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Psalm 119:65-72
Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 119. We've been doing an exposition of the longest chapter in the Bible, 176 verses, 22 stanzas, 8 verses, a stanza. Each stanza begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
And we have found that this one long chapter, the longest chapter in the Bible, is about the Bible. And so we desire, as a Baptist church, to be people of the book. And so tonight, we want to look at learning, leaning on, and loving the Word of God.
Now, we began this text last time we were doing Psalm 119. And we looked at just verse 65, you have dealt well with your servant. And we considered how good God has been to us. And let's just be honest.
God continues to be good to us, even though, even as Christians, there are many things in our life sometimes that warrant God not being good to us. And yet God continues to deal well with us. So we finish this stanza tonight.
We'll look at verse 65 through 72 together now. Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word? You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your Word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge.
Teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts. Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Father, you know that I need your grace tonight. Help us to understand this text and help us to be a people who hunger and love the Word of God.
Let that not just be in our doctrinal statement. So what if we put it down on a piece of paper that we love your Word, if it's not reflected in our daily lives? So give us grace, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.
Amen. You may be seated. So we talked last time just about verse 65, and we talked about how good God has been to us, and let's just remember the Gospel. God has dealt well with us chiefly in what Christ has done, in coming and rescuing undeserving sinners.
We who seem to always mess it up. Isn't the doctrine of justification great? That is, we're declared righteous by grace alone through faith alone. It's so great that some people are tempted to say, this is Paul in Romans 6, some people are tempted to say, should we just keep sinning so that grace may abound?
Of course, the answer is no. But the doctrine of justification is, Jesus has completed all the work. And so Christ has atoned for our sins, so that we could be forgiven. He has fulfilled all righteousness, so that we could be credited with His righteousness.
He has risen again from the dead, so that those who trust Him by grace alone through faith alone are justified. We're declared righteous. There's nothing in and of ourselves that we can do to gain or earn or get this righteousness.
In fact, to do so is to discount the goodness of God. You have to stop where you are. Repent. Put your faith in what God has done for us in Christ. And then you understand that today, though you've blown it even on the Lord's day, God looks at you not as an undeserving sinner, but now He looks upon you through the lens of Christ.
Because you have the righteousness of Christ credited to your account. That is, for those who are trusting our Lord. So, God has certainly done well with us. But you know what we didn't mention in the last sermon?
Was that one of the ways that God has dealt so well with us after we get through rehearsing the gospel is He's given us His word. Think about that. It must be exhausting to always wonder around what God thinks, what God wants, what God's will is.
Well, we don't have to waste time with that. We can consider what God, we know what God wants. Why? Because we have His word. God has been good to us. Just think for just a second where we're at. And I know sometimes we joke and stuff with, you know, with Alex or we joke with Brother Charles, you know, about the King James or the LSB or whatever the case may be.
But just stop for just a second and put all that aside and think about how blessed we are that we have multiple reliable translations in our own language. Isn't that great? Like in English, there are some translations I'd like stay away from, but the worst translation is the N .O .T., right?
Like not having one. And here we have so many great options with the LSB and the ESV and the King James and even the Christian Standard Bible. We have a lot of great, the NASB, a lot of great options before us.
We have the blessing of God's word. Friends, tonight, children, listen to me. Don't take that for granted. You have the word of God in your language. So three things I want to mention tonight. Learn the word, lean on the word, love the word.
First, learn the word. Verse 66 says, teach me, teach me good judgment and knowledge for I believe in your commandments. Is this not the cry of a believer's heart? Do we not want to learn? Should believers not be the most teachable people on the planet?
We want to learn the word. Believers are those who the Bible describes as humble and contrite in spirit and who tremble at the word of God. And who better to teach us than God himself? So we pray, like the psalmist, for understanding.
God, teach me good judgment and knowledge. Why? Because I believe your word. I believe your commandments. Those who believe God's word want to learn the word. Do you understand the connection? Don't come in here tonight and say, I believe the Bible, if you don't want to learn the Bible.
One time I was teaching through a series on Philippians. This was another church and this was a long ago. It's probably around 10, goodness, maybe like 12 years ago. And I was teaching through Philippians.
I think it was on Wednesday night. And there was a lady in the congregation that was just kind of mean about it. And she told the pastor, she was like, we've learned all this stuff before. We know all this stuff, you know.
It's like, that's not the attitude of a believer. Like, we're not going to do this, don't worry. But if we were to turn around next Sunday and say, we're preaching through Ephesians again. Like, I don't think that would be wise.
I think we should do the full counsel of the word of God. But let's say all we had is the book of Ephesians and we just finished going through Ephesians for three and a half years and we're going to start it over again tomorrow.
For the believer, we'd say there's still stuff in there that we can learn. There's so much that we can grow from. Because we love and admire the word of God, we want to learn the word of God. So if you say that you believe the Bible to be the all-inspired and infallible word of God, but you don't desire to learn it, it says that you actually doubt the goodness of God and his word.
Verse 68 says, you are good and do good, teach me your statutes. Say that again. So, teach me your statutes is based on the fact that the believer believes that God is good and does good. So if you say, I don't want to learn, you are questioning the goodness of God.
Do you understand that connection? I'm not just bringing that out of thin air, right? So are you cultivating learning the word in your life? You remember back long ago, we were in verses 9 through 16.
We talked about reading the word of God, studying the word of God, memorizing the word of God, meditating on the word of God, teaching the word of God. If you say, verse 65 is true in your life, you have done well with your servant, oh Lord, according to your word, then so should verse 66, teach me good judgment and knowledge for I believe your commandments.
We desire to learn the word. And one more thing I want to mention here and then I'll push on to the next point. I want to speak for a moment on preaching. So we talk about wanting to learn the word of God.
One of the things, so I'm not picking on anybody, in a smaller congregation, I can see what everybody's doing, right? It's funny because sometimes like you guys are talking to each other or you're on your cell phone or I'm like, I can see you, right?
So I don't know. It's kind of, I don't know really what to do. Hey, stop that. But I just keep on preaching. But I can see you because we're just right here and you're like, he doesn't have his glasses, but I got my contacts so I can see you.
We should have an up, a very high view of the preaching of the word of God. If there is a church in all the land, if there is a church in Central Arkansas, and I'm not picking on anyone else, but I'm just saying if there's a church that cares about the preaching of the word of God, why would it not be Providence Baptist Church?
Why would we not care and give utmost respect to the preaching of the word of God? Why would we come in here and sit and let our mind wonder to other things? Oh, so outwardly your face may be pointed at me, but inwardly you might be thinking about any number of things.
But the, what I'm, I'm not trying to bring unnecessary conviction to you. I'm just saying a people who want to learn from the word of God are people who have a high regard to the preaching of the word of God.
Like one time, I always give you stories. This was several churches ago, and this was back in like, I would say around 2010. I got a call one time from this lady, and I was youth pastor at that time, but we didn't have a pastor, so I was preaching.
And she called and she said to me, hey, I need to talk to you about something. I'm like, okay, this is an older lady. And she said, you're preaching too long. And I was like, and hey, look, we should think about that.
We don't want to just preach, you know, I don't want to kill you by sermon. That would be terrible. But she said, she wasn't asking from a right heart. And so basically, she was like, you're preaching too long.
And I was like, look, I'm just trying to preach what I believe the Lord has laid on my heart. You know, that little bit different language 15 years ago. But she said, well, could you just ask the Lord to help you preach shorter sermons?
And then she hung up. Well, look, I'm not saying that if you get a little bored at a sermon or whatever, you're not a Christian. I'm just saying as Christians, we have a high view of the Word of God. Our desire is preach, right?
We want to be fed. We're hungry. And that's why in our services, it's not that we don't think music important. It absolutely is important. It's not that we don't think prayer is important. Absolutely is important.
All these things are important. But in our services, what fills up the most of time in our services is the heralding of the Word of God. It's the preaching of the Word of God because we have here a high view of preaching.
Goodness, this could take a while if I just stay all this. But let me let me just mention I mentioned this Wednesday night. I'll mention again tonight in Colossians chapter one, verse 28. It says, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
That is, we proclaim Christ. We preach. That's the word for preach. We're not just teach Christ. We preach Christ. We proclaim Christ and the good news of what God has done in Christ, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, the propitiatory work, the atoning work of Christ.
We preach Christ. We preach the Word of God. We have a high view of the Word of God here. Why? Because we want to learn the Word of God. Teach me good judgment and knowledge for I believe in your commandments.
Another passage I'd written down to read. I'm not going to read it. But in Hebrews 12, verse 22 through 24, shows us that when we gather as a church, there is not an assembly on earth. That is, that is a gathering like the local church.
When the local church comes together, we gather with the angels. We gather with those who've gone before us. Yes, I understand. We don't see them. It's a mystery and all these ways. But we're not we're doing something much more than just the people you see here.
We're gathering in this great grand assembly in order to worship the risen Christ and to worship the triune God. And so we want to be seriously serious about the preachers here. We take an utmost seriousness about the preaching of the Word of God.
We want serious men. I was in a meeting not long ago and we talked about that with Samantha. We need to be more serious because the task that we have at hand is a serious task. We are proclaiming before a lost and dying world and before sinners and before saints who continue to need grace and they want good judgment and they want knowledge.
We are proclaiming the edict of God. We're proclaiming the decrees and the commandments and the truth of God. So we want to learn the Word of God. That means we have a high view of the preaching of the Word of God.
We want faithful preaching. Now that's an aside, but I thought it was a decent application of the text. Secondly, not only do we want to learn the word, we lean on the word. So verse 67 says before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.
Verse 71 says it was good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statute. So this is hard. And we're not going to develop a theology of affliction tonight, but we see this from the psalmist.
He felt the chastising hand of God. And because he felt the chastening hand of God, he was brought back into fellowship with God. And so here's what I mean by leaning on the word. Imagine, if you will, the Word of God propping you up.
You're putting, if the Word of God was this pulpit, you're putting all your weight upon the word. There are things that happen in our lives that we don't like. Perhaps sometimes it is, certainly it is, the chastening hand of God.
Sometimes it's simply the providential hand of God in your life that allows some sort of trial or suffering. It could be minor. The power just went out in the western part of the county. A minor, maybe you might say, inconvenience.
And you're not necessarily looking at that as like the chastising hand of God. But providentially, God allowed that to happen for whatever reason. That's a trial. There's suffering. But I'm saying in those times or in the big times, you must lean on the word of God.
And we must believe that in all affliction, there is a good purpose. And we confess this, very important, verse 68. We confess this. You are good and do good. No matter what. Now, praise God, our situation with Caleb is seemingly at this point, it's very good.
It's very good prognosis. I told my wife, I never thought I would say, praise the Lord for mononucleosis. But we did. Both of us said, praise the Lord for mononucleosis. And the reason we said that is because when we got some reports on Caleb's blood work, there was all manner of things that we were very concerned about.
We were very concerned. We didn't even really express all that concern to Caleb or to our children. But we both kind of just gathered together and cried and prayed. And we just confessed, God is good, God is good, God is good.
Now, that's a very minor situation that Steph and I have had to go through. There's a lot harder situations that people have had to go through. You see stories all the time, maybe on social media, or maybe you know somebody, or maybe you've been through a situation that's absolutely hard.
It's gut-riching, whether it might be a miscarriage, or the loss of a child, or the loss of a relative, or the loss of a mom or dad that's too early, or whatever the case may be. But we say, we're able to say, if we lean on the Word of God, we're able to say in the deepest, darkest moments, you are good, and you do good.
It doesn't mean that we always have a neat and tidy answer. Frankly, sometimes I think the church needs to be quiet and try to stop trying to give people answers when they say, why did this happen to me?
Sometimes you have to be able to say, I don't know. Deuteronomy 29 .29, the secret things belong to the Lord. I don't know why this happened. I don't know why you're going through this. But I do know this, God is good.
This is what it means to lean on the Word. So when you get the flu, or you have a car crash, or someone dies, or you get fired, it is not the natural inclination of our heart to say, you're good and you do good.
It's a natural inclination of our heart to say, why God? Or aren't I better than this? But when we lean on the Word of God, we are able to say, I don't understand, but this I know, you are good and you do good.
Friends, that's faith. That's faith. Now, it seems to me that in this section, the psalmist is not just talking about random events, but he's talking about God bringing chastisement upon him. So again, just revisit those verses.
Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep you word, verse 71, it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. So we go to verses like Revelation 3, 19, that says, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.
So be zealous and repent. So in regards, in this regards, we lean on the Word, believing that the discipline of the Lord is out of love. I'll tell you this again. God disciplines his children. If you are a parent that doesn't discipline your child, you don't love your child.
You don't care about your child going astray. You don't care about your child being corrupted. We love our children, so we discipline them. So too does God love us, and he brings about in our lives discipline.
But we need to remember and confess that when God brings discipline in our lives, it is always and only out of love. Did you hear that? It is always and only out of love. It's never out of atonement. Again, you need to hear me.
You who rail against the prosperity gospel, I'm along with you, really revert back to the prosperity gospel sometimes. And that is, something bad happens or the Lord brings discipline in your life, and you think, well, there must be something in my life that I need to, more sin that needs to be atoned for, or whatever the case may be.
Our sins atone for in Christ. Romans 8, 1 says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God has removed the condemnation. Why then does he bring discipline? He brings discipline as a sanctifying mercy in our life, as a sanctifying grace in our life, to not allow us to continue to make sinful decisions.
God will bring discipline, but it's only and always out of love. And when we are crushed or when we are broken, it is because God loves us and calls us to repentance and to come back to Him. There'll be no revival in our land.
There'll be no revival in our church without repentance. Repentance is difficult, but we lean on the Word of God, realizing that God breaks us because He loves us. And the question is, are you willing to be broken?
Are you really willing to believe? Verse 71, right? We don't want to sign up for verse 71 on the front end. It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. Okay, so we want to learn the Word of God and lean on the Word of God.
And then finally tonight, we love the Word of God. Look at verse 69. The insolence smear me with lies, but with my whole heart, I keep your precepts. So let's reflect on these statements for just a second.
With my whole heart. Are we saying that the psalmist is perfect? No, we said early on that Psalm 119, its ultimate culmination is Christ. Only the Lord Jesus kept the law of God perfectly with His whole heart.
You've fallen short. That's why you need someone who has done this in your place. And so that's why we need Christ. But this is poetry here. And He is saying, Lord, my heart is Yours. All of it. So love is an action, right?
Not just a feeling. So the psalmist loved the Word and therefore he said, with my whole heart, I keep it. That's the difference between a Pharisee or a hypocrite and a true Christian. So a hypocrite or kind of a Pharisee type mentality will go through the motions.
I'll show up on church. I'll tithe. I'll participate in the ordinances. I'll be here. I'll be here. I'll be here. But in my heart, I'm actually worshiping self. Or I'm actually patting myself on the back.
Or I'm actually looking down on others. That's the difference. But as true believers, we want to keep God's Word with our whole heart. That's what we give God. He doesn't delight Himself in sacrifice and burnt offerings, but in a humble and contrite heart.
So, verse 70. So those who trust Him, we're free to live that, because of what Christ has done, we're free to live that free and obedience. But verse 70 says, their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.
Okay, so who is there? Who's the antecedent of this pronoun? It's the insolent in verse 69. The insolent smear me with lies. Again, let me just say something. Those who oppose God, those who oppose the kingdom of God, those who oppose Christ are going to bring accusations against the church.
It's interesting. Let me just make this comment. Isn't it interesting to say, people are like, if you just live more like Jesus, the world would love you. Have you read the Bible? Do you remember what the world did to Jesus?
Did you understand? Like, you grant this to me, right? No one lived more like Jesus than Jesus, right? So, Jesus lived the most like Jesus, and what did the world do to Him? Crucified Him, right? Hated Him.
Told lies about Him. So, why would we think that those of us who seek to follow Him, and pursue Him, and go after Him, why would we not also receive the insolent and haughty lies of those who are opposed to Christ and His work?
You understand? Now, the insolent. Who are they? Their heart is unfeeling, verse 70, like fat. Like fat. This is kind of gross, but just think if you had a clump of fat, you know, laying there before you.
What if you poke it? It doesn't feel it, right? It's unfeeling. It doesn't have affection towards the Word of God. It doesn't love the Word. If it loved the Word, it would delight in the Word. It would submit to the Word.
It would desire to live out the Word. This is the reality, I'm telling you, of the unregenerate. So, listen to me tonight. You're parents, you have children, or you have neighbors, or you have friends.
This is the reality of the unregenerate. They do not love the Word of God. They have no spiritual taste for the beauty and wonder of the Scriptures. Okay, so what do I need to do with them? You need to continue to share the Scriptures with them.
You can't bring them to a point of loving the Scriptures without the Scriptures. You share the Scriptures with them, and you pray and hope and trust the Holy Spirit to bring them to that point of moving from unfeeling like fat, removing that heart of stone, and replacing it with a heart of flesh.
Listen, you can try to get them to love it. You can try and try and try and try, but they don't. They may nod their head at it, but then they go on doing and talking about the things they really love.
And this can get churches in trouble. And it has gotten churches in trouble. That is, we minimize the Word of God. It's like, we want to be a Christian church, but we don't want to be like too open about it.
We don't want to be too in-your-face about it. We'll keep the sermons short. We'll keep the prayers short. We'll keep the songs kind of ambiguous. Maybe it's talking about Jesus, but also it just really pumps me up and makes me feel good.
Churches will minimize the Word of God. Why? In order to get more people. You understand how this works. In order to get more people, you have to appeal to the things that they love. And they don't love the Word of God.
And so if you have a service saturated with the Word of God, you're going to eventually get people visiting to stop visiting. Why? They don't want the Word of God. Why? Their heart is unfeeling like fat.
This is the reality of the doctrine of total depravity. This is what we mean. This is what it means for a person to be dead in their sins. So, we must not cater to the unregenerate. If we really love the unregenerate, if we really love non-Christians, we will tell them the Word of God.
I've said this a few times, I feel like recently, but it's okay, not only okay, it's mandated to say to a lost and dying culture, hey, you know what the Bible says, right? It's okay to say that. Some people are like, no, you can't say that because no one believes the Bible.
It's like, no, this is the authority. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the Scriptures are the authority. The Bible says this. What do we do in the month of June? How do we really reach our LGBTQ IA, XP?
I'm not trying to be silly, I really don't know all the letters. How do we reach them? The Scriptures. We have to tell them. This is what God hates. This is what God has done. This is what God offers for those who repent of their sins and believe the Gospel.
This is what the Bible says. And so we have to be wary of making our attempts to dismiss the Word of God, making our attempts at reaching a lost generation, dismissing the Word of God, because they don't want it.
Of course, they don't want it. Their hearts are unfeeling like fat. But for those who love the Word, verse 72 says, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Now in the United States, we've developed a pretty good system whereby we feel as though we can serve both God and money, right?
This is simply not true. In your heart of hearts tonight, you must think on this verse, is God's Word better to us than thousands of gold and silver pieces? Again, that's what the psalmist says. He loves the Word of God.
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. I've seen this so much in my life that it's not funny. It's sick. It makes me want to puke. It's sad. And that is, if you stand before...
Now, they wouldn't probably say it this way, but by their lives, they show it. But if you stand before many professing Christian parents in the Bible Belt, and you say, would you rather your child be poor, but know and love and serve God with all his heart?
Or would you rather them be kind of like a medium Christian, like, you know, nominal. Sometimes they go to church, but they're taken care of financially. Which would you choose? Well, maybe they would admit it, maybe they wouldn't, but I can tell you by their lives that most of the Christian parents, the professing Christian parents over the last 20 years of ministry that I've been around would choose the latter.
That is, I don't care if my... I'm okay with my kid being a nominal Christian, so long as they're taken care of with the gold and silver pieces of this world. Now, I'm not trying to say that Christians always have to be poor.
I'm not saying that you can't cultivate wealth righteously, and God may bless you with that. Of course, all that is true. But the reality is, what is the priority of your heart tonight? Do you care more about thousands of gold and silver pieces, or do you care more about the law of the mouth of the Lord?
The psalmist says, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Has money become better to us than the Word of God? And see, here's what's interesting. How many people will strategize, and plan, and sit down, and budget, and work very, very hard to get money?
And they can endure working and the hardships because they know Friday, I'll get a check. I'll go in extra. I'll stay late. I'll get up early. But when it comes to the Word of God, oh, that's just too hard.
I won't do those things. Right? They won't wrestle with the Word of God. We won't dig into the Word of God. We won't labor in the Word of God, knowing that it is the Word of God that actually changes us and shapes us.
So, let's say, doctrinally, you may have an idea in your mind that you love the Word of God more than money, but I want to know functionally and practically, is this true in your life? Do you love the Word of God more than thousands of gold and silver pieces?
Well, if you do, you're laboring it. It's hard. It's hard. I don't know why. I think I have some answers, but why doesn't the Lord just zap us with knowing everything? Why do we have to work so hard? Why as Christians, we have to continually come to this book time and again.
Why as fathers, when we're tired and when the kids are crazy, do we need to lead them in family worship? Why is on Sunday mornings, do we need to commit and Sunday evenings, commit to sitting under the preaching of the Word of God?
Why is it so hard? I don't have all the answers for that, but I do know this. It is the means by which God has promised to bless us and to grow us and to change us and to conform us evermore into the image of Christ.
So friends, let us be people who love the Word of God, who see it in our lives as more precious than gold or silver, sweeter than honey. So I end tonight where I started back a couple of weeks ago. You have dealt, verse 65, you've dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word.
Friends, let me just ask you seriously. I say friends, brothers, sisters. I think most of us in here are church members. Have you? Do you confess, verse 65, that God has done well with you? He has dealt well with you.
He has been good to you. If he has, then why are we not a people who would be zealous to continue to learn the Word of God, to continue to lean on the Word of God and to continue to grow in our love for the Word of God?
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for you being so good to us. Lord, to confess as a pastor of this church and as a member of this church and as a Christian husband and father, I confess to you that we have not returned to you as much as you have dealt with us.
You have dealt so good and so kind and blessed us in so many ways. Lord, help us to respond by growing in our love for your word and leaning on it and learning from it. I pray tonight that the gospel is clear enough that people would be reminded that if they don't have Christ, they must trust him, even today.
And for believers, that we would rest in these sweet promises of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. And we pray it in his name.