Growing In The Bible Series

SERMON OUTLINE:

(A). What the Bible Is:

• (1). Water for cleansing (vs 9).

• (2). Wealth and treasure (vs 14, 72, 127, 162).

• (3). A companion and friend (vs 24).

• (4). A song to sing (vs 54).

• (5). Honey (vs 103).

(B). What the Bible Does:

• (1). It blesses (vs 1-2).

• (2). It gives life (vs 25, 37, 40, 50, 88, 93).

• (3). It gives strength (vs 28).

• (4). It gives freedom (vs 45).

• (5). It imparts wisdom (vs 66, 97-104).

• (6). It gives comfort (vs 50, 76, 82, 92).

• (7). It gives direction (vs 133).

(C) What We Must Do with the Bible:

• (1). Love it (vs 97, 159).

• (2). Prize it (vs 72, 128).

• (3). Study it (vs 7, 12, 26-27).

• (4). Memorize it (vs 11).

• (5). Meditate on it (vs 15, 23, 48, 78, 97, 99, 148).

• (6). Trust it (vs 42).

• (7). Obey it (vs 1-8).

• (8). Declare it (verses 13, 26).

SERMON BODY:.

Ill:

• Joke: A Church invited a preacher to come and ‘preach with a view’,

• They sat and listened and the best thing they liked about his sermon;

• Was that it was only 10 minutes long.

• They had a quick vote among themselves;

• And they immediately called him as their new Pastor.

• When it came to his first week in the new church;

• To their surprise he preached a 30 minute sermon.

• The following week his sermon was almost 2 hours long.

• So the leaders of the Church decided to meet with him and asked him to explain.

• Why his sermons have been getting longer and longer and longer!

The Pastors response was:

• The first time the committee heard him preach,

• He had a new set of dentures in his mouth that hurt him terribly,

• So he could barely preach 10 minutes and had to stop talking because of the pain.

• The second time he preached, he said that his dentures felt fine;

• And so he preached a normal 30 minute sermon.

• The Church leaders said,

• “Well that explains those 2 sermons,

• But please explain to us this last sermon that was 2 hours long”.

• He said that's easy, when I got up that particular morning;

• I accidentally put My Wife's Dentures in my mouth by mistake;

• And when I started talking I just couldn't shut up!

Ill:

• Joke: I guess you know what an optimist is:

• It is someone who thinks the preacher is about to finish when he says; “and finally”

• Other preachers say; “And lastly”,

• And boy don’t they last!

• TRANSITION:

• Now Psalm 119 is of course a long psalm;

• The longest psalm in the 150 collection of psalms

• And it is the longest chapter in the whole of the Bible.

Ill:

• David Livingstone, the intrepid explorer & missionary to Africa;

• Memorised this entire Psalm when he was 9 years old,

• His reward was a New Testament from his Sunday School teacher.

Ill:

• Another who memorised this psalm was William Wilberforce;

• Who as a politician played a major role;

• For the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire;

• Wrote these words in his diary (1819):

• “Walked to day from Hyde Park Corner repeating the 119th Psalm in great comfort”.

Ill:

• Another who memorised the entire Psalm was John Ruskin;

• Ruskin was a brilliant writer and art critic of the nineteenth century.

• Later he admitted;

• “It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible that my mother taught me,

• That which cost me most to learn,

• And which was to my child’s mind most repulsive, the 119th Psalm.

• Has now become, of all, the most precious to me”

If we are honest:

• Many of us have the same sentiment as the seventeenth-century;

• British minister Thomas Fuller, who confessed:

“Lord, I discover an errant laziness in my soul. For when I read a chapter in the Bible, before I begin it, I look where it endeth, and if it endeth not on the same side, I cannot keep my hand from turning over the leaf to measure the length thereof……”

A Special psalm:

(a).

• As mentioned already;

• It is the longest Psalm (176 verses),

• And so it is not surprising to find that it is the longest chapter in the Bible.

(b).

• It is also an acrostic Psalm;

• That means it follows the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Ill:

• If it were written in English each section would start ‘A, B, C, D…..etc until Z.’