The Word Is Settled (07/28/2002)

The Word of God as an Eternal, Settled Revelation

Romans chapter 2, verse 28,. For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.

What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision? Much, every way, chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. We're still at that point. We'll move on into verse 3 soon.

Last time we were looking in Psalm 119, and we went from Psalm 119, verse 1, down through verse 89. And you weren't aware of it probably because my wife has taught me through the years that when you have a 17-point sermon, you never announce it ahead of time.

But we covered 17 points in that little passage from Psalm 119, verse 1, down through verse 89. Now there are just a few more points in this chapter. I won't tell you how many, but we'll cover a few more this morning.

But let's pick it up at verse 89. Verse 89 says, Lamed, forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. I want to take a moment to take a look at the Hebrew in this verse, because I want you to get the understanding of this verse.

If you get nothing else this morning, I want you to get the sense of this verse as God sends it to us by His Holy Spirit, exactly what was the Holy Spirit telling us here. The word forever in this particular place is the Hebrew word olam.

And that word literally means the vanishing point. It comes to take the connotation and the meaning of time out of mind, both past and future. Time out of mind, both past and future, i .e. eternity. It can be translated into the word always, but literally it means time out of mind, going back that way, in our view, as far back as you can go, and then beyond that, dropping off into what we call eternity past, and then going as far this way as we can go into what we call the future, dropping off into eternity future.

That is the forever that is in this verse. So the Bible says forever, O Lord. In other words, you could say from eternity, O Lord. Thy word is settled in heaven. Now, the word settle is the word natzav, which means appointed, established, set, established, made to stand.

So what the Bible tells us is that the Bible itself is a book which was set up and established and appointed and made to stand at a point somewhere beyond the vanishing point, going back that way into eternity past.

It is, in fact, an eternal book, this Bible is. God has chosen to give it to man in space and time, line by line, little by little. And the word of God tells us specific instructions as to how God accomplished this.

But before we get into that, I want to look at the grammar on this verse as well, where it says that forever, O Lord, thy word is established in heaven. This word settled in heaven is in the Hebrew, it's called the nifal tense, which for us means the passive tense.

And this means that God is the one who did the setting of it. God himself is the one who set his word in eternity past. It is passive, the word did not do it itself. It was not men who just decided to speak and write down things and say, well, God told me this.

The fact is, it is in the passive tense, which means that the words were set by God from eternity. It's also in the participle, so it's in the nifal participle tense in the Hebrew. The participle represents an action or condition in its unbroken continuity.

The closest thing we have to it in English is the verb to be. But this can be used in the present, past, or future. And I'll give you an example of the past participle. He was still talking when another person walked up, would be an example of how you would use that in the English.

So you're going back into the past, but you're looking at something that's continual. He was still talking when the other boy walked up. It's kind of a strange thing to think about, is you're looking at the past, but when you get there, it's a continual occurrence in the past.

It could also be a continual occurrence in the present, a continual occurrence in the future. You could say that the apostle John looked forward into the future, and he saw that the angels were still singing, holy, holy, holy.

It's future, but it's present. It's continual in the future. So that's what this tense means. So when you look at that, and you see what God says, that thy word forever, O Lord, thy word is continually being settled in the past, in our past.

It is finished. It is done. It is set. It is stationed. It is made to stand from eternity past. Now, as we look at the New Testament verse, you might think of 1 Peter 1, verse 23 and following. It says, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word, which by the gospel is preached unto you.

You understand that that now brings it into the New Testament. It connects not only the Old Testament scriptures, but it says this is the word which brings the gospel. The gospel is the New Testament scriptures.

And then Revelation chapter 14, verse 6 says,. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

This all brings to our minds something which came from eternity past. It was set there and settled and then brought to us and comes to a place in time where it then becomes everlasting. Now what does that tell you and me?

If it's everlasting, it means it can't change because it's going to go into eternity future in the state that it's now in because it came to us in that same state from eternity past and was brought into time.

You could only do damage to the definitions and the grammar that were used in these passages to say anything otherwise. Now I want to remind us this morning of some of the things that we covered last time.

In Psalm 119, you can go ahead and turn there. The Romans passage is just the... It is the passage we're studying, but we're going through the Scriptures and finding parallel passages, supporting passages.

Psalm 119, I'm going to list to you what you learned last time. The sufficiency of the Word of God. And when I say the Word of God, I'm specifically this morning speaking of the Scriptures, which means the written Word of God.

It is that which cleans our hands and our walk. It is that which keeps us from wandering. The Word of God makes it to be where I don't have to go beyond the Word into mysticism to behold wonders. If you remember verse 18 said, Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

I don't need to go into the mystics who are going to tell me that God told them to tell me something to find wondrous things. It's in the Word of God. It's in the Scriptures. We also learned that in the Scriptures we have our joy.

We have our counsel. We have our liveliness. We are quickened by it. We have our strength. We have our freedom. When we love the Word, we also don't have to feel that we're idolaters for loving the Word.

Verse 48 says, My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved, and I will meditate on thy statutes. There is a movement today to try to tell you that if you're a person of the Bible that you're idolatrous because you worship that Bible more than you do God.

I mentioned last time that would be like being gone for a long time, Brother Roger, and getting a love letter from your wife and saying, oh, I think I'll just worship this letter. I don't need her anymore.

I have this piece of paper with ink on it. That's all I need. Is that true, my brother? It's not true. My wife was gone the same week for a while. So, I think that the letter speaks of the person. I think that the words, Jesus himself said, my words, they are spirit and they are life.

They're not just ink on paper. We're not worshiping a book when we lift our hands up to the word. As a matter of fact, God himself said that I lift my word higher than my name, which is a remarkable statement that could take weeks to study just what he meant by that.

But it's a clear statement. Then we find that God uses his word to speak to us and to give us what we need to know for life. Verse 49, remember the word unto thy servant. David says, when I'm in a place in life where I need a decision, I need to make a decision, God remind me of your word that I've studied in times past and this morning and today.

Remember the word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope. All of my hope for being in the right place at the right time comes from the word of God as the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart.

It does not come from an outside source. Somebody comes up to you and says, God told me to tell you that you're gonna write a play today. My son, I'd say that, we'd laugh a little bit because Paul had someone tell him that once.

God told me to tell you that you're gonna write a play. Funny thing was, he went home and wrote a play, brought it back, and the person didn't even read it. Didn't even look at it. But yet God told him to bring that play into existence.

That's a mystic. That's a person who's hearing voices and they probably ate too many onions the night before. I'll explain now. Let me explain why I believe that in a few moments. But I want to continue to go over what we talked about last time for just a bit more.

It's also our comfort. The word of God, many times in this passage, was used in the plural, which shows that it's the written word, not the living word, Jesus, but it's the same thing. It's his life. It's his mind.

It's his heart. It's his spirit when you read it, if you read it in the Holy Spirit. And we see this in many places, but verse 50 is an example. I'm sorry, verse 57. It says, Thou art my portion, O Lord.

I have said that I will keep thy words. When you see it pluralized, you know that that's not talking about Jesus, the person. It's talking about the word of Jesus, the word of God, the words of God. We see that the word of God gives us our direction.

I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do in my life and I go back to the scriptures and they guide me, the Bible says. So they give me direction.

My fellowship is in the word of God. My fellowship with my brothers and sisters. They that fear thee will be glad when they see me because I have hoped in thy word, the Bible says. We're glad when we see each other because we have that mutual hope in the word of God.

So our fellowship comes from the written word of God. Our spiritual, I'm sorry, our spiritual riches come from the word of God. Verse 72, the law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver.

Our spiritual riches come from the written scriptures that came from God and so forth. And lastly, the word of God is fathomless. It is in fact, broad, exceeding broad. Verse 96 says, I have seen an end of all perfection.

I have seen many things in this world that came to maturity, but thy commandment is exceeding broad. In other words, David is saying, I've never come to the end of it. I've never been able to glean all I can glean from it because it is exceeding broad.

Now that's what we talked about last time and that lists 18 things from the word of God where the word of God does these things in our lives. Now pick it up in verse 97 if you would. Oh, how I love thy law.

It is my meditation all the day. So we see now that the scriptures are designed for meditation. Designed for us to use our thought life and our time and our thought life to be upon the principles of God that he gives us in his word as the Holy Spirit continues to teach us the subtle colors and meanings of the different words and the combinations in the word of God.

The Holy Spirit quickens it enlivens and broadens it in our own minds as we meditate upon it. Verse 98 says, thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies for they are ever with me.

Wow. Our enemies are ever with us. The spiritual enemies the world the flesh and the devil always with us and yet if we'll be in the word of God if we'll spend time in the scriptures we can be wise because we've meditated upon them.

So wisdom comes. I understand more than the ancients he says because I keep thy precepts. Verse 101 talks about the fact that we can be purified by the scriptures. I have refrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep thy word.

And then 102 I have not departed from thy judgments for thou hast taught me. You see how the Holy Spirit comes into play with the written word. But David did not minimize the importance of the written word here.

The two come together. He says I do not depart from thy judgments. Now you have to understand that the Old Testament Jew called the Bible he didn't call it the Bible like we do he called it the commandments and the judgments and the law.

And so it's as if he is saying that I do not depart from the Bible from your word from the scriptures you've given me. For you have taught me. There's the importance of the Holy Spirit. So it's not just a book with ink on it.

Never was to a born-again believer. Never was to a child of God. It is the very word the very mind the very heart the very revelation of God of himself to us. And he puts it on paper because it makes it objective.

It makes it the law. It's what makes it the commandments. It's what makes it stand. It is settled in heaven. And it stands as that which everything else must be held up against in this world. And the Holy Spirit comes and interprets it and teaches us just like 1 John says that we have no need that we have a teacher because the anointing of the Holy Spirit is within us and he teaches us this word.

Now it doesn't mean not to have a teacher because a teacher can sometimes help you go faster, find verses more quickly to study in a systematic fashion and so forth. But if you were off in a place where you didn't have a teacher and you did have the word and you had the scriptures you would learn because the Holy Spirit would teach you just as he does now.

Verse 104, through thy precepts I get understanding therefore I hate every false way. So we gain not only knowledge and wisdom but also understanding and a hatred for sin comes from the scriptures. 105, the word, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Guidance, guidance comes from the word. 108, accept I beseech thee the free will offerings of my mouth O Lord and teach me thy judgments. And let me show you what 108 means. And this is amazing in this day and time because the very people across this nation who are into praise and worship, some of them are not very much into the word.

I don't know why. I don't know that I'm not saying that about all of them but I'm saying some of them are not and maybe it's because it's not sufficient to them and they're looking elsewhere. I don't know.

I know the children of Israel did that. They never were satisfied with manna were they? Give us meat so God just rained quail on their heads until they were sick of quail. God chastened them because they said the manna was not enough.

That's a type in the picture of the word of God. Never get to the place where the word is not enough in your life because God may just rain birds down on your head until you're sick of them. But notice this, the free will offerings of my mouth.

Doesn't the New Testament teach us that that is the praise, the sacrifice of praise from our lips? May I show you where it comes from? Did you know that it comes from the book that was settled in time out of mind going back to eternity past?

That scripture that was settled by God as he brings it to you and you have it today and he says teach me thy judgments, teach me thy word he means, teach me the scriptures he means and then my free will offerings from my mouth will be acceptable.

You realize we cannot even praise God except with information that he's given us in the scriptures. How would you praise him? Because to praise him is to recognize who he is and you couldn't know him without the scriptures.

Yes you could know he was there but you couldn't know who he is. So only by the scriptures can you give free will offerings of your mouth and when you attempt to give free will offerings to the Lord of praise and you do it outside of revelation of the scriptures it is not accepted by God because your praise originates in heaven and it originated and was settled there and made to stand there and it was brought down in time by the prophets of old and the New Testament apostles and prophets and sons of prophets as we'll describe later in this study and given to us line by line in time so that we would have words, listen to me, words to praise God with.

If you're going to praise God praise him with scriptures. I don't mean you have to quote scriptures to him at all but you notice when you start to praise God notice if the words that you use aren't words that you were taught in the holy scriptures.

That's where you learned about him. That's where you say oh father I praise you for your omnipotence, for your mighty power. Where did you learn that? From the word. Oh father I praise you for the fact that you're omniscient, you know everything, you know my thoughts before I say them.

Where did you learn that? Do you think that you can originate your praise? God's already settled it and he's given it to you by his grace and he's given it to you in time by his holy prophets and as the holy spirit teaches you as you read and study it then all of a sudden you can echo that back.

You can send it back up from your heart of love, from your own born again self as the holy spirit takes it almost as the messenger of it I would say. He brings it to you in the word of God. He takes it back to God in that smoke that you see in the revelation.

The vials of smoke that are the prayers of the saints going up praising God. That's where you get it. But it had to come to you first from heaven before you could send it back and I wish more people in this world today could understand these principles.

Verse 108 mark it, it's a beautiful verse. 114 says thou art my hiding place and my shield I hope in thy word. Verse 115 and several of these have to do with the fact that the scriptures are our defense.

They are our shield, our defense against the fiery darts of the enemy. You don't need anything else but the word. You don't need anything else but the scriptures and the power of the Holy Spirit and as you have the scriptures all of a sudden look what you have.

A shield. My hope in the word. Depart from me ye evil doers for I will keep the commandments of God. You see you can't bother me. You can't bother me you evil doers. I'm in the word. And he goes on and says thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes from the word of God for their deceit is falsehood.

Thou put us away all the wicked of the earth like dross therefore I love thy testimonies. It is time for thee Lord to work for they have made void the Bible. You see that in verse 126. So it's our defense against the enemy.

Therefore I love thy commandments above gold. Yea above fine gold. Therefore I steam all thy precepts concerning all things that are to be right. You want to know what's right and wrong boys and girls, young people?

You want to know how to tell the difference between truth and error, right and wrong? Read the Bible every day. Read the Bible every day. From the point you learn to read, start reading it every day and studying.

Let the Holy Spirit teach you God's heart and mind because the Bible says that concerning things right I esteem your precepts and I hate every false way. How can you hate something you don't know is there?

You don't know the Bible and you couldn't know it was false without the scriptures. Verse 129, thy testimonies are wonderful. Therefore doth my soul keep them. Verse 130 has to do with revelation. There are so many people today worried that we're not going to get enough revelation.

That God's not going to be able to speak to us, especially to those of us who don't believe in the true gift of prophecy being empowered by God right this moment. So we're not going to be able to get enough they say.

But look at the Bible. Verse 130, the entrance of thy words, you see that's not talking about the Jesus, the Lord Jesus. It's talking about the Lord Jesus' words. The entrance of thy words giveth light.

It giveth understanding unto the simple. What does it mean by simple? An area in life where you don't have understanding yet. What will bring you the understanding for that necessary thing in your life where you're seeking the Lord's understanding?

Perfect direction, is words. The entrance of thy words giveth light, the entrance into where? Does that say that the word of God sitting on your coffee table at home gives light? No, it says the entrance of it into your mind and heart.

As it enters your mind and heart, you then have light you didn't have before it entered. Even if you read that same passage yesterday and you read it again today, you will get more light. It never entered into your mind before in your whole life.

Let me tell you, it's sufficient for revelation. It is the full revelation of God which we'll demonstrate today in a few moments. Verse 132 says it is our history. Look thou upon me and be merciful to me as thou used to do unto those that love thy name.

I love David because he's really a Texan, he's a southerner, look how he talks here. If you have a King James Version, verse 132 says, be merciful unto me as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name.

As thou usest to do, used to do, 133 says, order my steps in thy word and let not any iniquity have dominion, the key word here is dominion, over me so the word of God brings freedom from slavery. Slavery to the devil.

Little children, slavery to little sins that you start learning to do. Lying a little bit. It's odd to you it's not a little bit, it's a lot when you lie. Not giving all the information to deceive. Taking something that's not yours.

Those things can become terrible habits in your life if you start as a little child and you continue it into adult life. But you know what the Bible teaches little boys and girls? It teaches that the Bible, if you will read it and study it every day, it will free you from the dominion of sin.

That means you don't have to do it just because something tells you to go do something bad. Something in your mind says go do that bad, you just tell it, no! The Bible said not to, I'm not going to do it.

But if you hadn't been reading the Bible, you won't have the strength to do that young people. Because the Bible says order my steps in thy word and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Man, that's power.

This book is powerful ladies and gentlemen. This book is sufficient to keep you from sin habits. But you got to be in it. It has to be entering, the entrance of thy word. Bringeth light. Verse 139, my zeal hath consumed me because mine enemies have forgotten thy words.

Isn't that amazing? God's enemies forget what the Bible says and then they begin to twist it. They'll use it, but they twist it and they base it on something they read ten years ago and hadn't gone back and done a complete thorough study and they forget a little bit here, a little bit there, confuse a little bit there.

They hear some preacher say this or that or the other, they put it all together and they come out with confusion and they have forgotten God's words and the Bible says the zeal of someone walking close to God will consume you when you hear people doing that.

You won't like it. It'll bother you. You probably won't let it happen in your presence, for very long anyway. Verse 140, thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it. You want pure words? I'll tell you what, don't get them from people.

Get them from the scriptures. Get them from God himself. 141, I am small and despised, yet do not I forget thy precepts. Men may see me as nothing, men may see me as worthless, men may see you as totally unsuccessful in life, but if you're in his word every day, David saw that as something worth more than the whole view of the world about his life.

Verse 142, thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness and thy law is the truth. We're talking about the fact that God is truth, are we not? That's the general subject we're in. This is a large part of God's truth in our life, this written word.

He says thy law is truth. 143, trouble and anguish have taken hold on me, yet thy commandments are my delights. I prevented the dawning of the morning and cried, I hoped in thy word. Mine eyes prevent the night watches that I might meditate in thy word.

You see, it doesn't just come automatically because you're born again. You get saved, you've been saved two or three years, you haven't yet arrived, you stay saved another 20 years, you haven't yet arrived, another 20, you still haven't yet arrived, you're still here, still haven't arrived, but I tell you what, if you are preventing the night watches and spending some time meditating on the word, you're arriving, you're arriving and you're arriving faster than people who aren't.

That's just the way it is. If you're in the word more than your brother next to you, all other things being equal, you're going to grow faster. And I say all other things because I am leaving there room for the Holy Spirit to teach you.

There are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that are in the word an awful lot and they're not growing, but if you're born again and you're in the word and you're in the spirit when you're in the word and you're that way more than the person sitting next to you right now, you're growing faster.

You're going to get there sooner. And when we all arrive in the heavenlies, you'll be ahead. That's why God calls it a race. That's why he says keep your eyes on the finish line. When we get so caught up in the things of this world and the pleasures of this life and other things coming in that choke the word from us, let's remember that finish line and there is going to be an award ceremony.

And we are going to be there and it's going to be very real. Now we don't know exactly how it will be because God uses those things to tell us and as we think as men now how this will be, but we can only view it as an award ceremony.

But I'll say this, if it's an award ceremony, if you ever sat there in an award ceremony and said, I could have won that one. How many of you have ever done that? Like an athletic one or academic? Boy, two more 100s and I'd have won that one.

I'd have had the most 100s or I'd have had the highest GPA or whatever. Well, I'm going to do it next time. I'm going to tell you something, when we get to the finish line, there won't be a next time.

You will have achieved what you will have achieved. And you will watch others receive what they will receive. And let me tell you what it's directly proportional to. Everybody look at me right now. How much you're in this.

I can boil it all down to how much you are in the Holy Spirit in this book. Now I know there are many other things in our Christian lives, but I can boil it down to this because this is what energizes the other things.

This is what makes your walk want to be holy. This is what makes you want to go tomorrow and not sin. If you're in this, if you're not in this, the world, the flesh, the devil will come into your life and it's as if you forget and you get outside of the boundaries just a little bit and you don't get any rewards for that.

The Lord said, be careful lest another man take thy reward. And you suffer loss. Wood, hay, and stubble. Those are Christian people he's talking about. It's directly proportional to this. So what does that tell me and you?

We're not in it enough. We're criticized already for how much we're in it. But we're still not in it nearly enough. The very holiness of your life, the very power that they call the charisma, the whole charismatic movement based on rah-rah.

Well let me tell you where real power comes from and it has nothing to do with your demeanor or your personality or whether you're outward or inward. It has to do with how much you've been in this book.

If you've been in this book more than the next guy, when he's in trouble, he's going to come to you. Because he's going to see the power of God and it's not going to be you dancing around the pews. It's going to be the power of God.

It's a quickened, enlivened heart and soul that you have. Yes, emotions are a part of it. Some more than with others because of our own nature that we're born with. We are ourselves too. God works in us.

He doesn't remove us. As Brother Otis said, He doesn't work through us. If He worked through us, it means He didn't do anything with us. He just came in, went out and did something in the world. He works in us.

With us. But let me say this. All of us in our own way have to have some heart behind it. Because how could you not? As we're in this word more and we see how much the Father loves us that the Lord Jesus said As He has loved me, He loves you.

In John chapter 17. As He has loved me, He loves you. When you think about that time, Brother Otis talked about in Sunday School this morning when you were lost and didn't even want to be saved. He loved you just as much then as He does now.

Because you were lost sheep. You can't tell me that doesn't bring emotions. You can't tell me that doesn't bring liveliness. Listen, people come in and they look at us and they say we're a dead church.

I don't think so. I know some Sundays are better than others that way and I don't know why. Probably because we all stayed up till 2 that particular Saturday night and weren't ready when we got here. It's not God's fault.

Because God's presence is here. But to the extent, ladies and gentlemen, that you are in the word you will be a lively church in the right way that pleases God. You won't have to even think about making that happen or faking it or causing it.

You just, listen, you go home this week tested. You spend twice as much time in the word this week as you did last week and you come back next Sunday and let's see what kind of service we have without you trying to do one thing.