Psalm 119, we'll be looking at verse 105 through verse 112. I should also mention that though my voice sounds weak, I feel rather well, if not slightly forgetful. And when I woke up this morning, I thought I sounded a lot like Reverend Kaminga, which I thought was a real blessing. But things went downhill from there. So, I feel good. I just hope that the pleasantness of the sound will not be a distraction. Let's ask God to bless His Word for us. Lord, You've given us Your Word. Not that they would be beautiful sounding notes upon a page. Not that they would be merely spoken, prayed, or sung. Lord, we know that You've given us Your Word, that it would indeed serve to be so useful to us in our lives. We pray now as we consider it, That it would help us to understand more clearly who You are, who we are, what You call us to be. That it would be a light upon our paths of life. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Psalm 119, verse 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much. Preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word. Accept, O Lord, the willing praise of my mouth and teach me your laws. Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law. The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts. Your statutes are my heritage forever. They are the joy of my heart. My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end. Well, this weekend, folks around the nation and around the world are thinking about their path in life. The past, the present, the future, maybe thinking about a better diet, a better exercise plan, a better social strategy. USA Today newspapers, weekend edition, had the headline Passageways, where it highlighted some of the more notable luminaries of society reflecting upon their life and death, their passageway. As we read the Bible, we find that there are indeed many paths. There are many paths in life, but only two ends. There are only two destinations. With God and without God. We either end in life or we end in death. This morning, God has called us. Each one of us have come following a different path. But we come seeking the same end, don't we? We come to be with God and to enjoy covenant life with Him today, tomorrow, forever. Psalm 119 reflects upon covenant life with God. And it celebrates the Word of God that makes it. Our passage in particular talks of the path that we travel as God's people. How God provides for our journey. And it suggests a plan. I think it's suggestive of a plan. It doesn't detail the plan. I think it's suggestive of a plan to ensure for us the best possible end. And not only the best possible end, but the best possible joy in life as we strive towards that end. As Reverend Donovan reminded us of and called us to last evening. Well friends, as we consider these verses, my prayer is that these words would become your words. that God's Word would be in our mind, be in our heart, be upon our lips, that it would saturate our lives. Because when we live as God's people with the Word of God saturated within our lives, we come to be with Him lights in this life. And we come to know a joy that surpasses all understanding. Well, in the first place, notice what our passage says about the path that we travel. Verse 105 says, Your Word is a lamp to my feet. It's a lamp to my feet and a light on my path. We need lamps. We need lights for dark places, don't we? We can imagine a dark room. We can imagine a dark, moonless night and we can imagine the feeling we have of not being able to see, not knowing what's in front of our next step or around the next turn. Just a few weeks ago, our headlights went out on our van. It was nighttime. And I had to drive the hilly, twisty, mountainous road home in the dark. And I can assure you it was dark and it was dangerous. Well, the Bible tells us that the world has become a dark and a dangerous place. Whatever our modern society has been able to do with the fallen reality and character of this world, the Bible reminds us that it remains a dark and dangerous place. And when the Bible uses the word dark or darkness, it does evoke those feelings of not being able to see, of not knowing what's around us or what's to come. And when it uses it in reference to God, it highlights the mysteriousness of God, what is unknown about God, what we cannot see about God. And yet, when the Bible uses or refers to or suggests darkness with respect to the world, it has to do with sin and misery. Proverbs 2 verse 13 talks of those who forsake the ways of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness. Those who rejoice in doing evil. And Job. Remember how Job lost almost everything that was near and dear to him in life. In chapter 5, he reflects upon the day of his birth and he said that he was born into darkness. That this little baby was born into a misery of life. When the Bible uses darkness to describe things of the world, it's referring to the sin and misery that is around us. And because of that sin and misery, the world has become a dangerous place. Think about the historical books in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles. Think about all the examples of how the people of God faced untold trouble and untold dangers. Think of Israel as they moved from Egypt through the wilderness and the promised land that God would give them. And think of all the dangers that they faced and the opposition they faced in being the people of God in a dark and dangerous world. Or we can think about the kings. We can think about Saul and David and Solomon. and we can think about how troubled and how dangerous their work was in trying to maintain the righteousness of God's people in the face of their enemies. Well, this danger is reflected in our own passage if you look at verse 107. The psalmist says, I have suffered much. I have suffered much. Preserve my life, O Lord, according to Your Word. consider my suffering and preserve my life as You have promised to do in Your Word. In Psalm 109, though I constantly take my life in my hands, He says, I will not forget Your law. When our lives are known to be within the hands of God, there is security, there is safety, there is confidence, there is stability. But when we think of our lives as within our own hands, we are reminded how weak, how exposed we are. And verse 110 kind of brings this danger to a climax when he considers how the wicked have set a snare for me. The wicked are after the king, the poet, the people of God. We must not forget that the wicked is at war against the righteous. Brothers and sisters, our temptation in our modern context is to forget that the wicked is at war against the righteous and that as a result, the righteous are always at war. We forget the basic character of this world and life in this world. We forget the sin that is always lingering in and around us. We are inclined to forget the misery of this life because of the air conditioning, microwaves, health plans, modern science. We have arrived, but we haven't arrived. There remains a war, a struggle, a strategy of Satan and the host of the kingdom of hell that seeks to undermine the kingdom of heaven. Maybe one of the best examples of this is the little book, Pilgrim's Progress. Next to the Bible, it has become the most widely distributed book, the most widely distributed Christian book in the world in history. It tells that story of how Christian follows a path from the city of destruction to the celestial city, the New Jerusalem. And as Christian follows this path, he sees firsthand how dark and how dangerous it really is. He meets, or he comes upon the place of despair, the village of morality. He's led astray in the city of Vanity Fair. And he comes across friends, travel companions of obstinate, pliable, Mr. Worldly Wise Man. And each of these experiences are tempting him to veer off the path of life. To leave off the path that God has called him and to find an easier way. A way that is less dark. A way that is less dangerous. And yet again and again, Pilgrim, Christian, turns to the book in his hand and is reminded about the reality of life. Pilgrim's progress illustrates our path as Christians and it illustrates how God calls and provides for us His covenant people with His Word. God provides for us light for our path with His Word. As we consider our passage, we're not sure who wrote it. But we do know that they were written and used by God's covenant people. The Psalms, in general, speak again and again and again of God's covenant faithfulness. Our call to worship this morning was from Psalm 118 that uses the refrain, His steadfast love endures forever. And that word, if you know nothing else in Hebrew, that word for God's steadfast love is worth knowing. It's fun saying, chesed, especially when you have a cold, chesed just rolls off the tongue. Chesed in Hebrew is a very precise term describing the distinct kind of love that God has for His people. His covenant love, His steadfast love that we can have confidence in. That we can know endures forever. That's why we find it throughout the Psalms. That's why we find the refrain in Psalm 118. That's why we find it dozens of times in Psalm 119. And that's why in verse 105, the prayer can come forth. The praise could be said that Your Word is a lamp to My feet. There's confidence that the Word of God provides the light necessary for us as we travel the dark and dangerous paths of life. In verse 106, he uses the word laws, elsewhere statutes. If you have an ESV study Bible, there is a chart in that study Bible right near Psalm 119 that shows how this psalm, celebrating the law of God is not thinking narrowly about law as the Ten Commandments, which we've heard this morning, but rather it is speaking about precepts, statutes, commandments, rules. It's speaking about the will of God that He's revealed to His people through His Word. His covenant Word. Using different words to describe that word in poetic fashion so that it might sink deeper within our thoughts, within our minds, within our hearts. Because God's word is such a treasure to God's people. They would find ways, the people of God, to saturate their life with His word so that they would have the light necessary to illumine their path. And they did so with anticipation. The people of God have always known that the Word of God was never simply something to be said. Never simply something written on tablets or on paper. Never simply something that is recited. But always something to be trusted in and to be fulfilled. It wasn't until the Son of God came that there was an understanding of what the Word of God was to be. In John 1, we are told that the Word became flesh. And Reverend Kamega reminded how He walked in our shoes, how He traveled down our path, how He bore our sin and our misery upon Himself and ultimately died as a sacrifice so that we would live. That we would have life with Him. That Word that brought all of reality into existence. That Word that called Abraham and shaped his family and Isaac and Jacob and Israel. That Word proclaimed and rejoiced by the poets and the Psalms and the prophets and proclaimed by the prophets became flesh. And the Word was light. And that light shines in the darkness. Brothers and sisters, the darkness has not understood it. Our call by God is to understand the light. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote just a delightful little book. I had to show it to you because it's so small and so delightful. Frankly, I don't know where to get it. Dr. Horton gave it to me as a little Christmas present and he didn't know how much of a treasure it would be. But Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes there that if we want to read and pray the prayers of the Bible, especially the Psalms, we must ask first not what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. Because of Him, God has become our Father. Because of Him, Heaven has become a throne of grace. The Psalms are given to us, Bonhoeffer continues, so that we may learn to pray them in the name of Jesus Christ. To know the Word of God. To pray it in union with the Son of God so that we may live in the light of God all the days of our life. And you know as well as I how much patience and discipline this requires. Abraham Kuyper in his little devotional Near Unto God writes, Our Father sows the seed of prayer in our hearts. He does it with His Word. And prayer life must develop in us. Prayer must ripen in the soul. And only when it matures does the Heavenly Father enrich it with the abounding and abundance of answers. It's not that our prayers need to be sophisticated. It's that they need to be informed by faith in Jesus Christ and patiently become an expression of the Word and will of God itself. A work of His Son and of His Spirit. That brings us to the third point that this text suggests a plan to follow. And I suggest it for you as you consider what other kinds of resolutions you may have for the new year. Diet plans are good. Exercise plans are good. But a plan to be saturated with the Word of God is best of all, Paul says. In verse 106, listen to how the psalmist commits himself to the Word of God. In verse 106, he says, I have taken an oath and I have confirmed it. I will follow Your righteous laws. Verse 109, Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget Your law. Verse 110, The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from Your precepts. Verse 111, Your statutes are my heritage forever. They are the joy of my heart. Verse 112, My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end. The commitment to the Word of God by God's people. Some years ago, a Presbyterian pastor named Terry Johnson really kind of put the lights on in my own mind regarding this when he explained that we need to be a people who are saturated with the Word of God. He goes on to say, because we believe the Word. We read the Word. We pray the Word. We sing the Word. We memorize the Word. All with a zeal to live the Word. In union with the Word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, we believe the Word of God. We have confidence in the chesed, the covenant, and steadfast love of God so that we know that it is a light for our path. We know that it is what we need to travel down the dark, twisty, mountain, hillside roads of life. And we know that without it, we have no way of knowing what may come next or how we might respond to the next difficulty. How we might plan for what is in the future. We believe the Word of God. And so we read the Word of God. One follows the other. If we wouldn't believe, we wouldn't read. But if you believe, you read. You need, you read to know. And as we read the Word of God, it becomes in our minds, it becomes in our hearts, and it becomes something that flows from our lips. So we pray the Word of God. And as the Word of God settles within our soul in that way, the heavenly husbandman, Kuyper says, starts to give it root and helps to give it life. And that Word of God is sung because God is worthy of that praise. We believe the Word. We read the Word. We pray the Word. We sing the Word so that brothers and sisters, we would know more of Christ and of the life that He calls us to live with Him. The Word in the world. The Word in us. A light for the world. We do these things with the Word of God so that we would indeed be passionate in living the Word of God. There's no doubt that the path God calls us to follow is a hard one. It's been hard. It is hard. It will be hard. It's hard in grade school. It's hard in high school. It's harder in college. And it may be hardest of all as adults in the workplace. The path illumined by the Word of God, brothers and sisters, is a hard one, but we can be confident that it ends with God. And that each step along the way, He is with us to uphold us. The little pilgrim Christian set his eyes on the celestial city, the New Jerusalem. And we're told in Revelation that in the New Jerusalem, there will be no more light, no more darkness, no more sin, no more misery, danger. For the Word of God, Jesus Christ Himself will be fully revealed for all of His glory, and His glory will shine like the sun. There will be only day. And in that place, our path will end. Until then, friends, until then, we are to be a people of the Word of God. And let's pray that we would find ways to saturate our lives with that Word. Oh, Father in Heaven, we give thanks to You for Your Word, especially as we consider the need we have in traveling the paths of life You've called us to travel. And Father, we do rejoice that You have made the provision necessary for us that we might see truly and that we would live rightly. And Father, we thank You most of all for not only revealing the path that we must travel, but giving us the power to do so through Jesus Christ in the indwelling of Your Holy Spirit. Oh Lord, that the Spirit would work within our hearts and minds so that we can say along with the psalmist, Oh, how I love Your law. Oh, that Your Word would abound within our hearts and our minds. That we would be those who not only believe it, but read it and pray it and sing it and live it. So that we would be those who are united to Christ by faith. And that we would be those who live like Christ in this life. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.