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Well, good morning, as Pastor Brad shared.
I have the distinct honor and privilege to be able to bring the word for you today. At Christ Reformed Baptist Church, we are committed to having a plurality of elders, more than one elder helping to lead and shepherd the church.
And in that process, Brendan and I are both elder candidates. During that time, we have the opportunity to preach and to be evaluated by the congregation to understand if indeed we're called to that high office.
So it is always an honor and a privilege to be able to be with you and worship alongside you today. Now I ask that we turn to the Lord in prayer, that we continue to worship our God today.
Let's pray.
Dear Lord, you are the sovereign creator, our holy and our righteous God. We are eternally grateful that you have revealed yourself to us and that even when we hated you, you loved us. We thank you, Lord, that you have gathered us together in this church today.
And we pray during this time of studying your word that you open our hearts and our minds to hear from you today. Please reveal to us the sins that we are committing in violation of our holy God. Encourage us to love you more and to go from here growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
For it's in his holy name we pray, amen. In the mid 1600s, an Englishman named John Bunyan loved to sin. He was the son of a poor tinker and he grew up in a time in England when it was common for boys and young men to roam the streets and commit all kinds of sinful deeds.
And he absolutely loved it. He loved his friends, he loved the trouble he got into, and it was his life to be a sinner. Although he had some exposure to religion, even in his youth and even after he was married, he described himself as sinning with the greatest delight and ease and had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God.
He was a pretty rough guy until he encountered the Bible. He read some of the Bible and heard it spoken about by some washerwomen who lived nearby. And as he read the Bible, it revealed to him that he was committing sin in violation of a righteous and a just God.
Although he was aware of his sin, that didn't cause him to stop sinning. He continued to read his Bible though, and it showed him the Savior, the Savior who would die and redeem him if he believed. Upon seeing the judgment of sin and upon understanding salvation, he suffered fear and doubt.
He feared for his own salvation and he doubted that God would save a sinner like him. He tried to work hard until he realized that salvation is through grace, not through his own effort. God used the Bible to wound John Bunyan's rebellious heart so that it could be healed.
Over time, this willful sinner became a widely known preacher all over England, so much so that he rose to prominence and was arrested because at that time it was illegal for him to be preaching the gospel.
He spent decades in prison, imprisoned only for preaching. They said, if you quit preaching, we'll let you out. He said, I'll stay right here, thank you. And in that time, he wrote a very famous book called The Pilgrim's Progress.
You might've heard of it. It is an allegory that tells the story of a Christian's life and has been a monumental impact across all the English-speaking world. Today, they believe that The Pilgrim's Progress is the second most widely circulated English book beside the Bible.
Bunyan's story is powerful, but it is not unique. All believers have some version of this same story. You might not be imprisoned and known for writing the first English novel, but you have indeed marked some of these aspects in your own story.
For the past few weeks, Pastor Brad has been leading us through a series leading up to and including Easter in which he described how Christ died, and we are justified because of that, and that that justification leads to sanctification.
Last week, he said that the sanctification isn't immediate. Happily, this psalm today builds on those ideas. The passage we're gonna look at explores what this growth in sanctification means as it relates to God's word.
We see that God gave his people the Bible to learn how to grow in sanctification. Today, we're gonna look at Psalm 19, verses 7 through 14, and we'll see that this passage informs your mind about who God is and transforms your heart by exposing sin and revealing Christ.
Now, please stand for the reading of God's sufficient, certain, and infallible word. This is Psalm 19, verses 7 through 14. The law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of Yahweh are true. They are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your slave is warned, and keeping them, there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also, keep back your slave from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my redeemer. You may be seated. So we see in this Psalm, it is like the Psalm that we read earlier, a Psalm of David.
Although this Psalm doesn't have a clear date of writing, we can see that that is probably because it is meant for all of us to understand it in all time. It is something that is applicable for us today.
This is what's known as a wisdom hymn. The structure of the entire Psalm includes the first six verses, which are a praise through creation. Verses seven through 13 are a Psalm of wisdom, and it ends with verse 14, a prayer for forgiveness and acceptance.
This Psalm stands out. It is widely regarded as a testament to true beauty. C .S. Lewis, the famous author, he said about this Psalm, I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.
Why would he say that? Of all the Psalms, what makes this one so special? One commentator observed that it's because this Psalm combines the most profound biblical theology with the most beautiful poetry.
This Psalm informs your mind and it transforms your heart. By doing this, it explores three aspects of God's word, and that's what we'll be looking at throughout the message today. There are three parts I want us to explore.
The revelation of God's word, the value of God's word, and the purpose of God's word. So first, we see the Bible as the revealed word of God. So when we say the revelation of God's word, we're not speaking exclusively of the book of revelation.
Instead, we're looking at how God reveals himself through the word. So the first six verses that are the revelation of God in nature describe the sky and the sun and how those things are pointing to God's glorious nature.
This is explained for us in the New Testament in the book of Romans, chapter one, verse 20. You don't have to turn there, I'll just read it. It says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.
So we are without excuse. We can look around and we can see just by noticing the creation around us that there is indeed a sovereign creator, God. We can recognize that we are imperfect and God is perfect even by looking at the sun.
Have you ever looked at the sun? Kids, don't do that. That's the point, you can't. There's a giant ball of fire in the sky that we can't even look at without going blind. And we take it for granted because it's always been there, but what a testament to God that he put a light for us in the sky that is so glorious we can't even look at.
That's what the first six verses talk about. But the rest of the psalm goes on to show an even clearer revelation, an even more glorious truth that shows us who we are. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 explains this part.
All scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.
We know that God speaks to us. He speaks to us through his word. It is his word that reveals the truth of him. That's not something that all churches believe. Some churches believe that you wait and listen for God to whisper the truth to you or to have a vision of God talking to you.
We understand that scripture is clear, that God speaks to us through the Bible. So we have here the comparison of two different ways that God is revealing himself, one that is partially clear and one that is even more clear.
So think, just to try to kind of illustrate this point. If you're walking in the woods at night and it's dark and there's no moon out and you're trying to get through the woods on a narrow path and all you have with you is a little flashlight, maybe your phone light.
A lot of phones now have flashlights and you have that there and it's lighting up some of the ground in front of you. But every time you come across a limb, a root, a rock, it surprises you and you trip on it.
It's hard to navigate through the woods at night without much light. And you're very likely to wander off the path. Now, if you are someone who happens to enjoy raccoon hunting like I am, a few of the folks in here, and you have one of those great big spotlights that mounts onto your cap and you turn that thing on in the woods, the whole place lights up.
It's like daylight out there. You can see every leaf. You can see every spider's eye reflecting on a tree. You can see every obstacle in your path. It turns the night into day and allows you to walk through there without any obstacles at all.
You don't wander off the path. You stick right to it. The word floods darkness. The word reveals the danger lurking in your path. The goal of this is to bring understanding to our mind and transformation to our heart.
Since the all-powerful, all-knowing, holy God has loved you so much to reveal himself to you through his word, the more you study it, the more you see its value. Verses seven through nine describe God and his word in six ways to comprehensively reveal who he is.
And you might notice that while it's explained here, we also saw it in the psalm that Pastor Brad read earlier. So see if you can pick up on some of that terminology. But it says here, in describing the word of God, the law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul.
The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever.
The judgment of Yahweh are true. They are righteous, all together. All of these things aren't meant to be broken out as individual descriptions of God's word. We're seeing that they are gathered all together.
These are all reinforcing how God reveals himself to us. Since Yahweh is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true, his word benefits you in ways that nothing else can. It has four effects mentioned here directly for you.
It restores your soul, it makes you wise, it rejoices your heart, and it illuminates the truth. It helps you see what is true. So taking this from the poetic language of the psalm, and we think about it for ourselves, when your soul feels dry, when you're discouraged, when you're exhausted from this life that you're living, it won't help you to turn inward, to look at self-help therapy, or trying to change your life circumstances so that you don't have to feel the way you feel anymore.
We see here that your soul is restored by the word of God. If you neglect it, you are rejecting the very thing God gave to revive you. When you can't see clearly, your mind is clouded by fear and sin and the pressures of the world pressing on you.
It's the word that enlightens your eyes. It shows you what is true, even when everything around you is telling you lies. This is what David is teaching in verse 10. The word of God is more valuable than gold and sweeter than honey.
It is both true wealth and true satisfaction. Think about it this way. There's a story of a rich man, and he dedicated his entire life to one thing, and that is building his own wealth. He didn't start off a rich man, so he wanted to have everything everyone else had, and he built a massive business empire.
He was successful. He had land, he had money, he had every luxury you could imagine. He was so rich that every meal was cooked by a private chef, and each evening, he would sit down at a large banquet table and have every luxurious delicacy of the world brought to him for his own enjoyment.
The problem was he had no appetite. There was no more flavor in the food, and it had all turned to ash in his mouth. No matter how valuable the meal was, he couldn't enjoy it. No matter how much wealth he accumulated, it never satisfied him.
He was surrounded by riches and pleasure and completely unsatisfied. This is the same if you live your life seeking your own satisfaction without finding satisfaction in the word of God. You can have all the gold in the world and still be spiritually bankrupt.
Wealth cannot purchase your redemption. You can slave away at work, get all the overtime you can, get promoted, work your way up the ladder, and you'll remain unsatisfied. You can chase endorphins, try to make yourself feel good, stay up all night playing video games.
You can doom scroll on your phone, shop online constantly, engage in every argument on social media, and still not be satisfied because your only real comfort comes from resting in the Lord. His word is the only treasure that truly enriches you and the only sweetness that truly satisfied.
The natural progression of understanding the revelation of God's word and valuing God's word leads us to realizing the purpose of God's word. We see in the rest of this passage that the purpose of God's word is to expose sin, foster repentance, and drive you to Christ.
Verse 12 and 13, David prays about hidden and presumptuous sins. Presumptuous isn't probably a word that we're using every day. It's a long one to text, I imagine, presumptuous sins. It's important that we understand the difference between these two types of sin.
Hidden sins, the first one David mentions, hidden sins are the ones you don't fully see. These are sins of weakness or ignorance or blindness. You might speak harshly and you don't realize how prideful you're being.
You might fail to pray for days on end and not really be able to see how you're neglecting it. You might envy someone without being able to realize what you're doing. These are real sins. These are real sins that really are in violation of God's holiness and his righteousness, but they are ones that go unnoticed until the light of God's word exposes them.
They're hidden from you, but they're not hidden from God. However, presumptuous sins, we could also call those willful sins. These are different. These are deliberate acts of disobedience. You sin presumptuously when you know what God has forbidden, yet you do it anyway.
This isn't stumbling around in the dark. You're not unable to see what you're doing. You're striding right up to the sin, throwing the door open and marching in, even though you see clearly what you're doing.
This is someone who might be looking at lustful images knowing Christ forbids it. This is a person who lies to protect the reputation, even though they know God hates falsehood. This is a child who throws a tantrum, arguing with their parents instead of obeying what their parents command.
Looking over there. Sadly, David's own life offers a perfect example of the consequences of presumptuous sin. We see in 2 Samuel 11, David commits vile sins to satisfy his own desires, but he wasn't ignorant of God's law.
He knew the commandments. He knew that adultery was a sin. He knew the coveting of another man's wife was in violation of the law and wrong. We see this narrative in its full extent. Again, I'm not going into explicit details for the younger ears here, but we know that David could have turned back.
He knew God's word and he could have at any moment realized what he was doing was wrong and stopped. But instead of submitting to the scriptures, he moved forward in defiance of it. The sin didn't stop, so he tried to cover it up and arrange the death of the very man he sinned against, the very husband of Bathsheba.
What began as a single willful act became a chain of sin that deepened and hardened. And because of that presumptuous sin, it got worse and worse. For a time, David tried to live as though nothing was wrong until Nathan, the prophet, confronted him.
And what does a prophet do? He proclaims the word of God. Nathan brought God's word to David. And then, and only then, did David see clearly the sin that he had committed. This is why he prays in verse 13 of this psalm, keep back your slave from presumptuous sins.
Let them not rule over me. He had experienced what happens. He knew how willful sin can consume your life. It doesn't stay small. It might feel like you've hidden it from everyone else. It doesn't stay small, it grows, and it blinds, and it enslaves you in it.
We can see how the entire Old Testament handles these two types of sin because the law included sacrifices for unintentional sins, but there was no sacrifice you could make for a willful, presumptuous rebellion.
This was severely punished, and it was not something that you could get out of. This means both categories make us deserving of God's righteous judgment. Both categories, when we commit them, violate the law, and it cause us to be punished forever, violating an eternal God brings about eternal punishment.
But this is where the cross gives us hope. Jesus didn't die only for the hidden sins that you accidentally did, the little ones that you weren't aware of. He also died for your open disobedience. The Lamb of God is a better sacrifice than the sacrifice of the Old Testament because the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, died for all of your sin.
Your hidden sins show your blindness. Your presumptuous sins show your rebellion, but the cross cleanses both of those. This is why David prays the way he does. He asks God to cleanse him of both categories of sin because he knows that without God's grace, both will utterly, utterly destroy him.
You're no different. Your flesh is quick to return to the chains of sin, the chains that if you've been saved, you've been set free, but your flesh is quick to take you back to the slavery of your sin.
But God uses his word to keep you from falling into that trap. As you read, as you study, and as you pray, you can see sin more like how God sees it, and you'll be quicker to turn from it. You will grow in your hatred for sin, and your war against it will grow more intense.
You will kill sin when it is still small, before it can blind you and enslave you. Like David, you'll pray, verse 13, let them not rule over me, then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Like David and Bunyan, you too must fill your mind and your heart with God's word, and you must do it every day. Why every day?
Why isn't it good enough to gather with other believers on a Sunday and hear the word of God read and preached? Surely if it's powerful, that'll be enough. That's a good thing to do. It is a good thing to do.
But imagine two men who are facing the same temptation. The first man doesn't open his Bible. He might attend church. He knows some of the truths of Scripture, but the word of God does not dwell richly in him.
This man, when temptation falls upon him, he doesn't see it the way God sees it, and it seems small and insignificant. He's not guarding his thoughts, so he justifies his sin. He says, it's not that serious.
I deserve this. I can repent later. I'll have this now, and I'll repent later and get right with God. Since he is not shaped by Scripture, his view of sin is low, and his resistance is weak. Sin tightens its grip because he allowed it to go unchecked.
The second man, he's been in the word daily. He's studied the word. He's prayed through it, and his heart has been transformed by it. This man, when temptation comes, he's ready for it. The word springs to his mind quickly, and he recognizes the temptation the way God sees it.
It's not attractive to him. He sees the rebellion that it is against a holy God, and he kills that temptation. He kills it before it takes root, while it is still small. He turns away from it. This second man, who reads his Bible, isn't somehow a stronger person.
It's not his own ability that allows him to do this. It's God's word that has made him watchful and wise. Now, it's important as we look in this passage, David uses the term meditation. I wanna clarify, when we talk about meditation in the Christian sense, we're not talking about the kind of Eastern religions in which meditation is the practice of emptying your mind to try to understand truth.
We're talking about the opposite here. Biblical meditation is filling your mind, and you dwell with delight on the word of God. As usual, the Bible is one of the best ways to explain the Bible, and so in Romans 12 too, we see this command, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.
When you're transformed by the renewing of your mind, your priorities change. You move from being self-focused to being God-focused. Instead of asking, how do I win this argument? It becomes, how do I speak truth and love and reflect Christ?
Instead of, look what I accomplished, it becomes, how can I glorify God in this? Instead of, why is this happening to me? It becomes, how is God using this to sanctify me? Instead of, what makes me happiest?
It becomes, what most honors the Lord? As your mind is transformed and your heart is transformed, your thoughts, words, and actions become more like Christ and more pleasing to God. David prays for the same thing we should each desire, to be blameless and acceptable in God's eyes.
Neither knowledge nor worldly happiness is the ultimate goal of studying God's word. Holiness, holiness, holiness is the goal. Of our lives, and it is the goal that we pursue when we study the Bible. Scripture shows us in John one, one through five, that Christ is the word who became flesh and dwelt among us.
He perfectly embodied the obedience and love scripture calls you to. So Christ likeness is your natural model for holiness. When you meditate on God's word, your love for God flourishes. And you desire to continue to pursue holiness.
As you pursue holiness, you desire Christ even more. And like David, in the end of the Psalm, you too cry out, oh Yahweh, my rock and my redeemer. The entire Psalm builds towards this climactic prayer of hope.
We know, as we study God's word and understand what the New Testament teaches, that Christ is the ultimate rock and the ultimate redeemer. Throughout scripture, and David loves to use this, the term for rock, to describe God as the protection and security that we find.
Several times in David's life, he hid in a cave or climbed a mountaintop to avoid the pursuit of his enemies. He understood what a rock can do to protect you. And we know that our ultimate defense from evil and our safe assurance comes from Christ.
All of this is possible because it culminates in this final word, redeemer. Christ is your redeemer. We've learned, as Pastor Brad has taught, over the past few weeks especially, what it means for Christ to have paid our purchase price.
If you have repented and you have believed in Christ, if he is your Lord and Savior, he has paid your redemption price with his blood. You are set free from sin. You have the ability to saturate your mind and your heart with the word of God and to be filled with it.
These are the pages of God's holy word. He has revealed himself to us through that word. God, who has no obligation to reveal anything to us, there is no need for God to tell us everything about himself other than that he loves us and he wants us to be able to grow in this holiness.
So he's given us 66 books to know and study and to learn. It is our obligation but it is also our great privilege to be able to study God's word. This comes with a warning though. This glorious truth of freedom from sin and freedom to grow in sanctification only occurs if you are a believer.
If you don't believe, if you have not been saved, the pages of holy scripture are foolishness to you. 1 Corinthians 1 .18 clearly shows, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Now is the time for you to be like John Bunyan. If you have not repented of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, now is the moment to do that.
See the glorious revelation flowing from the pages of God's precious word. Be transformed in Christ so God will see you as blameless before him. If you are a believer, praise God and follow the example of King David and John Bunyan as they faithfully study and meditate upon God's word.
Find the riches and satisfaction held in its pages. Lay your heart bare. Expose the hidden and willful presumptuous sins that still plague you. Kill that sin. Be transformed through the renewing of your mind and ultimately cry out with your whole heart.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Yahweh, my rock and my redeemer.
Dear Lord, our rock and our redeemer, you are indeed holy. You are our glorious God. And we come before you today worshiping you, praising your holy name, knowing that it is only through your love that you would ever reveal yourself to us.
Your grace and your mercy allows us to see the truth of who we are in our sin, in our flesh, opposed to you, but that you have come to us in that while we were yet sinners, our Christ died for us. Lord, let this truth wash over us and let us be changed by it so that we can love every page of your holy word, your glorious revelation given to us mere sinners so that we can be more like Christ, we can grow in sanctification, and we can love you more than we love ourselves.
We thank you, God, that you give us this time of worship today and we pray that we are able to go from here encouraged and go from here convicted, loving you more, yearning to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
To you be the glory both now and forever.
Amen.
Now I ask Brendan and Laura to come lead us in our singing.
Only own.