Turn if you would to Psalm 119
And we'll be starting in verse 9 It says how can a young man keep
his way pure by living according to your word I Seek you with
all my heart. Do not let me stray from your
commands. I Have hidden your word in my
heart that I might not sin against you. I Praise be to you, O Lord. Teach me your decrees. With my
lips, I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I
rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and
consider your ways. I delight in your decrees. I
will not neglect your word. Now, recently, my daughter came
to me right before bed one time, and
she says, Daddy, we need to talk. I was a little bit startled.
I said, about what? And she said, life. I could see she was struggling
with a white word, so she just said life. So we go up to her
room, and she says, I don't know how to pray. I thought something else had
happened. I thought it was something worse,
as children would ask about. But she was a little bit distraught
about this. She didn't know how to pray.
And she needed to know. So, how does a person pray to
God? And for many of us adults, that's
just not a question that enters our mind. Of all the problems
we could think of, that's just not one of them. Especially if
someone who's been raised in a church where there is a lot
of prayer to listen to. You hear it every Sunday, multiple
times. I know when I was young, I wished
we prayed less. Man, this has taken a long time.
Prayer upon prayer upon prayer. But these are not normally the
types of problems I have to deal with. If I kept a catalog of
those problems, at the top of the list would be bugs in the
house. I got to get rid of the bugs.
I'm the bug killer in the house. And the other one would be getting
the kids to go to bed at bedtime. I deal with those all the time.
But not this one. Not teaching someone how to pray. Never had to deal with that. Of course, of many of the problems
that we have today, we're grateful that there's the Internet with
lots of videos, how-tos, telling us what to do. But what do you
do when someone asks you how to pray? Telling them to go to
the Internet is probably not a wise idea. There are terrible
religious videos on the Internet. And they teach a man of God's
own design anyway, a little God for little sins. That's not the
God of the Bible. So we don't want them going there.
Of course, you can't tell a person to go see a doctor about this.
They can only tell you about your body. That's what they know. That's what they've studied.
They can't tell you how to pray. They've done nothing for the
spirit. The only remedy for this And for any God-centered question
is to go to the God-centered word. How can a young person stay on
the path of purity by living according to your word? And that's
right there in verse nine. This is something all believers
know. We know it in our hearts. So when my daughter asked me
how she should pray, I first told her what God was like. Because
to know how to pray, you have to know who you're praying to. So I told her about God, the
creator, God, the just one. God, the deliverer. Told her
about the ark, which is a picture of Christ. About the flood. About how the flood destroyed
everybody outside the ark. Told her about the Passover. God's deliverance through Moses,
about the Ten Commandments. And finally, about Jesus, who
God sent to provide salvation for his people. And I didn't
have to go to my pastor. This is something that should be basic. There are many complex things
in the Bible. Some we'll never know. But this
one is pretty, pretty low. As it has been likened to milk.
It is like milk. But this problem that she had
was solved by just this word. That's all it took. I didn't
have to go into a long thought out printed out process. Didn't have to go to a book that
someone else had written about how to pray. And the Bible is
good for this and for many things. And one thing it is good at is
solving spiritual problems. And there are reasons for that,
why it's a cure, and they can be found all over Psalm 119,
as well as the Bible. And keep in mind as we read this,
every time we hear the word, word, that word is Christ. In the beginning was the word,
that word was with God, and that word became flesh. So keep that
in mind. First of all, this word is trustworthy. Turn to verses 41 and 42. It says, may your unfailing love
come to me, oh Lord, your salvation according to your promise. Then
I will answer the one who taunts me for I trust in your word. Now I work in computers. So I see a lot. How many times do you think I've
heard someone say, I trust in my computer. It always does what
I want it to. Every time I turn it on, it acts
the same way as the day before. I never have any problems. It
never messes up. It does exactly as I tell it
to do. And it's never failed once since
I bought it. I've not heard that once. everything I have set up has
failed and I'm a senior tech that sounds
wrong but everything I've set up at one point will eventually
fail for whatever reason but maybe not a computer have
you ever heard anybody say that about a car or TV or the gun Because the bad guy's
gun always jams at the right time, right? How about your own body? My daughter was six. She got pneumonia. My son was
born with a hearing defect and a speech defect. We don't even
come out right. We come out failing. These bodies are untrustworthy. Yet there is one thing in heaven
and on earth that is trustworthy, and that's God's Word. Does anyone mock you for what
you believe? I feel that way even though nobody
says it to my face. You can see it on TV, you can
hear it on the radio. that if you don't believe such
and such a way, you're a fool. Or if you do believe anything
in here, you're a fool then too. Well, you can trust in the truth
of God's word because Jesus says in John 17, sanctify them by
the truth. Your word is truth. Do you fear
that a recent or old sin However great it is in your mind has
removed God's grace from you. I've had that fear. I don't know
what else to call it. I've had that fear. You can trust
in God's proven word as your shield. As it says in 2 Samuel
22, as for God, his way is perfect. The Lord's word is flawless. He shields all who take refuge
in him. Abraham had faith in God's Word
because he knew that God's Word was trustworthy. Paul trusted in God's Word as
well. As has every believer who has ever cried, have mercy on
me, a sinner. Why would they cry out for deliverance
to God if they doubted that His Word was not trustworthy? You can trust that God's word
won't change. For it says in Isaiah 40, the
grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God
endures forever. And the writer of Psalm 119 says
that all your righteous laws are eternal. If you trust in anything else
than this, Be prepared to experience disappointment. But you won't be disappointed
in this and you won't find a more trustworthy thing than God's
word anywhere on earth. Secondly, God's word is reviving. Go back a little ways to verse
25. I am laid low in the dust. Preserve
my life according to your word. Now that word preserve actually
means to be alive or to live. And to be revived as that word
means here does not mean that you were once depressed and now
you are happy. It does not mean you were once
sick and now you are just not sick. Those are Those would be cursory
readings of this. To be revived, to be made alive,
means that you were once dead. And when you are dead, you have
no way to make yourself alive again. Or in our case, we were always
dead. We won't be alive again, we'll
be alive for the first time if God has saved us. Now if we had a way to make ourselves
alive again, why would we fear death? Why would we fear dying? If there was something we could
do that could raise the dead to life, we'd have no reason
to fear God, no reason to care about sin. But the dead have no hope that
man can make them alive. Nor can they hope that their
dead bodies will somehow just reclaim their souls and jump
up out of the ground. To become alive takes the power
of the Almighty God with a word. What was it that revived Lazarus
from the tomb? A word. And a sinner is spiritually dead,
for the wages of sin is death. That's what you get paid. By obligation, you earned it. You earned death. And a sinner needs life given
to him. And when God speaks, he gives life. He revives. And when Jesus said in Matthew
4, referring back to Deuteronomy 8, he says, it is written, man
shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes
from the mouth of God. That's straight from God's mouth. There are things on earth that
we declare give life. Nourishing food gives life to
those that are hungry. He's been revived after he had
been starving for so long. Or a doctor might restart your
heart or bring them back from the brink of death. They've been
revived. But those things merely sustain life. They cannot give
life. Turn, if you would, to Luke 11. This is what a blessing truly
is. This is what life is. Luke 11 in verse 27. It says, as Jesus was saying
these things, a woman in the crowd called out, blessed is
the mother who gave birth or gave you birth and nursed you.
He replied, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God
and obey it. As Jesus was saying these things,
just a woman in the crowd called out. And that was as far as her
understanding took her. Blessed is your mother. And I
suppose Mary was blessed. She got to raise the only perfect
child that ever walked this earth. She got to hold the word. But he replied, blessed rather
are those who hear the word of God and obey it. And hearing the Word of God is
indeed a blessing because it is not given to many. Just look
around you. In our spot of this earth, that's
how many it's been given to. But those that do hear it, they
gain life everlasting. Thirdly, God's Word is righteous. Turn to Psalm 119, but verse
62. At midnight, I rise to give you
thanks for your righteous laws. Righteous laws. Why is his word
righteous? Because he says so. That's it. It doesn't have to go through
a test. He can declare himself righteous because he's God. And that declaration of his righteousness
is not open to challenge. Now, if his witness of his own
righteousness were not true, even though it is, his deeds,
his works have proved him. He has condemned all who are
not like Him in righteousness, because you need the same righteousness
He has. Those people have gone to hell
for all eternity, and hell is full of unrighteous people. If
you could gather them, all the people in hell, to one spot,
so that you are standing next to everybody and you could hear
everybody at one time as if they were standing next to you, And
someone asked, who has been put here unjustly that there was an error? And that's why they ended up
in hell. Not one of them could answer that justice had not been
performed. Every one of them deserved to
be there. And God declares the unrighteousness of all mankind
through David in Psalm 143. He says, do not bring your servant
into judgment for no one living is righteous before you. And the author of Psalm 119 knows
that he is not righteous by himself. Otherwise he would not need to
ask God to deal with him according to God's mercy and love in verse
124. No, the writer knows he is unrighteous,
and therefore needs God to deal with him in mercy. God's Word
is righteous, and that means it's moral, and it's just, and
it's right. We cannot attain to these pure
ideals. It's impossible, and nor can
they be established by us. We can't even maintain what society
thinks is moral. You just read the news. People
are behaving immorally all the time. And we don't have an appreciation
of what true justice really is to declare anything. In all actions
and in all thoughts, we have failed to reach God's righteousness. How can anybody ever believe
that they could rise to his level after what you see around you?
You think you're different. Nobody's different. As the expression
goes, we're all cut from the same cloth. Or we come from the same sand,
same atom. That's us. So let an unrighteous man come
to the righteous word, short or tall, Jew or Gentile, Northern
Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, wherever you are and whatever
you look like, Jesus will take you if you come in true repentance. And this true repentance He gives
you. It is not something you have
to work for. You should ask for it though.
You should ask for it. But he is righteous and he will
by no means clear the guilty. So you must be made righteous
and you must be spiritually revived. And finally, God's word is a
great treasure. Turn to verse 162. It says, I rejoice in your promise,
like one who finds great spoil. That word is treasure, one who
finds great treasure. Not only is God's word trustworthy,
reviving, and righteous, it is also enduring, comforting, shielding,
and saving. And those are just the adjectives
I found in this psalm. And I wasn't even looking that
hard. There's more in just Psalm 119. I found 12 things, and there
are so many more. So I ask, what is God's word
to you? How important is it to you? Is it enduring? meaning that
it never fails, even through eternity, because it won't. Is it shielding like armor against
arrows from the unrighteous? We put on the chest plate of
his word, as you should. It's not to be used as a sword
or a hammer. It's to defend. The word is not
an offensive weapon, it's a defensive weapon. Is it comforting to you as when
Jesus declares, those whom you've given me, I have kept and none
of them is lost? Is that comforting to you, knowing
that you can't be lost? Is it saving? Well, here we are. If it's not,
we've just wasted about 45 minutes every Sunday. No, it is saving, and the I-wills
of God make sure that His Word is saving. That's a great treasure. You might think a yacht is a
great treasure. You say, my yacht, it's got four
TVs, five bathrooms, three decks, three stories. I don't know boat
talk. It's got a place to land my helicopter. I have a crew. That sounds like
a great treasure. But can it do any of the things
I just mentioned? Can it save? Can it revive? Is it always trustworthy? No,
that boat's gonna rust, that boat's gonna sink, the crew's
gonna die, nothing will last. And the world thinks of treasure
in terms of gold coins and those precious jewels or a big church. It strives after earthly treasures
that rust and corrode and fade away. What a wonderful place Earth
would be if all strive to obtain the great treasure that is incorruptible
and will never fade. Yet they will have no joy, just
a grasping for the wind, as Solomon says. So if today doesn't find you
seeking God's word, his great treasure, then why do you wait? I always thought it was so silly that people claimed that they
needed to allow God, that they needed to choose God to let Him
save them. If God is like this, you'd be
the lowest idiot on earth not to choose Him. This is the best thing. Why would
you not choose him? Why would you let that go? Your choice. It is not choice. What stands in your way of repenting
and being baptized? Nothing. Well, your stony heart. God can take care of that too. Is there anything about this
great treasure that restrains your earnestness to seek the
Son of God? I know we can get sick, our bodies
will fail, and of course the Spirit is willing and the flesh
is very weak. But the Spirit should always
be there. And if you found fault with God's
word, then like during a wedding, declare the fault right now in
front of everybody. Claim something. Find an error. But if you cannot find fault
with his word, then go to him. Seize that great treasure and
lay claim to the promises that God has given That are in Jesus
Christ do not linger Go Do not first run an errand go Or like they said in Matthew
8 do not first bury your dead You're leaving this behind leaving all this earth behind.
Go. May we always seek that great
treasure of God's Word. Amen.