POST 3--PSALM 119;2

''BLESSED ARE THEY THAT KEEP HIS TESTIMONIES, AND THAT SEEK HIM WITH THE WHOLE
HEART.''

The 2nd of the two-fold blessing introducing this beloved and famous chapter,
every verse of which extols the efficacy and worth of the holy scriptures, is here
pronounced. It is limited to, or assigned to those who fulfil the conditions
required, who ''keep his testinmonies,'' and who ''seek him with the whole heart.''
In the psalms, the word ''testimony'' in the singular usually refers to the whole of
inspired scripture, whereas ''testimonies'' as it here appears has reference to the
specific commandments of God's Word. God, being sovereign and all-wise, from the
beginning deemed it necessary and good to give man, whom He created in His own image
[GENESIS 1;27], commandments to keep. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, had many
delightful duties and but one prohibition to observe, not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, in the Garden of Eden [GENESIS 2;17]. Their disobedience
in eating of the fruit of this tree plunged themselves and every subsequent member of
the human race under condemnation and death. The moral law of God later revealed in
the Ten Commandments given through Moses on Mount Sinai reveals the holy, unchanging
nature of God, and is binding on every son of Adam. By this law God's will and man's
duty are clearly set forth, yet fallen man has not power in himself to fulfill the
law's demands, for the more he understands of it, the more does his own sinfulness
appear to him. This is the very purpose for which God has given His law--
ROMANS 3;19-20--''Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become
guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be
justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.''

Man, therefore, in seeking salvation is driven out of trusting in his own
righteousness which he thinks to have by his own imperfect keeping of the law, to
trust in the righteousness of Another for justification before God. see
Romans 3;21-22.