Thy Word
Download MP3If you would, turn in your bibles to Psalm 119. I I have been gone for so long, I do feel like I need to introduce myself. I'm Joel. I'm the senior pastor here. I will confess that it's over the last month or 2, and they've stuck with it this entire time without having ever met the senior pastor.
Joel Brooks:So all I can do is disappoint. I I know I know if you leave, I know the reason why, and he is standing right here. Seriously, thank you for your prayers, for me and my family over these last 2 months. Just having that time away was a tremendous gift, a gift we did not deserve, and the Lord was just so good to us during that time. And I just have to say it is really, really good to be back.
Joel Brooks:I was ready to come back a long time ago. We all were. The Christian life is meant to be lived in community, not in isolation, and I missed my people. I mean, I I I grow so much through Your words of encouragement, through your prayers, through your hugs, through listening to you sing or listening to you cry. I need to be a part of that.
Joel Brooks:The Lord uses His church, to grow up His people. So it is it's good to be back. It's really good to be back. I'll talk more, maybe in the coming weeks about some of the things that the Lord's taught me during my time away, but this morning, I want us to look at Psalm 119, in which Sri really did a fantastic introduction. Psalm 119, we'll begin reading in verse 9.
Joel Brooks:How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart, I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Joel Brooks:Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth, and the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes.
Joel Brooks:I will not forget your word. Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I am a sojourner on the earth Hide not your commandments from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.
Joel Brooks:You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from your commandments. Take away from me scorn and contempt for I have kept your testimonies. Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors. My soul clings to the dust.
Joel Brooks:Give me life according to your word. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Our Father, we do ask that through Your Spirit You would open our eyes that we might behold wondrous things from Your Word before us, that we would hear and we would understand and we would be transformed to look more like your son, Jesus. He is the reason that we are here.
Joel Brooks:He is the reason we have this new life, we have salvation, we have forgiveness. He is the reason our hearts are full of joy and full of worship and we ask that through looking at your word, we will come to understand him better. May my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, Amen. So this is the last Sunday in our series that is going been going through the book of Psalms, And we end with this magnificent Psalm, Psalm 119, which is all about the word of God.
Joel Brooks:Now, a a lot of words can be used to describe this Psalm, but perhaps the best word is this. It is long. It is really, really long. It's by far the longest psalm that we have in the book of Psalms. It's the longest chapter in the Bible.
Joel Brooks:Just for fun, last night, I read it out loud. It took me 19 minutes just to read through this chapter, and keep in mind this was supposed to be sung, so then even longer. It's like 2 Hillsong songs long. You'd have to have a lot of worship endurance to get through this. But it's it's more than just a long Psalm, it's also the most artistic and the most poetic of all the Psalms.
Joel Brooks:If you look at it in your Bible, just the way that the author structured it is beautiful. He broke it up into 21 sections. Each one of these sections begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, bet, gimel, daled, hey. And then in each one of these sections, there is 8 verses underneath, and and each one of these 8 verses begins with that corresponding Hebrew letter. It's very poetic how he does this, and he really wants to to show us the a to z of God's word.
Joel Brooks:And the reason he is doing all of this is is because he's so consumed with the word of God. It has moved his heart so much. He wants to pull out every artistic stop. He wants to go as long as he could possibly go just to show us the majesty of scripture. It's simply breathtaking before Him.
Joel Brooks:Like a diamond, He's holding up and he just wants to see every little angle, every little facet of light that comes through. At one point, he even says in verse 96, you know, I've seen a lot of perfections, but they all have limits. But the word of God has no limit, no limit. Because of the length of this, there is a lot of things we could pull out and look at. I don't have the time to do that, so I want us to just look at 4 things that the psalmist brings before us to gaze at.
Joel Brooks:He wants to show us the authority of God's word. He wants to show us how his word is our life. He wants to show us how God's word should be our delight and how His word also should be our hope. So the authority, the life, the delight, and the hope of the word of God. Let's look at the authority.
Joel Brooks:There's a lot of verses you could pull on to kind of teach through the authority of Scripture from this Psalm, but I like verse 19 just because it's a little unusual and it stands out to me. I am a sojourner on the earth, Hide not your commandments from me. It's a little unusual, isn't it? I'm a sojourner, therefore don't hide your commandments. He's saying, I'm just somebody who's just passing through.
Joel Brooks:I'm just passing through this life, so I really need you to reveal to me your word. Have any of you ever visited another country in which you have been a sojourner, you've been traveling through, and there's this, you know, at least the 1st week, you're really confused. You don't know what the laws are. You don't know how people are supposed to behave. You you need somebody to come alongside and really show you.
Joel Brooks:And depending which country you are in, there's some strange things out there. I was looking up some of these things, and, did you know that in Thailand, it's illegal to step on money? So if you were to drop anything and the coin's running away, you're not allowed to step on it. Somebody's got to tell you that. In Singapore, you can't chew gum unless you have a prescription.
Joel Brooks:So half of us would be arrested, you know, probably. They probably don't do that, but, in Samoa, this is one of my favorites, it's illegal to forget your wife's birthday. I would love to see how they passed that law. Some really angry wife, you know, it's like, we need this on the books. There's a lot of funny laws out there, but some are pretty serious.
Joel Brooks:If you go to England, you're gonna need to know which side of the road you need to drive on. If you go there and you just think, I'm gonna do what comes natural to me. I'm gonna go what I think is right, then you're gonna harm yourself and you're gonna harm others unless somebody tells you the law, tells you how you're supposed to live. And that's what the psalmist is driving at. He realizes like he's in a world he did not create and he's lost in it.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't even understand it and he is likely going to do things that will harm himself. He's gonna do things that are gonna gonna harm other people unless God reveals to him His law, how to live, unless there's some authoritative word given to him. And listen, at a much deeper level, we are all sojourners in this life. We're all just passing through, trying to figure things out and left on our own, we never will. Think of it this way, right now, there are things that you are holding on to that you you are convinced are true.
Joel Brooks:You really believe it, that it's true, and yet 20 to 30 years from now, you will look back on that and be utterly embarrassed. You will not be able to believe you actually believed that, and I'm not talking just about fashion like UGG boots or, you know, skinny jeans or, you know, jeggings, which 20 years from now, hopefully, we're gonna look back and we're just gonna laugh. That's why I go with the timeless classic plaid from Sam's. It will always, always be there. No, no, but there's the deep things, the things we even really care about 20, 30 years from now, people will probably laugh at us for believing that.
Joel Brooks:And the reason we know this is because all I have to do is look at what the people believed passionately 20 or 30 years ago. I'm like, really? Read the old opinion editorials and you're shocked at what people believed 20 or 30 years ago, and they were shocked at what the people believed before them. We're we're we're so strapped to our culture which is ever changing. What is the authoritative word that will always be the authoritative word?
Joel Brooks:Well, it's scripture. It's scripture. And that's why the the psalmist here is pleading. He's like, I I don't want to be just so bound to the cultural sands that are forever shifting. Tell me what will last.
Joel Brooks:My culture says this about money. My culture says this about sex. My culture says this about marriage. My culture says this about justice or about politics, and yet I know these things are gonna just come and go. What does your word say?
Joel Brooks:I really wanna live faithfully in the right way. I don't wanna do harm to myself or harm to others. Teach me. God's word is authoritative. We'll look more at this as we go through John chapter 17.
Joel Brooks:2nd, the word of God is our life. Verse 25, my soul clings to the dust. Give me life according to your word. Verse 37, give me life according to your ways. Verse 40, your promise gives me life.
Joel Brooks:You could go on and on and on, but but the psalmist, he keeps saying that it's God's Word that brings life to him. Now I know when you hear that what some of you might be thinking. And if you're not thinking, I'm gonna go with it because I have a point to answer whatever you might possibly be thinking. But some of you are probably thinking, I thought it was the Spirit's role to bring life, not scripture. I thought it was a spirit.
Joel Brooks:Isn't it the spirit that gives us a new heart? Isn't it the spirit of God that works transformation in us, regenerates us? How can mere words bring life? I'm glad you asked. When you study through Psalm 119, something you will begin to notice is that the psalmist, he speaks about scripture the same way the New Testament writers speak about the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:He says the same things that the New Testament writers say about the Holy Spirit. Let me just give you a few. In verse 9, he says that God's word guards us. 2nd Timothy 114 says it is that it is the Holy Spirit who guards us. In verse 25, he says God's word gives us life, yet in John 6 Jesus says, it is the Spirit that gives us life.
Joel Brooks:In verse 28, the psalmist says, strengthen me according to your word, but Paul in Ephesians 3 that it would be the Holy Spirit who would strengthen us in our inner being. Verse 43 says that we are to put our hope in God's rules, yet Paul says in Romans 5 that our hope is the Holy Spirit living in us. Verse 49 says that scripture is our comfort, yet as we have seen through our study of John, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the great comforter. The psalmist says that we are supposed to walk in the way of the law and yet we find in Galatians that we are to keep in step with the spirit. You could keep going on and on, but the way that the the psalmist writes about scripture is the same way that the New Testament writers write about the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:And over and over again, you read this. And I feel that I I really must make this point because I know that there are there are Christian circles in which you are going to find people that are just, you know, all about the Bible. There's gonna be the the frozen chosen, and there's just the rules, and there's just the law, and they really don't know what to do with that third person of the Trinity. And then you have, you know, your your charismatic, your crazy charismatic, who are just nothing but fear, spirit, spirit, and they really don't want anything to do with scripture. And we have those camps within Christian circles, but there is no divide.
Joel Brooks:When you read through God's word, you find that God's word and His Holy Spirit are inseparable. They're wed together. If you want to be filled with the spirit of God, you must be filled with His word. And let me say it also this way, if you want to be filled with his word, you're going to also have to rely on his spirit. The spirit of God is vital to us reading our Bibles.
Joel Brooks:Otherwise, we will only gain information but never transformation. And we don't need more information, we need transformation. And over and over again, the psalmist is pleading with the Lord. Lord, will you give me understanding into your word? That's why he says in verse 18, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
Joel Brooks:Verse 27, make me understand the way of your precepts. Verse 34, give me understanding that I may keep Your law. He keeps praying and praying, give me understanding. Open my open my eyes, but it's not so he could get new information. He has more information than he can ever possibly enjoy.
Joel Brooks:What he is asking is that God would allow him to see his word through his heart. Let me understand it. Let me delight in it and savor it. Let me be formed by what I read. He's praying for heart transformation wrought by the spirit of God through the word of God.
Joel Brooks:So when people come up to me and they ask, you know, I've I've got my 15 minute quiet time and, what should I do? Should should I spend my time reading the Bible or should I spend my time praying? And my answer is always, yes. Yes. Spend your time prayerfully reading God's word.
Joel Brooks:You're just gonna be astounded at what the Lord brings up, you know. You'll come across, you know, maybe one of the Ten Commandments, Thou shall not murder. Well you know what that means, you know. Don't go kill your neighbor, all right? But as you're praying about this, you're saying, Lord, open up my eyes.
Joel Brooks:Open up the eyes of my heart for this. You're thinking, well, God, you're you're all about life, and and not only am I not killing my neighbor, am I giving my neighbor life? And you begin to think of specific people and you're like, how can I give life to this person? Do I need to invite them over for dinner? Do I need to take them a meal?
Joel Brooks:Do I need to give them a word of encouragement? What can I do? And so what it is is the Holy Spirit is beginning to take His word and bring transformation to you. To where it's not just understanding but transforming in the way you live. We need the Spirit of God to read the Word of God.
Joel Brooks:3rd, let's look how the Word of God is our delight. The word of God is our delight. Okay. So I'm on my last day on my sabbatical. I'm in Montana.
Joel Brooks:This is this past Monday and, I have hiked myself out. I can't hike anymore. My feet are swollen, they're blistered, they're bloody and I'm like, I I'm not going on another hike. So what can I do on my last day here? I don't want to just sit around, you know, watch the Olympics or whatever.
Joel Brooks:I'm fidgety. I gotta do something. And so a friend of mine who lives there, he calls me up and he says, Hey, you want to go on a horseback ride with me? I gotta do a resupply run, so I'm gonna bring a bunch of horses and supplies to these forestry workers and be gone for the better part of a day. Why don't you come with me?
Joel Brooks:I was like, perfect. Absolutely perfect. Horseback ride through the mountains with a friend. Great day to spend, on my last day of my sabbatical. And so he picks me up, we take the horses in the trailer over to the trailhead.
Joel Brooks:We get there, we're loading up all the horses, and I just kind of see him stop and he's just kinda looking around. He's like, man, I forgot your horse. Like, it's like, you forgot what? He's like, I forgot your horse. Like, I I I didn't bring enough horses.
Joel Brooks:I mean, that's that's different like forgetting your phone. This is a £1,000 animal, you know, like, it's kind of the the essential thing to a horseback ride is a horse. And he's like, man, I'm sorry. I just I just forgot it. I'm like but he had to go on his resupply mission, so I said, fine.
Joel Brooks:I'll just stay here. There's a big boulder over there. I'm just gonna kinda sit on it. I brought I packed with me a a Jack Reacher novel. Alright?
Joel Brooks:I'm just gonna veg, Jack Reacher for about 5, 6 hours. You know, I'll finish it. So you go do your thing, and he's like, sorry, man. And so he left. And, so so after he left with all the horses, I go and I I sit on the rock and I bring out my backpack and I don't have the Jack Reacher novel.
Joel Brooks:I had left it in the truck, which was locked. All I had was my Bible. My bible, 5 or 6 hours and all I have is my bible. I'm not John Calvin. I'm not Saint Augustine.
Joel Brooks:I wasn't thrilled at the prospects. Alright? I'm just I'm just putting it out there. 5, 6 hours with my Bible. I'm like, okay.
Joel Brooks:Well I am preaching on Sunday, Psalm 119. Let's get this thing out. Let me start working through this. You know, I gotta I gotta prepare for Sunday and trying to see how things work together. And God's like, don't prepare.
Joel Brooks:Delight. You've got time. Just delight in my word. I'm like, okay. Alright.
Joel Brooks:I I can see how you set this up. I'm gonna delight. And I I just I just started to read and and feel my heart and my affections getting warm. After a couple of hours, I was done. Once again, I'm not Saint Augustine.
Joel Brooks:I was done. I was like, all right, I'm gonna go have my lunch, and so I opened up my pack and, my friend had packed my lunch and taken it with him. So all I had was a water bottle. I have water and I have the word, and that is it. And I am stuck there, and I'm like, I see what you're doing.
Joel Brooks:I get it. Alright. Alright. I know. You want me to feast on your word.
Joel Brooks:That's it. It's like, you're not gonna you're you're not gonna pull that by me. I know. And it's like, fine. I will feast on your word.
Joel Brooks:And so I started reading Psalm 119 again slowly, verse by verse chewing on it. I'm just gonna chew this and chew this, and then my heart got even more warm, my affections even more stirred the more slowly and meditatively I read this. So I was just led into worship. God had to force me in this, force me into really slowly delighting in Him through His word. Over and over again through the Psalm, you find the words delight, you find the word love.
Joel Brooks:As a matter of fact, some of these verses would make you blush if the author wasn't talking about scripture. If he was talking about another person, you'd be blushing. It'd be kind of embarrassing. Just listen to how this sounds when you replace the word he uses for scripture with just the words your. Alright?
Joel Brooks:A lot of you husbands don't talk to your wives this way. Okay? My soul is consumed with longing for you all the day. I cling to you. Oh, let your faithful love come to me.
Joel Brooks:You are my comfort in affliction. I have seen a limit to all of perfection, but you are limitless. How sweet you are to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. I lay awake all night thinking of you. It sounds like the Song of Solomon, I mean, when you're reading this.
Joel Brooks:This person delights and loves scripture so much. Reading the word is not a duty to him, it is a delight. And he can use all of this language of longing, because he's not just longing for words, this isn't an academic pursuit. He's reading the scripture so that he might know his god. One thing I I noticed, probably after reading through this the 7th or 8th time that day, One of the things I noticed is that every verse, all 176 verses, have a reference to God in them, every one of them.
Joel Brooks:And in these 176 verses, the psalmist never just says things like the word, the commandments, the precepts, or the ways. It is always your word, your commandments, thy precepts, your ways. It is all tied into a relationship here. There's not just this objective like or subjective commandment that's out there to be studied. It is always tied to the one who is giving it to him in relationship saying, know my heart.
Joel Brooks:It's an invitation into relationship. And so as I look back on my last day in Montana, I realized that God did not cause my my friend to forget all those things, me forget all things all those things just so I can do homework. He was God was calling me on a date. He was wooing me and He was pursuing me. He wanted me to see His heart and to delight in Him.
Joel Brooks:Lastly, let's look at how the Word of God is our hope. The Word of God is our hope. You probably saw this last week when we went through Psalm 22. I confess I've not listened to any of the summer series. I will get to that, but I know last week that we looked at Psalm 22 or you looked at Psalm 22.
Joel Brooks:And when Jesus was on the cross, how He He went to the psalter to find a voice for His despair. And really, it was only the word of God was that was the only place he could find any hope because where else was he supposed to find it? He didn't have any possessions with him, any comforts, they're all gone. He couldn't look to the justice system because it had turned against him. He didn't have any friends because they had all left him, and he felt completely forsaken by his father.
Joel Brooks:Jesus literally has nothing, nothing on which to base his hope except for the Word of God. And so when he's hanging there all in darkness, he cries out both the first lines of Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then he cries out the last lines as well, saying, you wanna understand what's going on here, read Psalm 22. This is my hope. And as you know that most of Psalm 22 is all about despair, it's about forsakenness, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Joel Brooks:But towards the end, the psalm turns and it's about vindication, it's about victory, it's about life. And when Jesus is quoting Psalm 22, he's saying, yes, this is dark now, but I know how it's going to end because God's word has promised me this. Has promised me victory when I can see nothing else. And so the last line of Psalm 22 reads, God has done it. The victory is so secure it says he has done it or he has completed it or he has finished it.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus' last words on the cross were, It is finished. Psalm 22 from the beginning to the last completed. I hope in the word. And of course, Jesus's father always keeps his word always keeps his word and raised his son to life. Let me just say that there are times when there will be nothing else for you to trust in.
Joel Brooks:When you look around and all you see is darkness, all you see is despair, but you have God's word and you just cling to those promises that God is for you, and he is not against you, and God is giving you life. God always keeps His promises. I wanna end by us just looking at the last verse of the psalm. I don't think it's there in your worship guide. I wasn't certain if I was gonna end here, but want us to look there.
Joel Brooks:I feel it's appropriate. Verse 176. After you read through a 175 verses of this psalmist gushing about the word of God, how he hasn't strayed from it, he holds to it, he clings to it, thinks about it day night. He's longing for it. He's living by it.
Joel Brooks:He's stepping with it. He has not wavered in his devotion towards this law. That is all you hear for a 175 verses. And then you come to this. And it is not at all how you expect the psalm to close out.
Joel Brooks:Psalm 176, I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments. It's not the summary verse that you would expect. I tell you, I chewed and chewed and chewed on this verse here. I can't tell you how many times, actually over the years, I've I've thought about this verse because it honestly just throws a whole wrench into the psalm.
Joel Brooks:But I'm drawn to it. I I love I love the raw honesty that's there. I love the vulnerability that's there. And I love it because I am always there. I always find myself there.
Joel Brooks:Like I want a delight, I want to do all these things, but so often I'm wanna I'm this is me, I've gone astray like a lost sheep. Let's just be honest. I've just gone astray. Will you seek me out? Here, the psalmist, he finds himself in some place of failure.
Joel Brooks:We don't know if it's moral failure. We don't know if it's just he he no longer has any desire for God. We We really don't know what it is, but he's in this kind of vulnerable desperate position and he feels himself perishing. And out of this failure, he cries this little prayer, just this little one, says, I have strayed. Will you seek me?
Joel Brooks:Will you seek me? And the only reason he even knows to pray that is because somewhere deep in here, God's word is still there and he is being reminded, God is a God of compassion. God is a God of mercy. God is a God who goes after his lost sheep. It was in there and he remembers it.
Joel Brooks:And so with whatever faith he has, he just says, Lord, will you seek me? Because I know that's the kind of God you are because I I remember that. I remember that. Perhaps this is where some of you are today. You've heard me talk about how the Word of God is authoritative, how it gives life.
Joel Brooks:It is our delight. It is our hope, and yet here you are thinking, I know that's that's true. It's it's it's all true, yet I just feel so distant from God right now. If this is you, just call out to him to seek you. And remember that the living word, the living word, whom you have come to know through the written Word, He will never leave you nor forsake you.
Joel Brooks:The written word has called Jesus the Good Shepherd and he goes after his lost sheep, and you know that. Therefore, he gives you the confidence to say, I have strayed. Will you seek me? Will you seek me? Because let me tell you right now, the Lord longs to be with you, to have a date with you.
Joel Brooks:He longs to woo your heart and to create in you a new life. Pray with me. Our father, I ask that in this moment through your spirit speaking your word to us that affections would be lit. Lord, I know that there are some people here who definitely identify with that last verse. They have strayed like a lost sheep.
Joel Brooks:And so right now, trusting in your word, we are calling out, pursue us, find us, draw us close to your heart. At this time through your spirit and your word, ignite affections in us towards you. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
