Introduction

 

Last week I made a case that the ultimate goal of Christianity is for you and I to draw near to God. We talked about how Jesus is our true and better high priest who does not just cover sins, but He takes away sins – making it possible for us to enter into an eternal relationship with the living God.

If the goal of Christianity is to draw near to God, then the whole ultimate purpose of life, according to the Bible, is pretty easy to identify by asking this simple question: how would we benefit if we were to draw near to God and have a relationship with Him for eternity?

At least a thousand benefits could be found in having a relationship with the most powerful, most knowledgeable and most glorious being in the universe, but they all boil down to the heart of Psalm 16:11 which says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11

Knowing God is, by itself, a treasure of infinite value. Knowing God brings the ultimate delight. The ultimate goal of life is to know God and to glorify Him by enjoying Him for the rest of eternity. Do you want to know how to be happy? Be satisfied? How to be filled up full? It does not happen outside of a deep, meaningful relationship with the living God.

I am testifying to you this morning that I have found a treasure of such immense value that it has brought me joy that is far greater and more satisfying than anything else I’ve found in the whole world. This joy that penetrates every area and every facet of my life. The satisfaction, the hope, the rock-solid security, the pleasure and the wisdom I’ve found in this incredible book and that I’ve discovered by walking with the Lord for the last 30 years of my life are beyond compare.

Because of Jesus, I am blessed. Psalm 1 says “Blessed is the man… whose delight is in the law of the Lord.” In the first week of our study in Psalms, we learned that in Psalm 1, the Hebrew word translated “Blessed” (Esher) can also be accurately translated as “Happy.” The word (Esher) is plural in the original language and it can be understood to mean not just one blessing, but blessing after blessing after blessing or happiness on top of happiness on top of happiness.

I’m telling you today that because of Jesus and because of this incredible book (The Bible), I have had blessing after blessing after blessing (or happiness on top of happiness on top of happiness) and I want you to experience the same thing in your life. That’s why I’m in the ministry!

Charles Spurgeon says in his commentary in Psalms, “Happy men usually rejoice to make others happy and surely the happy God will willingly impart the holiness which is the fountain of happiness.” Holiness or purity is the fountain of happiness. Holiness is where happiness springs forth from.

In other words, finding our total satisfaction in the God, who is all satisfying, begins with us letting go of other things that are less enjoyable than God. Namely, happiness and blessedness and delight begins with letting go of sin (“that so easily entangles us”) and whole heartedly pursuing God.

Disclaimer

This morning I am going to teach through every verse between 9 and 16.

Psalm 119 was originally written in Hebrew and is a form of Hebrew poetry. Each section of this psalm is 8 verses long and each of those 8 verses in each section begins with the same Hebrew Letter.   You’ll notice in your Bible that this section is labeled “Beth.” Every verse in this section begins with the same letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Here’s a picture of the original Hebrew so you can see it for yourself.

There is some difficulty in translating Hebrew poetry into a non-poetical English form. With that in mind, I’m going to teach on each verse in this section, but I’m going to look at this section as whole and not sequentially.   I’m going to skip around a little. I think looking at it as a whole will help us to understand this passage better.

Let’s begin with the question and exhortation in verse 9

Enjoying God Begins with Purity (v 9, 16)

OR, you could say it this way: enjoying God begins with letting go of sin. Psalm 119:9 begins by asking this question: “How can a young man keep his way pure?” There is not a more important question for any young person to ask… and you older guys here, there is no more important question for you to be able to answer!

Fortunately for us, a young man keeps his way pure the exact same way that an older guy keeps his way pure. In fact, it is the same way that both young women and older women keep their way pure too. Don’t read this passage and think is only applies to young men. The principles for purity are universal, so they apply to all of us.

The Principles for Purity are Universal

God’s word makes it clear that our choices either leads to freedom and God’s blessing or to bondage and slavery to sin. As soon as a young man is aware enough to recognize these two paths in a man’s life, the best question he can ask is, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” And the wise answer to that question is in the last part of verse 9:

By guarding it according to your word.

How do young men learn how to guard their hearts? Young men lean how to guard their hearts according to the Word of God by watching older guys. How effective would it be if you told a young man to stay pure by guarding his heart according to the Word of God and then you didn’t do it yourself? God’s word is both taught and caught. Our sons and our young men in this new church will be better instructed by your lives than by your words. Here’s the big question for us: are you and I making the kind of choices where that young man could come us to us and ask,

  • “How did you keep you way pure when you were my age?”
  • “How do you continue to walk in purity now?”
  • “How do I be like you someday?”

OLD GUY TV: I had an older Christian man say to me one day that illicit movies on the TV just don’t really affect him anymore. Out of respect I didn’t stand up and shout, “What are you talking about?!”

[Because, the truth is, they still affect me and I can’t believe they don’t really affect him too.] BUT, I did plead with him and asked him to consider how those movies affected his mind and his heart.

As a younger man than him, I did not want to be pleading with him to keep his way pure. When given the opportunity, I wanted him to act like an elder. My flesh, as a younger man, wants to justify being content with impurity and sin, but the spirit in me wanted this older man to walk the borders of my life. Younger men need older guys to yell out “Danger! Stay away from sin! It’s not as satisfying as it looks. It will rob you of fully enjoying your most precious treasure, Jesus.”

I want Canyon to be the kind of church where the older guys know and love and protect the younger guys here. The principles of purity might be universal, but young men face some unique dangers that older guys are supposed to walk them through. Let me remind you what it was like to be young and name a couple of the unique challenges for our younger men:

  • Young men have strong passions mixed with poor judgment and inexperience. They need your experience [whether they like what you have to say or not]. They need help with taking their strong drives and pushing those passions into healthy outlets.
  • Young men put a huge value on their friendships but their peers don’t always have their best interest in mind. (They usually only have their own best interest in mind) Their companions tend to be strong in influence and light in wisdom… strong in passion, but reckless.Young men often think they can navigate the turbulent culture and secular influences on their own, but the truth is they need you (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa) to help them. They are not as self-sufficient as they believe they are. They need your availability and your instant forgiveness when they mess up.

Maintaining purity in our fallen culture is difficult for any man. How can a young, inexperienced man accomplish it? There is no more honorable task than a young person desiring to be holy and pure. There are three things our youth need to move forward:

  1. They need your example. Younger people tend to emulate the lives of their teachers. Our kids and our youth and our young adults need older adults who are living out what they believe. The next generation needs adults [esp. men] who will say with Paul, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”
  2. They need your encouragement. Paul says in Philippians 3:13-14, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” They need you to be quick to forgive them of the sins in their past and to help them to strain forward toward the prize. What is the prize? God is the prize… The delight we find in God himself is precious… “To glorify God by enjoying Him forever” is the prize and the treasure of infinite worth
  3. They need God’s Spirit and God’s word. Ps 119:9 says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” Young people and old people need God’s word to be their guide, but there is no way that any one of us in our flesh could obey God’s word in our own power. Sin is far too tempting. We need the Word, driven into our hearts and we need the Spirit to show us it’s immense value.

This passage gives us wise instructions for driving away sin and for pursuing purity.

Wise instructions for driving away sin and for pursuing purity

The first thing we are instructed to do is to store the word

Store God’s Word

Diamonds: My wife, Lara, inherited a couple of antique diamond earrings. The earrings are irreplaceable. Not only are they a family heirloom, but the quality of diamond is almost impossible to find these days. When we went away on vacation, she hid (or stored up) those diamonds in a place that no burglar could find them. She carefully stored them because they were valuable and irreplaceable. She would like to be able to enjoy them and use them for years to come.

To “store up” is the process of protecting something of value with the intent of carefully using it later.

Let’s read verse 11.

11 I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.

The In the Hebrew culture, there were no banks or safe deposit boxes. If you had something of immense value and you didn’t want it stolen while you were gone, you needed to hide it. But you didn’t hide it in order to keep it out of view. You hid it so that you could keep it and cherish it and enjoy it for many years.

When the passage says to store God’s word in our heart, it is telling us to store it like a treasure…to keep it in a special place in our lives as our most treasured possession so that nothing else is more precious to us in our lives.

Storing up God’s word is not just an exercise for the mind. Storing up God’s Word is intended to alter our affections. When a woman fears that a thief might break in and steal her jewelry, she fears the thief. In the case of our spiritual lives, the thief is sin itself. Sin steals our affections for God and replaces those pure affections for the Lord with cheap counterfeits from the world.

We hide God’s word in our hearts so that we do not replace a pure and holy passion for God with a cheap, worthless counterfeit from this world. It is as shameful for a legitimate Christian man or woman to be found admiring and promoting sin as it would be for a legitimate jeweler to try to sell costume jewelry as if it was the real thing.

When a disciple of Christ is admiring or cherishing or desiring what is sinful, God’s word is telling us that we are sinning against God himself. God is offended when we cherish the world more then we cherish Him. How do we remain in the world while not cherishing the world? By hiding God’s word in our hearts.

  • God’s word tells us God’s mind and God’s will. Knowing it is like preventative medicine that keeps us from offending him.
  • MacArthur says in his commentary, “Internalizing the Word is the best weapon to defend against encroaching sin.”

What is the best way for internalizing the word? By memorizing it, meditating on it and by being in it every day. Look at verse 15.

15 I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.

People have often asked how much Bible study is enough Bible study? How many minutes should I spend in prayer every day? 5 minutes? 15 minutes? An hour? What exactly does God expect of me? I’m a busy person after all.

I would not serve you well if I gave you an amount of time that you needed to spend with the Lord so you could check it off your list.

  • 5 minutes in prayer – check
  • 15 minutes in Bible study – check
  • Me and God are all good

If you are asking “how much time is enough time to study the Bible” it points to a deeper issue. That question reveals that taking time to spend with God is a duty, not a delight. Remember when you were dating? When I was dating Lara, I never thought, “how much time should I spend with her to keep her as my girlfriend?” I loved spending time with her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking, “how can I get my other obligations done more quickly so that I can spend more time with Lara?” Spending time with Lara was not a duty (and still is not a duty) it is and was enjoyable.

Does it thrill you to spend time with the Lord? Do you love to spending time with the Lord so much that you want to spend the rest of eternity with Him? When you and I are delighting in the Lord we spend however long it takes to hear from the Lord and be transformed by His word.

  • I doubt that could happen in 5 minutes – practically speaking meditating on the Word takes some time
  • It could happen in a several minutes – it could take several hours. People who delight in the Lord often get into their Bible study and wonder where the time went (they are not waiting for it to be over)
  • The Lord could absolutely speak to you through2 verses or it might take 2 chapters before something really hits you.
  • It’s a relationship, not a duty…. It’s not a checklist….

TOOLS: Here are three good gauges [three diagnostic questions] to determine if God’s word is penetrating your heart:

  • Do you remember what you read this morning?
  • If someone asked you how God is at work in your heart today or this week, could you answer that question without hesitation?
  • Do you find that you often use the material in your morning Bible study to
    apply to your own life or
    to encourage other people with
    later in the day?

As a church, we believe it is our job to guide you and encourage you as you feed yourself with God’s Word. There has been a reverse reformation in our country as of lately. What do I mean by that? Martin Luther and the reformers fought and bled and some died so that God’s people could have God’s word in their hands, in languages that they could understand. They made incredible sacrifices so that the people could read the Bible for themselves.

Especially in the last 30 years, there has been a movement [in America] where God’s people have been reading his Word less and less. Some churches don’t every expect people to bring their Bibles to church anymore so they put all the verses on the screen. NO Bible: I once stopped going to a church when Lara and I forgot our Bibles one morning and I said, “ahh…we don’t really need them”…. In that moment I realized that a church that treasures God’s Word would be a place where people need to bring their Bibles. That month, I found another church that took God’s word more seriously and we grew as a result!

I often hear people say that they do not have enough time to get into the Word. They’re too busy. Martin Luther was a busy man. He pastored a church. He taught in seminary. He led the reformation. Here’s what he said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Luther knew that being a godly man in this broken, fallen world is such a difficult task that it would be impossible in his own effort. To be effective, he needed to be totally dependent on the Spirit of God and driven to pursue Him for 3 hours each day.

I’m not saying to spend 3 hours with the Lord every day. You might need the Lord for less time than 3 hours. You might need to meet with the Lord for more time than 3 hours. BUT, I am encouraging you and I to pursue the Lord until we find Him… to stay in the word until we are transformed by it.

If we truly value God’s word, we will carve out time in our busy lives to make it a priority

Value God’s Word

It is not just one thing that keeps us from sinning against God – It is two. It is both storing God’s Word and Valuing it. It’s both. Both are crucial. We value the word, so we store it up in our hearts. The two work together to stand against the temptation of sin that you and I face every day.

Look at verse 10

10 With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!

This is a picture of a person who is an eager seeker. He is hungry for the Lord. He is desperate for more of the Lord. Seeking God with our whole heart is an intentional pursuit – it’s not a casual thing.

Holiness is about as accidental as becoming a doctor. No one wakes up one day and says, “I’ll be darn. I’m a doctor. How did that happen?” No way! Being a doctor is an intentional pursuit that is the result of years of careful decisions.

Holiness is an intentional pursuit that is the result of years of careful decisions too. Holy people don’t just wonder aimlessly through life. Holy people are people on a mission. They live intentionally. The bible calls us strangers or sojourners in this world, but it does not call us wanderers. . Skip down to verse 19. It says

19 I am a sojourner on the earth;
hide not your commandments from me!

We might be passing through a place where we don’t belong, but we are intentional. I was in Flagstaff this week and I observed some parents who looked like they were dropping off their very young looking daughter at NAU. It made me think that if I ever dropped off my daughter at a secular college, my prayer for her would be, “Lord, hide not your commandments from her!” “She is in a strange place….protect her with Your Spirit and with Your Word!”

When the Psalmist found himself in a strange place, he began to plead with God to reveal his commands. He realizes that without God’s instructions, he would be lost in this world. How do we know the Lord’s guidance? By reading his world. God’s word is a perfect and reliable guide. That is precisely why it is so valuable to us! In verse 12 the psalmist proclaims

12 Blessed are you, O Lord;
teach me your statutes!

When we do things God’s way, it keeps us from sin and it opens us up to the delight of God’s blessings. Look at verse 14:

14 In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches.

David probably wrote this psalm (we don’t know that for sure). He was a man of tremendous wealth, but he says that knowing God is of exceedingly greater value than all the wealth he enjoyed in his kingdom. So how do we know if we are treasuring God’s word?… If we really love God’s commands?

People who know and treasure God’s word obey His commands. Jesus says in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” As we delight in His Word and keep his commands, the result is that He pours out blessing into our lives.

The Natural Result of a Pure Life

So here is the huge pay off. If we love and honor God and follow the instruction He’s given us, then we avoid the pitfalls of sin. Obeying God’s commands lead to God’s blessing. God’s blessing lead to delight.

Delight

When we begin to see God’s blessing flow, we begin to exclaim with the psalmist verse 16, “16 I will delight in your statutes;    I will not forget your word.”

When we delight in something, we become a natural evangelist for that thing. For example, I love Hog Wild BBQ. Hog wild is the best BBQ I’ve ever had. I have had BBQ in other places all over the country and Hog Wild remains my absolute favorite BBQ place. My whole family loves Hog Wild. Every person I’ve ever taken there has loved it. Young people love it. Old people love it. I’m a huge fan of Hog Wild

You might say that I’m a Hog Wild evangelist. That’s easy for me. I testify about Hog Wild because it has brought me delight. I don’t care how they make it taste so good. All I know is that I love it. (And I can’t eat it very often because it makes me fat – so don’t buy me a gift certificate there or you’ll have a fat pastor)

The most natural way for you and I to give a testimony is to talk about what gives us delight. Talking about technical theology or apologetics with unsaved people is not the most effective method for sharing your faith. The most effective testimony for the gospel is to talk about how Jesus has brought you joy and delight. You don’t have to be a theologian to have a powerful testimony. You don’t have to have all the answers.

If God has blessed your life and you’ve found real lasting joy in the midst of the storms of life, that is the best, most compelling testimony that people could ever hear

AND

It is the easiest and most natural testimony to share. Delight naturally leads to proclamation

Proclamation

The psalmist puts it this way, “13 With my lips I declare    all the rules of your mouth.” In other words, if we really find that doing things God’s way results in a blessing, then it will be natural for us to declare it. It would be natural to turn God’s commands into fuel for evangelism.

Life Application

Do you naturally testify about God’s goodness or is you first reaction to be an evangelist for something other than the Lord? You won’t delight in God’s word if you never spend time in God’s word. You won’t enjoy the benefits of God’s blessings if you don’t obey His commands. Obeying God’s commands lead to God’s blessing. God’s blessing lead to delight. When we delight in the Lord, we become natural evangelists for the Lord. We naturally testify about the things that bring us delight.

So what come out of your mouth when you speak? What come out of our mouths stems from what is in our hearts. Jesus says, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matt 12:34b) If you and I do not naturally proclaim the benefits of knowing God, then we have to asses whether (or not) we know the Word and whether (or not) we are actively valuing the Word in our lives.

People who are seeking after the Lord and growing in holiness, become natural evangelists. If God is good to you all the time, then it is fitting and natural to constantly proclaim God’s goodness. In doing so, not only are we a testimony to our unsaved friends and neighbors, but we are a huge encouragement to other believers – especially our young believers who desire to keep their way pure.

 

Teaching Outline

Enjoying God Begins with Purity (v 9, 16)

The Principles for Purity are Universal (v9)

Wise instructions for driving away sin and for pursuing purity (v11)

·      Store God’s Word (v 11, 15)

·      Value God’s Word (v 10, 14, 19)

 

The Natural Result of a Pure Life

·      Delight (v 16)

·      Proclamation (v 13)

 

Application

If you and I do not naturally proclaim the benefits of knowing God, then we have to asses whether (or not) we know the Word and whether (or not) we are actively valuing the Word in our lives.