Our reading of Scripture this evening is Psalm 119, verses 97 through 112. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Psalm 119, the single longest chapter in all of Scripture. It is a psalm divided into 22 stanzas, each according to the letter of the Hebrew alphabet, And we come this evening to the Mem and Nun stanzas. You may wonder why we're looking here, a little past the middle of Psalm 119. I've been, over the last while, I've been working my way slowly, preaching through Psalm 119, and this is where I am. So this is where we are this evening. Psalm 119, verses 97 through 112. Hear the word of God. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. 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. 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. I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end. Sends our reading from God's word. Let's pray for the Lord's blessing on his word this evening. Oh Lord, our Heavenly Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for this great psalm that so focuses upon and celebrates your word. Lord, we confess that it is indeed a lamp and a light to us. And so we pray that by the blessing of your spirit this evening that you might make your word effective in our hearts. We pray that you would give us faith and repentance in order that we might respond to your word as we should. So bless your word to your people this evening and may you be honored and glorified. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. As human beings, we are the kind of people who dream, and sometimes when we dream, we have no clue why we dream about the things we do. We dream about a person we haven't seen in years, a place we haven't been in decades, and there are other times when we dream and we know exactly why we dreamed about what we dreamed. It's something important going on in our lives. something that has been on our minds and it comes to us. We dream about that big interview, that big trip, that big exam that is forthcoming. Of course, the reality never quite matches the way it appears to us in our dreams. Well, I would suggest to you this evening that the first part of the text before us might be understood as a kind of a dream, that the psalmist relates to us. The psalmist is thinking about certain things. There's a reason why he dreams what he dreams. And maybe as I explain this, it would be helpful to step back for a moment and to say a few things generally about Psalm 119. In many ways, it's difficult to read this psalm. There are really many things that make it difficult. It's long. There's a reason why it's sometimes called the long psalm. And it can often seem repetitive to us as we read it. But one of the things that is difficult is that we really are not told anything specifically about who our psalmist is, about where he lives, what time in Israel's history he lives. We sort of have to read between the lines if we want to figure out the context in which the psalmist is writing. And yet, as we look at that, as we try to understand our psalmist from the hints that he gives, one of the things that he tells us, which is certainly very important, is that he is a sojourner. He tells us that on several occasions. And there's a sense in which the fact that he is a sojourner indicates that there's something that has gone wrong. You see, we could go back to Genesis, and we would read about Abraham, and Abraham was a sojourner. Many times, Genesis tells us that Abraham sojourned with his family. He didn't have a permanent home. But you see, God, many years later, brought Israel into the promised land, and he gave to the tribes, to the clans, to the families, he gave them their plots of ground, he gave them an inheritance in that land. And they were to live there. It was their home. It was their inheritance. This sign of a greater inheritance to come. And these various plots of land that God gave to His people Israel were so important that God told them they were not to sell those pieces of land. They were to live on them from generation to generation to generation. And yet, when God gave the law to Moses, He said to Israel very clearly that if they rebelled against Him, among the many punishments, the many judgments He would bring upon them, the worst of them was that He would drive them out of their land. He would scatter them among the nations. They would become sojourners again. And so when we read in Psalm 119, not knowing the name of this psalmist, not having been told where exactly he fits in Israel's story, we know that he is a sojourner and that therefore something has gone wrong. This psalmist, and we might gather, the community of Israel more generally, has been rebellious. They have fallen under God's curse. We don't know if perhaps this psalmist is one of the exiles in Babylon. We know that this was the greatest of the judgments that God brought upon his old covenant people. He drove them out of their land, scattered them. They had to go live in a foreign land. Or perhaps it was some earlier time in Israel's history, some smaller event when this psalmist and other Israelites were driven from the promised land. In any case, we know that all is not well with this psalmist. And that background helps to explain why there is so much in this psalm that strikes us as complaining, crying out for help, groaning under the afflictions and the persecutions that this psalmist is enduring. He is wrestling before God. He has confessed his sins and committed himself to serving the Lord, But he certainly feels the heavy hand of God upon him. And yet, in the Mem stanza, the first eight verses we read, and the first couple of verses in the Nun stanza, it's as if the psalmist forgets all of these current trials. We don't hear about any afflictions. We don't hear about any persecution. He doesn't offer up a single cry to God for help. It's as if the psalmist is thinking about how things ought to be, how things should have been. The psalmist is in a sort of a dream in which he contemplates how things were supposed to go for God's people. Now we will see in the second stanza that it is as if the psalmist snaps back to reality. It's as if he wakes up from his dream all of a sudden and is suddenly faced right over again with all of these afflictions and trials. And yet we see that the psalmist, even so, has not given up hope. He has not given up hope because he knows it is not just a dream. He knows that how things ought to be is how things will be for God's people one day. And so the fact that he must again face these afflictions, these trials, these persecutions does not take his joy away. And that ought to be a great encouragement for us as well. The New Testament tells us that we are sojourners in this world. We do not live in our permanent home yet. As Hebrew says here, we do not have a lasting city. We are awaiting the city to come. But we know that the afflictions and trials of this life is not the end of the story. How things ought to be for us as God's new covenant people is indeed how things will be one day. So let's look first at the Mem stanza, verses 97 through 104. Now, as we come to this stanza, it's worth noting that the previous stanza, Lamed was one of the most upbeat of the psalmists. That's probably not quite exactly the right word. But there are some stanzas that are rather gloomy, in which a psalmist is clearly lamenting his great trials before his enemies. And there are other stanzas in which the psalmist expresses great joy, great hope, eager expectation before the Lord. And Lamed is one of the more positive of the stanzas following the previous stanza, which was one of the darkest. And so, when we come to the end of the Lamed stanza, we are being taken up into the joy and the zeal of the psalmist as he reflects on God's grace and goodness to him. And the last verse of the Lamed stanza, verse 96, the psalmist says, I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad. And it's as if the psalmist here is saying, look, I've been around the block a few times. I've seen the good things of this world. I've seen the allegedly perfect things of this world. And I've discovered that there's a limit to all of these good things. No good thing in this world is really perfect. You always exhaust the goodness of anything in this world. But I've looked at Your Word, O Lord. And I can't find its limits. I can't exhaust its goodness. God's Word is like a gift that keeps on giving. It is profound in its depths. It will never cease to bring illumination to us. as we walk before the Lord in this world. And so on that note, the psalmist begins this mem stanza, and you can see how he doesn't miss a beat. He continues right in this vein. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. In fact, we can sort of see the way the psalmist's mind is working. In verse 96, at the end of the previous stanza, he is, he's expressing this wonder at God's, at God's Word. This sort of amazement at God's Word. It's as if God's Word has taken his breath away when he considers its depth, its profundity. And then he proceeds to express his love for God's Word. And that's how it often is in our experience. We find something fascinating. We find something amazing. And we want to get to know it better. And we might come to love it. That's how it can be with people. It might be the person that fascinates us. The person that we find amazing. That we come to love. Oh, how I love your law, the psalmist says. But notice the second part of this 97th verse. He says, it is my meditation all the day. This is not an abstract love. Not a theoretical love. He doesn't just admire God's word at a distance. Just profess his affection for God's word. No. He loves God's word and so he meditates upon it all the day. We all know that it rings sort of hollow, doesn't it? To tell people we love them and not want to spend any time with them. What would it mean to love God's word? And not have any real interest in it. Well, that's how the way the psalmist is. The psalmist meditates on this word all the day. He wants to hear God's word. He wants to reflect upon it. To contemplate it. To take it in. And that's what we're called to do. You might even think of the way that Paul puts it in Colossians 3. Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. And you think about how much more of the scriptures we have than this psalmist did. We undoubtedly have much more of the Old Testament than he did. And we have all of the New Testament which he had not. How we should love God's law. And that means that we meditate upon it. We contemplate it. We reflect it. We take it in. We make it a part of ourselves. It is how God speaks to us and how God works within us. And there's a payoff. Verses 98 through 100. These next three verses have a common theme. They reflect on the wisdom and the understanding that the person who loves and meditates upon God's word enjoys. Notice first in verse 98. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. This is perhaps the most unsurprising of these three verses, yet it's still noteworthy. The enemies of God's people are often very smart, often very clever, often skillful, accomplished, sophisticated. And God's people, as we know, are often very modest and very humble and very simple. And yet, this verse reminds us that the simplest, humblest servant of God who meditates on His Word all the day has a wisdom that the smartest, most sophisticated enemy of God does not have. Because in God's Word, we know things about this world, about God, and about ourselves that our enemies cannot know and do not know. The most important things about this world and about God and about ourselves. And that should be an encouragement for us. And yet notice also what the psalmist says in verses 99 and 100. I have more understanding than all my teachers. Verse 99 and then verse 100. I understand more than the aged or the elders he understands more than his teachers and elders this might strike us as a fairly confident statement on the part of the psalmist if one of the students who is here professed that he was wiser than all his teachers all the elders of his church we might wonder a little bit about that student what's going on with this psalmist well there are a couple things that the psalmist might be trying to express it's difficult to know for certain one of the things the psalmist might be expressing is that his teachers and the elders under whom he was raised failed in their work now we can be certain that this was a well-educated Israelite who wrote this psalm. It is too good a piece of literature to be written by a hack. And there is some pretty good evidence in Psalm 119 that this psalm was written by a king. We can't be certain of that, but the evidence points to the fact that this psalmist would have gotten a great education by the standards of his day. And yet we know that he was a sojourner. we know that he and certainly fellow Israelites had been expelled from the land. We know that this was not a time of great righteousness and obedience in Israel. This was a time of rebellion. And so it could very well be that his teachers and his elders were not instructing the people according to God's word. And so he is professing the fact that he has a wisdom that those teachers and elders did not have because he is attentive to God's word. And yet, perhaps he is not making such an indictment against his teachers and elders. Maybe they were faithful. Maybe they did give him a good education in God's word. The psalmist could still be professing a wisdom that goes beyond them for the simple fact that he is talking, remember, about God's word. God's Word gives a wisdom that is greater than the wisdom that the best teacher can give. Because the Word of God is, it is the Word of God, directly, unfiltered. We know throughout the history of God's people, God has raised up teachers, preachers, prophets to instruct God's people. The prophets are inspired. Other teachers and preachers are not. Having teachers and preachers is important. And yet, God's Word itself is more powerful and gives more wisdom than the best teacher, the best preacher could ever give. The best sermon that has ever been preached in the history of this world was not better than the text that it preached. God's Word is powerful. It gives wisdom. And it's a reminder of why we do not follow people. We do not attach ourselves to the latest celebrity teachers and preachers and writers, though it is so tempting and so easy to do. It is God's Word that is always the final standard. It is always God's Word which gives us the wisdom. Now, one other thing to note briefly about verse 100. He says, I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. In the previous two verses, he has talked about his wisdom because God's word is ever with him. And his understanding because his testimonies are his meditation. In other words, he's thinking about God's word. God's word is always with him. But you notice here that he says he has understanding because he keeps God's word. There is a wisdom, a perception, an understanding that comes in the doing. Yes, it is important. It's crucial to meditate on God's Word, to contemplate God's Word. But there are things about God's Word that we will not understand except as we put it into practice. As we walk by faith in the paths that the Lord has set before us. There's wisdom that comes in the keeping of it. And it's in that light that we can understand how the psalmist proceeds to speak in the next couple of verses. In verses 101 and 102, he speaks about how he holds back his feet from every evil way. In 102, he says, I do not turn aside from your rules. He is professing his allegiance to the Lord. He will walk in this way. Because he recognizes that this is a crucial path for gaining the wisdom and understanding that he has been speaking about. And then in verse 103, he pushes things a little further still you notice here he says how sweet are your words to my taste sweeter than honey to my mouth now i mentioned earlier in verse 96 the end of the previous stanza he seems to express his amazement his wonder at god's word then he moves to express his love for God's Word, and now it seems that he is expressing a kind of delight in God's Word, a kind of joy in God's Word. How sweet are your words to my taste? And this too makes sense. This is how we often experience things. We move from wonder and amazement to love, and then to delight and joy we should take delight and joy in those things and people whom we love and the psalmist closes this mem stanza verse 104 the first part of it in a way that seems to fit perfectly through your precepts i get understanding but notice how he closes it therefore i hate every evil way as he talks about wonder to love to delight we may not have been expecting him to talk about hatred and yet that too follows we cannot truly love God and his word without hating things without hating what is evil hating evil paths we might profess to love God and his word But that means we must be diligent in hating what is evil. There are many places in the Psalms, in Proverbs, that express exactly the sentiment that those who love the Lord must hate evil. Or you think how Paul in Romans 12 says that we should abhor what is evil. how easy it is to harbor a secret delight in those things that are wrong. Yet for those of us who are committed to love God's word, it is a reminder that we should drive out, we should hate every evil desire, every evil thought of our hearts and our minds. And we come to the nun stanza, beginning in verse 105, And it's as if the psalmist, he just keeps his foot as it was on the accelerator. Keeping the steering wheel straight because he just keeps going forward with the very same theme. He says, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. This is perhaps the most familiar of all the 176 verses of this psalm. it works well all by itself as you know a plaque on your wall but it's helpful to note how well it fits in this larger context of the psalm the word gives wisdom the word gives understanding the word is a lamp to my feet a light to my path and of course this presumes that the psalmist is surrounded by darkness and the psalmist has made that clear earlier in the psalm There are several occasions in which he says things that he is rising at midnight to seek the Lord. It is in some ways certainly an expression of a sort of a darkness of his soul as he struggles with various trials and the darkness of the world around as he lives amidst many enemies. It is a dark world, and yet what the psalmist focuses on here is not the darkness, but the light that God's Word gives as he moves along the path of the Lord. And then in verse 106, the second verse of the nun stanza, if the psalmist just kind of kept his foot on the accelerator in the previous verse, it's almost as if he slams that accelerator into overdrive. He says, I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. The psalmist swears an oath. The psalmist has sort of upped the ante here. Now, when Israelites in the Old Testament took oaths, and there were many, many instructions in the law of Moses about swearing oaths and taking vows, when the Israelites did this, they took the name of the Lord on their lips. And in the most solemn way imaginable, They committed themselves to the truth or to whatever action that they had promised to do. What the psalmist is doing here is of the highest gravity to swear an oath before the Lord. He doesn't just say, I swore an oath, but he says, I confirmed it. There were some circumstances under the Mosaic law when a person could swear an oath and it would not be confirmed. For example, if there was a young girl in her father's house, she took some vow and her father heard it and said, no, you can't do that. The vow would not be confirmed and it would not be binding. It's as if the psalmist here is trying to take away any doubt. He swears an oath and he confirms it to keep your righteous rules. As we think about this, perhaps we wonder what is this psalmist doing? This psalmist has been confessing a number of times already in this psalm that he's a sinner. That he has rebelled against his God. Now he has also expressed his repentance and his commitment to follow the Lord and yet there is no doubt that this psalmist is a sinner just as we all are. And we may wonder is this psalmist really able to keep this solemn promise that he has made taking the Lord's name upon his lips. And it's here brothers and sisters that I would suggest that we can really see this dream-like character of these first ten verses of our text. the psalmist is reflecting on how things ought to be. The psalmist, up to this point, this is like an oasis in a larger psalm that continually reflects on afflictions and persecutions, that is continually crying out to God for help, and none of those things are here in these ten verses. The psalmist is contemplating the way things ought to work. The way, the joy, the peace, the prosperity, the obedience that God's people ought to offer. And it's as if the psalmist is presenting himself as a sort of great king of Israel. You just think about some of the things that he's been talking about in relation to the stories of the kings of Israel. In Deuteronomy 17, when God through Moses told Israel what the king of Israel was to be, one of the things that it emphasized was that the king of Israel must always have the law of God with him. He must read it and practice it. We might think of Solomon. Solomon, the wisest man on the face of the earth. Wisdom. Or we might think of David, the great king, who swore in Psalm 132, swore an oath to God that he would not close his eyes until he found a place for the ark of God. Continually having the law before you, wisdom, oath taking, Well, it's all here in these first ten verses that we have been considering. It's as if this psalmist is dreaming about perhaps what he should have been or about at least what the king of Israel should be and about the great blessing that ought to come to God's people as their king is wise and is immersed in God's law and keeps his oaths. But then, as we come to verse 107, it's as if the psalmist wakes up. It's as if he's suddenly awakened from this dream that he's having. And all of a sudden, in verses 107 through 110, that the realities of life, the realities of the rest of Psalm 119 come crashing back upon the psalmist. Psalm 107, I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord. The first prayer that he's offered up in these stanzas we've been looking at. And then he adds two more requests in verse 108. Accept my free will offerings. Teach me your rules. In verse 109, he says, I hold my life in my hand continually. That's a way of saying that his life is on edge. His life is always endangered. And then in verse 110, he speaks about the wicked. The wicked have laid a snare for me. All of a sudden, in the space of four verses, these realities come back to the psalmist. And it's as if the dream is over. And he's back to real life. A life that is hard. A life full of affliction. A life full of persecution. A life in which he fears for his life day by day. This psalmist may have been dreaming about being the ideal king, but he's not. And in fact, there had not been an ideal king of Israel. What king was there that kept God's law by him at his side all the time, as Deuteronomy 17 required? Solomon, yes, he was the wisest man on earth for a time. Until he rebelled and he disastrously followed the ways of foolishness. And David, David may have sworn an oath to find a place for the Ark of God, but even he couldn't finish that task. Someone else had to build the temple to house that Ark permanently. No Israelite king had yet fulfilled that dream of the psalmist. And yet, as we look at the final two verses of our text, verses 111 and 112, it is evident that the psalmist is not discouraged. He says, your testimonies are my heritage forever. or he might say are my inheritance forever and this is worth thinking about here is a sojourner here is one who has apparently been driven away from his family's plot of ground that had been given to them by the lord he had been alienated from his inheritance and yet he is still confident that he has a heritage, a heritage that he finds in the testimonies of God. How is it that this afflicted, persecuted, exiled psalmist can have such confidence that he still has an inheritance with his God? Well, this psalmist must know that his dream is not just a dream. His dream is a prophecy. A prophecy that he is recording and preserving for God's people for the ages to come. The psalmist knows that there has not been an ideal king of Israel. But he is prophesying that there is one who is coming. There is a king who will have God's law ever before him. Who will meditate upon it all the day. In fact, a king who would be wiser than his elders, wiser than his teachers. As even our Lord Jesus Christ was at age 12, when he went to the temple with his parents. The psalmist knew that there would be a king coming who would be wise. Wise like Solomon. As even our Lord Jesus Christ was the wisdom of God. as Paul proclaims. And the psalmist knew that there was a king coming who would make oaths and keep all his oaths. And you might think of Hebrews chapter 10 in which the author of Hebrews places Psalm 40 in the mouth of our Lord Jesus. When our Lord Jesus came into this world, he said, I have come to do your will, O Lord. He promised to do it. And as Hebrews explains, He did it perfectly, offering up one final perfect sacrifice for sins and then going and ascending through the heavens as our great High Priest. This exiled psalmist knows that he has an inheritance because he is a prophet and he knows that the way things ought to be for his people will be for his people one day in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as he says in the second part of verse 111, these testimonies that are his heritage are the joy of his heart. Here is a person who holds his life in his hands every day and yet he's joyful in the Lord. because he knows that his state of exile, his state of sojourning, all this affliction, all this persecution, is not the end of the story. He knows that this dream will come true. And did you also note in these last two verses, in verse 111, he says, your testimonies are my heritage forever. And then verse 112, I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever. And then as if for good measure, he says, to the end. He is not just confident that God will turn the tables for his people, but he will do so permanently, unchangeably. God's people will triumph over their enemies, and they will enjoy the wisdom and the peace that he prophesies. In the mem stanza. Brothers and sisters. As we join the psalmist. So often. In lamenting. Our afflictions in this world. In confessing our sins before God. In recognizing the fragility and. Frailty of this life. and by the way that is one of the reasons why Psalm 119 can resonate so much with us as sojourners like the psalmist as we so often take these words upon our lips in our hearts may we also take the psalmist's joy the psalmist's hope and encouragement may we dream with the psalmist this prophecy knowing so much better than he did how the Lord was going to fulfill it. Know that in Christ you have the wisdom of God and in His final word preserved for you in the Scriptures that you have wisdom and understanding that surpasses that of all of your enemies. Be encouraged to know that you have an inheritance that lasts forever to the end and that no enemy and no trouble in this world can ever touch. May we put our faith in that great king that this psalmist dreamed about. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this long psalm. Thank you for preserving these wrestlings of the heart of this godly Old Covenant Saint who knew trouble, who knew sin, who knew persecution for Your name's sake and has laid bare His experience before us, for us, that we too might take these things to heart Father, thank you that in the midst of all his many troubles that at some places in this psalm seem ready to crush him that he continues to turn back to you and to your word and to find hope and joy and encouragement because he knows that his troubles are not the end of his story or your story for your people. Father, we thank you that you have indeed provided a great king. A king who had your law on his heart all the day. A king who was so wise. Wiser than his teachers even as a boy. The very wisdom of God. Thank you, O Lord, that our Lord Jesus kept all of his promises, all of his vows, all of his oaths. That he did your will even to the end. Father, may you encourage us by pointing us to him. May you turn our eyes to that inheritance that is ours. An inheritance so much better than a plot of ground in Palestine. an everlasting inheritance, a kingdom that cannot be shaken, kept in heaven for us. Father, in the midst of whatever afflictions, whatever troubles face each of these saints here this evening, we pray that you would give this encouragement and consolation and joy in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.