How Can One Book Change My Life - Part 2

A good book can change your life, but the good book, the Bible, can transform you now and for all eternity like no ordinary writing ever could. Today on Turning Point, Dr David Jeremiah considers the life-changing power of God's Word that elevates the Bible above any other book in existence. Listen, as David introduces the conclusion of his message, how can one book change my life?

You know I have a friend in India whose name is Satish Kumar. He's the pastor of one of the largest churches in the world, the Calvary Temple in Hyderabad, and he has a habit of doing this when he preaches. He holds up the Bible and he says something like this, �All other books are information, but this book is transformation.� And you know what?

He's absolutely right. We're learning that as we open our Bibles yesterday and today to Psalm 19. Here is a life-changing book. It's a transforming book.

We'll get back to our study of that in just a moment. I want to keep reminding you that our special resource for the month of September is our brand new calendar, Colors of Creation. Throughout history, authors and artists have endeavored to describe and duplicate the beauty that's found in creation, and they use colors and features, and ultimately they discover that the only design that works is the design that God himself created, and they end up back at the beginning at the source, the creation of God.

God even created the colors, as you know, and our ability to see them and appreciate them. And so Colors of Creation is the calendar for 2021. It actually is a 14-month calendar.

It begins in November of this year, so you have November, December, and then all of next year. And in the 2021 portion of the calendar, there is a daily Bible reading schedule that will help you read through the Bible in a year. There's a place on each calendar and every day for you to write your appointments.

It will provide beauty for wherever you happen to place it, and I think you will love having it. We want to send it to you. Here's how you can get your copy. Simply write us and send a gift of any size to help with the cost of what we're doing on the radio and around the world on television, and ask for the calendar.

That's it. Send a gift of any size. Do the best you can.

Be as generous as you can be, but whatever you send, if you request a calendar, we'll make sure it gets to your home, and you'll be able to enjoy it in the months ahead. Well, let's get back to where we left off yesterday. We're talking about the Bible. We're talking about how one book can change your life. Psalm 19 is our text, and let's pick up where we left off.

Read back through that text again, and you will discover that here the Bible is described in six ways. It is perfect. It is sure. It is right. It is pure. It is clean, and it is true.

I wish I had time to take every one of those descriptions and tell you all of the truth that's wrapped up in them. The Bible is perfect. The Bible is sure.

You can count on it. The Bible is right. It's always right. The Bible is pure. The Bible is clean, and the Bible is true.

The law, the testimony, the statutes, the commandments, perfect, pure, clean, true. The psalmist literally uses 18 different expressions to try to get to our attention the importance of centering our thoughts on God's word, but the last six words have to do with its effectiveness. Does it really change your life? I mean, come on, pastor.

I know you're paid to say stuff like this, but does the Bible really change your life? I remember reading a story about an old lady who lived way back in the country. One day there was a knock at her door, and it was a vacuum cleaner salesman. He came into her house and began to give the woman his high pressure sales talk.

He said, madam, I've got the greatest product you've ever seen. This vacuum cleaner will eat up anything. In fact, if I don't control it, it will suck the carpet right off your floor. Before the woman could do anything or say anything, he said, I want to give you a demonstration. He went over to the fireplace, scooped out some of the ashes, and threw them in the middle of the carpet. Then he took a bag that he carried in with him and some dirt and threw it on top of the ashes, some more junk on top of that. After making a thorough mess, he said, madam, I want you to watch this vacuum cleaner at work.

I guarantee it will suck up everything I've thrown on your rug. The woman, kind of overwhelmed by this, stood there aghast, speechless. The salesman went on to say, lady, if it doesn't suck up every bit of this, I will personally eat it all with a spoon. The woman looked at the salesman and finally found her voice.

She said, well, sir, start eating. We ain't got no electricity. I wish I could have been there to watch, don't you? Somebody always needs to get caught like that when they do that sort of thing. But it kind of reminds me that before you pitch a product, you better be dead sure you can deliver, right? For whatever reason. Let me tell you, I am absolutely certain about what I'm going to say to you about the scripture.

I know this is true. This is what the Bible will do for you. The Psalmist says it will restore your soul.

Refreshing your inner life like food does your body. The King James says, converting the soul. And that reminds us that there is no way that you can even come to know God apart from the scriptures. But the one thing the Bible will do for you that you can't find any other book that will ever do for you is the Bible will deal with your soul. The Bible will deal with the real you, not the external facade that you walk around in, but the real you. The Bible will get down deep into where you live and help you to understand who you are. And if you take it at face value, you will discover that this book begins to refresh you and restore you.

Sometimes there's a little bit of tearing down first, isn't there? Sometimes the Bible has to tear out all that's bad so that it can begin to build up that, which is good. But I promise you that I know this book will do that. It will restore your soul.

Keep reading. Not only will it restore your soul, but the Bible will renew your mind. The Psalmist says that it makes wise the simple. It gives practical guidance to the inexperienced. Did you know men and women that there is wisdom in this book for every situation you face? I found help in this book for my family. I found help in this book for my financial challenges. I found help in this book for health, believe it or not. The book has some very interesting principles about health.

I found help in this book about discipline. I've discovered some hard truths in this book about the fact that the Christian life doesn't just descend upon you, that godliness comes through discipline. This book makes you wise. The Psalmist says it will rejoice your heart, bringing delight and pleasure to you when you obey it. It rejoices your heart.

You know, I've understood that a lot more in recent days than ever before. Do you know this book is filled with truth that sometimes it just kind of explodes in your heart and you cannot contain yourself. I sometimes go to a special place. I'm going to tell you where it is, but I have a special place that I go to.

It's beautiful, beautiful water and mountains. I go there to read the Bible and to pray. And you know what? Sometimes when I've been reading the Bible and I'm all there by myself, I forget where I am. And I just, I start having a party. I get so excited about what I've read.

I just want to shout and sing and beep the horn. I don't know, you know, just whatever you can do because the word of God rejoices your heart. Oh, I know there are times when the word of God works you over, but there are also many times when you study the Bible and really come to grips with its truth, just gets in your soul and it makes you happy. And if you haven't known that, it's because you haven't gotten into the book.

Keep reading. What else will it do? It renews your mind. It rejoices your heart. It'll refocus your vision. The Psalmist says that the Bible enlightens the eye, illuminating the dark. Do you know what this book has done for me? It's helped me to stay off of a lot of dead end streets. It's given me wisdom and knowledge so that I've had kind of, I've always said to my wife, it's a sixth sense.

No it's not. It's a biblical sense. It's the awareness of biblical principles that I may not even pull out at the time that I've learned and that I've been taught and that I've read. And when I start to go in a direction, there's an uncomfortable feeling that comes and I get my focus changed and it's refocused now because God's word has helped me.

If you want to have a biblical lifestyle, it's not about a bunch of rules and a whole list of do's and don'ts. It's about getting into the book and the word of God will get into the sinews and the flesh of your being so that when you start to walk in a direction, the word of God will keep you from getting into trouble. How many of you would like to have the ability to read the word of God to such a degree that you'd have a sense when somebody's trying to put a scam on you?

Somebody's trying to take you down a dead end street, take your money, take away the things that are important to you. How many of you would like to read the word of God so much that when you see your children heading in a direction, you just have a sense that that's not good. You can sit them down and help them understand. That's what this book will do. It'll refocus your vision. And then it says it'll remain forever. The word of God is eternal. You know, I thought about this week, if God allows his son to tarry his coming and he doesn't come for another 50 years, they'll still be preaching the same book 50 years from now and applying its truth to that generation and it will be just as accurate and just as powerful as it is today because it is a timeless book. The principles live on. You know, most of the books we buy today, they're outdated in a couple of months.

Now, a lot of the people that I talk with in the medical field and in the engineering field say they have to keep reading and reading because the stuff they read last month is already dated. But the word of God is timeless. It remains forever. And then finally, the psalmist says that it will refute any critic, the mutual parts explain and defend one another. Did you know that? It says it is righteous altogether.

What that means is that its parts come together in defense of itself. Do you have any idea how many people have made it their life's work to try to totally destroy the word of God? All the critics who've made it their life's work to destroy the credibility of the word of God, not one of them has ever been able to do it. One of the great translators of the Bible was a man by the name of Tyndale. Tyndale was a distributor of the word of God.

He translated it and he printed it and he distributed it. In the midst of the great distribution under Tyndale, the government, the king got angry and he wanted to get these Bibles out of circulation because they were attacking the national church. So he had a friend go and see if he could get all the Bibles that Tyndale had printed. He said, whatever it takes, buy them.

Just buy them and destroy them. The guy came and talked Tyndale out of the Bibles. Tyndale just gave an exorbitant price. He paid the price, took the Bibles away and destroyed them. And Tyndale used the money from the Bibles that he bought to print 30 times as many Bibles as he already had. And he distributed these Bibles all over. And the king came and wanted to know where in the world did he get the money? And his friend said, you paid for it. You bought the Bibles and he distributed them.

Isn't that great? I think God sits in heaven and he laughs at the foolishness of men who try to destroy God's word because it's beyond destruction. I want to tell you something. If that's true, if what I'm telling you is true, why in the world wouldn't we want to get our heads and our hearts into this book? There's something special about this book. In fact, read the next few verses and you will see it. More to be desired are they than gold. Yea, than much fine gold, sweeter than honey in the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned and in keeping them there is great reward. You talk about a guarantee. That's sort of like the stuff that's written on the bottom of the product.

Here it is. You know what it says? It says there's great possession in the Bible for those who will discover it. For gold is good and fine gold is better. Much fine gold is better yet. And God's word is better than much fine gold.

It's better than the best. And there's great pleasure in the Bible for those who will seek it. Honey is good and the droppings of the honeycomb are very sweet but the word of God is sweeter still. And there's great protection in the Bible for those who will believe it. The word of God not only encourages us, it warns us, it constrains us and restrains us.

It opens doors before us and closes doors against us. That's what the Bible does. And there's great profit in the Bible for those who will obey it. In the keeping of it there is great reward not in the future only but even here and now. The Bible, wow.

What an incredible book. I don't like to try to get you to do something out of guilt. I really don't. And I'm not here to make you feel guilty. If you're in the 23% that never read the Bible, shame on you but it's not my problem.

It's yours, right? I don't want to come here today and say, boy, you people, you don't read the Bible and you ought to be ashamed. That's not it. You know what my heart is? I just want to tell you what you're missing. I want to encourage you. If you have never taken seriously this book, you need to do that. You know, there's so many incredible helps that are available for you to get into God's word. I want to give you two responses, two responses to the revelation of God in the skies and to the revelation of God in the scriptures.

First of all, the revelation of God in the skies. You know, when you see the glory of God in the skies, folks, I hope you never get to the place where you take for granted that you know the God who did that. And sometimes when I stand at the edge of the ocean and I hear the surf break against the shore and I watch the rolling tide and I hear that most majestic sound that we know because we're a seacoast city, I think as I look out at the incredible expanse of it all, I know the one who did that. I know him. I'm not name dropping friends. I'm telling you the truth.

I know him. And even in the silence when it's sometimes scary and you hear the howl of the wind or maybe the storm comes and the thunder and the lightning crash all about you in that is the revelation of my God. You know, I'm not in need of God's revelation to come to know his son because I already know him, but I am grateful for the revelation of God. And I think I'm growing in my appreciation of it more and more each day that God's creative work in nature is one way that he continually reminds us of his power and of his majesty. And so I stand in awe of God's glory written in the skies, but I also stand in awe of God's greatness written in the scriptures. I want to just ask you a couple of things about God's glory and God's greatness in the scriptures.

If all the things I've told you are true and let's just assume for a moment they are. If God's word can do everything that I tell you from the word of God, it can do. Wouldn't it make sense that it'd be great to get into a routine to read the scriptures a little bit every day? Publishers have taken the word of God and organized them so that they're chronologically in the right order. And every day you just open to the date and in the book it gives you all the scripture you're to read for that day. You don't have to turn from the old to the New Testament, just read it all.

Then the next date, the rest of it. And if you read that all the way through from January to the end of December, you will have read every word in the Bible. And you know how long it takes? It takes 15 minutes a day. In fact, you can read through the whole Bible in 72 hours. Did you know that? And I told you I wasn't going to put any guilt on you, but I'm going to do it right now for just a minute.

All right. Do you know that the average American watches television in two weeks, 70 hours. So that in the time that the average American watches television in two weeks, you could read through the whole Bible from cover to cover. So I'm not asking you to read through the whole Bible from cover to cover. I'm just saying, wouldn't it make sense to take a moment and make a decision that you're going to read the Bible a little bit every day. Then you ought to get into some relationships where you're not ashamed to discuss what you read.

You know, the best thing you can do to keep yourself accountable is to talk about it with somebody else. If you try to encourage each other in the scripture and reading the Bible. Most of us have got friends that if we went to work and we said, you know what I found in the scripture today, they would think something really terrible had happened to us. And I'm not saying all your friends should be that way, but if you want to be faithful in reading the scripture, you need to have somebody, a husband or a wife, a good friend who will help you stay accountable to your reading. I can't teach you all the Bible, but I hope I can create a hunger and thirst within you that will make you want to get in the word of God for yourself. That's the purpose of the pastor.

As we close today, let me tell you a story about somebody I read about that encouraged me. His name was Lieutenant General William K. Harrison, the most decorated soldier in the 30th Infantry Division, rated by General Eisenhower as the number one infantry division in World War II. General Harrison was the first American to enter Belgium and he did it at the head of the Allied forces. This man was so decorated that he received every medal possible except the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was honored with the Distinguished Silver Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart. He was one of the few generals to be wounded in action.

When the Korean War began, he served as Chief of Staff in the United Nations Command and because of his character and self-control was ultimately President Eisenhower's choice to head the long and tedious negotiations to end the Korean War. General Harrison was a soldier's soldier. He led a busy ultra-busy life, but he was also an amazing man of the scriptures. When he was a 20-year-old West Point cadet, he began reading the Old Testament through once a year and the New Testament four times a year.

General Harrison did this until the end of his life and even in the thick of war, he maintained his commitment by catching up during the two and three day respites for replacement and refitting, which followed battles. So that when the war ended, he was right on schedule with his reading of the scripture. When at the age of 90, his failing eyesight no longer permitted his discipline, he had read the Old Testament 70 times and the New Testament 280 times. It is no wonder that the people who knew him said he was a man of godliness and wisdom and his wisdom was so incredible that people would come to him almost like they came to Solomon to ask his advice on just about any subject you can imagine. And the Lord used him for 18 years to lead the Officer's Christian Fellowship. What I learned from his life is twofold.

First of all, that it is possible even for the busiest of us to read the Bible if we really put our mind to it, isn't it? Just something we got to decide. God has given you a will. He's given you determination. You set your mind on a goal and you can do it. There's no question about it. Some of you say, well, Pastor Jeremiah, I'm up in years and I've never read the Bible.

So what? Start now. Just make up your mind to do it.

Sit down and write out a plan. Get your little one year Bible if that's what it takes or get a reading schedule and just say, hey, I'm not going to die before I read the Bible. I'm going to read the Bible and I'm going to stay alive till I get it done.

Amen. Not only can you read the Bible when you're busy, but Harrison also teaches us what can happen when your mind is properly programmed. You get the word of God in your mind and it will change every area of your life.

It'll change your family. It'll change your spiritual life, your professional life, and all the problems that you face will have a new picture, a new twist, and you can come to understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote about the treasure of God's word. In fact, he ended his psalm with this prayer. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Do you know how the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart can be acceptable to the Lord?

It's right here. Just get in the book, make it yours, study it, meditate upon it, make it a purpose in your life, and you can be sure that the meditation of your heart will be acceptable to God. This book can change your life. You know, I have been privileged as a human person to be exposed to the Bible all my life. I grew up as a child in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor. One of the first things I remember is getting my little testament, going to church and singing the B-I-B-L-E.

Yes, that's the book for me. And learning the Scriptures and being exposed to the truths, and now I find myself privileged to be teaching the Scripture every day in some form or another. And I can't think of anything more wonderful and more rewarding than to be an agent for the eternal Word of God and tell people what it says and what it means and what it means to them and watch it change their life. I hope that's happening for you in some way it is or you wouldn't be listening to this program. Be a student of the Word of God and let it guide your life more than ever before.

We need that security in our lives that the Bible brings. Well, tomorrow, a very appropriate discussion for where we are in life, and that's how do I face my fears. That's the next question that needs an answer, and we'll try to provide some answers tomorrow right here on This Good Station. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah.

We'd love to hear how Turning Point is impacting your life. Write and tell us at Turning Point, Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org. Ask for your copy of our 14-month 2021 calendar, Colors of Creation, highlighting God's breathtaking handiwork.

It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard and New International versions and in Standard or Large Print in the New King James, with notes from over 40 years of study by Dr. Jeremiah. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue, God, I need some answers. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au.