Welcome to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church in Donaldson, Arkansas. This is Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching in our regular Sunday morning service. Good morning. Well, Brother Dan said the church is not a place of perfect people. We're people that are looking forward to something better. We've all made mistakes. This morning I want to speak to you on the blessings and the benefits of God's Word. This has been on my mind for several weeks, and it's always been the responsibility of preachers and pastors to encourage God's people to be students of the Word of God. Dan has mentioned many times when he's preaching, he gives you a homework assignment while he's preaching, go read this during the week, and I don't know if you do that or not, but it would be profitable for you. I remember several years ago, I put out a little bookmarker that had all the books in the Bible on it to encourage people to read the scriptures. It's so important in our lives. It is a great blessing and a benefit. We find the apostles encouraging God's people to be students of God's word. Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1 and 5, and besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and that's some strength, and to virtue knowledge. So we may have some faith, but we need to add something to our faith, which is the knowledge of God's word. In another place, He writes in 2 Peter 3.18, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So we are to grow in knowledge and in grace, and the only way that we can do that is to be students of God's word. The blessings and benefits of this are numerous for every one of us as God's people. It makes us better church members. It makes us better people for the reading of it. It's nourishment to our soul and spirit. And it is the Holy Spirit that draws us into this arena. It's somewhat of a mystery to me of how that some of God's people love the reading of the scriptures, and there are some that avoid it for some reason. They don't get a blessing or seems that they do not get a blessing from the habitual reading of the scriptures. They're really missing out on that. But yet, according to the scriptures, it's a very blessed state to be in if you're one of those people that have fallen in love with the Lord and with the Word of God. Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. You're a blessed person if you hunger for righteousness, which is the righteousness that we find in the word of God in the reading of the scriptures. Hunger is like an appetite, blessed if you hunger for righteousness, you hunger for the scriptures, you hunger for more knowledge of God's word. And it is like an appetite. When people are sick and dying, they're not hungry. They have no appetite. But healthy people are hungry and they want to be filled. And I believe that the healthiest people of God's people are those that are constant students of the scriptures. And there is a promise that Jesus gave us in this where he says, and they shall be filled. So I've heard people make this excuse that I don't really read the Bible very much because I don't understand it. Well, I would beg to differ with anybody that says that because the scriptures, Jesus made this promise that if you hunger for the knowledge of God's word, you're gonna be filled. God is gonna give you something from it. You cannot read the scriptures with the right kind of, with the right heart and not learn something from it. As a matter of fact, Marilyn and I were talking about this the other day, the more you read the Bible, you can read the same things over and over again, but yet it's amazing how that it can become fresh. Something that you've read years ago, you learn something new even when you read the same scriptures over and over again. I mean, how would preachers be able to preach for the time that we get up here in front of you and have something fresh to give you if we weren't getting something fresh ourselves all the time. And somebody might say, well, I think the reading of the Bible is just for those preachers. You know, they need to read the Bible so they can teach us. Well, that is true. But Jesus isn't talking just to preachers on the Sermon on the Mount. There are a lot of people up there, and they weren't all preachers. That's a promise to every one of God's people, whoever you are, no matter what your intelligence level is, no matter how much schooling you've had, if you can read the word of God, God makes this promise that you're gonna get something from, a benefit and a blessing from the reading of God's word, and he's gonna reveal things to you. You know, it's amazing to me that there's some preachers that God's given them, he's revealed a verse of scripture that I didn't know about, but he reveals things to me that they didn't know about. Now sometimes, some of these preachers think they know everything and you can't tell them nothing. But God doesn't work that way. He doesn't give it all to one person. He gives some to one guy and some to somebody else. That's why we don't just have one preacher, see? If one preacher had all the knowledge, we'd just have to go to his church, wouldn't we? But see, the Holy Spirit works through preachers and that he knows who's gonna be here today. And he may know what you need today, and you may very well need this message today, because you may be leaving off the reading of God's word in your own personal life, and that may be why you're so depressed and down, and despondent, and you're not happy, and you're sad, and you're depressed. No, I'm not gonna tell you that if you read the Bible, you're never gonna be sad, you're never gonna be depressed, that's just part of living in this world. But I will tell you this, it will be a great blessing and a benefit to you, It'll get you through a lot of trials and temptations and troubles if you will read the Word of God. I'm going to go to the book of Proverbs right now, and I want you to see something here. I was reading through the book of Proverbs recently. and in the Psalms. We're gonna look at those two books today. And so if you wanna put your finger in the beginning of Proverbs and Psalms 119, we're gonna look at those two places this morning after I've made my little introduction here about the importance of reading God's word. But I want you to notice, if you look in the Proverbs, I don't know if you ever read Proverbs or not, But the first nine chapters, in my opinion, the first nine chapters of Proverbs, and of course remember when it was written, it wasn't divided into chapters, it was just written, a book written. But the first nine chapters is our Heavenly Father begging for his people to read the Bible. Now just think about that for a minute. You've got God that's inspired this whole book and he's begging for you to read it. And the reason he's doing it is because of the title of my message this morning, The Blessings and the Benefit of God's Word. Now you as a father, if you've ever been a father, you've asked your children to do some stuff, to read some things, to obey you, because you know it's good for them. And so that's why the Lord wants his people to be students of his word, to read it, because he wants us to be blessed, and it is the way that our Holy Father speaks to us. Now, if you've been waiting for God to part the clouds and speak down to you personally, you're gonna be waiting a long time. You'll hear that when he parts the clouds and takes you up. Meanwhile, while we're down here, the way that God speaks to you is through His Word. And if you're not reading it, you've just cut off your communication with your Heavenly Father. That may be why we may feel alone in this world, as if we're not talking or listening to what our Holy Father has to say to us. So that's the way he speaks to us, that's the way he guides us, he counsels us, he blesses us through the reading of his word. And when you read the Bible, I want you to read it like that. I want you to say, my heavenly father is speaking to me, and he's speaking to me through his word. And it is through the unction of the Holy Spirit that you gain this thing. I mean, the Holy Spirit is what works in our lives and communicates the holy word to us. And it works through preaching as well. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to stand up here and to preach a sermon to you and that you can receive it and you can receive it into your heart and your soul is through the unction or the power of the Holy Spirit. That's why I encouraged you last Suntime I preached. When you come to church, I want you to pray the Holy Spirit will be here with us, that the Lord will be here and the Holy Spirit will be here to help us to preach and to help us to understand. Let's look at verse eight in chapter one first as the Father speaks to us. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. Now, we can read that as a natural mother and father, and it's true. Children should listen to their parents and how they teach them, and what we say to them. Listen to them. It'll be a great blessing. I mean, we read all through the Proverbs, and even in the New Testament of how children are blessed when they obey their parents. when they obey their parents. And parents should be giving their children good instruction. That gives you, as a mother or father, the authority to give your children a counsel that they need. Even though you may not want to tell them what you need to tell them, you have divine authority from God to tell your children what you're supposed to tell them. And if you don't tell them, then it's on you, some of it. You understand? But to me, this is more than a mother or father speaking in verse eight. This is God speaking to us as his children. My son, or daughter, of course this is written in the male, most of the scriptures is written speaking to male, but it refers to male and female, that was the way they wrote things then. Hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. Now the way I'm gonna read this, is your heavenly father and your mother, which is the church. Now you may say, you're kind of going out on a limb here, but look at Galatians 4.26, but Jerusalem, that is the church, John Gill agrees with me on that, which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. So how much have you learned from your mother in coming to this church or to any church and hearing the word of God expounded to you. See, God is asking you to listen to the counsel of men that God has called to preach the word to you because we have the authority to do that. just as a mother and father have the authority to speak to their children, then we have the authority to teach you from the Word of God, not my opinion or Dan's opinion or anybody else's. We have been given the authority of God, and Paul mentioned the authority that he had many times as an apostle and a preacher in the church to teach God's people. Now, sometimes God's people are like our natural children. They don't want to hear it. As a matter of fact, they'll just come right at you and tell you that this is really not right, even though you can give it to them straight from the Word of God. But we have the authority to give that to you, and we take that authority because we know that we have a Father up there that's given us the authority, and He's calling upon us to teach you these things. And I stand before God responsible for that. And if I don't do it, then I have to answer to God. Just like a parent would answer to God for not doing the right job with their own children. And sometimes, as you don't want to teach your children some things, we don't want to teach you some things. I would rather get up here, make a few jokes, and be a good old guy that everybody loves, and be happy all the time, and never preach on some things that I have preached on before, like finances, or the way we ought to live, or things that people are involved in that people don't want to hear about. But yet, I'm called upon to do that. So, point made, your mother here is teaching you. God the Father is teaching you, and you're taught through the word of God. So, I agree with John Gill on this, that this is the speaking of the Jerusalem, the Gospel State Church, which is referred to as your mother. So, anyway, let's look at a few verses here in Proverbs. see God begging you to be a student of God's word for what? The blessings and the benefit of God's word. So look at chapter two, verse one. I've given you one and eight where he's saying here the instruction. But look at chapter two, verses one through, let's just read a few here. My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, that's God's word, right, right, and apply thine heart to understanding. Yea, if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. there is God again calling upon us, begging us to be students of his word. Now, it's amazing to me that God would beg us to do anything, and you would think that if God really were to, and we sometimes say if God would just ask me to do something and speak down from heaven, I would go and do it. Well, here it is. Here you got it today, he's asking you to do something and there is a blessing couched within the request. Three in one. Verse three, chapter one, my son, forget not my law. But let thine heart keep my commandments. For length of days and long life and peace shall they add to thee. All through the book of Proverbs, there are blessings that are couched within every request that God has for us to be students of his word. Go to chapter four. I said, remember I said the first nine chapters basically are an introduction to this book, and it's God asking you to read it. Verse four and one, hear ye, children, the instruction of a father, and attend to no understanding, for I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. Chapter five, verses one and two. My son, attendant to my wisdom. What is that? That's the Bible. You know, sometimes we can read something as simple as, well, what is God's wisdom? I'd like to know what, and here it is. And bow down thine ear to my understanding that thou mayest regard discretion and that thy lips may keep knowledge. Six in one, my son, if thou be surety for thy friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, thou art snared. The words of thy mouth thou art taken with the words of his mouth. Do this now, my son, and he goes on and talks to him about what he should do. Still, it is an introduction. Seven and one, my son, keep my words and lay up my commandments with thee, keep my commandments and live, and my law is the apple upon thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart. God again. begging us to be students of his word. Eight and one, doth not wisdom cry and doth understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of the high places by the way in the places of the past. She cries at the gates, at the entrance of the city, at the coming in at the doors. That's New Jerusalem, that's our church. God is crying to you to read and to listen to his word. And finally, in nine, one through four, Wisdom have built at her house, and where is that? Yeah, it's build it there you are you're in it today She have hewn out her seven pillars in other words this place is going to stand until God comes back now Maybe not here, but God's church is she's killed her be she's mingled her wine. She has furnished her table so here you are God is asking us to to be students of his word because of the blessings and the benefits that it has in our lives. There's a couple of places in the book of Proverbs that it talks about the value of God's word. I've already said the blessings and benefits, but in the book of Proverbs, we're gonna leave Proverbs here in just a second. I'm not gonna look at any particular proverb. But in the Proverbs, it tells us that this wisdom, the word of God, that God is begging for us to read is more valuable in your life and my life than gold and silver and rubies. Now I was reading one time that most people, the prayer, people pray more for money and what to do with money or to have money than anything else. Now you sift through your prayer life in this coming week and see if a lot of times you're not meditating upon money. Will I have enough money? Will I be able to retire with enough money? Do I have enough money to buy this, to go there, to do that? And we think about money because we know that if we don't have money, we're gonna be very, very poor people. But according to God's word, if you have this wisdom, then you're more likely to have more money. I hate to put it like that, but it is through wisdom that God gives us that we're able to learn to take care of ourselves and to succeed in this world as God's people. So God places a higher value upon the word of God than he does for us looking for money. So what I'm trying to say is we would be better off to pray for the knowledge of God's word as we read it and read it than we would be to pray and ask for money. You understand that? We should be praying for this book more than money. So here's the two scriptures. One is in Proverbs 16 and 16. How much better is it to get wisdom than gold? And to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver? Most of the time the losses in our lives come because we are not making the decisions that would have been taught in the word of God. So our bad decisions usually cost us financially. It is true. Proverbs 3 and 15, notice what he says. She, which is wisdom, and notice sometimes as you read the book of Proverbs that wisdom and the word of God, the scriptures, are referred to as the feminine. She, she. She is more precious than rubies. and all the things that thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." Nothing in this world, rubies, gold, silver, anything that you could imagine that you would want, should be more important to us than this book that we have here, that we can read. It's free. It's free. It's free to the taking for any who want it. Now, I want to go to Psalms 119 now, because I was reading in Psalms 119 this last week. I was reading through the Psalms. I come to Psalms 119, and I'm thinking, if I read this whole psalm this morning, I'm going to be here for a couple of hours, because it's a long psalm, isn't it? Have you ever read it? It's really a very interesting psalm. This psalm we believe is written by David. Most people who are scholars believe that was written by David. You can read it, it sounds like David. And it's 176 verses. Every verse teach us about the blessings and the benefits of God's word. 176 verses in unison teach us about the blessings and benefits of God's Word. If you kind of take it apart, you're going to find that it consists of 22 parts. If you look at it, you can see that the parts are according to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. So you notice here, It begins with Aleph. If I'm pronouncing that correctly, that's the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, just like our first letter is A. The second letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Beth. You see it in there? Our second letter is B. You know, they're not all the same. These two happen to just be that way. The third is Jamel. Ours is C. So they have, there's 22 parts according to every letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Now stay with me, because this is interesting. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has eight parts. You might say an octave or however you want to say it. So there's eight, verses for A, eight verses for B, eight verses, if we were doing it in our alphabet, eight verses for C, eight verses for D. And in the original language, every verse in that letter began with that letter. So in other words, if we had written it in our alphabet, we would start with A, and every verse would start with A. a good Christian reads his Bible. A, you know, eight verses with an A. And then B, believe God's word. Be a student of God's word. Be an attender of God's church. I mean, eight, it'd be eight. So that's the way that David composed this particular psalm. And there's 22 letters, and eight verses per letter, which gives 176 verses, and this psalm has 176 verses. It was written that way, some say, to enable people to memorize this psalm. Did you hear that? Memorize this psalm. Because there were people that did memorize this psalm, as well as many other psalms. Because you might memorize Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound That Saved a Wretch Like Me, and you may be able to memorize the whole psalm. Well, these were psalms. Okay, so they sang them. When they went to their church, they sang these psalms. And so a lot of them may not have had a songbook or these scriptures, but they memorized them and so they could sing them from heart. There was a day among our people that people were so poor that many people did not have a songbook. You may have heard about this. And so whoever the song leader was had a little song book. Sometimes I've got a little song book about this big maybe just you could hold it in your hand and it was there were no musical notes in it. No notes. And so they would do what we call lining a song. You ever heard of lining a song? Yeah, so since everybody did not have a songbook, they would line the song, which meant that the song leader would go, amazing grace, how sweet the sound. And then people would sing, amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Then the song leader would go, that saved a wretch like me. And then the song, people would sing, that saved a wretch like me. That's lining a song, because people didn't have a songbook, so they lined it, and so people could sing it like that. Well, perhaps they did some of these songs like that. Anyway, memorizing God's Word, there is a very, very special blessing in that. Now, another interesting thing about this psalm, we're gonna look at some of my favorite ones here in just a moment, and that'll be the conclusion of my message today. But remember, this psalm is about the blessings and benefits of God's Word. It's the Hebrew alphabet in the original language. Every verse started with the same letter, eight verses per letter. But every verse in this psalm, if you want to inspect it, it's great to look at it, but every verse in this psalm, except for maybe one or two verses, refer to the word of God, has a reference to the word of God, of its blessings and benefits. And there are nine or 10 different words that are used to depict the word of God in these verses. In other words, some of them speak of God's word as his law. And in some verses it refers to his precepts. And in some of them it says his commandments. Some, his testimonies. It uses the word statutes, even the word his word, and judgments, his ways, his truth. All of these words, nine or 10, mean the same thing. It's talking about the word of God. and the blessings and benefits of the word of God. And it proclaims the great value of it in our lives. John Gill said this about it, the designs of the whole is to show the fervent affection the psalmist had for the word of God and to stir up the same in others. Which I hope that I can do for you this morning. So let's look at a few of these. and notice how it refers to the word of God and to the blessings and benefits that it has in our lives. Let's go to verse 11, that's where I wanna start. Of course, there's, how many verses did I say? We're not going through all of them today, so don't get worried. We're just gonna look at a few of them here. Verse 11, thy word, there's a reference to the scriptures. Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. Now hiding it in your heart means memorize. Memorize. Now I'm not asking you this morning to go memorize the whole Bible. I remember I took a guitar lesson one time and so I was gonna learn to play some blues or something on my guitar and this guy says, well I want you to memorize every note on every string. Well, I didn't go back to him. I wasn't gonna do that. And he wanted to know why I didn't come back. I said, because I'm not gonna memorize every note on every string to play the guitar. I said, I just play for fun. I'm not gonna memorize every note on every string. That had taken me the rest of my life. So I'm not asking you to do that. But as you read the scriptures, I will promise you that there will be some scriptures that even if you don't want to, you're gonna memorize it. you're gonna memorize. It will go right in your heart and it will stay there. And notice why David said he wanted you for it to stay there. There is a blessing and a benefit to that. What is it? That I might not sin against thee. Yes, sometimes when we read the Proverbs, it talks about our tongue. It talks about our temper. It talks about anger. Now there's all kinds of excuses for these things. Well, I have red hair, so I have a temper. My family, they all have a temper. Well, that's probably where you learned it. But you see, you learn something bad. Go not with an angry man, the Book of Proverbs says, lest they'll learn his ways. So your excuses are all gone. You hide it in your heart, and you can work on that. I'm not going to tell you the first time that anger comes up, you're going to pass the test. But I'm going to tell you, at least you know you failed. Some people don't know they fail. They think that's just the way that they are. They're just living this perfect life. So we want to know how to deal with this emotion and with our tongue. Let's look at verse 15. Of course, we could preach many sermons from this psalm, as you can already tell, if the Lord would bless us to do so. Verse 15. I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. Now the word meditation is mentioned nine times in the Psalms, five times in this one Psalm. Very important for God's people to meditate upon the word of God. Isn't it better to meditate upon the word of God than your problems? Which is best? Which would you rather meditate upon? Would you rather meditate upon the word of God or what CNN has out there? Or Fox News? Would you rather meditate upon the Word of God rather than if you're sick or afflicted or something going on with you? I mean, all of that worry doesn't really help anything. Meditation of God's Word is necessary for every one of God's people. It gives us great peace. I remember when I first began to preach, I went to Elder Virgil Lowrance. And every time that I could get around a minister that had been around a while, I wanted to gain something from that person. And I hope young people today that are speaking will do the same, because you can gain a lot from the hoary head, as the Bible says. That means gray hair. I said, well, give me some information on what will help me to be a minister. He said three things. Read the Bible. Pray about it. and meditate upon it. Now that's not just for preachers. That's for every one of God's people. So verse 15 says, I will meditate in thy precepts. Notice the word precept, what's that referring to? The Bible, the word of God. I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy ways. So in Psalms 143, David again writes, I remember the days of old I meditate on all thy works, I amuse on the work of thy hands." Sometimes it is just a great thing just to stop and meditate upon God's great creation. What He has done. He created the universe out of nothing. Stop and meditate upon that. Meditate upon how many angels that He must have created. And what they're doing today. Meditate upon the days of old when he parted the Red Sea, when God's people ate flesh that he provided from heaven from a bunch of quail, how he dealt with Egypt. Meditate upon those things. What a great time to spend as we pass our day to think about the things of God and to meditate upon those blessings of God. Let's look at verse 24. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors. Notice the word testimonies. What is he referring to? Word is word. Okay, thank you. I wonder if y'all are still with me. The Bible, his word. They are my counselors. Now every king or ruler has a cabinet or counselors that help them make good decisions, right? The wise know they don't know everything there is to know, so they seek counsel of other people who are wise. And in Proverbs 11, 14, Solomon writes, where no counsel is, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. What's the best thing you can do when you're gonna make a big decision? Get counsel from other people. that may have gone through the same thing you're going through. You know, how did you do this? How did you handle that? How did, you know, what did you do? Good counsel helps all of us. In Proverbs 11 and 14, where no counsel is, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. There is safety. Proverbs 15, 22, without counsel, purposes are disappointed. But in the multitude of counselors, they are established. So, God's book has 66 books of counsel. The blessings and benefits of God's Word. If we're not reading the Word of God, you've just pushed all your counselors aside, and you're making your own decisions, living your own life without the counsel of God's Holy Word. You can trust what they say. They're always right. They have your best interest at heart, and they're given to you from a wise and loving father. Okay, let's look at another one. Let's go to, and by the way, on the same note, think of all the counselors there are in this world. You can go to psychiatrist and psychologist. You may get some good information, but sometimes you're gonna get some bad information. They're going to give you the counsel of this world, worldly wisdom. If you don't know what's in this book, you're going to believe it. But if you know what's in this book, you know what to take and what to throw away. I was speaking to somebody a week or two ago. That person is a millionaire, multimillionaire. They're going to a psychiatrist, but they don't go to church. and they don't read the Word of God. And I'm thinking, if you just had this, you wouldn't be spending all that money on worldly counselors. Now, I'm not saying some of them are not good. There are some good counselors out there. Don't get me wrong. I'm not throwing that away. There are some good Christian counselors that can help, but pastors are good counselors. Sometimes they'll tell you something you don't want to hear. But anyway, I've had that happen. But anyway, okay, let's go to verse 25. Verse 25, my soul cleaveth unto the dust, quicken thou me according to thy word. There you go, there it is again, the word, that's the Bible. And here David is using a term that we find nine times in this Psalm alone, quicken. Now the word quicken is used different ways in the Bible. For instance, in the New Testament, in one place it refers to being made alive from the dead. And you hath he quickened who are dead in trespasses and in sin. That's Ephesians two and one. That's what God does when he calls us from death to life, when we are born again. You're quickened, you're born again. We use that term when we're preaching sometimes, God quickened you. But in this psalm, the word quicken means something else. It means to revive, to repair, and to nourish. David's soul is in prison right now. He's depressed. He's sad. Ever been there? If you're one of God's children, I can promise you, you've been there. You may be there right now. But here David is asking for God to use this book, his word, to nourish, revive, and refresh him. The other night I couldn't sleep and I woke up and sometimes in the middle of the night, that's when your worst problems come up, don't they? You wake up and everything's terrible. It's amazing when the sun comes out and you get up and you get a grasp on things. Well, it's not quite as bad as I thought in the middle of the night. But I woke up and I thought, you know, I'm gonna read the Bible. As a matter of fact, I thought I'm gonna read what I need to for this sermon. I started reading the scriptures and whatever problems there was I was worried about, they went away. That's what David's asking here. He's saying, Lord, use your according to thy word means with your word. Use your word to get me out of this dark place that I am in my life. In Psalm 63, David writes, my soul shall be satisfied as with marijuana fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches. There it is again. meditating, praying, and reading the word of God in the night watches. When you wake up in the middle of the night, Lord may just wanted you to wake up just so you could read something he wanted you to know. Do you ever think about that? Could have been the reason. We forget sometimes that our Lord is the great physician. The great physician. Now you may have been praying for your physical health. You know, you may have been praying for Arthur to go away or something like that. A lot of times we pray more for that than we do for the health of our soul. David's praying for the health of his soul here. And the great physician many times uses the Word of God for the health of our own soul. Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. Isn't that a beautiful song? Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee. Leave, O leave me not alone, still support and comfort me. Jesus is a great physician. He loves our soul. He gave it to us, didn't he? He wants our soul to be happy. So quicken us, Lord, and help us. Verse 49, I'm gonna be through in just a second. Remember the word unto thy servant. The word, there it is. which thou has caused me to hope. Did you ever find any hope in the word of God? There's a lot of verses in God's word that can impart hope unto us when we're cast down and without hope. One person referred to the Bible as God's bank of faith. You have a lot of checks that you can cash with the word of God. And if we're not reading it, then we don't know what's in our account. He's promised he'll never leave us or forsake us, right? I remember when I first opened up our business at Malvern, I'm thinking, we're going to go bankrupt for the first three years. We just joined this church and my grandmother, Mimi, I called her Mimi, Ruby Rhodes, member of this church, she quoted Psalms 37.25 to me. She said, I have been young and now I am old. Yet not have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. I claim that promise, I cast it in that day, and God paid upon it. He's good to his promises, isn't he? He never made a promise, he never kept. But if you're not claiming them, and this checkbook you got here, if you're not reading it, you don't know what you got. There's a lot of promises to every one of us, and you know, we claim them as if this is my checkbook. This is not yours. This is my checkbook, and I'm cashing my checks in. Your business if you cash yours in, but I'm cashing mine, and he's got enough assets for all of us, by the way. He's not gonna run out of assets or blessings for any of us. Well, I'm gonna stop there, I guess. There are so many of them I've got written down here. But we're wise people. If we read the scriptures, there are great blessings and benefits to be found in the word of God. I pray that you will find that blessing. Well, have you heard something today? Yes. You know, you don't hear someone speaking about the Word of God for an extended period of time just out there in the world. But we do a lot of listening. I mean, when you think about the proliferation of television and cable TV, the number of channels that are out there, now you've got the internet, you've got YouTube and Rumble and Twitter and Facebook and all this stuff going on. It's just coming at you nonstop from all angles. We do a lot of listening. What are you listening to? That's really the question we should ask ourselves. And I know it's easy to get wrapped up in news or philosophy or entertainment or whatever. And I suppose there's some measure of that to be a well-rounded person that maybe you need to encounter just to be aware of the world that you're living in. But if you're soaking in that, you might be getting pickled in it. And some of you may be just as green as you can be as a result of it. You wonder why you have a spiritual sickness. While I'm depressed, I'm down about things. I'm discouraged about my current situation. Well, what are you listening to? Is it lifting you up? causing you to look at the promises of God, or is it dragging you down? I mean, many of us will listen to scientists. Well, we've got some problem, and we're gonna have this pill that's coming out, and you're gonna be able to take this pill, and it's gonna fix your problem. Lots of people listen to that. Lots of people have those sorts of problems that might be addressed by that. You listen to doctors. Well, I've got this ailment, and we're gonna do this procedure, and that's gonna correct that, and you'll listen to them all day long. You listen to counselors? Well, I'm gonna go pay a counselor to sit and listen to me tell them about all my problems, and they're gonna come up with some prescription to help me in that. Psychiatrists, all these sorts of things. Now any of these people may have some sort of thing that can help you, but they all share one thing in common. That thing that can help you exists in the short term. of your temporal life here. You may have a medical condition and the doctor knows how to correct it and he'll work on it and it will help you for a season. But it won't help you for eternity. See what I'm saying? So even the hope you have in the good things that any of these people might provide you is a near-term hope that trains your eyes on near-term things and causes you to lose sight of eternal things, and to recognize that there's a greater good, a greater counsel, a greater hope that we have that comes only from the word of God. The Lord is the one who can comfort us in eternal matters, and no matter how good of a job your doctor does at fixing your body, or some medication does at handling your blood pressure, or some counselor does in helping you try to get a handle on how to organize your life a little bit better, Ultimately, God's people need the comfort that comes from the Word of God. They need eternal comfort. What are we leaning on? Are we leaning on these temporal things that are only gonna be there for a season? Or are we leaning on the everlasting arms? That's the question. And a lot of times our problems, and I suspect that many of our deficiencies, particularly our mental illness, depression and things like that, come as much from the fact that we're starving to death spiritually. We don't get the spiritual sustenance we need and it's sitting right there before us. We'll turn on the TV rather than opening up the Psalms and just saying, Lord, teach me something from your word. Let me read from your word today. Teach me something. I don't even know what I'm opening up to here. But I know you're God and you wrote this and it's for my benefit. Lord, teach me from your word. I wonder how we would feel, how much better we might feel if we availed ourselves of the blessing of the word of God that we have before us that we so often do not. Thank you for listening to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church. Come and join us as we worship God in the simplicity of Christ every Sunday morning at 416 North Hall Street in Donaldson, Arkansas. At Harmony, we don't have many things that are so common in the religion of our day, but we do have a successful Savior. We invite you to come and see.