How Can One Book Change My Life - 12

Welcome to Turning Point Weekend Edition. Is the Bible just another book, or is it God's revelation of Himself to humanity? Today, Dr. David Jeremiah says your answer matters for eternity. Listen, as David turns to the 19th Psalm for today's message, How can one book change my life? Thank you for joining us here on Turning Point Weekend Edition, and we're happy to have you along as we look at Psalm 19 and discover how one book can change our lives. The thing I'm encouraged about today as I read this Psalm is that God has not left us without answers. He has revealed Himself to us.

Isn't that incredible? That the God who created the world, the God who is our Creator, has taken the time and the effort to reveal Himself to us so that we could know Him. In fact, this Psalm is about God's revelation of Himself to man.

It's wonderful as it points out the three areas where God has chosen to reveal Himself. First of all, God has revealed Himself in the skies, says the Psalmist. Then He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. And finally, and most practically, God has revealed Himself in our very soul.

The progress of the Psalm is from God's natural revelation in the world to God's specific revelation in His Word. There is not a better testimony to God's love for His people than the 19th Psalm which tells us how God has loved us and how He has revealed Himself to us. In the skies, we see His glory. In the Scriptures, we see His greatness. And in our soul, we sense His grace.

So I want you to walk with me through the words of this Psalm today as we ask ourselves the question, how could one book change anybody's life? Before we get to that book, we need to walk past that revelation of God in glory in the skies. We've all memorized, if we've been to church very long, some of these words. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. And in the eighth Psalm, it talks about the moon and the stars. Somebody said, that's the night Psalm. In this Psalm, it talks about the sun in the heavens.

That's the day Psalm. Whether it's night or day, God through His creation has revealed Himself to us. And while this is not the main focus of what I want to share with you today, we can't pass over these six verses without making some observations about God's revelation of Himself in the skies. Please note, first of all, that this revelation is an undeniable message. It says, in the heavens and in the firmament, He has shown forth His handiwork.

The word firmament really means the expanse of God's creation. It's as if God has written in the sky, everywhere you look, a finger that points back to the Creator so that no matter where you go in this great universe, all you have to do is but look up and there is an undeniable testimony to the Creator God. Not only is this revelation of God in the skies an undeniable message, but read on and discover that it's an unending message. It says, night unto night and day unto day, God showeth forth His power. It's like the day takes the glory of God and hands it off to the night. And the night lets it shine and when it's finished, it hands it off back to the day. So whether it's day or night, God is always sending out His message that He is the powerful Creator of the world.

Not only is it undeniable and unending, but it is universal. Read what the Psalm says. There is no speech, says the psalmist, nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In the New Testament, the writers pick up on the 19th Psalm, especially Paul in the book of Romans, and he's trying to demonstrate in his writing in Romans chapter 1 that all of the world is guilty before God.

One of the most often asked questions, especially if you get into college groups where people feel like they can really go for your jugular vein as a teacher. They want to know about the heathen in Africa. They want to know about the people who've never heard about Jesus Christ in India or in some part of the globe where the world message of the gospel has not been spoken. And you know what Paul said? Paul said in Romans chapter 1 and verse 20, For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

So that, says the writer, they are without excuse. I don't pretend to comprehend all of that, but I've read enough stories from the mission field. I've read enough testimony from men and women who've gone to places where nobody has ever told them about Jesus Christ. And as they have in their animistic ways tried to worship the sun and the stars, the moon, they've come to the realization that there has to be something beyond that, something behind it. And in their searching for the truth behind the creation, God has brought them into an encounter with the gospel message of Jesus Christ. What Paul is saying is that there's enough revelation in God's creative work so that if man would just follow the revelation God has given him, it would take him to the knowledge of who God is.

But what have we done? Once again Paul says we've taken the creation and we've worshiped the creation instead of the creator. And so all over the world, wherever you see pagan people, you see them bowing down to the sun, bowing down to the moon, worshipping the stars.

And by the way, we worship the stars in this country, don't we? Well, the psalmist wants us to understand that God has spoken in the skies and he's told us the story of his glory. Not only is it an undeniable message and an unending message, but it is universal.

It is everywhere. In fact, I love what the psalmist has said. He says their line has gone throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world. This is the surveyor's line and the psalmist gives us the picture of the surveyor surveying all the world. And when he finished surveying all the world, there's no place where God's testimony in his creative work has not been preached. I wish I had time to talk to you about the center of the psalmist's picture in the sun, S-U-N.

But we must hasten on to the next section. God's wonderful message told in the glory of the skies. But secondly, God's wonderful message told in the greatness of the scriptures. Beginning at verse 7, the psalmist switches his gear from talking about the creation into talking about the written word.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. And if you read those verses again, you will discover that there are six groups of three. The psalmist is clever and creative in helping us to understand how powerful is this book we call the Bible. He tells us, first of all, that it is a book which cannot be described in one word. So go down through your Bible and look at the words he uses. He talks about the law and the testimony and the statutes and the commandments and the fear and the judgments.

These are all the titles of the word of God which are listed for us here in the 19th Psalm. Down through the centuries, the Bible has always been something that has been hated and scorned. It is something that has created a great deal of opposition, and men have gone out of their way to try to abolish it. Walter's satire and Ingersoll's slander and Hitler's soldiers and Bishop Pike's skepticism, all of this has turned to be human hammers that are broken on the anvil of God's word. They wear themselves out on the Bible, and they never seem to get anywhere. Through the centuries, emperors have demanded the destruction of the Bible.

Church leaders have placed their superstitious traditions over it. Smart seminary professors have written it off as being beneath their sophisticated scholarship, but the Bible defiantly, victoriously, convincingly still stands. The Bible's pages continue to tell the grace of God, and the message remains the only inerrant, infallible, complete revelation that man has ever gotten from his living God. Today, we look back on history and all the critics, and we realize that in a strange way, Moses has outlived Voltaire, and Isaiah has outlasted Ingersoll, and the apostles have outsmarted the agnostics, and the prophets have overpowered the professors, and the Bible still stands as God's wonderful message to man. The six titles tell us of the majesty of God's word, but after the six titles, after reading of the law, and the testimony, and the statute, and the commandment, and the fear, and the judgments, we see the six descriptions. 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? 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.

Keep reading. What else will it do? It renews your mind. It rejoices your heart. It will 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 what 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 this 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. Most of the books we buy today, they're outdated in a couple of months. 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? The psalmist 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. 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. He talked Tyndale out of the Bibles, and Tyndale just gave him 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. He distributed these Bibles all over, and the king came and wanted to know, where in the world did he get the money? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, and 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, you just read it all. Then the next day, 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, that we 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 Officers' 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 until 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. We'll 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, O 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. We hope you enjoyed today's Turning Point weekend edition with Dr David Jeremiah. You can hear this and other programs and get more information about our ministry by downloading the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet or by visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio. You can also view Turning Point television on Frida Air Channel 7-2 Sunday mornings at 8 and on ACC TV Sundays at 6.30am and Fridays at 1pm. We invite you to join us again next weekend as Dr David Jeremiah shares another powerful message from God's Word here on Turning Point weekend edition. 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