Six More Responses to God's Word

Providence Baptist Church

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Psalm 119, we are on the second to last stanza.

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We started this last Sunday night, the stanza that is, not the chapter.

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I think of multiple ways to begin this sermon. One of the things I thought of is, this comes up on Christmas Eve.

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Some of you guys have been there and you've tried to put together one of those toys.

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On the package it says, some assembly required. You're trying to put it together on Christmas Eve and you get it all the way, almost together.

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You look over here and there's a little piece laying down and you're like, where does that go? I don't know.

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You try to figure it out. It doesn't matter. Well, no, it's not going to work without it. It turns out you have to take the whole thing apart.

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Your wife's over there, because this is the man doing it. The wife's over there, she's like, maybe you should read the instructions.

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Usually you try one or two more times to prove your manhood and then finally you're like, yeah,

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I should have just read the instructions. One thing about that, it's a silly illustration, I know, but isn't it applicable to the

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Christian life? Why don't you read the book? Right? How much pain, how much misery, how much frustration, how many things might you prevent in your life if you would just take up God's book and read it?

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If you would just understand what it is telling us, if we would understand its instructions for roles in the home, if we would understand its instructions for the way the church is to be ordered and how worship is to be done and how we are to share the gospel, if we would just read the book that God has given us, right?

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And you think about, we talked about this last week, but we live in an unprecedented age. We have access to the word of God.

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It is in our language. We have time to engage in the word of God. I know we're busy, we're busy, but you're not busy like have to wake up at four in the morning and you work the whole day all the way until about midnight, you go to sleep and you do it all over again the next day.

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You're not that busy, right? You have time, meaning you work in order to make money.

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You're not necessarily working just to eke out an existence for survival. You have time.

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But how often we don't spend appropriate time in the book.

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Another way I was going to introduce this sermon is to give you the famous Joel Osteen quote, but I can't really remember it.

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But that is, believe it or not, he actually starts off every sermon, besides the silly jokes he tells, he actually starts off every sermon with a quote that I mostly agree with.

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Have you ever heard it start? I just can't remember how it goes, but you've ever heard him start a sermon? They all hold up their Bible, right?

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And it's like, they all say, I think what he says is basically pretty true. It's like, this is the

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Bible. I believe what it says I am. I believe what it tells me about God.

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The only problem is he sets it down and then never to return, right, to the scriptures.

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But I mean, he says the right thing in that regard. Now he's a twisted false teacher and he needs to repent and believe the gospel.

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But you understand that we should have that type of mentality. We should, this is

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God's book. We should believe everything that it says to us about God. Everything that it says to us about man.

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Everything that it says to us about the church. We should believe it. And so tonight we just continue on where we left off last week about how we respond to God's words.

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Would you stand with me? We started this stanza last week. We'll just start in verse 162 and finish.

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I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.

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Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules. Great peace of those who love your law.

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Nothing can make them stumble. I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments.

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My soul keeps your testimonies. I love them exceedingly. I keep your precepts and testimonies for all my ways are before you.

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Father, would you just help me tonight? May Christ be exalted. Holy Spirit be present.

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We believe in the means of grace. We believe in the preaching of your word and we believe that the preaching of your word,

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O God, strengthens believers. We believe that it strengthens our faith.

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We confess to you tonight that we need it. Not because it's me. Not because it's just tradition.

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We confess to you tonight that we need the proclamation of your word. That we're not strong enough to face this wicked and dark world without the regular preaching of the word of God.

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We can't do it on our own as husbands and fathers and wives and mothers and grandparents and sisters and brothers and church members.

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We can't do it without the preaching of your word. We need it, God. Even those of us here who just drug in tonight and are just, well,

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I'm here because I'm supposed to be here. Remind us tonight. We need your word. Fill us with it.

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Help us to know it, to love it, to order our lives by it. To love the Christ that is on every page.

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Help us to be people of the book. Help us to respond rightly to your word. Move tonight in a way that we're not expecting.

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We come here and we're just routine and this is what we do. Shake us out of that,

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O God. Would you do that tonight? Fill our hearts with your love. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

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You may be seated. So last week we looked at just 161. Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words.

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And we said the first way that believers respond to God's word is we respond in awe.

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Are you in awe of God's word? Well, we won't repeat all of that. That took a whole sermon. So number two tonight, we respond to God's word in rejoicing.

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Look at what 162 says. It says it just verbatim. I rejoice at your word.

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Like one who finds great spoil. This is the idea of taking delight in.

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That's already been in Psalm 119. You can look at verse 14 later.

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But the idea is the word of God. Can I say it this way, church? The word of God is not drudgery to the believer.

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It's a delight. Don't tell me I have to read the Bible. It should never be, which

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I understand because of our sin and our distraction and fallenness, but it should never be that we have to rebuke one another for reading the

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Bible. It's kind of like this. It's kind of like it's similar saying, you better eat all your cheesecake, right?

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Like no one has to tell you that. They got to tell you to stop eating the cheesecake. Leave some for the rest of us, right?

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Well, even greater is the word of God. Hey, leave some for the rest of us.

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I want to read too. I want to know too. This is our desire. We rejoice at God's word.

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We delight in it. We want to open it. And now, I don't know when it is that you open God's word. For most of us, probably should be first thing in the morning, but it's not a strict rule per se.

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Maybe yours is at lunchtime, maybe yours is in the evening, whatever the case may be. But whenever it comes time for you to open

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God's book, you rejoice in it. It's like one, look at the text, like one who finds great spoil.

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Man, I hope this would happen to us, but it hasn't happened yet. I just hadn't found the right jacket.

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But you know, like in the wintertime, you put on a jacket, and I'm saying it hadn't happened in this year, but you put on a jacket and you reach in the pocket and you find great spoil.

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You're like, hey, look at these cough drop wrappers from last year. I hadn't worn this jacket in, you know, eight months.

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I found all these cough drop. But sometimes what do you find? Sometimes you find like a $10 bill, right?

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Or maybe like a $20 bill, you know? Or you know, if you're my boys, a $1 bill.

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But you reach in and you're like, look, it's great spoil. It's treasure, right? Or you may think you find something, imagine, you know, you watch those shows and that person has this old painting that their grandma gave them and just sentimentally, they didn't want to throw it away.

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And then one day they're like, well, let me just see how much this is worth. And it's worth like $2 million or something. That's great spoil, right?

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But the text says, I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. So you reach in your pocket, you pull out the $20.

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What does your heart feel? You're like, yes, this is great. My day is great. I got 20 bucks.

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If I find another 20, I can buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Or you win the million dollars from that.

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Like, yes, look at this painting. I got a great painting. This is great. Okay, that's how we are with the word of God.

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Hey, I found great spoil. I found something that's valuable. I found something that changed my life.

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I can tell you right now as one of your pastors, there's nothing that has changed my life more than time in the word of God.

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I confess to you, I have not always been the Bible reader I should have been. God convicted me when

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I was 21 years old, almost 22. God convicted me hard about that.

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I was arrogant and rude, and still I have been in my life, arrogant and rude. I'm not saying

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I just conquered that when I was 21. I'm just saying that God convicted me and I said,

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I've got to be in the Bible. You've got to be in the Bible. But when you get in the

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Bible, you realize this isn't just got to be. It's get to be. And it's not just get to be, but I love it.

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It's great spoil. I rejoice. I got to keep moving on. Well, what if we spent the whole time on that one?

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We're never going to get through. Okay, so I'm just skipping a lot of stuff.

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So let me go thirdly. What's our third response? So we have awe, we have rejoicing. Thirdly, we love it.

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We love it. The read a few verses here, verse 163. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law, verse 165.

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Great peace have those who love your law, verse 167. My soul keeps your testimonies.

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I love them exceedingly. Now, we'll talk about this later. But love is more than an emotion, but it's not less than emotion either.

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He actually loves God's word. He loves it.

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He loves it. Eleven times in all of this chapter, Psalm 119, the psalmist talks about how he loves

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God's word. In verse 167, you saw there that he loves them exceedingly, exceedingly.

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My soul keeps your testimonies. I love them exceedingly. I don't want to get ahead of myself and talk about this later.

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But when we talk about the commandments of God for the believer, OK, we talk about the commandments of God for the believer.

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What's the believer's response? We love them. God, tell me what you want me to do.

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I am your slave and I love it. I love to do what you've called me to do.

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And so you hear the one, stop, pause. That's going to be later. OK, so now, because we're not talking about this word yet, we're talking about love.

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So we love God's law. Do we love God's law because we're able to keep

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God's law perfectly? Is that what we're talking about? No. We love God's law for a few reasons.

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One, it's because the law is a revelation of God's character. You understand?

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So the law is not the laws out here and God's over here. And we just love the law. No, no. The law is a mirror of who

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God is. The law reflects the righteousness and holiness and goodness of God.

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And therefore, I love the law because I love God. And I love the law because it shows me more and more of who

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God is. And it's right and it's good. Don't you love, like they say in our world today, like silly laws or whatever.

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But don't you just love good laws? Aren't good laws right and good and you're happy with them?

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Well, even more so when we think about the law of God, we love it because it reflects who God is.

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And we desire to walk in it, not because we keep it perfectly, but because Christ has kept it perfectly in our place.

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And we desire to walk in it because we love him. And another reason we love God's law is because God has written it on our hearts.

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The verse that we're memorizing right now, specifically Jeremiah 31, 33. That God will write his law on our hearts.

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You tell me, show me someone who says they're born again. And I'll show you someone who loves the word of God.

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Why? Because God has written his law upon their hearts.

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Of course, if we love God's law, we hate other things. Look at 163, I hate in a poor falsehood.

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So if we love God's law, we hate in a poor falsehood. Like what I mentioned this morning, we love babies, so we hate abortion.

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So if we love God's law, we hate sin. We were just talking about tonight responses to the word of God.

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So awe and rejoicing and love. Fourthly, praise to God.

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Look at verse 164. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules.

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I wonder, in this congregation, we pray a lot about the gospel.

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We thank God for the gospel. We thank God for the church. We praise God for the church. But did you know that it's right and biblical and good and something that should be in our life to praise

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God for his word? We should praise God because he's given us a book.

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We should not be like the foolish husband on Christmas Eve just trying to continue to smash stuff together leave parts over, not listen to our wives and just not read the instruction.

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No, we should be the man saying, no, I want the Bible. I love it. I love it.

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And I praise God for giving it to me now. We know that David or if it was

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David, sorry, David, Daniel, whoever, we know the psalmist was not a

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Baptist because in verse 164 it says seven times a day I praise you. And you can barely get

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Baptists to come to church twice on Sunday, right? That's a lame joke.

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The point is, the point I think that he's making is not so much that you have to praise

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God a certain number amount of days. The point is the psalmist praises God a lot throughout the day for this specific reason in verse 164, your righteous rules.

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I give you praise seven times a day for your righteous rules.

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So again, God's word, it's biblical to give God praise for his word.

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There should be songs that we sing at times that are giving God praise simply because he's given us righteous rules.

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Righteous rules. By the way, God's rules are always righteous. God's rules are always right.

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It always bears highest authority. And because of these things we ought to know from scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, God should be praised for the fact that we have a

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Bible, a completed Bible in our language that we have access to, that we can read, that we can understand.

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And one of the ways, church, that we praise God for his book is by opening it and spending time with him in it.

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We would praise God. Fifthly, peace. Look at verse 165.

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Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble.

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You're probably familiar with the Hebrew word for peace here. It is shalom. Shalom is a theological idea that runs throughout the

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Old Testament. So without God, there's no shalom. There's no peace.

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There's no completeness. There's no wholeness. There's no security. The Israelites, you probably know, would commonly greet one another with this word shalom.

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They were saying peace, but really the English word probably for peace may not fully encapsulate the word there.

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But the text says shalom is for who? Great shalom, great peace have those who love your law.

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So believers, that's who peace is for. Those who love the word of God. You're saying, well,

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I have peace with God, but I don't read the Bible. I don't love the Bible. Well, there's no understanding of peace with God that doesn't result in a loving of the law of God, loving of the word of God.

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Psalm, or sorry, Isaiah 48, 22. There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked. It's kind of silly, but I have heard a preacher say before, every person is born with a shalom shaped hole in their heart, meaning that we're born with this idea of incompleteness, sinfulness, lack of peace.

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And the only thing that can bring peace to our hearts is the gospel. Without the gospel, there is no shalom.

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I'm going to go off on a little tangent here, but you understand. Do you understand that that's what people are fighting for in a theological, a theological,

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I don't know what word I'm looking for. I'm just taking a little detour, a theological detour. Maybe that would work.

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You understand that in the world today, everybody's fighting for shalom in one sense, meaning they don't have peace in their hearts.

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They're guilty, they're insecure, or they're greedy. They want more and more and more.

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They just can't find satisfaction. They do all sorts of things.

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They fill their lives with alcohol, maybe, or drugs, or sexual immorality, or maybe they don't fill it with, quote, unquote, bad things.

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They just make idols out of good things, so they fill their lives with work, and work, and work, and work, or they explore, you know, like, well,

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I'm going to be a man. No, I'm going to be a woman. No, I'm going to be a shemale, or something like they just mix it all together.

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I mean, I'm not being silly. Like, that's what happens in our world today. Why are people doing all these things? They have no peace.

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No peace. Now, I'm not excusing them. I'm not creating, they're not the victim. They're the victimizer.

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They are the ones that are rebelling against God. They have no peace because they rebel against God, but that's what's going on in our world today.

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Everyone's running around, and running up their credit cards, and trying to get extra hours at work, or try to work more, work less, or trying to find multiple partners in life, or trying to have more kids, trying to have less kids, trying to have extravagant houses, or trying to have minimal houses.

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All these things are out there in the world today because people don't have peace. What I'm saying is there ain't no peace without God, and the only way we can have peace with God is the gospel.

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In fact, the very song, that last song that we sang, captures this beautifully.

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It's what the angels are declaring to the shepherds at the arrival of Jesus. Peace on the earth, goodwill to men from heaven's all -gracious

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King. Now, I was quoting the song, not the scriptures. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom

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He is pleased. That's the text. There's no peace without the gospel.

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So Christmas, in one sense, is about a peace treaty on God's term. God has provided the righteous substitute.

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God has provided the sin bearer. By the sacrifice of our King, we can have peace with God.

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We are declared righteous by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ. Jesus says in John 14, 27, peace

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I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do

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I give it to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

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Peace. A heart that is yielded to Christ, a heart that is resting in Christ, a heart that is trusting in Christ, has true, lasting, great peace.

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And now look what the text says. I want to press this a little further. Great peace have those who love your law.

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And this little phrase at the end, nothing can make them stumble. Now, true shalom is found in Christ, but this shalom is more than just peace.

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It's also security. You want me to tell you a practical reason that things make you anxious in your life?

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I'm going to tell you a practical reason. It's going to sound legalistic.

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It's not just give me the grace to get the whole point out. So the reason that you are anxious, the reason you're frustrated at work, the reason that you get frustrated with your kids, the reason you're worried about money, the reason you're worried about your health, the reason that you stumble, you don't love the

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Bible enough. That's just what the text says.

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Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble. Now I'm not trying to be legalistic, obviously.

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I'm saying that we should go to God more. And one antidote, or maybe even the antidote for fighting all these foolish sins that we all deal with, me included, our anxieties, our fears, the things that cause us to stumble, or maybe you're in here today.

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Hey, let me address this. Maybe you're in here tonight and there are wicked things. Maybe it's more than just anxiety.

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I'm not saying that's not wicked, but maybe there's something like temptation to pornography, or maybe there's temptation to steal from your employer or whatever the case may be.

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You know why those things would make you stumble? It's because we're not plugged up in the word of God. Hey, you show me.

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I think it was Spurgeon, somebody said either this book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book.

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There's a lot of truth in that. And I'm not saying that we can be legalistic Pharisees. I'm just trying to tell you what the text says.

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Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble. So you find yourself stumbling, okay?

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Maybe in a little way or in a big way. Can I give you just one practical encouragement tonight? Would you find a way to digest more of God's word?

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Now, I'm not saying that that's just going to it's like a magic pill while I read three chapters every day. Now I'm going to read four.

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No. Would you consider meditating on the scriptures? Consider memorizing scripture. Consider going over the scriptures more with the brother or sister or even a spouse and just consuming your life with what the scriptures teach is just a practical exhortation there.

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Okay. Great peace. Sixthly. Two more. Hope. I'm just taking this from the text. Verse 166.

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I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments. Is there any surprise that the psalmist had hope?

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Because he was saturated with God's word. He meditated on it. He memorized it. He read it.

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He knew it. Again, like last point, we're tempted to despair and when we're tempted to despair, what should we do?

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We should look. We should look to the scriptures. We should look to the word. We should store it up to fight those times of sin and to fight those times of despair.

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Why? Because we have hope. I hope those in their Bibles are the fullest of hope.

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You understand? Find me someone that's in their Bible every day consumed with the word of God.

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They're sitting under faithful preaching. They're reading it. They're engaged in family worship. They're memorizing the scripture.

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They're meditating on scripture. They're not the ones that are running around like the sky is falling. Yes. Hey, look,

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I believe in conspiracy theories, right? Because I believe in total depravity.

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It doesn't mean I believe every conspiracy theory that exists. Not saying that, but I am saying, man, people are wicked.

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Governments are wicked. People do wicked and evil things. I believe in these things to an extent, but I will tell you this.

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If you're running around worried that the sky is going to fall on your head, it's because we're not consumed enough with God's word.

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We must be consumed with the scriptures. Those in their Bibles most have the most hope.

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Okay, finally, I saved this one for last. This word actually,

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I think in some churches is a inappropriate word.

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You can't say it, but I'm going to say it. And that's the word obedience.

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Verse 166, I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments. My soul keeps your testimonies.

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I love them exceedingly. I keep your precepts and testimonies for all my ways are before you.

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For believers, as we read the Bible, you know what we want to do? We want to submit our lives to it.

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Yeah, but that's countercultural, right? You know, marriage today, it's just different.

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You know, men and women are just different than when the Bible was written, false, right? Or the scriptures, you know, it's just different.

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Look, do we really, look, people's on TikTok and YouTube, do we really want to spend a long time just standing up and preaching, isn't there something better we can do?

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No, actually, there's not. We want to order our lives around and under and submit ourselves to what the

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Bible says. We desire, I'm talking to believers, because you've been born again.

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Have you been born again? You know what it means to be born again? To be born again means there was a time in your life that you heard the gospel.

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And when you heard the gospel, the Spirit of God convicted you and you saw that you were a sinner and you needed grace.

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And the Spirit of God worked in you in such a way that you called out to God in mercy.

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And I don't know, that could have been in a Walmart parking lot, that could have been in a church service, could have been alone in your room, down on your knees before God, could have been in any number of ways, but this happened.

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You were convicted of sin, you looked to Christ and you were saved because the Holy Spirit was working in you.

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You repented of your sins and you put your faith in the finished work of Christ. This is what it means to be born again.

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That the Spirit of God has given us a new heart, a new nature whereby we respond to God's Word in faith and repentance.

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Has that happened to you? If it has, now you desire to obey

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God, not to be saved, but because you are saved. You want to obey

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God because you love Him. There's this false idea, I was halfway tongue in cheek, but man, there's just this false idea in many churches that we have freedom from the law.

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That's not false. We do have freedom from the law. The false is the application, so let me tell you what that means.

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Here's what it means. It means that we have freedom from the condemnation of the law. It means that when we stand before God, the law will not be our judge, we have

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Christ. That the law is fulfilled because the law has been fulfilled. It's not been done away with, it's been fulfilled.

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It's not been broken, it's been fulfilled. However, freedom from the law does not mean freedom from obedience.

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That's what some people think it means. They are the ones running around saying grace, grace, or sin, sin, that grace may abound.

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And Paul addresses that in Romans 6, of course. But there's this idea where it's like, well,

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I'm just going to live however, and you can't tell me. You can't judge. Have you ever heard someone pressed to be a believer say this to you?

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You can't judge me. You can't tell me what I can do and what I can't do. Now there is liberative conscience, chapter 21, the confession.

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You should read that. But listen, when we're simply saying, hey, for example, usually it comes from very, very simple commands like, hey, you know what?

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If you're a Christian, you should be in church. You can't judge me. I'm not judging you.

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I'm simply telling you what the scriptures say and the scriptures say that as believers, we gather with the church, we obey

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God, we want to obey God. Do we obey God perfectly? No, you've not obeyed God perfectly a time in your life when you were unsaved or since you've been born again.

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You've never obeyed God perfectly, but he gives more grace, doesn't he? And so we do actually obey

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God, even though it's not perfectly. We do aspire to do what he has said to do in his word because we love him and we've been born again.

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Why did the psalmist pursue obedience? Because he had a hope for salvation. Again, verse 166,

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I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments. There's a connection. I want to say this. You know, the people that scare me the most, the people that scare me the most in terms of their soul, the state of their soul.

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The people who scare me the most in terms of the state of their soul are those who are not walking in obedience with the

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Lord. They don't read the scriptures. They don't spend time with God in prayer. They don't care about communicating the gospel.

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I mean, they may show up to church, but I mean, they're not really seeking to obey

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God. And yet they have this great assurance of salvation. That scares me for their soul.

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Because they've been greatly deceived. Because there is a connection between our hope for salvation and our walk with the

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Lord. Do you understand that? The people I often deal with that I feel better about are those who are walking with the

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Lord, but they have a tender conscience and they're like, I need to know that I'm safe. Oftentimes we can work through that.

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But it's those that never doubt their salvation and they're just walking in disobedience and are like, me and God, we're good.

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But the text actually says, I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments. So there's a connection between hope and obedience.

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Do you understand? He also wants to obey because he loves God's word. Again, verse 167, my soul keeps your testimonies.

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I love them exceedingly. Why are you always going to church? Well, I'm trying to get to heaven, you know.

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Why are you always going to church? Because I love it. Because I want to. Because I want to do what

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God says for me to do. I want to do it. Why? Because I love God. Our motivations are falling and things get mixed up and sometimes we do things even though we're not waking up with joy.

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We wake up in the morning, we're stumbling around, and if you ask me in the morning, like, hey, are you loving your

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Bible right now? I'd be like, hey man, leave me alone. Sometimes I get that. That happens. I get it. I get it. But we still do it because ultimately we want to obey

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God because we love him and we love his word. And we know ultimately only Christ kept

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God's law perfectly and we're resting in him. And resting in him means we desire to follow his ways.

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And then thirdly, I'll mention this, he understood that all his ways are before God. So again, that's why, why is he pursuing obedience?

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Why is obedience a part of our life? Why is obedience a response to the word of God? Verse 168, I keep your precepts and testimonies for, you could say, because all my ways are before you.

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Now, I'm going to give you an illustration. Most of the time you don't really think about your driving, do you?

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You just drive. You just do it. You just get in and you just drive. Except when you see a cop.

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And when you see a cop, and I see, I see that back there, and I'm not going to call out any names.

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No. When you see a cop, what do you do? You check your speed.

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Yeah. Check your speed. You think about your driving. All of a sudden you think about your driving. Your hands are now become at 10 and 2.

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Your cell phone is in your pocket now and you check your speed and now you're going instead of 18 miles over the speed limit, all of a sudden you're down to 1 or 2 miles under the speed limit.

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You act natural, man. You're just going down the road and you're like, good, everything's fine. Why? The cop's watching you.

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You don't want to have to give an account for breaking the law. Okay, but the psalmist says this, all my ways are before you.

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You understand, church, there's never a time that our ways are not before God. You may get before Pastor Jacob and you may say, well,

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Pastor Jacob's watching, so I'm going to watch my mouth. Pastor Jacob's watching, so I'm going to be kind to my wife.

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Pastor Jacob's watching, so I'm going to make sure I'm acting natural and acting cool. Hands are at 10 and 2, watching the speed, cell phone's in my pocket, amen,

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I'm a really good Christian. But Pastor Jacob's not always watching you. God is.

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And this is the psalmist's motivation. It doesn't matter who else is watching me. I know, the text says, all my ways are before you, morning and noon and night.

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All my thoughts, all my actions, all my feelings, all my motivations, all of it.

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Some of you may be in here tonight, even in a Sunday night crowd, a little bit smaller group tonight. Some of you, maybe you're living your life lying to God.

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You're trying to fool us. Maybe you're fooling Pastor Quatro or Pastor Jacob. Maybe you're fooling your spouse or those around you.

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But you're not fooling God. Right, you're not fooling God. He knows your heart. He knows your motivation.

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He knows your actions. He sees you in the secret place. He knows. So why would you run from that?

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Like if that's you tonight, if that happens to be you tonight, or you happen to be listening to this and that describes you, run to Christ.

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Repent and believe the gospel. He already knows. You can't fool him. You can't trick him.

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And for children of God, believers, let us know that all our ways are before him.

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And so we want to live before God and pursue holiness, knowing that he's ever with us.

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He's watching over us. He sees us. And man, most importantly, this is the reality of justification. Man, if you're in Christ, what

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God sees when we fail and when we succeed, it's all

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Christ. And this is good news for the believer. That never changes. The only way we could lose our justification is if Christ can lose his righteousness.

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And guess what? It's not happening. So the psalmist has a healthy fear of God. Frankly, that's something that we need to recover today.

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And he had a healthy fear because he understood. The scriptures, so what's our response?

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All rejoicing, love, praise, peace, hope, obedience.

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These were the psalmist response to the word of God. And tonight the question is simply, are they yours?

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Are they yours? Maybe there's more things I could say, but let me just let that sit with you.

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I'll read them again. Are you in all of God's word? Are you rejoicing at God's word?

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Do you love God's word? Do you praise God for his word? Are you at peace? Because of God's word and the hope of Christ, you hope because of God's word.

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Are you obedient to God's word? Let that sit with you for a moment. We've all failed in these areas.

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The answer is, will we get upset about that and leave, you know, disgruntled? Or will we take those to Christ and we say,

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I want, you know, the song, you know, the sermon I heard tonight, that crazy pastor and preaches too long.

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But you know what? In some of those things, he was definitely right. And that's the kind of heart I want. Just take that to the

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Lord and see if he might not answer that kind of prayer for a people who are resting in his son.

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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. And we pray tonight that you would bless it. You would honor it.

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God, make us love it more. Help us to be a people. Help me. Let us start.

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I pray for myself and Pastor Jacob that we'd lead not just in precept, but by example, that we'd show forth our awe of the word and our rejoicing in the word and our love for the word.

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And we praise you. Thank you for your word. That we'd show what it looks like to have peace with you because of the hope found in the scriptures, that we would have hope because of the scriptures and that we would be obedient and that we'd rest our failures.

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We would be models of grace and rest our failures in Christ. And we'd be able to say, follow us as we follow

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Christ. I pray that for the whole congregation. I pray for the husbands in here that they would respond to your word like this.

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I pray for the wives in here that they would respond to your word like this. I pray for the sons and the daughters here.

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And oh, God, if there is any who are rebellious tonight, their heart is resisting these things.

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Would you pierce them tonight? Would they understand what it means to be obedient, to follow