Light For The Path Series

Psalm 119:105-112 105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.106 I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules. 107 I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word! 108 Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your rules. 109 I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. 110 The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. 111 Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. 112 I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end. (ESV)

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For the night time journeys of Israel through the wilderness, they were illumined by a pillar of fire that moved before them on their march. Most of the time the pillar stood in the center of their camp over the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle, where during the day it was a pillar of cloud; but when they marched, it went before them to lead the way, and at night it also illumined their path by becoming a flaming pillar of light (Exod. 40:36–38; Exodus 13:21–22; Numbers 9:15–23; 10:34–36). In a similar way our nighttime passage through the dark and dangerous journey of this life is illumined by God’s Word, the Bible, as stanza fourteen of Psalm 119 (the nun stanza) says when it begins in verse 5: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”. Here we see how God’s Word is pictured both as a lamp and a light: “A lamp is for night; light shines in the day,” “The Word is both to the psalmist.” His antithesis may mean that the Law gives “light of every sort” or in all “the varying phases of experience.” It is a light for our darkness and for our brighter times as well (Alexander Maclaren, The Psalms, p.273.).

Psalm 119 is a massive psalm in honor of the law. It is in twenty-two eight-verse stanzas, which are organized in acrostic order. Each verse of each unit begins with the same letter. This made the psalm easier to memorize (Garrett, D. A. (1998). The Poetic and Wisdom Books. In D. S. Dockery (Ed.), Holman concise Bible commentary: Simple, straightforward commentary on every book of the Bible (D. S. Dockery, Ed.) (231). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.). It is one of the fifty anonymous psalms, the longest of the 150 psalms found in the book of psalms. It is 8 or 10 times as long as the average length of the other psalms (Gingrich, R. E. (1995). The Book of Psalms (Book Five) (20). Memphis, TN.: Riverside Printing.). Psalm 119 uses several different terms for God’s word: law, statutes, precepts, decrees and commands. By one term or another, God’s word and way are mentioned in every verse. The whole psalm is carefully constructed around the twenty-four letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each letter introduces an eight-verse section or stanza. Each stanza extols a fresh aspect of God’s wonderful law, its beauty and benefits. It is like a great love poem. God’s law is His truth, His teaching. It has been revealed so that we may live fully, safely, wisely and well (Knowles, A. (2001). The Bible guide (1st Augsburg books ed.) (243). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.)

In Psalm 119:105-112 the word of God is shown as: 1)Light Points Our Direction (Psalm 119:105-108), 2) Light Presents Our Defence (Psalm 119:109-110), 3) Light Provides Our Delight (Psalm 119:111-112).

God’s words is a “Light for the Path” in that this:

1) Light Points Our Direction (Psalm 119:105-108)

Psalm 119:105-108 105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.106 I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules. 107 I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word! 108 Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your rules. (ESV)

• “We will spend about half our time on this first point”.

God`s Word is not only clear itself, but it is also clarifying, which means that we see other things clearly by its light. Verse 105 shows us the Precept, the way we should go. The way we should live our lives is what the psalmist means when he calls God’s Word a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. We may not know how to live our lives, but Scripture shines on the path before us to expose the wrong, dangerous ways we might take and light up the right ones. Many Christians suppose the Bible exists to give them detailed instructions concerning what job they should take, whom they should marry, where they should live, how they should spend their vacations, and other such details of daily living. This is not how the Word of God functions. It does not offer special or mystical (moment by moment) leadings. It unfolds the kind of character a Christian should have and shows the priorities that should govern his or her thinking. This is true light on our path, and it is only Scripture that provides it. Nothing in the world gives the same illumination. On the contrary, the world always sets the wrong priorities and extols misguided results. Illustration: Think of walking in the woods at night. There in the woods at night it is difficult to see anything. Even if we have a flashlight, we may not see the whole trail, but we see where we are to place our next step. Likewise, God’s Word lights our path as we walk through the darkness of this world one step at a time (we may not know what is coming further on down the trail or where the trail will end, because our job is to stay on the path of obedience where we are now, and leave the rest of the trail to God) (Williams, D., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1989). Vol. 14: The Preacher's Commentary Series, Volume 14 : Psalms 73-150. The Preacher's Commentary series (368). Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc.).