As we think about what these verses mean for us today, we see here in verse 18, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. What a great prayer that is, that we want God to open our eyes. We understand that without the work of the Holy spirit in us, we are not going to truly understand the word of God. We need that spirit working in us. So what a prayer that God would open our eyes and help us to see wondrous things in his law, that we would know God's word, that we'd be able to apply it to our lives because there There are so many wonderful things in his word, and we need God's help to understand those and apply them to our lives.

As we come to the second section of Psalm 119, we see something very important. The focus here in Psalm 119 is on the word of God. And what we see is a question, how can a young man keep his way pure? Well, that goes for anybody. How can an older man? How can a younger woman or an older woman? How can any of us keep our way pure? And the answer that the Psalmist has is by guarding it according to your word. That is important. If we want our way to be pure, we need to guard our lives according to the law of God, according to the word of God. We see here in verse 11 what the solution is, to store up God's word in our hearts that we might not sin against him. We often might pray, God, deliver me from sin. That's a wonderful and good prayer. We should pray that every day. But often we think that that somehow is magically going to happen. But that isn't how any of this works. God works through his word and through his spirit. We need to have his word within us, to be working and sanctifying us.

So as we begin to look at Psalm 119, what we are going to see is that Psalm 119 is primarily about the word of the Lord. It's about his word and what it does for us. And so as we come to this, we see this first statement, and it really lets us know where we're going, right? Blessed are those whose way is blameless who walk in the law of the Lord. If we want our way to be blameless, if we want to walk in the law of the Lord, we need to know his word. We can't just arbitrarily come up with ideas on what God wants us to do. We need to know his word. And so that is how we are blessed. That is how we know the goodness of God, not only in keeping his law, but also knowing his gospel, knowing that we have a way to live that God has designed, but also that when we fail and when we sin, when we reject God's law, we have forgiveness in Christ Jesus. It is blessed for us to know those things. And so now we also see that verse 5, Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes.