We'll take your Bibles tonight and let's turn to Psalm 119 and we're gonna look at the Lamed stanza. That's the Hebrew character for the L in the English language. It's gonna be found in 89 through 96. 89 through 96. Psalm 119, 89 through 96. Let's give our attention to the reading of God's word. Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. I am yours, save me, for I have sought your precepts. The wicked lie and wait to destroy me, but I consider your testimonies. I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad. That's for the reading of God's word. There is a kind of shellfish, I don't know the name, sorry, but there's a kind of shellfish that clings so closely and so tenaciously to the rocks on a shore and the harder the waves and the breakers crash down upon it, the stronger and more resilient it gets. It is actually the pressure and the oppression of the waves and the breakers that makes it strong and makes it cling. And as I thought about this, I thought this is a wonderful picture of how the Christian is supposed to think about the word of God. The more we cling to it, the more we learn that it is reliable, The more we cling to it, the more we find it to be true. Here's another one. The more we cling to it, we find out that, I don't know if you've experienced this yet, this book knows a lot more about me than I even do about myself. It serves as a mirror, a mirror. One of the things Michael Horton would always say in class, and I've repeated it multiple times, he said everything tongue-in-cheek, he spoke in metaphors, but he said, when we come to the Bible, we do not interpret the Bible, the Bible interprets us. And I have found that to be true, especially in my deepest, darkest moments, especially in the time when I needed the Lord the most. In fact, just this weekend, I was in a situation where I had to confront a loved one, it was very, very difficult, a family member, a family member that's older than me. And I have never had a panic attack in my whole entire life, ever. I've heard people talk about it, I've heard people describe it, and I've never been able to enter into experientially what they experienced, because I've never had one. But before I went over to confront this family member, I have a, A multi-sport watch, and I just clicked it over to my heart rate. And my sitting heart rate is anywhere from 55 to 65, it fluctuates in there. I was sitting down, rested, and it was at 125. It's never been that high before. And I felt tightness in my chest, and no matter what I did, I couldn't settle down. So you know what I did? I quoted Psalm 23, out loud, to myself. And I just watched as it started ticking down, ticking down, ticking down. I'm not saying that that's always gonna happen. Maybe you need to say it three times, four times, and it's not the rote. It's not the rote, it's the clinging to the truths in that psalm, especially, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Do you believe that? You know what one of my favorite verses in the Bible is? When Jesus says at the end of the Great Commission, before he ascends to the Father in heaven, and lo, I am with you always to the end of the age. I'm with you always. Jesus is with us always. Jesus walks through the fire with us. He walks through the trials with us. He walks through the affliction with us. He walks through the panic attacks with us. You think Jesus ever had a panic attack? Well, he had some condition, there's debate about this, but I'll just give the standard line. He had some condition when he was in Gethsemane when he was sweating, and either the text is trying to say that he was literally sweating drops of blood, which is an actual medical condition that is brought upon by massive quantities of stress at one time, or it was just being figurative, saying that his sweat was so heavy and so profuse and so much that it was like drops of blood, I don't know. But, either way, he was probably having something similar to a panic attack. I don't know, but I know that he knows because Hebrews 4 tells me that he's a sympathetic high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses and yet is without sin. So I want to talk about delighting in the firmly fixed word tonight. If you remember, the last stanza that we looked at was a rather bleak stanza. It was really a stanza that could be classed with the laments of scripture. You might even say it was a little dark. And then it jumps to this one, which is delighting in the word. And Spurgeon says this, after tossing about on a sea of trouble, the psalmist here leaps to the shore and stands upon a rock. Sometimes in God's providence, the Christian life is thrown against the rock of God's word and clings for dear life. But once to safety, He often needs to return to that rock and remind himself of its properties. And that's what I want to do tonight. Remind us of the properties of that faithful rock, that rock of ages, which made a firm and stable and safe place in time of trouble. Someone said, this was attributed to Spurgeon, I don't know who said it, but they say he didn't say it. I'll just say that the governor said it. I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages. Isn't that a beautiful thing? I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages. So God's Word is eternal because it is the articulation of God's will and God's power. It stands the test of time because God has stood the test of time and will stand the test of time. And the Word of God before it was inscripturated was in the mind of God and it is eternal. So I want to ask a question tonight and answer it with four simple refrains, okay? Number one, here's the question, how do we delight in the firmly fixed word? How do we delight in the firmly fixed word? Here's the first way. We see this in verses 89 to 91a. Look to its witnesses, the heaven and the earth. Look to its witnesses, the heaven and the earth. Look at 89 to 91. Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You have established the earth and it stands fast. By your appointment, they stand this day. One of my favorite conversations I like to have with atheists and agnostics and people who don't believe the Bible and people who think that faith is a stupid thing to engage in, even though, ironically, they engage in it all the time throughout the day, even if the object is not God, it's something, is I like to talk to them about the origins of the universe. And I've talked to you about this before, but just think about it for a moment. Positing something like evolution doesn't answer all of the most and probably the most important question that an atheist must answer if he's going to deny the existence of God. Because all evolution says is that stuff evolved from other stuff, that's all it says. But what's the lingering question? Where did the stuff come from, right? And some have tried to answer that by referring to the Big Bang. Well, everything came into existence. Okay, well, let's go with that. Everything came into existence from what? And now they're on the horns of a dilemma, right? Because if they say that everything, something went from nothing to something, they're either A, gonna have to say it was a higher power, right? You can name it whatever you want, but it was a higher power. And in fact, some scientists have done this, but they're not gonna go with Jesus. They're not gonna go with God. Well, you know what they're gonna go with? Aliens. Aliens seeded life on the back of crystals. This is a real thing. They really believe that. And I just respond by saying, you have more faith than I do. Or the other horn is they say, well, something came out of nothing. Okay, well, whether it's aliens seeding life on the back of crystals or something came out of nothing, you're gonna have to have faith in either one of these. Okay? Or you can go with the Christian answer, which is given to us in Hebrews 11.3, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. This is called creation ex nihilo. God created everything out of nothing. I think Adrian Rogers once said, God stepped onto the stage of nothing from behind the curtain of nothing and created everything. God created everything, ex nihilo. So the heavens and the earth stand as a testimony and a witness to the word of God. Because how did he bring things into existence? By the word of his power. By the word of his power. He spoke, Genesis says, those early chapters. He spoke and light just sprang into existence. Isn't that a beautiful thing? That's what our God does, and He also does the same thing in our redemption, doesn't He? There is no life, there is death, and by the fiat of His Word, through the ministry of His Spirit, He makes us living spiritual creatures through regeneration. But now, let's talk about this word for a second because, of course, many of you know I did my doctoral work in textual criticism. That's what I did. And yes, there are many critics of the Bible. So is the Bible reliable? Like, I mean, one of the most common objections is that, you know, if you believe in Old Testament, New Testament, these were written thousands of years ago. So how can you be sure that what we have is the right thing? And how can we be sure that they corroborate with other manuscripts? Well, let me just give you just a little smattering of comparison between some ancient documents, okay? There is a historian named Pliny, and he wrote his works somewhere between 61 and 113 AD. The earliest extant copy that we have was found in 850 A.D. So that means that there's 750 years removed from when it was purportedly written and when we came across what is called an extant document, okay? How many copies do we have of that? Seven, that's all we have. Of the extant manuscripts of Pliny, we have seven copies from a document written in between 61 and 113 AD. Plato, he wrote somewhere between 427 and 347 BC. We didn't get an extant copy of that until 900 AD, which you do the math, that's roughly 1,200 years. How many copies do we have of that? Seven, seven copies. You go down the list, you have Aristotle, he wrote between 384 and 322 BC. We found the extant copy in 1100 AD, that's 1,000 years removed. We have 20 copies of that. The Iliad, we have 643 copies. You know how many copies of manuscripts that we have in the New Testament? The numbers differ a little bit, but it's somewhere around 5,800 copies. 5,800 extant manuscripts of copies of the New Testament. Okay, that's just the New Testament. What about the Old Testament? Well, before 1948, the oldest extant copy of the Old Testament, the complete Old Testament that we had, was the Leningrad Codex from the 9th and 10th century AD. And as many of you know, and if you don't know, I'm gonna tell you, in 1948, possibly the greatest text-critical find in our lifetime, for sure, and possibly in the last 1,000 years, we found the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the Dead Sea Scrolls have every book of the Old Testament, a copy of every book from the Old Testament, and some copies, multiple copies, except for the book of Esther. And you can ask me why later. They basically thought that Esther was a dirty Gentile. You can imagine why. So, what were they dated to? Well, they were dated to the time of roughly 250 B.C. to 100 A.D. That's a thousand years earlier than the earliest extant manuscripts that we had. So the question is, okay, well how do they pair up? 95% of what the Leningrad Codex from the 9th and 10th century AD had, 95% of the Old Testament was exactly the same as what we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the 5% that was different were just scribal slips and errors. The only major contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was different from the Old Testament is whereas the Old Testament Psalter that we're familiar with has 150 Psalms, The Psalter from the Dead Sea Scrolls had 151. They had an extra psalm. But none of the theology or history was affected. It completely harmonized with everything that we know about the Bible. So this is the word that is firmly fixed in the heavens. Tell you one more. The Bible talks about a group called the Hittites. You guys remember reading about the Hittites? And probably a hundred years ago, the liberal scholars had a heyday with making fun of conservative Christians because they said, we have no historical record of the Hittites whatsoever. See, your Bible is false. It has errors in it. How can you believe this old dusty book? And then in 1920, in Syria, just north of Israel, they found a treasure trove, a library of documents written in Hittite that gave the whole history of the Hittite people. There was a Hittite kingdom. The Bible is vindicated. So the word of God is firmly fixed in the heavens and we can see that by looking to the heavens and the earth and then by extension considering the manuscripts that we have. Secondly, how can we trust the delight in the firmly fixed word? Secondly, look at verse 90. by looking to the faithfulness of past generations. Look at verse 90. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. Here's all I want to say here. How many saints throughout the generations have placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ all the way until their death. How many saints throughout the generations have even given up their life for their confession of faith? And it goes back even before Christianity, when we had the promises of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, how many Jews were willing to die for their faith? Countless numbers. So either they're all crazy, or there was a massive conspiracy that was completely successful. How many people have died remaining faithful to the Lord and said that Jesus, at the end of their life, Jesus was better than life. He was better than all the offers that the world came and offered to me. And even when I gave into those offers and I felt shame and guilt and regret, He forgave me and He cleansed me and He restored me. Jesus is better than life. So I look to past generations to remind me that the Word is firmly fixed in the heavens and it is to be delighted in. Thirdly, how can we delight in the firmly fixed Word? 91b, look at how God makes all things his servants. It says in the second half of 91, for all things, all things are your servants. Now this is, if you don't believe in sovereignty, this is gonna be a big pill to swallow, but I think everybody here believes in sovereignty. If you believe that God is sovereign, then everything is God's servant to draw you closer to him. Disasters? loss, cancer, trial, affliction, heartache, people telling you the hard truth. Okay? All of it is for your sanctification. I mentioned earlier that I had to have a hard talk with a family member this weekend. It's probably one of the hardest things I've done. And my wife reminded me and all the other family members that were engaged in this endeavor that the Lord is trying to teach all of us something through this, and of course that's absolutely true. And as I was examining my heart and taking the counsel of my wife and trying to say to myself, Josh, what is the Lord trying to teach you? It came to me. One of the things that we were confronting in this family member's life is he has ongoing, frequent outbursts of anger. I mean, it was so bad, it was so bad this weekend, so bad, that the cops were called two times, one at my house and one at the oceanfront in the hotel where he was staying. And my kids experienced it. The walls in my house were shaking as this man was raging, he was raging, spitting in my face, trying to hit me, hitting my brother. raging. And yesterday, my boys were fighting. I said, boys, do you want to be like this family member? He said, no, daddy, no, we don't want to be like that. They were scared. And then I turned to myself in quiet that night and I said, Josh, you have that man's blood running through your veins. You have that man's blood running through your veins. You are just as susceptible to anger and bitterness and rage as he is. And you need to keep a check on it. Because if you don't keep a check on it, that's where you're going to end up. Even a man's sin is the servant of God. a servant to teach me what I don't want to be, where I don't want to end up. You see how sovereign God is? He could strike a straight blow with a crooked stick. He does it all the time. So look at how God makes all things His servants. Instead of, I mean certainly we mourn over sin, don't get me wrong, and certainly we are disgusted by the effects of sin, but in everything there is something to learn if you believe that God is sovereign. And now finally tonight. Look at the light of God's world in, well maybe two more. Look at the light of God's word in a world full of darkness. Look at verses 92 and 93. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. Now this is the last one, sorry. What do we take away here? Well, the Lord gives us life through his commandments in two ways. Here's the first way. Through his commandments and precepts, He clarifies and gives answers to questions that unenlightened people without authority, the authority of God's word, can't figure out. So questions like this. My wife was telling me this the other day. She said, you know, the way this verse hit me, she told me one time, she said, I was reading an advice column in the newspaper, and it was like, you know, what do I do in such and such a scenario? And she said, I was probably 12 years old, And I'm like, well, that's easy. The Word of God answers that. People are writing into advice columns, you know, dear Abby, what do I do? And it's like, well, that's simple. The Word of God gives us the answer to that. We don't need to write to Abby. We just need to open up to what is already written. Questions like, where do I stand on the whole gender debate? The Lord has answered that. Where do I stand on abortion, on marriage? Do I wait until I get married, until I have sex? Can I marry an unbeliever? God has answered all these questions, beloved. He's answered all these questions and more. And I'm not saying that every single detail of every single trial and every single affliction is gonna be clearly laid out. In fact, sometimes, you know what we need to do? We need to go to God's servants who are more trained in the word of God than we are and say, Help me find in the Word of God either book, chapter, and verse, or principle, or theological thrust, and show me what God has to say to me about this situation. And sometimes it's black and white. Sometimes it's a wisdom issue. And so you gravitate toward the wisdom literature and people who are embodied wisdom because they've lived through things like that. and you have light in a dark place. God answers these things in his word. And so in this sense, God's will for my life is made abundantly clear. I trust the word of God more than my own heart. But here's the final way, final way. There's this refrain throughout the Psalter. It happens most in Psalm 119, but it's all throughout the Psalter, and it's very, very interesting. He says something like, I will never forget your precepts, like he does in verse 93, for by them you have given me life. And I've got to be honest with you, I've got to be honest with you, I love the gospel, the law is necessary to understand the gospel, but I was trained at a seminary that made much of the gospel, the free grace gospel, and whenever I read something like, your law gives me life, I start getting really nervous. What does that mean? Your law gives me life. I can understand how I just explained it where it gives me answers to life, quality of life, answers to the tricky things in life, but when it just says it gives me life, and the way that I understand life in the Bible principally is eternal life, what does it mean? Well, I think that there is some foreshadowing going on here, you see. The psalmist under direction of the Holy Spirit realizes There's this faint echo after the fall that is reverberated from the fall all the way to the present time and all the way to where the psalmist had written that the law needs to be fulfilled for me to have life. The law needs to be fulfilled in order for me to have life. Yes, my transgressing of the law needs to be paid for, and that's the whole sacrificial system. But one of the things the sacrificial system doesn't in and of itself completely depict is that the law has to be fulfilled. The way it just kind of hints at it is that that lamb has to be spotless and blameless, and that points to some type of perfection. But we know that The Word was made flesh, Jesus Christ, and He came, as Paul says, Galatians 4, 4 and 5, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law. In the fullness of time He came. So what is the psalmist getting at here? I think he's grasping at the coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ would come and by the fulfillment of that law, by the law being fulfilled, I would have life. I'm not gonna do it, but I will put my faith and trust in one who will. And for us, we can say, we put our faith and trust in one who has. Amen. All right let's turn to some prayer requests. Now I have a number and then I want to turn it over to y'all. I'm going to start with Pastor Ken and Pastor Ken would you please in light of the sermon this morning pray that we would take delight as we sit under Christ who offers both