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I have quite a bit to say this evening, so much so that I’ll have to finish this message up the week following Easter.
And the reason is because this is such an important topic—one which is on my heart, and which I felt necessary to bring to you this evening.
And because I have so much to say, I’m hard-pressed to introduce this topic the way it needs to be.
So I’ll try to keep this introduction brief.
The truth is in a war.
In Genesis 3, we come across the very first question in history.
Before this there were no questions, only answers.
And this is really a question that questions God.
The serpent has approached Eve in the garden, and his question is, “Hath God said?”
His strategy: get Eve to question the word of God.
Get her to elevate her own mind above what God has said, and to trust her own reason.
Did God /really/ say that?
Could God be so indifferent to your happiness?
How could God be so needlessly restrictive?
And you know the story.
Eve acquiesced and ate, and Adam ate, and the human race plunged into sin.
This is the first attack ever on the truth, and it’s marked a long and arduous war, which has raged ever since.
And you and I are soldiers in this war, fighting spiritual battles.
And who is our enemy?
“Speculations”, Paul says, “and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”
Our enemy is not man, but the speculations of man and their ideological fortresses which they have constructed in their minds.
And what are our weapons?
They are “not of the flesh, but /divinely/ powerful for the destruction” of these fortresses.
And in Ephesians 6:17, we find our weapon: it is the sword of the Spirit, which is the very Word of God.
And like good soldiers, we need to /know/ our weapon.
We need to know what it is capable of, and how we are to wield it.
We need to become master swordsmen.
And to do that, we need to be instructed by the Master, himself.
We need to let God tell us about capabilities of our weapon.
Of all the texts that speak on this subject, there’s no more comprehensive a passage than that which is found in the nineteenth psalm.
We find in this psalm a passage of amazing comprehensiveness.
While the writer of Psalm 119 pours out his heart for the law over the span of 176 verses, David does so in our psalm in just eight.
The passage is succinct and yet comprehensive in nature, expressing vast amounts of information in a very short time, and so for our purposes here this evening it’s ideal.
And so tonight I want to take us into verses 7-9 of Psalm 19 so we can get a look at the nature and the character of God’s amazing Word, our weapon in this Great War on truth.
Notice how David organizing these verses.
We have here a series of six statements, each parallel, yet each expressing a distinct aspect of Scripture.
And there are really three parts to these statements.
Scripture is given a name: The “law”, the “testimony”, the “precepts” and “commandments”.
And really these names all refer to Scripture as a whole, so we can’t put too much stress on the individual designations, except that they do emphasize a certain nature of Scripture.
Scripture is also given a description.
It “is perfect”, “pure” and “right”, “pure, “clean” and “true.”
They are the inherent nature of Scripture.
Third, Scripture is given an effect.
It is not idle.
It is not void of power.
Scripture has profound effect upon man, having the power to “restore”, and “make wise,” “rejoice” and “enlighten.”
And this, you’ll notice, is a comprehensive effect.
It reaches every facet of man, from the “soul” and “mind”, to the “heart” and “eyes.”
Every area of man comes under the scrutiny and the commanding power of the Word.
And we will look at these in more detail in a moment, but I first want to point out the one common element in these three verses.
It is a phrase that is repeated, word for word, six times.
It is the phrase, “of the Lord,” and I really do feel I need to take a moment to unpack this because it really is central to the rest of this passage.
If you would go all the way back to verse 1 of this psalm, you’ll notice David states that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God.”
And really David is stating the obvious fact that creation testifies to its creator.
He looks up into the sky and sees the handiwork of God.
He saw in creation the irrefutable evidence of the existence and the glory of God.
He saw, as Paul wrote in Romans, “His eternal power and divine nature.”
And notice the word David uses for “God” in verse 1.
He uses the Hebrew word /El/, which is the root word of the name /Elohim/.
This name denotes a sense of power in the creative act.
It’s saying that what we see around us is a testimony to the power of God to create.
But /El/ is also the most general term used in Scripture to designate God.
It is, on occasion, even used to designate false gods.
But David does not use /El/ in verse 7.
He uses revealed name of God, /Yahweh/, and he uses it /six times/.
This is God’s special name, the name He gave to Israel in Exodus 3:14, a name that is /never/ used of false gods.
This is the special, revealed name of God, and it seems that David is making a point that we may know /of /God because of His creation, but cannot know /Him/ unless He reveals Himself specifically to us.
For the first six verses of Psalm 19, David speaks of the created world testifying of God, and only once does he use the word “God”, and when he does, he uses the most general term.
But when he speaks of Scripture, he uses the /revealed /name /Yahweh/, and he uses it six times.
This is why theologians refer to two different kinds of revelations, /general/ revelation, as seen through creation, and /special/ revelation as seen in the Word of God.
It is because as clear as nature is, it can only point us to the fact that there’s a creator.
And He’s a powerful creator, with immense complexity, and a love for beauty and order.
But that’s about as far as it goes.
In order to know God personally and intimately, man has to have further revelation.
God has to reveal Himself to us, and He does so through His word.
The late Dr. Carl Henry, in his work, /God, Revelation and Authority/, defined revelation as God’s “gracious forfeiture of His personal privacy so His creatures might know Him.”
He didn’t have to reveal Himself.
He chose to because it pleased Him.
Looking back at Genesis even a cursory reading points out that man could know nothing unless God told him.
Here he was, surrounded by the wonder and beauty of the pre-Fall creation in the middle of the garden, and he had to be told directly from the mouth of God to tend the soil, to have babies, to name the animals.
Man could know nothing personally of God and of what God’s purpose was for him through creation alone.
So, coming back to our Psalm, it’s important to see this phrase as a clear and distinct indication of the divine source of Scripture.
It’s repeated six times for emphasis.
God, the Lord of all things, the great self-existent God, /Yahweh/, has revealed Himself to us!
And what I want to point out to you is the fact that your view of God has a direct bearing on your view of His word.
How big is your God? How important is He to you?
Because I’ll show you how important He is to you by how you view and relate to His word, and how much you’re in it.
How can the swordsman wield the sword if he doesn’t think highly of the blacksmith who made it?
David wrote in Psalm 138:2, “For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”
You show me a man who has a high view of God, and I’ll show you a man who loves God’s Word, because he knows this is where His God makes Himself known.
You show me a man who has a low view of God, and I’ll show you a man who isn’t in the Word, because there’s nothing of importance to find there.
True believers love the Word, their heart-cry is for the Word, like the psalmist, they proclaim, “I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.”
Because they know that there is a God revealed in those statutes that is worth knowing.
And so they cry with a loud voice, “With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.”
Now, let’s take a closer look at our sword.
We know its maker, its source, so let’s look at its character.
We find in verses 7 to 9 six statements about the character and work of Scripture that we need to know as soldiers in order to wield it properly.
The first is in verse 7: *“The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.”*
Scripture is referred to here as “law”.
And this is not necessarily denoting /just/ the Ten Commandments.
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