You Missed Something Extraordinary
Some sermons teach you something new. Others remind you why the thing you already knew matters more than you realized. The message Dr. Gene Getz delivered at the Ocean City Tabernacle on June 14th did both — and it came from a man whose own story, told with no drama and total sincerity, was as compelling as the text he was teaching.
Dr. Getz opened simply: “It’s great to be on planet Earth.” Several years ago, COVID put him in the hospital for eight months. In the first weeks, his family gathered to say goodbye — doctors didn’t expect him to survive. He did. And on Sunday morning, at 94, he stood at the Tabernacle pulpit to teach from the longest chapter in the Bible: Psalm 119.
If you weren’t there, the full message — including a remarkable personal testimony from a sitting Texas state senator — is available now on the Ocean City Tabernacle’s YouTube channel.
Who Is Dr. Gene Getz?
Dr. Gene Getz is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute who went on to earn a BA from Rocky Mountain College, an MA from the Wheaton Graduate School, and a Ph.D. from New York University. He served as a professor at Moody Bible Institute and Director of the Moody Evening School, and later as a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.
It was while teaching at Dallas that Dr. Getz authored Sharpening the Focus of the Church — a book that led him out of the academic world entirely and into church planting, where he started what became the Fellowship Bible Church movement.
Over the decades since, Dr. Getz has authored nearly 70 books, including two multimedia Study Bibles: the Life Essentials Study Bible and the Men of Character Bible. He now serves as Director of the Center for Church Renewal, and continues to author a complete rewrite of Sharpening the Focus of the Church, recently released by Moody Publishers with 38 QR codes and video introductions woven into every chapter. He also hosts Bible Principles, a two-minute daily radio feature airing on stations nationwide, accessible at bibleprinciples.org.
At 94 years old, Dr. Getz returned to the Ocean City Tabernacle stage on Sunday, June 14th — not slowing down, but in many ways just getting started on the next chapter of a ministry already spanning more than seven decades.
176 Verses, 22 Letters, and a Pastor Who Preached 190 Sermons
Dr. Getz set the stage for Psalm 119 with a sense of awe for its sheer architecture. He told the congregation about Thomas Manton, a British pastor from the 1600s who preached 190 sermons on this single psalm — sometimes more than one sermon per verse. Three volumes of those sermons, totaling 1,677 pages, remain in print today.
“It’s still in print because it’s the Word of God,” Dr. Getz said. “The endurance of biblical truth.”
He then unpacked the psalm’s remarkable acrostic structure: 176 verses divided into 22 stanzas, each stanza built around one letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with every one of the eight verses in that stanza beginning with that same letter. “Isn’t that absolutely amazing?” he asked, holding up a small scroll to illustrate. “It’s not only a wonderful piece of literature artistically in every way, but you can see that the Holy Spirit was active in guiding this particular psalm.”
“It’s still in print today because it’s the Word of God — the endurance of biblical truth.”
One Sermon, Two Verses — “How Happy Are Those Who Walk”
With characteristic humility, Dr. Getz noted that where Thomas Manton preached 190 sermons on Psalm 119, he himself would preach just one — on its opening two verses.
“How happy or blessed are those whose way is blameless,” he read, “who walk according to the Lord’s instruction.” He was careful to clarify what this does not mean: “It’s not referring to perfection. None of us are perfect. What they’re basically saying is, blessed are those who are committed to living according to God’s word, who walk in his will.”
From there, Dr. Getz did something he considers essential to handling any Old Testament text responsibly: he traced the concept forward into the New Testament. He turned to Ephesians 4:1, where Paul — writing from prison in Rome — uses the same Greek metaphor, peripateo, to walk, urging believers to “walk worthy of the calling” they’ve received. That calling, Paul had already described in the letter’s first three chapters: chosen in Christ, adopted as sons and daughters, redeemed through his blood, sealed by the Holy Spirit.
“We are to walk in love as Christ also loved us,” Dr. Getz said, quoting Paul’s expansion of the theme. “We are to walk as children of light. We are to walk wise — and how do we know what is wise? Through the eternal Word of God.”
“Blessed are those who are committed to living according to God’s word, according to his will, who walk in his will and follow the Lord’s instruction.”
Head Knowledge Into Heart Knowledge
Moving to verse two — “happy are those who keep his decrees and seek him with all their heart” — Dr. Getz drew a distinction that shaped the rest of the message: “It’s one thing to know what God says. It’s another thing to live what God says. And we’ll only live what God says when it becomes part of our innermost being.”
He pointed to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 6:6 — that God’s words were to be in the people’s hearts, not merely their heads — and then to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:16-19, that believers would be strengthened in their inner being, that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith, and that they would comprehend the length, width, height, and depth of God’s love.
“That’s a process we will not only experience here,” Dr. Getz said, “but throughout all eternity.”
He then led the congregation in personalizing Paul’s prayer aloud together — inviting every person in the room to ask God for that same strength, that same indwelling, that same comprehension of a love that surpasses knowledge.
“It’s one thing to know what God says. It’s another thing to live what God says.”
Two Enduring Principles
Dr. Getz distilled the message into two principles he described as timeless — what he calls “super-cultural” truths that apply in every era of human history:
• To experience true fulfillment, we must continually learn and apply the principles of the inspired Word of God.
• To apply these principles, we should seek God’s help through prayer and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
“Those are eternal truths that apply in our lives at this moment in history — but also in the past, and in the future, and in any place in the world, until Jesus comes again.”
A Seven-Year Project That Became a Multimedia Bible
In the most personal portion of the message, Dr. Getz shared the unlikely story behind the Life Essentials Study Bible. Roughly 20 years ago, Holman Bible Publishers called and asked him — then in his 70s and stepping back from ministry — to build a complete “principles to live by” study Bible around the newly completed Christian Standard Bible translation, from Genesis to Revelation.
“They said, with all you’ve done, we know you could probably do it in a couple of years,” Dr. Getz recalled, smiling. It took seven — sometimes seven days a week. The result: 1,500 distinct biblical principles drawn directly from the text.
What happened next, he said, was nothing short of providential. As the team prepared to teach through all 1,500 principles on video for a small group, someone suggested QR codes — a feature that hadn’t even been part of the original plan — allowing every single principle to link directly to a short teaching video. The Life Essentials Study Bible became the first multimedia study Bible ever printed.
“If we had taped those seven years, we never could have reproduced it,” he said. “It was a God thing.”
“After 50 years in the ministry, when I began this project, I began to understand the scriptures in a way that I never understood them before.”
A Texas Senator, 200 Bibles, and a Ministry Spanning the Globe
Perhaps the most striking moment of the morning came via video testimony from Texas State Senator Phil King, who described receiving the Life Essentials Study Bible as a birthday gift from his wife after hearing Dr. Getz speak in the fall of 2019.
Senator King has since worked through the entire New Testament and most of the Old Testament — roughly five minutes of reading and one short video per day — and has personally purchased and given away more than 200 copies of the Bible to friends and colleagues. “Nobody’s ever mad at you if you give them a Bible,” he said. He even arranged for every member of the Texas Senate and House of Representatives to receive a copy, and was sworn into office with his hand resting on his own copy of the Life Essentials Study Bible.
Because every Bible purchased through the ministry funds one given away free to someone who could never afford one, the impact has reached remarkable scale. Dr. Getz shared a rapid tour of the ministry’s global footprint: 15,000 Bibles distributed in Uganda, 9,000 in Kenya, thousands in the Philippines and India, and a training center in Uganda where pastors are taught not just to receive the Bible but to use it.
The translation work is equally staggering — over 50,000 Spanish-language copies printed (with Dr. Getz’s own teaching videos lip-synced into Spanish), thousands distributed across Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Cuba, with Vietnamese translation underway, Romanian and Portuguese in progress, and Malayalam already complete.
“I just have to share the unfolding story this week — it’s coming out in Vietnamese. It’s just an incredible story of how that happened.”
A Closing Word — and a Room That Responded
Dr. Getz closed the morning not with a call to action, but with a quiet, personal request. At 94, he still carries lingering neuropathy from his bout with COVID. “I prayed that the Lord would remove it,” he said, “but he’s chosen not to, and I accept it.” He asked the congregation to pray instead for his wife of 70 years, that they would both have good health “to continue this ministry until God takes us home.”
It was a fitting end to a message that had, from its very first sentence, been a testimony to endurance — the endurance of a 176-verse psalm written three thousand years ago, the endurance of a translation ministry now reaching dozens of countries, and the endurance of a man who, eight months in a hospital bed and 94 years into his life, still gets up to teach the Word of God with the same wonder he clearly had the first time he opened it.
Tom Sherf closed the service with a reminder that felt entirely appropriate to the moment: this stage, in this place, has hosted faithful biblical teaching for 150 years — and that legacy continues because of people who keep showing up to listen, to give, and to walk it out.
Watch the Full Service — Ocean City Tabernacle on YouTube
If you missed Dr. Gene Getz’s message in person, the full service is available now on the Ocean City Tabernacle’s official YouTube channel. Watch it, share it, and come back next Sunday.
Watch Dr. Gene Getz: “The Secret to Spiritual Growth According to Psalm 119” — youtube.com/watch?v=UgEMEe3ESW0
Subscribe — new messages all summer long: youtube.com/@OceanCityTabernacle
Partner With Us
Each season, the Tabernacle becomes a place where people gather to hear the Word of God, worship together, and be renewed in their faith. Your support helps make that possible—strengthening a ministry that proclaims the Gospel, invests in the next generation, and provides a place where residents and visitors alike can encounter truth, encouragement, and community. By partnering with the Tabernacle, you are helping ensure that this work continues with clarity, purpose, and lasting impact.
