3. Psalm 119:9-16

3. The Word in the Heart has power to keep us walking in God’s way (vs 9-12)
And though he doesn’t make any mention of those events here in Psalm 119, that’s the background – that’s the God whose word it is he is celebrating. It’s a word of grace and power.

You can see that in these first few verses of today’s section – vs 9-12. He starts out here with a very important question: How can those who are young keep their way pure? This is not so much a question for the young person; but rather, it is the question you might ask as you see your life stretching before you: ‘how can I, over all those years ahead, preserve my life in purity and holiness? How can I, knowing the weakness of my own flesh and how vulnerable I am, hope to live God’s way?’
It’s a powerful question, isn’t it? The Psalmist knows how prone he is like all of us to ‘stray from your commands’. Keeping ourselves from sin isn’t within our human power. Have you ever considered how impossible it is to stop ourselves from the ingrained habits of a lifetime? To give away our instinctive tendency to tell lies; or to master our anger; or to stop our habit of tearing others down?

And so, he says ‘I seek you with all my heart…’ (vs 10). But he knows, too, that he can only do that as the word is hidden in his heart (vs 11). It is only as he takes God’s word on board that he is enabled to know what it is to not sin against God – to live the way he is supposed to. Allowing the word of God to inhabit him is exactly the way to keep his ways pure.

So what does ‘hiding the word of God in his heart’ mean? It means more than knowing the right answers to a Bible quiz. Now, I am a minister’s son – and so I grew up with a pretty good grasp of who was who and what was what in the text of the Bible. I could win the Christian Studies prize no trouble. But having the word in your mind is not the same as having it in your heart. Your heart is a way of speaking about your desires and intentions: the things you want and long for. And so: hiding the word of God in your heart means letting that word not just into your head but into your very being.

But there’s something we need to add to this picture. Notice that even though he is active in learning, it is God who he wants to teach him (vs 12). In the Bible, God’s word is the means by which he does things. How does he create the world, after all? We hear in Hebrews that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It’s dynamic. A friend of mine explains it by saying that God’s word tells us, but it also turns us and tethers us. That is: it isn’t just that we hear information about God when he speaks to us. In his word, we actually encounter him – and he himself works on us as we read it, changing us to be more like him and binding us to himself.

It’s powerful, this word. And you can begin to see why this guy loves it so much: because it isn’t of rules that he can’t ever keep. In these words he finds the power to keep him walking God’s way.