Tomorrow, October 31st, marks the 499th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. Because it was on that day that Martin Luther, a professor of Bible at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, he nailed, that day he nailed what's known as his 95 Theses to the front door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Luther did it as a singular protest against the Pope's corrupt sale of indulgences, but God used his 95 theses, not only to launch the Protestant Reformation, but folks, to literally change the world forever. And the two greatest changes that emerged out of the Reformation were, number one, it brought people back to the purity of the gospel, of Jesus Christ. That salvation was solely by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, void of any human works or merit. And two, the Reformation brought the church back to the sole authority of the Scriptures over all human traditions, church councils, and the Pope's edicts. And what primarily drove the Reformation, what propelled it so that it awakened a sleeping continent, the continent of Europe, was the preaching of the Word of God. You see, what the Reformation did was that it restored the sermon to its proper place in worship services so that the preaching of the Word then became the central thing in church. As someone once put it, the pulpit replaced the altar. That's how they would sum up. the reformation, the pulpit replaced the altar, and what drove the reformers to preach the word of God was their love for the word. This morning, we want to turn our attention to the subject of loving God's word because we've come in our study of Psalm 119 to a very special stanza that stresses the psalmist's love for the scriptures. I want to read it to you again, starting at verse 97. Notice how he opens. Oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all of my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have observed your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. I have not turned aside from your ordinances, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet. are your words to my taste, yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth. From your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way." Now, as we look at these words, I want you to notice that there is not one prayer request that this man makes in this stanza. He doesn't ask God for anything. Instead, he simply tells the Lord of his love for his word, for God's word. And his words are so sweet and they're so tender and filled with affection that we might find ourselves wondering how could they have been written by the same man who just two stanzas ago told us that he was in so much turmoil, so much anguish of soul because he felt forsaken and neglected and abandoned by God. But this is the same man. This is exactly the same man. I remind you that he had previously written about just how weary he was, how worn out he had become from waiting on God to fulfill his word and deliver him from his persecutors. He tells us also that his eyes were strained because he was looking for just some glimmer of hope that the Lord had arisen and was on the move to rescue him. Notice what he said back in verses 81 and 82. My soul languishes for your salvation. By salvation he means physical salvation, not spiritual. I wait for your word. My eyes fail for longing for your word. He means for the word of God to be fulfilled, that he'll deliver him. As a child of Abraham, as a believer, he's under the covenant of God that I'll rescue my people. My eyes fail for longing, with longing for your word while I say, when will you comfort me? And because he felt so down and so weary and so worn out, he asked God in verse 88 to revive him. That's what he says, revive me. In other words, he needed God's encouragement. He's so discouraged. He needed the Lord to breathe new energy and new power into his soul. He needed inner strength. He needed renewal. In short, he needed the Lord to lift his disheartened spirit and his discouraged mind to renew it. But you know what, that's exactly what God did. God did revive him because in the very next stanza, the one that we looked at last week, he tells us that the Lord did revive him. Notice verse 93, I will never forget your precepts for by them you have revived me. He prayed that the Lord would revive him and now he's telling us God did revive him. And how did God revive him? Well, he tells us that it was by the Word of God. What encouraged him, what brought him out of this spiritual funk was that he took heart by the fact that God's Word was so very special that he could have confidence in it. As we discovered in our study of these verses, the stanza prior to the one we're in now, the psalmist boldly declares how confident he was in the word of God. So much so that he tells us that he's built his life upon scripture even though his circumstances were still horrendous. What he tells us is why his confidence was in Scripture. We've spent two weeks going over this. He tells us that his confidence was in Scripture because Scripture never changes. Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Never changes. He tells us that his confidence was in Scripture because it kept him mentally sane and stable as it sustained him during his crisis. He said, I would have perished, perished in my affliction if I hadn't had your word. He tells us that his confidence was in scripture because it revived his sagging heart. Verse 93. He tells us that his confidence was in scripture because it enabled him to live above his distractions of men who were actually plotting, planning to kill him. Tells us that in verse 95. And his confidence was in scripture because he tells us that scripture is infinite. It is eternal. In contrast to everything else in this world which is limited, and very, very brief and temporary. And having this confidence, this assurance, this conviction of the trustworthiness and the reliability of Scripture, he just can't contain himself anymore. So as he begins the next stanza, our study today, he just blurts out in verse 97, oh, how I love your law, this law that he's told us how How much confidence he has in it. See, he didn't simply believe the Bible. He didn't simply strive to live by the Bible. He actually loves it. It's dear to him. He has genuine affection for the Scriptures. And the proof that he loves God's Word, he tells us in the very next sentence in this verse. He says, it is my meditation all day. All the day. like a man who loves a woman so much that he thinks about her all day long. So the psalmist always has God's word on his mind throughout his day. Someone I recently heard who commented on this verse said this, he doesn't read the Bible in the morning and then just check it off his to-do list. He's had his Bible reading, and then he doesn't think about scripture the rest of the day. No, this man tells us he continuously thinks about the word of God morning, noon, and night. This doesn't mean that he failed to do anything else during the day, but sit down and meditate. No, he had responsibilities just like we do. But his love and his affection for scripture was so deep that he couldn't get it out of his mind, nor did he want to get it out of his mind. Spurgeon put it this way, he meditated in God's word because he loved it, and then loved it the more because he meditated in it. See, the psalmist was convinced that scripture was God's word and that it was absolutely trustworthy. Therefore, he just loved it. I want you to notice something important about his love for the Bible. Notice that he says that he loved all of the Bible, not just the parts that made him feel good. When he says, oh, how I love your law, he doesn't mean simply the Ten Commandments, what we might call the law. He doesn't mean that at all. He's using the word law as a synonym for the whole Bible. Now, of course, he didn't have the New Testament. He means the Old Testament. So when he says, oh, how I love your law, he means, oh, how I love all of your word. Oh, how I love it all. Verses that convict me of my sin. Verses that call me to repentance. The moral standards of holiness that I sometimes struggle with. He says, I love them all. I love it all. But he doesn't just tell us that he loves God's word. He doesn't tell us and just leave it at that. See, after confessing his love for the word of God, what this man does, and this is what makes this stanza so precious, he devotes the rest of these verses to telling us why he loves the word of God so much. And he does this, watch this, so that you and I will love the word like he does. He's teaching us here. He's instructing us. See folks, it's one thing to be convinced that the Bible is God's Word. It's another thing to love the Bible. It's one thing for me to preach the Bible Sunday after Sunday, but it's another thing for me to love the Bible that I preach. It's one thing for us as a church body to say we are committed to the authority and the standards of the Word of God, but it is another thing for us to love the Bible. This morning, we're gonna see why the psalmist loves the word because he's gonna tell us that he loves the word because of what it does for him. And my prayer has been this week that once you see what the Bible does for you, and it'll take us a couple of weeks to go through this, but once you see what the Bible does for you, you'll find yourself loving scripture too. In the verses before us, this man tells us Three reasons why he loves God's word so much. We're gonna look at the first one today. First reason is this. He loves the word because God's word makes him wise. The word of God makes him wise. It gives him insight into life. It shows him how to live. He says in verse 98, your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. It means the word is ever mine. Now the first thing that this man says concerning his love for the word is that the commandments of scripture have made him wiser than his enemies. So who are his enemies? And in what way is he wiser than them? Well by enemies he means those godless men who have been persecuting him. These were men who in previous verses he described as very arrogant several times. He mentions how arrogant, proud, boastful they are. Men who in their sinful pride looked down upon him and held him in contempt because of his faith. Notice verse 78. May the arrogant be ashamed for they subvert me with a lie. These were arrogant men. When one is arrogant, they look down upon others. And he says, they subvert me with a lie. Out of their arrogance, these men decided to make up lies about him. Why? Because they held him in contempt. Verse 22, take away, he says, this is his prayer to the Lord, take away reproach and contempt from me. These men were contemptuous. Arrogant, lying, contemptuous men who have no regard or interest in the word of God. Verse 53, He had said, burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked who forsake your law. So their hatred for this man, and what he stands for, runs deep. They hate him, they had forsaken the word, they had forsaken and didn't care about God's law at all, but they also want to kill him. That's how deep their hatred is. Verse 87, they almost destroyed me on the earth. So we need to understand that when the psalmist speaks of his enemies, he's not referring to people who just don't like him. Or people he just has had, you know, a little bit of a problem with. He doesn't get along well with them. Rather, he's talking about evil, ungodly men. Men who hate the Lord, hate His Word, and all those who love the Lord and love His Word. And concerning them, these evil, condescending men who thought they were superior to Him, he says that God's Word makes him wiser than they are. And that's why he loves the word, because it gives him a wisdom that his enemies do not possess. Now, this doesn't mean that his enemies didn't possess any wisdom. They certainly had a type of wisdom in knowing how to look out for themselves and survive in this world. But this type of wisdom isn't godly wisdom. In fact, it's not really wisdom at all. Rather, it's a type of worldly shrewdness in knowing how to make it in this dog-eat-dog world by doing whatever it takes to benefit oneself. In other words, they know how to manipulate the system to their own advantage. And in this sense, they're actually wiser than believers, than believers in Christ. Why do I say that? I say that because Jesus said it. Jesus said in Luke 16, Verse 8, he said, for the sons of this age, he means unbelievers, for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. The sons of light are believers. Now what Jesus is saying is that there is a type of wisdom that unbelievers have that believers don't have. But it is a worldly wisdom that we shouldn't have because the ways of this world are corrupt and dishonest and unethical. It is the wisdom of doing whatever benefits them, whatever is useful for them, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. In other words, the wisdom of unbelievers is a wisdom that is dictated by the course of this world, by the standards of this world, so that they are actually wise in doing evil. We're not to be like that at all. Now the reason the psalmist says he loves the word of God so much is because it gives him godly wisdom, not worldly shrewdness. Godly wisdom, spiritual wisdom, wisdom about what's really important, the true values of life, what's really valuable, both in this world and in the world to come. It's a wisdom that his enemies don't have because it is a wisdom that tells him how to live so as to please the Lord. So what is the wisdom that comes from God's word that the unsaved non-believers don't possess. Well, first of all, it all begins in coming to faith in Christ. And it is the Word of God that gives us the wisdom that leads us to salvation in Christ. In 2 Timothy 3.15, Paul said, to Timothy concerning Timothy's childhood. He said, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, that's the Old Testament, the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Those who reject Christ and the word of God may be wise by the world's standards, but they have done the most unwise thing of all. in that they have lost their souls by living for themselves and for the things of this world. Jesus said of people like this, for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul? We all know the answer, profits him nothing. So, it is the Word of God that leads us to become wise by leading us to do the wisest thing ever, and that is trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Secondly, it's by the Word of God that we know what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing. The very next verse, 2 Timothy 3.16, says, all scripture is inspired. It means it's God-breathed. He's the source of it. It comes from Him. All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable. For teaching, tells us what to do. For reproof, tells us when we've gone off the track of what we should be doing. For correction, it tells us how to get back on the track. And for training in righteousness, so we stay on track. See, it's only by knowing God's will, which is revealed, of course, in God's Word, that we gain true wisdom. In Ephesians chapter 5, starting at verse 15, Paul speaks about the wisdom that comes from the Word. He says, therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise. So it's possible for believers to not live wisely as they should. Paul says, don't walk as unwise men, walk as wise men. Well, how should we walk then, Paul? He said, making the most of your time because the days are evil, so then do not be foolish. but understand what the will of the Lord is. Foolishness is the opposite of being wise. And what is that will? Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. It is the wise thing to do. God's will, and God's will revealed in his word tells us that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit, meaning that we should be under the control of God's Spirit, not under the control of alcohol, that's the contrast. Under the control of the Holy Spirit, how do we do that? We submit to the Spirit's voice, the Bible. When we submit to the word of God, we are submitting to the Holy Spirit and he is in control of us. In fact, the entire book of Proverbs is devoted to telling us how to live wisely, so that we are not like foolish, unsaved people who stubbornly refuse, stubbornly refuse to live by scripture, but who instead, how do they live? They live only by their unwise opinions, their own man-made standards. The unsaved fool lives by the motto, thus saith me. rather than thus saith the Lord." They live by the words, I think, rather than it is written. There are so many, as you go through Proverbs, there are so many contrasts between a wise man and a fool. But I think what sums up the difference between the two, as well as anything, are two verses from Proverbs. One is Proverbs 12, verse 15. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel. And then the other is Proverbs 18, 2. A fool does not delight in understanding but only in revealing his own mind. See, a fool doesn't care what anyone else says. He doesn't want anybody's advice. He knows what's right in his own mind. He's not teachable because he thinks he already knows what's best. And he'll be happy to tell you what he thinks whether you ask for his opinion or not. That's the way a fool is. That's what Proverbs says. He'll be only so happy to tell you, you don't even have to ask for it. By contrast, we read that a wise man listens, but not simply to counsel, but to godly counsel. That is, counsel that's based on biblical truth. In particular, he's attuned to the Word of God because he understands that he lacks wisdom apart from Scripture. Love God's Word because it is the only thing that gives you the wisdom to know Jesus Christ and to follow Jesus Christ. Nothing else will do that. That's why Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians and talks about the wisdom of this world is nothing. He said, where is the wise man? And the thought there is the wise man with all of his philosophy can't lead you to Christ. It's only through what Paul calls the foolishness of preaching, the Word. So, love the Word of God is the only way you come to know Christ. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. And only the Word of God will tell you how to follow Christ, how to please God. It'll tell you how to live in a manner that pleases the Lord. It'll tell you, for example, how to treat your parents with honor. It'll tell you how to love your spouse, even if your spouse doesn't love you back. It'll tell you how to raise your children. It'll tell you how to handle your money. It tells you how to treat other people. It tells you to work hard, not be lazy. It tells you to be honest, not dishonest. It tells you to be generous and not cheap. It tells you how to die with faith in Christ and joy because for a believer to die is gain. It tells you how to live, it tells you how to die. Imagine how poor and how horrible your life would be if you didn't know the Bible. Just imagine it. Not only would you have the wrong values in life so that you would just keep on making the same mistakes over and over and over again because all these mistakes are based on our selfish, wicked behavior, but you'd have no hope when You left this world. No hope at all. You would die. You would go to hell. How rich we are for the word of God. We ought to love it. The psalmist says that he loves the word because it makes him wiser than his ungodly enemies. Even though his enemies in their arrogance looked down on him and they thought they were so much smarter, so much wiser than he was. They felt they were so superior. I'm sure you've met unsaved people just like that. Who think how naive you are to believe the Bible. and they feel like they are so much better than you. Well, the psalmist faced that, but he said, I love the word because in reality, I'm wiser than those fools who think they're wise. Those men were wrong. The people who look down on you are wrong. He was wiser than them, the psalmist was, because the word made him wiser. And this word was always with him. It was always with him to keep him wiser than they were. Notice what he tells us at the end of verse 98. He says, your commandments make me wiser than my enemies. Then notice this, for they, meaning your commandments, are ever mine. Having told us that he loves the word so much that he meditates on it all day long, now he says they are ever mine. What he means by this is God's commandments are forever with him. They're always mine. I always possess them. They never leave me. Because why? He's thinking about them all the time. He's meditating on them. Therefore, they are always available to give him wisdom. It was the famous commentator, Matthew Henry, who wrote, a good man, wherever he goes, carries his Bible along with him, if not in his hands, yet in his head and his heart. So love the word, carry it with you wherever you go by thinking about it throughout the day, because it will give you the wisdom about how to live that the unsaved know nothing about. But it isn't only our unsaved enemies, those who show hostility to us because of Christ, that the word makes you wiser then. In the very next verse, the psalmist mentions a second category of people who he says he's wiser than because of his understanding of scripture. Notice verse 99. I have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation. Now, at first glance, this might come off as sounding a bit boastful, doesn't it? As if he's saying he knows more than his teachers. And notice, not simply some of his teachers, he says all of them. I have more insight than all my teachers. But teachers are those we recognize as knowing more than us. That's why they are our teachers. We study under them to learn from their knowledge. We acknowledge that a teacher knows more than us. So what is this man talking about? Listen, this is not a bragging statement. This is not a boastful statement of arrogance on the part of the psalmist. And we know this for a couple of reasons. Number one, because he's not saying that he has more knowledge. than his teachers. Let's not read into the text what he's not saying. He's only saying he has more wisdom than his teachers. Not more knowledge than his teachers. It's understandable that a teacher has more knowledge than a student, of course. He's saying he has more wisdom than them. See, knowledge isn't the issue here. But wisdom is. Insight. He has more insight into how to live by God's ways than all of his teachers. And he tells us, as I said, it's not just a few, but all of them. which leads us to believe that, secondly, he must be referring to unbelieving teachers who taught him secular subjects rather than the Jewish rabbis that he would have grown up learning under, who taught him the law of God. You see, it is very likely that the author of Psalm 119 wrote this psalm when he was a young man, who, as a devout Jew, who is now living, as I think he was, in Babylon during Israel's captivity, if you recall back in verse 9 he had said how can a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to your word now just because he said how can a young man keep his way pure that doesn't prove that doesn't prove that when he wrote Psalm 119 that he was a young man but he may have been it certainly would seem to be the case and if he was a young Jewish man living amongst the pagans of Babylon during the captivity of Judah, then like the prophet Daniel, he would have been forced to have been educated in the ways of the Babylonians. In fact, there are some Bible scholars, and I don't think I've ever said this before because I've tried to stay away from speculation, but there are some Bible scholars who have speculated that the author of Psalm 119, they think, may very well be Daniel. It's possible. We don't know. We don't know one way or another. But if this is the case, if this man who wrote Psalm 119 wrote it, as a young man living in Babylon, then the way that Daniel would have been educated in Babylon would have been very similar to his education. So how was Daniel educated? Well, we read in Daniel chapter 1, starting in verse 3, Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king's court. And he ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. It's the Babylonians. The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food and from the wine which he drank and appointed that they should be educated three years at the end of which they were to enter the king's personal service. So, after being brought to Babylon, Daniel, we're told, underwent a three-year course, a rigorous three-year course in which his subjects would most likely have been astrology, astronomy, architecture, literature, law, mathematics, language skills. Now, whether or not the psalmist was taught those exact subjects, we don't know. But what we do know is that the teachers, he says, he's wiser than, must have been unsaved secular-oriented men because the Jewish rabbis would have taught him the same Word of God that he now says makes him wiser than his teachers. And folks, here's the point that he's making, and here's the principle that applies to us. Any Christian who lives by the Word of God is wiser than the most knowledgeable and learned of his unsaved secular teachers. without exception, no matter how intelligent they are, no matter how academically qualified they are. And the reason for this is because the information that they might be well versed in and that they have to offer you in a classroom setting like science, math, social studies, English, that information may help you get a job, but it won't teach you how to live in a way that pleases God. And that's what he's talking about. Only the word will help you. and give you insight into what really matters as far as the values of life. Like how to deal with the guilty conscience. How to deal with your guilt. There's nothing you're learning in secular subjects going to teach you that. Like how to have meaningful relationships with other people. I'm not talking about surface, superficial stuff. How to give of yourself as a servant. How to care about others. As Paul puts it, how to outdo one another in honor. It's only the Word of God who will tell you about having a life of integrity and non-compromise and not living by pragmatism, which is do whatever you have to do if it works. It's only the Word of God who will tell you how to discern between truth and falsehood. But I want you to look again at verse 99, and I want you to notice that the psalmist doesn't say that he had more wisdom than all of his teachers simply because he knew his Bible. Notice the specific reason he gives for having more insight than all of his teachers. He says, for your testimonies are my meditation. Listen, if you want to be wise, then you must meditate on the Bible. Now, we've already touched a little on meditation, but you know what? Meditation is too important of a subject to just touch on. See, meditation involves internalizing scripture so that you absorb the truth, so that you digest the truth, so that it becomes a part of you. In his book, Disciplines of a Godly Man, a great book, if you've not read this, gentlemen, you should, Kent Hughes, from Disciplines of a Godly Man, points out that the Hebrew word for meditation means literally to mutter, to mutter, as in whispering or speaking softly or in chattering away. In fact, the same word, he says, is used for the chattering of doves in Isaiah 59, verse 11, so that one could legitimately translate a phrase like meditating day and night as chattering day and night. Now, in the practical application of how this actually is done, Here's what Kent Hughes writes. He says, meditation is intrinsically verbal. This means the psalmist memorized God's word, for one cannot continually mutter the scripture without memorizing it and vice versa. Personally applied, this tells us that along with our systematic reading of the Bible, we ought to select especially meaningful segments to reverently mutter over. Ideally, we ought to make meditation part of our regular devotion. giving hidden time to reverently muttering God's Word. But even our busy schedules can be punctuated with scriptural meditation in the car at lunch break or waiting for a bus. Select a choice text, write it on a card, slip it into your pocket, pull it out in those spare moments. Mutter it, memorize it, pray it, say it, share it. This kind of tells you how old this book is now you just take out your phone and put it in there but the point is you have access to it all the time so internalize it in the spare moments of life so if you want to be wise then you have to discipline and this is the point you have to discipline yourself to meditate on scripture because there will be times when you have those moments that if you're not careful your mind can go to a million different things discipline your mind to go to the Word of God And what will happen, you'll fall in love with God's Word more than you could ever have imagined. Now, so far, the psalmist has told us that he loves the Word of God because why? It makes him wiser than his enemies, and it'll do the same for you. He loves the Word of God because it makes him wiser than all of his teachers, it will do the same for you. But in the next verse, verse 100, he mentions still a third category of individuals he says that he's wiser than. This is why he loves the Word. He says, I understand more than the aged because I have observed your precepts. Now, he tells us that because he observes the word of God, he has more understanding than the aged. What does he mean by aged? Just look at me. No, I'm really not kidding. In fact, I just turned 64. I was exercising on the Pinellas Trail. A guy passed me on his bike. I was walking. I said, how you doing? He said, how you doing, old man? So I am the agent. I think he probably meant my man, but he said old man. I distinctly heard old man. So if you want to know what the agent are, just look at me. By aged, the psalmist means those who have lived a long time. Those who are considered old, who due to their longevity of life, have many years of experience. That's what he's talking about. Now, according to scripture, those who are older should be shown great respect, great honor. The Bible teaches that. And it's true that those who have lived the longest, they do have more experience than those who are younger than them. There's no question about that. But age and experience, they do not equate to wisdom. One may be old and have lots of experience in all kinds of areas of life, but still be lacking in godly wisdom. Good illustration of this comes from church history. concerns the man who we began this sermon talking about, Martin Luther. Luther was only 33 years old when he nailed his 95 theses to the Church of Wittenberg. And in doing so, it eventually led him, this was not his intention, but it eventually led him to clash with the Pope and all of the esteemed elders of the Roman Catholic Church who based their theological arguments, not on scripture, They based their arguments, their beliefs on the ancient church fathers and the traditions and dogmas that they held, that the fathers held. Now, the church fathers, their traditions, their dogmas, those things were venerated by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, they still are. But this young Bible teacher challenged the ancient dogmas and the ancient fathers of the church. Why? Because he had more understanding than they did. And the reason he had more understanding than they had was because he had personally experienced the Word of God by obeying it for salvation and in his daily living. They had experience in other areas, but he had experience in the Word of God. what the psalmist says in verse 100, why he says that he had more understanding than his teachers. He says, I understand more than the aged because I have observed your precepts. Now that's an important expression. See, it was his experience of obeying the word that gave him more wisdom than those who were much older than he was, even though they had experience in other areas. He experienced the Word. Concerning Luther's experience of the Word, here's his own words. He said, the Bible is alive. It speaks to me. It has feet. It runs after me. It has hands. It lays hold of me. This is a man, folks, who experienced the Word. This is a man who, like the psalmist, meditated on the Word. This is a man who daily sought to obey the Word. Listen, if you want wisdom, then you have to obey scripture. You have to do the will of God in order to gain the wisdom of God, because learning the Bible is not simply a matter of academics. It requires personal obedience. And that's experiential obedience. And the more you obey the word, the more wisdom you gain from it. The more wisdom you gain from it, what happens? The more you'll love it. My prayer is that as a church, Lakeside has stood for the Word of God for many, many years since its inception, but my prayer is that we will love the Word of God like we've never loved it before, with an affection. We will hold it dear. So don't be content with just knowing the Bible. Love it, because it is the Word of God. It gives you wisdom that others don't have. As I said before, what a poor life we would all have if we didn't have the wisdom of God's Word. This wisdom is priceless. It is a priceless treasure that we should never take for granted, ever. So begin to ask God to give you a deepening love for scripture. Meditate on the word. Start this week by memorizing some scripture. Carrying it around with you in whatever device, whatever means you want to do that. And in those spare moments of life, train your mind to gravitate to the Word, you'll love it more and more. And if Christ is not your Savior, if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, then the only way you can become wise, it's by letting the Bible lead you to faith in Christ. It will do that. That's how I came to faith in Christ. I started reading the Bible. It'll do the same for you. Because in the Bible, you will learn that you are a sinner and that you need a Savior. because God is holy and just and he punishes and must punish sin. It's in the Bible, you'll read that there's only one who can save you. There's only one who can save you and that one is Jesus Christ because he is God who became a man, a perfect man. So he didn't have to be punished for any sin he had. Instead, he was punished in the place of sinners so that God the Father poured out his wrath on God the Son. on Jesus Christ so that if you come to faith in Him, you'll be forgiven of all of your sins, you'll be wise because you've trusted Christ, and you'll be growing in wisdom because now you'll follow Him as Savior and as Lord. Let's bow for prayer. Lord, we have this desire to love your word like this man did. And we're reminded that he loved your word, Lord, even though his circumstances were terrible. He was still in captivity. He was still being pursued to death. They wanted to kill him. He still didn't have physical deliverance, but he was so confident in your word, and it led him to just love your word. And Lord, I pray that as a church body, we will love your word. just as we will love you. We never wanna separate you from your word. Having loved you, we wanna love your word. Lord, deliver us from treating the Bible in just an academic, trivial way where we may have information, but it doesn't grip our hearts. I pray that you'll help us to meditate on your word, to chatter the word, to mutter the word, to let it fill us, Even as Spurgeon had said that he wanted the word to dwell in him so richly that his blood would be bibline. Lord, we want that. We want our blood to just ooze Bible. And we pray that you'll help us in this endeavor. And we thank you for the wisdom it gives us. Lord, I pray especially for students here who might be intimidated by teachers, secular teachers, who think they know so much, and look down upon them, for being naive because they believe in Christianity. I pray that you'll strengthen them and help them to realize that they know so much more than the most learned of their unbelieving teachers. And I pray, Lord, even as all of us get older, that you help us to get older, not simply with experience in life, but experience in the Word, to be observing of the Word. Lord, help us to be like this. Help us to follow in the footsteps of this man, not to be wise in evil, but wise in doing good, following you. And I pray for any here, Lord, who may not know you as Lord and Savior. I pray that you will put it in their hearts to turn to the word of God, to start reading the New Testament, and to see the truth about not only themselves, but about Jesus Christ. And may some come to faith in him. We pray all of this. in Jesus name.