Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - A Lamp For My Feet | The Writings | Psalm 119

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

What do you think will complete you? Do you look to God's Word for wisdom, answers, and delight? Is Scripture shaping your heart? In today's episode, Tanya shares how Psalm 119 encourages us to see God's Word as a lamp for our feet. Prepare your heart this Advent with the 2024 TMBT Advent Calendar! Each day, receive a new prompt for Scripture, prayer, and reflection—designed to help you slow down and reflect on the Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy that Jesus offers. Sign up now to receive your free Advent calendar! Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 119

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work, I'm Tanya Wilmuth. In the summer of 1997, I used my graduation money to buy a TV VCR combo for my future dorm room. But that summer, only encumbered by my part-time job at McMurry Ward and getting ready to leave my hometown for the University of Missouri, I watched and re-watched Jerry McGuire on my new VCR. Hands down favorite scene is when Jerry McGuire, played by Tom Cruise, of course, looks at Dorothy Boyd or Renee Zellweger and says, You complete me.

It was a dramatic contrast to Tom Cruise's character, Maverick, and Top Gun, totally full of swagger and just basically full of himself. In this scene, he was kind of pitiful, almost needing Dorothy to be able to go on with his life. What do you look at with googly eyes, hoping it will complete you? what are you looking at right now? Or what are you getting ready to do? Because for a minute, it feels like it does complete you. Today we're in Psalm 119, the longest chapter of the Bible with 176 verses. Psalm 119 is divided into 22 stanzas, and each stanza has eight verses. It's actually an acrostic poem, and you're probably familiar with these from the third grade. When you wrote

your name vertically down the paper, one letter on each line, and then used that last, letter to form the first word in each sentence of your poem. But Psalm 119 is an acrostic, and it uses the entire Hebrew alphabet, 22 letters. Each stanza starts with the corresponding letter, and the style and structure showcases the completeness of God's holy word through the complete alphabet. The structure is meant not only to communicate the theme that God's word is in itself, a complete revelation of God, but that in it we will find completeness, completely what we need. It is our essential source for guidance and growth, our ultimate source of wisdom and comfort. Do you have a relationship with God's word that looks like Tury McGuire?

Looking to God for not just answers, but completion of your questions, desires, feelings, and doubts, to know how to live, to have real joy, to find true peace, I think it's more common to treat scripture like bonus material, not essential material. No matter where you are, where we are, Psalm 119 draws us into a relationship with God's word and God himself, a relationship of dependence and delight. When I need help, I depend on chat, GBT, people's opinions, my gut feelings. But what if I used those things as a secondary source instead of a primary one? what if the primary grounding came from God's word, and then feelings and opinions and experiences,

all framed themselves under that. Would I be better off? What if I started my questions like the psalmist did in verse 18 when he says, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law? I think he experienced God's answer to this request, because in verse 105, he says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. When we submit to God's word as our ultimate authority, it lights the way for us. It informs our decisions.

It makes the way forward more clear, even if there are obstacles, even if it feels really dark all around us. See, when I run in the winter, I wear a headlamp so I can see the trail. I can see where I'm going. I can see the fallen branches and the walnuts in my way. I can avoid them and feel more stable every time I put my foot down. I can run faster with my light because I can see. I feel safer with my light because I know where I am. I know what's around me. The psalmist says, how can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word. And he also writes, I am yours. Save me. For I have sought your precepts. See, he understands that he needs God's word to know how to live. But he also can't do it on his own. He's going to fail. And when he does, the Bible also informs his conscious and his spirit that he is okay. because his salvation comes from God.

Now, the other D word in this relationship is delight. Psalm 119 doesn't view obeying God's standards as a burden, but a source of delight. God's word reframes our perspective, so we want to live according to his ways. Now, when I get a little bit prickly, when I get out of sorts about how God's word collides with the culture or with my feelings,

it's usually because my balance is off. I'm shaped more by where I spend more time. my feelings are shaped by where I spend more time. In verse 16, the psalmas says, I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. In verse 24, it says, Your testimonies are my delight.

They are my counselors. And verse 92 is poignant. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. In scripture, we find cherished truths about God and his plans that strengthen us, motivate us,

counsel us, and protect us. Ultimately, though, God's word brings delight because it's where we experience God's mercy and salvation. So I was sitting around my kitchen table with a group of girls this week. We were talking about some of the things in the Bible that are just harder to deal with, things especially about sexuality. It was an honest conversation where some of the girls were sharing that what the Bible says about how to live at our sexuality doesn't sound good or loving to them.

We talked about how it sounds hard to call something sin. It sounds harsh to be called a sinner. to call someone else a sinner. Now we aren't talking about going around and shouting at people, that they are sinners. But if someone's genuinely searching for what the Bible says and being truthful about it. But see, when we open the pages of scripture for ourselves, we find out that we are sinners. And it isn't unloving, and we aren't left alone in that. We're wrapped in the mercy and grace of God and we're given a solution for it, a savior. So yes, Psalm 119 is a literary masterpiece. a symbol of completion, full of wisdom. It is also full of the knowledge of God and how to live by

his commandments. But it is a psalmist experience as well when he sought and hid himself on God's word, when he made it his guiding light, when he found complete joy in his relationship with God. Spend some time thinking about how often God's word is the lamp to your feet and the light to your path. Ask him to open your eyes to the wonder and wisdom of his word and read all of Psalm 1-19. for yourself. When you're done, you'll have read the longest chapter in the whole Bible.