Store Up

All right, good morning, guys. We're going to be in Psalm 119,

Psalms 119:9–16

verses 9 through 16. Psalm 119, verses 9 through 16.

Psalms 119:9–16

If you're in the Bible underneath your chair, that's on

page 480. Psalm 119, verses 9 through 16.

Psalms 119:9–16

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to Your word.

With my whole heart I seek You. Let me not wander from Your

commandments. I have stored up Your word in my

heart, that I might not sin against You.

Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes.

With my lips I declare all the rules of Your mouth.

In the way of Your testimonies I delight as much as in all

riches. I will meditate on your precepts

and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes.

I will not forget your word. Swear to the Lord.

What's going on Port City family and friends, how we doing?

Good, good. Happy New Year to you.

My name is Tanner. I am the lead pastor here and

just honored to be with you. I just pray that 2026 is the

year that Jesus gets bigger, more precious to you.

I hope it's a great year circumstantially to you, but

even more than that, I pray that Christ would be more precious to

you and, and if he is, you can you can handle anything that

this year throws at you, good, bad, or in between.

OK, so I'm going to pray over our time together in God's word

one more time and then we go dive in.

Pray with me, our Father, we give you this year.

Lord, we're not in control. We have no idea what's going to

happen. God, your Word tells us that we

can't add an hour to our life by worrying.

Lord, I know that some really good, beautiful gifts are going

to be received this year. Just goodness from you.

Now, I know there's going to be hardship in this room, in

different forms, different expressions.

God, we pray that this year You would be with us by the Spirit,

through Your Word, we would cling to Jesus.

Lord, teach us to live more communally as a body of Christ

and teach us to live on mission. And would more people come to

trust the name of Jesus? So Lord, as we turn to your

word, what we know not, please teach us, God, what we have not,

please give us and who we are not, would you please make us

let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart even

now be acceptable in your sight? And everybody who agree with

that said Amen. What is the most?

Beautiful thing you have ever seen once you just picture it,

maybe it's the sunset or something like that.

For me, I just love being at the beach.

I love taking in like a sunset, sunrise at the beach, OK.

I love the sounds, the smells, the waves.

And at some point you kind of let your eyes just get lost in

how vast it is and just overwhelmingly big it is.

And the closer you get to the actual waves, the more you just

take it all in. And typically when you're around

beauty, you just kind of. Stop, you know, you're not very

busy when you're around beauty. Hopefully you're still around

beauty. You're just silent and and just

taking it in. Today we are in Psalm 119 and

Psalm 119 is the Bible's way of standing before the ocean.

That is God's word, OK? It's the way of just being

mesmerized by the beauty of God's Word.

OK, Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.

It is a Hebrew acrostic. OK, so to my kids out there,

there are 26 letters in the alphabet, right When you sing

your ABC's. All right.

Well, in Hebrew there was 22. And each stanza is a letter from

the Hebrew alphabet, and each line in the stanza starts with

that letter. So for us to be like, amazing,

are you Lord? Awesome, are you Lord?

Something like that. And then the B1 would do that,

and then the C1 would do that all the way down.

So it's doing that in Hebrew, even though your translation

doesn't show that. Does that make sense?

So it's kind of like one, one guy a couple 100 years ago said

this. He said Psalm 119 has as many

expressions as ways of the sea, but it's ultimately highlighting

the unity that is the ocean of God's Word.

So it's many ways of praising the beauty that is the ocean of

God's Word. Are you all with me?

So what we're going to do is we're just going to walk through

the verses. We're just going to we're just

going to bask in the beauty of God's Word with the psalmist and

at the end the the application is going to be to store up this

beauty in your heart. My prayer for this church is

that when we're all 80 and sitting in a rocking chair one

day, you just got treasures of God's word in you and you can

maybe you can't read no more. You can't see nothing, but deep

in your soul there's just a. Treasure deep in you and it is

God's word. It's like you're at the ocean

all the time when God's word is up in you.

So that's my prayer for you and I'm I'm ready to dive in.

If you are ready, let me hear you say I'm ready.

OK, first thing we got to do. What do we mean by God's Word?

What does that mean? I want to talk about that for

just a minute because it's going to use that phrase in a lot of

different ways in our Psalm. I just want to talk a little bit

about that phrase, OK. From the opening pages of the

Bible, God speaks and when God speaks, life is created and

eventually a people are created, not just people generally, but

God's people. And God's people carry God's

word. And God's people kind of are

God's word. And he speaks through his

servants, servants like Moses, and he delivers them from Egypt

and gives them his word. And it's kind of like the the

the explanation or the evidence, if you will, that God exists is

through his people who carry his word.

And in these last days he has spoken through his son Jesus,

who came and dwelt among us, lived among us, died in rows and

then ascended and sent the Spirit to indwell the church,

who are now the creatures of the word.

That's us. OK, so why do I, why do I, why

do I, why do I bring that up? OK, maybe for you

intellectually, one of the hang ups getting into Christianity

was about this, this book we call the Bible.

Or maybe even now as a Christ follower, you would say I

struggle like I struggle with the logic of it.

OK, you might say you're telling me this is God's word, Like

these are God's word. Yes, that's what I'm telling

you. But maybe the logic of it a

little bit is is hard for you to understand.

There's some circular logic to it.

OK, Circular means. How do you know it's God's word?

Well, God tells us his word where he tells us it's his word

in the book. So it's like the book tells us

that and then we say it because it said it in the book, right?

If, if that is ever been a, a challenge for you, you just want

to know how to think around that.

I want to give you 2 quick thoughts on that.

OK. The first one is any worldview

of any kind, whether religious or irreligious, has circular

logic to it. It just does.

Even the person who says I trust what I see in here and that's

it. Why do you trust what you see

and you hear? Because I see it and I hear it.

It's like there's you can't escape circular logic a little

bit in your foundational why you are rooted in what you're rooted

in. The most secular person who says

it's only facts that drives them.

They have a lot of circular logic in them.

Other religion systems have circular logic to it.

The Quran, Why do you trust it? Because you got it from Muhammad

and the Angel and it's it's circular as well.

So the question becomes, why trust the Bible?

Why the Bible? If it's all circular?

I would say this, I would say when you think about what a set

of logic you're trying to do, everybody's trying to answer all

the big questions. Where did we come from?

Where are we going? What is wrong with us?

How will it be made right? Why does morality seem like it

matters? Why is it wrong to kill someone?

Why is it? Why are these things we we hold

to be self-evident even though we struggle to live them out,

even though they are apparent to us?

What makes sense of all of those questions and what holds

historical weight. What holds like proof is in the

pudding kind of way. If you line up all the systems

and compare them to each other, you all what I would tell you is

this is that no thought system holds the water that

Christianity holds. It answers all the questions

more compelling than anything else.

It does a lot of things that a lot of those other systems hold

no water to in comparison. It has stood the test of time in

history. And at the center of it all is a

person, Jesus. And the most hardcore atheist

does not deny his existence. They, they accept that he walked

this earth and we believe in faith and trust what what the

Scriptures teach in history alludes to, which is that his

body ain't nowhere to be found. OK.

And so when you put this together, the water that it

holds is a thought system with this fact that Jesus is risen.

It is a pretty historically unparalleled thing to grapple

with. And when you line up all the

texts and all the systems of thinking, nothing holds weight

quite like the Bible does. So at the outset of this, this

conversation around Word of God, yes, we believe this is God's

word. We believe that it is.

It is inspired supernaturally through very natural processes

of God using human beings under the inspiration of the Holy

Spirit to bring about his revelation.

It's 66 books that make up one book.

And yes, we believe this is the word of God.

So here's what I want you to do. Turn to your neighbor.

I want to hear you say neighbor. God wrote a book for real.

You should read it. OK now all y'all look at me say

preacher, God wrote a book for real, you should preach it.

Yes I should OK and yes, should anybody who stands up here and I

pray even if poor city is not your long term local fellowship,

I pray that where you go centers around this because if it is not

God's word, we're just a club. We're just a weird group of

people getting together with weird traditions and stuff, OK?

But we really believe God has spoken and we want to hear what

He has said. So if you're ready to walk

through our verses that, yes, is from God here today, let me hear

you say I'm ready. OK, Verse 9, verse nine, check

it out. How can a young man keep his way

pure? By guarding it according to your

word right at the outset. I want you to notice the half

and half nature to to almost every phrase in the whole Psalm.

OK, What you'll see here is the contrast between the the humans

way and God's word, his way, your word, his way, your word.

And that's kind of how each verse is going to feel.

And I want you to look at the end of today's stanza in verse

16. It says, I will delight in your

statutes. I will not forget your word.

So the the brackets of this stanza are way in Word, our way,

God's word. And the psalmist is saying, make

my way your word. He's saying my way is your word.

There's this constant back and forth between way in Word.

And you'll notice here it's a rhetorical question, one of the

few in all all the Psalms, and he's asking about a young man.

OK, this applies to you even if you're not a young man.

It's kind of like if it applies to young men, it applies to

everybody. That's kind of the the idea.

Young men tend to be at the the epicenter of their freedom,

their autonomy. The world is telling them do

your thing, think about consequences later, buckle down

later, all that stuff. But if a young man's way can be

pure, can be godly, it's going to be through God's Word.

And if it can be for them, it can be for anybody.

Which brings me to an important point, important point and point

and point. You know what I'm saying, that

Pastor Ron really highlighted last week?

I encourage you to go back and listen.

We've got to hear, as we're hearing this, we're not talking

about sinlessness. We're not talking about you

being a perfect person. We're talking about for the

person who is a Christ follower, the person who knows Yahweh.

At the time this was written, this applied mainly to Torah and

some Old Testament stuff. Christians have now picked this

up as ours in Christ. Y'all for the Christ follower,

y'all. This is for you, not Christian.

I need you to hear me for a second.

If you're here and you're you, you don't.

You have not submitted to Christ yet in his reign.

I just want you to hear what we're talking about.

Is not your path to be made right with God?

What this is is a covenantal way of talking to a God.

You already know. That's what we're getting in a

snapshot of. Is into the heart of somebody at

the beach. You ain't at the beach yet.

Are you with me now? You might be thinking, who are

you to tell me I'm not at the beach?

It's OK. I know it's offensive.

It's called the gospel, OK? The gospel is that the way you

get to the beach is through Jesus, not through you.

OK, so we're not talking about your path to enter a

relationship with God, we're talking about your enjoyment of

your walk with God. Are you with me?

So here's how I would say it. Not Christian.

You have an old way that needs to be replaced, OK?

Your way is old, it's dead. It's your way.

You've lived your way your whole life, OK?

That's what's got you where you are.

And to get in with Christ is to agree with Him that you need a

Savior, is to agree with Him that you need a new way that you

can't conjure. You need gift.

You need new nature. That's what you need now,

Christians, we have a new way that we did not earn was gifted

to us in Christ and we need to foster this new way.

Are you with me? So old way needs to be replaced,

new way needs to be fostered. And the way you foster the new

way in Christ is you guard your way by His word.

Look at verse 10. With my whole heart, I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commandments.

So we see here again, my heart, your commandments.

If I'm underlining, which I know some of y'all are, at each

phrase try to pick out your part in God's part.

OK, my heart, your commandments. Maybe the question goes through

your mind as you read that. If you're seeking him with your

whole heart, why does He need to keep you from wandering That

that seems like a logical question, right?

Like if you're seeking him with your whole heart, why does he

need to keep you from wandering? It seems like that would be

self-evident. And to all the Christians in the

room, you're like, this is kind of our whole faith put into a

sentence, right? I mean it, it literally is

feeling like you love Jesus. If you if the spirit indwells

you, there is nothing you want more than to make him look good.

You love him and you know that if the Lord takes his hand off

your life for five seconds, you're in a ditch, OK, You're

gone. You just want comfort.

You want Netflix ice cream. You want everybody to serve you,

worship you. You want it in big ways and you

want it in little ways. This is it, OK?

The way the Bible thinks about salvation is you are saved from

something and to someone, OK? We're saved from our old way and

into life with God. So the goal of salvation is to

live with God. And even though the spirit

indwells you, the power of the resurrected Christ believer

lives in you. But it doesn't mean that like

your life is microwaved into just Jesusness everywhere.

You're still irritated if coffee ain't hit and you got a

headache, you're you're, you're still you and he indwells you

and you need him to just overtake you, right?

That's why each verse kind of feels like a pledge and a plea,

pledge, plea. I pledge I will follow you.

Please help me follow you. I will seek you.

Please keep me. So you're going to feel this

constant pledging, pleaing contrast.

So do the Christ followers in the room.

Let me just ask you a question. Is your walk with God filled

with pledges? And please, is it all pleased

with no pledges? Is it all pledges and no pleas?

Both of those kind of reveal something.

If you're always pledging who you're going to be, but you're

not pleaing for the power to do it, you've missed something.

And if you never plead to be nothing and you ain't pledging

to nothing, you've missed something.

The psalmist is on a mission, a godly mission.

Are you on that mission? And do you recognize that you

can't fulfill that mission in your own strength?

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love, Here's my heart.

Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

We'll come back to verse 11 at the end.

Let's go to 12. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach

me your statutes. You're blessed.

Teach me. You're blessed.

Teach me. Yo, God is a blessed fountain.

Somebody say fountain. Fountains just keep spewing.

That's what they do. They just keep flowing.

That's all they do. They exist to flow.

God is an overflowing, inexhaustible, eternal,

unfathomably a deep fountain. He's deeper than the ocean.

All of His attributes are deeper than the ocean.

There is more of God to be explored than you will ever

eternally get to the bottom of a believer.

Isn't that amazing? God is just so inexhaustible in

the primary way. He blesses you.

OK, blessed are you, O Lord. Overflowing are you, O Lord, how

does God bless you? We got to have an answer for

that because if you're going into 2026 with the unclear about

that, life will squeeze you, OK. The way God blesses you is by

revealing himself to you. That's how he's in covenant

relationship with you and he is revealing, teaching.

The Israelites view themselves as the people who had hit the

Lotto. Y'all other nations were doing

crazy stuff. I told our our equip group

earlier they were it was not uncommon for like sacrifice of

kids to hopefully we get a good crop this year.

That was the kind of stuff the nations were on.

But God's revelation does so many things to a society, even

ones that don't think they follow the Lord.

Y'all, our society is standing on all kinds of things that

they're borrowing from God's revelation, a real basic one

like human rights. That concept is that there's

something self-evident about the nature of humanity that is

rooted in the fact we're made in God's image.

If you pull that out of a society, what is human rights?

It's I mean, y'all, we, we talk about the Nazi stuff from, from

almost 100 years ago now, like it's absolute crazy and never

happened again. They were the most pragmatic

group of people ever. And pragmatically, once your

life is not valuable to me, let's end it.

They ended elderly, they ended the sick.

It was not worth the time, energy, investment.

When you pull God's revelation out of a society, it just

there's chaos because there's no roots, there's no defining,

there's no agreed upon sense of what it even means to be a

human. And that's just general.

That's not even like I'm walking with Jesus.

That's just like if you pull out your made in God's image, what

is human rights? It's just what we all agree on.

But the, the, the idea here is that God's revelation just

creates life. It's a light in the darkness.

It's it's helping just by its existence.

And you might have noticed in verse 12, this word statutes.

Somebody say statutes. So you might be like, why is it

using different words every time?

Once you'd imagine like an umbrella, OK, at the top of that

is word. Word is kind of the universal,

like God's word is the, the, the overarching term that you need

to have in mind. In Psalm 119, there's about 8

other terms that are used. OK, you're going to see

precepts, rules, commandments, statutes, ordinances

occasionally. And the the idea here is that

sometimes it's zooming in on a law, it's meaning like, I am so

grateful God, you have revealed X.

Or it's just saying, I'm just so grateful you've revealed at all

like we are the chosen people who've received your revelation.

They're just praising him for that.

And as New Testament believers, the way we relate to God's word

is unique because Christ has fulfilled the law.

Amen. And we'll, we'll allude to some

of this and, and getting your head wrapped around how do Old

Testament laws apply to you and stuff.

We won't dive into a ton, but in general, Christ has fulfilled

the law. We walk in him sermon on the

Mount Christ filled love. Old Testament is still super

helpful as we do that. And the way that living out his

law in your daily life looks like is more complex than it is.

It's simple and complex. OK here's one.

Your Co workers are gossiping. You know, you're not supposed to

gossip. It's not like there's a law that

says do not gossip. It's just not loving your

neighbor. Well, you know, the Proverbs

talk about how dumb it is. It's foolish and in general, you

shouldn't do it. But what does that mean you do

when they start doing it? Do you walk away?

You say, hey, I'd love to talk to you one-on-one.

Do you start hanging out with them less?

Do you pray for everyone in that spot?

Do you just say, guys, we're stopping right now?

Do you get real? Direct with your personality,

with your story, with God. So what's unnegotiable is I'm

going to love my neighbor here. What's like God, I need you to

bless me, like teach me your statutes.

If you, Christ Jesus, but were here in my body with this job,

what would you do? If you had this friend, what

would you say if you were on that team?

If you were in this neighborhood, how would you

live? Y'all?

We need God to teach us down to the minutiae.

How do I walk with you? If you think you've got that

figured out, you know something I don't, OK?

Psalm 119 is praise God for your revelation.

And I need you to illuminate exactitudes of how to do this

because if you don't, I'm just going to hide behind.

I'm just trying to love everybody as best I can.

I'm a nice guy, hope people see the.

Lord of my life and here we go. It's like God reveal, like help

help with this person right now I need you verse 13 with my

lips. I declare all the rules of your

mouth, my lips your rules. Are you noticing in each verse

who is the possessor of all truth?

God. It's his rules, it's his

statutes, it's his word. It's not yours.

You don't possess it. Sometimes I talk to believers

who talk like walking with God is automatic.

Once you have the knowledge, it's like, Nah, you know what I

mean? Like you don't possess it apart

from him revealing it, you wouldn't even know what it was.

You need his help. And I'll be honest with you,

this one challenges me because when I think about being proud

of God's rules, like that's hard for me because sometimes I get

in the headspace, which I don't think is fully wrong, that I

want people to see Jesus so bad that I'm afraid to like have a

combo around a rule, you know what I mean?

And then be distracted from Christ.

I'm like, let's just avoid that and talk about this, which I

think is a good impulse. But he's like with my lips, I

declare all the rules of your mouth and I'm like, in some kind

of way. There's a distinction we have

when we follow Christ that sometimes you just got to be

proud of and you're not going to get to explain it all.

You're not going to get to do the story and share Christ with

them over months and all the stuff.

You just got to stand on what it says and just trust them.

I think the people who get this right are little kids.

I don't know if you've been around like a four or five year

old recently. If you step on a family rule

that they got and be like, oh, we don't say that where in my

house. Like no, no, no, no, I didn't

mean it. You said hey, you said hey,

yeah, but I said I hate a football team.

I didn't say I hate you. They're like, no, no, no.

Got to tell my dad and they run off.

They are declaring the rules of their family.

Are you with me? There's a pride, a family

identity that little kids just they're not over calculating.

Are you with me? Sometimes we just get so over

calculated Christians we just think we got to do everything.

Perfect for somebody to come to. Christ or something.

I'm not saying you become flippant and just walk around

like did you know the word of the Lord said like that's not

what I'm saying. But when there are moments you

could just be proud that you're different kids, you're going to

be different if you follow Christ.

And that's something that's hard and it's awesome because you've

been bought by the blood of Jesus and it's just something to

be proud of and stand in. And when it brings different

distinctions from your friends, that's OK.

Verse 14 in the way of your testimonies, I delight as much

as in all riches. Your testimonies, my delight.

This is one of those where I'm like, for real.

I delight in your testimony as much as in all riches.

That's one of those I'm circling that all riches like put Bill

Gates and Jeff Bezos money together.

All riches like all of them. All of them you know I'll take.

Just just to they could sneeze out a million.

I'll take that in the testimonies, you know.

But in all seriousness, this is this is challenging you're I

delight in them as much as all riches.

I wonder what our just if we just pulled all of our New

Year's resolutions right now. Do they reveal that you've

already got riches or you need to go get them And listen,

y'all, I want some more money in 2026.

I want there's a lot of things. I hope I'm more disciplined all

the stuff. OK.

But if you're starting a new year thinking you don't have a

treasure in Christ, you're just. You're living to get something

that in Christ you already have. Are you with me?

And the way that reframes how we go after things is so different.

We live from victory, not for it.

So I just want to, I just want to invite you that in God we

have a prize that we live for and from.

God is not our consolation prize.

He is the prize. He is the end.

He's the means. He is.

He is the one we love and we seek.

And our culture just pushes on you that you're a nobody if you

don't have something that sets you apart, primarily riches.

It just is what it is. Either you got the riches or a

path to get them, or you're a nobody.

That's what our culture tells us.

It's not true. You have the words of God.

Next week's sermon is entirely about meditation, which is the

the theme of verse 15. So I'm going to skip that for

now. Go with me to 16.

I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word.

My delight, your statutes. I won't forget your word.

I thought he said he delighted in it.

So how's he going to forget it like this again?

It just seems like I thought. I thought you did delight in it.

How? How does somebody delighting in

something need to tell themself not to forget it?

Well, again, y'all, this is this is just the pledge plea dynamic

here. This is the the, the the link

we've got to just accept as part of our covenant to walk with

God. OK, is that this is what it's

going to feel like. The way that you keep delighting

in God is by not forgetting his word.

Do you see that link? Like I delight, I will delight

and I'm going to do that by not forgetting.

It's like a path, OK? It's kind of like a fire has

started in you by the Spirit of God when you're saved.

OK, imagine a campfire and you want to the way to be warm, the

way to see is to get the light from the fire and the heat of

the fire. You need to be close to it if

you want to experience that. Once you're in Christ, the Bible

teaches that fire ain't going away.

However you can get, I mean, you know, you can get colder, you

can get hotter, you could see more, you could see less.

You want to be close to the fire to to live the life of

flourishing God intends for you. And the way that fire is flamed

is through the word of God and the Spirit of God stirring up

Christ in your heart. And that happens as you don't

forget it, as you store it up. So we're going to end our time

in verse 11. Go back to verse 11 with me.

I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin

against you. Y'all say it with me, your word.

My heart and again y'all, let's just take it phrase by phrase.

I have who is that I I believers say this y'all, if you're not a

believer here you are welcome to store up as we're going to talk

about. Just know that it's not going to

have the effect we're going to talk about for those who are in

Christ. Not because you're not.

Because we're on some plane that you're not on or we're better

people. It's because the Spirit of God

indwells us by Christ who has saved us.

Y'all, before a new way is learned, a new nature must be

received. So the invitation to you non

Christ followers is to receive Christ is to repent is to

believe. It says here I've stored up your

word in my heart. Here's what's crazy that the

Bible teaches y'all is that if you are in Christ, you have a

new heart. Quite literally.

In Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, the new covenant was I will take out

your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

It is as if God has put his heart in you believer, which is

what you're invited to. If you are not in Christ, you

are invited to receive a new heart.

This conversation we're about to have about storing up God's word

in our heart for the the faith family is what you're invited to

once you receive a new heart. We're not, we're not, we're not

trying to like dress up a dead heart.

We're trying to like, cultivate what Christ has given us in a

new heart. So the invitation to you is to

get a new heart. That's what the cross of Jesus

Christ is about. The purchasing power for your

new heart was His death, His burial, His resurrection, and

His ascension. He died to give you a new heart.

Isn't that amazing? Maybe your whole life you

thought He died to motivate you to live like you have a new

heart. That's not the gospel.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that Christ died as a perfect man so that

sinful people could be accounted as sinless.

And He's gifting you the heart He lived with, not you.

Like that's kind of that's the gospel.

He lived a new heart life. You don't.

So Christianity is not your pledges to be better.

It is you walking in the newness Jesus has given you as a gift

through his death, burial, and resurrection.

So we invite you to put your faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, followers, it says that I might not sin against you.

We're going to talk about storing it up here in a minute,

but it says that I might not sin against you.

Hopefully you know what I know that you know that I know that

we all know that you are a Sinner, OK?

And that apart from the ongoing grace of God, you can't help but

sin. It's just facts.

It's just, it's just what we do. But I wonder if in your mind if

if we've just fixed in our mind that part of the goal of your

life is to not sin, is to walk with Christ, is to love people,

is to not sin. Do you tend to, on the front end

of things, ask for God's empowerment to live his way?

Or are you banking on back end grace that you didn't?

Do you ask front end empowerment or bank on back end forgiveness?

Are you with me? It's not that you're not going

to need back end forgiveness either way.

Amen. Somebody is that.

Have you become the type of person that wants front end

power, that wants the way, wants the path illuminated, wants the

help, wants God to help? Or are you in your heart

settled? I'm not going to do it, but I

know He'll forgive me and y'all, I've been there.

I get there, but the psalmist says I'm going to store up your

word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

It's a plan to beat sin, as one of my favorite artist says.

He says I'm trying to win, trying not to sin.

And that just hit me as a new believer.

I'm like what? And like Paul talks about

pleasing God. You're like, I thought I do

please God because of Jesus. You do, but you can live in a

way that pleases God. And so I just want to, I just

want to ask you, do you game plan against sin?

You have victory in Christ that He wants to empower you to walk

in, in your workplace on your team.

Can you say to God, I have stored up your word in my heart

that I might not sin against you, which is way more than just

not doing a bunch of dumb stuff. It's being filled with the type

of heart that the Sermon on the Mount envisions, which is just

love and just giving your life away to others.

Let's close by talking about this phrase stored up your word

in my heart. Somebody say your word, my heart

y'all. The path to not sinning in some

way involves word being stored up in the heart.

Somebody say heart. This verse gives us an image of

the heart having like a vault, like a storehouse.

I'm thinking like Harry Potter Gringotts vault here.

I'm thinking like deep in your heart there's a vault.

You with me? Well, y'all in some kind of way,

your heart has a vault. Your heart is a vault like it it

has one it is one it's it's a little bit of both and what's in

the heart drives behavior. What's in the heart drives you.

What's in the heart, what's precious to you kind of makes

what you do automatic. I was I was sharing with the

students earlier. If you come to me and you ask me

about an opportunity to drive to Montana right now and just leave

my wife and kids, I'm going to be like, no, like I it, it

doesn't even, it's like speak of Chinese to me.

I'm like, that doesn't even like register because it's not in the

vault. Like the vault right now is

kids, it's family, it's Norfolk, it's church, it's y'all like

what's in the vault makes a lot of your decisions automatic, yes

or no. It just drives your behavior,

your words, your daydreams, They're all flowing from the

vault. The way the Bible thinks about

it is you are not a brain on a stick.

You're kind of an overflowing heart.

To watch your life isn't to watch a rational being.

Living out their life is to watch an overflowing lover, just

showing that through how they lived their life.

So what's in your heart really matters.

So should we if we love something else, just fake it

till we make it that we love God's word more.

No OK, remember pledge and plea part of how you're asking God to

make your heart. As a follower of Christ, Spirit

and power, part of your path to ask him to help you is to choose

to store up your word with God's heart, with a heart saying, God,

make my heart want your word. Therefore I'm a store up your

word. Are you with me?

You don't have to wait until you're fully authentic.

If you are always waiting until you're fully authentic, you're

going to stay waiting, OK? Part of the process is to plea

as you pledge. That's what I'm trying to get

you to see. Pledge while pleaing, plea while

pledging. It's not phasing.

It's kind of they're both happening in the same sentence.

Are you with me? Pledge, plea, pledge, plea,

pledge, plea. And one of the main pledges and

pleas of Psalm 119 is to store up God's Word in your heart,

Y'all, God wants to be treasured, not systematized.

So some of the asterisks here, we just got to get out the ways.

We're not talking about checklists.

We're not talking about you flexing information or being

proud of what you what you. This is not about you.

It's about Jesus, about the neighbor you need to love.

But the path to love God, it involves A storing up.

So I want to call you to store up God's word in your heart in

2026 and for the rest of your life, just store it up.

Just store it up. Next week we'll talk about

meditation. The goal of storing up is

meditation, but you can't swim in what you haven't stored up.

Are you with me? You can't soak in what you

haven't stored up like that. There is a a further

conversation from storing up. But you if you haven't even

settled that storing up is a part of what God's calling you

to, there's a lot. You're going to not be in the

rocking chair. You can't swim in the ocean.

That ain't in your heart. You with me, OK.

And y'all, there's all kinds of apps out there, things you can,

you do for the purposes of unity for our church at this place and

this time right here, right now. You don't have to.

Nobody's going to quiz you. If you would like to, I'm

inviting you to just memorize verses 9 through 16.

Store those up, store them in your heart.

Memory isn't the end goal. It's just the start of the goal,

OK? But you can't do other things.

You can't swim in. You can't meditate on what isn't

stored up. So let's start with verses 9 to

16. And within your family, if you

got young kids, pick one verse in there that they memorize.

OK, So if y'all want, you don't have to, nobody's going to ask

you. There's all kinds of apps,

there's all kinds of stuff. But I hope it's a lesson to you.

I, I want this to be a year where we are just storing up

God's word through reading, through praying, through

singing, through memorizing in ways that maybe we we never have

before and maybe changes the trajectory of your life.

So I want to close on is reading verse 12 one more time.

Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statues.

God is just. So blessed praise God, from whom

all blessings flow. Every good thing you will enjoy

today is a concept from God. Every food, every flavor, every

friend, every communication, every feeling, every game like a

person. I love to tell my kids, I'll be

like, who created football? They'll go God, I'll be like,

well, kind of, but some dude made it somewhere, but they

didn't even have the concept of creativity.

Like we don't know how to make like the concept of let's get a

committee and make better rules. Should we ban the tush push?

All of that flows from a God who is a being that is thinking and

rationally. He's a community within himself.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all blessings flow from God and

y'all in your life, the challenges you face, all of them

go back to who He is and His blessedness.

We're talking about a God who died on the cross for people

like me and you. He got up on that wood and then

He stayed there knowing I would keep struggling with sin the way

I do once I followed Him. We're talking about a God who

stayed as He was mocked. We're talking about a God who

just understands being misunderstood.

He overlooks so much. He's infinitely patient.

He is so kind. So maybe you're in a marriage or

something where you feel misunderstood or stuck and

you're just resentful and frustrated.

Whatever power you need to live out anything is found in Jesus

by the Spirit. And God wants to live life with

you. He has more blessedness to give

than you can even contain. So expand your storehouse this

year and you won't keep expanding it because he could

keep filling it for a long time. OK, blessed are you.

O Lord, teach us your statutes. Let's pray together Almighty God

our Father, you are blessed. You're overflowing.

You're a fountain God and and and nothing quite compares to

your word God your son is the word in the flesh.

We praise you that you are a revealing God.

You have made yourself known Lord and we we praise you for

that got to pray for my my friends who are not in Christ.

May they receive a new heart. May they repent and believe of

their sins. May they receive the heart of

flesh that your new covenant promises and for the believers

in the room. God just help us in the ways

that this is a battle. That we don't want to fight in

our flesh. We want to just, we want to

just, we just want to store up other things.

We want to have a storehouse full of of, of comfort and

daydreams and ease. But God being with you through

your word by the spirit. There's nothing quite like it.

And I just pray God that that the the fruit that will come

from this process would would glorify you got to pray against

just just lies and all the ways this process can feel

inauthentic and that rubs some allergies that we have and we

just don't like that. We want everything to feel

seamless, even though we, you know, force ourselves to do

things, even that we say we love like basketball or whatever all

the time. God, but with your word with

things of the Lord, sometimes we can just get real.

We can get real legalistic or we could just totally quit.

Lord, just help us to, by your spirit store up your word.

God and I pray that more neighbors will be loved, more

people will come to Christ, that when you cut this church your

word would flow out of us. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach

us your statutes. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.