A New Year, God's Word, and Your Life
A New Year, God’s Word, and Your Life
Psalm 119:9-16
Intro: Bible I received at my ordination.
Turn to Psalm 119.
This is the longest psalm. It is a prayer to God which sings the praises of his law, and reflects on the security and happiness of those who live by it.
The psalm uses several different terms for God’s word: law, statutes, precepts, decrees and commands. By one term or another, God’s word and way are mentioned in every verse.
The whole psalm is carefully constructed around the twenty-four letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each letter introduces an eight-verse section or stanza. Each stanza extols a fresh aspect of God’s wonderful law, its beauty and benefits.[1]
[Read Psalm 119:9-16]
Several principles for keeping God’s Word in your life in 2007:
1. Be Cleansed By God’s Word.
Psalm 119:9
How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.
Cleanse here means to be free from sin, free from fault, free from anything that would contaminate our hearts before God.
How can a young man? The same way an old man can. The same way a young or old woman can.
“How can a young man cleanse his way?”
This question is the great issue of the Bible:
How can a sinner stand in the presence of a holy God?
How can we be washed and restored?
“By taking heed.”
I will obey your word and stay clean.
Easter of 2001, visited England, took a tour out to the county of Kent, near the port town of Dover, and saw what British people have voted as the 3rd greatest natural wonder of Enlgand: The White Cliffs of Dover.
A cliff face. 350 feet height. Facing the English channel at its narrowest point near Continental Europe.
The cliffs are strikingly and brightly white. That’s because the cliffs are made of pure white lime chalk.
Constantly, the wind and the rain erodes the surface of the cliff. So the white cliffs never have the chance to become dirty.
They stay a bright white.
God wants our hearts to be like those white lime cliffs – constantly cleansed, refined, and renewed by His Word.
Daily washing in the word keeps us clean.
2. Be Close Through God’s Word.
Psalm 119:10
With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!
“Let me not wander” – “Wander” is a Hebrew word that was used to describe a sheep that had wandered from the fold. Or a drunken person who could not walk straight.
It means to make linear movement with no particular goal or direction.
It means to wander way from the place where you’re supposed to be.
God’s Word: Keeps us close to God.
Prayer. And the Bible.
Prayer. And the Bible.
An old Christian was asked by a younger believer, "Which is the more important: reading God's Word or praying?"
The old man thought about it for a moment, then answered, "Well, which is more important to a bird: the right wing or the left?"
[Adapted from A. W. Tozer, Jesus, Our Man in Glory; compiled by Richard A. Kauffman in "Reflections," Christianity Today (6-24-02)]
3. Be Corrected By God’s Word.
Psalm 119:11
Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.
Hidden – concealed. Used to describe gathering up treasure hiding them in a place where they cannot be stolen.
Implies that the thing hidden has a tremendous value.
Campbell Morgan summarized this verse this way: “The best book, in the best place, for the best purpose.”[2]
Some people may think that this verse only means that Scripture should be memorized.
Memorizing God’s Word is a wonderful thing, but some of the meanest little children I have seen in Sunday school were the ones who could stand up and quote a lot of Scripture.
When the psalmist wrote, “Your word I have hidden in my heart,” he didn’t mean something less than memorization.
But he did mean something much more.
He meant determining to obey God’s Word.
I want to know it. I want to treasure it in my heart. And I want to obey it – because I don’t want to sin against you, God.
I want your Word to correct me.
It was 2001. It was Talladega. It was a small adjustment that could make a big difference. Sure, it was against NASCAR rules, but almost everyone else was doing it. So crew chief Tim Shutt crawled under the No. 20 car of Mike McLaughlin, who used to race on the NASCAR Busch circuit.
Shutt was a relatively new believer "Joe [Gibbs, team owner] is adamant that we don't cheat," said Shutt, who encountered Christ at a Christian retreat for participants in the racing industry. "Most teams figure that as long as you get away with it, it's not cheating."
"I said to Mike that morning in practice, 'If we're no good in practice, I'll put this piece—the illegal piece—on. Probably 30 other teams are doing it." I was justifying it.
"I got up under the car, I got halfway through putting it on, and that verse, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' came flashing in red in front of me, and whoa, that was it. I said, 'I'm leaving this up to you, God.'" Shutt didn't put the piece on the car.
McLaughlin won the race.
4. Be Content With God’s Word.
Psalm 119:12
Blessed are You, O Lord! Teach me Your statutes.
Psalm 119:13
With my lips I have declared All the judgments of Your mouth.
Psalm 119:14
I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, As much as in all riches.
“As much as in all riches.” Hebrew word for “riches” literally means enough.
God’s Word is enough for me.
Two buddies: George and Don.
George’s friend, Don, coaxed him and invited him to come along to a new Bible study in their west Texas community.
The program was called Community Bible Study—started in the Washington, D.C., area in 1975 by a group of suburban women.
By the time it got to that town in west Texas, it was a spiritual boot camp; an intensive, year-long study of a single Book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter with detailed reading and discussion in a group of ten men.
For two years George and Don and their partners read the clear writings of the Luke—Acts and then his Gospel.
Two themes stood out: Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, and the founding of the church. George, who was a people-person, responded to the conversion story. He liked the idea of knowing Jesus as a friend.
The Bible study became a turning point for George. It gave him an intellectual and spiritual focus. He was the product of elite secular education—Andover, Yale, and Harvard—but, for the first time, George was reading a book line by line with rapt attention. A jogger and a marathoner for years, Bush found in Bible study an equivalent mental and spiritual discipline.
By the way, the little town in west Texas was called Midland. George’s friend was Don Evans, and George is now know to us as President George W. Bush. [Howard Fineman, "Bush and God," Newsweek (3-10-03); submitted by Greg Asimakoupoulos, Naperville, Illinois]
God’s Word satisfied as nothing had before, and it changed his life and direction.
Gregory the Great once said, “The Bible is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb may walk without losing its feet.”
Someone else put it this way: “The Bible is like a pool of water from which a little child can get a drink but deep enough that philosophers and theologians can swim for lifetime without ever touching bottom.”
It is enough. We can be content with it.
5. Be Committed To God’s Word.
Psalm 119:15
I will meditate on Your precepts, And contemplate Your ways.
Psalm 119:16
I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.
If I were to ask how many people here have ever taken piano lessons, a good number of you would probably raise your hands.
If I were to then ask how many of you would like to come up a play us a number on the piano, most of the hands would go down, quickly, before anybody had a chance to call on you.
Millions of people start on piano lessons. They play one note with one finger and then they go to two fingers, and then two hands. There are different plateaus. At each plateau another percentage of people get off the boat and give it up.
Few people are committed enough to really ever learn the instrument.
Many Christians do a similar thing with the Bible. We start reading. We start studying. But we don’t continue.
Even among people who have been Christians 20 or 30 years, only very small minority says that they've read the whole Bible.
Much less meditated on it, let it seep into their souls and change their lives.
But God is calling us to that kind of commitment.
It’s part of how He grows us into the image of Jesus.
Kim Peek is the man who inspired the 1988 film Rain Man about an autistic savant with astounding mathematical skills.
Peek is what doctors call a mega-savant. A savant possesses remarkable expertise in 1 to 3 subjects. Peek is an expert in at least 15, including history, sports, space, music, and geography. No one in the world is thought to possess a brain as extraordinary as Peek's. He has total recall of 9,000 books. It was discovered that each of Peek's eyes can read a separate page simultaneously, absorbing every word. In fact, a page that might take you or me 3 minutes to read, Peek can read in 10 seconds and never forget.
Kim Peek once went to a performance of Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night. As the play was ending, Peek stood up and said out loud, "You've got to stop it, stop it, stop it." It turned out that the actor had skipped the second to the last verse of the play. The actor then apologized saying, "The verses are so much alike I didn't think it would matter."
Peek responded, "It mattered to William Shakespeare, and it should matter to you."
How much more should the Word of God matter to us! ["The Original Rain Man," The Week (3-4-05) pp.40-41; submitted by Aaron Goerner, Utica, New York]
J. I. Packer on meditation:
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, thinking over, dwelling on, and applying to oneself the various things one knows about the works and ways and purpose and promises of God.
It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communication with God.
Its purpose is to clear one's mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one's mind and heart.
It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself.
It is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God's power and grace.
J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1973), pp. 18-19
The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.
Augustine of Hippo, Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Baker, 2000), p. 112
A garment that is double dyed, dipped again and again, will retain color a great while; so a truth which is the subject of meditation.
Philip Henry, Leadership, Vol. 5, no. 1.
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[1]Knowles, A. (2001). The Bible guide. Includes index. (1st Augsburg books ed.) (243). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.
[2]Wiersbe, W. W. (1997, c1991). With the word Bible commentary (Ps 119:9). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.