The Benefits of the Bible

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I am not playing a special music this morning. Y’all haven’t done anything bad enough to deserve that. I was thinking about this instrument this week.

This has been, well, the church that I was a member of during my high school and college days. We had an orchestra. And I learned to play this because I wanted to play an orchestra.

and I loved doing that. I did that for several years until I left there and went to another church where I pastored and it just felt really weird doing special music and then getting up to preach so I put that down. Only since I’ve been here have I started to do that occasionally.

I think Madeline and I are singing next week. I tried to do that at a time when I was not preaching like the last two weeks but that didn’t happen because it just feels really awkward like it’s the Jaren show. But anyway, I’ve put this down for about the last 15 years or so.

It’s just been decoration in my office. And a couple months ago, I noticed it and picked it up and thought, I wonder if I can still play it. I cannot.

It is a challenge. You know, playing the keyboard in our praise band, If I’ve not been at it for a while, you know, I can feel I’m a little rusty, but my fingers still reach the keys and all that. There are certain muscles that you have to build up in the way you hold your jaw to play this.

There are certain muscles you have to develop in the way you hold your lips in order to play this. Any sound I can make out of this at this point is not pleasant. Because I have, for 15 years, had no discipline.

I don’t know what made me think I could just pick it up and play it again. Because when I gave up that discipline of practicing every day and playing every week, that went away. And, you know, that happens in a lot of things.

Also, when I was in college, I used to walk several miles a day. Because I had a 7. 30 class and then no more classes until 11.

30. I was a commuter student. I had nowhere to go.

I just walked circles around campus. I got in really good shape I let go of that discipline and I felt it this week going up and down the hills at Falls Creek there are a lot of things that we do in life that require discipline and when we stop being disciplined about those things it all starts to fall apart that’s particularly true of our spiritual life There are things that we as Christians are called to do. And this morning I’m speaking especially to those who are already believers in Jesus Christ. There are things that we are called to be disciplined about that help in our spiritual growth.

And when we stop being disciplined about our walk with Jesus, bad things happen. I can look at things in my own life that have gone awry when I’ve stopped being disciplined about my walk. I can look back at experiences with churches where I can tell the people in the church, stop being disciplined about our walk with Christ, and it never leads to anything good.

When we become undisciplined, we become lazy. Preachers call us lazy. No, I’m saying we.

I’m not saying it is happening to you. I’m saying it can happen to us. It has happened to me in the past. It probably has happened to you at some time in the past. It’s just practically natural law.

If we become undisciplined, we get lazy. We get bored. And when we get bored, we start focusing on everything but what we’re supposed to be focused on.

We get self-centered. I start thinking about what do I want, what do I want to do, what would be fun for me to do in ministry instead of what God wants. What do I want church to look like?

what do I wish happened? What do I wish so-and-so did? And it becomes very me-focused.

And when I start to recognize those thoughts, it’s like a red flag goes off in my brain of saying, you’re not being as disciplined as you need to be. For whatever reason, as we got close to the end of our series on 1 Corinthians, I felt like the Lord was leading me that we need to do a series on spiritual disciplines. And so we’re going to spend the next several weeks going over some things that if we will practice these and if we’ll be disciplined about them, it’ll help us in our walk with Jesus Christ individually as a church.

It’ll help us become the things that he’s called us to be. We’re going to spend the next several weeks doing that. And I wanted, in addition to bringing you the first of those this morning, wanted to kind of introduce you to the topic of spiritual disciplines.

Because one of the things that you’ll find, one of the things you’ll find if you delve into this topic, is that there’s no set list of spiritual disciplines. There’s no list found in scripture. And if you go try to Google it, you will come up with wildly varying lists.

One of the things I did, I had kind of an idea of some of the things that we would need to talk about, but I went and Googled several lists. Google’s a great place for theology, just almost on par with Facebook and the YouTube comment section. But if you use some discernment about what you’re looking at, I went and Googled several ministries and several things that people put out lists of spiritual disciplines, and I just compiled all their lists, and I came up with a list of about 40 spiritual disciplines.

We are not doing a 40-part series. Don’t worry, on spiritual disciplines. But I looked at this list and some of them just were obvious nonsense.

And I thought in order to weed through this, I mean, and there were some things that were probably good practices. For example, journaling. Okay.

Journaling may be very helpful to some of you. I’m not sure if I’m going to promote it as a spiritual discipline. Good practice, but maybe not a spiritual discipline.

I’ll tell you, at some point, I just went with what my gut said. But I came up with a list of criteria of what I would consider spiritual disciplines to be, because there are some people that just anything that sounds like a good idea is a spiritual discipline. And I don’t think that’s helpful.

I’ve given you the list in your bulletin, so if you want to look at it later, you can. Or if you want to pull it out now, you can. But this way you don’t have to furiously write it down, those of you who take notes.

Here’s how I defined a spiritual discipline for the purposes of this study. And I’ll tell you why as we go to our passage this morning. First of all, spiritual disciplines are practices that aid in spiritual growth of the believer who participates in it.

A spiritual discipline is not something necessarily that you do to grow someone else spiritually, as important as those things are. Discipling somebody else may not in and of itself be a spiritual discipline. But it’s something that you do in order to grow yourself.

spiritual disciplines are commanded and modeled in scripture some of the practices that I came across that different ministries were promoting were not things that scripture tells us to do and then again they may be good ideas but it’s hard to stand up in front of you with the stance I’ve taken on scripture with the stance our church has taken on scripture it’s hard to stand in front of you and say this is something you must do if the scriptures don’t teach it. It may be a good idea, but it’s not in God’s word. Spiritual disciplines are actions we perform rather than attitudes we adopt.

Our attitudes are very important. But when I think of spiritual disciplines, I’m thinking of things that we are supposed to be doing. And I think the attitude goes hand in hand with those things.

But there were things like cheerfulness is a spiritual discipline. I just can’t put my finger on it, but that just doesn’t sound right. they need to be applicable in the life of the church and its individual members so these are things that god has given for the body and these are things that god’s given us that we can individually do and there’s a role for both of those and I think this one’s important spiritual disciplines are intended to draw our focus toward the person and work of jesus christ and lead us to follow him more faithfully rather than producing subjective mystical experiences.

There were several things I saw on these various lists that people had put together that were designed to induce some kind of feeling or take us into some kind of almost deeper hidden knowledge beyond what scripture tells us. That can be a very dangerous road. When we go looking for spiritual understanding beyond what is revealed in scripture, we’re in dangerous territory because God is so far beyond our comprehension that we really couldn’t know anything about him at all other than what he reveals to us.

That’s why the scriptures are so important because he’s revealed himself and his will in the scriptures for us to know him. And it also provides us an objective standard. We need objective standards of truth because what happens when I have a feeling that God is this way and you have a feeling that God is another way and God can’t be both of those things, who’s right?

Well, who decides if it’s just my feeling versus your feeling? We never come to any kind of settled understanding of anything about God. And so we need an objective standard.

Well, what better than what he’s revealed for us? So these practices that we’re going to talk about are things that are rooted in scripture and designed to make us consciously focus on Jesus Christ and following him. They’re not just things that are designed to create a feeling in us.

I’ve told you before, feelings are important. God created us as emotional beings. Feelings are great things to have, but they are terrible things to be led by.

And so we’re going to go to scripture for every bit of this. And that’s where we’re going to start this morning. The first spiritual discipline, there were several different things that people would put on their list. Bible study, Bible reading, Bible memorization, Bible meditation.

all of those go hand in hand I just call it Bible engagement that we’re going to engage with the scriptures the word I’ve used in this message is that we’re going to immerse ourselves in the scriptures and so that’s what we’re going to study this morning the importance of immersing ourselves in the scriptures and then if you’ll come back tonight as part of our Sunday night study normally we’ve been taking the passage we studied from Sunday morning and given you an opportunity to ask questions about it and us to discuss further. But what we’re going to do tonight is going to be a little bit different. We’re going to come back together and we’re going to do a study ourselves of how to study the scriptures for ourselves.

Now, most of you in here have been studying the scriptures for a long time. I may only give you one or two new things that maybe you hadn’t heard before. Some of you are brand new to studying the scriptures for yourself and don’t know how to get started.

I was asked yesterday. How does somebody prepare a sermon? Come tonight, and what I’m going to give you is actually the process I use in preparing a sermon, but I think it’s helpful in trying to understand God’s Word.

And whether you ever teach it or not, it’ll give you a deeper understanding of what’s revealed there, not just what we feel it means, but what God’s Word is actually trying to get across to us. So that’s what we’re going to do tonight, but this morning we’re going to start out in Psalm chapter 19. If you turn there with me, Psalm chapter 19.

I forgot my Bible with all the camp stuff at home, so I’m using my little paperback version. I’ll try to get the good one for tonight. But it says the same thing.

If you’ll stand with me once you find it, if you don’t have your Bible or you forgot yours at camp or you can’t find Psalm 19, it’ll be on the screen here for you as well. But this is what King David says about God’s Word. He says, Moreover, by them your servant is warned.

In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Equip me of hidden faults.

Also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me, that I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. You may be seated. so what we’re talking about this morning is the spiritual discipline of what I did I’ve lumped together as as bible engagement scripture engagement that we need to have a routine it needs to be a regular part of our lives to be engaging with the scriptures not just because they give good advice but because they are god’s word it is god’s revelation of himself the things that he wants us to know the things that we need to know about him he’s revealed in the pages of this book And the more we study this book and the deeper we go, the better understanding we’re going to have of God, the better understanding we’re going to have of his will, the better we’re going to be able to navigate in this world in a way that pleases him.

How many of you have ever been in a circumstance, a situation has arisen, and you thought, I really don’t know what it is that God would have me do in this situation? Anybody else ever been there? I think the deeper we go in God’s word, the more rare those occasions become.

Because that word is hidden in our hearts. And Jesus himself told the disciples that the Holy Spirit would draw those things to our remembrance when we need them. So the more that we have studied his word, the more we’ve sought not just to read it, although that’s important too, but the more we’ve sought to study it and understand it and think about it.

When I said meditation earlier, that’s not like chanting a mantra, an Eastern meditation. That’s not emptying your mind. When the Bible talks about meditating on God’s word, it talks about filling our minds.

so if you’re I have some of my best thinking time when I’m out mowing or doing other yard work because when you’re doing yard work people leave you alone they’re afraid that they’re going to get conscripted into doing yard work with you so I’ll be out there with the with the weed eater I’ll be out there on the mower I’ll be out there pulling weeds or something and I may be thinking about something I’ve read in God’s word and trying to figure it out and I’m mowing it over in my mind that’s that’s what he’s talking about when when King David writes about scripture meditation meditating on God’s word. The more we do these things, the more God’s word becomes ingrained in us, the more it’s stamped on our hearts, the more it’s back there in the file that the Holy Spirit can pull out to remind us of when we come into situations.

And so the better time we’re going to have trying to navigate this world in a way that pleases God. And so we want to immerse ourselves in scripture. We want studying the scriptures to become a way of life for us.

And we’re going to talk about, just briefly, some of the reasons why that’s important. I know you have a lot of notes in your bulletin. If you’re keeping notes and filling in the blanks, it looks like this is going to be a lot of things.

I’m going to try to move through it as quickly as I can. Immerse yourself in the Bible because it’s not an ordinary book. You know, there are a lot of books that I love, but I don’t necessarily live my life by them because they’re not the Bible.

When I was in school one year, I read Gone with the Wind. Because if I read Gone with the Wind and passed the test on that, that was the only book I had to read for school that whole year. I loved that book.

I have never gone out and made myself a dress out of curtains. Some of you are too young to get that reference. I’m not living my life according to Gone with the Wind.

Okay, there are other books that I’ve loved. I enjoyed the, I don’t know that you’d call it a book, actually, but the epic poem, Beowulf. I enjoyed that.

I’m not out trying to slaughter monsters in the street. We don’t live our lives according to ordinary books. But the Bible’s no ordinary book.

It’s God’s word. Even David, what he’s referring to, the scriptures that he had in his hands, he’s referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. But the things that are true of the first five books of the Old Testament are true of all of the 66 books we have in our hands.

And he calls it the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the precepts of the Lord. He says everything about this goes back to God and who he is. This is not an ordinary book.

And here are some of the ways that David describes the scriptures. He tells us that its words are inerrant and infallible when he says in verse 7 that it’s perfect. And both of those words are important.

It’s kind of funny that some churches and some ministries will run away from the word inerrancy because it sounds too fundamentalist. When actually infallible is a stronger word. They’ll use the word infallible because it sounds less threatening. I believe in both the inerrancy and the infallibility of Scripture.

Inerrant means it has no mistakes. Infallible means it can’t make mistakes. Sometimes, sometimes I’m inerrant.

Sometimes, not very often. I made a shopping list for Walmart before we left for camp and there were no mistakes on the shopping list I actually got everything I needed I’ve been inerrant on occasion but I’ve never been infallible for five minutes God’s word is both there are no mistakes in it oh what about the contradictions of the gospels show me because I’ve been going over with a fine tooth comb for years and haven’t found them there are things that look on the surface like a contradiction but they’re not not only are there not errors in the scripture but there cannot be errors. It is both inerrant and infallible.

And both of those things are important. David describes it as its truth is certain and unchanging when he says in verse 7 that it’s sure. You know, we’re in a world where it’s hard to know from day to day what the rules are.

What you can say, what you can do, things that were. . .

And some things have always been wrong, some things have always been offensive, and it just takes society a bit to figure that out. But there are things that were okay a few years ago that are not now. Okay to say a few years ago.

Okay to do. Okay to be. There are things that weren’t okay a few years ago that are now.

And what I find interesting is that some of the people that are ready to cancel everything from a few years ago because it’s not okay now, I think in a hundred years, people are going to look at them and say, well, why weren’t you where we are now? The rules keep changing in society. We need something that we can hold on to that doesn’t change.

Something that’s sure. Something that I don’t have to wake up every morning and go on Twitter and find out what’s okay. Because it changes every day.

Most of you are not on Twitter. Keep it that way. I promise you’re better off.

I never feel better after going on Twitter. But we don’t have to go and figure out what the rules are now. The testimony of the Lord is sure.

It’s true. It’s certain and unchanging. What the Bible says is good and praiseworthy today will be good and praiseworthy tomorrow.

What the Bible says is wrong and sinful and harmful today will still be wrong and sinful and harmful tomorrow. David says it in verse 8, its principles are correct. He says the precepts of the Lord are right.

The principles that are taught in Scripture are right and they’re good for us. You may notice as you study the Scriptures that there is not an answer to every specific problem you face. Okay?

The scriptures are probably not going to give you the answer to the math test. Unless you get into the Bible code stuff, and then all bets are off. But just reading the text of scripture is not necessarily going to give you an answer to every specific problem you face. And yet there are principles that are taught in scripture that apply to everything we deal with on a daily basis.

And they’re right. They’re correct. Its guidance is godly.

He says in verse 8 that the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. If we want to know how to live a godly life, just follow what it says in Scripture. Follow what it teaches in Scripture.

This is a distinction that sometimes skeptics don’t make very well. And they’ll say, well, so-and-so went and slaughtered such-and-such in the Old Testament. Clearly, the Bible is immoral. No, the Bible recorded that it happened.

It’s not teaching us to go out and slaughter Canaanites. It records that it happened. So I say everything the Bible teaches us to do will lead us to godliness.

A lot of times, and you’ll see these lists on social media, well, Abraham did this and David did this. So clearly there’s immoral stuff in the Bible. A lot of times those things are recorded as cautionary tales for us about what not to do.

Because we get to see the consequences. Those things that they did were disobedient to God, and we get to see the fallout. David messed up his family for multiple generations when he disobeyed God.

But when we follow what the Bible teaches us to do, it’ll show us how to live a godly life. How do I honor God with my life? Start reading his word and looking for what it teaches you to do.

And take that first step of saying what it teaches I’m going to do. I need to move on quickly. Some of these overlap a little bit too.

It’s judgments are just. He says in verse 9, the judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether. God looks at the situations we face he looks at the decisions we take and God makes determinations about those and guess what God is always right sometimes human judges get it wrong when they pass judgment on us sometimes we get it wrong when we pass judgment on each other but God is always right and when we stand before him there’s not a protest of saying no no God you don’t understand no he understands what he says is right is right his judgments are just that should both terrify us and comfort us.

Terrify us if we’re walking in disobedience, that God will judge and he’ll be right in his judgment. He’ll be just in his judgment. But also to understand that if we’re trying to serve him and we, you know, I’ve messed up, I’ve fallen short, God is going to do the right thing.

God’s not going to look at us and say, well, I know you trusted in my son like I told you to, but you messed up one too many times. Well, God is going to do the right thing. God is going to do the just thing and honor his word.

So his justice means that we can trust in the promises of God even when we fall short and we’re afraid of his justice toward our sin. It tells us in verse 10 that its wisdom is valuable. He says it’s more desirable than gold.

Gold is pretty desirable. Money and stuff is pretty desirable. He says if you’re looking at this right, if you’re thinking with your head on straight, what God offers us here is more valuable because it’s more lasting.

Gold can create problems for you. I thought when I was a kid, if you had money, it would fix all your problems. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not rich, but I’ve discovered the more money I have, the more problems come up that you have to deal with it.

God’s word will keep you out of problems. Keep you out of trouble, at least. He teaches us in verse 10, too, that its truth is pleasant to those who seek it and understand it. He says it’s sweeter than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Now, a lot of people will come to God’s word and they’ll come without their hearts prepared to hear it, without the Holy Spirit within them.

And to them, what they read here is bitter because it convicts and it confronts. But to those who belong to Jesus, those who are listening to the Holy Spirit within us, we recognize that even that confrontation and that conviction is sweet because we want to walk with God. And he’s telling us when things are wrong.

It’s sweet as a comfort. It’s sweet as a convictor. It’s sweet to us in everything that it does for us.

If we come to it in the right spirit. So these are just some of the things that David says in describing the Bible. It’s clearly no ordinary book.

That’s reason one to immerse yourself in it. But we also see scattered in what we’ve already looked at that we ought to immerse ourselves in the Bible because it will change our lives. Immerse yourself in the Bible.

If you’re new to this and say, well, I believe in God, maybe even you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, but you’ve never really taken the time to say, I’m going to dig into my Bible and take that seriously and study it. Immerse yourself in the Bible because it will change your life. And it will change your life for the better.

David outlined some of the things that it does for us in changing our lives. First of all, it will transform you from the inside out. Verse 7 says it restores the soul.

And that doesn’t just mean kind of sprucing things up. Now that I’m back from the convention and camp, things have kind of gotten a mess in the yard and in the house, and I want to go back and do some deep cleaning and spruce up. He’s talking about renovating something from the ground up.

If we want to use the house metaphor, this isn’t putting things away and making sure the yard is mowed. This is we’re going to tear out the sheetrock and tear out the floors, and we’re going to start building something new from the ground up. We’re doing a total renovation.

and God’s word, if you begin to take it in, you begin to apply it, you begin to live it, it will transform you from the inside out. It will change the way you think. It will change the way you live.

He also says there in verse 7 that it makes wise the simple. It will make you wise. When he says simple, he’s talking about foolish people.

I’m not calling anybody in here foolish. I think we all have foolish moments. I know I do.

There are times I do dumb stuff. And I tell you, I saw a lot of dumb stuff this week. God’s word will help us avoid some of the dumb stuff that we do.

God’s word will give wisdom to the simple. You know what? It’s kind of like the prayer of William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English.

He ran afoul of the king and the church. and they burned him to death. He prayed for God to open the king’s eyes, but he also said that if given the opportunity, he would translate the scriptures because it would ensure that the simple plowman understood more about God than the leadership of the church or the state.

It doesn’t matter whether you went to seminary and got every doctrine known to man or if you just barely learned to read.

if you can read God’s word it’ll make you wise it’ll make you wise in the things of God verse 8 he says it rejoices the heart it instills joy in us as you grow deeper in your understanding of the scriptures you’re more able to turn to them for comfort and find joy in understanding God and his will for your life even as you navigate difficult circumstances joy doesn’t mean that everything is going great in our lives joy means that we find a way to rejoice and praise God we find comfort and solace even in the midst of those trying circumstances and the scriptures will do that they will instill joy in you now you may go home tomorrow and especially if you’re new to studying your Bible you may open it you may read verses and say no I still don’t feel joyful keep at it it may take a little bit it’s a process All this is a process. But it will instill joy in the Bible. Verses 8 and 9.

Verses 8 and 9. He said it enlightens the eyes. And then he refers to the fear of the Lord being clean and enduring forever.

The Bible gives spiritual insight that comes from fear of the Lord. As we get to know God and we develop this healthy fear of Him, we’ll grow our spiritual insight. Not only will we be able to discern what we ought to do and what we ought not to do.

We’ll discern when something wrong is happening around us, something wrong is being taught. We’ll just grow in discernment. It will bring us wisdom and spiritual sight.

And the scripture said that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That spiritual sight comes along with the fear of the Lord. This one’s important.

He says it warns in verse 11. It will alert you to danger ahead. It’ll let you know before you make that big mistake.

It’ll let you know before you mess up. It’ll let you know before you do something that you can’t take back. Before you do something that changes everything forever.

The scriptures, if we are constantly staying in the scriptures, God will use that to alert us to danger ahead, whether it’s the little potholes we might trip in, or it’s the big cliff we’re about to fall off of, It will alert us to danger ahead. And again, to those of you who are new, I’m not necessarily talking about literal hutholes. I’m talking about the things in life where we mess up, where we sin against God, where we do things we didn’t intend to do, where we hurt those that we love most. It will help you avoid those things.

He talks about great reward in verse 11. The scriptures will lead you to blessings when you obey. You know, this is not a point system.

I didn’t fully understand it this week at camp, but I know there was this point system where they had some of the churches were the yellow team, some were the blue team. And if you did certain things, you got a certain number of points, and it was, I don’t even know what all the points were or what the point of the points were. But it was this big competition.

And I know you went through the missions village, and you turned that, and you got a certain number of points. And all these things you did, you got a certain number of points. Reading the scriptures, when we talk about rewards, it’s not a point system.

that God says, well, you spent an hour and you read three chapters, you get 20 points for today. That’s not what we’re talking about in terms of the rewards. This is not heaven’s version of Chuck E.

Cheese where you get to go cash in the points when you get them. The rewards we’re t