Oh, the Happiness!
An Introduction to the 119th Psalm
A Sermon by the
Rev. S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. (Ps. 119:1)
In times of trouble and distress, the word of God becomes more and more precious to us. During the recent pandemic, God’s people learned afresh how important it is to study the Scriptures, and not just to study them, but to realize what a treasure we have in that book that we have come to know as “The Holy Bible.” The Scriptures contain many descriptions of how precious and valuable the word of God is, but the longest treatment of that topic is found in the 119th Psalm, which, as you know, is the longest chapter in the Bible, containing 176 verses. The subject of the 119th Psalm is the word of God. If we really want to know how wonderful the word of God is and what use we should make of it, the 119th Psalm is the place to go. This Psalm is one long hymn of praise and thanksgiving for the gift of the Holy Scriptures.
As we go back through the history of the Church, we find examples of the lavish praise so many godly people have heaped upon this Psalm. Martin Luther, the great reformer, said that he prized this Psalm so highly that he would not take the whole world in exchange for one leaf of it. Spurgeon said that the 119th Psalm “might well be called the holy soul’s soliloquy before an open Bible… this Psalm, like the whole Scripture which it praises, is a pearl island, or, better still, a garden of sweet flowers.” Spurgeon pictures a person standing before an open Bible, and that book is so wonderfully beautiful to him, that he just starts pouring forth praise for the Scriptures. The perfect words of praise for the Bible are found in the 119th Psalm.
I have read accounts of some people who have memorized the whole 119th Psalm. Yet, I would have to say that there are probably few Christians today who know very much about this portion of God’s word. If I took a random survey of Christians to see if they could quote a verse from the 119th Psalm, I do not think many would be able to do so, unless it is the verse, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Ps. 119:11). It is not surprising to me that there is so little knowledge about this Psalm at the present time. If we genuinely loved the word of God, then this Psalm would be precious to us.
But from the late 19th century to the present time, so many people, especially preachers and theologians, have done everything they can to undermine the love that people once had for Holy Scripture. Some people, even those inside the Church, have taught that the Bible is just a human work with many errors, an idea that utterly destroyed the love that many used to have for the word of God. On the other end of the spectrum, there are other people who think that they are so spiritual that the Holy Spirit speaks to them directly, so they do not even need to study the word of God.
Then, with all the distractions we have in the modern world that keep us from reading, much less studying the Scriptures, it is difficult for the modern Christian to understand why someone would love the word of God the way this Psalmist did. Only those who deeply and sincerely love the Bible can have any hope to understand how the Psalmist feels about the word of God. So many of the verses begin with exclamations, like, “O how love I thy law!” Even the first verse could be translated, “O the blessedness….” Remember, that the Psalmist probably only had the first five books of the Bible, and yet he loves the word of God so intently. In our day, we have 66 books in the Bible. You would think that Christians would fervently love Scripture, but for the vast majority of Christians today, the Bible is a dull, boring, and, therefore, unopened book.
So, in this time when there is so little love for the Holy Scriptures, I have decided that I will preach a series of sermons on the 119th Psalm, which, even if I should live another 20 years, I am sure that I will not have completed. But in a day when the word of God is almost totally ignored, especially in American culture, I would like to be one of those few voices pleading with people to return to the Scriptures with love and devotion St. Augustine once said that he had longed to write a thorough exposition of the 119th Psalm but felt that he was inadequate for the task. If a brilliant man like Augustine felt that he could not do justice to this Psalm, what hope do we lesser mortals have of doing so? Therefore, I enter this project with much fear and trembling.
Many books and commentaries have been written on the 119th Psalm. One of the most famous works was by an Anglican minister, Charles Bridges (1794-1869). He was the vicar of Old Newton, Suffolk and later of Weymouth and Hinton Martell in Dorset, England. One of the most detailed works on the 119th Psalm was written by the great Puritan preacher, Thomas Manton (1620-1677). Manton, an ordained deacon in the Church of England, preached a sermon on every single verse of the 119th Psalm, a goal which I have set for myself. I will be preaching more than one sermon on some of the verses, but, of course, my sermons will not be nearly as long and detailed as Manton’s. Manton’s work comprised over 1,700 pages. I confess that my sermons will largely be an adaptation and paraphrasing of these fabulous works of the past, but these great studies always need to be updated, expanded, and made easier to understand for today’s reader.
Another wonderful study of the 119th Psalm was the devotional commentary written by the great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whose volume is entitled, The Golden Alphabet. He called it The Golden Alphabet because the 119th Psalm is divided into 22 sections containing eight verses each. The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters. In each section, the writer of the 119th Psalm goes through the Hebrew alphabet, and he begins each of the eight verses of that section with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. For example, in the first section, each of the eight verses begins with the Hebrew letter “aleph,” which is something like our letter “A.” Then, the next 8 verses begin with the equivalent of our letter “B,” and so on until we get to the last section where all eight verses begin with the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “tau,” corresponding to our letter “T.” No doubt, this system was used as a memory device. If a person were to try to memorize the 119th Psalm, a helpful memory aid would be to have each letter of a verse in each section begin with a particular letter of the alphabet.
As I said, the theme of this great Psalm is the word of God. Every verse deals with some aspect of the Scriptures themselves. Many people who read the 119th Psalm have felt that it is very repetitious–that the psalmist is just saying the same thing over and over again. Such people have never taken the time to study the Psalm in detail, for if one truly studies each verse, you will find that there are subtle differences even in the verses that seem to sound the same. This Psalm, like the word of God itself, is multi-faceted. It invites us to look at the word of God from all different kinds of angles and viewpoints, as one might hold a diamond up to a light and look at how the light comes through in so many different ways. No matter how many times we read the Bible, no matter how many times we read the same stories, we discover something new each time. Even individual verses come home to us in new and different ways depending on the circumstances of our lives at different times. No one will ever be able to exhaust the beauty and the meaning of every verse of Holy Scripture. The Scriptures are like a great symphony by Beethoven. Every time you listen to a Beethoven symphony, you discover something new. The interesting thing about music is that the more you know about music–the more you know about composition, music theory, the history of music–the deeper your understanding of the symphony grows, the more beautiful it becomes, and the greater appreciation you have for it. Scripture is like that, but infinitely more so. The more you learn about Scripture, the more you realize that there is so much more to know, so much more that you have not yet comprehended. This one section of Scripture, the 119th Psalm, is like that. The more you study each verse, the more you will realize that there is so much more to know, because the 119th Psalm, like all of Scripture, is the word of God Himself.
The Scriptures are not the words of men. The Scriptures contain the very words of God. Since God is infinite, and we are finite, we will never understand all there is to know of God. It will take all of eternity for us to explore the vast richness of who God really is. The great adventure of eternity will be to learn more and more of God and come into this knowledge through an eternity of communion with him. For Christians, that eternal study of God begins each time we open his word to read and study. At the present time, the way we come to understand God is through his word, the Holy Scriptures. This is where God has spoken to us, and this is where he will always speak to us. If you want to hear the voice of God, it is not difficult—open the pages of Holy Scripture, and there he will speak to you. The words of Scripture are his very words, and if you began studying this book today, 24 hours a day for the rest of your life, you would never come anywhere close to understanding all the richness contained in the Bible.
Since God is revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture, the 119th Psalm will help us to understand why we should value the word of God so much. Philip Henry, the father of the famous Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, encouraged his children to take one verse of the 119th Psalm each day and meditate on it. By doing so, a person would have meditated on each verse of the Psalm twice each year. The reason Philip Henry gave for wanting his children to follow this practice was so that “it will bring you to be in love with the rest of Scripture.” How true that is! If you can absorb something of the psalmist’s love for Scripture described in this psalm, then you will learn to treasure every word of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. The 119th Psalm tells us why the word of God is so important, why we should meditate upon it constantly, and why we should love it.
When we study the 119th Psalm, we will see that it does more than increase our love of Scripture. We will also learn how to live in a way that is pleasing to God in every circumstance of life. When Charles Bridges wrote his wonderful commentary on the 119th Psalm, he entitled it: Exposition of Psalm 119: As Illustrative of the Character and Exercises of Christian Experience. In other words, the 119th Psalm describes what it is like to be a Christian–the many joys of the Christians, the many trials and sorrows of the Christian life, and how the Christian goes through all these experiences with the word of God constantly on his mind and in his heart. Bridges says that what we have in the 119th Psalm is a description of the Christian’s excellent character, for in this Psalm we see
his instancy in prayer and praise, his determined and persevering cultivation of heart religion and practical holiness, his hungering and thirsting after righteousness, his jealous fear and watchful tenderness against sin, and regard for the honor of his God, his yearning compassion over his fellow sinners, his spiritual taste, his accurate discernment, the simplicity of his dependence, and the godly sincerity of his obedience, his peace of mind and stability of profession, his sanctified improvement of the cross, his victory over the world, his acknowledgement of the Lord’s mercy, his trials of faith and patience, his heavenly liberty in the ways of God, his habitual living in his presence, and under the quickening, restraining, directing, and supporting influence of his word.
Have you ever realized, like Bridges, that the depths of Christian experience are described in the 119th Psalm to that degree? We will see the depths of Christian experience in every area of life as we study this beautiful inspired, infallible, and inerrant portion of God’s holy word.
The 119th Psalm begins with the words, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” Immediately, we learn why we should treasure the Holy Scriptures. The word of God teaches us the way to live the “blessed” life. The first Psalm begins in the much the same way: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalms 1:1-2). Many scholars have suggested that it is no accident that the first Psalm is placed at the beginning of the Psalter. The first psalm is an introduction to the purpose of the whole book—how to live the blessed life. We could say that the 119th Psalm is an extended commentary on the first Psalm. We might say that the whole book of Psalms is a description of how to live the blessed life, even in the times of greatest sorrow and trial. Isn’t it interesting that when our Lord begins perhaps the most famous sermon in the history of the world, the Sermon on the Mount, he begins it by saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…and then follow eight more “blesseds”? The psalmists and our Lord himself wanted us to know what the blessed life is.
The word “blessed” is not a word that we use very often in our day, unless we are quoting Scripture itself, so we need to understand the meaning of this word in Hebrew and its equivalent in Greek. Some of the words that are put forth to describe the meaning of this word are “privileged,” or “highly favored.” Some have said that the word could mean “to be envied.” Others have paraphrased this word to mean “to be congratulated.” If we are searching for one word that comes close to “blessed” it might be the word “happy.” Sometimes, the KJV translates this word as “happy.” In John 13:17 our Lord Jesus said, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” Again, we see the relationship between knowing the truth, obeying the truth, and being happy. Some have translated Psalm 119:1 as, “Oh the happiness…!” By the way, it is correct to put this statement in the form of an exclamation. This verse is not so much a command to live this way so that we will have the blessed life, rather it is the statement of a fact. The Psalmist is looking at the people who are undefiled in the way. He is looking at those who walk in the law of the Lord, and he is saying to himself, “How happy they are!” Since the word “blessed” in this first verse is in a plural form, some have thought that perhaps we could say, “Oh the ‘happinesses’…” How many different ways are those people happy who love the word of God and who live in obedience to it! They are happy on an infinite number of levels. Would you like to have that kind of life–a life where you experience true and genuine happiness in so many ways that nothing could ever take this happiness away from you? The Psalmist shows us how that kind of life is possible, and he tells us repeatedly that this kind of life is achieved in one way—studying, believing, loving, and obeying the Holy Scriptures. In the coming studies, we will see how the word of God leads to the blessed life. Amen.
