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How do you know if God speaks to you? Does God still speak to you? Years ago, underneath the presidency of Bill Clinton, he asked a variety of evangelical pastors to come and speak to him. And so one of the pastors in California prayed to God, God, tell me what to say to President Clinton.
After a lot of prayer, this man said God came to him and told him to say to Mr. Clinton, Mr. President, there are no alligators here. So weeks later, he showed up with all the other men, the pastors, and stood up and said to Mr. President, as he looked him straight in the eye, Mr. President, there are no alligators here.
Years and years ago, two decades ago, a man was supposedly told by God to build a 60-foot hospital in the middle of Oklahoma, Tulsa. God told him to make it on the south side, even though there were already three hospitals there.
The city planners wanted a hospital desperately on the north side. But when Jesus tells you to do something, especially when he showed up to this man supposedly as a 900-foot Jesus, you better obey. The building was a complete failure, only two stories occupied, all kinds of debt.
Supposedly Jesus then told this man in 1987, if you don't raise $8 million, within a few weeks I will come back and kill you. Fortunately for that man, a dog track owner in Florida coughed up the $8 million two weeks later.
A man in the 90s said, God told him Fidel Castro would die in the 90s. God told this man supposedly that the homosexual community in the U .S. would be destroyed by fire before 1995. And before the year 2000, supposedly God told this man a major earthquake would happen on the east coast.
Did God really say these things? How do you know that God did or did not say these things? One man woke up at 3 .30 in the morning, and God supposedly told him to go outside and take a picture of himself.
He was a photographer. God said to him, quote, go and photograph my sunrise. The man said before, beside the river I set up my camera, waited for the sun, and that pre-dawn I felt so close to God, perfect peace.
On one of the negatives is a perfect shape of a finger, arms raised in blessing, as reflected in the water, exactly opposite every other shadow. I believe God gave me an image of himself to share. You can get that image, by the way, for $9 .95 in the magazine.
Did God really say that? I want to know, don't you? If God talks to you, don't you want to obey? I do. How about this man, very popular several years ago. He said, God told me the church that will win the world to salvation is when it goes to the world and sings anointed music like the Beatles.
The Lord said, I called those four lads from Liverpool. I don't know whether to smile or cry, but this is the last illustration. I called those lads from Liverpool to myself. There's a call from God on their lives.
They were gifted by my hand, and it was I who anointed them the Beatles. The purpose was to usher in a renewal with musical revival around the world. The Lord said, supposedly to this man, the four lads from Liverpool went AWOL and did not serve in my army.
They served their own purposes and gave the gift to the other side. And then the Lord said, I lifted the anointing for the 20 years I've held it in my hand and about to release it again. And the Lord said, it doesn't belong to the world, it belongs to the church.
And then the Lord said, I will release the anointing and music that will take the world by storm like the Beatles when they first had come. The same kind of reaction that the Beatles extracted will come, only this time the girls will not scream Ringo, John, George, and Paul, they will scream Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Did God tell that person those things? How do you know if God really speaks? Let's turn to Psalm 19 and find out today. Did God really say? Response, Psalm 19, God really said. But what did He say? And can we trust the Bible?
Should we look towards the Bible and to the Bible for our decision making processes? You know the last two weeks we've had a series, how do we make decisions? And today I want to reinforce, I want to fortify, to put an exclamation point on the fact that we need the Bible and the Bible is our sole, infallible guide to making decisions.
Where else are you going to go? A 900 foot Jesus? Especially if you're like I am and I never see those things. I never hear God talk. What do I do? What do you do? God speaks through His nature and through His word.
And today we'll look at Psalm 19, almost one of my favorite Psalms. Psalm 19 is so full of poetry, yet so doctrinal, so full of theology, yet just so beautiful, a wonderful song sung by David for all the ages.
Now before we get into Psalm 19, let's have a little review on our decision making processes and go ahead and let's just say these out loud. Remember I was trying to talk about how do we make godly decisions?
And there were six W's if you remember, and I don't know if you had to make a decision this week or not to use those, but order was important. And what was the first W that we looked at last week that spun out of Ephesians 5 .17?
The will of God. Remember Ephesians 5 .17 said that we are not to be foolish or stupid, but we are to know what the will of God is, God's Trinitarian, salvific plan, the purpose of the ages to save people.
And so if we make a decision, how do we fit underneath God's saving plan? It's not God's will for my life. It's God's will. Good. So the second W was what? The word of God. What does the word of God say?
Maybe it's explicit, maybe it's implicit principles derived, maybe it's as we study God's word we see areas where we need to obey things that are already revealed, or maybe it's just drawing close to the Savior in the word so we have more of his mind and we make a decision that's more pleasing to him.
Good. The third W is what? Wisdom. What does wisdom say? Wisdom from God by direct prayer, James 1, verses 5 and following, and wisdom from godly people, Proverbs 11, Proverbs 15, there's all kinds of Proverbs where we can go to godly people, we can go to an elder, we can go to a senior saint in the Lord and say, what would you suggest?
The fifth W is what? It's not what, it's, pardon me, wish or desire, Psalm 37 verse 4 says, delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. If you have been thinking about the will of God and his purposes primarily, you've searched the scriptures and you're trying to obey what the scriptures say and you're serving and you're praying for wisdom and asking for other advice so you don't kind of deceive yourself or trick yourself, then you do what you want.
Love God and do what you want, as an old reformer said. Do what you wish, because the wishes that you have in your heart have been given to you by God. You have to be careful not to put the wish at the top, what do we wish to do if not factor in the others?
But the fourth one is wish, the fifth one is wait. All kinds of scriptures, Psalm 37, Psalm 25 is all about waiting. God, I eagerly am anticipating what you're going to do in my life and I can just wait, I don't have enough information to make a good decision and so wisdom says I should just wait.
And then finally, so we're not paralyzed, the final W is what? Worship, that we can worship God while we're in a trial. This particular trial happens to be, I have to make a huge decision, what surgeon to use, who to sign my money over to if I die, who should I trust my kids to in a will, all kinds of things, you can just say, I will worship God as I go.
And this message today, Psalm 19, spins out of the second W, which is the word, because I want to make sure we as a congregation understand that the word of God is sufficient. God has given us this book, so no matter what year this is, if it's 6 ,005, it is still trustworthy for everything we need.
I was watching the show last night, Shackleton, about the endurance and how he wanted to crack across Antarctica, but never made it and then the boat collapsed and here he is with all these men. They didn't have any kind of backup plans for some of these things and they just had to do their best, but when God equips his Bible, he doesn't say, well, I know in the year 2005 you'll need some spiritual lemons because you might get spiritual scurvy, but I forgot to put them in.
The Bible is sufficient. So let's go to Psalm 19 and work through this Psalm as we try to reinforce the idea that the Bible is complete, it's final, it's authoritative, and God has spoken. He didn't stutter.
He didn't tell us something that we ought not know and he also put in everything we do need to go. Psalm 19, and when you understand this Psalm, it will be like Jesus when he said in Mark chapter 12, some other people don't understand the word of God, so they don't understand the power of God.
Imply that when you know the word of God, you know the power of God. That's something I need, especially as a weak, frail person. Don't you? You need power. I don't know why the churches have supplanted, so many churches have supplanted the preaching of God's word.
If you go to a new church, I suggest you ask them two questions. Number one question, which book of the Bible is your pastor preaching through verse by verse? That will knock out 99 of the churches because they usually don't.
Second of all, I ask you to ask this question, how long does your pastor preach? That's worth clapping, isn't it? How long does your pastor preach? I got a raise this year and did you know someone came up to me and said, pastor, I want you to preach for that raise and so you've got a 13 increase and I want you to preach for guess how many percentage points longer?
13%. I have restrained myself from doing that. But we sit under God's word because it powerfully performs its work in those who believe. It changes people. Some of you I met seven years ago and you're completely different people than I met then.
Because I had anything to do with it because I saw you first then seven years ago and as you sit underneath the word of God in Sunday school and tapes and listen and read, you are a brand new person. Different affections, different longings, different thoughts, different friends, different everything.
And God's word is so powerful that I want to try to reinforce today and impress upon you that you don't need to go anywhere else. As you know, we go back to Santa Cruz very often and this was an ad in the paper this week for a Santa Cruz church.
This is from the pastor. When we look at the churches that are thriving, we get a clue as to what is needed. So first of all, instead of saying what does God want from the word, you check out the churches, see the ones that are popular, do what they do.
Member-driven ministry that reaches out to others with compassion, not doctrine. Close relationships with others filled with authentic prayer that allows you to question and even get angry with God. And it goes on.
Anything about God's doctrine, right? A word about God means doctrine. We want to know doctrine. We want to know it because our lives are such that we can't live without it. Psalm 19 just lifts it up and says this beautiful word of God.
Doctrine and the word and just meet. It is so marvelous. Psalm 19. Is God's word sufficient for everything, including decisions? Let's find out. Psalm 19 has three major sections, but the first two talk about God in nature.
God speaks, not audibly, but he tells us things in nature, verses one through six. Then in verses seven through nine, it talks about the word of God, specifics. And then it tells us kind of our response to him's word in verses 10 through 14.
And let's look at Psalm 19, one through six verse as God reveals himself in nature. C .S. Lewis thought this was the most beautiful Psalm in all the Bible. The best poetry he could find. Franz Hayden even had an oratorio based on this Psalm right here, a creation.
Psalm 19 verse one, Psalm of David. We know that. And it says the heavens are telling the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. As one man said, a master is known by his work.
When you see the work of the heavens, you are impressed. I am. We have the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible. This is what one man calls the Older Testament. The God who reveals himself in nature.
And you just look at nature and you say, I learned something about you, God. I see. There's just not space up there that's empty. That's a space that reflects God's majesty and his wisdom and his beauty and his power.
You ever go on a camping trip? It's summertime. Lots of people are out of town and you're far from the city. You get done cooking all your favorite camp out foods, then the fire lights and everybody gathers around the fire and just seems to stare at it.
And then all of a sudden you just look up at about 10, 30 or 11 and it seems like it could just touch those stars. There's no smog and you just look at that and you just think, God, that you could just put all those up there in a word.
Do you know if you look with the naked eye, you could see 2 ,500 stars, but think how many more there are. They have these huge telescopes now. Some are 8 meters wide and some are 9 and 10. They're working on a new one called OWL that's got a 100 meter base disc lens.
OWL stands for Overwhelmingly Large Lens, I think. They can see so well. And you just see with your eyes, let alone when you look through the telescope and you think, it's true. The heavens are telling of the glory of God.
And that we're to declare and to show forth, it means ongoing. Every time you look up there, if you were born 5 ,000 years ago or 5 ,000 years in the future, you look up in the heaven and you just say, God, your glory, your perfection, your power, I can just see that.
Look at verse 2. And it's not just once in a while, it's every day, day to day. As God's mercies are new every morning and lamentations hear, the way he speaks in nature, day to day pours forth speech.
It bubbles over. You ever have a pressure cooker? My mom used to bake with a... My mom used to cook with a pressure cooker. You should see her bake with a pressure cooker. That's an upside down cake, that's for sure.
Those pressure cookers, and I was always kind of afraid of them because if you maybe touched them, my dad once said, don't play with that sun, it's like a hand. Don't touch that. And all of a sudden the pressure would build up and then the steam would release.
Or you can have a lid on a pan, and you leave it on too long and the heat's up too high, and all the kind of goo starts bubbling over on the side. That's that same word, to bubble over, to kind of just overflow.
So people say, look at the sky. Day to day that sky in the heavens pours forth speech. It's like old faithful geyser, every single day though the skies show it, and night to night reveals knowledge. Not so you learn about God, although that's true, but how you learn that God knows all this stuff.
It's God's knowledge that's revealed, how great he is, how wise he is, how good he is. Never takes a vacation. No three months off for summer school. Skies aren't going to declare God's greatness for these three months.
No, every day. Verse three though, but it's an interesting kind of speech. He talks, but it's not with decibels. He speaks, but it's not with audible language. There is no speech. It's not a contradiction.
There's a kind of demonstration, but it's not with words. Their voice is not heard. It's not literal in other words. It's not with syllables. It's not articulate when it comes to words. Verse four, their line, their voice in other words, has gone out through all the world.
Their utterances, stuttering of almost somebody speaking in tongues kind of thing, or attempting to, their utterances to the end of the world. He's placed a tent for the sun. Everywhere you go, whether you're in New Zealand or in New Guinea, you can see this great display of God.
How powerful he must be. How wise he must be. The cycle of everything. Amazing. He has placed, look at the end of verse four, a tent for the sun. The sun goes into its tent with metaphorical language at night.
You go into a tent to sleep when camping, it seems like the sun goes into a tent at night. Which the sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Now we're not sure exactly when he comes out of his chamber.
He is either coming out of his chamber, the bridegroom, the sun, as a bridegroom comes out of his chamber and says, today I'm going to get married. Sometimes when a lady's pregnant you might say, oh you just, you have a glow about you.
Have you ever heard that? When a man is going to get married, he's anticipating the day of all the festivities, I'm going to be married, God has given me this wife. He wakes up in the morning, the bridegroom comes out and he is beaming.
And it's either the day of his marriage or it's the day after his marriage. God, you've given me a wife. And just the glowing, bright, cheerful, God you've given me a wife. And every single day, the faithful testimony of God.
As the sun zooms up, it's like a bridegroom on his way to be married or on his day after his honeymoon. Or it's like somebody who's a strong man who's about to run a race. Vigorous and powerful and some kind of Carl Lewis-like athlete running.
That's what this is trying to picture. The power of God. It's rising, the sun's rising, it's from one end of the heavens. Sun rises in the what and sets in the what? Rises in one end of the heavens, the east, and to its circuit, the other end of them.
And there's nothing hidden from its heat. You can be blind and you can still feel God speak inaudibly because you feel the hot sun. If the sun's too close, we burn up. If it's too far away, it's too cold.
Nothing is hidden from its heat. From bugs to beasts to barley to birds to human beings, everything's covered. And we will sing at the end of this service, this song. I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise, that spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule by day. The moon shall shine full at his command and all the stars obey. That writer knew this song. That writer knew Romans chapter 1, where you see the power of God.
You might not be able to see his grace. You can't look at the sun and say, wow, there's the Trinity. But you can say, wise, powerful, faithful, eternal. And everyone knows that there's a God. Even Helen Keller, with all her difficulties.
Ann Sullivan gave her the name of God and then spelled it out for her so Helen Keller could know the name of God. And Helen Keller communicated back to her and said, quote, thank you for telling me God's name, teacher, for he has touched me many times.
People know there's a God. Romans 1 said if you look at the skies, you are accountable enough to know there's a God. That's why the argument of, well, if you don't know about Jesus, then somehow you are not held accountable if you don't love him and follow him.
No, because God shows that he is alive and well everywhere as you feel his heat, no matter where you go. Take a look at the skies and the sun. And when you look at Psalm 19, 1 through 6, basically here's the picture.
God's revelation is great. Stupendous. But there's something even brighter than the sun of God's revelation. And that's special revelation. That's his word. Now let's look at those, verses 7 through 11.
You think there's something more piercing than the sun? There is, and it's God's word. He speaks to us, and I'm so glad he did. Think about all the pagan gods. I wonder if I made Hermes mad today. Zeus, I hope he doesn't wake up in a bad mood today.
I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know. All these gods swirling around, are they going to be angry? Are they going to be mad? We better give them some pumpkins, or we better give them some raspberries, or maybe we should give them some young girl.
We don't know. Please, God, be appeased. But the revelation by God, he in his grace has revealed to us, so we know. Is there something more piercing and greater than the sun? Yes, God's word. Now you've probably heard this from the pulpit before, but look at Psalms 19, 7 through 9, and what you'll see is six statements about God's word.
And this is just beautiful Hebrew poetry to try to teach you one main point, but with just different facets. So if you have a diamond, it's pretty, but if you look at different sides, it becomes more incredible.
And so here's a diamond with six sides, and it's just synonymous Hebrew poetry. It's called parallelism, that's all. It's just a way that you can really try to impress someone. I could do it this way.
God's word is sufficient. And it's true, God's word is sufficient. Or what the writer of Scripture does, the spirit of God moving David, he writes six different ways why God's word is sufficient in a way that really hits you, in a way that you think, that's beautiful, that's marvelous, that's convincing, that is lovely.
God, thank you for your word. So that's what he's going to try to do here. He gives a synonym for the word. He gives what it is and what it does. And there's six of those if you're taking notes. Here's the nature of God revealed in the stars.
You can't get saved through that nature. And here's God's word, his special revelation that can help us. And it can help us in so many ways that I hope to drive this point home. When you make decisions, you go to God's word, and you don't need to go anywhere else.
And you don't need a 9 ,000-foot Jesus to tell you what to do, because you know God has spoken. And this is a closed system. And it's everything we need. Now, I notice something else before we start.
Instead of calling God, God, like verse 1 does, Elohim, with the root word of might and power, to talk about how he makes stars and moons and suns, he uses a different word. And it's used all six times.
Of the Lord, of the Lord, verse 7, verse 8. Of the Lord, verse 8. Of the Lord, verse 9, two times. Of the Lord, of the Lord. Now we're not talking about this creator God of power. We're talking about the covenant-keeping, personal name of God.
When God said to Moses at the burning bush, I am who I am. So that's one thing I notice. The other thing I notice that you can't tell unless you know Hebrew, is that the first five of these is an ongoing tense.
It's durative, it's ongoing. So when you hear a statement in here about the word of God, it's always that way. The last one's different because it's just a final statement. But when we learn about God's word, God's word is forever and always this way.
Number one. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. So he says the law of the Lord is a synonym for God's word. And it's not, as Dr. Block said, the law. And everybody's going, wow, I've got all these rules, yay.
The law is Torah. The law is instruction. The law is guidance. The law is not some kind of thou shall not, although instruction includes that. But here it happens to be instruction or precepts. Something that God is teaching.
What God has taught me is what? It's perfect. It's complete. It's always perfect. As you look at the diamond that we used for an illustration a moment ago, God's word is not like a diamond that has six sides, and you look at all five sides, they look perfect.
And that's the side that you put out in the display in the jewelry case because it's so great. But there's that one major fissure and fracture in the back that's just messed up. Paul, I think I'm in Ephesians, David is saying the word of God is complete.
Every angle that you look at, you can go over there and you know how you buy cars if you think you're kind of a cool car consumer and you kind of kick the tires, you know, and you're like, yeah, that's right.
But if you got underneath that car and looked all around, when I went to Checkpoint Charlie when the Berlin Wall was still up and I got in the bus and these eastern German soldiers got underneath the bus with the mirror and were looking around for any kind of hidden stuff under there.
Same thing. You can take a mirror or you can take a magnifying glass and you can look at God's word from every single angle and what is it? It's perfect. It covers all the issues from parenting to salvation.
It's essential. Everything you need to know. James even says it's the perfect law. Well, science has come along and technology and you don't understand people and psychology has helped and everything else.
God has given us this word and it is and it always is perfect, complete, entire. And what does it do? Oh, this is so good. It restores the soul. It heals the soul. It transforms the soul. It saves people.
Let's start off with number one. What do you need if you're a sinner before this God who reveals himself with power and with wisdom? And P .S., how else does God reveal himself in nature? With fire and brimstone at Sodom.
With waters from the heavens and up from underneath at Noah's Ark at the flood. It restores the soul. It leads to righteousness. It leads you right to God and it changes you on the inside out, the real you.
It just doesn't change your behavior. Modify it in that kind of way from the inside out. So, number one. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. Look at the second one. The second facet. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise is simple.
Maybe this is my favorite one. Look at the synonym for God's word. The testimony of the Lord. How God bears divine testimony to himself. How God vouches for himself. How God's word has a... You buy a new product, you buy a new DVD player and you open up to the back and you try to find some little tag on there that makes it, in your mind, it's been tested and it's safe.
And what's that little tag? It's got two little letters on it. U .L. It's been tested, it's been approved. Same kind of thing here. God attests to himself. He vouches for it. Oh, the Bible's written by man.
Can't trust it. God gives divine testimony and he vouches and says, yes, this is true. On a side note, what should have Jesus had done, what should Jesus do, what would Jesus do if he arrived at 4 BC or whenever it was and said, you know, there's all those problems in the Bible.
Jonah, swallowed by a big fish, days lengthened, two million people going through that Red Sea. There's all kinds of problems and you can't trust that. Six day creation. What did Jesus do? He affirmed and confirmed by his statements in Matthew 5 and also by what he didn't do.
He didn't say, you got it all wrong. Scribal errors, copied by men, manuscript errors. He confirmed it. And here in Psalm 19, way before Jesus' day, David said, the testimony of the Lord is sure. Look at that word, sure.
It's built on a rock. It doesn't shift. It's verifiable. It's not uncertain. It doesn't vacillate. Spurgeon said, we're having our lives built on the terra firma of divine revelation. I like that. It's sure.
It's trustworthy. It's established. By the way, for you scholars, that's a passive word there. It is something that has been established and made sure by someone else. God. And what does it do? Praise God, this is why it's my favorite one.
It makes wise the simple. I am ignorant. I am gullible. I am easily persuaded. And God says, I'm going to make you wise to the scriptures. My IQ is not way up. For you that want to know why we don't do, oh, that's coming.
Let's just do this one. If you'd like to know why we don't do PowerPoint, number one, is because back in the old days, you just stood in the pulpit and preached away. And number two, there are technical difficulties.
So why do PowerPoint? All right, let's close in prayer. My IQ isn't that great, as you probably know. But beloved, not based on who I am or what I've done. I'm just a country hick from Nebraska. I am wise.
As a recipient of being wise to the scriptures, not because I've made myself wise, but because I can understand God and who he is and his program, how things go together, how to grow, how to prepare for death.
All these issues I know. I guarantee you, you can take the average Christian in this church and put them before Alan Dershowitz, and I know who I'm going to ask for wisdom. Right? If I want legal advice, I'll still ask Dershowitz.
But in terms of wise regarding salvation, I'm simple. You know what simple means? Simple means open-doored. And so our great hue and cry of people these days, well, you just have to have an open mind.
Shut that mind! Right? Open it to all the worldly influences and open it to everything that's good that's in here that you just let out. No. Put a filter up and say the word of God filters what goes in and the word of God filters out what goes out.
We're untaught. We're impressionable. We spiritually buy life insurance from people on TV. You know, we ought not to do those things. And the word of God helps us. Helps us make decisions. Sure, it's verifiable.
Makes wise the simple. Let's go to the next one. Verse 8, number 3. Another synonym for God's word. And again, my point, beloved, is this. You don't need to go anywhere else for your decisions. The word of God is sufficient.
The precepts of the Lord, His charges, His orders, His precepts, as a governor would govern, His precepts, God's expectations, are right. They're right. And, you know, the Bible says they're continually right.
Founded on wisdom and equity and righteousness and they're always right. God is not just up there by a whim saying I like this and I like that and eeny, meeny, miny, moe. This pleases me today. This will please me tomorrow.
Hope you have fun trying to find out. No, they're right. A good way to get guidance. They're not crooked. They're not corrupted. They're not wrong. They're not stained. And what do they do? Boy, what a great thing for those who struggle with being down and mourning all the time.
And what do they do? They rejoice the heart. Joy and happiness and blessing. I could be in a foul mood and I start reading the Bible and God convicts me and I repent and by the time I end up putting the Bible down, I do what?
My circumstances haven't changed. God's changed me on the inside and I have joy. A big contrast to, well, the Bible and Christianity is a religion where you just have to do all these things with a stiff upper lip and don't let anybody ever let you have any fun.
They rejoice the heart. Fourthly, look what else they do. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The commandment, the order, the non-negotiable, something that's not suggested. Here, this charge or this command is what?
It's vague. It's kind of foggy. You can't really tell. You know, I read that verse and I'm not really too sure. I never know what these things mean. No, they're pure. They're lucid. They're radiant. They're clear.
You can tell that they're open and pure and flawless and they're ongoingly like that. That's not a big puzzle and a riddle wrapped in an enigma. No, you can see that it's sincere. And what do they do?
They make the light bulb go on on the inside of your mind, enlightening the eyes. You can see a truth now. You can understand truth. You ever go for a little walk while you're camping? You have a little lamp to light your way or a flashlight.
I'm flashlight king around here. I don't know if you know that, but I used to work for Duracell Batteries. We then began to sell flashlights. So I had about 100 flashlights and I, beloved, like to live in a house with 100 flashlights.
There needs to be flashlights everywhere. And so I have one wherever I go pretty much. I've got flashlights because I like to see things. And I have the hangover from living in California where all of a sudden the house is going like this and you need to have a flashlight with all those earthquakes.
No moon out. No electrical power. You're in the Middle East 2 ,000 years ago. You don't know which way to go. You have to have a lamp. Here now we have the scripture to tell us what to do to light our way.
That's exactly what this passage is talking about. Enlightening our eyes. Not just our eye eyes, but spiritually. Let's keep going. Number five. The fear of the Lord is clean. The fear of the Lord, this is maybe more difficult to understand, but with that Hebrew poetry of a synonym, this is a synonym for God's word as well.
It's almost like what it produces in our life first, but it's called the fear of the Lord. God's word is clean. The fear of the Lord is clean. So God's word is without corruption, without stain. There's no taint in it.
It's not like a sacrifice that you would buy and there's some kind of abrasion. No. It's ceremonially clean. It's ethically clean and pure. And you know what? It endures forever. It is always in. It is relevant.
Oh, that old stuffy Bible. You can't go buy that. That was written 2 ,000 years ago. How can that apply today? The Bible, if I could put it this way, has been protected from the fall. The Bible has been protected from the thermodynamic laws that everything goes to chaos.
It's relevant. It's timeless. So when you have to make a decision, you don't have to say, well, it's 2004 and that might have been good for Daniel and David and Samson, but it can't help me. No, it can help.
It's pure. It's clean. It endures forever. And then finally, the judgments of the Lord are true. The judgments of the Lord, God's divine verdict as he sits on the bench, adjudicating, they're true. And you know, sometimes the truth hurts, doesn't it?
But I'm so glad that it's still the truth and somebody has told me, especially these days. I can't back up now with this microphone. If it's true for you, what does that verse mean to you? As one friend once said to me, what does that verse mean if you're dead?
In other words, what does that verse mean to God? What is the authorial intent? When God wrote that verse, what does he mean? And when God gives the Bible, his judgments are always true. They're right.
People think there's no truth these days. What's truth? Pilate was before his time. He was a pre-postmodern. Pre-postmodern. What is truth? There's no truth. Here, he says they are true. They're reliable.
They're permanent. There's faithfulness and fidelity and continuity to these very words. And they, in a summary statement, they are altogether righteous. Altogether complete. Altogether sufficient. Everything we need to know.
As one man said, they produce comprehensive righteousness. So I've got a question for you. If you have to make a decision, why do we need to try to somehow hear God talk to us outside of his word? It doesn't make any sense.
Look at the response here. Verse 10. If the Bible outshines the sun in its sufficiency, verse 10 says, they, the word of God, are more desirable than gold. Yes, than much fine gold, the purified kind.
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. As people would delight in the honey that they would find, they would have more scrumptiousness as they got the honey that dripped out of the combs because none of that stuff was in there with the little honey bread and bee wax bread and all that stuff.
It's just the pure stuff. He says the Bible's like that. I wanted to do this this week but I forgot and I got too busy. There was a wise mother who did this because of this verse. She wanted to teach her kids, and you kids, it's coming probably this week.
She took her Bible and she took a big dollop of honey and put it on the Bible and she told the kids she wanted one of the kids to lick that honey off the Bible. The kids are like, probably want to do it on a big family Bible that's got some kind of cover that's not going to be ruined.
Don't ruin your leather Bible but put a big dollop of honey on there. And she said, go on, lick, for I want you to never forget that this book is sweeter than honey. That's right. That was the sweetest thing they had going back then.
Tonight, in honor of the Cooleys, we'll all get together at Rota Springs after the service. And you can have some kind of extra fortified, extra fat, extra carbo, extra protein, quadruple mocha, moose tracks, Ben and Jerry's deluxe swirl and taste it.
But at the time, they didn't have that. They had honey. Isn't that going to be good? It's more sweet. That was such a strange thing for them to have something sweet. And it warns too, verse 11, Moreover, by them the word thy servants warned.
Aren't you glad God will tell you don't do that for your own good? I love you. In keeping them, there's great reward, not only while you're keeping them but after you've kept them. Verse 12, Who can discern his errors?
Equip me of hidden faults. There's no way when you stand before a thrice holy God that can make the creation like that outside that we can stand before him and be right in his eyes. Only one being can do this.
And the scriptures point to him for forgiveness. Verse 13, Also they keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me. Then I shall be blameless and I shall be acquitted of a great transgression.
God, I don't want to sin either blatantly or just kind of presumptuously or secretly. God, I don't want to do that. I want to be, as the law was perfect, now he says, I want to be whole and perfect too.
Same word. And then he says this prayer. Oh, this is so good. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Yahweh, oh Lord, my rock and I can see your powerful faithfulness in nature and my redeemer and I can only see that you save sinners through your special revelation.
If you have a decision to make, beloved, go to God's word. It is sufficient. It has always been sufficient. Why would I go anywhere else? Let me flip it around. If you have a big decision to make and you don't go to God's word, what does that imply about your view of his scriptures?
Those men that I read earlier on as I introduced the sermon, I can't judge their hearts because I can't see on the inside, but based on their testimony, they do not believe in the sufficiency of scripture because if scripture is sufficient, why go somewhere else?
We'll learn about that more next week as we examine this idea. How does God speak? It's such a big issue these days. If God tells you something, I want to obey. Here's my challenge to you. Psalm 19 has 14 verses.
My summer challenge is would you memorize Psalm 19? If you memorize three verses a week, you'll be done in no time. If you want to memorize two verses a week, take you about the summer and then if you have a week that you can't, you're on vacation or whatever, but as you memorize Psalm 19, you walk outside and you say, God, how am I going to pray today?
And God, I'm thinking about myself and everything's microcentric and I'm not sure about all this. You stand outside and you say, God, the heavens are declaring your glory and off you go. And as you study God's word in verses seven through 10, you will probably study the scriptures more.
When I have a hard time of reading the Bible and I'm having difficulty diving into God's word, one of my surefire ways to help is to read Psalm 119 because it tells me about God's word and how great it is.
I'd hate to have you memorize Psalm 119 this summer because probably nobody would make it. Neither would I. 900 verses, the longest Psalm in the Bible. I think it's 168 verses. Is that right? 176, thank you.
Psalm 19. And grab yourself an accountability friend or spouse or someone else. Some of the men here are memorizing Romans 1 this summer. So then we're going to meet on Sundays and say, okay, you got Romans 1 done?
Yes, Romans 1, 1 through 9, God, and off we go. Grab somebody and memorize Psalm 19 because when you walk outside, you're not going to just say, oh, like we do. You get on the weather channel, you get on the internet, what's the weather going to be like?
What's the weather like where I'm going on vacation? What's happening over there? Can we see the satellite, the Doppler? Instead of seeing all that, which is fine, I want you to see God in that. This great God who shows his power, his fidelity, his faithfulness.
And when you memorize Psalm 19, it will change the way you look at God's revelation through nature and revelation through scripture. Any takers? You want to be so bold to say before the congregation, I, by God's grace, am going to try to memorize Psalm 19.
That's that pressure tactic you know we have at church. That's probably the only time we'll do the every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around. You can have your harm up around this church.
Next week, we'll look at some other passages that teach us we don't need to go anywhere else. And beloved, you say, I'm on board. Pastor, you're preaching to the choir. We understand it's the word and the word alone.
I know that, but maybe God will use you with your friends as they're at other places and somehow God led me, God impressed me, God did this, God did that, and it's very, very difficult. And I want you to go back to the solid rock of scripture.
Psalm 19, verses 1 and 2 for next Sunday. The best way to memorize is to read it every single day. Make a little 3x5 card, put it on your dashboard with caution. Read Psalm 19, 1 and 2, every day, every night, every day, every night.
And in seven days, you probably won't even have to memorize it. It'll just be in your mind. And your mind starts becoming flooded and being brainwashed, as it were, with the Bible and the mind of Christ.
So you think God's thoughts. And you know what's so good about memorizing the Bible? You begin to do something that you ought not to do, and Bible verses start flooding your mind. It doesn't feel good, but it is good for you.
And you say, oh, you know, I'm just kind of mad at the world and this and that and everything. And the Bible verse comes to your mind. Rejoice always. And you kind of suppress it. And then there's another one, and you go, oh, you know, I don't even know the verse.
I should memorize more. But these verses come to your mind. In preaching class, we tell the people, when you're done, finish. I'm done. Let's pray. Father, we confess as a church that even though we have the word Bible in our name, that we fall short of loving your scriptures.
Like someone who had never tasted Ben and Jerry's, and they tasted it for the first time, and they want to have it again. Father, we want to do that. And we know by your spirit, you can change us on the inside to give us that new desire today to just love your word.
Think about the lion, witch, and the wardrobe and that Turkish delight that the kids just desired like mad. They couldn't get over it. Father, we want the word to be like that to us, and for us. Father, would you protect our church from somehow doing something that's contrary to the scripture, and may we find our all in all in your son, and then through his word.
So, Father, thank you. I thank you for these dear people, and I pray for those who want to be challenged that they would memorize Psalm 19 in the next few months with joy and with excitement. And, Father, give them accountability, partner, so we might hide your word in our heart that we might not sin against you.
In Jesus' name, amen.