Summer of Psalms: Part 7 - By His Word
PSALM 119:9-16
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Morning, everybody. Good to be with you. We are indeed closing out our Psalms series for the summer today. We have returned to Psalms—not every summer, but pretty often. And just to remind you, if you don't know, or to tell you, if you do know, that we have a goal here at Spring Valley Church: over time, to cover the entire Bible, usually through Sunday morning sermons, but also through Bible studies. And so that's why we keep coming back to Psalms. There are 150 of them. We're not going to do that all at once, but the summer is a great time to do that. And so for summers to come, we're going to keep coming back to the Psalms, dipping in and learning more and more about God through the wisdom literature there. I just wanted to share that to remind you, to share some of our hearts as church leadership and as pastors, as we strive to spend quality time in God's work, digging into His Word together, developing a greater faith, and driving each other toward Him and a life formed in Christ.
Before we get to our Psalm this morning, I want to share a story with you, a story that maybe you're familiar with, as it happened just an hour and a half up the road on Highway 80, but it happened back in 1846. The Donner family and the Reed—no, sorry, we're going to drop the tone. It's really sad. The Donner and Reed families set out from Illinois for California with a large wagon train of 87 people. The planned route was a known trail north around the Great Salt Lake, the way that thousands of immigrants had gone before them. But James Reed had brought along a new guidebook written by Lansford Hastings, *The Immigrant's Guide to Oregon and California*, which advertised a shortcut south of the lake that would supposedly save them 300 miles. And again, back then, with 87 wagons, 300 miles is something you'd want to save. There was just one problem. No one had ever taken the Hastings Cutoff before. Not with wagons, not even Hastings himself. He hadn't traveled the route before writing the guide. He'd simply heard about it, heard that it was possible, and wrote with total confidence in his guidebook. The entire description of the route amounted to a single sentence in his guidebook. And it gets worse. Hastings, the author, promised to personally meet whoever wanted to take that route at Fort Bridger and guide them through. The promise convinced the Donner family and the party to commit to the cutoff effort. But by the time they arrived, Hastings had already left to guide another group. And they were, in effect, following a stranger's secondhand notes through terrain that no wagon had crossed.
And they weren't without warning. There were other people telling them not to do this. There was a journalist who had gone ahead and was writing back to the fort where they were, saying, “Hey, don't do it. I've seen it. I'm on it. You shouldn't do it.” But the people at the fort had a financial stake in travelers coming through, so they withheld those letters from the Donner Party. And even an experienced mountain man warned them directly, but he was ignored. So they took the cutoff, and it nearly destroyed them before the real disaster even began. The shortcut ended up adding 125 miles to their journey. They had to hack a road by hand through the mountains, crossing a waterless salt desert on the strength of Hastings's promise that it would only end up taking two days. But by the time they finally reached the Sierra Nevada in early November, and they were only about 100 miles from safety, the early blizzard came and sealed their fate, trapping them at what is now called Donner Lake for the winter, where roughly half the party passed away. We know what else happened at the Donner Party.
I share this because this unfortunate tragedy has almost every element that our Psalm for this morning is urging us to be aware of: the foolishness of having total confidence in a path never actually taken; the foolishness of following instruction untested by experience but sold solely on reputation; believing a promise without any proof. This group of immigrants had access to the truth: this route had been taken, it had been tested, and people were saying, “Here's what you should do.” And instead, they took the untested shortcut, and it cost them almost everything. It's the same risk that we face. We have access to the truth. God has given us the instruction and shown us the way. But many choose to live this life disregarding God's instruction, and they risk everything. So the question stands before us: what will we do?
You know, it's easy for us to forget that we live in a fallen world. The comforts of our modern age, the lifestyles we choose to pursue, the way our Western world tells us that we can live any way we want—do whatever is right for you—we forget that we live in a fallen world, marred by sin, guaranteed hardships, and brokenness. And we can forget that we need God every single day of our lives. We need God to make it through this life. We need His guidance, His direction, His wisdom to navigate the world we live in. For without it, we're left to our own devices: our own sense of what is right and wrong, our own sinful pride, selfish hearts, and our own sense of direction—just guessing, having not lived through everything to say, “Maybe this is right.” The saying goes that hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure many of the Donner Party wondered, “What if we had just taken the path that everyone else took, that was proven, that was tried and true?”
Similarly, one of my favorite questions that young believers, youth, or maybe even people who don't believe yet ask is, “How do I know what the right thing to do is? How do we know what God wants us to do? How do we know the life that God desires for us?” And I love this question because it brings up the Bible and the significance that it should hold in the believers' lives. And how great that the Bible not only has the answer, but it asks this question and answers the question. So if you guys want to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 119:9–16, I'm just going to go one by one through this little section right here. Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm in the Bible. We're not going to cover it all. A couple of years ago, we covered 1–8. And so now we're going through 9–16. And maybe in a couple of years, or 20 years from now, we're going to finish Psalm 119. Psalm 119:9 says, “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.”
*The Message* reads this: “How can a young person live a clean life? By carefully reading the map of your word. I'm single-minded in pursuit of you. Don't let me miss the road signs you've posted. This life truly is a journey, and God's Word guides us through it.” I love that. That's the first. If you're a note-taker, you're going to have some things today. The first one is this: God's Word guides us. Not necessarily step-by-step—not a manual on how to precisely work through every specific scenario you live through—but a guide that offers wisdom to navigate this life. So let's say you and your spouse are in an argument over how to load the dishwasher properly. You are not going to find in the Bible the right answer on what God says the right way to load the dishwasher is. You're not even going to find the answer to how to convince your spouse that you're right about loading the dishwasher. You won't find that in the Bible either. But you will find Ephesians 5, which says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” All right, so we get some wisdom there—how to help that conversation about the dishwasher.
Maybe you're in a situation where you're grieving loss. Maybe it's the loss of a loved one, the loss of a friendship, the loss of a dream. You won't find in the Bible a 30-day plan about how to get back on your feet, how to be your best self, and to move on from whatever it is you're grieving. But you will find comfort in Psalm 34:18, which says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” And you'll find hope in the truth of Revelation 21:4, which says, “You will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Scripture is a guide. It guides us through different situations, not necessarily step-by-step, but it offers wisdom. And through the Spirit, through prayer, through conversation with God, we can discern how to apply that wisdom to the situations we find ourselves in.
Verse 10 says, “I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands.” The psalmist is saying, not just some of my life, not just some of who I am, not just the Christian part of me on Sunday mornings, not just the 15 minutes of me in my devotional time throughout the weekday. It says, “With all my heart”—all of me. To me, this verse conveys a certain urgency and zeal that the psalmist has in pursuit of God. It's not half-hearted. It's not when convenient. It is intentional and purposeful. And if we're continuing the analogy of a journey, it's like the psalmist is saying, “Help me to see all the road signs along the way, all the signs that you say, God. Help me to see those warnings, those instructions.” I know we've had some recently newly licensed drivers in our church, or people who are working on their permit. It's a very exciting time, a new stage of independence for them. And I know that they have to go through the training and learn all about the road rules, right? What signs mean, what they're supposed to do in different situations. You learn that road signs are important for you as the driver and for other people, for pedestrians. And that's our next point: God's Word is like that. It protects us. God's Word can protect us. So it's like a map that guides us. It's also like the road signs along the way—the stop signs, the yields—that protect us from certain accidents that could happen. And so as we go about our day, as we live our lives, as we face all sorts of different situations, challenges, and temptations, God's Word can help us, warning us of certain pitfalls, certain consequences of sin that we may have to face, or the consequences of others' mistakes and failures. God's Word can protect us.
Verse 11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Hidden your word in my heart. The word here conveys someone who has internalized God's instruction at such a deep level that it results in a consuming loyalty that envelops the person's will and emotions. They have spent so much time in God's Word, so much time with God's Word in their mind and heart, that it actually affects the way they think, the way they feel, and what they do. We want to be so familiar with God's Word that it sinks into the deepest places of our hearts and minds. And it becomes instinctual to have God's truth come to the forefront of our thoughts, be the first words from our mouths, and even flow through our bodies so that when something happens, we react in a way—physically even—that conveys the love of God. Pastor John Mark Comer, an author, says this: “There is a reciprocal relationship between the role of Scripture in our lives and the depth of our formation as kingdom people. A key part of our apprenticeship to Jesus is allowing Scripture to constantly shape our imagination, our emotions, our words, and our actions.” We often think that as Christians, “Now I'm a Christian, and I'm going to be around Christian people, and I go to church,” and we just trust that God, through His Spirit, is going to change us. And He does. But we also have a role to play in making sure that we are consuming what is good for us, so that Scripture—the truth—can shape our imagination, emotions, words, and actions. We want the Word of God to transform us. And that's our next point: God's Word can transform us. From the inside out, the consuming Word of God plays a significant role in our spiritual transformation. We can go from people who sin against God to people who can choose now not to. We can go from people in rebellion, living in selfishness, pride, and godless lives, to living a pure and holy life that God wants for us—the way that God intended us to live. One of the biggest components of that happening is God's Word and it being in our hearts. And through the Spirit and through His Word, we are transformed.
Verse 12 says, “Praise be to you, Lord. Teach me your decrees.” There is no better way to learn the truth than from the author of truth Himself. Even though we can read the Scriptures and there is knowledge to be gained simply by reading, guys, we still need the Holy Spirit to help us understand what it is we're reading, to help us process, and to give us wisdom in how to use this truth in our daily lives. It takes a teachable heart. I've never been a teacher, but I've done youth ministry. I've coached before. I have conversations with teachers. And one of the best qualities a student or a player can have is a teachable heart, a teachable spirit. It's music to the ears of the instructor. When you have a student come up and say, “Can you teach me how to do something? I want to learn how to do whatever it is,” that teacher is like, “This is the best. This is the best day of my teaching career right here. I have a student who wants to learn.” The psalmist is exemplifying that for us right here. We need to have the same teachable spirit, a heart that desires to learn from God. We need God to help us truly understand His Word, and that affects how we read Scripture. We don't just read Scripture for learning information. We read Scripture to be taught the truth, to know the heart of God, and to be close to God. And so in this verse, we learn that God's Word teaches us.
Another quote here says, “Our goal is to read Scripture as apprentices of Jesus. This means that we don't read it the way we read an online article, a textbook chapter, or even a literary novel. Unlike other works of literature, the author is with us in the room. Our goal isn't just to read Scripture, but also to meet Jesus on the page, to be with Him, to become like Him, and to be formed into the people who live like Christ.” I love that. I've never read a book with the author in the room watching me read, or, if I have any questions, being able to ask, “What did you mean right here?” But we get to do that with God's Word. He's with us, and He's eager. I just imagine Him sitting next to you, like, “Oh, this is so good. You're reading my truth. You want to know.” And we can pray as we're reading, “God, I'm reading this, and I don't understand it.” He's there with us as we read, wanting us to understand. God's Word teaches us. And that's important because this is something that we don't want to get wrong. There is risk in misunderstanding the guidelines and the map, and the damage that can do. If we misunderstand God's Word, it will set us off in a trajectory that is not the way that we're supposed to be going. Just think of Jesus and how many conversations He was having, correcting bad theology from the Pharisees, from His disciples. So much of it was Him saying, “No, no, no, this is what the truth is. This is what My Word means.” And so we want to make sure we're not relying on our own wisdom to interpret Scripture, but on the Spirit of God. And that happens through church, through those whom God has given wisdom and insight. But we want to be relying on God to understand His Word.
I'm going to combine verses 13 and 15 now. It says, “This is the goal: that we know it so well that it becomes habitual for us. It becomes instinct. It becomes a reflex.” As one pastor points out, look how steeped in Scripture Jesus was. And when you look at His interactions and the responses He has, or the way in which He responds, it is so saturated in Scripture. So much so that His automatic responses to lies, to accusations, are direct quotes from the Old Testament. I think this line in verse 13, “With my lips I recount all the words that came from your mouth.” The author there is doing some wordplay: we speak what God spoke. And it's relating to how God most often interacts with humanity through His Word, through His spoken Word. He spoke the world into existence. He spoke the law up on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, to Moses. And so we know that God's words are powerful and true. There is power in His words, and we want to speak truth just as He spoke. There's power in our words. That old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is not true. Absolutely false. Both will hurt you—sticks and stones and words. There was a Christian band I listened to in high school, and they put it this way: “I've never broken bones with a stone or a stick, but I'll conjure up a phrase that can cut to the quick.” Words have power to hurt or to heal, to comfort or to crush, to love other people or to loathe. Thankfully, we know that God's words are perfect, and to speak His words well is absolutely a good thing for us and for the people around us. Verse 15 says, “I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.”
I just want to camp here for a second. I really want to talk about meditating on God's Word, along with memorizing God's Word. Now, some of you may be leery of the word “meditate” because of affiliations it has with other religions, but really the practice itself is just that—a practice. And it's what we meditate on that truly matters. And in Christianity, meditation is in reference to the words spoken by God. The goal of meditation in the Christian life is to interact with Scripture on such a regular basis and in such a deep way that the Word of God is in us and with us. And that's the point of this verse: God's Word dwells in us. And in order for God's Word to dwell in us, it means interacting with Scripture on a regular basis. We can't do this once a week, once a month, and just spend some time and be like, “Yep, really good at the Bible. I know it super well.” No, it takes time, and it takes consistency. We did a Bible study through studying Scripture and how important it is. And there's a quote from our study book that says this: “The digital age has rewired our brains and conditioned us to a new style of reading. We're used to quickly skimming over words to get the information we need and then moving on. But this fast, clickbaity mode of reading is at odds with the way Scripture was designed to be read. The word used in Scripture for the ideal way Scripture was designed to be read is meditation. This rich Hebrew word calls us to a mode of reading that is slow, reflective, and prayerful.” Slow, reflective, and prayerful. That means intentional time that we set apart to enable us to be slow, reflective, and prayerful—not just five minutes in the morning as we're brushing our teeth and doing multiple things at the same time, reading God's Word, “I'm good for the day.” No, you've got to set yourself up for success and have time. So open God's Word, take some deep breaths, read it slowly, reflectively, and pray through it. As we do that, that's meditating on God's Word, chewing on God's Word. I like this analogy of a cow. I don't know how many of you have seen it—the last time you saw a cow in a field, it takes one bite, and it's chewing on that bite for a long time. Did you know—maybe you did—that we have one stomach, right? One stomach, one compartment. Cows have one stomach, but it's four big compartments. And so it'll chew the grass, go into one compartment, then it regurgitates it back up, chews on it some more, goes into another compartment, then it'll come back. So they're just chewing on that one thing for a long time, getting the most out of it. I mean, they're getting every element, every atom from that piece of grass. And that's what we need to be doing with Scripture. We don't need to—it's not necessarily about consuming as much as possible and as quickly as possible—but you can take one verse and just sit on it for a week. Just read it every day. Every morning, read that same verse again. Put it into the cow's stomach and see what comes up there. The next day, chew it again. So that God's Word can dwell within us and it changes how we think, how we feel, and therefore what we do.
And then, to close out our section, Psalm 119:14 and 16 together say, “I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your word.” To take delight in God's Word is to see the real value that Scripture has. It's not just a good thing. It's not just a helpful tool. It is the best thing. It's literally God's words spoken to us. It's better than any earthly riches. Seeing Scripture in this light helps us to value it. Once we realize this is the best thing—not what I have in my bank account, not the status of my home—God's Word right here is the best thing that you can have in life. It should change how we approach Scripture. It should change the time that we spend in Scripture. And it brings us joy. God's Word brings joy to us. Taking joy in God's Word, delighting in His Word, only comes for those who have love for God. If someone doesn't have a love for God, this is just another book. But for those who have a relationship with God, we love this. We delight in God's Word because it is one of the best connections we have to God. And our motivation for studying Scripture must always be the love of God. It can't be out of selfish ambition. It can't be, “I want to be a better person, so therefore let me help myself by reading God's Word.” No, it must be, “God, I want to be like you. Use me, God. I'm your servant, and in order to be a better person for you, for your kingdom, let me submit myself to your truth.” When God's Word brings us joy—when living by His standards, following His guidelines and road signs, when that brings us joy—it's because we're benefiting from His love and His truth, and we're experiencing what it means to live in His will, to live the way that God intended us to live. And that will only further motivate us to be in Scripture more, to commit our hearts and minds to Him. And again, the goal is for God's thoughts to become so deeply imprinted in us that in both challenging moments and in moments of joy, we begin to feel, think, and see the world through His eyes, responding in the way that Jesus would.
So I want to encourage us in a relationship with this text right here. I just want to ask this question: How do you interact with Scripture on a regular basis? You don't have to say it out loud. It's not meant to be convicting. If it is, and that's the Spirit working in you, and maybe you want to be in God's Word more, how do you interact with Scripture on a regular basis? Is it a time thing? Is “regular” for you not regular enough? Is it, “Hey, maybe once a week, or when I'm at church?” Is it every morning, but it's, you know, just really quick? I just kind of have my app that's the verse of the day. I read it, and then I open up my emails or I scroll social media. How do you interact with Scripture on a regular basis? I think oftentimes we approach Scripture because of the business of our lives and schedules. We have stuff to do. We come to Scripture hurried, rushed, with a frenetic energy. And it doesn't help us. That hurts us. Recently, Becky and I got to celebrate our 10-year anniversary. We got a day away without the kids—a little over 24 hours without the kids—and it was so good. We had this lunch, and we were at this outdoor shopping mall in San Diego, and I was just noticing the difference in the pace of life going to a shopping mall with kids and without kids. When you're with kids, our minds are constantly on, “How much time do I have before they lose it? Before our time here is done and we have to go? What are the things I have to get done? Let's get those done first.” And it is just—it's a whole thing. But when it was just the two of us, our pace—not even just internally, our whole pace—just slowed down. We're just kind of strolling. We're just like, “Oh, we have all the time in 24 hours that we want to stay. We can just go into this shop. We can go to that shop. We can window shop.” We were just meandering. And I hadn't meandered in what felt like years. And I think that's how we need to approach Scripture. We need to meander through this, take our time. That's not always—I understand that life is busy—but we should have regular time where we're able to slow down and chew on this over and over again, because at a slower pace you can notice details. There is time and space for our minds to contemplate not just what it means, but then how it affects our lives. Sometimes we're either one or the other. We just read Scripture, and we go straight to, “How should this change me?” And we skip the step of, “What is the truth in here? What is this even trying to say?” Or we just get stuck there. We're saying, “What is this truth? What is it trying to say?” And we never get to the point of applying it to our lives.
So two practices I want to encourage us to grow in today are meditating on and memorizing Scripture. Now, maybe some of you are already just stressed out and worried because simply reading Scripture is a lot. That is true. Reading Scripture is a lot. It's hard for a couple of reasons. One, the Bible was originally written in another language. Two, it was written in another time and in another culture. It's authored by multiple writers in various genres, all inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they write in different ways. And it was written over 1,500 years ago. So there's a lot there that's working maybe against you as to how this should flow in your mind and why it's a little bit choppy to read at times. But that's why we do certain things together. We come together on Sundays to hear God's Word. We go to Bible studies to understand what the Bible is trying to say. I would suggest building a library to help you understand Scripture. Grab a commentary. There are some digital resources that we would love to send you if you want those, to open up to a certain passage and say, “What does this mean? Let me go to someone who's given their life to studying this.” Pick something specific to study in your season of life, find where that is in Scripture, and dwell and meditate on those passages. You could, if you wanted—I know there's a trend of, “Read the Bible in a year.” That's good. I'm not saying that. You can also slow it down and just read one book for the next six months over and over again if you wanted to. Like maybe now to Christmas, you just read the book of Matthew over and over and over again. There is benefit and richness and goodness in just reading the same thing over and over again when it comes to God's Word. And also, don't go it alone. You do not have to read this Bible just between you and God. That is a part of it. That's part of your relationship. But it was also meant to be done in community. That is why we encourage Bible studies. That's why we have such an urgency to try to get more of these small groups and Bible studies started, so there are more opportunities for us to get into God's Word together.
In this digital age, most of us have long—I'm reading a quote here—most of us have long abandoned the practice of memorization. Few of us could even recite our best friend's phone number anymore. Do you guys remember when we had all the phone numbers off the top of our heads? Why store that information in our brain when we can just store it in the cloud? Why put the work to memorize Scripture when we can just Google it? “What does this passage say?” But this ancient practice of storing the truth of God so deep in our bodies that, when we need them most, they are there, simply cannot be done by a device. And as we build an inner library of key texts that we put to memory over many years of following Jesus, these texts begin to rewire our brains, causing us to take the mind of Christ. So meditation and memorization. It's not the finish line, but it's part of our practice as believers. So this week's action step, if you'd like to join me—I am terrible at memorizing. It's not my thing, but I know that if I put more effort into it, I could be better. And so the invitation is there on your program. If you want to check the action step, help keep me accountable this week. If you want to commit to God's Word, to memorize it—meditating on and memorizing Psalm 119:10–12. So it's not everything we covered this morning. It's just three verses. But if you would like to do that, join me this week in meditating on and memorizing just three verses. So every day we're going to read Psalm 119:10–12. The next day, the same thing. And we're going to try to memorize it so that for the rest of our lives, we have God's Word on our hearts. So if you feel like doing that, mark that off. Drop it in the back, and I'll text you this week and say, “Hey, how's it going? How's memorizing? What's God revealing to you?” And the church will text you, not me personally. Okay.
Let it be true of us here at SVC that we are people who let His Word form our thoughts and shape our hearts. That instinctively and automatically, the first thing that comes to mind for the people in this room is God's Word, His truth. And so let's be dwelling and chewing, meditating, memorizing His living Word—words from the Author of Life Himself. Amen? Let me go ahead and pray. Jesus, may we receive You personally through Your holy Scriptures. May we read not only with our minds, but also with our hearts. May we seek relationship more than information. May we allow ourselves to be wholly shaped by every word. May we discover the joy and beauty of meeting You here. Let us savor Your heavenly words. Let us delight in the teachings of Your love. Let us be slow and gentle, not missing any detail. And let us long for it more than food itself. Let it nourish and sustain our souls. Let it draw us always to You. Living God, whose Word is living, active, articulate, and true, may Your words live always in us, taking hold and illuminating us, that in carrying them in the womb of our souls, they may enlighten the world with You. Amen.