Henry Martyn wrote, “I experienced a solemn gladness in learning this MEM part of the 119th Psalm.” Psalm 119:97-104 is a prayer in which the psalmist addresses the Lord in every verse. It is a prayer with no petitions. It is a prayer of devotion: “Oh how I love your law!”

He did not say he believed, obeyed, or proclaimed God’s word. He says, “Oh how I love your law.” It is a personal confession: “Oh how I love your law!” It is a present-tense testimony. He did not remember when he loved the word of God. He did not promise to love the word of God. The testimony is in real-time. Verse 97b records the cause and effect of the writer’s love for God’s word: “It is my meditation all the day.” This statement does not mean the writer did nothing but contemplate scripture all day.

• He did not neglect the word of God outside of worship. 
• He did not rush through a few verses in the morning. 
• He did not ignore scripture until he faced affliction. 

Throughout each day, he intentionally and constantly thought about how to apply the word of God to his life. Psalm 119:48 says, “I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on our statues.” The psalmist kept this vow. The more he meditated on the word, the more he loved it. And the more he loved it, the more he meditated on it. The testimony of the psalmist is a barometer of spiritual devotion: To know the word of God is to love the word of God. Do you love the word of God? Verses 98-104 give three reasons you should love God’s word.

The Word of God Will Make You Wise. 

Charles Swindoll wrote: “Wisdom is the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to handle life with rare stability.” How does one learn the wisdom of God? The wisdom of God is found in the word of God. Verses 98-100 make three comparisons to testify to the superior wisdom of God’s word.

Wiser Than Your Enemies. Verse 98 says, “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.” The Psalms had enemies who plotted schemes, told lies, and acted wickedly to bring him down. Yet he was wiser than his enemies. He had godly life skills to guide and protect him. He learned these life skills from the word of God.

Verse 98 says, “Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies.” While his enemies were at work against him, he simply obeyed the commandments of God. And the word of God made him wiser than his enemies. It will do the same for you. Wiliam MacDonald comments: “The humble believer, equipped with the wisdom of the word, can see more on his knees than his enemies can on their tiptoes.”

The word of God will make you wiser than your enemy of your soul. In Matthew 4:1-11, the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus turned back each temptation with the word of God. The power to overcome the devil was not in quoting of scripture. The power rested in the fact that Jesus refused to compromise the truth of God’s word for Satan’s lies. The overcoming power of God’s word is available to you. You can be wiser than your enemies.

Verse 98 tells us how: “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.” “For it is ever with me” is not about the abiding presence of scripture. It is about the unchanging nature of scripture. No matter the time, opponent, or situation, when he turns to the word of God, it is always there. His enemies kept plotting and planning. But he didn’t have to find something new or novel to overcome them. All he had to do was turn to the word for wisdom. And the word of God was there every time. And it will be there for you. Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Wiser Than Your Teachers. Noah Webster’s name is synonymous with his dictionary. But Webster did not view the dictionary as his chief accomplishment. He also produced The Noah Webster Bible, which he called the most important enterprise of his life. He was convinced that education is useless without the Bible.

Verse 99 says, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” The writer does not say he knows more than his teachers. He says he has more understanding. Understanding is similar to wisdom. If wisdom is foresight, understanding is insight. Insight and information are not the same. They do not assume one another. Knowledge comes from reading, research, and retention. Understanding comes from God.

In Matthew 16:15, Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” In Matthew 16:16, Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In Matthew 16:17, Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

Vance Havner noted that many college professors search for wisdom while the janitors who clean their offices discovered it years ago. The psalmist said, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” Meditation on God’s word will produce more wisdom than education from a school. Psalm 1:2 says of the blessed man: declares: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Wiser Than Your Elders. Verse 100 says, “I understand more than the aged, for I keep your statutes.” Wisdom and age do not automatically go together. In the ancient Near East, old age was associated with wisdom. They are not synonymous. Experience is not always the best teacher. Some claim twenty-five years of experience when they only have one year of experience repeated twenty-five times.

Matthew Luther said, “Antiquity is no help against stupidity, where it does not accord with the commandments of God.” It is foolish to think nothing significant happened until you arrived. There is much to learn from our elders. But you do not have to be old to be wise. James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.” True wisdom comes from God.

Verse 100 says, “I understand more than the aged, for I keep your statutes.” Wisdom is what you do, not what you know. Wisdom is not measured by the notes you take, books you read, or verses you memorize. It is measured by personal obedience. James 1:22-25 says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

The Word of God Will Keep You From Sin. 

Psalm 119:9 says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” Psalm 119:11 says, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” These verses affirm the sanctifying power of God’s word. Either the Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

God’s Word Will Keep You Off the Wrong Path. Verse 101 says, “I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.” The psalmist acknowledges that some paths are evil. But he doesn’t just see the evil around him; he also sees the evil within him. If he did not hold back his feet, he would go the evil way. Proverbs 6:18 says God hates “feet that make haste to run to evil.” Left to our natural inclinations, our feet will lead our hearts to sin, minds to error, and souls to hell. We must practice self-restraint and hold back our feet from every evil way.

JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE, GRANT IT JESUS IF YOU PLEASE
DAILY WALKING CLOSE TO THEE; LET IT BE, LORD, LET IT BE.
I AM WEAK BUT THOU ART STRONG; JESUS KEEP ME FROM ALL WRONG
I’LL BE SATISFIED AS LONG AS I WALK CLOSE TO THEE

Verse 101 says: “I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.” You cannot live in obedience to God with undisciplined feet. W. GRAHAM SCROGGIE comments: “No one can be in two paths at the same time. Each of us must choose.” Good intentions need disciplined feet to live God’s word. The writer determined to hold back his feet from every evil way to keep God’s word. He refused to play around with little, minor, or harmless sins. Sin is like a sink of dirty dishes. If you do not wash dirty dishes, they keep getting dirtier. Sin is the same way. Do not allow sin to fester. Hold your feet from every evil way.

God’s Word Will Keep You On The Right Path.

• Verse 101 declares the sanctifying power of God’s word to refrain.
• Verse 102 declares the sanctifying power of God’s word to sustain.
  

“I do not turn aside from your rules; for you have taught me.” Your spiritual walk does not have to be a cycle of three steps forward, and two steps back. You can practice what EUGENE PETERSON calls “a long obedience in the same direction.” You can walk without turning aside from the word of God. I am not talking about sinless perfection. I am talking about consistent godliness. Philippians 3:13-14 says: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

The word of God will keep you on the right path. Joshua 1:7-8 says, “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Many times, we wander off the path of God’s word looking for prosperity or success. If you obey God’s word, he will cause you to prosper. He will make you successful.

The Word of God Will Give You Joy.

This stanza begins with an exclamation of love: “Oh how I love your law!” It ends with an exclamation of joy. Verse 103 says: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Honey was the sweetest thing the psalmist would have known. But the word of God was far sweeter to him. Psalm 19:10 says the word of God is “sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” Psalm 19 declares the sweetness of God’s word as objective fact. Psalm 119 declares the sweetness of God’s word as subjective experience. He does not speak for anyone else. He speaks for his taste and his mouth. The word of God satisfies.

Everyone wants to be satisfied. It does not matter if it is the youngest of babies or the oldest of men. It doesn’t matter if it’s the person on the other side of the pew or the other side of the planet. Everybody wants to be satisfied. We may disagree on what it looks like or how to attain it, but the fact remains. Yet true satisfaction remains an elusive commodity, despite the many and various promises of satisfaction guaranteed. The problem is not that satisfaction is so difficult to find as much as it is that we keep looking for it in all the wrong places. True satisfaction is found in the word of God.

• The word of God produces a joy that satisfies.
• The word of God produces a joy that sanctifies.
  

Verse 104: says: “Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.” God’s word is the source of understanding. To understand God’s word is to hate every false way. That is the sanctifying joy of God’s word. Derek Kinder comments: “Attraction to the true and revulsion against the false are, for us, acquired tastes. Verse 104 describes the process.” To love God’s word is to hate what opposes God’s word. It will not just cause you to hate the consequences of the false way. It will cause you to hate the false way itself. There is a love that hates. The more you love God’s word, the more it will cause you to hate every false way. Nothing brings true joy like the word of God.

James Bracy wrote love letters to his wife, Sallie, while stationed at a California military base in the 1950s. One letter was misplaced. Half a century later, James and Sallie celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Meanwhile, a construction crew dismantled the old post office at Fort Ord and discovered the letter. The crew turned it over to Bob Spadoni, the postmaster in nearby Monterey. Spadoni tracked down the Bracys, and the letter, dated January 28, 1955, was delivered to Sallie Bracy. “It meant a lot to me then,” said Sallie. “It means even more now.”

God’s love letter has been forgotten, misplaced, and neglected. But the message has not changed. John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW
FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO
LITTLE ONES TO HIM BELONG
THEY ARE WEAK BUT HE IS STRONG

YES, JESUS LOVES ME
YES, JESUS LOVES ME
YES, JESUS LOVES ME
FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO