Ordinary Wonder
It’s 2023, a new year, new possibilities, fresh excitement, vision, plans, strategies, high hopes…but nothing sounds more ordinary, plain, and run of the mill like reading our bible.
Psalm 119 is designed to remedy this faulty perspective and give us a refreshed and awakened affections for the word of God. We see in verses 129-131 two themes that dominate this 176 verse adoration of God’s word: Love and longing.
129 Your testimonies are wonderful;
therefore my soul keeps them.
130 The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple.
131 I open my mouth and pant,
because I long for your commandments.
Psalm 119:129-131
It is clear that to the Psalmist, the Word of God is a delight, a treasure, and a wonder. For more examples of the Psalmists love for the Word of God, read verses 14,16,24,47,54,62,71-72, 103, 127,140,159,161-164,167,172
Therefore, because he loves it, he also longs for the Word with a deep desire and craving. For more examples of the Psalmists longing for the Word of God, read verses 20, 31, 40, 50,52,81-88.
Why is this?
“No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God's word. Nothing can substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture. The reasons for this are obvious. In the Bible, God tells us about himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. The Bible unfolds the law of God to us and shows us how we've all broken it. There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing substitute for breakers of God's law, and how we must repent and believe in Him to be right with God. In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord. We find in scripture how to live in a way that is pleasing to God as well as best and most fulfilling for ourselves. None of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except the Bible. Therefore, if we would know God and be Godly, we must know the word of God intimately.” Donald Whitney – Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
But our everyday experience may not be so filled with this love and longing. For most of us, our daily bible reading, if we get to it, feels far more ordinary and difficult. Why is this?
Barriers To Our Wonder in the Word
We battle three key enemies: The world, the flesh, and the devil. These enemies make it a constant battle to truly enjoy God through his Word.
We live and work in a fallen world that is full of the curse, temptations, and the 1000 normal parts of human life that are so distracting.
We still battle with our old flesh which wages war against the Spirit within us (see Galatians 5:16-17), actively opposing any effort we have to engage and commune with God.
And the Devil is constantly prowling, with his minions in tow, looking for ways to draw us away.
“…the flesh hates everything about God. Since it resists everything about God, it resists every way we try to taste him and know him and love him. And the more something enables us to find God and feast on him, the more violently the flesh fights against it. Kris Lungaard, ‘The Enemy Within’
So how do we overcome these barriers?
Breaking Through To Wonder in the Word
This Psalm teaches us two ways to breakthrough
First up, prayer. We need to plead before we read. The Psalmist was not able to naturally just read and enjoy the Word and love God. He needed divine and supernatural help, and so he prayed:
18 Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law…
36 Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to selfish gain!
37 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways.
Do you see how the Psalmist is pleading with God for eyes to see, a heart that is inclined, and the strength to look away at the trivial and sinful to the beauty of the word?
We must plead before we read. We cannot enjoy God without God helping us to do it. The world, the flesh and the devil are too powerful for us to overcome.
Are you constantly coming to God and pleading for the eyes to see and the heart to love Him through his word?
Secondly, a plan. We need a plan to read, study, meditate and delight in God’s Word. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Our enemies are too strong for us to go into this most essential task without a strategic battle plan.
11 I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
16 I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word.
The Psalmist worked hard by committing to read, study, memorise, and obey God’s Word. And so must we. But this requires work, hard work.
“We fail in our duty to study God’s Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because is it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy…The problem of slothfulness has been with us since the curse of the fall. Our labour is now mixed with sweat. Weeds are easier to grow than grass. Newspapers are easier to read than the Bible is to study. The curse of labour is not magically removed simply because it is the study of Scripture that is our task. RC Sproul
In order to overcome this natural and sinful laziness, we all must have answers to these questions:
When are you going to read?
Where are you going to read?
What are you going to read?
How long are you going to read for?
SG Parra Bible Reading Plan
Perhaps you may want to sign up to the SG Parra Bible Reading Plan for 2023 (a.k.a the Vargordi Plan). This plan will take you through one chapter of the New Testament and one chapter of the Proverbs every day for 260 days. In that time you will have read the whole New Testament by mid-October. Each day Andrew will post the reading and a simple done ✅. And you reply the same saying done ✅. That way there is a little bit of community, continuity, and accountability.
You can sign up to the Whatsapp group from the link in your Life Group chat or by reaching out to Rebecca Song at admin@sgparra.org.au. Of course, there’s no pressure or expectation that anyone does it, but it is there to help!
Digging For Diamonds
Does all of this sound too hard? Let me share a few final quotes to encourage you.
“When my sons complain that a book is too hard to read, I say, “Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.” John Piper
“Do not expect to master to the Bible in a day or a month or a year. Rather, expect often to be puzzled by its contents. It is not at all equally clear. Great men of God often like absolute novices when they read the word. The apostle Peter said that there were some things hard to understand in the Epistles of Paul (2 Peter, 3:16). I'm glad he wrote those words because I have felt that often. So do not really expect always to get an emotional charge or a feeling of quiet peace when you read the Bible. By the grace of God, you may expect that to be a frequent experience, but often you will get no emotional response at all. Let the word break over your heart and mind again and again as the years go by, and imperceptibly there will come great changes in your attitude and outlook and conduct. You will probably be the last to recognise these. Often you will feel very, very small because increasingly the God of the Bible will become to you wonderfully great. So go on reading it until you can read no longer and then you will not need the Bible anymore. Because when your eyes close for the last time in death and never again read the Word of God in Scripture you will open them to the Word of God in the flesh, that same Jesus of the Bible whom you have known for so long, standing before you, to take you forever to His eternal home.” Geoffrey Walsh
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” Don Carson
Your Words Are Wonderful
Friends, please consider how you can position yourself to dig for diamonds in Scripture! Your hard work will be rewarded over time. Over time, you will be able to join in with the Psalmist and declare boldly and joyfully: “Your words are wonderful”!
Listen to ‘Your Words Are Wonderful’ by Sovereign Grace Music
Listen to the sermon from Sunday
