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Lessons and Sermons from the Longmire Road church of Christ in Conroe Texas USA
And when we talk about the Word of God, we're talking about the written Word of God that
has been given to us over the years, written by various individuals over a period of 1,600
years, given to us, has survived just about everything this world could throw at it.
And here we have it, beautiful in a language that we can understand, and we can read what
is on its pages, the Word of God.
This is what this is.
This is not a word of God.
This is the word of God.
There is no other book like it.
If you're going to know about God, it's going to come from this book.
If you're going to know what God wants you to do in life, it's going to come from this
book.
If you want to know what the standard of judgment is going to be on that great and
glorious day of judgment, it's going to be in this book.
This book is what we have from the Lord.
This is what the Lord has preserved and given to us.
And we're so grateful that we have it indeed as the apostle Paul would tell the Jews,
treat chiefly to them has been committed the oracles of God.
That was a great blessing that they were able to be the custodians of the word of God,
that they will be able to be the ones chosen by God to record his works and the scheme of
redemption that they would be a nation that he had chosen for that purpose.
But what does this book mean to you?
What does it mean to you?
All of those facts are wonderful about this book and all of the facts are great about the
Word of God.
But what does it mean to you as an individual?
I'm reminded to Jeremiah chapter 20 and verse 9 as Jeremiah deals with the people of God
that were rebellious in nature and he desired no longer to talk about the Word of God.
He desired no longer to preach it.
He didn't want anything necessarily to do with the people.
And so he said, I will not make mention of him that is God, nor speak any more in his
name.
But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones.
I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay." He says, was gonna say, I said, I'm not
going to preach anymore.
I'm not gonna talk anymore about God, but his word was in my heart as a burning fire.
And so I know how Jeremiah felt about the word of God.
I know how he viewed the word of God.
What does...
The word of God mean to you, what is your relationship with the word of God?
Is there a relationship with the word of God or are you estranged from it?
How do you feel about the word of God?
Because you ought to feel something about it.
Do you feel love for the word of God?
Or is there indifference?
Maybe it is contempt, hopefully not.
Or is it cynical about the word of God?
How do you treat the word of God?
The word of God desires to be treated in a certain way.
After all, we're not talking about a letter from Joe down the street.
We're talking about the Word of God.
This is not the musings of the apostle Paul or Peter or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These are not the ideas of Jeremiah and Isaiah.
Second Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 13, the Lord would say that this is the words of
the Spirit, that He was the one who inspired these men what to say.
This comes directly from God.
And so how do we treat it?
Do we honor it?
Do we respect it or do we neglect it?
What I want us to do this evening, I want us to look at one person's relationship with the
word and what it meant to him.
It can be summed up as follows.
It is sweeter than honey to his mouth.
If you had to put a moniker on the sermon, we might say sweeter than honey to his mouth.
The man in question is that man David and I want us to turn to Psalm 119.
as we look at various passages within the Psalm that talks about the Word of God and how
David viewed the Word of God.
And when we are able to see how David viewed the Word of God, maybe we are able to adopt
that same view so that the Word of God can indeed mean to us what it meant to David and
how David felt about the Word of God is beautifully illustrated for us in this Psalm.
And so first consider number one,
In Psalm 119 and verse 11, that David considered the word a treasure in his heart.
Notice what it says, your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you.
The word hidden there in the Hebrew tongue reflects the idea of hiding or storing up
treasure.
It is really the idea of concealing something of great value.
That's what that word hidden means.
So when he's talking about he has hidden the word in his heart, it doesn't mean that he
has put it away, never to be found again, never to be researched again, never to be looked
at again.
No, he is referencing the idea that he has taken this thing, which is so very valuable,
and he has put it in a safe place.
I consider the word of God so valuable, he says, I have buried it.
Just like someone when they find treasure, you remember these shows about pirates, usually
when they find treasure, what is it they do with it?
They go bury it somewhere and then they draw a map of how to get to that place and they
usually get lost.
But the idea is it is so valuable that you will bury the thing so that no harm comes to
it.
And that is how David views the Word of God.
You know, that which is important to us, we put in a safe.
That's what we do with it.
If something is important to us or we want to protect something really valuable to us, we
put it in a safe, we put it in a display case, we put it to where no harm can come to it
so that we can continue to enjoy its value or its beauty.
Now do not misunderstand, David is not storing the scrolls somewhere.
He's talking about the content of the Word.
And so the Word of God, because it is hidden in his heart, number one, the Word is
protected.
It's in a vault.
Nobody can take it away.
No one will remove this treasure from me.
Why?
Because it's hidden in my heart.
How would you remove the Word of God from someone's heart?
How would you do that?
You might be able to steal someone's Bible of a physical way, but you cannot remove the
contents of it from the person's heart once it's been put in there.
And so it's protected in the heart, but not only is it protected, it is also preserved.
When you protect something valuable, it preserves it for longer.
And the fact that he is treating it like a treasure means that he wants to preserve it.
He's treating the Word of God as this great treasure, so he wants to preserve it in his
life.
And so the Word was hidden in his heart.
It is valuable to me.
I'm going to put it in my heart or my mind, which is the Bible heart.
It will be a part of me.
It will guide me.
It will preserve me.
And so what do we know about the heart?
We know that the heart is the seat of emotion.
And so David here feels for the Word of God.
It's the seed of emotion.
He loves the Word of God.
It's a treasure to him.
There was a genuine love for God's Word.
You know, it's like when someone that an individual may fall in love with, know, young
people, I don't think they write letters anymore.
You know, I'm not that old, but I do remember a time, you know, if you like somebody, you
would write a letter to them.
Right?
You would write a letter to them and you would say things about them.
I love your hair.
You know, I've been watching you in the classroom.
You know, not that I'm trying to be creepy or anything.
If you want to go out and catch a movie, please mark yes or no.
Right?
And when somebody may respond in that fashion, what do you do with that letter?
Sometimes they would write letters to one another and they would put perfume on it.
and you would get it and you would smell it and it'd be like, I'm gonna hold on to this,
why?
Is it the letter that you have fallen in love with?
No, it's not the letter that you've fallen in love with.
It's not about the ink on which the ink that's on the paper.
It's not about the type of paper, it's who wrote it.
That's why you love it.
And that's why David loves the Word of God.
He's going to put it in his heart because of who wrote it.
God wrote this book to his creation
And so we understand there's a seed of emotion here, but it's also the seed of intellect.
It's not just an emotion that he has for it.
It is a comprehension of it.
He has put it in his heart.
Notice what he says.
I've put it in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Not only have I hidden it, I've hidden it somewhere for the purpose of living a certain
way.
I want to know how to live right with God.
I want to know what to do in order to be pleasing to God.
And so what I've done with this word is I've put it in my heart to that end.
It is the seed of intellect, but also it is the seed of desire.
David longs or yearns for the word.
This will explain or set up as a foundation some of the other attributes of his
relationship with the word.
But because he deems it valuable, he desires it.
And so in David's mind, this word is a treasure.
Is the word of God a treasure in your life?
Do you value this book and what it means?
Do you value what is said in it?
Truly, the half has not been told in relation to what this book is and what it means to
man.
Remove this book from our society.
Remove it from our lives and see what this society in which we live looks like.
You like walking down the street without getting robbed, without getting murdered.
Well, where do those things come from?
Do you think man came up with his own system of morality?
No.
The morals that we have, it all comes from this book.
The things that we do good, it comes from this book.
Man was not born sugary sweet.
In the sense that he didn't come up with the code or the standard of morals.
God is our standard of morals.
And so if you remove this book, this valuable book from society, it will cast society into
moral anarchy.
It's a society that is much akin to Genesis chapter six, where individuals remove
themselves
from the Word of God.
But imagine what it would do in your life if you remove it from your life.
If you remove this book from your life, sooner or later it's going to start showing up.
It's going to start showing up in the things that happen around you because you're not
paying attention to it because you haven't attributed value to it.
I hope you like David, that your mind is just like the great psalmist of Israel, that you
consider it a treasure in your life.
But not only does he say it's a treasure in his life,
In verse 15 of Psalm 119, he also says number two here, it is important in his life.
He says, I will meditate upon thy precepts and contemplate your ways.
The word meditate there means to ponder or to think or to put forth thoughts out loud.
Usually when we the term meditate, we think of the mm, and all of that type of stuff.
That's not the meditation of which the Bible speaks.
When the Bible talks about meditating, it talks about thinking out loud.
It talks about the idea of I am speaking forth or pondering something.
It's being in deep thought or concentration about something.
He says, have meditated upon your word.
I'm in deep thought about God's word.
But not only am I in deep thought about God's word, I contemplate your ways.
It has the sense, the idea of contemplation here has the sense of looking intensely in a
focused way at something.
And so here we have a great understanding of what the Psalmist says here.
It's this idea of I'm thinking about the Word of God.
I'm thinking out loud.
I'm speaking out loud about it.
I'm going through the passage and it says, let not your heart be troubled to believe in
God, believe also in me.
I'm thinking about what that means to me, but not only that, I'm also deeply and intensely
focused on what it means.
I'm intensely focused on the word of God, concentrating on it, thinking about it.
He's studying the word of God, that's what he's doing.
And so this is not a mere reading of the text, it's an intense study.
of the text and this is where folks usually get in trouble you've heard me say before
sometimes what we do is we think we're studying when we're actually reading you know we're
reading through the Bible and we read through the Bible and that's good you ought to read
through the Bible but that's not studying what David is talking about is studying it's a
pondering on the verses it is a intense focus on it in order to make sure that he is doing
it and how does the psalmist feel about the word he says it is important or pertinent
enough for me
to put some serious time and effort into studying it.
If something is this important, it's going to show up in how you treat it.
It's going to show up in how you deal with it.
Meditating and contemplating in the way that it's described in the Hebrew tongue is going
to take some time and effort.
You don't meditate upon something or stand, let's make this crude analogy.
If you're standing in the line at McDonald's,
and you're trying to decide what you're going to eat even though the menu hasn't changed
for years, you're trying to decide what you're going to eat, right?
You don't stand there meditating on it, do you?
Well, it's not that important.
not, you know, as people say, it's not that deep, right?
You don't stand there and meditate and think out loud, shall I consume this over here with
1,500 ingredients or this over here, right, with 1,700 calories?
You don't do that.
You don't spend an intense amount of time
contemplating about it and tell them, listen, I want you to just take your time, let me
walk away, I'm going to sit at the table, I'm going to think about this meal that I'm
about to have and then I'm going to come back and then I'm going to order.
You wouldn't do that.
In fact, this whole illustration, it seems rather silly to us.
Why?
Because we understand we wouldn't put that much time and effort into that situation.
That tells us it's not that important.
What about the Word of God?
How are you treating it?
How often do you meditate and contemplate the Word of God?
The answer to that question reflects the importance the Word of God has in your life.
You know, we make time for the things that are important to us.
The things that we want to do, we make time for it.
Long and short of it, our lives are filled with a lot of things and a lot of things that
we want to do.
Most things that we are doing in this life are things that we want to do.
not things that we have to do.
That list of have to do's is very short.
The rest is filled with things that we want to do and that's all good and well but what is
the balance of those things in relation to the Word of God?
In verse 131 of Psalm 119 David says, opened my mouth and panted.
I longed for your commandments.
The word panting there is heart beating, deep breathing.
He longed for, only found here in Psalm 119, 131, it means an earnest desire.
If the word of God is important to me, I'm going to make time, not excuses.
I'm going to decide to meditate and to contemplate on it.
And so here is a guarantee that the Psalmist gives.
Here's the guarantee that he gives.
Notice it in verses 97 through 100 of Psalm 119.
verses 97 through 100.
If you make time for meditation and contemplation on the word of God, it will benefit you.
He says, how I love your law.
It is my meditation all the day.
You through your commandments, notice this, make me wiser than my enemies.
You want to know how to deal with folks that are contrary to you?
Get into the book.
Get into the book.
It's going to show, it's going to make you wiser
than those who are contrary to you.
For they are ever with me, David says.
Notice this, I have more understanding than all my teachers.
I tell this to my students all the time.
I says, I expect you to leave here and to become smarter than I am.
I expect you to leave here right now.
You may not know a whole lot, but I expect you to leave here and to know more and more and
more and to learn more and more and more.
Why?
Because it's expected that you will surpass your teachers.
You should.
David says because he continued to meditate on the Word of God, he became smarter, if you
will, with more understanding than the ancients.
Why?
Because he keeps his precepts.
And so the psalmist believes God's Word is important and so he makes time to contemplate
on it and meditate on it.
And so it's important in his life.
It's a treasure in his life.
But then also consider number three here.
It is a joy in his life.
Psalm 119.
verse 14 and also verse 16.
Notice what it says, Psalm 119 verse 14 and also verse 16, I have rejoiced in the way of
your testimonies as much as in all riches.
He says also, I will delight myself in your statutes.
I will never forget your word.
The word of God is a source of joy or happiness in the Psalmist's life.
He says, I have rejoiced.
The verse there or the phrase rejoice means
great and jubilant celebration great and jubilant celebration in the word of God and what
is the scope of his joy he says I have great and jubilant celebration in your testimonies
as much in all as much as in all riches David was king of a lot of wealth he had a lot of
things around him in fact that was during the United Kingdom
And the United Kingdom at that point in time was ruler of the world.
There were other nations, but there was no nation that stood against God's people as they
were united, walking in the ways of God.
God was their hand protecting them.
And so David was over a lot of wealth.
His son would even eclipse that.
And the Psalmist would say in Psalm 1, 1972, the law of your mouth is better to me than
thousands of coins of gold and silver.
David had thousands of coins of gold and silver.
That's why he could make this statement.
His delight is not in the things of this world, it's in the law of the Lord.
That's what he has joy in.
I know, I'm talking to those who love the law of the Lord.
I'm talking to those who love the Word of God as you are here tonight once again to engage
in a period of worship as we sing praises to God but also as we engage in the Word of God.
There are three things the Word of God can be in your life.
It can be a chore.
The Word of God can be a chore.
I know I'm supposed to study, but I really don't want to.
If you don't want to, guess what?
It's not gonna happen.
We don't do what we don't want to do.
Simple as that.
We don't do what we don't want to do.
We'll always find excuses not to do it.
And so because the Word becomes something that I despise, it's not something that I like
to do.
I'm always going to put it off.
It's like washing dishes.
Who likes to wash dishes, right?
There may be some in here who likes to, I don't know.
Who walks around and says, I can't wait to go home and wash the dishes.
When my wife's gone out of town, I'll tell her myself, when my wife's gone out of town,
she cleans the house very beautifully.
She does me that great favor.
And I, from that moment on, eat out of disposable things.
Plastic, everything, right?
I'm not washing a single dish.
It's all going in the trash.
I'm not doing it.
Who likes to do that?
It's a chore, right?
The word of God ought not to be that to us.
When we think about, I don't want to think about the Word of God, is it a chore or it
could be number two, you're a source of conflict.
The Word of God can be a source of conflict.
You read it and you heard it and you don't like what it says.
You know what it says.
The Word of God is not difficult for us to understand, though there are certain passages
that require a little bit more study.
But when we read it, we get it.
That's why most folks in the world, they don't want to read it.
They close it up and say, I don't want to have anything to do with that.
because they get it and it's a source of conflict because they read something in it that
is contrary to their lives so they want nothing to do with it and so it can be a source of
conflict or just like David it can be a source of joy.
It shows me how to be right with the Lord and I desire to be right with the Lord that
should bring joy.
It provides for me comfort in times of trials.
Imagine living this life without knowing whether or not there was a better place.
Wouldn't that be miserable as I deal with pain and struggles in this life and I ask myself
will this ever end?
Will there ever be something better?
If there was no answer given to us in this book then it would be a very bleak life.
I don't know how those outside of Christ and those who do not believe in Christ, I don't
know how they do it.
how they go through life and they deal with the struggles and they sit by the bedside of
loved ones or they are in the beds of affliction they're dealing with problems in this
life and there is no answer there's no answer you die and just like Rover you're dead all
over if that is the only answer you have what a miserable life that must be but the reason
I have joy is because I know that he has prepared for me a place in where there are no
tears and no sorrow
and I can have joy in that.
It talks about the promises that I have already received and so I can have joy in that so
because it does these things I delight in it more and more and I delight in this Word of
God more than this world's vain riches.
The psalmist would also say in Psalm 103, verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste?
Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
Oh it's sweet, I love to taste the Word of God.
Sweeter than honey.
My joy is found in God and nowhere else.
It is the steadfastness of His joy, it is the delight of His joy, or rather the delight of
His life, the Word of God.
And so the question to us is, is the Word of God that to us?
Do we enjoy the Word of God?
Do we?
does it bring us joy?
The only reason it can bring us joy is if we understand the things that are written in it
are written for our well-being, are written for our good.
But not only does he say it's a treasure in his life, not only does he say it's important
in his life, not only is it a joy in his life, he also says that the Word of God is his
life.
Psalm 119 verses 33 and 34, notice what it says.
He says, the Word of God, it is my life.
He says, teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, Psalm one, 19, 33 and 34.
And I shall keep it to the end.
Give me understanding and I shall keep your law.
Indeed, I shall observe it.
Notice it with my whole heart.
The word of God is not something that is a part of his life.
It is his life.
The psalmist is making a promise to the Lord that he is all in.
He is locked in, as the young people would say.
He is locked into the word of God.
I'm all in the word.
Notice what he says.
It has my complete devotion.
Teach me your statutes and I shall keep it to the end.
Not I shall read it and if I find something that I don't like, I might consider it again.
No, he says teach me your statute.
I'm gonna keep it.
I'm locked in.
He has complete devotion for better or worse in sickness and in health.
The psalmist has a sense of joining himself to the Word and he is saying that it will have
all of his attention.
It will not have his divided attention.
The verse reminds me of three other passages in Scripture dealing with the principle of
devotion to the Lord.
And the principle here is identical in Exodus chapter 20 verses 1 through 3.
Remember when God
appears to the children of Israel and is giving them the Decalogue, is giving them the Ten
Commandments.
What is the First Commandment?
God says, shall have no other gods before me.
I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
You shall have no other gods before me.
God says, I want your complete devotion.
Don't serve them, don't bow down to them.
You belong to me and me only.
And so the conduct of the psalmist's life belongs to the word.
The conduct of his life.
belongs to the word of God.
My life is guided by this and this thing only.
When he is guided, it will be by the word.
When he needs advice, it will be based upon the word.
When he seeks comfort, this is where he's going to go.
He's gonna go to the word of God because it is his life.
Just like God desires for us to serve him and him only, he desires for us to follow only.
His word and this is what David does here.
When your heart belongs to the word of God, there is simply no room for the creeds and the
opinions of man.
Frankly, I don't care what you have to say religiously.
I do not care unless your name is Jesus the Christ.
I take advice and I take leadership and I take commandments from one King Jesus.
And if you are not in agreement with my King, I'm not following you.
As simple as that.
Why?
Because I'm concerned about what my king said, not what you said.
And so this is hard for some to understand.
Why?
Because they placed themselves on the pedestal and they placed themselves on the throne
right next to the king.
That's why they want their word obeyed.
There is no room for fake promises of Satan.
Satan makes a lot of promises.
In the very beginning, he promised Adam and Eve something that was absolutely false.
There's no room for enticing words of man's wisdom.
There's no room for enticing words of the world.
The Word of God is a primary guide in our lives.
It is what we desire to do.
If someone comes along and says something to me religiously, says something to me of moral
value, my first question should be, did it come from this book?
Did it come from this book?
If it didn't come from this book, I don't want anything to do with
How you're supposed to, as Brother Baker talked about this morning, briefly, how you're
supposed to raise your children?
If it's not coming from this book, I don't want to hear it.
Now I'm not saying you're not going to get great advice from parents who have lived a
life, but foundationally, if it's not coming from this book, I don't want to hear it.
What's your marriage supposed to be like?
And what does a scriptural marriage look like?
If it's not coming from this book, I don't want to hear it.
What is the world supposed to do?
How are we supposed to act towards one another?
How are we supposed to live with one another?
If it doesn't come from this book, I don't want to hear it.
Why?
Because this book conducts my entire life, David says.
I live by it.
Not by some of it, but by all of it.
And so the Matthew would say in Matthew chapter six and verse 24, no man can serve two
masters for either will hate the one and love the other.
You cannot be loyal to the one or you will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
And so this is a principle throughout scripture.
The Lord says you got to make a choice.
1 John 3 and verse 18 says, My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but
indeed in truth.
He says, I will observe it with all my heart.
I will observe it with all my heart.
The psalmist loves the word of God, not just the word, but indeed.
He loves the Word of God and He's going to do it.
And so He says what the Word of God is to Him, it is His life.
It guides His life.
But then also consider this, the Word of God is His, is His hope.
Last and in no way is the least and the sermon will be yours.
Psalm 119 verse 114.
You are my hiding place and my shield.
Notice it.
I hope in your word.
Biblical hope is a confident expectation of receiving something.
That's what the word hope in the Bible reference.
Usually when we use the word hope we say I hope
It doesn't rain tomorrow and that is wishful thinking.
It's the idea that really I wish it doesn't rain.
I don't have any necessarily expectation one way or the other.
That's not biblical hope.
We ought to separate that definition from biblical hope.
Biblical hope is a confident expectation of something.
And so the psalmist says he confidently trusts in the promises and commandments of God.
It is his hope.
Where would we be without the word of the Lord?
What hope would we have?
The word of God gives me every reason to be hopeful.
You know, sometimes we lose hope.
Sometimes we lose hope.
You know when we lose hope?
When we stop reading about the hope.
When the trials of this life and the things of this life and the temptations in this life
cause me to look over here instead of over here.
That's when we lose hope.
It's that simple.
It's not rocket science.
Because in this book my hope is declared.
It's not because there's nothing in which to hope.
It's because we have removed ourselves from the proclaimer of hope.
Hope does not go anywhere.
Hope is constant.
It's steadfast.
God said, I have a place prepared for you and so I can hope in that.
That hope's not going to change.
It may change in my heart because I focused on something else, but the hope remains
steadfast.
Psalm 119 verse 92 says, your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my
affliction.
I cannot survive without it, he says.
There is no hope separate and apart from it.
I need the word of God, he says, because therein is my hope.
As we mentioned earlier, the hope that we have when Jesus so beautifully talked to his
disciples.
He's about to leave earth.
He spent three years with these men, teaching them, training them.
to become the ambassadors of His church, to be the ones who are going to be given the keys
of the kingdom.
They're going to be in charge of His church.
We are under the Apostles' doctrine.
Why?
Because Jesus placed them in charge.
Just like the Israelites were under the law of Moses, we are under the Apostles' doctrine.
And as He sits with them, He reminds them that He's about to leave.
He's about to leave his friends.
He's about to leave them and they are about to tackle the greatest cause in the history of
mankind.
The salvation of souls.
They're about to lead the Lord's kingdom established here upon earth.
Wow!
What a great task.
And he tells them, let not your heart be troubled.
He believe in God, believe also in me, in my father's house are many mansions.
if it were not so I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you I will come again
and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also." What is he telling
them?
says, I'm leaving but here's the hope, I'm coming back.
I'm leaving to actually go prepare a place and that place is being prepared by the cross.
I'm leaving and I'm going to the cross and I'm going to die and I'm going to be put in a
tomb on the third day I'm going to rise again and I'm going to give you access to my
Father's house.
And then I'm going to ascend up into heaven and I'll be seated at the right hand of the
Father and if I go I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself that where I am
there you may be also.
What does Jesus want for his disciples?
He wants them.
to be where He is.
He wants them later on in that text, and I have this sermon planned, I don't want to get
too much ahead of myself, I have this sermon planned for a couple of weeks from now, but
the unity of which Christ preached, Jesus in that text later on, Jesus says, I want you to
see me in my glory.
Jesus wanted His friends
to see who he really is in all of his glory.
They saw him in human form and they knew that he was God in the flesh but the half has not
been told.
He says what I want is for you to be with me and man I want you to see me in all my glory.
That's why those men, all of them with the exception of John, were murdered.
because they stood firm in this book.
They preach Christ when people said don't preach Christ.
They said the things that needed to be said when people told them to be quiet.
As tradition have it Peter is crucified upside down, the Apostle Paul is beheaded, Stephen
is stoned, they are all being murdered and killed for what?
Because they have hope and that hope was given to them by the word.
And brethren that's what we have in the Word of God.
We have this grand hope that has been provided for us in the pages of Holy Writ.
And we just like the apostles can have that same conviction that no matter what happens in
this life we're going to preach Jesus.
Period.
The psalmist would say in closing in Psalm 119, 103, How sweet are thy words to my taste,
yea sweeter than honey to my mouth.
How do you feel about the Word of God tonight?
What is it in your life?
How do you treat it?
Is it a joy?
Is it a treasure?
Is it your life?
Is it your hope?
Is it your moral guide?
And stay, I hope that it is.
But if tonight, if you find yourself not even knowing what that relationship is like, not
knowing that there was a relationship to have with the things that are written in here,
maybe it's time to reevaluate how you've been treating the Word of God.
and ask God's forgiveness for not focusing intently on what He has instructed you to do.
And you can do that as a Christian.
You can ask God's forgiveness and you can do better.
You'll hear me say this all the time, if you mess up, fess up.
It's as easy as that.
If you've done that which is contrary to God, ask God's forgiveness and do better.
And that's what we can do as Christians.
We have that glorious forgiveness of sins.
We don't have to be baptized again to have
our sins washed away in that fashion.
We have the forgiveness of sins through God who said, if we're willing to repent of it,
God is willing to forgive.
But maybe it is the case that you recognize that your life has been lived for self, that
you didn't even know that God has said something about you in this book.
Yes, He did.
He said something about you in this book.
He said that He desires you to be saved.
He desires for you to be with Him.
for all eternity.
That's what he desires.
2nd Peter chapter 3 and verse 9 says he's not slack concerning his promise as some men can
slackness but as long suffering, notice this, not willing that any, that's you, should
perish.
He doesn't want you to perish.
He wants you to come to repentance.
And see repentance is a change of mind.
It's me changing my mind about how I live and what I do I want to do right and so if
you're willing to repent tonight
If you're willing to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who died on that
cross, was put in that tomb, and on the third day rose again, ascended up into heaven, and
is seated at the right hand of God.
If you're willing to confess His good name this evening before witnesses, that you believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, because with the mouth confession He's made unto
salvation, Romans chapter 10, verses 9 and 10.
If you're willing to have yourself immersed in water, to have your sins washed away, you
can have that glorious eternal hope.
which all of us in this room who are Christians have, you can share in that hope and what
a glorious day it is going to be.
Harden not your hearts in the day of provocation.
Today is the day of salvation.
If you have need of heaven's invitation, make it know while we stand and as we sing.