Last Sunday I left you hanging in the middle of a story. I was telling you about a family with eight children, the first six of whom are all actively serving and following the Lord. But when child number seven became eighteen he decided to rebel—and rebel in a big way. He flew off to another country to be with his girlfriend for three weeks, and as his father told me, “to sow his wild oats.” The question for us is, how does a young man from a wonderful Christian family suddenly decide to cast off all of his Christian upbringing in order to pursue a purely selfish path? How could he throw away the commands of God so easily?
I think part of the answer comes from 1 John 5:3. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. For some reason, to this 18 year old boy, who we’ll call Greg (not his real name), the commands of God were a burdensome toil. They were such a heavy weight to him that he decided to throw them off of his shoulders and walk his own way. From a logical standpoint, I would say he made the right decision. If he was carrying a heavy burden it makes sense to get rid of it. Many of you carried the heavy burden of legalism on your shoulders for too many years. You know full well the freedom that you experienced when you finally stopped carrying this burden. You felt free, light and alive for the first time in your life. This is probably how Greg felt when he was suddenly unburdened from the commands of God. At least for a little while, he will feel free and light because he is not carrying this heavy burden. The problem is not that he threw off a heavy burden, but the problem is that the commands of God were a burden to him in the first place. Legalism, or the laws of men, will always be a burden, but the laws of God are not supposed to be a burden. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” For Greg, the commands of God were heavy because he was carrying them on his shoulders when he should have been carrying them in his heart. Greg had never internalized God’s commands, so every time a new command was taught to him, he merely placed it on the already heavy burden on his shoulders.
Therefore, the key to not rebelling from Gods commands is to make sure we are carrying the commands of God in our hearts and not our shoulders. But how do we do that? This morning I want to open the 119th chapter of Psalms to see how we can move commands from our shoulders down to our hearts. We will choose several verses from the 176 verses in this chapter. The first is verse seventeen. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Psalm 119 is known not only for its length, but for is emphasis on the law of God. Out of the 176 verses in this chapter, 174 of them speak of the wonders and glory of the word of God. The Scriptures are referred to in a number of ways. They are called commands, statutes, precepts, law, the word, promises and decrees, but whatever they are called, the Psalmist speaks of them with a language of love, admiration and dependence. The psalmist knows that the word of God is filled with wonderful things. Eighteen different times in this chapter the psalmist says that he loves and delights in God’s commands. That’s the difference between the psalmist and Greg. To Greg, God’s commands are a burden but to the psalmist they are a delight.
If you think about it, this is a strange and radical statement. How many people have ever said that they love a book of laws? There are approximately 775,000 words in the average English Bible, but the Unites States Tax Code has 3.4 million words. [1] It is four times the length of the Bible and it grows larger every year. Have you ever heard anyone express the following sentiments? “I love the U.S. Tax Code. I delight in the tax code and I meditate on it day and night. I rejoice in the tax code for it is my hope and my salvation.” You will never hear anyone describe the U.S. tax code in this way. In fact, what we usually hear is just the opposite—pronouncements of hatred and disgust. We can unequivocally say that the U.S. Tax Code is burdensome! Even though we know that some laws are given for our protection and welfare, you don’t hear people expressing their admiration and love for tax codes and law books. But this is what we find in Psalm 119. We see that the Psalmist has a deep and abiding love for this book, which is fundamentally a law book. The psalmist loves this law book! And I submit to you that this is the secret to raising children who will not rebel—we must teach them to love this law book we call the Bible. But for some of you this sounds about as likely as raising children who love the U.S. tax code! We know that we should love it, but how do we love it and more precisely, why should we love it?
Turn ahead to verse 48 for some answers to these questions. I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love, and I meditate on your decrees. Do you see what is almost shocking about this verse? The writer says, “I lift my hands to your commands.” This is shocking because to say that you lift your hands to something means that you are lifting it up in worship. Every other time the Bible uses this expression to lift up ones hands, it always refers to worship, such as Psalm 134:2. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. Lifting hands is always a sign of worship, but in verse 48 the psalmist is lifting up his hands to God’s commands. In other words, he is worshipping the word of God. What is it called when you worship something other than God himself? It is called idolatry! The first of the Ten Commandments is “You shall have no other gods before me.” This exclusive command is repeated in many and various ways all throughout Scripture. When Satan demanded that Jesus worship him, Jesus said to him, “Away from me Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” The 850 prophets of Baal were slaughtered on Mt. Carmel because of their idolatry. Three thousand men and women were cut down by the sword because they worshipped the golden calf while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. In Numbers 25, 24,000 Israelites died in a plague because they were seduced by the false god of the Moabites. Every king in the northern kingdom of Israel committed unending acts of idolatry and half of the kings of Judah did the same. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, yet he was led astray by the idolatrous practices of his 700 foreign wives. Again and again idolatry is condemned as a chief and heinous sin. The Bible only allows for exclusive worship of the one true God and everything else is sinful idolatry.
So then, what do we make of verse 48 where the psalmist wrote, I lift up my hands to your commands? To make this verse perfectly plain, we could translate it this way: “I worship your commands.” Is this idolatry? It’s a step up from mere love for God’s commands, is it not? It’s one thing to say, “I love your commands,” or “I delight in your commands,” but it is something else altogether to say, “I worship your commands.” Let me make this absolutely clear: this is idolatry. This is definitely an idolatrous statement…unless…unless the word of God so accurately and perfectly reveals the one true God as to itself be worthy of the worship. If the Bible is just another religious book or only gives us small pieces of the truth about God, then it would be idolatry to worship this book. In that case, it would be terribly sinful to say that “I worship your commands.” But if the Bible is the completely accurate and reliable revelation from God, about God, then it is the very word of God. To worship the very words of God is equivalent to worshipping God himself. God has so identified himself with the words in his book as to be part and parcel with them.
I hope this bothers you a little. I hope what I have just said makes you uneasy and causes you to squirm and wiggle in your seat. It should. We should be so inclined against idolatry as to have a strong reaction when anyone says it is OK to worship something other than God. But that’s not what I have been saying, is it? I have been saying that the word of God is so aligned with God himself as to be worthy of worship. I would never make such a claim if I did not think the Bible was making the claim for me. Let me say a few more things to clear up any confusion. This book is not God. The English translation of God’s word that I hold in my hand is not God. Moreover, this book does not even tell me everything about God. God is infinite and this book is finite. It only has 775,000 words. Even if the Bible were as long as the U.S. tax Code, it would still not tell us everything about God. The last thing John wrote in his gospel was this: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would no have room for the books that would be written.” Even if the whole world were filled with books about God, this would still be a finite description of God and you simply cannot describe an infinite God with a finite number of words. To have a complete understanding of God we would have to be God. Only God know everything about God. Therefore, the Bible never makes the claim of being the complete revelation of God but it is a sufficient revelation of God. It is not all that there is but it is all that we need. We don’t need any more than what we have, otherwise God would have given us more. It is not complete, but it is sufficient.
Second, this “worship” of God’s commands is contingent upon a proper, even a perfect understanding of God’s word. In its original form, God’s word is perfect and infallibly represents our perfect and infallible God. However, once we sinners begin to read and interpret his word, it is no longer perfect. Therefore, we can never claim that our understanding of Scripture is God or that our doctrinal statement is inspired.
Psalm 19 says that “the ordinances of the Lord are sure…they are much more precious than gold, than much pure gold.” This Bible weighs 24 ounces. When I checked on Friday the price of gold was $663/ounce. This means that my Bible is worth at least $14,500. (Taking into account the conversion into troy ounces) If that were true, I would sell it and give the money to the building fund. Or I could take this Bible which weighs 96 ounces and by the price of gold is worth $57,283. Hat would make a great contribution to our capital campaign, don’t you think?
This particular Bible I hold in my hand is not God nor is it worth its weight in gold, but in its original, unadulterated form, it is the word of God and is to be valued as if it were God. If God is our treasure and his words are inseparable from himself, then it follows that his word is our treasure as well. But is this how we read the Bible? Do we pick it up daily and declare, “I worship your commands,” and “Open my eyes that I may see the wonderful things in your law.”? A few weeks ago I mentioned a theological discussion I was having with another pastor which has turned into en email discussion. The topic turned to homosexuality and I want to read a portion of his last email. “Can it be that God is doing a new thing? Can it be that God is again lowering the sheet before Peter/the Church?” If you recall, in Acts 10, Peter saw a vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven filled with unclean animals and Peter was told to rise up to kill and eat these animals. Before this new revelation, eating these animals was strictly forbidden, but after the revelation eating them was acceptable. So what this pastor I saying is that perhaps when God said that homosexuality is a sin he is now changing his mind and lowering a sheet from heaven which instructs us that homosexuality is now acceptable.
Here is another part of the same email. “Homosexuality is not the defining issue. Nor is the Bible. The Bible is not an object of worship or something to be placed higher than the Word (Jesus) it bears to the people. While these are interesting issues to consider, they are not central. Christ is. His death and resurrection are the power of God to bring life, not correct or incorrect stands on homosexuality.”
The summary of what he is saying is that the death and resurrection of Christ is the most important thing, not the truth of the Bible. Now apply some basic reasoning skills to his comments and see if you can’t see the fatal flaw in his argument. Can you see the problem? How can the death and resurrection of Christ be more important than the Bible? How do we learn about the death and resurrection of Christ? Through the Bible, right? But if the Bible can be changed or altered as he claims, then how can we be certain about Christ’s death and resurrection? You cannot say that Christ is more important than the Bible because apart from the Bible, we know very little about Christ. We could construct bits and pieces of his life from historians like Josephus, but without the Bible, we have no virgin birth. We have no sacrifice of atonement on the cross. We have no remission of sin. We have no baptism, no Lord’s Supper, no church.
It’s like this satirical poster, modeled after the “demotivator” posters, which says: TEXTS: Wonderful, bendable, highly amusing toys.”[2] It is like the word of God is no better than gumby or pokey—it can bend it into whatever shape you want. You can mold it to say anything you want it to say. When we try to separate the Bible from God, we wind up doing the work of Satan when he tempted Eve in the garden. Satan tempted Eve by saying, “Did God really say?” We can take the commands of God one by one and declare, “Did God really say this? Did God really say that?”
This is why the Psalmist can write, “I worship your commands,” because God and his word are inseparable. This is why when our rebellious 18-year old casts off what he believes to be the burdensome commands of God, he is not casting off mere words and laws, he is casting off God himself. The danger with this kind of a rebel is that he thinks he is basically right with God. If you asked him if he was still a Christian, he would think it was a stupid question. He might say, “What do you mean? Of course I am still a Christian. I still believe in Jesus.” But if the throws away a large portion of the commands of Christ, is he not throwing away Christ himself?
We know the problem, but what is the solution? You should know full well that there are no simple and easy answers but verse eleven gives us a great start. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. This is what the children do in Awana and what the teens do in Bible quizzing. They memorize lots and lots of Scripture. Last year, the top quizzer from our area was Tullen Baird. At the national quiz meet in March, Tullen was only eleven years old, yet he finished in 9th place in the nation! These kids are sharp and amazing memorizers. You have to make sure you get to one of the quizzes this yea. They are all held at the Church of Christ and the first one is Saturday, September. These kids are hiding the word of God in their hearts? Or are they? I applaud them all for their hard work and effort, but is this what it means to hide the word of God in your heart—simply to memorize it? Memorizing the Bible is hiding the word of God in your head. The hope is that it will eventually work its way down into your heart, but that is no guarantee. The trip from your head to your heart is a longer journey than you might think. The Pharisees never made the journey. Many Bible scholars and seminary professors never make that journey. Countless pastors and missionaries never make the journey. Hundreds of millions of so-called Christians, most of whom read the Bible and even memorize, never make the journey from head down to the heart. This verse does not say, “I have hidden your word in my head that I might not sin against you,” but it says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” And what is the word of God? As we have seen this morning, it is Christ himself. I hide Christ in my heart so that I will not sin against Christ. I treasure Christ in my heart so that I will not sin against Christ.
Raise your hand if you are going to be in Bible quizzing or Awana this year. All of you keep your hand sin the air and lets add some more. All of you who are going to be working in Bible Quizzing or Awana this year, raise your hands. Now all you keep your hands in the air and we’ll add to it again. Everyone who has read the Bible in the past two weeks, raise your hand in the air. Look around at all of the hands! Good for you! Keep your hands up. Now I’ll be generous and ask how many have read the Bible in the last year. Now look around at all of the hands. Every one of us is reading and memorizing our Bibles. Way to go! Keep your hands in the air and I’ll ask you one last question. How many of you have gotten the word you have been reading and memorizing into your heart? To get it into your head and not into your heart is worse than never getting any at all. At all costs, get the word into your heart. Treasure Christ in your heart.
Rich Maurer
August 29, 2007