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12th February 2026
ThursdayReflection
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'John Piper'
founder and teacher of Desiring God.org
"I keep your law in my heart"
.... Psalm 119:11
There are two ways to state the ultimate goal of life, one positively and one negatively.
Positively we could say: the ultimate goal of life is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
Or negatively, we could say: the ultimate goal of life is not to sin.
They both mean the same thing because sinning is falling short of glorifying God by embracing other things as more enjoyable.
So if we could learn how to glorify God by enjoying him, we would know how not to sin.
And if we could learn how not to sin, we would know how to glorify God by enjoying him.
Psalm 119:11 tells us one of the keys to not sinning.
It says, speaking to God,
I keep your law in my heart, so that I will not sin against you.
The way not to sin is to treasure the word of God in your heart.
Which means that the way to succeed in the ultimate goal of life - to live for the glory of God by enjoying him forever - is to treasure the word of God in your heart.
The word the psalmist has in mind is not a subjective impression that comes to his mind when he prays for God's will to be revealed.
It is the revelation of God in his written word, primarily the Torah, the books of Moses, but also the writings of the prophets whom God sent to Israel.
You can see this in the way he piles up familiar words for God's revealed written word in the context.
For example, verse 10b: "Do not let me wander from thy commandments."
"Sinning is falling short of glorifying God by embracing other things as more enjoyable."
Today we would say "Thy word" refers to the Bible in its entirety.
So what the psalmist is referring to in verse 11 is not subjective impressions but objective teachings of God in Scripture.
"Thy word - that word I have treasured in my heart."
Next take the phrase "in my heart."
The point here is mainly to say: inside of me, not just on a tablet outside of me.
The heart in the Old Testament is a place of both thinking and feeling (Genesis 6:5; Job 36:13).
So these words of God are being treasured in a place where they can be thought about and felt.
Finally take the middle phrase:
"I have treasured."
You might ask, "How do you know that the word of God is 'in the heart.
For example, I could say, "My wife have I treasured in my heart," and would not mean that my wife is in my heart, but only that I treasure her with my heart.
The reason we know that the word of God is in the heart is that the Hebrew word "I have treasured" (tsaphan), in its more than thirty uses in the Old Testament, almost always means "hide" or "store."
So we know that when the psalmist says,
"Thy word I have treasured in my heart," that the word is being hidden and stored up there as something valuable - like a treasure.
So the teaching in this verse is that one way to keep from sinning - one way to attain the ultimate reason for being, to live for the glory of God by enjoying him forever - is to store up the word of God in our hearts as something very precious.
It is not just having the word stored. Nor is it is just valuing the word. It is both.
Both are crucial.
We value the word and therefore we have it stored in our hearts.
And the two together give us the power to stand against the temptations to sin.
It is a (1) superior treasure, (2) present and active, that conquers sin.
So I believe that the Bible teaches us to memorize Scripture the way an ant gathers food in summer: because it is so valuable and will be needed in the winter months.
"[The ant] prepares her food in the summer, and gathers her provision in the harvest" (Proverbs 6:8).
Memorizing Scripture is not a discipline for its own sake.
It is because the Scriptures are a treasure and will be needed before the day is done to help you escape a sinful attitude and live a life that glorifies God.
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This is an edited version.
The full article is avaiable on request
'John Piper'
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy
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