Psalms 19. We started looking last week
at the Word of God. And we looked at some different
things that it's called. And we looked at some ways that
it's described. Some names that it's called and
some of the things that it's described. And we're gonna look a little
bit more on some of the things that it's described today. We see today a lot of moving
away from the word of God. And I think, for the most part,
at least as I can see it, is because there is a lot of moving
away from the preaching of God's word, a lot of storytelling,
a lot of self-help life application type
things being preached, a lot of taking the scriptures and
pulling them out of their context and using something that's said
in a certain context, pulling it out, and because it has something
within that that strikes at another topic, They use that or for a
doctrine that they've brought and they've laid that doctrine
upon the scriptures and made the scriptures say what the doctrine
says. And so we have a moving away
from the expositional teaching of God's word of exegesis. We don't really see too many
preachers who are exegeting the scriptures anymore. They're giving
their philosophies, they're giving their thoughts, their opinions
on the scripture. The Bible is not a private interpretation. The Word of God is meant the
way that it's supposed to be mean. Now that doesn't mean that
as God reveals the scriptures to his people that as we read
that there's only one concrete thing whenever you read it as
concrete it can't mean or be taken or be understood any other
way. And let me clarify what I mean
by that is that as we grow and mature in the grace and the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he reveals himself, as he gives
us more understanding of this word, that doesn't mean that,
I mean, it means that we see that maybe some from different
angles. You know, at one time, whenever I seen predestination
or election or something like that, I've seen it, and I've
seen it maybe at a more superficial level, but as the Lord has grown
me, and that's at His time, as He teaches me in His time, and
reveals things in Scripture, the understanding of those things
goes a little deeper, a little deeper, precept upon precept,
line upon line, here a little, there a little. We learn the
Word of God as He teaches it to us. And so the word of God
is something that we don't just pick and choose, or we just pull
out little verses, and we try to make our little systematic
theologies. I was so enamored by systematic
theology whenever I first come into the doctrines of grace.
Well, even before I come to the doctrines of grace, I used systematic
theology trying to debunk the doctrines of grace. Anyway, the
systematic theologies, whenever I come into the doctrines of
grace and I see, man, I've been missing so much of the Bible,
whenever the Lord opened that up and said, man, if I can miss
the simplicity of what the gospel is, then there's so many things
other. And I mean, after I spent a long
time studying to get the gospel in my head and see it from a
true biblical viewpoint, You know, that's whenever I begin
to kind of look at everything that I believe. Go back and just
check everything. Keep that which has been instilled
that's good. Those things that aren't according
to scripture, I have to reject no matter how precious they seem
to me and no matter who it was that taught it to me. That's
a lot of where our issues come is because we have these dear
old precious things that mama told me or daddy told me or grandpa
told me or grandma told me. you know, mom or husband or wife
or something like that, you know. We have to take God's word and
let the word of God say what it says and stand upon what the
word of God says. The scriptures teach, keep your
finger there in Psalm 19, but in Isaiah, I was reading through
some passages this morning, some parallel passages and some of
the things I was gonna talk about today. And I come across this
passage in Isaiah chapter eight and verse 20 that I'd kind of
forgotten about actually until I come through here. If you look at verse 18, I'll
start at verse 18 and read down, it says, Behold, I and the children
whom the Lord hath given me. Now, who's that talking? The New Testament speaks of that,
right? Matter of fact, there's a couple
of places in the New Testament where that verbiage is being
reiterated and it's by Jesus. Jesus makes this claim. He says,
Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for
signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which
dwelleth in Mount Zion. And when they shall say unto
you. OK, he's speaking to he's speaking
to the to the people who are dwelling in Mount Zion. OK, speaking
to the church here. And as we know, As we gather
in a church, there may be some here that are children of grace
and there may be some that aren't among us. There may be professors,
but not possessors of eternal life, of spiritual life. And
so whenever He speaks, He speaks and He says, and when they shall
say to you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits. Now we've
had a whole week of people pointing to a man who has a familiar spirit,
but he did not speak the things of God. He spoke partial truths. He spoke some truth. But behind
those things was lies and error and anti-Christ speech. It says, and when they shall
say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits. And
unto wizards that peep and that mutter, should not a people seek
unto their God? Now I'm just going to pause there
for a minute, and I'll be honest, I haven't done a thorough study
of all this passage. But I'm just going to say on
the outset, you can put John Gill, you can put Gilbert Beebe,
you can put all the commentators of scriptures into those that
have familiar spirits. They have familiar spirits with
us. But it says whenever they tell you to go seek to them.
I hear this all the time on Facebook whenever you're discussing something
in the scripture. Someone says, well you need to go read the
Canons of Dort. You need to go read the Westminster Confession
of Faith. You need to go check out what 1689 says. Or 1644 says.
Okay? And then to that I say, why are
you pointing me to the writings of man? Why don't you point me
to what God said? I wanna know what God said, not what man said
that God said, in their interpretation of it. Point me to what God said. If you can't point me to what
God said, then don't point me anywhere, okay? Point me to where
God said, and that's where we all should, whenever we're talking
with each other, that's one of the wonderful things about the
word of God is, That's where we go for our rule of faith.
That's where we go for practice. That's where we go to know who
God is, what salvation is, what salvation is about, whose salvation
is about. Those are the places that we're
going to find. And when we get there, when we hear the words
of God, as we're going to see here in a few minutes, we're
going to see that they're perfect. They're true. They're sure. These things
are wonderful words for us to have. And why would we point
anybody to go somewhere else? And as Isaiah is saying right
here, he says, why send people out to seek after all these other
things? Why can't these people, should
not the people seek unto their God? And so to me, at least it
seems, and again, I might be wrong and I can be up for correction
on this if anybody knows any better than me. On this verse
19, I see two sides. I see those who have familiar
spirits. Those would be those who claim
to be God's people, Christians. And then we see the dark side.
There are people that seek after wisdom and counsel towards religion,
and there are some that seek after it in the dark arts of
witchcraft and wizardry, if you'll allow me that word. I mean we have them even just
right down here down the street in Joplin. We have psychic readings.
People going in getting their psychic readings. You know, tell
me what's going to happen in the future. You know, tell me
who's best suited for me to be my husband or my wife. What am
I going to do about my children? Can you tell me what's going
to happen with my children? Can I talk to my dead mama or my dead papa? You know, they go to these people
that are dabbling in witchcraft and evil arts. We also see that
they look to the stars and the astrological signs. Some person somewhere in a newspaper
that's writing a bunch of, they're opening up fortune cookies and
typing it down somewhere in a newspaper and saying, here's your astrological
reading. I don't know how it works, I'm just joking about
that, but it's about as useless as a fortune cookie. Anyway, they're seeking after
these things, and here the writer is saying, should not a people
seek unto their God? And that to me is a question
that just drove me home this whole entire week, especially
coming on the heels of all this talk about Billy Graham and everything
like this. Everybody is looking to men and not to the Word of
God. What does God say about it? I
don't know how many people that kept saying, you know, just like
Brother Larry brought up last week, you know, well, what difference
does it make as long as, you know, if they're for us, they're
not against us. Well, that's the thing. He wasn't
for us. And people saying, well, he was
a good man. He was doing this, you know, what difference does
it make? We're not all. Because, and you will see here
in a minute what the Bible says about that, but our main concern
is don't tell me what they say, I wanna know what God says. As the people of God, as a church,
we should always seek what does the Bible say and let that lead
us in anything that we should ever endeavor to do, anytime
that there's ever any issues that we have to resolve, anytime
there's conflict, accountability, correction, rebuke, we need to
go to the word of God. But he says here, he says, sorry, I lost my place. Should
not a people seek unto their God for the living to the dead? Now listen to verse 20. To the law and to the testimony,
if they speak not according to this word, it is because there
is no light in them. That is a very sobering passage
of scripture. That if someone is preaching
and teaching and taking from this, but not preaching what
this says, the Bible says that they're not preaching the law
and the testimony, that there's no light in them. And that doesn't
mean that we're going to err sometimes. But what that means
is the Lord is going to lead us to that truth. He's going
to reveal to us the truth of God. And we're not going to continue
preaching lies about him, lies about his salvation, and specifically
lies about Christ. The Bible tells us that the law
and the testimony will be actually upheld by those who are children
of light, right? The Bible says that we are the
children of the light. He is in us, and in him is no darkness.
But those who are without, those who are not his, are children
of darkness. They're children of darkness.
And so we speak to the law and to the testimony. Now, back in
Psalms, If you'll look there where we sang this morning, it
says, the law of the Lord, verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul. I'll just stop right there. That
word perfect there, I tried to, I mean, at face value, I mean,
the law of the Lord is perfect, meaning without error, without
any problems, without any darkness, without any issues, okay, it's
perfect. God is perfect, everything He
says is perfect. But however, whenever I looked
at that word and seen what that word was and found how it was
translated throughout the King James Bible, I found out that
that word perfect there actually means to be believed. The law
of the Lord is to be believed converting the soul. Now whenever
we say converting the soul, it's not talking about to be born
again. That's not what that's talking
about. Converting the soul does not mean to be born again. To
be born again is a work of the Holy Spirit alone. Okay, the
preaching of God's word, the teaching of God's word, the reading
of God's word, the hearing of preaching isn't what causes one
to be born again. What causes one to be born again
is an internal work of the Holy Spirit where He takes out the
heart of stone, puts in a heart of flesh, where He takes one
who is dead and trespasses in sin and puts within them spiritual
life. We did not have spiritual life.
We were born of Adam, created, of the earth earthy as our father
adam without spiritual life and god at his appointed time because
we are children of the promise we are children of christ we
are his children he has put that in now that's why the bible says
because ye are sons hath god sent his spirit into you so the
holy spirit comes and gives us spiritual life that is new birth
Converting of the soul is where our mind and our emotion and
our will that was set to believe in self-righteousness, to believe
against the things of what Scripture teaches, where righteousness
comes from, what salvation is about, who Christ is, who God
is. The converting of the soul is
to hear the word of God and then to turn and believe the word
of God. That's what this passage is talking
about. The law of the Lord or the doctrine, and that word law
there doesn't talk about the Torah, I mean, excuse me, the
10 commandments there. This is actually talking about
the whole doctrine of God, the word law there. I also looked
and seen that was used in other places, meaning the whole of
scripture. If you remember last week, we
talked about that. It can mean the whole of scripture. It can
mean the first five books. It can mean just the 10 commandments.
Well, this here is found. and the way that word is used
means the doctrine of the Lord or we can say the gospel. The gospel of the Lord is to
be believed converting the soul. So one of the reasons why we
cherish the word of God is because this is what God has given to
us for those who have been given spiritual ears to read, to study,
to hear, preached or to be read, that will tell them the truth. That the Holy Spirit who is inside
of them will confirm and convert them to believing the wrong way
to the right way. Whenever I come to believe the
gospel, I believe for many years a false gospel. Preached a false
gospel. Sung about a false gospel. but
the Holy Spirit that was in me as is. intended whenever it was sent
to me, the Bible says, was to lead me into all truth, was to
testify of Him, was to not make Himself known, but to testify
of the things of Christ. The Spirit was also sent to give
me understanding of the things that was freely given to me.
The Bible says those are the reasons the Spirit was given
to me. And what does the Spirit do? He takes the word of God
and He applies that word in our heart and He teaches us what
it says. And when we're taught of God,
the Bible says those who are taught of God, they come to Him,
right? All of those who have been taught
of the Father, come to the Father. They come to Him. And so whenever
I was born of the Spirit, all that that was false that I believed
and I thought was true, whenever the Word of God shone light upon
that error and the Holy Spirit testified to what was true, it
converted my soul. Now my mind, emotion, and will
was governed to go and believe this. Where once it was governed
to believe this lie, now it's governed to believe the truth.
And brethren, once you're given the truth, you can't go back. I can't go back and believe an
untruth again. Whenever God's Word has shown
the light of truth, It's just the truth. I mean, if I, you
know, if I set this up here and everybody thought, well, man,
that might be a straw, that might be whatever. But as I turn the
light on and you get up close and say, oh, that's an ink pen.
Well, not one of you gonna come in here and say, well, that's
a stopwatch. Why? Because the light of truth has
shown you what that is. And so same with the scripture,
same with the gospel. The law of the Lord is perfect
or is to be believed, converting the soul. He goes on to say,
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. That word testimony of the Lord,
there's a lot there to be said. This right here is the testimony
of the Lord, right? The scriptures is the testimony
of the Lord. But we also know that Christ
himself is the testimony of the Lord. He is the one who bears
witness of all who is God, right? The Bible says in Colossians
that he is, and I'm gonna just turn there so I don't botch it
up. In Colossians, the Bible says, And He is the head of the body,
the church who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased
the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." We also
read in chapter 2, it says, Well, it's in here somewhere. Nine. Ah, yes, thank you. Verse 9, For in him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in
him, which is the head of all principality and power. So we see that Jesus Christ is
the testimony of all about God. He is the one who embodies God. He is the one who testifies of
God. And the Word of God is a testimony
of Him. So whenever we come to the Word
of God, we see that it is the testimony of the Lord. And so
the Bible says that the testimony of the Lord is sure or is good and capable. It's right. It says, making wise the simple.
It's amazing whenever we look at men who The Bible has given
eyes to see and ears to hear. And I say women too, but particularly
men, as far as those who have been called to minister the word
of God, we see that sometimes these men are just uneducated
men that don't know nothing. You know, we look in the scripture
and we see that even those disciples, remember, people were astounded
because these were just fishermen. I mean, uneducated fishermen
who were speaking with authority, who were speaking the things
of God, and people just couldn't understand how these men come
to all this learning. Now Jesus, we know he was God,
but even in the eyes of man, they looked at him and said,
this is a carpenter's son. Where did he come being able
to speak with all this authority? But we see, and I've come to
see, I mean, I believed it in theory, but now that I've gotten
out and about and I've come to meet so many men who teach and
preach the word of God, I know more preachers that are
uneducated that know this word better than a lot of men who
are seminary professors. Who are seminary degree, doctorate
of this, that and the other. And they have a better understanding
of God's word than even those men do. Which tells us that the
wisdom of God doesn't come by the arm of the flesh. It doesn't
come by human means. It comes, as it says here, the
testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. It doesn't come from us. It comes
from God. Verse 8, it says, the statutes
of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The Word of God is right. It's
not wrong. It's never wrong. If you come
up and something happens in your life, some situation, some instance
that you're having issues and whatever, and you go to God's
Word and it says something, and it says something different than
the way that you think, guess who's wrong? Raise your hand. It's you. It's you. You're wrong. Whenever there seems to be a
conflict in God's word, you're reading one passage of scripture,
and it says one thing, and then you go over and you read another
passage of scripture, and it seems to say something else,
you say, aha, there's a contradiction in scripture. Guess what? No,
you're wrong. You've interpreted one of those
scriptures improperly, because the word of God does not contradict
itself. So at that point now, what you need to do is you need
to pray that the Lord might give you understanding to what both
of those verses are talking about so that he might lead you into
the truth so that you'll see how they coincide and they don't
mark each other out. God's word is right. It's always
right. But one thing about it is, is
because it's right and never wrong to the child of grace,
whether it's hard to hear to the carnal ear, It rejoices our heart. You know,
we spoke about suffering a few weeks ago. And nobody likes suffering. I mean, if we're honest, we don't
like to go through suffering. But yet when we come to God's
word and we see the beauty that God intends in suffering for
the child of grace, guess what? It rejoices our heart. It rejoiced
my heart to go through some of those scriptures that we went
through about suffering, because now whenever I go through suffering,
I have a different vantage point and it has a different attitude
and an effect on me, and it causes my heart to rejoice. Why? Because the Scriptures are right,
and I was wrong. It says, the commandment of the
Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. One of the things that the commandments
of God and the law of God was given is to do what? reveals sin, right? The law entered
in so that we could see our sinfulness. Now that's for the child of grace
to know that. See, those who have not been
born of the Spirit can't come to know the depths of their sinfulness.
They might know that they've done morally wrong. They might
know that they've done something evil. They might know that they
even will say that they've sinned, but they don't know the depth
of that sin and why they're like that. They just believe that
they didn't do enough good at that point. It's basically what
it is. But the child of grace comes
and says, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. We know that we
are sinners. We know that we can't do anything
but sin, that our only hope is in the righteousness of Christ.
And so the commandment of the Lord to the child of grace, when
it comes in, isn't a harrowing effect, isn't this a crushing
blow It's a beautiful and pure thing. It enlightens our eyes. Whenever I see the commandment
of God to don't do this or don't do this or to do this or to do
this, what does it do? It enlightens my eyes to know
that number one, I can't keep that and that it keeps me pointing
to Christ. It enlightens my eyes to the
fact that there is no hope for Michael Smith in himself. If I ever try to go back to revert
and trust in my own righteousness, then I've become blind. The Bible
says that you've, what does the Bible say? It says that if you
try to go back to that, then you've fallen from grace. You've
fallen away from grace. And it's grace that saves. It's
grace that has been given to us that is where our salvation
comes. And if you turn away from grace
and go back into self-righteousness and works, then you've fallen
from that. You've turned away from that
and you're seeking righteousness in your own self. And the Bible
says that the works of righteousness, our righteousness, are filthy
rags. And so, the commandments of God are pure and they enlighten
our eyes to what is going on, to who God is, to what God has
said, to who we are, and to how we are saved. It says, the fear
of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether. And then look at verse 10, it
says, More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold. The word of God to the child
of grace should be something that is more desired than anything.
More desired than gold, it says here. Yea, than fine gold. Some of you ladies may have jewelry
or something like that and you may have some gold jewelry. You
may have some of this gold jewelry that leaves a green spot around
your neck or around your wrist, okay? Then you may have some
gold jewelry that's 10 carat, or 14 carat, or 16 carat, or
I don't know what all the carats are, but I know that there's
different levels of purity of gold. This right here, it says,
the word of God, the law of God, the statutes of God, the commandment
of God, all these things are to be desired more than fine
gold. We live in a society today where
everybody is chasing after gold, money, wealth. And it says, sweeter
also than honey and the honeycomb. That's pretty sweet. Pretty sweet, isn't it? The honey
and the honeycomb. Have any of y'all ever actually
just eat a honeycomb just full of honey, just eat that and the
honeycomb? That is like a sweet bomb, just boom, right there. Well, the Bible says that to
the child of grace, that it is sweet. And it's sweeter than
even the honey and the honeycomb. Is that what the word of God
is to us? Is it sweet to you? or is it just something you hear
when you go to church? Then don't think about it the
rest of the week. Verse 11, moreover by them as thy servant warned,
and in keeping of them, there is great reward. Now we're not
talking about crowns and stuff like that at the end, but in
this lifetime, whenever you follow the word of God, His commandments,
His admonishments, the things that this thing says, you live
after this. You're going to find in this
lifetime, it's going to reward if there's going to be reward
here. And I'm not talking about fancy car. I'm not talking about
the health and wealth guys. And they're talking about the
Rolls Royces and the Rolexes and their airplanes and all like
that. I'm talking about your life is
gonna be peaceful. Your life is gonna be harmonious
in the fact that you have peace with God. You know the righteousness
of Christ. And then the admonishments, listen,
if you follow the things of the scriptures and live according
to these things here and do those things, The life that you live
is gonna be a nice one. I mean, just think about it.
Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit
adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness. I mean, if we
lived by that, if we lived by that, we'd live a peaceful life,
right? So the reward is in this lifetime. The great reward is that it will
keep us from things that we shouldn't be involved in and doing. Anybody
got anything that you'd like to add to that? We're going to
take a break. It's 11 o'clock and we'll take a break. Anybody
got anything, any brothers that want to add to that or make a
comment? All right, we'll take a break
here and then we'll come back and look at a few more verses.