This morning we get to dive into the first of four weeks that we're going to spend
expositing four unique sections and four unique themes in Psalm 119. And Psalm 119 focuses our
attention on the immense value of God's authoritative word. And here at Oak Hill,
we are a body that is passionate about the Bible. We are children of the Reformation, right?
Whose battle cry is sola scriptura. So we love the Bible's inerrancy. We love its infallibility.
We love its holy and righteous character. We love its unchanging nature. We love its daily
relevance in our lives. But most of all, we love its author. And that's an important thing to say.
The one who supernaturally breathed that scripture through his chosen servants so long ago.
And that's why we put the word at the center of everything we do here at Oak Hill. It's why we
study the Bible with such a passion, because we want to know the living God more and more,
deeper and deeper with every passing year. We seek to know who he is. We seek to know what he has
done in creation and human history. And we seek to know more about how and why he has saved a bunch
of wretches like us. That's an amen moment. We agree with that, right? Because we sing it.
And all those things that I just mentioned, they're found in that book that you're holding
in your hands right now. It's all found there. A book that ought to be your most prized possession.
Here's what Charles Spurgeon had to say about the Bible. He said, I beseech you
to let your Bibles be everything to you.
Carry this matchless treasure with you continually and read it and read it and read it again and
again. Turn to its pages by day and by night. Let its narratives mingle with your dreams. Let its
precepts color your lives. Let its promises cheer your darkness. Let its divine illumination make
glad your life. As you love God, love this book. It's a great statement. So you have them in your
lap. Let's open them up. Let's open up this matchless treasure and let's turn to Psalm 119.
And I want you to find verse 97. I know that's a weird place to start. We decided we weren't
going to do every verse in this Psalm. It's huge, but we're going to start in verse 97.
Now, as you're making your way there, if you went to the top of Psalms, you would see that there is
no superscription above the heading, which means we don't know who the author of this
amazing Psalm is. Now, over the last couple of millennia, scholars have tried to make some
guesses and there's some prominent possibilities. Always David, when it comes to the Psalms, maybe
David wrote it. Ezra has been suggested if we want to look at the post-exilic period,
but we can't know with any certainty because we don't have a superscription in the actual
text and there's no real internal evidence that points to one man or another. As I shared last
Sunday out at the beach, Psalm 119 is famous for a few things. First of all, for its volume, right?
For its size. It is the longest Psalm in the collection. It is the longest single chapter
in any book of the Bible. 176 verses. Second, it's known, as I said, for its deep, deep focus on the
importance of God's Word. And third, it's known for its unique structure. And I'm going to put
something up on the screen here. For its unique structure, Psalm 119 is arranged in what we call
an acrostic pattern. It has 22 sections that correspond with the 22 letters of the Hebrew
alphabet. If you've never seen what Hebrew looks like, there's the alphabet for you.
And with each of these sections that are headed by a Hebrew letter has eight verses, exactly. So
a total of 176 verses. And then beyond that, the first letter of the first word in each section
corresponds with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet in the title. So it is beautifully poetic.
It is exquisitely thought out and it's wonderfully arranged. In fact, Martin Luther once professed
that he valued this Psalm so highly. He said, quote, I will not take the whole world in exchange
for just one leaf of it. That's how valuable it was to him. At least two famous men in church
history, if you know who William Wilberforce is or David Livingston, both of those men had memorized
all 176 verses of this Psalm because they believed it to be so foundational to their personal
spiritual walk and to their ministries. That's a great challenge for folks like us, right?
Matthew Henry, the great 18th century Bible commentator was introduced to Psalm 119 as a child.
His father told him, if you read just one verse from this Psalm every day, you will get through it
twice every year. And Matthew Henry did that every year of his life. And the point of it,
his father said, was to help him fall in love, not just with the Psalms, but with the entire
canon of scripture. Another great challenge for us. Those are wise words from a wise father.
So as we read this morning, we are entering onto sacred ground as we open this chapter. So I'm going
to have you stand again as we honor God's word. And we're going to read these eight verses. Again,
this is headed up by the Hebrew letter Mem, which you can see circled there in red. This is the 13th
letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And so here God's word this morning. Oh, how I love your law.
It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies are my
meditation. I understand more than the aged because I have observed your precepts. I have
restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. I have not turned aside from your
ordinances for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste? Yes, sweeter than
honey to my mouth from your precepts. I get understanding. Therefore I hate every false way.
Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. So already in just this one section, we saw, get this now,
six different words that are used to describe the scriptures, six different words. And I'm going to
give them to you here. I want to give you another, you take a picture if you want, if you care,
but six words already in just these eight verses. First in verse 97, you see the word law in Hebrew,
Torah, right? Found 25 times just in this Psalm. And that word basically, Torah basically means
instruction and coming from the Lord, it carries the idea of authoritative law. Meaning when a
person receives Torah, it means this is how you should live. This is how God says you should live.
And then depending on the context, Torah is a little bit flexible. It can refer to the first
five books of Moses that we're familiar with. It can refer sometimes to a single command.
Sometimes it's used, especially by Jews to describe the entire canon of the Hebrew scriptures.
Second in verse 98, you see the word commandments, mitzvah in Hebrew, found 22 times in this Psalm.
And this is a word that reveals Yahweh's authority, his inherent right to give his people orders,
to command them. Then in verse 99, you see the word testimonies in Hebrew, eduth, found 23 times
and related to the Hebrew word for witness. So it points to the dependability of the Bible as a
witness to the things of God. And sometimes that particular word carries with it the nuance of
being a warning to God's people. Fourth, we have the word precepts in verse 100 in Hebrew, pikkudim,
found 21 times, a word drawn from the office of an overseer. Then in the next verse, verse 101,
you see the most general Hebrew term for word, dabar, found 24 times in this Psalm. It simply
emphasizes the fact that God has spoken to his people. And then the sixth one, finally, in verse
102, is the word ordinances. In Hebrew, mishpatim, found 23 times. Sometimes you see that in your
Bible translated as judgments because it's rooted in the justice aspect of God's character. So those
are the six you see just in our section that we read. And then there's two more we're gonna see
later on in this preaching series, the word statutes in Hebrew, hukim, found 21 times. This
is a word that comes from the root to engrave or to inscribe upon. So it speaks of the permanence
of God's word. And last but not least, finally, we're gonna see a second term for the word word,
emrah, in Hebrew, found 19 times. And that is a particular word that has the nuance of describing
the promises that God gives to his people. So we talk about, we just say the Bible, right, or
the Scriptures. But Hebrew is so colorful, so many different nuances, so many words used by the
Psalmist. So with all those details established, let's walk through the logic of this particular
section of Mem. Beginning with the key verse, look at verse 97. Let's look there. It begins this way,
oh, how I love your law or how I love your instructions, how I treasure your instructions,
oh Lord. Now this is a theme that runs all through the Psalms. And we even see it most prominently
in the foundational Psalm of the whole collection. Remember, it's been over a year now, we were in
Psalm 1, and we looked at that and it said in Psalm 1, the man who is blessed by God, the one
who is happy in God, his delight is in the law of the Lord. And that word delight is so beautifully
descriptive, right? It speaks of a man or a woman who finds great pleasure and fulfillment in
studying and understanding every instruction that comes from God. He's delighted by it. And there's
all kinds of wonderful statements similar to that in the Psalms. But throughout, God's law is said
to be the most valuable thing that a man can possess. Try to wrap your mind around that. Think
about all the possessions we could have in this world. Would any of them actually outweigh what
God has stated, his love letter to us? It's greater than anything on earth, greater than any amount of
silver or gold. In fact, in this Psalm, 119, in verse 162, it says, I rejoice at your word as one
who finds great shalal, which is the word for spoil or plunder. Catch that. The psalmist sees God's law
as something valuable to be captured, as plunder. You go to go and capture it. And then there's
another great Hebrew verb which speaks of treasuring God's word. And the root of that word
is this idea of hiding it or storing it, which is what you do when you find something valuable.
You hide it away. You store it up for use at a later time. So that's the way the ancient Israelites
approach Torah. That's the way they saw it. And that's the way we ought, how we ought to approach
our Bibles each and every day. The problem with our culture today is that we all have multiple Bibles
in our homes. We have it in multiple translations on our computers and our phones. And it's so easy
to take for granted. The ancient Israelites would long to have what we have, but we ought to be
approaching it as that great possession, as if we had captured the most valuable thing in the whole
world and treated it like our greatest treasure. Now, one thing you have to make sure you don't do
in this is treat this word love in verse 97 as just some emotional or sentimental feeling.
Like, oh, we love this person. We're falling in love with this person. It's not the same thing.
The Hebrew word here means more than that. To love God's law is to make a lasting commitment to it.
To make a lasting commitment, to commit one's heart, to make God's law the foundation of your life.
And so in that sense, it has to surpass all other things because the man who loves God's word in the
sense that the psalmist is talking about, he cannot live without it. Have you ever tried to picture
that scenario in your mind? Something happens in this country where literally the scriptures
are ripped from us and we no longer have it. Could you live without it? Could you live without God's
word? The person who loves God's word cannot live without it. To him, it's food that sustains. To him,
it's water that slakes his thirst. To him, it's medicine that comes and heals and brings comfort.
God's word to the psalmist is life. Again, we're so spoiled that we don't often see it that way,
but the psalmist is screaming at us, see the word of God as your life. And so if you say,
well, of course I love God's word, Jeff. Of course I do. That's why I'm part of this church.
That's why I'm here. Okay. Then that means you're giving the word, it's your valuable time, right?
You're giving it your attention and your care. You're giving it honor and respect. You're putting
your trust in it. You're speaking highly of it in front of other people. And of course, at the end
of the day, you're obeying its instructions if you love God's law and the way the psalmist speaks of.
And I don't say that this morning to condemn anybody here, because not one person here would
say, I feel like I've done this sufficiently, right? That I've actually loved God's law
sufficiently. And we probably won't this side of heaven, but here's the really good news.
God's mercies are new every morning. We can start today. We can start tomorrow. That process of
cultivating the proper love that we should have for God's word. And it may start with us saying,
wow, I need to stop taking this for granted. The fact that I've got it on my device here,
my device there, and I've got it on my bookshelf and actually begin to treasure it.
Now, just as an aside, let me address something that sometimes comes up when we talk about the
lofty status of God's word. And this attack often comes from our Roman Catholic friends.
Sometimes they will say, look, you Protestants, you seem to worship the Bible more than you
worship God. Or if you've ever heard that attempt, you know, you're not going to be able to.
I don't know if you've ever heard that attack, but I have many times. And although that attack
is usually sort of thrown at us as a weapon, not in good faith, but we should be careful not to
prove it true in our lives. What I mean by that is I've known some people in the church
who through the years say they have a great love for the Bible. But as you begin to ask them
questions and see their lives, you see that really it's more of a love for the Bible as an
academic textbook. It's become a textbook to them. And somehow in their love for the text,
they're actually failing to worship and love the God who authored it. And so we should always be
clear on this. We love God's word because we love God. So let's make sure we get that straight.
And here in Psalm 119, where God's word is obviously lifted up as a great treasure,
we should notice as we go through this, these four weeks, that every time it talks about God's word,
it points back to the author. In fact, look at verse 97. Notice it doesn't say how I love the law,
how I love the Torah. It says how I love your law. So even though the law is a big part of this,
it ultimately goes back to the author. Make sense? We've got to make sure we get that right. Okay.
I want to look at the second phrase in verse 97. This is the big idea for this morning.
Look what it says. Not only does the Psalmist love God's law, he says it is my meditation all
the day. My meditation. Now, I don't know what word springs to your mind when you hear meditation.
Some people go like all new agey, right? Sitting crisscross applesauce with their, I don't know,
they do this or something with their fingers or whatever, and they start chanting. No, no, no.
No, no, no. Not biblical meditation. So don't wipe that from your brain.
Meditation. This is also a truth, by the way, that's laid out in Psalm one. For the blessed
man, remember what I just said, his delight is in the law of the Lord. And then that sentence is
finished with this phrase. And in his law, he meditates day and night. And then listen to,
listen to how that plays out in his life. When you meditate on God's word day and night, it says,
he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season
and its leaf does not wither. What does that tell us? How beautiful is that language, by the way,
right? What does that tell us? That the result of having a passion for God's word and taking the
time necessary to meditate upon it will produce in us deep, healthy roots within. And that's
within and deep, healthy roots within produce beautiful spiritual fruit on the outside.
But there's no shortcut to that. Sometimes we want that, right? We want the short,
I just want spiritual fruit to appear, but there's no shortcut. It requires this being
firmly planted by streams of water. So what does it mean to meditate on God's word then?
In a practical sense, if somebody, if some unbeliever walked up to you and said, okay,
hey, I hear you Christians meditate on the Bible. How do you do that? What does that look like?
How would you answer? Well, in the Hebrew, the word means to reflect upon something. In the English
language, it means engaging in thought or contemplation, very similar things, right?
And for the Psalmist who clearly loved God's word, that type of reflection, that type of
contemplation appears to just be a natural thing in his life. And it should be for us as well.
Because when you love something, you think about it all the time, right? It's like any man or woman
who falls in love with somebody, they think about that person all the time. You don't have to,
you don't have to say, okay, I need to set an alarm to make sure I think about my wife today.
No, I just do. It's a natural thing because I love her, because I care for her.
So for him, it's a natural thing. And it's something that builds on itself over time.
When you meditate on God's word, because you love it, guess what happens?
You love it all the more because you're spending more time with it. And it's, and it builds on
itself. And this was true of the author of Psalm 119. And we want it to be true of every member
here at Oak Hill, that we would all come to treasure God's word more and more with each passing year.
And I know you all nod your head. You're like, yeah, I want that because we've all heard that
exhortation many times, but I want to challenge you with this idea. It's not only important that you
consume biblical truth. It's how you do it. Not just that you read the Bible, but how you read it.
Because it's one thing to read the Bible, even to love the Bible in an intellectual sense.
It's another thing to actually treasure it. That as you're reading, you're hearing the very voice
of God speaking into your heart and your life. Those are different things, seeing it academically
and hearing the voice of God in its pages. When we go beyond reading the Bible and we start to
meditate on it, we find ourselves rehearsing its truths in our minds all day long. That's what he
means all day and night. When he says, I meditate all day and night, doesn't mean he's walking
around in life doing this all day long, right? Like, cause that's dangerous. It's like texting
and walking. It's bad, but he's rehearsing truth in his mind all day and all night in terms of
like internalizing God's instructions so that when it, and maybe you've had this experience,
you're internalizing God's instructions so that you walk into a situation and you're now confronted
with the choice. What happens? God's word pops up and speaks to your heart. And you're like,
I know what to do here. I know what will please God in this situation, but it has to be deeply
ingrained in us for that to happen. And that's why the great fourth century preacher, John Chrysostom
made this famous comment. He said, dive into the scriptures as into a chest of medicine and don't
simply dive into them, swim in them, keep them constantly in your mind. Maybe that's an image
you can keep to swim in God's word, to be in the pool all the time, filling your mind. But what
seems clear from the Psalms is that meditation is not the same thing as just hearing, not the same
as just reading. It's more than that. Because we can check a box by spending time reading the word.
We can check a box by saying, well, I was in church and I heard a good sermon. And yet we can walk away
from either reading a Bible or from Sunday worship and never again reflect on anything we've heard.
In one ear out the other, we never reflect, we never contemplate, we never rehearse those truths
in our minds. Now, why do we fail in that when we know it's important? Well, number one, because
our pace of life is so busy that we just can't find time to carve out space and time to actually
reflect on things. Or number two, because of reason number one, we just haven't established
meditation as a habit. And spiritual habits need to be cultivated. And we just don't have that habit.
And what we tend to do is we go, boom, got that done, check that box, what's next? And we move on to the next thing
in our schedule. And we fail to fulfill exactly what the Psalmist is telling us to do here,
to meditate on God's word. So if you were to ask me practically, Jeff, what method should be used
to meditate on the scriptures, I'll probably disappoint you by saying this because the how
of meditation is actually not easy to pin down because we don't have a man. There's no step by
step manual to tell us how to do this. And frankly, because of your unique personality,
because of your life, because of your schedule, it might look very different from for you than
it does for me. But here's my promise at the end of the message, I'm going to close with what I think
is a good process, something that has worked for me in the past. So hold tight on that because that's
really important. What I will say is this, each one of us has to find a method for meditation,
something that works for us because the one thing we can't do is just ignore this example in the
Psalms and say, I don't want to meditate because if we're saying that we're basically saying, I
don't really want to grow. I don't really want to mature in my faith. So this is not really optional.
Make sense? Okay. So now we've just covered one verse. We better get going. All right. Yikes.
What I want you to see next is what the Psalmist says. These two things, loving God's law and
meditating on it. What does it produce in a man's life? Those two things, whoop, they're gone now.
Those two things, let me put it back up. What will they produce in a man's life? Look at verses 98
to 100. What we see here is that that habit will make you wise. It will give you understanding,
insight and discernment. Anybody ever prayed for those things? Good. Verse 98,
your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, he says, for they are ever mine. Verse 99,
I have more insight or more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies or my meditation.
Verse 100, I understand more. I'm more discerning than the aged because I have observed or obeyed
your precepts. So you see three comparisons here, right? Right? Three different groups of people.
The Psalmist says, let me compare myself to three groups, my enemies, my teachers and old folks.
And of all three groups, he says, I'm wiser. Well, why? For one simple reason, because he loves God's
law and he meditates on it all the day. Now at first glance or first hearing, and we read this
at the beach last Sunday and I heard some of you guys talking about this, you're like, wow, he seems
pretty full of himself, but you have to understand where his confidence comes from, right? His
confidence comes from the infinite wisdom of God, which he is taking in on a regular basis.
And by definition, that is always going to be superior to any human wisdom or any wisdom that
we find in this fallen world. Do we understand that? There's a lot of smart people in this world,
but apart from God's word, you have more wisdom than they do. Process that. So our enemy,
are going to be out there touting their intellectual capabilities. They're going to
boast in their ways, but at the end of the day, what did they actually have? This very narrow,
finite perspective that is tainted with darkness and sin, right? Which makes them blind to the
greater realities in terms of the big questions of life and death. So you may look at them and go,
that's a really smart person. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wise.
And our human teachers, uh-oh, teachers out there, even the ones we love and admire in the psalmist
is not trying to demean teachers here because we need them in our lives. And yes, we can learn
from them, but even human teachers are bound by finiteness and by this fallen world and by their
own sin. So I think his argument is basically this. If our human teachers can teach us some things,
how much more can God's word teach us? So I think that's the argument. So I think that's the
argument. How much more can God's word teach us? Make sense? And yes, we can learn from people who
are older than us, who have more experience than us, but newsflash, age doesn't always mean wisdom.
We should extend honor and respect to the aged, but know that there's a lot of old fools out there.
I've met men in their twenties who have more wisdom than men in their seventies. Why? Because
wisdom is something that they've spent years studying and applying God's word. And some men
in their twenties have been more diligent in that than men in their seventies.
Hmm. Because wisdom comes from that, right? Diligence in studying and applying God's word.
So again, I'll go back to Spurgeon as he once said, he said, we may hear the wisest teachers
and fools, but if we meditate upon the sacred word, we will become wise. There is more wisdom
in the testimonies of the Lord than in all the teachings of men. If they were all gathered into
one vast library, do you believe that? The one book outweighs all the rest. Why? Because it's
from the infinite creator. Now notice some of the nuances in the language in these verses, 98 to 100.
Why do God's commandments make the Psalmist wiser than his enemies? He says, because they're always
with me. They're ever mine, he says, right? That means he's internalized God's law. He has tasted
it. He has chewed on it. He has ingested it. Now it's a part of him and it goes with him everywhere
he goes. That's the goal. Why do God's testimonies give the Psalmist more insight than his teachers?
Because it says those testimonies are his meditation. He is rehearsing the witness of God's
truth in his mind all the time. And finally, why do God's precepts give the Psalmist more understanding
than those older than him? This is important. Look, because he has observed them, which means
the Psalmist isn't just hearing. He isn't just reading. That's a piece to the equation, but he
is applying it as well. He's obeying all that God has set before him as the path to wisdom and
blessing. That's why he feels confident, so confident to speak as he does. So make sure you
catch the summary of those three comparisons. The Psalmist says, I have more wisdom, insight,
and understanding than those in the world because each and every day, number one, I carry God's word
with me. Number two, I'm constantly meditating on it. And number three, I walk in obedience.
Now, if you're looking for a formula for maturity in the Lord, there's a really good one.
There's a really good formula. And if we'll commit to that same process, the promise we have is that
we will begin to cultivate this love for God's instruction, and we will begin to walk in wisdom.
But you got to know this. This is key. It won't happen by magic. There's a lot of magical thinking
in the church. If I'm just around godly people, it just somehow sinks in and comes out of the
life. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. We cooperate with the Spirit of God who
wants to grow us in sanctification. We yield to the work of the Spirit. We put in the work
so that God can use that effort, that work, that striving to produce the fruit that only he can
produce. It's a cooperative effort. Make sense? So look, you got to establish certain priorities.
You got to make certain choices. And at some point, you got to do hard things like put down
your phone. I'm guilty. I'm with you. I'm not preaching at you. I'm preaching to us. We got to
put down the phone. We got to log off the computer. We got to get off social media. We got to turn off
Netflix. And we got to find that space, that quiet time, and the focus and the energy to really love
God's word and to meditate upon it. There's guys, man, if I had a cheat code on this, I'd share it
with you, but there's no cheat code. There's no shortcut. There's no substitute for that.
Sorry. Okay. What else does loving God's word and meditating produce in us? Look at verse 101.
It says, I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep your word. And then
let me tack on the last verse. Look at verse 104. From your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore,
I hate every false way. So continuing in our logic, meditating on God's word taught the psalmist
there's a form of knowledge that you can only find in obedience, living in a restrained way,
living by principles and convictions that help you to stay away from evil
and to stay on the path of blessing. And I find the way it's phrased here so interesting
because we often talk about knowing the word so that we won't walk in sin, but here, look,
it's flipped around. He says, I restrained my feet from walking in sin so that I keep God's word.
It's a symbiotic relationship between those two statements. They build on each other.
Meditating on the word restrains us from evil and encourage us to walk faithfully with Jesus.
And when we choose to do that, it causes us to love God's word more. Why? Because it produces
in us spiritual fruit, which is pleasing to us and pleasing to God. It's symbiotic. These two
things go together. It reminds me when I was always writing this, you probably have heard this quote
from D.L. Moody, sin will keep you from this book or this book will keep you from sin.
I mean, that is so simple yet so profound.
So bottom line, your best and most effective companion in the fight against sin
is meditating on God's word and then allowing the spirit of God to impress its judgments on your
heart and your mind. And then you take that with you out into this big bad world and let it speak
to you in the situations you bump into. Notice in verse 104, growing in understanding leads one
into understanding. It says, it says what we get is spiritual discernment because every day we face
all these choices, right? Every day. Look, if you're anything like me, you pray in the morning,
you spend time in the word and you go out into the world and you have the best intentions, right?
To always respond in a godly way and then bam, something happens and you're like,
I did not expect that to happen. And now I'm challenged and now I want to react in the flesh.
Right? Things come at us every day. We're faced with these choices, right? We're going to walk
the path of obedience or the path of sin. And if you're loving God's word consistently and
you're meditating on its instructions over time, over time, it becomes easier for you to bump into
the situation and go, I recognize that. That is the path to sin. If I keep going down that path,
it's going to lead to conflict and pain and discouragement. And at the same time I go,
I also know the other path and I know that path leads to blessing and joy and contentment.
Right? And then you pick accordingly and it causes us over time to hate evil more and more
because we see where that leads. And can I just say sometimes, sometimes, and I can admit this,
I can admit this. Sometimes you have to feel real pain from walking that false way and you have to
experience the consequences of your sin and how it affects you, how it affects those around you,
those that you love, your family, for you to learn that lesson and say, you know what? I'm going back
to God's word and I'm going to love it all the more and I'm going to meditate on it. So next time
I get to that crossroads and I see those two paths, I'll make the right choice. And the Spirit is
there if we'll yield to Him to help us make that choice. This is how scripture makes us wise unto
sanctification. That's the promise. And by the way, if you think that's too simplistic, you know,
Jesus said the same thing in John chapter 17. Do you remember the high priestly prayer?
The last night that Jesus spent with his disciples, here's what he said. He said,
Father, sanctify these men in the truth, sanctify them in the truth. He said, your word is truth.
The Spirit of God works through the truth of scripture to grow us and mature us
in every way in our thinking and our feeling and our priorities in our desires and in the choices
we make to either walk the path of obedience or sin. Now we can't skip past verse 102 because it
too holds a very important truth. Look at verse 102. I've not turned aside from your ordinances.
Well, how? It says, because you yourself have taught me. So the Psalmist says, you God,
you yourself have revealed truth to me. You yourself have taught me through your word,
through your ordinances. This is what I was talking about at the beginning. The Psalmist
heard the voice of God in the pages of the scriptures, which is a wonderful thing.
Now, obviously that truth didn't eliminate the need for God to send prophets. We have the word,
but God also chose spokesmen to speak his truth, to call people back to that truth.
And in the new covenant era, he still uses pastors and elders and teachers to take the scriptures,
to exposit it and to call us back to faithfulness. But the advantage we have in this dispensation
is that we also have the indwelling spirit. We have an advantage over the Psalmist,
right? Because the promise that Jesus said is that the spirit will come and teach you all things
and bring to your remembrance all that I said. And then two chapters later, the spirit will come and
guide you into all truth. But that's always been the promise, whether it's old Testament or new,
the promise has been that the Lord would not leave his people without a witness to the truth.
So I hear it all the time. I wish God would speak to me. Guess what? He has. He has. Again,
it's sitting in your lap. It's sitting in your hands. It's on your phone, probably. He has spoken
to you. We're personally taught by the Lord when we come to him with open, humble hearts,
and we meditate on his instructions. Now, one final verse to look at, and it's literally
sweet. Verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste? Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
This is where all the everything that the Psalmist has said up to this point, this is where it leads
to the sweetness of God's word, which is the sweetness of God himself, treasuring God's word,
committing your life to its precepts, meditating on it day after day. And now that I've read the
Bible, and now that I'm in my early sixties, I can tell you it gets more and more sweet with each
passing year. It really does. Walking with the Lord through the seasons of life, being able to
look back now and go, man, you know, my twenties, my thirties, my forties, my fifties. Wow. Seeing
how God has been faithful in both trials and in blessing through all those seasons of life and
grandkids, it gets sweeter and sweeter as you look back. I think about it this way. Think about
how do you enjoy a piece of hard candy? How do you eat it? Really slowly, hopefully, right? Don't do
that, dentists, right? Don't do that. You put it in your mouth and then you just let it slowly dissolve.
And the more it dissolves, the sweeter it gets in your mouth, right? But it takes time. It takes time.
That's how the word of God becomes sweet to us. Little by little, each time we open it up, each time
we pray over it, each time we ask the spirit to teach us, word by word, verse by verse, chapter by
chapter, over time it becomes sweet. Sweet as honey, the psalmist says. By the way, the opposite is true.
Over that time, falsehood begins to taste more and more bitter. So there should be this separation
of the two, the more time you spend in God's word. So is that how you feel about the Bible? Big question.
Is that how you feel about the Bible that's in your hands this morning? Is it sweet to you? Is it sweeter
than Krispy Kreme? Sweeter than Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake? Right. We all have our favorite dessert.
Do we see it as that sweet? If not, it's good to ask the question, why not? Why isn't there an appetite
present in me for God's word? That's a really good question. Don't be afraid of that question, by the
way. Don't feel ashamed by it. Why have my taste buds become dull? That is worth exploring. It might
be that you're intimidated by the Bible. It might be that it's hard to understand. It might be that,
gosh, there's parts of it that are really boring. Is that bad? Right? If that's you, that's okay.
Come ask for some help. We have people that can walk you through that, that can give you reading
plans, study plans, can help you to bring the text of Scripture alive. So don't be ashamed of that.
But I will say this as well. If you don't find the words of Scripture sweet because there's sin in
your life and because you don't want to be confronted or exposed by it, that's a different
deal. I once heard a pastor say this, the Bible is a book that in some ways is dangerous to our
peace and our comfort and to our comfortable illusions about ourselves. So sometimes we avoid
the word and we're like, it doesn't feel or taste sweet to me right now because I'm enjoying my sin.
The word is sharper than a two-edged sword, right? It will cut and it will divide and the Spirit will
use the Scripture to confront things that he wants you to grow out of. And so if the Bible isn't
sweet to you because of sin, I just want to encourage you, now is the day, today is the day
to start dealing with that reality. We've all been there. Sometimes we want to hide and go, I'm the
only guy that's ever wrestled with this. It's a lie from Satan. He's the only one that's ever
wrestled with this. It's a lie from Satan. We've all been there. But deal with the reality. Commit to
a process of honesty and openness with the Lord and again, ask for help because we have people
here who could help. Did you catch the lyrics of the song that we sang right before I came up here?
It's called Honey, which is, it's one of my favorite worship songs. So,
so look at this chorus. Is this the chorus, Grant? Okay, thanks. Just checking.
And ask yourself the question, does this describe how I feel about God?
It says, you Lord delight in me. I'm adored. I'm desired by you.
Do you believe that? You cherish me. You count me as blessed. Yeah, through Jesus Christ, you love me
to death. That's how much you love me. Does that resonate in your heart? You're like, nope,
that's not me. I'm fully known. God knows everything about you. All of your inclinations,
all of your thoughts. I'm fully known and yet my King still loves me. If you're found in Christ,
he still loves you. He's not angry. He just wants better for you. I've been exposed before God and
yet you speak to me softly, like a shepherd. My deepest joy is found in you and you only,
because God, my God, you feel that? The way of that? My God, you are as sweet as honey to me.
So it's a good question to ask. Is that how I see God? Is that how my relationship with God
looks and feels? Okay, as you process that, let me close with a practical example of what
meditation looks like, at least in my life. Martin Luther once said that, and I love this image,
he said the best way to study the Bible and to meditate on it is pick a passage that is
like a fruit tree. Pick a text and then just shake the heck out of that thing until the fruit starts
falling in your lap. I like that. But you've got to do the shaking. See, some of us expect the fruit
to fall without doing the shaking. You've got to get in there. You've got to shake the tree.
So let me just give you an example. Let's say there's a man who has a problem with anger
and it's something that has been present in his life for a long time. He's got a problem with
anger and it's something that has been present in his life throughout his adult years. Too often,
he's angry about things at work. He's angry at his wife because she's not doing all that he thinks
she should. He's angry at his kids because they irritate him and his anger becomes a dark cloud
over his life and over his family's life. And in the heat of the moment, he tries to justify his
anger. He's like, but I got so much pressure in my life. He justifies it, but he knows deep down,
because he's a Christian, he knows deep down that this is sin and that it's hurting his family.
And from time to time during his life, he will commit himself. I am going to work on this
and I'm going to get better of my anger. And he finds limited success, but he still falls
way short of the man that he wants to be. So the question is, besides constantly praying about this
and besides humbling himself and asking for help, what else can he do?
This is where meditation comes in. For starters, he should look long and hard at every passage in
the Bible that speaks to this issue of anger. And he could go straight to James chapter one, right?
It says, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger for the anger of man
does not produce the righteousness of God. And there are many passages like this that speak to
the issue of anger. And then this man should slow down, find quiet time, find space and start to
meditate on that statement and others. That is essential to the process. It's not enough. Just
read it. Okay. Oh, James is right. Okay. What's next? No, slow down and start to parse through
that verse and all the verses that talk about anger. And if he does that, he's going to realize, wow,
anger is contrary to the purposes of God in my life. Not only is it unrighteous in itself,
it actually is working against righteousness in my life. That's a conviction, right? And that
unrighteousness then is spilling out into my family's life, hurting the wellbeing of my family.
And I let that sting a little bit because it should. And if he's paying attention to that passage and
other places, he'll find out, you know what? I really don't have a right to be angry at others,
especially when I'm banking on the fact that God's not angry at me.
That doesn't seem right. Perhaps in reflection time, he looks at Jesus as his example and says,
well, how did Jesus respond when he was, when he was treated so poorly, so unjustly,
Jesus didn't retaliate. And he's my example. And what is anger? But a, but a, a lack of self
control and self-control is a fruit of the spirit. This demanded of Christians in Galatians five,
not only is anger contrary to the fruit of the spirit, it's actually the wicked fruit of self
centeredness because it makes my own happiness, the central issue of my life and therefore should be
the central issues of everybody's life to make sure I'm happy. You see how this works? When you
start parsing through what scripture says, what about the command to return a curse with blessing?
What about the command to be a peacemaker in a world of conflict and strife? That's what Jesus
told me to be. So if this man then confesses his need to God and he collates all those biblical
texts together that shows him the sinfulness of his ways, and he reads those texts and he mulls
over them carefully and he thinks about them often and he begins to memorize them and he asks the
spirit for help. And then he begins to write out how those biblical texts should be understood and
applied to his life. And then he does this not once, not twice, but he does it every day and every
day and every week and every month and every year until he begins to see progress in his heart and
in his life. That is what I think the Bible means by meditate. By the way, that's my story. I just
told you my story from many years ago. It's very personal to me, but it takes that time and it takes
that energy and it takes that focus and it takes shaking that tree, not going, oh God will fix that
or ah this whatever. No, no. You've got to attack these things by loving God's law and by meditating
on his word. And that folks is how men and women throughout church history have put sin to death in
their lives through the word and by the spirit. But it's not by magic. It's by ingesting the word.
It's by chewing on the word. It's by shaking the tree of every text and making it a part of
themselves and then carrying that wherever they go. By the way, this is really just, this is the heart
of biblical counseling. This is literally what we do. It's hard work. If you've signed up for
biblical counseling at Oak Hill, you know it's not a cakewalk, right? It's hard work. That's the
expectation of scripture and God will honor that. If that's your desire to overcome sin, if that's
your desire to please the Lord in every way, he will honor that and he will bring all the power of
the Almighty to strengthen you and to heal you and to help you to walk in a path of wisdom and
blessing. Amen. Friends, the word of God is a phenomenal gift, a phenomenal gift. The greatest
thing, the greatest treasure we could ever have. We just have to love his instructions.
We just have to commit to meditating on them because they will bring you all the things that
you truly want deep in your heart, right? To love God and to love others and to please him in every way.
Father, we stand amazed at the power of your word. Even something like Hebrew poetry
that is authored by you, how beautiful it is, how practical it is, how convicting it is,
all the things that you teach us, all the ways that you instruct us, Lord God, we
stand amazed at you as the author of all of it.
And God, we pray, pray that you would seal these truths in our hearts, Lord. I pray for myself and
for my brothers and sisters that we would not shy away from what you've called us to in this passage,
to love your law, to love the instructions that you've given to us. It's a love letter. It's what
is best for us and that we would desire to be able to do that. We would love to be able to
love the Lord God in every way that you've given us and that we would desire that you would
cultivate that in our hearts, a desire to meditate on every word that you've given us,
both for your glory and for our good, Lord, because we know that that is the result of it.
So help us to do that well, God. Help us to help us to continue to lean into your word
in obedience, to trust you for that and to encourage one another to love and good deeds
that you've given us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.