These fifteen psalms (Psalms 120-134) seem to have been used by pilgrims who were making their way to Jerusalem for the three great annual feasts. Joseph and Mary would have sung these psalms as they made their way to the city with the young Jesus (Luke 2:41), and Jesus would have sung them himself when he went up to Jerusalem with his disciples. 

In the last verses of Psalm 119, the psalmist lists what he lacks unless God is his shepherd. He is lacking in five areas, including understanding, salvation or deliverance, and the ability to worship God rightly, which we have already covered. In today's study, we conclude with points four and five. 

Is that your longing? Are you looking to God for the salvation that only he can supply? If you are not, it can only be because you do not have a true sense of need. You think you can handle things yourself. Learn from this psalm. These first petitions reflect the two great needs of fallen men and women, namely, to know God and to be saved from sin. 

There is a tremendous difference between this stanza and the last, in fact, between this stanza and the entire preceding psalm. The last stanza was all assertion, chiefly about the poet's obedience to God's Word and his rejoicing in it: “I rejoice in your promise" (v. 162), “I hate and abhor falsehood” (v. 163), “I wait for your salvation” (v. 166), and “I obey your precepts and your statutes" (v. 168). In this stanza, all is petition, and there is little confidence at all. Instead, there is humble recognition of the writer's lost condition and his constant need of God's grace: 

If trusting God involves obeying God's Word, as it certainly does, then there can be no real discipleship apart from Bible study. Indeed, study of the Bible cannot even be an occasional, minor or “vacation time" pursuit. It must be the consuming passion of a believer's life. This is because it is only by the study of the Word of God that we learn what it is to obey God and follow Jesus.