WEBVTT 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:06.759 Well, good morning again. I'm delighted to see you all, delighted to have an opportunity 00:00:06.759 --> 00:00:12.980 to be here and to celebrate this baptism. Before we do that, we're going to open God's 00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:17.820 Word together. We're starting a new series this week, and this series is going to take 00:00:17.820 --> 00:00:26.420 us well into the fall up to the season of Advent, which is around the first of the year 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:30.480 in the Christian calendar. And so, all fall, we're going to be in a series called Read, 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:36.280 Mark, Learn. And it's a series essentially looking at the doctrine of Scripture. We're 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:43.020 going to be talking a lot about the relationship that we have with the written Word of God, 00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:48.380 with Scripture. And I think it's fair to say that probably most of us have a fairly complicated 00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:54.680 relationship with the Bible, especially depending on how or when or where we grew up. I know 00:00:54.679 --> 00:01:01.460 that some people here grew up in a very fundamentalist context, and the Bible was held up and touted 00:01:01.460 --> 00:01:07.400 and defended as infallible and inerrant. But now that you're getting older, you're wondering, 00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:13.599 are we really so sure about that? You have your doubts. Other people come from a very different 00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:19.819 context. They're in a world where people assume that the Bible is simply a book written by men to 00:01:19.819 --> 00:01:27.000 be used as a tool of the patriarchy, a tool for oppression to perpetuate and justify injustice. 00:01:27.239 --> 00:01:33.280 And so, the Bible is almost seen as being evil or a justification for evil. And then there are other 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:40.000 people who I think maybe some of us here who…we like the Bible, or at least parts of the Bible. 00:01:40.579 --> 00:01:44.280 There are other parts that we're not so sure about, and there are some parts that we definitely don't 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:50.420 like that we find to be offensive. And so, we tend to stick to the parts that we like and just try to 00:01:50.420 --> 00:01:55.260 avoid or pretend like those other parts aren't there. And so, our relationship, I think, with the Bible 00:01:55.260 --> 00:02:03.379 is pretty complicated. And so, I want to start this series by asking this question. If that's the kind 00:02:03.379 --> 00:02:09.500 of relationship we have, pretty complicated, then what kind of relationship should we have with Scripture? 00:02:09.500 --> 00:02:17.039 Or to put it another way, what kind of relationship could we have? What's possible? And for that, 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:24.180 we're going to look at Psalm 119. We just recited a portion, a selection of Psalm 119, but it would 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:29.039 take a little while if we tried to do the whole psalm in church. It's the longest chapter in the Bible. 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:37.139 It's 176 verses, and it's actually, if you look at it in the Hebrew, it's an acrostic poem, 00:02:37.139 --> 00:02:43.599 which means that each stanza is eight verses, and each stanza starts with one of the letters of the 00:02:43.599 --> 00:02:48.219 Greek alphabet, and it goes in order. Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Daleth, all the way through the letters of 00:02:48.219 --> 00:02:56.060 the Hebrew alphabet, 22 letters, stanza for each. It ends up being 176 verses. It's a very long chapter. 00:02:56.419 --> 00:03:00.000 But listen to some of these verses. As we think about what kind of relationship 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.500 we might have with Scripture, listen to what it says. Verse 14, 00:03:03.500 --> 00:03:13.020 in the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. Verse 20, my soul is consumed with 00:03:13.020 --> 00:03:20.639 longing for your rules at all times. Or listen to verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste, 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:26.780 sweeter than honey to my mouth. Now, that sounds like something that you would write to somebody 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:32.819 that you are in love with, right? You should write something like that to your spouse. 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:38.819 Things will go well for you if you do. It conveys deep love and affection. For the psalmist, 00:03:38.979 --> 00:03:47.560 God's Word is more than just good advice. God's Word is sublime. He is absolutely enraptured 00:03:47.560 --> 00:03:55.319 by Scripture. This is romantic language. And what we see is that Psalm 119 is essentially a love poem 00:03:55.319 --> 00:04:03.659 about God's Word. It's a love poem. Now, why would the psalmist feel this way about text? 00:04:04.780 --> 00:04:11.060 And we can look at this psalm, and we don't have the time. Deborah won't allow me the time 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:19.199 to go through all of the themes that we could draw out of Psalm 119. So, I'm going to pull three out, 00:04:19.319 --> 00:04:25.759 three of the central themes and reasons why the psalmist is so deeply in love with God's written 00:04:25.759 --> 00:04:32.139 Word. Let's pray, and then we will look at those reasons. Lord, we thank You for Your Word, 00:04:33.160 --> 00:04:40.060 and we thank You that, as we'll see, it's more than just text. You are the God who has promised to be 00:04:40.060 --> 00:04:45.560 in the midst of Your people and to speak to Your people. And so, we pray that even as we open Your 00:04:45.560 --> 00:04:51.560 written Word, we would hear Your voice and that we would encounter Your living Word, Jesus Christ. 00:04:51.980 --> 00:05:00.639 And it's in His name that we pray. Amen. So, reason number one why this psalmist loves God's Word so 00:05:00.639 --> 00:05:09.459 much, number one, through Scripture, he is grounded in God's truth. He's grounded in God's truth. 00:05:10.060 --> 00:05:16.479 He says in verse 1, blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. 00:05:16.819 --> 00:05:23.199 This sets the tone for the entire psalm. And notice that it refers not to the laws of the Lord, 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:31.000 but the law of the Lord. The Hebrew word is Torah. And this isn't just referring to laws, 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:37.179 it's a shorthand way of describing all of the Scriptures, right? Or what we would think of as the 00:05:37.180 --> 00:05:44.840 Old Testament. This is how actually Jesus referred to the Scriptures. In John chapter 15, Jesus quotes 00:05:44.840 --> 00:05:52.420 a psalm, and then He refers to that psalm as part of the law. Now, psalm is a poem. It's technically 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:58.620 wisdom literature. It's not about law, but He considers it to be part of the law, meaning 00:05:58.620 --> 00:06:08.240 the Scriptures. And then look at verse 160. The sum of your Word is truth. This is not just saying 00:06:08.240 --> 00:06:15.000 that your Word is for the most part true. This is saying that every single part of your Word 00:06:15.220 --> 00:06:22.800 is truth. And there's a difference. And by the way, this is how Jesus viewed the Scriptures as well. 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:28.560 All along the way, as we consider a doctrine of Scripture for ourselves, we're going to be looking 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:35.600 at Jesus' doctrine of Scripture. Jesus says in John 17, He's praying for the church, and He says to the 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:46.019 Father, sanctify them in the truth. Your Word is truth. Now, what does that mean? Well, when we say that 00:06:46.019 --> 00:06:55.299 something is true, we're saying that it corresponds to reality. A true statement corresponds to what is 00:06:55.299 --> 00:07:03.439 real. But when we say something is truth, we're saying something different. We are saying that this 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:11.500 is the ultimate standard of reality itself. This is the thing against which reality is measured. 00:07:11.500 --> 00:07:19.420 It's the thing that determines what is real and what is not. Maybe some of you have been to 00:07:19.420 --> 00:07:25.680 Greenwich, England, and you have seen the prime meridian there, and you have been able to stand on 00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:31.139 the line with one foot in each hemisphere. You know, when the prime meridian was established, 00:07:31.139 --> 00:07:40.579 it was absolutely world-changingly revolutionary. Why? Because it established a fixed point. 00:07:40.579 --> 00:07:49.159 A fixed standard by which people could orient themselves in space and time. Once that standard 00:07:49.159 --> 00:07:55.259 was established, you could be anywhere on the globe and know where you were relative to that standard 00:07:55.259 --> 00:08:02.959 and when you were according to how time was broken up. And so, this allowed people to navigate. It 00:08:02.959 --> 00:08:08.500 allowed people to find their way all around the globe, which at this point in history was extremely 00:08:08.500 --> 00:08:16.139 important. So, through the Scriptures, God has established a kind of ultimate prime meridian 00:08:16.139 --> 00:08:22.759 for reality itself. It's a fixed position through which we can understand things like, 00:08:23.139 --> 00:08:32.700 who are we? Why are we here? Where are we in time and space and history and in God's unfolding plan? 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:40.140 Where do we need to go from here? What is all of this moving toward? This is the information that 00:08:40.140 --> 00:08:46.040 we're able to glean from the prime meridian of Scripture. And as the psalmist says, verse 105, 00:08:46.540 --> 00:08:52.820 your word is a lamp to my feet and it's a light to my path. Verse 130, the unfolding of your words 00:08:52.820 --> 00:09:00.540 gives light. It imparts understanding. This imagery is not just poetry. It's not accidental. God's truth 00:09:00.539 --> 00:09:09.740 allows us to see where we are. It allows us to see where we need to go. It illuminates reality 00:09:09.740 --> 00:09:14.939 so that we know what is real and what's not, and it grounds us in that. 00:09:16.379 --> 00:09:21.500 Now, I think probably most of us in this room, and the younger you are, probably the more true this is 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:27.860 about you, most of us in this room get somewhat uncomfortable when anybody stands up on a stage 00:09:27.860 --> 00:09:35.519 and says, we know truth. This is absolute truth. We have it here, right? Number one, 00:09:37.019 --> 00:09:41.060 Christians need to understand that when we talk about truth in Scripture, that is not something 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:49.080 that we have. That is not something that we can own, right? It has us, right? It owns us. We are 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:55.300 entirely subject to it. We can do our best to describe it in ways that are accurate, to interpret it in ways 00:09:55.299 --> 00:10:02.599 that align, but we don't have it. We exist within it. It has us, and we do our best with humility and 00:10:02.599 --> 00:10:07.319 patience to understand it and describe it, right? So, that's the first thing. But the second thing is 00:10:07.319 --> 00:10:12.779 we need to understand the cultural context that we've grown up in. We've all grown up hearing pretty 00:10:12.779 --> 00:10:20.439 much throughout our lives the idea that anyone who claims any kind of truth is suspect because we have 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:26.240 inherited ideas from people like Michel Foucault or Nietzsche, ideas that essentially say that all 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:32.420 truth claims are power plays. And so, we've grown up in a culture that says we should eschew truth claims. 00:10:33.680 --> 00:10:40.660 And in fact, in many ways, the idea of truth as an objective reality has sort of faded, and we're 00:10:40.660 --> 00:10:47.240 encouraged to look inward and to look for our personal truth rather than the truth. But what we have 00:10:47.240 --> 00:10:54.779 realized if we look at history is a very different message, right? The real power play is not claiming 00:10:54.779 --> 00:10:59.980 that something is true. The real power play is not actually claiming that there is objective truth. 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:07.560 The real power play is abolishing the idea of truth altogether. Hannah Arendt is probably one of the most 00:11:07.560 --> 00:11:13.980 important political philosophers of the last century, and she writes and thinks extensively about the 00:11:13.980 --> 00:11:21.460 totalitarian regimes of World War II. And here's what she says, the ideal subject of totalitarian rule 00:11:21.460 --> 00:11:29.340 is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and 00:11:29.340 --> 00:11:36.879 fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exists. That's the ideal candidate for 00:11:36.879 --> 00:11:41.360 totalitarian rule. And that's the ideal candidate for the world. And that's the ideal candidate for the 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:47.879 people's ability to know what is true and what is not. If you take away their ability to determine what 00:11:47.879 --> 00:11:56.600 is real and what is not, then you get to be the one to define reality. And that is the ultimate power play. 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:07.899 The idea that there is a standard of truth is profoundly good news for the world. It's good news for society 00:12:07.899 --> 00:12:14.639 because, as this example would say, it guards us against totalitarian rule on the right or the left 00:12:14.639 --> 00:12:20.899 because it gives us a standard of truth by which to measure human truth claims. So, when somebody stands 00:12:20.899 --> 00:12:26.240 up front and says, this is true, we have some prime meridian to look at and to say, that doesn't line up. 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:31.759 With what we see here. Or, as Martin Luther King Jr. says in his letter from a Birmingham jail, 00:12:32.519 --> 00:12:37.740 it guards us against injustice by giving us a standard of truth by which to measure human laws. 00:12:38.360 --> 00:12:44.360 So, no one can claim that their law is ultimate in authority. We have a higher standard that we can 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:50.680 compare laws to. And God's truth isn't just good news for society, it's also good news for us 00:12:50.679 --> 00:12:59.099 as individuals. Because the Bible is the only book there is that will tell you the truth about yourself. 00:13:00.500 --> 00:13:09.259 That will tell you the truth about yourself. Emile Callier was a philosopher and a professor at Princeton, 00:13:09.799 --> 00:13:17.059 and in his early life, he was entirely naturalistic, entirely materialistic. He didn't believe in any kind 00:13:17.059 --> 00:13:24.079 supernatural God or creation. He was a pure materialist. And he had actually always forbidden 00:13:24.079 --> 00:13:28.599 religion in his home, so he had never seen a Bible. He had never come across a Bible. 00:13:29.559 --> 00:13:35.199 So, in his young life, he was very passionate as a materialist. Then he goes to fight in World War I. 00:13:36.259 --> 00:13:42.099 And after that, all of his philosophy started to fall apart. He couldn't understand the world anymore. 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:47.139 He couldn't understand himself anymore. None of his convictions that he had held to early in his life 00:13:47.139 --> 00:13:55.860 could explain World War I, nor could they explain what was going on inside him. And he was profoundly 00:13:55.860 --> 00:14:01.399 disoriented, and nothing could help. He had tried to write his own book of accumulating all of the best 00:14:01.399 --> 00:14:05.779 bits of wisdom that he had come across in his life, but when he sat down to read the book, he was deeply 00:14:05.779 --> 00:14:13.379 disappointed in its inadequacy. And then, through a series of providential circumstances, his wife 00:14:13.379 --> 00:14:19.799 brought home an old Bible one day that she had gotten at a used bookstore. And here's what he says, 00:14:19.980 --> 00:14:27.600 "'I literally grabbed the book and rushed to my study with it.'" He flips open and just happens upon 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:33.000 the teachings of Jesus, the Beatitudes. He says, "'I read and read and read, 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:39.620 "'Now allowed with an indescribable warmth surging within. I could not find words to express my awe and 00:14:39.620 --> 00:14:46.000 wonder. And suddenly the realization dawned upon me, this was the book that would understand me. 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:54.000 I needed it so much, yet unaware I had attempted to write my own in vain.'" 00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:08.460 God's Word alone can understand us, explain us to ourselves. It uncovers the things in our hearts 00:15:08.460 --> 00:15:13.759 that we can't see, don't want to see. The more time you spend reading the Bible, and I've certainly 00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:20.179 found this to be true, the more you spend time reading the Bible, the more you realize it's actually 00:15:20.179 --> 00:15:29.519 reading you. It reads you. You have these moments of feeling exposed, found out, illuminated. 00:15:31.819 --> 00:15:36.620 It uncovers things in our hearts, tells us things that we either couldn't or wouldn't see before. 00:15:37.639 --> 00:15:42.919 So this is the first reason why the psalmist loves God's Word so much. It gives him access to God's truth, 00:15:43.059 --> 00:15:46.959 and it grounds him in that. And by it, he can orient himself to reality. 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:53.360 The second reason why he loves Scripture so much is this. He finds that through Scripture, 00:15:53.500 --> 00:16:01.860 he is liberated, he's liberated by God's goodness. Verses 44 and 45 are curious. Just listen to this. 00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:09.400 Tell me if it makes sense to you. I will keep your law continually, forever and ever. And then it says 00:16:09.400 --> 00:16:14.220 in verse 45, "'And I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.'" Now, that's a 00:16:14.220 --> 00:16:21.759 Hebrew idiom that means, I'll be free. I'll walk in a wide place. I'll be totally free, unencumbered. 00:16:22.360 --> 00:16:27.879 So here's what he's saying. I'm going to keep your law continually in every area of my life always, 00:16:28.379 --> 00:16:34.220 and by that, I'm going to be free. I'm going to do whatever I want. Now, how does that make sense? 00:16:35.100 --> 00:16:40.120 By keeping this law continually in every area of your life, you're going to walk in a wide… It sounds 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:44.259 like you're going to walk in a very, very, very narrow place. But no, you're going to walk in a 00:16:44.259 --> 00:16:49.100 wide place. And to many of us, this might sound actually like the opposite of freedom because 00:16:49.100 --> 00:16:55.139 our way of thinking about freedom is to define it in terms of autonomy, you know, to be a law unto 00:16:55.139 --> 00:17:03.940 ourselves. Freedom means unconstrained freedom of choice. So that's how a kind of Western person living 00:17:03.940 --> 00:17:08.599 at this point in history would automatically define freedom, unconstrained freedom to do whatever I want. 00:17:08.599 --> 00:17:15.579 No boundaries. But what we need to ask is, does that actually line up? Does that kind of freedom 00:17:15.579 --> 00:17:23.899 actually work in real life? So consider the following examples. First example, maybe we think 00:17:23.899 --> 00:17:28.859 that we should be free to eat whatever we want. Maybe, maybe, man, I, you know, as I live in a free 00:17:28.859 --> 00:17:31.919 country, I can do what I want, whatever I want. Nobody will hold me accountable. I can eat and drink 00:17:31.919 --> 00:17:35.980 whatever I want. If it were up to me, if you know anything about me at all, you know that I think that 00:17:35.980 --> 00:17:40.059 there should be three basic food groups, cheeseburgers, barbecue, and whiskey. And that's 00:17:40.059 --> 00:17:45.099 essentially it. That's essentially it. It's essentially the Ron Swanson diet, if you know 00:17:45.099 --> 00:17:51.779 anything about him. And, you know, I could exercise my freedom and live on that diet, but what's going 00:17:51.779 --> 00:17:58.140 to happen? Right? I'm either going to become an alcoholic or I'm going to die a premature, horrible 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:04.500 death. Right? But it's not going to go well for me. And the point is, staying free from things like 00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:12.079 addiction, premature death, that requires a lot of self-control, which means giving up freedom. 00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:18.700 Right? Let me give you another example. Maybe, maybe we think that freedom means being able to go 00:18:18.700 --> 00:18:27.539 wherever we want or to be whoever we want. Some people are so committed to being able to do what 00:18:27.539 --> 00:18:32.119 they want, when they want, go where they want, live where they want, that they are very reticent 00:18:32.119 --> 00:18:40.039 to commit to any one place for too long. They're very, very nervous about committing themselves to 00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:44.679 a community, to a church, committing themselves to a marriage. Right? I still remember a friend of 00:18:44.679 --> 00:18:49.819 mine from college who, you know, I went to visit him and I asked what had happened to the girl that 00:18:49.819 --> 00:18:52.719 he was dating. She was really great. And he'd broken up with her and gone to somebody else. And I said, 00:18:52.739 --> 00:18:55.939 well, what happened? He said, well, that's the problem with living here is that no matter who you're 00:18:55.940 --> 00:19:03.519 dating, around the corner, there's always somebody better. Right? So, still not married as far as I 00:19:03.519 --> 00:19:07.580 know. I think he's my age, he's 45, still not married because there's always something better 00:19:07.580 --> 00:19:11.920 out there. There's always, he's just ready, you know, he wants to keep his options open. Right? 00:19:12.100 --> 00:19:17.640 But over time, what happens if you live in that kind of freedom? You want to keep your options open. 00:19:17.640 --> 00:19:24.400 Right? Over time, you end up being incredibly lonely and adrift. Right? Things like love, 00:19:24.780 --> 00:19:30.720 things like community, things like friendship, things like marriage, those require commitment. 00:19:31.380 --> 00:19:37.740 Which means what? Giving up a fair amount of freedom. Right? One final example, maybe I want 00:19:37.740 --> 00:19:43.259 to sit down at that piano over there and maybe I want to play Beethoven. Maybe I've got a little 00:19:43.259 --> 00:19:47.360 Rachmaninoff that I just want to get out there, you know, and express that to you. Right? Maybe I'm 00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:53.259 feeling moved by the Spirit to do that. Now, I'm free to try, but it's not going to go well for us. 00:19:53.399 --> 00:19:59.479 And the reason is because I have no idea how to play the piano. Right? If I wanted to be able to do 00:19:59.479 --> 00:20:06.059 that, you know, when Hillary, when Hillary plays piano, there's a freedom in what she's doing, 00:20:06.299 --> 00:20:10.819 but where did that freedom come from? It came through the fact that for years and years and years 00:20:10.819 --> 00:20:15.079 and years and years, she gave up lots of other things in her life and devoted herself to practicing 00:20:15.079 --> 00:20:18.879 the piano. And so, if you were to say to Hillary, can you sit down and play some Beethoven? She could 00:20:18.879 --> 00:20:24.899 do it. And it would seem effortless. Right? It would seem effortless. But that's the product 00:20:24.899 --> 00:20:31.699 of giving up a whole lot of freedom in order to train and practice. Right? So, what we see with 00:20:31.699 --> 00:20:37.439 each of these examples is that certain kinds of freedom, the highest, best forms of freedom, 00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:44.660 actually require sacrificing other forms of freedom. Right? It's not as simple as saying 00:20:44.660 --> 00:20:49.720 freedom is the ability to do whatever I want. And so, what we see in Scripture is a much better, 00:20:49.840 --> 00:20:55.559 much more nuanced definition of freedom. Freedom isn't just unconstrained choice without boundaries. 00:20:56.840 --> 00:21:05.480 True freedom means finding the right kinds of boundaries that liberate us to be fully alive, 00:21:05.480 --> 00:21:13.799 that liberate us to be fully who we were created to be. That's true freedom. You know, there's a reason 00:21:13.799 --> 00:21:20.039 why immediately after liberating the Israelites from 400 years of slavery, one of the first things God does 00:21:20.039 --> 00:21:28.960 is to give them the law. They've lived in slavery for 400 years. They've only ever always known slavery 00:21:28.960 --> 00:21:34.319 all the time. Had somebody else telling them what to do, when to do it, what they could eat, 00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:40.980 you know, they could never stop working. God says, you need to learn how to be free. I can't just 00:21:40.980 --> 00:21:44.240 unleash you in the world. What are you going to do? You're going to go right back into slavery. 00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:51.419 It's all you know. You need to learn how to be free as individuals, as a society. Here is a law. 00:21:51.740 --> 00:21:58.500 Here are the right boundaries that if you follow them will teach your hearts how to be free hearts 00:21:58.500 --> 00:22:01.400 rather than slave hearts. 00:22:03.559 --> 00:22:08.839 Right? So, the second reason the psalmist loves God's Word is because it gives him the right boundaries 00:22:08.839 --> 00:22:13.960 that lead to freedom and flourishing. He says, I'm going to follow your precepts and that will allow me 00:22:13.960 --> 00:22:20.319 to walk in a wide place. Right? And then the third reason that we see in Psalm 119 why the psalmist 00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:27.399 loves God's Word so much, through Scripture he is captivated by God's beauty. He's captivated by 00:22:27.399 --> 00:22:34.000 God's beauty. Verses 35 through 37, lead me in the path of your commandments for I delight in it. 00:22:34.619 --> 00:22:40.779 I delight in it. Captivated by beauty. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:46.460 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. 00:22:46.460 --> 00:22:52.240 The word for worthless things can also be translated as idols, and it often is. 00:22:53.240 --> 00:22:58.120 The Bible says that our core problem, the reason that we aren't the kind of people we want to be, 00:22:58.180 --> 00:23:03.200 that we do things that we don't want to do, the reason that we're broken, the reason the world is 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:10.019 broken is because of idolatry. Because we as human beings take good things, this is a good thing that 00:23:10.019 --> 00:23:16.319 God has given me, and we elevate them into ultimate things. And that becomes the thing, the only thing 00:23:16.319 --> 00:23:19.960 that I want, the only thing that I live for. It's the reason I get out of bed in the morning is this 00:23:19.960 --> 00:23:25.399 thing. It's a thing that I'm meant to receive from God and to thank God for, but I allow it to become 00:23:25.399 --> 00:23:31.419 God. And when that thing is allowed to be a God in my life, that's when things go off the rails. 00:23:32.700 --> 00:23:40.859 And anything can become an idol. Safety can become an idol. Comfort, convenience, family, kids, 00:23:40.859 --> 00:23:46.559 career, all of the good things that we love and give ourselves to in the world, they can all become 00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:52.419 idols. And no matter what, what we see again and again and again is whatever we turn into an idol, 00:23:52.500 --> 00:23:55.759 if we worship anything other than God as ultimate, it's going to wreck our lives. 00:23:57.259 --> 00:24:04.159 If you worship safety, and if you build your life around always staying safe and avoiding risk, 00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:10.220 what's going to happen? Well, you're always going to feel anxiety. You're always going to feel fear 00:24:10.220 --> 00:24:16.960 because you're always going to worry that you're not actually safe. You know, did I remember to turn 00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:22.900 that off? Did I remember to lock that? You're always going to worry you're not going to feel safe. 00:24:22.980 --> 00:24:27.640 There's going to be no peace in that. And then you're going to start to refuse to actually live your life 00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:33.640 and inhabit your life because risk is unavoidable in life. But if you build your life around safety, 00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:38.440 if that's your idol, you're going to imprison yourself in a cage of your own fear. 00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:44.259 If you worship family, you know, a lot of cultures would say there's nothing better than family. 00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:48.820 If that's where you find all your meaning, you're going to crush your family under the weight of 00:24:48.820 --> 00:24:53.360 your expectations and needs. You're going to need them to be something that nobody can be, 00:24:53.960 --> 00:24:59.100 an ultimate source of meaning for you. What happens when your kids don't do well in school? What 00:24:59.100 --> 00:25:01.820 happens when your marriage falls apart despite all your best efforts? 00:25:04.100 --> 00:25:07.840 What happens when there are behavioral issues that you need to deal with and the principal wants to 00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:12.400 meet with you, right? What happens when you look around and all of your friends' kids seem perfect 00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:15.920 and your kids seem like they've got all kinds of issues? And what does that say about you? 00:25:16.180 --> 00:25:21.580 If family is an idol, that's going to destroy you because what meaning is there for me in life? 00:25:21.580 --> 00:25:27.200 What purpose is there in life now that I've failed at this, right? If you worship career, 00:25:27.320 --> 00:25:29.400 then what's going to happen is you're going to find that more and more and more, 00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:33.880 you will do whatever it takes to succeed. You're going to sacrifice friendships, you're going to 00:25:33.880 --> 00:25:39.640 sacrifice maybe your family or a chance at having a family, and then ultimately you might even find 00:25:39.640 --> 00:25:43.540 that you're sacrificing little bits of your own integrity here and there because the ultimate 00:25:43.540 --> 00:25:49.800 thing for you is success. And what the Bible says is that God is the only one in existence who, 00:25:49.800 --> 00:25:55.960 if we worship Him, leads us to greater freedom and flourishing. Everything else leads us back into 00:25:55.960 --> 00:26:03.400 captivity. But giving up our idols is not easy because we're captivated by them. That's what the word means. 00:26:03.900 --> 00:26:10.299 You can't just walk out of a prison. You're captivated by these things. So, the only hope that Scripture 00:26:10.299 --> 00:26:16.700 says is that we need something more beautiful, something more captivating to come along and displace 00:26:16.700 --> 00:26:22.160 that idol. They need to be forcibly removed from our hearts. And this is that great phrase that comes from 00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:28.080 the Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers, who famously coined the phrase, he says, we need the expulsive 00:26:28.080 --> 00:26:35.480 power of a new affection. He says, what cannot be destroyed may be dispossessed. The only way to 00:26:35.480 --> 00:26:41.700 dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Something so beautiful 00:26:41.700 --> 00:26:48.519 and something so captivating comes in that the old love is cast out. It's replaced, right? In the light of 00:26:48.519 --> 00:26:57.279 this new love, this old thing seems pale and thin and vapid by comparison. And there's only one thing 00:26:57.279 --> 00:27:04.339 that can captivate us more than idols, which are very captivating, and that's the love of God, 00:27:04.519 --> 00:27:11.619 which is the most captivating thing in existence. And in fact, the Scripture does more than just speak 00:27:11.619 --> 00:27:22.239 about God's love. It promises that God's love will one day come, that God's love will one day come to His people. 00:27:22.379 --> 00:27:23.359 Verse 41 says, 00:27:23.899 --> 00:27:30.479 Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:39.039 So, the third reason the psalmist loves Scripture is because it speaks of God's love, which is the 00:27:39.039 --> 00:27:45.880 greatest and most beautiful thing there is, a God who loves His people and would do anything to set 00:27:45.880 --> 00:27:52.620 them free. So, these are the three reasons the psalmist loves God's Word, because by it, he's grounded in 00:27:52.620 --> 00:27:59.839 God's truth, he's liberated by God's goodness, he's captivated by God's beauty. But as we read this 00:27:59.839 --> 00:28:07.019 psalm, just one final thought, as we read this psalm, we cannot help but notice that his love for God's 00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:15.579 Word seems to go even beyond all of this. He doesn't just love God's Word the way we might love a great 00:28:15.579 --> 00:28:25.000 novel. He actually seems to love God's Word like a person, right? He speaks of God's Word like someone 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:30.259 might talk about the love of their life. He says, 00:28:30.259 --> 00:28:39.160 My soul is consumed with longing for your Word. Now, I love books. My happy place is to be surrounded 00:28:39.160 --> 00:28:44.980 by books. I feel like I'm with all of my friends when I'm around all of these books, and one of my 00:28:44.980 --> 00:28:49.240 favorite things to do in my life is to open a book that I love and to just have time to read it, 00:28:49.240 --> 00:28:55.940 right? I come alive when I get to do that. I've never said anything like this about a book. 00:28:56.920 --> 00:29:06.359 My soul is consumed with longing. It feels like melodrama, but it's not. How do we make sense of 00:29:06.359 --> 00:29:12.380 this? Well, over a thousand years later, the Apostle John realized something profound. 00:29:12.380 --> 00:29:23.740 The psalmist was right all along. God's Word is a person. And when John sat down to write his account 00:29:23.740 --> 00:29:32.380 of the birth and the life of Jesus, what did he say? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, 00:29:32.380 --> 00:29:39.960 and we have seen His glory, right? The Word became flesh. The psalmist is like, I knew it! 00:29:39.960 --> 00:29:47.079 I knew it! I knew there was someone here just on the other side of these pages. I knew that it was 00:29:47.079 --> 00:29:53.500 that love that I felt. I knew that that's who was speaking to me all the while, right? So, 00:29:53.579 --> 00:29:59.259 our relationship with Jesus and our relationship with God's Word are one in the same. Ultimately, 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:07.200 God's Word points to the eternal Word of God, which is Jesus Christ. Why is God's Word filled with so 00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:13.519 much goodness and beauty and truth? Because it is all about and points to the one who is goodness 00:30:13.519 --> 00:30:19.539 and beauty and truth, the one who said Himself, I am the way and the truth and the life. 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:26.059 So, our relationship with Jesus and our relationship with God's Word, they are inextricably linked. That's 00:30:26.059 --> 00:30:32.799 why Jesus says to His disciples, if you love Me, keep My Word, right? So, for those of us who have a 00:30:32.799 --> 00:30:42.639 complicated relationship with Scripture, it's okay. But Jesus is the answer to that. If you want a better 00:30:42.639 --> 00:30:48.539 relationship with the written Word of God, then there's only one place to go, and that's to the 00:30:48.539 --> 00:30:56.159 living Word of God, Jesus Christ. That's where it starts. And so, my hope and my prayer is that as we dive 00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:03.220 into this series over the next few weeks, we will be able to take that truth and to dig in, and that 00:31:03.220 --> 00:31:11.620 we will actually see our relationship with Scripture shift and change as a result of Jesus' work in our 00:31:11.620 --> 00:31:18.940 hearts. And the series is called Read, Mark, Learn because we've taken that out of one of our prayers 00:31:18.940 --> 00:31:23.580 that we pray in the Anglican tradition. So, what I'd love to do is actually to end this by praying this 00:31:23.579 --> 00:31:30.240 prayer together. And so, I'd love to put that up on the screen if we have it, and then we'll pray it 00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:45.879 together. I don't know if you can see that. We see through a glass dimly. Here's how it goes. Let's pray. 00:31:45.880 --> 00:32:15.860 Amen. Amen.