[0:00] Psalm 119, we'll look at the verses with our time together. Teenagers have an expression. If a person understood the assignment, David DuBois certainly understood the assignment tonight. He took us to school, and I really enjoyed that.
[0:13] To see the excitement that's available to us, that trip he took us on through God's Word, which is right there for us, and just taking a bit of time to read those cross-references and just to rejoice the way it built, right?
[0:25] And to see to get the revelation. I knew he would end up in Revelation. Those that are in his class know that everything's going through Revelation these days, but I just love that, and I'm so grateful for it. So, alphabet vet, gimel, dalet, hey.
[0:39] I sing it like the alphabet. It's the best way to memorize it. Hey, verse number 33 for verse 40. H-E, the first two that you see in the inscription above the verse.
[0:49] And I haven't read it to you yet, but I've shown you that each one of these verses start with a request. If I was to ask you tonight if you have any prayer requests, we do that a lot of times in our life group, I doubt any of you would give the seven prayer requests that are here.
[1:05] I would encourage you, if you don't have a prayer request, maybe look to one of these as your prayer request. The go to God. These are the kind of things that we should be praying for, not just events in people's lives, but we should go to the Lord and say, Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, and I shall keep unto the end.
[1:22] Another request, verse 34. Give me understanding and I shall keep thy law. Yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart. A prayer request and then a response that when God is answering it.
[1:32] Verse 35. Make me to go in the path of thy commandments, for therein do I delight. Incline my heart into thy testimonies and not the covetousness.
[1:43] Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity and quicken thou me in thy way. Verse 38. Establish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear. Turn away my reproach, which I fear, for thy judgments are good.
[1:57] Behold, I have longed after thy precepts. Quicken me in thy righteousness. The psalmist is praying here. Give me understanding. Guide me so that I will faithfully keep your word.
[2:08] But he's faced with two obstacles, two difficulties, which are true for him, and it's most certainly true for us still to this day. The first one we see is this allurement of the world in which we gain at any cost worthless activities that compete for his attention.
[2:24] Father, help me as I desire your word to avoid the desire that I would have towards the things of this world. The second one is the reproach that we suffer from those who reject God and the way of righteousness.
[2:39] When I've committed to the precepts, I've committed to the way, his commandments, and I'm going to walk in this, in this world, I am going to go against the grain. I'm going against the culture. And so I'm going to find that opposition.
[2:51] I'm going to be in a situation where I'm going to say, this world isn't built for me to go in this direction. It'd be a lot easier if I just gave in to the peer pressure or to the norms, and that is going to fight against you, just like the allurements of this world.
[3:06] So the theme in this portion is a desire for God, which is shown in a desire for his ways and for his word. And the nature of the psalmist, his request here, it shows a humility and a dependence on the Lord, the way that he's speaking to the Lord, the things that he's asking for.
[3:25] You know, I need help. Things that little kids say, the parents that adults don't often say to people is like, you told me to do something, but I need you to help me do that.
[3:35] That's what we're having a psalmist say, is like, God, I know your commandments, but I'm not going to be able to do that. We sung it tonight. I can't think exactly of the expression that we sung to our brothers and sisters in Spanish.
[3:48] We have some help from a Chilean brother that's helping us translate some of the songs so we can sing them together. But it says, give me the strength to do what you have called me to do.
[3:59] One of the songs that we sung tonight spoke about asking him to give us the strength to do what we are supposed to do. So that's what we have. The word with our whole heart, to keep the word with our whole heart, we're going to need to know his word.
[4:12] Verse 33, teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, and I shall keep it unto the end. God, you teach this to me. If you will teach this to me, I will keep it here.
[4:24] And so it's a request for God to show him his ways. It requires our humility to ask this. In this manner, the psalmist was saying, if you will teach it to me, then I'll be able to keep your statutes.
[4:37] But God, if you don't, I'm not going to be able to do anything. And we're reminded, Psalm 19, which we looked at tonight, David started us with there. It says, moreover by them is thy servant worn, and in keeping of them there is a great reward.
[4:52] The law itself is a reward for the servant of God. The keeping of it is a reward. It's the light of our heart. Our whole affections are set upon it. And so we have to understand it if we are going to keep it.
[5:04] Verse 34, teach me, verse 34, give me understanding, and I shall keep that law. I'll observe it with my whole heart. God, I need discernment. Whole heart qualifies this idea.
[5:14] The more he knows and understands God's word, the way more enthusiastically he can obey it. I don't think I could ask for a better example tonight. Reading. What should happen when you read the passage that David had given us in the book of John, where we read about him being pierced?
[5:31] The response, the application to that verse is worship. It is to, it is I have to respond that Jesus Christ died for me.
[5:42] That happens when you hear, thank you Jesus, the song we just heard, it stirred in our hearts, right? It caused us to want to worship the Lord. But David taking us wide and then deep did the same thing.
[5:56] It gave us an understanding of it. And so that you could read past that verse, but when you stop and say, God, give me understanding. And he would say, well, to help your understanding, compare scripture with scripture.
[6:08] So read in some other portions. By the time we got to revelation, we didn't just know what pierced meant, but we felt it, right? It sunk into our soul where it was supposed to be.
[6:20] So we need the discernment to understand the Bible. I heard an argument on the internet. You know, people do that. That's where people go. They used to go behind the school and fight. Not anymore. All right. And as a person said that Adam, it says in the Bible that Adam and Eve had three sons.
[6:35] How are you going to tell me that 8 billion people came from three sons? It doesn't make any sense. And then people just responded with, read the rest of the verse, right? He had sons, he had daughters, he lived a long time.
[6:46] But people just read a little bit of the passage, and then they stop. They have no understanding of the passage. They have no context in the passage. They don't go deep enough. In our understanding of God's word, sometimes we struggle because we don't understand it to the depth that is available.
[7:03] We need to go deeper in the God's word. The believer desires to have a guidance from it because we delight in being led by him. Verse 35, Make me to go in the path of thy commandments, for therein do I delight.
[7:20] We desire to be led of the Lord. Kids, teenagers, what do we say? Nobody can tell me what to do. I can't wait until I get to make my own decisions. What do we say as an adult?
[7:30] Somebody please tell me what to do. All right? Or as some say, there's an adultier adult around. You ever heard that expression? There's somebody that's more adult than you are.
[7:40] If I'm anywhere with Chuck Littlefield, I'm just like, he's going to take care of everything. I don't need to know where we parked the car. I don't need to know if everything's safe. I have a real adult here with me tonight.
[7:51] I have some real guidance here with me. And we desire that. The psalmist would say, He makes me to lie down in green pastures, and he leadeth me beside the still waters.
[8:03] The place that the word of God leads me to is green pastures. It is still waters. I want to be led by this word. It has never led me astray. It has never taken me where I did not belong.
[8:16] It has cleansed my ways. It has protected me. And so we delight in it. Why should we delight in the word of God? Let's start with this. 1 Peter 1, 23 tells us this, Being born again, not of a corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, but by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
[8:36] We should remember that life came to us from the word of God, that we understood how could we have faith unless we hear, and how could we hear unless they were sent, and what were they sent with?
[8:47] The word of God. Why do we call it the seed line on the Saturday admissions conference, and why do we decide about putting John and Romans together? Because we're not putting Time magazine together.
[8:58] We're not putting any of these other, anything less together. We're putting the word of God together, that somebody's going to read, and it's going to bring them from death unto life.
[9:08] And then in the life of the believer, sanctify me, them through thy truth, thy word is truth. Jesus' prayer for us in John 17, 17. It's through the word that we are going to grow.
[9:19] So a couple of things quickly here of how to do that. Why the delight in it is because, or how do we do that? How do we soak our minds in the word?
[9:31] Psalm 1, 2 says, But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and as long as he meditates day and night. Nothing can replace Bible memory in forging a connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts.
[9:46] Nothing more, nothing that we can do with the Scripture is going to help us fully meditate and take it in like Bible memorization. I want to encourage you that the frustrating thing about Bible memorization for me is it's difficult, and that I don't always feel like I'm just getting it right.
[10:06] And then you feel like you've accomplished the goal when you finally get to say it right, and then you've memorized it so well that you can't forget it. Well, I can tell you that you can memorize Bible verses and not remember it a year from now, and it still helps you.
[10:19] You can try to memorize a Bible verse, and until you've memorized it perfectly, it's still helping you, right? Because it's just a way of soaking your mind in the word as you're dealing with it and going through that process.
[10:29] Just the process alone is helping your mind. And then we can pray through Scriptures. I'll do that here in a moment. I will pray through this portion of Psalm Force.
[10:40] It helps us internalize the words that are being said. These aren't just the words of the psalmist, but I want them to be my words tonight. On Sunday night, this coming Sunday night, we will meet in here for a little bit, and then we will meet, and we'll meet with our Spanish brothers and sisters as well, and we are going to divide in the different portions of the church, and we're going to pray through Scripture concerning our missions conference.
[11:05] And so we should pray through the Scriptures. We should memorize the Scriptures. We should discuss the Scriptures. Write it out in your devotions. Share it with other people. Have conversations.
[11:16] I mentioned that about David. David is always wrestling with some passage, always asking me. I don't know how many times he'll say, what do you think about this? And I'll say, David, I've never thought about that. I have no opinion on that.
[11:27] I didn't even know I was supposed to have an opinion on that subject before. Because the Bible is just so wonderful, and there should be no shame in that. And I hope and believe in 50 years from now, if I'm still living, I wouldn't place bets on that, but if I was still living, that I'm still going to be shocked when somebody brings something to me, and this says, have you ever seen that?
[11:49] Not because I'm not going to be dedicated to it, but it's just, there's so much that is here. What is the picture given in Deuteronomy about the children of Israel when it came to helping their kids know the Bible verses?
[12:01] It says, write it upon the post of the house and upon the gates and keep it in front of you. It's just, write it everywhere. Some of you ladies, this isn't your permission to go to Hobby Lobby Wendy and buy more scripture verses, okay?
[12:12] But it's putting just scripture everywhere. And so sometimes it can be decorative, sometimes it can be a note card, sometimes it can be in another way, but you should be constantly, everywhere you're turning, running back into the scriptures that are there for you.
[12:27] And no generation will have more evidence to the fact that our Bible reading suffered not from a lack of time, but from a lack of attention. Because I have more ability to organize my time than the CEO of a major company did a hundred years ago.
[12:43] Just because there's a million things to remind me. I don't have to count on somebody else reminding me can be done there. And we should see these promises. I'll end with praying this portion of scripture and we'll pick up again.
[12:55] We've looked at a few of the requests out of the seven here tonight. And next couple weeks from now, we have missions conference. We'll look at how the work of the Spirit in our hearts through the words keep us from covetousness and vanity.
[13:09] And that's everywhere you turn. Covetousness and vanity is everywhere you turn. So we need the Word of God to help us incline our hearts to the things of God. And what's great is, there is nothing when we really meditate on the Word that is of anything in this world that is of greater attraction than the Word of God.
[13:30] The treasure that is found there. Like when we truly see it for what it is and we pray to God to help us, there's moments that we'd say, I would not trade what I know, what I just heard.
[13:41] The idea that Jesus Christ coming pierced for us in Revelation is of greater value than anything that I will ever drive or any meal that I will ever eat or anything else in this world.
[13:53] This book has greater, it's a jewel, we said, right? It's of greater wealth than anything else in this world. And that captivates our attention so much that the other things that are distractions from us, the things that will draw us in the sin, they just seem to be so much inferior.
[14:08] They seem to be completely empty when we behold Him through His Word. Let's pray together and then we'll be dismissed tonight. Heavenly Father, I thank You for what we have sung, the truth, what we have heard, presented, the testimonies that were given.
[14:26] Lord, I pray that You would help teach us, O Lord, the ways of Your statutes. We need understanding. Father, I can read this book, but I need You to work in my heart and to show me.
[14:38] And Lord, as You show this to me, I will buy the truth, Lord. I will not sell it. I will keep it to the very end continually, Lord. Give me understanding and I will keep Your law, Lord.
[14:49] And I will observe it with all of my heart. I will not come at this lightly, Lord, as You show it to me, Lord. I will give my entire life to it. Make me to go on the path of Your commandments and I will delight.
[15:02] Lord, the path of this world does not bring me joy and happiness. And so, Lord, I'm praying tonight that You will help incline my heart to Your testimonies so that I will not covet after the things of this world.
[15:15] In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.