Like a Lost Sheep (Psalms 119:169-176)
Like a Lost Sheep
Psalms 119:169-176
January 29, 2012
Well tonight we bring this magnificent Psalm to a close.
I pray it has strengthened your convictions
About the importance and power of God’s Word.
At the very least we have seen one life
That was radically transformed because of it.
This young man went from suffering in disobedience
To standing in strong conviction.
And the entire change is credited to God working through His word.
Never underestimate that it is through His word that God works.
Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
Romans 10:17 “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
God’s Word is valuable.
Psalms 19:7-13 “The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them Your servant is warned; In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me; Then I will be blameless, And I shall be acquitted of great transgression.”
And so we are grateful to have studied a life
That shows just how God’s word can work in a person’s heart.
• We have seen him seeking,
• We have seen him submitting,
• We have seen him standing.
• We have seen him in affliction and oppression,
• At the pit of despair and literally busting at the seams with joy.
And through all those ups and downs of life the one constant
Has been that God’s word held the answers for him.
Well tonight we close this Psalm.
And I honestly have to say,
We close it in a way that I don’t think any of us would expect.
After all the victories and all the endurance,
We would expect this last stanza to be one of great praise and reflection.
We would expect a review of all his deliverances
And a promise to continue as he has gone.
But that is not at all what we get.
The context to this final stanza is actually a bit shocking.
(176) “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, For I do not forget Your commandments.”
I think it is probably safe to say that
None of us saw that one coming.
Our Psalmist has stumbled.
In his own words he has “gone astray”
And to compare himself to, he picks “a lost sheep”
That of course does NOT mean he has lost his salvation and is now lost,
He uses the word “like”.
He simply feels cut off and disconnected, he almost feels like he did back in the first stanza when his relationship with God was non-existent.
And he realizes that the reason he feels that way
Is because he himself has “gone astray”
God didn’t leave him, somehow he wandered away from God’s fold.
Now, don’t confuse this with apostasy.
This man has not turned his back on God, nor forsaken his covenant with God.
All you have to do is read the stanza and you will see that
He still loves and chooses God’s word over everything else.
(169) “Give me understanding according to Your word.”
(172) “For all Your commandments are righteous”
(172) “For I have chosen Your precepts.”
(174) “And Your law is my delight.”
(176) “For I do not forget Your commandments.”
Those are not the convictions of a lost man, or an apostate.
What we are dealing with here is a man who loves God and who loves God’s word, but he still stumbled.
And that is possible.
• Are we not familiar with John the Baptist having a difficult moment while imprisoned, sending his disciples to question Jesus?
• Are we not familiar with Peter denying our Lord three times?
• Are we not familiar with the remainder of the disciples fleeing in fear?
And of course we remember what Paul wrote:
Romans 7:13-21 “Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.”
The point is even the strongest of believers
Stumble and fall into disobedience.
Even the strongest of believers
With the strongest of convictions about God’s word have hiccups in life.
Now, the mark of a true believer is not that they never sin,
But that they hate it when they do.
• It is not that they never have hiccups in their relationship with God, but that they want them resolved as soon as possible.
• It is not that they never stray like a lost sheep, but that they desire to be found as quick as they can.
And that is where we find our Psalmist tonight.
And this really does give a sense of comfort to us.
Not that we delight in disobedience, or in the disobedience of another,
But since we do fall it is encouraging to us to see how one gets back up.
Tonight we see the Psalmist as a man whose relationship is suffering,
And how he cries out to God to have that relationship restored.
I think we can all agree that this is valuable information.
One thing I think is very important to point out at the first,
Is that this is not a “self-help” Psalm.
This is not a stanza on how a lost sheep wonders back into the fold.
It is very clear what the Psalmist wants.
(176) “…seek Your servant,”
This is again one of our great lessons on sovereignty,
And that is that the sheep is dependent upon the shepherd.
The Psalmist feels helpless and hopeless.
If he knew where to go to find God, he would go there, but he is lost.
He is totally dependent upon the shepherd finding him.
• Thank God that we have such a shepherd in Jesus.
• He has always been the One to search for the lost sheep.
• He has always been the One to keep the fold together.
And the Psalmist is banking on that here.
So let’s look at this final stanza tonight.
There are actually 3 things I want you to see in our Psalm tonight.
As our Psalmist seeks to be found.
#1 A DESPERATE CRY
Psalms 119:169-170
These two verses very much sound like the bleating of a lost sheep.
When a sheep gets lost from the fold,
The only options it has is to either cry out or lay down and die.
I’ve told you before a sheep really doesn’t have any natural defense mechanism,
It is totally dependent upon the shepherd.
So when a sheep gets separated, or in danger,
The main objective of that sheep is to make its voice heard
In hopes that the shepherd is actually out seeking for the sheep.
And so the Psalmist is crying.
(169) “Let my cry come before You, O Lord;”
(170) “Let my supplication come before You;”
He is a sheep in the wilderness crying “help me!”
And his only hope is that God will hear his cry and come rescue.
However, we are not dealing with a sheep, we are dealing with a man,
And he is not physically lost, he is spiritually lost.
And so, it is not as though he just needs God to come show him the road.
He actually spells out what being found would look like to him.
(169) “Give me understanding according to Your word.”
(170) “Deliver me according to Your word.”
When he says he is “like a lost sheep”
He means he has no clue where to go next.
He doesn’t know what to do.
He is a prisoner of ignorance.
And so he is crying out to God for guidance,
Hoping God will hear and grant him some information.
Certainly we understand that when we stumble away from God
It hinders our ability to understand the truth.
The only reason we are ever able to understand truth is because of God’s Spirit,
And when we walk away from fellowship with Him,
It only stands to reason that we will lose our ability to understand.
That is where our Psalmist is.
Lost and seeking for God to hear and guide Him.
When you find yourself lost in the sense of not understanding what to do,
Then cry out to God, and cry desperately.
(We definitely learned the importance of that from women like the Canaanite woman, or the widow seeking help)
A Desperate Cry
#2 A DISTINCT CRY
Psalms 119:171-172
I find these two verses pretty interesting.
We already know our Psalmist feels like a lost sheep,
And we know he is desperate for God to answer.
And so it sort of seems strange to go from such desperate measures
To instantly go to talking about praising.
WHAT IS THIS?
It is the language he is speaking to get God’s attention.
Remember what Jesus said?
John 10:14 “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me,”
John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;”
Jesus spoke of a unique intimacy that exists between Him and His flock.
They know His voice, He knows theirs.
They know Him, He knows them.
And so this makes perfect sense.
If you were a lost sheep, intent upon crying out
Wouldn’t you do everything you could
To sound as much like His sheep as possible?
You wouldn’t growl like a wolf,
You wouldn’t bark like a dog,
You wouldn’t bellow like a donkey.
You would kick your head back
And sound as much like a sheep as possible.
Well, that is what the Psalmist is doing.
As he cries for help, he is making sure
To sound as much like one of God’s children as possible.
And God’s children are characterized by a voice of praise.
So he says, “Let my lips utter praise,”
And “Let my tongue sing of Your word,”
He determines to sing.
Let me show you something about singing:
Ephesians 5:15-21 “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
Paul said to “be filled with the Spirit”
And then he explained what a spirit filled person sounds like.
“speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;”
Folks, songs of praise are the natural language
Of a spiritually filled child of God.
He literally puts a song in your soul.
If singing doesn’t mark your life
Then the Spirit doesn’t have much foothold.
Remember Paul and Silas?
In Acts 16, they cast a demon out of a girl, this got them arrested, flogged, chained, and imprisoned in the inner cell under Roman guard.
Acts 16:25 “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them;”
It is the language of praise and gratitude.
Beyond that, take the most personal book of Scripture.
Psalms is literally one testimony after the other,
And don’t we find it strange that it is called “Psalms”.
The fact is God’s people sing to God and to each other.
Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Obviously praise is the language of God’s people.
And so it only stands to reason that it is the language of our Psalmist
As he seeks to be found by his shepherd.
There is an obvious application for us here.
I heard a story once about a woman was arrested at a stop light.
“There was a woman driving his car when he saw the light turn yellow, not wanting to risk danger she decided to go ahead and begin to stop. When she did come to a stop she noticed the driver behind her pitching a fit. The driver behind was honking and cussing and even using hand gestures to let the front driver know how displeased she was about her decision not to take the light. All of a sudden a police officer from the car behind her, got out, approached the second car and proceeded to arrest the woman. Later, after the incident was over the officer came to the woman in the first car who had stopped at the light. He said, “Ma’am I’m sorry for the disturbance, it’s just that when I heard that woman behind you carrying on as she was and cussing like she did…and then when I saw the fish on the back of her car I assumed it was probably stolen.”
It does not good to sound like a goat
When you so desperately want to be found as a sheep.
It does little good to sit around bitter and complaining.
If you want to be found by God than sound like one of His.
Fill your mouth with praise and let thanksgiving come off your tongue.
And look at why the Psalmist praises.
(171) “For You teach me Your statutes.”
(172) “For all Your commandments are righteous.”
Even when circumstances are bad,
There is always a reason to praise the Lord.
Her the Psalmist feels like a lost sheep, and as he reminisces on the blessings of the Lord he can’t help mourn what he is missing.
This sort of sounds like the prodigal son doesn’t it?
Luke 15:17 “But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger!”
Is it any wonder that the son returned to the Father
And started talking with a little more humility?
The Psalmist is doing the same.
For whatever reason, his relationship with God is struggling,
But instead of growing bitter and grumbling,
He decides to reminisce on the goodness of God’s word
And sing praises accordingly.
A Desperate Cry, A Distinct Cry
#3 A DELIBERATE CRY
Psalms 119:173-175
Well now we know that our Psalmist is crying desperately to be heard.
We know that his cry is the distinct cry of praise easily recognizable to God.
Finally here we learn that his cry is deliberate.
He wants something specific from God.
WHAT DOES HE WANT?
“help”
(173) “Let Your hand be ready to help me,”
He wants God to come find him and help him
Out of the wilderness he has grown trapped in.
(174) “I long for Your salvation, O Lord”
He desperately wants God to deliver him from his peril.
(175) “Let my soul live that it may praise You, And let Your ordinances help me.”
There it is again, “help me”
I really like the deliberate way in which he cries out here.
• He doesn’t just want God to know about his trouble.
• He doesn’t just want God to examine his trouble.
• He wants God to get him out of it, and he makes no bones about that.
Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Be specific.
The sheep didn’t just want to be found, the sheep wanted to be delivered.
The prodigal didn’t just want to be found, he wanted food.
And so, with a heart of praise and thanksgiving,
He cries out for it with all he has.
And he wants God’s help to come from His “ordinances”
He wants God to give him direction and help him know what to do.
He is lost, and he needs guidance,
And so he is begging God to show him what he needs to know.
And that is a good example for us.
• There are times in life when we stumble.
• There are times in life when we do the very things we hate.
• There are times when our relationship with God seems stressed because of it.
At those moments cry out to the Shepherd (He is looking for you)
• Cry out in Desperation – because only He can find you.
• Cry out Distinctly – praise Him as one of His sheep.
• Cry out Deliberately – tell Him you want to come back home.
The Psalmist did.
And we are confidently certain that God delivered,
Because that is what God does.
And so there you have it.
It really didn’t matter the circumstances of our Psalmist’s life.
Victory or Defeat.
Joy or Despair
Confidence or Uncertainty
The answer for the Psalmist was always found in God’s Word.
It is invaluable.
In short, God’s Word is your road map for living,
It will guide you in all areas of this life
So long as you seek it and seek God to understand it.
Psalms 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.”
