Words of Light (Psalm 119)

Today, which comes from Psalm 119 verses 105 through 112. Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much, preserved my life, Lord, according to your word. Accept, 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. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Good morning, church. It's great to see you. As Ryan said, we're going to continue in our summer in the Psalm sermon series.

It's kind of a little bit of a challenge to preach a sermon series on the Psalms because the content of this book of the Bible is so really diverse. There are 150 Psalms in the Bible and they can be prayers and poems and liturgies, responsive readings. They can be Psalms.

All you have to do is open up your Bible. Like Ryan said last week, you open up to the middle and there you find yourself probably in the Psalms. And you find out that they're formatted differently.

They look different. They read differently. Today we're going to look at Psalm 119 that Rebecca just read to us.

Now you'll notice that she didn't read all of Psalm 119. I thought about having her read it all. It's 176 verses long. It takes about 15 minutes to read the entire Psalm in just one setting. That means that I wouldn't be left with any time to preach today. I decided I would take it easy on her a little bit.

I mean, think about it. Psalm 119 is longer than 31 entire books of the Bible all by itself. It's longer than 22 Old Testament books and nine in the New Testament. It could be a freestanding book of the Bible all by itself. Just Psalm 119. It's so big, so magnificent, almost beyond comparison.

It really is an amazing piece of scripture all on its own, this one single Psalm. It's really kind of amazing because the Psalm is organized into 22 sections, and each section of this Psalm corresponds to one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, bait, gimel, dalet.

That's about all I remember from my Hebrew, by the way. And each of those 22 sections is comprised of exactly eight verses. It really just is an amazing piece of scripture.

And what's even more amazing about this Psalm 119 is that each of those eight verses and each of those 22 sections starts with a letter, the specific letter of the alphabet. So the first eight verses in Psalm 119 all start with the A, the aleph, they all start with that first letter of the alphabet. And our reading today, our section, is the eight verses, our nun, it's the N in the Hebrew alphabet.

The words of the Psalm are very enlightening. It's so well organized and well ordered. It's a celebration of one of God's most amazing, precious gifts, essential gifts to us, the very word of God.

So eight times 22 gives you 176, and its theme throughout all 176 verses is the praise, the exaltation of the word of God. And throughout it, the psalmist repeatedly praises God's word through God's laws and decrees and statutes and the very presence of God as God speaks to God's people. Now, throughout the Psalm, words like word or law, they're not described as kind of harsh words that are meant as kind of a strict set of burdensome legal kind of responsibilities with penalties set aside for them.

Instead, the words that were used for Hebrew to describe word or law like torah is one of those words, mean directly translate to like teaching or instruction. And they really represent for us this idea of God's word coming to us as a way of providing loving guidance to his people, designed to keep us from falling off the path, to keep us safe and to help us thrive, rather than a list of penalties that we can find ourselves judged by. Now, the verse we're going to center ourselves on today is the first verse that we read.

It's Psalm 105 of Psalm 119. It's probably the most often quoted verse in all of this verse, in all these 176 verses of the Psalm. It's, your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.

Now, this is not a statement about the Bible as we have it now. That Bible, as we have it now, did not exist when the psalmist wrote this. Now, let me be clear.

That does not mean that the Bible as the word of God is any less important for us. It simply means that this psalm, this statement here, is not really talking about that, although we kind of understand that as we become people of the book today. So what does it actually mean to say that God's word is a lamp or a light? Well, to answer that, we really have to dive deep into the world of the psalmist and seek to understand what he might have understood.

And to do so, we have to explore the words of light that he uses throughout the psalm. The first word for light in the verse 105, as we read, is the word lamp that we translate lamp, and it's the Hebrew word near, and according to the scholars, it kind of means a glistening light like a candle. So a candle or a glistening lamp gives off a very little bit of visible light.

Picture what you might see if the power goes out in your house and you light a candle so you can see your way around so you don't run into walls like evidently some people do. And maybe what you have when you're out for a romantic dinner one evening and you're sitting at the table, that kind of light we're talking about, not a lot of light, just enough light to see kind of what's going on right in front of you. In ancient times, a lamp was kind of a vessel with a wick with a little bit of oil inside, and if you walk with a lamp, you held it in your hand, and it produced just enough light to be able to see what was going on right in front of you.

So when the psalmist wrote, thy word is a lamp unto my feet, he wasn't picturing that modern flashlight or flipping on the light switch so you can see what's going on around you. He imagined a small oil lamp, just enough light to be able to see the next step on a dark and uneven path. Psalm 119 verse 105 isn't about clarity.

It's about dependence. It isn't about clarity. It's about dependence.

In the ancient world, that lamp that revealed just enough light to take the next faithful step teaches us that God's light for us is enough sometimes just for us to see what's right in front of us and to take that very next step. The image here is of daily walking by lamp light and the spiritual practice of trusting God one step at a time. The psalmist recognizes that God's word illuminates even the darkest roads of life.

It's an admission that without God's clarity, we can stumble into uncertainty and even danger. The psalmist helps us understand that the human heart alone cannot reliably navigate all of life's complexities. Surely that's not a surprise to any of us, right? We've all experienced something like that.

So it says the word of God is a lamp unto my feet. Other places in the psalm, the psalmist uses this kind of imagery to talk about walking properly before God. In verse 59, the psalmist says, I thought about my ways and turned my feet to you.

In verse 133, the psalmist prays, direct my footsteps according to your word, let no sin rule over me. The psalmist also uses other words for light and throughout the psalm. And one of those words that he uses in this very verse when he says, your word is a light unto my path.

The Hebrew word for light here is not the same kind of a slow, a low glimmering light that the candle provides for us that you hold in your hand to steady your steps. It's a brighter kind of light. It's a light that's bright enough to see everything around you.

It's clear like morning. It's illuminating. Now somebody with a little bit of a vision problem like I have, this kind of light is very important.

It helps us to navigate things. I can see much better and a little bit brighter light than I can and just a little dimmer light. It's the kind of light you might have on a street or on a walkway or somewhere else so that people can see to walk along that path and navigate it clearly without running into any kind of danger.

It represents the overarching vision and direction and ultimate purpose that God provides for our life's journey. A light though, no matter how bright, will not show all the twists and turns on the road ahead, but it is enough light to give us a general kind of sense of direction. Because this verse is poetry, it's intended for singing, there is no point in trying to make a big deal about the distinction of a lamp and a light or God's word coming to our feet or our path.

I mean, those kind of phrases are repeated over and over again as a poetic device to make a single big point, namely that it's God's word that guides and directs us in life. And the word light in this verse and throughout Scripture becomes one of the important images that's used to describe the very word of God. Later, this psalmist goes on to say, the unfolding of your word gives light, it gives understanding to the simple.

I like that verse, that verse is good for me, I like that one. The psalmist celebrates the many ways that God speaks to us in words that we can hear and read and understand. And then for us, as followers of Jesus, we look to the New Testament and we begin to understand the ultimate revelation of the word of God.

The light of God's word comes to us in a person. Jesus himself would describe His presence as the word made flesh. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And in that phrase, we now see the kind of the full trajectory of Psalm 119 verse 105. In the Psalm, God's word is a light.

It guides us and leads us towards life. But God had even a greater light to give to the world, the light of Jesus Himself, the light of God. The other words in this verse that are important to me that really shine a light on my path as I'm walking through life is where it says that your word is a lamp or a light for my feet and my path.

I remember when I was, my kids were younger when they were little boys, it was my job to drop them off this day at their daycare center so that I could then go to the church where I was appointed at the time, where I was serving as the pastor at the time, and they had a chance to go to the daycare at the United Methodist Church where I grew up, so it was kind of neat for me to drop them off, walk around those halls that were familiar, but that also meant that as I drove from out of that church over to the other church where I was going to work, I drove down a road that I was very, very familiar with, that I had driven countless times since I was a 16-year-old boy and got my license, which meant I also probably drove it a little faster than I should, and we all kind of do that when we're riding a familiar road. About halfway down this road, there is a sharp left-hand curve that it takes. It's been a dangerous spot for a lot of years, and when I was getting my license, my parents always told me I had to be very careful when I ran around this curve.

Well, I went around the curve probably a little bit too fast, and I looked out the windshield of my car, and all of a sudden what I saw was this old woman in a car that was way too big for her to be driving, back slowly out of her driveway right in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, stopped just short. She took her time, puffed on her cigarette, blew her smoke out the window, and then finally shifted into drive and pulled off.

About that time, as I looked out the window at her, I noticed that on the bumper sticker of her car was this bumper sticker that said, WWJD. Remember those, what would Jesus do? We kept asking each other at the time. That was all over the place, and I remember thinking to myself, well, I can be darn sure he wouldn't be pulling out in front of people like you just did, and I'm sure he wouldn't be puffing on that cigarette.

And about that time, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in my rearview mirror, and I heard the words, and I'm sure he wouldn't be talking about other people and judging people the way you just did. Some people have said, somebody has said that the word of God is to be used in our life like a mirror, not like a window. It's used like a mirror, not like a window.

What that means is instead of using Scripture to shine a light on someone else's life, to point at their flaws or to judge the world, I should instead use Scripture like a mirror that shines a light on my life and helps me to walk in the ways that God desires for me to walk. When I look through the Bible at someone else, it's like looking through a window that often leads to self-righteousness, to finger-pointing, to using it to scrutinize the behavior of someone else. A mirror, on the other hand, helps me to see my own life, to see ourselves as we are, so that we might better align our steps down the path that God has laid out before us through His Word.

Now, this verse is not a guarantee of God providing all the right steps and us always taking them. Scripture is not a turn-by-turn set of directions like your GPS is. Every decision in life is mapped out.

But it does provide for us some spiritual landmarks and some guidance and a little bit of direction so that we might walk in a better direction. The psalmist in Psalm 119 gives eight different ways throughout all those 176 verses that God's Word shows up in the life of the people. He tells us over and over again that He loves the Word of God.

He tells us over and over again that He believes the Word of God. He asks God to help us understand the Word of God in our lives. He asks God to teach us the Word of God.

He ascribes glory to the Word of God. But in this passage, what He does for us here is we get to this point in a psalm and He starts to tell us that the purpose is not just to praise the Word of God. It's to find ways that we can live out our lives according to the Word of God.

Loving the Word of God is not enough, but we show how much we love the Word of God by realizing that those are words of light that help us walk in the ways that we are supposed to walk as His followers. You see, our love for the Word of God is best shown by the way we live it out, by the way we walk in the light of God's Word. At the end of our reading today, the last verse that Rebecca read to us when she read that reading, it says, My heart is set on keeping your decrees, My heart is set on keeping your words to the very end.

This is the promise the psalmist makes for his life and I think the prayer that we need to make for our lives is that we might find ways to find a little light on our feet, a little light for our path, so that we might find ways that we could say, God, I will walk down the path of life, letting Your Word light my way. May we find our feet walking by the words of light. Amen.