INTRODUCTION
I know that just about everyone here has a favorite Bible verse that they have either memorized or can paraphrase it. What are some of your favorites? (Congregation
participation)
I have several favorites from John 3:16 & 17; Romans 10:9; Philippians 4:6 and so on. But recently God has placed a verse from Psalm 119 on my heart and I like it so much that I have put it
on the banner screen of my cell phone. It's Psalm 119:73. I like how it's stated in the New Living Translation although the NIV is fine. In the first part of the verse the Psalmist is acknowledging God as his Creator. He says, “You made me; You created me...” He knows that God is the God of all creation and that he, a mere man, was not just
an accident of nature. He acknowledges that God made him on purpose. What a thought that is, to be hand-made by God himself. Talk
about a wild Arts & Crafts project that was. But in the very next sentence
the psalmist acknowledges that he is probably not the 'sharpest tack in the box'. Here
he says, “...Now give the sense to follow your commands.” He knows that he doesn’t do what God wants him to do all the time and he's asking
God, his creator, to help him out. That's me in a nutshell. I need God's help because like the psalmist, I don't do what God wants me to do all the time.
What I would like for us to do today is to take a look at some the power that is contained in His Word. I would like to take a quick look into Psalms 119 and some other verses in His word to try to get a understanding
of just how powerful God’s Word really is. Now I am not talking about the
“Feel-good” power that we hear some people say we get by claiming the promises found in the Bible and that we
will all live a happy “promise-filled” life if we just claim it. The
power that I am talking about is the power of God that is revealed in His Word that changes lives, the power that moves us
from the dark, sin-filled world that we used to live in and places us into His Son-Ship where we receive the light of God
through faith in His Son Jesus. That's real power.
What I would like to do is start off by going through some of Psalm 119 and see what is said and done. In the first five verses the psalmist declares that those who follow God's instructions, His commands,
and search for Him are joyful. Psalm 119:1-2 (NLT) “Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the commands of the Lord.
Joyful are those who obey His laws and search for Him with all their hearts.” The word joyful in the Hebrew is 'eh-sher' which means
blessed, happy – how happy are those... Then in verse 3 we see that they
don't give in either, “They do not compromise with evil, and they walk only
in His paths.” Wow, if only I could be like that - but I am like the psalmist in this area. Verses 4 –
6 say how most of us probably feel. “You have charged us to keep Your commandments carefully. Oh, that my
actions would consistently reflect your decrees! Then I will not be ashamed when
I compare my life with your commandments.” The psalmist knew that
he didn’t measure up to God's standard that is found in His word. He knew
that when he stacked how he lived his life against how God wanted him to live his life, it wasn't a very pretty comparison. How is your life when you compare it next to how God wants you to live? I know that we sometimes think that we are not doing too badly when we compare ourselves against how the
majority of the world lives. But against God's Word how do we really stack
up? The psalmist knew that he fell way short and he is telling God that he wants
to do better. What about us? Do
we want to do better or do we just want to continue to live our lives just as we always have?
I know that I want, I need to do better.
In the business world when a person makes a mistake or some corrections
need to be made in how things are done, usually a plan is developed on what to do and how to make those corrections, along
with how to avoid making the same mistakes again. That's not just good business
practice, its good common sense. The psalmist acknowledges that he falls short
and has made mistakes and now here he is displaying some good common sense, the same common sense that I wish more people
today would show. He develops a corrective action plan. Take a look at some of the changes he wants to make. Verses
7 & 8 say, “As I learn your righteous regulations, I will thank You by
living as I should! I will obey your decrees.
Please don't give up on me!” So his action plan is to learn God's word and live by it.
KNOWING GOD'S WORD
He knows that he must learn and follow God's Word and the more he learns, the more he can live as God intended him
to do. He knows that there is the power in God's word to live by. But for us to understand the power that is in God's word we must know His word. God gave instructions to the nation of Israel about learning His word.
In Deuteronomy 11:18-21 God says, “Commit yourselves completely to
these words of mine. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your
forehead. Teach them to your children.
Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting
up again. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that
as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the Lord swore to give you ancestors.”
Now I don't advocate that you literally write scripture verses
on the back of your hands or tie some in little boxes onto your heads. But what
we need to do is internalize God's word, not just in our hearts but in
our everyday lives and in everything that we do.
Psalm 119:11 says, “I
have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”
Now I love God’s Word and can love reading it. I love it but I need
to do more, I need to learn it and act on it. We have to get God's word from
our head into our heart. I need to make it a part of me.
HOW TO LEARN GOD'S WORD
So how do we go about learning God's word? How do I hide it in my heart? Now I don't know about how good
your memory is but mine is about as good as a sieve is at holding water. It just
leaks right out. I have a difficult time in remembering what I had for breakfast. I read the Bible but sometimes it goes in through the eye and is good for a little
while but then it leaks right out. But the psalmist gives us some good advice
on how to remember God's word. In verse s 13 - 16 of Psalm 119 he says, “I have recited aloud all the laws you have given us. I have
rejoiced in your decrees as much as in riches. I will study your commandments,
and reflect on your ways. I will delight in your principals and not forget your
word.”
One thing that we have gotten away from in the majority of churches is the reading aloud scripture. How many of us read the Bible out loud during our personal study?
I think this is something that we probably need to do more of. In my personal
Bible reading, I have found that reading out loud helps me to better understand what God is trying to impart to me. I find that when I read out lout, I think more about what I am reading and I try to hear what it is saying
to me instead of just reading words off a page. Reading out loud seems to make
God's Word more vibrant and alive. Then the more that I think and reflect on
what I have read the better I understand it. It makes my time with God more meaningful.
The psalmist knows that God's word contains the power that he needs to live his life in a consistent manner for God. He know it contains the power he needs to walk the road that God has placed before
him.
POWER IN GOD'S WORD
So what is some of the power that can be found in the Word of God? Well,
first we need to know that God's word is stable.
We are living in an ever changing world. Things change so fast that
it’s hard to keep up. Take telephones
for example. When I was growing up, we had a rotary dial phone that was on a
party-line. Then we moved up to the push button phone and then to the miracle of technology - the cordless phone. Cordless phones, man you couldn’t do better than the cordless phone.
You could actually walk around the house and still talk on the phone and not be attached to a wall. That was cool. But before you knew it we could make calls
from our cars using a bag phone. Then we got the first ‘cell’ phone. It was about the size of a WWII walkie-talkie.
It was huge. But things change and now we’ve got phones where you
can check your email, take pictures, do banking, buy movie tickets, and on and on. There
is something called 3G and 4G, whatever that is. I thing it has something to
do with gravity. Everything is changing in our world in the blink of an eye. They are now talking about 3D television where you don’t need 3D glasses. I can’t keep up all the changes. But
one thing that has never changed and will never change is God’s Word. We
need stability in an unstable world, we need God’s Word. It’s stable. Isaiah 40:8 tells us this, “The grass
withers, and the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever.” God’s
word is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It’s constant and unchanging. God's word is powerfully stable.
Next, His Word has the power to keep us pure. We live in a world where
we are constantly bombarded by the things of this world. The things that can
separate us from our walk with God and keep our focus on the things of this world instead of where it needs to be. Now that is not saying that everything that captures our attention is necessarily bad. But when they begin to replace our time with God or they go against God's plan for us then problems begin. We are contantly assailed with the idea that times change and our old traditional
thoughts on family and marriage, on how we are to conduct our lives, even how and who we worship are old fashioned
and no longer relevant. We are told that if we resist the change that is on the
up-sweep, we are bigoted and narrow-minded and could be in jeopardy of breaking the law.
So if we know that what is going on around us is not good for us, but we are inundated, assailed constantly by this
how do we separate what is good, right and pure? Psalm 119:9 gives us the direction
we need to follow. “How can
a young person stay pure? How can we keep ourselves unstained by the
distractions of this world that and stay on track with how God wants us to live our lives?
“By obeying your word and following it's rules”
The NIV version says it this way, “By living according to your word.” We need to
be in God's word, not only learning what it says, but by living our lives by it and following and dong what it says. James 1:22-25 says, “Do not merely
listen to the word, and deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror
and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
But the man who looks intently
into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it –
he will be blessed in what he does.” If you just spend a little bit of time in God's word and not apply it to your life, it's kinda like a screen
door on a submarine – the water of this world can and will still rush in. There
is an old saying, 'Put a penny in and get a penny out, put a nickel in and get a nickle out'.
The more that you put into studing God's word the more you get out of it. What
we need to do is study intently and deeply God's Word and apply it to our lives. God
's Word can and does show us how to keep ourselve untainted and pure from the things that abound in this world.
Now we also need to know that God's word is alive and powerful. Believe it or not, a lot of people are acutally afraid or unwilling to delve into
the Bible. But why? Because God's
word is alive, powerful, and revelant. It has the power to see deep down inside
of us and expose what we want to keep hidden, even from ourselves. But nothing
is hidden from God. Hebrews 4:12 tells us, “For
the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife,
cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what
we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from him. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes. This is the
God to whom we must explain all that we have done.” (NLT) You might
think that you can hide from yourself but you cannot hide from God.
Not only does Scripture have the power to cut deep into the very
depth of our lives but it also has the power to illuminate the paths of our lives. We
have a journey that has been set before us in our life and when we try to follow that journey on our own we find that it's
like driving a car in the terrible storm in the middle of the night with no headlights or windshield wipers. We either drive off the road and crash or take a wrong turn and wind up in a destination that we really
didn't want to go to in the first place. But God's Word is the original Tom Tom. It's a road map for life and it illuminates and highlights the road we need to be
on and where the curves and bumps are. Psalm 119:105 tells us, Your word is a lamp for my feet, and a light for my path.”
Now think about this verse. It's a lamp for my feet. A lamp will show you where you are. It shows you each step
that you need to take so you don't fall off the path that you're on. Each day
is a new step, each encounter is a new step and His Word shows us how to take that step each day. But it's also a light for our path. A light that shines out
to illuminate the road before us. It shows us our direction of travel. It gives us the direction that we need to take in order to complete the journey that God has placed before
us. God's word has the power to guide our lives.
Not only is His word stable and have the power to keep us pure,
to see deep inside ourselves, and give us light for our lives but it contains the power to help bring people to the saving
knowledge of Jesus himself. In Romans 1:16 Paul tells us, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes...”
(NIV) It's contains the power of God himself. How more powerful does something
need to be for people to take it seriously? But you need to believe it. You need to have faith in it. But how? How do I get that kind of faith? Where
does that kind of faith come from? The faith that heals the body and the soul;
the faith that is powerful enough to move mountains yet gentle enough to wipe tears from the hopeless? Romans 10:17, “...faith comes from hearing the message,
and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (NIV) We gain and grow our faith through hearing the message
contained in God's Word. We need, we must be reading, studying, and internalizing
this message, that is contained in God's love letter.
There is power in God's Word;
•
It's powerfully stable. (Isaiah 40:8)
•
It's power gives us the ability to stay pure. (Psalm 119:9)
•
It's power cuts straight to our hearts and souls. It opens us up to His true love, grace and mercy. (Hebrews 4:12)
•
It has the power to guide and order our steps on this journey through life.
(Psalm 119:105)
•
It is the power of God for everyone's salvation. (Romans 1:16)
We
need God's word in us daily. Our lives are like a car. On Sunday we fill up on God and His excitement and then throughout the week our tank begins to run low
and sometimes we even run out of gas. We go to church and listen to the Sunday
Sermon – but that's the 'low test' gas, the 89 percent octain. But by reading
and studing God's word daily, getting into the meat of His word – that's the high test, the super octain. We become super-charged by God's word. When we read, study, internalize, and put into gear (put into practice) God's word we go further, faster, and more
efficently than just by being 'spoon-fed' on Sundays.
Psalm 119:9-16 says; “How
can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word and following your rules. I have tried my best to find you – don't let me wander from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your principals. I have
recited aloud all the laws you have given us. I have rejoiced in your decrees
as much as in riches. I will study your commandments and reflect on your ways. I will delight in your principles and not forget your word.” Read God's word, internalize God's word, then live God's power in your life.
