Psalms - Why God's Word Is Supreme

God Centered Theology

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In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr.

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flew his small airplane from New York City to his family home in Massachusetts for a wedding.

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On board were his wife Carolyn and her sister. Though Kennedy was a licensed pilot, he had not yet been approved for instrument flight, using only instruments to navigate.

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When their takeoff was delayed until after dark, Kennedy should have waited for daylight. And notice here in this illustration, it specifically says what he should have done.

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Should have waited for daylight and sought a more experienced pilot to help. Yet Kennedy took off into the darkness.

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The plane never reached its destination and all three passengers were killed in the crash.

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Investigators determined that the crash was likely caused by disorientation from flying over open water marks or visible horizon.

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Kennedy's lack of experience may well have led him to trust what he thought he was seeing more than what his instrument panel was telling him.

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All of us face the temptation to walk according to sight instead of faith. Faith in God's word will keep us from crashing.

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Human reason will fail us at times, but God's word never fails.

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His word keeps us on the right course as long as we obey it.

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I haven't forgotten about Galatians. We're going to keep right on trudging through Galatians and trudging is probably the wrong word.

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We're going to keep moving through Galatians, but I am obedient to the God of the universe and he put this sermon on my heart and I've been working on it and I was using it in other places, but I've kind of put it together piecemeal style over the last couple of months and it's kind of come together.

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I said, well, Lord, you're in the, you're the boss, you're in control, whatever you say I will do. And he said,

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Andy, I want you to preach this today. So we're going to take a one week break from Galatians. And so we're going to talk about the fact that why

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God's word is supreme. And you see in this illustration right off the bat that you've got

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Kennedy who had some knowledge of what he was supposed to do. It weren't that he was ignorant.

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It weren't that he was absent of any understanding of how to fly a plane or he probably even didn't even read a book or possibly even had taken some training on how to fly in this situation.

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But when it came down to it, when the test came, he failed and obviously very tragically so because he trusted in what he thought he trusted in human reason.

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He trusted everything but what his training had told him and sadly too many Christians specifically today trust in far too many things other than the word of God.

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And one of the things I've always said for going back many, many years, in fact, I'm still trying to find it somewhere in my closet.

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I don't know if I ever put it online just because every time I listened to it, I feel embarrassed. But I have my first sermon back in January 4th, 2009.

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It's in my closet somewhere. I don't know if y 'all ever get to hear it or not. It'll probably take

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Gina sneaking it out the back door and giving it to y 'all before I'll ever let it out of my hands. But even in that sermon,

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I think I said this, that the question or the answer to every question in life, whether it's for your

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Christian life or in the church, the answer is always what does Scripture say? Because you see the

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New Testament writers quoting Scripture. You see the early church fathers quoting and obeying

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Scripture. All throughout the church history, one of the definitional aspects to our faith, and we've said these often,

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I'll review them here. We've got the Trinity, one eternal being and three distinct persons. We've got justification by faith.

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There are no works. Rome's gospel can't save you. The Mormon gospel can't save you.

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The Jehovah Witness gospel can't save you. Only the true gospel of Scripture can save you, and it is a justification by faith alone.

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We believe in faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone, glory to God alone. All these things are important.

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We also believe in the deity of Christ. We don't believe in Arianism and all these false things that have come out, and they tend to perpetuate themselves.

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You know there's nothing new under the sun. I read that in Scripture once too, in Ecclesiastics. Nothing new under the sun.

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All these false heresies, all these things that are plaguing our world today, it's nothing new. It's the same stuff they did around the

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Council in 325, which is why we had that Council. It's the same reason we had to deal with all these things throughout history, because man, through the power of Satan and his world system, is constantly coming up with all these reasons why the

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Bible isn't true, why it's not inerrant, why it's not authoritative. And most Christians don't understand what inerrancy means.

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Inerrancy means that all of Scripture, everything that it contains, every word that it covers, every letter, jot and tittle, everything about it is true with no mixture of error.

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It means if it talks about science, everything it says about science is true. If it talks about math, everything it says about math is true.

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If it talks about history or theology, if it prescribes something to us, no matter what it's covering, it's all true.

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And you hear so many people talk about they don't want to believe in inerrancy, well the problem is if all the

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Bible isn't true, then what parts are and what parts aren't? And what's sad is if you don't believe, if you have no way of knowing, what if the part about justification by faith isn't true?

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What if that's one of the parts that isn't true? Boy, we're in a lot of trouble, aren't we? Sola Scriptura, Scripture is the only rule of faith in the

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Christian church and the Christian life. Tota Scriptura, all of Scripture. Unfortunately some of the more well -known preachers today talking about unhitching from the

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Old Testament and how the Old Testament has no basis for moral life in the New Testament church. They're not heretics.

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They're not unsaved. I wouldn't kick them out of the church. But they're in error. They're wrong.

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I respect the right for them to be wrong. I respect their opinion, but I also respect their right to be wrong.

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Because we're going to look today at Psalm 119, if you want to be turning your Bibles there, verses 25 -32 of Psalm 119, and we're going to look at what

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David thought about Scripture. We're going to look at what David believed about Scripture. We're going to look at the benefits of believing and obeying and walking in Scripture.

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David was a man that believed in Scripture so much that he saw it as more important than daily food.

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How many times in our life have we neglected the Word of God? I know I have.

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There's days I wish I could go back and relive and get some of that laziness out of my life and say,

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Andy, get off your lazy tail and go read the Bible. You got all, we have all these reasons. We justify everything.

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I've got this. And some of it's true. You know, one thing I tell people when you're committing yourself to Scripture, don't commit yourself and put an unreasonable burden on yourself that you have to literally read the

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Bible every single day. Look, life happens. Sometimes your family's going to need you. Sometimes there's going to be an emergency that pops up and you can't, you can't.

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But that means the next day, if you have the time, get back to it. See, because there's a difference between being involved in something and being committed to it.

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Someone that's involved in something, well, they'll get it to it if they can or if they have time. But someone that is committed to something, they make it a priority.

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One of the best things that ever changed in my life, the singular point I can remember where I was at, what was going on in my life,

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I even remember almost to the word the prayer I said is when I committed my life to Scripture.

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I said, Lord, I've been doing this all wrong. I've been going off what man thinks. I've been going off what

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I think. I've been going, and I said, Lord, I'm miserable. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

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You're the sovereign. You're the king. I'm going to start obeying my king.

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And you know what? Everything changed. Everything changed. Is my life easy?

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No, man. I still got two canker sores in front of my mouth. I've had these things for 10 days.

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Every medical thing you can read online says 5 to 7. I'm on day 10. I want these things out of my mouth.

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I want them gone. It's hard even to talk up here right now. I'm sick of them. I want them gone. Yes, all of us have our own struggles.

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We have these things we deal with. I've got, for whatever reason, I thank God my daughter didn't get them.

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Oh, I thank God for that every day because I wouldn't wish these things on my worst enemy. They're so painful. So we all have something.

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It doesn't mean somehow your life is going to be perfectly easy from here on out. If anything, it gets harder.

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See, being legalistic, we're looking at this in Galatians, you know, the legalistic lifestyle that Paul was dealing with in Galatians.

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It's easy to do that because you can rest on the rules. Well, I did this or did that, so hey, I'm good, man.

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It's much harder to wake up every single day, search the scriptures, and say,

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Lord, what would you have your created servant to do? What would you have me to do?

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And so we're going to look at this, and there's five points to this, but nobody worry, nobody panic. I'm not going to tarry long on any individual point.

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We'll move through these five quickly, so there's no need to, you know, get scared or think, oh my

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God, I'm going to be here until 1 o 'clock. No, I'm about a 30 -minute preacher. I always have been, always will be, so you can rest easy.

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But we do have about one or two more points than I normally do, but we're going to move through them quick, so let's jump right in. Number one,

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God's Word revives us, and we're going to look at each one of these, how

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David saw God's Word, how God's Word impacted David, and how it crafted and formed his

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Christian life, and also crafted and formed the basis and the foundation for every single decision that David made.

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There was not one decision, not one thing David ever did that was ever absent of the

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Word of God. The Word of God was always the foundation for his decision -making. It was always the basis for his decision -making.

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It was always the authority for his decision -making, and we need to look at David's example.

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So in verse 25 of Psalm 119, if I really wanted to scare you all, I'd get up here and say,

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I'm going to preach all of Psalm 119 today. Oh, you all would go running for the doors, like this guy has lost his mind, just in case you don't realize

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Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. So, yeah, if I ever get up there and say that, yeah,

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Andy's clinically insane at that point. But he says, "'My soul clings to the dust, revive me according to your

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Word.'" Notice, and David was one that a lot of the

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Psalms he wrote were either before a battle, or sometimes after a battle.

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He'd ever been through the war, because you've got to think about their situation. The Israelites not only had spiritual war going on, but they had real physical flesh and blood war going on.

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People trying to wipe them out. People trying to kill them all the time. They were constantly under the...

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Well, they didn't have guns back then. Constantly being targeted. It seemed like every time you go through Kings, and all these books, and these historical narratives, it's, you know, this army's attacking them on this side, and this army on this side, and this, and this.

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And David says, "'My soul cleaves to the dust.'" Not only are we dust, and to dust we shall return, but David says, "'My soul cleaves to the dust.'"

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He's so battle -weary. He said, "'Lord, just take me now. I don't want dust.

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Take me now. I'm just through.'" But then the very next line he says, "'Lord, revive me.'"

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Why would anyone say, "'Revive me '"? Because David knew he still had work to do. You see this very clearly in Paul's writings.

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There's one of the letters when Paul's writing, he says something to the effect of, "'Look, I know I'll see you because there's still work to be done.'"

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Paul was so in tune with the Holy Spirit, and I can't say with any objective certainty that Paul literally knew the day he was going to die, but I think

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Paul was so in tune with the Spirit that he just knew somehow, someway that he'd be certain places at certain times, and God wouldn't let him die until he got there because that's what

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God wanted him to do. I mean, oh, that we could be so in tune with the Spirit, so walking with the

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Spirit in that way. He says, "'Revive me,' notice, "'according to your word.'"

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David didn't want to be revived according to nothing else. There was nothing else in existence at David's time that was worth his attention more than God's word.

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He wanted to be revived according to God's word. He says, "'I have told of my ways, and you have answered me.

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"'Teach me your statutes.' "'That is what will revive you.'" You know, and some of you have been through hard times.

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Some of you have been through tragic circumstances. Some of you have had death in your family.

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Some of you don't have your mothers. They're already in Heaven. Some of you have been beaten down.

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Some of you, I can't even imagine what Billy's going through. But when these things happen, nothing else in this world will keep you going, will revive you, will help you hold up under whatever it is the unique pressures are that are in your

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Christian life more than that book right there. Why do you think that when

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David and Paul and all the writers of the Bible, when they faced trouble, what's the first thing they start doing?

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Quote Scripture. Why do you think some of the most mature Christians you've known in your life, the first thing they do when they encounter trouble, what do they do?

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They open the Bible. It's the anchor. We talk about how, you remember when we went through 1

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Corinthians 13, it talks about love endures all things, hopes all things, and all these things. And one of those words in the original meant to hold up under pressure.

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Why do you think it says that love does that? Well, you don't have to turn there with me unless you're just one of those people that really likes to thumb through your

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Bible. But in 2 John, the 2nd epistle, or the 2nd letter of John, verse 6, it says this, and this is love, the same love that will help you hold up under trial.

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John's going to define for us right here what love is. This is love, that we walk, there's that word again, walk,

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Colossians 2, 6, 1 John 2, 3 -6, we walk according to His commandments.

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We walk according to His Word. We're going to see in point 5, we're going to revisit this in a moment.

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But David knew, what Paul knew, what I know, what I hope you know for your life.

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When you're at a point in your life when you've hit the bottom and you need to be revived, and you need that joy again, it's going to come from God's Word.

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It's the true anchor that we need. Number 2, God's Word brings us understanding. Look at verse 27 in Psalm 119.

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It says, David says, Make me understand the way of your precepts. Why? So I will meditate on your wonders.

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Make me understand. The Word of God will bring you understanding in your life.

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If there's some aspect of your life you're having trouble in, or you're not quite living like you should, or I'm doing really good over here, but there's this one nagging sin, there's trouble at work, one of my kids has lost their mind and they won't listen to me, or my family's just lost their collective minds, or whatever it is that's a problem for you.

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The IRS won't send me my money back and my refund. I can't at least get one amen on that one.

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Son, come on. We all know one of the truest things in life, right? If you owe money, they're going to want it quickly, but if they owe you money, it's never going to come.

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You just have to wake up one day and, whoop, there it is. Understanding.

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You want to know how you're supposed to conduct your life? It won't come from one 30 -minute session of sitting under a sermon, or sitting at your home reading a book, and look,

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I'm not against commentaries, I'm not against books that people have written. Come look at my bookshelf.

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I've got a bookshelf full of them. But there always is that need. Just you, a

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Bible, and God. Because that's how you get the understanding. Now preaching and teaching obviously should be the centrality of what we do as a church, the preaching and teaching of the

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Word of God. But my friend, if you're saved, you're priests. You have no need of Aaron. You have no need of Moses.

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You have no need of Andy to be your priest for you. Hebrews chapter 4 tells you you can go to the throne of grace all by yourself.

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Now obviously, it's an encouraging thing to have other Christians go with you and pray.

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My friends, you have the same access to God that I do. That's why

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Rome's Gospel doesn't say they tell you you need these priests and the cardinals and papal authority. No, my friends, you have the same access to the

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Savior that I do, that anybody does. The same blood that poured from Jesus' veins saved us all equally.

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There are no distinctions. Now some of us may have more time.

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I'm very fortunate in that regard to have more time to study. Some of us may have more resources, maybe.

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You may have more longevity. Everything I know about the Word of God I didn't learn this morning or last week has been year after year studying.

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But we are all guaranteed by the Word of God that the amount of time you commit to the Word of God God will increase your understanding of the

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Word of God and how it's supposed to apply to your life. So I will meditate on your wonders.

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My friends, if you want to have private worship, if you want to get your church on and your own home when you're all by yourself and nobody's looking so we can all do things we wouldn't do in public and really get your church on, study the

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Word of God. There have been times I've been sitting around, Glenda's long gone after two. I'm just sitting there by my lonesome

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Glenda and God will show me something in the Word of God and I'm like, Praise Jesus! I'm like,

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I wonder if I heard that. I might be a little embarrassed. So I'm like, that's cool stuff! And I'll get up, and you know me,

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I like to pace. I'll just start pacing around my desk, or I'll call someone of my friends. I'm just, man, let me tell you, I just saw this,

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I compared this, and I just start preaching to myself. I'm like, man, you know what I need to do? Hannah's got all these stuffed animals at home.

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I need to bring a bunch of stuffed animals to my office and put them in my couch so I have a congregation to preach to.

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My best preaching is not on Sunday morning. It's during the week when God shows me something in His Word, brings me to an understanding of it, how

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I need to be more obedient to Him, and I just start preaching in my office all by myself. There will be people walking by the Lifestar, that window.

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Because I keep my blinds open all the time. They'll be like, man, that guy has lost his mind. What is he doing in there? There's joy!

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It should prompt you. He says, I will meditate on your wonders. It should prompt you to worship

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God, an understanding of the Word of God and how we are to be obedient.

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It prompts us to worship God. Number 3 says,

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God's Word strengthens us. Verse 28, He says, My soul weeps because of grief.

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Strengthen me according to Your Word. If you're paying attention, you've already noticed the trend.

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Every single one of these is according to the Word of God. My soul weeps because of grief.

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Why would David have any reason to weep? You don't think David has a reason to weep?

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How would you like to know that all your worst sins were recorded in inspired scripture? Bathsheba ring a bell?

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And remember, he gets Bathsheba pregnant, and what happens to that child? Dies, doesn't it?

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How would you like to have a reminder of your worst sin in the realm of you have to wake up every day and know that you don't have a child because it died in childbirth or before it was born, and it all stemmed from your worst sin?

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You don't think David grieved? Read Psalm 51. David grieved over his sin.

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You know what turns a Christian life around? Do you know what turns a church around?

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Grief over sin. Mourning over sin.

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And a turning to God. Lord, search me and see if there's any wicked way in me and cleanse my heart.

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Strengthen me according to your Word. If you rely on anything else other than God and His Word to strengthen you,

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I pity you. I really do. I pity you because you won't make it. You won't hold up.

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Talk to the people you know that have had the hardest life. The ones that truly have held up under the pressures of this world by clinging to the

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Word of God. Every single one of them would tell you the same thing. I don't know how I would have done it without the

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Word of God. Every one of them. How do you do it with God? How does anybody live the life that a

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Christian claims to live without God? The world already thinks we're insane anyway.

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Our hope in Jesus Christ is what sustains us. Our hope in the

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Word of God sustains us. Number 4, God's Word removes sin.

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Verse 29, David says, remove the false way from me and graciously grant me your law.

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David says, remove the false way from me. David didn't want any sin to be between him and his

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Savior, his God. David so often through the Psalms refers to God being his

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Savior. How prophetic. You tell me David and the Israelites, the people of God didn't know a

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Savior was coming, the Messiah was coming? You haven't read the Scriptures. It's all over it.

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David wanted that false way removed from him. One of the hallmarks of a truly mature and complete

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Christian is one that searches the Scripture and pleads with God and says, Lord there may even be something

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I'm not even aware of. Show it to me and remove it. And he says, and graciously grant me your law.

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He wanted the false way and the sin removed and he wanted God's law and God's commandment to replace it.

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He wanted disobedience out of his life and he wanted obedience to replace it.

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He says, and graciously grant me your law. He says, I have chosen the faithful way.

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I have placed your ordinances before me. I cling to your testimonies.

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If you do not cling to this book I pity you because you don't have the anchor that you need when the true storms of life come.

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The true Christian, the one who truly loves God chooses that faithful way.

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Why? Because God's Word is supreme. We place your ordinances before me.

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It's like he had a table and he just keeps placing it as a presentation in front of him and says, this is the way

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I want to go. This is the path I want to take. He says, I cling to your testimonies.

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I cling to it. You don't have to go out and memorize Scripture, but you need to learn it.

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And if you know it, you'll be able to repeat it. So many times in life you have to go through the checklist.

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Am I faithful here? Am I doing this? Where is this? Remove this false way. Help me cling to your testimony. Lord, get this sin out of my life.

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It decays! It destroys! I wanted to do 1

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John instead of Galatians. I really did. I love 1 John. I don't say this to toot my own horn, but I feel like I have it memorized.

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I've read that book so many times in my life. And I said, Lord, Colossians is about over. It's going to be 1

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John. I'm ready. I've already got the first chapter outlined and ready to roll. And God says, no sir.

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Galatians? Really? I've never studied it. Never taught it. It's going to be a bumbling train break probably half the time.

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God says, Andy, I want you to preach Galatians. How does He say that? Well, a variety of ways. Serve Him for another day. He'll put it in front of you.

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Or you have a conversation with someone and it seems like every time they tell you something that's Galatians, you know how God lets you know things.

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But one of the reasons I want to do 1 John is in the heat. John, I'm telling you what man, you think

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Paul don't pull any punches? John had a way of putting it to you as well. And he says, if you're not walking in Christ and if you go out there and say you have no sin in your life, you make

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God a liar. Man. He says, you make God a liar and the truth is not in you.

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You claim to be Christian? You better not ever say, well, I don't have sin. The reason we need to be saved is because we are sinners.

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One of the best things that ever happened in my life is when I just accepted the fact that I'm a sinner. I'm an enemy of God.

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If left to myself, I would choose my sin, love my sin, die in my sin, be condemned by my sin, and then eternally pay for my sin in hell.

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But someone told me through the Word of God that a Savior died on the cross.

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And because God's Word is authoritative, inerrant, and obedient to the truth, I could believe that, confess it with my mouth.

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I'm justified by faith. I'm eternally secure. I don't have to work for it.

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There's nothing you can do to earn it. The very God that created you, who owes you nothing, by His grace and mercy died for you, and He offers you salvation freely.

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You turn your back on Him. You call Him a liar and say you have no sin. You'll spend eternity in hell.

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The Christian clings to the Word of God. They want to know what it says.

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They want to be obedient to it in all areas. Lastly this morning,

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God's Word grows our heart. Notice verse 32, David says,

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I shall run. Now, I've just now in the last couple months gotten really good about preaching on walking, and then he goes in here and throws in running.

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I'm going to have to go back to where I started and start all over again. We've got walking, and now we've got running.

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Well, there goes my... So I not only have to walk in the way of the

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Lord, I can't remember the last time I ran to anything but the refrigerator.

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Did I just say that out loud? Oh, Lord, I repent.

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I shall run the way of Your commandments. And notice what he says here, for you will enlarge my heart.

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What he's saying here is obviously he's not literally saying he's going to take the organ that's inside your body pumping blood and enlarge it, because we all know that would be medically devastating.

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Okay? That's why we interpret the Bible normatively, not literally.

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There are parts in it that are meant to be taken literal. There are parts that are figurative. The key is it's all truth.

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Jesus Christ said, sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. We interpret it normally based on the type of literature it is, so on and so forth.

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So obviously in this case he's not saying he's literally going to enlarge the organ that's pumping inside of your chest.

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He's talking about the seat of man, the will of man, that basis and that foundation inside of you that determines your decision making.

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That's why Ezekiel says he needs to take out the heart of stone, replace it with the heart of flesh so that you can be regenerated.

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That's why it says, I've got to give you a new heart. I've got to give you a clean heart, because it's from the heart that we make our decisions.

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That's why it says, love thy soul and strengthen your neighbor as yourself. We're to love God's Word supremely, walk and yes, run in His commandments supremely, and it is that that enlarges your love.

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That's what he's saying. It will enlarge your love. What do we know from love? 2

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John 6, this is love that we walk according to His commandments. You say,

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Amy, my love has grown cold. I don't feel the joy of the

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Lord. I don't feel the love of the Lord. I might have had it one time, but you don't know my situation.

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You don't know what I've been through. You're right. I don't, unless you've told me or I've seen it or experienced it with you.

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But my friends, anger, resentment towards God over something that happened to you in your life,

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I know what that feels like. Man, I'll tell you, I dropped off talking about food line in my sermons after month three.

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I know it was longer than that, but just work with me. But I dropped that off because you can't beat that old dead horse forever.

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But if I were to walk you through some of the stuff that happened to me, yeah, you talk about resentment towards God, I'd be at the front of that line.

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I know what that's like. And you know what? It won't revive you. It won't strengthen you.

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It won't grow your love. One of the best things you can do is whatever has happened to you in life, whatever has happened in your

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Christian life, whatever it is that you're holding against God or mad at God for or mad at what you at least perceive

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He did to you, release it. Let it go. Fall on your hands and knees and repent for having been resentful towards your maker and release it.

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And you'll find forgiveness. You'll find a sweetness with your God that you never knew before.

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Will it change whatever it was that made you angry to begin with? No. I had a cousin that died when

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I was 13. I think about him just about, I mean, not literally every day, but what we mean when we say this.

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I think about him every day. We know what we mean by that. Boy, was

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I resentful for a long time. Well into my 20s. Because I'm not the kind of guy that has a lot of best friends.

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God's so graciously given me some in the last two years, but a large part of my life I didn't have any. And the one that I had,

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He took from me. Yeah, there's some anger there. I had to release that.

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My friends, I don't want you living like that. Whatever has happened in your life, if there's something that you just can't get over and you feel like your love's grown cold because of some event that happened in your life, whether it's personal or on the job or wherever the context was, release it.

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Don't carry bitterness. It will eat at you. Trust me, I know. My whole 20s is a testament to that.

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Thankfully the Lord got a hold of my heart. My 30s have been much different. My 20s, man, I can tell you it will eat at you.

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You know what's going to enlarge your heart? Submission to God. Submission to Scripture. Obeying your

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Savior. Walking in His commandments. Repentance. Trusting God.

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When your relationship this way is right with God, everything else takes care of itself.

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And it says, I'll enlarge your love when you run the way of my commandments.

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Kennedy's biggest mistake that fatal night with that plane crash is he didn't obey what he knew to do.

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If he had just not been impatient, if he had just stayed where he was at, it might have turned out different.

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Now look, please don't misunderstand. I don't use that illustration to say there's some tragic event in your future if you don't obey the word of God.

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I don't know. I'm just giving you one example. It doesn't mean all of them will turn out that way. But you know what?

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There's something more tragic than dying. It's living life and you're not clinging to God. A life without God is a lifeless.

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It brings us understanding. It strengthens us. It removes sin. And I promise you on the authority of Scripture, it will grow your love.