Sermon Tone Analysis

Every man, woman and child in the whole world is inescapably religious.

Because God made us in his image, we really cannot be anything else.

We are religious by nature, and everything we think and do is an expression of our religion.

On the other hand, if you do not put your full trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, you should not take any comfort in the fact that you are religious.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of religions in this world.

Some worship a deity, while others do not.

Most have a code of ethics, although there are some that think law is unnecessary.

The idea of an afterlife is common to many of them, but not all of them.

Therefore, it is not good enough to be religious.

For a religion to have any value, it must be the religion, indeed the only religion, of which God himself approves.

Jesus identified this religion when he said, /I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me/ (John 14:6).

True religion requires that you put our faith and trust in him alone.

As you can see, this means that there are only two choices for religion.

Either a man worships and serves the God of the Bible, or a god of his own making (an idol).

Even the silly notion that there is no God is an idol of the atheist.

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The Psalmist’s Question

Once a person becomes embraces the true religion of the gospel, he has another question to answer, viz., he’ll want to know how to worship and serve God through the Lord Jesus Christ?

He has heard the Word of God and obeyed the summons to believe.

Now, what should he do?

This is the question with which our text, the second section of Psalm 119, is concerned.

Verse 9 asks, /Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?/

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem at first.

Cleansing our way is not really a matter of rearranging our priorities, making amends for a few minor lapses in judgment or catching up on old resolutions and commitments.

Rather, it requires a complete and thorough overhaul of everything.

It demands a total restructuring of everything in our lives.

Why?

Because the way of man is completely out of sync with God’s holy law.

Proverbs 16:25 says, /There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death/.

A lot of people think that it’s good enough to keep God’s commandments most of the time, as long as they avoid destructive sins like murder and adultery.

A little lying isn’t that big of a deal, nor is the abuse of God’s holy name.

If they try their best, they assume God will ignore their minor infractions of his law and let them into heaven.

But it just isn’t so.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that a person keeps the law 90 percent of the time.

That would be like taking an airplane from Los Angeles to New York, only to have it take a nosedive into downtown Scranton.

There are not too many people who, being in this situation, would commend the pilot for a 90-percent successful flight.

Unfortunately, the real picture is not even this good.

T0 use the same illustration, the plane crashes before it even takes off.

Now, why would I say that?

It’s because the greatest commandment, according to our Lord Jesus Christ, requires us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves (Matt.

22:37–38).

Who here today has kept this commandment perfectly throughout your entire life?

For that matter, who has kept it for a month, a day or an hour?

How many of you have kept it for even a single second without polluting it with your own desires, opinions and motives?

I don’t see any hands in the air, and that is as it should be.

Psalm 53:3 says, /Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one/.

The prophet Isaiah, addressing God’s covenant people, said that /all our righteousness is are as filthy rags/ (Isa.

64:6).

The writer of Psalm 119 made the same point but in a different way.

The word translated /way/ (אָרְחוֹ) in verse 9 signifies a track or a rut, such as might be made by the wheels of the cart traveling across soft soil.

It envisions a young sinner, also very impressionable, who has already begun developing sinful habits and becoming set in his ungodly ways.

The purpose of the question in our text is to remind us that this process must be both reversed and undone in the life of a believer.

Why?

Because a young man who despises the truth of God and the righteousness of his standards will very quickly become an old man who continues to despise the truth of God and the righteousness of his standards.

Toward the end of his life King Solomon realized this very thing when he wrote, /Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them/ (Eccles.

12:1).

How, then, can a young man escape this?

How can he maintain a pure way when he is predisposed to evil?

There is no more important question for young men to ask themselves, especially since young men by nature tend to be proud and self-confident, believing that they can do absolutely anything.

The answer given by the writer of Ecclesiastes is that young people should remember their creator in the days of their youth before they establish these horrible, sinful ruts.

Psalm 119 says that young men must cleanse their way /by taking heed thereto according to thy word/.

That is, they must keep, guard, and give their undivided attention to those God-glorifying doctrines set forth in the Bible.

They must heartily embrace what God says about their sin and misery, how they have been redeemed from their sin and how they must show their thankfulness to God for such a wonderful redemption.

Because the Bible sets forth these truths with unmistakable clarity, it is the principal means of our sanctification.

Before Jesus was arrested he prayed, /Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth/ (John 17:17).

Whether young or old, you can only undo the sinful ruts that you have established by submitting your life entirely to the Word of God.

I cannot emphasize enough that the Bible is the only place where God speaks to men.

He does not whisper directions in people’s ears anymore or appear to them in visions and dreams.

He does not give signs on earth or in heaven that tell you how to live or what he thinks of you.

You will hear his voice only in Scripture.

Psalm 147:19–20 is very clear about this.

It says, /He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.

He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them.

Praise ye the LORD/.

Therefore, you must count the Bible as one of God’s greatest gifts.

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The Psalmist’s Example

In verses 10 and 11, the psalmist draws our attention to his own example.

He described his life as follows: /With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee/.

In these words we see that the psalmist’s life stands in sharp contrast to the way that most young men live, as suggested by the previous verse.

The psalmist has followed the way of the Lord.

If David was the writer, then he no doubt prayed for God to show him the right way.

He wrote, /Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths/ (Ps.

25:4), and, /Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies/ (Ps.

27:11).

Later in the Psalm that we are looking at today, he expressed his firm resolve to follow in that way.

Verse 33 says, /Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end/.

But what accounts for the difference?

Was the psalmist a better person than most young men?

After all, he wrote in verse 10 that he had sought the Lord with his whole heart.

Does this, then, mean that the psalmist was a step or two above ordinary men, perhaps some kind of a super saint?

No, that’s not the point here at all.

The fact that the psalmist sought the Lord with his whole heart identifies his purpose.

Like the rest of us he sometimes stumbled and fell.

David’s sins — his adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of her husband, and his shameless counting of the people at the end of his life — have been written in large letters across the pages of his inspired biography.

They are there for every one of us to read.

David was not immune to sin.

To the contrary, the emphasis of these two verses is on the word /heart/.

According to Proverbs 4:23, all the issues of life flow out of the heart.

Therefore, Solomon exhorts you to keep your heart with all diligence.

The natural heart is the source of all our sin.

Jesus said, /For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies/ (Matt.

15:19).

But we know that the world does not want to blame the sinner for his sin.

Our modern prison system is based on the Quaker idea that people are basically good but society as a whole is basically evil.

Therefore, if we separate our good-hearted criminals from the evil society that forced them into a life of crime, they will think about what they have done and improve themselves.