The Prosperity of the Blessed Man (Psalm 1:3-4) | Worship Service

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Good morning. Good morning and welcome to Kootenai Church. Would you please stand as we begin our service with a call to worship from the book of Isaiah.
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In chapter 12 verses 4 to 5 it says, and in that day you will say, give thanks to Yahweh, call on his name.
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Make known his deeds among the peoples. Make them remember that his name is exalted.
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Praise Yahweh in song for he has done majestic things. Let this be known throughout the earth.
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Let's sing together this morning, Christ our glory. Yes, it's in heaven.
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Our rest is not here. Then why should we tremble when trials draw near?
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Be still and remember the worse that can come, but shortens our journey and hastens us home.
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Christ our glory, Christ our hope,
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Christ our King forevermore. Be still and remember the worse that can come, but shortens our journey and hastens us home.
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No hours should be wasted on seeking our joy and placing our hope in what will be destroyed.
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We look for a city that can't have not raised.
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We long for a country that's in as of today.
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Christ our glory, Christ our hope,
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Christ our King forevermore.
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We look for a city that can't have not raised.
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We long for a country that's in as of today.
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Oh, trouble and anguish increase all the more.
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They cannot compare to the glory in store.
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Come joy or come sorrow, whatever befalls, the light of the
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Savior will outshine them all. Christ our glory,
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Christ our hope, Christ our
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King forevermore. Christ our glory,
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Christ our hope, Christ our King forevermore.
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Christ our glory, Christ our hope,
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Christ our King forevermore.
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Come joy or come sorrow, whatever befalls, the light of the
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Savior will outshine them all.
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How firm a foundation, ye saints of the
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Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent
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Word. What more can He say than to you
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He hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus hath fled?
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Fear not, I am with thee, O being not dismayed, for I will still give thee aid.
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I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand.
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When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all -sufficient shall be thy supply.
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The flames shall not hurt thee, I only desire thy trust, and thy hope to refine.
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A soul that on Jesus hath fled for repose,
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I will not, I will not desert to His foes.
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That soul will all hell trade never to shake,
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I'll never, I'll never, I'll never forsake.
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Let's sing together, My Soul Will Wait, Psalm 62. The end of growth's fate's within, when the darkness overwhelms, and my fears are pressing in.
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I will trust in You, O Lord, in the silence
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I will wait. I will stand upon Your Word.
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You're my solid rock and my salvation, my steadfast hope that won't be shaken.
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My soul will wait, my soul will wait for You.
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You're my stronghold and my shield, in the midst of every dread.
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Though the wicked never yield, they will vanish like a breath.
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Yes, I know the outcome's sure, Satan's evil plans will fail.
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In Your power I'm secure. You're my solid rock and my salvation, my steadfast hope that won't be shaken.
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My soul will wait, my soul will wait for You.
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You're my comfort when I feel forsaken, my refuge and my sure foundation.
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My soul will wait, my soul will wait for You.
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This is love I can't explain. This is mercy unreserved.
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Through Your sacrifice so great, I have peace that's undeserved.
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For the battle has been won, and I fear no shame or loss.
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Now the sting of death is gone. You're my solid rock and my salvation, my steadfast hope that won't be shaken.
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My soul will wait, my soul will wait for You.
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You're my comfort when I feel forsaken, my refuge and my sure foundation.
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My soul will wait, my soul will wait for You.
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You're my comfort when I feel forsaken, my refuge and my sure foundation.
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Hearts before You, we will trust in You.
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Perfect Savior, strong Defender, we will trust in You.
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Pouring out our hearts before You, we will trust in You.
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Perfect Savior, strong Defender, we will trust in You.
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Amen. You may be seated. Just the one announcement that I have has to do with the
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Biblical Counseling Training Conference that we are hosting next weekend. It's one weekend each in September, October, and November for a
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Friday night and Saturday sessions. The first one is this coming Friday, which means that today is the deadline to register for that if you're planning on making it.
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So I can see in the face of my kids, the ones who are planning on showing up still have not registered. So, Taryn and Liam and Shepley, this is for you.
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This morning. Oh, man, that's early. That's good. Early registration.
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So, do not confuse the application for the rebate with the registration itself.
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Those are two different things. So, if you're going to register, you need to register online for that, and the link should be in the literature that's available either outside or in your bulletin or both.
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And you can turn in the rebate application to Jennifer or to Kathy, Jennifer Barba or Kathy Conger, either one.
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Turn now, if you will, please, and don't register now, Liam, just later on is fine. Turn to Psalm 119,
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Psalm 119 for our scripture reading. We're going to begin reading at verse 49 and go to the end of verse 72.
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Psalm 119, beginning at verse 49. Remember the word to your servant in which you have made me hope.
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This is my comfort in my affliction, that your word has revived me. The arrogant utterly derided me, yet I do not turn aside from your law.
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I have remembered your ordinances from of old, O Lord, and comfort myself. Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked who forsake your law.
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Your statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. O Lord, I remember your name in the night and keep your law.
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This has become mine that I observe your precepts. The Lord is my portion.
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I have promised to keep your words. I sought your favor with all my heart. Be gracious to me according to your word.
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I considered my ways and turned my feet to your testimonies. I hastened and did not delay to keep your commandments.
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The cords of the wicked have encircled me, but I have not forgotten your law. At midnight,
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I shall rise to give thanks to you because of your righteous ordinances. I am a companion of all those who fear you and of those who keep your precepts.
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The earth is full of your lovingkindness, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. You have dealt well with your servant,
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O Lord, according to your word. Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
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Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good.
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Teach me your statutes. The arrogant have forged a lie against me. With all my heart,
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I will observe your precepts. Their heart is covered with fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.
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The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces." Please remain seated for the prayer time,
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Ms. Bauerhitz. Our Father, we are thankful for your word and the clarity that it gives us in all of life, in all of the decisions that we must make, in walking day to day, as you have ordained for us to walk.
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We are grateful that you have revealed to us in your word your path, your instruction, your righteous ordinances and precepts.
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You have revealed to us your righteousness, O God, your holiness. And you have revealed to us our own sin, depravity, and inability to do anything that is pleasing in your sight.
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And then most importantly, you have revealed to us how righteousness is available in Jesus Christ and forgiveness of sins because of what he has done.
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And so as your people, we gather together here to worship you, to adore you, and to thank you for your righteous ordinances, your righteous precepts, your holy word, your law and instruction, and also for the one, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled those righteous ordinances on our behalf and then died so that we may have life and forgiveness and righteousness.
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And so we rejoice in that and thank you for your mercy. We pray that you would instruct us in your word, that you would cause our hearts to delight together as we fellowship with one another and worship with one another.
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And as we rejoice around your throne and your goodness and your grace, we ask this for the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray.
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Amen. It's not in your bulletin, but I do want to introduce a missionary who is here with us, who's going to give a brief presentation of his ministry.
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Many of you know Gordy Hunt. He's preached here. He's a member here, has been here for years, and we've supported him and Nancy for years on the mission field and even now at home.
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And Gordy, you know, for those of you who don't know who Gordy is, you should make it your life's mission to meet
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Gordy and learn what he did on the mission field for 40 years. And he has now two sons who are serving on the mission field.
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One of them is working with the tribe that Gordy translated scripture for. One of them, whom you met several months ago, he was here.
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Jamie and Char, his wife, were here, and he got up and gave a presentation about what he's doing in another neighboring tribe down there.
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And so now we have Gordy's other son, Jeff, who is here to present to us the ministry that he continues there with the
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Monhui. And with that, Jeff, would you come up here and present what the
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Lord's doing through you there? Well, it's a real treat to have this opportunity to take just a couple minutes and introduce ourselves.
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We've heard a lot about you. We've heard from our brother and sister -in -law who came by, as was mentioned.
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I actually hear from my son who listens online to things that come from this church and the reputation that you preach and teach
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God's words in this church. So it's just a real privilege to be able to come by and say hi and introduce ourselves briefly.
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My wife, Stacey, and I, as we mentioned, we are Gordy and Nancy's kids. I have the privilege of continuing on the work that my dad started.
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And actually, I brought the work that my dad started here with me this morning. This is what my dad did.
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He won't brag about it, but he did this in the Monhui language. It is the New Testament and Genesis.
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And Stacey and I now have the privilege of following in his footsteps and continuing the work with the
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Monhui people by translating the Old Testament into the Monhui language. So that's what we've been doing for the last several years and will continue to do as long as the
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Lord allows us to have health and continue going back. We have two children, Micah and Jayla.
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Micah is 21. Jayla is 18. We just brought Jayla back this furlough and have left her about three weeks ago in the
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Ethnos Bible School in Waukesha. She's doing wonderful and we are making it.
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So I wanted to just share, currently we're working on Second Samuel and we're going to continue working on through the
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Old Testament. What I wanted to do really briefly this morning, I was trying to think of what could give you the best idea of something different and yet really something that is just the same in many ways.
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Something that this has done in the Monhui tribe as briefly as possible by sharing a testimony about how
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God's words have changed a man's life. And I just want to read his testimony.
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I thought that would be probably something that would give you the best idea possible of who the Monhui people are, kind of what they thought, and yet the same in many ways because it's only by God's words that a heart and a life and a person is changed.
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So I thought the best way to do that would just be to read Latinus's testimony to you this morning and hopefully you can kind of glean a little bit of some differences and yet again see that there is nothing new under the sun.
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It really is really truly only God's words that changes a heart and brings a person to the
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Lord. Not fancy teaching, not eloquent missionaries, but God's words.
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And so without further ado, I just want to read the testimony of Latinus and leave that with you here hopefully to give you an idea of who the
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Monhui people are and what God's word has done in the Monhui tribe.
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So here goes. Picture Latinus. He was the strongest shaman in the
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Monhui village, a witch doctor, someone who adored and worshiped and felt like the spirits and the demons bowed down to him and yet also he was able to manipulate them.
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So this is Latinus's words translated into English as best as I could. Latinus says this.
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My feet hurt from walking all day. They were cracked and bleeding from the dry ground. As I walked through the dust on the way back to the village from hunting,
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I thought about what the kids would say when I came back to the village empty -handed again. They would cry.
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They cried a lot lately. Sure enough everyone came out to meet me when I got home and I told them I hadn't found anything for food in the jungle.
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When they cried, I told them to stop crying or else lions would come eat them. Lions wouldn't actually come into the village but that's how
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I got them to obey. They'd have to learn to deal with hunger. We were always hungry. That's what it was like being a
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Monhui. It was dry this time of year. There wasn't much to be found in the woods and someone in the village most likely wasn't properly pleasing the spirits.
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That's why we were having a hard time getting food from the jungle but I was afraid we wouldn't last much longer.
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My oldest son Sessa came in from hunting. He had killed a couple of birds and a rabbit with his slingshot so that'd have to do for food for tonight.
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I thought about my daughter then. She wasn't a baby but she could fit in my bag. She was so skinny.
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She'd been sick for a long, long time. I'd have to chant over her again tonight to try to heal her.
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She was sick because a bad spirit had her spirit and I couldn't seem to get her spirit back.
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You would have thought that I could because I was the strongest shaman with the strongest helper spirit around.
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Everyone was afraid of me because I was the strongest shaman around. They were afraid because I could get anything
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I wanted. I could cast a spell on them if I wanted but I was generally good.
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I usually tried to heal people. Even though I was the strongest shaman around though, I was actually very afraid of my own helper spirit.
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I always tried to do whatever my helper spirit told me to do because I was afraid of him. I'll never forget the night
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I chanted over my sick daughter to try to heal her. I chanted so hard I could hardly talk.
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Eventually my helper spirit told me I had to put her body underwater to try to ground out the bad spirit and it didn't help and she passed away.
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Even though I wasn't able to heal my daughter, I was still known as a strong shaman. My people were afraid of me and respected me.
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Nobody would ever want to stop me from what I wanted. They'd never want to make me mad or shame me. Shortly after my daughter died, the
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Whiteskins, those guys, came. They told us a lot of stories that we already knew most of from the past.
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They didn't have them all correct though. They said that one god made us all and we know that we all came from parrots, the
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Amazon parrot, because it's the only animal that knows how to talk. We listened to a time to the
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Whiteskins teaching but after a while my helper the helper spirit told me I had to stop.
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I still tried to listen but it made my helper spirit really angry and unhappy. After I listened to what the
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Whiteskins called God's words, it would take me such a long time to try to chant and call up my helper spirit to help me heal somebody.
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My helper spirit really didn't like God's words or me listening to God's words and about that time a lot of my fellow shamans started to leave their helper spirits but not me.
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I was still strong. The missionaries talked a lot in those days about God and what he did for us and if I ever mentioned anything to my helper spirit he would cower and get angry and leave me for a long time.
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I'm not sure why because he was the strongest helper spirit around. I felt so weak when my helper spirit would leave me.
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I didn't know what to do. Nobody would ever dare confront me about my helper spirit because they were all afraid of me.
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Nobody that is except for my son Cessa. Everyone knew what I'd do to them if they confronted me and shamed me but that day that my son
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Cessa stood up to me remains in my mind. My son had been listening for a long time to God's words and he believed them.
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He said I was wrong about what I believed and I'd go to a very bad place called hell if I didn't
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God's words. My helper spirit was very angry that my son had stood up to me. He begged me not to be done with him.
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He also said I should put a curse on my son for shaming me and confronting me and I would have done that but my wife wouldn't let me.
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About that time I started listening more and more when I could to the white skins teaching. I didn't know what to do.
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I told the people I was doing it because I wanted to not because my son said I should but the truth is I was listening to God's because I was afraid.
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I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of dying.
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I was afraid of not having food. I was afraid of my helper spirit leaving me and becoming weak and not that many of my people were now afraid of me anymore.
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I was seemed like I was the only one in the village still afraid of everything. Finally came the day that I gave up my helper spirit for good.
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I hadn't seen him around for a long time. I've been listening quite a bit to the white man's teaching and what he said about God and about man not being good enough to go to God's place.
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Excuse me. Man not being good enough to go to God's place because God was perfect and man was sinful.
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I wanted to go to God's place when I died. I was so terribly afraid of dying.
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My helper demon, helper spirit demon left me for good the day that I understood that God's son died in my place so that I could go to God's place when
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I died. I thought I'd be really afraid and lonely when my helper spirit or demon left me but I wasn't.
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I got another helper that day. God's spirit came to live inside me.
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I wasn't afraid of God's spirit like I had been in my old helper demon. I was only happy.
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My stomach wasn't even full of honey and yet I was really really happy. I think I was so happy because I was freed by God's words that I believed.
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I wasn't afraid anymore. It was so good to not be afraid. These are my words.
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My name is Latinis. I can say my own name now because I'm not afraid of the curse that that was supposed to bring from saying my own name.
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And that's Latinis. Someone that's been changed by God's words being translated into his own language and then taught.
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Just want to say thank you again for letting us share and thank you for what you're doing here and giving us the opportunity to do the same thing in Paraguay.
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Thanks for taking care of our parents as well. Would you please stand as we sing together this psalm.
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Psalm 23, the king of love my shepherd is. Clear streams of him, my savior, he leads, alas, you'll be confused and foolish.
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Off I stray, but yet in love he saw me, and on his shoulder gently lay, at home rejoicing cried me.
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In death's dark veil I fear no ill, dear
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Lord beside me, your rod and staff my comfort still, your cross before to guide me.
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And so through all the length of days, your good wills we know.
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Shepherd may I sing your praise within your house, forever.
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Shepherd may I sing your praise within your house, forever.
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In first Peter chapter one and verses three to five it says, blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
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Let's sing together Christ the sure and steady anchor. Christ the sure and steady anchor in the fury of the storm, when the winds of doubt blow through me, and my sails have all been torn, in the suffering, in the sorrow, when my seeking hopes are few,
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I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor while the tempest rages on, when temptation claims the battle and it seems the night has won, deeper still then goes the anchor, though I justly stand accused,
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I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor through the floods of unbelief, hopeless somehow, oh my soul now, lift your eyes to Calvary, this my boundless self -assurance, see his
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God forever proved, I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor as we face the wave of death, when these trials give way to glory and we draw our final breath, we will cross that great horizon, clouds behind and life secured, and the calm will be the better for the storms that we've endured.
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Christ the sure of our salvation ever faithful, ever true,
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I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed.
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We turn your Bibles now please to Psalm 1, the first Psalm, Psalm 1.
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Let's begin with a word of prayer before we start. Our Father, we are thankful that You have called us here, that You have brought us here by the power of Your Word, that You keep us in Your Word.
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And by our Word, You preserve us in our sanctification and our security by Your Word of power.
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You've given to us all that we need for life and for godliness. And so we pray today that as we open up Your Word and consider it together, that You would use this time, the preaching of Your Word and our meditation around it, to conform us to the image of Christ and to make us men and women of Your Word that are described here in this
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Psalm. Be glorified through our time here and through the teaching of Your Word, we pray for Christ's sake and in His name.
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Amen. We have looked at the first of three contrasts in Psalm 1.
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The path, contrasting the path of the wicked and the path of the righteous or the blessed man.
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We saw last week that the blessed man avoids the instruction of sinners. He does not walk in the way of the ungodly, the wicked.
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He does not stand in the path of sinners and he doesn't sit in the seat of scoffers. That is to say, he is not swayed by them.
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He does not stand with them and he does not seduce with them. Those are two or three different degrees of involvement and relationship to evil.
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Instead, the righteous man or the blessed man delights himself in Yahweh's instruction, which is an entirely different path than the path of the wicked.
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The righteous man is informed by the Word of God, by his righteousness and by his truth, which is found in the instruction of Yahweh.
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So that kind of summarizes what we covered last week in verses 1 and 2. And I want to offer just a note of clarification before we move on.
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This is not the path of the legalist, verses 1 and 2. It's not the path of the legalist. The legalist is somebody who delights in his use or abuse of the law of God as a means for his own righteousness or a measure of his own righteousness.
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The legalist uses the law of God to show how righteous he is in his own eyes and holds other people up to that sort of man -made standard.
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That's what a legalist does. But the righteous man or the blessed man who delights himself in the law of the
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Lord is not delighting in the law because it condemns him. He's not delighting in the law because he cannot achieve the standards of the law.
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Even though the law condemns all of us, the righteous delight in it because we see even in that thing that condemns us, we see something that is holy and good and righteous and true, and we delight in that.
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We delight in the righteousness that is revealed in the law, the instruction of the Lord. We delight in the
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God who is revealed in the scriptures and in the righteousness that is revealed in the scriptures. We don't delight in the law in some sadistic sense where we think we have achieved the standards of the law and we have kept its perfect standards of righteousness because we can't and we don't.
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But instead, the righteous one delights in the God who is revealed in that Word and in the instructions that Yahweh gives to us in that law.
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So the blessed man receives all kinds of different blessings, a variety of blessings.
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He is blessed in a variety of ways. He can look at his life and say that he is blessed by God because of God's goodness and grace to him.
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He is blessed in salvation. He is blessed in the fruit of that salvation, and he is blessed in ways that the wicked cannot even perceive or even understand.
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So here at the outset of the Psalms, in Psalm 1, we have this question, are we the righteous man described in this
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Psalm or are we the wicked that is described in this Psalm? And before we even enter into worshiping
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God in and through the Psalms, the Psalter, that's the question that confronts us. Which one are we?
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Psalm 1 is a wisdom Psalm that calls us to consider two paths, two products, and two outcomes. And we see in this
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Psalm the way of blessedness. So the outline that we're using to work our way through the Psalm in verses 1 to 2, we see two contrasted there, two paths, and we've called verses 1 and 2, the path of the blessed man.
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Verses 3 and 4, we're looking at today, this describes the prosperity of the blessed man. And then verses 5 and 6, the prize of the blessed man, that the
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Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked or the path of the wicked will perish. And here is a second contrast, the prosperity of the blessed man.
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The righteous and the wicked are contrasted with these two agricultural similes. You'll notice it. Let's read together verses 3 and 4.
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Actually, let's back up and just start at verse 1 again. We can read the whole Psalm. It's not that long. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the
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Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does he prospers.
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The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
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For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Verses 3 and 4 are our text for this morning.
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We're going to notice there with each of the phrases in verse 3, a different kind, a distinct kind of blessing, and this gives us some idea of what the author means when he talks about the blessedness or the blessingsness of the righteous man in verse 1.
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We'll notice in each of those phrases a different and distinct blessing. The first one, we notice his provision. He's like a tree firmly planted by streams of water.
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Then we'll see his produce or product. It yields its fruit in its season, and then we'll notice his permanence.
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His leaf does not wither, and then finally his prosperity, and whatever he does he prospers. We'll break those down, spend most of our time in verse 3, because verse 4 is simply the negated contrast of that, but the wicked are not so, and then just a brief description of the wicked.
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So we'll spend our time in verse 3 so we can see what it is that really is the blessing of the righteous, and then we can just simply say all of that for the wicked, not so.
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None of that is true of the wicked person in verse 4. Let's notice first of all his provision.
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Psalm 1 verse 3, he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water. Again, this is a simile, and there's a simile in verse 3 and a simile in verse 4.
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Verse 3 says the blessed man is like a tree, and verse 4, the wicked is like chaff, and these two similes, agricultural similes, are intended to contrast these two men and their prosperity, or we would say the product or produce of their life.
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The imagery used here of a tree flourishing by streams of water is one that's used frequently in the
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Old Testament, and it's really used to picture here a flourishing and fruitful life under the blessing of God.
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I want you to notice something in verse 3 that probably flies under your radar as you just read over the verse.
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Notice that he is describing here a tree that is planted. It is a planted tree, not a wild tree.
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It's a planted tree. Those are two entirely different images in Old Testament Scripture, a planted tree and a wild tree.
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A wild tree pops up next to a river of water. Its seed is planted by the dung of a bird, or just by accident or happenstance, or the wind blows the seed in next to a stream.
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A wild tree is there by accident or by chance. It springs up on its own. But the author is not describing a wild tree.
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He's not describing a tree that just so happened to pop up next to an undefined stream of water out somewhere in the wilderness.
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Instead, he is indicating here by calling this a planted tree, a tree that is chosen with intention and care and design, and then is intentionally and specifically, by God's providence, planted where it is by the grower, a tree that is cared for by the husbandman who plants the tree with intention and purpose.
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In other words, in this picture, God Himself is the farmer, and He chooses the tree. He chooses the place in which the tree is planted, and then
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He cares for that tree. He tends it. He plants it. The blessed man is a man who is attended by God's providence, and as a planted tree,
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He is the special object of that special divine providence to not only choose the tree, but also choose the place where it is planted.
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This last spring, I went to a local nursery, and I bought two trees, a honeycrisp apple tree and an apricot tree.
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And when I showed up at the nursery, of course, I find the section that has the specific tree that I want, and then
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I don't just grab any tree. You guess which tree I pick. I pick the best tree that is there. Now, that's not what God did when He chose you and I, but every analogy breaks down a little bit.
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But follow me here. I choose the tree. I select a tree that is green and lush. It looks healthy.
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It's got lots of leaves on it. It's got lots of new shoots that year. Maybe it even has some blossoms or some fruit starting to form on it.
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It's taller. It looks like something that I can shape and mold as I prune it over the years. I bring that home with great care, and I know exactly on my lot where I want to plant it in direct sun and a place that sort of catches the eye and is specific to the landscaping, whatever landscaping
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I have in my yard. And I plant the tree specifically there, and I fertilize it. I dig the hole. I put the food in there, a little shot of some liquid, whatever it is that's supposed to make it sort of take root.
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And then I water it over the course of the summer. And these two trees, I put wire cages up around them to protect them from the deer.
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And then I'm observing them, not just for their health and their vitality, but also eventually for their fruit -bearing quality.
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And I watch them, I guard them, I protect them. Now that's a lot different from just a tree that's planted out in the wilderness that I could care nothing about.
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Spurgeon says this, it is the particular characteristic of the Christian man and woman that he is like a tree planted.
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That is to say there is a special providence exercised in his position. You all know the difference between a tree that is planted and a tree that is self -sown.
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The tree that is planted in the garden is visited by the husbandman. He digs about it.
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He fertilizes it. He trims it, prunes it, looks for its fruit. It is an object of property and of special care.
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The tree in the forest, the tree which is self -sown upon the plain, no one owns, no one watches over it.
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No heart will sigh if lightning flash shall shiver it. No tears will be wept if the blast should light upon it and all its leaves should wither.
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It is no man's property. It shelters no man's roof. No man cares for it."
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That's the difference between a cultivated tree and a wild tree.
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The blessed man is like a tree that is planted, which means that you, believer, are by God's choice and by God's providence the special object of His care.
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That's the imagery that is used here. Not a wild tree out in the middle of the wilderness that you could care less about, but a specific tree chosen and planted and watched over that you would be fruitful and flourish.
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Now the tree symbolism is a rich symbolism that's used throughout the Old Testament and obviously into the New Testament.
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Israel was an agrarian land with a lot of agrarian culture, and so we see these types of agrarian similes and metaphors and pictures used all the way through our
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Scriptures. The first episode or the first incident of this type of imagery, and it's in a literal place and a literal time, that's in the
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Garden of Eden in Genesis 2. So this picture occurs early. Genesis 2, verse 8, the
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Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the
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Lord caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became four rivers. So here early in Genesis you have a tree that is planted at a place where there are four rivers that water that lush garden, and in that garden
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God walked with man in His innocence before the fall. God walked with man, and there was consummate provision there.
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Everything that Adam and Eve could have needed, everything they could have desired was provided for them by God, and they had
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God to walk with and commune with. It's also the same picture that we see at the end of our scriptures in Revelation chapter 22, and in Ezekiel 47 describes the same thing in the restored creation.
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Here's how Ezekiel describes it. By the river on its bank on one side and on the other will grow all kinds of trees for food.
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Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month because their water flows from the sanctuary, and their fruit will be food, for their leaves will be for the healing.
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And then Revelation 22 says, Then he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the
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Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.
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And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. So we have at the beginning of God's revelation tree, the tree of life planted by rivers in the garden where everything was provided, and men walked with God in community and fellowship with Him.
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And then we have at the end of God's revelation, the tree of life planted by the river which flows from the throne of God where abundance is provided for all
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God's people, and He walks with us just like He did with Adam and Eve in the garden beforehand. That's the imagery that is used here, a tree that is planted that is flourishing and it is well watered and it is lavish in its fruitfulness.
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The imagery of the tree also reminds us of judgments that were promised as sometimes the opposite of the flourishing tree becomes the specific point of the metaphor.
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When the nation of Israel forsook the law of God and turned from Yahweh's instruction, then Scripture likens that nation to a tree that withers and dries up.
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Isaiah 1 verse 30, judgment upon Israel is described in these terms, for you will be like an oak whose leaf fades away or as a garden that has no water.
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Isaiah 34, 1 through 4 describes the judgment of God upon all the nations at the end of time, and listen to how the judgment upon the nations for their rebellion and their turning away from the law of God is described.
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Isaiah 34 verses 1 to 4, draw near O nations to hear and listen O peoples, let the earth and all it contains here in the world and all that springs from it.
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For the Lord's indignation is against all the nations and His wrath against all their armies.
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He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to slaughter, so their slain will be thrown out and their corpses will give off their stench and the mountains will be drenched with their blood.
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And all the hosts of heaven will wear away and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll, all their hosts also will wither away as a leaf withers from the vine as one withers from the fig tree.
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So here's the summary of the Old Testament imagery, the man of God, the blessed man is like a tree that is firmly planted by multiple streams of water that nourish it and cause it to grow, and that tree ends up producing fruit because that man meditates on the
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Word of God day and night. Scripture becomes his source of sustenance and food and nourishment, and because he is nourished by the
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Word of God, he flourishes like a tree that is firmly and intentionally planted right next to multiple streams of water.
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And the streams in the analogy is the instruction of Yahweh that is mentioned in verse 1 and 2, we are to not walk in the path or the instruction of the ungodly, but instead in the instruction of Yahweh, and when one does that, he becomes like this tree planted by the streams.
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The streams are the Word of God which nourishes and feeds the soul of the blessed man.
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Second, I want you to notice his produce, that's his provision in the first phrase. Next, notice the blessed man's produce, verse 3, second phrase, which yields its fruit in its season.
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He's like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season.
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This tree is a fruitful tree. It yields fruit. In fact, the reason the tree is planted is so that it would bear fruit.
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And so one may expect that if it is nourished by the streams or by the Word of God, that it is going to bear fruit that is in keeping with the nourishment that it receives.
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You plant a tree that's to bear fruit, and you expect it to bear fruit. Now, I have on my yard one fruit tree that does not bear fruit.
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I planted this 10 years ago. I planted it in my yard because it came from my mom's
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Italian plum tree, which came from my great -grandmother's Italian plum tree, which I wanted to have sort of that in my yard.
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I thought that would be cool. Someday my grandkids or great -grandkids will take a little shoot off of this. I planted it 10 years ago.
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It has never produced a single plum or a single blossom or a single sprout that shoots up.
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It looks beautiful. It's flourishing. But I tell you right now, it's a dead tree standing because this fall it's coming up.
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It's coming down, out of there. If it does not bear fruit, it goes to the fire. That's biblical. The vine that does not bear fruit is going to be cut off and burned.
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So that's what I'm going to do with this fruitless tree. There's another fruitless tree in my yard, which is my wife's
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Canadian maple tree. Because I love my wife like Christ loved the church,
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I allowed one tree in my yard that I will mow around and weed eat around that does not give me something to eat.
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So which fruit is it that is intended that the righteous man or the blessed man produces?
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You'll notice the text doesn't say. The text doesn't say it produces the fruit of this or the fruit of that. It just says that it produces each fruit in its season.
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When the season is ripe and when the season is ripe, this tree produces fruit. I think that the author does not describe the fruit or name the fruit because I think that there are varieties of fruits that the blessed man produces in his life.
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It's not just one fruit, patience or thankfulness or kindness, but it is a whole bunch of virtues.
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So that in times of plenty, there is produced by this blessed man generosity and thankfulness and graciousness.
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In times of privation, in seasons of drought, there is produced thankfulness and hope.
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In times of affliction or seasons of suffering, he produces patience and long suffering. In times of grief and sorrow, he produces faith and trust.
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In seasons of turmoil, peace. In seasons of temptation, prayer and obedience. When he is wronged, the blessed man produces forgiveness and mercy and gentleness.
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Those are the fruits that are produced in the blessed man. And when the Word of God is at work in the heart of a believer and he is nourished by the
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Word of God, whatever season it is that God has brought into his life, he will produce the fruits that are in keeping with that season.
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Multitudes of fruits, all kinds of varieties of fruitfulness. The work of the
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Word is seen in the fruit that is born in the lives of those who are planted by the streams of water. And if you starve yourself of God's Word and cut yourself off from that, then do not be surprised to see your spiritual fruit begin to fade and wither and even fall off.
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Notice that it says that it produces this in its season that can take time. It can take time. The tree doesn't bear fruit overnight.
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There has to be growth and nourishment and maturing and development and ripening. In the case of my plum tree, it's had 10 years.
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That's more than sufficient. That's why it deserves to be burned and I'm going to do that. It is only a fool who says, you know,
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I tried reading Scripture and meditating on the Word of God for a whole month and I didn't see any difference. Nothing happened.
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I tried daily devotions for a couple of weeks and I didn't see any magic pill. This is not a magic pill. Seasons are seasons.
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They're long periods of time. It takes a while for a tree to develop over years and sometimes the growth of fruit can be imperceptible to the naked eye when you try and observe it.
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I can stand outside my yard and watch my apples or my peaches or my apricots or my cherries and I can stare at them from dawn till dusk and I will not notice any growth whatsoever.
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None. But I promise you they have grown because if I do it week by week then I will notice growth week to week or month to month.
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Fruit takes sometimes a long time to develop and to grow and to mature. The growth of a tree can sometimes be entirely imperceptible.
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You don't notice it day to day, hour to hour, but you do year to year. I told you about the
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Canadian maple tree that my wife convinced me to plant. When we planted it, it was one of the smallest trees on our yard, just a small little sprig.
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Now, that was 20 -some years ago, I think. It's at least 20 years old and I was just driving up to my house this last week and I noticed that it dwarfs every other tree in my yard.
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I thought to myself, we need to cut this thing down. It is way too big. All that I see now driving up here.
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At no point in any one day did I think, oh, I've noticed how big it has grown since yesterday.
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It takes a while. The fruit is born in its season. Third, I want you to notice this permanence.
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Verse 3 again, its leaf does not wither. This is an evergreen tree. It's odd because it's an evergreen tree that is always producing fruit.
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We have evergreens around here, but they don't produce fruit in this sense. This is a tree that is constantly nourished by the
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Word of God. It never runs dry. And the imagery here is very simple and powerful. In an arid region like Israel, you can imagine trees that would be planted by these canals of water that the farmers would bring onto their piece of land to irrigate all of their trees and their plants, that you would have a dry season in which the ground would dry up and even crack, and yet the tree would be green and flourishing and even bearing fruit.
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Its leaf does not wither. You might look at the landscape around it and say, this is dry, and it is parched, and everything here is going to die, and yet this tree has roots that go down deep into the soil, and it is nourished, and it is fed, and it is sustained by something that you cannot see on the surface of the ground.
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That's the imagery here. This is an evergreen tree that is vibrant. It is flourishing. It is fruitful because it is nourished by things that the average person, that other people do not see.
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The wicked do not observe what it is that nourishes these trees. These trees are nourished by things that are out of sight, by deep roots.
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Third, or fourth, I should say, I want you to notice his prosperity, and that's the fourth phrase of verse 3, and whatever he does, he prospers.
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Let's read all of verse 3 again. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season, its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.
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Now, here is where the simile can be abused and where we can misunderstand what the author is intending.
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It is helpful for us to consider what he is not promising and what he does mean here. The word that is translated prosper can describe something that is profitable, something that is prosperous, something successful or completed, or even something brought to its ordained end.
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In other words, it is brought to completion. So now the question is, what kind of prosperity is it that the author is describing, and what is he saying that is being prospered?
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Notice that it is he who is prospered in whatever it is that he undertakes.
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Now, prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen and Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland, they love verses like this because these verses seem to suggest that they will have a life of unending prosperity and wealth and health and happiness, and that nothing that they ever do will fail.
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They will never be involved in a business venture that will go south. They'll never lose their job. They'll never have a building project that never gets completed.
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They'll never fail at anything. That everything that they touch will turn to gold like Midas. They'll never lose money.
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Their house will never burn down. They'll never get sick or ill or have a child die or a car that breaks down.
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That's how the promise of prosperity is often abused and used in our day, but that's not what the author is describing here.
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Because if you will notice that sometimes the wicked do prosper as well, right? In those terms, the wicked do.
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In fact, that's the the whole crux of the issue that is at the heart of Psalm 73 and Psalm 37, which we're going to get to, and we're going to deal with some of these
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Old Testament statements that seem to promise prosperity and abundance to the people who are righteous when we get into Psalm 37, because there in that entire
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Psalm, all 40 of those verses, that question is really taken up and addressed at length. So we're going to leave sort of a wrestling through how you understand those passages for later on when we get into that Psalm, but I want you to understand here at this point that the fact that sinners can sometimes be prosperous is no malignancy upon promises like what we find here in this phrase.
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In fact, in Psalm 37, to give you an example of how sometimes the wicked do prosper, and in fact, let me back up for a second.
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It is obvious sometimes that the prosperity seems unbalanced on the side of the wicked, does it not?
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That causes us real angst, because while we as righteous, as God -fearing people do enjoy a level of comfort and abundance and provision that most of the world does not.
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In fact, most of humanity has never enjoyed the things that we enjoy. The wicked seem to enjoy those things in a greater abundance than we do, all told, when taken as a whole.
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And yet, the issue that is raised in Psalm 73 about what about the wicked and why is it that the wicked prosper, it is answered in Psalm 73 this way, verses 18 to 20, "'Surely
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You,' that is God, "'You set them in slippery places, You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment, they are utterly swept away by sudden terrors, like a dream when one awakes.
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O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.'" The prosperity that the wicked enjoy is a preparation of their judgment.
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God is fattening the wicked up for destruction by abundantly giving to them this world's goods.
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That's the teaching of Psalm 73 and Psalm 37. The success or the good that is promised to the righteous in this passage and in other passages like it is a good or a blessing, a success that is described throughout wisdom literature, in the
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Psalms, and in Proverbs, and it encompasses more than mere material prosperity.
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If we think that prosperity begins and ends with wealth, business, success in this life, ease and comfort and temporary and temporal blessings, if that's what we think prosperity is, then we will miss the point of wisdom literature because true prosperity is far more than that.
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Let me ask you this question. Is it better to have barns that are filled with plenty or a soul that is filled with God's goodness and grace?
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Which one is better? Is it better to have all the world could offer you and your soul shrivel or would it be better to have none of this world's goods and yet to have a soul that is fat and flourishing and fruitful?
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Obviously, the latter is better. And it is the latter that is incorporated into the idea of prosperity and blessing in this psalm and in other places.
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The blessedness, happiness, peace, joy, and delight that is the lot of the righteous is something that is enjoyed without any reference to material or financial prosperity.
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Now, material blessings and abundance may be involved in God's blessing to us in this life, but it is not necessary.
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In fact, we have to think of that blessing that God gives to the blessed man or the righteous in terms of not just the soul flourishing in this life and the fruitfulness in this life, but also of the ultimate prosperity, which is the end that both the righteous and the wicked will be at when it is all said and done.
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And when you zoom out and you say, in terms of the righteous and the wicked, the end result is not similar at all.
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In fact, it is entirely different. And that is really where the prosperity of the righteous can be seen.
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And that's in Psalm 37, and we'll get to that more when we get there. There are limits.
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Notice the fourth phrase of verse 3. It says, in whatever he does, he prospers.
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I think there are limits pronounced on that by the text itself. In other words, the righteous does not prosper in his sin.
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The blessed man does not prosper in endeavors that leave God out or in pride or presumption or any endeavor that he undertakes.
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The limitations are on the endeavors or the things that he does that are in keeping with his meditation upon the law or the instruction of Yahweh.
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So the whatever is to include the things that spring out of a life that has lived in obedience to the law, to the
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Word of God in which he delights day and night. It's not every single thing he does that is promised to succeed or to prosper.
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It is the things that he does that are in keeping with the meditation on the law of Yahweh. So a blessed man may have a business failure.
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A blessed man's house may burn down. A blessed person's spouse may get sick and die.
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The car may break down. He may lose his business. He might lose his job. Bad things will happen to the righteous.
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But here is the promise of Scripture. Everything that that man does that is in obedience to and in keeping with the law of God in which he meditates day and night, every one of those things will be brought to its
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God -ordained, God -appointed end and will result in the prospering of his soul.
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Your every act of obedience, your every act of service, your every act of sacrifice will have its
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God -ordained completed end and that end will prosper you. It will be for your good and for your soul's blessedness.
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In other words, the ultimate outcome of the blessed man's obedience to the instruction of God is his temporal and eternal good.
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All that God appoints for the blessed man, he accomplishes the blessed man's good. He ordains his ultimate joy and good and everything the
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Lord does for this man of Psalm 1 is guaranteed to produce his ultimate and eternal happiness and joy.
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Catch that. Everything that God appoints for the blessed man of Psalm 1 is intended for your ultimate and eternal blessing and joy.
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That includes your suffering and affliction. You say, how does that work?
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How does it work that I can suffer and be afflicted and yet prosper? Because one thing we do not understand in our context and we need to wrestle through is the reality that our affliction and our suffering can actually result in the prospering of our soul.
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The Lord chastens those whom He loves. He brings to us affliction and suffering and trials and temptations and difficulties all because in meditating on the law of God day and night,
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God intends the good for that child of His to whom He has brought those things. He intends our good and the flourishing of our soul and He knows exactly how to use those things in order to accomplish that God -ordained end in the life of His child.
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Spurgeon said this, it is often for the soul's health that we should be poor, bereaved, and persecuted.
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The trials of the saints are the divine husbandry by which He grows and brings forth abundant fruit.
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In all things, even your affliction, God intends your good. In all things, even your suffering and your trials and your difficulties,
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God is working for the good of your soul and for your eternal joy and your eternal prospering.
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Now, how is it possible that we could speak of somebody's affliction and somebody's blessing?
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Well, who is the blessed man of Psalm 1 verses 1 and 2? Who is the one who never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, never sat in the seat of scoffers, and never stood in the way of the transgressor?
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Who is that one? There's only one person who has never done that, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Correct? He's the only one.
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And yet here is what Isaiah 53, the chapter that talks about the suffering of the suffering servant.
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Here's what Isaiah 53 says. Listen, verse 10, but the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief.
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If he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the
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Lord will prosper in his hand. Same word, prosper. The suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ is described as the result of that, as the good pleasure of the
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Lord prospering in his hand. So here's my question to you. If you could go back to the original first Good Friday on that Passover weekend, almost 2 ,000 years ago, and walk into the city of Jerusalem and walk past those three men hanging on the cross, and you were to look at the man on the middle cross, would you have said to yourself, that is the blessed man of Psalm 1?
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Would you have said that? You would never say that. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
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That's what you would have said. Not blessed is he on the middle cross. Here is the King of the
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Jews. You would have never considered him a blessed man, and yet he is the blessed man of Psalm 1.
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Why? Because through his affliction, the Lord has caused the good pleasure of Yahweh to prosper in his hand, meaning he has paid the price for all his people, and he will gather in all his people, accomplish everything that Yahweh sent him to do.
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He will receive the kingdom, and he will turn it over to us in that final day, prospering all those for whom he has died.
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The good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. The man of Psalm 1 is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the man of Psalm 1 hung on a cross.
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And as a result of that affliction, the Lord has caused all the sin of his people to fall upon him, and the good pleasure of the
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Lord is prospered in his hand. Now verse 4, very brief, not so the wicked.
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In fact, there are manuscripts that have this passage that have a double negative here so that it says, not so the wicked, not so.
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In other words, the author is intending here the starkest of contrast. Everything we've said about the blessed man, the wicked enjoys none of that.
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None of those things apply to him. So whatever we think blessing means in terms of the righteous or the blessed man in verse 3, whatever we think of the wicked enjoy in terms of blessing, that is not what is being described in verse 3.
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It is a different kind of blessedness entirely. Do the righteous and the wicked both enjoy material prosperity?
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They do. For the righteous, it is God's blessing. For the wicked, it is God's curse. It is the exact same filthy lucre that God intends for his child one way and for the wicked another way.
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But this blessing that is described in verse 3 is something entirely different. Everything about the wicked is opposite of the blessed man or the righteous.
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In this life, that is not as evident as it will be in the life that is to come. In this life, it seems like the difference between the righteous and the wicked is kind of one of degrees.
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We live in the same houses. We drive the same kind of cars. We eat the same food. We enjoy the same restaurants.
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We dress the same. We visit the same place. We work at the same places. There's a lot of similarities between the righteous and the wicked.
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But in the eternal measurement, in the eternal perspective, the difference could not be more contrast. Not so the wicked.
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And notice how the wicked are described. They are like chaff which the wind drives away. Again, an agricultural simile.
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James Boyce in his commentary says this, quote, the picture here is of a threshing floor at the time of the grain harvest.
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The threshing floors of Israel are on hills that catch the best breezes. Grain is brought to them, is crushed by animals or by threshing instruments that are drawn over it.
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Then it is pitched high into the air where the wind blows the chaff away. The heavier grain falls back to the threshing floor and is collected.
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The chaff is scattered or burned. To use the picture of chaff to describe the wicked, the wicked is like chaff which the wind drives away.
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It describes two things, their uselessness and their judgment. Uselessness and judgment.
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The wicked produce no righteousness and no true eternal and everlasting goodness. While they may serve some temporally, humanly speaking, good purposes in this life, they invent things that we enjoy, they design pleasures that we get to enjoy as well.
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The wicked do a few things here in terms of temporally in this planet, but they have no eternal value.
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When we measure them with eternal standards and by eternal weights, the wicked are worthless and light and have no substance.
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They are driven away by the breeze. They have no substance whatsoever. Not like the tree that is firmly planted.
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A tree firmly planted will see the blast of the wind.
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The wind will come, the wind will blow, and the tree might move, but it is not taken over. It's not turned over. It's not destroyed.
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Whereas the chaff are so useless and light and of no substance that immediately when the wind blows, the chaff are blown away with it, and they are gone and forgotten just as fast as you can say the wind are like chaff at which wind blows away.
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That quickly they are forgotten. They have no root, they produce no fruit, they're light and insignificant, useless to the farmer, have no value, they're blown away and quickly forgotten.
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Nobody measures the success of their crop or the success of their harvest by the amount of chaff that they took off of it.
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Nobody does that. John the Baptist described the judgment that is coming upon the world this way, executed by the
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Lord Jesus, by the way, in Matthew 3, verse 12, His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear
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His threshing floor, and He will gather His wheat into the barn, and He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
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It's a picture of God's judgment, the chaff. At the time of Christ's return to establish His kingdom, all the nations of the earth will be destroyed.
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And here's how Daniel chapter 2, at the end of that vision of all the kingdoms, and they have the rock that is cut out without hands, and it comes in and crushes all the kingdoms.
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Here's what Daniel 2, verse 35 says, of the coming judgment that Jesus will bring. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found, but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
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You hear that? All of the nations are chaff. And when that stone rolls in and destroys all of the kingdoms of this world, and it fills the entire world, it is going to bring destruction, and the wicked will be blown away like the wind blows away the chaff.
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How inconsequential are the wicked? Notice that they just get one phrase to describe them, chaff, chaff which the wind blows away.
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Notice the contrast between verse 3. Verse 3 is, the righteous are like the tree, and you get their fruitfulness, you get a description of their leaves, you get a description of their activities and the prosperity that come to them, and then the wicked, chaff which the wind drives away.
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Even the brevity of the description is intended to demonstrate the contrast between the righteous, the blessed man, and the wicked.
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And notice also that the blessed man is described as a singular, and the chaff are described altogether. The blessed man, each and every single blessed man is like a tree firmly planted by rivers of water.
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Every one of them brings forth its fruit. Every one of them is firmly planted. Every one of them has leaves that never fade or wither.
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Every one of them is prospered by God and by His providential hand in the accomplishment of all that Yahweh sets out for Him to do.
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Every one of them is like that. So if you have a collection of godly and blessed men together, it's like having a forest or an orchard full of such trees that are firmly planted by streams of water.
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One blessed man is like a tree. Take all of the wicked, pile them all together, and what are they like?
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Chaff. That's their value. Add them all together. That's the value of the wicked in the eternal scale, in the eternal sense.
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So here's the application. Why would you pursue their counsel? That's the point of the psalm. Why would you stand with them?
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Why would you identify with them? Why would you try and seduce others to join their path? Why would you not be like the man who delights himself in the law of God day and night, meditates upon it?
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Why wouldn't you be like that person, given that the wicked are going to receive that kind of an end? Do not be influenced by chaff.
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Do not be swayed by them. However strong sinners may seem now, however entrenched in their positions of power and influence and however weighty their opinions may sound, however immovable and unconquerable, the wicked appear in all of their evil and in all of their power and in all of their positions.
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Keep in mind that they, in the end, are going to be driven by the wind of God's wrath that comes out of his nostrils like chaff from the threshing floor, and it will be piled up and it will be burned with unquenchable fire.
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That is what Scripture promises. There's going to come a time, I don't know, 10 ,000, 20 ,000, 30 ,000 years from now, when we're all sitting around in the kingdom and we're going to say to each other, remember that day we were all worried about the 2024 election?
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Remember that? See how goofy that seems now in perspective?
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We've forgotten the Nancy Pelosi's, forgotten the Kamala Harris's and the Joe Biden's, forgotten the congressmen and the
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Supreme Court justices, because all of them that did not delight in the law of the Lord will be driven away like chaff.
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And not to be sadistic, but we will rejoice in God's judgment when that day comes.
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If God is going to rejoice in that righteous work, his people will rejoice in that righteous work as well.
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They will be driven away like the chaff. Psalm 35, verse 5, let them be like chaff before the wind, which the angel of the
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Lord drives them on. So which one are you? Whose counsel do you follow? And what will be your end?
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Let's pray together. Father, what an encouragement this word is to us of your providential care for us and the loving kindness that you have lavished upon your people.
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We thank you for the promises of your word and may we take them to heart and may we find comfort and consolation in them.
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We pray that you would work a work of grace in our hearts to make us men and women of your word, delighting in your instructions, following your counsel, your instructions in your word.
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And then we pray that you would delight yourself in causing the abundance of fruit in our life to come forth so that we may give you praise and glory and honor on that final day.
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Produce the fruit that is promised in this passage in our lives, we pray through your word. Produce steadfastness of hope and courage and confidence and may we delight in what you have promised to us, an eternal, joyful, and everlasting kingdom as the reward for the blessed men and women who are yours by your choice and by your grace.
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We thank you in the name of Christ our Lord. Would you please stand as we end our service this morning and sing together,
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Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory, and oh, so are you weary and troubled to see.
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There's life for a look at the Savior, and life for a turn to Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace through death into life everlasting.
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No more hath no end. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory.
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His word shall not fail you, he promised.
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Believe him and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying, his perfect salvation to tell.
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Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
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May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of his