Would you turn your Bibles to Psalm 119? We're gonna look very briefly tonight at Psalm 119, 97 through 104, and that's 97 verses 97 through 104. For those of you who are following and care, this is the Mem Stanza, which is the Hebrew equivalent of the English M. And while you're turning there, let me just say real quick, I wanna give a plug for this. A little while back, I asked Pam Anderson to start sending out an email with all the songs that we would be singing in the morning and evening. And I did that for a few reasons. Number one, we are trying to implement more psalms into our palette of Lord's Day worship. And, you know, sometimes it depends on the tune that we're setting the psalm to. And so if it's new for us, and in many cases it is, Pam is giving a YouTube link so that you could check it out, listen to it, practice it beforehand, so that when you come here, it's not totally new or foreign. But the other reason I asked her to do that is because If you have small children like me that can't quite read yet, or maybe they can read but they can't keep up with following the words on the bulletin or on the overhead, if you men, as the head of the household, would lead your family in singing that song throughout the week in your time of family devotions, then when you get here on Sunday, your kids will know it and they can instinctively sing with you. So, just to let you know, take advantage of those emails, and if you have any questions, reach out to Pam, especially if you have music questions, because I will just say, talk to Pam. Alright? So, let's come to the text. Psalm 119, 97-104. Listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. Oh, how I love your law, it is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. That's for the reading of God's word. I want to consider three things tonight under this mem stanza. And the first one is this, and we see it in verse 97. The lost art of meditation. The lost art of meditation. You no doubt know this, but our culture is a culture of data dump, not meditation. Our culture is a culture of data dump, not meditation. I think probably you've even verbalized this before, especially if you are in school and you're studying for a final. I wish I could just plug a USB somewhere into my head and just dump all the data so I don't have to go through the process of internalizing it. And I'm not saying that's a horrible idea, but I am saying when it comes to the Bible, it was never intended to be that way. And we see this bold exclamation of the psalmist, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation. It is my meditation. I'll say that again. It is my meditation all the day long. When we think of meditation, we think of Eastern mysticism. When we think of meditation, we think of somebody sitting down, pinching their fingers, contemplating their navel. But that's not what meditation is, even if, ironically, it might look like something like that. Meditation is ruminating upon, and if I could put it into metaphorical phrase, chewing upon the Word of God. It's like the silkworm, right? The silkworm does not come to the leaf and then crawl over it. What does the silkworm do? The silkworm comes to the leaf and it eats through it. And so it should be with us when it comes to the Word of God. When you do not come to the Word of God, In our time of personal devotion, and I would say even here in our time of corporate worship, whether it is reading the words on the screen in a responsive reading, or whether it is hearing them as they are read, we are entering into deep, mental, heartfelt meditation upon what is being said. And that is a hard thing, and I'll tell you this, one of the biggest One of the biggest temptations that we have to not do that is because we know precisely how powerful and how precise and how personal the Word of God can be. You say, what do I mean by that? Well, sometimes the Word of God gets just a little too close to home, doesn't it? And sometimes the Word of God gets a little too close to home when you know it's in the neighborhood of something that you need to repent of. And so the best way you can keep yourself from repenting of that thing is by staying away from that powerful sword, that double-edged sword, the Word of God. But if we love the Law of God, as the psalmist does here, and if that is something after which we should strive, a heart attitude that wants to love the Word of God, then we will make the Word of God our time of meditation. Listen to Charles Bridges. The professor, and by this, what he means is the one who professes faith in Jesus Christ, but doesn't necessarily have faith in Jesus Christ. The professor may read and understand and even externally obey the law, but the believer only loves it, and he lives in it as if he could not live without it. To the professor, it is a task imposed to satisfy conscience. Think about that for a second. How many times have we said, gotta check off that box, gotta check off that box? And some of you aren't even doing that. Just gotta check off that box. It's better to be that box checker offer than to not have a box to check off. But even then, we want to go deeper, don't we? He says, It is the veil upon the heart. It darkens all his spiritual apprehension and consequently excludes spiritual delight. You see, to the child of God, he says, it is food and medicine, light and comfort, yea, life from the dead. So what is interesting about these two things in verse 97, love and meditation, love and meditation, is that they fasten onto one another, right? They feed off of one another. What do I mean by that? Here's what I mean by this, okay? The more you meditate upon the word, the more you what? The more you love it. And the more you love the Word of God, the more you what? Meditate upon it. And it is this holy cycle. You just can't get enough. You go back to it and you love it. And because you love it, you go back to it. And this is where the child of God should be. If we should be on any hamster wheel, it should be the hamster wheel of love and meditation. The law of God has this peculiar effect. Spurgeon said, it is said that the more you know of a man, the less you admire him, right? Familiarity breeds contempt. But the reverse is true of God's word. Familiarity with the word of God breeds affection, and affection seeks still greater familiarity. And this is why he says in verse 103 how sweet are your words to my taste sweeter than honey to my mouth." You know, there are many things that are sweet in the Word of God, but here's one thing that is very, very sweet in the Word of God, and I ran into this early on as a young Christian. When I graduated high school, many of you know I got saved at 18 years old. And when I got saved, it was one of those radical break ties with everything type of salvation. And one of the things that meant is that I had to break ties with friends. And I was happy to at that moment because they were getting me nowhere. In fact, some of them are the reasons why I ended up in a jail cell, which led to my conversion. But then it was a lonely road. Then I went to junior college, and I was all by myself. Junior college, and I'll come back to that a little bit later. But I remember I had a busy schedule. I'd wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'd go to FedEx. And you're like, FedEx? Yeah, I worked for FedEx and UPS. Isn't that crazy? Anyways, I worked for FedEx early in the morning. I'd load trucks, and then I'd go to school all day. And then at about 5 o'clock, I'd have one hour. And in that one hour, I would sit in my 1979 Chevy El Camino with a 350 horsepower under the hood, and I would read my NIV Bible. That's what I would do. For one hour, I got to read my Bible. And then at six o'clock, I had to go work as a janitor in a warehouse until 10 o'clock, and then I went to bed and got up in the morning and did it all again. But for that one hour a day, I had that meditation upon the word of God. And here in that lonely time is something that extremely encouraged me. As I went about my time at work and at junior college among pagans, I felt like a pilgrim. I felt like an alien. I felt like an outcast. And I'm like, man, who can understand me? Who can enter into what I am going through right now? And lo and behold, when I would read the Word of God, I would find the very experiences that I was experiencing in the people of God, in the Word of God, and for that reason I loved it. I saw myself in the Word of God. I saw my people in the Word of God. I saw my experiences in the Word of God. You see, this is why we call the Word of God a mirror. It shows us ourself. What do I always say? We don't interpret the Word of God, the Word of God interprets us. And so it is sweet to our soul to find that solace in the Word of God. So meditate upon the Word of God. Second thing I want to say tonight, which is found in verses 98 through 100, and I'm really excited about this. is the law makes one wiser. The law makes one wiser. I want you to notice in verses 98 through 100 that there are these three refrains where basically he says, the law makes me wiser than my enemies, the law makes me wiser than my teachers, and the law makes me wiser than the aged. Now listen to Charles Bridges for a moment. He says, we can never obtain that assurance of the certainty of our faith, which is indispensable to our peace, or resist the influence of unenlightened teachers, or the long-established worldly maxims of the ancients, except by entire submission to the supreme authority of Scripture. I love that. Now listen, meditating upon the word of God, the law of God, the revelation of God, will, here's a promise, will make you wiser than your enemies. It'll make you wiser than your enemies. What kind of enemies? Well, enemies that deny that fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. But here's the one that I love in verse 99. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. Now, before I get into the meat of this, listen to me. I think this stanza, probably more than any other stanza in Psalm 119, screams out Daniel as the author. Why? Well, can you imagine David saying this? Can you imagine David saying, I have more understanding than all my teachers. Who are his teachers? The prophets and the priests. And he's gonna go to those wise men and say, I know more than you. Or he's going to have inscripturated in the Psalter verbiage that says, I know more than my teachers, I know more than my prophets. No, no, no, no, no. But, but, if you were Daniel, in Babylon and the wisest PhDs of the land, the professors in the universities, the ones who taught the wisdom of the gods of Babylon, the ones who put forth the understanding and the knowledge of Babylon, then as he sits under them, having fear of Yahweh as both the beginning of understanding and of wisdom, then he could truly say, I have more understanding than all my teachers, right? And this is where I come to our young people here tonight. You may find yourself in a university setting, you may find yourself in a school setting where you are sitting under teachers who are spouting foolishness. I remember when I was coming back to junior college, I sat in an anthropology class. And this teacher, she was the kindest, one of the kindest people I've ever met. She had a big smile. I really, I mean, I really loved her just like as a person. She was so kind. But she was completely giving us the evolutionary view of anthropology. And she just like clockwork, you know, taking us through, well, if you look at all the strata, you just look at all the strata, it's clear that it's, you know, the earth is millions of years old. And I said, excuse me, I have a question. Yeah, what about cataclysmic events? Well, that. Cataclysmic events that still could you know still be thousand? No, no, I'm saying like the Grand Canyon like that could happen in like seven days like scientists have shown that well Well, I don't know and just like she was foolish. She was spouting foolishness And I was the only one in the class saying, excuse me, and I just kept pushing back. I could tell she was getting frustrated. And then at the end of the class, I literally had one of the students, they followed me into the hall there at Modesto Junior College. And they said, excuse me, excuse me, I gotta ask you a question. I'm like, yeah? He said, are you, you really believe, like you really believe that God created the world in six days? Yeah, I did. And this person literally laughed at the top of their lungs and ran down the hall laughing the whole time. I mean, honestly, they look more like an idiot than I did, but anyways. I had more understanding than my teachers. And young people, this is the promise that God's word gives you. You can be the one with the greatest understanding in a classroom filled with people who hate God and want nothing to do with Him if you cling to the testimony of His word. Now that is extremely encouraging. And then look at verse 100. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. Now this is a tricky one, man, because, well, let me just put it this way. There are, in our culture and in most cultures, the idea is the older you get, the wiser you get, right? That's the idea. But the fact of the matter is, I know men and women older than me that are more foolish than I am, and perhaps you do as well. But there aren't many of that category. In fact, there probably aren't any who are Christians. You want to know why? Because Christians, as they grow in age, they are growing together with the revelation of Scripture and their understanding of it. And because of that, they have great wisdom. But here Daniel, again in Babylon, is getting at a very simple precept. And really it comes down to this, and I've said this before, but I'm just gonna say it again. There's two ways to get understanding. There's two ways to get wisdom, right? What are those two ways? There's the easy way, and there's the hard way, right? Recently, recently, I observed an older woman who loves Jesus with all of her heart and had been walking with Jesus for many, many years trying to gently and graciously convey to a younger woman some wisdom on child rearing and other things. And what blew me away, what blew me away is that this younger Christian woman, she just thought she was smarter than this woman. She thought that she knew what she was, that she didn't know what she was talking about. She thought that it was gonna be different than her. All the wisdom that this older woman was given, well, that doesn't apply to me. It's different than me. And I just wanted to scream out, no, it's not different. You're not that special. You're not that special. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if that hurts your self-esteem, but you're not that special. You're probably like most people. You're probably like most people. Okay, your children are probably like most children. And here is this elderly Christian woman who she's, it's not her first rodeo. It's not her first rodeo. She knows what it means to raise children. Listen to her, listen to her. But we could say the same thing to ourselves. How many times have older men and older women in the congregation, in the midst of God's people, come to us and said, yeah, you know, friend, I don't know if that's a good idea. Well, hey listen young friend, shut up, just shut up and listen to your elders, okay? I should just give the benediction right now, okay? Shut up and listen to your elders. I'm not talking about elders who don't love the word of God. I'm saying elderly people, the hoary-headed, the ones who have walked with Jesus, who know because they not only see it in their own life, but they look to the Scripture, and the Scripture's like, the Scripture's told me that that's what would happen in my life, and now I believe it, and I do it over and over and over again. Listen to your elders. And then finally, love for the law fosters distrust of self and hate for falsehood. I'm gonna be very quick here. Psalm, or verse 101, 102, and 104. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. Verse 102. I do not turn aside from your rules for you have taught me. Verse 104, through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. So two things, number one, holding tenaciously to the law of God causes you, forces you, shows you that you should distrust yourself. You should distrust yourself. So many times I sit in the counseling room and I'm trying to convey to people like, listen, God knows better than you. Just, I know that you may not feel like obeying the word of God. I know that you may not want to obey the word of God, but look at what he says here in verse 101. I hold back my feet from every evil way. You know what that's implying? His feet don't want to be held back. His feet want to go. His feet want to go. His desire is pushing His feet. His emotions are pushing His feet. But what does He do? I hold back my feet from every evil way. In order to what? In order to keep Your Word. You know, sometimes, Christian, you've got to bite your lip as you hold your feet back in order to keep God's Word. Sometimes you have to tell yourself to shut up and your emotions to shut up. I'll give you an analogy. Jons Voigt, Jens Voigt, a cyclist. If you know about him, he's a very colorful character, but one of his famous lines in his cycling career. He was being interviewed by an interviewer one time. They were talking about this amazing stage that he had in the Tour de France, and they're like, man, how did you do it? What was going through your mind? He's like, well, my legs were screaming, and they were saying, stop, gents, and I said, shut up, legs, you're okay, and he just kept going. And I'm like, that'll preach. I mean, sometimes we have to tell our feet, shut up, feet. Sometimes we have to tell our eyes, shut up. Eyes, shut up. Heart, shut up. Passions, shut up. Lust, in order to keep the Word of God. Distrust yourself and trust the Word of God. And finally, In verse 104, through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Here we are again, we've dealt with this a lot in the Psalter, but this idea of hating falsehood, hating unrighteousness, hating enemies that hate God. And I would just say this, the opposite of loving the law is hating what the law despises. So let me say this, and I'll just leave it here, If you really wanna know if you love the Lord and love holiness and love righteousness, ask yourself this question, do I hate the sin? Because you wanna know why you keep falling into the sin because you, here it is again, you still think it's gonna be different this time, and you fall into the lie that we tell ourselves, well, it's not that bad, is it? That second look, it's not that bad, yeah, it's horrible. And if you don't believe me, come, I'll tell you some stories of the destruction of families, the destruction of lives, the destruction of character, the destruction of vocation that all started with that second look. It was zeal for his house that consumed Jesus so much to hate what was going on in the temple. Don't be afraid of hate if it is the counterpart of love, and don't be afraid of hate if it's hating things that God hates. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for this stanza. Now as we enter into prayer, Father, hear our petitions for Christ's sake. Amen. All right, I have a few requests. Number one, Pastor Ken, would you pray that husbands would give attention to their brides' banner or emoji, and to their bride's longings. So the husbands would give attention to their bride's banner, banner over me is love, and to their bride's longings, I'm sick with love, rather than being sick with him, okay? And then number two,