Kootenai Church: The Psalms

The opening words of the book of Psalms sets before us two paths, the path of life, which is wisdom and righteousness and justice, and the path of death, which is folly and wickedness and rebellion. And it tells us what it is that characterizes the blessed man. If you remember from our study of Psalm 1, the blessed man is one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but instead his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. That is the path of the righteous man, a path that is in God's Word and blessed by God.
And the righteous walks in God's truth. He stands in God's truth and speaks God's truth, and the Psalms feature references to the Word of God prominently all the way through the book. The opening verses of the Psalms begin with that proclamation, that contrast between the path of the wicked man and the path of the righteous. The wicked man walks and meditates and loves the counsel of the ungodly, and the righteous man loves and meditates and walks in the paths of holiness and righteousness and God's Word.
And one of the most interesting psalms in all of the book of Psalms is Psalm 119. It is remarkable in this regard, that in that psalm, which is the longest chapter in all of Scripture, we have 176 verses, and of those 176 verses, only five of them do not mention explicitly the Word of God, using phrases like or words like precepts and ordinances, commandments or commands or statutes, the law, the Word, the testimonies. That's how Psalm 119 describes God's Word. And every verse in there, as I said, except for five of them, mentions Scripture explicitly. Those other five, by the way, that don't mention that explicitly are nevertheless about God's Word, even those five that don't mention it.
Psalm 119 speaks of delight in and love for the Word of God. Let me give you some examples. Verse 14 of Psalm 119: “I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches.”
Verse 16: “I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not forget Your word.”
Verse 47: “I shall delight in Your commandments, which I love.”
Psalm 119:77: “May Your compassion come to me that I may live, for Your law is my delight.”
Verse 92: “If Your law had not been my delight, then I would have perished in my affliction.”
Psalm 119 shows us that the righteous man, the righteous person, is affectionately oriented toward the Word of God, that for the righteous, the Word of God is their delight, their source of joy, their comfort, their consolation, their daily food, their sustenance, their strength, their encouragement, their spiritual power. It is their strength. It is, for the believer, everything. That is the source of their spiritual food. After all, it is through the Word of God that you and I come to see the truth that we are in need of a Savior. It is in the Word of God that we see God's righteous standards, His law, His moral law laid out. And we realize that the law says thou shalt not and we have “shalted” all of those things and done all of them, and what the law demands of us, we are not even able to fulfill. To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are unable to do that and we fail to do that day after day after day. And when the law says thou shalt not and demands of us that we not sin in this way, those are the very things that we do.
And our heart, before Christ, rejoices in doing evil and wickedness. We delight in the sin, we delight in iniquity. And then it is in the law of God that we see our need for a Savior, that we're under the judgment of God, and then it is in the Word of God that we see that God has provided a Savior in one who fulfilled that law in our place, on our behalf, and that, by repentance and faith in that one who lived a perfect life and died in our place and rose again, we can have eternal life. And at the moment that life is granted to the believing sinner, our affections are changed, our heart is changed, we are regenerated and given a new life with new affections and a new heart, a new standing before God, and the law of God then becomes written on the heart of the believer, and now our delight goes from sin and iniquity and violating that law to loving and delighting in the truth of God's Word.
So the Word of God is that which has saved us. We came to understand our need for a Savior, the provision of a Savior, how we should respond to that Savior, and by all of that understanding in the Word of God, we are redeemed. But then the Word of God goes further and it is not only an instrument by which we are saved, it then also becomes the instrument of our sanctification as we grow in holiness so that we feed on and delight in that Word. And that Word becomes not just an instrument of our salvation by which we come to know God for salvation, it becomes the instrument through which we begin to know God for our sanctification.
So, we come to Christ in salvation because of the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. He brings us forth by His Word of truth, causes us to be born again by that imperishable and living Word, and then He sanctifies us, His people. But then it goes further. The Word of God is also an instrument in our preservation and our keeping. Not just our salvation and our sanctification, but our security comes down to the Word of God as an instrument that God uses to preserve His people all the way through to our eternal inheritance.
Look at Psalm 37:31, and this is our passage today, verses 30–31. Verse 31, the last phrase of that says, “His [that is, the righteous man] steps do not slip.” That is, God preserves and keeps His people. Verses 30–31 is our passage, and this is in the fifth section of this psalm, which is what we read at the beginning, verses 27–34, and we saw last week that God preserves His people for our eternal possession. In verses 27–29, we learned that. Today we're going to see in verses 30–31 that the Lord preserves His people through His enduring precepts. This is the role of the Word of God in the life of a believer.
Let's begin reading at verse 30. We'll read 30–31. Verses 30–31: “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice. The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip.” We're going to notice three things about the Word of God and the righteous man in those two verses. First, the Word of God is in the mouth of the righteous; that's in verse 30. Second, the Word of God is in the heart of the righteous; that's in verse 31, that first phrase. And then third, the Word of God guards the steps of the righteous at the end of verse 31. It is in our mouth, it is in our heart, and it guards our steps, and it is by this way that God preserves His people through His eternal precepts.
Let's look first at how the Word of God is in the mouth of the righteous in verse 30. “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice” (v. 30). That is a description of the righteous. Notice that the psalmist describes the righteous according to his speech, our words. That is because our words are an indication of what is inside the heart. Such descriptions like this in verse 30, by the way, are very common in wisdom literature in the Old Testament, in the Psalms as well as in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 15:2 says, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly.” Proverbs is full of quaint sayings and proverbial statements regarding the use of our tongue and our mouth. Proverbs 10:31: “The mouth of the righteous flows with wisdom, but the perverted tongue will be cut out.”
Notice the parallelism in verse 30: “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice.” There is a parallelism between mouth and tongue, between utters and speaks, and between wisdom and justice. The righteous is marked by wise, moral, ethical, just, and righteous speech. Remember wisdom and folly are not intellectual categories, they are moral categories. So if a righteous man is marked by wise speech, it means he is marked by what is just and righteous and good and true. Not just that the righteous man walks around spouting proverbs every time he sees something in life that reminds him of a proverb. Those people can be quite annoying. Interesting, but also annoying, but that's not the idea. The idea is that the righteous man's mouth is full of the law of God so that what he speaks is just and righteous. What he speaks is justice and wisdom and ethics and morality and truth. It is pure and good and right and just and accurate. That's the mouth of the righteous.
The mouth of the righteous speaks these things because the law of God is in his heart, and it is conversely the opposite for the fool. The fool speaks what is unjust and unrighteous. The mouth of the fool just flows with folly, like a river into the ocean, just pouring forth foolishness all the time. And since folly is not just an intellectual issue, it is a moral issue, that means that the speech of a fool, of a wicked person, itself is immoral, unjust, wicked, and perverse. It is crooked, it is not right, it is not according to what is true. There's something just off with the speech of the wicked as his mouth pours forth folly.
Proverbs 17:28 says, “Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.” The best way for a fool to look wise is to stop talking. Stop talking and if you're a fool, you’ll look wise. Why? Because a wise man will hold his tongue, Scripture says, so even in the holding of the tongue, there is wisdom being at least perceived by others.
The word utters in verse 30, “the mouth of the righteous utters wisdom,” this is interesting. It means to moan or to growl, to utter, to speak or to muse. It is, interestingly enough, the same word that is used to describe the righteous man in Psalm 1:2: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates [that’s the word] day and night.” The righteous man meditates day and night. You may remember in Psalm 1, I said that that word kind of has the idea of sort of growling over in your mouth, like you're saying something under your breath and reciting something, like somebody would just be musing and talking that over in their mouth over and over again, turning it over, muttering, growling sort of under the breath. That's the idea behind meditation. It's something that's percolating in your brain, percolating in your heart, and then, like a pot boiling over, it percolates out your mouth and people can kind of hear that. Well, the righteous man percolates, as it were, wise words, righteous words out of his mouth because that is what is boiling up in the heart of the righteous. He meditates on the law of the Lord and so he utters that which is right and righteous and true. He speaks wisdom because wisdom is what is in his heart. His mouth utters wisdom because wisdom is his meditation.
Last week, we talked about what it means to depart from evil. Verse 27, right? “Depart from evil and do good” (v. 27). How much evil results from our speech, from the things that we say? Can we measure that? Is there any way of measuring it? Are you like me and can look back upon your life and wish that there were entire conversations, sentences, paragraphs, or days that you could take all of those words and bring them all back and erase them from time and from eternity? Because we recognize that there is a world of evil in the tongue, as James says, and then we speak out that which is evil because something is bubbling up in our heart. How many marriages have been ruined? How much strife has been caused? How much blasphemy has been uttered by the tongue? It is an immeasurable evil that sets on fire the entire world. And so the righteous man is one who departs from evil with his speech.
Ephesians 4:29: “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth [that means departing from what is evil], but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” That's doing good. We depart from evil and do good even in our speech. And one who meditates on the law of the Lord, and Scripture is that which fills the heart, he will utter justice and wisdom.
Verse 30 is describing some of the good uses of our tongue and of our mouths. Warning others of a judgment that is to come is a good use of the mouth. To turn people from their evil and warn them of God's righteous standards and His justice is to utter wisdom. To give wisdom and truth to somebody, to render a right and true verdict, to advocate for righteousness and justice and truth and what is good—and these things, by the way, not as the world defines righteousness and justice and truth but according to how Scripture defines those ideas. Speech that is edifying and encouraging so that God's just precepts are in our mouths, that should be our goal, that God's righteousness is what we proclaim. And this will be the case if we delight in the law of the Lord and in His law meditate day and night.
If we delight in God's truth, then we will want to speak that which we delight in. I delight in my grandchildren, so I like to talk about my grandchildren to people. Never thought there would be a day when I would do that. I thought people who just talk about their grandchildren all the time are crazy, self-centered, egotistical, narcissistic, whatever. Then I became a grandparent and I realized, oh, I'm egotistical, narcissistic, and self-centered. I love to talk about my grandchildren because I delight in them. The things that we delight in we like to talk about. So if my delight is in the law of the Lord, then my speech will reflect that, and your speech will reflect that if you delight in the law of God and if it is in our meditation day and night.
Psalm 119:13 says, “With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of Your mouth.”
Psalm 119:46: “I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings and shall not be ashamed.”
The Word of God is in the mouth of the righteous. And we might say, “Why or how is that?” It is because of the next thing at the beginning of verse 31. The Word of God is in the heart of the righteous. This is what marks righteous speech. Psalm 37:31: “The law of his God is in his heart.” This is describing the righteous man. This marks the righteous because our speech is an index of our character. Let's think about that for just a moment. Our speech is an index of our character. Our speech is that which reflects what is in the heart. Our mouth is the pressure valve of the heart. So you take somebody's heart and you put it under pressure, and whatever is in that heart is going to come out of the mouth in its unguarded moments. It is out of the heart that a man speaks. And Scripture prolifically describes this reality.
Matthew 12:34: “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” If the heart is evil, then what comes out of the mouth will itself also be evil.
Matthew 15:18: “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.”
Luke 6:45: “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”
Proverbs 15:28: “The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.”
So the mouth becomes the pressure valve or is the pressure valve of the heart. And if the heart is evil, then what comes out of the mouth will be evil. It will be folly and wickedness and corruption and lies, perversions, deceptions, ribald humor, jokes, crass jokes, criticism, bitterness, anger, venting of envy, strife, all of that comes out of the mouth of the man because that is what is in the heart. But if the heart is renewed by the Word of God and the righteous man delights in the Word of God so that the Word of God dwells in his heart and fills his heart, then that which would come out would naturally be reflecting that which comes out of the good treasure of his heart.
The reality that the Word of God should dwell within the heart of the believer—verse 31: “The law of his God is in his heart”—that shows us that what God's standard is or what God desires in us is not an outward conformity to the Word of God but an inward delight in the Word of God. And each of us can only answer this question for ourselves. Is my delight in the Word of God an internal reality, or is my life merely a conformity to the outward standard of Scripture? In other words, is Scripture something that is out there, that I try and mold my shape and shape my life to for the sake of appearances before other people, or is the Word of God something in which I truly delight and take joy? Those are two different kinds of believers, the one who takes joy and delight in Scripture as opposed to the one who merely gives a hat tip or lip service to the Word of God when it's easy and when it's convenient or when it serves their purposes.
Is your soul fed by God's Word? Is it shaped by God's Word? Deuteronomy 6:6 says, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.” This is what God wanted for the nation of Israel. Not just that the law would be something sitting in the synagogue and they’d said, “Well, the law says this, so we better fashion our lives in such a way as to outwardly conform to this while looking for ways to get around this,” but rather God's purpose and intention was that the law of God would dwell within their heart, that every Israelite, every Jew, would internalize Scripture and that it would become the joy and delight of their heart and therefore walking in His paths would be delightful and not a burden. “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:6–7).
How do you know if the Word of God is internally delightful to you or if it's merely external conformity? Here's what it will look like. It will look like you cannot wait for the opportunity to sit down with your wife and your husband and your family and to teach your children the Word of God. That will be the delight and joy of your heart. Family worship time will not be something that—well, I guess it's been about a week since we've done this. We should probably go ahead and do this since we do call ourselves Christian and we do have a Bible here. We don't want to get too much dust to fall on that, so we should probably crack that open and maybe have some sort of a discussion as a family, but let's make it short because Seinfeld reruns are coming on later this evening. We want to make sure that we don't miss the news or whatever else is coming on streaming services.
Rather, it will be: I look forward to this. I want at every opportunity to teach my children Scripture that they may know the Word of God and how this applies to their life in this time, in this way, at this time in their life. If that is your joy and delight, then it will be the most natural thing for you to speak of it when you are walking, when you are sitting down, when you are standing up, when you are lying down, when you're having dinner with your children, before bedtime, when you wake up in the morning, while you're cooking, while you're cleaning, while you're doing your chores, while you're on vacation, while you're driving. This doesn't mean that you and I, in order to demonstrate our love and fealty to the Word of God, must be doing nothing but constantly speaking Scripture and biblical language. It doesn't mean that we say, “Thou shalt go clean thy room,” as if we're trying to make it sound like a biblical commandment or sound like it comes from Scripture, but rather that all of our life and our walking and our words and our attitude, everything is shaped and molded and conformed and patterned after what is true in Scripture. That is an inward delight.
Is the truth in your heart united with affection? Or is Scripture for you merely an intellectual endeavor? Yeah, you know the truth. You have a degree in that. You went to Bible college. You can do apologetics with the best of them. You can sit down at a coffee table and talk about infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism and traducianism and any other big, five-syllable, twenty-five-cent theological word, and you can wax eloquent about all of that. But if none of that ever shapes and molds our hearts and changes us, then that is just Scripture outside of us, not inside of us.
Does Scripture occupy a place in your meditation and your thinking and your affections? Can you say with Psalm 40:8, “I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart”?
Jeremiah 15:16: “Your words were found and I ate them, and Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I have been called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts.”
Colossians 3:16–17: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
So listen to the activities there that reflect one in whose heart the Word of God dwells richly or abundantly. We worship, we speak, we teach, rejoice, admonish, encourage, sing, and give thanks. That is the fruit of the Word of God dwelling in us. And if that's true, then it doesn't matter if I'm walking or sitting or standing or working or leisure, whatever it is, the Word of God is going to come bubbling out of us.
Psalm 51:6: “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being.” Not truth out there, on my wall, stenciled on a pillow, written on a calendar, in my day timer, on a three-by-five card on my bathroom mirror. You desire truth in the innermost being. That is a high and holy standard.
Proverbs 4:23 tells us to watch over our hearts for out of our hearts flow all of the issues of life. All of our work, our leisure, our training, our child-rearing, our relationships, everything we do proceeds out of and comes out of the heart. The heart is going to affect all of that. And if the Word of God is not there, shaping and molding and dwelling and delighting inside of the heart, then that will have an effect negatively outward in everything else that we do. So everything we do and say will be either positively influenced by the Word of God dwelling in our hearts, or negatively influenced by the Word of God absent from our hearts.
The expressions of the Word of God and its work in the life of the righteous that we see even in Psalm 37—“The righteous is gracious and gives”; do you remember that, the previous section? The righteous depart from evil and do good. We cease fretting. We trust and delight in the Lord. The righteous speak righteousness because that is what the Word of God in the heart causes them to do.
So how does the Word of God get into the heart? I promise you it does not happen apart from reading the Word of God. There's no syringe for us to inject it into our veins. There's no quick fix, no pill that we take, no speedy program that we do at the church. Rather, the Word of God getting into the heart happens through a consistent, persistent diet of Scripture constantly in our lives. If I could—I don't want to sound like a legalist, but if I could make you read the Bible every single day, five or six chapters, I would. Actually, let me rephrase that. If I could make you want to read the Scriptures, five or six chapters every single day, I would. Because it is only through the consistent intake and the regular reading of the Word of God, a diet upon the Scriptures, not just in listening to the Word of God preached but in the reading of the Word of God, the application of the Word of God, meditating upon Scripture, memorizing Scripture, thinking about Scripture, reminding myself daily and moment by moment in times of temptation and allurements to sin of the truth and the reality of Scripture—all of that has to be there. And over the course of a life—and it is difficult, it is taxing, it takes energy, it takes persistence, it takes effort, it takes time, it takes all of those things, but I promise you it bears fruit in the life of a believer.
The righteous person does not walk according to the precepts of their heart, so don't misunderstand what I'm saying. A righteous person walks according to the law of God that dwells in their heart, in their innermost being. That is to say, in the affections and in the mind, in the thinking and in the emotions and affections of our heart, the Word of God is there. The righteous man walks according to the Word, not according to our heart. We don't do anything according to how our heart feels. “Just follow your heart.” Worst advice ever. My heart is deceitful, desperately wicked above all things. Only God can know that heart. So my heart is wicked and corrupt, but if I can get the Word of God to dwell and to live in my innermost being, if I can get the truth to dwell there, then out of that overabundance and the bubbling forth of that truth will come a delight in and a desire to walk in holiness and righteousness.
The righteous have to internalize the Word of God so that in every arena of our lives we are bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's what Scripture describes. So that that indwelling Word that we delight in grabs our attention, grabs our affections, grabs our emotions, grabs our steps, and brings them into conformity to the Person and the work of Christ. That is what sanctification is. The Word of God for the believer is the grid through which they see all things. It is our highest authority. It is the truth. It is the truth by which we know what is true. It is the voice of God to us, and so we love the truth, obey the truth, and rejoice in the truth.
Let me pause for just a moment to say if what I'm saying about joy and delight and rejoicing and obedience, if that doesn't resonate with you, you have every reason to question whether or not you are a believer. You have every reason to question whether or not your heart has truly been renewed by grace. That's not to say that a believer never goes through a dry spell. That's not what I'm saying. It's not to say that a believer never goes through a season of life when they have to reorient themselves and get their hearts back into the truth of God and anchor it again there. But if what I'm describing about joy and rejoicing and delighting in obeying righteousness and wanting righteousness to bubble over out of your heart into your speech and into your walk, if that doesn't describe you, you should examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.
Is Scripture for you just merely an external standard, something that you think is a tool that you can use for yourself, or is Scripture for you something that you want in your innermost being and in your heart?
Psalm 1:2 says that the righteous delight in the law of God and meditate on it day and night. He cherishes the Word. He longs for the Word. He delights in obeying it. He wants his life and his thinking to be governed by the Word. He wants all of his steps ordered according to Scripture so that the path of Yahweh is the way of life and the path in which he walks. And he desires and wants to walk in obedience to God's command because he delights in the truth, because the law of God is in his heart.
Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Psalm 119:59: “I considered my ways and turned my feet to Your testimonies.”
There are times in the life of the righteous when we have to look at the Word of God and look at the path that God would lay out for us and intentionally turn our feet to that path, to make ourselves walk in that path. That is part of what it means to grow in delight in the Word of God.
So the Word of God is in the mouth of the righteous, the Word of God is in the heart of the righteous, and third, the Word of God guards the steps of the righteous. This is verse 31, the last phrase, “His steps do not slip.” When God's truth governs our speech, our affections, our thinking, our mind, and our emotions, then His Word is also guarding our steps so that we do not slip. Yahweh makes the path of His righteous ones straight when we delight in His Word.
Remember, we looked at earlier in the psalm the reference to delighting ourselves in Yahweh, and He will give us the desires of our heart. Do you remember that? And it doesn't mean that whatever we want, God gives us as long as we're delighting in Him, but it means that when I delight in Yahweh, He actually gives me appropriate desires so that my desires are changed. Why? Because in my heart, where my desires are at, if the Word of God is dwelling within there and informing that, then I'm going to have right desires, desires that He shapes by His Word which dwells in my heart. And then the thing that I desire is the thing that I will pursue, and if I'm pursuing His paths because I desire His paths, because I'm delighting in Him, delighting in His truth, then my steps will walk in His paths and I will not slip.
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word” (Ps. 119:9). It is stability and strength. It is a solid foundation that is being described in verse 31. His steps do not slip. To use the language of Psalm 1:3, “He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.” That tree will not be blown over. The tree will not be capsized. It will not be torn up. It won't be uprooted. It won't be destroyed. It will flourish and prosper and produce fruit even in times of drought. Why? Because as we saw in chapter 1, Psalm 1:3, that tree is rooted in the Word of God, which the man of God delights in and meditates on day and night. And that is what makes his foundation strong. He doesn't wither in doubt and he's not shaken, he's not overturned, but instead, verse 27, he abides forever. Verse 28, he's preserved forever. The righteous depart from the evil way. They cease anger and they forsake wrath and they keep their paths, their feet, according to God's Word.
There's an interesting reference to slipping, actually, in the other psalm that deals with the prosperity of the wicked, Psalm 73. Asaph, when he observed the prosperity of the wicked—listen to what he wrote. “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart! But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (vv. 1–3). So Asaph observed the wicked and what they had, and he wanted what they had, and he says, “My feet almost slipped.” But Asaph's feet did not slip. You know why? Because he says in the middle of the psalm, “Until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. Surely You [that is, God] set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction” (vv. 17–18).
So Asaph says, I looked at the wicked, I almost slipped, I almost stumbled over that, but I didn't. I went into the sanctuary of God, perceived their end, and realized that I'm not the one, if I'm in Scripture, I'm not the one who's in the slippery places. Instead, God sets the wicked in slippery places and God casts them down to destruction, causing them to slip, and the slipping of the wicked is a slipping into destruction and to judgment and to perishing. They perish from that slippery place that God puts them in, but God puts the righteous firmly upon His paths and our feet do not slip. The wicked stumble into judgment but the righteous do not. We don't stumble into judgment. Instead, we stand solidly on the Word of God because the Word of God dwells in our hearts, and so we walk in the paths of righteousness and we are kept from sinning.
Psalm 119:9: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word.”
Psalm 119:11: “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.”
The Word of God keeps us from stumbling over the prosperity of the wicked. The Word of God keeps us from stumbling into all other kinds of sin because when the Word of God is cherished and dwelling within the heart of the righteous, then we do not want to sin against that Word because we delight in it, and so the delight of the righteous man is in doing righteousness and therefore the righteous man hates to do wickedness. So what keeps us from sinning? The Word of God dwelling in, treasured, and cherished in the heart of the righteous person so that our affections are governed by the Word of God, our mind is renewed by the Word of God, and the path of righteousness is laid out in the Word of God and we walk in it.
We have in Scripture commands to teach us, threatenings to warn us, promises to encourage us, rewards to motivate us, and the example of Christ to guide us. The righteous love God's Word in the heart because it is the center of all we do. It is the instrument that God uses to bring salvation and a knowledge of salvation to His people. It is the instrument that He uses to sanctify us. Jesus prayed for us on the night He was betrayed and said, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17). It is the Word of God that sanctifies us, grows us in holiness, fits us for Heaven so that we can gaze upon the glorious countenance of the Lord Jesus Christ, unashamed.
Psalm 119:165 says, “Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble.” It is in the moments when I do not love the law of God that I sin. And if I loved the law of God and my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind, I would not sin against Him. Or anybody else, for that matter. But when I do not love that, when I do not cherish that, and when I am not delighting in it, then sin is alluring. Then temptation is strong. But when the Word of God is delighting, nothing causes him to stumble.
Psalm 121:3: “He [Yahweh] will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.” Nothing causes them to stumble. Now, how does this work? Is this keeping grace a work of God, or is it through my own diligence? Is this the work of God, or is it through my own diligence? Yes. It is both of those things. God preserves His people. He is the active agent in our preservation. He is the one who preserves His people, and the means that He uses, one of the means that He uses, is His Word dwelling in the heart of His people. We participate in that sanctifying and preserving work when we read and study and meditate on and reflect upon and hear and memorize and obey and submit and love and preach and apply and are a doer of the Word. When we sing, when we trust, when we cherish, and when we prioritize Scripture, we are participating with the work of God in that keeping grace.
So it is all by grace, but the way that that grace is active in the life of a believer is that God strengthens us in His Word, and our participation in that Word, in loving it, cherishing it, obeying it, giving it a place in our heart, treasuring it, and walking and keeping with that, we participate with the keeping, preserving, and sanctifying work of God. So we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, all our effort, knowing that it is God who is at work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure. So it is both of those things. It's not one or the other. I certainly am never going to make myself holy or make myself to delight in the law of God apart from His grace and His work and His Spirit. And He is certainly not going to accomplish that apart from me loving and cherishing and reading and studying and delighting in and obeying the Word of God. So my desire to do that and God's work in doing that, those two things go together.
How do they mix? How is that accomplished? I don't know that. But I know that without Him, I'll never be holy. And I know that He's not going to make me holy apart from me following that command in Hebrews 12 to pursue holiness without which no one sees the Lord. And therefore, it is both.
These are the things that bear fruit in the life of the believer. They bring a reward to the believer, not just in this life, but also in the life that is to come. And so, to paraphrase—I think it is J. C. Ryle who said this—brethren, how readest thou? How readest thou the Word. Is the Word of God in your heart? Does it have your affections? Do you delight in its precepts? Is it your daily bread? Have you come to understand who the Savior is and why you need one because of the Word of God? And have you been sanctified and are you being sanctified by that same Word? Does the Word of Christ dwell richly within you? And do you apply all diligence to think and to walk and to live in keeping with its truth so that you will delight in the Word of God in that truth in the inner man? Is the Word of God in your mouth? Is the Word of God in your heart? And does the Word of God guard your steps?