Christians face many temptations and sources of opposition in the world. With so many pressures inside and out, it can be easy to forget the most foundational tool in our struggle against sin - God's Word. God has given us a book, his infallible and authoritative word, to equip us not only with facts or feelings about God, but so that we may know him personally and grow in our love and obedience toward him.

You'll open your Bibles to Proverbs 28. He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. In light of what Jason just exhorted us on and what I'm going to exhort you on is let let today be the day like I'm with Jason I know I know there's men and and young men in our midst that are either addicted or looking and on their way to addiction to things that are inappropriate on their smartphones and on their computers. And I know there's men here that maybe they can't remember the last time they sat down and met with God opening up His Word, or it's, you know, it's hit or miss. And what Jason brought to us this morning and what I'm gonna bring to you like I don't want it to be like a maybe it needs to be a ton of bricks that falls on you and crushes you but that then you can practice verse 13 and Proverbs 28 and find healing and help in the Lord Jesus Christ by confessing them to each other.

Young men, little guys, don't ever think that Being a man means you just hide everything in your life, you're strong and you're self-sufficient. That is a lie from the devil. We desperately need each other. I desperately need brothers in my church, they need me, and you need the brothers in your church. So, so let's make use of each other, even, even today.

Today can be the day that, that you, maybe for the first time, stop covering your sins and you take God at his word, knowing that you will not prosper and you confess and forsake them and you find mercy. Mercy in the Lord. So let's ask for the Lord's help. Oh Lord, who's sufficient to stand and to proclaim your word? None of us.

It's only as we are United with the Lord Jesus Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit that we can stand and proclaim your holy, your sufficient, your perfect Word. There's not one of us, Lord, that has stood up here that is attained to these things, but oh God, give us an appetite to be going hard after them, all of us. The ones speaking on them, the ones hearing. Give us a passion to go hard after the things that we're hearing, And ultimately in all of them that it would be a passion after you, to have you, to lay hold of you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

So the topic that I've been given is equipped by the Word of God, and I've titled my remarks, A Glimpse of God. And this is going to sound so elementary, but I think the glory of it has been lost. God wrote a book. Think about that. God Almighty wrote a book.

I'm not saying he, you know, scribed it out with a pen, but you know what I mean. God wrote a book page after page, God's thoughts, who God is, right here at our fingertips we have in the Word of God. The Bible is a book about Jesus. Jesus is fully God and is a full and complete revelation of the Father. Therefore, when we open our Bibles, what do we see?

What do we experience? It's God. My heart's desire is that from what you hear from me, that you would be stirred up and challenged to come to the Word of God, not for information, but to meet with God, to open up your Bibles and to be expecting to come face to face with the God of the universe. Marshall Siegel writes in relationship to this, when we steep our souls in the Exodus, the Levitical laws, the Psalms, the minor prophets, the Gospels, the early church and Acts and Paul's letters, we are meditating not merely on words on a page but on God himself. He reveals himself through words.

We are seeing him, God, in radiant glory, hearing from him in infinite wisdom, tasting him in his unique ability to satisfy the human soul. Brothers, how else does God reveal himself to us? Sure, his glory and creation as I walked this morning and it was beautiful, fog rising on the ponds, the sun coming up over the trees, pink and all sorts of beautiful colors, but...and that's glorious and the Word of God says that the creation displays the glory of God, but if that's all we had, we would all be dead in our sins and trespasses. If that's all we had, we would know nothing of what has been said so far. We would know so little of the glory of God.

We have got to be men that expect when we sit down and open up the Word of God. We're not just checking off the box, We're not just doing our duty so when someone asks us we can say, yeah I'm reading the Bible, what are you reading? Well I'm reading in this, but our expectations is that we're meeting with God. When we wake up early, we don't wake up early to simply study God or to exercise discipline. And I said simply.

Exercising discipline and studying God are good things. But it's got to be more than that. On the glorious, Psalm 145, 5 says, On the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works I will meditate. When we sit down to meditate either early in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, during the watches of the night, there's no special, it's not special if you do it in the morning or if you do it in the afternoon or if you're doing it late at night after all the kids are in bed, but are you doing it? When we sit down to meditate upon the Word of God, we can expect God.

And I want to take us to Psalm 119. I want to take us to Psalm 119 and just go through there pulling out four different categories that Psalm 119 highlights and there's more there about the Word of God. Just to wet our appetites of what can we expect when we open up the Word of God. The first point is, is the Word of God is more valuable and sweeter than anything that we have in this life. And if you're like me, The realities of my day-to-day life and my experience are so far from that consistently being true of my life.

So far from me living my life like the Word of God is, as it says in verse 14, I have rejoiced in the way of your testimony, testimonies as much as in all riches. Or in verse 72 it says, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver. I wrote a note sometime in the past, oh Lord make it so because I'm not there. I know none of us are there, but let's not be content with being satisfied that that's not the case. Let's not be content, young men, when you open up the Word of God that it's boring to you.

If your dad is honest with you, oftentimes we open up the Word of God and it's boring, it's dry. That's not because the Word of God is insufficient and lacks glory, It's us. So what should we do at that point? We should say things like that. We should get on our face and say, God, I love money more than I love your word.

Help me. Make it not so, Lord. One brother shared with me, he said, my times of the Lord have been dry. And he said, so I put the kids to bed and I got on my knees and on my face before God and I opened up his word and I stayed up. And I cried out to God, make it not so, Lord, show me your glory.

He said, and I didn't, I woke up the next morning with laying on the floor with my Bible beside me and guess what nothing happened so I did it again the next night. Are we men and young men, have you professed Christ? Are we like that? Do we have that kind of appetite to see the glory of God in His Word? Because it's there.

God is revealing himself, his thoughts, who he is in his word. It's for the taking, but yet we we so often have such little appetite for it. May we cry out that it would not be so brothers verse 103 in Psalm it's all from Psalm 119 103 says how sweet are the words are your words to my taste sweeter than then honey to my mouth verse 127 back on the money therefore I love your commandments more than gold. Yes, than fine gold. And then lastly in this point, verses 161 and 162, But my heart stands in awe of your word.

I rejoice at your word as one who finds great treasure. So the first point from Psalm 119 about realities of God's Word is that it's more valuable and sweeter than anything in this life. That may not be our experience consistently, but that's the reality of God's Word and what it says about itself, that it's more valuable and sweeter than anything you have in this life. The second point I want to draw out from Psalm 119 about God's Word is that it gives power to wage war against sin and to win and we see this in verse 11 of Psalm 119. Your word I have hidden in my heart, and why that I might not sin against you?

Verse 16 says, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. The third point, and it's connected, it's connected to the the power to wage war against sin and to win. As you taste and see that the Lord is good, the third point is about the Word of God, the more you get, the more you want. I promise you, and I think most of your dads could promise you, You sit long with your Bibles open, praying that God would show you His glory in His Word, and you start to taste it, you'll want more of it.

You won't get full and say, no, that's enough. I've had enough glory today. I want more. Every day I want more. Give me more of my desires and appetites for the glory of God that we experience in His Word would grow.

And this is where you will win the war against sin. You will not win that war that Jason just talked about by saying no. Saying no is important. Running, starving, all those things are important. But you have got to find a superior pleasure.

I speak out of experience. Decades of saying no, I won't look at that, I won't do that, and going back to it, and going back to it. It's the only period of my life that I've been able to sustain victory against sin and specifically against the sin of impurity is by finding a superior satisfaction in God. It comes into my purview and I know what it will cost me, the pleasure that I'm having in God and His Word and experiencing and walking with Him and the cheapness of it, the fleetingness of it. It's like, no thank you.

It's not worth it. It's not worth it. So first, the Word of God is more valuable and sweeter than anything that we have in this life. The Word of God will give us power to wage war against sin and to win. The Word of God, the more you get of God in his word, the more that you will want.

Lastly, the fourth point that I want to draw out from Psalm 119 about the Word of God is in verses 32 and 36. Verse 32 says, I will run the course of your commandments, for you shall enlarge my heart. It's an odd, odd phrase, enlarge my heart, and coupling that together with verse 36, incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness, reading on in verse 37. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things and revive me in your way.

I think there's a direct correlation between the more time we spend meditating upon the Word of God and our hearts being enlarged to taste and to see that the Lord is good and a decrease, a corresponding decrease in our appetite and desires for trivial things. You see that? Lord, turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things and fix them upon your word. Fix them upon your word. And in closing, I don't doubt that almost all of us know that what I've said about the Bible is true.

I've probably not shared anything new with you. But how many of us have tasted it? How many of us have experienced meeting with God in His Word? Not just reading the Bible so you can check off your Bible reading plan, not just reading the Bible so you don't feel guilty when brothers ask you those questions, but reading the Bible and meeting God. At the end of the day, we don't read our Bibles, brothers, and young brothers if you're in the Lord, because we don't want to.

You want to argue with me about that? We don't read our Bibles because we don't want to read them because they're boring. We want to surf Facebook. We want to surf YouTube. Brothers, Young brothers, put your phones down.

They're shriveling your hearts. I feel this. I feel how much it shrivels my heart and appetites for the things of the Lord, to sit there in my chair in the evenings, or worse, to lay there in my bed and to browse just nothing inappropriate but just rubbish. It shrivels your heart. Put it away.

And I'm not saying open up the Word of God when you feel like it. I'm saying These things are objectively true about the Bible. Get on your face like that brother did, open your Bibles, and cry out to God to help you to feel like reading his word. Open your Bibles and cry out, show me your glory, Lord, that at five o'clock, five thirty, six o'clock, whatever time it is, the alarm goes off to get up with God and the appetite to get out of bed because you're eager to meet with him gets you out of bed, versus it being boring and unsatisfying so that you hit the snooze button and you go back to sleep. So we don't read our Bibles because we don't want to.

Let's be honest with ourselves. Oftentimes like I've said, we find the Bible boring. But here's the glory. The God who said, let there be light, He loves, God loves in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6 to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God loves to show you his glory.

He's not beggardly just holding back, ask me a little more, wait, like beg me for it Michael. God loves to show you his glory. Ask him to. He loves to meet with us in his Word. He loves to set sinners free from the bondage of sin and lift up the brokenhearted and give strength to the weak, courage to the fearful.

Whatever it is that you need, brothers, it's here, it's in the Word of God and he loves to give it to you. Oh brothers, let us model for our sons, just like Jason was saying, let them catch us sneaking off to be alone with God. Let our sons find us like the great missionary, Peyton, how they would tiptoe past the little room in the middle of the cottage because holy things were happening behind that door. Let our sons know fathers like this. Let us cry out to God that he would show us his glory in his word and that we would not simply open up our Bibles to study God, but that we would sit down opening up our Bibles and expect to meet with him, to experience him, to get a glimpse of him and be changed by that.

Let's pray. Oh Lord, your word is glorious. I pray that today, Lord, would be maybe for some men, young men here, would be a day that they lay bare and confess. Maybe it's purity issues. Maybe it's a lack of discipline and appetite for your word.

Oh, may today be a day, O God, that that stops and that they cry out to you to show them your glory Lord give us as men such an appetite Oh may may spare us from dry dead religion and give us yourself, Lord, primarily in your Word. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.