Psalm 119: 81-128 (He Has Given Us His Word, part 3, Jeff Kliewer)

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June 11, 2019

Psalm 119:81-128 (He Has Given Us His Word, part 3) Selected Psalms Jeff Kliewer

Psalm 119:129-176 (He Has Given Us His Word part 4, Jeff Kliewer)

00:09: Let's pray. Father, You spoke ten commands, let there be, let there be, and everything that You spoke came into existence by Your Word.
00:26: You did not just spin this world into existence and then leave it. You did not leave us to grope about in the dark.
00:34: Instead, You have given us Your Word. What a treasure Your Word is to us.
00:41: To direct our path, to be light unto our path. Lord, we pray that this morning You would incline our hearts to Your Word.
00:48: We pray that You would open our eyes to see wondrous things in Your law. We ask that in the preaching of the
00:56: Word, You would not just allow words to pass through brain matter, but instead,
01:04: Lord, that You would cause Your Word to go forth to heal us spiritually, to change us and sanctify us by Your truth.
01:12: Your Word is truth. We pray that You would send forth Your Word with power to accomplish the work for which it is sent.
01:21: Lord, we turn our eyes and our attention to Your Word. You are the God who speaks.
01:27: You are not silent. So speak to us, Lord. Your servants are listening.
01:33: In Jesus' name, Amen. He has given us
01:39: His Word. He has given us blessing. Psalm 119, verse 1,
01:45: Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
01:51: We are like trees planted by streams of water. We yield our fruit in season, and whatever we do prospers.
01:58: He has given us His Word. He has given us protection. Psalm 119, verse 8,
02:05: How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word.
02:13: So we're like swordsmiths. Temptation comes to us through the devil, through the evil one, and because of our own fallen flesh, the world in which we live, temptation comes, and just like Jesus, we wield the sword to fight off temptation.
02:29: It is written. It is written. It is written. One of the gifts of the Word of God is that we're protected from temptation.
02:37: Third, Gimel. He has given us His Word. He has given us wonder.
02:43: Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law.
02:49: We're like children at a water park. We're like young people in the wonder years.
02:55: Only our delight, our awe, is in the law of the Lord as we mature. Fourth, He has given us
03:01: His Word, so He has given us courage. My soul melts away for sorrow.
03:08: Strengthen me according to Your Word. We're like King David who says he can bend bronze, who can leap over a wall.
03:19: When our strength melts away, when we're called to do something beyond what we can do in our own strength,
03:25: His Word rises up inside of us. He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
03:31: His Word is our courage. He has given us His Word, so He has given us attention.
03:38: It says in Psalm 119 verse 36, Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain.
03:46: Before the Word grows in us, we're like Eutychus. With the preaching of the
03:51: Word, our minds get distracted. We lose attention. But the Word of God is able to arrest our attention and grab us to pay attention to His Word.
04:02: He has given us His Word, so He has given us an apologetic.
04:09: Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in Your Word. If you read
04:14: Romans chapter 1, we're told that God's eternal power and His divine nature are clearly seen through the things that are made so that men are without an excuse.
04:25: There's no excuse. All people see the created world and know that there's a God. That word in the
04:31: Greek for excuse is anapologetou. No excuse, no answer.
04:36: They have no answer to give before God, unless they come humbly.
04:44: But we, on the other hand, we have an answer to those who taunt us, to those who attack the
04:52: Bible. We have an answer, and that answer is Jesus and His Word. He is our perfect plea.
04:59: We have an apologetic. 1 Peter 3 .15 Next, Zion.
05:05: If you can't tell, we're following through Psalm 119. Each stanza begins with a Hebrew letter.
05:11: And in your notes, I've given you one verse from each of those letters. Zion, Psalm 119, verse 50.
05:19: This is my comfort in affliction that your promise gives me life. So He's given us His Word, which means we have comfort.
05:26: We will be afflicted in this world. We will be attacked by the evil one.
05:34: Picture Martin Luther under attack while he's translating the Bible and he throws the inkwell against the wall, fighting with the
05:41: Word of God as he claims the truth of Scripture against the evil one who is accusing him. Hasatan, the great accuser, that Satan, that devil who brings his lies against us.
05:52: We fight that affliction with the Word of God. And God is our comfort. Next, Psalm 119, verse 57.
06:00: He has given us His Word, so He has given us satisfaction. The Lord is my portion.
06:08: I promise to keep your words. One of the great gifts of the Bible is that we can be truly satisfied in a world where nothing is ever finally satisfying.
06:19: Thirst always returns. Hunger always returns. Our desires always return, except that the
06:26: Word of God can finally satisfy our soul. We can feel complete and whole, delighted in God, finally satisfied.
06:36: Ninth, Psalm 119, verse 67. Tet, He has given us His Word, so that means
06:42: He's given us discipline. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now
06:48: I keep Your Word. And finally, bringing us up to speed for this week, He has given us
06:54: His Word, so He has given us teaching. He makes us to be teachers.
07:01: He gives us teachers of the Word, and then as we grow and mature, we become teachers of others, teachers of children, teachers of adults.
07:11: Verse 79, Let those who fear You turn to Me, that they may know Your testimonies.
07:17: We're teachers with our lives as well as with our words. So these ten gifts He's given to us, and I stop and think about it, does the world have anything like that?
07:30: Does the world offer any gift to you and I that compares to the gift of the Bible?
07:36: The world cannot match one of those ten, let alone all ten. And now we proceed to six more.
07:43: So turn with me to Psalm 119, verse 81 and following. Cough.
07:52: There will come a moment in your life where you'll be desperate. And in those desperate moments, when you're at the end of your rope, the
08:01: Word of God is your lifeline. The letter cough is like a sideways
08:08: U. And the Hebrews looked at that as a picture of an open hand, an open hand reaching up to God.
08:16: There comes a point when you have nothing left to hold on to. Your hand is open. You have nothing but the
08:23: God of the Word. And some people live through a life and never experience that kind of desperation.
08:30: But most people, at least once, at some point in your life, you'll experience a moment of desperation.
08:36: Let's read it. Psalm 119, verse 81 through 88.
08:42: My soul longs for your salvation. I hope in your Word.
08:48: My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? Do you see the raw desperation there?
08:56: The time has been dragging on and there seems to be no answer. Look at this picture in verse 83. For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke.
09:06: Yet I have not forgotten your statues. The picture of a wineskin under the soot and the heat and the ash of the fire, drying you up, wearing you down, wearing you out, and you feel like you're going to break or burn.
09:26: Verse 84 is the first time in Psalm 119 where we do not have the direct use of a word for the
09:36: Bible. You don't have precept or testimony or law or word. He says, how long must your servant endure?
09:45: When will you judge those who persecute me? Many commentators have looked at that and asked the question, why now does the author of this psalm not mention the word?
09:59: I mean, he was 83 out of 83. That's a good percentage, right? And now all of a sudden he doesn't.
10:04: I think a clue for us is in the very preceding verse. I have not forgotten your statues.
10:12: I have not forgotten. And then the very next verse, it seems as if he's forgetting.
10:19: The commentator David Guzik puts it this way. The sense of personal weakness and injustice has led the psalmist to such distraction and despair that he has lost focus on God's word.
10:33: The author, in fact, is being held by the word of God. He has the word of God, but the desperation here is so thick, the desperation is so intense that he's forgetting to look to the word of God.
10:48: He uses this as a rhetorical device. Boyce agrees. He says this stanza has a great deal to say about the psalmist's enemies.
10:56: As if, at this point, his thoughts were nearly monopolized by them. Sometimes the word is in us, but the intensity of a situation, we're not remembering until the very next verse.
11:10: Look at verse 85. The insolent have dug pitfalls for me. He's almost done in.
11:17: They do not live according to your law. He's remembering again.
11:22: All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. And now, he simply cries,
11:30: Help me! Help me! Have you ever been to that point in your walk when all you can do is cry to the
11:36: God of the word, Help me! They have almost made an end of me on earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts.
11:44: See, he's not forgetting. He's returning to the source of his strength. In your steadfast love, give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth.
11:57: There comes a time in most of our lives where we will hit a point of desperation.
12:03: In the 1600s, there was a man named George Wishart in England, a preacher of the gospel.
12:10: And in opposition to the gospel, he was condemned to death because he refused to be silent about the
12:19: Protestant gospel. He was condemned to be burned at the stake. They brought
12:25: George Wishart to be killed, but there was a custom at that time. The custom was, the one to be killed was allowed a psalm to be read.
12:37: And sure enough, George Wishart chose Psalm 119. A much better choice than Psalm 117.
12:44: If you flip back, he bought himself a little bit of time. And as the reader of Psalm 119 progressed, imagine
12:53: Wishart standing there waiting for his final moment, just probably three minutes away, two -thirds of the way through the psalm.
13:02: He hears before that, verse 81, my soul longs. Verse 82, my eyes long.
13:09: Verse 83, I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. They're ready to light the fire beneath him.
13:17: He's a wineskin in the smoke. And with two -thirds of the psalm gone, the pardon from the king arrived.
13:26: True history. And he survived the ordeal. He was released because he chose such a long psalm.
13:34: Amazing story. There will come a point in your life and mine where we're desperate.
13:41: The death of a child, I was reading on Facebook, a woman who was riding with her husband and young family and got in a terrible car accident.
13:50: One of their children of the four was killed. The other paralyzed from the waist down. They were flown to separate hospitals, even in different states.
13:59: And a week later, she, in a hospital, separated from her children and her husband, wrote a
14:05: Facebook post calling for prayer and saying, yet I'll trust in the
14:10: God of the Word. When you hit that moment, when you have nothing left, when you're desperate, you'll find that you're not holding on to Him.
14:21: You may forget for a moment, but it's the God of the Word that's holding on to you. The desperate times will come at some point in life.
14:30: Could be your deathbed when you're old and gray. But in those moments, He's holding you.
14:37: And the lifetime of digging into the Word, building that treasure in your heart, is your security for those moments.
14:44: That's what cough is about. Being a wineskin in the smoke. Let's move on. Oh, by the way,
14:51: Christ knew what this was like, didn't He? Christ knew in the Garden of Gethsemane what it was like to be desperate.
14:58: When He cried out from the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? He wasn't forgetting the
15:04: Word. He was quoting Psalm 22. Christ knew what it was to be desperate.
15:11: And yet, He held on to the Word. Next, Lamed. Verse 89 and following. Here, in Lamed, we see endurance.
15:22: We see endurance. In this life, everything is passing away quickly.
15:28: As I thought about that, I was reminded of fidget spinners. Remember how quickly that fad came and went?
15:34: And then there were the pop sockets. Even VeggieTales seems to have gone the way of all the earth.
15:41: In this life, fashions come and go. People come into our lives that we loved and we were so close to.
15:46: And we look back 5, 10, 20 years later, and we've lost touch with our high school friends. How many of our college friends do we still keep in touch with?
15:57: This life is transient. Everything changes, but the Word of God is this constant in your life no matter what befalls.
16:05: So let's read this. Forever, O Lord. I love that word forever. Forever, O Lord, Your Word is firmly fixed in the heavens.
16:16: Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth, and it stands fast.
16:23: Now in verse 90, there's no direct reference to the Word again, but I think there's a parallelism with verse 89.
16:29: The Word by which God spoke everything into existence, God is faithful to that Word.
16:36: So His faithfulness here means His constancy to what He said. And the world
16:42: He created is a picture of that. Think of this. Mount Everest still stands where it has for thousands of years.
16:50: A picture of God's steadfastness. He spoke it, and there it is. By the way,
16:55: I have no desire to climb Mount Everest. And if you do, I question your sanity. Why would you want to go climb that when so many people die?
17:04: The shorelines of Florida, they've been fixed for many, many years. And some people say within 12 years, it'll be overflown with water.
17:15: I doubt that. In fact, all the banks doubt that because they're still giving 30 -year mortgages to people buying houses right on the water.
17:24: Many people are concerned. But God has set the world by His Word.
17:31: And this world will come to an end. Remember Isaiah 40? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the
17:38: Word of the Lord lasts forever. What I love about Lamed, we're reminded what is truly sure and steadfast in this life.
17:46: There's one thing that outlasts this world. His Word and the God of the Word. And those who trust in God become eternal ones in that He forever sustains us.
17:59: The Word of God in us brings us through death into everlasting life. What did Jesus say? I am the resurrection and the life.
18:07: He who believes in me will not die. Will not die,
18:12: He said. Yes, they'll live and be resurrected, but there's a sense in we won't die. Death is only a transition from this life into the next one.
18:22: His Word is eternal. And He keeps us eternally by His Word. Forever, oh
18:27: Lord, Your Word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth and it stands fast.
18:36: By Your appointment, they stand this day. For all things are Your servants. The appointment there is
18:42: His spoken Word of what would be. Verse 92. If Your law had not been my delight,
18:49: I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget Your precepts, for by them
18:55: You have given me life. I am Yours, save me, for I sought
19:01: Your precepts. The wicked lie and wait to destroy me, but I consider Your testimonies.
19:07: I have seen a limit to all perfection, but Your commandment is exceedingly broad.
19:18: Haven't you seen it? There's a limit to all perfection, but Your commandment is exceedingly broad.
19:26: There's no limit. That's a transition there with the word but. There is no limit to the perfection of God's Word.
19:33: It endures forever. It continues on. It can't be broken. Generation after generation assault the
19:39: Word of God. We're seeing it in our day, but we're not the first generation to see this attack on the
19:45: Word of God. But it's always the word that outlasts the attacker, isn't it? Remember Voltaire?
19:52: A couple hundred years ago, when was it, 1800s? He came along and said, within 50 years
19:59: I'll see this book in the morgue. And he was a profound philosopher and he had a wide following and he attacked it mightily.
20:08: And 50 years after he said that, he was in the grave and Voltaire's house was being used by the
20:16: Geneva Bible Society to store their Bibles. True history. The Word under assault, but the
20:24: Word is the steadfast, rock -solid, immovable, unchangeable, perfect standard.
20:32: It goes nowhere. It remains. It outlives every human that comes and goes.
20:39: And so we move on. And again, Christ, the living Word, is forever.
20:46: Believe in Him and never die. So verse 97 to 104, we're moving on to Mem.
20:52: Mem. The Word of God matures us. Oh, how
20:58: I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies.
21:07: By the way, even if they have a Ph .D. by their name, you're wiser if you believe.
21:13: In fact, some of these Ph .D. scientists who attack the Word of God and disbelieve the Word, they still have to come up with a theory for where the world came from and where life came from on this earth.
21:26: Many of the Ph .D. scientists who are so smart, they literally believe that this world was seeded by aliens or piggybacking diamonds.
21:36: If you watch the movie Expelled by Ben Stein, they have all the learning in the world, and yet they've descended to absolute foolishness.
21:47: We're wiser than Ph .D .s. And by the way, I think many people who get degrees and letters next to their name assume that by that, they have wisdom.
21:59: It's not the case. It can be the case, but it doesn't translate exactly.
22:06: I would say probably the most intellectually smart human who ever lived was
22:14: Adam and his wife Eve. Equally probably so. And ever since Adam and Eve, human intelligence has been devolving.
22:26: There's been a devolution, not evolution. You say, well, wait a minute. How come it's only modern generations that fly to the moon?
22:34: That is the accumulation of knowledge and the sharing of information, the building up of information to build on that.
22:40: It doesn't mean that human capacity is increasing. And anybody can go sit in a university and learn what those university professors tell them to believe.
22:52: They can listen and learn and read and write papers. But wisdom is not assessed by letters next to your name.
23:03: Wisdom is determined by the word of God. Do you see this with me? Verse 98, I'm just struck by it.
23:08: Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies. Maybe not smarter.
23:14: They might have a better mastery of the English language, better writers, more information.
23:24: But we're talking about wisdom in verse 98. Verse 99, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.
23:34: I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way.
23:42: Do you see the practical aspect of wisdom? It's not just head knowledge. It's to live in the word of God.
23:49: That the word of God becomes what you walk in. Blessed are those who walk in the way of the
23:54: Lord. Not just head knowledge, it's the implementation of that by the Spirit of God. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.
24:05: Man's word versus God's word. You choose God's word over man's word and you keep your feet in that path.
24:11: That's wisdom. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.
24:18: Blessed are those who are taught by the Lord. Timothy, according to 2
24:25: Timothy 3 .15, from infancy was taught the Scriptures that are able to make you wise unto salvation.
24:31: So Paul could write to him as a young pastor and say, don't let anybody look down on you because you are young.
24:37: But instead, set the example. Age is not the metric here.
24:44: It's obedience to the word being taught. Aren't we blessed when our children are taught by the
24:49: Lord? Blessed. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.
24:56: Verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth.
25:03: Through your precepts I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way.
25:10: A .W. Tozer said, the word of God, well understood and religiously obeyed, is the shortest route to spiritual perfection.
25:22: In saying that, he didn't advocate that we could be perfected in this life, but we're on a sanctificational journey trying to be made like Christ.
25:30: As we follow in His word, we're being conformed more and more into the image of Christ. And he goes on to say this, and we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of all the others.
25:44: Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.
25:51: Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian. The wisdom and understanding of God's word, we need all of it.
26:01: The one who spends time in the word being transformed by everything he said is wiser than his teachers, and that's what we get.
26:08: Christ, He was a carpenter. He wasn't trained in the schools of the rabbis, yet He knew the word.
26:19: In His humanity, He had to grow in wisdom and knowledge. Of course, in His deity, that the deity and humanity of Christ were united in one person, and yet there's ways we look at Him through His humanness and other ways through His deity.
26:33: In His humanness, He had to learn the word. Being taught in the schools, in His local synagogue, but primarily by His parents, teaching
26:49: Him the word. And mysteriously, He is the author of that word in His deity.
26:57: He lived that example for us perfectly, and then He laid down His life, and this is wisdom, brothers and sisters.
27:05: You want to know what wisdom is? Christ and Him crucified. That is the wisdom and power of God revealed to us in the scripture.
27:15: So we move on to none. We're travelers passing through, and what we need is guidance.
27:24: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules.
27:33: I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. Accept my freewill offerings of praise,
27:41: O Lord, and teach me your rules. I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.
27:49: The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.
27:59: I incline my heart to perform your statutes. Forever to the end.
28:07: The word of God is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path.
28:13: Does that make you want to sing that old song? I know that's coming back into your mind right now. Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
28:21: If you were given a lamp to go through a forest, it would not light up the entirety of the forest.
28:30: It would give you just enough light to travel through. And if you notice in verse 110, the wicked have laid a snare for me.
28:40: The lamp would enable you to see the coming snare, the pit that was dug for you.
28:48: It gives you just enough light to see what's coming next. Not necessarily the course of your life.
28:56: To be a mature Christian, to grow in faith, we must learn to look to the word of God to make the decisions of this life.
29:04: I remember my first big decision was when I was 18 years old and my parents said that they were not going to choose for me where I went to college.
29:14: That one was mine. And I still remember going back into the back bedroom and I spent days reading the scripture and praying.
29:24: And then suddenly one day in reading something and in prayer, it clicked in my mind that I knew where God was calling me to go.
29:31: It was to Eckerd College. In my mind, part of it was to play basketball. But I knew from being in His word that that's where He was directing me.
29:40: Then later in life, when I felt called to go to seminary by reading the scriptures again, I knew I was to leave everything behind, everybody
29:46: I knew, and move to Dallas. And then from Dallas and there,
29:52: I looked out in a chapel service. I'd only been there for a couple months and I saw a woman a couple rows ahead of me raising her hand and worshiping the
30:02: Lord. And I recognized her, though we had never met, my wife,
30:08: Jen. The first time I ever saw her was her worshiping Jesus. And then we found that we believed everything the same in the scriptures.
30:16: God had made us for one another. And each step that I took as we went to Philadelphia to be missionaries together, we never saw that coming.
30:26: I never pictured going to inner city Philadelphia and then one day I'm running past this church on Mount Laurel Road and I slap the sign and I pray for this church and next thing
30:36: I know I got a text message that said, would you ever be interested in preaching at the E -Free Church? And I said,
30:43: I better say yes because I'm praying for that church right now. I never would have dreamed in a thousand years that God would have sent me to an evangelical free church in New Jersey.
30:55: I never saw any of the steps of my life coming. And guys, we don't know what's coming next in our future, but I'll tell you this.
31:02: Take the word of God as the lamp to your feet. Be in it every day. And the path that he illumines for you will be glorious.
31:10: He'll reveal the snares to keep you from falling. He'll keep you along that straight and narrow.
31:17: He gives you just enough to see where you go next. He doesn't tell you the big picture.
31:23: I know it can be scary in this life because we don't see what's coming. But his testimonies are my heritage forever.
31:32: The spirit leads us by the word. I want to direct your attention to verse 108. It says, accept my free will offerings of praise,
31:45: O Lord, and teach me your rules. In Leviticus 23 -38, there is commanded that the
31:54: Israelites are to bring free will offerings. But it's not specified when or how.
32:01: The free will offering in Israel was not demanded. There was not a certain thing that was brought like the wave offering and the grain offering and the sin offering, all the different offerings that were prescribed for times and seasons and for occasions.
32:17: No. The free will offering was an offering that came from the heart as the worshipper felt led.
32:27: You see the free will offering a few times in the scripture. In Exodus, I believe it's the 35th chapter, verse 29.
32:35: A free will offering is taken to build the tabernacle. And then you see in the building of the temple, a free will offering is taken.
32:45: And finally, again, at the rebuilding of the temple, in the book of Ezra, there's a free will offering.
32:51: Brothers and sisters, this corresponds to the New Testament form of giving. Not only financially, but of your life.
33:00: We're told in verse 108, accept my free will offerings of praise.
33:06: It's not commanded that we bring a tithe of our income in the New Testament. Whether we take that as a guideline to help us as the
33:15: Israelites under that theocracy always brought a tithe. In the New Testament we are to give cheerfully as the
33:22: Lord leads us by His spirit. The free will offering is to come completely voluntary.
33:33: Without compulsion. Why? You're not fulfilling a religious ritual. You are giving out of the gladness of your heart as worship unto
33:43: Him. And so we're told, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
33:50: We need the word of God in our hand. And we need the spirit of the living
33:56: God in our heart leading us. And if you have the word and the spirit, God will lead you in a path that will bring you joy and satisfaction and ultimately, the straight and narrow road to heaven.
34:09: We need the Bible to be guiding us on a daily basis. We need the spirit of God because the sword of the spirit is not the sword of Jeff or the sword of Bob or the sword of Eric or the sword of Kathy.
34:24: It's the sword of the spirit. We need to come humbly with the sword of the spirit praying that God would direct us through His word.
34:34: And that's how we're led. That's how we make decisions in this life. Alright guys, we have four stanzas down and two more to go.
34:45: Can we endure that? Absolutely. Verse 113, strong language,
34:53: I hate the double -minded but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield.
35:03: I hope in your word. Depart from me you evildoers that I may keep the commandments of my
35:09: God. Uphold me according to your promise that I may live and let me not be put to shame in my hope.
35:18: Hold me up that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually. You spurn all who go astray from your statutes for their cunning is in vain.
35:30: All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross. Therefore, I love your testimonies.
35:37: My flesh trembles for fear of you and I am afraid of your judgments.
35:45: Psalmic is the letter and the issue is consistency.
35:53: Consistency. We're told here in the 113th verse that the
36:00: Lord hates the double -minded. Why such strong language?
36:07: Why does he hate the double -minded? I think it's the same reason that when
36:13: Elijah went up on the mountain with all the prophets of Baal and he said that Yahweh is
36:19: God and the hundreds of prophets of Baal said no, Baal is God. Finally, Elijah came to the point where he said if Yahweh is
36:29: God, worship Him. If Baal is God, worship Him. Make a choice. And the people even in that refused until finally the fire of God fell and revealed the power of God.
36:42: The true God was Jehovah Yahweh, the God of Israel. And it was time at that point in the story to put away the idols.
36:54: The prophets of Baal died that day. God desires singularity of heart, not double -mindedness.
37:03: James chapter 1 the language is particularly strong when you ask of God seeking
37:09: His wisdom, seeking the Word. Don't be like a wave of the sea tossed back and forth.
37:17: He goes on to say that person should not expect to receive anything from God. Don't be like the man who looks in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like.
37:29: God is calling us to consistency. You see, consistency is the hallmark of truth.
37:37: You know that in logic, right? If you can reveal the inconsistency of an argument, you've demonstrated that the point is not true.
37:46: Truth is always consistent with itself. And to walk in the truth means to become a consistent and whole person.
37:55: As a pastor, one of the things that breaks my heart the most is double -mindedness.
38:02: And I've seen it many times. Where on Sunday morning, the
38:08: Word of God is preached and someone is clapping and believing and agreeing, but then takes a sharp left turn somewhere later in the week and is falling off the rails into sin.
38:25: Brothers and sisters, this Word of God integrates our minds.
38:30: Do you realize that we as people who have fallen into sin in Adam, we are prone to disintegrate, to become double -minded, to live one way at one point in time and another at a different point in time.
38:46: We are prone to disintegrate into multiple personality disorder. We're prone to that because of the fall.
38:56: We need to be in the Word in order to unite our minds into single -mindedness, single -minded, wholehearted devotion to the
39:05: Word of God. If we don't do that, how do we know that the other personality might finally take over?
39:14: That's why the language is so strong. Do you see it in the text? Look at 113. The psalmist here,
39:20: I think it's David by the way. For a long time, most people agreed, but it's not ascribed to him in the text, but I'm very confident that this is
39:28: David, kind of a lifetime psalm that he worked on through the course of his life and his many different experiences.
39:35: He says, I hate the double -minded, but I love your law.
39:41: Let the force of that hit you. We've got to integrate our personality entirely with this one thing, one thing and one thing only.
39:54: Christ. Christ and Him crucified. Not Christ plus any other thing.
40:02: Your heart cannot be divided to walk this Christian life. You've got to be all in or else you'll be all out.
40:09: When Christ, the time came for Him to go offer
40:15: Himself as a sacrifice. In the book of Luke, it happens in the early chapters around 9, 8 or 9.
40:22: It says that He proceeded toward Jerusalem. We see these markers through the book of Luke that Jesus set
40:30: His face like flint to go to Jerusalem. He had made up His mind and when
40:38: Peter came along in the 16th chapter and said, oh no Lord, there's another way. Don't go, don't die.
40:45: He said, get thee behind me, Satan. He fought that with every fiber of His being because He knew
40:53: He had to be single -minded that nothing would deter Him from the cross because there was no other way to save us.
41:03: Jesus Christ was single -minded for our salvation. He set His face like flint to the cross.
41:09: His life was directed to that point. And He carried it through. He died.
41:15: He was buried. He rose from the dead. And now He's calling you through His word to be single -minded, fully devoted to Him.
41:24: Finally, I am. 121 -128 I have done what is just and right.
41:34: Do not leave me to my oppressors. Notice again there there is no reference to word or precept or law or testimony.
41:42: This is one of the disputed passages of 2 or 3 or 4 that don't have that reference.
41:49: 122 Give your servant a pledge of good. Let not the insolent oppress me. My eyes long for your salvation and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise.
42:00: Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love and teach me your statutes. I am your servant.
42:06: Give me understanding that I may know your testimonies. It is time for the Lord to act for your law has been broken.
42:14: Therefore, I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold. Therefore, I consider all your precepts to be right.
42:24: I hate every false way. I am teaches us what is just and right.
42:33: Look at verse 121 I have done what is just and right.
42:44: Circle that word is and think about this question. How do we know what is just and right?
42:56: By what standard do we know what is just and right?
43:03: Does that depend on what the meaning of the word is? I have done what is just and right.
43:12: Do not leave me to my oppressors. There's no reference to Scripture here.
43:20: Directly. But I think it's left unstated for the same reason that we saw earlier.
43:29: To draw attention to the overall point all 173 out of the 176 verses pointing us to the word of God.
43:37: It's asking a question. By the silence, by the lack of the word testimony or law or anything, the psalmist says
43:46: I have done what is just and right. How does he know what is just and right? The rest of the psalm tells you.
43:55: He learns it from revelation. He learns it from the law. And he can confidently say what is just and right.
44:03: Do not leave me to my oppressors. Listen. There are oppressors.
44:08: There are accusers that will come against you for what you hold to be true from the
44:14: Scriptures. They will taunt you. They will mock you.
44:21: They will degrade you for believing in the Scriptures. But the truth is you have a standard.
44:29: An infallible standard of right and wrong. What you hold to be true regarding sexual ethics and all the gamut of political hot topic issues.
44:41: Where the Scripture has spoken we have absolute certain revelation.
44:47: The word of God has told us what is just and right. And the irony of the attack that will come against you is that the people who bring it have no foundation upon which they stand.
45:01: There can be no consistency without a revelation from God. In other words if you believe that the world has just evolved through random chance what does it matter how one walking fish that's emerged out of the primordial soup treats another walking fish?
45:22: There can be no standard of righteousness to say what is right and just.
45:30: So when accusing you they reveal their hypocrisy. I want you to learn something quickly here.
45:35: We only have a couple minutes. Something that's very important for answering those who attack you on these grounds.
45:44: The big word for it is presuppositional apologetics. But I'm just going to give it to you in one
45:51: Scripture verse. Actually it's two. Proverbs 26 verse 4 and 5.
45:58: It sounds contradictory at first but it actually fits together.
46:05: Answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes.
46:13: And the parallel verse right next to it. I forget which one comes first. Answer not the fool according to his folly lest you become like him.
46:23: Answer him. Answer him not. How does that fit? According to circumstance you either ignore someone because it'd be like casting pearls before swine.
46:37: They become so inconsistent. So irrational. That there comes a point where you just leave that alone.
46:44: You don't touch it. Answer not a fool according to his folly lest you become like him. But the parallel is also true.
46:51: In a respectful conversation where you have opportunity answer a fool according to his folly meaning you enter their world view according to their folly and lead them where their presuppositions must necessarily take them.
47:12: If someone calls you a name or someone derides you for making a truth claim you have a basis upon which to make absolute claims of truth.
47:26: But when they accuse you on those grounds and they say you're wrong to speak the way you do answer them according to their folly.
47:40: Show them that their world view has no basis whatsoever for even having right and wrong.
47:50: To make a moral statement of what is right or wrong requires an absolute standard.
47:57: So take them back and ultimately what you're doing is you are establishing again the word of God is the authority.
48:05: If they don't have this answer them according to their folly. They have no consistent reason to say that bestiality is sin or incest is sin or any other moral thing that they themselves would decry apart from the revelation of scripture there is no consistent basis upon which to call that unjust, to call it wrong.
48:33: So learn presuppositional apologetics. You can't always do it sometimes answer them not lest you become like them.
48:41: And that's often the case because people are ridiculous in conversation very often. But learn
48:48: Proverbs 26 4 and 5 there is a time to answer them according to what is just and right.
48:55: Bring them back to the word of God in that way. So in closing today we found six more reasons to love the word of God.
49:04: Six more reasons why this treasure I can't even think of words to describe how valuable this is.
49:11: Do you agree with me? Without this we have no guidance, we have no protection, we have no endurance, no maturity, no consistency, no way to stand on what is just and moral and right.
49:28: It's everything to us. So I'm going to ask the worship team to come up now and we have one more week.
49:35: Next week we finish this race and I want to commend to you to be strong and diligent in Psalm 119 for this last week.
49:45: Next Sunday we close this section. I would like it if every one of us were at the best place in our lives spiritually come next week.
49:57: You say well how can I do that? I can't control that. No you can't, that's why you need this. Go to this and ask
50:03: God to mature you, to make you consistent and steadfast and then we'll be sent out with Bibles next week to share this good news with others.
50:13: Let's pray. God we thank you so much for your word. Again I don't have the words to describe how
50:22: I feel about you, the God of the word. Thank you that you've given us this book.
50:31: Thank you for everything it means to us. Help us to treasure it, to hide it away in our hearts so that we might not sin against you.