THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"Hiding God’s Word in Our Hearts"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) September 18, 2005; No. 3272
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Dear
Radio Friends,
How exactly do you write
God’s Word in your heart? The Holy
Spirit has to do that. But how do we put that
Word down in our heart? Is there some kind of
marker or chisel or pen? The answer is: by memorizing it.
Through memorization the Holy Spirit writes the Word of God upon our hearts so that
we know the Word of God, we are able to talk about it, we are able to repeat it. And it gives us direction in our life.
The importance of memorizing the
Word of God is clinched by this consideration, that without the Word of God in our hearts
we will never be able to live a holy life. “Thy
word,” we read, “have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against
thee.” It is not the Bible closed at
home that will do you any good this week when you are confronted by temptation, despair,
and the lie of Satan. It is not by walking by
your Bible occasionally and rubbing it like a genie bottle that is going to give you
spiritual protection. It is not some vague,
nebulous idea of what it says: “What
does it say again … where is that… oh, it’s somewhere, isn’t it?” Such a knowledge is going to be of no benefit to
you as you engage the foes of temptation. But
it is the Word of God in your heart, where you need it, that will be the strength of God
to preserve you in your daily walk of life. You
will need to have God’s Word in your heart if you are to stand and live a Christian
life. The man who goes to work without lunch
money or without a lunch is going to suffer hunger. The
young person who is white from the winter and exposes himself to four hours of the intense
sun on a summer afternoon at the beach will burn. The
soldier in Iraq who has no bullets in his weapon or whose weapon is at home in a display
case is defenseless. So any child of God who
goes into life, who goes to his job, on vacation, to school, or in any part of life, into
the business of life, into the temptations against sin, into the questions and struggle of
life, without the Word of God in his heart, is going to be burned, is going to be hungry,
and is going to be defenseless.
Young people, the Christian life
is not a do-it-yourself project. It is not
something you feel your way through. There is
a manual, there is a Word. It is a powerful
Word. It is God’s Word. It is the power unto a Christian life — when
it is in your heart!
Psalm 119,
from which the
passage is taken today, is the Bible’s tribute to itself. It is really a love-song. It is a sonnet of the Bible to the Bible about the
preciousness and profit of the Scripture. It
has twenty-four sections, according to the Hebrew alphabet, with eight verses in each
section. And it is a tribute, as I said, a
love-song, of the Bible to the Bible. It was
written, evidently, by a young man who was being persecuted severely for his faith. We do not know exactly who this young man was or
when he lived. The psalm does indicate that
he lived at a time of departure from the truth of God.
He was, evidently, persecuted. He was
imprisoned because of his walk and confession of God.
That persecution had come to him from the highest levels of the kingdom. He speaks of princes and kings who had ridiculed
and mocked him and locked him up. He writes
in that situation of what was his treasure, of what kept him — the Word of God. He says it was the Word of God that was the power
to preserve his faith in the most difficult and trying of circumstances. He said he had hid something in his heart. As a person will hide something to keep it away
from his jail keepers, something that gives him hope, something that gives him the promise
of freedom, so he had hid something. He had
hid it where no jail keeper would ever be able to take it away. He had hid God’s Word in his heart, so that
he might not sin in the face of persecution. We
are to hide God’s Word in our hearts.
Now the psalmist is speaking of
“thy word”: “Thy word have I
hid in mine heart.” If we are to learn who the “Thy” is, we need to go all the way back to the first verse of
Psalm 119
where we read, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” “Thy”
refers to the Lord, or Jehovah. It is
Jehovah’s Word that he hid in his heart. “Jehovah”
means “I AM THAT I AM.” It is that
name of God that declares to us that God is eternal.
He never became something. He always
is. I AM THAT I AM! It speaks to us that He is sovereign in power,
that is, He possesses all power to rule. He
does not derive His being or His power from another.
He did not get it from someone. But
“I AM,” He is the God of all power.
And it speaks to us that God is faithful. “I
always am what I am.” There are no
changes in God. Jehovah’s Word is the
Word of the eternal, the sovereignly powerful, and faithful God. We have the Word of the eternal, almighty,
independent, faithful God; the God who is and ever shall be; the God who made all, and
holds all; the God alone who is to be worshiped and extolled and honored as God. We have that Word.
It is in the Bible.
The source of the Bible is God,
Jehovah. The Bible is not, as is taught in
many Christian circles today, the catalog of men’s impressions about God, the record
of various encounters with God. The Bible is
not a sort of Norton Anthology of Spiritual Encounters.
It is the Word that Jehovah has written. It
is “Thy” Word. It is the Word that
He writes about Himself and all the wonderful things that He has promised to do to glorify
Himself in Jesus Christ.
Because it is the Word of
Jehovah who is the supreme and the eternal God, the God who alone is good and glorious, it
is a Word about Himself. It is a Word in
which He tells us about Himself and all the things that He will do for us. It is the Word that He speaks to us about Himself
and of His love and of His power and of His purpose in Christ. To us poor sinners, lost sinners, dust creatures,
rebel-hearted sinners, He comes to tell us of His great and precious promises, says Peter in
II Peter 1
— the great and precious promises of God. This is a treasure, a great treasure.
Thy Word, the psalmist says,
have I hid in my heart. What does that mean? I thought, children, that we were supposed to tell
others about God’s Word. What does he
mean when he says that he hid it? Does it
mean that he kept it secret, kept it to himself? No. He means that he stored it up as a treasure in his
heart. When he says that he has hid
God’s word in his heart he means that he stored it up as a special treasure in his
heart.
The word “hid” has a
basic meaning: “to conceal.” It is the word that is used, for instance, to tell
about Moses’ being hid three months by his parents when they were not afraid of
Pharaoh’s commandment to have all the boy children of Israel killed. But that word goes on to refer to something more
than just concealing. It means laying up what
one considers a treasure. One considers
something to be extremely valuable and he wants to keep it.
So, you could say, lay up: “Thy
word have I laid up, have I stockpiled, have I treasured, have I stored in my heart.” That is the idea.
God’s Word is the best treasure because it is about God.
And the psalmist says, “I
have stored up that treasure in my heart. The
written Word of God I have memorized, I have prayed over it. I want that Word to be in my heart.” You see, the psalmist was in prison. He had been torn from his family. He was cruelly treated. He was laughed at.
What did he have? He had no one. He had no friends, he had no possessions. But he had a treasure! As I said, he had a treasure where his jailers
could not take it away from him. He had it in
his heart. He did not have a copy of the Word
of God. But he had that Word of God written
down on the pages of his heart, where it could soothe him, where it could comfort him,
where it could make him glad in a prison cell. “Thy
word have I hid in mine heart!” He
thought about it. He poured over it.
You say, how did he get it in
there? Well, he went to church. He went to the temple, where he could hear the
Word of God. He listened. He paid attention.
And then he memorized it. It is easier
for us to store up that Word of God in our hearts than it was for him. But he did it.
He did it because he loved God, he loved the Word.
Do you have this treasure? I am not asking you if you know where a Bible is
to be found in your house and you could go and find it a moment for me. I am not asking if you have some acquaintance
with its message — a little head-knowledge to find your way around in the Bible. I am not asking that. I am asking, “Is it hid, is it treasured, is
it coveted, is it stored in your heart? Do
you love it? Do you know its power? Do you rejoice, do you tremble before it? And do you use the means to get it into your
heart?” The church, reading the Bible,
Sunday School, catechism classes, Christian school — memorizing. Do you treasure the Word in your heart?
The psalmist had a great purpose
in treasuring up God’s Word in his heart. He
said, I did this that I might not sin against Thee. He
wanted to live a holy life. That was why he
did that. That was his purpose. He wanted to live a life in Christ. If you want to live a life in Jesus Christ, then
you will treasure the Word of God in your heart. You
will want the Word of God deep down in your heart because only there will you have the
strength to keep you from sin.
This means that the psalmist
lived a new life. He had been given a new
life in Christ. He had been given a life that
wants to serve and glorify God. Yet there
remained within him his sinful flesh. And he
understood that it was the Scriptures, the Word of God, not simply on his night stand, but
in his heart, which would be the power to live a holy life, a power to overcome his
inclination to follow the pack, the power to overcome that which would make him ashamed of
living a Christian life.
Do you know in your life the
power of sin? Do you sigh in weariness as you
struggle against sin? Are you ready sometimes
to despair? Do you ask, as a young man with
lust within you, how shall my way be directed to the Lord?
What can take me away from the seduction of lust and bring me to Jesus’ arms? Here is the answer:
God’s Word in your heart.
The answer is not the intention
that one day you are going to read the Bible. The
answer is not “Well, I’m a member of a solid Reformed church.” The answer is the Word of God in your heart.
That Word of God had made the
psalmist very sensitive about sinning against God. He
did not want to sin against God. The word
“sin,” in both the Old and New Testaments, has the idea of “missing the
mark.” The mark that we are to aim at is
God, for He alone is good. Sin is when we do
not want to. We do not just miss the target a
little bit. Rather, we aim at the opposite,
we aim at our own pride, our own way. That
sin always disrupts fellowship with God. It
spoils our relationship with God. We cannot
look up to God. We cannot say, “I know
the sweetness of walking with God in love.”
The psalmist looked to the Word
of God as the only defense against sin. “Thy
word have I hid in mine heart, lest I sin against thee.”
Hide God’s Word in your
heart. Memorize the Word. Meditate upon the Word. Recite the Word of God. Speak the Word of God. God’s Word, because it is God’s Word
used by the Holy Spirit, is the power to give us to walk with God in a sinful world and as
sinners. “My son,” says the
Scripture, “lay up my words beside thee. Keep
them before thee.” Have close contact
with God’s Word in your life, even if it comes at a cost. Do not say, “I don’t have time to read
God’s Word.” Do not say that! Say it the way it is, “I will not take
time.” Say it that way, then. Do not say, “I can’t understand
it.” Say this: “I chose not to try to figure it out. I evidently don’t have enough zeal in my
heart to try to figure out what my God is saying to me.” Do not say, “But I can’t remember
it.” Boys, you can remember the score of
the ball game. You can remember line-ups. You can remember!
The Bible is God’s
cleansing agent for sin. The psalmist was
determined to study the Word of God and to commit large portions of it to his memory so
that his spiritual weapon was loaded. Grab
hold of the Word of God. You see, Satan knows
that God’s Word is a treasure, so he tries to snatch it from you. He says to you, “You’re too tired. It’s too hard. It doesn’t make any sense. Tomorrow you can read it when you aren’t as
busy. Something else right now is more
important. There’s something else you
need to do for a moment.” The psalmist
said, “No. I’m tempted right now as
a young man to compromise. I’m fighting
against despair. I’m seduced by sin and
by greed. I need God’s Word right
now.”
We must lay up God’s Word
in our hearts as a treasure. Many in the
Christian church do not. The devil has struck
a sore blow into the soul of God’s church when the church denies the inspiration of
the Holy Scriptures. That means when the
church says that the Bible is not word-for-word God’s Word, and it has errors. When that happens, the devil has struck a sore
blow into the very heart of the church. When
the Bible is no longer held by the church to be as completely inspired, but men are
allowed to contradict it and to say that portions of it are in error, then the power of
holy living will go out of the church! Mark
that down. When the church will not tremble
before the Word of God, when the church will not preach the Word of God, when the church
will not cherish the Word of God, when the church compromises the Word of God, then, in
time (only time) holiness of life will go away.
But there are other ways for
that Word to be lost as a treasure in the church. That
is when we lay up all kinds of other things in our hearts as treasures instead of
God’s Word. God made your heart for one
treasure — Him. When we make, perhaps,
learning our treasure, or sports or entertainment or possessions, so that the Word of God
is neglected and there are all kinds of things vying, fighting for attention within our
hearts and we become ignorant of the Word of God, then, too, a holy walk of life will
leave the church.
Lay up God’s Word in your
heart. Be in God’s house twice on the
Lord’s day. Make sure the second service
is as well attended as the first. And be
there to listen, be there to engage. Come as
a humble and thirsty sinner for the Word of God. Discuss
the Word of God in your homes. Discuss the
Word of God with your children. Understand
that there is no vacation from the Word of God. Hold
that Word close to your heart. Make it your
family project. Take time to read it. Take time to memorize it. Recite the Word of God to each other. Show your children that memorizing is as important
for you as it is for them. Then gather with
your fellow saints to discuss the Word of God.
Is the power of a holy Christian
life to be found in your life? Do you feel
close to God or far from God? Does sin lead
you astray further and further and further? If
the answer is, “Yes, it does, to my shame. I
must answer that, yes, I feel far from God. I
see that sin is simply leading me further and further and further away,” then I will
guarantee you that the reason for your state is this:
You have left the Word of God closed. We
have not cried out to God that He put it in our hearts.
The psalmist was resolved to
have God’s Word in his heart so that he could live a holy life. Are you?
Let us pray.