The Word Our Anchor and Our Song Text: Psalm 119:49-56
Introduction: Two Ways to Walk
The Christian life is a walk. It is a pilgrimage. The psalmist here describes himself as being in "the house of my sojourning." But every walk has a path, and every path is defined by something. There are fundamentally only two ways to walk through this world. You can walk according to the word of man or you can walk according to the Word of God. You can walk by sight, which is to say, by the ever-shifting consensus of the spiritually blind, or you can walk by faith in the unchanging, life-giving, world-defining Word of the living God.
This is the great antithesis that runs through all of Scripture and all of human history. It is the conflict between the city of God and the city of man, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And in this stanza of this great psalm, the section designated by the Hebrew letter Zayin, we see this conflict in miniature. The psalmist is a man afflicted, surrounded by the arrogant who utterly scoff at him. He is a sojourner in a hostile land. And yet, he is not dismayed. He is not undone. Why? Because he has an anchor outside of himself. He has a songbook that was not written by his enemies. He has a comfort that the world cannot give and, more importantly, cannot take away.
Our secular age is an age of industrial-strength scoffing. The arrogant have tenured positions at the university, they have seats in the legislature, and they have the loudest microphones in the public square. They believe reality is whatever they can imagine and enforce. They have forsaken God's law and are therefore seized by a kind of corporate madness. Into this environment, the Christian is called to walk. And this passage is our instruction manual. It shows us the foundation of our hope, the source of our life, the necessity of our backbone, the fuel for our indignation, and the melody of our pilgrimage.
The Text
Remember the word to Your slave, In which You have made me wait.
This is my comfort in my affliction, That Your word has revived me.
The arrogant utterly scoff at me, Yet I do not turn aside from Your law.
I have remembered Your judgments from of old, O Yahweh, And comfort myself.
Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, Who forsake Your law.
Your statutes have become my songs In the house of my sojourning.
I remember in the night Your name, O Yahweh, So I keep Your law.
This has become mine, That I observe Your precepts.
(Psalm 119:49-56 LSB)
The Ground of Hope (v. 49-50)
The psalmist begins his prayer by reminding God of His own Word. This is not because God is forgetful, but because the man of God knows where the power lies.
"Remember the word to Your slave, In which You have made me wait. This is my comfort in my affliction, That Your word has revived me." (Psalm 119:49-50)
To pray "remember" to God is to appeal to His covenant faithfulness. It is to say, "Lord, you are not a man, that you should lie. You have spoken a promise, and my entire life is staked upon it." Notice the source of his hope. It is not in his own feelings, his own strength, or his own circumstances. His hope is in the Word that God spoke and in which God Himself "made me wait." God is the author of both the promise and the patience required to inherit it. Faith is not a leap in the dark; it is standing on the solid rock of a divine promise.
And this hope is not some flimsy, sentimental optimism. It is a comfort with teeth. It is a comfort that operates "in my affliction." True Christian comfort is not the absence of trouble, but the presence of God's Word in the midst of trouble. The world seeks comfort by trying to eliminate affliction. The Christian finds comfort that is stronger than the affliction. And how does it work? "Your word has revived me." The Hebrew word means to preserve life, to give life. God's Word is not a collection of dead letters or pious suggestions. It is living and active. When God speaks, life happens. This was true in creation when He spoke light into existence, and it is true in salvation when He speaks life into our dead hearts. In the midst of affliction, when the world and our own flesh are telling us that we are finished, the Word of God performs a spiritual resurrection. It revives us.
Steadfastness Under Scoffing (v. 51)
The inevitable result of living by God's Word is conflict with those who do not. The psalmist faces this head-on.
"The arrogant utterly scoff at me, Yet I do not turn aside from Your law." (Psalm 119:51)
Who are the arrogant? They are those who have made themselves the center of their own universe. Pride is the native air of the unregenerate heart. The arrogant man's ultimate authority is himself, his own reason, his own desires. Consequently, when he encounters someone whose life is oriented around the authority of God's law, he can only respond with derision. The scoffing is not incidental; it is a necessary expression of his worldview. The very existence of a man who fears God is a rebuke to the man who does not, and so he must mock what he cannot control and does not understand.
Notice the intensity: they "utterly" scoff. This is not gentle teasing. This is total, contemptuous dismissal. This is the world's constant pressure on the believer to conform, to compromise, to just be "reasonable." And what is the psalmist's response? "Yet I do not turn aside from Your law." This is the backbone of faithfulness. He does not negotiate. He does not seek a middle ground between God's law and the opinions of the proud. He understands that to turn aside even a little is to abandon the foundation of his hope and comfort. When the world scoffs, the faithful man plants his feet more firmly on the Word. He will not be moved.
The Comfort of Ancient Judgments (v. 52-53)
The psalmist finds comfort not only in God's promises for the future but in His actions in the past.
"I have remembered Your judgments from of old, O Yahweh, And comfort myself. Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, Who forsake Your law." (Psalm 119:52-53)
This is a deeply offensive thought to the modern, sentimental mind. We are supposed to find comfort in God's niceness, not His judgments. But the psalmist is a realist. He knows he lives in a moral universe. Remembering God's "judgments from of old" means remembering that God is not mocked. It means remembering Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, and the plagues on Egypt. It is the profound comfort of knowing that history is not a random series of events but a story with a plot, and the author is a holy God who judges evil. This gives him stability. The arrogant may be winning the skirmish today, but the believer who remembers God's judgments knows who wins the war.
This remembrance produces two things: comfort for himself and indignation toward wickedness. "Burning indignation has seized me." This is not a petty, personal animosity. It is a holy zeal for the honor of God's name and the authority of His law. To see the wicked forsake God's law is to see them spitting in the face of the Creator, dismantling the foundations of justice, and leading others down the path to destruction. A man who loves God must hate what God hates. Apathy in the face of rampant lawlessness is not a Christian virtue; it is a cowardly vice. This indignation is the emotional engine of reformation and righteousness.
The Pilgrim's Songbook (v. 54-56)
In the final verses of this stanza, the psalmist reveals the internal disposition that makes this faithfulness possible. It is not a grim, joyless duty.
"Your statutes have become my songs In the house of my sojourning. I remember in the night Your name, O Yahweh, So I keep Your law. This has become mine, That I observe Your precepts." (Psalm 119:54-56)
This is a glorious transformation. The very law that the wicked forsake and the arrogant scoff at has become the believer's song. In this world, we are sojourners, pilgrims passing through. This is not our permanent home. And every pilgrim needs a song to sing on the road. The world sings songs of rebellion, lust, and self-pity. But the Christian's songbook is the law of God. This means that God's commands are not seen as oppressive burdens but as the beautiful, harmonious lyrics of life itself. To delight in God's law is to find joy in the very structure of reality as God designed it.
This song is cultivated through remembrance. "I remember in the night Your name." In the quiet, dark moments, when the distractions of the day have ceased, his mind turns to God. To remember God's name is to remember His character, His attributes, His saving acts. It is to meditate on who He is. And the result of this contemplation is not passive mysticism; it is active obedience. "So I keep Your law." True meditation on God always leads to obedience to God.
He concludes, "This has become mine." What has become his? This whole pattern of life. The practice of taking refuge in the Word, of standing firm against scoffers, of remembering God's name, and of obeying His precepts. This is his possession, his inheritance, his way of life. And it is a gift. The ability to observe God's precepts is itself a blessing from God. Obedience is not the price we pay to get God's blessing; obedience is the blessing.
Conclusion: The Word Became Flesh
This stanza gives us a portrait of the faithful man, but it is more than that. It is a perfect portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the ultimate sojourner, the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He was the one at whom the arrogant utterly scoffed as He hung on the cross. He was the one who found comfort in the Word of His Father, crying out the Psalms from the tree. He was the one who had a burning indignation for the wickedness that defiled His Father's house. It was His delight to do the will of His Father, and God's law was His song.
Because He lived this life perfectly, we who are in Him are enabled to live it as well. Our hope is not that we can perfectly replicate this psalmist's piety in our own strength. Our hope is that we are united by faith to the one who did. When we are afflicted, we find our comfort in the Word who has revived us, Jesus Himself. When we are scoffed at, we stand firm because we are hidden in the one who withstood it all. When we see wickedness, our indignation is righteous because it is His indignation, worked in us by His Spirit.
Therefore, our task is to remember His name, to sing His statutes, and to observe His precepts. For this has become ours, not because we have earned it, but because in Christ, God has remembered His word to us, His slaves, and has given us a hope that cannot be shaken and a song that cannot be silenced.