BENEFITS OF GOD'S WORDS

More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. More­over by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping there is great reward" ­- so read the words of the Psalmist in 19:10 -11. What are the "they" of verse 10? The reference is to God's law, testi­mony and commandments of the previous verse. All of us are interested in benefits. "What advantage is there for me in this or that? What will I get for my money," or "why should I buy this product..." and the beat goes on. Let us apply this to spiritual matters in light of our text. Will my life be better for following what God says? As we take a cursory journey through these two short verses, we can see a threefold benefit derived from God's words. What do these words do?

1. THEY CAUSE DELIGHT. Nothing can compare to them; not the finest gold, the sweetest honey nor any other thing. There is that quality about God's words that cause delight to those who love them enough to partake of them. They will show the way to true riches. Note Prov­erbs 3:5-6 where we are told to trust in God and not to lean on our own under­standing. Then in verse 10 we are prom­ised that "your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine." In letting God's words lead us into his kingdom, we will find our­selves greater than even men like John (Matt. 11:11 ), because we have been brought into a royal relationship with God. We have become a "kingdom of priests" (Rev. 1:6). To experience these words, we but have to reach out and take them "taste and see" that the Lord is gra­cious (Psa. 34:8). Again, "taste" the gra­ciousness of the milk of the word (1 Pet. 2:1-3). Those who have partaken of God's words will consider those hours as precious and sweet, even as the great Jeremiah did (Jer. 15:16).

2. THEY WARN US AGAINST EVIL.. In verse 11 of our text we are told, "more­over by them thy servant is warned..." We live in a world filled with warnings, labels that say "here is danger," and so on. In heeding these our physical bodies are safe from harm. The same is true with God's spiritual "warning labels." God wants men to live - not die! And so his words warn us in many ways, both in what we should be doing and in what we should not be doing. They warn us of duties we are to be busy about. They tell us of dangers to avoid, and the con­sequent destruction that will come if those warnings are not heeded. We are all better off because of this. God's word "tells it like it is" - and we had better be about the business of listen­ing! God told Ezekiel that he had set the prophet as a watchman unto the house of Israel - "therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me" (33:7). And so God's words warn the wicked to forsake his wicked ways and take up the ways of God.

3. THEY BRING REWARD. Notice verse 11 of our text - "in keeping them there is great reward." The reward is not just for keeping them, but in keeping them. What that says is that obedience to the words of God is reward in an of itself! But certainly there are rewards because we do keep them as well. Jesus once said, "and everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold" (Matt. 10:29 ). A man is never a loser who keeps the words of God! If we are true and faithful in keeping God's words, we may be assured that our comforts are made sweeter and our bur­dens made bearable. It makes life truly valuable and desirable (Phil. 1:20 -23). There is indeed a "reward motive" in living in harmony with the words of God!

Those words tell us where we are going - and the journey will be joyful. Many benefits are in God's words. - Bill Moseley

 

 

 

                                  BRAGGING ABOUT OUR HUMILITY

In the June, 1969 issue of Plain Talk, bro. Robert Turner briefly addresses an issue that we need to think about. He says: "When there is nothing else to pick on, we can always become critical of someone's public prayer. These are so often filled with trite and borrowed expressions, so unlike the person who is speaking, and so unrealistic. But we who criticize set the stage for much of this. We expect too much; we push men into public prayer who have no preparation for what we expect of them; we are sometimes cruel in our comments about their errors.

"I hope I can avoid blunders as I ques­tion the practice of telling God we are very humble. Can't we just be humble in His presence? What do we think of the man tells us, repeatedly, that he is the quiet, deep-thinking type? Or, who assures us, over and over again, that he is not the egotistical type? anyhow, there is no way to hide what we really ARE, from God who knows our every thought. "

We might want to think about this next time we address God in prayer and feel the need to inform him that "we come humbly" before Him! I wonder what God thinks about the humility of one who has to tell the maker of heaven and earth that he is humble. Someone has said, "humility on display is hy­pocrisy." There, I've got that off my chest, so now on to other things to be critical of! - Bill Moseley

 

 

 

The old phone would ring, and a deep voice would answer, "Jot'em down store - Lum Ed'ards doin' the talkin'." Takes me back some 60 years or so when the old "Lum and Abner" radio program would come on (no TV then!). We were treated to characters like Little Pearl, Abner's daughter and Elizabeth his wife. Maybe Cedric Weehunt would come into the store, or maybe Mousey Gray or Squire Skimp. One thing you could count on - whatever the situa­tion, it was good clean fun. Abner once told Lum that Cedric had been "incarcerated," whereupon Lum said, "oh, I thought he was in Little Rock ." Yeah...

This past May in traveling in southwestern Ar­kansas there appeared the sign - "Pine Ridge 18 miles." I couldn't resist, so here we went. Sure enough, there was the "Jot' em down store," with Dick Huddleston's name still on it. You see, all the characters on the radio show were patterned after real people in Pine Ridge. I was a small boy again as I walked through the old store, looking at the small museum, all the while an old recorded program of "Lum and Abner" was playing over an intercom. I almost turned around a time or two, sure that Abner was following me!

Well, it may have been corny, but we loved those characters. They talked about what we talked about; and as they talked about it there was nary a "cuss word" anywhere. Although I wouldn't wish some hard times we went through on our young people, I almost feel sorry for them that they never got to know people like Lum and Abner. For just an hour or two there was a part of Americana "come alive" for me. And I left a better man, because my mind could be guided back to when times and entertainment were good - not noisy, loud and filthy. - Bill Moseley