“4 Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; 5 guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long. 6 Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to Your love remember me, for You are good, O Lord. ”
‘ABC. It’s easy as one, two, three; [it’s] simple as “Do Re Mi.” ABC, one, two, three
Baby, you and me.’ That’s the Jackson 5 with ABC. That song is all about what’s most needful to learn. To know how to read, you need to know your ABCs. To know how to do math, you need to know your one, two, threes. To know how to sing, you need to know your “Do Re Mis.” To know how to love, you need to know your you and me.
This section of this Psalm is all about the “you and me” of you and God. ‘“Do Re Mi.” ABC, one, two, three. God, you and me.’ The five words begun by the next five letters of the Hebrew alphabet have to do with you and God—ways, guiding, teaching, remembering, and sin. These are the five words. Here they are in a sentence: Guide me and teach me Your ways, God; remember Your mercy; don’t remember my sin. That’s the claim of this sermon: Guide me and teach me Your ways, God; remember Your mercy; don’t remember my sin.
We will study this in four points. First: the ways of the Lord. Second: guide me; teach me. Third: remember Your mercy and love. Fourth: remember not my sin. In verse 4, the next letter “dalet” introduces the ways of the Lord. In verse 5 we have two letters, first “he” and second “waw” which together talk about God’s guiding and teaching. In verse 6, the letter “zayin” introduces David’s request that God remember God’s mercy and love, and in verse 7, the letter “het” introduces David’s request that God not remember David’s sin.
First: the ways of the Lord. This first word in the fourth line of this poem begins with the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it is translated as “ways”; “show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths.” The concept of “the ways of the Lord” is simply massive in Scripture. It describes a pattern of life—a way of life. I dare say that even people with no familiarity with the Bible use the phrase, “way of life” because of this Biblical concept has bled into the culture.
The parallel of “ways” is “path”; “show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths.” Ways and paths are patterns of life—direction of life. There are a lot of ways of to live a life and left to ourselves none of us would know God’s ways—none of us would know God’s paths. That’s why David prays what he does in verse 4, “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.”
The first verbal form is what’s called a causative, as in, “cause me to know Your ways.” That’s the forcible showing we see in verse 4. If you do, in fact, know God’s ways—however imperfectly—it is because He has caused you to know them. You didn’t stumble upon Psalm 23’s right path that leads through green pastures and quiet waters and winds up at the house of the Lord. You only know that path because God has caused you to know it. This should give us good hope as we pray that others might come to know these ways because it is all of grace.
We Christians ought to be the humblest of people because we didn’t find this path on our own. There is no room for “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” in the kingdom. We are those who have been caused to know the path and we are those who must keep praying, “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths,” because we stand in constant need of having our eyes opened.
God makes these ways known through His word. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” These are the commandments. When we pray, “Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths”, we are asking God to tell us His will and His will is His commandments. It makes no sense to ask for God to show You His ways if you are ignoring His word.
The way of Jesus is just the way of the word. To follow him is to follow his commandments. To follow him is to behave like a little kid who walks in his dad’s footprints in the snow. You step where he steps. That’s discipleship. To step where Jesus stepped all you need to do is follow his commands. You can’t be all about knowing Jesus and not all about knowing his commands—his way of life. It makes no sense. It would certainly make no sense to him. We are giving Amanda a study Bible for her profession of faith because we want her to know God’s ways.
We not only need to pray to know God’s way, we also need to pray to walk in God’s way; that’s our second point: guide me; teach me. We have two Hebrew letters together in this point. The first letter is “he” and it begins the word translated as “guide.” The second letter is “waw”; it is the word translated as “and” which is attached to the word “teach”; so what we have here is “guide and teach”, as in verse 5’s, “guide me in Your truth and teach me…”
This guidance and teaching are hands on. This is like shop class. The first word, “guide”, comes from the verb that means “to walk.” David uses it in a causative form here meaning “cause to walk.” When you guide your toddler on a path at Newton Hills, what you are doing is causing her to walk on the path. This is David asking God for hands on teaching.
This is a request to be guided and taught to walk in God’s way. This is a request to be caused to walk in God’s commands. Calvin paraphrased this prayer as, “whatever may happen, suffer me not, O Lord, to fall from Your ways or to be carried away by a willful disobedience to Your authority or any other sinful desire, but rather let Your truth preserve me in a state of quiet repose and peace, by a humble submission to it.”
Wanting a heart that wants to know God’s ways and to walk in God’s ways is what the life of faith is all about. This is what Moses called the circumcised heart. This is what Ezekiel called the heart of flesh. This is what Jesus spoke of as the new birth. Today, Amanda declared that this has happened to her—she wants to walk in God’s ways. “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths.” That’s a heart that is becoming more like Jesus’.
Is your heart becoming more like Jesus’ heart? You know, in large part, by your walk. Do you want to fulfill the commands? “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” he said. “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” If you want to know what walking in the ways of the Lord looks like in action, just look at Jesus. You can’t be attracted to what’s truly attractive in Jesus without also asking, “Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth and teach me…”
David was praying to be led in God’s ways, and he was counting on God to lead him in those ways because God was truthful; that’s the “Your truth” in “guide me in Your truth…” David appealed to God’s unwavering truthfulness to keep him walking in the way of truth. We need to count on God’s unwavering truthfulness because we are not unwavering truthful. We are self-deceivers. Each of us is far more self-deceived than we will ever recognize in this life. We lie to ourselves in such convincing and subtle ways that we don’t even see the tenth of it. The most mature Christians you know are the ones who grasp that they lie to themselves about a great deal, which is to say that these Christians know they have great reason for humility; that’s, “blessed are the poor in spirit.” That’s why they pray depending on God’s truthfulness; “guide me in Your truth and teach me.” That’s why they regularly refer to the word of God; they need it.
The original disciples enjoyed this truthfulness in the flesh. They could count on Jesus’ unwavering truthfulness to keep him walking in the way of truth. He was the north star by which they could continually recalibrate their moral compass. He would neither feed into their self-deception nor be deceived himself. One of the reasons that our culture is so crazy is that they have no one like Jesus upon whom they can depend for direction. This is just one reason why the church must put verse 5 into practice for all who come: “guide me in Your truth and teach me.” That’s what we are doing right now as we study God’s word. That’s what we will do tonight.
David asked God for such guidance because he knew he needed God; verse 5, “You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.” Many of the versions translate “Savior” as “salvation”; “you are God my salvation, and my hope is in You all day long.”
David knew that he would self-destruct and be destroyed without God’s continual help. Remember from last week, David prayed because he knew that he was so radically needy. Here we see that his radical need had only one hope of being filled and that was God; “guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my salvation, and my hope is in You all day long.”
That was Jesus’ only hope too; “During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,” as Hebrews put it, “and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”
You are radically needy, and you have only one hope of salvation. That’s why church isn’t simply one soul refinement organization among many. That’s why we are brash enough to claim that we have something unique to offer; “guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my salvation, and my hope is in You all day long.” We offer God. No one else does. That’s why we rejoice with the Spirit’s working this morning in Amanda’s life rather than simply seeing this as a rite of passage. God is her only hope and she has publicly acknowledged that. God is your only hope whether you’ve acknowledged that or not.
David now switches gears, but he continues to drive in the same direction. He transitions from focusing on teaching to focusing on forgiveness; these two are connected, however, because they both have to do with God’s ways. We’ve seen David praying to be taught to walk in God’s ways; now we see him asking for forgiveness for failing to walk in God’s ways. We see the first part of this in our third point: remember Your mercy and love.
This line of poetry begins with the next letter in the alphabet, “zayin.” This word beginning with zayin is yet another central word of Scripture—remember; verse 6, “Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.”
Now David didn’t say, “Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love,” because he thought God had forgotten His great mercy and love. Rather, he was depending upon God’s mercy and love. Think of it in terms of jumping down from an attic. Growing up, we had different items stored in the attic above our garage. The only way into that attic was through an opening in the ceiling of the garage. My dad would open it, lift me into it—I was much smaller at the time—and I would hand the items down. Then I would jump down and he would catch me. Before I jumped down I would say, “remember to catch me dad.” I said that not because my dad had a history of dropping me but because I was acknowledging my dependence on him. I was acknowledging that if he didn’t catch me, I would fall. That’s what David was doing, “Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.” David was acknowledging that unless God remembered His mercy and love, David would fall.
Now I could depend on my dad because of his track record of caring for me. David could depend on God because of God’s track record of caring for him and His track record of caring for His people as revealed in Scripture. If you want to depend on God like David, you need to know God’s track record. To pray, “Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old,” you need to know these stories of old. That’s why we study God’s word together morning and night. That’s why we are reading through the Old Testament as a church. We are doing so, so that we can honestly pray, “Remember, O Lord, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.” If our prayers aren’t being changed by this study of the ABCS of prayer, what are we doing?
Jesus knew his Father’s great mercy and love were from of old. He depended on them daily. Jesus’ words in the gospels reveal that he thought his Father was the most generous hearted person imaginable. Jesus came, in part, so that you could know his Father that way. Can you honestly say “Remember, Father, Your great mercy and love, for they are from of old”? That’s a question to consider.
David wanted God to remember God’s mercy and steadfast love. David did not want God to remember David’s sin. Sin is the first word of this next verse, and it starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet—het. David wanted God to remember God’s mercy and steadfast love. David didn’t want God to remember David’s sin. I imagine you are the same. I know I am. That’s our final point: remember not my sin.
David knew that he needed to be taught God’s ways. He knew that he needed to be guided to walk in God’s ways. He knew he needed that because he knew himself to be a sinner. You can’t get anywhere with God until who acknowledge that you are a sinner who actually sins. David didn’t want those sins to stand in the way of God’s continued guidance; verse 7, “Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways.”
Now when David said, “Remember not the sins of my youth,” he wasn’t asking for God to excuse the sins of his youth because he was young when he did them. If you follow that line of thinking, you have to ask yourself when you are actually culpable for your sins because each of us—as Christians—are always in the process of learning God’s ways better; “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.”
Rather David was setting the sins of his past in contrast with God’s past mercy and love. Both of them are in the rearview mirror. David asking God to look in that rearview mirror and see His great mercy and love to David and not David’s sin; “Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth.”
David wasn’t just asking for forgiveness for the sins of his youth; he was asking for forgiveness for more recent rebellions; that’s what’s going on with, “my rebellious ways.” As John Goldingay explains, this verse is about the “shortcomings as a child who did not know better, and acts of rebellion as an adult for which there was no such excuse.” David was asking that God would remember none of it but instead would remember His own great mercy and love.
David threw himself on the great mercy and love of God. He knew that his only possibility for justification was the character of God; that’s the second half of the verse, “according to Your love remember me, for You are good, O Lord.” That was David’s only hope for mercy and love. As Calvin put it, “David can discover no other cause by which to account for this paternal regard of God, [other than] that [God] is good.” That’s your only hope.
Your only hope is that God is good. Your only hope is that God will remember not your sin but instead remember you according to His love and goodness. You can’t get deeper than that. You can’t, so to speak, get behind God’s decision to be merciful and loving to people like us. You can’t explain it. He chooses to do so because He chooses to do so.
In other words, the Son of God chose to take on flesh and die simply because he chose to take on flesh and die. The fact that you sinned placed no necessity on Jesus to choose to do that. The fact that you were created in the image of God placed no necessity on Jesus to choose to do that. Nothing about you placed necessity on Jesus. He chose to die for you because of his great mercy and love. That’s why grace is amazing. “Amazing grace, how can it be—that you my king would die for me?” Today Amanda declares that she has experienced and will continue to experience that amazing grace. If you want to experience that, please talk to me. I can show you God’s ways in His word. Talk to an elder.
Those who do experience that grace are remembered according to God’s mercy and steadfast love; they know how desperately they need to know God’s ways and they actually want to walk in God’s ways. They have the new heart. That’s the ABCs of a relationship with God. ‘“Do Re Mi.” ABC, one, two, three, God, you and me.’ Amen.