You're listening to the teaching ministry of Harvest Fellowship Church in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. You can find out more about us on the web at www.harvestfellowshipchurch.org. We pray that through our teaching we may present everyone mature in Christ. Well, if you would all stand for this morning's Old Testament reading. This morning's reading comes from Psalm 19. Psalm 19, beginning at verse 1. Hear now the holy, inspired, inerrant, and all-sufficient word of God. 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. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord endures forever. You may be seated. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this rich gift that you've given us to submit to your word, to hear your word, to obey your word, and to follow your Son, your blessed Son, Jesus Christ. We pray that as we listen today that we would submit, that we would obey, and that we would love the honeycomb flavor of your word. It's so sweet to our hearts, to us who believe. So grant us wisdom, grant us knowledge, and for those of us today who may be far from you, revive our souls, restore us unto your flock, and bring back the wayward soul, O Father. We pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So Psalm 19, it's a beautiful psalm. It's a very popular psalm of course and the psalms are meant to sing, they're songs. The psalm is a song and David, the king of Israel, the Messiah of Israel, he was the anointed one so we can call David the Messiah during that time. He was the leader of the people of God, and he was instructed by God to judge the people with righteousness and equity, but also he was like a worship leader. He was like Luke, right? Where is Luke? I don't know where he's at, but he was a worship leader, right? David was not only a king, but a worship leader in your church, right? And he made beautiful, beautiful songs. I want to recommend a wonderful song. It's verbatim. It's made... Who sung it? Oh, man, what is this song? Well, it's Psalm 119. What is the band? If my wife was back there, she's in the nursery with her kids, but if my wife was back there, she'd remind me of the name of the band, but it's a verbatim song. Come to me after, hopefully I can recall, but it's a beautiful, beautiful song that essentially says, the heavens declare the glory of God. And the skies above proclaim his handiwork. And I have a terrible voice. I'm not going to sing it to you. But it's a beautiful song that helps you to memorize these with your families, OK? And that's what we want. We want the word of God to dwell in our hearts, to dwell in our minds, so we can sing these at home. The Corner Room, that's the name of the band. The Corner Room. They have biblical psalms and songs that they sing verbatim. And you can memorize them with your families. So hopefully that will be an encouragement for some of you families at home in your devotionals or other things to memorize. So just a little side before we begin. Every act of God is seen and heard in the whole earth. God's acts of creation are not silent. In God's creation we see God's glory and grandeur. We have all been in awe when an orange creamed sunset is painted across the peaks of the Poconos. We have all feared the mighty storms that pass by, uprooting trees as they march towards the Atlantic, scraping their fingernails along our eastern coast. We have all been mesmerized by solar eclipses, glorious snow-capped mountain peaks, and the bristling warm baby blue oceans in the Caribbean and beyond. We've all heard of the power of tornadoes which throw mansions and semis like a javelin in a track meet. The power of volcanoes whose immediate blast levels mighty oaks and obliterates regions for miles around. Blowing forth from its mighty nostril smoke and ash that will choke and kill anything around. and hurricanes that send millions of residents of the South like an army of ants to the highways all at once, treading inland to flee from coming destruction. These are just partial details in the grand global scene of God's glorious creation. Yes, marred by the fall, but glorious nonetheless. Every day humans marvel at such beauty in the skies and on the earth, yet there's one issue. Even though the Almighty has revealed his own glory and beauty through such a creation, it is left with a problem that cannot be solved. Though creation, through creation, we can learn of the Almighty's infinite power and divine nature. Yes we can know about God. The problem is through creation we cannot know God. We can know about God but we cannot know him personally. We can acknowledge his existence and his power and his divine nature but we are darkened. So we cannot know God rightly through the creation in a saving way. And this is what we see. In the very beginning it says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. God created all things and we can rejoice in them. But there is something else that God uses to rejoice the heart, to instruct foolish people, to make wise the simple, to revive or restore the wayward soul. It is not creation that can do this. It is the Word. It is the Word of God. It gives us a different kind of knowledge. The Word of God shows us how to be in a right relationship with God, something the creation could never do, no matter how beautiful her speech is. Just as a human has many forms of speech in different contexts, so for instance, commands, encouragements, testimonies in a court of law, judgments, So God's word is varied in its form. The phrase the word of God is merely a summary of all of the instances of God's speech in the scriptures. We see that God's word is expressed in instruction, commandment, testimony, decree, judgments, fear, among others. Therefore we must come to understand each aspect of God's word and see their accompanying effects, the work that they do. So really quick, we see a framework. Today I'm going to be preaching mainly on verses 7 through 11. And we see a framework in verses 7 through 11. It says a subject, an adjective, and a verbal quality. This is not a grammar class so I won't bore you any further. Subject, adjective, and a verbal quality. Okay, first, the instruction is this, and it does this. The testimony is this, and it does this. Pretty simple, right? There's a little pattern here. And so we see that throughout. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is pure, making wise the simple, and go all the way down. But further David did not make these words of God out of thin air. By that I mean he referenced these words from texts already written. He pulled them from the books of Moses. He studied them meticulously as a shepherd and later king of Israel and he reflected upon them while writing these psalms. So verse seven we begin. First. The law of the Lord, the law of Yahweh, the divine name of God, the law of Yahweh is perfect reviving the soul. What is the law? The law is perhaps better translated covenantal instruction. Covenantal instruction. It does not just involve laws, it also includes the wisdom, the laws, even down to the blessings and the glories of the covenant that God established with his people. The first five books of the Bible are generally called the Torah, and that's the word Torah. The law of the Lord is the Torah of the Lord, the instruction, the covenantal instruction of the Lord. It is not just filled with laws. And to use the word in this context in our day, I think is very unhelpful. Now, I don't want to question your dependence upon your Bible translations. That's not what I'm trying to do. However, I think that it's better in our day and age to realize that this law is covenantal instruction. The word Torah comes from the word teacher in Hebrew. And what we must see is that this is the instruction of Yahweh. To say law minimizes the import of the Hebrew word and confuses many Christians today, I think, because it makes the concept too narrow. This is the Hebrew word Torah, as I mentioned, and it's like a father giving loving instruction to his son that he may grow up into a wise man. It's not merely law, it is good, edifying instruction. But it's more than this. It's instruction in the covenant, in the covenantal bond, the covenantal union, the relationship with God. It tells us how to live life correctly and to be in a right relationship with the Almighty. So what is this instruction? We have the adjective, it's perfect. The instruction of Yahweh is perfect. What does it mean to be perfect? That word to me is associated with a perfect game in baseball and a student who gets a perfect score on his test. How does that connect to the word of God though? The word means that something is whole, without blemish, perfect in the sense that it does what it was made to do. It accomplishes its intended purpose. We also get our word integrity from this, a wholeness. When we say the man is a man of integrity, he does what he says he's going to do. He's reliable. He's faithful. He's honorable. He acts according to his word. And that's what the word of God is. It's perfect. It's whole. Let's give it a little word picture here. Think of a chair. If the chair is perfect, it will be made and structured in such a way that it will withstand much weight when you sit on it. Are you going to worry when you sit on that chair? No. You trust in it. It's doing its job. It has no problems, no cracks, no creaks, no blemishes. It's strong and sturdy. Such is the Word of God. It accomplishes its task. There is no problem with it. There is no blemish. There is no error. It is whole. It is perfect. It does what it's supposed to do. So you ask OK what is it supposed to do then? Its job is to revive the soul. Revive the soul. It is as if our souls are wayward sheep and they need restoration or return to their proper location. This is the same word as in Psalm 23. Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. The same word. Revive, restore. But what does it mean to have a restored soul? In the context of Psalm 23, it's quite clear. A restored soul means the soul is a wayward sheep and he brings us back to the gentle still waters. That's what a restored soul is in the context of Psalm 23. It's a wayward sheep, it's restoration. The word in Hebrew actually is to return somebody, to return something, to bring it back, to restore it, to revive it, to its God intended position. Restoration is the popular translation, but it's a returning to God. And often in the Bible, this is the idea in the Old Testament, the word repent doesn't exist, so what do they use? They use the word return. Return. God says what? Return to me. You've left me. Return, come back to me and I will come to you. Return to me and I will return to you. its return. That's the idea of repentance in the Old Testament. And so when God returns the wayward sheep, the lost sinner, this is the work of the Word. It is a powerful, powerful tool and it's the only tool in the world that can return a wayward soul, restore a wayward soul. The creation cannot do this, the Word can do this. Men will not be convinced by your intelligence and your philosophy and your knowledge. They must hear the Word of God proclaimed to be restored unto God. Charles Spurgeon says, try men's depraved nature with philosophy and reasoning and it laughs at your efforts to scorn. But the Word of God soon works a transformation. The Word of God soon works a transformation. Philosophy can't restore a sinner. Knowledge, intelligence, cleverness, and even the creation, looking at the beauty of creation, cannot restore a wayward sheep, cannot restore a strained soul. The Word of God can. And we need restoration. Why? Because all is not as it should be. We see this in our day and age but in every generation. We see it in our own families in our own lives. Our own sin causes problems with our wives and our children and our communities and our churches. The sins of our leaders have impacts on our society and the world. The fact that the world is in such a state today is not God's fault. It's not God's fault. It's our fault. If my family's messed up, it's my fault because I'm the leader and I need to take care of my wife and my daughters and my son. Same for all of us. It's our fault that the world is in such a way and God's word restores wayward people. It instructs wayward people in the covenant. It is a blessed word. It is a mighty tool and it accomplishes the work that it's designed to accomplish. Let us realize that God's word is a mighty powerful instrument and God uses the Torah to bring us back into a right relationship with himself. I just am right now thinking about Romans chapter 5 and what it says, Therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have reconciliation, justification through the word. Next we see the testimony of the Lord, the testimony of Yahweh is sure making wise the simple. What is a testimony? Generally we think of testimony in a court of law right? Yahweh however produces a testimony of himself and of his covenant with his people. It appears in Exodus often actually, and this is what David is referencing in Exodus 31, 18. It says, And he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony. That's what David's talking about, the tablets of the testimony, the Ten Commandments. The testimony of the covenant that God is making with the nation of Israel. And they're called sure, the testimonies of Yahweh are sure, making wise the simple. They are reliable, they are dependable. You can trust in them without wavering in your belief. Some people are very unstable, untrustworthy, and you would never put your lives in their hands. You would never divulge to them important information. Not so with God, not so with God's Word. It is sure, it is stable, it is certain, and it is trustworthy. It is like a mighty oak in the midst of a raging storm that is sure to stand unwavering. Its power and protection is always trustworthy and certain, and it's eternally sure and eternally certain. Sadly, I go running on the Perky Omen Trail every once in a while. We're over in the Greaterford area. And a monster, 350-plus-year-old tree fell a week and a half ago. And it's right along the trail, and it has a mighty, massive plaque. And it's like, this is the oldest tree in this area. Beautiful. Gorgeous. I mean, everything around it is, like, protected by the shade of this mighty tree. And it fell and I saw men coming to take away the remains. That was once a symbol in the community of stability, of surety. But then internal tree rot comes and kills the tree. Even the most mighty, beautiful, healthy trees have an end to their stability, their surety, their trustworthiness. But God's Word does not. God's Word has no end. It's an eternal stability, an eternal surety. And it makes wise the simple. And the simple is not necessarily the dumb or just the uneducated in a general sense. No. The simple is the gullible. The simple, they believe everything when somebody tells them something. They're easily led astray by bad ideas and by evil people. Perhaps there's some here today who are gullible. They'll just listen to anything on the news and believe it all. They'll listen to their co-workers say whatever they want and they'll just believe it all. They're carried about by other people, by various ideas, by philosophies. As a popular dictionary says, they're open to instruction in folly. They're fine with receiving folly, foolishness as a teaching. These people need something sure and stable. They need the unwavering testimony of Yahweh. Because they're always tossed about by every new philosophy of life and by every wind of doctrine and teaching that comes blowing by. But the testimony of Yahweh in life is the only thing that truly makes one wise. We see that wisdom, true wisdom, not the false worldly wisdom of self-help books, psychiatrists and mega conferences on becoming the best you. These things don't make people wise, the testimony of Yahweh makes people wise. You don't need another conference in your life, you need the word of the Lord. For in it he reveals to you his glory, his character, and all of this ultimately expressed in his glorious son Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul says it this way, and because of him, that is God, You are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God. Christ Jesus is our wisdom. He is our wisdom. Now the precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart in verse eight. The precepts of the Lord are charges given by God to men to perform a duty. It's not merely just a commandment do this do this do this. It's more of like a leader giving a man a position appointing him a specific position and then saying perform your duty perform your action accordingly to your position. He has been given a charge to complete his work. In this case, God has given his precepts to Israel to do what he has charged them. They are to carry out the task that he has assigned them, to be a kingdom of priests, to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God. And these precepts are straight. They are right. They say right here they are right but the word is a straightness and by that we deduce it's a rightness, it's straight, it's uncomplicated, it's not twisted, it's not deceptive. They flow from a God who is upright and good in all of his ways. And further these charges rejoice the heart. You often don't hear people saying that they rejoice to obey commands. These precepts, David did though, they rejoice the heart. How can precepts rejoice the heart? They rejoice our hearts by revealing to us God's beautiful righteous character. Since they are good and upright they lead us to the truth, to reality. We can rejoice knowing we are safe. Imagine someone on a highway on a beautiful grand mountain pass is driving fast and suddenly a warning sign comes up that says slow down, sharp curve. They would be happy to know about this, right? If not, they would pop right through the guardrail and fly down the mountain with their family to their impending doom. God's precepts ought to rejoice the heart because they are good and upright. I feel compelled to briefly touch on the subject of human joy as well, since they rejoice the heart. We are in an age of mental health. Ironically, in the age of mental health, with all the attention and money devoted to mental health, people are more anxious and depressed than ever. Regardless of how we got to this miserable state, we must ask ourselves how to get out of such a state. However, we must be beware because there are many nowadays who are making a profit by promoting businesses, books, and meds to help the anxious. Their motives are tainted because they want a profit. There are popular counseling websites. You know, people used to go to a pastor or a parent or a trusted community leader to get help. Now people go straight to meds and cool fancy counseling websites or apps on your phone, or even Reddit. Some people find, like, counseling on Reddit. That's a website online for those of you who don't know what it is. However I want us to think through this deeply. Why would we use the wrong material to try and fix our lives. We must be aware of false counterfeits that we think can replace the word of God. It's like someone eating sour patch kids in order to lose weight. Or if you've been to Israel it's like trying to sink in the Dead Sea. It ain't going to happen. The Dead Sea has a lot of salt. Your body is going to be elevated. You literally cannot sink. I tried it. Why would we go straight to antidepressants to try and get joy when we have a problem with the God who created us? Don't go to human-made inventions for happiness. And I will say first, I'm not making a blanket statement about all medication and drugs, okay? Talk to your pastors and other wise elders here about that. I'm not making a blanket statement about that, but it is, we need to realize that there is the serious danger of going to meds before we go to God. That's the whole issue. It's trying to give you immediate relief, but then it creates more problems later on often. And that's the great issue that we have. So watch out. There are human-made inventions for happiness. Be careful. Let us go to our creator. Does not the creator of a product know the ins and outs of the product? The one who created the thing knows the thing better than you and I. So why would we go to a different thing to try and figure out how to fix our issue? Why would we go to, look, let me ask it this way. If you break your leg on a hiking trip, are you gonna go to the dentist? Are you gonna go to a dentist and ask your doctor, I broke my leg, how can you fix it? He's like, dude, go to the hospital, go to the ER, man, you got problems, mental and physical. You went to the wrong place. If you are severely depressed and anxious, why would you not go running as fast as you can to your creator? As fast as you can. Any remedy for your soul besides the word of God will still eventually kill you. It will. We're all going to die. We need to make sure in this life that we go to the proper remedies, not these false counterfeits, these fakes. Let the precepts of the Lord be your delight. Meditate on them. Use the Word of God to remedy your serious issues. Go to trusted friends, elders, pastors in the church to seek wisdom, knowing that they will deliver you to the blessed medicine called the Word of God. Nine. Second part of Ada, I apologize. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Many have this natural propensity in our day and age to hate commands. I mean, maybe it's throughout all of human history, but it seems like there's this eagerness to want to just break rules. It's like fun. You gather together and you spray paint government buildings and you break windows and break into campuses and have fun with your group. The sinful human heart has a natural knee-jerk reaction when it comes to obeying a ruler or a leader. Sinful people hate being restrained or directed by righteous rules and commands. People want to exercise kingship over themselves. We see this mentality is running rampant in our day and age. Young and old people alike don't like to obey rules. They don't want to be told that abortion is murder. They say, hands off my body. They don't want to listen to someone who says homosexuality is a sin. They say, you're just a religious bigot and a dark, hateful person. They don't want to listen when a coworker confronts them for their constant gossiping about other colleagues. They say, mind your own business. Nobody invited you into this conversation. They scoff at you when you say Jesus is king and you must submit your whole life to him. These people are the ones who are trying to get you away from God and they don't want God ruling over them. It's ironic, they're always talking about being enlightened. We're on the right side of history. We're the enlightened ones. You conservatives, you're holding back the human race from true progress. You and your Christian religion are part of the communist and fascist regimes trying to suppress true human beauty and dignity. Sadly and ironically, they are farthest from true enlightenment. True enlightenment to reality, to the world, comes from understanding life by listening to and obeying God's commands. A truly enlightened person will submit to the proper authorities, the highest of whom is God. They will submit to his commands and do what he says. They will quickly and happily say, yes master, yes Lord, I will do all that you say, my mighty king." The heart that responds otherwise is darkened and far from true enlightenment. And how is the commandment pure? What does purity mean? Some human commands are bad. Like you shouldn't obey all commands of a ruler or a leader, right? We know this. They are pure in that there is no problem or error in them. And that is why they enlighten the eyes, because you do not have to question God when he gives you a command. You can be confident that his commands are pure, good, and will lead to a beneficial outcome. Verse 9, the fear of Yahweh is clean enduring forever and the rules of Yahweh are true and righteous altogether. So as I was going through it this week I was like OK the law of the Lord makes sense, the instruction, the testimony, the precepts, the commandment, the rules, all of those sound like the word of God but what's up with the fear of the Lord in the midst of all of these verses about the word of God. The fear of the Lord, is it the word of God also, like a different aspect of the word of God? I think David is referencing Exodus chapter 20 in the giving of the 10 words, the 10 commandments to Moses. You don't have to turn there but I'm going to read it really quick. Exodus 20 verse 18 says, now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet in the mountain smoking, this is Mount Sinai, I mean this is epic. The people were afraid and trembled and they stood far off and said to Moses, you, you Moses, speak to us and we will listen. But do not let God speak to us. lest we die." I've never heard a Christian walk into the church and say, Pastor, you know, let God speak to you and you speak to us, but I don't want to hear from God. Everybody's always like, I want to hear from God, I want a voice from God. It's interesting though that when God speaks, lightning flashes and thunder bangs. Volcanoes erupt and mountains crack and split. Ash flies in the sky and clouds cover the vast expanse. When God speaks, crazy things happen. The world reacts to the word of God on Mount Sinai. This is crazy. The world is terrified. It said the mountain trembled. The mountain like shook Mount Sinai. It's crazy. So if the earth trembles at the word of the Lord, why would humanity not tremble at the word of the Lord? It's a good, proper, healthy fear. Listen, it says, they trembled, the mountains smoking, the people were afraid and trembled. They stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die. Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you. Doesn't that sound a little weird? He's like, don't fear that you may fear. He literally says, do not fear for God has come to test you that you may fear. Sounds a little interesting, right? But I think what the point is, is he's saying there are two different kinds of fear here. There's a inordinate terror, but then there's a proper reverential fear where you hear the word of God and you know who's boss. you know who's boss. When I was younger, and I did something bad and my brother started screaming, I knew Papa was coming down with a belt or a rod, and that's not a good day. There's terror, there's fear, and it's good because I did something bad. And what's the purpose of the fear? It's that you may not sin. Look at it right here, it says, that the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin. So there's a good healthy kind of fear that comes from the word of God. The word of God is mighty and powerful it shakes mountains and it should shake your heart sometimes. It should shake your heart if you are doing what is wrong. And the rules of Yahweh are true and righteous altogether. We do still live in an age where people they question truth. There's always like this fake news and you know fact checking and everybody's always concerned about the truth. They want to know that they believe the truth and these people don't. They're on the right side. But I want to encourage you when you study the Word of God believe the Word of God and obey the Word of God you are obeying the truth. The truth. When God makes rules they are true rules and we all should be pursuers of the truth. Praise God that they are true and that you do not have to question whether or not they're wrong or false. Every word of God proves true. And they're righteous altogether. There is no unrighteous rule that departs from the mouth of God. There is no evil that comes forth from God. For the sake of time I am actually going to skip over verses 10 and 11 and conclude. Do you realize that Jesus abided by all the Mosaic law while he was on the earth? He not only was fully obedient to the word of God but he also was its fulfillment. I quote Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them, to complete them, to show you that I was the ultimate purpose and reason of the covenantal instruction anyways. That I was the only one who could ever fulfill the instruction at all. I am the fulfillment, the completion of the Torah, the instruction, the law, and the prophets. Everything. I didn't come to abolish but to fulfill them. And further we see in Romans 10 4, Christ is the end of the law. It doesn't mean the end as in it's no longer here, it means the goal. Christ is the goal of the law. The end is the goal of the law in that sense. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all who believe. Further, the Torah, the instruction of Yahweh, was always intended to point forward to a coming king. That king was supposed to rightly rule over his people, rightly distribute justice to the oppressed, and walk in all of the straight paths of God. And this is our Lord, the righteous king to whom we must submit our lives. Let us submit to him, trusting in him, knowing that he alone is the man of integrity, the upright one in whom there is no blemish or sin. He fulfilled all of the sacrificial system in himself. He is the great high priest. He is the king, the Messiah, the son of David, and the final prophet of whom Moses spoke. When we read over the law and instruction, let us find at its center Jesus, the Son of God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for your word. We thank you for your instruction. We pray that we would submit to Christ since he is the ruler of the covenant. He is the king. He is the Lord. He is the mighty one. May we bow down to him and obey him and rejoice in his statutes and his commands rejoice in his law and his his person. We pray this in the name of the Lord your son Jesus. Amen.