God's Word - Our Joy

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Will you please turn over in your Bibles with me to Psalm 1. Psalm 1, if you're using the Pew Bibles, the New King James Pew Bibles, the red ones in front of you, you'll find that on page 481. And if this is, maybe you're newer to the church, or you're visiting, you are stepping into an annual tradition. And as I say, almost every year, it's nothing more than a tradition. But each year, I try to devote one Lord's Day to preaching on encouraging you to be in God's word. to read God's Word, to meditate on God's Word, to memorize, to sing, and to use that ordinary means of grace that God uses to build us up. So turn with me to Psalm 1.

Blessed is a man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. And we know that it does not return void. But Father, we pray that as we hear your word preached, Father, we pray that it would be Even though it is ordinary, it would be a means of grace used by you for building us up in our faith. Lord, and for those who do not know you, that it may become effectual to them for salvation as they hear, receive, and rest in you. Lord, please let your spirit be working now in Jesus' name, amen. I grew up in an area of Southern California that was pretty arid, but we had sprinklers, right? Sprinklers are something unheard of in the Midwest.

Sermon

We don't like mowing our grass, most of us, and we don't want it to grow big and green and tall, but in California, people spent big dollars to have green grass. Well, sprinklers didn't always get everywhere in our backyard, and one of the houses I grew up in, there was a tree The backyard had a little bit of an angle in it, and there was a tree in the very far back that was just out of the reach of the irrigation system.

The sprinklers just barely touched the edge of it. And so they got enough water that it was green sometimes, but it never actually had any fruit. It was an apricot tree. And it would produce these little hard, pity, nasty things that nobody wanted to eat. You just let them fall on the ground and you run them over with a lawnmower. They weren't any good. That's what happens when a tree doesn't get the nutrients that it has.

And I'd like to propose to you that sometimes that's what it's like being a Christian. Trying to live our lives, live the Christian life to be a fruitful tree, but not actually having the nourishment of God's word that gives vitality and fruit. And so this morning as we go through, I want you to know that God does not want you to be that withering apricot tree that's not good for much.

But as we come to Psalm 1, really a gateway to the Psalter, we find two contrasting different people. The first is the way of the righteous, and the way of the righteous is clearly here rooted in God's word, and the second is the way of the wicked, and their way leads to destruction. And I hope by the end of this sermon, you will have to ask yourself, which path am I on? Which person am I in this story, or in this psalm?

And as we enter into 2025, I pray that we would consider how meditating on God's word day and night would shape our lives, rooting us in the covenant of grace, and the good news of Jesus Christ. But I hope that you also won't walk out of here, this is a thing we'll get into later, I hope you won't just come to this with legalism, thinking that if you just pick up one of the Bible reading plans in the back and you check the box each day that somehow you're going to be a super saint or God's gonna love you for it.

It's about having a vital relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And so first, I'd like for you to look with me at verses 1 and 2 about the blessed life. What is this blessed life being abundantly and rooted in God? Look with me at verses 1 and 2. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight It's in the law of the Lord.

And in his law, he meditates day and night. There's no doubt that God desires, as a good father, to give good gifts to his children. We may be so allergic to health, wealth, and prosperity, gospel-type heresy, that we are afraid of thinking that God actually wants to bless you, but God does. God wants to bless his children. He wants you to have a full life, Christian.

And so I want you to look with me at just a few words here that are extremely interesting. First is the word that this whole psalm starts with, blessed. What does that mean? What does that mean that if we want to be that blessed person, it seems like something good, but what is it? Interestingly, in the Hebrew, there's two different words for blessing. The first is baruch, which is oftentimes referring to something regarding somebody's interaction with God. But that's not the word used here. This word here is a different word in Hebrew, it's asherah.

And the word asherah often has this idea of an abundant life. It has an idea of happiness, of joy. It's a happiness or a life filled with contentment that comes from a fear of God. That's how ashray is used, that blessing is used in Psalm 112 verse one and 128 verse one. This idea of blessing and a good and happy life is found from those who meditate on God's word. Psalm 119 verse one. This idea of a blessed, happy, good life is said to be for those who consider the poor and who keep justice and love righteousness.

Psalm 41 and Psalm 106. This word for Asherah is the same one that when the Queen of Sheba came days long ago during the reign of Solomon, she came and she met with King Solomon. She was amazed by his wisdom in the kingdom. She said in 1 Kings 10 8, blessed or some translations like ours will say, happy are your men. And happy are your servants who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom. Now I gotta tell you, the first time I heard someone say, well, being blessed in Psalm 1 really just means being happy.

We have such a vapid, empty idea of what happiness is that it almost sounded blasphemous to me. What do you mean God just wants us to be happy? I hate to tell you, God doesn't just want you to walk around sour and dour all your life. He does want you to have joy, to have peace, to have hope, to have fruit abundantly in your life, to have contentment. The word that sums up all of this is either blessing or shalom, peace, wholeness. The Lord wants this in your life. He wants an internal peace that brings external fruits.

But the question that you have to ask yourself then is if God wants me to have that type of peace, joy, contentment, blessing in my life, where do I find it? Well, Psalmist makes no doubt here in mentioning that the blessing of an abundant life is found with a relationship with God.

In our American culture, right, we're such as coming out of Christmas, right, we are such a materialistic, consumeristic type people. We just think that either if we have all the stuff that we could possibly want, then we'll be happy. If our stuff just stops breaking and we could just stop doing maintenance on everything, then we'll finally be happy. If we just had all the money in the world, then all of our cares and concerns would be gone and we would be happy.

But that's not what the psalmist tells us. It's not what the scriptures as a whole tell us. Job 5.17 says, blessed is the one whom God reproves. Therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. Whoa, that's our same word for happy, did you get it?

Job 5.17, we can change out blessed there for its synonym in our English, happy. Happy is the one whom God reproves. Man, that doesn't sound like what we think about. Kids, how happy are you? How filled with joy are you when your dad reproves you for doing something wrong?

But you know it's for your good. You know it's because they want to love you and show you a better way for life. Psalm 16, verse 11 says, in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Philippians 4.4, rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

If you're trying to find your blessedness, if you're trying to find your happiness, your joy, your peace, your contentment, and anything other than God, you're always going to be sorely disappointed. Your spouse can't give you ultimate joy. Your job will not give you ultimate security. Your things will not sustain you all your life. They will break. And if you have kids, you know they'll break. This is life.

But we rejoice not in just the things of this world or the relationships of this world, but our ultimate joy, our ultimate peace, our ultimate sense of blessing comes from God himself. So our joy, our blessing must be found specifically in Jesus Christ, the one who took our sins upon himself, the one who left us peace, not like the world gives, but a true eternal peace. And so I just wanna encourage you that the abundant Christian life is not marked by material wealth. There's plenty of poor Christians that I know, I mean, desperately poorer than you can imagine Christians. who are filled with the joy of the Lord.

And when I'll talk to them in foreign countries, and I'll ask how they're doing, I remember talking to one guy, he's a Chinese dude, I mean this guy was poor as pork can get. I asked how he was doing, and he in his very broken English said, I'm blessed brother, I'm blessed. The guy didn't even have food to eat that day. But he had a contentment, a joy, a blessing that nobody could take away.

When we delight in the Lord and in His Word, His Word shows us who He is. It's not just a raw discipline saying, we must just read God's Word, read God's Word, read God's Word. No, I'm trying to encourage you, go to God's Word and find God. Go to God's Word and soak up Christ. As we meditate on His Word, we grow in our intimacy with Him and we find strength for the trials of this life. And I'm encouraging you each year to go and to read God's word and to be in his scriptures.

It's not about slavish rule keeping, but it's about soaking in the life-giving water for your soul. So you might be able to say it as well with my soul. This delight transforms how we live. Because as we come to God's Word, as we receive it by faith, and we lay it up in our heart, then what happens is we start practicing it in our lives. God changes us from the inside out as the Spirit works through His Word. There might be some of you who are somewhat skeptical of this, and that's understandable. You might ask things like, why should I even read the Bible? Because this is how you experience and come in contact with the living God himself. Scriptures reveal his character. Scriptures reveal God's grace. Scriptures show us the plan of redemption, how God bought us for himself.

So, okay. You don't have to. It's a free country. It's your life. You have to make the choice. If you want to just ignore the greatest story that's ever been told and believed by billions of people, that's your choice. I try to encourage you. Maybe it might be worth the effort to pick up the book and read. Make the judgment for yourself. Many skeptics have found their lives radically changed by picking up the book.

But notice, it's not just about this blessed man, but I want to point you that there's competing values in this world. It's not just the scriptures that you could listen to, and you need to be careful who you take counsel from. Look with me at verse one.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. There is a willingness that we find in each one of these descriptions here. It's talking about blessing, but when it's talking about blessing, the psalmist starts with us with the negative. Sometimes it's easier to show things or more illustrative if you use it by the negative than the positive. And that's how the Lord starts here, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly.

Calvin and Matthew Poole both point out that this walking is a casual acceptance of ungodly counsel. You're just walking along with someone, you're talking with them. And so, who is it in your life that you find yourself walking along, working beside, interacting with, who gives you counsel, and they're not the godly person. They're not giving you biblical counsel.

Be careful. Be careful of walking in the counsel of the ungodly. But notice, it's not just a walking in the counsel of the ungodly, but it progresses from that. Nor stands in the paths of sinners. This is not just walking along, you're going on in your normal life, but now it's okay, I'm standing here, I'm intently listening to you. I wanna soak up what you're saying, I want to have a settled participation in your advice and even possibly in your sin. Brothers and sisters, don't stand in the path of sinners. There's a way that leads unto destruction, even though it seems right in the eyes of men, and God says, don't stand in that path.

But notice the last one, there's a final part of this, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. No longer is this person in the psalmist walking along the way with acquaintances they may have, or standing amongst people that they might know better, but now they're even sitting with them. This idea that now there's a fellowship, there's a communion, I'm friends with you and I'm gonna fully soak in what you're saying to me here. God says that's not the way of blessing. To sit in the seat of the scornful, those who would mock God and his righteousness. This isn't just a Psalm 1 type thing. The New Testament says this as well. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 33. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts. good habits. I wonder why the Lord started that phrase off, evil company corrupts good habits, with the words, do not be deceived.

It's easy for us to soak in all sorts of advice from the world around us. Sometimes we're like sponges, dry sponges that are put in the world and we'll just soak up what other people say, because there's a part of it that sounds good and a part of it that sounds right. But we need to be careful. Don't be deceived. Bad company, evil company corrupts good habits. And so be discerning in seeking counsel. There's challenges that we have in our modern era.

And I'm not saying that the Bible is going to answer every single question that you have. It cannot tell me the difference between a deck screw and a machine screw. The Bible can't tell me that. That's not what it was written for. So you use the Bible for what it is, but there are times in our lives that, what screw do I use? It may not be able to tell me what the difference in the screws are, but it certainly will tell me whether or not I'm using the cheaper screw to steal from my neighbor. It might endanger somebody's life if I'm making something that somebody could, they could fall apart and they could die. What am I loving more, people or money? There's information gaps we have. There's things that we struggle with in this life. We're always having to reach out and get information from other people, but we must take all the advice, all the information that people give us in this world, and we must put it through the biblical filter of God's word.

I mean, if you wanna take investing advice from somebody like Warren Buffett, that's fine. The guy's a billionaire. Okay, you're probably gonna get good financial investment. But did you know that Warren Buffett's charitable foundation is one of the biggest foundations that's donating money to try to perpetuate abortion in America?

Maybe we should take a step back and ask, what are the business ethics behind? What's he advising? Great, he can make a lot of money, but is this the best biblical advice? Are we putting it through our filter of God's word and saying, hold on, does this line up with the Lord's will? We must go to the Lord's word as our ultimate counsel. Why, right? It's more precious than gold. It's sweeter than honey. It tells us the way of wisdom. It shows us the path of righteousness. It brings us into relationship with God.

So I just wanna encourage you And as you do what this tells us, meditating on God's word day and night, that you let God's word guide your decisions to shape your life and your character. This idea of meditating on his word in verse two, meditating on his law day and night is thinking it over, chewing it over, considering it. As you read God's word, wrestling with it, wrestling with how does this apply in my life, And what happens is, as we go to God's Word, there's a tree that flourishes because it draws from pure living streams. And there might be some of you who are more skeptical about this, and you think, I'm still not fully convinced that this is good for me, Brian.

Maybe I shouldn't be so committed to the Word itself. I want to just, again, say that There are people who have come to God's Word. One of my favorites, there are two examples here, is C.S. Lewis himself. One of the most prolific authors of the 20th century, or most important authors of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, the writers of the Chronicles of Narnia, wasn't always a Christian.

And it wasn't until he started to read the scriptures himself and the Holy Spirit started to work in his heart that he realized the beauty and the majesty of God and the depths of the story and how the Holy Spirit changed his life because he picked up the book and read.

And there was a professor I had when I was doing my church history studies. And Dr. Woodbridge, I remember he was a son of a missionary. He spoke French natively, because he grew up in West Africa, speaking French on the missions field with his parents. He grew up in his young adult life, he was an atheist. I mean, his dad was a seminary professor. And in his young adult life, he just thought, I don't want anything to do with this. And he was a self-proclaimed atheist.

Until one day his dad gave him Bibles to smuggle into a foreign country. And Dr. Woodbridge would still sit there and say, I don't know why I was taking these Bibles into a foreign country. My dad gave them to me, so fine, I was doing it. But then he started to pick up the book and read for himself.

And God radically changed his life. And he showed him that all the despair and all the angst that he had over the entire fallen and broken world around him that he saw only made sense with a good God who still provided redemption for sinful people. There have been skeptics who have come to God's word and have found themselves profoundly changed. So I'd like to challenge you, if you've been one of the people who have said, I'm not sure if I really need to read my Bible, or maybe you've been hesitant to, Okay, fine.

That's your choice, but you're missing out on a document that has formed Western thought for the last 2,000 years. One of the most influential books in the world. If that's your level of pride and you don't want to stay in your ignorance, that's fine. That's your choice. But I think any wise thinking person, even an atheist or a skeptic would say, at least I want to know what the book actually says myself when I make judgments about it. So worry yourself. But thirdly, there's a beautiful picture here. Look with me at verse three.

This picture of the blessed man. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. These streams, right, this whole picture is this tree, and at first it's planted by rivers of water. This is a continuous stream of God's word, ensuring vitality and growth for this blessed man.

It's a fruitfulness that comes in God's timing and not through human effort. A few things I want to point out here that we may quickly pass over is, first, notice it doesn't say the types of fruit. It could be the fruits of righteousness, as the books of Colossians and Galatians talk about, or Ephesians, or it could be talking about fruits of the Spirit, like Ephesians talks about. And the point is, it's a tree that's bearing up good fruits. These are good from its context. This is a wonderful tree. But notice a few other things. It doesn't say how much fruit it's bringing.

There's this thing that happens in the Christian life, sometimes maybe you've seen this. As somebody else is reading their Bible, you'll see certain things going on in their life where they're being sanctified, and you look at the fruits that their life is bearing, and this is so funny how slippery our hearts are. Sometimes as Christians, we can become covetous, wanting other people's good fruit. We want their blessings. We want their contentment. We want what God is doing in their lives. Because we're not happy with what God's doing in our lives. I'm not saying that we shouldn't desire the fruits of the Spirit or the fruits of righteousness. What I'm saying is, trust that if you're in the Lord's Word, if He's loving you and if He's caring for you, He's bringing about the good fruits in your life that He wants you to have at this time.

But also, even in Jesus's parables about the different seeds and they're thrown out on different types of soils, and we often talk about the different types of soils, but did you notice the seed that's cast on good soil, it sprouts up, it has deep roots, it's able to withstand the dry days and the heat of the sun, it bears fruit, some yields 10, other yields 50, other yields 100.

They're all good trees. They're all good plants, but not all of us are going to bear the same amount of fruit because we're not robots. God's not making us on an assembly line. So we bear different types of fruits and different amounts of fruit and so we ought not to covet what other people have going on in their lives. God's grace and his word waters our souls and that's good enough for us. What he's doing in my life is good enough for me. But notice also this last part, that brings forth its fruit in its seasons.

One of the things that was so encouraging to me was, I don't like, like almost any theologian, I don't like everything they say, but one of the things that was interesting to me was when Tim Keller was talking about his walk with the Lord one time. Keller talked about how once his children moved out of the house, His time of devotionals flourished huge. Why? Because he had a lot more time to spend in the evenings reading his Bible.

Some of you, it's your season right now, the fruit that the Lord's bearing in your life is being patient with your children. Some of you, you're in a different season in your life and you have lots more time on your hand and you're able to just delve into God's word and read chapters and chapters and chapters and that's your blessing and that's your season. Some of you are going through seasons of sorrow and depression and sadness and the Lord has a different time and season in your life, right? We don't all bear the same fruit all the time.

Again, you're not a robot. God is providentially caring for you in all seasons of your life. You're going to have hills and you're going to have valleys. By saying that you're going to be blessed here does not mean that you're somehow always going to be on the mountaintop. No, there are going to be seasons of sorrow where you'll have to fight for joy. But we will always seem to want more fruit. Why? We long for that day when we don't just rely on God's word, but when we'll be with him face to face.

And it was lastly, almost lastly here on this, whose leaves shall not wither. I'm convinced that when this says, whose leaves shall not wither, it's not meaning that you're never going to go three seasons. Again, there are seasons on fig trees. There's seasons for the leaves to come out and seasons for the leaves to be dormant. There's seasons for the fruit to show up, seasons for the fruit to not show up. But what I think it means here when it says, whose leaves shall not wither, is the same way I know that I killed the tree in my front yard.

We had mulberry bushes, or mulberry trees. I don't know why the Lord came up with mulberries. They just grow everywhere, and they cause a thorn in my side, in my yard. But I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll go, and I'll chop it down, because it was growing up in the middle of an evergreen tree. And then somebody told me, they said, you know, they sell poison, that once you cut it down, you can put the poison on there, and it will kill that tree from ever growing again.

And I thought, oh, hot dog. I'm going to go to Tractor Supply. I'm going to get some of that poison. I got the tart on. I put it on there. And then guess what happened about four or five months later, all the needles turned brown on that evergreen tree. I tried to kill the weed, but I killed the tree. And the first indication was that the needles were falling off. Its leaves were dying.

I think that's what this is talking about here. Whose leaves shall not wither. It doesn't mean that there's going to be times that you're going to produce more sap and less sap. Times that you're going to have some pine cones, but not others. That's not what this is saying. You're not going to have disease that's killing you from the inside out.

Because when you're watered by God's word, when you're planted in the firm soil, when you're taking seriously that there's weeds that need to be pulled, and that there's dangers in your life that you need to be aware of, and sins that you need to take care of, the Lord grows a healthy plant. So we need God's word, right? It teaches us, it reproves us, it corrects us, it trains us, so we might bear good fruit, that we might be thoroughly equipped for every good work. But you need to test the quality of your work in your life.

I'd like for you to look with me at verses four through six. After speaking of the tree that is planted by the water, notice that the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall. Perish. Did you catch the imagery difference? The righteous, the blessed, those who are in God's word and loving his counsel, they're like a tree.

They're rooted deep, they're in good soil, they're sucking up the water, they've got the nutrients, they're bearing good fruit, but the wicked are like chaff. One of the things that I learned is you don't go for a jog in the country during the harvest time, because you might run by a field where there's a combine. And you might end up breathing in a whole bunch of dust, chaff, coming out of the back end of that combine that the wind is just blowing in your direction. The wicket are like that chaff. When the combine goes through, especially it seems like with the beans, and it's cutting right out of the backside, the wind just takes it away. just blows it into the air. That's what it's like for the wicked, right? They may seem like they have some substance, but at the end of the day, when the hot wind blows, it's just gone. It's just gone.

Psalm 49, 16 through 17 says, do not be afraid when one becomes rich, for when he dies, he shall carry nothing away. It's easy for us, even the psalmist talked about, why did the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? It's easy for us to look at especially material wealth and people's lives, and we might think, God, why did they have such, it's so easy. And why do you seem to prosper them, Lord?

Some of us have spiritually nearsighted. We want to just kind of look at right now, and God's blessing is just right here and right now. I want to encourage you to develop in your life the spiritual long view. Don't become so myopic that you think if somebody has the nice stuff in this life, and they seem to be happy right now, that that's all that matters. Brothers and sisters, there comes a day. It's appointed for every man to die once, and after this, the judgment. Will you stand on the day of judgment?

There's only one way you will. The only way you will stand the hot day of the Lord's wrath on that judgment day is if you are rooted in Jesus Christ. If you have heard from his word about his only son who came and died for your sins and rose again from the dead for your justification. And if he is your only hope, then you will be saved. Then you will be the one who's still standing on the last great day. So don't fret when the wicked become rich. When he dies, he shall carry away nothing. Do you have a true inheritance, a heavenly inheritance no one else can take? That's what the Lord is offering us, giving us in his word.

So what's the quality of your work? Maybe I should say, what's the quality of your joy? What are you hoping in? Where do you go to find water for your parched soul? I wanna encourage you to go to God's word. Reading and meditating on his word is a habit, and I wanna give you just some simple, very practical steps for embedding this into your life. Start small. Start small and be specific.

By the way, some of you are great. Some of you read like the McShane reading plans, and that's great. Some of you read the Professor Grant Horner's plan, and you like to read, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10, 13 chapters a day. Wonderful, that's great. For some of us, we just need to start small. And be specific.

Commit to reading a manageable amount of scripture on a regular basis. Even if it's just one psalm, or a portion of scripture. Maybe you work through the Bible, and it's gonna take you years, but you just read one paragraph a day, or one section a day. If you look at most Bibles, if you go to the Gospels, you'll find a story, and it's normally bracketed by a heading. Maybe just go from one heading to the next heading. In a couple years, you will have read through the whole Bible. Yeah, you might not do it in a year, but you'll be watering your soul.

Focus on consistency over quantity. Anchor it with another habit. This is just a practical application. Add or attach your Bible reading to an existing routine. By the way, I put these seven different advice things down in the bottom of the outline. Maybe you need to read your Bible when you have breakfast. And maybe you need to do it after you brush your teeth. Maybe you need to have your Bible and you build this Bible reading routine into your bedtime routine. And maybe it might be a good idea, right?

I've had to do this before. I put my coffee sometimes on top of my, I put my coffee, I put my Bible on top of my coffee maker. Sometimes I do that because I'm so dense that when I wake up and I stumble out of bed and I go to my office, I might get distracted by whatever, whenever. I never get distracted from missing coffee. And sometimes my Bible's there. Sometimes you need to put it where it's accessible. Make it a clear time. Make an appointment with the Lord. At this time of day, this is when I devote this time to the Lord. Decide when and where you'll read the Bible each day.

That might be a helpful thing to you. By the way, these are just, if this is not helpful to you, any of these, I don't care, whatever. Just throw it away. Do the ones that are helpful to you. The goal is to read your Bible, not to get stuck in this silly advice.

Use visual cues. Put your Bible on a spot that you're actually going to regularly see it and engage with it. Leverage accountability. Ask a friend, a family member, a church group, somebody in the church to help encourage you reading your Bible. One of the things you can do is encourage each other with what you've been reading in your Bible and that sometimes will encourage other people like, oh yeah, what have I been reading in my Bible? track your progress, right? There's all sorts of amazing little Bible apps, right, that will tell you how far you've read and stuff.

And one of the things I do, again, because I'm dense and I'm dull, is, I'm gonna go back to this this year, is I've just got a Bible that's organized by date. And I just read January 1. It says January 1, and whatever's there, I read it. And then January 2, and I read that. So this year I'm gonna go back, I have a chronological Bible, and it's just by date.

It tells me what I'm supposed to read. Maybe that's, maybe you'd be helped by that, I don't know. But find a way to track your progress, know what you've read. Maybe it's just, one of you love, has told me before, you just, you got one of the Bible checklists back there, and you just check off a chapter when you've read it. It doesn't have dates, it doesn't have time, it's just, you wanna read all the chapters of the Bible, and so you just check off the chapter. Great. These are just tools, but use it to build momentum, to increase your joy in the Lord. But I would also encourage you, seventhly, to make your Bible reading helpful, impactful. Reflect and respond upon what you've read. Maybe you're like me, or maybe you're not. Maybe you're a lot smarter and less dull than me, and that's fine.

I have been guilty plenty of times of reading my Bible, and I'll get done with three, four, five paragraphs, and then I realize, I don't remember a single thing I just read. So one of the very helpful things for me is I've got a Bible that I like to use, and it's got a wide margin. It's a journaling Bible. And I write down what this paragraph was about. Because if I've got to summarize, I've got to have actually understood it, and I have to write it, right? So maybe that's a helpful thing to you. Reflect on it. Pray about it. This is one of the very helpful things that the Puritans would do, is they would take a passage of Scripture, and they would just break it apart, and pray over each part of that passage.

What is the Lord teaching me here? The whole point of this is I pray that you'll meditate on God's word, that you'll reflect on his goodness, you'll learn of his promises, you'll grow in your love for Jesus Christ. And as you abide in Jesus Christ, that you'll bear much good fruit. As a Christian, as you dwell in God's word, as you soak it up, your love for the Lord is strengthened and grows. So go to God's Word. I'm sure I've told these illustrations before, but that's fine, because they're vivid in my mind.

We didn't just have one tree in our backyard in that house growing up. We had the apricot tree that wasn't really an apricot tree, it was just a pit tree. But we had another tree on the other end of the backyard that the water got to it all the time.

And I mean, this tree was huge. There were five of us kids, and we would climb in the tree, and it was this big, huge, lush, green plum tree. And we would have so many plums that we would pick them off the tree, and they would fall on the ground. There were so many plums from this tree. I mean, there were types of plums, you would bite into them, the juice would fly down your face, you'd have to get a napkin. And we would take bowls of these plums and take them to church to give away to people.

That's what the Lord desires of you. I thought you would be a tree bearing good fruit. What was the only difference between these two trees? Their placement and how much they were getting watered. Be watered by God's word. Be rooted amongst his people. Meditate on his word day and night.

As you go into the new year, which path are you gonna take? Who will you be? Right, you get to choose, you get to choose. There's Bible reading plans in the back. I hope they may be helpful to you. If you forget, you get stuck doing fellowship, they're online. If neither of those are helpful to you, that's fine. Maybe here's something fun I did this year. I'm gonna end off with this last thing, right?

My Bible reading plan last year took me longer to get through with traveling in India and stuff. I didn't finish until I think it was like the middle of February, something like that. And so it was, I knew I wouldn't have enough time to read through the whole Bible in one year again. And so I decided to do some of the short, intense Bible plans back there and work through those.

And then one of the fun things that a member of the church told me, he said, they talked to me about a dramatized Bible app, a Bible version. And so I downloaded it on Audible. And it was so fun. The first day I got it, I was listening to it, and I just had it on the kitchen counter. And I, Genesis chapter one, I pressed play. And before I knew it, I had four kids sitting on stools, standing around, listening to this audio Bible. They listened to 19 chapters that day. And so that was one of the things I did this past year. I'm almost done. I've got a few last letters in Revelation to get through. Listening through the Bible this year has been a blessing to me.

Closing Prayer

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So maybe for you, if you're not a reader, listen to it. Listen to it as you read. Be blessed, get in God's word. Have it water your soul. Be filled with joy. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us your word. It's a gift from you, you've kept it preserved Lord, you've given us a privilege. Lord, that we have so many versions in the English. Lord, so many of them are faithful. And so, Father, we pray that we would, Lord, we would not be like the person who would go to a banquet and die of hunger. Lord, please, we pray that your spirit would move us to pick up the book and read, that we might believe, and that we might bear good fruit.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.