Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning I have chosen to put our Study through Leviticus on hold for one more week.

As I have been thinking about Kelsi and Isaiah and recognizing this milestone in their life, I began to wonder what piece of advice would I want to give them?

As they are now looking to the future, to what paths to take, I kept coming back to this one passage of Scripture.

Now this passage is not just for those who are graduating.

This passage and the advice that is found in it is, in all reality, advice I would give to any Christian.

But this advice is some of the most important advice that I can think of for looking ahead to the rest of our lives.

This passage starts out with a question that is really one of the most important questions that a child of God can ask.

How can a young man keep his way pure.

This is a question that we should be asking ourselves.

How can we keep our way pure?

Or to put the question another way: ‘How can I live a life that will please God?’ or, ‘How can I be sure I will grow as a Christian?’

The first thing I want to point out about this question is that it recognizes a truth about God.

You may miss this, because it is implied in the question.

It recognizes that God is holy.

And this holy God who has saved us is calling us to live holy lives.

I love how Paul puts it in 1 Thes.

4:3

Your Sanctification, that is your life being set apart and growing in holiness.

So our question is one that is seeking to follow God’s will in our lives.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:48

The idea here is to seek holiness in our lives.

So How do we do this?

How do we live our lives in a way that will please God?

How do we keep from sin?

The answer is found in the second half of verse 9.

By guarding it according to your word.

We are to guard our lives by God’s word.

Scripture tells us that God’s word is able to do just that.

The Holy Spirit uses the words of Scripture to search out our thoughts and hearts.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says

God’s word is used to teach, reproof, correct and train us for righteousness, that is, holiness.

John Bunyan had handwritten on the front of his Bible these words:

The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

The Word of God is able to do just that.

So How do we guard our lives with God’s word?

The psalmist spends the next few verses telling us how.

I want to walk through the how with you this morning.

I have five points that I want to bring our.

The first is:

I. Seek God though His Word.

I have written in the front cover of my Bible a quote from Charles Spurgeon.

it goes like this:

“If you wish to know God, you must know His Word.

If you wish to perceive his power, you must see how he works by His Word.

If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.”

You see here is a truth that we often overlook because we are used to having Bibles available readily in our culture.

God is a God who speaks.

He created the universe by speaking.

In fact in our study of Leviticus we are seeing over and over the phrase, then the Lord said to Moses… God is a God who speaks to us.

In Isaiah 44 we read God mocking the false idols that his people were tempted to follow, and he says with the same piece of wood you start a fire to grill steaks and you carve a god for yourself.

All by itself the argument that the idols were nothing more than a block of wood was devastating.

But God doesn’t stop there.

He then points out that they can’t do anything, that is specifically, they cannot speak.

Look at how God address the idols in Is 41:21-24:

God is challenging the idols to speak.

He demands that they tell us.

Tell us about the past or the future.

But they are unable to do anything.

Because they are not real.The God of Israel, the God of the Bible however is a God who speaks and that sets him utterly apart.

There is no God besides our God.

There is no God besides The God of the Bible and what proves it is that He has spoken.

How has he spoken?

God has spoken through the prophets, that is through the Old Testament, as well as through His son this is the New Testament.

The passage we looked at earlier said, all Scripture is God breathed.

That is, all of the Bible is from God.

It is God speaking to us.

So when Scripture tells is to

We are to seek Christ, and all of Scripture, Old and New point us to Christ.

So the first practical application of guarding our ways according to His Word is to seek God through His spoken word.

So as we seek Him our prayer should be with the psalmist here in the second part of vs. 10

Let’s move on the the next point.

II.

Memorize the Word of God

This is something that kids often do in Sunday School or VBS, but for some reason many adults do not practice this.

That is not how it should be.

I want to encourage you to memorize Scripture.

We need to store it up in our hearts.

Chuck Swindoll wrote,

I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture. . . .

No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends!

Your prayer life will be strengthened.

Your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective.

Your attitudes and outlook will begin to change.

Your mind will become alert and observant.

Your confidence and assurance will be enhanced.

Your faith will be solidified.

(Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 61).

The apostle Paul told us in Philippians

What can fit this more than God’s word?

I heard on preacher sum up this passage by saying, “If you are thinking what you ought to be thinking, you wouldn’t be thinking what you ought not to be thinking.

But beyond that, it is God’s Word hidden in your hearts, that you have memorized, that the Holy Spirit is going to use to guard our ways, our thoughts, our emotions, it is from here that we will be convicted, encouraged, and strengthened.

Jesus Himself commanded memorization.

In John 15, Jesus likens Himself to a vine and believers as branches that must abide (or live, dwell, remain) in Him in order to stay alive and be fruitful.

In John 15:7-8, Jesus gets even more specific, saying that if we remain in Him and His words (plural!) remain/live/dwell/abide in us, then we may ask whatever we wish and it will be given to us.

This is the essence of the fruitfulness by which we will both glorify God and prove that we are Jesus’ disciples.

But what does it mean to have Jesus’ “words” (plural!) remaining/living/dwelling/abiding in us?

It means at least that we can remember them.

More than that, it means that they are captivating our minds and hearts, multiplying and spreading like yeast within us, dominating our heart more and more.

It is hard for me to see how this can be done as fully as Jesus intends apart from memorization.

Similar to this passage is Paul’s commandment to the Colossians:

How can we obey this commandment fully apart from memorization?