading to emotional injury, brokenness, or even physical death. We like to go our own way. We like to think that we can navigate life on our own and that we know better than God how to travel this modern world. We are proud. But the truth is that on our own, we are wandering lost in the darkness.
We need God’s word to light our way. When decisions have to be made, when opportunities arise, when our friends ask us to do something, how do we know what is right? Only God’s Word can lead us to what is true and steadfast. That is why the Psalmist asks repeatedly, eight times in this psalm, for God to teach him God’s commands. He knows that unless God teaches him, he will not have a light for his journey. He will be lost in the world and not know what decisions to make or where he is going.
But life has not been easy for the Psalmist. In verse 107 he says that he has suffered much. In verse 110 the wicked have set a snare for him. More than ten times already, he has mentioned that the wicked are trying to trap him and destroy him. How can he see the snares they have laid in his path? Only by the light of the World of God. By dedicating his life to God, he is able to know God’s truth and ways, and he can avoid their traps. He is like Daniel, whose enemies sought to trap him in evil because he followed God, but they couldn’t find him doing anything wrong. The Word of the Lord illuminated his path.
But sometimes we find the darkness mysterious and alluring. Sometimes it seems easier to do what the wicked want so they will leave us alone. What do we do then, when we don’t want to know the will of God? The Psalmist says that he has “taken an oath and confirmed it, that [he] will follow [God’s] righteous laws.” He has bound himself to follow the commands of God, even when he doesn’t feel like it, even when it is difficult. Without his oath, without his commitment to the Word of the Lord, it would be easy at times to walk away from God’s path, especially because his enemies are making it difficult for him to keep walking at all. So he takes an oath that he will follow the commands of the Lord. His oath is binding. He doesn’t get to opt out of it because he doesn’t feel like keeping it today. He keeps it regardless. We often need his perspective. We need to bind ourselves to the Word of God, conforming our lives to his Word instead of trying to conform his Word to our lives.
Living a life dedicated to the Word of the Lord, like the Psalmist is doing, is not easy. It takes time to learn the commands of God. It takes perseverance when we don’t understand and prayer that God would teach us his ways. It takes patience to learn the new language of God, and we are all at different stages on that journey. For some of us, this language of God is strange and foreign. We don’t understand the terms being used. We could use a good dictionary, not an application to our lives. What is God talking about? For others of us, the language of God is familiar. We have been hearing it for years, and we have let it illumine our path more or less over the years, depending on who we are and our circumstances. No matter where we are on this journey, learning the Word of God and letting it light our way shapes our lives. In a vastly different direction, ignoring the Word of God just as dramatically also shapes our lives.
I mentioned earlier that Dr. Davis was the person who taught me to love Psalm 119. She taught me many other things in her classes. I remember some of the things she worked so hard to teach, and I have already forgotten some of the others. But what struck me most during her class, and what still stands out in my mind, is Dr. Davis herself. She is a woman who embodies the words of Psalm 119. She has dedicated her life to studying the Scriptures, and it shows. When she picks up her Hebrew Old Testament to read the Word of God to her students, her passion and love for the Word pour through. She reads Hebrew better than anyone else I have met, even still, translating for her classes as she reads. And she respects the Scriptures, paying close attention to the words through which God has chosen to communicate. She has bound herself to the text, even when she doesn’t understand or wishes it would say something else. She listens to Scripture, seeing the ways the whole story connects, but refusing to disregard the words of the text instead of obeying it. Her insight and dedication to the Word of the Lord provided more insight into the book of Job in a one hour lecture than I had gained in a whole class with another professor. Dr. Davis’ willingness to allow the Word of God to shape her and her desire to know what God is saying have shaped her life in a way that illuminates God’s Word for the rest of us. She is a living, breathing example of what life looks like when you live the prayer of the Psalmist.
The story from Genesis printed in your bulletin this morning provides a drastically different set of examples for us. Isaac is the son of Abraham, the child of the promise which God gave to Abraham to make his descendants like the stars in the sky. He is the child that was rescued by the hand of God when he was bound to the altar of sacrifice. Yet here, as an adult, Isaac is an unremarkable man. We read very little about him in the scriptures. The most significant thing in his life that is recounted in the Scriptures is his father’s obedience to God to sacrifice Isaac. We read little of Isaac speaking with God or of God directing his paths.
Eventually, Isaac married Rebekah, who is childless. Isaac knows God well enough to pray for God to provide a child to fulfill his promise, and God provides twin boys, who jostle each other inside of her to the point where she goes to ask God why it is happening. So far, so good. Isaac and Rebekah are seeking the Lord, trusting him to fulfill his promises, and coming to him when they don’t understand.
God answers Rebekah’s prayer with the proclamation that there are two nations inside of her. One people will be stronger than the other, and one will serve the other. The Hebrew is ambiguous. God answers either, “The older, the younger will serve” or “The older will serve the younger.” We tend to translate it the second way, because that is what happens, but God’s answer is ambiguous.
The rest of the story recounts Isaac and Esau against Rebekah and Jacob, both parents seeking to secure a greater future for their favorite son. This is a family, just one of many in the story of God, who could use some serious counseling! Esau is born first, but Jacob is born holding onto Esau’s heel, living out a Hebrew idiom meaning “he deceives.” When the boys grow up, Esau becomes a hunter in the open country while Jacob stays home among the tents.
One day, Esau has been hunting and comes back to the tents, “faint and weary from fatigue and hunger.” Jacob is cooking stew, and Esau, unable even to come up with the word for stew, asks Jacob for “some of that red red stuff.” Jacob, taking advantage of his brother’s weakness and hunger, responds, “first sell me your birthright.” The birthright is the right of the oldest born son to a double portion of the inheritance and the right to serve as the priest for the family. Esau says that he is about to die, so what good is his birthright? He swears an oath that Jacob can have his birthright, willing to give up his place as firstborn for this particular meal. Jacob gives Esau some stew, which he eats and then leaves.
Not one of the characters in the story is to be emulated. Not one is allowing God’s Word to shape their actions. Esau lets his physical appetites rule his decisions. Jacob takes advantage of his brother’s weariness and hunger. Isaac and Rebekah both choose one son to love over the other, with Isaac choosing Esau because he has an appetite for the wild game that Esau hunts.
Their story will get worse before Jacob and Esau learn to listen to God’s Word. Rebekah will help Jacob deceive Isaac into giving Esau’s blessing to Jacob, resulting in Esau serving Jacob. Esau will desire to kill Jacob for stealing his blessing, and Isaac will be oblivious to the tricks happening around him until it is too late.
Eventually, both boys will learn something different. Jacob will be out-tricked by his father-in-law Laban. He will have to flee Laban and fear for his life in his meeting with Esau, but he will encounter God, wrestle with God, and be changed from a deceiver into a man possessing integrity. Esau will be transformed from a man seeking to take his brother’s life into a man offering forgiveness and living alongside his brother in peace. Together, they will eventually bury their father Isaac.
For Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau, their lack of attention to God’s ways results in pain, brokenness, deception, lies, and anger. They are examples to us of what life looks like when we go our own way. But their later transformation reveals the power of God’s Word and immensity of God’s grace to transform our lives.
In a powerful description of the role of the pastor in the church, Eugene Peterson writes:
We need help in keeping our beliefs sharp and accurate and intact. We don’t trust ourselves; our emotions seduce us into infidelities. We know we are launched on a difficult and dangerous act of faith, and there are strong influences intent on diluting or destroying it. We want you to give us help. Be our pastor, a minister of Word and sacrament in the middle of this world’s life….
One more thing: We are going to ordain you to this ministry, and we want your vow that you will stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment but a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know you are launched on the same difficult belief venture in the same dangerous world as we are. We know your emotions are as fickle as ours, and your mind is as tricky as ours. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you. We know there will be days and months, maybe even years, when we won’t feel like believing anything and won’t want to hear it from you. And we know there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you won’t feel like saying it. It doesn’t matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry, vowed to it. |
There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise right now that you won’t give in to what we demand of you. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time-conditioned understanding of our needs, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of Word and sacrament so you will be unable to respond to the siren voices. - Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor
This is Peterson’s description of what it means to be a pastor, to be called to proclaim the Word of God to God’s people. But his description, that pastors are taking a vow to stick to the Word of God whether we feel like it or not, that pastors are “[lashed] fast to the mast of Word and sacrament so [they] will be unable to respond to the siren voices” is not true of pastors alone. True, we are ordained to Word and sacrament, but all of us, and members of the church, take vows that lash us fast to the Word of God to keep us from responding to the siren voices of the world that will dash us upon the rocks. In our membership vows, we proclaim that we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and that we accept its authority for our lives, and we resolve to be cleansed and empowered by the guidance of the Scriptures.
As you take time in prayer this morning, ask yourself whether you will let the Word of God shape you and illumine your path, or whether, in pride, you will seek to go your own way. Examine your life this morning. Ask God to show you if you are honestly seeking to follow his Word, to learn from Him his commands, and to let his Word light your path. Then ask yourself if you are willing to bind yourself to God’s Word, even when it is difficult or doesn’t make sense, to wait patiently to learn from God what his decrees are.
Time for Prayer
If you are willing to bind yourself to God’s Word, to let God’s commands illuminate your path and to follow them even when they are difficult or confusing, reaffirm with me your membership vows this morning:
“Do you believe the Bible is God’s written Word, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit, and do you accept its authority for what you must believe and how you must life?
We do.
“Do you here resolve, by God’s grace, to be Christlike in heart and life, opening yourself fully to the cleansing and empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of the Scriptures, and the nurture and fellowship of the church?
We do.
Amen. Let it be so.
