Light for Our Path

[0:00] Heavenly Father, there are many philosophies, systems of beliefs, people that claim to give light. But as your word teaches us, you're the one that lights our path. You are our vision.

[0:38] And so we turn our gaze toward your word once again so that we might hear from you and so that we might respond and pray, speak to you in accordance with your revealed will in scripture. So meet with us, Father. Lead us. Address us, Lord. Once again, we come and humble ourselves before you. We want to place ourselves under the authority of your word.

[1:12] Please, Father, help us now in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're in Psalm 119, in stanza noon, verses 105 to 112.

[1:35] Psalm 119, verses 105 to 112. It takes a little while to scroll down now, doesn't it?

[1:52] I'll read it out loud for us. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I've sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word.

[2:11] Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules. I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.

[2:23] The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.

[2:34] I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end. The main point of this stanza is that we are to stay on the path of life lit by God's word.

[2:47] And we can divide it into two sections. First four verses is about light for our path. And the second four verses, 109 to 112, are about staying on the path.

[2:59] And I don't know if you guys have seen the news lately about Bolivia. There's civil unrest, elections that have been disputed.

[3:10] Actually, Mary, Daniel's sister is there. And so she lost power. A lot of people lost power because of the things that are going on. And so you can imagine in a city that doesn't have power at night, there's no light, right?

[3:26] Groping around in the dark, kind of not knowing what you can do, where to go. And in that kind of dark place, you can imagine the comfort and clarity and direction that light brings.

[3:40] And that's kind of what's in view here in verse 105 when it says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, right? A lot of people have claimed to bring light, right?

[3:56] So Buddhist enlightenment or the Enlightenment age when people turn to reason, human reason, as the primary source of knowledge. However, what brings true light that brings eternal life, leads us to holy living, is the light of God's word, according to this passage.

[4:15] And this is good news for people who are lost, right? People who are aimless, people who feel like they're groping around in the dark. Because God's light is shining through his word.

[4:28] And it's really all the light we need, right? In 1 Timothy or 2 Timothy, it's a typo here. 2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.

[4:47] Man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So all that we must know to do every good work that God intends for us to do is written in God's word. So it illuminates the path.

[4:59] It illuminates the path that we must walk on and shows our feet where to go, metaphorical feet. So the psalmist continues in verse 106, I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules.

[5:12] What does it mean by sworn oath to confirm it? It's probably something similar to what takes place in Nehemiah chapter 10, verses 28 to 29, where all of God's people gather to enter into, kind of renew their covenant before God.

[5:28] And it says in verse 29 of Nehemiah chapter 10, that they enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, a servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord, our Lord, and his rules and his statute.

[5:44] So that's kind of what it means to be in covenant with God, right? You enter into an oath. You've sworn your allegiance to God.

[5:56] So to become a follower of Christ is not like becoming a Twitter follower, right? Where with the easy click of a button you can follow somebody, and just as easily you can unclick it and unfollow somebody.

[6:13] To become a follower of Christ is to submit to him as Lord. It's to pledge allegiance to him as king, and to worship him as God. And because of that, it requires the realignment of all of our purposes and priorities.

[6:27] It requires the renunciation of all our sins and selfish desires. It requires the subordination of all other loyalties and allegiances in our lives.

[6:38] That's what it means to enter into covenant with God, to become a Christian. It's an oath and a confirmation to keep God's righteous rules. And this psalmist who's writing this has been doing this, and that's why he's able to say in verse 107, I am severely afflicted.

[6:54] Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. Because he has lived in accordance with God's word, he expects God to deliver him as he promises in his word. And he continues to praise God in spite of his affliction, and continues to express his desire to grow in his understanding of God's word.

[7:12] In verse 108, Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules. It's the light for our path. And then let's look at staying on the path in verses 109 to 112.

[7:25] Because God's word is the bedrock of the psalmist's life and our lives, it's the certainty that anchors the psalmist's life. The psalmist seeks to stay on the path that has been lit by God's word.

[7:35] He says in verse 109, To hold one's life in one's hand continually is referring to being under life-threatening circumstances constantly.

[7:55] Like you're having to take your life into your own hands continually because you're being assailed on all sides. And yet, I mean, that's the kind of situation when all kind of standards go out the window, right?

[8:09] All your principles go out the window, right? You kind of do anything to survive, right? But for the psalmist, it's even in those moments he says, I do not forget your law, right?

[8:20] Even when his life is flickering away like the light's about to go by, he stays on the light of God's word. He does not forget God's law.

[8:32] Similarly, it says in verse 110, Even when the enemies of our souls lay traps for us, even when we feel their snare about to close on us or encircling us, we don't flee out of fear from the path that God's laid in front of us.

[8:57] We do not stray, it says, from God's precepts. When fearful of an immediate threat that they know and see, people, in order to avoid that seemingly immediate threat, will often walk unwittingly into even graver threats and dangers, right?

[9:20] It's like a, I think of someone in a fire, so scared by the fire, will jump off the window, right? It's like a, even though there might be rescue at some point, or there might be some way out, like they choose, they flee what they know into what they don't know, right?

[9:42] Into, because they don't, or maybe think that that's better. This is, the road laid out for us by God might seem treacherous, because our enemies lay snares for us there.

[9:59] But even so, we must not stray from the path that the light of God's word shows us, right? Because the path that is lit by God's word is still the safe path. It's still the good path.

[10:10] And to go astray from it onto dark, unlit alleys is to walk unwittingly into evil and ultimately death, right? It's to, and that's exactly what the enemy wants to do, right?

[10:22] He lays traps for us, tries to ensnare us, not only that we might fall, but so that we might stray from God's commands, God's word. And the psalmist knows this, so he says in verse 111, your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.

[10:39] It's such an expressive, emotive phrase, joy of my heart. Like, what comes to mind, you know, when you hear that phrase? The joy of my heart.

[10:51] You know, it's like, think of my daughters. Abigail means, Abigail is Inge's English name. Abigail means the father's joy.

[11:02] You guys are all like, who's Abigail? It's like, do you have another daughter you hid away somewhere? Yeah, Abigail means father's joy, right? The joy of my heart. That's kind of, that's the kind of affection that a psalmist has for the testimonies or the word of God, right?

[11:17] The joy of my heart. That's my heritage because there I find God's promises. There I find my eternal inheritance promised to me by my father, heavenly father, because there I find the promise that I've been forgiven of my sins.

[11:30] I can be united with my Lord Jesus Christ. So that's my heritage forever. And so it's the joy of his heart. It rejoices his heart. But that's not the default state of the human heart, is it?

[11:43] We don't always feel like God's word is the joy of our hearts, right? And it's because we're still in our sinful flesh, and our flesh still awaits its ultimate redemption, right?

[11:56] The redemption of the body that will come when Jesus returns in the second coming. The renewal of our hearts have begun, but it has not yet been completed. And so in this life, it takes work to continue to rejoice in our heritage of the testimonies of God.

[12:15] And so it says in verse 112, If we don't do this, we won't make it to the end.

[12:26] In order to make it to the end, we have to incline our hearts. We need to lean toward God's word. We need to incline our hearts toward it. We must apply ourselves to learning and keeping God's word.

[12:38] Because we are to stay on the path of life lit by God's word. And this psalm is fulfilled ultimately by Jesus, who is described as the light of the world, right?

[12:48] He calls himself in the Gospel of John as the way, the truth, and the life. He is the fulfillment. He's the one who lights our path. He is the one. He is our heritage.

[13:01] He is the word incarnate. And so it is when we incline our heart towards him, when we lean toward him, when we follow him, when we align ourselves and orient our lives around him, that's when we are able to stay on the path that God's laid out for us.

[13:18] That's when we are on safe ground and walking on the path that God has lit for us. And so let's seek to do that as God's people, even when we are ensnared, even when there are dangers.

[13:38] Hey, John. Hey, it's good to have you back. It's good to have you back. I don't want to interrupt. Oh, I just finished. Yeah, it's okay. Oh, great.

[13:49] Yeah, you came at the right time. Yeah. You came at the right time. You came at the wrong time. Yeah. Yeah. How do I stop the recording? Yeah.