God’s Own Defense of Scripture, Part 2 B

The Word is sufficient for salvation. It's sufficient for skill in living, sanctification. It is sufficient to produce lasting deep down joy and rejoicing.

It is sufficient to give us a clear understanding of things otherwise not understood. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you're tuning into this broadcast, you probably have at least one Bible, and in fact, one survey found out that nearly 90% of Americans, whether they're Christian or not, own a copy of the Bible. Of course, owning a Bible and tapping into its life-changing power, those are two different things. So how can you be sure you're taking full advantage of Scripture, recognizing its value, reading it the right way, and applying biblical truth correctly? John MacArthur is going to answer those questions today on Grace to You as he continues his series from Psalm 19 titled, God's Own Defense of Scripture.

And here's John now with today's lesson. Here is God's own witness, God's own revelation as to the sufficiency of Scripture, Psalm 19. And we're looking at verses 7 through 14.

Let me read them for you. 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 all together.

They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey in the drippings of the honey comb. Moreover, by them Thy servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors?

Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins, let them not rule over me, then I shall be blameless and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer." First of all, the sufficiency of Scripture, verses 7 to 9. Then the value of Scripture, verses 10 to 13. And finally, our subsequent commitment to Scripture in verse 14.

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. That is to say that Scripture can be viewed as God's law for man's conduct. The second point we made here is to look at verse 7 again, the testimony of the Lord views Scripture as God's own personal testimony, God's own self-revelation. Thirdly, in verse 8, Scripture is seen as the precepts of the Lord, precepts meaning doctrines, if you will, statutes some translations have, that is principles for life and godliness, divine principles. Number four is in verse 8, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The commandment indicates that Scripture is a mandate.

These are not negotiable, they demand obedience. The Word is sufficient for salvation, it's sufficient for skill in living, sanctification. It is sufficient to produce lasting deep down joy and rejoicing.

It is sufficient to give us a clear understanding of things otherwise not understood. Number five in verse 9, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. Fear is a term in Scripture that is synonymous with awe, reverence, wonder, respect, worship. This book is not only the law of the Lord, testimony of the Lord, precepts of the Lord, commandment of the Lord, but it is the fear of the Lord. It is the manual on worship. It instructs us how to worship.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Scripture calls for and instructs us in the true worship of God. And you remember, Jesus said, the Father seeks true worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth. The habit of the human soul is to worship.

Do you see that? The habit of the human soul is to worship. People worship. They worship themselves. They worship things. They worship heroes.

They worship adventures, experiences, whatever. Humans are made to worship. Only in Scripture are we instructed as to who we are to worship and how we are to worship. It is the manual on who to worship and how to worship. We are to worship the true and living God, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture incarnated in His Son and we are to worship Him in spirit and in truth. We are not to make idols and worship them. We are instructed how to worship in Scripture. As a source of worship, He says it's clean, without evil, without corruption, without error.

This is in contrast to the evil imaginations of men who worship other things. The root of this word clean, tehor in Hebrew, has the idea of the absence of impurity, the absence of defilement, the absence of filthiness, the absence of imperfection. It's unsullied. Psalm 12 verse 6, the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tested in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Its words are holy, separated, hallowed. That's why David says, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin. The word has a cleansing effect.

Jesus in John 15 says we are pruned, purged, cleansed by the Word. Because of its purity, by the way, here's the effect. It endures forever. It endures forever. Because of its purity, it endures forever.

What do you mean by that? Sin kills. The Bible lasts forever. Jesus said, My word will never pass away, never. It has no principle of sin in it, no error in it, no death to it. It endures forever. It needs, by the way, no updating.

It needs no editing, no refining, no aid, no assistance. It is eternally pure, eternally relevant, eternally powerful. Are we supposed to believe that all of a sudden today it's no longer true, it's no longer relevant? It's no longer able to be understood?

All of a sudden the light's gone out and it's a dark book? It has inadequacies, errors, shortcomings, it's inexplicable, it needs correction, it needs addition. We can't trust it.

Do we need some people to vote on whether something in the Bible is true by rolling out colored balls? No, it is without error, it is without stain, it is without pollution, it is without corruption and because of that, it is unchanging, it is unaffected by the Fall, if you will. It endures. And again, Psalm 119, and I don't want to go through all of the verses there, but just to remind you that many of them address this, many of them throughout this Psalm. Verse 9, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy Word.

If you want a pure way, then apply a pure instrument to your heart. And then verse 11, I've treasured Thy Word in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. Verse 38, establish Thy Word to Thy servant as that which produces reverence for Thee. The Word cleanses me, makes me holy, makes me reverent in my thoughts toward You. Before, verse 67 says, I was afflicted, I went astray. Now I keep Thy Word. The bottom line is, when you obey the Word, it leads you in the path of obedience and righteousness. Verse 101, I've restrained my feet from every evil way.

Why? Because I keep Your Word. It's sufficient to cleanse your life. It's sufficient to purify your life.

Any person in any culture, in any age, in any location, doesn't need to be updated, doesn't need to be edited, it's not become irrelevant, it is as alive and powerful now as ever. And finally, the judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous all together. Judgments, how interesting is that word? The judgments of the Lord are true. How does that view Scripture? That views Scripture as divine adjudications from the bench of the Judge of all the earth, verdicts. When the Bible renders a verdict, it is true. Its verdicts are true. Judicial determinations by the Judge of all the earth from the heavenly bench, the one who is the ultimate and only final judge renders true verdicts. In contrast to the injustices that prevail in human life, in contrast to the lies of this world, God's justice, God's judgments are always perfectly true...absolutely true, absolutely dependable. In that last phrase, what's the effect? It produces...what it means is it produces comprehensive righteousness.

That's a summation. It produces the total product, a righteous soul, righteous in the sense saved, sanctified, joyful, understanding clearly the truth about everything because the mind has been enlightened by Scripture, worshiping, embracing the truth, a comprehensive complete soul before God. It is sufficient for salvation. It is sufficient for all the skills of spiritual living. It is sufficient to produce lasting deep-seated unassailable joy that overcomes the sorrows of life. It is sufficient for understanding of all the things that are hard to see.

It casts its light on all the darkness. It is sufficient to purify all sin and it is always true, true, true, true. One television evangelist who is very popular said this, anything coming through man is contaminated to some extent. Therefore since the Bible came through man, there must be some errors in it. So we must never equate the Bible with the perfect Jesus. Is the Bible less than perfect when God in His own Word says it is perfect? Can God give us a perfect text and not preserve and protect it? Such statements depreciate the Word of God, any depreciation of the Word of God is a dishonor to God Himself. When it says the words of Scripture are righteous all together, it means comprehensively right and comprehensively producing what is right. I think it's sufficient based on this text.

I don't know how you would argue anything else. This is reminiscent of 2 Timothy 3, Scripture is able to make you wise unto salvation. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable so that the man of God may be thoroughly or completely perfect.

Same thing exactly. It meets all spiritual needs. That is the sufficiency of Scripture. And that leads to a second thought in the text, the value of Scripture. Since this is true, since this is true, listen to the value, verse 10, they meaning the judgments of the Lord that are completely all together righteous and true, they, the words of Scripture are more desirable than gold, yes than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. That is to say, they are more precious, more valuable than anything else. For that ancient world, gold was it. This is better than that, better than fine gold.

The sweet drippings of the honeycomb, delicious to the tongue, this is sweeter than that. We could say it this way, it is our most valuable possession, more valuable than gold. It is our most valued pleasure, sweeter, more desirable than any other thing. It is supreme in its value, it is supreme in its goodness. I wish I had time to take you through Psalm 119 on this, do it yourself. There must be 20 verses in Psalm 119 that say that one way or another.

It is our greatest possession, it is our greatest pleasure. Thirdly, it is our greatest protector. Moreover, verse 11, by them Thy servant is warned. Moreover, by them Thy servant is warned. Scripture is the source of warning in the face of temptation, sin and ignorance. We need the Scripture to warn us, our greatest possession, our greatest pleasure, our greatest protector.

It is our greatest provider. Verse 11, at the end, in keeping them there is great reward. Obedience to Scripture produces reward in this life and the life to come.

Obedience to Scripture brings the believer his greatest provision, or if you will, his greatest profit. The word is the source of reward. The true reward comes not through self-seeking, it comes not through imagining, visualizing, trying to speak it into existence as the positive confession people tell us, the true reward comes to the one who keeps the Scripture. The reward is literally in Hebrew the end...the end. The eternal reward is in view, always the proper goal. You obey the Scripture and it impacts your eternal reward. You shouldn't even be looking for what you can get now, here and now, like the Christian cultic preoccupation of health, wealth and prosperity and success and happiness now. We look to that eternal reward and obedience to Scripture produces that eternal reward. It is our greatest possession, greatest pleasure, greatest protector, greatest provider, and then our greatest purifier.

Verse 12, who can discern his errors? We're not really very good at examining our own hearts unless we have some kind of plumb line and some kind of standard, right? Well what do most people do? Well they compare themselves with other people, right? I'm not as bad as most people, I'm basically a good person. Like Paul described the false teachers in 2 Corinthians who compared themselves with themselves. You can always find somebody worse than you, some mass murderer.

We're all better than those people. So who really can assess his own errors? On your own, your pride, your self-will, your self-preservation instincts, your blindness to reality and your tendency to comparison is going to cause you not to be able to honestly discern your own errors.

You heard it in the testimony in the baptism tonight. People don't really see the sin in their own lives. Who's going to discern his own errors? Only one exposed to the Word of God, acquit me of hidden faults, also keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins, let them not rule over me, then I shall be blameless and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. What he is saying is, I don't even understand my own wretchedness. I don't understand my own sinfulness.

I don't even know my own secret faults as well as presumptuous sins of deliberate action planned and premeditated. And I don't know the rebellion and the apostasy of my own heart unless I know Your Word. It is Your Word that purifies me, convicts me. And finally, what is our response to a sufficient word and a precious word? It should be commitment to it, verse 14.

This is just the high point here, the Herpunkt, the Germans would say. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. What is he saying there? Probably most of us can quote that. Let the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

That caused me to ask one question. What kind of words and what kind of meditation is acceptable in God's sight? Fair enough?

If you're saying, let my words and my meditations be acceptable, then the question is, what kind of words and what kind of meditations are acceptable? David knew, everybody knew. David didn't need to explain any more than that. It would be like you quoting part of John 3.16, for God so loved the world, you wouldn't need to quote the rest, you could all quote the rest.

David gives a little bit of a cryptic comment here. There's a little ellipsis here, there's some things left out, but everybody knows them...everybody knows them because he's reaching back to a text of Scripture that everyone knew. Turn to Joshua chapter 1, everybody knew this, everybody in Israel knew this, Joshua 1, 8. Listen, this is after the death of Moses, God speaks to Joshua, going to lead the people into the new land. This is what he says, this book of the Law, the Word of God shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate on it day and night.

Whoa, that answers the question. Psalm 19, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. And here we're told that the book of the Law is to give the words to our mouth and provide the meditation of our heart day and night. So what kind of words and what kind of meditation is acceptable to God?

That which is centered upon what? The book of the Law...book of the Law. This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. You want your life to be success? You want your life to be spiritually prosperous? Then understand the sufficiency of Scripture for all these areas, its comprehensive power and let your words be words of Scripture and let your meditations be meditations of the Scripture for this is acceptable in the sight of the Lord who has by grace made Himself your rock and your Redeemer.

This is the right response. O Lord, says David, keep me in your Word so that when I open my mouth, it comes out and it dominates my thoughts. May the Word dominate my thoughts and my speech. May it saturate my life for it is this Word which causes me to live a life that pleases You and will be eternally blessed. Yes, we have a sufficient Scripture. Our Father, again the testimony of Scripture is so compelling, so rich, thank You for this magnificent tribute to Your Word among many on the pages of the Bible.

We thank You for again the privilege of hearing it. We now stand responsible, Lord, help us to know that all that we need is here, all that we need. And when we ask the question, What does the human heart long for?

What are the deep agonizing longings of the human heart? We might suggest that transformation of the soul, real wisdom in all aspects of life, true lasting joy, the ability to understand the dark things of life, a permanent enduring source of life and truth to go to that is forever true and never wrong. What satisfaction we find in all those things and all those things are found in the knowledge of Your Word. We thank You for this precious gift. May we live our lives in it as we have been instructed.

We live by every word that proceeds out of Your mouth. Thank You for writing it down for us by the inspiration of the Spirit that we may see it and know it and meditate on it and speak it and live it. We trust to the honor of You, O Lord, our rock and our gracious Redeemer. We thank You in Your Son's name.

Amen. That's John MacArthur here on Grace to You. John is a pastor, author, and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His lesson today is part of his series called God's Own Defense of Scripture. You know, if there's a clear takeaway from this study, it's this, that the Word of God is always fresh, always relevant, and it's sufficient for every believer in every era. And John, I know you believe that, and you have built your ministry on that principle.

You've even staked your life on that concept. Yeah, the Word of God is never going to be irrelevant, and you don't need to contemporize it. You don't need to bring it into the modern era. You need to take the modern people back into the ancient era so they know exactly what the Word of God was saying.

But just think about this, Phil. Everything is sort of updated. Everything in the world is updated, right, in the fast-paced movement of our world and with all the inventions and all the shifts and changes. Everything changes, but one thing never changes, and that is the Word of God, because the message of the gospel never changes. God never changes.

God is unchanging, and so His Word reflecting His nature is equally unchanging. What an incredible thing to have half a century of messages and sermons that we can play in any language, any time and any culture across the face of the earth, and know it will do the work of God. So this is the commitment of grace to you, to feed the folks around the world truth from Scripture. And the measure of our reach is really only the collective reach of individual listeners like you.

You make it happen. We live on what God provides through the people that we minister to. And in the era of pandemics and political shockwaves and crazy economies, there's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of mystery.

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