God's Word

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Our text this morning will be Psalm 19. Psalm 19 will be the sermon text this morning. And as it is my unofficial tradition each year to encourage you to look at God's Word, that's what we'll be doing this morning. Psalm 19, and this morning's passage will come from verses 7 through 14. Psalm 19, you can find that if you're using the Pew Bible on page 489.

Hear now God's perfect and holy Word. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned, and in keeping them There is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Prayer for Illumination

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We pray now that you would Turn our ears, our minds, our eyes to your word that we would pay careful attention. Father, we pray that you would allow us to put on the back burner the things of this world that want to pull away our attention. I pray, Lord, that you would give me the words to speak and that you might be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

Well, there was a woman out in North Korea, her name, I'm gonna just read this one for you, Kim Da-bin. Kim Da-bin had a ritual every night. Kim Da-bin would go out every night and she would go out along this well-beaten path out to the woods outside of her house.

And when it was pitch dark outside, she would go out there with her small shovel And she would look around and make sure that nobody had followed her or seen her go outside. And as it was dark out there, she would quietly and slowly push her shovel into the ground, trying to make sure she didn't make any noise. And would take her a few shovel scoops, but she would take the dirt off and she would get down on her hands and knees and she would pick up a bag. And she would wipe off the dirt from the bag and she would open the bag and inside of it was a Bible. And she would take that Bible into her house and she would read as much as she could before the rest of her family realized that she had gone outside and come back in because any one of them could turn her in for a death sentence for holding this Western book in her hands. And after she read as much as she could, she would go back outside each night, put it back in that plastic bag, wrap it back up, put it in the hole, put the dirt back over it and cover it over and try to get in so no one would see her. She desired God's word even though it might cost her her very life. Brothers and sisters, do we value and treasure God's word? Do we value and treasure God's word?

Especially in a world where you can pick up your smartphone and you can read. You can pick up Facebook or get a text message every day and read the Bible with me. You can open up, I'm sure, a gajillion Bibles in your house that you have in print and just pick them up and read. But if we just become familiar with it and stop treasuring it, well, brothers and sisters, that's your call this morning. It's a simple call, value God's word. Treasure God's word. And so as we do that, you'll see three different things.

First Point

First, we'll see what the scripture is. We value the scripture because of what it does. And we value the scripture for what it shows. What it is, what it does, and what it shows. What do the scriptures show us? What do they do and what are they? So first value God's word. First value God's word for what it is.

There's a number of different terms here that it uses in seven through 14. Just look at a few things with me at verse seven. The law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commands of the Lord. This is something we need to get used to, right? When I first became a Christian, I would read these and I was like, what's the difference between a statute and a testimony and the law? Are these different things or different parts of God's word?

And at times it's used that way, but in the Psalms, this is poetry. This is a song. These are used as synonyms, essentially equal terms. Not to be ripped apart, not to be pulled apart, but this is poetic language for saying the Word, all of it, the judgments, the law, the testimonies, the statutes, everything, God's Word. It's His. He gave it.

This is like saying, you know, my wife is beautiful, gorgeous, and lovely. Well, they're meaning the same thing if I'm telling Olivia, you're beautiful, gorgeous, and lovely. I'm not trying to say, well, this is beautiful about you and this is lovely. No, no, no, this is talking about God's word, all of it. All of it is perfect. All of it is wonderful. God's word is his gift to his people. And so as we get into God's word and we look at it, look at how the psalmist describes God's word. Again, look with me at verse seven. The law of the Lord is perfect. The law of the Lord is perfect.

Without blemish. Perfect. Have you guys ever gone to a wedding before and seen the bride right as she starts to walk down the aisle and she's got her hair perfectly, everything in place and the gown is perfect white, there's no stains or wrinkles on it, no blemishes anywhere on it. That's the picture here of something that doesn't have any blemish on it. God's Word is that, it's perfect, it's pure, it's wonderful. Nothing unsightly about it.

But the psalmist goes on in verse 7 and he says, the law of the Lord is perfect, but what else is it? The testimony of the Lord is sure. The testimony of the Lord is sure. This is the idea that it has been tested and proven upright. That it has been tested by generations and centuries and millennia of Christians and every one of them has found it to be what it promises it is. God's very own breathed out communication to his people. God's word is sure. Verse eight, what else does it say?

The statutes of the Lord are right. This idea of God's word being right is the idea that it is a straight path. It's not like when you get into God's Word, you're going to start reading it, and as you read it, you're going to take a sharp turn to the right, and you're going to end up somewhere down the wrong way. No, no, no, no. No, if you faithfully read God's Word, and don't try to shove your own ideas into it, or don't try to make it say things that it's not saying, but if you just read it for what it is, and you let Scripture interpret itself, when you let more clear passages interpret less clear passages, what happens is, It's always going to lead you to the straight path to Christ. It's always going to lead you towards the straight path to Christ.

Now, there are those who will twist, right? What did Paul tell Timothy in 2 Timothy 3? There's going to be deceivers who are going to come. They'll even deceive themselves. Because they'll look into this and they'll try to pull things apart. This is a common way that the cults will come to God's Word. They'll come to it and they'll take this minute little obscure passage over here and they'll build a whole theology on this one little obscure passage that everybody's kind of scratching their heads at.

But yet there's 15 other passages that contradict what they're teaching that that one passage is trying to say. When we let the more clear passages of Scripture interpret the less clear passages of Scripture, when we use that rule of faith, what happens is the Scriptures always lead us in the right direction towards Christ.

God's Word is sure, it's straight, it's infallible. Verse 8 goes on, the statutes of the Lord are right, but what else does it say? The commandment of the Lord is pure, perfect, 24K, no dross, no mingling, It's not watered down, it's a pure word of God. The judgments of the Lord, verse 9, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together. God's word, brothers and sisters, is true every jot and tittle, the smallest stroke of the pen.

The littlest letter, the apostle Paul in the book of Galatians even goes so far as he's making an argument and he says, here's the reality, even whether a word is singular or plural matters. He doesn't use the grammatical language like that, but he says, what do the scriptures say? It does not say, and to his seeds, meaning many, but and to his seed. Paul has such confidence in the inerrancy of God's word that even whether it's talking about one seed or a bunch of seeds is important.

We can trust whether it's saying this is singular or plural. That's the precision and accuracy of God's Word. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. So this is what God's Word is. This is how the psalmist explains all of God's Word. I remember a little while ago, I was introduced, Jay took me to Mecham Auctions. And so I was surprised as we were at this auction, and they were selling tractors. And I thought, oh, OK, cool. We'll go up there and see some tractors, and people will buy some old tractors and new tractors. No, it was all old tractors that day.

And somebody dropped $90,000 on a tractor. And so that got me down this rabbit trail of now I'm always looking at these stories of why would somebody buy an old tractor? And just recently, just this year, a man in Indiana bought a tractor. He bought his, a model, I shouldn't, I gotta look at this, make sure I don't get it wrong or else the farmers will make fun of me later. A 1951 Deere Model B. And he paid thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for this tractor. But the tractor itself is just metal in an engine. Why would he pay this much money?

It was his grandpa's tractor. And his grandpa had farmed on this tractor. His mom had farmed on this tractor. His uncle had ridden on this tractor. And then when the family needed the money and they didn't need the tractor, they sold the tractor off. But this grandson, after his grandpa died, wanted that tractor.

He remembered his grandfather and how he had used that. And so what did he do? He tracked down who had bought it and found that person, who had they sold it to, and eventually found it rusting away in some barn. And after months, he finally found this thing, bought it, brought it home and restored it. Brothers and sisters, there's real value that that man had, not in the physical tractor itself, but what was all tied up in that tractor.

You can collect physical Bibles all you want, but unless what it actually means has value to it, they're just books. Does that make sense? Have you ever met someone who has this big, huge Bible? They might have a Bible like that one. There's like this big, huge, thick one that sits on their mantel place or something, but nobody in the family ever actually reads it. Just because you physically have a Bible in your hand doesn't mean anything to you. The family that owned that tractor, they didn't care about it. It was just an implement. But to the family who originally had it, to this grandson, it meant everything.

Do we value God's word? Not just the physical book itself, but do you actually get into it? Do you know the substance of it because it teaches you about Christ? Is it valuable to you? Brothers and sisters, God's word is more valuable than any tractor is ever going to have an intrinsic value.

There's nothing more perfect than God's word. There's nothing more true than God's word. There's nothing more upright than God's word. God's word is more desirous than everything else in this life. God's word is more valuable than money. God's word is more valuable than the finest of gold.

Do we value it? Do we go to it? Do we find the words of life there? It's interesting what it says that God's word is more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold, that's what verse 10 says. More to be desired are they than gold, that's about God's judgments, yea, than much fine gold. At the time that David is writing this psalm, this is not the day of propane gas.

I had to look it up, but it's like 1900 degrees is how hot you have to heat a fire to melt gold. So you would mine gold, you would ore gold, and then you would get it and you would put it in a crucible and you would heat up that crucible to 1,000, let me make sure here, 1,947 degrees. I'm talking about fire, I'm talking about glowing hot red bricks, I'm talking about intense work to stoke this fire, stoke this fire, stoke this fire, so that way when the gold is in there, all the dross comes out of it, all that's left.

No alloys, no aluminum, no copper, just gold. People then knew what it was like to have costly gold. You know it. And people want 24 karat gold when they buy stuff. God's word is more tested and pure than any of the world's finest gold. It's interesting also that in verse 10, what does he say? More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Again, we can get honey all the time. I mean, there's a guy just a mile down the road here who has a whole bunch of beehives and we can go to his house in Mediapolis and buy a whole gallon of honey from him if we wanted to. But in the ancient world, that wasn't the case. They didn't have modern beehives like we have. Those were only invented in the last 150 years. But you had to forage and find wild honey.

This was so much of a luxury that Pharaoh himself was called the Bee King because he had a whole bunch of people who would go out and would actually harvest honey from wild hives because it was a royal luxury. How often do we treat God's word as something paltry, as something common, as something ordinary? Or do we treat it as a royal gift from God himself? Sweeter than honey, even honey from the comb. Melting in your mouth, tastes good. Oh, I want more of it. Oh, it's so good. That's what this is talking about. Do we value God's word like that? some application on what God's Word is beyond just valuing God's Word, is do you store it up in your heart?

What does Joshua 1.8 say?

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to observe, to do everything that is written in it. Do you meditate on God's Word day and night? Do you chew it over? Do you think about it? Psalm one, we sang this and read it, but his delight is in God's law, and he shall meditate on it day and night. Even Jesus, when he is being tempted by Satan, what does he say? Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Do you value God's word more than you value your food?

I'm gonna give you a challenge here. Bible before breakfast. Now, I'm not saying Bible before coffee, but Bible before breakfast. I have to have coffee to wake up in the morning. But before you eat your food, will you devote yourself to being in the real food? Will you go to the real meat and bread of God's Word and fill your soul before you fill your belly? There's a theologian who says, great, you've mismanaged your time this morning and you haven't had time to make yourself your normal breakfast, too bad. Get in God's word, read some, and take a granola bar and eat it in the car on your way to work. And there's a reality that what's our priority? Don't we show that, that we prioritize our body and our belly over our souls when we'll eat our breakfast, but we won't read God's word?

Now that's not meant to be legalistic and heavy on you. There's nowhere in the scriptures that you're going to find a commandment, thus shall you do. Always read your Bible before you eat your breakfast. That's not a proverb. It's nowhere in there. This is just a common sense application I'm giving you. But do you read God's word?

On the back bulletin boards, there's, if you look back there, I mean, literally, there's all sorts of yellow and green papers all over that back board. There are two dozen different Bible reading plans on the back door, or on the back wall. In each of your bulletins, you should have a little tiny square that says, I commit to read, and it has a blank line, and you can write what Bible reading plan you would like. If somebody takes all the Bible reading plans that you want to do, you can wrestle them for it, or you can go to the website and print it out yourself.

But will you commit yourself to actually valuing God's Word? Will you purpose yourself that this will be the year that you're going to get through? And don't bite off more than you can chew. If you know that you read slowly and it's hard for you to comprehend things and you don't want to just fly through it, there's a plan back there to just read the Gospels.

You can go through with us and read the wisdom literature. If you would like me to text message you every single morning and ask you a question from your Bible reading, when you write your name on the back of that, or on that paper, you can write, text me. And there's a number of you in the congregation that I do that with every single day. And you can get a text message and I'll just ask you questions about your Bible reading. Or you can join us online.

But the point is, are we reading God's word? Are we showing our children that we value God's word by doing family worship? Children, you can, now this is legitimate, ask your parents to read the Bible to you. Children, ask your parents to read the Bible to you.

Grandparents, parents get ready because they can do this. They were meant to do this, right? This is when God institutes the Old Testament sacrifices and he institutes the Passover. The children were to ask their parents, why do we do such and such? And the parents were supposed to be able to tell them the scriptures, how God brought his people out of Egypt. But that meant his people had to know the stories themselves. Children, ask your parents or grandparents questions about the Bible.

Older saints teach the younger saints. COVID has thrown a wrench in our Sabbath school program, but the work that you do with the younger generation of Christians is extremely important and is vital to Jesus's kingdom. So we value God's word because of what it is. We also should cherish God's word for what it does. Point two, cherish God's word or value God's word for what it does.

Hebrews 4.12 says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joint and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. God's word does things. God's word is powerful. Verse seven, the law of the Lord is perfect.

What does it do? Converting the soul. Verse seven, the testimony of the Lord is sure. What does it do? Making wise the simple. God corrects us, God rebukes us, God trains us, God gives us pure doctrine in his word. That's why we read 2 Timothy chapter three, God's word is, all scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable. It's good for what? It's good for correcting us. It's good for training us. It's good for rebuking us. It's good for giving us instruction and righteousness. Why?

That you might be equipped, thoroughly equipped for every good work. If you want to be more valuable to God's kingdom, if you want to see God's kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven, there's a really simple place to start. Getting God's word. Don't be naïve about what it says. That's probably a better translation than simple. We don't want to be naïve about God's Word and His ways. God's Word is powerful. It converts the soul. It makes simple the naïve. Verse 8, it rejoices the heart.

When we find ourselves in trouble and in turmoil, we can go to God's word. When we find ourself in where we don't know where we're going to find strength or comfort, we can go to Psalm 46. When we find ourselves confused about the world and needing encouragement because it seems like everything's going to hell in a handbasket, we can go to the book of Revelation. When we just need to remember what the point of why we're living is, we can go to the gospels and look to what Christ says when we mourn. And when we need comforted, we can go to the Sermon on the Mount.

When we have to struggle against sin in our lives, if we're struggling with things like lust or with hatred, we can go again to Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and we can have our hearts cut quick by the words of Jesus. God's Word rejoices the heart. Verse 8, God's Word enlightens the eyes. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Verse 11, moreover, by them your servant is warned. God's word warns us.

Don't go that way. That way leads to death. Don't go that direction. It's going to lead to heartache and turmoil in your marriage. This is why we went to Ephesians chapter four and five. People look at Ephesians 4 and 5 and they think, oh man, you can just get stuck down in legalism and stuff like that. Brothers and sisters, I'm telling you, you go to bed angry in your marriage, God's telling you there's gonna be trouble.

You're opening the door to Satan and temptation. God doesn't want you to be naive about this. He wants to open your eyes and see the ways that Satan will try to attack you. See the ways of your old life. God's word warns us, Psalm 119, how can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Are you hiding God's word in your heart? Are you tired of a sin in your life? Are you committing his word to memory? Brothers, I'm going to be honest with you.

This isn't easy. This takes work. This is a spiritual discipline. I'm telling you this as a sinner. Talking to you is somebody who has to fight sin in my life. Often you'll ask me when I ask you, how can I pray? And you're so nice, you'll respond, you'll say, you'll tell me your prayer question, you'll say, how can I pray for you? And I really appreciate that. Brothers and sisters, every day I have to memorize scriptures on not being angry, being patient with my children.

We have to, if I just go on default mode and I'm not thinking about my sin and actively putting it to death, I'm going to go back to my default behavior, go back to that old man. Is there a sin in your life you have been struggling with? Will you memorize scripture to help you, to train you, to rebuke you, to correct you that you might be able to live to God?

Verse 11 also says that He rewards us for keeping His statutes. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. There are good things that come from God's Word. Jesus Himself in Matthew 14, 21 says, He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is He who loves me, and he who loves me, I will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. If you hear Jesus' words, they seep deep down into your soul. It shows that you love Christ and that the Father has loved you and Jesus will be with you.

I quoted to you the first part of of Joshua chapter 1, verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to observe, to do everything that is written in it. There's a second part of that verse though. The second part of that verse. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Now that doesn't look like necessarily earthly success. I'm not saying read the Bible and keep God's law and this is health, wealth, and prosperity. You're going to have a great life, have a Ferrari, and you're going to sell your farm and you're going to have $17 million in the bank. That's not what this is saying.

But generally, this is a way that God promises. If we follow after His ways, there are blessings that come from it. And you can't do that from a legalistic heart. You can't do that from self-righteousness. But we come to God's Word. We say, God, make me more like this. God, move my feet to actually live like this. There is great reward. So we value God's Word because of what it is. We value God's Word because of what it does. But we also, lastly, value God's Word for what it shows. Look with me at 12 through 14.

Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and I shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Who can discern his errors? Equip me from my hidden faults.

Man, that's an honest psalmist, isn't it? If you just read the second half of Psalm 19, you might think this is really a, you know, this is an upright guy. This is somebody who really knows God's word. This is somebody who really loves God's word. They must be like really righteous. And yet the psalmist says, no, no, no, it's not me that's righteous. It's God and his word. What am I, verse 12, errant and faulty?

Indeed, that's what the scriptures point us to. I told you before at the beginning of the sermon, all roads lead to Christ, even here. Even here, brothers and sisters, this flies us straight to Psalm 51 and flies us past that to the cross and takes us all the way to 1 John 1. Right, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness.

Right, what do the scriptures show? The scriptures show us who we really are without Christ. The scriptures show us that even our good deeds are as of filthy rags and I'm not gonna preach too much on all that because you had a whole sermon on it last week. But the scriptures show us that we aren't good enough in and of ourselves, but we need Christ.

We need the one who can keep God's law perfectly. We need someone who is able to hold to God's word perfectly. We need Jesus Christ. We need to be cleansed from our errors and acquitted from our sinful faults that are even hidden to us. is the gospel according to David in Psalm 19.

The scriptures are showing you your sin, your faults, transgressions, and shortfalls, but they are revealing to you your Redeemer, that God has purchased you by the blood of his very own Son, a redemption far more valuable than any silver or gold. How does God enlighten your eyes? He gives you eyes to see. My brother, Stuart, he's like five years younger than me, and Stuart couldn't see very well when he was a young kid. My little brother, I mean, had terrible eyesight.

We didn't realize it at first until, I mean, he kind of like groped around at stuff and he had a real hard time, you know, when he was in school and he couldn't read and it was really frustrating to everyone. And then he went and he saw an eye doctor and they said, whoa, he really needs glasses. And I mean like really needs glasses. But the first time they put on his glasses and he walked outside, he stopped and he looked up And he said to my mom and dad, he said, so that's what leaves look like. They had just been these big, green, amorphous blobs to him before, but once he got eyes to see, he could see how things really are.

Brothers and sisters, the scriptures are the spectacles of God upon our eyes. He gives us eyes to see. So we can see who we really are in our unredeemed natural state. So He can show us the beauties of Jesus Christ and how wonderful and righteous He is. That He might show us the ways of this world. This is why we need our eyes enlightened. That we can see and know what's actually going on around us. Verse 14 is this beautiful closing verse. Let's look at it together.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. This is what God is pushing us towards. We didn't look at the first half of the Psalm. And if you would like, sometime today I'd encourage you to go read the first six verses. Because the entire world around us points to the glory of God. The sunrise and the sunset, everything in the natural order of this world points us to God, but specifically his word points us towards our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

So are these words the words of your mouth? Are these words the meditation of your heart? If we kept track of what your days look like, would it be devoid of God's word, or would it look like you have your priorities straight, that you're following the way of the Spirit, and that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, that you go to God's word, His infallible, inerrant, never-changing, absolutely perfect word to learn about Christ.

Brothers and sisters, I pray that this year, I pray that this year might be the best year you have had meditating on God's word, and I am excited. I am excited, not by a legalistic or formulaic way, but I am excited to see what the Lord's going to do in you and through you as you meditate on His word, as you study His word, as you sit under it preached, as you memorize it, as you sing it, as you value it, as the royal gift he's given.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Oh Lord, we do thank you so much for this great gift you have given us, that you have spoken truth and that you have loved us and cared for us so much that you would speak to us in languages that we can understand. Lord, we pray. that you would by your spirit light a fire within our souls, that we might desire and hunger and thirst for your word, that we might see Christ. It's in his name we pray, amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.