Lutheran Brethren Church of Nampa

This week’s reading begins with the Hebrew letter, “Mem.” The word is, “Mah,” and it simply means, “How.” Now, if you’re particularly astute, you might remember that we already dealt with, “how,” in the “Beth” section of psalm 119. But now we have another “how” under Mem. Why is that? Well, the “how” in the “Beth” section was a question, saying, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” The “how” here is an exclamation. “How I love Your law!” It’s the same as how we might say, “How awesome is that!” or, “How wonderful!” or, “How do I love thee; let me count the ways.” The point here is that the psalmist is overflowing with love for God’s law and is practically shouting that love from the rooftops. He loves the wisdom the Law gives, He loves the obedience the Law calls him to, and because of his love is so great, he hates every false way that stands opposed to that Law.

How I Love Wisdom

So the first thing that jumped out at me is the wisdom the psalmist attributes to God’s Law. He says that he’s wiser than his enemies, he has more insight than all my teachers, and that he understands more than those who are old. Kinda sounds like he’s full of himself, doesn’t he? I mean, isn’t that the height of conceit and pride to say that you’re smarter than any enemy, any teacher, and anyone older than you? If someone were to come up to you saying, “Dude, get a load of me. My enemies are morons, my teachers know nothing, and every old person is an idiot compared to me.” you’d probably think the guy hasn’t gotten enough dope slaps in his life. But that’s not what the psalmist is actually saying here. He’s not claiming any great wisdom, insight, or understanding on account of his own abilities. Rather, it’s that when he has in mind God’s truth, there is nobody in the world who has any wisdom, insight, or understanding greater than that truth.

Think about it. Whether it’s your enemies, teachers, or a wise old man, they’ve all got wisdom, insight, and understanding. Some more than others, granted, but they all have these things. Everybody does. But consider the source of such wisdom, insight, and understanding. Is the source of these things from the world? From other fallen and sinful human beings? From empty philosophies or false religions? If that’s their source, then you can be guaranteed to have greater wisdom, insight, and understanding than any of them because their source is God’s own Word. The Word that comes from the one whose wisdom, insight, and understanding are limitless. It’s why scripture so clearly tells us, in a few different places, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. When your eyes are focused on God and His teachings, true wisdom follows. And that’s not pride. That’s boasting in God.

But we do have to check ourselves often on this, don’t we? Because the path to pride is supplanting God’s wisdom with our own, claiming that that wisdom is actually from God. I can claim to be a godly person, sharing my wisdom, but failing to discern when what I’m teaching has not come from God’s Word, but from my own ideas, or from the teachings of this world. What might that look like? Let’s say I’ve just finished reading about when Mary is being criticized by Judas for using expensive perfume on Jesus. Jesus responds by saying that the poor will always be with us. And, because I’ve been scrolling through a lot of ultra-conservative blog posts lately I say, “Aha! There it is! Jesus himself said to not care for the poor.” So, the next week, I preach a sermon on how we shouldn’t be giving any money to charities and, if you can pull it off, don’t pay your taxes either. Now, because I haven’t bothered to discern whether this teaching is from the world or from God, I’m teaching it under the color of God’s Word, despite the fact that that Word is chock full of commandments to give to the poor. And this world of ours tempts us to exactly that: to lower ourselves to the wisdom, insight, and understanding of the people around us, rather than getting these things from the entire counsel of God’s Word.

And you know what? It’s going to keep happening. Despite God’s Word being an unfailing source of wisdom, insight, and understanding – and despite how great it is to know and believe that – we’re going to find ourselves buying into the wisdom of this world instead. And that makes us foolish. The first chapter of 1st Corinthians deals with exactly that. It calls the world and everyone in it foolish. That includes you and me. We’re fools. But what comes next is this wonderful statement that God has chosen the foolish things in the world to shame the wise, to where we see in 1st Corinthians 1:24 that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. So right there you know that so long as you are in Christ through faith, you already possess the wisdom of God. By faith, you’ve already bought into the wisdom of God over and above the foolishness of the world. What this means for you is that, first, when you do believe and teach the foolishness of the world, you’ve got an out. You’ve got the repentance and faith Christ has given you, which removes the sin of your foolishness, applies Christ’s wisdom to you, and restores you so that God does not see your foolishness. And what’s more, that repentance and faith then drives you back to God’s word so that it can correct whatever foolish ideas the world has splattered on you so that you don’t make the same mistake again. In Christ, you do have wisdom, insight, and understanding that far exceeds anything you’ll find in this world because Christ is the fulfillment of all of God’s Laws, Precepts, and Testimonies.

How I Love Obedience

Which naturally leads us into the next thing the psalmist is writing about here: obedience. He talks about how he has restrained his feet from every evil way and not turned aside from God’s ordinances, citing that God’s words are sweet to his taste; sweeter than honey. Isn’t that great? God’s words are so sweet to him that it is his hearts desire to do everything they command. But as wonderful as that sounds, is there something about that that doesn’t sit quite right with you. It doesn’t sit right with me. The reason being that God’s Law convicts me just as much as it encourages me. Probably more so.

Look at it this way. In my own bible readings, I just finished the book of Deuteronomy. And it’s not a happy ending. Israel is given the law, they’re receiving it gladly, and God gives them all kinds of promises that if they keep everything God has commanded them, God will richly bless them. They will stay in the land that God has given them, they will be fruitful, they will prosper and be rich, they will never be afflicted by any enemies. Sounds awesome, right? But then God goes on to tell them that they will not, in fact, keep His law. That they’re going to fail miserably and be cursed instead. And don’t misunderstand this. God isn’t saying, “If you fail to keep my law you’ll be cursed.” He’s saying, “You will fail to keep my law and you will be cursed.” Furthermore, he’s not saying this to just the generation of people who are listening at that time, but to the future generations as well. This includes the psalmist here. Which means that there are two problems with what he is saying: first, he has not kept his own feet from straying into evil ways, and second, that when the law condemns that straying, it is a bitter, deadly thing.

But, and this is a big “but”… But, when we understand the psalmists words through the lens of saving faith, there aren’t any problems with his words at all. See, the words here are being spoken out of a heart that possesses saving faith. And even though the law has repeatedly shown the psalmist his wandering feet, He also knows and believes God’s promise of righteousness through faith. Though the psalmist will never see the death and resurrection of Christ while he lives, he knows that God has already promised forgiveness and righteousness through His Messiah. So even though the law might convict him and drive him to repentance, the law does not condemn him. The law is not death to him because death has been swallowed up by life – the eternal life that comes through faith. This is the starting point for all of us as well. If any of us are stubbornly holding on to any of our sins, loving the sins more than we love God’s word, then the Law has to be bitter and deadly to us. It has to come at us in full force. It needs to kill that sinful nature and leave us with nothing but a desperate plea for salvation. But once that salvation comes, we come to realize that the law no longer condemns us to death and hell. It can’t condemn us to death and hell because Jesus Christ has already defeated death and hell for us. So although the sins we continue to commit are bitter, God’s Law no longer is. It is sweet – sweeter than honey – because that Law comes from the God that loved us enough to send His only Son to die for us.

This, then, becomes our true motivation for wanting to be obedient. We’re not obeying because of the threat of punishment, but because of the gospel. We’re obeying out of a deep love and appreciation for the God who first loved us. Our feet no longer want to stray into every evil way, but instead we want to live out lives that look like who we truly are: God’s beloved children.

How I Hate Every False Way

But it would be good to spend a little more time on the idea that sin is bitter to us. The psalmist says here that he gets understanding from God’s precepts, which means that he hates every false way. Now, the temptation is to jump right into identifying every false way that’s out there in the world. And there’s plenty of false ways out there, I know. But we’ve always got to start with ourselves, because we’re not yet free from false ways ourselves. 1st John 2:1 really helps us to understand this difference between the love of God’s Law and the hatred of our sinful nature. 1st John is dealing with living in obedience to God’s Word, and has wonderful commandments to love our brothers, to not love the world, and all that. But in the midst of that, 1st John 2:1 says, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” This is it! This is what we’re talking about. We want to be obedient to God’s law, that law is sweet to us, it gives us wisdom, insight, and understanding. And so we are charged to meditate on it, to keep it, so that we would not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, meaning that our righteousness is constantly being advocated for by Jesus Christ himself, who removed our sin from us.

All of that to say that when we are called to hate the sin we keep doing – when we’re called to hate every evil way we keep stumbling into – we’re not called into the kind of hate that leads to desperation. It is not a hate that says, “I’ve sinned again. I hate myself. I’m no good to God. He can’t ever love me.” Not at all. Rather, when these sins and evil ways crop up in our sinful flesh, the first thing we do is refuse to love those sins and evil ways. We identify them as hateful things, turn in revulsion from them, and receive the forgiveness of Christ. And, using that hate, commit ourselves to being obedient instead. After all, when you hate your sin, you’re not actually hating yourself; you’re hating your sinful nature. Which is not who you are. By faith, you are first, foremost, and solely a beloved child of God, holy and blameless because of Christ. The sinful flesh is just a leftover that is yet to be dealt with. It is not who you are at the core. With that then, hating our own sin and evil ways is a really good thing because it can only foster better obedience to God and better devotion to His Word.

With that dealt with, now we can move on to the evil ways out there in the world. The calling is to hate those as well. So what do we do with that? How do we live that out? Well, what that can sound like is that we’re now charged with a holy crusade to purge the world of all evil, embarking on a godly mission to drive the evildoers out of our societies and our countries. Remember how we were just talking about how we can package worldly wisdom in the guise of godliness. Yeah, that would be another way of doing that. I mean, yes, we’re on a holy crusade against evil, but not in the way that we go to war against our neighbors. Remember that we’ve got to consider the whole counsel of God, which also tells us to love our neighbors, to bless those who curse you, to pray for those who persecute you, and to do good to those who hate you. There’s the puzzle we need to work out: How do we hate every evil way, while loving, blessing, praying for, and doing good to the people who walk in those evil ways?

This is where the world, its philosophies, and your own thoughts and ideas will never have an answer. The only answer is to see how God – God, who likewise hates every evil way – to see how God deals with those who walk in evil ways. What does He do? He loves them. And how does He demonstrate that love? Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That promise isn’t just for you, you know. God loves all of those evil-way-walking sinners out there, and while they are still, right now, sinners, Christ died for them. So our job is deal with their evil ways by telling them exactly that. By bringing the gospel to them so that, just like us, their sinful nature would be killed by that bitter, deadly law, so that they would turn in repentance to life through faith in Christ. That is the way you show your hatred for every evil way; to deal with it in the same way God did: through the love of God demonstrated through the death of Jesus.

God’s Law. Love the wisdom it offers you. Love the obedience it encourages you to. And when you see evil ways, whether it’s in you or out there in the world, deal with them how God did, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Let’s pray…