The wonders of the word of God

The title of this sermon is The wonders of the word of God, and it is based on Psalm 119, which is the text par excellence about the word of God. Psalm 119, two verses, 129 and 130. Listen to this. It says: "Wonderful are your testimonies." The word wonderful is very important. There is a consequence of that recognition that the word of God is wonderful. The consequence says, "Therefore my soul has kept them." The psalmist wants to emphasize how deep is his appreciation and care for the word of God within his being. There is nothing deeper than the soul of a human being.

"Wonderful are your testimonies, therefore my soul has kept them." And the second verse says, "The exposure of your words gives light." I want us to stop for a moment on that idea ahead of the word that illuminates and how the exposition of that word is important, this activity of exposing the word. The exposure of your words illuminates, illuminates. And then that cute expression, "He makes the simple understand."

Let's see what that word simple means and that idea of making people understand simple and simple. There is another text that I want us to keep in mind in this context, it is in Psalms 19, which I think we sing some verses of that Psalm 19, verses 7 and 8, it says: "The law of the Lord is perfect, which converts the soul . Jehovah's testimony is faithful that makes wise the simple."

Do you remember in Psalm 119 he also makes the simple understand, the simple? It's the same idea. “It makes wise the simple, the simple. Jehovah's commandments are right, they make the heart glad. The precept of Jehovah is pure that enlightens the eyes.

And remember that, the word of God enlightens the eyes. And we are going to see in what sense it lights up the eyes. So, the book of Ecclesiastes, in chapter 8, in verse 8, says: "Who is like the wise and who is like the one who knows the declaration of things, the wisdom of man lights up his face."

Do you see the idea of lighting the eyes? And here it says that the wisdom of man when a person is wise, this lights up his face. "And the coarseness of his countenance will change, it will change." When the word of the Lord enters, wisdom enters a person, his face reflects it too. And we're going to look at an interesting piece of information about how mysterious the human face is when it's illuminated, when it's educated.

Here I enter into the very material of my message. This psalm is a sustained meditation on the word of God. It is as if the word of God were reflecting on itself. When we read Psalm 119, which is 176 verses, it's like the word of God is speaking about itself. It is a sustained meditation, a sustained praise of the word of God. This entire text talks about many things, visits many themes, but some of them are repeated over and over again.

If you read Psalm 119, for example, it talks about obedience, how important obedience to the word is. There is another theme that comes up over and over again of being faithful to the word of God even though we go through conflict, loss, tribulations, difficulties, trials, staying faithful to the Lord. Another theme talks about the delight, the joy that the psalmist feels in savoring and meditating on the Scriptures. Another topic also talks about the positive effects of delighting in the word of the Lord, how that blesses the person who delights in the word of the Lord.

And it also talks about the negative consequences, when one strays from God's law that there are emotional reactions and consequences that affect the man or woman when they stray. It has many themes but they are repeated over and over again throughout those 176 verses. The Psalm is divided into 22 sections, 22 segments, each 8 verses. If you multiply 8 by 22 you get 176. Not only that, but each section of those 8 sections begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It's an acrostic and each one of those sections, if you read it in Hebrew, you're going to see that it has a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That psalm is a mystery, structurally it is tremendously complex. As an acrostic it is also very interesting.

And that Psalm becomes evident when one sees the delicacy with which it has been written, it makes evident how important it has been and how important the word of God is for the Hebrew people. And it calls us, the Church of Jesus Christ, to continue that Hebrew tradition, as well as the Jews...

Look, the Bible has been very important for the Hebrews that when the manuscripts that were always made by hand by the scribes of the Bible, when they were copied writings, the copiers of the Bible in Hebrew, they counted at the end of copying a manuscript to another, they would count the syllables and letters of the manuscript to make sure they were the same number of the manuscript they had copied to make sure there was no discrepancy between one and the other.

Jews are incredibly careful. To this day if you go to a Jewish synagogue, when one of those manuscripts, a scroll, ends or gets old or old or whatever, they never burn it or throw it away. They have like a cemetery of manuscripts. They keep them. In a synagogue you can have hundreds of manuscripts or scrolls of the Bible because they never throw it away because it is the word of the Lord. And it is divine Scripture.

So we are supposed to have that same kind of appreciation, approval of the word of the Lord. Like the psalmist who wrote this text, we do not know his name, by the way, we too must experience that sense of wonder, of delight when we realize how wonderful, how mysterious, how complex, how profound is the word of the Lord. .

And one of the things that I long for today is that, that we leave here impacted, impressed, with this idea that I must study the word, I must value it, I must be a person based on the word of the Lord.

And I encourage the young people who are here, who are just beginning, they are there on the balconies. I urge you, young people, who are here today to become students of the word of God because that's where everything begins.

When a person learns to love the word and to study it, they are already on their way. They are already well on their way and nothing will separate them from the ways of the Lord. Let yourself be marked by the word of God.

I want to make a few statements now about Psalm 119. And as I say, I'm going to extract them from those two verses, 129 and 130. First, let's notice that sense. Let us once again mention the psalmist's sense of wonder, of wonder regarding the word of God. He begins by saying, - let's go back to Psalm 119 – he begins by saying:

“Wonderful are your testimonies.” What a beautiful word, wonderful. It means that he is absorbed, he is extremely impressed by how wonderful the word of the Lord is. That says everything. It says, “your testimonies.” You know that in that psalm one of the interesting things is that there are many mentions of the Bible and he uses different ones, he talks about the precepts, the testimonies, the commandments, the law of Jehovah, the statutes of Jehovah, they are all the same idea , the Bible.

There are very few of those verses that do not have some allusion to the word itself in the Bible, only that it uses different expressions to give diversity and variety to the text. It would have been monotonous if he had always said the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Scripture, the Scripture. No, he uses different expressions. In this case says your testimony. Because? Because by giving us the Bible, the Lord is testifying, he is giving testimony of who He is, of his precept, his commandments, his law, the principles of the Christian life or of the holy life in the Lord. So, he uses here "the testimonies of Jehovah are wonderful." He highlights here the beauty, the complexity, the wisdom of Scripture.

And when he realizes that beauty of the word, it provokes a feeling of wonder, of wonder, of enthusiasm in him. Evidently this man has dedicated a lot of time to the study of the word and when he sees wisdom, when he sees how beautiful the word of the Lord is, he bursts into an expression "marvelous are your testimonies."

Brothers, the Bible is not just anything. It is not a text like any other. It is not a document like any other. The Bible is exceptional. It is truly wonderful. It is not just any word. When this man reads the Bible, meditates on it, he experiences a feeling of deep admiration.

And I think that this, this extreme appreciation that he has of the word, probably makes him take more advantage of the word. And here is a practical conclusion that I want to leave with you, and it is the following. To get the most out of the Bible, first you have to admire it, you have to revere it, you have to understand that it is not just any word, but that it comes directly from the mouth of God, it is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Inspired means that the sigh, the breath of God is embedded in that word. The Bible says about itself that the Lord inspired the writers of the Bible to write these books. The Lord did not dictate word for word, but what he did was that he inspired it. These men in their teachings, they were men like any other, but the word they wrote had the breath of God in it.

When Paul says, for example, to Timothy, "Bring me the coat that I have left." There is such a passage in Scripture. You're looking at the man Paul there, when he said, “Everyone left me, when I was in court, I was left alone. No one came to visit me,” in one of the passages. That's the man Paul writing. But the book as a whole, the teaching it contains is divine inspiration.

God did not turn the men who wrote the Bible into automatons, but He infused them with the essence of what He wanted them to communicate to us. And so, that word is inspired by God. So, when we understand that this word is the mouth of God, the spirit of God speaking to us, that should provoke in us a sense of admiration, of reverence. That is important for us to understand, that it is the mouth of God speaking to us. When you approach the word understand that you are trading, you are interacting with the same divine personality.

First Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 13. It says, “For this reason we also give thanks to God without ceasing – he is speaking to the Thessalonians – that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you received it not as a word of men, but according to the truth of the word of God, which works in you who believe."

In other words, the Thessalonians understood when Paul was preaching to them that today we have that preaching written down, they knew that this is not a mere man speaking to us. This is God himself, the word of God.

And we have to relate to the Bible that way. When we come into contact with her, we are coming into contact with the same divine mouth. And when we receive the word of God for what it is, the word of God, the divine revelation of God for our lives, that faith that we exercise at that moment by reading the Bible in that way, activates, releases the power that the word of God encloses and allows it to work in us in a transforming way.

What is the key for the Bible to unleash its power? It is the one to approach it with a sense of wonder, admiration, reverence, knowing that when you are opening that book, you are opening a universe full of infinite truths, a mystery that God has decided to reveal his mind to us, to share his mind with. us through that book.

This morning I was talking about the Bible as a quantum document. The quantum theory is a very deep scientific theory, but it speaks of the mystery of the universe, that there are things behind time and space, matter, that are inscrutable and that matter has dimensions that no one can ever decipher. And that happens with the Bible.

The Bible is a document of several hundred pages. 66 books written by human beings and yet, within that book there is a universe of truth. All the truths of the world are contained in it for those who have eyes to see. And that is why you can probe the Bible year after year, after year, and you will always find new things in it, because it is the word. It is infinity poured into a finite vessel.

And when you understand that, when you approach the word and approach it with that respect, that reverence, that will make it possible for you to enjoy it. That is why that psalmist who says, "Wonderful are your testimonies" is important. And that same sense of admiration is what we have to understand, which is the word of God that is acting, says First Thessalonians, in us.

Do you know that when you read the Bible, the Bible acts on you. She works on you. It is like you put yourself on the surgeon's table and while you read it, you can visualize the Bible working on you and making adjustments, it is transforming you, it is changing your mind, your thinking, your character, all these things. So, throughout life, when we read the Bible, it is acting within us and reconfiguring us according to its desire and its purpose.

Interacting with the word of God is not merely acquiring knowledge. It is receiving the life of God within us. It is rather a process in which the word of God enters us and reconfigures our interior. The very neurons of your brain are being changed when you interact with the word. And that is why it is so important that you always feel and cultivate that sense of wonder when you approach the word of the Lord.

The word of God acts in us believers. The word of God is living energy. It always fulfills the purposes for which God sent it. Whenever we come into contact with the word of God, it does something, it has an inevitable transforming effect on us.

What does Isaiah 55:11 say? The Lord says that about his word, "So shall my word that proceeds out of my mouth be, it shall not return to me void." Believe that when you open the word and read a verse or read a chapter, you will never be the same again. The word of the Lord will not return without doing something. Sometimes the word of God heals and sometimes it condemns, because if you do not receive it, it condemns you. If you receive it, it blesses you. But it does have some effect.

It says, "She will not return to me empty, but will do what I want and prosper in that for which I sent her." The word of the Lord always fulfills its purpose. You will never withdraw from the Bible and its study leaving you empty. Something the Lord is going to do, and you have to believe that within yourself. You will always profit in some way.

Understanding that the Bible is something alive, powerful, transforming, I hope that inspires you to want to have contact with it, as often as possible. If you knew that when you go to a specific university, or to some place, you are going to meet a sage whose teaching is capable of transforming your life and with a knowledge that is immaculately perfect, would you not go, would you not pay anything for it? go to that person and get advice from them, or by simply sitting at their feet? Well, that's the word.

And that is what we have to do. When I said that right now, my brain experienced something and it was this: Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus immediately came to mind. And Mary was so happy that Jesus was in her house, that she forgot about the pots, she forgot to set the table, she just wanted to receive the word of the Master who was in her house. Marta had good intentions and wanted everything to be alright, and she went to the Lord and said, “Look, Lord, look at my sister there, lazy, simply sitting at your feet listening to you,” and the Lord said to her, “Marta, Marta, you are too busy with too many things. María has chosen the best part and we are not going to take it away from her.”

What was the best part? That love that she had for Jesus. She said wow! I have here the same Son of God in my house. How am I going to waste that time? I'm going to listen to it. I believe that this is the attitude of Mary is the attitude that we should have towards the word of the Lord. That attitude of being immersed in the Bible.

I wish that we would experience that when we come to church, when we come to the House of the Lord that we are going to hear the word, we are going to sing it, we are going to pray it, that we say wow! I want to be in the courts of the Lord to hear the word of God.

Says the psalmist, "One thing I have required of the Lord, this I will seek, that I be in the house of the Lord every day to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his holy temple."

It's the same idea. Those opportunities that God gives us to be in front of the word of God in different ways, we cannot waste them. And we should not start a day without sitting at the Master's feet and listening to the beauty of his word, and sitting on the surgical table so that he operates on us and does his work on us. The Bible is active, it is alive, it is effective, it is penetrating, it fulfills the purposes for which it is sent.

Hebrews 4:2, what does it say? "For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword." And he says that, "discerns, penetrates to the point of dividing the soul and the spirit, the joints and the marrow and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Look how penetrating the Bible is that she walks in and she immediately starts like a woman who comes to a house that's all in disarray, and she goes in and starts fixing up, throwing things out, taking out old things, replacing them with new things, cleaning up the space, to sweep, to put everything in order. When the word of God enters that recess that is your inner house, it immediately begins to put it in order. And she does that work, she discerns different things, she separates.

There is nothing deeper than the marrow of a human being. The marrows of the bones, we are talking about those marrows being surrounded by skin, tissue, fat, whatever, bone and then inside is the marrow. It is the inside of the inside of the inside. Know what? The Bible penetrates to that place. It is what he means, "penetrates to divide the soul and the spirit."

He knows that there is a difference between the soul and the spirit. Sometimes we kind of take the human personality and divide it into everything, rather, we put it as a whole. No, the human personality is divided into many things, there is mind, there are emotions, there is will, there is intellect, there is soul and there is spirit. The human being is a multidimensional being. And you know what? The Bible operates in all of these dimensions. Not a segment of the human personality that the Bible doesn't reach, and it does a work, this or that, but it orders all things.

So, let us contemplate how active, how dynamic the word of God is. Very different from that religious conception we have of the Bible. Oh, I have to read three verses today. And they already believe that that already did everything. How many times have we gone to a house of those people who are little religious and have the Bible open to Psalm 23? They have never read it but they have it open. And they have a tremendous candle of 7 colors in front of the Bible, but they never read it. That is not the idea. It is not a religious relationship, it is understanding that when you enter the Bible, you enter a potentially very dangerous zone, because sometimes the Bible can also cut you off. It is a two-edged sword. I would say that one edge heals and the other edge cuts. So be careful.

I like that the Bible is dangerous. When I go into the Bible, I go in very cautiously because he can pick me up and hit me over the head with a bat and leave me breathless. How wonderful it is to know that the Bible is like that. The Bible is dangerous.

Tell the person next to you, “The Bible is dangerous.” No, I'm playing, like a good Pentecostal preacher. The Bible is dangerous because it's a two-edged sword and it does things that… Look at that idea that it discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. Do you know that the Bible illustrates the mysteries of our personality, the reason for the actions of our life, discerns the intentions and thoughts of the heart.

There are things that the human being does not understand about himself, but when he studies the Bible, things often become clear to him. How many of us read the Bible one day and found out, you know what? I have resentment towards my father. Or I didn't forgive that girlfriend who left me 15 years ago when I was in high school and I still don't like to think about her and I hate her.

So, the Bible discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. The Bible is an excellent source of self knowledge. The Bible is like a great psychiatrist, very perceptive and notices everything. When you're sitting in front of a good psychiatrist, the psychiatrist studies how many times you blink when he says something. If he's talking to you and you cross your leg at one point, he says, “Uhm, why did he cross that leg? You're closing off something if you're like that." Or you get tense, the psychiatrist is watching all the movements of your body. Why did he say this before or after saying that? See everything and draw knowledge. Likewise the word of God.

The word of the Lord searches and when you study it, that word gives you knowledge about yourself. When you leave a good psychiatrist's office you come out a little more enlightened about the inner workings of your mind. And that is what the Bible means when it says, “it discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, it divides the soul and the spirit, the joints and the marrow.” The Bible is an excellent way for one to gain insight, self-knowledge, self-perception.

And a person who knows himself is a very powerful person. One of the great Greek philosophers said, "Know thyself." And he also said, I think it was Plato, "the unexamined life is not worth living." You have to examine and the Bible is the best book that I can suggest to gain self knowledge.

And that comes through time. The more you read Scripture, the more knowledge about yourself and the secret inner springs of your own being it brings to light. Because there are many things, brothers, that we have within us that we are not even aware of. And the illumination that the word provides throughout life is incredible. A person who studies the Bible deeply and sustainably is going to be a person who has a lot of knowledge about himself.

So, up to here I am going to stop for a moment and I am going to tell you all the things that I have said. We must be amazed at the word of the Lord. You have to appreciate it. You have to know his supernatural personality. You have to read it steadily and when we read it, it reveals itself as something wonderful, exceptional, beautiful. And when we experience that sense of wonder and deep appreciation of God's word, it makes the Bible open up within us.

When you love the Scripture interestingly it's like the Scripture is animated then. Like a teacher who sees his students respect and admire him, that makes the teacher more enthusiastic. God's word is the same. When you admire her, respect her, she reveals herself. Another thing I have said, the word of God is active, it is alive, it is effective, and the word of God discerns our thoughts and gives us knowledge about ourselves.

My desire, once again, is to excite you because, brothers, I can tell you that there is nothing more fundamental than the word of God for one to have a spiritually healthy life. You can go to church all the time you want, listen to all the sermons you want, still pray all you want, but if you don't know the word of God, don't dress up because you're not going. If you do not nourish yourself with the word of the Lord, you will be a stunted Christian all your life. You have to know the Bible and you have to discipline yourself to study it.

Many times you will not want to study the Bible, but discipline yourself and read it anyway, and spend time with her and approach her with a sense of mystery and expectation that she is going to do something exceptional in your life. Let us commit ourselves, the Lion of Judah congregation, that they be here or they are out there to be scholars of Scripture and to become great connoisseurs of the word of the Lord. Amen.

That is the challenge we have. My great dream, brothers, is that León de Judá will always be a community based on the word of the Lord. How good the brothers Carina and Juan and their daughters, the way in which... we have a preacher, in fact, out there in Flor. I do not know what it is called. Everyone did a great job but she has something very special and you have to recognize it and you have to encourage her to continue studying.

Brothers, that León de Judá becomes more and more of a community known for being a community that is faithful to the word of the Lord and that we are fully committed to keeping every letter of the word of the Lord and its implications.

When a community dedicates itself to basing its life on the word of the Lord, that community will be blessed and protected until the end of its days, until Christ comes. So be it with us.

I'm landing now. The psalmist says, "Your statutes how wonderful they are, my soul has kept them." That means two things, the Hebrew word that is translated to keep, has two meanings, to keep in the sense of retaining them, treasuring them, storing them within one. And it also has the idea of keeping in the sense of obeying, paying attention to it and guiding yourself according to them. So, save and obey.

And I believe that with respect to the word of the Lord, we have to do both. We have to keep the word of God within us. The word of the Lord must be a sediment that is within you continuously and that on the least expected day something, a verse, something springs from you, because it is within you.

When you are going through crises, difficulties in life, if the word of God is within you, it will help you, support you in times of trial. Because that is what I encourage you to memorize verses of Scripture, to get to the point that the word of God is redundantly within you, that you keep it, meditate on it, ruminate it, like the cows that chew the grass and it is within them in a stomach, a reserve. The word of the Lord... we have to keep the word, store it within us. Having a special chest where there are jewels of knowledge and special verses, events of Scripture that we keep there, which serve as a reference point for our lives.

And of course, we also have to obey the statutes, the commandments of the Lord, because it is useless to admire, to adore the word, but not to obey it, not to keep it, not to be guided by it. Life has to be aligned according to the truths of Scripture. And one of the issues that the psalmist discusses in Psalm 119, in its entirety, that idea of keeping.

There is a very nice expression, something like “my eyes wept because they had strayed from your law,” something like that. Beautiful expression. So it's an invitation. Let us be great scholars, great admirers of the word, and also great keepers and obeyers, worth the word, of the word of the Lord. We have to keep it in those two senses.

And finally, I end with this idea that... it says that the entry, "the exposition of the word of God enlightens and makes the simple understand." I want to highlight that idea, the exhibition. The word exposition is a complex word in the Old Testament, pesach [00:33:55] which means… It has some very interesting meanings. He says that it is like the entrance of your word. In several translations it says "the entrance of your words enlightens." And also another expression says, "the exposition of your word," and it is because in the original Hebrew the word pesach has both senses of entering something and also when you expose something.

And if you think carefully etymologically, the two ideas are united in this idea of entry and exposure, because when someone exposes you a truth, what they are doing is giving you access to it. So, this idea of "the entrance of your words" is important because it refers to the exposition, the systematic development of an idea. And that is important, brothers. I'm not talking about exotic and overly subtle little things here. It's this idea that the Bible has to be systematically expounded. It has to be analyzed and studied in a disciplined, organic, systematic, almost mathematical way.

I want to encourage all of us not only to read the Bible superficially, but to scrutinize it, to expose it to the intellect, to study it, to disassemble it into its component parts and extract all its nutritional value.

Many people only read the word in a devotional way, but more important is to study the word carefully. What many of us do is, we open the Bible and we put our finger and I'm going to read that today. Says a man did the same thing the Bible said "Judas hanged himself," and said, "No, I didn't like that." And then, he looked for another and said, "You go and do the same." So, you have to be very careful about studying the Bible thoroughly, studying it systematically.

Brethren, I would rather read one verse of Scripture than read 10 chapters and dedicate myself to that particular verse. For example, if I say, Jehovah is my shepherd. Look, you can stop there, not even, I won't lack anything, stay in Jehovah is my shepherd and ruminate that, leave it there in your stomach, in the second spiritual cow's stomach that you have and let that little herb stay there. And then say, Jehovah. Wow! Jehovah, the creator of the universe. I am who I am, the inscrutable being that has created the galaxies. That is my God. Jehovah, Jehovah. And you stay in Jehovah. Let yourself fall in love with the image of your heavenly Father Jehovah. Jehovah is my shepherd, mine, he is not so-and-so's shepherd, no, that is mine. Stay calm because that is mine, Jehovah is mine, my shepherd.

Jehovah is personal. Because a child is born to you, it is given to us. Look what staff. The son who was born of the Virgin Mary was my son, he was my shepherd, he was my God, he was my savior. Jesus is personal. God is personal. Jehovah is my shepherd. Wow!

How does a shepherd love his sheep? Jehovah shepherds me. He guides me, defends me, takes me to places of delicate pastures, gives me food, prepares a table in front of my enemies. I have a God who is not only a cosmic, distant God, he is my shepherd. Walk with me. “Behold, I am with you always until the end of the world. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will always uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.” He is my shepherd.

And if you stop there, I'm just random, you can stay all day in Jehovah is my shepherd. And then he continues in the other part of the psalm, "I will lack nothing." Wow! What does that mean, Jehovah? “I am your provider, Jehovah Jireh, you will never lack for anything. You see?

Expose the word, dismantle the word. Study it thoroughly. You will have a lifetime for the word to unleash its nutrients on you. It is that the word of the Lord is infinite. It is a machine of infinite parts. It is a gear that no watchmaker can ever imitate. It is a cosmos without limitations. And you throw yourself into that space and spend your whole day there. In eternity you will have time to delight in the word of the Lord.

So, spend time exposing. That's why the exposure of your words shines. Let's get used to being people who study, who scrutinize the word. And the last thing about that is that when you let the word of God be exposed and you study it in that systematic, disciplined, almost rational and spiritual way too, you know what happens? Let that light up your eyes. "The exposure of your word makes the simple understand."

There is a dimension of the word of the Lord that is wonderful. shine. The word of God has a luminous quality, it shines. When I was little in the Dominican Republic I learned a verse. My mom had a little painting that we still treasure. That little box has been in the family for about 50 years and it is a little box that has a lamp and says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."

With what will the young man light his path? By reading the word. The word is associated with light. And when you approach the light of the word, that word shines on you and you know what? The light of the word translates to your face.

Do you remember Moses when he was on the mountain? Which says that when he came down, he was so intimate with God that his face shone. Because the light of God is transmitted to the person who is in contact with him and contemplates his light. When you contemplate the luminosity of the word of, that luminosity is transmitted to your face as well. That's why he says, "illuminates and makes the simple understand."

Who are the simple? The simple ones are the innocent people, the people who allow themselves to be fooled by anything, the people who are tricked, who have no discernment to discern between good and bad, between true and false, who sell them a jewel that looks like gold but is tin, aluminum painted gold.

Brothers, the church and the world are full of simple people. There are Harvard professors who are simple, they are stupid, is what he wants to say. They are clumsy, naife, is a word that indicates that. They are people who have no complexity, they let anything get in and they believe anything.

You know that when we approach the word of the Lord, initially we are like that, we are stupid, we are simple. But when you come into contact with the Bible through time, you become an enlightened, enlightened, well-educated person. In the original Hebrew it means that, a foolish, innocent person, easy to deceive, simple, clumsy in his way of reasoning. The person who dedicates himself to studying the Bible acquires wisdom about all aspects of life. He is not fooled by what fools normal people, he has discernment, he learns to live soberly, he gains perspective on life, he walks with a sure step. He loses that baby fat that so many people have that leads him to make foolish decisions and destroy their lives many times.

The Bible has an impact, it lights up the face. See what I read in Ecclesiastes:8, if you can put it back, that idea that the Bible illuminates the face. For me that was wonderful, to have that association that exists. He knows that people who have studied the Bible for a long time gain an incredible amount of knowledge. The Bible contains history, it contains philosophy, it contains art, extremely profound literature. The history of Western culture is very much based on the Bible, yet Western science is based on the Scriptures and the philosophy contained in Scripture of an ordered world. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The great scientists in the Western world who developed all the science that governs Western culture and influences the entire world, understood that God had made the world and that therefore the world contained coherence, right.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning was the logos and the logo was God and logos was with God. That logos is the reasoning principle of the universe. And so this idea has permeated all of modern science. It is said that modern science would not be possible without the Bible originally. The great scholars of science in the Middle Ages, especially in the Renaissance, understood that there was design in the world, there was coherence and there were laws and that all they had to do was look for them and they would find them. And that was the great stimulus for the exploration of the universe that led to the development of modern science.

So, brother, when you read the Bible, you are reading a book that has influenced every dimension of modern culture. If you go to the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston, go to the medieval section, medieval painting or renaissance painting and you will see there that everything was based on the Bible stories and biblical knowledge. And that is the document that we have access to today.

And when you read the Bible that way, whether you want to or not, it's going to start to light up your face. A well-educated person reflects something different on his face than a coarse person, who has an uneducated intellect. And that is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is saying. The wisdom of man lights up his face and the coarseness of his countenance will change.

There are people who have never read, have never studied, have never subjected their mind to the cultivation of knowledge, and their faces reflect a certain awkwardness, a certain hardness, a certain coarseness. The person studied his face is different. It's mysterious. Do you know how many tens of muscles the human face has here only in this part of the front? Dozens that subtly affect the look, the appearance of a face.

And many times when a person has a lot of knowledge, a lot of understanding, that affects the muscles. Your inner knowing, your refined sensibility, is producing a very specific configuration, although we are not aware of it.

Look, brothers, if you study the word of the Lord, your face will be illuminated, even the expression is different. When we study the word of the Lord, we gain intellectual knowledge. So I'm here as a lawyer pleading for the word of the Lord this afternoon. I end like this, then.

Lion of Judah, be amazed at the word of the Lord. Fall in love. Let's just put our heads down for a moment. I ask the Lord every day, “Father, make me fall in love with your word. Fall in love with your word because your word is something unfathomable, it is wonderful and I never want to underestimate it. Every day of my life I want you to speak to me through your word."

My brothers up there, I want to invite you, young people, do you want to be wise? Do you want to avoid a number of stumbling blocks in life? Do you want your mind, your intellect to develop? Begin to study the word. read it. Treasure it, promise yourself that you are going to be great scholars of the word of the Lord. Today is a good day to start. Today. If you strayed a bit from the plan to read the Bible in a year, go back to… get that purpose back. Don't worry. Finish her. I plan to read the Bible again this year, because I will never get tired of it. That Bible speaks to me. That is my prophetess. The Bible is my prophet.

And many times God gives me… he takes a text and highlights it for me. He tells me, "Today I want to talk to you, my son, about that verse." And God speaks. Don't miss that opportunity, my brother, my sister. This afternoon, I invite you, we are going to become misers of the word. We are going to become people passionately, desperately in love with the word of God.

Father, in the name of Jesus I ask that my brothers are all flooded by this desire to immerse ourselves in the unfathomable waters of your word. May the Lion of Judah be a family of the word of God and may this church, Father, while it exists here on earth, be a community militantly committed to the mysteries of your word. May no thought, no erroneous teaching penetrate this church and may our conclusions, the ramifications of the study of your word, extend to every aspect of our life in all dimensions, Father. That there is no compromise, there is no compromising your word, there is no negotiating your word, that this church always has good teaching and good instruction. May your word rule and be the foundation of our life.

Develop in my brothers this afternoon a great awareness of the beauty of your word, of the need to study it, love it, treasure it, keep it, obey it, reflect on it in a disciplined way. And to you we will always give glory and honor in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen.

May the Lord bless you, my brothers, may the word of God live within you and within me too. Amen.