What Scripture Requires #2

We give our life to this Word. We give our loyalties.

We give our abilities. We give our resources all in an effort to proclaim, assert, defend, and hold up this marvelous Word from God. As a Christian, what should your response be to the Word of God?

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and today, as Don brings his series called The Magnificent Word to a Powerful Close, he'll take a final look at the profound effect the Bible has on the believer that has given himself or herself wholeheartedly to the study of Scripture. Right now, friend, go ahead and open your Bible once again to Psalm 119. Let's join our teacher for the final message in his eye-opening series here on the Truth Pulpit. You'll obey Scripture. You'll trust Scripture.

Number three, what do we do in response to it? We love it. We love it. As we understand what Scripture is and what Scripture does, we come to love it. We have an inner affection for it. Our heart yearns after it. Our heart appreciates it. Our heart views it as our bosom friend, the Word of God is.

And so we have this inner affection for it, and we love it. And Psalm 119 is filled with these kinds of responses to the Word of God. Look at verse nine with me. Verse nine, how can a young man keep his way pure?

By keeping it according to your word. With all my heart I have sought you. Do not let me wander from your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you. There's this deep-rooted response to the Word of God that he can only say, I love it. I give my life to it.

I govern my life by it. Verse 14, I've rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches. Verse 47, I shall delight in your commandments, which I love, and I shall lift up my hands to your commandments, which I love, and will meditate on your statutes. You think he's done?

No. In this lengthy psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible, this theme of how much he loves the Word of God comes up repeatedly. You see the psalmist repeatedly coming back to these expressions of loving devotion to the Word of God. Look at verse 97. Psalm 119, verse 97. Oh, how I love your law, it is my meditation all the day.

I love it so much I can't stop thinking about it. Verse 119, you have removed all the wicked of the earth like dross. Therefore, I love your testimonies. Verse 159, consider how I love your precepts. Revive me, O Lord, according to your loving kindness. And then in verse 163, I hate and despise falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you because of your righteous ordinances. Those who love your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble. I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and do your commandments. My souls keep your testimonies, and I love them exceedingly. If Scripture is what it says it is, then we respond to it with gratitude and trusting devotion. Let me say that again and just to kind of delineate what to love it means is that we are grateful to the Word of God. We're grateful to God for having revealed himself in such an exquisite book, the perfection that exceeds that of the most flawless diamond. We love it.

We're grateful to have it. You know, honestly, I don't know what my life would be like but for the Word of God. I don't know what would have happened to me in those early days after my conversion if there wasn't a Word of God.

I can't imagine. I can't imagine the course of world history but for the Word of God. I can't imagine what would happen to lost souls everywhere if there weren't a Word of God by which we could proclaim Christ to them and the salvation of their souls, and to proclaim the shed blood of Christ as the perfect sacrifice. What would we do? What would we do? We would be in such darkness. We would be like a blind man in a black, dark room with no doors to get out, but for the Word of God. Where would you turn in times of sorrow and temptation if there were no Word of God? We would be miserably lost.

We would be a ship cast on an ocean, a blinding storm of life opposition tossed to and fro and the waves casting us everywhere without any place to turn, without any anchor to lay down to give us root and protection. And so, yes, without apology, without shame, we say we love the Word of God. We love the Word of God. We realize its value. We're grateful for it. We're devoted to it. We trust it, all of these things being an expression of a hard attitude, of love for it. And that has practical implications, beloved.

The one who genuinely loves the Word of God, who genuinely has the Holy Spirit within him, within her, well, something's going to happen. It's going to manifest itself. If you've got that love within you, you know what you're going to do with the Word of God? At the very least, you're going to read it. You're going to think about it. It's going to have a defining part of your life. You're going to proclaim it.

You're going to want to talk about it with others. You're going to want to defend it. You're going to be personally offended when lies undermine the authority of the Word of God.

You take it personally because it's a matter of heart devotion to you. And so, so much so that Martin Luther could say this, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still.

His kingdom is forever. I can lose my goods. I can lose my family.

I can lose my life. But God's truth abideth still, and that is the source of my courage, confidence, and conviction as I go forward in life. Sold out, abandoned to, what Scripture is and what Scripture does.

This is the testimony of Christians throughout the ages. In the very earliest days of the churches before the canon had been finalized and there were persecutions against the church and there were few manuscripts of the books of the Bible that were available and authorities would come and knock on the doors and say, do you have the Word of God here? Because they wanted to take it and burn it in an effort to destroy and stamp out the Word of God and the movement that it had engendered as people were proclaiming the faithful gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, people had to make decisions. One of the ways that we know we got the right Bible these days is the fact that when people were challenged, they would hand over writings that were not inspired by God. They would hand over writings by some of the early church fathers, perhaps. They would give those overs and the authorities could take those away and burn them. But they would not hand over the actual Word of God.

They would not hand over the books of the Bible itself. And they would not betray God by caving to that demand of the authorities. And they put their lives on the line out of devotion, out of love for the Word of God.

This is what it does. This is what it inspires in us. This is how we respond to it. We give our life to this Word. We give our loyalties. We give our abilities. We give our resources all in an effort to proclaim, assert, defend, and hold up this marvelous Word from God. And as the pastor of this church, I'm grateful to have so many of you. And my friend, if this kind of affection for the Word of God is utterly foreign to your thinking, whatever you've thought about whether you're a Christian in the past or not, you need to go to God and ask Him to sort out the disturbing lack of affection for His Word that you find in your heart. The stunning indifference that you have to His heart.

I ask you, I ask you, you're all in here. I ask you, how could you be indifferent to a word like this? How could that which Christians through the ages have loved and defended and given their blood for, how could it be a matter of no consequence to you and you still be a Christian? That doesn't compute. That's not possible. It's not possible for somebody to be a Christian and not have a developing love for the Word of God.

That's not possible. And so you may say, Jesus, Lord, Lord, with your lips, but if you know in your heart of hearts that what we're talking about here is foreign to your experience, you need to humble yourself before Christ and say, do something in my miserable soul. How is it that I am cold and indifferent and even disdainful of the Word of God? It doesn't matter that you've grown up in a Christian home.

It doesn't matter that you've been homeschooled. It doesn't matter that you show up. If you're just going through the motions externally, none of that matters because the Word of God, what Scripture requires is a love for it.

Point number four. You'll obey Scripture. You'll trust Scripture. You'll love Scripture. Fourthly, you meditate on it.

This is what Scripture requires. You meditate on it. Part of the psalmist's response to Scripture stated repeatedly is this idea of meditation.

And let me just kind of explain the concept, and then we'll look at the passages that emphasize this briefly. The basic idea of meditation is that you rehearse it in your mind. You go over it repeatedly. You think about it again and again, and your thoughts just have a center of gravity where you're coming back to Scripture in different ways. You think about Scripture. You mentally repeat its words to you. You rehearse its meaning to you. You listen to decent Bible teaching repeatedly. You go back to it again and again, and it's always revolving in your mind. Like an ever-spinning globe, the Word of God is moving in your heart, moving in your mind, becoming a force of gravity that draws you back to it again and again and again. Now listen, this may be foreign to some of you. This may be foreign to thinking about in churches where the Word of God is not at the center of what they do. But let me give you a couple of illustrations that make it plain that it could be no other way. A Christian who is devoted to the Word of God to obey it, to trust it, to love it, could have no other response but to meditate it on this repetitive way.

And think about it this way. For far lesser rewards, for far lesser goals, what do athletes do? Athletes, the skilled athletes, repeatedly practice the same movements again and again and again so that they are conditioned and there is muscle memory so that they react in exactly the right way at exactly the right moment of competition. And they give years to the repetition of training so that when the day of competition comes, they are prepared for it. They are bodily, so to speak, meditating on what they do so that when the time comes, they are prepared for it. Think about concert musicians. Think about concert pianists or violinists. How have they gotten to the stage where they can perform with such exquisite perfection, such exquisite precision when they are in a concert hall before skilled ears and the slightest mistake would be noticeable to all?

It's because they have given themselves constantly to the repetition of practice in order to be able to perform at that high level. This is for earthly things that are going to pass away. Beloved, do you see that if the Word of God is what it says it is and it does what it says it does, how much higher of an elevated claim on the affections and motions it has on our minds and on our hearts, the casual approach that can take it or leave it. I don't understand that in the heart of a true Christian. A true Christian has the Word of God as the center of his life and he wants to repeatedly go back to it. Beloved, it is the natural result of having an authoritative word from God that you obey, you trust, and you love is that you would meditate on it.

Couldn't be any other way. Captivated. A prisoner to the wonders of God's Word so that we're drawn to it again and again over the course of time and life. Look at verse 15 with me, Psalm 119 verse 15. I'll meditate on your precepts and regard your ways. Verse 23, even though princes sit and talk against me, your servant meditates on your statutes. Verse 27, make me understand the way of your precepts so I will meditate on your wonders. Verse 48, I shall lift up my hands to your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. Verse 78, may the arrogant be ashamed, for they subvert me with a lie, but I shall meditate on your precepts. Verse 97, oh, how I love your law, it is my meditation all the day. Verse 99, I have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies or my meditation. Verse 148, my eyes anticipate the night watches that I may meditate on your word, the silent times where there are no distractions and being able to do so. You see, our hearts gravitate toward the things that we love.

So you memorize scripture, you go over doctrines and messages often. You never get tired of thinking of it because you see what an inexhaustible, infinitely worthy treasure it is, and you can never plumb the depths of it. And so the psalmist is expressing here in his meditation, he's expressing an intimate part of his emotional life. This is my supreme priority.

This is what I long for. I long to be in the place where I can think about it and treasure it and muse it in my mind. His mind, his devotions, his desire is wrapped around the word of God. It's not unfair for me to ask you whether that is somehow true of you or not, because what scripture is and what scripture does could require no less. Well, fifthly and finally, fifthly and finally, proclaim it. Proclaim it. The Bible says elsewhere that the mouth speaks from that which fills the heart, and the one who loves God's word will, in one way or another, be found communicating about it with others. The primary emphasis of Psalm 119 is on an inner response of the man, but this outward proclamation, this outer spoken response is present there as well.

We see it horizontally toward men in a verse like verse 13, Psalm 119 verse 13. With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of your mouth. I have spoken what I understand about the word to others, in other words. Verse 46, I love this verse. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be ashamed. There's this horizontal dimension in which the one who trusts the word of God obeys it, loves it, he speaks about it to his circle of influence, and yet this proclamation is not simply horizontal.

It is something that has a vertical aspect to it as well. Look at the end of the Psalm, verse 171. Let my lips utter praise, for you teach me your statutes. Let my tongue sing of your word, for all your commandments are righteousness. Verse 175, let my soul live that it may praise you and let your ordinances help me. What's filling his heart is that which is filling his praise.

He's praising God vertically, he's speaking the word of God horizontally to men. And so you see this proclamation accented by the passage that we looked at in 2 Timothy 4, verse 1. Preach the word, speak about it, make it known. Beloved, think about the Great Commission at the end of Matthew's Gospel. Go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. The word of God is at the middle of everything. In Christian life and in Christian ministry, there is no other place for it. Well, Psalm 119 has gone by quickly.

I'm now wrapping things up here. We've seen that Scripture, what it is, we've seen what Scripture does, we've seen what Scripture requires from us. There's one last emphatic statement that we want to make. Psalm 119 was written, you know, several centuries before the coming of Christ. Here we are, 2,500, 3,000 laters, reading it and benefiting from everything that it has to say. But there was an epic event that took place between then and now in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his giving himself on the cross for our salvation. And the fullness of divine revelation rounded out in what was revealed in the New Testament.

On this side of the cross, my friends, what we see is this. We see a great, great, great, great climax of the written word of God because we see that it points us to the incarnate word of God. It says about Jesus that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures. Jesus said in John chapter 5, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.

It is these that testify about me. Scripture, in other words, points us to Christ as the great climax of it all. Look at Hebrews chapter 1.

I can't resist making this point here. The final word, the final climax by which we know that revelation has ceased because God has given his final word in Christ. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 1, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world. Scriptures are pointing us to Christ. The written word points us to the incarnate word. And as we understand all that Scripture requires of us, we understand we don't meet its standard.

We realize that we've all stumbled in many ways and still do to this day. But, beloved, why is it so important to end on the note of Christ? It's so important for us to end on the note of Christ because everything that Scripture requires, Jesus did. Jesus obeyed it perfectly.

Jesus loved it, trusted it perfectly. He's the fulfillment of all the prophetic utterances about the coming Messiah. You see, you and I don't meet the standards of God's word, but Christ does. Our ways are not completely utterly blameless, but the ways of Christ were, are, and always will be. His righteousness fulfills what the word requires.

He is the climax of all of the wonderful beauty that we've been talking about. And if you are in Christ, beloved, his righteousness has been shared with you as a gift. If you are in Christ, beloved, his blood cleanses you from all unrighteousness. If you are in Christ, you are in the one and only one whose way has been utterly blameless. And in the grace and mercy and unfathomable plan and wisdom of God, God accepts you as though you had lived that righteous life of Christ. Christ lived on your behalf, Christ died on your behalf, Christ rose on your behalf, and he shares his perfect righteousness with everyone who believes in him.

You know how we know that? It's because the word tells us so. How precious is the word of God, the written word and the incarnate word. The Lord Jesus Christ, the ultimate example of a life completely surrendered to the word of God. Friend, you've been listening to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green.

Today's lesson brings our series called The Magnificent Word to a close. Now if you'd like to find out more about this ministry, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. There you'll find all of Don's messages at no cost to you, as well as other great free resources, all of it conveniently available 24-7. It's all at thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. And Don, when it comes to God's word, it really is all or nothing, isn't it? Well, Bill, I suppose I could respond in this way. All of scripture equips the believer for all of life. And the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3 verses 16 and 17 that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. My Christian friend, God's word enables you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to live life well for His glory. And I encourage you, then, to make time for scripture each day. And may God bless you as you do. Thanks, Don. And friend, we hope you'll join us again next time as we continue with the study of God's precious word here on The Truth Pulpit.