Thank you ladies. Take a seat. I'm going to turn the Bible to Psalm 119 and I'll take back up this word for and this meditation for pilgrims on the way that we've started. If you are just joining us, you're a visitor or It's not normally with us. We've started about three weeks ago a series on Psalm 119, and we are working through this acrostic. Each acrostic begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and you may have looked at the title on the bulletin today, and it said Beth. Well, it says Beth, and we weren't talking about Miss Beth. We're talking about the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, which is Beth. So tonight, we're gonna read and you're going to hear verses nine through 16. Psalm 119 verses nine through 16, the second stanza, the Bet stanza. So listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. That's for the reading of God's word. Well, many of you have probably experienced this by somebody that you know, or maybe it was you yourself, but sometimes when a teen who is getting closer to the age of 18, and has been brought up in a Christian home, is getting ready to leave the home, either to go out and strike out into the workforce on his or her own, or to go to university and start their preparation for their vocation, a young person and the world intersect. And it can be a very overwhelming experience. If you think about it, a young person is under the rules and under the authority of their parents, maybe both parents, maybe one, And while they're under their household, they must keep them. And then when they leave, there is this really interesting and odd experience where, in so many words, you could do whatever you want. Have you ever experienced that? I'm sure you have. When a teen goes to university and they strike out on their own, they now have all these different freedoms and liberties that just last week they didn't have. They are, as one theologian, Nacho Libre, said, become the gatekeeper of their own destinies, and they will have their hot day in the glory sun. Well, this can be a good thing. because it can be that moment in the beginning of that season when, like me, this was my experience, it was that time when I had genuine faith, but I really had to fight for my genuine faith when I went to university. I started out in junior college, and I had to go into classes like anthropology, and I felt like Daniel going into the lion's den. I mean, it was just a bunch of either agnostics or atheists who were listening to a very kind and compassionate professor, but a professor that nonetheless was teaching the theory of evolution. And I was saying, I believe in God, I believe in 624 creation, and they laughed me out of the classroom. I mean, literally, I mean, literally would follow me into the hallways and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, you actually believe that God created in six days? Yeah, that's what God said. And they would literally, I kid you not, I'm not using metaphorical language here, they would laugh all the way down the hallway. So it could be a good thing, but it could also be a bad thing. And we have seen young people, sadly, make shipwreck of their faith. And this is the situation that Daniel was in. He was going into a place where he was far from parents, he was far from synagogue, if you will. He was far from the religious culture of Judaism. He was far from a culture that was saturated and shot through with Torah and the commandments and statues and rules of Yahweh, where you just breathe in a culture of Yahwism. And now that was all gone. Now he was at the University of Babylon. Now he was sitting under professors who hated his God and wondered why he would believe in only one God. It's in the context of this that he asks a very important question, how can a young man keep his way pure? Now tonight, I wanna say two things real quick. When the psalmist says how can a young man keep his way pure, the first thing we wanna say is it's not just young men, it's women, young women, but it's not just young men and young women, it's also us older folk. But tonight, I really wanna key in on you younger folk. And I was thinking earlier, should I make them all sit in front of me? And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna do that. Some of you would do it, but I'm not gonna make you do it. But I am gonna be looking at you more, okay? And it's not awkward for me. I'm just totally comfortable with it, okay? So I wanna ask this question tonight. How can a young man, how can a young woman keep his way pure? And he's gonna answer that for us, and I'm gonna submit to you very, kind of in a quick and dirty way, there's four ingredients that a young man, a young woman can keep his way pure. And here's the first one, by having a right attitude. by having a right attitude. And under this heading of a right attitude, I wanna give you three characteristics of a right attitude. The first one is this in verse nine. It's an attitude characterized by awareness. Look at verse nine. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. Here we see care. Here we see careful attention, painstaking reflection on comparing my life with the word of God, the canon. If you've never heard that word, the word of God has always, for 2,000 years, been considered, and even before that, in Judaism, the word of God was always considered to be the canon. And the canon is a word that literally means a measuring rod, a measuring stick. And the reason why the people of God called the canon a measuring stick is because it was the measuring stick against which I measured my life. It's the measuring stick against I measured society and everybody else as I go out in my evangelism. It is and was and evermore shall be the standard. And there is a very, listen, intentional awareness here on behalf of the young man, the young woman, to make this canon the standard by which he or she measures his life, whether he or she is under the roof of his parents or outside of it, in the dorm room and all the crazy stuff that happens there, he or she is going to measure his life according to this standard. Now let me say this, if you don't intentionally and actively and aggressively on a daily basis, and may I even say sometimes on an hourly basis as you go off to university and in the vocation out of the context of your mom and dad's authority, if you're not making that the standard, something will become the standard. Do you understand? Something will become the standard. Let me give you another word, I've used it before. If the word of God is not your standard, the zeitgeist will be your standard. What is the zeitgeist? The zeitgeist is the spirit of the age. And as a wise man once told me, it was Michael Horton, he said, he who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes a widow. You will become a widower if you marry the spirit of the age because as Pastor Jim read this morning and reflected on so pastorally and so well, the world is passing away. The world is passing away. What is going to endure forever is the things of eternity, and so you have been given by God a canon, a standard, a measuring rod, by which you must measure your life and make your standard, or else you will marry something that will dissipate. Right now, the zeitgeist is relativism. The zeitgeist is anti authoritarianism. I think even ten years ago. Nobody had heard of Antifa Now you can't go through your newsfeed without seeing some obnoxious story about these jokers You may be imbibing these zeitgeist spirits without knowing it. How do you know? You measure your life by the standard of God's word. Now let me say this to you young people, and I'm saying this, okay, listen to me. This is not some preacher's blow, okay? Your pastors have counseled and bent our backs over our deaths time and time again for young people who have gone off the rails in thinking that they can make moral judgments that God has not allowed them to make. Let me give you an example. God has already made the decision whether or not you can move out and live with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You don't need to make that decision. God has already made that for you. He's already made it. You can't do that. You don't need to ask yourself the question, should I marry or date or get close to an unbeliever? God has already made that decision for you. You are to not be unequally yoked. You must marry in the Lord. It's not an option. It's not a suggestion. It's not best practices from the CDC. It is God's holy word. God has already made these moral judgments for you. We don't have the luxury to reevaluate them according to my own experience. Well, my circumstances are, stop, they're not different, okay? God has been doing this for a long time. And I don't think that, you know, however long you think the earth has been around, you know, six, 10,000 years, in 10,000 years, God's like, oh, I didn't think of that situation. Ah, I gotta rewrite the word, version 2.0. No, God has always had version 1.0 of his holy word. And he has already made these decisions for you. So the first thing that characterizes a right attitude toward the measuring rod of God's word is a right attitude characterized by awareness. But the second thing it's characterized by is a crucial acknowledgement of the God of the Word and my own proclivities. Look at verse 10. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. Now I love this, and this is the Old Testament version of I believe, help my unbelief, okay? Firm in his conviction, distrustful of himself, right? That's what the psalmist is, and he did this in the last stanza too. I believe, help my unbelief. With my whole heart, I will seek you, God. Let me not wander from my commandments. You know why he's saying that, young ones? He's saying that because he knows himself. Do you know yourself? If your best friend came up to you, or one of your pastors came up to you and said, what are your proclivities? You know what proclivities are? That's what you're usually drawn to, okay? There's some people, they're never drawn towards porn. They're never drawn towards cussing. They're never drawn towards drunkenness. They're never drawn towards lying, but they're drawn towards something. There's a besetting sin, a proclivity that they have, and if anything is gonna cause them to wander off the path, off the reservation, away from the standard, into the spirit of the age, it's gonna be that thing. And whatever that thing is, you have to know it. You must know yourself. As Calvin says, you must know God and you must know yourself. So with my whole heart, I seek you. That's the direction, Lord, but let me not wander off from your commandments. And I love the humility here. I love the humility. So sincerity is great, and it's important. You must be sincere, but it must always be joined with accountability. And an acknowledgement of the God of the word is that if we don't get the message in his word, if we don't hear it, if it doesn't get through, you know what God's gonna do, young people? If in reading his word, we don't get what he wants us to get, he's gonna put that word in the lips of your brother and sister, and he's gonna shove that person in your direction and say, give that word to them. That's called accountability. And the older I get, not only as a Christian, but specifically as a pastor, I realize, number one, everybody in this church needs accountability, everybody. This guy included. I need accountability. I will go off the rails. And if you don't think that, you're not a Calvinist. More importantly, you're not reading the Bible. Okay, before you get to perseverance of the saints and limited atonement and all that stuff, there's total depravity, right? If you don't believe in total depravity, go to the airport. Why do they have metal detectors? They believe in total depravity, okay? So the right attitude is characterized by awareness, it's characterized by acknowledgement, but finally, the right attitude is characterized by doxological teachability. What do I mean by that? Doxology means the right praise, right worship. Listen, all theology that is done for the purpose for which God intended it to be done leads to doxology. Theology leads to doxology. Theology leads to right praise. If you are steeped in quote unquote theology, you love talking about God, you love talking about the word of God, you love banting around all these terms, but your life looks like one who has denied the gospel, then you haven't studied theology for the reason it was intended to be studied. Theology is not meant to make us smarter sinners. Theology is meant to make us those who glorify and magnify and put on display the grace of God to a watching world powered by the Holy Spirit. And the psalmist is eager to let God be his teacher and for the psalmist to be the learner. And we see this in verse 12. Look at verse 12. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. You know who your primary teacher is? Your primary teacher is God. Your primary teacher is God. You have many teachers, Paul says. You have disciples, you have your mom and dad, probably very important teachers. You have your pastors, very important teachers, but all of them are conduits and channels through which God is teaching you his holy word. So a second ingredient. and keeping our way pure is seen in verses 11 and 13. It's a desire for and accrual of the word of God. Let me say that again. Second ingredient for keeping our way pure is a desire for and an accrual of the word of God. Look at verse 11. I have treasured, you could say I've stored, the ESV says stored, you could render it treasured. I've stored or treasured up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Okay, there's a purpose clause here. And I want you to notice, the psalmist sees the word of God as treasure. He sees it as goal. He sees his position as a miser. This is the one time when coveting is okay, right? You want to covet the word of God, you want to get it in your heart with the purpose that you don't sin against God, God says covet all you want. Covet the word of God, covet wisdom, covet knowledge that will transform you. Seek it as hidden jewels. I value it so much that I'm trying to get as much as possible. This is what we're supposed to be. Now, it says, notice, this is very important, this is also a lost art, I have treasured up the Word of God. You see, we must memorize the Word of God. We must memorize the Word of God. And reliance upon the Word of God on the tablet of your heart is a more surefire way to internalize it than looking it up in the moment on Google, okay? Think about it for a second. Somebody in this congregation, I won't name Woodbury's name, told me that An unloaded gun is not a helpful gun. Maybe I butchered it, okay, but if somebody breaks in, okay, in the night, and you got a gun, but it's not loaded, okay, just imagine this scene. Okay, you're bumbling around, you hear a bump in the night, and you get up and you get your gun out, and you're face to face with the guy, and he's got an AK, okay, and you say, excuse me, sir, will you excuse me as I go and load my gun? Yeah, that's gonna go over real well. Okay? You don't have time to go find something when the enemy, as he told Cain, is crouching at your door, and its desire is for you. It wants to devour you. You need to have that word treasured up, stored up in your heart, so that you don't sin against God. We must memorize the word of God. One of the things that I loved about the navigators is that this is something that they were very intentional about, memorizing the word of God. Pastor Kim would tell me all about it, because he used to be a navigator. So we need to store up the word of God. And listen to me, this is very important. The word of God can change the way you think. Raise your hand if you believe that, okay? All right, now, let's put our hands down. The word of God can change the way you feel. You guys believe that? Okay, good, that's good. It can. Now, will you have to work a little bit harder to have the word of God change how you feel than how you think? Yeah. Yeah, we do. We do. I mean, let's be honest, okay, because I think transparency is really important. I think we can all say, there's times when I don't want to go to church. There's times when I don't want to read my Bible. There's times when I want to speak words to my husband or wife that ought not to be spoken. I mean, let's just be honest, okay? And we have to fight for joy and fight for contentment and fight for being pure in those moments, right? All the way down to our feelings. But the word of God can change the way you think, the way that you feel, and if you can do this, it can change the way you act. God's word is a powerful change agent, and it is ammunition to keep us from sinning. And the best way to learn something, maybe you've been told this, the best way to learn something is to teach it to somebody else. Look at verse 13. With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. You see, God doesn't want us to be a cul-de-sac of what he teaches us, he wants us to be a thoroughfare. He wants us to take that word and teach it to others. So one of the best things you could do, men, women, whatever, is you read something in the morning for your devotions, take that to your wife, take that to your husband, take that to your children, and regurgitate it, okay? Sorry for the image, but it works, okay? Take it to your family devotions, you know? I mean, we talk a lot about men being the priests of their home and leading in family worship, and don't get me wrong, it's a daunting task. But don't reinvent the wheel, okay? Feed yourself with the word of God and then take how you have been fed and feed your wife and feed your children. That's the best way to do it. In fact, I can tell you, and other preachers in this place could probably say the same thing, some of the best sermons I've preached have been sermons that have come right out of my devotions. They've come right out of my journal. I'm just like, this is good, I'm just eating this up. I'm like a miser, I'm coveting, I need more of it, it's changing me. It's changing my wife, I share it in family worship, and my kids aren't as sinful as they normally are. It's like a change agent everywhere. I need to preach this, and that's the way it's intended to be. Because the word of God is first meant to change you, and then you take that and ask the Lord to change others. John Golden Gay, Old Testament scholar says, proclaiming God's ordinances is another indication of my commitment to them. When we take things on our lips, they become part of us. And when other people have heard us say these things, it becomes shameful to do something other than what our lips have said. I thought that that was very well stated. what we take upon our lips, and especially if we start teaching others, there's more and more pressure to make sure we do that. That way we're not one of those guys, right, that are hypocrites. Third ingredient, very quickly, delight. Look at verses 14 and 16. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will delight in your statutes, I will not forget your word. The delight comes from the life which springs from keeping his testimonies. Delight is not drudgery. The light is not drudgery. It's easy to say that the lighting in the word of God is drudgery. It's easy to say that it's puritanical to say don't have sex outside of marriage. It's easy to say it's puritanical to say keep your life pure. But the fact of the matter is there's a reason why God says that. Your friends that are not doing those things, they're probably getting STDs, they're probably having babies out of wedlock, their life is radically changing, or they're aborting the baby, so now they're murderers, okay? And there's grace and there's forgiveness for that at the foot of the cross, amen and hallelujah. But there's a reason why God is trying to keep us from contamination, and that's why he asks, how can a young man keep his way pure? And one of the ways we do that is not seeing it as drudgery to obey the Lord and follow his commandments, but to delight in it. The psalmist is saying, God, I love the way you are applying the word to my life in such a way that it's changing me. You're infiltrating your word into my life. Have you ever had that experience where like something happens, something happens, It's bad, and normally when you look back in your life, your response to that is maybe violent, okay? Or maybe it involves new cuss words that nobody's ever thought of before, okay? It's usually violent, but something happens and then you're like, you handle it okay. And you stop and you think to yourself, you're like, wow, wow. I'm different today than I was five years ago. I'm different today than I was a year ago. What is that? You know what that is? That's grace. The Lord is growing you in grace. He's sanctifying you. And one of the most glorious things to see is when people are changed by the word of God. Now, look at verse 16. I'll delight in your statutes, I will not forget your word. Forgetfulness to God's eternal word is always the open door to sin. And I just want to say this under this head. Sometimes we think, oh, forgetfulness, it's just a mental thing, right? You just kind of forget things. The word of God treats forgetfulness by and large as an ethical category. It's an ethical category. What does that mean? We're good at forgetting things, aren't we? That's what it is. You see, we intentionally forget things so that it's not right in our mind, in the forefront of our mind, so that we can fall and careen into sin. To forget and to remember, though, are ethical categories. Well, now, finally, I want you to look at verse 15. Final ingredient for keeping our way pure is meditation. Meditation, look at verse 15. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on all your ways. I think it's been the last two years that I'm really learning more. I haven't learned, I haven't arrived, I won't until Jesus gets back, but I'm learning more what it means to meditate. And one of the reasons I spent some time in the evening services on prayer is because I wanted to talk about this idea of being silent before the Lord. Meditation is not crossing your legs, getting a cramp, putting your fingers out and saying um. Meditation, there's a biblical category for it and one of the ways you could describe it is murmuring. And the idea of murmuring is you're putting a thought in the tumbler of your mind and you're turning it over and you're turning it over and you're talking to yourself. You could say preaching to yourself. There's an old word for this and the word is to muse. And some of you who have read some Greek mythology know much about the muses. Muse to muse is to reflect. It is to be absorbed in one's thoughts. It is to engage in thought. You know what the opposite of musing is, anybody? Amusement. And for you one and a half Greek scholars, that is the alpha privative. The A that is put in front of anything negates it. Atheist, agnostic, amusement. Ah, thinkingness, non-thinkingness. That's what amusement is. I'm not saying all amusement's wrong. I happen to engage in some amusement. But what you want to ask yourself is, am I giving more time to musing and murmuring and meditating upon the word of God, or because it's hard to do that, and it brings up things in my own heart and mind that I don't want to face, do I run instead to amusement? So what fills our minds moves our hearts, and what moves our hearts motivates our wills, and that's the way that God has wired us. So meditate on your determination to delight in the right thing. So you know the reason why our Lord Jesus Christ spent so much time in prayer and solitude is because I think that this is what he was doing. He was musing, he was meditating, he was, if you could put it this way, envisioning and visualizing that glory that he would eventually and will eventually bring us into. You know, Jesus spent a lot of time on his knees in prayer, meditating. I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to say, and use a little sanctified imagination to think about this, that in those times that he was on his knees in prayer, he was thinking of you. He was thinking of how he would redeem you. He was thinking about how his veins would burst open and pour forth blood to cover sins and to take punishment that you deserved. He was thinking of you and his determination as he set his face like a flint to Jerusalem to be righteous and submit himself to the law of God so that on the day of judgment, he could transfer that righteousness to your account, his act of obedience through faith so that when God says, where is the righteousness that I demand, Our Lord Jesus Christ could say, I've given it to them through faith. This is the gospel, and this is the wondrous thing that we should be meditating upon day and night. So young people, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to the word of God. Jesus kept it perfectly, so look to and meditate on him this week. Let's pray. Father God, thank you again for this word. Help us to meditate on it in sincerity and truth. And we ask these things in Christ's name, amen. Just have a few prayer requests, then I'm gonna open it up.