The Upright Man in a Treacherous World Text: Psalm 119:153-160
Introduction: A Real Faith for a Real Fight
We come now to the nineteenth stanza of this great psalm, the section governed by the letter Resh. And as is so often the case in the psalms, we are not in a sterile, quiet library of abstract theology. We are on a battlefield. The psalmist is a man beset on all sides. He is afflicted, he has adversaries, he is surrounded by the treacherous. And in the middle of this very real fight, he brings forth a very real faith. This is not the flimsy, sentimental devotionalism that passes for piety in our soft age. This is a robust, muscular, word-centered faith that knows how to cry out to God for deliverance, how to stand firm in the face of persecution, and how to hate what God hates.
The modern church has a great deal of trouble with passages like this. We are comfortable with the parts about loving God's precepts, but we get squeamish when the psalmist talks about loathing treacherous men. We like the appeals for revival, but we want to disconnect them from the hard realities of God's judgments. We want a faith that floats three feet off the ground, untouched by the grit and grime of a world at war with its Maker. But the Bible will not have it. Biblical faith is for the trenches. It is for the man whose enemies are many and whose afflictions are real. And the central lesson of this stanza, and indeed the whole psalm, is that the only anchor in such a world is the unshakeable, everlasting, and entirely true Word of God.
The psalmist here is in a covenant lawsuit. He is making his appeal to the great Judge of heaven and earth. And he makes his appeal on the basis of the covenant. He is not claiming sinless perfection, but he is claiming fidelity. He has not forgotten God's law. He has not turned aside from His testimonies. He loves God's precepts. And because his standing is within the covenant, he can boldly ask for God to see, to plead, to redeem, and to revive. This is the logic of faith in a world gone mad. It is not a blind leap into the dark; it is a confident standing on the immutable promises of a covenant-keeping God.
The Text
See my affliction and rescue me, For I do not forget Your law.
Plead my cause and redeem me; Revive me according to Your word.
Salvation is far from the wicked, For they do not seek Your statutes.
Many are Your compassions, O Yahweh; Revive me according to Your judgments.
Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, Yet I do not turn aside from Your testimonies.
I see the treacherous and loathe them, Those who do not keep Your word.
See how I love Your precepts; O Yahweh, revive me according to Your lovingkindness.
The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments is everlasting.
(Psalm 119:153-160 LSB)
Covenantal Appeal in Affliction (v. 153-154)
The stanza opens with a direct appeal to God, grounded in the psalmist's covenant faithfulness.
"See my affliction and rescue me, For I do not forget Your law. Plead my cause and redeem me; Revive me according to Your word." (Psalm 119:153-154)
He begins by asking God to "see" his affliction. This is not to inform an ignorant God. It is a covenantal summons. It is asking the Judge to turn His attention to the case. When God sees, He acts. He saw the affliction of His people in Egypt, and He came down to deliver them. The psalmist is in trouble, and the first and most important thing to do is to get God's attention. And what is the basis of his appeal? "For I do not forget Your law." This is not the boast of a self-righteous man. It is the plea of a faithful vassal to his covenant Lord. He is saying, "I am on Your side. I have kept the terms. My loyalty has not wavered, even in this affliction." In a world where everyone is forgetting God's law, this man has made it his anchor.
Then, in verse 154, he presses the legal case. "Plead my cause and redeem me." He asks God to be his advocate, his divine defense attorney. The world is bringing accusations, but he appeals to a higher court. And he asks to be redeemed, to be bought back from his trouble. This is the language of the kinsman-redeemer. He is in a state of distress from which he cannot extricate himself, and he calls on his covenant Head to act on his behalf. And what is the instrument of this revival? "Revive me according to Your word." The life he seeks is not just bare existence, but a life defined and animated by the promises of God. God's word is not just a book of rules; it is the source of life itself.
The Great Divorce (v. 155)
The psalmist then draws a sharp, clear line between his own position and that of his enemies.
"Salvation is far from the wicked, For they do not seek Your statutes." (Psalm 119:155 LSB)
Here is the great antithesis that our mushy, inclusive generation despises. There are two paths, and only two. The path of the righteous, who seek God's statutes, and the path of the wicked, who do not. And the consequences are ultimate. Salvation, or deliverance, is near to the one and far from the other. Why is it far from the wicked? The reason is plain: "For they do not seek Your statutes." It is not because God is stingy with salvation. It is because the wicked have turned their backs on the only place it can be found. God's statutes, His law, His word, are the map that leads to life. The wicked have not only lost the map; they have contemptuously thrown it into the fire. They are seeking their "salvation" elsewhere, in their own autonomy, in their rebellion, in their idols. And in so doing, they are running at full tilt away from the only source of help. This is not an arbitrary decree from God; it is the simple spiritual law of cause and effect. If you run from the light, you will end up in the dark.
Revival by Judgment and Compassion (v. 156)
Having established the hopelessness of the wicked, the psalmist turns back to his own hope: the character of God.
"Many are Your compassions, O Yahweh; Revive me according to Your judgments." (Psalm 119:156 LSB)
Notice the glorious paradox. He appeals to God's "many compassions," and then immediately asks to be revived "according to Your judgments." We tend to pit these two against each other. We think of compassion as soft and judgment as hard. We want God's compassion, but we'd rather He keep His judgments to Himself. But the psalmist knows better. God's judgments, His righteous rulings and decisions, are not contrary to His compassion; they are the very expression of it. For a righteous man in a world of lies, God's judgments are a profound comfort. They are the assurance that the universe is not meaningless, that right and wrong are not illusions, and that the score will one day be settled. The psalmist wants to be revived by this reality. He wants the life that flows from a world set right by its righteous Judge. God's compassions are not a sentimental goo; they are a covenantal, judicial love that acts to set things right. And that is a foundation you can build your life on.
Steadfastness Under Fire (v. 157-158)
The pressure of persecution is intense, but the psalmist's response is twofold: steadfastness toward God and holy revulsion toward sin.
"Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, Yet I do not turn aside from Your testimonies. I see the treacherous and loathe them, Those who do not keep Your word." (Psalm 119:157-158 LSB)
The opposition is not insignificant. They are "many." He is outnumbered. The pressure to compromise, to trim his sails, to go with the flow, must have been immense. But his resolve is firm: "Yet I do not turn aside from Your testimonies." God's testimonies, His covenant stipulations, are his non-negotiables. He will not swerve, he will not bend, he will not flinch. This is the backbone of faithfulness. It is one thing to love God's law in the abstract; it is quite another to refuse to turn from it when the persecutors are many.
And this steadfastness produces a necessary moral clarity. "I see the treacherous and loathe them." This is another one of those verses that makes modern evangelicals nervous. We have been taught that the only acceptable emotion toward sinners is a sort of bland, therapeutic niceness. But the Bible is more robust. The psalmist sees the "treacherous," those who are covenant-breakers, those who betray the truth, and he "loathes" them. This is not a petty, personal animosity. The reason for his loathing is explicitly theological: "Those who do not keep Your word." He hates their treachery because it is treachery against God. He sees sin for what it is, a disgusting rebellion against the beautiful and holy God, and he reacts appropriately. To love holiness is to hate unholiness. To love the truth is to loathe the lie. A faith that cannot loathe what is loathsome is a faith that has lost its moral compass.
A Final Plea for Life (v. 159-160)
The stanza concludes by returning to the central themes of the psalmist's love for God's Word and his desperate need for God's life-giving power, all grounded in the very nature of that Word.
"See how I love Your precepts; O Yahweh, revive me according to Your lovingkindness. The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments is everlasting." (Psalm 119:159-160 LSB)
Again, he calls on God to "see." First, it was "see my affliction." Now, it is "see how I love Your precepts." He is laying his heart bare before the Judge. His love for God's law is the evidence of his covenant loyalty. And on this basis, he prays again for revival: "revive me according to Your lovingkindness." The word here is hesed, God's covenant loyalty, His steadfast, unending love. He is asking God to act in accordance with His own covenant character. Because God is faithful, He will give life to His faithful people.
And why can he be so confident? Verse 160 is the bedrock foundation for the entire psalm. "The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments is everlasting." This is the ultimate presupposition. When you add it all up, when you take all of God's revelation together, the bottom line, the sum total, is truth. It is not a collection of helpful suggestions or inspiring myths. It is reality itself. And because it is truth, its applications, God's "righteous judgments," are "everlasting." They do not change with the times. They do not bow to cultural pressure. They are fixed, eternal, and utterly reliable. This is why the psalmist can stand when his persecutors are many. This is why he can plead his case with confidence. He is not standing on the shifting sands of human opinion or personal experience. He is standing on the everlasting rock of the word of God, which is, in its sum, nothing less than truth.
Conclusion: The Logic of the Gospel
This entire stanza is a beautiful illustration of the logic of the gospel. The psalmist is a man in deep trouble, surrounded by enemies. He cannot save himself. His only hope is for God to see him, to plead for him, to redeem him, and to revive him. And what is his plea? It is that he has clung to God's Word. He has not forgotten it, not turned from it, but loved it.
How can a sinner make such a plea? He can do so because he stands in a covenant of grace. For the Old Testament saint, this was a confidence grounded in the promise of a Redeemer to come. For us, it is a confidence grounded in the Redeemer who has come. Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of this psalm. He was the one who was truly afflicted, surrounded by many persecutors and adversaries. He was the one who, in the face of it all, never once turned aside from God's testimonies. He was the one who could truly say He loved God's precepts with a perfect love.
And on the cross, God did "plead His cause" by crushing Him for our iniquities, and He "redeemed" Him by raising Him from the dead. And now, because we are united to Him by faith, His perfect record is counted as ours. We can come before the throne of grace, even in our affliction, and say with the psalmist, "See my affliction and rescue me," not because we have perfectly remembered the law, but because our representative, Jesus, has. Salvation is no longer far from us, because in Christ, we have been brought near. We can loathe the treachery of sin because He has broken its power in us. And we can bank our entire lives, now and forever, on this great fact: the sum of God's Word is truth, and the central truth of that Word is Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and our Life.