Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee;
And let thy judgments help me.
Without the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scripture we cannot possibly fulfill the holy end for which we were created in the first place, namely, to glorify God as his worshipers. A spiritually-minded man knows this and prays earnestly for the indispensable divine gifts, as the psalmist does in this verse.
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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
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Accept, I beseech thee, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O LORD,
And teach me thy judgments (Psa 119.108).
Worship is fundamentally for God, not us. It is not that he needs anything from us, because he is wholly self-sufficient. “We give thee but thine own.” But God’s pleasure and glory is the all-important consideration in worship. We cannot increase his glory, but only reflect it. We are mere moons; he is the sun. Any benefit to us in worshiping him is merely a secondary consideration as to its substance, form, and worthiness. Worship is justifiable and imperative because it pleases God to glorify himself through us as his instruments.
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How sweet are thy words unto my taste!
Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!(Psa 119.101-102).
Samson’s enemies answered his riddle with questions, and one of them was, “What is sweeter than honey?” (Judg 14.18). This question is posed in a rhetorically negative form—i.e., nothing is sweeter than honey, at least not in the physical realm.
The fact that honey was renowned for sweetness in ancient times led the psalmist to make a comparison with something even more sweet—the very words of the sacred Scriptures.
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They continue this day according to thine ordinances:
For all are thy servants (Psa 119.91).
Everyone observes the natural world with religious and philosophical presuppositions, whether conscious of them or not. The prevalent notion that modern scientists are wholly objective in the analyses of their observations, and that therefore their conclusions are infallible, is, of course, a myth. This helps account for how that in many areas of scientific inquiry fashionable explanations come and go. It is not that the reality of the created order is changing, but man’s knowledge of it is growing, and his interpretation of it is as error-prone as fallen humanity itself, and also as capable of reformation and progress.
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At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee
Because of thy righteous judgments (Psa 119.62).
The psalmist’s divinely-inspired testimony here sets forth a praiseworthy example of gratitude. These words were, in that miracle of prophetic utterance, infallibly given by the Spirit through fallible man, so that the very words of the text are as much the Word of God as if He had breathed them out of His own mouth. The result is a text with God’s own authority which is profitable for instruction, reproof, correction, and disciplined training in righteousness (2 Tim 3.16-17). Yet only if the Lord is pleased so to work in our hearts will we benefit eternally from studying it (1 Cor 2.13-16). Jesus is praying for you who believe to that end (John 17.17). May He awaken the rest of you.
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Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes (Psa 119.12).
A life of genuine piety can be summarized as praising God and learning from God. These two things are mutually symbiotic—they thrive together and need each other. A famous example is Egyptian plover and crocodile. The bird loves to eat the crocodile’s little parasites and the crocodile appreciates this so much it will open its jaws and let the plover in to hunt. The croc-dwelling bird enjoys a safe place as few of its predators would dare approach this fierce perch. So the bird and crocodile live happily together, mutually advantaged and dependent.1
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I will praise thee with uprightness of heart,
When I shall have learned thy righteous judgments (Psa 119.7).
Our sinful hubris makes us think we “just know” how to worship God, and without grace inevitably we follow Cain’s wicked example of bringing unacceptable offerings to the Lord (Gen 4.3-5), whether we realize it or not. When preachers expose our spiritual ignorance and the Lord’s displeasure with our religious folly, our countenance also falls, except He change our hearts.
Most of the worthwhile things we do require some knowledge, skill, and practice before we become very good at them. No one sits behind the wheel of a car for the first time ready to drive on the highway. Real cooking (not TV dinners) cannot be done without culinary learning and training. Any kind of serious sport requires a serious commitment to discipline before excellence appears. So why do so many people fancy themselves expert in religion and worship, while they remain mostly ignorant of Scripture and grossly inconsistent as professing Christians?
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