And well, if you have your Bible tonight, turn with me to Psalms 119. Psalm 119, verse 97 through 104.
I'm excited to get into this passage tonight. I love this portion of Scripture. It was years ago I committed to memory this section of Scripture, and so when I was studying back through it, it was just so present on my heart to think about these texts. Let's read verse 97 together, and then I'm going to read verse 98 down to verse 104 for our text tonight.
So let's all read verse 97 together. O how love I thy law, it is my meditation all the day. He goes on and says, Thou through thy commandments has made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. I have refrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep thy word. I have not departed from thy judgments, for thou hast taught me. How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through thy precepts I get understanding.
Therefore, I hate every false way. Father, we pray that this text would be written on our heart, the desires of our heart, that it would not be something that we read externally, but it would be read internally into us. That you would allow us to be those who are filled with truth, that we might live out the truth. If there's ever been a day when this country needs godly servants, men and women of God who are not afraid to stand for the truth, who are not ashamed of Christ, who love the Lord Jesus Christ, who love their neighbors as themselves, who shine the gospel to those in this world, so desperately need you. Lord, it's today, and I pray that you would help us to grasp this, and may we be gripped by your truth. God, I pray for the teens tonight, the youth, and I pray that if anyone in those ministries, even hundreds that are in those ministries combined, Lord, I pray that their hearts would be soft, and the word of God would penetrate and fill their hearts with the love of God and the truth of Christ. We ask your blessing now in Jesus' name, and God's people said, man, you may be seated tonight.
Well, it's said that your life will really be defined by the people you meet and the books that you read. So let's read about someone whose life was so affected and impacted by God, and that our shoulders may also rub with him and be impacted by this testimony of the man who wrote Psalms 119. It's been such a blessing to navigate through the words of this chapter and what he writes down. We live in a day where people love to hear their own words and who take advice from themselves.
We live in what could be called the selfie generation. How refreshing to hear a man that if he had a camera, he wouldn't take a picture of himself, he would take a picture of the Word. He is so in love with the Word of God that he just is consumed with it to the point that at 176 verses, he could only find about three to four of those verses where he doesn't mention the Word in some way. There's no chapter in the Bible like Psalm 119. It's absolutely the most unique chapter, longest chapter in the Bible, and it has the most dominant theme.
And you say, if God was going to write the longest chapter, what would it be about? And it's about the Word of God. And so we are 97 verses deep into this chapter. We have seen the psalmist who has faced great trials, incredible persecutions, afflictions, and who has made the Word of God the constant source of strength and foundation for his life. And after 96 verses into this journey of trials and difficulties and persecutions, challenges, listen to the heart cry of this man. 97 verses deep, he now cries out, oh how I love thy law, it is my meditation all the day. I mean, after 96 verses, all he can do is cry out that 97th verse. What do you cry out?
What's the cry and love of your heart after facing hardships and trials and afflictions? This man was being slandered, he was being spoken evil against. I want my heart to echo this man's heart, to both hold the Word of God so I could be held by the Word of God. And love for the Word is the primary thing. Loving God's Word is more important than obeying God's Word. Loving God's Word is more important than sharing his Word. Loving God's Word is more important than learning and studying and preaching it. The reason why is because you could speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if you have not love, it doesn't mean anything. And you could have faith to move mountains, but if you have not love, it doesn't mean anything. And if you love the Word, guess what?
You're going to obey it. If you love the Word, you're going to share it. If you love the Word, you're going to have faith.
And all of those things become the after-effects of the heart love, but if you start with just the externals without the internals, you're going to have a problem. Spurgeon rightly said, We may know, read, hear, speak, yea, preach the law. And all God's Word is also outwardly performed works, and yet not love it.
But where this love is, there cannot be but all the former. And so Jesus, I like what Spurgeon says, Jesus loved the Word of God more than he loved his mother, more than he loved his brethren and sisters. Do you remember when they came to him and said, Your mother and your brethren are out to talk with you?
He said, Who are my mother and brethren? They that hear the Word of God and keep it. Jesus, he says, loved the Word of God more than his own life, for did he not lay down his life to fulfill the Word of God?
Pretty insightful thoughts. Would those in your life say that you love the Word of God? When you go somewhere, does God's Word go with you?
Not necessarily physically, but in your heart and mind? Have you ever noticed how you can tell someone who spends time in the Word of God, they speak scripturally? When you talk to them about things in life, they bring it back to the text. My prayer is that when people come in contact with us, they would come in contact with scripture. You know, we may be the only Bible that a lot of people ever read, right? And so we must be influenced. Every day we splash influence.
Every day we push effects on people. And it's so essential for us to fill our hearts up early so that we may infect other people in a biblical way. And so tonight, Do I Love the Word of God?
I want to look at seven ways you can know if somebody's heart loves the Word of God, if they truly have a love for the Word. And this is really a message to reflect upon our own lives and question our own hearts. And the first is in verse 97, I know I love God's Word when it is my meditation. Oh, how I love thy law, it is my meditation.
All the day could also be translated, or the whole day, it is my meditation. What does it mean to meditate on the Word? It means to focus your thoughts on it. It means to ponder over it. This speaks of having a diligent reading of God's Word, and then you seriously consider it. You think about it deeply. You study God's Word.
You want to know what its meaning is. I did a little research out of this psalm, and the word meditate is used in verses 15, 23, 48, 78, 148, 97, and 99. He's constantly talking in this chapter about meditating on the Word of God. In verse 99, he says, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation.
And he says it's all the day. I meditate on it all the day. This doesn't mean that the only thing he thinks about is the Scripture.
That's not the idea. What it means is it is the chief thing that he thinks about. Let me ask you, what happens in life when you have a big event that happens, something that could be considered somewhat catastrophic?
Something that is really a huge event that takes place in your life. Through your day, you're going to be thinking about it. Now, sometimes you can get engulfed in your work, you can get engulfed in something else, and you go to that.
But what happens to your mind? It just keeps going back to that huge event, doesn't it? You just keep returning to it. That's the idea of meditating on the Word all the day. Your mind just keeps going back to it.
It's like no matter where you go, it's just sucked right back to it. And usually that's in a negative way when we have something going on and we're stressing about things and we're worrying about things. God says, let the Word of God be your meditation. Let it be what your mind rushes back to.
He practiced Philippians 4a. You know, people say, what do I need to do to stop worrying? What do I need to do to stop worrying? Anybody ever struggle with worrying?
Like I'm worried to raise my hand right now. So we can worry, and that's probably one of the biggest problems for us. One of the reasons why is in the nation we live in, we live in a unique society. You know, not every society is like freedom is the key. We live in a land of the free, right? And so freedom is a big thing, but with freedom also comes sometimes you carry things.
And sometimes we push ourselves. We're not totally free. God's the only totally free being.
He is autonomous. You can't have two totally free entities because if you did, then they could clash in their freedoms and one would have to usurp the other. God is ultimately free. Our freedom is subjected to Him. So we live inside the bubble of God's sovereignty. But what happens is we begin to live with this idea of freedom, and we try to control things too much sometimes, and not realizing God's sovereign, and I'm not in control of everything. Actually, I'm only in control about a three-foot circle that I'm standing in, and I have trouble enough controlling the guy that's in there. That's why we don't always think the way we want to or talk the way.
I shouldn't have said that. Why not? Aren't you in control of yourself? So why are we worried about controlling 15 other things outside of the bubble when we can't even control what's in the bubble?
Does that make sense? So what it does is it produces chaos. It produces stress. You always pay the price of joy and peace for the foolish idea that we can be in control, and we get handed anxiety and anger because of it.
Any time you try to control something, we get anger and anxiety. And so you go to Philippians 4, and it says this, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God. As you go to God, you go to Him, you take your anxieties, you turn them into thankful prayer requests. Why would you thank God for what you're anxious about?
Nobody's thankful for their anxieties. That's one of our problems. When we're in control, we don't think any bad thing should happen. Like, we think things should go a certain way, and God says, be thankful for all things, Ephesians 5-20. So you come to God, and you say, God, you're in control.
I don't understand why this is going on, but I can trust you for it, and I can thank you that you're in control. And I believe you can turn all things to good for those who love God. And you can work this thing out, and I don't have to trust in my own heart.
I can pull a Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 and trust you. So we go to God, we turn it over to Him, and then the next verse says, and the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. God will return to us the gift of His peace when we give Him the burdens of our heart. You say, well, I've prayed about it, but I still feel stressed. You know why? Because you're not doing what verse 8 says. Well, I prayed, I was thankful, I cast it on the Lord, but I still feel stressed.
You know why? Because Philippians 4, 8 says, Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are true. They have found in studies that 92% of the things that people worry about never happen. Or they weren't in control of the outcome of what, only 8% of what we worry about, do we have direct control of what we could change. In other words, we're worrying about a lot that we're not in control of. So we have to cast those cares on the Lord, thank God for them. So I have to, finally, my brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is a good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on those things.
And we have to choose to begin to think on correct things. Well, how could I do that when my mind wants to drift, then drift it into the Scriptures? I tell you, Scripture memorization is probably the most mentally healthy thing. If you take care of your bodies, you should be taking care of your minds as well. I think it's important not only to focus on yourself spiritually, but mentally, physically.
I think those things tie together. It's hard to have a disciplined spiritual life when you don't have a disciplined physical life. Early in the church, we'd have a lot of people get saved, and we do now. But say you leave somebody to Christ who can't get up and go to work on Mondays.
Do you think they're going to be disciplined to get up and go to church on Sundays? So all through the years, I've found where if people can't be physically disciplined, it's really hard to get them disciplined spiritually. But if you can be physically disciplined and begin to control yourself, and get my body into this thing called a bed on time, and wake out of the bed on time, and begin to do things that I don't feel like doing, but I know I must do, then I can begin to harness this flesh, and I can begin to do what God wants me to do spiritually. Now, in that, not only do we need to take care of ourself physically, but spiritually as well. And I think one of the things I should say mentally as well is memorizing Scripture. When people say, I just can't memorize Scripture, what that does is you're hindering what God could do in your heart. I just talked to somebody recently, they said it's been one of the biggest impacts on their minds, their thinking, just cleansing their heart, just the impact that's had. I'm telling you, it is.
It had a purifying effect. And every day I try to spend at least 20 to probably 40 minutes. Honestly, I don't know how to, I struggle to turn it off. I'm like, ah, you know, I've got to go to the next thing. I can't memorize all morning, you know.
But just getting up early and spending time in Scripture and just allowing that to soak on your heart, I'm telling you, it's the greatest thing I can tell you to do. And I yell like that so I can get your attention. So everybody's like, whoa, what do you say? So just telling you, man, like start next year, I'm so excited to get us into, we're calling it the top 52 and we're going to do it through our 242.
We've created a little book and we're going to be getting that out in January, probably before then. But everybody in the church should memorize those top 52 verses. You say, I can't do it. Yes, you can. If you say you can't, I'm going to be like a teacher and take a ruler and slap you on the tail or something. Straighten up, you're going to do it. Don't write me a letter.
Don't take that where it shouldn't go. Now, he meditates on the word. He practices this Philippians 4a.
This is a guy that every time troubles came, he just comes back. He is seen meditating on the word when he was attacked verbally, when he was wronged in life. Psalm 119 23. He said, princes also did sit and speak against me, but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. In verse 78, he says, let the proud be ashamed, for they deal perversely with me without a cause, but I will meditate in thy precepts.
It's just great. I mean, when you're spoken evil against and you're done wrong, is the first thing to think biblically? I mean, our flesh is like, we'll repent later.
But that is not the direction. But I tell you, when you have been in the word of God, doesn't it have a calming effect? You know the morning when you've really spent time in the word, you've prayed, you've done maybe a hear journal, you've gotten saturated in the word. You go about your day, you're just like, you know, my mind, I was just so much more focused that day. I just felt like the day went smoother. And then the days that you don't do it, don't you feel that? You all with me? Hell no, preacher, I've never gone a day in my life without reading the Bible. But we've all done that, right? We've not spent that time in the word.
And the effect is tragic. When you and I meditate and grow in the word, I can tell you, when those challenging things come in life, you'll be able to respond in a way that typically we wouldn't have responded. Now, the reason he meditates is so he can respond in the right way when wrong things happen to him. And also he meditates on it primarily because he loves it. It's literally a shout when he says, oh how love I thy law.
I love your word. Psalm 119 48, he says, my hands also will I lift up unto thy meditation which I have loved. This was the desire of his heart. Those who love the word of God meditate on it. It means you ponder it, you dwell upon it.
Matthew Henry said, what we love, we love to think about. All true wisdom is from God. A good man carries his Bible with him, if not in his hands, yet in his head and heart.
Would you consider yourself to be somebody who meditates on the word of God? As a young man, I would really focus on memorizing scripture. And I would always have scripture verses in my pocket. And I would carry them around in the day and just pull out verses and look them over whenever I have downtime.
Now we have phones where we can utilize that opportunity. But there needs to be a constantly going back to the word. Like it's got to be on our hearts, in our minds, in our thoughts. And it's got to be just the joy. You've got to realize that there's this thing that God gave us called life and it's one shot at it.
It's like you get one opportunity in just a few brief years. And the entire effect of your life will be in comparison to how much this has rained down on you. It's in direct proportion. I planted some trees behind our house because I knew there was going to be a bunch of businesses that grew up and they did. And now I've got like a 15 foot, 20 foot wall up there.
I'm like that was a good idea. But one tree has a big walnut tree overhanging it. And that one tree is kind of being dwarfed because of that. Because it doesn't get the same amount of sun. It doesn't get the same amount of effects from that.
So it doesn't grow quite as much. And that's what happens. We can all be in the same church.
We can all have the same truth. But sometimes we put ourselves in the shade. Get out of the shade.
The bed casts a lot of shade, right? My wife did this years ago. She said, I'm going to start praying and saying, God, whenever you want me to get up and read and stuff, whenever I wake up, I'm just going to get up and do it.
And she started doing that. And that really became an impact on her life to begin to get up even earlier and seek the Lord and spend time with Him. I can tell you, friends, you will never look back on your life and say, you know, I just spent too much time in the Word of God.
I let the Word have too much of an effect on me. This is this one chance at life I would encourage you to allow the Word of God to just rivet your heart. The Bible connects the blessings and prosperity of God to His people, to the funnel of His Word. When He told Joshua, you took the reins after Moses, 800 times his name is written in the Bible.
Who wants to follow that guy? You're taking the reins after Moses. And Joshua is told, he says, God's commission to him was, he says, do not let this book of the law depart out of your mouth. But meditate on it day and night. For then shall thou make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success.
Have I not commanded you? If you want your way to be prosperous and successful, then meditate on the Word. You know what the kings of Israel were required to do? Was to read the Word and write it out.
Write it out. Psalms 1, 2, and 3, he says, but his delight, the book of Psalms starts out the first song of the nation. It starts out talking about the blessed man who's planted like a tree by a river of water.
It says he's planted there because his delight is in the law of the Lord and he meditates on it day and night. And he becomes very fruitful, very prosperous in verse 3. In the New Testament, Paul said, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. 1 Timothy 4, 13, he says, till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Verse 15, meditate upon these things.
Give thyself wholly to them that thy profiting, better translated as thy progress, may appear to all. As you grow in the Word, people should see you progressing. And don't you see that when over the years you've probably seen like, who's said in Alex Martin's class? You feel like he's grown? Have you seen his progress? I've seen his progress. First time I met him was like in 2009. He was like 220 pounds.
No, I'm teasing. He was walking down the road with one of his friends and I was just running around the streets inviting people to church. And I think I even jogged up to him.
He thought, who's this crazy maniac running at me? And I talked to him and God's just been gracious to have him come. And, you know, I've just seen him grow in the Word of God. I've seen Eric Woodworth grow in the Word of God.
Braden Teach and Cam and Ty and staff and just different ones. It's just, you should see that progress. You should see me growing in the Word. You should say, you know what, what if I got up here and I never quoted a verse? What if I'm like, let's see what John 14.6 says again? Would that be a problem if I didn't even know what John 14.6 said? Would that be a little bit like, what if a pastor, a guest pastor came here and had to look up John 14.6?
Or Acts 2.42 or Philippians 4.13. I mean, you'd just be like, really? I'm being judgmental here, but it's like, I mean, there are some things that you should know how to do. If you're in the military and you don't know how to shoot a pistol, that's probably a problem. You don't know what an AR-15 is? You don't know how to load the cartridge? Right?
I don't want that guy to be a Marine. I mean, there are some things you just should know how to do, and as Christians, we should know how to go into the Word of God, meditate on it, and be able to give that to other people. We've got six other things.
I want to go quicker. Number two, I know I love the Word of God when it produces wisdom in my life. Verse 98, he says, Thou through Thy commandments hath made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with me. What wisdom is, is the ability to live life effectively. Knowledge is having the information.
Wisdom is being able to use it. You ever known somebody who has a lot of information and doesn't know how to use it? You're like, yeah, the guy who just came to work and he's got a high degree, and he's never done any of the work practically, and he wants to come in here and tell us how to do it, but he hasn't a clue of what he's doing.
You all probably know what I'm talking about if you've been in one of the situations. Listen, you don't learn just by sitting in a classroom. You learn when you go from the classroom to the work site and put your hands on it, right? I have buried many people through the years who had a sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade education, but they had a PhD in how to live.
I would read a book from them 10,000 times over than somebody who had just a degree after a few years. It's life. It's wisdom.
Can you live it out? Wisdom is knowledge but the practical use. Wisdom, in essence, is obedience to God.
That's a great way to think about it. In essence, it's obedience to God. Wisdom comes through obedience. So knowledge is somewhat like telling you how to turn the key and the vehicle starts.
Wisdom tells you why it's running. Knowledge can answer the what questions. Wisdom answers the how questions. So how important is wisdom? Well, Proverbs 4-7 says wisdom's the principal thing. Get wisdom. And the giver of wisdom is God. Proverbs 2-6, the Lord gives wisdom.
Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. You're not going to sit down and God's going to verbally teach you. People say, I would just love for God to speak to me, then read his word.
Yeah, but speaking out loud, then read it out loud. There it is, right? 1 Kings 4-29, and God gave Solomon wisdom. Isn't that a great verse? Wouldn't it be good to go to God and say, God, give me wisdom like you gave Solomon wisdom.
When I started Lighthouse, and I prayed that this week, but I would pray as a 27-year-old man starting his church years ago, I would be on my knees, God, give me wisdom that exceeds my years. Give me wisdom that only you can give. And I would read this and I would, God, make me wiser than my teachers, verse 29. Make me wiser than my enemies.
Give me what I can't get on my own. I think about Daniel and his three friends. Hanani, Azariah, Meshiel, Daniel 1, verse 20. When they went without the king's food and they were obedient to what God wanted them to do, Daniel 1 says, and when they stood before Nebuchadnezzar, it says, in all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than his magicians and astrologers.
Here in Psalm 119, the psalmist declares, he is wiser not because of some natural ability or anything inherently known in himself, but rather, he says, through your commandments you made me wiser. You better not have a constant growth in the knowledge of the things of the world and a diminished growth in the things of the Bible. Better to be ignorant in the world's philosophies and things.
Better to lose jeopardy. I'm always like, do they have a Bible category here? Because I'm not really good on the rest of the things right now. Better to know those things. Better to know the Word of God than any of those things. Learn not to waste time.
Learn not to just do this. I think we could look at each other's thumbs and figure out who's really, you know, you get this beefy right thumb, it's like, man, that thing's been scrolling, you know. Everybody's going to have right thumb arthritis in 20 years from now. This should be the thing that we're soaking in. You know, it's okay to know what's going on in the world, but if there's anything we should, I don't understand sometimes when people struggle to know how to share the gospel with other people and they don't know the Bible. But yet they're so learned in other areas of life. You know, Deuteronomy 4, verse 5 and 6, God says, let the Word of God keep the Word of God and do them. He says in verse number 6, he says, for this is your wisdom. And the other nations are going to be saying, what such a wise nation is that?
Such a wise nation. The one who takes the Word of God, keeps it, that is your wisdom. God sees you as a wise person when you can live out the Word of God. But to live out the Word of God, you need to be filled with the Word of God. That's why Colossians 3, 16, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. He says in verse 98, you through your commandments have made me wiser than mine enemies, for they or your Word is ever with me.
It's always with me. It's just in the driver's seat, it is there guiding me throughout life. Since God is a giver of wisdom, there is no wisdom apart from God. And people will therefore live foolish lives when they depart from God. In other words, when I depart from the Word, like disobedience is a step of foolishness.
I become a fool. And that's Matthew 7, isn't it? 23 through 27.
It's primarily 24 through 27. He that heareth my words and doeth them, I will liken him unto a what kind of man? Wise man.
Because he built upon the rock. But whoever hears the Word and does not do them, you see how he attaches wisdom to application? That's why you can sit under the teaching of even Jesus himself and walk out a fool. It's not what you hear and what I hear, it's what I do with what I hear, isn't it? 1 Corinthians 1-20, he says, Where is the wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? The world's wisdom is foolishness to God. His wisdom is so superior. Jeremiah 8-9 says, They have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?
There is none. That's the implication. Number three, I know I love God's Word, not only when it makes me wise, not only when I meditate on it, but also when it produces understanding in my life. What is understanding? Verse 99, it says, I have more understanding than all my teachers. Verse 100, I understand more than the ancients. The word understanding is the Hebrew word sacol.
Here it speaks of being prudent, to make good judgment, to reason correctly, to be an expert, to be intelligent. What's interesting is the exact same Hebrew word sacol is used in Genesis 3.6. When she said, I saw that the tree was good, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one sacol. It was a tree to make you one who has great understanding.
If I eat of that truth, I would become one who is extremely intelligent, I could reason correctly, translated as wise in Genesis 3.6. It is used twice in Joshua 1, 7, and 8. It's translated there as prospering. He says, don't turn from the commands. He says from the right or to the left that you may sacol, or you may prosper. It's translated as good success in verse 8. He says, when you follow the word of God, then shall your way be prosperous, then shall you have good sacol, or good success. So understanding is like the idea that you are prudent, you make good judgments, it creates success in your life, wisdom, blessing, prosperity.
You just have it dumped on you. Godly understanding prospers you guys. It will give you good understanding.
It makes your life fruitful. And so Spurgeon writes, there is more wisdom in the testimony of the Lord than in all the teachings of men if they were gathered into one vast library. The one book outweighs all the rest. I quote Spurgeon because I have read through a dozen different commentaries.
He's the best. Charles Spurgeon is one of the wisest men I have ever read in my life. If you've not read one of his tomes or his writings on the Psalms, you'll just walk away just so amazed. He would study the Bible in like 18 hours a day. The guy was a literal genius.
His brain was much different than what the natural mind was. And to be able to just go back and read somebody who's back from the 19th century, it's like rubbing shoulders with the guy in Psalm 119. Verse 100, he says, I understand more than the ancients or the old men because I keep thy precepts. You know, age does not necessarily make people wiser. A fool with time only becomes more foolish. It is time in God's Word that produces understanding, not simply time on earth. You ever known somebody who they just got worse through the years?
They did not increase in wisdom. You know you love God's Word when you're growing in it and you see it producing an understanding in your life that gives you guidance, good decision making, and it prospers you in those decisions. Like the outcomes are like, man, that really turned out good.
Like, wow, that really worked out good. And again, that comes from reading it, learning it, studying it, growing in it, obeying it, and your wisdom and your understanding increases. God supernaturally pours that on. Number four, I know I love the Word of God when it causes me to avoid sin. 101 of Psalm 119, he says, I have refrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep thy word. Thy feet speaks about our affections. I keep a close and strict hand over my affections. What you find is that the preliminary to keeping the Word is the refraining of the feet. Like, holding the Word only happens when I've let go of other things. This is, Gregory Lint rightly said, in such a world as this, thou shall not, is the necessary preliminary to thou shalt.
I like that. But think about Ephesians 4, 22, what's it say? That thou put off the former conversation, the old man, right, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts. Before you can begin to put on the new man, 22, you have to put off the old man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, in verse 24, and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. So I have to get rid of certain things, renewal happens, and then I put on the right things. We live in a world where we want to, I want to grow in the Word of God, I want to live for the things, but it's like, well, but we don't want to give up these other things.
And it's not always sin. Sometimes it's just busyness in life and Martha's stuff. That's why when people say, it's hard for me to find time to read. You've got to put off until you can put on. Did you notice verse 23 is in there too?
23 comes after 22. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Mind renewal even happens before putting on because I have to be changed inwardly for me to be changed outwardly and spiritually as well.
So I got to put off. Now think about the blessed man in Psalms 1. Psalm 1 had our guys in our ministry training class last year, a year before, going through that, putting together some sermons and stuff. I said, do you notice what Psalm 1, what is emphasized there? What is he known for? What's Psalms 1 known for? What's the guy who meditates on the Word?
Yeah. And then what happens? And he's blessed. I said, but do you see before he meditates and he's blessed what the first thing he's known for? He's known first of all for what he doesn't do. He's known first of all for the things that he cut off from his life.
He's known first of all for the things that he's no longer associating with. Blessed is the man that walketh not, right? It doesn't start out blessed is the man that meditates. It's blessed is the man that stopped doing something. So the hymn book of God written in Psalms starts off with you're blessed when you stop. Stop what? When you walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. When you remove yourself from those environments and influences that will influence you away from God.
You have to get rid of that. Well, I struggle with the word yeah because you're influenced somewhere else. You're being influenced. The question is who's influencing you? You're meditating. The question is what are you meditating on? You're musing and the question is what are you musing on? We all choose it. I just think most of us in life in the Christian realm don't want to get rid of certain things. I remember when I was a young guy I'd be driving for different construction work and I'd listen to 700 WLW.
700 WLW. What a waste of my life. I will never the rest of my life, not that I'm against everything that's on there, but I have priorities now that there wouldn't be a day in my life except if the bingles were on. And I wanted to get my blood pressure up for some reason and increase the pressure of stress in my life. But we need to realize there are some things that just fill our time but don't really benefit us. Again, there's nothing wrong with certain things in life. They can be good things. They can be just casual things. But then there's this best category.
There's this God, eternal, richest, prosperity of wisdom category. You elevate it so high that it's like, I want that. And when you begin to get that, it's like, I really just kind of want that. And then other people are like, I don't know, I don't really want to read that.
I just kind of like to read over here. I want to read a book about that. I want to read that book.
I want to read this. That's where it is. And no matter what field of life, you don't have to be a pastor, you don't have to be a missionary, but all of us need to be lovers of the Word and I can tell you there is nothing that will impact your life more. I can't elevate this enough. One of the things the Bible says the fool does is their feet go towards sin. Because their heart is not meditating on the truth, their heart begins to meditate on other things. And if you know anything about the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 7, he says, I saw among the simple ones a foolish one who turned into the way of the prostitute and the harlot and he went by the way of her house and he was destroyed by her. Proverbs 5, 8 says, remove thy way far from her. Love for God and His Word will be the voice you listen to as you avoid coming near the door of sin. And then number 5, I know I love God's Word when it produces a life of faithfulness and obedience. He says in verse 1-2, I have not departed from thy judgments for thou has taught me. How important does God say faithfulness is? He said a faithful man who can find. He said it's required in stewards that a man be found faithful. I mean what do we want to hear from God when we stand before Him one day? Well done, thou good end.
Right? Are you faithful? Faithfulness comes when we have the right teacher. He says, for thou has taught me. You ever been in church and you just feel like God spoke directly into your soul? You ever been in a devotional time by yourself in the Word and you're just like, man, I just feel like He just gripped my heart? And it's just so real, it's so evident and you're like, man, I'm just so, and you're thinking, and you know that He's done that when a day later, two days later, three days later, a week later, you're still thinking about it. You all know what I'm talking about?
And it just grabs a hold of you. That's the penetrating effect of verse 102. I didn't depart from your judgments because you taught me them. It wasn't some pastor, it wasn't some teacher, it wasn't anybody. It was you that Psalm 119 18, opened down mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Paul prayed in Ephesians chapter 1, he says, he says, for this cause I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling and what the goodness of the riches of His glory of the inheritance in the saints. And his prayer is that God would open your eyes.
He's praying for that church at Ephesus that God would illuminate and turn the light on for them. I wonder what the effect would be if we could see eternal heaven for five minutes and hell for five minutes, how tomorrow would change for us. Like what would we do different? You think we'd get up and be like, man, it's just hard to get up and read in the morning. What happened? We got gripped by eternity.
It affected us. And we could never be the same. And so let's take the one eternal book there is. There's only one.
And let it give us light to that place so that I could live here the way I would have lived here if I had been a hundred years from now. Number six. I know I love God's word when I cherish it and pursue it above every worldly thing. He says in verse three, How sweet are thy words into my taste, Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. I like honey. Anybody else like honey? We got bees. I like honey.
Sweeter than honey to my mouth. We meditate on the word of God. And I believe that affections can be changed.
You know, your brain is plastic, which means it can modify. And as you grow in things, you begin to grow away from other things. Colossians 3, 2 says, Set your affection on things above, not on things of the earth. Psalm 119, 127, he says, Therefore I love thy commandment above gold, yea, above fine gold. Those who love God's word give up worldly preoccupations to be preoccupied by the word. People give up bedtime for Bible time in the morning. People give up bedtime for Bible time in God's house.
They just begin to make those commitments. Oswald Chambers says, The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. He's so right.
He's so right. Have you kept God's word and meditate on it this week? Number 7, and the last one here is, I know I love God's word when it produces a hatred towards sin.
He comes to the end of this in verse 104 and he says, Through thy precepts I get understanding. And it's because of that, therefore, I hate every false way. I don't just dislike them, I disdain them.
Verse 113, he says in Psalm 119, I hate vain thoughts, but thy law do I love. You ever notice the things that you once loved that after you get saved you begin to grow in Christ? You're like, I don't just dislike that stuff, I hate that now.
I despise those things that want to come into my heart or my mind or things that want to pull me down. Loving God's word will result in a different taste. As verse 103 says, I love the taste of your word and you lose a taste for the things of the world. My preacher would always say growing up, he says, Either sin will keep you from this book or this book will keep you from sin. That is a very true thing. When you love God's word, you meditate on it, feed upon it, you think upon it, your desires literally change from the inside out.
And I know you found that to be true. I know that the people here tonight, I'm preaching to the choir if you would, you're here on a Wednesday night because you've made this valuable to yourself. I mean, some of you guys are like, I'm looking forward to dinner, preacher, and I am hungry right now. I'm kind of hungry too.
But you're going to go home and you've got things you could do, you have other priorities you could fulfill. But you say, you know what, I prioritize the word of God. I want to be here. I want to soak the word of God in.
I want it to affect my life. I want to live for Jesus. I value eternity more than the temporal. The Christian who turns to God and His word will turn away from sin in the world. Most sins in our life are produced because we meditate on sin. I mean, you think about giving in to some kind of bitterness, slander, or gossip. It's usually anger that's on our heart.
Somebody who gives in to lust or covetousness, they've dwelt on those things, and they give in to a wrong effect with a person or a possession. Jesus said from within, those things will come in Mark 7, 21 through 23. It's that wickedness on the inside that produces evil on the outside. And so to change the way we live from sinful to pure, we have to change our internal driver.
We've got to be clean on the inside. Before we were Christians, we often hated to hear the word of God. My brother was sharing the testimony about his son who got saved. I was at a preacher's meeting yesterday in Circleville, and he shared a very vulnerable and powerful story about his oldest son who was raised in a Christian home and became an atheist. He was a good young man.
If he was around him, you'd say, Man, this is a great kid. He totally rejected God, left his home for three years, and just a very, very difficult thing. And just this last spring, he sat down with my brother, and they talked, and he had put together a bunch of arguments to disprove God and all these things. He didn't believe it. And it really broke my brother's heart as he began to share. And he said the door was right there, and what his son would always do is he'd just leave, because he lived a couple of states away.
He would just leave, and he would just go. And he said it was literally between walking out the door, all of a sudden, his son was so gripped by God that he got on his knees, grabbed him by his ankles, and began to weep and beg for forgiveness, and called out to Christ for salvation. The most supernatural salvation he has ever seen in his probably 25 years of ministry, or however long he's been in the ministry, and it was his son. The power of God's Word gripping someone, sovereign grace. Preachers can't get their kids saved. God saves them, right? We're helpless, friends. We preach the Word, we share the Word, but God brings the increase. You feel it?
Is that real? And I will never lead my kids to Christ. I praise God they've all made decisions to trust in Christ, but Christ leads them to Himself. We share the truth that God saves them. And it was just so great to hear that my son, who never wanted to talk about the Bible, could never get him engaged in it, never. Every Sunday now, he just wants to tell me about everything he's been learning now that he's back in church and going to my brother's church.
It's doing great. Isn't that just so fulfilling? I'll just close with what Spurgeon said. He said, I beseech you to let your Bibles be everything to you. Carry this matchless treasure with you continually. Read it and read it and read it again and again. Turn its pages day by day and by night.
Let its narratives mingle with your dreams. Let its precepts color your lives. Let its promises cheer your darkness. Let its divine illumination make glad your life. And as you love God, love this book, which is the book of God and the God of books, as it's been rightly called. You have the God of books in your hand tonight.
This is the book of God and it reigns over every other book that's been written. And what a joy. What a joy we have it.
We get to have this tonight. We get to have it in the morning and through the week. You know you love the word of God when you meditate on it, when it produces wisdom, when it produces understanding, when it causes you to avoid sin, when it produces faithfulness and obedience, when you cherish it above all worldly things, and when it causes you to have a hatred for sin. And so tonight, as you examine your life, do you love the word of God? And I think we all would say I have a love for the word of God, but I need to love it more. Amen. Because this is the reflection of Christ to us. And so let's all stand tonight.
