973. Loving God by Loving His Word

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day, students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel Platform. We're continuing a study series called Loving God. These messages were preached in a special seminary chapel for students preparing for ministry. Today's speaker is Dr. Brian Hand, a seminary professor at Bob Jones University. The title of his message is Loving God by Loving His Word from Psalm 119, 61 through 68.

Our topic is Loving God by Loving His Word. With the arrival of the fall season, of course, football season is now well in play, and out of the woodwork come all the fans. You can see them all around town with the flags flying out the car windows. And every weekend, people are making journeys out of town or either down toward Columbia or over toward Anderson, and they look a little unusual. You know, the faces, orange or black or maroon, other colors.

They have bumper stickers all over the car. You can see that everything is loaded up for a big day. Their enthusiasm or passion is unmistakable, and so it is true of all that we are enthusiastic or passionate about, our love is hard to hide, isn't it?

If you love a person, you don't hide it. It's outward. It's very open.

It's very public. And so it is with the psalmist. We see the passion of the psalm writer revealed in verses 161 to 168, which give us a picture of his ardent devotion and calls us to a disposition that is similar.

So let's read together Psalm 119, beginning with verse 161. Princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil. I hate and abhor lying, but thy law do I love. Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments. Great peace have those which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation and done thy commandments. My soul hath kept thy testimonies and I love them exceedingly.

I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies, for all my ways are before thee. A few months ago, I found a smallish box at our household, normally a box like that, because we have several children who enjoy collecting little boxes. I get a quick looking over before I throw it away. This one was different. Inside it was a puzzle, a very special puzzle. See, this was a puzzle that I sent to a girlfriend 17 years ago in 25 piece sections when she was away from me all summer long at a camp in Wisconsin, and I was down here in South Carolina, a gloomy summer.

But it's not so much the importance of what was on the front side of the puzzle as what was on the back of the puzzle. And she got it in little increments and had to put together 25 pieces at a time in which I wrote poems and notes and letters and lots of other little details for this puzzle. And yeah, the center one there with the heart, I proposed with that one. It says, will you marry me down in the little bottom piece and so on.

That was inside the ring. Okay, very exciting summer. But you know, the interesting thing that I faced as far as the discovery recently of this puzzle once again, is while the puzzle back then was a testimony of my love for her, what is it today? In its current state, the fact that she has kept the puzzle, that she has preserved the puzzle, that she has treasured the puzzle, not for what's on the front, but what's on the back, is now a testimony of her love for me. The fact that she values my words so much that she wants to read and reread and savor them and reflect back on the days when we were dating. And yes, it is my wife, okay, 17 years ago.

Haven't kept any artifacts from girlfriends previous to that. Unlike my words that are incomplete and sometimes incoherent reflections of my own attitudes, my dispositions, my thoughts, God's word is a complete and accurate description of his own thinking. Now he doesn't tell us everything that he's thinking, but everything that he does tell us is a clear and precise reflection of what he is and thinks. It is so close, in fact, to his very being that this book can be called a living word. Unlike any other book in human existence, this one is alive and powerful.

Why? Because it's the very extension of God's own intent and purposes, his will, a reflection of his person. And so the psalmist calls us to consider the thing that since we demonstrate love for God by loving his word, that is that one of the ways that we love God and prove that we love him is by loving his word, we need to learn to love the scriptures, to appreciate them as God intends for us to appreciate them. Well, what does love for the written word look like?

Even without the text developing this for us, I think we can guess. If you love a book, what do you do with it? Throw it under the house, right? No, if you love a book, it's usually on the bedstead so you can read a few words at night or maybe a select location on your shelf so that you're reminded even looking at it. Some of you guys I've met in class are all about Lord of the Rings or something, not the guys, but the girls about Jane Austen.

My wife loves all the Jane Austen type things. And so we have these beautiful gilded copies that are set right out there publicly and things that she would read and reread and reuse. And so it is as far as the scriptures are concerned, we can guess some of the things that God is teaching us even before looking at his word or the things that would indicate our love. And that's exactly what we find here in this passage because the passage begins by showing us you love the scriptures by esteeming them properly.

Well, that makes sense. We don't normally love what we don't esteem. If you really have no esteem for somebody, it's very difficult to love that person. And if you don't esteem God's word, there's no possibility of loving it. You love the scriptures by esteeming them properly. And that esteem is seen first in verse 161 by fearing it more than you fear men. This seems like an interesting juxtaposition to us. Princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. How in the world do those go together?

They seem totally unrelated ideas or topics. Well, I think what we have here is a pretty clear indication that the princes who are directing their persecution or their hostility against the psalmist are doing so. And he's innocent. He's guiltless. He's doing what is right.

He's doing what he's supposed to be doing. Hence he says they're doing it without a cause. They don't have a good reason to exert this kind of coercive pressure against me. And yet here they are doing it. And we understand that when a government writes laws, it's trying to coerce behavior. So when we have places like Alaska and Maine with a $2 per pack tax on cigarettes, what are they trying to do?

Get people to stop smoking. And when princes are exerting pressure against the people of God, trying to box them in, hem them in, and direct our affections and even our conduct and behavior of life, what do we do? Do you yield to that? Well, according to the psalmist, not if it's contrary to God's word.

And here's the contrast then. The princes may be ordering you to do one thing, but I rather instead I'm more impressed by your word. I'm impressed by the power of your word, impressed by its majesty. I esteem your words the highest court of appeal, the end statement of truth. And therefore I will abide by your words rather than yield to the bullies of humanity, the bullies of human culture, even the bullies within my own heart that are trying to coerce me to do evil. If we are in awe of the word of God and fear it like we should, showing esteem for it, yielding to it, we are put in awe of God. So our love is shown by an esteem for God's word and that esteem is evidenced by fearing it more than we fear men. The esteem is also exhibited by treasuring it as we would treasure wealth.

Verse 162, I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil. I have a nine-year-old who has delusions of finding gold in our creek. Actually our creek is a known gold-bearing creek in the upstate, but it's all placer gold, which is those minute, almost infinitely tiny particles that filter downstream and you actually get it once it runs into a lake rather than in the creek. But he is determined to find gold and untold numbers of rocks come out of the creek and there are chips and powder lying all over in one of our pole barns as he smashes it all apart, sure that he's going to find a treasure. By the way, if he did it, I'm sure he'd probably morosely come up to the house, dad found gold, sorry.

No, of course not. Esteem for a treasure. We would love to find a treasure. Most of us have dreamed of finding a treasure.

Oh, if we could just go out in a field somewhere and just be strolling along like a person was a number of years ago in North Carolina and found one of the largest sapphires in the world. Just nonchalantly. Oh, there it is. Oh, this is amazing.

It's incredible. Do you have that attitude towards scripture? I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil, as one that found a treasure.

He's got to tell everybody else about it. He effervesces or boils over, bubbles over with the enthusiasm and excitement for it. And since this is the very revelation of God's thoughts and his character, what you're really bubbling over about is your God. If you are excited about the scriptures, you're ultimately excited about God himself. And therefore your esteem for the word of God is an esteem for him and love of him. I have three files of fabulous artwork at home.

One is labeled Grace, one is labeled Daniel, and one is labeled Elizabeth. You probably wouldn't find anything particularly meritorious in the contents of those files, but I do. Why? Because a relationship transforms everything. A relationship transforms everything.

I pull out these files and look through them periodically. It's so much fun. I say, oh, here's Elizabeth when she was three. Look at this fun artwork. And four and five and six.

And now I have a teenager as well. And look at what she is producing. And little pamphlets from the orchestra concerts that she has been in and the honors that she has won. And it is something that pleases me to do, reflect on their writing, reflect on their creativity. And we're dealing with children whose offerings are very imperfect. How much more ought we then to reflect on the scriptures and esteem and value them because of relationship?

There is nothing of intrinsic value in those three files that I hold. The Word of God is intrinsically, supremely valuable. And yet we won't recognize that value unless we love God. And some of you are already going, well, there's a little bit of circularity in your argument because you're saying we won't love the Word of God unless we love God. But I thought your message was love God by loving the Word. The Word is bound up with the very person of God. You cannot love one without the other. So the passage has first shown us the esteem that we ought to have for God's Word.

But second, we love the scriptures by finding God in His Word. What did we do with those letters that we received in those wonderful days in which we were dating? Or in which we were engaged? Or what do you do even if it's the first letter you've received? If it's from a guy that you're kind of like, ew, you know, don't want to have anything to do with him, you don't take time reading it, you just gingerly tear it up and throw it in the trash can.

But what if it's a guy you like already? What color did he use? Did he mean something by the color that he chose? How has he structured the sentences?

What is he really saying? And you turn the letter over and over and over again in your mind to see what it reveals about the person that you like. True? Of course we do. And we love the scriptures by finding God in them. To begin with, we imitate the truthfulness of God as revealed in His Word. Psalm 19, 163, I hate and abhor. When that was translated into Greek, it uses a word now that we say, abominate.

I absolutely abominate, lying. But thy law do I love. So there's a contrast between hate and love. And then there's a contrast next between lying and thy law. So what is he saying about the law in that statement? The law is true.

The law is perfectly accurate. God's testimonies are absolutely truthful because our God is a God of truth. Unlike any other book, which while researchers may have done their best and while sincere men may have written them, they are still flawed.

This book is utterly without error. This is a word of truth. And we are imitating the truthfulness of God as it's revealed in His Word. We study the Word to learn truth. And in learning the truth, we're learning about God himself. We also praise the righteousness of God as revealed in His Word. Verse 164, seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments. Now where do we become informed of these righteous judgments?

Do you see them around us in the world? Most of the time that we look outward at natural revelation, we don't see a lot of righteousness. Do we see lightning striking only the ungodly? Do we see calamity only catching up and sweeping away the wicked? When the flooding came in South Carolina, did it elect carefully only the worst criminals within Columbia and Charleston?

Did it only damage their property? And so our attitudes with reference to the natural world around us doesn't seem to be a lot of justice. We have to look inside scripture in order to understand that God is a God of justice, that his justice does not sleep forever. He is slow, not because he is slack. He is slow because he's merciful.

He's slow because he's absolutely in control. His justice is not passed over. His justice is waiting the great day of his wrath. And we learn that all from scripture.

So we actually come to reflect on God and his character by learning what the scriptures themselves say. Now what would happen if a guy was telling a girl how much he loved her, but then he started qualifying that love? You know, I don't like the way you laugh. And I don't like your appearance. I especially don't like your hobbies and your parents and your cooking. And I utterly abhor your personality. But I really do love you. You persuaded? You say, I don't think so.

Why? Because you have to love a person as that person is. As that person is genuinely, as that person is revealed. And yet there are so many people who come to the Word of God, who see God revealed in the scriptures, and who don't like what they find, who will still claim that they love God, but the God that they love is one of their own inventions. You hear phrases like, they love Jesus but not the church.

Impossible. If you love Jesus, you love the ones for whom he died. You may not like all that they do, but you have to love the church. Or what about, oh well I love the God of the New Testament, but not that vindictive, mean-spirited God of the old. If you don't love God as he's revealed in his Word, you don't love him at all. And that's hard for us to deal with at times. I don't know whether you are as I am, but sometimes in wrestling in my own devotions, I run across a really hard saying. And I'm struggling with it because of the spirit, the contentiousness of my own heart, and I'm just going, I don't like what this passage is doing and saying. But as we continue studying, if we really love God, we grapple with it, and come to the point that the reason it is so difficult in that place is frequently that it is extended mercy for sometimes decades or centuries or even millennia to a group of people.

So that when his judgment finally breaks, the measure of justice is full. And it seems to us a little bit extreme in some instances. But if we love God as he is revealed in his Word, we are really loving him and not our imaginations. We're not following after a fairy tale. We're not following after a God that we have identified, that we have painted, that we control. Rather, we love God and worship him as he is. Then we gain the peace of God as it's revealed in his Word as well. Great peace have they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. That is the process of studying God's Word gives us the very peace of God. And it creates in us a love for God.

We love the Scriptures by finding God in his own character. The peace is not something that we get apart from knowing God. Is your heart ever troubled? You look at the world circumstances that surround you, whether they be political or economic or social or cultural, there are just too many currents, too many natural disasters, too many perils.

One of the young people who was killed in Columbia, one of the first reported, was a former student of my wife here at the middle school. Life is very uncertain. Do we really have peace? Not if you're reliant on your own emotions for that peace. The Scriptures tell us, no, you don't get that peace external to the Word. You get that peace from the Word. And it is a peace that is a possession.

Great peace have those. They have it. It's something that they actually hold onto, not just something that they feel subjectively at some moments and not at others. It is a possession of theirs, an ultimate tranquility of soul, because we ultimately are guaranteed eternal life in our Redeemer. Well, if we have truly esteemed God's Word and have seen God revealed in it as we ought, our love is continuing to grow in this final section of the Scripture, because we love God's Word by obeying it. Psalm 167, which is actually the middle verse of that section, says, and yet it's the key, it's the central point, my soul hath kept thy testimonies and I love them exceedingly.

Those just lay things side by side. My soul keeps and I love. But that immediately brings to mind a number of New Testament passages. If you love me, keep my commandments. And Jesus said that over and over and over again. Verse 167 is a linchpin here. Notice how clearly it connects love and obedience. And all three verses in the section use an active term for obedience. Verse 166 has the psalmist doing God's commandments. 167 and 168 have him keeping and or guarding, but it uses the same Hebrew term there, God's testimonies.

And this is vitally important for us. Love and obedience are never juxtaposed in Scripture as antitheses. It's not, oh yeah, you guys are the ones who are trying to keep God's Word.

We're the ones who love God and other people. No, you love God by keeping his commandments. Now a person can keep God's commandments out of just a raw sense of duty, out of just servile fear. But nobody truly loves God who is not keeping his commandments.

You can keep the commandments without love, but you don't love without keeping the commandments. And I routinely use this with my children as well because it preaches so well. We talk and they're resisting, they're pushing back as all of us push back against truth and the rebellion of our own hearts. And they're pushing back just because they're sinners as I am as well. But in the middle of pushing back I say, you know what, really kids, what it comes down to, if you love me, obey me. That really kind of somehow breaks through even as young as they are so many times. Because yes, I can compel them as their father. Yes, they need to be doing it out of duty. But motivated by love, if they really have their hearts overflowing with love in that moment, they have to obey.

They can't do otherwise. Love is an incredibly compelling force. And so we have here in this passage, we are obeying in the hope of God's salvation, as verse 166 shows us. Obeying in the hope of thy salvation. Lord, I have hope for thy salvation and done thy commandments.

In the process of studying the word of God, in the process of learning the word of God, what do we learn? One of the truths that we learn is we have this great salvation that's out there one day, a great reward. In other words, all of our obedience is not futile. It's not fruitless.

It's not pointless. We obey in the hope of God's salvation. And we obey in the confidence of God's assessment of our lives as well. I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies.

For all my ways are before thee. Everything that I am is spread out in front of you, Lord. You know who I am. You know me intimately.

You know me personally. I can't hide anything from you. Well, again, where did we get that information? How did we come to know that we can't hide from God? We got it from his word. And the more we love the word of God, the more we understand God. The more we understand God, the more we understand what he's promised us in the future and the more we understand that he's overseeing us right now. And our love through the scriptures for our God compels our behavior. We know that we are evaluating him both now and in the future.

So obedience is a direct corollary of loving God. You know, a six-year-old rarely comes home with earth-shattering news from school. A first grader doesn't have that much to report that is of supreme interest. But when Elizabeth comes home from school and wants to tell me what she and her friends did, Savannah and I were on the playground today and we, and the chitter, chitter, chitter, chitter, chitter, little bubbly, redheaded, effervescent trivialities. And of course I respond as any good father should. Look, until you have something worth saying, I don't want to hear it.

Of course not. Again, you know very well the fact that I love her means I love her words. And how do I demonstrate that I love her? By loving her words. So that when she tugs on my sleeve and says, Daddy, Daddy. Yes, there are times I have to say, you need to wait for just a minute.

I have to complete this and I'm with you. But then you get to her and you get down on her level and you look her in the eye and say, I'm very much concerned with your words. Tell me what you have to say. If we love God, we will show it by loving his word. And we love that word by esteeming it as we ought, by lifting it above the true trivialities of life. By, yes, we're tired in the morning.

We esteem it more than we esteem 15 extra minutes of sleep, if need be. Maybe you have your devotions late in the evening. But I don't feel like reading scripture when I get up in the morning, a lot of the time. But in the process of reading the word of God, the love is rekindled in the reading. And in the process of reading, I come to admire my God and esteem him as I ought. And likewise, I'm not just learning to esteem him, but I'm learning to obey him. If you love me, keep my commandments. So since we demonstrate love for God by loving his word, you must learn to love the scriptures.

And what does that look like practically speaking? Well, practically speaking, we've already addressed some. Esteem, obedience, and attention, giving devotion, giving time to what you really honor. Father, we're grateful for the testimony before us today. We're thankful that your word is pure, that your word is perfect. May we exhibit genuine love for you by taking time with this word, by reflecting on it as we ought, by loving it. May it not be a book on our shelves. May it not be dusty history, mindless material from a bygone era that tells us what you did with Israel but has no relevance for us today. But may we read it as a love letter and so much more than that, as a testimony of your power and your greatness and your majesty, esteeming you through your word, finding you in that word, obeying you because of that word, loving you in all things. I pray this for Christ's sake. Amen. You've been listening to a message preached at Bob Jones University by seminary professor Dr. Brian Hand, which was part of the series Loving God. Join us again tomorrow as we continue this series here on The Daily Platform.