Returning in God's word this morning to, I've said first Peter so many times that I almost automatically said first Peter, Psalm 19. That's where we're going. This is October, and sometimes in October we, those of us who love church history especially, get thinking about some stuff that happened in October a long time ago. One time in October, a little more than 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed some stuff to adore, and a lot of people sat up and paid attention. That's the beginning of the Reformation in a nutshell. And one of the big issues in the Reformation was simply the importance of scripture. And for the next few weeks, it's my plan to go to a few different parts of the Bible that give us some guidance about how we are to feel about God's word and how we are to use God's word in our lives, simply because that was one of the reasons why the reformers undertook the work that they did. Psalm 19 is one of the best places in the Bible to go to direct our hearts as to how we should feel towards scripture and use it. And so we're going to read this together. If you're able, I'll ask that you stand and we will glorify God in hearing his word and its preaching. To the choir master, a psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God. and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent 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. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we know no better prayer than what we have just read. We would simply and humbly ask in Christ's name that the meditations of our heart and the words of our mouth would be acceptable in your sight so that our faith and hope might be in you as our rock and our redeemer. We ask this for our salvation and also for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. In case anyone's unfamiliar with some of the terminology, the Reformation was a period in church history about 500 years ago, and it lasted for about 100 years, from about 1520 to about 1620. That's an easy way to remember the rough time frame. And through that period there's a number of things happening that are actually quite unusual in the rest of church history, and that is there were a lot of changes. I say that's unusual in church history because anyone who's been around churches know that it's hard to change anything, isn't it? You know, we hum and we haw and we have committees and we have studies and we want to do our homework, we want to do a thorough job, and then we change the light bulbs, right? It takes a lot of work to change anything, and that's not bad. It's just how things work, and it's one way that we maintain order and peace and harmony among God's people. We don't just change things for no reason. But for about a hundred years, especially in the Western church, in the Western part of the church in Europe, There were an enormous number of changes in a relatively short period of time. Very, very big changes. Things that hadn't changed in a very long time started changing. And the changes involved were not simple things like You know, they didn't have light bulbs, but had they had light bulbs, changing light bulbs. It was not issues about, you know, who was going to be on the cleanup rotation this week that changed. It was big, big, big changes. Changes like, what language are we going to use in our worship? Changes like, who is going to be in charge of leading the church? Changes like, what does the church believe about this very important doctrine, like, say, the Lord's Supper or baptism? Those are big changes. And in about 100 years, from about 1520 to about 1620, there was an incredible number of these changes. Yet another one was, for many reformers, hey, maybe I should get married. Many of the reformers who were involved in the early stages of the Reformation were celibate monks. and something very strange happened where they came to believe that their vows of being monks were not necessarily valid and they decided to change practices that were not only changed in other people's lives and changes in the church as an institution but changes in their own life so much so that as monks left their monasteries and became pastors of churches And then as nuns left their convents and became church members, Well, there's a whole lot of single men, godly character, who are leading churches and a whole lot of single women who are quite godly and needing husbands. And Martin Luther was one who married a former nun. Martin Buetzer was another. And there were many such big changes. And I say that just to illustrate. These weren't just theoretical changes on paper somewhere. They were big changes in people's own lives. And we could look back at all that and think, You know, what was really going on? Was it just people who like to fiddle with things? People who like to change? People who like to disrupt? Were it just people with a kind of revolutionary, innovative spirit who like to tweak and change and make everything just the way they wanted it? Or was there something else going on that was deeper? And I think anyone who's familiar with the amazing variety of developments in that century in the church will understand there must have been something deeper going on. So the changes weren't random and they weren't fiddly. They were deep and they were principled and they were coherent and they all happened in a way that shows that there was a bigger point and a bigger purpose. And what was the underlying issue? Well, there were a few, but one of them was, what role does scripture play in the life of God's people? How are we to treat the Bible? Around the time of the Reformation, pastors began learning the original languages of scripture. Now, you may have never heard a pastor speak in Hebrew or Greek, but most pastors today at least have a little bit of understanding of Hebrew and Greek such that they could look up some information about the original languages, even if we're still learning how to read it. But back then, almost nobody knew the scriptures other than in a translation that had become very common in Latin. That was almost the only way any pastor knew the Bible. They didn't know the original languages. And sometimes misunderstandings would arise around certain translation choices. And no one would know that there were other possible translations. And their misunderstanding would never get fixed. Because pastors weren't able to get at the original languages of the Bible. So that was one example. Another is how people would treat church authorities. Maybe this is one moment in the Reformation or its history that you might all be familiar with. And that is Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. Not the Diet of Worms. Eating worms is not a good diet. But at the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther stood up and he said, Okay, so we've got the Pope and the councils and all the authorities of the church. And then here I've got a plain understanding of a text of scripture. And I've got to go with scripture. That's how it's got to be. And that was an unusual thing to say at the time. It wasn't totally unusual, but it was certainly unusual for someone to be saying that so publicly and so boldly and so clearly. That the scripture is not something the church has authority over, but something that rules and governs everything the church does and says. So how are we going to treat church authority? Another one is, should we let people in the church have their own Bibles in their own languages? And should we preach in a language that people can understand? You might think, what would be the point of going to church and hearing something I can't understand? Well, that's a good question. But that's what people had become used to. They had become used to going to church and the priest doing basically everything in a language that nobody knew, and there wouldn't even be maybe a sermon that they could hear and understand for themselves. Sometimes a preacher would come to town and there would be sermons then, but it wasn't a normal part of their worship. It certainly wasn't the emphasis in their worship. And the reformers made this point that the Bible belongs to the people, and they spent an enormous amount of work. Luther spent years translating the Bible into German. William Tyndale gave his short life to the work of translating the Bible into English. And Tyndale put it best, that the point of his life's work was to make it possible for the plowboy in England to know as much of the Bible as the bishops. And that was a very practical outcome of this concern with what role does scripture play in the life of a Christian? And one other one is simply how do we preach? Is preaching something that is mostly to do with what the preacher thinks everyone needs to hear? And do we preach from one part of the Bible and another part of the Bible, and maybe we have a really good preacher in the area write his sermons down, and all the preachers in the area read their sermons, and they read the same sermons on a yearly cycle, so if you've been going to church for 20 years, if you even have any sermons read, you hear the same sermons your whole life? And everyone just gets used to the sermon? Is that the best way of doing things? Is that the role that scripture's supposed to play in our life? Or should most Christians have a daily, weekly, monthly diet of going through the whole scripture and understanding what it means? And one of the amazing changes, for the very first time in a long time, this hadn't been done before for a very long time, but a gentleman named Ulrich Zwingli, who had been converted to the Reformed faith, he decided to get up one Sunday and he opened the book of Matthew, and he started preaching in Matthew 1, and he just kept going. Nobody had ever done that before, at least not in living memory. People maybe more than a thousand years earlier had done that, but not in living memory. And Oryx Wingley showed everybody a totally different way of preaching. Just go through the whole Bible and preach the whole thing. That's another example of a big change that happened because of a different way of thinking about God's word and its role in the life of a Christian. Now, you say, those are all very interesting historical details. That's a good history lesson. But what I'd like to point out is that that's not just a sort of historical interest point to us. We're Christians who have inherited many of the blessings that God has given to his church in ages past for our benefit. And it's not just enough for us to say, well, yeah, I agree with all those things. I believe that sermons should be in the language of the people. I believe that we should all be allowed to read the Bible for ourselves. I believe that scripture should be more important than the church authority. I believe that the pastor should preach through the Bible. But if those were just things that people thought, well, yeah, I agree with that. Do you think the changes would ever have come about? at such great cost to those involved, at such enormous effort over whole lifetimes of ministry? Do you think that nearly believing all of those points would have actually brought about the kinds of changes that that century witnessed in the church? No. I don't think so. I think in order for any of those changes to have come about, many, many, many, many Christians and church leaders had to be gripped in the deepest parts of their heart with a different sense of the importance of God's word for their own life and salvation. That's what needed to happen. And in large measure, amazingly, that's what God did. And so my plan this morning and for the next few weeks is to call you and invite you and to, with God's help, effect in you a new, renewed, refreshed love for the Bible. That's the point. So that you and I will go through our life with this kind of love for scripture that brought such great blessings to others in past centuries. And certainly that's something that Psalm 19 can help us with. The question I'd like to ask is, why did David, who wrote this psalm, why did he love the Bible? Why did he love the Bible? Could we overhear and catch, like a contagious virus, some of his love for scripture? Why did he love the Bible? And the first answer to that question is because the Bible reveals God's glory. Verses one to six. David hasn't gotten to the subject of scripture yet. He's going to get there in verse seven, but he adds this preface about what the world around us reveals about God. And the answer is that the heavens declare the glory of God. God's glory is high like the heavens. In verse three, we learn that the heavens preach a sermon about God's glory that goes across the entire world and crosses every culture and language barrier. Their voice goes throughout all the earth. And that's also true of God's glory. It's big, like the whole world. And then verses four to six, we learn that God's glory is like the strength of the sun. It's a little line at the end of verse six that I think sums up a lot of the point. There is nothing hidden from its heat. There's nothing in the whole world that if we are properly understanding it, is not shot through with the glory of the God who made us. Just like there's nothing in the world around us that we can glimpse or understand without reckoning how it's related to the sun. I can see everything I see and everything I eat and everything I enjoy in this world has something to do with the way the sun shines in such strength on the earth. And the same thing is true of God's glory. Everything is related to it. There is nothing hidden from its heat. And I think that the point we should gather from that is that we ought to have an attitude towards scripture that many of us are better at having towards the world around us. Many of you guys are engineers. Many of us are interested in the outdoors. And we talk about the outdoors with a kind of wonder. Mountains are beautiful. Nature, God's creation, the sky, the heavens, the stars, the moon, all of it kind of inspires inevitably in us a sense of wonder and amazement and fascination and interest and pleasant Ah, we enjoy having such amazing things to see and to experience. But then you go to the Bible and you think, oh, maybe here there'll be something interesting. I don't know. We'll see. I got to tell you, if you're bored by the Bible, you're doing it wrong, right? If you're bored by Yosemite Park, you're doing it wrong. Nobody should be able to go to Yosemite Park and be bored. There's nothing boring about it. There's enormous mountains to see and beautiful waterfalls and beautiful trees and forests and all the rest. You can't be bored there. You can't be bored at the Grand Canyon. You can't go to the Canadian Rockies and be bored. It's just impossible because they're declaring the glory of God. And in exactly the same way, if you will come to scripture and think, More Bible? You're just completely missing the point. Because everyone who is in love with the glory of God loves the Bible because, as David's going to show, it's an even better revealer of God's glory than the world around us. So if you can go to the heights and the depths of the natural world around and be bored, Well, then with some consistency, you could go to the Bible and be bored too. But I don't think that's the way God made you and me. He has made you and me to respond with interest and fascination at every glimpse we get of what is really important, which is his glory. And the Bible is like a theater of his glory. So it shouldn't be boring because it reveals God's glory. Just by the way, that means, Like entertainment in the Christian's life needs to be evaluated, doesn't it? Not just sinful entertainment. I just mean the whole idea of entertainment for a Christian should be put in its place. Because what's really fun for a Christian ought not to be trivia that don't mean anything. And I like a board game and a video game and I like watching things and I like relaxing. Don't get me wrong. I love it. But what should really float a Christian's boat is not stuff that doesn't matter. What should float our boat and turn our crank and all the other ways of saying this is what really matters. And one of the surest marks that you're a child of God, truly converted and changed by God's spirit, is that you go to the page of scripture, and even if it's sometimes difficult, or you're sleepy, or you don't have the ability to understand everything, like even though there's some obstacles, at root, you are basically very, very attracted to the Bible. Just the same way that all of us are naturally, unless we're totally off our rocker, we are naturally attracted to the beauty of the world around us. We love it. Trivia and entertainment and diversion and distraction need to be put away so that we can get to what really is the root of our life, which is the glory of God revealed in scripture. That's one thing. We love the Bible because it reveals God's glory. The second reason that David loved the Bible is because it addresses our deepest needs. And here we're going to look at verse seven to nine. And there are a whole bunch of needs that David recognizes that God's word meets. The first in verse seven is the need for new life. Listen to this. The law of Yahweh is perfect, reviving the soul. See what David did there? He identified a need that sinners have. We are lifeless in ourselves. None of us, all on our own, have the kind of life that we need in order to see the kingdom of God. We're spiritually dead people. It's because we're sons and daughters of Adam and the root of our life is sin, not righteousness. And what does David say about God's law? The law of Yahweh is perfect because it is able to give sinners what they don't have in themselves. It revives the soul. So do you need new life? Do you want to really live? Do you want to actually have a real life of significance and meaning and joy and wonder? Well, the world all around us is offering that. I mean, especially advertisers. I think I've maybe mentioned this as an illustration in one of my sermons here before, but my favorite example is a Tide laundry detergent commercial. I mean, it's about laundry detergent. And the beginning of the ad, everyone in the family is sad and fighting and bored and desperate. And in the middle of the ad, someone gets tied and pours it in a laundry machine. And at the end of the ad, everyone is bouncing and playing and happy and fun. That's life, real life from some laundry detergent, right? I mean, it's ridiculous. Laundry detergent is not like that. But God's word is. And God's word can come into the most difficult situations. The news that God has sent his son to die and rise again for the new life of dead sinners. The fact that God promises forgiveness to those who repent. The fact that God welcomes even the weakest, and like a gentle gardener looking at a broken plant, is able not to crush it or break it apart, but to mend it and heal it and restore it. All of a sudden, sinners who have only spiritual death because of the entrance of God's word can have life. Is there anything else in the world that can do that? No, because only Yahweh's law is perfect. The second spiritual need that it meets is the need for wisdom. I think this is where we're going to wrap up this morning. There's a lot to learn here and I don't want to rush too much, so we'll just look at the end of verse seven. There's a need for wisdom. The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple. Now the word testimony here draws attention to the fact that God's word is a witness to the truth. The word law earlier talks about the fact that Yahweh's word is comprehensive instruction for our life. It's a guide and a manual for all of life. This word testimony focuses in on an aspect of scripture that is that it gives witness to what is true. It truthfully relates what God has done in history. It truthfully speaks about what God will do in the future. And it truthfully, accurately describes who God is towards his people. It's just a fact. Jesus has risen from the dead and the Bible tells us truthfully that that has happened. With exactly the same level of certainty, we can say that we who trust in Christ will one day rise from the dead because the scripture bears a true witness and testimony to God's promise to do exactly that. And in the same way, we can confidently call God the God who raises the dead. because scripture teaches us to say that. Now, why do you need to have God's testimony in your life? Well, because first of all, as a limited human with a brain only about this big, and then especially as a sinner, you are in constant danger of being a gullible fool. who simply believes what everyone around them believes. That's what the simple is in verse 7. The simple. Gullible. Easily persuaded. There is a comedy show in Canada where I'm from that used to run and its whole premise was tricking people in innocent ways. One was they would set up a little plywood box with a sign that said ice cream. And then we get people who were in on the trick to stand in front of the box and line up and buy ice cream. I think they may even have handed it out for free. And then there would be one person come along who wasn't in on the trick, just a member of the public, and they were actually serving scoops of butter. and the person was so excited to get a nice cold lick of ice cream and instead got a mouthful of gross butter melting all over them. It was kind of funny. I mean, it didn't harm anybody. It's just a little trick. But you see the point. What's funny about the situation is that person never checked whether or not it was ice cream or butter. They just assumed because other people around them were acting as if it were ice cream. They were being simple. And that's a very, you know, unimportant matter in which to be naive. But there's a lot of other things in the world around us where if you just line up in other people's lineups and do what the crowd around you is doing and believe what the herd believes, you will be a fool, destroyed both in this life and the life to come. That's why Jesus warned that the Broadway is full of people, but it leads down to death. And if you approach your life by simply taking the average of what everyone around you is doing, you are a gullible spiritual moron. And I say that lovingly, but that is an absolutely crazy way to live. Because scripture truthfully tells us that the world around us is not a reliable guide to understanding God and his ways. The world around us will deliberately lead us to destruction. And for you to go through life gullibly, just assuming that what a teacher or professor or author or journalist or official or government leader or whoever else or celebrity or athlete or whatever it is, that they're obviously correct. Love is love. just being the most obvious example these days of what the world around us thinks is obviously correct, right? Who could say love isn't love? Of course love is love. What do you mean? What they mean is, when they say that, is that God is wrong when he claims a right to govern the way we use our bodies according to the way that he created us, male and female, and designed marriage as a lifelong relationship between one man and one woman. But they don't tell you that's what they mean. They just say love is love. Why? Because they're deliberately trying to deceive you. And to go through life believing every slogan and following every popular trend is an absolutely dumb way to live. It's a simple way to live. but the testimony of Yahweh is sure. And one of the ways that you can live in the blessing of being a Christian, not a blessing that is just something you enjoy from afar, but something you can carry with you in your heart day after day after day after day, is you can say, you know, I'm onto this world. I know what they're trying to do. I know what sinful society around me wants for me. They want my money, they want my life, and they want me to join them in some destructive pleasure that will lead to them being more powerful and me being destroyed. I'm on to it and I'm not going to fall for it because I have a far truer testimony from a far better Lord and a far wiser Savior. And if you want to go through life not being a simple, gullible, naive fool, you will be like the people who made big changes in the church 500 years ago, who didn't just say, sure, other people around me are doing that. Of course, they're probably right. No, they said, well, let's see what the Bible says about that. And they just kept asking, what does the Bible say about that? And keeping on asking the question, what does the Bible say about that? If enough people ask that for long enough, the world will change. And you know what? Nobody ever lived a whole life of humbly, faithfully asking the question, well, what does the Bible say I should do now? and went to hell. Because what the Bible says you should do is trust in Jesus Christ, repent of your sin, receive his forgiveness, hope in heaven, and live every day now for the glory of the Lord who will one day come to bring you home. The testimony of Yahweh is sure. And no one who puts their faith in him by trusting in the words of scripture is simple. They are wise. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you that your word is not merely something for us to know about, but something for us to have as a great inheritance, a great blessing, a great help. We ask that you would use your word to make us wise and not simple. We ask that you would use your word to give new life that our dry spiritual bones would be clothed in new and living flesh and made into worshipers of the living God by the life giving force of your word entering our hearts. I ask especially that you would cause the wonderful grace of conversion to happen in the lives of all who hear your word today. That we would no longer merely know that you require us to do something, but that we would lovingly yield our lives in response to the Savior who calls us to be his disciples. Please forgive us and cleanse us and change us and renew us and equip us to live for you. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. We're going to sing a hymn, which is number 670.