D. A. Carson on The Priority of the Word of God

it's a privilege to return to canada you may think of me as a missionary to the yanks and once in a while i take a furlough and come back to home turf please turn in holy scripture to deuteronomy 17 deuteronomy 17. before we plunge into the text it's worth pausing for a moment to remind you of where we are this is a day when many christians are feeling discouraged as they watch the social context statistics heading in this direction from their perspective and they cannot help but feel a little lost and undone threatened and so on but i want to tell you that while those things are going on at the same time god is raising up a new generation of what one of our council members likes to call big god theology that's league duncan not only in north america but in many parts of the world there is a resurgence of big god theology traditionally called reformed theology that is an emphasis on god and what he has done in particular through the cross of christ and by his spirit across generations across the nominations with uh an eruption of of joy and and worship and gratitude and emphasis on truth and today we're going to focus on the truth element of that and um and and recognize from the outset how many passages there are to which we could have drawn attention but right now we focus on deuteronomy chapter 17 verses 14 to 20. when you enter the land the lord your god is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it and you say let us set a king over us like all the nations around us be sure to appoint over you a king the lord your god chooses he must be from among your fellow israelites do not place a foreigner over you one who is not an israelite the king moreover must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to egypt to get more of them for the lord has told you you are not to go back that way again he must not take many wives or his heart will be led astray he must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold when he takes the throne of his kingdom he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the levitical priests it is to be with him and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the lord his god and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in israel this is the word of the lord you might well think this is a strange place to begin it's a passage that tells a king what he is supposed to do and most of us in this room as far as i know are not kings it's bound up with the old covenant we see ourselves as under the new covenant and yet we will discover when we study this passage closely that it links with scores literally scores and scores of other passages in scripture with the same burning point the priority of the word of god let me remind you of the context this is a passage in the book of deuteronomy delivered by moses to the leaders of israel at a time when finally after 40 years of wilderness wandering they're about to enter the promised land moses himself won't make it he's about to die but joshua will lead the people in and at this juncture although there are leaders and elders there is no king but moses empowered by the spirit of god envisages a time when there will be a king in israel they will ask for a king in fact the language is hugely suggestive after you enter this land that the lord gives you and you've settled in it and you say let us set a king over us like all the nations around us that anticipates something of the ambiguity of the situation when eventually they did look for a king on the one hand god chose saul god chose david yet the people were held responsible for wanting a king so that they could be like the pagan nations all around them in other words their motives were hugely mixed as believers motives often are without teasing any of that out moses anticipates the problem and tries to lay down some guidelines be sure to appoint over you a king the lord your god chooses so what do you not want if you're going to choose a king what you should not do as you launch into this kingly role this leadership role what you should not do number one don't acquire a great number of horses it's what the text says did you notice that verse 16 the king moreover must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself why horses in the ancient world donkeys and oxen were used domestically horses tended to be used for war they were battle horses often pulling chariots with wheels with huge knives on the side and there would be one charioteer driving the horse and in the back of the chariot a bowman or two so militarily speaking the ancient chariots were the equivalent of contemporary tanks they went along with the infantry but were the mechanized form of warfare that could cut a swath through entering hordes from the opposite camp so don't acquire great numbers of tanks what this means of course is they should avoid making their name great forming their identity around sheer military power and that is reflected again and again in the history of israel it's not that god forbids the use of military power under the terms of the old covenant in in fact god strengthens david and others and gives them fabulous sometimes miraculous military relief yet there is a way of lusting after power and strength that goes way beyond the desire for security into the desire to make a name for yourself to find yourself impregnable here is authority without limits and i'm the one with it indeed no passage in the new testament is as close to this one at the level of conceptuality as one which reports the words of the lord jesus himself matthew chapter 20 verses 20 and following then the mother of zebedee's sons came to jesus with her sons that's james and john of the twelve and kneeling down asked a favor of him what is it you want he asked grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom so here's a notion of the kingdom that is bound up with earthly power and authority she recognizes that he has twelve apostles but two of her sons her two sons are part of the twelve she wants an inside track for them one on the left one on the right think one minister of defense the other secretary of state or whatever your categories are under you number one and number two i won't even stipulate which one is number one and number two just as long as they get the top two jobs do you see you don't know what you are asking jesus said to them can you drink the cup i am going to drink to drink the cup in this case is to share the experience can you share the experiences that i'm going to have can you belong to my party in that sense and with spectacular aplomb and equal ignorance they respond we can still not understanding that jesus pathway was toward the cross in jesus response you can almost see a twitch of his lips a little smile as he says um you will indeed drink my cup after all one of these two will become the first apostolic martyr and the other in old age gets exiled to the island of patmos you're going to drink some of my suffering after all you don't have a clue what you're talking about but um you know you can drink of my cup but to sit at the right or the left is not for me to grant these places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my father one of the half dozen or so major passages in the gospels where there is a distinction between the role of the father and the role of the son if this were another sort of talk we'd spend a lot of time here on the doctrine of christology so as to be clear how to understand a text like that but we pass on when the turn had when the ten heard about this they were indignant with the two brothers not of course because they thought they were impertinent but because they didn't get their own dibs in first they didn't want to be eclipsed by a couple of upstarts jesus then uses this as a teachable moment he called them together and said you know that the rulers of the gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercise authority over them not so with you instead whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave just as the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many now from this passage has arisen the expression servant leadership jesus stipulates that if you want to be a leader in his community you must be the servant of all and in my view that passage has sometimes come to be understood it is it has come to mean something like you must become a doormat for everybody else but whatever jesus is he's not a doormat when he goes to the cross he's not a doormat what exactly does jesus mean this same jesus elsewhere says you call me master and lord and you say well for so i am if i am your master and lord then why don't you do the things that i tell you to do as the master he still expects to be obeyed so unless he's a flaming hypocrite which i assume this august crowd will disallow then when jesus says he must not be a ruler over them but must be their servant he cannot simply mean abduring all functions of leadership to give commands and give orders and so on that's it it misses the point the point rather is this in most forms of leadership in what we might call secular leadership but it can be religious leadership too sad to say there is a subtle slide away from serving people to exercising authority authoritarianly over them at every cycle of elections in the western world people talk about we don't want to be like the old generation in the capital city where they all know each other they're in each other's pockets and they're an inside crowd there's an elite we represent the people vote for me and and and will serve the people it's hard to think of an election when that has not been the cry of the party that's out of power and it's hard to think of a leader who within three or four years sometimes three or four weeks but certainly three or four years there there is a subtle shift and there is a feeling of entitlement where where the the country the people the party exists for for them rather than the other way around the distinctive thing about christian leadership is that it is passionately seeking the good of those being led in that sense jesus is the servant of all he serves them he serves them by going to the cross one of many passages in the new testament in which the cross is not only the basis of our forgiveness it's a theological concept of the cross but it's also a moral paradigm you remember what peter says in his first epistle he says there that the cross of christ is is the ground of our atonement he suffered in our stead but on the other hand he also suffered leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps the cross is a moral paradigm as well as a theological fundament that establishes the ground of our acceptance before god and that's the way jesus uses it here he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many that's the theological fundament yet at the same time in the context it's establishing a pattern of leadership in which you're seeking the others good jesus is not doing what he's doing in order to be puffed up with pride or to to be arrogant or to lord had over be he is the lord he doesn't have to lord it over people he has authority he doesn't have to act in an authoritarian fashion do you see so also in the church of jesus christ and already in principle that set of distinctions was being laid out all the way back in deuteronomy 17. what kind of king do you want do you want a king who wants battle tanks who at the end of the day rules by virtue of military force you see the the the the argument is not that all military forces should be abolished it's it's where your identity becomes bound up with military authority with with authority being the the be all and the end-all then where's the note of service what is seeking the people's good and in the church of jesus christ we have a master who has shown us what way to go so what you should not do if you're going to be a leader of the people of god don't acquire a great number of horses number two don't make the people return to egypt now in the historic context of course the israelites had not infrequently looked back at egypt with a bit of silly nostalgia they had escaped slavery god had sustained them across the barren desert he had provided food and water for them and he had enabled them to defeat their dangerous attacking enemies and now they were on the edge of the promised land and they were about to take it over but yet nevertheless times had arisen when the people wanted to go back to egypt in one remarkable passage when they are a little hungry and they're not sure that god is going to provide them whatever they will need to eat they bemoan their existence by saying well at least back in egypt we had garlic you want to sell your freedom for garlic what do you want to choose freedom from slavery without garlic or slavery with garlic you see this is such a massive loss of proportion and and expectation but in this case too if they go back to egypt egypt was one of the regional superpowers it's a way of saying i come under this vassal's authority once again much of israel's history is a struggle to be free of the southern regional superpower egypt or the northern regional superpower which at various times was assyria or babylon or the medo-persian empire there is little israel squashed between the two and sometimes people wanted to compromise their religious beliefs wanted to compromise their covenant with god wanted to covenant to compromise their their primary trust in the living god and in his word by these sorts of allegiances so they were seeking not only authority they were seeking security and then in the third place you must not take many wives verse 17. that's what the text says he must not take many wives or his heart will be led astray now i suppose this necessarily generates some thoughts about the sanctity of marriage as jesus says from the beginning it was not so it was one man and one woman but that's not the main point solomon we're told had three i had a thousand wives and concubines i never remember whether it's 300 of one and 700 of the other or 700 of the other and 301 but anyway it's a lot what do you want a thousand wives for it's not just the sex i'm sure he enjoyed the sex but it's not just the sex in in the ancient world the farther up the pecking order you were and the more money you had the more wives you were entitled to it's still this way in many many rural tribes in parts of africa and very commonly in the muslim world not every man has multiple wives but in the muslim world you can have up to four and you're likely to have up to four if you're rich in many tribal areas you can have a lot more than that if your religion is in islam but the other people in the tribe don't have the money the well with all i'm sure it costs a lot of extra money to have 10 wives so you might have the sex you might have the help you have the prestige but there's something even beyond that when you read the history of solomon you you discover how astute he was at making alliances don't forget that the kingdoms of that age tended not to be kingdoms like the kingdom of saudi arabia vast terrain or the united kingdom a constitutional monarchy most kingdoms in the ancient world were city-states and cities often had two thousand to five thousand very rarely ten thousand people in them so the king of a particular city was from our perspective something like a small town mayor with his own police force his own army so that in genesis 14 for example when the the four kings from the north under cater leomar go on raiding parties farther south and are met by the king of sodom and five kings in that case and they have a pitched battle you're talking of it most a few thousand people it's a running fight and so it's not it's not thousands and thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of troops on the plains of central europe but it is it's not that bad at all do you do you see so one of the ways you tried to avoid getting embroiled in local politics with raiding parties from this kingdom two towns down the road or that kingdom five ten towns down the road in another direction with their own raiding parties doing this or that is you made alliances with him and the best way of making an alliance was marrying one of the daughters so one of the big reasons why solomon had so many wives is as he expanded his turf he married the daughters the princesses of these kings and of of course that meant that he was an important man because he had all these wives and if he was an important man then you wanted to make an alliance with him so you give him your daughter too and not only so but but they nevertheless were from pagan backgrounds and as they moved into jerusalem pretty soon one or the other of them would would whine and complain you've got your temple to yahweh why can't i have my temple eh that's not fair so eventually solomon in his old age after having overseen the building of the temple of god the permanent form of the tabernacle after uttering that great prayer of dedication that can still move you to tears he's busy building pagan temples in his old age to placate his wives that's what the text says he must not take many wives or his heart will be led astray doesn't mean he will be led astray by sex he'll be led astray by paganism and in other words here is the pursuit of what we would call today networking now there is a kind of networking that is shrewd and wise and making friends and and finding out what you don't know and getting help from other people and so on but there is a kind of networking that is necessarily compromised and that was solomon's kind so the king was not to seek authoritarianism security and not to seek power not to seek this kind of networking not to seek the social approval of others through endless relationships and finally he's not to seek wealth 17b he must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold well of course it takes some silver and gold to run an administration keep the free clean water flowing provide elementary police forces and elementary security social services of one kind or another of course takes silver and gold but it's so easy to seek silver and gold for itself as a marker for who's winning and who's losing as a marker for power and those who want silver and gold eventually end up wanting it so much that it becomes god for them if god is that which you want the most wealth becomes the god for many many people who think that they're atheists but they're not they're materialists it's interesting to observe that in the new testament as in the old there's no top figure for how much you're allowed to have or not have no one says you shall not have an income of more than such and such amount because beyond that it's greedy but but that misses the issue the issue is the heart much closer to biblical fidelity is john wesley in this regard who advised people earn as much as you can give away as much as you can sadly a lot of his hearers only observe the first half do you see but how how can you put a cap on how much you are it's where the heart is that's the issue so now review these four foci these things that are prohibited power security social approval through networking unmitigated wealth all evidence of idolatry the displacing of god by something else this is what you should not do as you launch into your new field of service this is what you should not do as you exercise your leadership roles in company or certainly not in the church it's not what you should look for in a leader it's what you should avoid so that's on the negative side what should you do as you seek to be faithful in your leadership roles what should you be looking for as you seek to appoint a new leader verses 18 to 20 can be summarized very easily they're complex in their detail but the summary is straightforward when he takes the throne of his kingdom he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the levitical priests it is to be with him and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the lord his god and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees so he's appointed day one what's his first job audit the books of his predecessor no make sure he's got a cabinet lined up nope check the security of the nation through the police and military forces no declare a holiday no grant attack spray no what's he supposed to do he's supposed to get a copy of this law now that could refer to the book of deuteronomy or part of it it could refer to the whole first five books what we call today the pentateuch genesis exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy whatever it is he used to get a copy a copy that is controlled by the priests the levites who had responsibility for securing the copies that were around he is to re obtain a copy and then he is to copy it out longhand to make his own copy there were no photocopy machines no digital copies nope he's not even supposed to pass it on to a scribe to do it nope he's to take a quill marker dipping it in ink and write it on a scroll now scrolls in the ancient world were were of two types the more enduring type was made of sheepskin and it was pretty durable and you had a sheepskin rectangle with another sheepskin rectangle with another sheepskin rectangle and you would sew or glue them together those were the more expensive kinds most however were made of papyrus papyrus is a plant grown in abundance in the delta of egypt and it has the constituency of rhubarb or celery fibrous and on the cross section it's triangular so you'd cut a stalk of papyrus and nick one of the edges and pull off a strip and nick another edge and pull off a strip until you had a whole lot of strips together perhaps vertically first then you'd tear off some more strips and put them out horizontally and mush the whole lot together with some sort of organic glue and then let it dry and you had one sheet of papyrus paper with the strips going horizontally on one side and vertically on the other side you see and then you make another sheet of papyrus paper and then another sheet and when you had 30 or 40 sheets and you had glued them or sewed them together you had a book you had a scroll one of the reasons i'm convinced why we have luke acts two books by the same author extending the same story is because you you can get a copy of luke on 30 34 pages of papyrus and then the scroll is big enough thank you very much you start another school for book two the book of acts do you see and so most times people wrote if they're writing in greek from left to right or writing in hebrew from right to left they wrote on the inside of the scroll where the strips were going horizontally they wouldn't write on the outside of the scroll because although there was as much surface area on the outside as on the inside the strips were going the wrong way and your your quill pen was bumping across all those little strips do you see but already some of you who know your bibles better remember that that in the right hand of god in the great vision of revelation 4 and 5 he is holding a scroll written on both sides why on both sides can he afford another one there were two reasons for writing on both sides in the ancient world either because you wanted everything that you were saying to be in one place you put it on two scrolls and you've got to double the chance of losing a copy do you see or because you were too poor to buy a new blank scroll now you cannot imagine that god is too poor to provide an extra scroll so it must be because what's in that scroll in the right hand of the almighty is such a vision of all of god's purposes for judgment and blessing that he wants them all in one place it's a unified vision it's a comprehensive amount do do do you see that's part of the symbolism that runs right through scripture so here he is to take a scroll and start writing out the words of this law and he's to do it carefully because this is to become his own personal reading copy he's not to dash it off using his own shorthand a little bit of pitmans for ancient hebrew nothing like that he's supposed to write it out with such clarity letter by letter letter by letter that this becomes his own personal reading copy all the days of his life were told did you notice that it's quite dramatic he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the levitical priests it is to be with him and he is to read it all the days of his life in other words he's to have his devotions from it have you ever pictured people in the ancient world having their devotions well most people couldn't have their devotions the way we do because they didn't have copies it was too expensive they spent a lot more time memorizing text but at least that king should have his own copy for goodness sake there was no way to download it from the cloud onto your hard drive without it passing through anybody's brain which is the way we get a lot of books today including some of our bibles there's no way of doing that nor is it a question just of dictating it it's already been dictated it's written down it's a question of writing it so slowly that you're checking the accuracy as you go word by word sentence by sentence paragraph by paragraph with great clarity because this becomes your devotion copy there might be bigger copies for the rise of synagogues later but this is your own personal copy of god's most holy word that's your first job in leadership your first job absolute priority now there are several reasons that are reduced for having this priority number one by this means you will learn to fear the lord your god and all of his words isn't that remarkable use revere if you prefer but it is it is to tremble before the word of god that's the language of isaiah the prophet in chapter 66 god looks to those who are humble and contrite and in spirit and who tremble at his word i spend my life interacting with with biblical scholars from around the world some of whom are not believers in any sense at all but they they still write intelligibly about the word of god what you what you miss from their writings is any fear even when they're exegetically accurate you miss the fear so by learning to copy it all out line by line i i sometimes wonder if these if these brother scholars of mine would would actually write out the word of god word by word word by word by word if if they wouldn't recapture something of the fear of the lord and then second they are to follow this word entirely look at the text it is to be with him and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the lord his god number one number two follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees you see it's possible to to be a bible christian in some generic sense you talk to some people do you do you know the word of oh yeah i read it when i was a kid which means they read the lord's prayer and had to memorize some parts of the sermon on the mount in sunday school or whatever but to really know it to follow it carefully what does deuteronomy 24 say about divorce how does that work and how to get does it get integrated with anything else but if you know the word of god you can answer that question and thousands of others like them what does amos contribute to the canon what would we lose if we lost zechariah but if you start copying it out letter by letter word by word and then reading it every day every day you see there's the advantage of devotional reading it shapes your mind it's not that as you read you've never read this before many many is the time still in my advancing years when i read something in the word of god and i think boy i've forgotten that at a deep level it's tucked into my memory somewhere i've i've read the bible so many times i know quite a lot of the text i'm still learning stuff and to read it again and again and again and again day by day is not just to feel pious devotional in that sense but to shape how you think as in the computer world garbage in garbage out if what you feed your mind is incidental stuff or merely secular stuff or lots of entertainment but never anything from the word of god then you'll have a garbagey mind when i first started teaching at trinity evangelical divinity school we had a chap teaching people homiletics how to preach called lloyd perry lloyd perry was famous for his one-liners one of his best one-liners was this you're not what you think you are but what you think you are well after all that's what proverbs says as a man thinks in his heart so is he did you see so that if your mind is steeped in scripture you're a scriptural person if your mind is not steeped in scripture you're not a biblical person that's what the text says doesn't use exactly those words but it's what it says so that he may learn to revere the lord as god and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees number three one of the reasons why you're to act this way is so that you will not think of yourself as superior to others verse 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow israelites nothing induces genuine non-artificial humility as much as reading the bible again and again and again and just as because you are as corrupt as i am just as you can read the bible and pat yourself on the back because you're reading the bible i mean you know it's good for you but but you you know that you're on the good side today because you're reading the bible and pat yourself on the back and give yourself a few extra brownie points and maybe god will remember that when you get to heaven i know you don't think that because you're a gospel grace person but but deep down your motives are a bit crooked anyway or maybe you're so holy you never get tempted that way i i confess i'm still tempted that way but then you read on a little more and a little more and you find yourself thinking less of yourself and more about god and the wonder of his ways and what he was doing in this chapter and how does this relate to another chapter and what this says for the ancient society and how it should or should not be applied to our society today and gradually it teaches you a certain kind of humility it's hard to be arrogant when you stand beside the cross it's hard to be arrogant when you're genuinely steeped in scriptures that make you fear god and finally not consider himself better than his fellow israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left that is one of the reasons for committing yourself to such reading of scripture is so that you will not turn from god's ways to the right or to the left whether it's god's ways is disclosed under the old covenant or god's ways as disclosed under the terms of the new they're still revealed in scripture we'll come to that in the second session this morning and this sort of lesson is driven home repeatedly in scripture let me tell you now why this passage is paradigmatic of a lot of other passages this one we have seen is addressed to a would-be king centuries after moses is passed from this world he dies at 1350 give or take a century saul is in the 11th century the end of the 11th century david at the beginning of the 10th so three centuries have passed between moses and the rise of the monarchy so when this was first addressed it was it was not addressed to someone in particular it was addressed to a leader a king who would be appointed it was addressed to the people who would appoint him what kind of people they want to look for and thus becomes paradigmatic of leadership in the people of god whether under the old covenant or the new and when you stop to think through what similar passages of scripture might be called into play let me remind you of a few joshua 1 joshua takes over leadership from moses and he is told in the very first chapter this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth you shall meditate in it day and night for then you shall make your way prosperous and then you shall have good success so he doesn't have to be called king he is a leader he is a leader of the covenant community of god and one of the things he's got to do is is so meditate on the word of god day and night that it shapes his direction his priorities and so on is that any less an obligation for us in other words leadership in the people of god turns not only on some god-given skills relational strengths and ability to conceptualize the future and entrepreneurial get up and go and all the kinds of gifts and graces that are bound up with certain kinds and styles of leadership of course of course but more fundamentally than all of them you've got to think god's thoughts after him but then there are other passages there are other passages even in the book of deuteronomy turn back to deuteronomy chapter 8. there moses addresses the people as a whole and says be careful to follow every command i am giving you today so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the lord promised on oath to your ancestors remember how the lord your god led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years etc etc etc verse 3 he humbled you causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the lord yet the truth of the matter is there were several junctures when the covenant people of god cried to god sometimes in anger sometimes in desperation because they were a bit hungry or because they wanted a change of diet the man is okay god but we like some meat you know it would be nice to have a bit of garlic but i cannot think of a single passage where the people of god are crying out to him saying reveal more of yourself we need more of your words to do you see and of course you cannot read a passage like deuteronomy chapter 8 without thinking of matthew 4 and luke 4 when jesus is tempted by the devil and he responds by several biblical quotations one from deuteronomy 8 verse 3. command these stones that they become bread well there's nothing wicked about that i mean it's not as if the devil tempts jesus to go and shack up with a prostitute or rob a bank or club a policeman on the head or start a revolution just turn some stones into bread make a sandwich for yourself for goodness sake a little bit of miraculous power thrown in no doubt but there's nothing intrinsically wicked about that but of course in the context of jesus ministry it would mean that he is using his god-given gifts for his own comfort whereas in fact he has been sent on a mission where he is a human being with so many of the constraints and limitations of human beings he he asks his heavenly father for his daily bread and it is a sufficient answer for him to say don't you understand as hungry as i may be man does not live by bread only but by every word that comes from the mouth of god at a theoretical level that's easy to understand even easy to emphasize with at a practical level to see it at a practical level you you probably have to be ridiculously poor or part of a persecuted minority in some corner of the world and i have known christians in various corners of the world that have walked exactly that path and they find delight in every word that comes from the mouth of god or consider the psalms psalm 1 provides a contrast between a just person and an unjust person there are a lot of ways you could distinguish between the two camps what's interesting is the initial disjunction in verses 1 and 2. you might want to open up psalm 1 unless you've already got it memorized psalm 1 has six verses in verses 1 2 and 3 the righteous person is summarized in verses 4 the unrighteous one is summarized and in verse six there's a final summarizing contrast so go to verse one here the righteous person is described negatively what he or she is not like blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers he doesn't do this he doesn't do that he doesn't that's what they're not like that's what the righteous person is not like but positively what they're like is verse two but his delight is in the law of the lord and on his law he meditates day and night now you folks will know that an awful lot of hebrew poetry is based on parallelism you say something then you say it again a slightly different way or you say something and then you utter the negation so that the contrast stands out so what you'd expect verses one and two to be to say to how you'd expect them to be put together is something like this verse one blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of the ungodly or sit in the seat of str of mockers that's what you'd expect roughly parallel saying roughly the same thing maybe intensifying a bit and then verse two in contrast but rather he walks in the way of the righteous he stands in the seat of the humble in the way of the humble he sits in the seat of the praising you'd expect something that that would reflect a contrast with the three propositions of verse one do you see but but instead of that the author moved along by the spirit of god offers one simple criterion as countervailing power to the description of verse 1. in verse 1 he does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of walkers what does he do he delights in the word of god and on his law he meditates day and night he thinks about it like a tree planted by streams of water verse three now he's described metaphorically and evergreen whose fruit comes along at the appropriate season whose leaf doesn't wither always showing signs of life he meditates on it day and night and that is enough to overturn the pressures to walk in the in the ways of the of of the ungodly or to stand in the seat of in in the ways of sinners and to sit in the seat of mockers it it overturns all of that the word of god so shapes one's mind that that that you become what you think and what you think is bible steeped do do you see or again in proverbs how shall a young man cleanse his way except by taking heed according to your word or some psalms if you want to have any godly reflections on how to think about the bible read psalm 119. he'll give you 176 of them or think of the words of the lord jesus on the night that he's betrayed according to john chapter 17 he prays sanctify them through your truth your word is truth you never ever get genuine sanctification in christians without massive infusion of the word of god that becomes bedrock reason for preaching and teaching and studying together god's most holy word because if you're a christian you want to be sanctified don't you it's inconceivable that you don't want to be if you're a christian that is achieved not least by the word of god well there is so much more that can be teased out but this is enough to be getting on with i do not want to give the impression even for a moment that this is merely mechanical i have known some great scholars who memorized vast quantities of holy scripture and have technical skills and can handle the hebrew and the greek and all the rest who nevertheless aren't christians i've even met some atheists along these lines so i don't want to give the impression that this is merely a mechanical thing a verse a day keeps the devil away because it's not mechanical with it must also come a hearing heart and repentance and faith and humility before the living god the secret powerful transforming work of the spirit but although being steeped in scripture does not guarantee holiness not being steeped in scripture guarantees unholiness for jesus even in his own prayer life has ordained that it's through the ministry of the word that we are to be sanctified let us pray so hear us lord god as we come before your word not only this day of conference but in our churches and in our homes again and again grant to us such a delight in thinking your thoughts after you that it will be more precious to us even in our daily food in jesus name amen

Channel: The Gospel Coalition Canada

Views: 6,181

Rating: 4.9411764 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: gmktP1VuzQo

Length: 55min 52sec (3352 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020