Sweeter than Honey, More Precious than Gold! (Psalm 19:7-14)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morningston, 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. Please turn over and your Bible is with me to the book of Psalms. Book of Psalms, and we'll be looking this morning at Psalm chapter 19, the second half of that chapter. Psalm chapter 19, you can find that on page 489 of your provided pew bibles. Psalm chapter 19 beginning at verse 7.

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 than they, 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. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Ascends this portion of the reading of God's Word. What you have heard today is self-attesting to its truth. God's Word is truth, every single part of it. The grass withers and the flower fades, but His Word will endure forever.

Well, in 2016, there was a market research done, and they found out that the self-help industry, full of gurus and people who will tell you to have your best life now, Was an industry worth 9.9, catch it, 9.9 billion, let me say that again, 9.9 billion dollars? The self-help market. All sorts of people telling you, here is how you should live your life. Here is how you will find happiness. Here is how you will find good success. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things. There is nothing wrong.

Do you not want happiness in your life? Do you want joy in your life? Do you want a marriage that is strong and enduring? Do you want a sense of joy that will give you contentment that will go on throughout the ends of the ages? Do you want the good things in this life?

Well, what Psalm 19 teaches us is it's not in some self-help book. The answer to what we desperately need in our life is found in the pages of God's perfect word. And so as we look at Psalm 19, we're going to see three different things that you need to look at. The first is what God's Word is. Second is what God's Word does. And lastly, we'll look at what we are to do with God's Word. What God's Word is, what God's Word does, and what we are to do with it. So first, what is God's Word? How does Psalm 19 describe it for us?

Well, it starts in verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect. We need to start right there. The law of the Lord. There's going to be a whole bunch of different words used. There's going to be law. There's going to be judgments. There's going to be testimonies. There's going to be statutes. All those are referring to God's word. In a special way to the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, the law proper. But as we see throughout scripture, it's talking about the whole word of God. But how does it describe God's word? The law of the Lord is perfect.

Have you ever seen a jeweler examine a diamond before? They put on that weird eyeglass thing and they magnify and they look at this tiny little stone and they turn it over and they check how is it cut? Are the cuts square? Is it cut well? Is there any carbon that's inside of it? What's the color grading of it? Is there any shades of color that should be marked?

And every diamond gets a grade on it. It's very, very rare that they'll call a diamond flawless. Actually, they just grade them because flawless is never actually achieved. If it's achieved, it's actually a fake. That's actually how they figured out cubic zirconias when they first came out was, oh, this is too good to be true. But here we find God's Word can be expected at every point and found perfect. with all of its intrinsic value.

There's nothing else like it. You pick up the Bible and its majesty of style and its beauty and its preservation show that this is God's perfect word. The law of the Lord is perfect. And then the second part of verse 8, the testimony of the Lord is sure.

God's Word is proven. God's Word was proven when he promised Abraham that his descendants would become as a sea of the seashore. God's Word is proven true every time he makes a promise and that promise comes to fruition. He promised that the Israelites would come out of Egypt after 400 years and God's Word was proven true. It's sure.

God promised that somebody would come and sit upon the throne of David and rule upon that throne forever. And Jesus came just as His Word had said it was going to happen. Jesus had said, the Word incarnate said that this temple will be torn down, but a new one will be built up in three days. And Jesus was sure His Word was proven true and He was raised from the dead. God's Word is sure. What else is God's word? This verse eight, the statutes of the Lord are right. The statutes of the Lord are right. This is the idea that God's word is straight.

Imagine for a second you were building a house. You're building a house from the ground up, and you have a ruler, and that ruler is pretty good, but it says it's a foot long, but in reality it's only 11 inches instead of a foot. And then you also have a carpenter's square. And that carpenter's square, it looks pretty close to right, but when you really look at it, it's actually 10 degrees off of 90. And you start to lay the foundation of your house, and as you frame the walls of your house, how well would that house go?

It's not going to be square. You're going to have framed walls that are going to be off kilter. You're going to have a roof that's going to want to sag to the side. You're going to have a ceiling that's leaking because things aren't lined up how they're supposed to line up. See, the idea here is that God's Word isn't bent. But God's Word is straight. God's Word is right. God's Word is true to its mark.

This is the standard. It doesn't deviate at any point. Secondly, in verse 8, the command of the Lord is pure. It's pure. This is a unique word in the Hebrew. It's only used a few times, and when it is used, one of the interesting times is in the Song of Solomon, chapter 6, verse 10, where it's Solomon telling his beloved, your love is as pure as the sun. God's Word shines brightly like the sun. Absolutely pure. Perfect light. God's Word is pure. The fear of the Lord is clean and enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Oh, don't we long for truth in our day. Isn't that what our country just spent weeks and thousands and thousands and ten thousands of man hours and radio waves and TV channels trying to figure out who the heck has the truth? Oh, but when we come to God's Word, we have a God who tells us this is true, and this is righteous. This is the way of life. This is the way of the King. When we come to God's Word, it is true and righteous all together. And then what is God's Word? Verse 10 and 11.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey from the honeycomb. More desired than gold, than much fine gold, sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. Gold we get. We still value gold. Gold is still an extremely valuable, precious metal. Go to the commodities market, and it's at the top of the precious metals.

Sweeter than honey. You can go to the store, and you can buy honey. It doesn't cost that much. But when the time of this was written, honey was actually scarce. See, the modern beehives that we have, those weren't invented until the 1800s, and so you had to go and you had to forage for wild hives. And this was a special commodity. You couldn't have honey all the time. You couldn't just go to the grocery market and buy it. It was so much so that the king of Egypt, Pharaoh himself, was called the Bee King, because at his table all the time there was honey. See, the point is that God's Word is more desirable than gold and more precious than the most precious of food.

I was reading just a while ago about one of the churches in China in the 1990s. And there was two Western pastors who had gone to China, and they had gone through great lengths of all sorts of secrecy to get there. And they were taken to a remote village, and in that remote village, they had a gathering of all these house churches that had come together, and all the pastors were there, and they wanted to read God's Word, and they wanted to study God's Word, because these two pastors, these two seminary professors had come in, and they had their own Bibles. And as they soaked up God's word over this week, which is a dangerous thing to do in China in the 90s to gather a whole bunch of pastors together. At the end of the week, they realized, well, that's wonderful. We're going to go home. We're going to go back to our villages. But all we have is what you've told us. We don't actually have God's word itself. And so what these pastors did is they did something that we might find very uncomfortable.

They went to the book of Genesis, and right there, at the end of the book of Genesis, chapter 50, they ripped it out. and they handed it to one of the pastors, and then they did it with the book of Exodus, and then with Leviticus, and then with Numbers, and then with Deuteronomy, and then with Joshua, and then with Judges, so that all these different pastors throughout all of this area of China at least had one book of the Bible, and as these pastors went back home to their home villages with these one books of the Bible, the people were so excited that they had at least one of the 66 books and at their own disposal and they've poured over it and they read it and they studied it and they gathered together and they thanked God for this word even though if they were caught with this word it cost them their very lives and then when they were done with that book they would try to arrange a meeting with the other pastor and so the pastor who had the Genesis book would go and get Philippians and they'd bring it back and people would risk their lives to come and would hear God's word Oh, they valued God's Word even more than their life, more precious than gold, sweeter than the sweetest of honey. It was as if when God's Word hit their ears, their mouths, and their appetites were satisfied, finally, here was food for their soul. Here was the sweet bread of living life that Jesus had promised. It was God's Word for them and they could chew through it and they could eat it.

And yet, how often in our American families Do we have houses filled with multiple copies of God's word?

And yet in a middle class America, this stays shut and overtime is clocked. Chasing after the RV, the next truck, the biggest tractor, the better combine, that next field, whatever that other thing is valued more than God's word. God is telling you this morning, get your priorities, your values straight. Go to His Word, it's more precious than gold, it's sweeter than honey.

What is God's Word? Perfect, sure, pure, enduring, righteous altogether, more precious than gold. And what does God's Word do? What does God's Word do? See, God's Word isn't some dusty book that sits on a shelf that's fun to read for historians. but in it is contained the very words of life. Verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect and what does it do?

Converting the soul, turning back the person to the way. Oh, it was a glorious day. Not too long ago, just about a year ago, we had a person in our own congregation who heard Matthew chapter 2 preached for the first time. And as Devin had invited her to come to a Bible study, She just sat under God's Word and as she read God's Word and as she studied God's Word, something amazing happened.

It was like the light shined into her soul and she realized that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. And she realized that Jesus Christ was our hope. And she realized that it was Jesus who was prophesied about all the way from Genesis, all the way to Malachi. And it was Jesus who was the King of the Jews and the Redeemer of her soul. Oh, and she's still at church now.

She might not be in our church, but brothers and sisters, our dear sister loves the Lord. And it was the Word by the working of the Spirit that converted her soul. The Word converts sinners. What else does the Word do? The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. but it's the wise, the simple, who will humble themselves before God. And it's God who will give them wisdom, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Do you want wisdom? Do you want to know how to actually make things right in your life? Do you want to know how you are to actually cling to the Kingdom of Heaven? Do you want to know how you're supposed to love your wife? Do you want to know how you'll finally have victory over that sin that you just can't get rid of?

Go to God's Word. Go to God's Word. Do you want to know how you can have contentment when your life falls apart? Go to God's Word. Do you want to know how you can have hope Go to God's Word. It's there that we find the wisdom of God that speaks into our lives. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. What else does God's Word do? Verse 8, the statutes of the Lord are right.

And what do they do? Rejoicing the heart. Philippians 4.4 tells us, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. How can you rejoice? Like, seriously, I want you to back off for a second, right? This is all good high language, right? That's fine, Pastor, but my daughter just died. I have family members who are in jail. I'm facing bankruptcy and the debt is crushing on me.

How can you say God's Word has joy? How can you say It rejoices the heart because it's here. It's here in God's word that we find the promises of God that in the darkest of the valleys, he tells you, he walks with you in the valley of the shadow of death. It is in God's word that he tells you, I have begun a good work in you and I will bring it unto completion. It is in God's word that he tells us, I will never leave you nor forsake you. It is in God's word that he tells us, be at peace.

It is God's word that rejoices our hearts in the darkest of the hours. It stands as a torch and as a bright light that pierces down in the deepest of the depths and gives us hope and joy. Oh, we desperately need God's Word, more of God's Word in our life as we live in an age that's filled with darkness and depression and cold-heartedness. Oh, we need the light of God's Word. And that's what the second part says, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Enlightening the eyes. It's amazing. It's always amazing to me. It'll never cease being amazing to me.

That God takes children out of a kingdom of darkness, and by the power of His Holy Spirit, through the preaching and the reading of His Word, brings people into His marvelous light. It is the Word which takes the scales off our eyes that we might finally see the light.

See, when we live our lives based upon what we want to do, when we live our lives based upon our preferences, when we live our lives seeking number one, me, me, me, number one, I, it's always going to end in darkness. But when we come to God's Word, and he tells us, you're looking in the wrong direction. You need to stop looking down. You need to stop looking at the problems around you, and you need to look up.

It's then that we look into that marvelous light, and it's then that our souls can be filled with the warmth of his grace, enlightening the eyes The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. Verse 9, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Verse 11, moreover, by them is your servant warned. I'm going to talk explicitly to you who call yourselves Christians now. This is when things get really hard. See, because Hebrews chapter 4 tells us that God's word is a sword, But that sword hurts because it turns inward as a scalpel on our own hearts, dividing to the piercing of joint and marrow, even to soul and spirit. It's when that scalpel of the Lord, His Word, cuts at our own soul that God's Word is pointing at you and He's saying, you know, you know this is sin.

You know this is wrong. I'm warning you, get out of here. I'm warning you, this affair you're about to have, you need to flee from sexual immorality. God is warning you in the path that you are walking, don't go down that route of covetousness. It's going to destroy your family. You're going to spend more than you bring in. You're going to rack yourself as a slave for debt. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't steal. It's not going to end well. You're going to get fired from your job.

God is telling us again and again and again in His Word. He's warning us. This is what 1 Corinthians 10-13 is talking about. No temptation has overcome you but what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will provide a way of escape that you may bear up under it. Have you looked for that way of escape? God puts signposts as warning signs all over the place, warning you. Don't go here. Don't go here. Don't go here. Don't go here. This is the path that leads to destruction. Stay far off that road. God warns us.

I was just talking to a man who is sentenced to prison. for years upon years upon years. He had lived his life as a Christian for multiple decades, but he missed the warning signs. And he gave in to a carnal idea, a carnal, a fleshly idea of what Christianity is, that somehow he could do whatever he wants, sin in whatever way he wants, and that God would just forgive him of all his sins. And yet he now finds himself sitting in a jail cell, looking up at the bunk, remembering the words that his pastor told him when he was a young man against not being a slave to his sinful desires.

God gives us warning signs, not because he doesn't love us, not because he wants to be a tyrant over you, but because he does love you. Because he does want you to walk in the light of his grace. Because he does want you to follow the way that will lead to everlasting life. Because he does want you to walk upon that narrow road. It is a loving God who warns you. It is not a loving father who tells his child, yeah, go ahead and touch the hot stove, kid. No, the loving father says, don't do that. Move your hand, you're gonna hurt yourself. That is what God's word does.

Moreover, by them your servant is warned. But the flip side of that, and in keeping them, there is great reward." Joshua 1, 8. For 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 all that is contained in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Are you meditating on God's word? That you might be careful to do all that they contain. That then it will go well with you.

Now don't get me wrong, this is not health, wealth, and prosperity. If you read your Bible every day, and you keep God's Word, I'm not promising you a new truck. That ain't in the Bible, and it wouldn't be loving of me to lie to you like that. It doesn't mean that all your marital problems are going to go away, or all of your financial problems are going to go away, or somehow you're just going to have perfect little children and they're never going to disobey. That's not what it's saying. Oh, I wish that's what it was saying. But in keeping them there is great reward. We see our Father's face shine upon us.

It's not that we earn our salvation this way. but it's because he saved us now we have good works to do is what Ephesians 2.10 tells us. What else does God's word do? Who else, verse 12, who else can understand his errors, cleanse me from secret faults? It's in God's word that he reveals to us in Psalm 32 and Psalm 51 that we have secret faults.

One of the things that amazes me in all the laws of the Old Testament Did you know that there was a sacrifice for unintentional sins? Seriously, think about that. There was a sacrifice for unintentional sins. That means every single day we live our lives, there are things that we say that we don't realize we're biting words. There are things that we do that we don't realize hurt other people. There are things we think that we don't even realize that we're thinking wrongly. These are hidden faults, secret things, things that nobody else sees, things that we might not even be aware of, and yet God's word shines a light on it and cleanses us from that sin.

Oh, what a beautiful picture it is in Psalm 51 when he tells you that your sins are made clean as white as snow. I was just telling people today, you know, it might be windy out there, but there ain't none of that white stuff that's on the ground that will come soon. But when that stuff does come, oh, what a beautiful picture it is. That no matter how dirty our sins are, that no matter how deep the ruts of our life might be, no matter how bad the pits are that we have filled with the filth of our life, when the snow comes, it covers all of it.

1 John 1, if we confess our sins, He, Jesus, is righteous, and He will cleanse us, or He will forgive us of all of our sins and cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness. It is God's Word that gives us the hope of the grace of Jesus Christ, that He cleanses you from your sin, that He loves you, and that He will wash away your sin, that He will take it away from you as far as the east is from the west. Oh, how beautiful is His Word that brings good news like that. It keeps us, verse 13, it keeps back our servants from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me. See, for the Christian, God's Word tells us in Romans chapter 6 that sin does not have dominion over you. Do you realize in Romans chapter six you have your emancipation declaration? You are no longer a slave to sin, but you are a slave to righteousness. The shackles of sin that were bound around your hands and your feet have fallen off and God's word is given to you and his spirit is given to you and you are no longer under the dominion of sin. Do you realize, Christian, you do not have to live as a sin to your gluttony? You do not have to live as a sin to your pride. You do not have to live to your sin of covetousness. You do not have to live to your sin of lust. You are not a slave to any sin, Christian, but you are a slave to our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is God's Word that gives us that hope. Oh, what if, oh, it's sweeter than honey. Oh, it's more precious than gold. Don't trade it for anything. Don't trade it for anything. Then I will be blameless and I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth, verse 14, and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Oh, the redeemer is our strength. Thank God for his word that brings us to this. This is all that God's word is and this is all that God's word does. Do you see the hope and the grace and the freedom that it offers you? So how do you take hold of that?

I only have a few more minutes, so I'm going to move fast here on how we use God's Word. And I'm going to suggest to you that there are six ways. I wish I had six fingers. I'd have one hand. Six ways that we can use God's Word, that these become true in our lives.

The first one is reading God's Word. Read it. Read it, Jesus, when he goes and he spars with Satan. He's the one who tells Satan, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. Go to God's word daily as your bread.

Oh, you need it for your soul. Have you ever met someone before who has been anorexic? Have you ever met someone before who has just gotten used to starving their body from the nutrition that they desperately need? How many Christians do that to their own souls because they won't feed their souls, their hearts, the very bread of God?

It's a word that gives strength to our souls. It's a word that gives endurance to our hearts. It's God's word that we must feed on every day. I'm gonna challenge you today in each of your bulletins, you have a little insert that's a 21-day Bible reading challenge. It takes a minimum of 21 days, not 21 like hodgepodge, 21 days straight. of reading, of doing any activity to make it a habit. And so I'm going to challenge you to stay, to commit yourself this year, the last week of this decade, to commit yourself that this is going to be the year, this is going to be the decade where you will no longer have a famished soul, but you will be on a healthy diet of God's Word.

If you put your name down on that, just give it to John or Jim at the back door, and I'm going to promise you, each week we check to make sure that the members of the church were here, and I'm going to just call you or text message you or put you on an email list, and I'm just going to ask, how's your Bible reading? How has God been feeding your soul lately? How's it been going? On the back wall there, just behind Jim, there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Bible reading plans.

Just pick one up. Just pick one up. If you don't need to read through the whole Bible in a year, that's fine. There's a wonderful one that the Horstman's made, Robert Murray McShane's Bible reading plan, where you can have two chapters to read by yourself in your own worship time, and then two more chapters to read with your family later. There are other ones up there that's just working through the New Testament in a year. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Just a practical application here.

Just get into God's Word. I say it time and time again when I talk to people who aren't used to reading God's Word. Don't start in Genesis. If you've never read your Bible before, let's be honest. Not all of us have. Let's be honest. Some of us have had good intentions and we started out in Genesis, and by the time we got to Exodus 15, we're like, I just can't do this anymore.

Start in Mark. Start in the book of Mark. There's no genealogies in the book of Mark. That's a bonus. The genealogies are important, but if you're in Matthew or Luke, you're gonna have a genealogy. Start with the book of Mark and just read about seven verses. Or when you read, just pick up, in almost every single Bible, there are sections that are broken up. You don't even need to read a whole chapter. Just pick up a section. So like here, Mark chapter 7 verse 24, literally just pulling this out, verse 24 to verse 30 has a subheading, a Gentile shows her faith. Just read that section. Just read that section.

Husbands, I'm gonna challenge you, men of families, I'm gonna challenge you now, Ephesians tells you, husbands, you are to wash your water in the wives of the word. You are to be reading God's word if you are a Christian husband to your wife. Wives, feel free to go home and say, why don't you read God's word to me? Please, please read the Bible to me. Please, let's do this together. Let's this year at least read the Bible as a couple. Read God's word.

Second Point

Second, study God's word. How do we use God's word? Well, we read it and we study it. We get into it, we dig deep. When you find a word that you scratch your head, go look it up online. Get a concordance, get a commentary. Shoot me an email. What in the world does this mean? I have no clue who this dude is or why this matters. I love getting emails like that. You might get a phone call back, or I might say, let's go out to lunch and talk about it, but we're gonna talk about, let's study God's word, let's get into the weeds of it, let's really chew over it, and that's the next is meditation.

Read, study, meditate. See, it does a great disservice to God's word when it's just in one ear, out the other. Have you ever done that before where you're just reading your Bible and you read through a few verses? You might even get to the bottom of the page and you realize, I don't remember anything I just read. I promise it happens to every single one of us.

Stop. Don't just zoom past it. We're not just trying to check off marks here. This isn't a to-do list. Stop. Think about it. Chew on it. That's what the biblical idea of meditating is. Chew on it. Savor it. Let it seep richly into your soul. Get every ounce out of it.

That's what Joshua 1.8 says. We just talked about that a minute ago. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. Psalm 1. Blessed is a man who does not walk in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is upon the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates. Choose over it day and night. Read God's Word. Study God's Word. Meditate on God's Word. Memorize God's Word. Psalm 119 verse 9 and 11.

How can a young man keep his way pure? Your word, O Lord, I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. When I work with people who are fighting an addictive sin, it's often that I tell them, you need to get a fighter verse, buddy. You need to get a verse. How do we see Satan go toe-to-toe with the devil? He doesn't say, oh, hold on, hold on, Satan. I need to go pull out my Torah scroll. Where was that verse I wanted to use?

No, he has God's Word on the tip of his tongue. He knows how to spar with Satan. He knows that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. He knows that God's Word says that he is not to bow down nor worship to any other god nor serve them. He knows God's Word. It's at the tip of his tongue. He knows. God's Word. Do you know God's Word? Are you ready to fight with God's Word? When your heart is in despair, do you know where to go? When you are struggling with a sin that you've struggled with again and again, do you have a Word at the front of your mind?

Right, again, that's what Deuteronomy chapter 6 tells us. God's Word is to be as a frontlet to our eyes. It's supposed to be right there. It's supposed to be on our hands and on the doorposts of our house. We're supposed to fill our lives with God's Word. Meditate on it. meditate, memorize on God's word, listen to God's word. Number five, listen to God's word. Don't stop listening now. I know we're at the very end. Don't stop listening. Never stop listening to God's word. Never stop listening to God's word.

I'm gonna put this in two different ways. If you're a person that just has a real hard time reading your Bible, Pick up the YouVersion app, Y-O-U version, on iTunes or Google Play, whatever device you use. It's free. Go to Mosa Translations, New King James, ESV, whatever, and hit play at the bottom, and it will read God's Word to you.

Seriously, listen to God's Word. Listen to it. Just listen to it. Listen to it. We have a friend who listens to God's Word all the time. And it's like, whenever I talk to this guy, I'm asking, hey, have you been reading God's Word? And he's like, well, no, but I think this is my seventh time hearing the New Testament this year. Because he plays it, and plays it, and plays it. So it's just right there for him, and he's thinking about it.

Listen to God's Word, but also listen to God's Word preached. Listen to God's Word preached. How will they hear? Or how will they believe? unless they have heard. Go to God's Word weekly. This is one of the things we need, our hearts, our souls desperately need each week is to be reminded of God's Word. We need to be in worship so we can hear God's Word.

If you go to a church and they don't open God's Word and that's not where the sermon comes from, you need to get up on your feet, walk out of that church and go find one that does. That's an open invitation for you here. If your pastor, this sinful, stupid man, ever gets a brilliant idea that I'm smarter than God's Word, I want you to vote with your feet and just leave. Kick me out or leave. It's gotta be God's word that the preaching of the word comes through. That is what God tells Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter four. Preach God's word. Preach God's word.

Lastly, how do we use God's word?

We sing it. We sing it. Ephesians chapter three, verse 16. We admonish each other with God's word, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with grace in our hearts. We sing God's word. Did you know that God gave the church his inspired hymnal? He gave the church 150 psalms. If you need a psalm to go to when you feel like God has abandoned you, Jesus knows that psalm. He cried it out on the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 22. If you have a psalm, if you have a time in your heart where you're just like, it just seems like nothing's going for me and God must be against me, the psalm is felt that way, Psalm 85. If there are times when the weight of sin and guilt is just weighing heavy upon your shoulders, God gave you a song to sing for that. Go to Psalm 32 or Psalm 51.

When there are times when you're just excited to go to worship, where you're excited to see God's people, great, sing Psalm 122. I was glad to hear them saying to the Lord's house, let us go. If there are times when you're so excited because you hear about what God is doing in Muslim countries, wonderful, sing Psalm 67, selection C. Sing God's word, sing God's word. There is a teaching effect that singing has, it's amazing.

I'm gonna close with this last illustration. Our kids, I try to get them to memorize Hebrew every once in a while. And it's amazing, they understand the words in English as I explain it to them. But if I just tried to teach them what I call the Hallelu, Psalm 117, they'd scratch their heads. They'd be like, you're just speaking crazy alien language, dude. This don't mean nothing. I can't remember this.

But when we put it to the tune that's in the Psalter that we're going to sing in a minute, all of a sudden, they can remember the Hebrew. When we sing the Shema at night when they go to bed, they remember it because we put it to a tune, and they can remember it in the Hebrew and in the English.

Closing Prayer

It's amazing. If you put God's word to a tune, you can bury it in your heart. put it to a tune, sing God's word, bury it in your heart. It's better than the best of golds, sweeter than the sweetest of honey. Let this year be the year that God's people are the people of his word for his glory. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word. What a gift. Lord, what a beautiful present you have given us that you have given us the very words of life. Father, we pray that you would bury them in our hearts. Father, we pray that by your Holy Spirit, you would enable us to do these things, not because we are those who are righteous or self-willed enough to do them ourselves, but Father, because you are good. Thank you. Thank you so much. In Jesus' name, 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 and 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.