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Who We Are. Word: Be Transformed, Psalm 119:97-105

Word: Be Transformed

Psalm 119:97-105

 

In 1879 Lieutenant George De Long set out with a crew on the USS Jeannette in hopes of claiming the North Pole for the United States. De Long’s plans were based on maps developed by mapmakers at the time (cartographers). Like most mapmakers, Dr. August Heinrich Petermann believed there was an open polar ice-free sea, teeming with marine life “whose waters could be smoothly sailed, much as one might sail across the Caribbean or the Mediterranean.”

 

Unfortunately, every previous expedition that had sailed north in search of the sea had run into a problem – ice. Now you might think that running into ice every time would lead scientists to abandon the theory of an Open Polar Sea. Not so. Instead, Petermann merely modified the original theory by adding the idea of a “thermometric gateway.” As Hampton Sides recounts the story in his book In the Kingdom of Ice, “If an explorer could just bust through this icy circle, preferably in a ship with a reinforced hull, he would eventually find open water and enjoy smooth sailing to the North Pole. The trick, then, was to find a gap in the ice… a natural portal of some kind.”

 

George De Long and his crew of 28 men wanted to find that portal. It didn’t take long for De Long to realize that all the cartographers, scientists, and geographers had been wrong. He wrote, “I pronounce a thermometric gateway to the North Pole a delusion and a snare.” Eventually, De Long began to doubt the existence of the Open Polar Sea. He and his men encountered ice that seemed to stretch out forever.

 

De Long and his crew came to grips with the fact that they had been duped. The team had to “replace [their wrongheaded ideas] with a reckoning of the way the Arctic truly is.” They were running up against the rocks or hardened ice of reality. In September 1879, the USS Jeannette got trapped in the ice pack and his crew escaped and tried to go toward Siberia. The crew got separated. Some made it to Siberia and survived; others continued their lonely trek through the ice. As for George Washington De Long, he died in late October 1881 of starvation. He was covered up by snow, except for one of his arms, which was raised as if to signal toward the sky.[i]

 

If the map you’re using isn’t good, you aren’t going to get where you are going. And the results can be tragic. If I’m in a new town and I need to find my way to the grocery store, having a bad map may lead to inconvenience, or maybe a humorous story to tell later. If I’m trying to find a hotel on a trip, the results of bad directions can lead to my getting lost, maybe winding up in a bad part of the city, or wasting time and money getting back on track. If I’m trying to find the north pole, the results of a bad map can be devastating and tragic. If I’m trying to navigate this world and this life from birth to death and beyond, and I have a bad map, the results will always be catastrophic, for me, and quite possibly for others too.

 

God has given us a map. A reliable map. A perfect map. When Jesus said, “I am the way,” he was saying, I am the way to forgiveness. I am the way into the presence of God. I am the path through this life that leads to life in the Kingdom of God here and now, and throughout eternity. Christians are also called “Christ followers.” We follow Christ, who is the way. He embodied in every fiber of his being the way in which we are to make our way through this life as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

 

But we as fallen, broken human beings whose hearts have a bent toward sin are really good at convincing ourselves that we are following Christ when we aren’t. I often have people tell me, “God told me to tell you …” What I’ve learned in 45 years of following Christ, very imperfectly most of the time, and 30 years in ministry is that what I’m about to hear when someone says that is what THEY want to tell me or what THEY think I need to do or say or think or whatever. Don’t blame your bad behavior on God.

 

So I always take it back to Scripture. To the Word of God. The Word of God is God’s revelation of his plan of rescue for us. It is in the pages of Scripture that we most readily encounter Christ. Scripture, is the inspired Word of God, and it marks the way we are to live as followers of Jesus, citizens of the Kingdom of God. Scripture reveals God to us. It reveals Jesus to us. In the pages of Scripture we encounter a God who is holy and righteous and just, and also filled with love and grace and mercy. And in Christ those two things are brought together as one. We encounter it all in the pages of Scripture. Turn with me to Psalm 119:97-105.

 

Many of the Psalms feel like a sudden, spontaneous outpouring of praise to God. Psalm 119 is not like that. It isn’t sudden and spontaneous. It is planned and thought out and deliberate. It’s a work of art. With 176 verses, it is by far the longest of the Psalms. It has a structure that seems to flow from less mature forms of thought early on to more maturity and more experience at the end. The Psalm itself is divided into stanzas that align with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And each stanza repeats words and ideas that give it a theme. And the overarching theme for the whole Psalm is the psalmists love for the Word of God.

 

Look at Vv. 97-100. How I love your … law?? I know a lot of attorneys. Many of them truly love what they do. But I’ve never met a lawyer who says, “I just love reading law. It’s so life changing.” When we hear the word “law,” we think about a long list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” But that isn’t ALL that the Word of God is. If we reduce Scripture to a long list of do’s and don’ts, we’re going to become legalistic and judgmental. And that isn’t how God wants us to approach his word.

 

Yes, there is moral and ethical instruction. There ARE do’s and don’ts. But those do’s and don’ts are a reflection of who God is. We encounter God in his holiness and righteousness and justice and also his mercy and his grace and his love in Scripture. So as we dive deeply into Scripture, we become more like Christ and our lives begin to reflect the life of Christ. We love the Word of God because we encounter God there, and it shapes us from the inside out into the image of Christ.

 

There never has been and never will be a human civilization that can manage to maintain a safe, healthy approach to life without some kind of external restraint. Every people, every nation has laws of some kind. But no human system of law and instruction is perfect. There are always loopholes, sometimes written in by those who wrote the laws as a benefit to themselves. Human justice and human restraint is always flawed.

 

Without an outside control system, every one of us would do what is right in our own eyes. And when conflict inevitably arose, we’d decide who was right through the exercise of might. And the result would be and always is chaos. That’s why God wants us to orient our lives toward him, toward moral and ethical instruction that reflects who God is. When Christ becomes our center and our life is oriented around him, we are able to truly live and thrive, even as we are surrounded by the chaos of this world. We love the Word of God because in the pages of Scripture we find life, not rules and restrictions, but life! Doing what I want to do regardless of the impact on others leads to death. When we orient or lives around Christ, we find life.

 

But that means we have to actually obey his Word. Look at Vv. 101-102. God instructs us through his Word. Not because he wants us to be miserable, but because he wants us to really, truly live.

 

We live out in Williamsburg, so we learned a long time ago how to handle roundabouts. To us, they really aren’t that big of a deal anymore. Sure, there was a little bit of a learning curve, but it wasn’t THAT big. Now, when I encounter bigger, more complicated roundabouts downstate, I can handle them pretty easily.

 

Here’s the thing, for roundabouts to work, everyone who uses them kind of needs to understand how to get on and how to get off. If someone gets confused and drives the wrong way, at best there’s an annoying stop to the traffic flow and people honking their horns. I usually honk and then give a big scowl to communicate my displeasure. But if the other drivers aren’t paying attention, you could wind up with a head on collision, which roundabouts are designed to more or less eliminate. Someone could be seriously hurt or killed.

 

The instructional videos and rules for roundabouts aren’t there to keep you from having a good time. They’re there to keep you alive and enjoying life.

 

Eugene Peterson, in his book “Eat This Book,” writes:

 

At age 35 I bought running shoes and began enjoying the smooth rhythms of long-distance running. Soon I was competing in 10K races every month or so, and then a marathon once a year. By then I was subscribing to and reading three running magazines! Then I pulled a muscle and couldn’t run for a couple of months. Those magazines were still all over the house, but I never opened one. The moment I resumed running, though, I started reading again.

 

That’s when I realized that my reading was an extension of something I was a part of. I was reading for companionship and affirmation of the experience of running. I learned a few things along the way, but mostly it was to deepen my world of running. If I wasn’t running, there was nothing to deepen.

 

The parallel with reading Scripture is striking. If I’m not living in active response to the living God, reading about his creation/salvation/holiness won’t hold my interest for long. The most important question isn’t “What does this mean,” but “What can I obey?” Simple obedience will open up our lives to a text more quickly than any number of Bible studies, dictionaries, and concordances.[ii]

 

When we’re really trying to follow Jesus, to obey God, we’ll begin to really love and even enjoy his Word. Look at Vv. 103-104. Now, not everyone has a sweet tooth, but pretty much everyone enjoys something sweet, even in moderation. When the Psalmist wrote this Psalm, honey was the sweetest thing they had, and they used it as a sweetener, much like we use refined sugar. Sweetener makes pretty much anything you put it on more enjoyable.

 

The Psalmist is talking about the JOY the Word of God brings him. Or her. God, your Word is sweeter than honey in my mouth. It adds a sweetness and a pleasure and a joy to life that isn’t there without it.

 

If you go back to the earliest pages of Scripture, one of the things you’ll see is God and humanity in a close relationship. Walking and talking in the garden in the cool of the day. God wants us to draw close to him. In our sin we can’t. His holiness and righteousness would consume us. In Christ he’s made a way for us to be close to him. In Christ, our sin is forgiven but not ignored. It’s dealt with. He paid the debt for us. But then, when we’ve accepted God’s forgiveness offered in Christ, there’s this huge question that comes up in every human mind – how am I supposed to live now? I’m a citizen of God’s kingdom now. How do I live as a citizen of his kingdom? Jesus summed it all up like this:

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40).

 

Love God and love your neighbor. That’s it. The entirety of Scripture is summed up in those two commands. But my human heart wants to know: How far do I really have to go in loving God? What does it look like to love my neighbor? Who even IS my neighbor? And just what is love? Why do I ask those questions? Because I’m looking for a loophole. I’m looking for a way to still do whatever I want whenever I want. I’m looking for a way to follow Jesus without REALLY following Jesus. I want to be reasonable. So Paul, in Romans 12, says that my REASONABLE worship, my true and proper worship, is to offer every part of me – heart, mind, and body. To make my whole life an offering of worship.

 

Here’s the thing: when I allow the Word of God to deeply penetrate my heart and my mind, when it truly becomes “my meditation all the day,” I’ll discover a source of joy and life that surpasses the deepest joy I’ve ever experienced in this world.

 

When I was 16 and learning how to drive, driving was stressful. It seemed like there were so many things I had to pay attention to, and my adolescent boy mind just could attend to it all. But as I kept driving, those laws got deep down inside me. And now I can drive, even through roundabouts, without having to think too much about it. My eyes naturally float to the speedometer every once in a while, and I can actually feel my speed. I know what side of the road I’m supposed to be driving on. My eyes naturally go to traffic signals and signs and lane markers. It just happens. I don’t have to think about it.

 

I was driving back home after a trip to Ohio a few days after Thanksgiving. We hit light snow just north of Bay City. By the time we got to Grayling, it was pretty heavy. Between Grayling and Kalkaska, we were in complete white out conditions. I was driving less than 20 mph, and I kept myself on the road and even in the correct lane by feeling the rumble strips on the right and left edges of my lane. It got us home safely and I wasn’t all that stressed about it. That happened because “how to drive safely” (more or less) went deeply inside me a long time ago. Do I still make mistakes? Yes. I’ve been known to have a brain glitch and stop on green and go on red. I’ve avoided catastrophe when that’s happened, but I still get horn honks and the one fingered wave. But getting that instruction and law deep inside me has brought me joy in driving. I love to drive the countryside in the summer, enjoying the beauty of our little corner of the world.

 

Through the Word of God, we draw close to God, and God instructs us in how to navigate the chaos of this world. In it, he reveals himself to us as a good of holiness, justice, love, and mercy. And so we love the Word of God, and seek to obey him by obeying his Word. And when we do, we’ll find our hearts filled with the joy that comes from knowing and following him. Let’s pray.

[i] Adapted from Trevin Wax, This Is Our Time (B&H Books, 2017).

[ii] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book (William B. Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 70-71; paraphrased in the September 18 entry of Men of Integrity (September/October 2009)