Tonight, if you want to join me in Psalms 119, excited to bring this message, Psalms 119.
I have thoroughly enjoyed going through this on a pretty regular basis through the years. It's really just, feels sanctifying to a person's soul as you get in through these different passages. But, Psalm 119, we're going to read 160 down to 176, just this closing portion. The Bible says here in Psalm 119, verse 160, thy word is true from the beginning and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever. And then the last two stanzas is in verse 161 down to 176. There's 22 stanzas. Basically, in this, as there's 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each one, they take eight verses for each. And if you were to read this in the Hebrew language, you would find that the letter that is corresponding above that, the 161 skin, is the Hebrew letter. And in Hebrew, each one of those eight verses starts with that letter.
And so they did this throughout. So if you have 22 Hebrew letters, eight verses, you have 176 verses. That's how you end up with this chapter. Verse 165, if you could read with me, great peace have they which love thy law and nothing shall offend them. He goes on and says, Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation and done thy commandments. My soul hath kept thy testimonies.
I love them exceedingly. I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies, for all my ways are before thee. Let my cry come near before thee, O Lord.
Give me understanding according to thy word. Let my supplication come before thee. Deliver me according to thy word. My hope shall utter praise when thou hast taught me thy statutes. My tongue shall speak of thy word, for all thy commandments are righteous. Let thine hand help me, for I have chosen thy precepts. Come for thy salvation, O Lord, and thy law is my delight. Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee, and let thy judgments help me.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments. And Father, this is a reflection of a man who loves you, who loves your word, and I pray that it would be found in our hearts tonight. Lord, our love for you is not always what it needs to be, and our affection for your word is not always what it needs to be.
We would ask for forgiveness for that, and help us to see the scriptures for the value that it is. May we love your word, and may the truths that we find in these passages tonight be found to be true in us. We give you this time in our hearts, and we ask it in Jesus' name. And God's people said, man, you may be seated this evening. Well, this is our tenth message on this great psalm, Psalm 119, and really, 176 verses is as long as most of the epistles of the New Testament, so this is a long, long section. It's really one of my favorites. We started this back in September, looking at Psalm 119, and now we're bringing it to a year-end close.
It's a good way to travel for some time. The Bible says if you want to be wise, you walk with wise people, don't you? If you want to be hungry for the things of God, walk with hungry people. You don't want to be around people who are not passionate for the things of God, and as you sink your heart into Psalm 119, you begin to sink your heart into the truths of a man that had a great passion and zeal for the things of God. We live in a world today where people have misguided passions. I mentioned a quote by C.S. Lewis Sunday where he said the problem is our passions are not too great, they're too weak, and we find ourselves too easily satisfied with things of this life, and I think that is true.
Our hearts will be restless, as Augustine said, until they find their rest in God, and that's a truism for all that are created by him. But this passage of text really exemplifies for us a man that I believe that God is wanting us to be, or the woman of God that God wants us to be if you're a lady. Isaiah 66, one and two, another great passage of scripture says, Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. God is bringing the book of Isaiah to a culmination here, and he's saying that I am the creator of everything, I set my feet, if it would, to be upon the earth as a footstool. He says, What kind of house would you build me?
Where is the place of my rest? All these things have my hands made. In other words, what can man provide God who is the creator? And I want you to see this, and it says, But to this man will I look. This is the person that God has respect for, sees, and holds to be one who brings him great honor. And he says, I will look to the man even to him that is of poor and a contrite spirit, that is the idea of a very humble spirit, and it's reflected, how do you know what poverty of spirit looks like, contrition of spirit? He says, They tremble at my word. There's such a reverence for the word of God that it causes the person to even come to a place of inward, if not outward, trembling.
Jesus spoke of the overwhelming value of the word of God when they came and told Jesus, Your mother and brethren are wanting to talk with you. In fact, they really thought Jesus had lost his senses. He's gathering all these crowds together. He's doing some strange things. They're wanting to talk to him, slow this thing down.
This was unsettling to them. Jesus was not on his family's timetable. He was on a divine timetable that usurped Mary and his brothers.
They're like, Can we talk to you? And there are massive crowds around him, and Jesus responded this way. He said, My mother and my brethren are they that hear the word of God and keep it. That's a fascinating statement because he basically elevated spiritual relationships over physical relationships. We make the statement, You're a part of the lighthouse family. When you become a believer in Jesus Christ, you plug into a local church, you become a part of a lighthouse, a spiritual family.
And that's a reality, and you just need to know this. You may not have a great physical family, but praise God, you have a spiritual family. And in essence, our spiritual relationship transcends the physical relationships we have. In other words, if you had a family of unbelievers that didn't know Christ, even if you had a good relationship with them, your relationship is actually greater and more real in a familial sense with your spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ than it is with your biological family.
Why is that? Because in a million years from now, me and Steve Scholze are still going to be brothers in Christ. Praise God, my brothers know the Lord, but if they weren't saved, we would be brothers for just a handful of years on earth, and then that relationship's over. So Jesus here is again elevating that, and he connects it to the Word of God.
This relationship is built upon that. In just three chapters later in Luke's Gospel, the crowd has a woman who cries out and says, Blessed is the woman that nursed you, and blessed is the mother that gave birth to you. And she's right to say that, but Jesus responded and said, But yea, rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. In other words, greater is the person who would hear God's Word and keep it than even the person who would give birth to the Son of God. Is that interesting?
Yea, rather? I mean, that was a perfect time for Jesus to elevate Mary, wasn't it? I mean, if she was to be like co-redemptrix, as some in the Catholic realm elevate, I mean, you know, in Pope, one of the popes, Pope Benedict, I think it was, quite a few years ago when he got shot, he was crying out, Save me, Mary, save me, Mary.
That's problematic. Obviously, it's heretical. People say you pray to saints. You don't pray to saints. And you just read the Bible, and do they ever pray to dead people?
Right? And I've had people tell me where it's just like you asking someone of your friends to pray for you. Well, we're limited in scope and mind and everything else, right? But if you pray to a saint, that would make them, in essence, omniscient, right? Because they would be listening prayers all over the world.
Do they have the ability to do that? Now we're elevating them to a place the Bible never does. And that's extremely heretical. We go to the Father through the Son. Most of you are like, I don't even know what you're talking about, Pastor. All I've known is what we've known here.
Well, good for you then. But some of you, raise your hand if you grew up in a situation where you prayed to saints and you were at least underneath teaching like that. So there's quite a few that have been in those situations.
I just wanted to say that. Now, in Luke 10, when Jesus was in Bethany, the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, again, he elevates the Word of God. When Martha is busy about getting meals prepared for Jesus and the disciples, they didn't have call-ahead seating, right? They didn't call ahead and say, hey, we're a half hour away.
They just showed up with a gang, and that was where they would stay. So Martha's getting things ready, but Mary sits at his feet and hears his word. And Martha was frustrated by that, but you remember the words of Christ.
He says, Mary has chosen that good part that will not be taken away from her. And so tonight, I just see those kind of things that Jesus elevates being exemplified by the author of Psalm 119. This was a man who loved the Word of God. And in these 31 verses of the end portion of this, we're not going to do a dive deep into the specifics of each one of these verses.
We wouldn't have the time for that tonight. But we're going to look at some elements, basically eight results of loving God's Word. You can hold these things up and see, do I love the Word of God, and how can I know if I do? And so these are some elements that you can basically hold against your own life that were true in the psalmist's life here. And so the first thing is, if you love the Word of God, the first thing that happens is you will have a right response to the trials of your life.
That may not be something that you first think of a love for the Word of God would produce, but it is one of the big elements that happens. I mean, think about Matthew 24, after Jesus gets done with the Sermon on the Mount, what's the first thing He says? Anyone who hears these sayings of Mine and does them, he'll be likened to a wise man who built his house upon what? A rock, and what happens immediately after the storm comes, and he's not devastated by it. What's Matthew 13? When the parable of the soils, right?
What happens when soil number two and three come? And he's sowing seed among the hard soil with the rock in it, and then he's also throwing the seed among the tares and the thorns and the thistles and all of that. And those are elements, especially the thorns are pictures of the tribulation that you will face as a Christian, and when the Word of God is centered in your heart, true salvation has come, the Word of God has been grounded in your soul, and you will not be overwhelmed by trials. That is a evidence that you are one who has the Word of God centered in your life. Just so you understand, the man who writes this had faced many, many trials, rejection, persecution, people attacking him.
He had external problems, internal problems, just to name a few. Verse 141, he said, I am small and despised. Verse 143 of this psalm, trouble and anguish have taken hold on me.
Verse 150, they draw nigh that follow after mischief. 153, consider my affliction. 157, many are my persecutors and mine enemies.
161, princes have persecuted me. So he's not only facing persecution from the common man, but also from princes, those in authority. Now, one of the great tests of our faith is when we are faced with trials and unfair treatment by others. It is one thing when you do wrong and are punished for it, but it's another thing when you do right and you're afflicted for it.
That can be difficult. This man had lived for God, and because he lived for God, he faced these trials. God was the cause. God was causatory.
It was the reason why he was facing it. It's not that God so much produced the trial. God did allow it, but it was because people did not like what God was doing in his life. And that's why this is mostly believed to be Jeremiah who wrote this.
Some people, even Spurgeon, would move toward like David writing this, but princes didn't persecute David so much. But Jeremiah was thrown in a pit, wasn't he? I mean, you read through Jeremiah Lamentations, you're like, man, this poor guy, you'll have a good day after you read through all that.
He never had it so bad. I have a pastor friend down south, and man, he's faced so many trials. Every time he preaches, we're like, can you just preach on all the hardships you go through? Because after I get done listening to you, I'm like, praise God for my life, man. You ever get around somebody like that?
You don't want to be around Eeyore because they kind of go down, but this individual's not like that. He's just gone through a lot of trials. And it's like, man, praise God, I didn't go through all that, the same level of difficulty. And sometimes we face trials because we're just foolish and ignorant, but many times we can face trials because we're faithful. David had to face Goliath because he was faithful, right? Now, facing trials and hardships can be greatly challenging to a person's faith.
They expose the truth of a person's heart. What a person really believes comes to the surface when the heat's turned up. It's easy to say how much we love God when we're walking in green pastures, right? But walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and then tell me how good Jesus is.
And that's the difference. And if you want to be a believer who is able to weather the storms of life, then you have to build your life on a rock. That is the foundation of God's Word.
Now, look at the attitude, faith, pursuit, and desire of this afflicted man. In verse 145, he said, I cried with my whole heart, hear me, O Yahweh. Verse 146, I cried unto thee, save me. Verse 147, I prevented the dawning of the morning. Or better translated, I rose up before the sun rose up.
That's the idea of that. What was his desire? Verse 145, I cried with my heart, why? He said, I will keep your statutes. Verse 146, I will keep your testimonies. 147, I hope in thy word.
So he's crying, he's crying, he's waking up early. Why? So he can follow the Word of God. Verse 148, he says, my eyes prevent the night watches. Again, more clearly translated, I am awake throughout the night.
Why? That I might meditate in thy word. It's the affliction of life that shows us our dependency. Like, what do I really believe in?
What do I really turn to? And don't trials in life have a way to simplifying life? You think it'd make it more complex, but a lot of times it makes it more clear. It slows everything down and you say, you know what, your priorities begin to come to the surface.
Like, what is really important for me? And if you don't know what I'm talking about, there will be a day when you will. Like, you'll get to where you're like, you know what, I used to think some of these other things were a big deal. I've just found they're just really not that important anymore. When your time on earth begins to draw to a conclusion, you're like, what really matters? When someone that's super close to you, someone very dear, and you're just like, you know, some of these other things in life, I used to feel like were a big deal.
They just don't carry the weight they used to. And so trials have a way to helping us cut off some of the fat of life. So was he in any way questioning God's goodness? This man was not questioning God's goodness. He was crying out to God.
He was trusting in God because he had built that foundation. Now, look at the attitude in the heat in Psalm 119, 153. He said, consider my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget thy word. Verse 157, many are my persecutors, my enemies, yet do I not decline from thy testimonies. Psalm 119, 161, princes have persecuted me without a cause. They weren't just in doing this, but my heart stands in awe of thy word.
And that's just a joy. He's not standing in awe of how God allowed this to happen to me. He's standing in awe of God. He held a high view of God.
And he had a high view of God because he had a high view of God's word. A few years ago, I had an aunt. Her name was Lorella. She passed away, and her health was not good. She spent a lot of time the last couple years just home. She was in a bed. And you would thank somebody who's kind of lost a lot of contact with outside people for a couple years.
Funeral would be somewhat modest. I mean, just hasn't had a constant influx of people in her life because of that. It was a three-and-a-half-hour visitation to get everybody through it. Three-and-a-half hours. Eight family members got up and read through things about her life.
They just go on and on. Everyone got up, and all they talked about was her great love for God, his word, and love for Jesus Christ. Her faith was so solid at the end. She knew she was going to die, and she was just so strong. My dad was telling me about the same season how my great-grandfather, he said he would stay up late at night.
He would rise up early in the morning and also stay up late at night and read the Bible by candlelight because it would be too dark in the morning and in the night. So my great-grandfather, who was a hard worker, passed the faith down. With humility, I now look at the Bevan family, which is a bunch of imperfect people, but I will say this. Ninety-two family members on our Bevan side of the family who all are of the age of understanding have all come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior out of all 92.
Dozens of marriages that are all still together. A large percentage of them are in the ministry. I have cousins in past ministries down in Tennessee, different ones in ministries, different places, and nobody had been in the ministry before. It was interesting, my grandfather, I didn't know this, his son, I didn't know that he felt called to be a preacher, but he had to, because of family situations in just the state of the country at the time, very difficult, and so he had to work and he never did. But he writes about it, he said three different times in his life he felt called to preach.
But he was in a group of churches that just probably didn't know how to train guys. Like, how do I progress to that? It's not an easy thing, like, what do you do if you feel called to preach? Ask yourself that question.
If you don't have somebody to talk to to kind of guide you, you're kind of in a place where you're... So it was interesting, he wrote this stuff down and I came upon it just in the last year how he wrote that. What's fascinating is even his own sons, three of his four boys, ended up being pastors, his other son has a son who's in the pastorate, and so I thank God's grace that allowed him to be such a godly example and prayed for that, God began to pass that down. And my point being is this, when you love the word of God, the fruit will trickle down generationally.
It creates a legacy effect. And if there's anything that you give yourself to, give yourself to that. Be known as a man of the word. I say this with humility, and I don't even know if I should say it, but I memorized, I was trying to memorize the book of Romans, which is 16 chapters long, back when I was in Chillicothe, I could never do it. I got through about 11 chapters and my brain gave out. And I worked on it, and I worked on it, but I have come to a renewed passion for this. I finished up Philippians and Ephesians, and I started going through the book of Romans starting last week. I say this with humility, but I just want you to know what God does for your mind. Last week I was able to re-memorize three chapters, and this morning I re-memorized chapter four in about 30-some minutes.
And what's fascinating to me is I have not really looked over that for over 15 years. And it's not because I'm super intelligent. I'm telling you, when you commit God's word to your heart, He brings it back to you. That's why we're doing this memory verse challenge next year, and you can be a naysayer and say, Well, I just can't memorize. You're going to get from God what you give to Him. When you pour His word into you, that's why some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. When you begin to share the gospel, it's like I don't even know where the verses came from. I don't even know how that came back to me.
It's one of the most shocking, astounding things. I got a 2.8 GPA when I was in high school. I didn't do any homework. I was in a good student, but I'm just telling you, I played sports, didn't do anything.
My grades are a lot different now. I don't need to get into that with college, but I'm not like some genius. I'm just telling you, God will place His word in your heart, and when you love it, He'll give it to you. The question is, do you want it?
Do you want it? It'll become the greatest thing you invest your life in. Secondly, a solid belief in the eternal nature of God's word. Now, the Bible's clear that God's word is eternal, and the word of God is eternal because the God who created it is eternal, and the nature of God is reflected in the nature of His word. Do you understand Adam and Eve would have lived forever if they didn't sin? So when God creates the word of God, there is no error, there's no evil in it, and it now has, it's eternal. And creation has come under the fall of man because it was underneath the jurisdiction of man.
Adam and Eve were co-regents, and it's under the curse, Romans 8 talks about. But the Bible is kept providentially by God. It's eternal, and one of the things that happens when you love the word of God, you will have a high view of it and its eternal nature.
Psalm 119, 89, Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven. Why is believing in God's word as being eternal so important? Because if it could change, then truth can change. If it can change or fade or vanish away, then our eternal salvation could fade away.
All that we believe in and build upon could be dissolved. To not only hold to the eternality of God's word is to turn all we believe in and hold onto into a bunch of uncertainties and relative truths. It's essential to believe that God's word is, it's essential to believe that God's word is eternal, that it doesn't fade away, as Psalm 119, 89 says. It goes on in Psalm 152, it says, Concerning Thy statutes, I have known of old.
Thou hast founded them forever. Verse 160, Thy word is true from the beginning. Every one of Thy righteous judgments endureth forever. He repeats this over and over again, so I don't know if you've thought about it, but our view of the eternal nature of God's word is the fruit of a love for the word of God.
My pastor would tell me growing up, how you view the Bible will determine how you live your life, and that is a reality. Jesus believed this. I mean, think about the first message he preached.
The first major sermon he preached was in Matthew 5-18, in Matthew 5 through 7. In Matthew 5-18, he says, Heaven and earth shall pass away. He says, Verily I say to you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. So he's talking about that eternal nature of God's word. In Matthew 24-35, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away, right? Luke 16-17, it's easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail. Isaiah believed this, Isaiah 40 verse 8, The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God shall endure forever. Peter quotes this, repeats it in 1 Peter 1, 23 through 25. What's interesting is when you read through the totality of scripture, it just constantly repeats this eternal nature of God's word.
It's so important. So loving God's word will cause you to have a right response to trials. They won't blow you over, they'll actually build you up. Secondly, it'll create a solid foundation, solid belief in the eternal nature of God's word. Thirdly, you'll have a high value of God's word. Now this is something we can see all through Psalm 119. His view of the word of God is extremely high. He says in 162, I rejoiced at thy word as one that findeth great spoil. Like somebody who came upon a massive gift of riches, he's like, I have just rejoiced in your word like that.
It's like a deer hunter who finds a huge buck and rejoices over that big deer. He saw it as great spoil, it's a great treasure. Again, many believe that Jeremiah wrote this psalm, that's what I would lean towards. In Jeremiah 15, 16, Jeremiah said, thy words were found, I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.
For I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts. The value of the word is seen in his thrill when he has it. He valued it over money and possessions. He says in Psalm 119, 72, the law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold. 111, thy testimonies I have taken as a heritage forever for they are the rejoicing of my heart. Do you have a value of the word of God that makes you rejoice in it? You wake up and you're like, well, I'm just so thankful for this.
I am so grateful. And a joy and a thrill toward that. Could it be said that you treasure it? You know, we have to choose our treasures, don't we? Like what we treasure is, is you can only treasure so much. And if you notice, whatever you begin to treasure, other treasures begin to lessen. That's why I say trials sometimes clean up our treasures.
Right? Number four, a disdain for sin. This is another fruit of a love for the word of God. Verse 163, he says, I hate and abhor lying, but thy law do I love.
I want you to listen to a couple other verses about him. In verse 113, he says, I hate vain thoughts, but thy law do I love. Verse 128, therefore I esteem thy precepts.
Precepts is another word for the word of God concerning all things to be right and I hate every false way. It was his positive love for the word that had a direct correlation to his negative view for sin. It's like Amos 5.15, hate the evil, love the good. Romans 12.9 says, abhor or detest that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.
They work in simultaneous correlation. As I grow in my love for the things of God, I will grow in my disdain for the things of the world. The things I once loved, I now despise. I don't like that anymore. I turn from that, I turn on that.
God's word effectively changes us. You know, when I was young, there were certain foods that I did not like. I did not know how thin my palate was until I got married. I don't think my dad and mom salted and peppered and flavored and like, we didn't eat Mexican and it was just like very Americanized. And then I got married and I was like, whoa, these taste buds. I mean, there's all this stuff she's making. I got a wonderful wife as a cook.
I said, praise God. And so we always bring the salt and pepper to my parents' house. You know, they have it over there. It just needs a little bit of love on some of that food, right?
A little bit more. My dad's always like, oh, that salt will hurt you, boy. Salt will hurt you.
I said, Dad, it's okay. Christians who, you know, I think there's a palate that we have a taste for the word of God and when you've tasted and seen, the Lord is good, right? It increases your taste. It increases your desire.
I don't want you to think this causes you to be some perfect Christian, though. It doesn't make you into somebody who, well, I don't have as much passion for the word of God today as I did on Sunday or that other day and, you know, there are seasons that can kind of press against you and your body. Sometimes you don't feel good.
Sometimes sickness comes. There's different things that can affect your feelings, but what you have to realize is you don't live by feelings. You live by faith. You pursue the word when you want it and even if you don't want it and you recognize that feelings follow willful choice, so you choose to do the right and the feelings for right follow that.
Does that make sense? So I don't let my feelings dictate my desire for the word. I desire the word by my will and my feelings will follow that. So I choose to do right and the desire for that grows. Christians who constantly battle the old sinful temptations, oftentimes they allow their taste buds to be taken by the things of the world and they get caught up in some of that stuff and I can tell you it will affect your taste for the things of God.
And so let me go to a fifth element. So loving God's word will result in a right response to trials. Solid belief in the eternal nature of God's word, a high value of God's word, a disdain for sin.
You'll begin to really not want sinful things around your life. Number five, a worshipful life. Verse 164, he says, seven times a day I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.
I mean, that's a wonderful idea. Because of God's righteous judgments. Everything God has done for him, all his blessings, God being a just God, he praised him seven times in a day. And I think, I was thinking today about that, the only reason that we would not praise God seven times in a day is just simply because we don't think about it. What I mean by that is we take for granted our blessings. Just consider some of these things. Consider how many of us stop to thank God for our eyesight today.
Right? Who's had vision problems in the last year of some kind of level? When you've gone through vision problems and if you've gone through any type of corrective surgery, something about that, it's incredible how much more thankful you are, right? It's like, oh, Lord, thank you, I can see clearly. Because when you go through some vision issues, it's life-altering, isn't it? So today, imagine if we woke up blind, and then tomorrow we woke up seeing, what do you think the first thing we would do?
Right? The problem with our thanksgiving toward God and our worship toward Him is hindered because of taking things for granted. We say this sometimes, you know, you don't want to spoil those kids too much. Because you give them too much, they'll what? Take it for granted. They won't appreciate it.
They need to learn to work for what they have. And I'm like, amen, amen, and amen. Bring all that down, right? So, but I think what God would say, what did you do to earn your eyesight? What did you do to earn all the health and the benefits and the blessings that have been lavished upon us? And I think sometimes we take for granted these things. Consider how many of us stop to think God our children are alive and healthy tonight.
Our spouse and family and parents are alive. Consider how many stop to thank God for the food, water, clothing, and shelter that we have that the vast majority of the world doesn't have what we have. Consider how many stop to thank God for being saved, having our sins forgiven, and the promise of eternal life.
Now, I know many of you have done those things even today, but my point simply being, when we see a guy who's stopping seven times in a day to do thanksgiving toward God, he's affected by the reality of what is. He sees reality for what it is because he sees God for who he is. And when he sees God for who he is, he sees himself for who he is. And you can see the clothing of humility in verse 176.
He gets 176 verses deep. He says, I've gone astray like a lost sheep. Somebody told me the other day how much they love sheep. They said, I try not to get offended when you talk about sheep.
No, I'm teasing. So I sent him a video of the sheep that jumps in the hole. You guys seen this? I'm gonna have to show it to you sometime.
Raise your hand if you've seen this video. This guy's pulling the sheep out of the hole, and the sheep gets all excited, runs, and he jumps, and he goes right back into the hole. It's like, God says, we like sheep, right?
So we are like sheep. And it's important for us to begin to realize who we are, and the only way we can do that is really to know God for who he is, and it will bring us to a place of humility. And that will cause us to do things like stop seven times in a day and praise him for his righteousness and his judgments and all the mercy he's shown us.
At least do it once, right? Don't walk out of your house like having not praised him for another day of life. Do you think discontentment might be in front of you that day? Right? If you find yourself discontentment, the reflection of discontentment's always complaints, right? Since none of us complain, we're obviously all super content, so yeah, right? Yeah, being facetious there. So now what does your worship say about your theology?
Because that's where the connection is. My worship reflects my theology. So number six, just a last couple here. You'll have verse 165 true of your life. When you love the word of God, this is what happens. Great peace have they which love thy law, nothing shall offend them.
Nothing shall offend them. You have great peace. The reason you have great peace is because you spend time in the word, and when you spend time in the word, you spend time with who? You spend time with the Lord.
And guess what? God is a God who wants to give you peace. Listen to some of these verses. Psalms 29, 11, the Lord will give strength unto his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace. Proverbs 3, one and two, my son, forget not thy law, not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments for length of days and long life, and peace shall they add to thee.
Isaiah 26, three, I love this verse. Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusts in thee. Perfect peace is the mind that's stayed on thee.
And that seems somewhat abstract. Like, how do you keep your mind on him? You keep your mind on the word, right? This is Philippians four, six, and seven, when you're not anxious for anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the result of that, and the peace of God that passes all understanding shall keep. It's also be translated as guard your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.
I like what one commentary said. Those that love the world have great vexation, for it does not answer what they expect. Those that love God's word have great peace, for it outdoes what they expect. And it says nothing shall offend them. Nothing will cause them to stumble. The meaning here is that they would not fall into sin.
They would be kept safe. They have been preserved from the power of temptation. When a person's filled with the word, it becomes a lamp to their feet, a light to their path. So peace comes, and protection comes. So is your heart filled with peace?
What do you do when fears, and anxieties, and worries come? I can tell you, the place to turn is to the word of God. When you get consumed with God, you will not think so highly of the trials.
That was Peter's problem. He saw the waves bigger than Christ, and it caused him to sink. Seventh, an obedient life is the seventh element here, verse 166 through 68. When you love God's word, you will become obedient to him. Psalm 166, he says, Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation and done thy commandments. My soul hath kept thy testimonies.
I love them exceedingly. I have kept thy precepts. He just goes on and on.
I keep them, I keep them. This is John 14, the day before Jesus dies. He says in verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. John 14, 21, he that has my commandments and keeps them he it is that loves me.
He repeats this two more times in verse 23 and four of the same chapter. So that's why I say if you've been saved and not yet baptized, a way to show God you love him is to do what he says. Jesus says he that has my commandments and does not keep them does not love me. So love is an evidence of obedience in that area. Now, what does your obedience to God's commands say about your love to him? If we really are devoted, we need to do what he asks of us.
And then number eight, as we come to a conclusion tonight, when you love the word of God, you will have a great dependence upon God. You will feel that you need him more and more, and it comes the older you get too, don't you? I mean, to be honest, the older you get, I mean, your finances typically would be more solidified at some level. You know more in life. You've surrounded yourself, hopefully, with better people and situations than maybe you when you were 20. Not that if you're 20 here tonight, everything's terrible for you, and we've got some young wise people. But as age comes upon us, you would think a little bit of arrogance can come, a little bit of like self-sufficiency. But if you're a person of God, a person of the word, you're like, boy, the older you get, the closer you get to Christ, you're like, oh, I need him.
Oh, I need him. Oh, what would I do without the Lord, right? Because when trials come, difficulties come, when our own mind comes, we have to deal with ourself.
We have to deal with just situations. We feel the vexation of temptation and trials and all the things that happen, and you're pressed into dependency. He says here in verse 173, let thy hand help me. God is our help. I think about Psalm 121, verse one and two, I will lift up my eyes into the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord.
Who is he? He's the one who made heaven and earth. Notice how God's hands are seen in helping in John 10, 28, and nine, right? I give unto them eternal life.
They shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them, Jesus says, out of my hand. Those are some pretty big helping hands. We tell people, can you give me a hand? Can you give me a hand over here?
You mind giving me a hand? And I want to thank those who helped. We had a couple families move this last week. We had a young couple who graduated, and a great young couple mentioned his dear wife, and some folks from church helped them move this week, and they're staying local.
I'm always like, praise God. People graduate, and they have many places they go around the country, and they find themselves landing close to Xenia. I said, wherever you move, stay in driving distance to Xenia. You got to stay close to the church. Amen. And we had another young lady. You guys were able to help her move, and thank you for that.
Thank you for being a church family that comes along and gives a helping hand. And I just want you to know, when we one day stand before God, it's like, how did I get through all of that and Jesus, I think, would just show us his hands? I'm the one who kept you. You were in my hand, and no one's going to take you from me. Is that good news? It's good news, isn't it?
Try to break that grip, right? Verse 174, God was his salvation and deliverer. He delivers us from our present trials and saves us from our eternal sins. Verse 174, I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord, and thy laws might alight. Verse 145, he says, let my soul live, and it shall praise thee. Let thy judgments help me. Again, he saw himself, let my soul live. In other words, I know the only reason I'm going still is because you're allowing me to breathe. Isn't this Daniel, back in Daniel, when he says, Mene, Mene, techo, you farce, and you being weighed in the balances, and you found wanting, your breath is going to be taken from you.
Your life is going to be snuffed out. The creator of heaven and earth is the one who holds us in existence. Verse 146, again, I just think this is so telling of a man of God. He says in verse 176, I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments. Seek thy servant.
Why? Because a sheep is too foolish to know where to search, and they wander astray. I need the shepherd to find me, to keep me, to preserve me. Again, one of my favorite prayers, Lord, may you keep me, my wife, the dear saints at Lighthouse, faultless and blameless before your throne of grace with exceeding joy.
Jude, the end portion of that book. Well, aren't you saved? Yes, and I pray that he would keep us saved. Well, he said he'll keep us saved. Yes, and I'm praying that he just keeps his word. That's why you pray the word. I know he will, and I pray that he brings to pass his will. His kingdom will come, but I pray his kingdom will come. I mean, what's Revelation 22 end with? Jesus says, I come quickly.
How's he end? Even so, O Lord, come quickly. He prays what Jesus just said. So pray the text. Not that you change him, but we need to change ourselves, don't we?
We need the reality of that. So he had a very humble view of himself, which is the right view. You always know you're growing in the word when you grow in humility. You can know the Bible and get proud about it. You know, the Pharisees could recite scripture. That's why just to recite it doesn't mean you have it. You can quote stuff and not know what it means, and you could have somebody who says, oh, I know a lot of the Bible, and they don't even know the Christ of the Bible. So we should see ourselves more clearly as we get into the scriptures, and I would ask you tonight as we wrap this up, do you recognize that you are absolutely dependent upon God through studying the Bible? Has it caused that in you?
How do you view yourself when people around you say you're humble? We have spent 10 weeks rubbing shoulders with someone who wrote the longest chapter in the Bible, and of 176 verses, he could not go without speaking in some way of the word of God in no less than three to four verses out of 176 verses, only about three to four verses did he not specifically allude to the word of God. That's the love that he had for the word of God.
That's just amazing. If that's true of him, should it be true of us in the day that the word of God comes out of our mouth to people? Do you think you could live around this guy and be like, I don't know, is he a Christian? I mean, you would know what he read that day. Yeah, I was reading this morning, you know, Jeremiah, one of my favorite books, you know.
You would know what he'd been reading, you know, what he'd been involved in, and I pray that we would be a people who love God's word as we've rubbed shoulders with this great man of God. I want to leave a legacy like my great-great-grandfather did, that he would be, my great-grandfather, I should say, that he was with candlelight. Praise God, we have electricity today. Burning the old candles. But what a picture, what a picture of a man of God, and may you and I be a man and woman of God that loves his word. Let the Psalm 192 resonate in our hearts. Let's all stand this evening.
