Your Word Is A Lamp To My Feet Series

The Bible is so available; it’s as close as reaching out our hand. The Bible is on our phones and our nightstands in hotels all across our nation. The Bible is handed down from generation to generation. Around eighty million Bibles are printed every year and it is thought that there are between five and seven billion copies of the Bible printed in the last 1,500 years. The Guinness Book of World Records tells us that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and it is the best-selling book each and every year. The very book that commands you, “Thou Shall Not Steal,” is the world’s “most stolen” book, as copies of it disappear from hotels and hospitals every year.

Banning the Bible

The Bible is the most banned book of all time. You can guess that dictators such as Stalin sought to ban the Bible. But the Bible was the most challenged book in school libraries and public libraries around the nation according to the American Library Association in 2015. The Keller ISD recently returned the Bible to circulation in its libraries after it was flagged for removal last year. The Bible has been challenged as objectionable reading for students and schools since I was in college. And it’s not just us Americans that flag the Bible. When the wind is right, South Koreans launch “Bible Balloons” into North Korea, where the Bible is banned. An American pastor Eric Foley fills forty-foot balloons filled with hydrogen, and they are chocked full of Bibles on SD cards, flash drives, and photos of the Bible’s pages. With GPS technology, he can direct the balloons to go into rural areas. But the North Korean regime will shoot down the balloons if they are spotted. “The Bible has been criticized, challenged, and banned by individuals, groups, and governments through centuries of persecution.” What other book has this kind of reaction?

The Bible and the USA

Despite all this, the Bible has been special for our country, the United States of America. The Bible is so important that astronaut Buzz Aldrin read the words of John 15:5 silently before his counterpart Neil Armstrong said those immortal words, “One small step for man…” The first time men stepped off this planet, they depended on the Bible for inner strength. Martin Luther King, Jr. used imagery from the Bible to argue for civil rights as he talked about the “promised land.” The Bible helped frame our nation’s constitution, and it’s our nation's foundation for civil rights. And every President except one used the Bible when being sworn into office. And the one exception was John Quincy Adams. God has given us a great gift when He gave us the Bible. The central storyline of the Bible is the worship of God made possible by the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

If you’ll find Psalm 119 with me (page 609 in your Black pew, Bibles in front). One thing the Bible has in common with every book that has ever been written is that it is absolutely useless if it stays closed. The psalmist takes 176 verses to motivate us to get into the Bible and get the Bible into us.

1. I Meditate On Your Word All the Day

“Oh how I love your law!

It is my meditation all the day.

98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,

for it is ever with me” (Psalm 119:97-98).

1.1 Meditate

The word “meditation” in verse 97 is the idea of thoughtful contemplation. The idea here is not to read a verse of the day and go about with your day. The idea here is to pull from the pages of Scripture all day for every part of your day. For every possible thing that comes your way, you connect Scripture to real life.

Earlier the psalmist said, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways” (Psalm 119:15). My greatest single habit is to read the Bible each and every day. There have been seasons when I neglected to read my Bible. I am not perfect. But again, my greatest single habit is to read the Bible each and every day. My reading of God’s Word has saved me from more heartache…

… given me more wisdom…

… protected me from more mistakes…

...given me more comfort…

… and provided me with more encouragement than anything else I’ve done in life.

Listen to the words of Psalm 119: “How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!

104 Through your precepts I get understanding;

therefore I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:103-104).

He meditates because there is such profound wisdom that comes from Scripture.

1.2 Why Meditate

Again, the longest chapter in your Bible is devoted to how important the Bible is to our lives. Now hear this: the aim of Bible study is not just to know the Bible better. No, the aim of Bible study is to know God better.