(upbeat music) - Well, 2022 has begun, and the start of a new year is always a great time to consider our habits, specifically which new habits we wanna start. And of course, it's a great time to ask, how can God's word abide in me more deeply? What can I do?

How can I improve here? And the answer, or one of the answers, is found in a sermon clip taken from John Piper's sermon, If My Words Abide in You, a sermon title, taken from Jesus's phrase in John 15, seven. The sermon was preached on January 4, 2009, 13 years ago yesterday.

It has the new year in view, actually, as you will hear in a moment as we jump into the end of that 2009 sermon. Here's Pastor John now, and he is here talking about Bible holsters. Yeah, like a holster for your Bible. It'll make sense in a second. Have a listen.

- The Holy Spirit awakens through the word, transforms through the word. 1 Peter 1, 23, born again by the Spirit through the living and abiding word. John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So new birth and sanctification are the work of God, not any other way than by the word.

The word is huge. So you need to ask, well, how then does it work? This is the word. So, gonna make a little harness, sort of like a pistol, the FBI. Gonna wear this all day on my heart, and I'm gonna walk around. Will God sanctify this to me and transform me because I have, I'm carrying it here?

What's the answer? The answer is no. The answer is no. Sorry about that. We'll talk afterwards. You probably have a really good idea in your head what you meant. The answer is no, because God created you with a brain. He didn't have to. He created you with a consciousness.

He created you with a will and emotions and thought. And the way he ordains for Christ to be magnified through his word is for there to be a connection created with these words and this brain, and then this will and this heart. If you just try to do this and never read it, never read it, so there's no connection between the meaning of these words and your brain, it has zero effect in your life.

Meditate on the law of the Lord day and night is because a connection is established. And by the connection of the meaning of God in his holy word and my construction of that meaning in my brain and its effect on my will and my heart, I'm changed by the Holy Spirit's using all that seemingly natural process for our change.

So my answer to what's all this got to do with memorizing the scripture is this. When we memorize the scripture, we make that connection between this and this and this more constant, more deep, and more transforming. I'll venture this, realistically, nothing can replace it. Nothing can replace it, Bible memory, in doing what it was designed to do, in forging a connection between this and this and this.

This and this and this. Closing testimony from Noel and me. On December 21st, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. We went away for two days and among other things, we read, this is funny, Psalm 40 and Isaiah 40. We talked. We talked about the year and the years. So the anniversaries are four, right?

Past and future, taking stock, regretting, repenting, resolving. And we thought back how many times we had sat at a lunch, say at Eddington's or Famous Dave's or Leanne's, or Leanne Chin or Jimmy John's, this is our style. How many times we did our date lunch on Monday and we sat across from each other and rehearsed for a half an hour the pain of the years and the reasons for discouragement now and never once quoted any scripture at all.

And then we read in Psalm 40, verse five and we paused and we said, we've never done this before. We are going to make a verse, our year marriage verse. We've never had a year, if we have, I've forgotten it. A year marriage verse. Psalm 40, verse five. We're working on memorizing it and for some reason, I'm finding it a tough verse to memorize.

You have multiplied, O Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, when, yet when I tell of, thank you. Say it again. Yet they are more than can be told. Now, here's the relevance. The number of the wondrous deeds of God is uncountable.

The number of his thoughts toward our marriage, his thoughts as our father toward us, our children, our grandchildren, our marriage, the number of those thoughts is beyond counting. And as a husband, now this is a little tiny exhortation here to the men, I believe those lunchtimes of God's silence is my fault.

The number one responsibility of a husband is to lead with the word of God. And when a thousand reasons are being accumulated and moped over for why we are sad, it's my job to rise and call down some of the wondrous deeds of God, some of the thoughts of God and proclaim them and tell of them.

That's what we decided we would do. So you can ask us in June or July, how's Psalm 40 verse five going? Because I went to my little Apple computer and I entered it as a daily reminder for every Monday at 11 a.m. In the year. You will sink folks, you'll sink in your marriage, you'll sink in your parenting, you'll sink in your singleness, you'll sink in your studies if you're a student, you will sink if you only listen to the voices of the circumstances that are giving you problems.

'Cause they speak so loud and they have nothing good to say. And God has, this is a very thick book. (audience laughing) He has so many wondrous deeds and so many thoughts towards his children, hundreds and hundreds of thoughts towards his children. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.

Well, that's my testimony and our marriage testimony. May the Lord make his word dwell richly this year. - So good, hearing Noel's voice in this clip is just priceless, I love that. This one was sent in from Andrew, a listener in Salt Lake City. He writes, quote, "I love this clip "as it ties together both scripture, memory, and meditation "and it ties together leading and encouraging your wife "as a husband, amen." Thank you, Andrew.

And it also ties in the new year too, as you heard there at the very end. So good, this sermon is titled, "If My Words Abide in You," Jesus' phrase from John 15, seven. It was preached 13 years ago yesterday, on January 4, 2009. The full sermon is on DesiringGod's site, as always.

Thanks for listening. Most of our clips are now crowdsourced. You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons stand out to you and we share that clip with the APJ audience. If you've got one, email me. Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio and tell me how it impacted you.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, why does God hide himself from believers? It's a question we've touched on on the podcast, but we need to address it head on. Why does God hide himself from believers?

We're gonna ask that question next time when Pastor John is back in studio with me on Friday. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)