Psalm 119:97-104
Growing in God’s Word
What book is the best-selling and most widely distributed book of all time? What was the first book that Johannes Gutenberg chose to mass produce with his movable type printing press in the year 1450? What book has had parts translated into more than 2,000 different languages? The Jeopardy answer is, of course, “What is the Bible?” The most popular, the most purchased, and sad to say, the least read book in history!
We call the Bible “God’s word” because the Bible itself claims to be inspired from God, which literally means “God-breathed.” Even so, God chose to use human authors as his mouthpiece, some forty different writers from all walks of life—shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, physicians, fishermen, priests, philosophers, and kings—who wrote over the course of about 1,600 years.
Despite the variety of authors and the length of time it took to write, the Bible is an extremely cohesive and unified book. The reason? Scripture says these people wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). They wrote not in words of human wisdom, but in words divinely taught (1 Corinthians 2:13). The great preacher and scholar, A.T. Robertson, once quipped, “The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has [with]stood so much bad preaching.”
The Bible consists of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament or Old Covenant and (using a memory trick, you can multiply the 3 times the 9 to get) 27 books in the New Testament or New Covenant. The Old Testament was first written in Hebrew along with some Aramaic. As the Jewish scripture, it was Jesus’ Bible when Jesus walked the earth. It consists of the Torah—the first five books of the Bible—considered most authoritative by the Jews; followed by the historical books, wisdom literature, and major and minor prophets.
The New Testament was first written in Greek along with a little Aramaic. Its books include the four gospel accounts of Jesus’ activities on earth, followed by the Acts of the Apostles, various letters written by some of Jesus’ disciples to churches or individuals, and finally, the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Taken as a whole, the Bible is a record of God’s loving pursuit of a people to love him in return. The storyline, in broad strokes, is: God’s creation, humanity’s fall into sin, God’s redemption, and then ultimately God’s restoration. The Bible is a love letter from heaven to us. The great church father, Augustine of Hippo, once wrote, “The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.”
We read a passage earlier, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, that tells what scripture can do for us. It helps us teach and help people, it corrects us when we get off track, and it shows us how to live. The scriptures train us for all kinds of good works. The great reformer, Martin Luther, once said, “You may as well quit reading and hearing the Word of God, and give it to the devil, if you do not desire to live according to it.” So the Bible is more than just a textbook about God; it is a guide in our relationship with God and each other. Sometimes it challenges us to the core. Mark Twain quipped, “Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”
Today’s text, Psalm 119, also speaks to the value of scripture in our lives. This psalm has the honor of being the longest chapter in the longest book of the Bible. (By the way, I discovered this week that its nearby neighbor, Psalm 117, is the shortest chapter as well as the middle chapter of the Bible!)
Psalm 119 is like that Lamentations passage we looked at recently in that it is a poem written in acrostic. It has 22 sections, and each section of eight verses all begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So the first eight verses all begin with “aleph,” or “A.” The section we’re looking at today is Section 13 of 22, so in Hebrew each verse begins with the letter “M” or “mem,” the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Obviously the psalmist put a lot of work into this, and his theme is clear: how special is the word of God. The psalmist uses several synonyms for scripture, such as “law, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgments, word, and promise.” You’ll find one of these words in almost every verse of the psalm.
As you read the psalm, you realize its writer loved the Bible so much. In fact, some accuse him of worshiping the book, a kind of “Bible-olatry.” Yet, if you look carefully, the psalmist loves the Bible because it always points him back to the author, God himself. Oh, if we were all accused of such love for the Bible!
Anybody here have a “read Bible?” If so, hold it up high. Research indicates that people with read Bibles are more spiritual than people with other kinds of Bibles. You know what a read Bible looks like, right? It’s tattered, it’s frayed, it’s marked up, highlighted, pages turned down. It’s a “R-E-A-D Bible.” As another famous preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, once noted, “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.”
The psalmist believes in reading God’s word. In fact, he says in verse 97 that he “meditates on it all day long.” God’s word can’t change you until it’s in you. When you read it, you give the Holy Spirit something to work with in your life. And sometimes you need to do more than just read it; you need to mull it over in your mind, chew on it for a while, meditate on it. That’s where the word “meditate” comes from: from a cow chewing her cud. Chew on it. Let the word of God permeate your heart and sink into your soul. Someone once said, “Reading the Bible without meditating on it is like trying to eat without swallowing.”
When the psalmist gets into God’s word, he finds that he grows in wisdom. Wisdom is simply the ability to apply knowledge well to everyday life. He says he gets so wise, in fact, that he’s becoming wiser than his enemies (v. 98), his teachers (v. 99), and even his elders (v. 100), all because he stays in the word (v. 98), he meditates on it (v. 99), and he obeys it (v. 100).
Sometimes it’s just hard to obey God, isn’t it? But a funny thing happens as we get into God’s word: we grow in our “want to.” We grow more in love with God, and the more we love God, the more we want to obey him. You see that in today’s psalm. The writer says in verse 101 that he has chosen to avoid evil paths so he can stay on the straight and narrow path of obedience of God’s word. In other words, he has chosen to follow God. But by the time he writes verse 104, he says God’s word has given him so much understanding that now he finds he hates every wrong path. The more you love God, the more you hate your sin and the path that leads to it. And a very great way to grow in your love for God is to read God’s book.
Don’t know where to start? Begin with one of the gospels, the first four books of the New Testament. They’re all about Jesus’ time on earth. Or find a Bible reading plan. There are free ones online. The devotional, “Our Daily Bread,” will e-mail you one every day. Or if you don’t like computers, they will mail you a quarterly devotional. A verse a day keeps the devil away. The important thing is not how much you read but how often. Read a little, and then ponder it, chew on it, let it sink in, and then pray it back to God.
A popular acronym for the Bible, B-I-B-L-E, is “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” This is our instruction manual, our way of life. We need to seek counsel from God on a daily basis. Max Lucado writes in his book, “Facing Your Giants”: “I wish I’d sought counsel before I made a recent decision.” He talks about awaking early one day for a meeting, and before rushing out the door, grabbing a bag of cookies on the kitchen counter. He remembered his wife and daughter had recently been to a school bake sale, so he thought, “Great. She left out some breakfast cookies for me!” He nibbled on one and found it chewy, almost gummy. He thought the taste was a bit subtle, but he tried a second, dipped in coffee, and that was much better. He grabbed a third for the road, and left the last one for his thoughtful wife.
Well, she called later, and said, “Someone got into the bag on the counter.” He confessed up and said, “Thanks for leaving them out for me. I’ve had better breakfast cookies but they weren’t bad.” She said, “Those weren’t breakfast cookies, Max.” “They weren’t?” “No.” “What were they?” “Homemade dog biscuits.” “Oh . . .” Max writes, “That explained a lot. I should’ve consulted the maker. We need to consult ours.” Do you have a Bible? Read it!
Let’s pray this in: Lord, help us to be people of the book, your book, the Good Book. Help us to prioritize time in your word every day, asking your Holy Spirit to rightly interpret it for us, to help us to apply it to our lives, to be changed by it, to grow to love you and your ways more than our sinful ways. We ask this in the name of the Living Word, Jesus Christ, amen.
