My lips shall utter praise,
When thou hast taught me thy statutes (Psa 119.171).
Have you ever stopped to consider why God gave you lips? Seriously, our lips are great blessings to us and a stewardship from the Lord, for lips can do wonderful things. We can move our lips into different shapes to express our emotions non-verbally, with smiles and frowns, and by pursing them. Lips keep foods and liquids from falling out of our mouths when we eat and drink. It takes lips to spit, and lips to kiss. We recall with amusement a certain animated vegetable character exulting in this gift with the exclamation, “I love my lips!”1
But chief among the lips’ abilities is the faculty of speech, and no higher speech is possible for human beings, either in this life or the life to come, than the praise of God Almighty. Omniscience created “lipped creatures” for the manifestation of his glory, world without end. Lips cooperate with tongue, and “therewith bless [or, praise] we God” (Jas 3.9). Think of it! Your physical humanity, your body of flesh and bone, with your lips, shall be literally, corporally raised from the grave, however decayed and scattered to the four winds it may have been since you died, even if you were cremated, and with these very same lips you have now, albeit glorified, you and I, my fellow Christians, shall glorify the God of our salvation in the very physical, tangible, new creation after Christ returns—unless he comes before we die, in which case we shall along with the righteous dead be glorified instantly and caught up to meet the Lord in the air for our commendation and reward (1 Thess 4.16-17).
Admittedly, our text verse, Psalm 119.171, presents a figure of speech, using “lips” for the psalmist’s whole person, body and soul. Of course he intended readers to understand, “I shall utter praise, with my whole being,” and not that his lips alone were engaged in the holy activity of verbal worship. Indeed, mere lip-worship is an abomination to the LORD. He complains about this and announces severe judgment upon it. “This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men” (Isa 29.13).
However, we should never misinterpret the critical importance of heart-sincerity in worship as canceling out the necessity also of external, physical devotion to God. At a point of climactic application in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he issues an impassioned plea that you Christians “present your bodies a living sacrifice” (Rom 12.1), and this after he had exhorted, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom 6.12-13, emphasis mine), the lips being most definitely included and not least among the bodily members in the sphere of repentance and consecrated Christian service.
Consider that the New Testament highlights the first clear-cut outward sign of salvation to be “confession with the mouth” of Jesus as Lord (Rom 10.9-10). Those are characterized by the Holy Spirit as sorely blameworthy who would not openly confess Christ, because they “loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12.42-43). This is the horrible sin of idolatry. What they would not say was as clear an indication of the state of their hearts as what others will say, when we boldly confess Jesus to be our Lord and Savior before unbelievers. Recall how this open verbal confession bolstered the assurance of fearful and skeptical early believers concerning the claims of formerly-murderous Saul the Pharisee, when he was only newly converted and preaching the already-despised Gospel of Jesus Christ (Acts 9.27).
What David has in mind is not a barely audible mention of God’s praise, but that which would “flow freely from” his lips (NET). The Hebrew verb means “to bubble up,” and “to pour out,”2 “like water flowing from a fountain, as the word signifies.”3 “The word means to pour forth continually.”4 The AV choice of “utter” is excellent, for the literal sense is, “send out; esp. five out from a store,” and the right sense here is, “send out as a sound, emit audibly, give expression to (an emotion etc.).”5 The Septuagint of verse 171 uses the Greek verb “humnos” (related to English word hymn) meaning, “to celebrate.” One paraphrase gives, “I will burst into songs of praise!”6 David is writing the very words for such public praise as he commits to the singing of them.7
What is it that elicits, guides, and sustains such a response from this godly heart through his lips? It is nothing less than the divine tutelage by Holy Scripture. “When thou,” LORD God, “hast taught me thy statutes.” While God uses human teachers as instruments, true spiritual learning is born and lives and grows stronger and healthier by the words of the living God deposited and preserved for us in the Bible, and brought home to the heart with glory by illumination of the Spirit, which is certainly the living voice of God himself speaking to his people.
There is an immediacy of fellowship between the soul of the righteous and God himself which is wholly unknown in the experience of unbelievers and does not ultimately depend on the church’s human instructors. Jesus alluded to this in John 6.45, “It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” Paul was a master-teacher in the church, but he acknowledged that the most profound discipleship was accomplished more directly. “But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another” (1 Thess 4.9).
Only when Bible hearers and readers are thus “taught of God,” when they receive the apostolic doctrine “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God,” will it “effectually work in them which believe” (1 Thess 2.13).
And the inevitable and God-ordained effect of such spiritual learning is to produce sincere and heartfelt praise from our lips, with a consecration of all that we are and have to the glory of God. Always remember that
THEOLOGY IS FOR DOXOLOGY
Another way to put it is that we are learning to worship. The whole point of our studying the holy Word of God is to prepare us to fulfill the ultimate end for which we were created in the first place, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.8
Apart from Scripture, we have enough spiritual light in natural revelation to condemn us for our idolatry and immorality, but not enough to turn our hearts back to God and to instruct us adequately about how we might serve in his Temple as a spiritual Levite-choir under the Lordship of Christ.
We must have the Law to reveal God’s holiness, to convict us of our sins, and to bring us to that painful and precious despair of self-righteousness and self-salvation, but even this is inadequate.
We need the Gospel to reveal God’s loving grace and mercy in Christ for sinners, and to present the Savior before us for all our love and trust and loyalty and hope. By Gospel preaching God is pleased to exercise his gracious power in saving his people from our sins. Further, this biblical Law and Gospel continue to impel and reform our hearts and conduct as his worshiping host. As sinners are saved and added to Christ’s beloved church, the snowball is becoming an avalanche of thunderous praise in a new song to him who is worthy, for he was slain, and has redeemed us to God by his blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation (Rev 5.9).
David’s testimony then is this. My lips shall pour forth your praise when you have taught me your statutes, for that is your purpose—so that the sounds of the age to come, when all evil has been purged from the new heavens and the new earth, might begin to be heard from my lips in the congregation here and now, to the glory of God.
Why, then, do we study Scripture? Not to gratify curiosity or to impress others. Brethren, we are learning for the purpose of divine worship. We are being blessed with a progressively enlightened view of God’s person and works to awaken our hearts to praise, and we are being increasingly strengthened by the Holy Spirit in the inner man to fulfill this ultimately worthy reason for our being. May God bless his grand cause. Amen.
Notes:
1 Yes, it was Larry the Cucumber of “Veggie Tales” fame, which we only recommend for their humor more than any serious value.
2 BDB #615.2.
3 John Gill, in loc.
4 1599 Geneva Bible notes.
5 SOED.
6 ERV.
7 The Psalms are hymns in the biblical parlance.
8 Westminster Shorter Catechism, #1.