Trusted with God’s Words IV: Do Not Remove Your Word

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Teddy James. Still under duress.

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Under duress. And so I was going to thank him for being here, but since he complained. Well, we've been looking at the theme of being a people that in a day of so many clamoring voices, so many different options being offered to us, which of course, ever since the entrance of sin into humanity, there have been various voices and God has warned us, we can't have more than one master.

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There's one voice that we follow. But there is something unique about today. There is the ability to hear voices that contradict

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God's voice, especially through our media. So you were, you were talking about something that you listened to on a podcast.

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Yeah. So, and so I was listening to this homeschool podcast that my wife sent me, but also I didn't really believe it.

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So I did a little bit more digging and research. So what it seems to say, this study is that before 1900, humanity doubled its knowledge every 100 years.

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So it took a hundred years to double knowledge. And you're talking about a kind of stored knowledge, available knowledge.

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Available knowledge and things that we understand, right. The things that we understand about the world, things we understand about science, these things doubled every 100 years.

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From 1900, it, after that point, it doubled every 25 years. So we saw this huge increase.

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So every 25 after 1900. Right. Because, you know, when we saw that with the atomic knowledge, right, we understood the atomic bomb and nuclear power.

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From 1945 on, it was 25 years. Starting in,

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I think it said like 2019, 2020, somewhere in there, our knowledge began to double at a rate of every 25 hours.

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So with that much noise coming and now, and who knows how fast it's going to happen with, you know, with AI.

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I mean, I know right now AI is helping to develop or is being used to develop medication because it can put together particles that our minds were never able to see a pattern to put together.

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So who knows how, you know, how that's going to go. So there's a lot of noise coming out. And I think that while we're very careful to make the statement that we live in unique times, this is an issue that, that we've never seen before where there's so much noise and so much information available.

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And so because of that, we have to be a people with weighty words. Yeah. So all, all the more necessary, it's not a new category for a

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Christian life, but the degree, the extremity of the need perhaps is unique in human history.

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So many voices So not just that much knowledge available, but available at the press of a button.

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Someone can read a blog or an article from someone in Cambodia or South Africa, you know, or, you know,

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Manchester, England. And whereas before, you know, 200 years before, how, how would a person have known what all those people think about all these topics, unless you bought a book on it and which was edited, right?

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Yeah. A book is expensive. So very few people would have the opportunity to, to kind of give their opinions through print.

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So it is an unusual time. And that's why we've been talking about the necessity of being a people that can be trusted with God's message.

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And we talked about that in the last couple episodes, but today's episode, similar theme, but a little different.

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And it is this. If as a

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Christian, you have been entrusted with the word of God, and it is humans that God entrusts with his message to take to other humans.

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So saved centers, taking the message to those who are sinful and blind and deaf, you know, people who once were starving, but have been brought to the table of Christ are now turning toward a starving world and inviting them because it's saved centers, men and women, not just ministers, not just men preaching, but because it's all believers that have been entrusted with this word and not the angelic hosts.

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We, we want to ask this question. If we have the word of God as individuals, or you think of an individual church, how can we guard against the possibility of losing that word?

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And we, you know, we have all probably heard preachers mention times in the past where the churches undergone extreme persecution.

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You know, we think of like the Roman persecutions or, or even under Roman Catholicism, the persecution of those who differed from the

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Roman church, where the word of God was not accessible or it was taken from the hands of people.

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But that's not what we're talking about primarily. And we can think of other passages, book of Amos, book of Amos, where the people are, it says that there's a famine in the land and the people are starving for the word of God.

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And, you know, people who had once been hearing the word of God, they were receiving the word of God, living upon the word of God.

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Now it's been removed. Another passage that comes to mind is in the early chapters of the book of revelation, where Christ writes the letters to the churches and there are warnings for most of the churches and there are hopeful promises.

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But if the warnings are ignored, if repentance and belief, you know, if pressing on in loving obedience is not something the church takes seriously, then one of the consequences is the removal of the lamp from the lamp stand or the removal of the candle from the candlestick, where you still go through the motions, but it's as if, you know, the pulpit, the study of the

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Bible, suddenly it gets darker and darker. And, you know, we still own a

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Bible, but it's as if the Lord has removed the light bulb, you know, and so we're looking at the page, but it just seems so dark.

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God has become silent, so to speak. But that's not what we're referring to today.

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Today, I want us to look at Psalm 119, that wonderful Psalm that describes the dynamic between a believer and a speaking

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God with this open book in their hand and their feet on a path of obedience.

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Verse 43 is an unusual verse. So Teddy, why don't you read that for us? Yeah. In the

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ESV it says, and take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules.

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All right. So a strange picture there. The metaphor is that the word of God is in the man's mouth and he is concerned that God not remove that from his mouth or God not allow some situation to remove that from his mouth.

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I think the metaphor is a simple metaphor, though it's kind of different for us. Maybe we haven't thought of it this way.

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We would say it in modern language. I had that, you know, that phrase,

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I had the answer on the tip of my tongue. So I think the metaphor is one of readiness.

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It's not just that the word of God is in the man's mind. It's not just that it's been treasured in the heart, you know, remembered, meditated on.

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It's a picture of a believer in any area of life with any of God's truths from Genesis to Revelation and the healthy, vibrant Christian life ought to be, whether it's difficult or pleasant, it ought to be one, the situation ought to be one in which the believer has what

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God would say, what God thinks, what the word of God tells us. It's like on the tip of my tongue.

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So whether it's for my children coming in, you know, after playing and they're fussing, and what does a parent say?

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Whether it's your spouse, you know, is brokenhearted over a family situation, you know, over whatever, whether it's a word of God for your coworker, or whether it's a mom taking kids, you know, to the ball field and you're sitting on the bleachers beside your neighbor or someone you've befriended and they're telling you about the struggles in their own life, what would

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God say about that? Do you, in a sense, do you have the right thing, the appropriate thing from God's word?

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Do you have it on the tip of your tongue? Are you eager, ready, able to speak on behalf of God?

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There are a number of categories that we've thought of to kind of simply illustrate this. So Teddy, why don't you run us through those basic categories?

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Yeah. So there's praise, praise offered to God, our prayer. So it's his truths and explanations, how we speak to God, witnessing to the lost.

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And then the strength and counseling, like you just said, when someone comes to you, lays out their problems. And then also answering the enemy when he comes with the various lies that he uses against believers.

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So in those categories, we, I think every believer could look back on your own experience and you could see,

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I know that there have been times in my life as a believer where I have had the word of God on the tip of my tongue when it was time to speak his praises.

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And, you know, it's just, I was eager to say to God, the very things the scripture says about God, you know, bless the

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Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all of his benefits. And, you know, and you're eager, you're ready.

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The heart is full and from the full heart, the mouth is eager and the word of God fills that.

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We all know what it's like in prayer to go. And the word of God seems to be, it's like it's, it's the guide for our crying out to God.

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It's almost as though you're singing a song. The words have already been written and you're able to just echo and come along.

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The words are there for you. Yeah. Or even in the pleading of prayer, you know, it's like some, it's like the

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Lord Jesus hands us a slip of paper, you know, the word of God, but words that are appropriate to the situation.

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And this is how, you know, you say, this is perfect. This is exactly how this says what

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I need to say. And it says it in a way that honors the Lord and is bold and hopeful. So it, whether it's that or whether it's witnessing, but we also know what it's like to not have the word of God on the tip of our tongue, to not feel ready where we feel mute.

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We're silent when it comes time to praise. We just go through old prayer number, you know, seven. Or whether it's witnessing and we look at a lost person and we think,

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I know what to say. I just don't have the heart to say it. You know, a

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Christian struggling. I know what I could say, but I would just be repeating what the preacher says. You know, the preacher says, but it's not like the word of God is on the tip of my tongue for my brother or sister in Christ.

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I have nothing to say to the enemy when he mocks God and my hope in the Lord. I have nothing to say to the enemy when he mocks me and my own conscience rises up and joins the enemy.

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And I have no defense, but you know, I remember days when I did in prayer, especially in prayer.

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It is so easy to lose the word of God. It's no longer there on our tongue. And you, you mentioned a quote before we started from Jeremiah Burroughs.

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Yes. Before I do that, I want to say this. It's also a metaphor that you, you have used before, you know, that we have to dig our own wells.

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It's almost as though our own well is dry and we can't go to our wealth because it's dry. There's no words there, but yes, there's a quote from Jeremiah Burroughs that I found so encouraging from this.

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Um, he says this, then this is from, uh, the rare jewel of Christian contentment. Though a

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Christian ought to be quiet under God's correcting hand, he may without any breach of Christian contentment complain to God.

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As one of the ancient says, though not with a tumultuous clamor and shrieking out in a confused passion, yet in a quiet, still submissive way, he may unbosom his heart to God.

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And I just thought when we're doing that, when we're able to pray, when the word of God is removed, that unbosoming of our heart is the ability to do that's really removed from us.

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The ability to be honest before God is removed. Yeah. I think that we lose the confidence, you know, who am

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I to lay my broken heart before the Lord? Who am I to ask him?

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God, why, uh, who am I to ask him for help? Uh, you know, and especially if we've done that before and, and God appears on the surface to be silent, uh, to be inactive when we cry out, we can easily despair.

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And we'll talk about that in a minute. But the word of God shows us examples of believers who are crying out the very same thing that we want to cry out.

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You know, they, we see the words they bring. We see how God dealt with them. We see how they endured the age long moment when

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God seemed silent. So without the scripture, without it filling the heart and being on the tip of our tongue, eager or ready to be applied to that situation, even prayer we find fails.

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So let's go through a number of ways that we can say, um, in our short podcast, these are some of the ways, not all of them, but these are kind of the categories.

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These are things that might take the word of God from a believer's mouth or from, um, a church's mouth.

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So Teddy, why don't you give us the first one? Sure. So first we have when we become distracted and other things in our life are filling up our hearts.

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Yeah. And that, that's, that's self -explanatory. Christ makes it clear. People speak from the heart.

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Um, I know that there are times where we say things that are not really in our heart because it's officially expected and we're talking about religion, you know, so, um, we come to church.

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These are church times. These are religious moments. And maybe someone calls on us to pray.

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Maybe someone asks a question in a small group study. And so we know what's expected.

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This is the appropriate thing to say, but our heart's not in it. And if we were honest, we would say that the reason we don't really have anything from the word of God to say is because our heart is full of distractions.

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And if the church will, you know, when the church service ends, and if I could just be free to talk about what

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I'm want to talk about, like, you know, like a potluck supper or lunch, we have lunch after our morning service, you sit down at lunch.

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Nobody is saying to you, what are the official things you should say at this moment? So you're free to talk with your friends about anything and you find what fills your heart is what you go toward.

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And you talk about that. Um, so a distracted heart, a heart filled with everything, but the realities of God.

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Yeah. And I think a good test for that is, is, and we've talked about this before on the podcast, but when your mind is free to wander, where does it go?

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That will reveal to you, uh, one of the, one of the highest priorities in your, in your heart.

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So, yeah. So, you know, and we can apply that to whether it's praise or prayer, but think especially of, um, you know, of just sitting beside a

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Christian and you're listening to them talk about the struggles of the week or some things that they're facing.

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And maybe they're a little confused. I'm not sure what would honor the Lord in this situation. And you just have nothing to say of value.

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You know, you just give a cliche because, yeah, because you'd rather talk about, did you see yesterday's baseball, you know, or whatever.

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The other thing that I've seen is when, when someone does come and it's with a problem and all that you have to offer, all that I've had to offer is just the, the advice that anybody in the world could give.

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And it is not counsel that only a believer could offer. That to me has been one of the most heartbreaking experiences in my life.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's rare. I don't know that I've ever, I think I have, but it would be rare for me to say to someone to be so honest to say, look, my heart is distracted and I have nothing to say of any value.

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You know, you, you tend to think, well, I should throw out something. And like you said, sometimes it's something that rises no higher than the blind deaf worldling who, who doesn't understand

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God. Give us another category. So second one, disobedience and offended conscience can steal

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God's word out of our mouth. Yeah. So if there is a prolonged period of argument with God, where God has put his finger on a sin and we say to God, I'm not interested in this at all.

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I'm not talking to you about this category. And you keep going through the motions of religion. You know, you have your daily

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Bible readings. You're still at church. But when it comes time to say something, you know, the heart is clogged with self self -centeredness.

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And that has stolen in a sense, the word of God.

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It, you still know it exists. You still have things memorized. You still know Bible phrases, but you have no eagerness to speak what

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God would have you to speak to another person because you are far from God. I think of evangelism, you know, a person saying how empty they feel, and you feel the same emptiness, though you're not an unbeliever at that present moment, the judgment of the

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Lord, you know, the loving discipline of God has resulted in you being just as empty as the worldling in a sense worse, because you can't even enjoy the world.

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You can't go back to being in the world and you have rebelled against your savior. And so that stream is in a sense clogged.

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And we have nothing to say to a lost person that would be of any benefit. So let's move on to the third one.

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When seasons of sorrow and disappointment seem to be where you live, not just something you're passing through.

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Yeah. And I think we see this in the scripture so often where wave upon wave of sorrow, and it may not be related to any specific sin, you know,

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Job. And, and, you know, you see it in the life sometimes expressed in the Psalms where the believer has gone through sorrow for so long with our limited, you know, vision.

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It's like, that's all I can see ahead of me. And that's all I can see behind me. It's hard to even remember seasons of kind of a weightless joy.

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So while I still grasp, you know, Christ and the, and the faithfulness of God, the, the covenanted love, the, the new

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Testament, the new covenant blessings. Okay. So I still hold on to those, but it's with such a feeble grip.

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And at first it's just sorrow. But if it, if it is a period that goes for an extended time,

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I see many believers enter, go from sorrow to doubt to despair.

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Oftentimes what we see in church as families grow older, you know, you have the families that are like,

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I would say the, basically the age of your family. So mom and dad, they're believers and they're wanting to raise their kids in a way that points them to Christ that guides their little feet to trust, love, submit to the

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God of the Bible. And when they're like climbing all over you age or preteen age, you know, maybe you're homeschooling.

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We did. You are, if that's what the Lord would have you to do. And you know, you're homeschooling and you're so involved in their lives and you're full of confidence that if you do it right, it's going to turn out beautiful.

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But what happens if they're in their teens or twenties, if they're even in their thirties and grown sons and daughters are not walking with the

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Lord in a way that you had so hopefully, you know, set your heart upon that they will, you know, they will embrace the gospel.

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They will follow the God of their parents and they're not. And that can bring such despair.

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And I see dads, especially moms, when their children are that age, they're no longer children, really.

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And they're not following the Lord. Mom and dad, you know, the enemy comes and whispers in their ear that God has abandoned them, failed them.

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And so they despair. They blame themselves completely. And they have nothing to say beyond cliches.

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We can see that so clearly, you know, to go back to what we were talking about earlier in all these different categories.

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So we can see that in our praise when we are despairing. And that's not, you know, particularly the grown child.

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That is not something that I've experienced. But I can tell you that I have seen, you know, we have people in our church who are going through this.

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And the days where it's hard and you can see it's hard and you're talking to them and it's hard, you can see it.

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But there's also joy in that the Lord is faithful. But in our prayer, goodness, in our witnessing or in our counseling, when someone comes with something so heavy and our heart is empty and our mind is far from the word of God, and there's just nothing there, our well is dry.

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And so we have nothing to pour into their cup for them to drink. Yeah, you can have the kinds of things to say that we talked about in the

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Rethinking God Biblically study. You know, you can have knowledge that's secondhand.

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You say, well, I remember Mrs. So -and -so was going through that, you know, back when her children were that age, or Mr.

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So -and -so when he got a new job and he was, you know, he found out that being a Christian at the new job was pretty difficult, or this pastor who went through a season of real hardship.

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And they said this, and that's not wrong. You know, I remember when Hudson Taylor said this, or your favorite, you know, biography, but it's very different when you have all of that.

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But on top of that, on the tip of your tongue, you have exactly what the

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Lord would want you to say from his word to a person. It is appropriate.

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It's timely. And it is given, you know, with heart and confidence.

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And the person hears you and thinks, you've been where I'm at. How can you be so hopeful?

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Especially if, you know, it's not as if, well, you were where I am at, but now you're in such a springtime of the

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Christian life. You're just walking among flowers and the breeze and the smells. The joys of Christianity are unmixed with the sorrows.

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I'm in the night. You're in the dawn. I'm in the winter. You're in the spring. Well, of course you think that.

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But what if a person's still, in a way, walking through the dark patches, but they walk with Christ, they have shut their ear to the lies of the enemy, even at times to their own conscience, look to Christ, pointed the enemy and the conscience to my savior, take your complaints to him.

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He's answered for them all, grabbed hold of scripture. And even when the heart is still breaking, like you said, the joy in Christ is there deeper.

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And you are able to turn and say to someone, he is all that he says he will be.

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I'm reminded of the scene in Pilgrim's Progress where Pilgrim is, you know, he's on this dark path and he meets, is it

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Abaddon? The dragon who comes, right? And he, you know, he has his armor on, he has his sword and he's fighting, but it's a fierce, fierce battle.

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And, you know, as I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about this, we can be in the midst of our own battle and encourage someone else in their battle.

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Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Well, let's bring this to a close at the end of the verse, the second half, as we often find with Psalm 119, which

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I think this is one of the things that set Psalm 119 off as a peculiar, rare jewel in the

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Bible. We have pleading, we have depending, but we also have it balanced with determinations.

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So, oh God, do not take your word from my mouth. Do not let anything take a readiness with your truths, a wholeheartedness with your truths, a vibrant faith that grasps and is grasped by your truths.

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Don't let that be taken from me. The world needs it. My children need it.

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My spouse needs it. My church needs it. God, I need it. Then he follows that with a determination.

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So it's not just kind of a, you know, a hyper grace. Well, Lord, you promised. So I'm just going to wait for you to do it all.

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There is the cry because we feel our weakness, but there is, because God is at work within a believer, there is also a very holy, humble determination.

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It's not pride here. It's humility. I have no right to plead with the

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King for something and then to ignore what the King says. I cannot stay distant with a false humility and say, oh, who am

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I to ask the Lord for this? So I come. I'm too needy to be proud and say, oh, who am

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I? No, God, maybe you don't even want to hear from me today, but I need you today. So I'm coming.

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And then the determination, God, by your grace, don't let this occur in my life.

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And then there's this second statement. I wait for your ordinances or as the ESV says,

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I wait for your rules. So there's such a balanced picture of the believer crying out to the

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Lord, perhaps in a, in a very difficult time where they are afraid that if God does not act that word of God, that appropriate word for the situation, which used to be on the tip of their tongue or is at this moment,

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God, what if, what if that's removed? What if despair and doubt? What if distractedness?

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What if, what if willful sin is allowed? And I have nothing to say for you from you for humanity, for myself.

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So I'm pleading with you while I'm doing that. I'm not just saying, okay, God, you do it.

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I am holding myself, my focus, my heart, my thoughts in the word.

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I hope in your word. And it's not just, I hope in your promises.

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You know, we could see how that's easy. I hope in your rules. I hope in the path that you set for my feet, while I walk in submission to your authority by the word of God, by your commands,

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I'm not earning your love. You have already given me this. You have brought me to yourself through your son.

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It's finished, but I am walking in submission to you today.

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And as I hold my heart there, the word of God is open. My desires placed beneath my

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King's desires, if they conflict. And with that posture of dependence and yieldedness,

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I expect my God will not let his truths be stolen from my mouth.

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I expect he will help me to keep them, to be ready to speak them, whether preaching to myself or to my neighbor.

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Well, Teddy, in the next week or two, we will be looking at an example of this.

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We're going to look at an, at a historical example. We're going to look at Hudson Taylor and there's a very rare book that was published.

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It wasn't published often, so it's difficult to find, but it was a, it's a collection of Hudson Taylor's talks with his, with the missionaries that were under his guidance, his leadership with the

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China Inland Mission. And this is a talk. He traveled to North, to the

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Northern edges of their ministries in China. And he arrives there. He's an older man now, and he gathers all the missionaries together from that enormous region.

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And he speaks to them about some things that he feels they need to be if they're to serve the

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Lord in a difficult place and if they're to be pleasing to the Lord. And so his counsels are full of examples of a man who has the word of God still right there on the tip of his tongue, ready to give wise seasoned, you know, godly counsel to young, earnest missionaries.

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It's a wonderful little book. It's not perfect. Hudson Taylor's theology wasn't a perfect theology, but neither is ours.

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So we will look at some of the strong points from those lectures. He actually didn't write the book.