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Printer Friendly VersionPsalm 119 is the longest chapter in the entire Bible. It stretches
for 176 verses. It is a masterpiece of Hebrew literature. There are 22 letters
in the Hebrew alphabet and in this psalm, each section of eight verses is
devoted to a letter of the alphabet. Each line in a section begins with the
same Hebrew letter. Verses 1 through 8 begin with the Hebrew letter “Aleph”
or “A.” Verses 9 through 16 begin with “Beth” or “B”
and so on all the way through the alphabet.
The entire psalm—and every section—is devoted to
praising, remembering, and emphasizing the “word of God.” Some
have called it a “devotional on the word of God.”
Psalm 119:10-16, “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. 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.”
I’ve been sharing with you these last couple weeks about
great, community impacting, five-star churches—how they are inclusive
and everyone is welcome and how they are intentionally and purposefully evangelistic
with people coming to Christ as a result. Today, I want to share with you
that one of the dominant characteristics of great churches is that they emphasize
the importance of learning God’s Word.
Everyone is shaped by something, by someone, by some influence.
Everyone. No one on the planet is a blank slate, a “tabula rasa”
to borrow a term from John Locke. Each of us is influenced and shaped and
molded by things and people and our environment. Great churches want God’s
Word to be the major shaper of who you are and how you think, and churches
plan for that and program for that. It’s begins in the cradle and continues
to the grave.
Great churches are grounded and founded on the Word! They encourage,
they expect their people to be engaged in the study of the Scriptures. The
norm is learning His Word. To be disengaged from learning God’s Word
is deviant behavior in the life of the five-star church. Why? Why is such
enormous emphasis placed on God’s Word in great churches? What fundamental
conclusions about the study of God’s Word are embraced by churches impacting
and influencing their communities for Christ?
Great churches understand that a passionate, life-changing encounter
with Jesus goes hand-in-hand with a love for God’s Word. They go together,
so learning His Word becomes a pursuit of love. Love for God. Love for His
Word. Love for the Church. These traits and practices are bonded together.
One may come before the other. One may precede and prepare the way for the
other, but they are woven and entwined together.
Learning His Word is a pursuit of love. It doesn’t mean
we’ll always come to God’s Word with great emotions or with feelings
running high. That’s not what we mean by love. What we know is this
is God’s revelation about the truth, life, and the way to heaven. God’s
Word is where it’s found, and it is our loving pursuit to understand
it better and allow it to shape us more and let it form who we are and how
we think.
The New York Times is Scripture for some. It shapes how they
think. For some, the Fox news channel “molds” who they are. For
some, it’s Oswald Chambers or Beth Moore or Rick Warren or somebody
else! For the Psalmist, it was God’s Word. He said, “I’ve
hidden it in my heart.” In other places in Psalm 119, he says, “I’ve
set my heart on your laws,” “I’ve chosen the way of truth,”
“I obey your precepts.” Over and over again it’s clear the
Psalmist is engaged in this “pursuit of love” for God’s
Word. Do you love God’s Word?
A man in Kansas City was severely injured in an explosion of
some kind. He lost his vision. Both of his hands were destroyed. He had just
become a Christian and now he wouldn’t be able to read the Bible.
He heard about a woman in England who read Braille with her
lips. Hoping that he could do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible
in Braille, but in the process, he discovered that the nerve endings in his
lips had been destroyed in the explosion that had disfigured his face. While
he was still trying to read with his lips, he brought the book to his mouth
and his tongue happened to touch some of the Braille characters and he could
feel them. His mind raced with the possibility that he could read the Bible
in Braille using only his tongue!
Now he’s read the Bible at least four times from cover
to cover using Braille characters and his tongue.1
That’s a pursuit of love!
“Born to be battered. Underline it. Circle things. Write
in its margins. Turn down page corners. The more you use it, the more valuable
it gets to be.” You might think somebody’s describing the Bible,
when really it’s an advertisement for the Yellow Pages.
Let me make you a promise. If you’ll pursue learning God’s
Word with a heart of love and dedication, God will begin to do amazing things
in your life. You’ll have insight you’ve never had before. You’ll
have a perspective for living you’ve never experienced before. You’ll
be taught lessons you would have never learned before, that will help you
and protect you and shield you from dangers. God, through His Word, will shape
you and form you and mold you to become the person you could never have dreamed
you would become.
In great churches, not only is learning God’s Word a pursuit
of love, but it’s also a provision for the low times.
Can you remember when and where you learned how to drink from
a straw? I learned at Shoney’s in South Charleston, West Virginia. After
church on Sunday night our family would go to Shoney’s with another
family or two. We’d pat “Big Boy” on the belly and go in
the front door and sit down to a hamburger and a hot-fudge cake. It was there
I learned you can’t keep your straw at the top of the glass and just
leave it there. It’s OK when you start, but eventually the level of
the Coke goes down, and if you leave the straw on the surface you end up with
that annoying slurping sound. It’s not rocket science, but the key is
to put the straw all the way down and drink from the depths of the glass.
That’s kind of the way it is with drawing from the reservoir
of God’s Word. You can’t live on the surface. You can’t
stay up near the top because when the tough times come, when tragedy comes,
when disappointment comes, when grief comes, what are you going to draw upon?
Fred Craddock tells the story of going to the hospital to see
a lady from his church who was facing surgery. She had never been in the hospital
before and she was having major surgery. She was a nervous wreck. She wanted
him to pray with her, which he did. As he spent some time there in her room
trying to minister to her, he noticed on the stand beside her bed a stack
of books and magazines—tabloid, Hollywood-type stuff. He said, “I
thought to myself: There’s not a calorie in that whole stack to help
her through this experience.” She had no place to dip down into a reservoir
and come up with something—a word of comfort, a phrase of promise, a
thought of provision. Nothing. Just empty!
God’s Word is a reservoir. It is the provision for the
low times. When you need a word of encouragement, when you need direction
or wisdom, when you need help to overcome the obstacle that is too big and
too high, what will you have hidden in your heart and mind? Will it be Reader’s
Digest or Sports Illustrated or People? Or, will it be the life-changing power
of God’s Word?
Learning His Word is a pursuit of love and it is provision for
the low times, but you should also realize it’s a practice for life.
Learning God’s Word is not just for children. It’s not just for
teenagers, as if at 13 or 18, you can graduate from learning the Scriptures.
Great churches encourage, emphasize, and emphatically insist that hiding God’s
Word and allowing God’s Word to be a lamp to your feet and a light to
your path is a lifelong process and practice!
The Scriptures are like a map. The map tells you how to get
to a certain destination. But just looking at the map won’t automatically
transport you to Arizona or England or Peru. To get there you have to make
the effort, pay the price, take the time for travel, and stay at it until
you arrive. Chuck Swindoll says, “God’s map is reliable and available.
It is also clear and direct. But there is no hocus-pocus in its pages that
automatically sends its readers by way of a magic carpet.”2
It just doesn’t happen that way. Great churches teach
their people that learning God’s Word is a lifelong process and practice.
There are no shortcuts. There is no easy way to be shaped by the Word. There
must be devotion to it and dedication to it and determination for it to happen.
God’s Word!
David Livingstone was the first European to discover Victoria
Falls in the heart of Africa. He was the first person to make a transcontinental
journey across Africa. But he didn’t go to Africa to be an explorer
or a discoverer of new things. David Livingstone sailed from Scotland and
made his way to Africa to be a missionary—to tell people about Jesus.
When he got there, he was loaded down with supplies. He didn’t
really know where he was going. He didn’t really know how long it would
take. He didn’t know what would be involved. A significant portion of
his supplies was books. He started with three packs of books—almost
100 books. Altogether, the packs weighed 180 pounds. Of course, he had people
helping him carry all these supplies.
By the time the group had gone inland 300 miles, Livingstone
had to lighten the load. He had to get rid of some of the things he thought
were necessary when he began. The fatigue of those carrying the packs demanded
some things had to be set aside. Some of those things were books. As Livingstone
and his group continued to travel, his library grew smaller and smaller. When
he arrived at his destination, every single piece of his library had been
eliminated, except one book. As you would imagine, his Bible is the only book
that remained in his possession.
Great churches are filled with people whose lives are shaped by the Word. “O God, let us be that kind of people, people of the Book!”
1 Robert Sumner, The Wonders of the Word of God (Vero Beach,
FL: Biblical Evangelism Press, 1969).
2 Charles Swindoll, Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1980).