My first serious exposure to the Bible came when I was 18 years of age. Although I was raised in a Jewish home, I never owned a Bible, I never read from a Bible. But while I was at college, a Christian friend started witnessing to me about Jesus. So I decided to purchase a Bible and start reading the New Testament for myself. But my reason for doing this wasn't to objectively try to discover the truth about Christ. No, my sole motivation was to uncover what I thought were the many errors and mistakes and contradictions in the Bible, so that I could go and point these out to my friend. and tell him this is the reason, this is my justification for my unbelief and my rejection of Christ. However, and I know I've told you this before, but to my surprise, I didn't find any errors in the Bible, no mistakes, no contradictions. Instead, I found Jesus Christ as my Messiah, my Savior, my God. And in the process, I discovered that the Bible is indeed the Word of God. Breed out by Him every word of it, true and reliable, and every word of it worthy of our complete trust. That's what I came to believe as an 18-year-old college student, and now, about 46 years later, I am more convinced than ever that the Bible is God's book, and that it reflects his character, of righteousness and truth without any flaws, without any blemishes. This morning, as we continue our study of Psalm 119, we have come to a section of this psalm in which the psalmist teaches us the same thing, that God's Word is righteous and it is absolutely true. I want to read to you again Psalm 119 starting at verse 137 going to 144. Righteous are you, O Lord, and upright are your judgments. You have commanded your testimonies in righteousness and exceeding faithfulness. My zeal has consumed me because my adversaries have forgotten your words. Your word is very pure, therefore your servant loves it. I'm small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Your law is truth. Trouble and anguish have come upon me, yet Your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding that I may live." Now, last Sunday, we began to unfold the meaning of these words. We noted that the psalmist mentions the term righteous or righteousness five times in these verses. There are only eight verses, and he mentions it five times, leading us to the obvious conclusion that this stanza is dedicated to emphasizing the fact that God's Word is righteous. Meaning that it's right, it's correct in everything it says, everything it teaches. Therefore, it is totally trustworthy. And the psalmist establishes the fact that it is righteous. In the first two verses of the stanza, he tells us that not only is the word righteous, he tells us why we know it's righteous. In verse 137, he says, righteous are you, O Lord, and upright, are your judgments. It's righteous, he says. The Word is righteous. God's testimonies, judgments are righteous. Why? Because God Himself is righteous. That's his point. That is to say that God's character is perfectly just. And right, He is the standard of what is right. If we have a problem with that, we're the ones who are wrong, not Him. Therefore, His Word, which comes from Him and mirrors Him, is just as righteous. And because the Word of God is righteous, in the next verse, the psalmist tells us we can trust it, because God is faithful to keep His righteous promises. Notice verse 138. You have commanded your testimonies in righteousness and exceeding faithfulness. Now, we've been studying Psalm 119 long enough to know that the man who wrote this psalm, we don't know his name, but whoever wrote this, inspired as he was, he wrote it in order to instruct us out of his own personal experience of suffering and pain. And he does this constantly throughout the psalm, not because he enjoys writing about himself, it's not a form of therapy for him, He's not trying to enlist any sympathy from us as his readers. No, he writes this psalm in order to teach us the place that the Word of God ought to have in our lives. He uses himself as an example. And that's why he tells us of his attitude throughout this psalm, of his response, his attitude towards the Word of God, even under the most difficult and trying of circumstances. And he does this not to exalt himself, because there certainly are plenty of times in this psalm he tells us, very honestly and very humbly admitting his own struggles in the areas of obedience, but he tells us about his attitude towards scripture through all of his struggles in order to encourage us, note this, to follow his example. He is instructing us by modeling this for us. That's precisely what he does once again in this stanza that we've come to. Having told us in the first two verses of this paragraph, or this stanza, that the Word of God is righteous, this man takes the remaining verses to tell us of his response in light of God's Word being righteous, even while he is going through persecution and pain from his enemies. So, that's what this is about, how he responds to the righteousness, knowing that God's Word is right, how he responds to it. And that's why these verses are so precious, they're so pertinent, they're so relevant, important for us, because They tell us that we can love and we can delight and trust the Word of God even under the most trying of situations. As we go through the deepest of trials, it doesn't matter, we can still delight in the Word. We can still trust the Word of God. And we do this and we can do this because the Word of God is righteous, it is true, it'll never mislead us. It will never give us incorrect information. And so, what the psalmist does in these verses, is he gives us five of his responses, five responses he had towards God's Word being righteous, because these are the very responses that God expects from us. Now, last week we saw his first two responses to Scripture being righteous. First, we saw that because God's Word is righteous, The psalmist was zealous for the word, zealous for the word. He says in verse 139, my zeal has consumed me because my adversaries have forgotten your words. Now, with these words he tells us that his adversaries had forgotten, they had turned away, they had abandoned God's word, which would seem to indicate that the men he's referring to here as his adversaries were not Gentile pagans, they were his enemies too. But I don't think that's who he's talking about here, because the Gentiles never had the Word of God to begin with, so they certainly couldn't forget what they didn't have in the first place. Take it that he's referring to some of his fellow Jews, men like him, who were raised on God's Word, But unlike him, they had now forgotten it. They had turned aside from it. They were disregarding it. And as we've noted many times in our previous studies, it would appear from all the information that the psalmist tells us about himself and his current situation, that he was a Jewish man living as an exile in captivity in the area of Babylon, known as Babylonia. Do you recall from the Old Testament, God had told the nation of Israel that if they obeyed Him, He would bless them in the land. If they disobeyed Him, He would eventually cast them out of the land, the promised land of Israel. And He said He would exile them to a foreign land. And that's exactly what He did. First it happened with Assyria, who took the northern ten tribes and transported them to Assyria. Then later, He did this with the Babylonians coming in and destroying Jerusalem, destroying the temple, and leading Judah, and at this point it would be Judah and Benjamin, the other two tribes remaining, taking them to Babylon. And the key statements in Psalm 119 that would indicate that the writer was one of those taken during the exile, these key statements are found in the earlier verses in the psalm. For example, if you look At verse 19, you'll see he says, I'm a stranger in the earth. Do not hide your commandments from me. I don't think he would say he's a stranger in the earth if he was living in Israel. That's home. I take it that he is telling us he's not living in his homeland now of Zion, of Israel, but rather he's a stranger, he's an alien in a foreign land. That would be the exile. He says in verse 23, even though princes sit and talk against me, your servant meditates on your statutes. I take it that these princes are very likely Gentile princes, Gentile chieftains who hate him, they talk against him. And then if you'll notice in verse 37, he prays, turn away my eyes from looking at vanity and revive me in your ways. When we studied this, I took some time to point out to you that the word vanity probably has to do with religious idols. It would appear that he is asking the Lord to help him to turn away from the idolatry that would be so rampant in Babylon. Now there certainly was idolatry in Israel, that's why they're in exile in the first place, but not to the extent that it would be in the place that I take it he was now in Babylon. And so, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the fact that now, here, in verse 139, he tells us that his adversaries had forgotten God's Word, it reveals that these were his fellow Jews, his countrymen, his own kinsmen, who, like him, were taken captive and then transported to Babylon. But unlike him, they made a choice. They decided to forsake the Word of God that they had been raised on. Now, why they did this, he doesn't tell us. Perhaps it was out of anger, resentment, bitterness towards the Lord for uprooting them and sending them into exile. That's possible. Or else, it's possible that as a result of their captivity, they viewed God now as weaker. Weaker than the pagan gods of the Babylonians? Perhaps they viewed him as a loser, since his people were defeated by these pagan invaders, and his holy city of Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. It's possible that their view of God changed from the mighty one to one who was weak. Or else perhaps they just wanted to make a new life for themselves. They wanted their lives to be easier. After all, they're in a new nation. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Babylon, do as the Babylonians do. New land, new religion, new life. We abandon our old life, which would include the Word of God. But regardless of the reason or the reasons that they decided to forget Scripture, It made the psalmist angry. That's what he's telling us. He says, my zeal has consumed me because my adversaries have forgotten your words. Now, this isn't sinful anger. This is righteous, holy indignation. We covered this last week. It's the kind of anger that everyone who believes God's word is righteous should have when it's just disregarded, especially disregarded by those who know better. those who know the word, those who choose to ignore it, it ought to upset us in a holy manner, not a sinful, selfish, personal anger, but a concern for God's righteousness, His holiness, because this is the right response to the righteous word of God being disregarded, because it is such an affront to our righteous God. Our attitude should be something like, how dare people treat Him and His Word this way? Especially when they know the truth, how dare you speak of God this way and neglect Him and forget Him? That ought to be our reaction. That was the psalmist's reaction. There's more, though. The second response of the psalmist to the Word of God being righteous is not only is he zealous for the Word, he also tells us that he loves the Word. In verse 140, we read, your word is very pure, therefore your servant loves it. In stating that scripture is pure, he's saying there are no impurities in the Bible. It never had to be refined, because there was nothing there to refine to begin with. God's word has always been pure. There's nothing in it that would ever contaminate us or corrupt us, because it is a perfectly righteous book. And I take it that when he speaks of the purity of the word, he's speaking of the purity of God. Since it comes from a perfectly pure righteous God, therefore He says He loves it. That's exactly what our response should be to the righteous Word of God. We should love the Bible. And loving the Bible means we obey the Bible. And we do it because of its pure nature. You know, one of the things I enjoy doing is reading a good book. I love books. But even with a good book, you have to be discerning. You have to be critical. Even a Christian book. You have to be discerning, you have to think critically, lest you be fed some information that's not accurate. But that is not the case with the Bible, ever. I like good books, and I know I just said I love good books, I really like good books, but I love the Bible. I love the Bible because everything in the Bible is right and true without any mixture of error. You never need to read the Bible with a critical mind. Never. So these are the psalmist's first two responses to the righteousness of the word. He's zealous for it, angry when it's neglected and forgotten, and he loves the word because it is so pure and so untainted from error. This morning, as we continue studying these verses, we're going to see three more responses this man had towards scripture being righteous. Therefore, as he continues, He now gives us the third response to the righteousness of God's Word, his third response, which is, he does not forget God's Word. He doesn't forget the Word. Others may have, he doesn't. He says in verse 141, I'm small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts. In contrast to his adversaries, those Jewish people who were very aware of the scriptures, and yet deliberately chose to turn away from them, the psalmist now tells us that he doesn't forget God's precepts. But notice what he says that precedes this statement about not forgetting the word. He says, I'm small and despised. So the question is, what does he mean by this? And what does this have to do with him not forgetting the Bible? Well, it's obvious what he means when he says that he's despised. That's not hard to figure out. He means that he's held in contempt by his adversaries. He's already told us this many times throughout the psalm. But what isn't so obvious is what he means when he says, I'm small. Is he telling us that physically his size is small, meaning he's not very tall? He's small in stature? It's possible. He may be, he may have been, as the Scots and Irish like to say, a wee little man. It's possible. It's also possible that he means he's small in the sense that he's young in age. I say that because the same Hebrew word that's translated small is also used in the Old Testament to speak of someone who's young and not fully grown. And if you recall, back in verse 9, the psalmist did say, how can a young man keep his way pure? Which may indicate, doesn't prove it, but it may indicate that when he wrote this psalm that he was a young man, perhaps even a teenager, a young adult. So it is possible that in saying that he's small, it's possible he's saying that he's physically on the smaller side or that He's a mere youth. That's possible. Linguistically, that's possible. However, if that is what he's saying, then it's hard to understand what this has to do with him being despised by others. I mean, it's very likely that his physical stature was similar to the physical stature of other Jewish people of that day, which wasn't very large. And people didn't have any particular contempt for those who were young in age. They may not have respected them, but they didn't have contempt for them. So, smallness in size or youthfulness just wouldn't have anything to do with him being despised. Therefore, it seems best to understand that when the psalmist says that he is small and despised, that he's talking about how his enemies looked at him, how they made him feel. not his actual literal size. In other words, they looked down on him. They made him feel small. They made him feel insignificant, unimportant, a man of no consequence, just insignificant. And why would they think this about him? No doubt because of his faith in the Lord and his love for the Word of God. As you may recall earlier in the Psalm, This man speaks of his enemies as very arrogant. Arrogant means you have an exalted view of yourself. You think that you're better than others. Notice, if you will, verse 51, he says, the arrogant utterly deride me. Yet I do not turn aside from your law. So here he says, they hate me, but they're arrogant. Verse 69 says the same thing, the arrogance have forged a lie against me. With all my heart, I'll observe your precepts. These men had exalted thoughts of themselves, thinking that they were superior to the psalmist. They thought they were better than he was. And if they were Jewish people, as it certainly appears, who had turned their backs on the Word of God, then they would have certainly looked down upon the author of the psalm for being so small-minded as to still believe the truths that they had been taught back in Israel. And for this, they despised him for still holding on to the faith that they felt had let them down. But this shouldn't surprise any of us, because the Bible does make it clear that unbelievers do tend to look down on believers in Christ as foolish and naive for believing in the Bible and believing that one could die on the cross 2,000 years ago and it would save us for all of eternity. You see this very clearly illustrated, this attitude of contempt and arrogance and mocking of believers by unbelievers. You see this very clearly illustrated in the life of the Apostle Paul. For example, I'd like you to turn your Bibles or tablets to Acts chapter 17. We read in Acts 17 that when Paul came, he came alone to the city of Athens, he started witnessing about Christ in the open marketplace. And he was noticed. He was noticed there by some of the local philosophers. And they were intrigued by what he was preaching. So they invited him to come to a place known as Mars Hill, the Areopagus, to explain his message to all of the leading philosophers of their city. Now, the reason these men invited Paul to speak to them wasn't because they were under conviction of sin. Not at all. It wasn't because they really wanted to understand so much of the gospel that they could come to faith in Christ themselves, no. It was more out of curiosity. That's all. More out of curiosity than anything else. And why do I say that? Because we read in verses 19 through 21 in Acts 17, they took him, they took Paul, they brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is? which you are proclaiming, for you are bringing some strange things to our ears, so we want to know what these things mean." Now, all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time, notice this, in nothing more than telling or hearing something new. That's what they did. All they wanted to do was Listen to novel thoughts, new ideas. So, even before they heard Paul explain the gospel in more detail, which he did at the Areopagus, I want you to know some of these men had mocked him. Notice what they said about him in the previous verse, verse 18 of Acts chapter 17. And also, Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, those are two schools of philosophy, were conversing with him. Some were saying, now notice this, what would this idle babbler wish to say? Others, he seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Now, I want you to know the term idle babbler, that's not a compliment. That is a term of derision. That is pure mockery. You'll know more as I explain the meaning of this term. The word literally meant a seed picker. It might be translated that way in your Bibles, a seed picker. It was originally used to refer to various seed picking or scavenger birds. So that's what it literally meant, just a seed picker. Then, language always changes, it's applied to different situations. It began to be applied to people who were beggars. poor people who begged, because like seed-picking birds, they lived off of scraps of food that they picked up from the gutters. So you can see how that could be applied to them. They're kind of seed-pickers. Eventually, though, the word came to be used to describe teachers, teachers who plagiarized the thoughts of others. They just stole the thoughts of other people, picking up scraps of knowledge from here and there, because they didn't have any original thoughts of their own. In other words, These men were accusing Paul of being a phony, an intellectual phony, a pseudo-intellectual who had no original thoughts. He was just parroting the thoughts of others. That's what they're saying about Paul. So these men initially mocked Paul. They looked down on Paul. And later, after he had the opportunity to proclaim Christ and the resurrection in a more fuller, Manner, he did this to all the leading philosophers on Mars Hill. Notice what we read in verse 32, that some began to sneer, meaning they scoffed at him. They laughed at Paul. They ridiculed him. See, this is often the reaction of unbelievers to those who believe the Word of God. You've faced this, I'm sure. They arrogantly scoff at us. They mock our faith. They mock us. They mock the Bible. They think our faith is intellectually beneath them. And that's why, in writing to the Corinthian church, the Corinthian believers, who were also Greeks, that was their ethnic background, and sadly, the Corinthians, who had a lot of issues, still tended to love Greek philosophy and put far too much stock in human wisdom and philosophy. Paul wrote these words to correct them. and to point them back to the purity of the gospel and the purity of the word of God notice how often in 1st Corinthians chapter 1 starting at verse 18 through 25 notice how often Paul uses the word foolishness now remember they're not from Athens but they're of the same makeup except these people are believers but they're clinging too much to philosophy Paul writes, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. For it is written, I'll destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I'll set aside. Paul says, where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. To Jews, a stumbling block, and to Gentiles, foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger. than men. Now, there's a very good reason Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians. Based on his experience in the city of Athens, he knew that the Greek Corinthians tended to think too highly of man's wisdom and human philosophy. And so he immediately told them exactly how unsaved secular intellectuals look at the message of Christ and salvation. Remember, these people are professing believers. but they're not right in their attitude. So Paul immediately, in this section, tells them that you're really no different in your thinking than unsaved secular intellectuals. He said in verse 18, for the word of the cross, that's the gospel message of Christ crucified, The word of the cross, it is foolishness to those who are perishing. Foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And several times in these verses that I just read to you, Paul refers to the message of the gospel as God's foolishness. He also calls it God's weakness. And why does he call it that? not because God's Word is foolish, not because there is any weakness in God, but because this is how unsaved people, especially those who consider themselves smart and intelligent, look at the Gospel and the Bible. They often describe our faith with words like simplistic, foolish, childish, naive, irrelevant, and they consider people like us who still believe the Bible to be outdated and out of touch with a modern world that is progressive and enlightened. In fact, I know someone who, when he refers to Christians and how we think, refers to us as you people. Yes, you people, as if we were a certain class of people who don't know what's going on in the world, we just have committed intellectual suicide by clinging to the Bible and burying our heads in the sand. You people. Now listen, don't let that kind of thinking and mockery intimidate you. It certainly did not intimidate the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, was smarter than all these men. But notice what he told the Corinthians almost immediately after he rebuked them for their love of human philosophy. Now remember, this is coming from Paul, who was more educated, was one of the most educated men of his day, conversant in several languages, an intellectual, extremely bright. This is what Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 1 and 2. And when I came to you, brethren, when I came to Corinth, Notice, I love this, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Now let me tell you, what Paul is telling them is that even though they were still impressed with man's wisdom and human philosophy, he wasn't going to accommodate their thinking. He wasn't going to change his message in order to try to appear more intellectually acceptable to them. He wasn't going to adjust or alter his message to suit their appetite for philosophy. He wasn't going to sound like one of them. He wasn't going to come to them and sound like an Athenian philosopher. He was determined to proclaim to them the pure truth of Christ, regardless of how simplistic and unsophisticated it sounded. That's what Paul is saying. See folks, this is what the writer of Psalm 119 is telling us was his experience. While his fellow Jews looked down on him for holding to belief in the Word of God, he refused He refused to forget the Word, regardless of what they thought of him, thinking of him as small-minded and despising him. He knew that the Scriptures were right, because they were God's righteous words. Therefore, he would never forget them. Listen, this man, as well as the Apostle Paul, these are great role models for us. Great role models of how to handle the snobbishness of those who mock us for our belief in Jesus and the Word of God. Let them laugh at you. Let them ridicule you for believing the Bible. Let them consider you foolish and simple-minded. Let them call you, you people. But the truth of the matter is that you are right and they are wrong. And the reason you know that you're right is because God's Word is righteous. He's righteous. His Word is righteous. It's absolutely true. And that's why the psalmist goes on to make this wonderful statement in the next verse, verse 142. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is truth. In light of the fact that some have despised him for believing the Word of God, he says that God is righteous forever. He doesn't change. Therefore, His Word remains righteous and true, regardless of what others think about it. So, He's going to go on believing it, and following it, and never forgetting it. I hope that's your attitude, that you're not going to forget the Word of God because of criticism from others. Take heart in the fact that God is always right, because He's always righteous. That's what the psalmist is saying. He doesn't change. The way the writer to the Hebrews puts it is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. He doesn't change, He's always righteous and therefore His word is always true. So don't be intimidated by what others say about you, what they say about your beliefs. The psalmist wasn't intimidated, Paul wasn't intimidated and neither should you be. Stick with the word because it's always right. And so up to this point, the psalmist has told us of three of his responses to the fact that God's Word is righteous. He's zealous for the Word. He loves the Word. He doesn't forget the Word. As he continues writing, he gives us a fourth response to God's Word being righteous, which is he delights in the Word. Verse 143, trouble and anguish have come upon me, yet your commandments are my delight. Once again, the psalmist returns to the issue of his suffering, which he's told us about many times. He says that trouble and anguish have come upon me. And from our understanding of this psalm, we know that the trouble and anguish that he's referring to have come because of his faith. He has refused to give up his faith, therefore his adversaries have attacked him. Now it's interesting that both of these Hebrew words, trouble and anguish, have similar meanings to the point that they are basically synonyms. because they both have to do with being pressed and restricted, confined, under stress. That's the thought of both of these words. So what this man is telling us is that he felt this great sense of pressure coming from his adversaries. And it would appear that this was pressure put on him by them to abandon his faith and just join them in their unbelief. That's the pressure he was undergoing. But no matter how much pressure they exerted on him, he's not going to cave in. far from being driven away from God's Word. Notice what he says. He tells us that he drew closer to the Word of God. It was his delight, he tells us. It didn't drive him away. It drove him closer to the Word. Ironically, it was his suffering for the Word that caused him to seek the Word for his comfort and his peace and his delight. And that is why the Word became his delight. This man knew the comfort of God's word because he knew that the word was righteous. And therefore, as the righteous word, it offered him encouragement. It offered him strength. He was feeling this pressure from others to conform to their sin. He turned to the Word and he delighted in the Word because it comforted him. In his commentary on Psalm 119, Bible teacher John Phillips has a good word worth hearing about this. He writes, trouble and anguish are two of the devil's jailers. He uses them to imprison our souls. The best way to get free from their clutch is to reach out for the golden key the psalmist here puts into our hand. Yet your commandments are my delight. So, if you're feeling pressure from others, pressure to conform, just go to the Word of God. Go to the Word of God. Let it drive you to Scripture, not away from Scripture. So I ask you, is the Bible your delight? Do you take comfort in what the Word says, especially when you're in trouble? This man, he's our example, he turned to the Word, he found it to be his delight, because he knew the Word was always right. Therefore, he wasn't swayed by the oppressive opinions and the pressures of others, their arguments for abandoning the faith. He delighted in the righteous Word of God, and so can you, and so must you. When you're going through a severe trial, it must be the Word of God that you turn to, or else you'll be subject to the wrong kinds of thoughts, and you're vulnerable then to give in to the pressure that comes from others. As I said, what an example this man is to us. He's zealous for the Word. It's forgotten by others, but he's zealous for it. He loves the Word for the purity of its truths. He refuses to forget the Word in spite of being despised and belittled for it. And he delights in the Word even in the midst of being pressured to abandon the Word. And now in the final verse of the stanza, he gives us his fifth response to God's Word being righteous, which is he longs to understand the Word. He says in verse 144, your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding that I may live. Now having already said that God's words are righteous, notice now he says that they are righteous forever, meaning they are eternal, everlasting, they will never pass away. This is precisely what Jesus said in Mark 13 verse 31 when he said heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. The words of our Lord are eternal forever. But notice how the psalmist responds. That's what we want to look at. How he responds to God's word being eternally righteous. Notice he asks the Lord to give him understanding of his eternally righteous word so that he may live. Now, what does he mean by this, that I may live? Well, he's not asking the Lord to give him understanding of his words so that he might simply continue to stay alive. No, he's asking the Lord to give him understanding of the Bible, watch this, so that he may have a meaningful life. not just stay alive and live an ordinary life, not just physical sustenance, but that he may have a meaningful life, a life that is based on truth, not foolishness, a life that is based on wisdom, not error, a life that's based on the Word of God. Listen, if you're a Christian, then make sure you are a student of God's Word. Otherwise, you'll miss out on so much in terms of how to live your life in the fullest possible way. Because only the Bible tells you how to have a meaningful, satisfying, fulfilled life. And it's not about living for yourself, it's about living for Christ. It's something all of us really want in terms of meaningfulness, Isn't this what Jesus was talking about in John chapter 10 verse 10? He said, I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly. Not just life, but an abundant life. Look at it this way. Every book that is popular right now, every book that's on the New York Times bestseller list, I don't even know what's there right now, but including all of those self-help books that offer advice on successful living, all of those books will pass away, and they will be remembered no more. They're just trendy. That's all. But God's Word will never pass away. It will live on for eternity, and the righteous truths that it tells you today will enable you to live in a way that pleases the Lord both now and forever. That's how the psalmist responds to the Word. He saw the Word as righteous forever, and he wanted to learn as much as he could from it so that he could live abundantly right now. I hope that's your desire. I hope that's your attitude. That's what this man is modeling for us. That's his example to us. But if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, the Bible, I would say, is also the book for you. It has to be because not only will it tell you how to have a meaningful life here and now, but it will tell you how to have eternal life so that you can have a meaningful life both now and forever. that when you die, you go to heaven. If you will do what Scripture says, you'll not enter into judgment, you'll not enter into eternal death. See, in light of the Bible being God's righteous book, it is the only book that you can depend on to give you the truth about how to have eternal life so you can be with God in heaven when you die. It is only, only in the Word of God that you will hear the truth that you are a sinner. You are a rebel. That you deserve eternal punishment. Why? Because God is holy. He's just. He's righteous. Therefore, He must punish sin. It's only the Word that will tell you that. Only God's Word. And it's only in this book that you'll learn that God did something about that predicament. The predicament that we're sinners and we deserve punishment and a holy, righteous God has to punish sin. It's only in this book that you learn that God solved that dilemma by becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ in order to be punished in the place of sinners like us. So that His righteousness, His holiness, His justice, that's satisfied in the death of Christ. And it is only in this book that you'll learn how to appropriate Christ's death, the death that satisfied the wrath and justice of God the Father. It is only in this book that you'll learn how to appropriate His death for you, for your salvation. How is that? It is by grace through faith in Him as Savior. Simply trust Christ's death. as the sole basis for your eternal salvation. Does that sound too simplistic? Well, that's what the Athenians said. But it is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. So, if you really want to learn how to have a meaningful life so that you don't waste your life on chasing after trivial pursuits and living for yourself, and then you die and you face eternal judgment, then what do you do? Then you open your Bible today. You open your Bible. I would recommend opening it to the Gospel of John, the fourth Gospel in the New Testament. Why? Because in that Gospel you'll learn about Jesus Christ in a way that ought to lead you to faith in Him. You'll learn who Christ is. You'll learn what is death accomplished. And then when you learn that, turn to Him. Trust Him as your Savior and your Lord. As we close this service, I want you to know we'll have some of our elders up at the front. If you'd like to talk to any of them, pray with any of them, we welcome you. But love the Word. Don't forget the Word. You think we're finished, don't you? Yeah, we are. Delight in the Word. Believe the Word. Let's bow for prayer. Father, we thank you for whoever this man was, for the example he has set for us. Lord, we want to be like him because we want to follow you as he did. And we thank you for the example of the Apostle Paul. We thank you, Lord, that though such an intelligent man, such a bright man, such an intellectual man of great stature, yet Yet, he didn't try to come across like that. He determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Lord, help us to be like that. Not to try to impress people with how much we know. Not to try to impress anyone with our degrees and scholastic achievements. Not to try to keep up with the world and their scholarly approach, but to take the pure gospel and present it. We remember Paul's words to the Romans that he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation. So Lord help us to go forth believing, trusting the word because it is righteous, you are righteous and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word concerning Christ. Lord, help us to have great confidence in your word. I pray especially for our young people who are often intimidated by others at school, who look down upon them for believing the Bible and going to church on Sundays and claiming that Christ can save them. I pray that you will, as a result of our study today and their own personal study, arm them with great confidence, not in their own abilities, but great confidence in your word. And Lord, for those here, those who might be listening or watching, we pray that you will open their hearts to Christ, draw them to yourself, and then bring them to the point of repentance and faith in Jesus. This we pray in his name. Amen.