1496 - “Getting in the Word of God Daily” Psalm 119:11

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1496. Today I want to continue what I started yesterday in Podcast 1495 in talking to you about reading the Bible every day. It's so very important. It's not as important as to what version you use, as long as it's either a word equivalency, which is uh something like the New King James or the King James or the Legacy Study Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the ESV, the English Standard Version by Crossway. All of those are great translations. But there's other good translations that are dynamic, like the NLT, the New Living Translation. I started reading it years ago after David Wilkinson came out with the Daily Walk Bible. And Tyndall House had just done a dynamic translation called the New Living Translation, and I loved it from the very beginning because through the years, as I have translated the scriptures which I do, if it's Hebrew, if I'm in the Old Testament, I translate it out of the Hebrew. If it is in the New Testament, I translate it out of the Greek, I break it down, I parse every verb, I decline every noun, I work on the syntax, on diagramming, all of those things, so that I can get to the heart of what God is saying. And the messages that I preach are not always alliterated because sometimes when we alliterate messages, we give the same way to every point. And many times the Bible doesn't give the way to every point. And so my goal is not to have a fancy outline, but to outline it as God has written it. That's called exegesis. And that is reading out of the text. And uh there may be only one point that needs to be emphasized. And I would just say to all of us, we need to emphasize what God emphasizes. If in my preaching and my teaching of the Word of God, if I am preaching to people on Sunday morning, the congregation of any kind, whether it is a congregation where I serve as pastor, I'm as a guest speaker for someone, honestly, if I can get the people to go away and just take away one point, not five points, not fifteen points, not three points, just one point, then I believe that I have accomplished something that only God can help us with, and that is for people to take away something. Take away something that will help them and they can remember and they can dwell on it and they can learn it and they can obey it, then I believe that I've accomplished something. That is as far as a teacher is concerned, because many times people go away, they've written down an outline, they've written down something, but they really don't have it. But if they can take away something that will help them to get through the next week and get through the next day and get through the next hour, and it's something that is uh nourishing to their soul, it may give them the idea that they can get in the Word of God and they can ferret it out for themselves. And what I would say to you is when I read the New Living Translation, I used to see this as that translation became more prevalent, that many times the way I would translate it so that the people could really get the heart of it in a language that they could understand the way that they could understand, I usually ended up with something that was very close to the New Living Translation. Because sometimes one word or two words cannot get it. Sometimes you it is a thought that is being expressed, and the way that it is expressed, we need to make it palatable to the people, not compromising any of the structure or the meaning whatsoever. But I want to tell you, in our English language, when you're translating something, the moment that you make a choice of words, you're already going beyond what the text says in the sense of there's more than one way to say it, and just because you choose a word doesn't mean it's the best way. It might be for your audience, but it might not be for another audience. And in English, when you translate anything out of Hebrew into English or Greek or Aramaic out of the original into a language, you're already making choices. You're making choices of words which will best picture and say what that Greek or that Hebrew says, but many times there is not just an equivalency as such, and so you're trying to get as close to as you possibly can. My goal is to get you in the Word of God, not what translation you use, because there's many good ones out there today. I've named a few of those, but I would say to you that the main thing is for you to get in the Word of God. My godly grandmother who raised me after I surrendered to preach, many times guys would come home with me, and uh many of those guys are dead now, but there's still some alive that might remember what my grandmother used to say. This was back during the days of the paraphrases when the living Bible was out and others were coming out, these paraphrases. They would often ask my grandmother when the King James was basically the only thing that was out besides at that time the Lockman Foundation came out with the uh New American Standard Bible, and they would say to my grandmother, Grammy, which is the best translation? I never will forget you used to say the one you read. And that really is true, because the one you read, if it is anywise accurate and conforms to the uh original languages, then whichever one that you're most comfortable in reading, read that. But read it. Read it every day. Uh you eat every day, you uh walk every day if you can, if you can do either of those things, you try to do it. You talk every day if you can. Spend some time, five minutes, ten minutes in the Word of God, and it'll become a part of you. And that's why the psalmist David said, Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. And many times the best way to get that in your heart is not just rope memory. Memorizing scripture is wonderful, but the best way to get it in your heart is repetition. You read it over and over and over and over again until it becomes a part of who you are. And years ago I began to practice before I would preach through a book, I would read through it several times because I wanted to get the big picture and not just center in on a verse or some kind of exposition of a paragraph, but where did that paragraph fit in? How'd it fit in? And in doing that, I would read something over and over and over and over again. Back when I was a student at the Cristal College in uh the mid to late 70s, I had just come out of an ungodly lifestyle. I'd been saved in 1975. I knew I needed help, so I went to the Christwollege. You didn't have to have any kind of anything special but a call of God upon your life. So I prayed and prayed and sought God's leadership. And after uh making my way to Dallas, I went there. But when I got there and started reading the Word, then God started convicting me of things that I had lived and the way I'd lived before, even uh before I was saved. It was just an ungodly lifestyle, an ungodly thought life. So I began to ask God and search God's word about how I could get my mind cleaned up. And so I began the practice of just reading the Word of God and uh and a book through over and over and over and over again, like the book of Ephesians and the book of Galatians and the book of Romans. And after I'd been doing that for about a year, uh one morning I left my home there where I was staying in Lakewood, which is a part of Dallas around White Rock Lake, and and I headed to Greenville. I was going there to preach in my at a church, and I was thrilled to death, but my mind started wandering into just ungodly thoughts, and I began to just start quoting the scriptures. And so I started at Ephesians chapter one. I had been reading it over and over again, and I began to, as I went down the road, just quote the word. I just started out with chapter one and verse one. I didn't say this chapter one, verse one, just started quoting it. Well, before I got to Greenville, I had quoted the entire book. I might have missed a verse here and there, but I pretty much quoted it verbatim, and I didn't try to memorize the book of Ephesians. I just read it so much that it became a part of who I am. And I believe that's how we hide the Word of God in our heart. We just read things and read things and we think of it and and ponder it over and over again and ruminate it and it meditate on it, and it becomes a part of who you are. This is what happens in Christian schools many times. Every morning they will go over a passage of scripture and go over a passage of scripture. I can remember my daughter uh going to a Christian school in Waynesville, North Carolina, and what was our really scripture reading for the graduation commencement, like going from fifth into sixth, is all the third graders came in, they quoted the book of first John. It was astonishing. I mean, they got up there and did why because they had done that every morning for months, and by the end of the year they had the book of First John in their hearts. They knew it and they quoted it in almost in harmony. And it is important that we read the word of God every day, but not just read to check off something, but hide it in our hearts, read it over and over and over again. Yes, you need to read through the entire word of God, but you need to read the portions of the Word of God, some of them over and over again to where they become a part of who you are. I read through the Psalms every month. I read five Psalms a day, and if I miss a day, I just pick up the next day, and I usually read according to the day of the month. That way if I miss a day, I know right where I'm going to be the next day. There's 150 Psalms, and you can read through 30 of them in sequence. I read on the first day of the month, I read Psalm 1, Psalm 31, Psalm 61, Psalm 91, Psalm 121. That is how I go through on Psalm 119, I read through on the months that have 31 days in them, because uh it is a long psalm, 175 verses, and it takes a while to read through it. This keeps me in the word. Why? Because the Psalms are great psalms and songs of worship and praise and petition and repentance, and some of them stir your hearts, others sometimes when you read through them, you just you're amazed at how God speaks to your heart. But whatever method you use, get in the word of God. And again, that's why I started the 365 Bible reading plan is just get you in the word of God and give you a track to run on. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. Just get in the word of God and the word of God will get in you. That's my word for you today, and I pray that you'll take it and that God will help you, whoever you are, wherever you are, wherever in the world you're in this. We're now in 170 countries, and you may not hear this the day that it is coming out in the archives of the podcast, but whenever you hear this, make a commitment to read a portion of the Word of God every day that you possibly can, and ask God to help you to have that time and the discipline to do it, and that's a prayer He'll answer in Jesus' name. For On the Way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.