I encourage you to take your copies of God's Word and turn in them to Psalm 119. Tonight we are looking at the hay stanza. The hay stanza. And that is from verses 33 through 40. Verses 33 through 40. And I am going to read the Word of God, the stanza of the Word of God in your hearing. And I just want to remind us all as you're turning there, One of the reasons we read the word of God in your hearing before we preach it is because Paul commanded his protege Timothy to do so. Give your attention to the reading of God's word in the presence of all. But a second reason which goes with the first is because we believe that even if the preacher were to stand up and read the word of God and then pray and give the benediction, the Lord can work miracles through it. The Lord breaks through stony hearts, and the Lord changes lives, and the Lord transforms, and the Lord gives hope, and the Lord lifts us up out of despair through the mere reading of God's word. If little Elijah Whitis got up here, I don't know if he can read or not yet, but if he could, and he got up here and he read it, it would be just as potent as if I, or Pastor Jim, or Pastor Ken read it. So, anyways, that's free. Here we go, Psalm 119, verses 33 through 40. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise that you may be feared. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. Behold, I long for your precepts, and your righteousness give me life. Let's pray and ask the Lord's help one last time. Father God, we've read your word, and I pray tonight that we would believe what was just uttered, that your word can change us, Father. It may not in the moment change our circumstances, as we heard this morning, but it can change us in the midst of our circumstances. And Father, we need that right this very moment. Some of us need it more than others. Some are in the doldrums. Some are a threat away, Father, from utter despair. and others, Father, on the mountaintop. And we recognize that each and every one of us have been in one of these scenes in the vicissitudes of life. But in each scene, Father, we need your word. So may your word and your spirit converge this evening and do wonders in our life, we pray in Christ's name, amen. I've labeled this meditation tonight the heart of the matter and the heart of the matter very simply just to get down to it, the heart of the matter in living the Christian life is a humble disposition and a teachable spirit. Let me say that again. The heart of the matter in living the Christian life is a humble disposition and a teachable spirit. Just to whet your appetite tonight, I wanna just read a few Proverbs. I could quadruple these because the Proverbs tend to do that, but I wanna contrast in the reading of these Proverbs how the fool reacts to instruction, correction, rebuke, and how the wise man or woman reacts to the same. Proverbs 9.8. You don't need to turn there, just listen. Just let it flood over your heart and minds tonight. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Wow. Proverbs 9, nine, next verse. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be wiser still. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning. You know, if you think about that for a moment, it kind of gives some background to Jesus's parables when he says, to those who have been given little will be given more, right? And to those who have not been given much, even what they have will be taken away. Isn't that interesting? Let me read it again. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be wiser still. And he will love, excuse me, teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. If the wisdom is there, if the baseline is there, it will multiply, it will increase. If he's a fool, he's gonna think he's wise in his own eyes, and even what he does have, or what he thinks he has, will be taken away. Proverbs 15.12, a scoffer does not like to be reproved. He will not go to the wise. A rebuke goes deeper, Proverbs 17.10, a rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool. In Ecclesiastes 2.14, I love Kohelet. He's one of my favorite teachers apart from our Lord. Ecclesiastes 2.14, the wise person has his eyes in his head. I love that. But the fool walks in darkness. In my short years of ministry and in my, what, 20 some, 25 years of being a Christian, I've seen many who profess to be wise who in reality are fools according to these Proverbs. They are the people who, when corrected, cannot stand it. They cannot stand that you had the audacity to give them instruction, even if you're older than them, even if you're wiser than them, even if you're balder than them, even if you're grayer than they are. You have the audacity to give them instruction. And when rebuked, some of these people, they hop onto another church because their ego cannot bear it. They cannot stay in the same place knowing that they have been rebuked. especially if it is in a public manner. These are people who, in their eyes, are the first and the smartest and the wisest to read the Bible. It's as if the 2,000 years of church history were nothing but a blip. They are not historical, they are all historical. They read the Bible by themselves, for themselves, and they are God's gift to the church. They know one Greek word and have a screensaver of a Puritan on their computer desktop, and suddenly, they are Solomon incarnate. They are solving riddles and cracking enigmas, and they scratch their head and wonder why you haven't elected them to be an elder or a deacon yet. So you try to speak the truth in love, and they get terribly offended as if you slapped their infant, or something worse. Well, tonight, I want to contrast that with the heart of the psalmist. What you will see is that the heart of the matter, as I said, in living the Christian life, is a humble disposition and a teachable spirit. a humble disposition, and a teachable spirit. And you can test this if you are even willing to be taught by a child. And by the way, as I've said often, sometimes it's the children who can teach us the most. So let me consider first this. Look in verses 33 to 35. The teachable heart is marked by ardent imperatives for God's law. I'm not going to read all of it, but I just want you to notice the first three words in your English text of verse 33, verse 34, and verse 35. Teach me, give me, lead me, all directed toward God. And all of them have to do with God's statutes. Teach me your statutes, give me understanding, lead me in the path of your commandments. Give me your commandments, God, not my own wisdom, not my rendition of it, not how it fits into my life and my lifestyle, but teach me your raw commandments, even if that means, even if that means that I will receive rebuke, even if that means that there will be egg on my face, even if that means that there will be tears in my eyes, give me your commandments. This is the ardent imperative of a humble disposition and a teachable spirit. When it comes to wisdom and instruction, I would say that there are four kinds of people in the church when it comes to wisdom and instruction. Here they are, number one. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these. Hopefully you'll recognize yourself in one of these, okay? There's four kinds of people in the church when it comes to wisdom and instruction. Number one, those who listen to and apply to the best of their ability and adjust to the best of their ability. their life to fit the wisdom that you have given them into it, okay? This is the noble person, this is the righteous person, this is the heart of the matter for the psalmist. He wants to receive wisdom and he's just taking it in. He can't get enough. I can't remember which founding father, maybe it wasn't a founding father, maybe it was Frederick Douglass, I can't remember. But he... He would sit by the window of the schoolhouse. Maybe it was Frederick Douglass because he was African American and he wasn't allowed to learn. He just wanted instruction so bad, he sat outside the window of the schoolhouse in the cold and the snow just so he could hear the voice of the teacher. It wasn't comfortable for him. It wasn't convenient for him. He didn't care. But there were some fools inside, okay, of a different skin color at that time, okay, who Though they had the benefits and the convenience and the warmth of the fire and the light of the candlelight, were not taken advantage of what was right before them. Frederick Douglass made a sacrifice because he wanted it so bad. Wherever he could get wisdom, he said, give it to me. I want more. I want more. That's the noble one. Then there's a second kind of person. who they listen, they listen to wisdom, but they push back. But it's a noble kind of pushing back. And I've experienced this a lot and I've been that guy. It's not a pushing back like, no, I don't want that wisdom in my life. I don't want that correction in my life. I don't want that instruction in my life. I want it, but I don't understand how you're giving it to me. So draw me a picture, okay? Say it from another angle, say it in a different way, but say it in such a way that I can understand it. That's what my pushback is. My pushback is not that I don't want it. My pushback is that I do want it, but it's not clear to me. That's noble and that's right. And then there's a third kind of person who knows that what you're saying, It's probably right, but they will not be told what to do by anyone else unless it was their idea. These people adore their own wisdom, but their foolishness is apparent to all who have, as Kohelet says, eyes in their head. And then there's the fourth category who are just clueless. They don't even know what's going on. I mean, they come to church and they're like, well, where's the popcorn? Like, they just don't know what's going on. They don't realize what's at stake. It is so incredibly important, beloved, to be teachable. I think one of the biggest things that gets in our way of being teachable is our Americanness, okay? It's our Americanness. And I'm not trying to, I'm an American, okay? But there is a rough and rugged individualism that comes with the identity and the warp and the woof and the zeitgeist of Americana, if you will, That is like, I did it my way. I forged my own track. I forged my own path. I did it the way I wanted to do it. And I think that that gets in the way of us receiving instruction and wisdom the way that the Lord intends for us to have it. It's so important to be teachable. And one of the things that I've learned over and over again in my short years of ministry is you can't help somebody that doesn't want to be helped. You can't teach somebody that doesn't want to be taught. And yes, there are people like that in the church. There are. And I would ask you tonight to consider if you're one of them. Have there been overtures of desires by the people of God, by the pastors of this church to help you? and you slap their hand away. I hope that's not you. I hope that's not you. What is the beginning of wisdom? Anybody know what the Proverbs say? What's the beginning of wisdom? It's two words. Get wisdom, that's the beginning. It sounds redundant, right? What's the beginning of wisdom? Get wisdom. Now fear the Lord, that is too. But as you get into it, the beginning of wisdom, fear the Lord, but get wisdom, get that wisdom. And to be able to get wisdom, you have to realize that you don't have as much as you think. That's the first step. It's like, you know, getting help as an alcoholic, the first thing you have to do is admit that you're an alcoholic. To get wisdom, you have to admit that you don't have as much wisdom as you actually have. Now notice in verse 33, that the true disciple of Christ is a lifelong learner. He says, I will keep it to the end. You never stop learning. You always need instruction. It's only the stubborn and the fools who despise instruction. The psalmist here, he never draws a line and says to obedience, to here you may come, but no farther. The end of your keeping the law will come only when we stop breathing. No good person will think of marking a date on the calendar and saying, it's enough. I can now relax my watchfulness and live like the rest of the world, no. But look also in verse 35, your feet will follow your heart. So make sure your heart is aiming in the right direction. The psalmist says, lead me in the path of your commandments for I delight in it. I delight in that path. Now I'll come back to desire in a moment because I want to unpack that a little bit more. So the first thing we see is this, the ardent imperatives of the psalmist, lead, teach, and what was the other one? Teach, give, and lead. But now secondly, let me present to you tonight in verses 36 and 37, two enemies of a teachable heart. Two enemies of a teachable heart. Look at verse 36. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Now that word in the Hebrew, it just basically means covetousness. And the first enemy to a teachable heart is covetousness. Covetousness of being perceived of in a particular way. There's a word for this, I never knew what it meant until I started watching some of the movies that my wife wanted me to watch, but it's this idea of putting on airs, right? What is putting on airs? Trying to be somebody that you're not. Trying to act as if you're somebody that you're not. That's a really hard thing to keep up, isn't it? It's like a liar who has to tell lie after lie after lie to cover up the previous lies, and before he knows it, he forgets who he is. Covetousness. is an enemy to a teachable heart. Spurgeon says, the crime of covetousness is common, but very few will confess it. For when a man heaps up gold in his heart, the dust of it blows into his eyes, and he cannot see his own fault. I love that. Our hearts must have some object of desire, and the only way to keep worldly gain out of it is to put the testimonies of the Lord in its place. You can never take out anything, no matter what it is, especially covetousness, and have a vacuum. A vacuum will always retreat back to the thing that you took out, right? You take covetous, I'm gonna fast from covetousness for a week. Okay, I don't even know what that means. You have to fill it with something else. What is more desirable than what I'm desiring? The Lord, his law, his spirit, obedience, faithfulness, perseverance. So in other words, we can't deprive ourself of that vice, we must put something else in. Now look at verse 37. A second enemy, a second enemy of a teachable heart is worthless things. Look at verse 37. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. I was thinking about that. I'm like, where do I even begin with this? Where do I even begin with worthless things? All right, everybody pull out your iPhone, okay? Let's start taking down the list of worthless things, right? I mean, think about it. I lost count of how many times I deleted my YouTube app on my phone, but you know what I do? I'm kind of a shyster. I delete it, but then I go to my web browser, and I open up YouTube in there. It's like, oh man, I just can't get away from myself, right? But if you think, just think for a moment, of all the worthless things that you've watched on YouTube, all the worthless games that you've watched, Candy Crush. I'm not saying that these things are bad in and of themselves. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that they too easily master us. They too easily master us. They too, listen, they too easily drown out the silence and the solitude that our souls need to remind ourselves of who we are. Am I a product of my apps? Am I a slave to my apps? Am I a slave to YouTube? I mean, they've done studies, you know, the way they set it up for you to just continuously scroll, you could do that all day. It draws you in, it sucks you in. If your conversations consist of memes, I got an answer to that, look at this meme, you probably have a problem, okay? worthless things. Again, I'm not going to say this anymore because I don't want it to die of a thousand qualifications. You know your struggle, you know where the battle is, you know where the fires are, and I'd encourage you, as the psalmist says here, that you ask the Lord to turn your eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life according to your ways. Spurgeon says this about the second half of the line, enable me to travel so swiftly on the road to heaven that I will not stop long enough with sight of vanity to be fascinated by it. So those are two enemies of a teachable heart. But now finally tonight, let me give you three aids for a humble and teachable heart. Three aids for a humble and teachable heart in verses 38 through 40. And please listen to me. Please listen to these three aids. Number one, verse 38. Here we see the confirmation of God's promise to the believer promotes healthy fear. The confirmation of God's promise to the believer promotes healthy fear. Verse 38, what does it say? It says, confirm to your servant your promise. that you may be feared. Now, why would he say something like that? What is the connection between, listen, between God fulfilling a promise of his to you as a child of God in your life, that, purpose clause, that you would fear him more. What is the connection between those? Have you thought about that? Here's what I think it is, okay? The same God who experientially confirms to me the sweetness and the goodness and the pleasantness, if I could put it that way, of a fulfilled good promise. is the same God who in His sovereignty can fulfill a warning promise. And a warning promise is that which we see, for example, it scares me every time I come to it in my devotional reading, in Hebrews 6, verses 5 and 6, which says that the one who falls away from Christ The one who falls away from Christ. These are the words of the author to the Hebrews, and I'm not gonna be some foolish evangelical and try to unsay what he has said. This is what the author to the Hebrews says. The one who falls away from Christ cannot be restored again to repentance, for he is crucified to himself again, the Son of God. That scares me. And the same God who I experience fulfilling to me good promises is the same God who will fulfill that promise too. That person who falls away, who apostatizes, who has tasted of the heavenly gifts and been enlightened by the Holy Spirit will not be able to come again to repentance. That's what the Bible says. That gives me fear. Is that a bad fear? No, that is a healthy fear. That is a healthy fear. I want that fear. America has lost the fear of God. We've lost it. There's only some remnant elect churches in this nation that still understand and preach and promote and pastor according to a healthy fear of God. We need to have a fear of God. I'm not talking about, as John says in 1 John, that perfect love casts out all fear. You know what that fear is? That fear is that even in Christ through faith, I could fall away. No, you can't. No, the perfect love casts that kind of fear out. That's a fear of punishment. And I can cast that fear out because that punishment fell on Jesus and it'll never fall on me because in faith, I'm in union with him. Well, how strong is your faith? Just faith. That's all it says, faith. It could be weak faith, it could be strong faith. Do I want it to be as strong as it can? Yeah, but in some people it's weak faith and they're just barely hanging on by a thread, but they're there through faith. It's not the act of faith, it's the object of faith, right? It's the person in whom I put my faith. He is the one who keeps me. So perfect love casts out any fear that in Christ I will have that punishment. It's this kind of fear. It's the kind of fear that says, I am in Christ, but I could do whatever I want. No, the child of God doesn't say that. And if the child of God says that, he's not a child of God. He doesn't know Jesus. Because the person who says, I can do whatever I want, I can believe whatever I want, and I'm still saved, that is a reprobate. And the Lord has instituted a process in the church by which those people who act as gangrene and spread their unbelief throughout the church are to be excised from the church because they will harm it. That is the kind of fear that we should have, okay? Fear that I would be that person that though I name the name of Christ and have the spirit of God within me, would have the audacity to say something as foolish as that. Sometimes religious people who say they've tried church, I've had these, I just had this conversation with a guy who came and fixed my gas fireplace. He's like, yeah, you know, I tried church, but I just wasn't feeling it. I just wasn't feeling it. And after I got in a talk with him, man, he wanted to get out of there. I told him, I said, that's very scary. If you don't feel, I'm not talking about emotionalism, but if you don't have no desire to be with the people of God, if you don't want to be with the people of God, worshiping God, and you say foolish things like, I don't hear any of you saying, I'm just saying, there's a evangelism encounter I had, okay? People say, you don't have to go to church to be a Christian. That's kind of like saying, you could be a cook and not cook. You could be a mechanic and not mechanic. I mean, that's, with all due respect, that is ridiculous, okay? The child of God wants to worship God with the people of God, period, okay? Period! It boggles my mind when people say, well, I have church in my heart. I say, I don't know what you're talking about. You could say to the most eloquent Southern drawers you want, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm from California, draw me a picture, okay? But when you say I have church in my heart, I don't think you know what you're talking about. What does that even mean? Listen, if you're not feeling it, meaning you don't have a desire to worship God, that should scare you to death. That may mean that you are dead inside. Dead people don't feel. Dead people don't have spiritual affections. To feel nothing for worshiping God is a scary thing indeed. In that case, if I ever got there, you know what I would do? And what I hope you would do is fall on your face before God and beg him to give you that desire. And you know what? If you did that, you probably have the desire. So the first aid is a healthy fear that proceeds from seeing God's promise fulfilled in my life and looking the flip side of the coin and saying, oh, there's also a promise that if I fall away, I will be damned. And that gives me a holy and healthy fear. A second aid, verse 39, and we've talked about this a lot, so I'm just gonna repeat it. is the desire to avoid shame. Look at verse 39, turn away the reproach that I dread. That's a strong word, isn't it? Turn away the reproach. You could translate that shame. Turn away the reproach or shame that I dread for your rules are good. Reproach is shame, and just like we've lost the fear of God in the church, we've lost this concept of shame as well. Look, shame and reproach is unbearable. It's unbearable. To bring reproach upon the family name is unbearable. Some of you know my testimony. I was saved in 1996 at 18 years old. I was arrested for driving under the influence and evasion of an officer. I was in a drunk tank all night. and I got up in the morning, and my dad picked me up, and he drove me home for 30 minutes from Modesto, California to Waterford, California, and 15 of those 30 minutes, with his fist until they were bloody, he was begging the dash in the truck, saying, you brought reproach upon the family name, and he was right. I brought reproach upon the family name, and I was filled with chagrin, and I was ashamed of myself. And psychologists and pastors who aren't really pastors today say, don't tell people about shame. You're not gonna grow your church with shame. That's fine, I'll have a small church, I don't care. Less problems, okay? The word of God talks about shame. Turn away reproach from me, turn away shame from me. Much worse than bringing reproach upon your families, bringing reproach upon the family of God. But people don't like to talk about this. It's not sexy to talk about the dread of shame as a motivation for not sinning, but here it is in the Bible. And I'm not interested in presenting a sexy ideal case for not sinning. I'm not interested in using all the, I am interested in using all the biblical grist for the mill that I possibly can to keep my head and the head of my family and the head of my church from shame. I want to keep them from shame. And when we do bring reproach upon ourselves and our family and our church, why is it? The second half of the line tells us, because we did not regard his rules as good. We didn't regard them as good. We had a better idea. They didn't apply to us. We did what so many Christians do. I'll interpret that rule, that law, that statute, that commandment, that precept to my liking. I'll fit it into my life. If it fits into my lifestyle, I'm good with it. Good job, God. Your rules match my shoes today, thanks. God isn't the nerdy freshman trying to fit into your lifestyle. He is the God of the cosmos, and He doesn't suggest our obedience. He demands it, and guess what? He has every right to demand it. He has every right to demand it, and we should be okay with that. It so bothers me when foolish evangelicals try so hard to make God look cool, to make God's ways fit in with the culture. There's too much of that going around today. God's rules are good when they make us popular, and they are good when they require our life. They're all good because he is all good all the time. So finally tonight, an aid in having a teachable heart and a humble disposition is found in verse 40. His righteousness gives us life and that makes us long for his precepts. Look at verse 40. Behold, I long for your precepts and your righteousness give me life. You know what I love here? It's your righteousness, I think there's an echo here, there's a foreshadowing here of Jesus and his work. In your righteousness, give me life, and in that, I long for your precepts. I see gratitude coming out of the work of Christ here. The work of Christ in my life brings forth the flood out of my heart of gratitude. Now, if you heard what I just said, and you're a John Piper fan, you're going to think I'm wrong, okay? With all due respect, and I say this humbly, John Piper's wrong. John Piper says that it's wrong to be motivated toward obedience out of gratitude. He calls it the debtor's ethic. And he wrote a whole book about it, Desiring God. Yes, I disagree with him. I still love John Piper, but I disagree with him. And if we got in a room together and for 45 minutes to three hours we were nuancing what we were trying to say, maybe we'd come out in the same spot, but probably not. He doesn't like the idea of gratitude. But the Bible talks all about gratitude. And I'm going to simply, I'm simply going to read the first and second question of the Heidelberg Catechism, which sums up what the Bible says, and then I'm gonna be done. Because the Christian life is about gratitude. You know the Heidelberg Catechism sums up the whole Christian life in three words that start with a G. Do you guys know what it is? Anybody? Cricket. Come on, anybody? Guilt, grace, and gratitude. Okay, listen. Question one, what is, this is beautiful, this is gold. What, this is the Heidelberg Catechism, question one, what is your only comfort in life and death? Oh, this'll preach, this'll counsel, this'll disciple. Listen, what is your only comfort in life and death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil and so preserves me. that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head, yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation. And therefore by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto him." Wow. Then question two, how many things are necessary for you to know that you in this comfort may live and die happily? Three, the first, how great my sins and misery are. The second, how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries. And the third, how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance. Christian, your obedience and your motivation for obedience comes out of gratitude. for what God has done for you in Jesus Christ. Do you believe that tonight? Take it into your week and let the light of Christ shine in your worship and devotion and subservience to Him. Let's pray.