Theology of Exposition

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to come back and bring the Word again.
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Good morning brothers and sisters.
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It is a joy to be with you again and I am grateful again for the opportunity to be a part of this conference and for the privilege of standing in this sacred space to proclaim the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
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I want to talk about theology for biblical preaching.
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The heart of what I wanted to say is simply that you cannot preach faithfully without confidence that the Bible is the Word of God.
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Well, last night I pointed your attention to 2 Timothy chapter 4.
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This morning, I understand, in the earlier session, we sit at the end of 2 Timothy chapter 3 and the two passages are wedded together.
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If you ask really why biblical preaching, why expositional preaching, why preach the Word, if you ask me the significance of 2 Timothy 4.2, I would say it's 2 Timothy 3.16.
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If the Bible is in fact what it claims to be, the inspired, divinely given, revealed Word of God, then why would you run about anywhere else looking for something to preach? You just preach the Word.
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And if you do not believe that the Bible is God-breathed Scripture, you should not be in the pulpit.
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Yeah, so that's that message.
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I want to lean in a little more about confidence in Scripture, and I want to do so from one of my favorite parts of the Scriptures, favorite passages of the Scripture, if that's appropriate to say, and it's Psalm 119.
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I want to breathe the Word of prayer, and then I want to read to you from Psalm 119.
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Father, thank you again for our time together today in your Word.
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Thank you for what we have already encountered and experienced, and we pray afresh that you would be our teacher.
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Now, as we study your Word, help us to lay aside all malice, deceit, envy, hypocrisy, and slander, so that as newborn infants we may crave the pure spiritual milk of your Word, and grow thereby having tasted of your goodness.
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Would you guide my thoughts, govern my words, and guard my heart, so that everything I say would be consistent with sound doctrine, and may Christ be exalted as the Word is explained, we pray.
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Amen.
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You already know Psalm 119 is the longest psalm of the Psalter.
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If the Psalms were considered chapters, they are songs and independent units.
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It would be the longest chapter in the Bible.
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This is a psalm of 176 verses, and these verses are organized, arranged into 22 sections or stanzas or strophes that are each eight verses long, and they are arranged beautifully, poetically, in an acrostic using each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the writer went through all of this simply to celebrate the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Psalm 119 is just a glorious celebration of the sufficiency of God's Word, and I want to look at the mem section of the psalm in verses 97 through 104.
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Reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible, the reading is this, oh how I love your law.
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It is my meditation all the day.
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Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.
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I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.
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I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.
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I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.
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I do not run aside from your rules, for you have taught me.
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How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
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Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way.
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Amen.
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The 19th century missionary Henry Martin wrote in his journal that I experienced solemn gladness as I read the mem portion of the 119th psalm.
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What a phrase, solemn gladness.
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May that be our experience today as we consider together Psalm 119 verses 97 through 104.
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The first thing I would note to you about this section of the psalm is that it is a prayer.
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It is a prayer in which the psalmist directly addresses the Lord God in each of these eight verses.
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The interesting thing is it is a prayer without a petition.
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There are no requests in this section.
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This is not a prayer of supplication.
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It is, if you will, a prayer of confession, a prayer of testimony, a prayer of devotion.
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It begins with an exclamation in verse 97.
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Oh how I love your law.
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This would have been a glorious testimony if the psalmist would have said instead, I believe your law, or I obey your law, or I proclaim your law.
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Those are great testimonies.
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But would you note here that the psalmist does not merely refer to any conduct related to the word.
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He speaks about realities underneath the skin, describing his heart's devotion to the word of God.
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He prays to God simply to tell God, I love your word.
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And note that it's a personal testimony.
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He does not speak to or for or about anyone else.
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It's a sense in which he says, I don't know what anyone else in the culture or around me's attitude about the word is, but Lord for me, I want you to know I love your law.
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And notice how he speaks here of present tense reality.
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He does not look back and remember a time when he used to love God's word before certain things happened.
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He does not look ahead and promise that he will love God's word if certain things happen.
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He speaks here in real time.
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We do not know what the circumstances of the psalmist were as he wrote these words.
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The body of Psalm 119 lets us know that he faced many afflictions.
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But whatever he was going through, he is saying here, I will not let my present circumstances, I will not allow what is happening to me or around me change my devotion to your word.
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I love your law.
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There's a cause and effect in verse 97.
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Oh, how I love your law.
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It is my meditation all the day.
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When he speaks of the word of God being his meditation all the day, he is not suggesting that he sat on the mountain side all day and contemplated scripture.
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Rather, what he is saying is that he was not a man who rushed through a few verses in the morning to get it out of the way.
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He was not a person who brought a Bible to church and then neglected it the rest of the week.
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He was not one who ignored the scriptures until he found himself in some danger, toil, or snare that he could not handle on his own.
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He is saying here that all the day, throughout the day, he is chewing on God's word, meditating on God's word, processing God's word so that it would shape his attitude and his choices and his words and his desires and his conduct and his relationships.
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In fact, in verse 48, he declares, I will lift up my hands towards your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.
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It's as if now in verse 97, he checks in and says, I kept the promise I made in verse 48.
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I do love your word, and it is my meditation all the day.
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I suggested that this verse and the two statements in it are cause and effect, but maybe these two statements are better understood more cyclically there as a cycle.
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In a sense, the more he loved the word, the more he meditated on it, and the more he meditated on it, the more he loved it.
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And the more he loved it, the more he meditated on it until here, somewhere around the middle of this extended celebration of God's word, he pauses in prayer and says, Lord, I'm calling you up, but I don't want anything right now.
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I just called to tell you that I'm in love with your word.
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One more thing before I leave the verse, notice what he labels the word of God, your law.
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Law is one of at least 10 synonyms for scripture in Psalm 119.
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When he says, I love your law, he is saying, I love your word, but the nuance of this word is significant in that he is saying here when he could have chosen other words that I don't just love your word when it is offering blessing, providing comfort and giving direction.
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When your word confronts me, when your word convicts me, when your word challenges me, you get it? When your word is getting in my business, I still love it.
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Oh, how I love your law.
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It is my meditation all the day long.
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Brothers, this is the bottom line.
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There's a lot to get to here.
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Let me just bottom line this from the beginning.
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This opening verse of this section is a, is a objective barometer of spiritual devotion to know God's word is to love God's word.
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The question we need to consider today is this question on the table is, do you love God's word? Not just asking, do you read it? Do you study it? Do you preach it? Do you teach it? Do you defend it? Do you love it? It has been said that the Bible is God's love letter to his children.
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If so, I suggest that if you do not love the word of God, it may be because you're reading somebody else's mail.
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To know God's word is to love God's word.
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And the rest of the stanza gives, if you will, three reasons why you ought to intentionally fall in love with God's word.
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Here's the first reason.
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The word of God will make you wise.
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The word of God will make you wise.
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I read a definition of wisdom by Chuck Swindoll that just stayed in my head.
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Swindoll defined wisdom as the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to respond to life with rare stability.
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It is the God-given ability to see objectively and to stand your ground or to walk, not just to see with objectivity, but to stand as well in that truth.
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The question is, where do we get this wisdom so that we don't play the fool? Here in this passage, the Psalmist makes it clear that the wisdom of God is found in the word of God.
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If one is to be wise, wisdom is found in the word of God.
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In verses 98 through 100 here, the Psalmist describes the superior wisdom of God's word three ways.
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He first says God's word will make you wiser than your enemies.
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Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.
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Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies.
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The tension between verses 97 and 98 is worth noting.
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In verse 97, he declares that he loves the word of God, but now in verse 98, he admits that even though he loves the word of God, it doesn't mean that everyone loves him.
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He has enemies.
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Read the Psalm.
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He has real enemies, powerful enemies, rich enemies, influential enemies, insolent enemies, determined enemies who would stop at nothing to undermine or overthrow his devotion to God's word.
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And he acknowledges here that he has enemies, plural, in his life, but yet he speaks here cool, calm, and collected.
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He is not panicked by what is going on in the world around him because he says God's word makes me wiser than my enemies.
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He's not suggesting here that he is a shrewd man who is able to beat his enemies at their own game.
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He is saying he has godly direction for his life that permits him to stay on his feet and stay on the right path no matter what is going on around him.
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And because of that, he says, I am wiser than my enemies.
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Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies.
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My enemies may be up all night or maybe strategizing throughout the day, he says, but all I have to do is obey your commands.
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And it keeps me a few steps ahead of my enemies.
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No doubt he's talking about people here, but you cannot, as a Christian here, read this without thinking about a higher, deeper, greater way.
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Ephesians 6 reminds us, verse 11, that we do not wrestle against what? Flesh and blood, but against principalities and against rulers of the darkness of this present age.
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We have spiritual enemies.
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Ephesians 6, 11 is trying to make it clear that people are not our biggest problem, but even when Satan and his forces work with all of their might against the gospel of Jesus Christ and the people of God, here is the good news.
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His commandment makes us wiser than our enemies.
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In Matthew 4, verses 1 through 11, after Jesus has fasted for 40 days and is tired and hungry and weak, Satan comes to tempt him to accept a shortcut to glory.
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Remember, Jesus wins this original operation, desert storm, if you will, by declaring, it is written.
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It is written.
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Get behind me, Satan, for it is written.
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The old Southern Baptist evangelist, Vance Havner, used to say that if Jesus can get the victory over the devil with three verses out of Deuteronomy, how much more should we live and minister and serve with confidence, as God has given us 66 books of spiritual wisdom in his word.
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There's another phrase there before I move on.
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Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.
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The poetry there is not a reference to the abiding presence of Scripture as much as it is a reference to the unchanging nature of Scripture.
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He is not just saying, your word is always there for me.
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He is saying, your word never changes.
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He says, your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, because while they have to look constantly for a new plan, a new plot, a new scheme, I keep going back to your word and it never changes.
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But not only will God's word make you wiser than your enemies, he says, God's word makes us wiser than our teachers.
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Noah Webster, of course, is known for his famous dictionary.
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What is not known by many is that he also produced a dictionary.
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I mean, beyond the dictionary, a translation of the Bible, I should say.
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And from Webster's perspective, that translation was a more important product of his life's work than the book of definitions, because he believed that education without Scripture is useless.
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The psalmist, the anonymous psalmist here would agree with him.
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He says in verse 99, I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation.
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Some commentators don't know how to take that.
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It seems a very presumptuous thing to say.
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I have more understanding than all my teachers.
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He doesn't say I know more than all my teachers.
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That would be a pretty arrogant thing to say.
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But this is a legitimate testimony.
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I believe he says I have more understanding than my teachers.
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Understanding here is a synonym for wisdom in verse 98.
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If wisdom is foresight here, understanding is insight.
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We are reminded here that there is a difference between insight and information.
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There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
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Knowledge comes from reading and research and retention, but wisdom comes from God.
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In Matthew 16 verses 15 through 17, in that great confession passage, Jesus says to the boys, but what about you? Who do you say that I am? And Peter declares you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
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And remember how Christ responds by saying flesh and blood did not reveal that to you.
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You didn't learn that at a school.
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You didn't read that in a book.
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You didn't get that from a teacher.
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That comes from God the father.
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The most important wisdom is not of this world.
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It is from God and it is found, brothers and sisters, in his word.
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He says I have more understanding than all my teachers.
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Havner, if I may quote him again, says that there are college professors looking for wisdom when the man that cleans their office is founded 30 years ago.
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Because real wisdom comes from God.
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He says I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation.
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The reason why he says I am wiser than my teachers is because I am meditating on your word.
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Makes us think does it not of Psalm 1.
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Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate all the day long.
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Therefore he is like a tree planted by the streams of waters that brings forth his fruit in his season.
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His leaf also does not wither and in everything he does he prospers.
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God's word will make you wiser than your enemies, verse 98.
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God's word will make you wiser than your teachers, verse 99.
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But God's word will make you wiser than the aged, than your elders he says in verse 100.
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I have more understanding than the aged.
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I have more understanding than all my elders for I keep your precepts.
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Maybe two points to consider out of this verse.
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Here the psalmist remind us that age and wisdom don't necessarily always go together.
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It is the assumption, it's the assumption that with age will come maturity and with maturity will come wisdom.
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It's not accidental or incidental that in both the Old Testament and the New Testament a title for the people who led God's people is elders.
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The assumption is that with maturity comes wisdom, but it is not inevitable.
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It is not automatic.
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Time is not necessarily the best teacher.
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Experience that is not necessarily the best teacher.
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Time doesn't fix everything.
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Time doesn't fix a flat tire.
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You got to actually do something about that.
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And there are some people who run around bragging about 25 years of experience when actually they may only have one year of experience repeated 25 times because they keep making the same mistakes without learning from the past.
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By no means am I suggesting that we should ignore the wisdom of our elders, those who come before us.
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I think the problem with the contemporary church is that we often act like nothing significant happened until we got here.
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But what the writer here is saying is that wisdom does not come merely from the passing of time.
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Wisdom comes from God.
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James 1 verse 5 says if anyone among you lacks wisdom, if again I may exegete the white spaces and consider what he does not say, he does not say if anyone lacks wisdom wait a few years till you get older and your hair gets gray.
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No, he says if anyone among you lacks wisdom let him ask of God who will give it to you generously and will not chastise you for asking.
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Oh may God give us hearts of the psalmist that just love his word.
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Not just study it, not just preach it, not just defend it, but we love it.
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We ought to love it because the word of God will make you wise.
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But secondly, you should love the word of God because the word of God will keep you from sin.
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Psalm 119 verse 9 as how can a young man keep his way pure? Answer, by guarding his way according to your word.
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And then verse 11 the psalmist testifies, I have stored up your word, hidden your word like a treasure that I could not afford to lose.
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I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
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But they used to say it's true.
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Either the word of God will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from the word of God.
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The opening verse of the next stanza, Psalm 119 verse 105 says it succinctly, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
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God's word is both lamp and light that that can keep one off the wrong road of life and keep one on the right road of life.
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That's verse 101 and 102.
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He says, first of all, God's word can keep you off the wrong road.
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I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.
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When I read this verse, what encourages me is that the psalmist here is just bold enough and honest enough and forthright enough to tell it like it is, that there is an evil way.
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I said to my congregation Sunday, when I began pastoring as a young man, I readily understood that my job is to care for souls.
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I over time understood that I also as a pastor must not only care for souls but care for words.
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It's your job to oversee, care for, watch over words.
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They looked at me the way some of y'all are looking at me now and I told them it's a big theology, theological that is, God-sized words pastors have to care for.
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Words like prayer and forgiveness and service and faith.
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If you're not careful, those prayers can slip out the church and you got to retrieve it and bring it back.
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We've lost the meaning of words.
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Here's a word I think we have lost.
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We just don't know how to call evil, evil.
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We find all kinds of ways to describe what's going on in the world around us.
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The psalmist here just, I like, he just calls it like it is and says there's some ways that are just evil.
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But before we are tempted to linger there too long, will you note that his big concern here is not the evil in him, around him that is, as much as the evil in him.
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There is an evil way and what he acknowledges subtly here is that that evil is not just out there somewhere.
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My feet would be on that evil way if I didn't hold back my feet, if I did not restrain my feet.
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He is reminding us and what an important word for us as Christians in these days.
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You can't have spiritual devotion with undisciplined feet.
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Your life must be brought under the authority of the lordship of Jesus Christ.
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How particularly true is this for those of us who preach the word.
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There must be a life that is submitted to the lordship of Christ in order to be faithful to the truth of God's word as a proclaimer.
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And if you do not submit your life to the authority of lordship of Christ, you will be a coward in the pulpit.
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You must hold back your feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.
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In verse 101 talks about the restraining power of God's word.
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Verse 102 speaks of the sustaining power of God's word.
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I do not turn aside from your rules for you have taught me.
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In verse 1 he says I'm holding my feet back from the evil way in order to live according to your word.
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But now he says I'm on the right path and on the right path I refuse to turn aside from your rules for you have taught me.
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This is a statement the psalmist uses throughout this psalm.
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There are times when it is a petition here it is a declaration you have taught me.
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Here is a big statement about the nature of scripture.
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This is not merely the psalmist teaching us but by these words God himself is teaching us.
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The bible is not merely man's thoughts about God.
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They are God's self-revelation of himself to man.
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And this is why we must be so careful to rightly handle the word of truth.
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Because if you misinterpret the text you misrepresent God.
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God teaches through his word.
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It is our job to be if you will a mouthpiece for the text and then get out of the way.
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Let God by the dynamic working of his wonderful holy spirit teach his people.
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Oh we ought to love God's word.
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You ought to love God's word because the word of God will make you wise and secondly because the word of God will keep you from sin.
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Permit me one of my favorite little pieces of poetry is written by Portia Nelson.
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She labels it an autobiography in five short paragraphs.
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Let me give you the whole thing.
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Chapter one.
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I'm walking down the street there's a huge hole in the sidewalk.
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I don't see it.
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I fall in.
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It is dark.
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I am lost.
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It takes me forever to get out.
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Chapter two.
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I'm walking down the street.
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Same street.
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There's a hole in the sidewalk.
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I pretend it's not there and I fall in.
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It's dark.
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I'm lost.
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It takes me forever to get out.
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Chapter three.
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I am walking down the same street.
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There's a huge hole in the sidewalk.
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I fall in but at this point it's not my fault.
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It's a habit and I've been in this hole so many times I know my way out now.
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Chapter four.
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I am walking down the same street.
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There's a huge hole in the sidewalk.
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I carefully tiptoe around it so that I don't fall in.
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Chapter five.
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My favorite chapter.
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I walk down another street.
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This is why we must plead.
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Every week we must plead with those to whom we will preach the word of God and teach the word of God.
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Plead with them to run to the cross.
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It is only in the blood and righteousness of Christ that we find a new and living way and we don't have to keep falling for the same old stuff.
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I recently read a biography on John Stott and one of the notes I remembered is that with regularly a part of his sermons when he turned to application he would regularly ask how are things between you and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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This is the question we must constantly raise as we proclaim the word of God because he is the only one that can lead us to salvation.
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You should love God's word because the word of God will make you wise.
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The word of God will keep you from sin.
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I have two more verses quickly.
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The third reason in the text why you should love the word of God is that the word of God will bring you joy.
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The psalm begins with a declaration of love oh how I love your law.
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Now it ends with a declaration of of joy.
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How sweet are your words to my taste.
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Sweeter than honey to my mouth.
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Honey would have been one of the sweetest things the psalmist knew and he mentions it here only to say God your word is sweeter than the sweetest thing I know.
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He affirms what David says in Psalm 19 verse 10.
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David says that God's word is sweeter than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
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But there's a difference here because the statement in Psalm 19 is a statement of objective reality.
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The statement here is a statement of subjective experience.
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Again he's not speaking for anyone else.
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He says I'm just talking about my taste and my mouth.
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Nothing satisfies like the word of God.
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Nothing satisfies like the word of God.
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God gripped me by grace when I was just a boy.
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Started preaching when I was 11 years old and my father had fellow pastors he had been kind to.
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They knew no other way to pay him back than to let his preacher boy son speak in their Sunday school class their little youth event and very early on I had a lot of opportunities to speak the word of God.
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God by conspiracy called me to preach as a boy.
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I had asthma couldn't walk outside without having an asthma attack it felt and he just kept me with books and books led me to the book.
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I was called to my first church at the age of 17.
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I was still a senior in high school.
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I don't recommend that as a father of a 17 year old.
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I do not recommend that.
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That is my biography and the providence of God.
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I served that church for 18 years until the Lord called me here eight years ago and I am asked now still at the age of 43 I'm often asked when people hear my biography do you regret starting so early and missing your youth? I've heard it enough that I've got a packaged answer I could just pull off the shelf and it is simply this my only regret looking back is that I wasted so much time.
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This world has nothing to offer us.
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True satisfying joy is only found in God.
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Westminster Catechism, Shorter Catechism declares that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever and of course in Desiring God John Piper famously twists that statement to say that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
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Indeed God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him and that is the truth.
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I was thinking about that this morning.
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I saw something on social media this morning about giving God the highest praise and the thought came to me you cannot give your highest praise to the Lord if you don't first give your highest devotion to the Lord.
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What do you find your joy in? I mean it gets loud I was trying to be do my I'm trying to be cool there but the word here will give you he says satisfying joy and then in verse 104 as I conclude he says not only will God's word give satisfying joy it will give sanctifying joy.
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He is saying in verse 103 your word is the sweetest thing I know.
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Now in verse 4 he says that is the truth my experience because God changed my appetite through his the precepts of his word God has given me understanding and as a result I hate every false way.
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The first line of the of the stanza verse 97 is a declaration of love I love your law the last line of the stanza is a declaration of hate I hate every false way.
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This is why in the words of Nehemiah 8 when we stand to preach or teach the word of God in the words of Nehemiah 8 we just we need to bring the book we need to bring the book laying before it the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ the wisdom of God the faithfulness of his promises the hope of his salvation so that sinners by amazing grace will fall in love with God's word and the more you fall in love with God's word the more you will hate every false way.
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And listen to what he says I don't merely hate the consequences of the false way I hate the false way itself the more I love God's word the more I hate anything that tries to turn me away from God's word.
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In the 1950s James Bracey was separated from his beloved wife as a young newlywed because of military duty.
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But to keep the romance of the new marriage going he wrote his bride Sally love letters letters you remember those don't you he wrote letters long passionate love letters.
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One of the letters he wrote got lost in the process of delivery and never reached Sally.
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Life went on time went on fast forward the story from the 50s 50 years forward Jim and Sally are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary unbeknownst to them they are tearing down the old postal house at Fort Ord in Monterey near Monterey where he served and somewhere in the process of the demolition they find a letter stuck between the panel that was undelivered.
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They took it to the local post office in Monterey there they looked up record until they found the Bracey's and was able to finally deliver that letter to Sally that was dated January 28, 1966.
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She said it was good to know then that he loved me it is even better to know that after all of these years his love has not changed.
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God has written a love letter the message has been lost delivery for so many people the good news is the message has not changed the message has not changed.
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Ephesians 2 verses 4 and 5 says but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved.
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Thank God that message has not changed and may God use us to get that message out so that all that God has chosen for salvation will run to the cross.
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Amen.