The reading for today is from Psalm 119. It's a little bit different than what's in your bulletin there, but turn with me to 119, Psalm 119, beginning in verse 41. We'll read eight verses from Psalm 119. Beginning in verse 41, reading through verse 48. May your loving kindness also come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your word. So I will have an answer for him who reproaches me, for I trust in your word. And do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for I wait for your ordinances. So I will keep your law continually forever and ever. And I will walk at liberty, for I seek your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be ashamed. I shall delight in your commandments, which I love. I shall lift up my hands to your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes." If you have your Bibles, open to the passage that Anthony read. I'm the reason that what's written in the in front of you is different than what Anthony did. I changed on him last minute. In fact, I just told him about three minutes ago. So, what I want to do is I want to pick up with a theme that we began last time I was with you this year, and that was when we looked at Psalm 119. But let me open our time together by asking you a question. How is your prayer life? How have you been cultivating a prayer life? How has your prayer life been this week? I think that that's the kind of question that Christians expect that if we get asked that question, the answer for all of us is gonna be some form of a failing grade, you know? So you may be a 49 out of 100 and feel like, well, that's better than I was last time. Last time I was a 35, you know, but we feel like none of us would feel that it would be spiritual to say, actually, my prayer life is just really great and I've cultivated a wonderful prayer life When we first planted the church in New Albany, Mississippi, a lady came to the church who was a children's minister in a very large church. So she shows up at this very small church plant, and the first thing she said to me after telling me her name was, I am a prayer warrior, and I didn't know what to say to her. I just stared at her, because I thought, I would never say that. I would never introduce myself, say, hi, I'm John, I'm a prayer warrior, because I immediately thought she wasn't, since she told me she was. I didn't say that, so I just said yes, you know, and I didn't know what to say. Now when I ask you how your prayer life is, I'm not asking you what we normally think of as a prayer life. So I want to be very clear here. I'm not meaning simply the time each day that you set aside for prayer. I'm not meaning as a church the time you set aside Sunday to prayer, to pray. What I mean is this. If your life choices throughout the week could be summed up as asking something of God, you know, what do you really want from God? What do you long for? What is it that is not optional for you? And that's seen by the way you make your choices during the week. What is your life and it's simple choices during this past week, what has it been asking? There's a simple principle here. True prayer obviously starts with the heart, you know, just saying words, we know that's not prayer. It involves the lips, of course, but it also involves the life. And that's essential. That's what I mean by your prayer life. So I'm just using it in an unusual way for this sermon. Do you mouth prayers to God on Sunday as a church? We just prayed. That your life does not plead for during the week. Is there a disconnect between what you're saying and the choices you're making? So if someone followed you through the week but did not attend the prayer meeting today, what they see in the way that you use your time and how you prioritize and what you really pursue, would they write out a prayer based on your life's choices this week, and would that prayer look completely different than the prayers of the church today? How many of your prayers do you notice that God is answering? I mean, obviously many times we plead with the Lord for things that we don't expect to see an immediate kind of tangible answer. But what if it is that God is answering the prayers that your life is lifting all week long? One of the most beneficial things about Psalm 119, for my own soul, and I have found it so helpful, is not merely the descriptions it gives of scripture, like the doctrine of scripture. I mean, you can buy books on the doctrine of scripture. But oftentimes, while they're full of many clear truths that we need to be in the grip of, I do not find them nearly as helpful as the way God describes the doctrine of scripture because in Psalm 119 we have 172 of the 176 verses as prayers. So in Psalm 119 we have prayer and the word united We have the prayer life in the sense that it's not just the psalmist opening the book, putting their feet on a very definite path of obedience, and the face is turned to God, and 172 times what's written in this book causes something in the heart of the believer to rise up and to be expressed to the Lord through our prayers, through our lips, but we also have so many times the life that follows, the life that must go alongside those kinds of requests. So we see the psalmist making choices in their day-to-day life that are in harmony with what they request and so I find it just so helpful so simple and balanced What I wanna look at today with you is the prayer and the reason for the prayer that we find in verse 41 and 42. But I want us to then look at verse 48 and spend most of our time looking at verse 48, which I want to call the life that has to accompany that kind of praying that we find in verse 41. 42 well let's look at the prayer and the reason for it in verse 41 and 42 I'll read it again for you the psalmist asked the Lord may your loving kindnesses also Come to me. Oh Lord your salvation according to your word so I will have an answer for him who approaches me for I trust in your word and we'll stop there and The Christian knows by bitter experience that in a world which mocks our claims about Christ and how we apply those claims to church, that he is enough. We don't need Jesus plus. How we apply those claims in our marriages, how we apply those claims in the lives of our children, and we say that Christ is all. all and in all. He is everything. He is chief among 10,000. He is altogether lovely. He is not part of my life, but like Paul says, He is life. And the world hears those things and it mocks our, what they feel is our primitive, naive views of this Jewish man from 2,000 years ago. And not only that, but within each believer, we still have those remnants of sin and pride, of selfishness, but also of unbelief. Those have not been completely eradicated, and so no matter how long you've been a believer and how close you walk with the Lord, there will be within you something that is ready to rise up and whisper in your ear, joining with the world, and to whisper the doubts that it has in your ear. Is God really all he says he is? Will he be enough for this? Now I know that we can come up with good biblical answers to those plaguing, mocking, insinuations from our culture, and even the questions that rise up within our own heart, which are like unwanted companions on the journey of life, and no matter how we run from them, they seem to always meet us around the next corner. There are times where it's easy to give the right answer, and we say, well, no, those doubts are not true. Christ is enough, and we give the right answer. But then hard times come, and maybe the times get more difficult than normal, and the depth of disappointments and spiritual sorrows reaches a point where it is not so easy to give the right answer, you know, the 20th time and the 30th time. And if the kinds of spiritual sorrows that you face come one after the next without any interruption, and you wonder if the Lord is even paying attention to what's happening to you, either as a church, or as a family, or as an individual, and you look in the mirror, and there's enough in the mirror to raise doubts about your boasts in Christ, I find that if that continues for an extended period, that it becomes very difficult to continue to give the right answer. And verse 41 is the kind of prayer that gets lifted from the heart, wrung from the heart, the agonizing heart of the believer. It reminds me of a verse that is just custom suited for the believer up late at night when you cannot sleep because of things that are bothering you, and you turn your face toward your God and you say after the, 100th time that the doubts rise up and you say, God, may your lovingkindnesses also come to me, your salvation according to your word, so that I will have an answer for him who reproaches me, who mocks my hope in you, for I trust in your word. What does he ask for? The prayer asks for the loving kindnesses to come to him. Here we have in verse 41, a Hebrew parallelism, which we often see throughout Hebrew poetry, especially the Psalms. Something will be said in one way, and immediately following that, another sentence, which basically says the same thing. Either saying it from a different angle, so as to help us to really comprehend the fullness of it, or adding some material to it. Well, here we have the same thing restated. May your loving kindnesses come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your word. So what I'm asking for is the salvation you've promised, the salvation you've purchased. But another way of saying that is I'm asking that you send me the many expressions of covenanted love or covenanted mercies of this loving kindness that you've promised me, and I'm asking you to send them to me. Now, a couple of things that I find so significant here. One is this word loving-kindnesses. It's not really a good translation. It's kind of a paraphrase. It's a summary of a Hebrew word that is so multifaceted, somewhat like our word grace. that you almost don't know which words to use for it. But here's the big point. It isn't simply speaking of kindness. And it's not simply speaking of a kindness that is so wonderful we call it a loving kindness. It is speaking of kindnesses that are built upon the foundation of God's faithfulness. the promised mercies, the unalterable, immutable expressions of love that have been purchased for us in a covenant, in a contract of undeserved favor. God, you have in Old Testament and so much more in the New Testament, you have laid before our eyes in the Scripture, in the fine print of these covenants, you have laid in front of us all that you have planned, and purchased, and by your Spirit you are presently providing and applying to the life. There are so many things, this multifaceted love, the royal favor of God, the undeserved friendship of the King of all. And I am needing it all. But notice what he asks for. I'm asking that the loving kindnesses, that these covenanted, promised mercies come to me. This is experiential. Is it an immature faith that asks God for the experience of the things we read on these pages? Obviously, there are things in the scripture that are not meant for here and now. And so, if you just kind of carelessly read through the Bible, and you find some wonderful words, and you say, God, I'm just going to believe you for this, I'm gonna kind of name it and claim it, well, you may be very disappointed when God does not do what you claim he should do. So, we want to be careful. It is according to his word, the psalmist says, that I'm asking for this, but what does his word say that he has provided for the believer in this life? And are you willing to live a life without the actual experiential knowledge of these things? And are you willing for them to remain kind of as wonderful concepts in your head? When we look at the scriptures, the base, the foundation of the Christian life here is that we live by faith, not by sight. And the wonderful picture we have of that, one of my favorite, is what Paul talks about in Romans 4 when he points out Abraham. He says, consider Abraham, who all he had was the word of God about a son, and in fact, about a nation of people coming from him that would be so numerous, he would not be able to count them, like the stars of the sky or the sand on the seashore. It would have been much easier for Abraham to lay hold of those promises and not to, you know, and not to be, just baffled by the immensity of them, if God would just have shrunk them down and said, Abraham, I'm gonna give you a kid, I'll give you a son, but he says, I will bring this great people from you, and that's all Abraham has, decade after decade, as he slowly ages, and year after year, he and his wife, Sarah, realize, humanly speaking, it's not gonna happen. And yet, though there is nothing around him that would hold up his hope in God, he continues to hope against hope that God will do what God says that he will do. The foundation of the Christian life is not our experiences. It is that the word of God, it is the word of a God who cannot lie to you, and you must believe if all you have is his word. But the greatest answer to the mocking of our world and the doubts that have crept into our minds in those seasons of extended sorrow and spiritual disappointments is not just that God has spoken. The greatest answer to that is that when what God has spoken arrives, so to speak, on your front porch. and you experience in such a noticeable way what God has spoken. We find this all through the New Testament. Luke, I believe, is gonna be preaching from Ephesians soon, am I right? You don't know? Yes. All right, what chapter? Three, four? What chapter? Where's Luke? Did Luke go to McDonald's? Where's Luke? Chapter three, have you got to the end yet? Okay, so you are at the place where I wanna talk about. Luke is about to hit the place where after more doctrine, Paul stops and says, this is why I pray, and then he goes into this prayer basically asking for the experiential grasp of these truths like he did at the end of chapter one. Great truths, rightly understood, and then Right living, yes, but in between this linchpin of God causing those truths to move from mind to heart, which sometimes feels like a thousand miles, but from heart to life, which the Puritan John Flavel said is just a few inches. Paul is asking that the things that God has done would lay hold of the people in a way that they would know the love of God that is beyond knowledge, that is incomprehensible. And that through this mighty work of this doctrine and all that's represented there, that it would then work in them things that they find hard to imagine. And it would all be for God's glory. And that's really what we're talking about here. God, I need an answer to this constant mocking insinuation. I need an answer to the doubt in my own heart that has risen up. I know what to write on paper, but I need you to do what? To send me the loving kindnesses. I need to experience what I'm reading. When words are beautiful, and concepts are beautiful, and they beautifully describe something that is not real, then beautiful words are enough, aren't they? I mean, they stir your heart, they have a purpose, beautiful poetry, beautiful literature, Now, when I say this, I'm afraid you'll think of Hollywood, but I remember as a kid reading Tolkien's books, you know, before Tolkien was cool, and I remember as a 12-year-old reading through, you know, the trilogy, His Lord of the Rings, and I was so bored by the long descriptions of the scenery. I thought, hurry up and get to the fight. Now, at age 50, When I read Tolkien, it's not the fight, it's those long descriptions. I think, I wish I lived in a hobbit hole. I wish I was walking with those guys through those scenes. But I never get mad that I'm not allowed to live in a hobbit hole, and I'm not allowed to walk through those scenes, because those are beautiful descriptions, and they're noble things to think about. They're not real. And so I don't have to have the substance of the words. The words are enough. I appreciate them. But if things are real, and they're described beautifully, We are not satisfied with just the words. You can say a lot of things about love, can't you? About the love between a boy and a girl, about the lifelong love of a marriage. And you can write all this poetry on it. I mean, how many things have been written? And the heart is ablaze, you know, and you're thrilled with it. But if at the end of the day, all you have is the marriage license and not the spouse sitting next to you, you're not satisfied. If all you had was a book of Victorian love poems and not your husband or not your wife, you would say, well, this is a beautiful book, but I want the thing. I want the reality. In Christianity, it is not a mark of mature faith that you say to God, words are enough, when the reality has been brought to us through Christ. Sometimes I think it is a mask for our unbelief or our weak faith when we say, oh no, the words are enough, I don't need to experience them in this life, that will be for the next life. A robust faith comes to scripture, makes sure that what we're asking for is really what God has provided, but having settled that issue, what God says is for this life, we demand that it be given in this life. so that we can have an answer for those mocking questions. But the prayer of verse 41, because of the struggle in verse 42, is never enough. So let's look at the prayer life. Let's drop down to verse 48. And I want to use this just as an example of that principle. Here we find two responses that ought to be a part of every life that prays verse 41 because of the situation in verse 42. And it's stated in such a simple, concrete way that any of us can take it with us through the week. Hands stretched toward God, thoughts returning again and again to his word. Verse 48. And I shall lift up my hands to your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes." So, two very simple questions as we approach the Word of God. A simple question that you can use every time you come together with these brothers and sisters. And one of your church leaders gets up and opens the scripture. You can ask yourself this. You can write it in the front of your Bible. You can stick it on a sticky note. You know, write it on a sticky note and stick it on the front of your Bible. Where are my hands? I don't find that to be a question that gets easier to answer the longer that I'm a Christian. A lot of times, I come to the Word of God for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with what the psalmist is talking about here. I come to the Word of God to get a sermon. I come to the Word of God because I don't wanna stand up and say to the people, even though you paid me a paycheck, I have nothing to say to you. I come to the Word of God because there's an emergency in my family. I come to the Word of God because that's what I do because I'm a Christian, and so I do that every morning, or I show up at church, And I come to the Word of God because if I skip church, then somebody at church is gonna, you know, give me a call and say, hey, are you okay? I didn't see you there today. It is not easy. to make sure your hands are in the right place when you come to the Word of God, but it is significant. Where are your hands? So let me just ask you now, where are your hands? I don't mean these hands, the spiritual hands. Where are your hands? Whether you're a baby Christian or whether you're one of the elders of the church, where are your hands? And then where are your thoughts during the week? Let's take the where are your hands. What does it mean when he says, I shall lift up my hands to your commandments? I remember reading Spurgeon on this passage, and of course Spurgeon waxed eloquent, and he just gave a whole list of things that this could apply to. I think two of the things that Spurgeon pointed out are obvious, and so I want us to just talk about those before we go any further. The stretching of the hands toward God's commands, toward his word. Whether as a church, where are your hands? Or as an individual, you wake up in the morning, you grab your cup of coffee, you go and sit down, hopefully you take your phone and iPad and throw them to the opposite end of the house, but probably you don't, but I hope at least you silence them, you open your Bible, where are your hands? Well, what's he talking about? One of the things I think that this wonderfully expresses is a hunger or a desire, a yearning for what God has given us in his word. Are your hands stretched toward the Word of God every time you read it as an individual, every time you come together as a body of believers? Are you hungrily reaching out, stretching unashamedly for all that is there? In 1 Peter 2, you remember the passage where Peter says, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you've tasted the kindness of the Lord. That's a wonderful picture there, the newborn babe. Think of it. Think of the infants you have in church. Think of moms and dads, and they show up, you know, not long after, maybe a month, maybe two months, depending on how you think about germs and babies. We have some folks at our church, it's like they show up eight days later, I'm thinking, you're here already? And then some show up six months later, I'm like, where you been? Like, you know, come on. So, We all have different views of when it's right to bring the infant into the public. So you bring the baby, and what are one of the things that distinguishes the hunger of a child? So after church, everybody's mulling around and talking, and the baby is grumpy. And so the mom's trying to talk, and so the dad takes the baby, says, I got him. And the dad, you know, trying to distract the baby and bouncing the baby. And the whole time, the baby, because the child is hungry, it's just doing this toward mom. Dad's here, don't want him. Mom, I'm hungry. And the baby's crying and the baby's leaning and the baby's stretching its hands. Have you ever watched the young father, especially of the first child, try to distract the baby? Walks him around the building, shows him, doesn't work. It's a futile effort. Eventually, what does mom say? Give him to me, he's hungry. And mom and baby disappear. Now when our children get older, let's say 10, And after church they say, mom, dad, I'm starving, you know? And you're at home and you're trying to cook and the kids are trying to reach in and grab stuff and you say, ah, out of the kitchen, I'm dying, I'm starving. And you say, you're not a little baby, you can wait. Let me ask you, which are you? The kind of grown up kid that says, yeah, I can wait, I'm not a baby. or the infant, that every time the word of God is opened in your personal study of the word, or when you come together as a church, you are inconsolably hungry. It is not optional. Other people can be thinking about other things. In your family, they can be thinking about other things. The preacher, he may not be that great, but between your soul and God, your hands are outstretched. I forget which Puritan it was, but one of the Puritans said, he was an early Puritan, that his people's hunger for the word did more for his sermon preparation than his library. Now he wasn't saying he didn't study, but it's true, a hungry people You know, there are people at the little church where I pastor that every week they get so much from the sermon. And it's not because of me. It's because they are so hungry. They are so needy. And their arms are stretched out to God. Whether I'm talking in circles or whether it's wonderful, it doesn't matter. They're hungry and the Lord feeds them. So let me ask you, in the middle of this sermon today, where are your hands? Are you saying to the Lord, do you carry on a conversation with God during this sermon? Are you saying to him, I am hungry. I am not in a position where I can afford to skip the meal. I can't wait. I need you to feed me. Sometimes we come to church and we're not that way, and we have to be honest, and sometimes we open our Bibles and we're not that way because of what Proverbs 27 says. Proverbs 27, verse seven, a satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. The person who has just eaten a large meal has no room for dessert, even if it's their favorite dessert. My father, you know, dad jokes, when we were little, you know, we would stop and eat at McDonald's and I always felt, I think I felt it was a mark of, a rite of passage, you know, a mark of manhood that I would eat the biggest thing on the menu. My dad would always look at me and say, you really want that? I'm like, I can eat it, I can do it. So I would do it and I would be so sick to my stomach, you know, and I'm sitting in the back of the car regretting it. And my dad, we'd get back in the car, and the family's driving home, and we'd pass, we were at McDonald's, now we're passing Wendy's, and he'd say, he'd put the blinker on, he'd go, hey, let's go to Wendy's. And we'd all go, oh, dad, don't even mention food. Is that how you come to church? A little bit of jam from the world that you've been snacking on all week? and there just really isn't any appetite for the word. I don't mean that you're rude and you don't show up. I don't mean that you don't listen or take notes. I mean that God knows the difference between a hungry infant whose hands are stretched toward the word and a half full Christian who is going through the motions because they know it's the right thing, but it's optional. In your quiet times this week, where were your hands? I know the difference in me between opening up a Bible and getting my favorite commentary and getting a notebook out and writing down truths that I'm seeing there for my own soul. but I'm going through the motions. I know the difference between that and having hands stretched in hunger. Let me give you a second application of this metaphor of hands being stretched up towards God's word, and that is, there's a lot of overlap here, but that is desperation. Not just hunger, but need. Not just that you admit you're needy, but you feel the need. And it's a desperate issue. And if God doesn't meet your needs, nothing that anyone around you does can meet this need. You feel so needy for God, and knowing that nothing else and no one else can help you, that when the Bible is opened in church, your heart is already in communication with God, and your hands are stretched out like a beggar. Think of a beggar. Are you so needy that you are like a beggar toward your heavenly Father right now? I have never been so needy that I had to go beg on the street. It would be humiliating to go beg on the street, wouldn't it? Can you imagine losing your job or whatever happens and tragedy after tragedy and Can you imagine being a beggar on the street and old college friends walk by that you haven't seen in 20 years, or church members, and how embarrassed you are to be so desperate that you would beg? I live in a small town. We have 6,000 total, and I think that's counting pets in the outlying region, but we don't have beggars on the street. But we've all been to cities that have beggars. I remember going through, walking down that street in Chicago. I forget what it's called. It has a name, but it's the touristy street with all the super expensive shops that if you walk in, you know that they know that you're not really there to shop. You're just there to window shop. I went in a fancy watch, a Swiss watch company, Omega. I've always been fascinated by the watches, so I walk in and the man with all these watches, and you had to go through a door that was locked, and you had to push a button for them to electronically unlock it, and it has bars all over the windows. So I walk in, and as soon as he looked at me, I just walked right back out, and my kids were like, Dad, and I'm like, he knows. Like, I'm not buying anything in this store. Not buying and staying married, you know, so I wasn't buying. When I was on that street, it was one fancy shop after the next. and in between the really high-end shops were beggars. Now, there are different ways of being a beggar, aren't there? There's the beggar that has a little basket with a sign propped up saying, you know, please help, thank you, or whatever, some little message on the sign and the basket, and the beggar doesn't call you out, he doesn't say anything to you. That's kind of a, you know, that's an unambitious beggar. And then there's the step up. That's the person who, if you make the mistake of looking at them in the eye, they say, sir, sir, and you think, oh, I shouldn't have looked. Now I don't have any cash. Now I don't know what to do. But there is another kind, and I remember, the reason I mention Chicago is I remember walking past those fancy shops, and there was a woman who looked like she was a Muslim woman with her clothing, and a little huddle of children around her. And I saw her in the distance, and I thought, I don't know what to do. I don't have any money, and so I don't know whether to look at her or say something to her. So I thought, I'm just not gonna look. She just hollered out at me. And, sir, and I thought, oh, so I looked, arms stretched out, I'm starving. My children are starving. That's the picture in this passage. Are you the polite beggar? Do you have a sign set up in your seat right now that says to God, would like a little something for the week to get me through the week, thank you? Or if the sermon kind of looks your way, do you say, oh, thank you, God, I'm glad I needed that? Or do you say in a way that is inconvenient and shameless, do you go to God and say, I'm not leaving you alone until you give me what my soul so desperately needs? When you opened the Bible, when you did it this week in your quiet time, were you shamelessly desperate or just pretending to be a beggar? Edward Payson in the early 19th century, he pastored from like 1790 into the early third of the 1800s. Payson was in Portland, Maine, noted particularly for his godliness, young man, and for his prayer life. He's kind of like the Robert Murray McShane of that region, or the David Brainerd, you know, 70 years later. Payson noted that there was a way of going through the motions of pretending to be a beggar that really you weren't a beggar. And maybe I've used this illustration with you before. He had a man in his church that was a banker who joined an acting troupe in town. And in his first play that he played in, in the theater, he was a beggar. So they made him all scrungy and nasty and they covered him in dirt and he practiced his part. Payson said to him after the play, it was amazing, you did such a good job. Everybody was bragging on him. Mister so and so, you made such a good beggar. And then Payson said this, yes, but you could never teach a rich man to beg like a starving man begs. There's a difference. He applied it to prayer. We could apply it to prayer. We could apply it to the word. Do we come to church, are you a spiritually rich person? who is pretending to be a beggar. Do you ever do that in the prayer time? Do you say things that you know are appropriate to say for beggars, but you're not really a beggar? You haven't begged all week. You've been fine all week. Are your hands stretched to God as a beggar, or are you embarrassed to cry out and bother him? Do you feel like you're getting low on spiritual supplies as things get difficult in your life? But you could say to God, but God, really, honestly, I can make it another day if you're busy today. You know, I open my Bible to read in the morning and I don't know, I'm just not getting much out of it and my mind is distracted and I've got other important things to do. So God, I can make it a day. Or do you throw open your Bible and lock the door of your bedroom and get on your face and say to God, I'm not leaving until you hear my prayer. I am lifting my hands toward you as a desperate beggar toward your word. Now maybe I can illustrate this in a very simple way. Let's just think of our hands, okay? Let me give you three ways that you could be here, and all three of these are the wrong way, okay? So let's think of the first way, the crossed arms. Do you have any crossed arms people in your church? Probably not many. I don't think this is the place I would come if I didn't want to come to church. I would go to other places. I wouldn't show up here. But you may be here because someone loves the Lord in your family and they told you, get in the car. And so you're here. Maybe you're a young person, and you aren't interested in anything about Christ, and we don't talk that way because we're in church, but you're here because your parents made you come here, and you're sitting there like this, crossed arms. And it is impossible, humanly speaking, to get you to take anything home from God's word. But I imagine that that's not many of you. So let's go to the second. Here's the second. This is me coming home from Walmart, which I go to every day. And so I go to Walmart, and I get everything that's on the list. I try. And then I don't like making multiple trips, so I grab all the Walmart bags in one trip. It's my new rite of passage. I'm a real man if I can get it all in one trip. So I got all of them. And sometimes I kick the door handle open, sometimes I can get my thumb on the door handle, and I come in, and what if my kids say to me, oh dad, good, you're here, here, mom said to give you this. And I'm like, guys, hold on, hold on, let me, and I shuffle things around a little, and I get a little bit of a hand open, I say, okay, okay, put it in that hand. And then I go on to the kitchen. Is that how you're here? Your life is full of so many nice things. Things that God has provided, but they have become the things that satisfy you. Relationships, activities, possessions, even just the dream of tomorrow will be better than every yesterday was somehow. And your hands are so full that when you come to the Bible daily or to the church as a group, and you come to the Word of God, for God to give you anything, you have to shuffle everything around and you go, okay God, just put a thought for the week right there, thanks. Let me give you a third illustration of a wrong way to come. Okay, this right here. Just hands at your side. Despair. I have found When I was converted in my 20s, despair never tempted me. Other things tempted me, but not despair. But in my 50s, after pastoring for 30 whatever years, after pastoring for 20 whatever years and being a Christian for 33 years, despair tempts me. I think, do I dare still hope that God will be all that he says he is? even though he knows me, and John is still so much like John, and so little like Christ, I think, would he really still hear my prayers? Would he still feed me from his word? Is it even worth trying? And I start to stumble in my faith, and I struggle to believe that he is, and he is a rewarder of those that seek him. And so sometimes I come to the Bible like this. And it's like trying to hand me something would be hard work because my hands aren't stretched out. Because I don't believe that God would be kind enough to give something to me. And I can give a lot of reasons that I think that's very reasonable. Look at how I've handled what God has given to me in previous years. Or look at the distracted mind. Look at the divided heart. Look at the cold love. Why would God give me anything? And I believe the enemy's statements about my Redeemer, and I come to church and my hands are at my side, and I wish that God would give me something with this kind of weak wish, and I don't stretch my hands out. Is that you? Has the last year as a church been so difficult that as a church your hands are at your side? Like I said, it's very easy when there's spiritual disappointments. Are things in your marriage or in your home so frequently heartbreaking to you that your hands are limp at the side even when you open the Bible? So, be careful. Have you ever thought that what you got this week from scripture was not based primarily on the commentaries you own or the translation of the Bible that you're reading from? I mean, have you ever thought if you bought a new study Bible, you would get so much more? As a young Christian, I went through a lot of study Bibles, none of them gave me anything significantly more. Have you thought that what you're getting from the services week after week may be directly related to where your hands are in church? Crossed, full, hanging, or stretched to God? Desperately hungry, desperately needy. It is easy to be deceived into thinking that sitting in the chair that you're in right now or having a quiet time each day is equivalent to arms stretched toward his word. But you know that you can go through the motions. If you skip church, someone may come ask you, where were you? But if you come here and sit politely and talk kindly to your friends after the service, nobody is going to say to you, where were your hands? Why were they at your side? Why were they crossed? Why were they full? They'll never ever search that out. So you can come to church for a lot of motives that have nothing to do with the outstretched arm. Where are your hands? Let me finish with that final part in verse 48. I will meditate on your statutes, which he's just said he loves in verse 48. Again, he said it before in verse 47. Where the heart delights, the mind returns. You don't have to force it. Because our love for God's word is not perfect, as Christians in this world, we do have to preach to ourselves, don't we? We do have to say to ourselves, you need him. You need this word. Whether you feel like you need it or not, whether you feel like you love him or not, whether you feel like you're a Christian this morning or not. I mean, I wake up some mornings and I feel very not Christian. And I look at my Bible and I think, but I desperately need him. So I open that book. So not just where are your hands when the Bible's open, but during the week, where are your thoughts? Is it just Sunday, and then the week, you know, Sunday fades, the sermon fades? Is it just in the morning, the quiet time, but then throughout the day, the quiet time is faded? There are so many simple things we can do to carry the word of God with us through the day. And I'm not even talking about your electronic devices, which, you know, I'm kind of pretty dumb with those. So whenever I talk to my friends at church and say, well, why don't you do this? They go, well, John, I can do that on my phone. I have an app for that. I'm like, oh, I didn't know you had an app for that. But I am simple. I get a note card and I write on the note card just one or two things or just a verse from the passage I read that morning. Things where it's like the Lord so clearly pointed those out to me, and I stick it in my pocket, or I put it on a sticky note, and I stick it on the refrigerator, or on the steering wheel of my car, and as I go through the day, I see it, and I just talk with God about it, and the mind goes back and gravitates to the things that my heart delights in. Do you ever buy anything? Well, if you buy anything and you're under the age of 60, then you probably go to YouTube for reviews. Do you ever go to YouTube for reviews? There's all kinds of reviews. So I'll use a personal illustration. I always buy my own Christmas presents, because that cannot be left up to amateurs. You get socks and ties. So I want exciting things. You think I'm joking, but my wife will ask me, you've already bought your Christmas present this year. Yes, I bought my Christmas present for this year. Last year, in November, it was one that needed a long time. So, it hasn't arrived yet, and when it arrives, I'll hand it to her. I'll say, this came in the mail for me, thank you. You'll need to wrap it and put it under the tree. One year, though, I wanted a pocket knife. Now, I didn't just want any pocket knife. I didn't want a Walmart pocket knife. I wanted this really cool pocket knife. So I found this really cool pocket knife advertised. So I go online and I read the reviews. And then I go to YouTube and I watch the reviews. Do you know all the reviews there are? Like there are the open box reviews. Do you know what that is? Those are the lame ones. That's when the other guy who's nerding out about his pocket knife films himself opening the box and says, oh, it's just so great, it's just so great. He doesn't know anything about the pocket knife either, he just got it out of the box, but he wanted to film himself getting it out of the box, and he puts it, so I watch it. And then there's the review that guys that are real brainy in that area, so guys that know all about the right kind of steel for pocket knives, and the way they open and close, and if they're a pocket knife, how trustworthy is the lock, and how does it weigh, and what's it made out of, and so those are the brainy reviews, and I watch those. And then there's, the other review I like is like the year later reviews. I've had this pocket knife for a year. I've used it in all these situations, and they show it to you, and it's kind of all beat up, and they tell you how well it held up. My wife looks at me and says, what are you doing? Like she's asleep and I'm laying in the bed with my computer watching these videos on this pocket knife. I go, I'm watching the videos on the pocket knife. I need to know which pocket. She goes, you've spent all these hours watching these videos on this same pocket knife? I'm like, yeah, because it's important to get the right. And she goes, just buy it. That, of course, is part of the plan, but anyway. Do you know I say to her, oh, it's no work. It's not hard at all. I really like these videos. I would have to pay her to watch those videos, but me, I can't wait to watch the next one, because my heart was attached to it, and so the mind wants to return. Meditation is you taking up what God has been teaching you from His Word, which you stretched your hands out for, hungry and desperate, and He gave. And you, in your mind, your heart loves it, so your brain goes back to it every chance. And you turn and you look at it from every angle. One of my favorite commentators on Psalm 119, Charles Bridges, wrote this about meditation and the rarity of it. How often we just, you know, read the passage, write a few thoughts and never come back to it. He said this, why is the Bible only read and not meditated on? Is it because it is not loved? We do not go to it as a hungry man to the food, as the miser to his treasure. Then he says this, our loss, not meditating, our loss is incalculable. Our superficial knowledge has no practical influence. Have you not found that to be true? You can love what is said in a sermon and it makes no practical influence. You can love what you studied in your quiet time and it makes no change. Just ask yourself, could you list on a paper the changes that you have made in your life in the last month because of your exposure to God's word? Are there four, five? They don't have to be big changes, just small changes. Have you changed anything? because of exposure to the Word. How little a superficial acquaintance with God's Word actually makes of a practical influence. Will you cultivate a prayer life as you come to the turn of the new year. It's always good to think about where we're at spiritually. I don't mean will you make sure that you get a book on prayer and you pray a little longer each morning, but will you cultivate a life that is in harmony with your lips and heart so that there are some practical statements made to God, not from the mouth, but from the daily choices. Oh God, may your loving kindnesses come to me. Send them to me one after the next. Yes, because I stretch my hands day after day like a hungry child, like a needy beggar. And my thoughts return to your word. Well, two real very quick things to close, and that is, notice what he says he stretches his hands toward. Not God's word, but what? God's commands. Do you not find it shocking? in a world that hates, and that's us too, human nature, where we hate to be told what to do by anybody, that the believer belongs to such a king who has your heart that you say, I stretch my hands with hunger and desperation, not to the promises, to the commands, I mean promises too, but even the commands of the king are so sweet to the believer because of what kind of king you belong to that you're glad to yearn for the command. It's so perfect. And finally, if you find it hard to imagine what a life would look like that stretches its hands toward the commands of God and meditates on the word that it delights in, you need look no further than the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. Can you imagine him reading this as a 15-year-old? and realizing that every moment of his life, according to his age, his level of maturity, this was him. He, your Lord, stretched his arms toward his father's commands in the word every day and meditated on that which he loved. And he can teach you. So let's ask Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the pictures that are so simple that can be carried throughout the week, even when the mind can't hold on to complex concepts. We can ask ourselves, where are my hands? Where are my thoughts? But Father, it's not enough. We're going to need a teacher, and I think of what we were told this morning, such a sweet reality. Since your son is the greatest of teachers, then none of us, no matter how bad a pupil we feel we are, none has any right to despair. If only we will come. Will you teach us, Jesus, will you teach us by your spirit how to stretch out the hands, how to meditate, so that it's more than just words when we say, send us your loving kindnesses today. We ask it in Christ's name and for his name, amen.