Psalm 119:9–16
How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Praise be to you, O Lord;
teach me your decrees.
With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees;
will not neglect your word.
2 Timothy 3:10-17
Paul’s Charge to Timothy
You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Luke 24:27, 32
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Delighting in the Word in which we meet Jesus
I imagine that there have probably been individuals over the years who have had a lasting influence on your life. I'm talking about those people who have encouraged you and inspired you – those special people who have played and perhaps continue to play an important part in who you have become as you have grown and matured. And for Christians, they will often be people who have impacted our faith in some way - brought us to faith, spurred on our faith, challenged our faith or stretched our faith.
There have been a small number of such people in my life – most notably two friends who were instrumental in establishing me in the faith way back when I was a young medical student. And when I look back at our friendship, I am struck by how much both of these two young men were motivated by their love of the Bible.
As a young man I had occasionally attended church but I never really got what the Bible was about. It seemed a dry and slightly spooky book that we studied in RE at school but which had little relevance to my life. But all that changed when I got to know a fellow student called Bill, a quiet and reserved man who gave me a bible in modern language and suggested we might read one of the gospels together. It was a transformational experience and led to me finding a living faith of my own within a few weeks.
My second great influence was Paul – a lively Geordie friend who went everywhere with a copy of the New Testament in his coat pocket. When we were supposedly studying in the library I would often glance across and see that Paul was in fact reading his bible rather than his lecture notes. His pocket bible was constantly in use, and pretty dog-eared as a result. He was hooked on the scriptures.
What was it that made these two young men value the scriptures so highly? Were they just a bit weird?
Well, as I explored my own developing faith I began to understand what these two friends saw in the scriptures. As I opened and read them, I found the words came alive. This was a book that moved me, inspired me, taught me, strengthened me. It was more than just words on a page. Many times, passages that I was reading seemed to speak directly to situations I was facing.
And before long I too found I couldn't get enough of this book. And others have agreed with me. Decades later, working as a Prison Chaplain I met lifers who also could not get enough of the Bible. One man managed to reduce one of our chaplaincy bibles to rags in just a few weeks because he couldn't stop reading it; another told me he had literally sat up in his cell the whole night reading his bible because the words seemed so alive and so relevant to him.
So why is this book so compelling? Simply because it's a book like none other – as we heard in our NT reading from the Letter to Timothy:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
All Scripture is God-breathed. You see, the Bible is where we hear the Word of God. It's in these written words that we meet the Living Word – we begin to understand who God is, what is our relationship with him, and what his call is on our lives, both now and for all eternity. These scriptures are the bedrock of our understanding.
Today we're continuing a short series of sermons on Feeding our Faith - what measures can we take to deepen and strengthen our faith. And today's topic is Personal Bible Study. And to explore that, our set passage is actually the psalm we read at the start of our service – Psalm 119. It's the longest psalm in the bible, extending to 176 verses, but today we just have seven to consider as you'll see on your sheet.
And in those seven verses the author explores the value of studying the scriptures. The psalm is more of a prayer than a piece of instruction – he is reflecting in prayer on the importance of scripture in his life. His own personal bible study. And as he does so, he uses no less than ten different verbs in relation to his understanding of the scriptures. But I want to consider just six of these, under two headings:
1. Taking in - Live, seek, meditate:
2. Giving out - Recount, rejoice, delight
Taking in - Live, seek, meditate
How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119: 9-11)
We don't know who our psalmist is, but we can see that he's a young man who wears his heart on his sleeve. He's a real zealot for the faith – there are no half-measures here. His over-riding desire is to keep his way – his life – pure. He desires that sort of innocent purity that can stand before God without guilt or shame. He wants to be good, but in the best sense of the word. He wants to avoid moral taint. How will he do that? How will he live well? By seeking God with all his heart; which means for him living according to God's will as revealed in the scriptures.
His choice of Hebrew words behind our passage particularly has in mind the promises of God regarding his plans for his people. His intention is to 'hide the word in his heart' – to become familiar with it, to learn it, for it to be second-nature to him. And there's one particular way he'll achieve that:
I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. (v15)
He'll ponder these scriptures, he'll think them through, he'll reflect on them and consider what they mean to him.
Meditation doesn't always get a good press in Christian circles – we often associate it with Eastern mysticism, Buddhism and the like. But we need to recover the Christian practice of meditating on the scriptures – for the word itself comes from the Latin meaning devout preoccupation, private devotion, prayer. We need to recapture the notion of quietly reflecting on bible passages and allowing God to speak to us through them.
There was a time when children were encouraged to memorize bible passages. That seems old-fashioned now and all too much of an effort when we can simply dial them up on our smart phones. But that level of familiarity with the scriptures can be invaluable when we face challenges – as God prompts those stored passages to the forefront of our minds when we need them most to guide us through whatever besets us.
Understanding the scriptures is a life work for any Christian. I have been studying the scriptures now for just over 47 years but I feel like I am still scratching the surface. And yet some of what I have studied has stuck – I find it easier to apply scriptural principles to things in life, to see the world through the lens of God's will. It's easier to live, to seek, and to meditate on these words now than it was when I started – but still I am a novice.
But there were three other verbs:
Giving out - Recount, rejoice, delight
With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. (vv13-14)
Rejoicing is not perhaps a natural word to associate with the scriptures. Especially when you read some of the harder, bleaker books of the Old Testament. But here is a young man who not only rejoices in what he reads, he wants to recount it – to tell it to those around him.
My friend Paul would love to do just that – he would come up to me in the library and show me a verse in his pocket New Testament and tell me how brilliant it was – some truth about Jesus that had got him excited. That sort of enthusiasm is infectious. And the psalmist also delights in what he reads v16 - I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.
Perhaps the delight is a kind of inward glow at what he's reading; and the rejoicing and the recounting is a more outward expression. Have you ever felt that kind of delight and rejoicing when you have read the bible? We have a collection of home groups now across the Benefice and I'm glad to say we often do delight and rejoice in what we read – as we discuss and ponder, our passages draw us closer to God and we marvel at his purposes for our lives and our church. And that delight inspires us to study more – v16 - I will not neglect your word.
There's no doubt the psalmist loves to immerse himself in the scriptures. He's pursuing personal piety – a way of living a pure life, pleasing to God, and living faithfully for him. But what, then, is our overall goal with this sort of personal bible study? Is it simply to learn commands and precepts, rules & regulations?
Our psalmist was clearly a pious young man. But the kind of piety we see in here is true piety: a love of God not desiccated by study but refreshed, informed and nourished by it. And that works for one reason: because the scriptures reveal the character of God.
As we said at the start, it's this written word that leads us to the Living Word – God in Jesus Christ. For the scriptures reveal the salvation story of God – his rescue plan for a wayward human race and a tainted universe. And the culmination of the scriptures is the Lord Jesus Christ - he is the focal point of all that we find in our bibles, both Old Testament and New Testament, even in those puzzling and difficult passages.
And that's why these scriptures are alive to us, why they excite us, delight us, make us want to rejoice and recount what we read. That's why they make us want to live and seek and meditate on the words we read. For it's here that we meet the Lord Jesus; it's here where we our see own frailty and understand our rebellion against the God who gave himself for us. It's here that we find that God so loved the world that he gave his only son to die in our place on a cross for the penalty that should have been ours.
And here's the point: In the scriptures we don't study rules and regulations, but we meet Jesus, the person whom we need more than any other.
But we need to close. We meet Jesus in these precious, life-giving scriptures. So how shall we best approach bible study for ourselves? I want to suggest four simple rules:
1. Get a bible in a language you can readily understand. There are some who insist that the only 'proper' bible is the King James Version; but it was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures in 1611, and consequently it can be a struggle to understand in the Jacobean English of that time. It's beautiful language, but not always the most accessible if you're looking for strength and guidance as you explore your faith and its impact on your life. So if you love KJV, get a modern translation to read alongside.
2. Read little and often. A daily dip into the scriptures may sometimes seem sterile but over time – maybe 47 years or so - things will begin to link up for you!
3. Find help with what to study – there are many bible study guides available online or in print. Or join a home group where you can be encouraged by others as you dig and delve into the scriptures together.
4. And above all, meditate on these words, as our psalmist taught us – pray over them, ask God to help you to understand, and help you to see what they mean in your life.
And you too, I promise, will soon delight in God's words.