A Better Way: Justin Huibregtse | September 13th, 2026 |

Good morning, Easteridge.

My name is Justin.

I'm the senior pastor here.

And today we are starting our uh brand new series, A Better Way.

And uh uh, if you're gonna uh if you brought your Bibles with me, uh which I hope you all did, uh open with me to Psalm 119.

Uh we're gonna get started right away because Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.

It's 176 verses, so we've got to go through a lot today.

So follow along with me as we go.

But before we get into that, uh I've um I really want to uh thank the safety team that we had here.

Uh we had a safety training yesterday that went amazingly well.

If you don't know it, we have a safety team here that keeps everyone safe.

We know we have uh there's safety issues that are going around around the country that we are hyper aware of.

And we have a safety team here that trained a bunch of our volunteers and our staff and our board, so it was fantastic.

I want to say thank you to that.

I also want to say thank you to uh Nate and Carrie who preached for me this last two two weeks, uh, gave me some, you know, a break to to dream and to vision, uh, a little bit of vocal maintenance as well, which was shot down by allergies.

Thank you.

And um, and so yeah, we just have a we just have a lot going on here.

And uh and we today we're talking about uh about what we delight in.

And so um, you know, before we get into Psalm 19, uh we we also talked last week about how we are moving away from our trunk or treat event and going towards this uh an event called Harvest Pack.

And there's something that I truly believe about Harvest Pack and about you know what this what this whole thing is, is uh is I believe that we do not want Duluth uh kids to go to bed hungry.

And you know, we we we I believe that you guys want to help out with that.

I I truly believe that with with conversations I've had with the the direction that we're going, we I just I feel like there's a there's a way to help these kids that have these needs.

And um, that's why this fall we're gonna be packing over 23,000 meals for Second Harvest Northland to stay in the area to uh to yeah, it's a it's an amazing uh endeavor that we're that we're going towards.

Um and all of that food that we're packing, those 23,000 meals stays here in the Northland area.

And it's uh it's it goes through the the backpack program that if you don't know, you know, kids get meals at school every single day throughout the week.

They get uh they get a breakfast and a lunch.

Then on the weekends, they sometimes are very hungry.

So they get sent home with a with a package, a backpack of food that lasts that's supposed to last them through the weekend.

This goes to help with that.

Uh, our goal is$7,000 to to it's 30 cents a meal.

So we're we're raising that that money.

And what I want you to hear is when you give this or when you show up and pack with your own uh uh or your own two hands, you're not just writing a check or working to a cause.

You become the neighbor who shows up.

You are caring for the for the uh the kids that are on the bus with your kids.

Uh you become the reason a kid in the city eats on a Saturday.

Uh, you know, there's there's these 23,000 meals, and it's not just uh, you know, start, it's that's a start.

It's not it's not where we're gonna end.

We're gonna keep on going and keep on doing this.

So here's why I'm telling you all that on the very first Sunday of a brand new series, though.

Um it's all about spiritual disciplines, and that we need to delight in what we are doing.

And so we're talking about uh uh over the next seven weeks about uh reading your Bible, praying, fasting, resting, giving, and none of it was never meant to stay a private act.

That we do all of these things together, and we do all these things to delight in what God has put on our hearts to serve the community.

So uh so keep Harvard's pack in front of you this fall, and this morning we're gonna talk about all where it all starts.

But I have to tell on myself for a second here is that you know, uh actually raise your hand if you've uh if you've ever started a Bible reading plan.

It's okay, you can you can raise it, you can be proud of it.

You've started a Bible reading plan.

Keep them raised, keep them raised.

Now, also put your hand down if you completed it.

Okay?

Yeah.

A lot of us start them, right?

That's okay, that's okay.

You can we're we're gonna embrace it because I'm right there with you.

A lot of us start those Bible reading plans, very few of us actually finish them.

And so that and I'm right there with you.

You know, a few years ago I told Sarah, you know, I I bought this new Bible, and it says the Bible in one year.

I'm gonna read all of it.

And she, you know, said, okay, uh, completely unimpressed.

Um, she definitely has a reason to be unimpressed with that, though.

So, you know, day one, I'm going.

I'm going.

Day one, I'm reading.

I read that chunk of scripture, and I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm a theologian at this point.

So day two, I'm still very strong.

I I I'm reading.

Uh somewhere around day 11, I had a rough week and missed a couple days in a row.

Uh, and instead of just you know reading two chapters in a row or so, uh uh, and I like a and I could just read it like a normal person, my adult brain decided that the entire plan was ruined.

I couldn't just start over.

Uh or I couldn't just keep on going.

It was beyond saving.

Uh I had to wait until January the next year to start it.

So um as if there's some sort of you know Bible commissioner that's keeping track of all this.

Um so you know, I don't do that with anything else in my life.

You know, I don't quit the gym sometimes, um because I I missed a Tuesday.

But somehow missing a reading plan felt like I'd broken an actual contract with God, and the only honorable move was left was to quit for 11 months and restart in January.

So, uh, but I want to tell you something about you know uh why that might actually be a problem for all of us.

Not just not just me, but for all of us, is because that's that's really not a discipline problem.

What it is, is it's a it's a delight problem.

Think about it.

Nobody needs a reminder to check their phone 40 times a day.

Amen?

I I've I've never heard once someone say, I should really build my consistency in picking up my phone and checking and scrolling, my scrolling habit.

You you don't need it, you don't need a plan to watch the show that everyone's already talking about.

Okay?

You don't forget to eat a healthy meal that you actually love.

We are shockingly consistent about anything we truly delight in.

We don't abandon things we love, we abandon things that feel like homework.

Amen, kids?

Right?

We don't want it.

So here's a small experiment.

What I want you to do is pull at your phone right now.

I'm I'm asking you, it's okay.

Uh you can pull at your phone right now, and what I want you to do is find the flashlight app.

Okay?

Look for it.

Look for that flashlight app and turn it on, and let me see.

Let me see what you got, okay?

Find the flashlight app.

It's it's a-okay to do this.

Your pastor's telling you to use an app in church?

Okay.

So I see all I see all the these lights on now.

It's pretty cool.

And and but nobody has ever forgotten how to turn that on.

If you if you've ever turned it on yourself.

It nobody needs a plan to remember that the flashlight exists when the power goes out.

You you just reach for it instantly.

You it becomes the uh, you know, in that moment, you actually need that light right now, and you know exactly where to find it.

You guys can turn it off.

I don't want your batteries to run out.

So, but hold on to that picture, but we're gonna come back to it.

Here's what I think is actually going on underneath all of that, and it's bigger than reading plans.

I think a lot of us, including myself, are quietly asking a question we don't say out loud very often.

Is there something more than this?

More than the busyness, more than the checking the boxes, more than just showing up and going through the motions that used to mean something, and now mostly just feel like maintenance.

That's exactly the question we're asking today, and why we're starting today.

We're we're we're walking into this new series called a better way.

Because as Shannon pointed out earlier, this is the ancient way.

These are the ancient paths.

There's an older, better way to actually live this life here, right now, with God, and it's not new at all.

This isn't new hacks, this isn't new gimmicks.

It's been walking this way for thousands of years.

So it's it's similar to this this image behind me.

I have I went to go visit my brother in the Pacific Northwest, and this is uh this is in the Cascade Mountains, and we went to go find uh find these trees, that these ancient deep rooted cedar trees.

And as you can tell, it's it's it's pretty big.

And those weren't even the ones that we've found that were supposed to be the biggest.

We actually got lost trying to find the big ones.

But uh, but but you know the the secret of those trees standing for centuries is their root system.

They're deep, they're wide, they're interconnected, they're tangled together underground with every tree around them.

So that's when the wind comes for one of those trees, they're actually being held up by others.

So it's a it's an entire forest that we can't even see.

It's the same thing with these ancient rhythms that we have going on.

That it interconnects our lives and something that survives the seasons because it was never meant to be walked alone, is that we're walking through these seasons together.

And so if I if I'm really honest with you, you know, sometimes I'm preparing for a message, and there's been there's been years, not not just not just weeks where where this where you know I'm looking for being deeply rooted, for being like these trees, for having this rhythm, for for for having uh these ancient, ancient ways, these ancient paths exist.

And for for years, I felt like my Bible was something that I needed to understand professionally before I understood it in my heart.

That that I I've and I want you to understand that I've I've I have sat at my desk and have opened my Bible on a Tuesday and really and my you know, my laptop's there, it's open, and opening it to scripture, and instead of you know finding who God is and what God is all about, I'm just trying to write something down.

I'm trying to just get something accomplished, opening it because someone had a question I needed to answer well.

And somewhere in there, without ever deciding to, I got remarkably skilled at handling the Word of God without ever actually sitting in it.

And so if that's you this morning, if your Bible has quietly become a tool that you manage instead of a voice that you long for, hear this before we go any word further.

You are not disqualified from this message, you're not behind, you're exactly who this message is for.

Every one of us needs to be recaptured by the light, not just shamed back into discipline.

Guilt might get you to open up your Bible tomorrow.

It's not gonna get you to open up your Bible a year from now.

So let's look at somebody who actually had what we are after, somebody who wasn't managing this book from a distance, somebody who was, in the best possible sense, addicted to the word.

So we're gonna be in the book of Psalms and Psalm 119.

It's in the Old Testament.

If you if you want to open up the scriptures with us this morning, it's in the Old Testament.

If you need a second to get there, it's okay.

It's probably right in the center of your version of your Bible.

It's right in the middle of it.

It's in the middle of mine.

So we're gonna be there, and scripture says a lot about itself.

It is uh referring to the law, spoken word, being a sword, being breathed by God.

But listen to this.

If you've never spent much time here in Psalm 119, like I said, it's the longest chapter in the entire Bible.

176 verses, and nearly every single one of them circles back to some version of the same confession.

I love this book.

I delight in this book.

This book is my joy.

So in verse 24, it starts out.

Believe me, if you start in verse one, you're going to see exactly what I just said, that it circles back to delighting in the word.

But in verse 24, we're gonna start there because it says, Your testimonies are my delight.

They are my counselors.

What the author is saying here is that before he makes the very hard decisions in his life, he is going to the word and saying, What does your word say?

What does your law say?

What is your testimony saying about what I should do in my life?

If he had not delighted in God's law, he would have perished in his affliction, starting in verse 92.

That's exactly what it says.

If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.

I would have perished, I would have, I would have died.

I would have not survived anything, any sort of trial, any sort of tribulation, anything that I'm doubting.

I would not have delighted in it if it were not for your word.

So Psalm 92 goes on into Psalm 93.

I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life.

The law, the word, the spoken word of God gives life.

It goes on to say, I am yours.

Save me, for I have sought your precepts.

The wicked lie and wait to destroy me, but I consider your testimonies, what is written about you, what others have written about you, bring me life.

I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.

Which basically says that the wisdom of the world is not going to help you, but this book can.

Then in verse 97, oh how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

The law, the word of God, fills his life.

He meditates on it all day long.

Not because he's forcing himself to think spiritual thoughts, but because that's genuinely where his mind keeps drifting towards.

He wants to think about it.

He wants it to be on his mind.

He is delighting in this.

It's not something that he's just falling into.

He's saying, This word, this word that I am reading is for me to delight in, for me to find joy, for me to find hope.

He goes on to say, Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.

The law is forever with him, the word is forever with him.

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.

I understand more than the age, for I keep your precepts.

I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.

I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

That I I I love that imagery and what that what that says, because we've all tasted that sweet honey, and that the word is just like that to this to the author.

His words are sweeter than honey in his mouth.

Not sweeter than duty, as far as like like I have to get this done, I have to read this Bible, I have to keep these commands, I have to get this checklist done, I have to do all these things to get me closer to God.

No.

The word is sweeter than honey.

This is not a man white knuckling his way through his devotions where he's thinking, I gotta get this book read.

I have to get this thing done.

He's not, he's not just doing that.

This is a man who cannot stop talking about how good this book tastes.

He keeps on going, Through your precepts I get understanding.

Before, therefore I hate every false way.

There's a lot of false ways in our world today.

Amen?

There's a lot of things that are influencing us in very negative ways.

That false way that he keeps talking about, he's saying, if I am in your word, if I am reading your word, I am keeping those false ways away from me.

And my I am I'm understanding them in a different way now.

And then this is the key verse of today's message, verse 105.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

A lamp doesn't manage your life from a shelf, it collects dust.

A lamp goes where you go.

There's a massive difference between a rule book and a lamp.

And if we're honest, most of us have been treating God's word like the first one, like a rule book.

Saying, I gotta follow these things.

The Bible commands these things, I gotta do them, I gotta, I gotta get better with God.

And if I don't follow this this these commands, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow the line with Him.

It's just not true.

It's a lamp.

A lamp isn't reference material.

The whole shift in this psalm is inviting you into understanding that God never intended his word to be something that you occasionally check when life catches fire.

He intended this to be your light, that you actually walk by every single day.

Whether anything is happening that is bad or nothing is bad, to be with you all the time.

Remember your flashlight from a few minutes ago.

Nobody needs a reminder to read for it when power goes out.

You just use it.

It's right there.

That's the relationship the psalmist has with scripture.

It's not that he's more disciplined than the rest of us, it's that somewhere along the way, this book stopped being an emergency tool that he fumbled for in the dark and became something he simply instinctively reaches for because he generally wants it to give him life.

Says, this will help me in my life.

It's not just a tool.

So just for a second, we're gonna have verse 105 back on the screen here.

Just for a second, I want I want to walk through what this kind of looks like and how we delight in scripture together.

So if you have your if you have your Bible out, if if you have your phone out, it's okay.

Um Psalm 119, verse 105.

Psalms 119:105

Uh, if uh I'll wait for you to find it if you need to open it back up.

Now, what I want you to do is we're going to read it together.

Okay?

It can be under your breath, it can be quiet, but with your own voice.

Let's read this together.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

That's it.

That's the whole picture.

It's one verse.

Read slowly, out loud, on purpose.

If that took you 15 seconds, and it didn't, I can promise you that.

Notice something.

You just did the hardest part of what I'm going to ask you to do this morning, and it costs you almost nothing.

It's not an accident.

It's the whole point.

Now, I know for some of you, uh, we have we have different backgrounds, we have different things that we've grown up with.

Some of you have been Christians for a very long time, and you know that this book is is is kind of uh it's complicated, it's confusing.

Um, there's a lot of you know inner inner integrated chapters, and we we find the timeline weird and it it's it's it's out there.

But what I and for some reason we've let that understanding of the Bible be cold to us.

We we we we're like I'm kind of afraid of it now.

I don't know if I want to get to know more of the Bible, because it's gonna convict me, it's gonna change me.

I don't know if I want that change.

And then there's some of you who are brand new to all of this, brand new to the faith, brand new to being a Christian, brand new to the Bible.

And Psalm 119 sounds like a foreign language because your delight isn't in there quite yet.

I want to tell all of you, no matter what sort of uh area you're on in that spectrum, that it's okay.

It's okay to be there.

Here's why this matters so much to us is that before you know uh I give you a practical uh knowledge of what the what the Bible is, we have to remember that this is this is pointing us to a single person.

If I stop where I just stopped and said, yeah, we're gonna read this together, we're gonna work this is I want you to delight in this, I want you to be like the psalmist and go through all these things and delight in it.

I'm handing you a religion rather than a relationship.

So, what I what where I want us to go now, though, is to understand that this book is something that we do delight in, that we're shaped by it, that the reason you can open this Bible tomorrow.

Tomorrow without fear is that Jesus has already done for you what those five minutes would cost to be in this book.

What I mean by that is that you and I have a sin problem that keeps us from reading this.

We're influenced by the world that says, You don't need this.

You don't need this book.

You don't need, you don't need people, you don't need church, you don't need worship, you don't need these things.

You don't need it.

And we're letting our lives be influenced by other things that say, Yeah, I think I can set this down.

I'll collect it'll collect some dust.

It'll be the last app on my phone that's opened.

I I don't need it.

So we have a sin problem where we we let that happen in not just reading the Bible, but with everything in our lives.

So we have a Savior that came down to set us free from that.

That we have a we have a savior that says, I came down to set you free so that you can read this book with the light.

That he lived the life that we could never live, and he lived it perfectly.

He lived by the law so that we would never have to, so that we could delight in it.

We didn't just have to keep the rules that were in here.

Then he died on the cross for us, he shed his blood for us so that we also could be forgiven, so that we could receive mercy, so we could experience grace, so that when we do forget to read our Bible and we walk back into it, he says, It's okay, I still love you.

You're forgiven for that.

Come back to me, I will embrace you.

And then when after he died, he rose from the dead after three days, proving that we also can have eternal life.

If we turn from our sin, if we follow what this book says and say, Yes, I trust in who this book points to.

Delight is very often the fruit of the rhythm that Christ wants us to have, not the prerequisite for it.

Nobody delights in a book they open twice a month for four minutes out of guilt.

That's not how delight works.

We have to delight in this book, but first we have to delight in our Savior.

We first had to delight in Jesus.

You didn't fall in love with your favorite TV show by watching one episode a month.

Amen?

Right?

You didn't do that.

That's not how we work.

Something in you kept returning to it.

And Jesus is asking us to do the same thing.

Keep coming back to me.

Keep coming back to me.

You do that by being with his people.

You do that by being reading his word.

You do that by being here on Sunday, by being here uh by signing up for one of our groups that's out there and saying, I'm gonna be with his people.

I'm gonna get to know them.

I've got burdens too, and I'm gonna I'm gonna help other people out.

I'm gonna see what this word says.

I'm gonna be moved by it.

Because I I can I can tell you the pattern I see over and over that people don't quit Bible reading because five minutes was too little.

They quit because 30 minutes was too much to sustain and they they just can't get over it.

So here's what we're gonna do.

If you got a sheet of paper uh that said the five minutes on it, uh you you if you didn't get one, we'll have one for you when you leave.

I I've I I think we ran out of them.

So, and I promise you that it's not just another chart, you know, with 365 boxes to check off.

Okay?

It's it's it's a lot more than that.

But what I want you to do is to pick one time.

Pick one time, pick one place and read for five minutes.

That's it.

That's how we start our rhythms.

That's how we start these things.

And and uh like you know, like I said, some some of us need eight cups of coffee before we can even open up our Bibles.

That's okay.

I'm I'm not I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

It's actually that was the rhythm for my life for a long time.

Then you have kids, and then you're waking up at six.

Anyway, um, so you have you have an opportunity to read your Bible whenever you want.

It starts with the rhythm of picking that time, picking that place, picking what you're doing, where you're gonna be, and saying, I want to do this.

This isn't magic.

I'm not saying that you're gonna instantly delight in this.

It is the start of the rhythm that we are called to follow from Psalm 119.

That we want to be in this book.

We want to delight in it.

And here's what excites me today, specifically, about delighting in God's Word, because it was never meant to stay private.

Our delight was supposed to be shared, just like Psalm 119.

So when you find something in this book that you love, that you say, I get this, I understand this, I want to explore this, you share it with other people.

You share it with your friends, you share it here.

When you have questions, you ask it.

When you struggle through things, you bring it forward.

Say, let's go, let's wrestle through this together, let's let's be this together.

That's how roots start.

So, you know, my my ask um is small this week for all of us to do this together.

And made it small on purpose because this is not a bigger plan.

This isn't more guilt walking out of this room than what you walked in with.

It's saying, tomorrow, sometime this week, I'm going to start reading my Bible.

I'm gonna delight in this word.

And trust me, uh, I did the same thing.

I started with this little devotional called Seven Minutes with God.

And I and I still follow it when I fall out of a good rhythm.

And the reason why I fall back into it is because it starts with something simple, something sustainable.

Seven minutes.

And guess what?

It's never enough.

So start with five and say, can I get to five?

Can I get to five minutes of reading a book?

And believe me, if you're stumbling in the dark, if you're stumbling around and not knowing where the path is, if you're looking for a better way, you're gonna need a lamp, not a rule book.

So that's how these roots start.

It was never really about this book, though.

This book this book, honestly, is the best option for for pointing to who this book is about, and that's Jesus.

A lamp is only ever useful because of where it leads you.

And where this one leads every single time, if you actually follow it all the way, is to Jesus.

That's something that we've been pointing to.

That's something that we want to see.

We've talked about it, you know, and and walked through it this morning through worship.

And the worship team's gonna come back up here, actually, and we're gonna we're gonna sing about this.

We're gonna sing about how we delight.

Uh, and we're gonna sing about how our delight is in him because our delight is in our salvation, is in our security, is in how we show the world who he is through what this book says.

We start here.

We don't end here, we start here.

So if you will all stand with us, I'm gonna pray for us, and then we're gonna we're gonna worship together and sing what this delight actually looks like.

Father God, we thank you for delighting in you.

We pray that we don't just have a habit, that we don't just have a checklist, and that we want you.

So strip away everything else that we've been quietly chasing to fill a place only you were ever meant to fill.

Every version of success we've been building our identity on, every reward we thought we needed, we lay it down this morning.

Our hope is in you.

Our strength to do this is in you, and our delight is in you.

Let this season that we are all in be marked by one simple prayer underneath everything else we do.

Less of everything, more of Jesus.

Let it be true tomorrow when we open this book.

Let it be true when we when we pack these meals, when we sign up for these things that we're we're committing to.

And as we commit to one another, the salvation of our faith, the grace of the gospel.

We don't want a better life apart from you.

We want nothing more than you alone.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.