Well, anytime you visit somewhere, you've got to do a quick couple boxes to check off.
So first of all, greetings from Crossway, Milwaukee.
We've enjoyed whatever kind of level of fellowship we can have throughout the years.
In particular, since the last time I was here, I've been able to have lunch and coffee with Mike Salvati and Matt Sear.
And it's been a great blessing of a time.
Those men love this church.
And it's a great encouragement to me to be here once again.
Another box I need to check off is Eric Tully.
Kirk Miller sends his greetings wherever you are.
If he's not here, send it to him, Eric.
All right, very well.
I feel like a little bit, you know, like when Paul sends a letter to show up at a church and he's like,
greet this person and this person.
I'm assuming maybe they did some of that.
So that's from Kirk in Milwaukee.
And then my family, it's just a great pleasure to be here.
So my wife over there, Dan, my name is Dan, and then Danica, Dan and Danica.
And then our three kids are with us, Tally or Talatha and then Selah and Dupree.
So it's great to be here.
Let's jump into the word.
I'll tell you my goal right up front.
My goal is that all of us here would be stirred up to pursue a life in the word of God.
It's very simple.
So I'm not trying to convince you of the profitability of the word of God.
Now, if you're not convinced of that, I hope that you will be convinced of that throughout this time.
But I'm not, my goal is not merely to convince you of a fact, but that God would stir up our hearts to pursue a life in the word.
That we would see that as valuable and worth sacrificing other things in life to have a life in the word.
So I find one of the interesting things about the human race is that we like to be terrified sometimes, right?
If it's for entertainment, we like instability.
You know, that's why people go to, let's say, Great America, right?
I mean, people pay exuberant amounts of money to feel totally out of control, right?
I mean, that's what you do on a roller coaster.
You're terrified.
That's why you're screaming.
That's why you like to watch those things on YouTube as somebody is, like, passing out on the roller coaster.
Because they're terrified.
And we enjoy that for whatever reason.
We like tubing behind a boat because it makes us feel out of control.
We like bungee jumping.
Or when you're a kid, you like, my four-year-old loves it if you come around the corner and just, bah!
You know, first he jumps back and he lets out this huge scream and then he says, I love that.
You're like, what is wrong with us?
Like, right?
There's something about us that we like that.
We enjoy it.
But that's, of course, if it's for entertainment, right?
I mean, if that actually comes into our home, like, in daily life,
like a feeling of instability,
that we don't want.
But the reality is that that is life on this world.
That's life on this side of eternity.
It is a roller coaster.
And much of it is experiencing some of those quick down, you know, on a roller coaster.
And you're just terrified and you're waiting and it's going down.
That's what life is like a lot of times.
You know, you're struggling in a relationship or financial crisis.
Or just fear of a doctor's appointment or fear of putting the kids in school over and over again.
I mean, we could come up with this long list of this just scary world.
It's scary because you're limited.
I'm limited.
We can't control things.
We don't like that.
Now, our psalmist this morning gives us the solution of where to find stability in this unstable world.
And it's very simple.
His claim to us in the text is that God's word gives God's people strength and stability.
Both in this life and in the next.
That's the way the psalm goes.
God's word gives God's people strength and stability in this life and in the next.
Now, this psalm, you may know, comes to us as the first chapter of psalms.
That was pretty simple, right?
Psalms is a book, as you guys have been going through, this is a book of poems.
It's a way of helping us to encounter our emotions.
What does it look like to worship God and come underneath his authority in heartfelt faith in this roller coaster of life?
And that's why you read so many psalms that there's ups and there's downs.
There's times of confusion and chaos and defeat.
And there's times of great victory and happiness.
And it's all about how do we come underneath God's authority and worship him?
And isn't it interesting that he starts off, the book of psalms starts off with a focus on the very law of God.
The worship of God through the book.
So as a wisdom psalm, he's presenting two paths, two ways of life, as you will.
There's the way of the wicked and there's the way of the blessed.
This is a wisdom psalm, we would call it.
And he's not trying to get you to just see that there's two paths, but he's urging us and begging us to pursue the blessed way.
So he's going to paint a picture of what is the blessed way?
How do we pursue it?
And that's how I understand he would have us to leave the psalm.
So we're just going to walk through the psalm, most of it, so at least we see the claim.
Who is this blessed man?
How does he become blessed?
It starts off right there, verse 1.
1 and 2 is kind of showing a negative relationship and a positive relationship with something, right?
He starts off, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor does he stand in the way of sinners, nor does he sit in the seat of scoffers.
Now notice the progression there.
He doesn't walk or stand or sit.
There's a progression in what he's talking about.
And you could summarize this as he doesn't kind of mingle with sin.
Now I don't think that doesn't mean he doesn't like hang around with sinners, otherwise Jesus would not qualify as the blessed man.
But it's engaging in the activity.
It's not only just standing with him, but sitting, and this is who I am.
He says the blessed man has a negative relationship with that.
He resists it and turns from it.
And then he throws in a contrast.
Now before you read verse 2, you should ask yourself, well what's the opposite of that?
So blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.
Instead, he what?
I mean if I didn't go left, I went right.
If I didn't go up, I went down.
If I don't walk in the counsel of the wicked, you would think you would say, I walk in the counsel of the righteous.
That's the contrast.
But he doesn't.
He focuses on something else.
He says, I don't, he doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked.
But he delights in the law of the Lord.
Now he's going to get back to a way of the righteous.
He gets to it at the end of the psalm.
And I think it's because it's delighting in the law of the Lord that actually gets him on this path.
But so verse 2, the contrast is the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord.
And on his law, he meditates day and night.
So we should at least ask, what is the law?
The Old Testament uses that term several different ways.
It could be referring to the Levitical code.
These are some of the ceremonial things you're supposed to do, the law that's given in Leviticus.
Or it could mean sometimes it's referring to all of Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible, as the law of Moses that God gave through Moses, the Pentateuch.
Or it's referring to the general instruction of God, the teachings of Yahweh, which eventually gets compiled into what the New Testament then calls the Scriptures.
Now, I understand that to be the way, this last way, the general pursuing the law of the Lord, the instruction of the law.
When Yahweh speaks, he gives it to us and packages it in words, writing.
Now, that in itself is a mind-blowing thing.
Because, I mean, if you've read your Bible, do you know what happens like on page 3?
The people reject God.
They don't want God to be king over them.
And yet God, he kicks them out of the garden, but he promises that one day he's going to restore this.
By, like, page 6, God actually says that his heart is grieved because he created man.
Because man's intention of his heart is evil all the time.
So he destroys the whole world with a flood, save eight.
And God would have been perfectly holy, perfectly just, if he just saved those eight and left them.
And said, now, go figure this out yourself.
I'll be over here.
But that's not what Yahweh does.
He pursues the sinner.
And he gives them a writing.
And then he shows them, this is the way of relationship with me.
This is the way of worship.
This is who I am.
This is who you are.
This is the way the world works.
I mean, this is mercy.
The law of Yahweh.
He has given it to us.
So the blessed man is one who delights in the law, meditates on the law.
But let me just say here, there's an assumption going on that's not spoken.
The assumption is he reads it, right?
I mean, you can't meditate on the law of the Lord and delight in it if you don't have any kind of relationship with it, right?
He reads it or listens to it.
Whatever it is, he's around it to consume the word of the Lord.
Now, I realize for my own self, I need to be careful a little bit in my own heart as I talk on a topic like this.
Because this has been my burden for the church since like day one of coming to faith in 2001 when I was 23 years old.
So I actually was living in Racine at the time.
Started attending this church in Kenosha.
And it was a very charismatic church.
And I have no doubt that those people love Jesus.
None whatsoever.
They gave me my first Bible after I came to faith.
And I blessed the Lord for them.
But I would sit there.
My whole world was going tipsy-turvy.
I mean, it was radically changing.
And I'm still living with some of the guys that I kind of run around with and partied with.
And through the years I've played ball with.
And so I'm still living in this apartment.
It was a total chaotic mess.
And here I am is seeking to now follow Jesus.
Who I believe actually died in my place and rose from the dead.
And he's raining on high.
And he's coming again.
Like I was believing this stuff.
And I would show up to these services.
And I don't remember exact timing.
But let's say the service was an hour and 15 minutes.
Roughly an hour and five minutes of that was singing.
And running through the aisles and speaking in tongues and such.
John, I'm not even knocking that.
My point is I would leave not having some emotional experience.
And thirsting in my soul saying, I need to know this book.
Don't these people realize where I'm coming from?
I believe in Jesus, but I don't know what this book is talking about.
I'm a fool.
I need to know this book.
They seemed more interested in pursuing some emotional experience than actually understanding what the book said.
And so then I started attending this conservative church.
That would stand up right here and just say, this is the authoritative word of God.
We read the word of God.
We love the word of God.
And I would say, yes.
And I remember the pastor preaching for 40 minutes.
And I say, yes.
I need this.
And then I look around and people look bored out of their mind.
And I couldn't figure out what's going on.
And I would ask people in the church just very basic, basic questions about the Bible.
And they had no clue.
And I could not figure out what was going on.
I mean, here I am sitting at home.
Instead of going out to the bar and getting drunk.
I mean, this is my early stages of walking with Jesus.
I'm getting drunk at home and reading the Bible, right?
This is really early, right?
I'm telling you, there's a lot for God to work on me.
And I remember the nights of just several days in almost.
I mean, I started in Matthew.
And I got to a section.
I don't know if it was Matthew or Mark.
But I remember sitting there.
I was so bitter towards my dad.
My dad left when I was nine.
I hated the man.
And I remember reading the words of Jesus when he said, when he talked about the forgiveness
that we have received through his shed blood for all the sin that we've committed against
God that I've received from God.
And he turns to then his disciples and he said, if you don't forgive, then you will not be forgiven.
And I remember a night sitting there where God took this 500-pound weight off my shoulders
so I didn't have to be so bitter towards my dad.
I mean, I'm reading the word, seeing God transforming my heart through the word of God.
Now, the weight was 2,000 pounds at the time, so 500 came off.
But that was a glorious 500 pounds.
And so I'm experiencing the word of God is changing me from within.
And yet these people in the church, they seem to care less about the Bible.
And I could not figure that out.
Now, that stirred up a lot of self-righteousness in me.
So that's why I say I have to be careful with this in my own heart.
But it also gave me a deep burden.
Brothers and sisters, the living God, the law of Yahweh, who redeemed you through Christ,
has written a book about who he is and about how we can find life in him and live in this world.
And we will study this book forever.
So there's this basic assumption that the psalmist is making.
We read the book.
We need to be people of the book, to open the book.
But then he actually raises the stakes, actually.
He doesn't say he just doesn't read the book.
He says he meditates on the law of the Lord, verse 2.
The word meditate, you know, other places it's translated as growl.
It's about the lines growling.
It's the picture almost like of a man kind of, you know, working his vineyard.
And he's kind of, blessed is the man.
He's not seeking.
He's grumbling underneath his breath.
And he's repeating the word of God.
And he's thinking through it.
And he's saying, his delight is in the law of the Lord.
God's word.
He's grumbling.
He's growling.
So there's this meditation that he's consumed with it.
But what does the beginning of verse 2 say?
He delights in it.
There's a pleasure he finds in the word.
In other words, he's not talking just about reading the Bible or being able to say a few facts of the Bible.
He's actually saying people that the blessed man loves the law of the Lord.
There's a delight that happens.
I eat broccoli.
I eat cauliflower.
And my wife has actually found ways to cook it that I mostly like it.
And she roasts it with some garlic and coconut oil.
I like it.
I'll even eat it as leftovers.
It's decent.
But I don't delight in this stuff.
I mean, I delight in pizza or lasagna or something.
Those are the type of things.
Like, you tell me we're having pizza tonight, I'm going to be distracted for half the day.
I'm going to think about it.
Because it's coming up, right?
I delight in it.
It kind of savors the mouth.
This is what he's talking about.
There's this hunger for the word of God, the law of God, the instructions of Yahweh.
So this, I mean, just a basic question.
Does that characterize you sitting here?
Do you have a delight for this book?
Now, my guess is all of us here on some level would say I don't.
I mean, if we're honest, at times.
Right?
I've met one person in my walk with the Lord that has told me they're never without a hunger for the word.
And I don't even know if she was telling the truth.
Maybe she was.
But I certainly don't all the time.
Now, if you're here this morning and there's never been a delight,
then that's good reason to question what's going on in your heart, actually.
Like, are you actually one of God's people?
Because the blessed man who is one of God's people has some sort of a delight.
Now, the more important question than whether or not you delight in the law of the Lord,
because I think all of us would say, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
The more important question is to say, does that concern you?
Because if you say, if you answer that question, you say, no, not really.
Actually, I don't really care that much.
Yes, I don't delight in the Lord, or I don't delight in the word.
I don't care.
That's a problem.
You probably aren't one of God's people.
But if there's even a flicker in you that says, you know what?
I don't delight in the law of the Lord all the time.
I don't like that.
I wish I had a delight.
But frankly, I'm distracted.
But man, I wish I did.
I wish God would do that for me.
That is a great sign.
That's a miracle, right?
I mean, we are all born dead in sin.
We don't want God.
Even if God was standing there in a pillar of fire by day, or a pillar of fire by night,
a pillar of cloud by day, even if a man rose from the dead, we would say, nah, I'm really
not interested.
If you have any sort of a desire for the, to have a delight in the law of the Lord, it's
because God has put that there.
We should bless the Lord for that.
So this, as you read the psalm and question yourself, you're not supposed to feel condemned.
If you don't feel it, you're supposed to say, oh, there's something there.
Bless the Lord.
Give me more.
Well, then he gives you a wonderful picture of the result of this.
So Psalm 2, as I understand, is kind of the banner statement of the psalm.
The blessed man delights in the law of the Lord, and let me show you what happens to him.
Gives us a word picture, verse 3.
He says, the man that does that, this is the result for him.
He, well, he's like a, how do I describe him?
He's like a tree.
Not just any tree.
Not, you know, not a tree planted out in the desert.
That tree's going to fall down soon.
A tree that's planted right by a stream of water, that yields its fruit in its season,
its leaf does not wither, and all that he does, he prospers.
So it's, you know, I don't know trees that much.
This is a way that I've thought about it, though.
This is about two months ago.
I was sitting, Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting at our kitchen table doing some work or something,
and I hear this screeching of tires.
I look out our front window, and I see a car coming kind of sideways on the road,
and then it goes out of my view because the window's not big enough,
and all of a sudden I heard a...
I thought for sure this car just drove into my neighbor's house.
I don't like medical things or blood or anything like that, but I thought, man,
I thought I was going out to pull bodies.
I throw on my shoes, and I take off out the door to see what happened,
and thankfully they didn't drive into the house, but they drove right into a pole,
like a light pole.
So they're going 30 miles an hour, and the people were totally fine.
Going 30 miles an hour, it hit the light pole,
and, you know, it's one of those where it's kind of like cement and stone put together,
the pole, right?
So what do you think happened to the pole when that car hit it going 30 miles per hour?
I mean, didn't have a chance.
I mean, it totally fell, right?
Now contrast that with two years ago, I think it was,
we were woken up in the middle of the night with sirens everywhere,
and there was a high-speed chase going through the south side of Milwaukee
and it ended in our neighborhood, tragically.
So a car, it was actually a truck, going 70 miles per hour through our neighborhood,
hits the tree so hard that the truck itself, the driver died on impact,
the truck actually split in two, hitting that tree.
A truck going 70 miles per hour, and guess what happened to that tree?
He said, did something just hit me?
Nah, I'm going back to bed.
It's still standing there today.
It lost a little bark, but that's it.
70 miles per hour, a truck barreling in it, and the truck stands because it has strong roots.
This is what the psalmist is trying to get us to think about.
Trees, when they're planted by water, there is nothing going to take that thing down.
You can go to Seven Bridges Park just south of Milwaukee along the lake,
and if you go right by the lake through the trail, there's these trees that stand up on a high hill,
not quite as high as the ceiling, but very steep to these trees,
and there's steps all the way down.
And you know what the steps are?
They're actually the roots of the tree.
Because the roots go so far because it's trying to get down to the water,
and the tree stands tall and strong.
I mean, if you walk along the sidewalk, you'll see how many sidewalks you'll see like this.
Because tree roots have lifted up sidewalks.
They destroy foundations of houses.
I mean, this is a powerful picture that he's trying to give of a promise of the living God telling his people,
look, if you meditate on my law, you are going to find stability and strength in this life that nothing else can give.
Nothing else will give it.
You will be like a tree.
That even if a truck hits it at 70 miles per hour, you will laugh at it.
This is unbelievable.
Now, if you want a living example, you just got to read further in the Psalms.
This is the way I understand they kind of organize the Psalms.
The first one says,
Blessed is the man who comes underneath the authority of God's word,
who delights in the love of God.
Second Psalm ends with,
Blessed is the man who takes, you know what it says?
Refuge in the Son.
So, blessed is the man who comes underneath the authority of God's word,
who delights in the law of the Lord.
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in the Son.
And then look at Psalm 3.
Psalm 3 is about,
written by a man who had an adulterous relationship,
and it caused total havoc on his household.
His son kills one of his other sons,
and David now is on the run.
He's out in the wilderness,
terrified.
And yet,
you read these words in verse 5.
I lay down and slept.
I woke again,
because the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
You think he'd be sleeping at a time like that?
David is being hunted by thousands of people.
I wouldn't be sleeping a wink.
I can hardly sleep if I have a,
you know,
a hard conversation coming up tomorrow.
And here's a man,
delighting so much in the law of the Lord,
coming so much under the refuge of the Son,
and he sleeps,
like a baby,
out in the wilderness.
But, you know,
this is not the only place
that God promises this about his word.
Let me show you a couple other places here.
If you have your Bible,
go to 1 Thessalonians 2.13.
1 Thessalonians 2.13.
So here,
here's the Apostle Paul.
He says,
writing to the church in Thessalonica,
he says,
we also thank God constantly for this,
that when you receive the word of God,
which you heard from us,
you accepted it.
But you accepted it not as the word of men,
but as what it really is.
It's the word of God.
Here's the phrase,
which is at work in you believers.
Now, theologically,
this is a very important statement here.
He says,
he says,
you receive the word of God,
which is working in you,
but not you as everybody.
He says,
you believers.
He says,
when you receive the word of God,
intake it,
it goes to work in you,
who believe.
You might think of it this way.
Maybe you want to,
maybe no,
I don't know.
But think of,
you give my four-year-old
two dishes of ice cream,
you're expecting a response,
right?
You're expecting that ice cream
to go to work in him.
It's going to change him,
fundamentally,
for the next couple hours,
right?
Here,
he says,
the word of God,
when it goes in you,
who believe,
that word goes to work in you.
It's going to change you.
Well,
how is it going to change you?
It's going to make you stable
like a tree.
Well,
let's go to Psalm 19.
We'll see some actual ways,
promises,
of what God says,
this will do to you.
Psalm 19.
Verse 7.
The law of the Lord,
here we have this phrase again,
the law of the Lord,
the instruction of the Lord,
is perfect.
Here it is,
reviving the soul.
The testimony of the Lord is sure.
Here's another one.
Making wise.
The simple.
And he keeps going,
and the precepts of the Lord are right.
Here it is,
rejoicing the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes.
Now,
do you think there's a single person alive
that wouldn't want those four aspects?
Like,
your soul revived?
You want your heart to rejoice?
You want to be wise?
You want to have your eyes enlightened?
Is there anybody here that doesn't want that?
No.
We all want that.
Here,
God is promising to his people,
the word of God will do that for you.
You want wisdom?
In the word.
You want to have your heart rejoicing?
Open the book.
This is what the psalmist is saying.
There's no,
I understand,
that's why he says verse 10.
More to be desired,
are they,
the scriptures,
the words of God,
the precepts of the Lord,
than gold,
even much fine gold.
That's a stunning statement.
The psalmist is saying,
look,
I'd rather have the word of God
than a lot of gold.
In our day and age,
we would say,
man,
I'd trade in my 401k for that.
That's a stunning statement.
I'll sell my house so I can have a Bible.
That's amazing.
It's if we're convinced that that's what's going to give me wisdom,
we will feel that.
The problem is,
we don't actually think the word of God will do that,
right?
Or take Romans 15,
4,
you don't have to turn there.
It says,
everything that was written in earlier days
was written for instruction
so that through endurance
and the encouragement of the scriptures,
we might have hope.
There's another place.
God claims all that was written in earlier times.
He's talking,
in particular,
the Old Testament there.
All of it.
Genesis to Malachi
was written so that you and I would have hope.
Every single piece,
even the genealogies,
once you learn why they're there,
that is meant to instill hope
that makes you like a tree.
2 Timothy 3.16,
all scripture is breathed out by God.
It's the very breath of God.
And it's profitable for us.
It's useful.
For what?
Well, he tells us
to teach us,
to reprove us,
to correct us,
to train us in righteousness
so that we're equipped
for every good work.
Another promise,
there again,
he's talking about the Old Testament.
The Old Testament
is useful for you.
It will train you.
It will equip you
for righteousness.
Ephesians 5.26,
talking about Jesus
sanctifying the church.
I love this phrase.
He says,
having cleansed her
by the washing of the word.
I love the picture.
It's a picture of Jesus
taking the church
that's all full of blemishes
and he takes the word
and he scrubs her.
What a picture.
The word of God
is meant to purify us,
to change us.
1 Peter 2,
I love this picture.
Verse 2,
it says,
he's just talked about
the enduring word
and it says,
like newborn infants,
long for the pure spiritual milk
so that by it
you may grow
in your salvation.
This is this picture
of this baby.
If you've ever seen a baby
who longs for milk
it's quite the sight.
I mean,
they're trying for the milk,
right?
They're just doing
anything they can
to get the milk
because why?
Somehow that little package
understands that
if it doesn't get milk
it's going to die.
Peter calls up this image
that the Christians,
that's what we should feel.
That's why God says
to his people,
man does not live
by bread alone
but by every word
that proceeds
from the mouth of God.
That's why we need it
because we need food
if we are to live
and we could go on
but these are
very clear promises
that God says
this is what my book
will do for you.
It will make you strong.
It will make you wise.
It will give you eyes
to see rightly.
It will give you hope in life.
It will give you stability.
It will keep you from sin.
It will cause you
to pursue holiness.
I mean,
what a picture.
And then verse 4
of Psalm 1,
if you're back there,
he contrasts it.
It says,
the wicked are not so
but they're like the chaff
that the wind drives away.
So for us
non-agricultural folks here,
the chaff would be
the part of the wheat
as they're harvesting.
You throw it up
and the grain parts,
the heavy parts,
fall back down
into the bucket
or whatever
and the chaff,
it falls off the seed
and the wind comes in
and it blows the chaff away.
Or for city folks,
you might say,
the wicked are not like
the righteous
who are like a tree.
The wicked are like
that plastic bag
that's floating around
and it's going to be
down the block
in about 25 seconds.
That's what the wicked
are like
because they have
no foundation.
In this rollercoaster
of life,
they have nothing
to actually stand on.
And then he goes on
and he talks about
the judgment to come
which is the very same thing.
The wicked will not stand
in the judgment
nor will sinners
but those who are the righteous
who I understand
in verse 6,
the righteous,
as you read the Psalms,
are not those who
have made a righteousness
of their own.
They have received
the righteousness.
I mean,
this is the gospel here.
This is all throughout Scripture.
Man is made right by God
through faith.
He's received a righteousness
not his own
and then he lives it out.
He walks in it.
And the righteous
shall stand.
So what does this mean for us?
I mean,
I think the claim actually
of the text is very simple.
God's word
makes God's people
strong and stable
in this life.
I hope we can all say,
I mean,
this is sort of obvious
that one of the greatest gifts
you could give yourself,
your spouse,
this church,
your kids,
is a life
in the word of God.
It's one of the best things
you could do for yourself.
It's one of the best things
you could do for your neighbor.
It's have a life
in the word of God.
I'm talking about
a functional life.
The word of God
makes a definitive difference.
You know,
it's something that actually
you think about.
It comes up in conversation.
And so let me just speak
to different categories here.
If you're a youth here,
if you're a kid,
I'm telling you
one of the greatest things
you could possibly do
is start reading your Bible.
You don't have to understand
it all the time.
You don't have to have
a powerful experience
all the time.
Just open the book
and say,
God,
teach me about you.
That is one of the greatest habits
you could possibly form
in yourself.
kids,
you do not want to be
the next 55-year-old
that I've talked to many
that know nothing
about the word of God.
They have no stability.
Kids,
do you want to be wise
when you grow older?
It's not from intellectualism.
It's not just by going
to a nice school.
It's not by having nice toys.
It's the word of God.
There have been many people
who have gone to great schools
who perish in the end
and that are not wise.
And there have been many
who starve to death,
who have been persecuted,
have been killed
for the faith
and are wise
beyond our years.
Kids,
the greatest thing you can do
is to pursue
the scriptures
and learn about our God.
Young
adults,
which I think young
for me now
is like through
ages 29
or 35,
I don't know,
I turned 41 this summer
so this feels weird.
Young adults,
maybe you don't feel young
but to me,
I guess you do.
Through your 20s,
you know,
you're in your career
or starting career
and maybe you're getting married
or thinking about it
or maybe you're staying single,
whatever it is,
you feel like you're on a path
and life is busy,
life is crazy.
do not for a second
assume
that you'll put off
the word of God now
and you'll come back to it
when life slows down
because it's not slowing down.
It'll only get crazier
and the greatest thing
you can give yourself
right now
is to say,
you know what,
if that job
is going to move me away
from the word of God,
the job goes.
That's what the psalmist says,
Psalm 19,
I prefer the word of God
over all the gold
and yet we live in a culture
that tells us to consume,
it tells us it's okay
to put the things
of the Lord on hold.
That is so prevalent
in the American church.
We put career first
and I don't think
that would hold up
in the scriptures.
Now parents of young kids,
I mean what a gift
you can give to your kids
to raise them
not just knowing
about the Bible
but demonstrating
a life in the Bible.
If you have young kids,
this is what you could do tonight.
You could ask them today.
It's like,
son, daughter, whatever,
I want your honest thoughts.
What do you think
mommy and daddy
think about the Bible?
Like, show us
what we think.
Do you think mommy and daddy
love the Bible?
You know what?
They'll probably say yes
because we train our kids
to kind of think
in these terms, right?
And then you say,
how?
I mean, I hope
you are demonstrating
to your kids
that the word is good,
that they see it,
that when life is confusing,
the word of God
comes into the conversation.
Here's something
I learned early on too
in the faith.
You know,
a lot of discussion
goes on,
the question like,
why are so many kids
walking away from the faith
when they get to college?
They leave in mass numbers.
They leave the church
when they go to college.
And so the big discussion
is why does that happen, right?
And you have
these different answers.
Well, maybe it's because
we sheltered them too much.
We didn't help them
experience the world enough.
Or maybe we didn't teach them
enough about, you know,
science and, you know,
they go off to the education
and they kind of lose sight
of, you know,
up and down.
We didn't train them enough
in that sense.
And, you know,
that all might be
right and good.
I don't know.
But here's the question
I never ask,
or I don't hear.
It's like,
what did the home look like?
I can tell you
the ones that I know
in general,
I wouldn't look at the parents
that say they had
a growing, vibrant life
in the Word of God.
They loved the church.
They gave themselves
to the work of the Lord.
And yet,
this is a basic principle
of life, right?
Kids will love
what parents love.
Right?
I love softball.
I go out and hit softballs.
I go out all the time
and hit softballs.
I play a lot of softball.
I have a YouTube channel
and I do softball stuff on.
I have a station
out in my garage
where I go out
and I'll hit 400 swings
in the winter.
I did 350 yesterday, right?
I just love to hit off the tee.
So I go out earlier in the week
and my son comes out with me.
He hits for a half an hour
off the tee.
He's four.
Like, why does he do that?
He wouldn't do that
if I wasn't out there doing it.
He does it because dad's out there.
Kids love
what their parents love.
And so I'm speaking
in generalities here,
but so we ask,
like, why do kids go off
into school
and they don't walk
with the Lord?
Well, duh.
We've trained them
that you go to church,
you act something,
but at home,
the Bible never shows up.
Now, if you're here
and you're not bringing
the Bible in,
again, this is not meant
to guilt us.
This is to stir us up
that it's worth it.
It's worth sacrificing time
if you have to sacrifice career,
if you have to downsize your home,
if you have to sell
one of your cars.
It's better to have your kids
leave the home
walking with Jesus,
reading the scriptures,
delighting in the law of God
so that they will be strong
and stable
in this life
and in the next.
And God says
it's in his word.
It's not in nice clothes
or education.
It's in his word.
Or if you're married here,
I think one of the greatest
things you can do
is figure out
as husband and wife,
how do you commune
with God
in his word together?
I think that would be
a worthwhile pursuit
and sacrifice
to figure it out.
It's going to look different
across couples.
So there's not like
a prescription here
that it has to look like.
But I think personally,
experientially,
for our own marriage
and for others that I know,
this will transform
your marriage
more than anything I know.
In fact,
it will transform
your intimacy
more than anything I know.
Because suddenly
where you're going to find
is that the couple
communes with God
through the word
that they're finding
their deepest joy
in God together.
They don't have to find it
in their spouse anymore.
And suddenly a lot
of the tension
kind of falls to the side.
And those are the places
where real conversation
can happen.
Is your community
with God
through the word.
Now if you're older here,
I do want to say a word.
Especially,
whether or not
you are in a place
where you know
the scriptures,
you're six years old
and older,
or you don't,
now is the day
to pursue it.
And now is the day
to find some younger folks
in the church
and gather them around
and say,
let's pursue this together.
I want to walk with you.
And if you don't know anything,
fine.
Just help them see
why they don't want
to go that path.
And say,
look,
I made a lot of mistakes.
If I could go back,
I wouldn't do that anymore.
But by the grace of God,
he's going to change me.
He is changing me.
I'm not who I was
and I'm not who I'm going to be.
But let's pursue it together.
This is the day.
Find some young folks
and equip them
in the word together.
So let me end here
with just a couple
quick pointers
of things
that I think
could be helpful
for how do you
pursue a life
in the word.
Not all the,
I mean,
there's a lot of practical things
you can do
for sure
and that's a worthwhile
discussion.
But here's a couple things.
One,
I think,
learn the promises
of God
about his word.
And I don't mean
just know them
but functionally
try to internalize them
and say,
God,
you say
your word
will give me hope.
Would you convince me
of that?
Convince me
that it's true.
Convince me
that that will give me
more hope
than having more money
or having a relationship
or having whatever.
That your word
promises that.
I gave you a few before.
Let me rattle off
them again.
So there's Psalm 19,
7 through 10.
Great place to go.
Romans 15,
4,
2 Timothy 3,
16 through 17.
Ephesians 5,
26,
1 Peter 2,
2.
And even if you
just grab those,
those are great places
to go
to just memorize them,
learn them,
say,
God,
teach me these,
convince me of these.
Second,
learn to push yourself
with grace,
not legalism.
So the last thing
right now
that anybody should
go home
is just like
try to like
just barrel through it
and think they can
just push through it
and pull up their
bootstraps
and check off boxes
and just keep reading.
This is where I think
the promises come in.
So you and I,
most of us are going to
have days where
we don't want to read
the Bible.
In fact,
I don't want to want
to read the Bible.
I just want to go
about my day.
that's when you have
to grab the promises
and learn how
to pursue this
by grace.
You say,
you grab one
of the promises
of God
and you say,
Psalm 19,
you say,
God,
I don't want
to read your word
right now.
Frankly,
I don't understand
it half the time
I read it
and I don't think
it's going to be
worth my time.
But yet,
God,
you're much wiser
than I am.
I mean,
you created the world.
You're the one
that spoke me
into being.
And you say
that your word
will make me wise.
I'm going to read
this paragraph
for the next
three,
four minutes
trusting that promise.
Would you do that
for me?
And you read it.
You read it
not because you're
just trying to
be some good Christian
but you say,
God,
I need you now.
Let your promises
stand true.
So that's a second
thing to do.
And then third
is to lower your
expectation.
In general,
lower your
expectation both
for time
and experience.
So if you're
not reading
the word of God
at all,
what I would
say to you
is pick it up
five days a week
for four minutes.
That's it.
Or something.
Just do more
than you were doing
yesterday,
which was nothing.
So do it for
two minutes tomorrow.
Whatever.
Do something.
Just move.
Move one foot
in front of the other.
Lower your expectations.
I don't think we just
stay there.
We want to grow in that.
But lower the expectations
but especially then
in experience.
I would say
most of the time
I read the Bible,
nothing big happens.
And this is actually
one of the biggest things
that as Danica and I
grew to read together.
helped.
So Danica grew up
in the church
and she kind of
had this feeling
like she should be
reading all the time
and there was
for whatever,
whether it was
from somebody else
or from her own self,
there's this kind of
thought process
that she should
understand everything
and have this
powerful experience
unless she's doing
something wrong.
Right?
And so here we are,
we're married.
I have a lot of passion
for the Lord.
I have a great passion
for the word of God.
I've gone through seminary.
I'm pastoring
and we're still trying
to figure out
how do we read
the word of God together
and so finally we started
getting in a groove
and this happened
day after day after day.
We would get to the end
of our reading time
and then she'd be like,
that's it?
I'd be like,
well yeah,
we gotta go,
time's up.
You know,
we got things to do.
And then the next day
she'd be like,
well what do you think
this means?
I'm not sure,
it could mean this,
it could mean that.
I don't know.
It's a good thought.
That's it?
And this happened
over and over
and over again.
What happened,
it lowered her expectations
to see,
oh here's this pastor,
he's not having
these powerful times
every day.
I mean,
I might have
a handful
every year
of times
where I read the word
and I'm just like,
I've never seen that
in my life.
I just heard
the voice of God
piercing me
like nothing
I've ever felt.
It happens
every once in a while.
But most of the time
it's like the drip
of a faucet.
Drip,
drip,
drip.
And you know
what happens?
Tree roots
lift up cement blocks
day after day
after day
after day.
That's what a life
in the word
looks like.
So let me
close here
by reminding us
this is not
about guilt.
If you are feeling
any kind of guilt
about not reading
the word of God,
then I certainly
have not done
a good job
and you're hearing
wrongly.
If you don't
read the word,
if you're slothful
towards it,
this is a time
for us to repent.
We confess to the Lord.
We are dull
to your voice, God.
And then we grab
hold of the gospel
and we trust it
and say,
even for that,
even for my slothfulness,
Christ has died
for me.
And the fact
that I have a desire
to even want to desire
to read the word
has been planted
there by you.
And so by golly,
God, give me the grace
to pursue it.
Give me the grace
to pursue it.
This is not about guilt.
This is about asking God
to shape us
within.
Let me pray
or let us pray together.
God, I ask that you
would convince us
all more deeply
about who you are
and what the word
of God is,
the very breath of God.
Maybe we would see
the benefits of it
but that it would
stir us up
to read it.
God, what would you do
in this church?
I mean, thinking about
a church full of homes
that are pursuing you
in the word.
What would a church do
in a community
that is enjoying
the scriptures together?
So let it be
in this church.
So let it be
at Crossway Milwaukee
and Crossway Bristol
and other churches
in this city.
God, give your people
in Kenosha
a desire for your word.
In Christ's name,
amen.
Amen.