[0:00] Let us read God's Word then again in the Old Testament and this time in the book of Psalms and in Psalm 119.
[0:14] Psalm 119. At the beginning of the psalm.
[0:26] I'm always tempted to say we'll read the whole psalm but no, we won't. Psalm 119.
[0:37] At the beginning, blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity, they walk in his ways.
[0:52] Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments.
[1:05] I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have learnt thy righteous judgments. I will keep thy statutes. O forsake me not utterly.
[1:16] Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way. By taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee.
[1:28] Let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart. That I might not sin against thee. Blessed art thou, O Lord. Teach me thy statutes.
[1:40] With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy ways.
[1:57] I will delight myself in thy statutes. I will not forget thy word. Deal bountifully with thy servant that I may live and keep thy word.
[2:09] Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. I am a stranger in the earth. Hide not thy commandments from me.
[2:22] My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times. Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.
[2:32] Reprove from me reproach and contempt. For I have kept thy testimonies. Princes also did sit and speak against me.
[2:43] But thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors. My soul cleaveth unto the dust.
[2:55] Quicken thou me according to thy word. I have declared my ways, and thou heardst me. Teach me thy statutes. Make me to understand the way of thy precepts.
[3:08] So shall I talk of thy wondrous works. My soul melteth for heaviness. Strengthen thou me according unto thy word. Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me thy law graciously.
[3:23] I have chosen the way of truth. Thy judgments have I laid before me. I have stuck unto thy testimonies. O Lord, put me not to shame.
[3:34] I will run the way of thy commandments. When thou shalt enlarge my heart. And so on. May the Lord bless to us that reading of his holy and infallible word.
[3:47] And to his name be the praise. Let's sing again then, this time in the same psalm. Psalm 119. The verses that we have read. We'll sing the first part of the psalm.
[4:03] Psalm 119. Blessed are they that undefiled and straight are in the way. Who in the Lord's most holy law do walk and do not stray.
[4:16] And we'll sing the whole of this section then to God's praise. The first section, verses 1 to 8. Blessed are they that undefiled and straight are in the way.
[4:27] Blessed are they that undefiled and straight are in the way.
[4:46] Blessed are they that undefiled and straight are in the way.
[5:16] Blessed are ig efficaces. And Lamborghini big, furnstorm and religious themselves in the way. And when you will sing the Church in the way.
[5:26] Father, have mercy. Letali begin.
[5:37] Such a bliss wish to walk and live, to know iniquity.
[5:53] Thou hast all anded us to keep, thy peace and care for you.
[6:12] O walk, thy statutes to all stand, the woods my best I am.
[6:29] Then shall I all be shamed when I am free, except all is there.
[6:47] Then with integrity of heart, thee will I peace and bless.
[7:05] When thy touchments, O thou art, all thy good, high justness.
[7:24] The light who will keep thy status on, the peace of God have died.
[7:41] O good, O man, most gracious God, forsake me and I read.
[7:59] Let us then turn back to the passage we read, Psalm 119. And let us look again at verse 17 onwards.
[8:16] Psalm 119 and verse 17. Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live and keep thy word. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
[8:32] I am a stranger in the earth. Hide not thy commandments from me. And so on. And particularly, I want to focus on verse 18.
[8:43] Open thou my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Psalm 119 is perhaps a most unusual psalm in the collection of 150 psalms that we have.
[9:09] It is by far the longest of the psalms. In fact, I think, if I remember correctly, it's the longest chapter in the Bible. But my memory may be wrong on that. But I think it is.
[9:19] But it has several peculiarities about it, which we need to bear in mind before we actually look at the content of the psalm.
[9:33] Like all the psalms, it brings before us the personal experience of the author. And one of the things that you notice about this psalm and 117, 118 before and so on, is that there is no inscription above it to tell us who the author is.
[9:58] And that has been a sort of argument among commentators for quite some time, who actually wrote this psalm. The majority of commentators, and I tend to agree with them, think that it's David who wrote this psalm.
[10:18] There are others who, from some of the terminology used in the original Hebrew, say that it is much later, that it dates from the time of Ezra or round about there.
[10:29] But you would have to do a very thorough linguistic analysis of the original Hebrew to be able to argue that one. And I'm not going to go into that.
[10:41] There is a sense, of course, in which it doesn't really matter who wrote it. It's useful at times to know who wrote a particular psalm, because then, according to the scriptures, very often we have more detailed analysis of the psalm, because we can tell from the book of Chronicles or Samuel or Kings, what the circumstances of the writer were when he actually wrote them.
[11:08] But I think that this particular psalm is very clearly written by David. One of the reasons I think that is what it says in verse 23.
[11:23] Princess also did sit and speak against me, but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. And you have the reference to a servant again in verse 17.
[11:34] Now, why would I be so convinced that this was written by David?
[11:45] Well, first thing that you notice in Psalm 119 is the way in which the psalm is written. You have 22 sections in the psalm.
[12:01] And each section is eight verses. That corresponds to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
[12:15] And if you haven't guessed already, that's what Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, He, and so on, that's what all these words at the beginning of each section actually are.
[12:27] These are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And when you look at the original, you are dealing with eight lines in each section.
[12:40] And the first word in each section begins with the same letter of the section. So that, for example, in Aleph, in the first eight lines, every word at the beginning of the line begins with the letter A in Hebrew.
[13:00] In the second section, nine to 16, every word begins with the letter B, and so on. And what this is, is an acrostic.
[13:11] I'm sure you're quite familiar with the term an acrostic. It's a memory tool to help people to remember things.
[13:22] And it's a tool that we see quite commonly used even nowadays as well, even with scriptural words and scriptural texts and things like that. For example, we often make an acrostic of the word grace.
[13:39] And depending on which one you've heard, G-R-A-C-E, gift received at Christ's expense, is quite often used as an acrostic for the meaning of that.
[13:51] I'm sure some of you will have heard another one for the word Bible. Well, basic instructions before leaving earth. These are all acrostics. And what they are, basically, is memory tools to help us to remember certain things.
[14:08] Now, what does that have to do with the authorship of the psalm? Well, I think, along with most commentators, that David wrote this psalm for Solomon to teach him and to help him to remember and to memorise the principles that are written in the psalm.
[14:32] It's not unusual for people to memorise things in that way. Perhaps learning things off by heart nowadays has gone out of fashion quite a bit.
[14:46] Certainly, when I was at school and so on, we were made to learn all sorts of things, including in Sunday school, and we had to learn them off by heart. But nowadays, where you can have everything at the touch of a button, that's gone out of fashion.
[15:01] And that, in one sense, is a great pity, because committing things to memory very often means that it's much easier to remember them later on. I remember my mother, even up until a few years before she died, she could repeat lines and lines of poetry that she had learnt in Carloway School as a 10, 11, 12-year-old.
[15:26] Never forgot them, because they were forced to learn them off by heart, but she had a surprisingly retentive memory. And I remember my father telling a story about being at a fank out near Ben Rackleth in Shabbos.
[15:44] If you're not familiar with Ben Rackleth, the two big hills in Shabbos, one is Ben Rackleth, and the one behind it, that's further out into the moor, is called Ben Rackleth.
[15:56] And that there, at that fank, there was a man who sang the whole of Psalm 119 in Gaelic from memory.
[16:09] He didn't, of course, present it, he just sang the whole psalm. But that's quite a remarkable feat of memory. And I was trying to find out who that man was.
[16:23] I spoke to various elders in Shabbos, but none of them could remember even having heard the story. Till I spoke to an old elder in Barbas, and he said, oh, I remember hearing about it, he said, I don't know who it was.
[16:37] But he said, when I was a young boy in Del, that's in Ness, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Gugaland, he said, there was a caliuch there, and every night she milked the cow, she sang Psalm 119 from memory, the whole of it.
[17:00] I thought, it must have been quite a long milking, but never mind. Psalm 119, I wonder how many people you would find nowadays who could repeat Psalm 119, or any psalm from memory.
[17:14] It used to be commonplace, that everybody knew Psalm 23, perhaps it still is. But those sort of memorising of Scripture, and various other things, have gone out of fashion completely.
[17:27] And you may have your own opinion, on whether that's a good thing, or that's a bad thing. But that's why I think the psalm was written, for Solomon to be able to remember, and to learn, the theme of the psalm.
[17:45] Now, they always tell us that Psalm 119 is a sermon on Psalm 1. That's why we sang Psalm 1, first of all.
[17:56] And you see how similar the opening of the psalm is. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. I wonder how many of us would apply that to ourselves.
[18:10] The undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. And this, in a sense, is what the whole psalm is about.
[18:23] The whole psalm is about God's law. And the writer, if it is David, employs various different words that he uses for the law.
[18:39] The first verse, you see, it's the law of the Lord. Verse 2, it's testimonies. Verse 4, it's precepts. Verse 5, it's statutes. Verse 6, commandments.
[18:51] Verse 7, judgments. And then statutes again in verse 8. And you will find all that throughout the whole of the psalm, that synonyms for the law are used again and again.
[19:06] There's only two verses in the whole psalm that don't have it. Verse 121 and 122, if I remember correctly. You can check that when you go home if you're interested in it.
[19:21] But the writer's theme all the way through is the wonder of God's law. Now, we have to be perhaps a wee bit careful here as to what is meant by God's law.
[19:38] If I ask people usually, what is God's law? Then most people throw out the Ten Commandments. But if that's what you answer, then you are assuming that there is no law before the Ten Commandments are given.
[20:02] And as we shall see in a moment, that can't possibly be true. If it is David's time or later, you will remember that the law was a term that was used to apply to the first five books of the Old Testament, the books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
[20:27] And if it was David who wrote it, then these are the books, the scrolls, that would have been written in his time. Possibly along with the book of Job, as we saw this morning, and possibly along with the book of Joshua.
[20:44] Perhaps even Judges, but it's reckoned that Judges was written by Ezra later on, or rewritten by Ezra, but these are complex questions. But David's main focus when he speaks about the law of the Lord is not just the Ten Commandments.
[21:03] It's much, much wider than that. And you remember that this is what our Lord speaks about when he says he has come to fulfill the whole law.
[21:17] Not just the Ten Commandments, but the whole law. You remember that the Ten Commandments are given at Sinai, perhaps a thousand, five hundred years before the coming of Christ himself.
[21:31] But how many years was God's law in existence before that, going right back to the Garden of Eden, to creation itself?
[21:46] That is something that we have no idea what the answer to that question is. There are various people who try and work it out from the events and dates of the book of Genesis and so on, but it's a biblical chronology in those times, certainly pre-flood, is an extremely difficult thing to calculate.
[22:10] However, that's not really what matters. What matters is that we have instructions given to us in this psalm that it is the law of the Lord that matters more than anything else.
[22:29] Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. And you notice that the writer realizes that he is failing. In verse 5, he says, Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes, then shall I not be ashamed.
[22:47] And that would seem to suggest that he has been ashamed on various occasions by being unable to keep the statutes. And certainly, if David is the author and if he's writing this in his older age from experience to teach Solomon, we know very well that David fell and sinned grievously many times.
[23:12] And that is, of course, something that happens to all of God's people. But nevertheless, the desire of God's people is to be able to keep God's law.
[23:26] God's people and yet, you and I know that we are incapable of doing so. But that should not stop us from trying because there is a pleasure to be found.
[23:43] We don't try and keep God's law out of obligation. And this is very often one of the complaints that people make about the Christian religion.
[23:55] Oh, it's a series of don't, do not, etc. No. It's a series of do's. Do this and.
[24:06] And the consequences from doing this are often what we see in verse 17 and 18. In fact, we see it before in verse 14.
[24:18] I have rejoiced that very often the keeping of God's law brings joy. And we see in verse 16 I will delight myself in thy statutes.
[24:34] Then we come to verse 17 Deal bountifully with thy servant that I may live and keep thy word. What does he mean by I may live?
[24:44] Well, he's not just thinking of this life but he's thinking also of eternal life that I may live and I may keep thy word.
[24:57] And you notice that although he classifies himself as a servant nevertheless he has a pleasure in serving. And this is the experience of the Lord's people when they come to faith.
[25:14] They begin to find a pleasure in serving God and keeping his law even although they recognize and know that they fail. But nevertheless it is not an obligation that causes pain to them it is an obligation that they take pleasure in.
[25:34] The pain comes when we realize our failures. you see no one apart from the Lord Jesus Christ is able to keep the law of God 100% and this is what the Lord says when he is speaking to us I have come not to get rid of the law but to fulfill not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law.
[26:06] He was the only one who could completely keep it. You remember that if the law is summed up in the Ten Commandments and you remember that Jesus sums it up in two phrases he says thou shalt love the Lord when he is asked the question the greater commandment the first thing he says thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart all thy soul and all thy mind that's summing up the first four commandments man the human being's duty to God who can say that he keeps that commandment to love the Lord with all your heart all your soul all your mind or you may try and I'm sure every believer tries but yet finds it impossible it's just impossible to do and the second six commandments are man's duty to man and yet how often do we fail in those but the writer's focus here is on his ability or his lack of ability to keep
[27:22] God's law and so he asks in verse 18 open thou mine eyes now if you are asking for your eyes to be opened then you are admitting a form of blindness there's something that you don't see if you need your eyes opened and isn't that what every believer will tell you that before they came to faith they were blind they didn't understand they couldn't see the pleasure the joy that people get out of God's law and God's word it was almost in a way a closed book for them but when through faith through through the work of the Holy Spirit when they came to faith they began to see things that they'd never seen before and isn't that the way it is with you and I every day as we search the scriptures things that we may have read a hundred times before and didn't really say anything to us suddenly leap from the page and we learn something new that's the experience of the believer as he meditates on God's word as he reads it every day that there are constantly new things in it and this is what the writer says later on in the psalm he says that things come out and almost as if it were are great spoil he says verse 162 that you find great spoil in the law wasn't that what Jesus said to his disciples as well search the scriptures for they speak of me and the more you search the scriptures you see that the only person who was able to keep the law was the
[29:41] Lord Jesus Christ that's what Psalm 1 is all about the man who is undefiled etc etc it's a psalm that refers to the glory and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ himself as does every Psalm but in particular in Psalm 1 and here again in Psalm 119 open thou mine eyes and literally in the Hebrew it's saying take away the veil from my eyes and you remember that this was the experience of the children of Israel when Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tables of the law that they couldn't look on him because of the way that his face shone with the glory of God the Shekinah glory of the cloud on top of Mount Sinai that he had to put a veil over his face and of course Paul speaks about that again in Romans when he is speaking about the
[30:51] Jews that the veil is still on their eyes and the veil up until this day is on the eyes of many of the children of Israel of the Jews because they cannot see Messiah having come in the New Testament they are still waiting for Messiah to come but there is of course a veil on the eyes of those who do not believe who do not see their need for a saviour and this should be perhaps everybody's prayer open thou mine eyes no one else can do it open thou mine eyes both for the believer and the unbeliever that for the believer if his eyes are opened every single day to see wondrous things out of thy law then more and more he is understanding the scripture and for the unbeliever it should be his prayer to come to faith open thou mine eyes no one else can do it you can't open them for yourself it is only through the regeneration of the
[32:06] Holy Spirit that your eyes will be opened now don't get me wrong that doesn't mean that you just sit there and say well if it doesn't happen to me it doesn't happen no you have a responsibility yourself to search the scriptures to seek to understand you have a responsibility to pray you have a responsibility to desire to come to a saving knowledge and very often if that desire is not there it's your fault people will say it's God's fault no you cannot blame God for it the only person you can blame is yourself it's a fearful thing to say that we try and blame God for our unbelief wasn't that the cry of the man who came to Jesus for the healing of his servant
[33:07] Lord I believe help thou my unbelief so that should be our prayer open thou mine eyes why so that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law what wondrous things can we see well again we have to go back to the very beginning and as I said we mustn't think that the law only comes into existence when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai bearing the two tables of stone the law was an existence in heaven between father son and holy ghost before anything was created before anything was created it existed among the divine attributes of the trinity and of course as soon as one mentions the word trinity again people start to say well the word trinity doesn't appear in scripture either no the word doesn't but the trinity does they're there from the very beginning they're there at the creation look at genesis one you find the word that is used all the time let us make the word that's used for god in the hebrew is in the plural elohim it's plural not singular let us the whole work of creation is a triune work of father son and holy spirit and these in themselves are wondrous things to see in the law the work of creation i mentioned to the children this morning looking up into the stars and seeing the wonder of god's creation what's often referred to as god's book of works that through looking at god's book of works and creation and nature we can see certain things about the laws and the attributes of god and when we look at god's book of words the bible then we see this revealed we see it revealed in the old testament but we see it fully revealed in the new testament and remember one thing is incomplete without the other and peter makes a comment on this in his letter in the first epistle of peter in chapter one he says this at verse 10 receiving the end of your faith even the salvation of your souls of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you searching what or what manner of time the spirit of
[36:05] Christ which was in them did signify when it tested beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister these things how many of the Old Testament saints and writers understood fully what they were reading and what they were writing look at Psalm 22 where David writes about what happened at the cross in such detail that it's almost impossible for us to think that he understood what he was writing about he saw it in the future in a prophetic spirit as it was revealed to him by the holy spirit but did he really understand it did
[37:08] Isaiah understand when he wrote Isaiah 53 about the sufferings of Christ the servant king did he really understand what he wrote and so on and we could ask the same question of much of the Old Testament but they diligently entire Messiah the answers didn't come until the New Testament came until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and when you look at all the prophecy in the Old Testament concerning the coming of Messiah I wonder how many of these prophets really understood what they were prophesying but they prophesied what the Holy Spirit gave them to say but you and I have no excuse they might have an excuse for not understanding you and I have no excuse we have the Old Testament and we have the New Testament and one dovetails into the other and one reveals the other one is incomplete without the other you cannot understand the letter to the
[38:20] Hebrews unless you are familiar with the books of the law in the Old Testament Genesis and so on it's impossible but even although the psalm speaks of the law where do we have to go to find the first breach of the law it's quite amazing that the first breach of the law takes place in heaven itself we know from the book of Job and we were looking at it this morning we know from the end final chapters when God speaks to Job that the angels of God the sons of God rejoiced in the creation that the angels were created before man when exactly they were created we don't know and there's no point in speculating about it because we're not going to get anywhere on that but somewhere along the line the law of
[39:27] God in heaven is challenged and broken and broken by Satan as we saw named for the first time in the book of Job this morning you see the connection between the two things and it is there that Satan and his angels are cast out of heaven and if we follow the interpretation that's given in the book of Revelation about the dragon's tail drawing a third of the stars of heaven with him most commentators think that that means that a third of the angels fell along with Satan how many angels did John see in the book of Revelation thousands upon thousands and then a thousand times ten thousand that's a million and innumerable more that gives you some idea of the number of angels much maybe much greater than that that fell along with
[40:36] Satan Satan's little helpers and they're the ones who very often carry out his instructions and carry out the work that they do in bothering and accusing the believer if I haven't mentioned it before there's a wonderful little book by C.S.
[40:58] Lewis called The Screwtape Letters which if you've never read is well worth reading it's an old devil giving instructions to a young devil as to how to trap believers in their faith especially those who are young in their faith and it's quite not only entertaining but eye opening and I thoroughly recommend it open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law the law is first of all broken in heaven and from heaven it is then broken in the garden by Adam and Eve Adam and Eve are created innocent holy pure undefiled they are initially what we see in verse one the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the
[42:00] God but Satan sets out to destroy the creation and its perfection how does he do it he deceives Eve but you notice that Adam falls by his own decision Adam makes the decision to eat the fruit and very often when people just mention this in the passing people say what was the fruit and everybody says an apple no scripture doesn't say that it may well have been an apple we have no idea the fruit is not defined so why do we get the idea of an apple very simply from the amount of paintings that were made of the fall what was the commonest fruit in Europe at the time the apple and therefore it seemed logical of course that it is an apple that Eve holds out to
[43:03] Adam curiously enough in one of the main Roman Catholic churches in the centre of Lima in Peru if you ever manage to visit it and go along to see a painting of the fall then what is being held out is not an apple but a banana there were no apples at that time but the banana was a common tropical fruit and of course each painter again will paint according to what he is familiar with so the legend of the apple of course is simply a conjecture of man's imagination but what do we see in the law being broken there we see not only Adam and Eve thrust out of the garden but we see the sword the sword that I referred to this morning the sword of God's justice and judgment being put at the gate to stop them coming back in and it is from there that the first promise is given the first wonderful promise in the law of what's often known
[44:17] Genesis 3 15 as the proto evanculum that is the first mention of the gospel to come that of the seed of the woman what would come someone who would bruise the head of the serpent even although his heel would be bruised and you notice it's quite specific of the seed of the woman isn't it interesting that it's only recently that medical science has been able to tell us that it is not the woman who produces the seed but the man the male produces the seed the female produces the egg to be fertilized and isn't that pointing us forward to the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ the immaculate conception as it's referred to quite often the conception of the
[45:18] Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit there is nothing more wonderful than that in scripture can you say that you understand it I certainly can't I don't understand the virgin birth I believe it I don't understand it I have to by faith accept that it is the work of the Holy Spirit the work of the Trinity at work and again you see the Trinity so clearly at the baptism of Christ at the Jordan the Father speaks from heaven the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and there is the Son in the water Father Son and Holy Spirit acting together wondrous things out of thy law the next wonderful thing that we see immediately is when they are cast out of the garden God clothes them in the skin of an animal the word in Hebrew in skin is singular not plural it would seem to have been one animal but isn't it fascinating again that for clothes to have been made out of a skin the animal had to die the animal had to be sacrificed and that is God's grace being shown to
[46:49] Adam and Eve and we see again in the letter to the Hebrews that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin and it points us forward to what was to come everything in the Old Testament points us forward to what is to come in the new there are so many wonderful things in the law time has unfortunately gone past jump to the Passover wasn't it amazing again how the children of Israel are saved through the application of the blood it was no good simply killing the lamb and having the blood it had to be applied to the doorposts and the lintel and the same way in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has to be applied to the believer you may know all about it you may even believe in it but until it is applied to the doorposts and lintels of your heart it will have no effect on you and there are so many other wonderful things the law it's not specified in the psalm the difference between the ceremonial law and the moral law the ceremonial law was the law that pertained to everything in the tabernacle from the clothing of the high priest and the priests and the various ordinances the furniture in the actual tabernacle and so on and all you have to go is to the holy of holies and what an amazing sight you see there the ark of the covenant covered by the shekinah glory the presence of god and the cherubin looking down upon the mercy seat the cherubin who are particularly a symbol of the presence of god and yet unable to understand the atonement that is being made once a year by the high priest with the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat wonderful things in your law how many other wonderful things would you find in the first five books look at the sacrifice of isaac abraham willing to sacrifice his own beloved son take thy beloved son and doesn't it remind you of the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ and you remember the question that isaac answers asks he says here's the wood and the fire he says where is the lamb and abraham says how the lord will provide a lamb and yet when you get to mount moriah where the temple is to be built later on close to the site of the crucifixion what do you see it's not a lamb that has his horn caught in the thicket but a ram and have you ever wondered why it's a ram well a ram is a mature animal our lord could not begin his ministry until his maturity according to the law 30 years of age before he could begin to fulfill his priestly ministry and that was the old testament law that's why he begins at 30 that's why it's a ram and not a lamb although john will refer to him as behold the lamb of god and so many other wonderful things that we could see think for example of the manna that's coriander seed white thing that fell every day to feed
[50:49] them in the wilderness for 40 years so a commentator who had calculated once that given the number of the children of Israel in the desert somewhere between perhaps 2 to 3 million people that 100 1500 tons of manna fell every single day for those 40 years and double that on the Friday of course because they did not gather on the sabbath never failed no matter what the weather wind rain gale etc maybe there wasn't any gales in the desert but the manna never failed how god sustained his people with water and with food throughout those times there are so many other wondrous things that we could see out of the law and yet I'm afraid the time has gone by so
[51:50] I'll have to leave it there for this evening but I'm quite sure that you yourself can go back and look at the amazing things in the first five books that point us forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that show us the person of Christ one of the most amazing ones perhaps some of the most amazing ones in the Old Testament are what we call the theophanies theos the Greek word for God an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament before his incarnation beginning of the book of Joshua you see him he appears to Joshua as the commander of the Lord's army he appears to Moses in the burning bush isn't that another wonderful thing to see as well how could the bush keep going and so on but again time has passed and I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave it there for this evening so let us pray our father in heaven we pray that you would open our eyes to see wonderful things in your law and we thank you for these little pieces that we have been able to cover this evening and yet there is so much more to be seen that the more we look the more we find the wonder of your law teach us oh
[53:18] Lord to love your law and though we confess we are unable to keep it in the way that we would wish to nevertheless you have put the desire in our heart to comply with your law as much as possible we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ who was able to fulfill your law and thereby remove the curse of the law from us through his sacrifice through the blood that was shed we pray oh Lord that you would open our eyes to understand these and to meditate upon them be with us now as we conclude our worship and pardon sins through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen Let us conclude then by singing the words that we have been meditating on in Psalm 119 we'll just sing a few verses there from verse 17 just the four verses verse 17 to 22 with me thy servant and thy grace deal bountifully
[54:26] Lord that by thy favour I may live and duly keep thy word open mine eyes that of thy law the wonders I may see I am a stranger on this earth and I didn't have time to deal with that part of it hide not thy laws from me and so on to the end of verse 22 with me thy servant and thy wish η e班 η sabot Turns cái eて인을 ou d Truly keep thy word.
[55:28] O burn mine eyes at all thy wall. The wonder shine is here.
[55:46] I am a stranger on this earth. I thought thy loss from me.
[56:05] My soul within me breaks and not. Much fainting still endure.
[56:24] The loving light it hath all time. Until thy judgments pure.
[56:41] The first rebuked the cursed ground.
[56:54] Who from thy peace have swam. Rebootionship remove from me.
[57:12] For thy thy laws of terror. Amen. Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[57:26] The love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Be with you all now and forever. Amen.