As I mentioned, our scripture reading this evening is found in Psalm 119, verses 33-40. Psalm 119, beginning at verse 30. Brothers and sisters, this is God's Word. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding that I may keep your law, and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. Behold, I long for your precepts, and your righteousness give me life. Thanks be to God for his word. I'm sure most of you have had opportunity to hear children pray. The prayers are so simple, yet so beautiful. And we too long for this childlike faith, and the prayers that then flow from it. As we get older, our prayers change, don't they? There's much more that weighs on our minds as we mature and move along in age. Many times those prayers include our physical needs or the needs of others. Maybe we are sick and desire to be healed. Perhaps we need a job and we ask for the Lord to provide. Maybe we are grieving and we ask the Lord to comfort us. It is good and it is right for us to ask the Lord, to pray to him for these things. In fact, the Lord commands us to cast all of our cares at his feet. Well, in this section of Psalm 119 that we read, the psalmist too is asking the Lord for very specific things. And these requests might not be the sort of things that we normally pray for. But here we're being taught that we should. In fact, these are the sort of requests that should characterize one who is maturing, who is growing up in the faith. One who is, in fact, a righteous believer. And as God's people, we are counted righteous, aren't we? We're counted righteous because of Christ. And therefore, we can ask the Lord for these things. Requests to God that change us not on the outside of how other people see us, but how God sees us on the inside. As we continue through our lives in this present evil age, facing all the trials, facing all the troubles that come in this life, we constantly need to ask the Lord requests of Him. Requests that befit the righteous in Christ. Because that's who we are. We are to come to the Lord with requests concerning our heart, our soul, and our mind. Those are the three points this evening, but in the order that the psalmist gives them to us in our text. So think with me this evening, as we see in our text the requests of the righteous, considering our mind, our heart, and our soul. And may you, Christian, ask the Lord for these things as well, so that you can be guided, so that you can be instructed in his word as disciples of Christ. But before we dive into these requests for our mind, we need to briefly consider this entire psalm and where our text fits within it. Well, as many of you know, Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. But it's also one of the most stylized. Psalm 119 is an acrostic, as are a few of the psalms, which means that each line starts with a sequential letter in the alphabet. But instead of just one line starting with the next letter of the alphabet, Psalm 119 has eight. Each stanza begins with the same letter in the Hebrew alphabet. And as you may have noticed from the heading in your Bible, the text that we read is in the fifth stanza. Verses 33 through 40 all begin with the fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet in the original Hebrew language, the letter He. Now there are a lot of words in Hebrew that start with this particular letter. What the psalmist does in this text is very interesting. The psalmist starts every line but the last one with a certain verb form, a certain verb that begins with this particular letter. i don't need to bore you with all the details why this is noteworthy but it's because this form usually means to cause something to happen the psalmist here is making requests to the lord but he's asking the lord to bring about that change how many times are there when we see things in our own life that we just want to be the ones to make the change ourself, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We can do this by ourselves. Well, in these requests, we ask the Lord to work the change in us. Brothers and sisters, isn't that how we need to look at it? When we think about our need for the Holy Spirit and our sanctification. If our sanctification was left completely to us none of us will look more christ-like tomorrow as we do today we need god's grace and here in this psalm we've been given the words to pray to ask the lord for his grace our first request then is asking the lord to change our mind well this entire psalm is the psalmist praising the lord extolling the lord for the beauty of his word the richness of his law sometimes i wonder if we can write 10 verses concerning god's law let alone 176 and well the first three verses of our text the psalmist asked for his mind to be filled with the word of god teach me give me understanding lead me these are the requests that the psalmist brings to the lord the psalmist asked the lord to teach him concerning his law concerning his commandments so that they can instruct him so that they can guide him throughout his life sometimes as christians we forget about this use of god's law don't we that it is to guide us that it is to lead us in the paths of righteousness We have the law read to us every Sunday morning, but then we might try to avoid the law the rest of the week. Brothers and sisters, God's law is for our entire life. When we leave the church building this evening, we can't escape God's law. As a believer, the psalmist knows the wisdom that is contained in God's law. We need to understand. We need to be taught by the Lord Himself. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then understanding what God's law says is the most wise thing that we can do. Having this wisdom from God will guide us. It will lead us. In verse 105 of this psalm, we hear those famous words, Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. Being led in the path of God's commandments means that we are aware of what God's law requires of us every moment of the day. We are to love God. We are to love our neighbors. We are asking the Lord to bring about these changes in our mind so that we can keep God's law to the end, to observe it with our whole heart. This isn't something that we only do on Sundays, or maybe just part of the time. God's law is for you, Christian. Simply knowing what God's Word says allows us to even make decisions in our daily lives. Should I make this business deal, or is it kind of shady in breaking the Eighth Commandment? Should I take this job, even though it causes me to work on Sunday, breaking the Fourth Commandment? Those are easy decisions to make in the light of God's law. And making decisions like these based on God's law is what it means to have the Lord make us walk, to be led in His commandments. But in order to have the path of the Lord, the forefront of our mind, we need to be taught. We need to be given understanding, just as the psalmist asked the Lord. I once heard a Christian, when asked if he could list the Ten Commandments, said, no, I can't list them, but I sure do follow them. That doesn't make any sense. How can we follow God's law if we don't know what God's law says? They're not just the Ten Commandments, but also what Jesus and the apostles explained further in the New Testament. And children, this is why you are being catechized. Every one of us need to be reminded of God's law, which is why we have it read to us every Sunday morning. Brothers and sisters, the psalmist tells us in verse 35 that he delights in the commandments of the Lord. Do you delight in them? Do you desire to keep the statutes of God to the end? To observe all of God's law with your whole heart? Just as these were the desires of the psalmist, They need to be our desires as well. If they aren't, we need to ask the Lord to give us these things. As verse 18 says, we need to ask the Lord to open our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out of His law. Well, this is actually good news for us. Because for those who have been saved by the blood of Christ, we're not under the threat of the law. We can see wondrous things in it. Because we are not under condemnation for our inability to keep it perfectly. For the unbeliever, the law of God is only bad news. But for the Christian, Christ has kept the law perfectly for us. We can now approach following God's law out of gratitude. Knowing that it is pleasing to God because of Christ. This is the understanding that comes to God's people only by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. If you don't have the understanding, then put these verses on your lips and ask the Lord for these things. Well, this is the first request of the righteous for our mind to be taught, to understand, to be led by God's Word. And the second request concerns our heart, which is our second point this evening. Now children, have you been told not to be selfish? To share with others. To allow maybe your brother or your sister to play with something that is yours. Well, being selfish is something that comes very easy to us, doesn't it? We like to keep things for ourselves. To not share them with anybody else. Well, when we're selfish, we're not loving God and our neighbor as we ought. when we act this way, is because our heart loves those items more than it should. We need to have our heart changed so that we don't make idols of earthly things, worshiping them alongside the Lord God. This is precisely what the psalmist asked in verses 36 to 37. The psalmist saw himself trying to gain things selfishly. He's desiring worthless things. So what does he do? He asks the Lord to turn his heart, to desire God's Word, to turn his eyes away from looking at worthless things. Now, if I know we are honest, every single one of us needs this to be our prayer to the Lord as well, don't we? If there are any righteous requests that we need to ask of the Lord in our day and age, these are it. To incline one's heart means to give loyalty to something. Maybe you have a favorite sports team or a favorite college or university that you root for. Your heart is inclined towards that team. You root for them and cheer for them regardless of the opponent that they are going up against. In order for you to root for or cheer for another team, something needs to happen. Something needs to cause that change. Maybe you move away. Maybe that team disappoints you in such a way that you can no longer root for them or cheer for them. Your heart is turned. Your loyalty is put someplace else. Well, the psalmist in Psalm 119 saw himself rooting and cheering for selfish gain. He needed to have his heart changed to switch sides and to focus on God's testimonies. Focus on God's Word instead. Let's just call this as it is. This is covetousness. This is breaking the Tenth Commandment. The psalmist also had the object of his desire worthless things in verse 37. Now the word here for worthless also has the idea of being false. These are things that look good. They promise happiness and joy. Instead, bring the opposite. They're not worth the value that we placed on them. We all have such things in our lives, don't we? We can't sleep at night thinking about such and such item. But then when we actually get it in our hands, it's kind of disappointing. All the features you are looking forward to don't do what they're supposed to do. It doesn't change the world as you thought it would. We need to ask the Lord to turn our eyes away from those things. We are to see our lives in the Lord, in His ways. Not in the ways of the world, in its things that moth and rust destroy. Well, I don't need to tell you that the world thinks that this is foolish. To seek after God's Word? To turn our hearts, incline our hearts to His ways? That's foolishness to non-believers. The world thinks what it has to offer is so much better. worthless things that we desire for our own selfish gain. Not much has happened in the last 3,000 years, has it? The psalmist saw his failings in this area. He asked the Lord to change his heart, to turn his eyes away from these things. There are other places in the psalms that speak very beautifully of what it means to have our hearts and our eyes turned away to seeing God's Word and His law as beautiful if you have your Bibles open turn back 100 Psalms to Psalm 19 look at verses 7 to 10 of Psalm 19 the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart the commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Here David very beautifully expresses how his heart and his eyes especially have been transformed by meditating upon God's law and upon God's word. He paints a picture of a table containing fine gold, sweet honeycomb, and God's law. We can even say the Bible. How many of us would run up to that table, shove as much gold in our pockets, as much honeycomb in our mouths as we can fit? What does David do when he runs up to that very same table? He runs directly to God's Word. He runs directly to the Bible. His heart has been turned. That honeycomb just isn't sweet. His eyes don't see that gold, even fine gold, as being desirable. Brothers and sisters, this is what we need to ask the Lord for every single one of those worthless items that we have in our lives. Those things that are stumbling blocks to our walking in the paths of the Lord and maybe even causing us to sin. We need to be revived, as the psalmist asks in verse 37. To be revived or to be given life according to God's Word. Only the Holy Spirit can turn our hearts and give us that life. But the good news is that Christ has conquered sin and death and has made us alive. Listen to these words from Romans 6. so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to god in christ jesus let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to god as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to god as instruments for righteousness for sin Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law, but under grace. We are to consider ourselves as being dead to sin, and alive in God and Christ Jesus. Sin will have no dominion over us. This is the promise of God. He will incline our hearts to His testimonies. He will turn our eyes away from worthless things. As a result, we fear the Lord. We rest in His promise for our souls. Which brings us to our final object of our righteous requests. Our soul. In the previous stanza of Psalm 119, the psalmist declares in verse 25, that my soul clings to the dust. Give me life according to your ways. And in verse 28, My soul melts away for sorrow. Strengthen me according to your word. These are the longings of the believer's heart as we live in this present evil age. In this veil of tears that God allows to come upon us. We ask the Lord to give us life. To strengthen us. Our souls long for these things, don't they? The request of the righteous given in verses 38-40 is that we ask the Lord to comfort our soul. We want to have God's promises confirmed to us. We ask the Lord to turn away the reproach or the disgrace that we're so afraid of. We know deep down that we need God's righteousness to give us life. There's an interesting contrast between verses 38 and 39. In 38, the psalmist's desire is to fear the Lord. And in verse 39, he dreads or he fears the reproach of God. On the one hand, the psalmist knows, fears, and trusts the Lord because of His Word and His promises. God's promises will come true. He is to be feared by all people because He is Almighty God. Because He is our Heavenly Father and He is the Almighty Creator God, there is a fear of Him because His rules, His judgments are good. We have His rules and His judgments shown to us throughout the Bible. Now young people, especially those who are in high school or in college, Maybe you've had a class before where the older students have warned you about a particular professor or a particular teacher. Boy, is he tough. He doesn't let you get away with anything in his class. He doesn't show any mercy on his exams. You enter that class on the first day pretty worried, don't you? You're anxious about the semester ahead because of the reputation of the teacher that you have heard about. Well, the word translated in verse 39 as rules can also be translated as judgments. Knowing that God's judgments are good gives the psalmist dread. Because he knows that they are just, they are exact. God doesn't grade on a curve. There is no good enough. God demands perfection. The psalmist asks the Lord to turn away the disgrace that he feels because of his sin. He asks the Lord to remove it. The psalmist knows that to properly fear the Lord, he needs to rest on God's promises. Promises that God has given that He will redeem us from our sin and guilt. Then comes verse 40. I think that we can see verse 40 as the second half of verse 39. And that the two are really connected. Primarily because verse 40 is the only verse that doesn't start with a verb. So they're connected to the one that precedes it. The psalmist asks the Lord to turn away his reproach in verse 39. Then in verse 40, he wants that dread, he wants that reproach replaced with life and the righteousness of God. This is a comfort that God gives all of His people. Finding their life in God's righteousness. In many ways, the Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther read Romans 1, verse 17. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Luther realized that this righteousness of God was not something that he needed to merit. He didn't need to earn it for himself. But it's the righteousness that God gives through faith. Only then is the dread, reproach, curse, fear of God's law removed. It is turned away from us because it was turned on Jesus Christ who fulfilled the law for us. We then receive his righteousness. As Romans 8, verse 1 reminds us, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The gospel is foreshadowed in verse 40 because our life is to be found in the God-man's righteousness. Without it, we are lost. God's judgments haven't changed. They never have, and they never will. Even the psalmist was trusting in God's righteousness. to give him life. Where is your trust, Christian? Is your trust in your ability to look holy, to look pious on the outside to others? Is your trust in the faith of somebody else that you're just hoping to grab the coattails as they go into heaven? Or is your trust in God and his promises found in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee for us of all these benefits. Well, there is one big problem with this psalm. And maybe it's troubling you as it does me. The psalmist who penned this beautiful psalm could never fully live out those requests that he asked God to give him. He is still a sinner. Putting ourselves in the psalmist's shoes and praying this psalm only serves to remind us how far we have fallen from the glory of God. Even as Christians, we can't observe God's law with our whole heart. We don't fear the Lord as we ought. We covet continually. We don't delight in God's word. The psalmist and we like him will only be fully described in the way this psalm gives us when we are glorified in heaven. But there is one man who looks like this now. One who did fulfill this psalm perfectly while he walked on earth. One who kept the statutes of the Lord to the end. And kept and observed God's law with his whole heart. One who truly delighted in the path of his Father's commandments. And never had his heart inclined to selfish gain. One who found life completely in God's ways and his eyes never turned to worthless things. And who feared the Lord eternally because of His promises and the covenant that they had between them for even the foundations of the world. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the true object of this psalm. In Christ, we have a picture of the only truly righteous man Not only foreshadowed here in Psalm 119, but throughout all of the Scriptures. Verses 33-38 are very beautifully and profoundly seen as fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But then we get to verse 39. There the psalmist asks the Lord to turn away the reproach that he dreads. Christ, too, asked something very similar of the Lord the night before his crucifixion. In Matthew 26, we read, And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. The next night, Christ received the answer to this prayer, didn't he? The Lord's will was done. And it caused Christ the most reproach, the most dread, the most disgrace, the most punishment man has ever faced on earth. God's reproach was not turned aside. God's judgments were indeed shown to be good, shown to be just, shown to be exact. And all of that culminated on Christ crying from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But on the third day, after being laid in the tomb, verse 40 was fulfilled. Christ was given life. He was raised again because of the righteousness of God. And God's promises were kept. Brothers and sisters, the only reason we have life in God and our Heavenly Father is because of Christ, our elder brother. Throughout our lives, we have a tendency to desire to make changes in our lives. Good changes, but maybe not the most important changes. Christian asks the Lord to give you by the power of His Holy Spirit these requests of the righteous. Because you are counted righteous in the sight of God because of Christ. And may this prayer of the psalmist in Psalm 119 be your prayer throughout the week indeed through the rest of your life as your heart, mind and soul are conformed more and more into the likeness of Christ toward whom this psalm points us. Amen. Let's pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father we just give you praise and we give you our wonder and our amazement at the beauty of your law and your word. Lord, so often we don't see that. We try to run away from Your Word. Run away from what it so clearly tells us. To try to find our own righteousness in and of ourselves. Lord, as we see on every page, and especially here this evening, from the stands in Psalm 119 that we have been considering how these things point to the only truly righteous man, Your Son, Jesus Christ. And it is only in Him that we are seen righteous in Your sight. That we can now see Your law as wonderful. To see Your commandments as beautiful. That we can be led in them. We can be led in the path of righteousness. Because Christ has taken upon the curse of the law for Himself. Lord, we thank You once again for allowing us to see these wonderful things. And may this truth, the Gospel truth, motivate us. Not only for the rest of today, but throughout the week, month, year, in the many years to come. In your Son's most holy and precious name we pray. Amen.